[HUGE Spoilers] My Date 5 Qualm

[ScholasticOG]

Okay this is gonna be a long one, and it's very ranty, but I've cut out a LOT of my extra thoughts and justifications for why I say what I say. Basically, the current Date 5 order is Mio-Iro-Elle-Cassie-Quill, but I firmly believe it should be Iro-Cassie-Mio-Quill-Elle. Here's why:

Iro date 5 you learn that there are people after Iro if you go the mess up route, plus Lilliana is present so it must be before Cassie;

In Cassie date 5 you learn of Harris' involvement with the illegal activity in the area if you go the "settle debt-just tell me-giving you a way out" route when talking to Lilliana, which means that before this there would be absolutely no reason to have any knowledge of his criminality before now (which is an issue because, as of the current order of things, Mio's date comes first, and if you choose to not kill Harris and instead call Fumi, you get her there by saying that Harris popped his head out... Popped his head out from where? Before Cassie's date, he's just some dude you've met once or twice who, while definitely a stalker, hasn't done anything to justify Fumi's recognition and response to your call. You don't yet know he's a part of some giant criminal enterprise);

In Mio Date 5 you confront Harris and either kill him or get him arrested, with you receiving his phone either way which receives a text from his boss, presumably Dorian. Since you have texted Dorian before, a mere few days prior, maybe the plot progression that should happen is you recognizing the number after the events happen with Elle. However before that, I think what makes the most sense next is;

In Quill date 5, the only important points are that you learn her friend that got killed was another Chosen one, like yourself, that you've interacted with the killer before because you "came home smelling like him", and that the house you're in is actually hers (the lore implications of this are iffy? Could just be saying that the goddesses took the homie's key and sent you the card saying you won, OR perhaps Quill plays a bigger, more important role than it initially seems (potentially because she has extra cosmic significance, what with her both being around multiple Chosen Ones but also going from the friend of one to a Destined girl)).

Elle date 5 you learn that Dorian seems to have some sort of knowledge about "Them" (though you wouldn't yet connect the dots that he's referring to the Goddesses) after you finish his Dies Irae line. Additionally, you find out that he is some sort of high-level criminal, as Elle tells you that he has a large number of criminals under himself. At this point, it should be the connect-the-dots point, where you connect his knowledge of "Them", the death of the Chosen before you being caused by somebody you've interacted with before, looking at Harris' burner phone and seeing the phone number and matching it to Dorian's, etc.

[ScholasticOG]

Your first point, if I recall correctly, is absolutely correct--perhaps even moreso than you led on here. I believe it was a decidedly very long-term trip, and it was one of the "presents" he was hoping to get from Elle at his birthday (as he douchingly brought up in front of the crowd to apply only the heaviest of pressure on her). It is a very fair point that that was definitely a pressing and imminent danger, though we also don't *necessarily* know that she hasn't gone on such trips in the past (or similar, at least). If that were the case, I think it'd be more abstract, ever-present danger since he could snap at any random time, so pinpointing it to the exact month you pop in would probably be goofy.

Also to your Eli point, he's already a resident of the town, so he gets a pass. As far as I can tell, it seems the Chosen is always some sort of outsider who comes in, so it would be relatively easy to keep track of such individuals for someone in Dorian's position.

Edit to add: Yes we know that Harris is a psycho stabby-stabby boy, but he doesn't specifically jump into action outside of his regular stalking and stream creeping until we get involved, or more specifically until we first go to Mio's apartment. With that being said, though, it is entirely possible that Mio was going to be murked by him by month's end regardless, but because her pressing danger was a person instead of an event (Iro surfing in a freaking hurricane basically, Cassie just... generally being involved in a horribly violent gang, though it never really spells out what *exactly* was actively encroaching and was gonna kill her unless she was gonna try to escape, which seems doubtful considering how resistant she is even with your help... maybe her final danger is that she'd be killed while working the streets? I dunno, long tangent is long), we don't have any way of knowing if things would've played out differently had we not been involved. Quill was in danger no matter what due to Dorian actively seeking her out and Elle was (possibly) in danger no matter what due to the trip Dorian wanted to take her on, but Mio's danger only became a pressing and present danger when we made her want to stop streaming... So unless she would've decided to meet up with Harris anyways for some other reason, or would've decided to stop streaming without us (which would be completely antithetical to her character), I don't see much reason for the whole "she'll be dead by the end of July if you don't save her".

[jmvbento]

Dorian was a Chosen, though, and he's a Subrosa native.

[ScholasticOG]

Originally posted by jmvbento:

Dorian was a Chosen, though, and he's a Subrosa native.

Ooh, excellent point that I somehow hadn't thought of! Though, in fairness... Do we have any reason to believe that Subrosa is where all of the Chosen go? Perhaps Dorian's Destined were somewhere else entirely (meaning he was an outsider to them), and it just so happened that the Chosen before us went to Subrosa (further giving credence to the idea that our Destined were the same as his). Maybe Dorian travels around finding the other Chosen, and that it has absolutely nothing to do with Subrosa most of the time. Or maybe the game explicitly tells you that the game always happens in Subrosa, I honestly have absolutely no idea. And this further leads to the question of "How does Dorian find the other Chosen if they're NOT in Subrosa?", but then again, from Mystic's existence in-game we know that there is the potential for people to gain powers that give them a proverbial higher view of the world.

[jmvbento]

Yeah, but we know that Dorian doesn't have any super-duper ability to detect Chosen, because he has no clue that you're one until you quote the aria to him in Elle's 5th.

Also, I think I just realised WHY there's so little interval (according to Dorian) between Previous and you. The goddesses ARE getting desperate. They're getting desperate to get laid. And they can't without a game, because the result of the game determines who tops.

[jmvbento]

By the way, as a complete aside, you said you were in SPS's Discord server.

Have they said anything about fanfic that specifically goes through the events of the game?

[ScholasticOG]

Yeah, I alluded to that in a way earlier post, basically saying that Dorian murdering all of the Chosen is just giving them a really bad case of blue balls and they need someone to *W I N*. Which is when I then made specific reference to Mystic being interfered with by the goddesses, because why would they be doing that? They WANT us to save our Destined so they can get laid. Is it because Mystic isn't so much helping with saving them as he is with finding all of the secrets? Well, no, because his phone hints are almost exclusively "here's how to not let the girls die", which is the only thing they actually cut off--he's able to finish with all of his fortunes just fine, save for a single fortune that even he said was basically useless. So they only actually interfered with the thing helping you win the game (and avoid getting a bullet to the head).

Okay so then I guess this all ties into something: How does Dorian find the Chosen? We know that he doesn't have some superpower, as he only finds out that we were Chosen if we specifically complete the Requiem. He also doesn't know due to my whole "Elle is always in danger so that's an easy tell since the Chosen will always come find her" as, again, he somehow doesn't connect the dots until almost 4 weeks after we first date Elle, and he *never* connects the dots if we don't say his freaking sleeper agent phrase. Despite that, he is 100% accurate at finding the Chosen, and has killed the past (I believe) 9 in a row, meaning that clearly he has some way to find them very consistently. Yet somehow, we have an extremely easy time escaping after completing our tasks, with only one way to get killed by Dorian without going after Dorian (saying the wrong things during the event at his house that gets you rifle'd). Unless the earlier assassination attempt at the beach was him, which it almost certainly was, but WHY is he trying to kill us after simply hanging out with Elle once *and why doesn't he ever try again, aside from having Lilliana vaguely threaten us at the party*?

Edit to answer that last question: No, nothing that I've seen. I imagine they're completely open to anybody and everybody writing whatever they want as long as it's not posted somewhere that's meant to be spoiler-free.

[Kasune]

We do know, at the least, that Dorian hurt Elle as a child and that Iro almost drowned as a child and that Cassie had been living on the streets as a younger teenager, so it doesn't seem unfair to say that the girls have been Destined for many rounds of the game or, given what Mystic says when he gives you the option to have one of the girls stay with you, that they will continue being Destined for many more rounds of the game.

It kind of feels like, even though Dorian and Lilliana and Harris were the bad guys, living in Subrosa is the danger.

[LockDown]

Having just finished the game tonight, I'll mention one thing that did bother me was the bit with Harris and that you know he's a part of the gang without any reason.

All the other points are pretty good. But to me it seems like you should be going after Dorian right after Elles last date and finishing off with Quill following that.

[Lunar Vette]

I know this thread is nearly 2 years old, but I only found out about this game a few months ago, and not only do I absolutely love this game, I also enjoyed reading through the deep level of discussion in this thread regarding the timeline and lore. I also have some thoughts.

First off, I absolutely agree that the meeting with Fumi at the hotel and Cassie's 4th date should be switched. (It should be meet with Fumi on the 23rd, and Cassie's date on the 24th) This would also solve the issue I have with Mio's livestream being the same night as the initiation. Additionally, I think that meeting with Fumi might be the key to your issues about Harris. Fumi is telling the MC to infiltrate the gang and help bring them down, as well as protect Cassie and Iro, yet she doesn't tell us anything about persons-of-interest in the case? If Fumi were to tell us about specific people to be wary of, or high priority members she wants behind bars, then it would make more sense for the MC and Fumi to have that phone call about Harris later on.

Regarding the point of the original post, I have a slightly different take: Quill's 5th date should be after the confrontation with Dorian. Everything about that date feels like an epilogue: the storm has completely passed, Quill and the MC both feel like she is no longer in danger, and I don't think her last secret really needs to be discovered before the final confrontation. It was already alluded to when we discover Quill's 4th secret; the 5th secret only provides the MC with confirmation that it was the goddesses who sent Quill's friend to Subrosa on a quest. Aside from that, I like the final date order. MC is unable to catch Dorian after he leaves Elle's house, and has no clue where Dorian could have gone, so we get that info from Lilliana during Cassie's date)

In regards to the Chosen, Dorian, the goddesses, and Subrosa: Assuming the goddesses have been playing this game for a very, very, very long time, I feel like Chosen have been sent to various location all over the world, but if a cycle develops like the one Dorian talks about, that increases the likelihood of there constantly being 5 Destined in that one location that need to be saved. When the cycle is broken, there may be fewer than 5 girls in that location who qualify to be Destined, so the goddesses need to find a new location to send Chosen to. (I could be very wrong about this, and instead Subrosa has a deep, ancient connection to the goddesses) With Dorian, it is odd he seems to have let his guard down around the MC, but combine the implied fact that there is a consistency to when Chosen arrive, with the fact that he has killed the 9 prior Chosen, it's possible he has fallen into a routine, lulled into not expecting any curveballs. His judgement was further clouded after his birthday, thanks to his focus on Elle.

[ivanaepachecoamezcua]

Originally posted by jmvbento:

As a note, I'm almost completely sure Quill was a Destined for the previous dude, too, which is why he was looking for "more girls like her" to protect, not just his friend.

I don't think so. You see, every Destined Girl has a major secret that makes her, precisely, destined to die unless the Chosen One discovers that secret and saves her. In Quill's case, the secret is that he witnessed the murder of his friend, a secret that she obviously wouldn't have at the time the Chosen One arrived in Subrosa and while they were becoming friends, because obviously, he wasn't dead yet. Therefore, there would be no reason to be the Girl Destined for the previous Chosen to save her. We could argue that the Goddesses had their fate assured and would know that Quill would eventually witness the murder, but in the first place, the Chosen One could not be in a position to discover a secret that Quill did not yet have while he lived. Second, let's remember that in the game at least, the decisions of the chosen one can dramatically change his fate and the fate of his Destined Girls. And if the goddesses knew what was going to happen, it wouldn't make sense for them to make their bet on each other

[Lunar Vette]

Originally posted by ivanaepachecoamezcua:

Originally posted by jmvbento:

As a note, I'm almost completely sure Quill was a Destined for the previous dude, too, which is why he was looking for "more girls like her" to protect, not just his friend.

I don't think so. You see, every Destined Girl has a major secret that makes her, precisely, destined to die unless the Chosen One discovers that secret and saves her. In Quill's case, the secret is that he witnessed the murder of his friend, a secret that she obviously wouldn't have at the time the Chosen One arrived in Subrosa and while they were becoming friends, because obviously, he wasn't dead yet. Therefore, there would be no reason to be the Girl Destined for the previous Chosen to save her. We could argue that the Goddesses had their fate assured and would know that Quill would eventually witness the murder, but in the first place, the Chosen One could not be in a position to discover a secret that Quill did not yet have while he lived. Second, let's remember that in the game at least, the decisions of the chosen one can dramatically change his fate and the fate of his Destined Girls. And if the goddesses knew what was going to happen, it wouldn't make sense for them to make their bet on each other

I just thought of something: what if the previous Chosen was wrong in his assumption of Quill being one of his Destined? A "right track, wrong train" type of situation, mixed in with a little unreliable narrator. It's likely Quill was the first girl he met in town, so he couldn't tell the difference between who was destined and who wasn't, and simply assumed Quill was one of his Destined. That was why he told Quill he was looking for other girls like her.