Turret

Forum Fanatic
Jun 23, 2017
4,128
7,059
No, I think I'm interpreting the arguments properly, I just find them completely unsupported.

Even if Mina is Ian's girlfriend, she doesn't OWE it to Ian to disclose her bucket list. They're her kinks. She's completely within her rights to hide them from anyone she thinks wouldn't treat them appropriately - and as True_Degenerate illustrated, Ian has *deliberately* abused her trust and belittled her sensibilities pretty much from the get go.

Moreover, you imply Mina's innocence is disingenuous and I just don't agree. Her bubbly, innocent persona is an affectation, but it is not false. That's the person Mina wants to be, and thus it's how she tries to act. Mina doesn't see herself as a nymphomaniac so she hides that aspect of herself; the dichotomy between her preferred self-image and her overactive libido is a big part of why she's so reluctant to vocalize her fantasies.

Lastly, the idea that Mina will disclose truths to Hana she won't admit to Ian is flat out preposterous. Ian is sitting right next to them during the game! The fact that only Hana was respectful enough to answer Mina's questions earnestly and wise enough to recognize the pattern in Mina's questions ought to make it crystal clear why Ian never learned about the list. Yet some people refuse to believe their lying eyes and insist Mina *must* have intentionally misled Ian.

It's a real headscratcher to me.
Hi!
Yes, I think you misinterpret my text, since you do not write about the points I want to make. It might be that we have some translation loss in the meaning of the argumention chains and language stuff in general here. So a try at a very basic compressed translation:
a) While True_degenerate illustrated the situation at the time the game, it cannot be the situation "from the get go". Ian and Mina´s relationship was roughly a year old when they are at the birthday paty. Had Ian started out like he behaved at the end, the two would never have come together, no matter that Ian hyperboles during the talk with Edwin! It does not function like that. He would never have gotten Mina on the hook had he started it like he did in the end!
And that Ian can be charming if he wants to is shown in several scenes, not just with Mina, but e.g. Vicki. And there is a another hint of it in the party scenes. When they are forced to say something nice about each other. It is clear Ian could be different if not Chuck would influence him strongly.

b) This is something of a headscratcher for me, why some Mina fans try to read something from my posts I never said nor intended! I always said that Ian is by far the main culprit why the relationship with Mina crashed, no debate here, it was practically selfsabotage. It is just that there are scenes with hints that Mina is not completely blameless it came to that.

c) I do not imply Mina´s innocnece is a complete act like you insinuate, her personality is mainly like this at that point in game. But Mina is not quite as innocent as you believe! She is steering her innocence depending on the situation how thick or thin she lays it on. She clearly overdid it at Edwin´s birthday party, even with Ian present! It was completely unnecessary to e.g. give Hana the glare she gave her when she explained a kink which was not as"bad" as the ones she wants to try. No one present would have "hmmed" if Mina just listened to it.
 

Bill Temple

Active Member
May 20, 2021
732
2,629
I see this is a deeply philosophical thread pondering on mysteries like the self-awareness, emotions, motivations and whatnot but i just came to ask how is the porn in this one because i never played it before. Interestingly enough.
Pretty fucking hot, but there's some rough/gross humiliation stuff happening to some of the girls too. Some people don't like that (*whispering* betas :sneaky:).
 

Bill Temple

Active Member
May 20, 2021
732
2,629
Yes I'm aware that the things you mentioned (or some version of them) exist. But awareness isn't knowledge or insight. If you honestly believe making your girl jealous like that will lead to more love/sex, I hope for you sake you never get a chance to try it out! And the thing about toxicity (hate that redditspeak bullshit term) in the real world: there isn't a writer who can turn it off whenever convenient. If Ian's the kind of guy who keeps a gf just to humiliate and torment, he cannot simultaneously be the guy who accepts her breaking up like mummy's brave little soldier. Realistically Ian 1 would come after you and leave a trail of destruction, whereas Ian 2 would've ended a relationship he clearly doesn't want.
Yea, I have wondered if the different levels insight into this situation are where the disconnect lies. A tiny bit of jealousy might help some partners connect with each other more, but I think most of us agree that in the general case making your partner jealous in the way and to the degree that Ian is doing doesn't strengthen a loving relationship. You'll note that I said that Ian making Mina jealous is an effective way to manipulate someone. I should have said "can be" an effective way to manipulate someone. Some people can't be duped so easily, but it is a tactic used to reasonable success by men and women for as long as we've been a species. One would be sacrificing trust and love for sexual and other short-term gains, but it can work. If one has enough of a conscience, feeling like a scumbag and damage to one's mental image are the other costs.
Ian's feelings about the breakup being at odds with his treatment of Mina makes him seem like a real person to me. People are complex and frequently behave less than rationally and inconsistently. We often do things we later regret. There's a reason why "You don't know what you got 'til it's gone" is a saying. One can take someone for granted, objectify them, emotionally torment them, then in hindsight realize that the reason for doing so was proactively sabotaging the relationship for fear of rejection, avoidance of commitment, bouts of narcissism, or some other personality flaw. Some of us are generally respectful, honest guys that fall into a pattern of acting like a right bastard for a while. Others are awful sons of bitches whose humanity bubbles up to the surface periodically. And there's everything in between too. If I were to put them on that scale, I'd say Ian's just a few notches to the right of the middle, and I'd put Edwin at even money.
Realistically, TD could have written the two scenarios you suggest, but he also could have, and did, realistically write the scenario he has. Is it the most likely outcome? Maybe not, but it's not like it's 4 sigmas from the mean.
 
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Turret

Forum Fanatic
Jun 23, 2017
4,128
7,059
Ohwow, look at this, this title somehow ended up on top of my list of 'Probably should give this one a try'. Now how did that happen :lepew:
Hi Ennoch!
I agree with other members that you should definitely try out "Pale Carnations". It is one of the absolute best games we have on F95! Some parts disgust me, but I live with them because this game takes you for a great ride. The characters alone are worth it!
One of the side characters managed to gain a following even as a potential LI with just a couple of "visits" and she is hardly your standard VN woman.
 

Gab1

Member
Jul 9, 2018
114
187
Funny how intense this discussion about Ian and Mina has become.

My two cents.

First, Pale Carnetion is a really interesting work about people with Daddy issues, Mina has them, Ian has them, Hana of course, even Veronica, Felicia and Rose has them.

Second Ian and Mina relationship, to me, is about this, for one Mina follow her dad philosofy, that giving is the most important thing, but with Ian she wanted to show that she isnt like her mother, that she could mantain a relationship no matter what, instead Ian wanted to have fun first, but Mina, who is really smart, see more in him than a horny wallet, and that bothers Ian a lot, because only Dr. Chuck and Mina were seeing him with expectation, not his mother even less his father, so Ian couldnt help himself but see how much Mina would permit before finally getting disappointed, perhaps he was testing if his own uncle would give up on him too some day...

Both have a toxic relationship and i love how TD show us that it isnt necesary to be an asshole to get into a Bad relationship.

Funny stuff, with everything Edwin have inside he is the healthiest person in the game.
 

Pr0GamerJohnny

Conversation Conqueror
Sep 7, 2022
6,266
9,241
Finished playing it just now but kinda underwhelmed. The technically legal sex show premise is running very thin at this point, and I thought it was the most boring part of this game to begin with. All the interesting things in this story are peripheral. Making pretty girls feel uncomfortable appeals to some combination of the barely pubescent, the very old and the ill-begotten. In fact the orgy in its popular conception and as represented here - men in high places molesting beautiful damsels in distress - is an envy-fuelled middle-class wetdream. The real Dionysian orgies were ordained by women and the participants were the excluded in Greek society - women, slaves, cripples, foreigners and outlaws. They weren't explosions of strength and beauty but festivals worshipping the paradoxical power of weakness. Their spiritual heirs were not Satanic cults or Fifty Shades of Grey but the radically Christian peasants' revolts of the 1300s which reached their apotheosis in the French Revolution.

The real sex parties of the leets are less mommy roleplay or raw octupus mukbang, and more mutually satisfying handcarved-tabletop missionary with a few performers present to spice things up. And as I've heard, nowadays many of them are embracing the principle of female ordination (men can only attend if accompanied by a female partner, only women can approach men). There is no element of the suffering or the dissolution that becomes lightning and dynamite. It's basically the daily life of a rich person, plus sex and mock-secrecy. Jolly good fun if you're the one doing it; vapid and boring if you're looking in from the outside. Kubrick had it exactly right: masks, expensive hookers and drugs, vanilla sex. Eyes Wide Shut is primarily a satire of the spineless middle-class puritanism that vicariously enjoys "excessive" wealth even as it denounces it, which is spelled out right at the end, in the cloying pop-philosophical exchange between Cruise and Kidman in the toy store. Whatever evil/ugliness there might be in such situations is dialectical, existing only in their relation to an absent other either unacknowledged or, out of respect for the fashion/custom of "wokeness", ceremonially honored in abstract and strategically self-recriminating terms. But in either case - effectively located out of sight and mind across the streets, highways and oceans.

Anyway, if it were up to me this update would be the conclusion. And the big audience event from the last update would have been climactic and final.

Only part that stood out for me was the scene with PC and mad scientist chick in the bar. That was some legit MKULTRA activation bullshit while also managing to retain the campy tone and straight-edgy social commentary of the rest of the story. In fact the mad scientist chick and her sugar-grampy are now my favourite characters and I look forward to a lot more of them; but that'd probably require a different game.
At first I thought this was just pseudointellectual drivel - and probably wasn't the only one. But this is a surprisingly thoughtful take if you read it carefully - and I'd agree with much of it. The fact that a porn game would inspire such high-brow analysis should be a complement to the creators, not a detraction.


I've done enough arguing and criticism in the prior thread decades I thought it'd be nice to rehash my favorite and what I consider the best scene in the entire game from a technical standpoint - I wonder what some other people's favorite scenes are?

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TM | Twisted Games

GDI Spec Ops
Moderator
Dec 30, 2020
433
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At first I thought this was just pseudointellectual drivel - and probably wasn't the only one. But this is a surprisingly thoughtful take if you read it carefully - and I'd agree with much of it. The fact that a porn game would inspire such high-brow analysis should be a complement to the creators, not a detraction.


I've done enough arguing and criticism in the prior thread decades I thought it'd be nice to rehash my favorite and what I consider the best scene in the entire game from a technical standpoint - I wonder what some other people's favorite scenes are?

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I read it carefully as well. The part about 'Eyes Wide Shut' was somewhat interesting...most of the rest was pseudo intellectual drivel.
 

JasonsGranpa

Member
Apr 30, 2023
214
207
At first I thought this was just pseudointellectual drivel - and probably wasn't the only one. But this is a surprisingly thoughtful take if you read it carefully - and I'd agree with much of it. The fact that a porn game would inspire such high-brow analysis should be a complement to the creators, not a detraction.


I've done enough arguing and criticism in the prior thread decades I thought it'd be nice to rehash my favorite and what I consider the best scene in the entire game from a technical standpoint - I wonder what some other people's favorite scenes are?

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If you can forget about the lack of realism of an american female citizen driving a manual that is...
lol

Loved the music as well. Very calm and relaxing together with the nightdrive.
 
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