Violet

When it comes to Renee's behavior in Step 1, every excuse under the sun is whipped out to justify her at the time behavior from her age to her gender issues. But in Step 2, Vianca is 14 and personally believes that the only people she can relate to are girls. Y'all can act like 14 is that much older than 10 when it comes to levels of maturity, but it isn't. Both come with near equal amounts of immaturity and the need to still grow and develop as a human being.

To become better.

Vianca is never outright mean to those who don't identify as girls, but she is very curt and prefers to keep interactions to a minimum. Renee in Step 1 would actually say disparaging comments about you and in front of you to her friends if you and Tamarack identify as girls. But also, like Ren, Vianca grows out of this phase a step later.

And, much like how you have the ability to push at that line with Renee in Step 1 and grow to become friends if your MC doesn't identify as a boy, you can do the same with Vianca in Step 2 if your MC doesn't identify as a girl. You even see in Assistance, despite her lack of interest in anyone that isn't similar to her, Vianca goes out of her way to let Qiu know that if part of their lack of desire to audition or try in their sport is because they don't want to be slotted under masculine roles, then she'll take them instead in an attempt to understand Qiu better.

That isn't something a genuinely terrible person would do and yet a large portion of this fandom is weirdly comfortable with trying to vilify her and constantly will ask GB if it will be possible to literally fight her or cuss her out to which the repeated response from OLNF's developer is:

"No, you can't pop off on a 14 year old girl."

"No, you can't verbally attack a 14 year old girl."

"No, you can't hit a 14 year old girl."

I don't know if it's because some of y'all were just bullied in high school and Vianca who isn't a bully mind you has a similar enough personality to those girls, that you are taking those pent up frustrations out on her, but the way I've seen a lot of you talk about a fictional teenager is insane, let alone the comfort you all have saying this vitriol to developer of the game. The absolute lack of decorum.

You would think that Vianca was comparable to Space Hitler with the way a considerable chunk of you talk about her, and she isn't even a romanceable because like Serenity, due to the fact they have a gender preference when she dates—Vianca can't be.

But you know who is a love interest? Tamarack. And I swear she really can't do anything right in the eyes of this crowd. When all we had to work with was Step 1—she was annoying.

Loud, too much, incapable of understanding social cues. Oh, and my personal favorite, 'too immature to be a love interest', when mind you... Duh? Obviously a 10 year old is going to be immature. She's 10. Even Qiu, for all their comparative maturity at the time, is a 10 year old who is 'too immature to be a love interest'.

Then we get to Step 2, where Tamarack is shy and at her most anxious, and now she's just 'boring'. The traits that caused her hate in Step 1 from the fanbase are gone, but now she's boring and being picked at for that instead. Interesting.

Maybe she is, when you only prioritize interacting with Qiu and getting to know them instead.

But I'm also 99% sure that if Tamarack was a skinny white boy instead, there wouldn't be nearly as much critique of her character and she'd be almost as loved as Qiu, if not more so for being cis. Honestly, the most similar character we have to Step 2 Tamarack is Step 1 Cove and I don't see any complaints about how disagreeable he was at the time or comments that he was 'boring'.

And, to be frank, a lot of y'all are fatphobic and very comfortable with it. You either draw her skinny, would and still ask the dev if she will ever become skinny in later steps...

I think y'all just need to admit that you didn't want OLNF to have characters that weren't men be love interests, let alone one that is bigger bodied. And I honestly think that Qiu's popularity largely stems from the fact, they're the closest thing to a male lead you people have.

And that is some internalized transphobia, you all need to fix.

These are the same people who largely use Qiu's he/him pronouns over their they/them pronouns, despite them being genderfluid and leaning more towards the 'they' part of their identity. Y'all wanted boyfriends again, not a girlfriend or a partner or whatever term Qiu prefers since according to GB 'partner' sounds too formal to them. Maybe this is exacerbated by the fact that, according to the developer, Qiu doesn't plan on physically transitioning or otherwise altering their body as it is.

After OLBA had back-to-back male leads, y'all set the expectation that OLNF would be the same with a fall-colored coat of paint and now that the reality doesn't match those expectations, you scramble to find the male lead similarities and are hypercritical of the female lead and the female-centric cast.

There's so many people that ask the developer if there is going to be an 18+ wedding night moment in OLNF like OLBA has, and I'm honestly glad there isn't because the discourse surrounding it would be so exhausting.

I can honestly see so many people in droves saying that Tamarack should be asexual and completely averse to sex, not because they care about having acespec characters represented in the game—