#mtfl: ava

[the-unconquered-queen]

So it's true that I'll always believe ID should have a poly ending (ideally a throuple but we can start small and work our way up to that) and that I'll play both sides as long as I can

AND it's true that if I have to choose an endgame LI, it'll be Gabe

But honestly, if I were MC, at this point I'd talk to both of the LIs and tell them I'm actually not going to date either of them, because MC canonically cares about them both a great deal, and I feel like on account of that, it'd be best if MC not jeopardize their friendship with either just to date the other when it's just as good to just stay friends with both of them (the awkwardness of choosing is bad enough, imagine that awkwardness when all three of you are immortal—even worse if you end up in the same coven as the one you rejected)

Maybe it's just me, but I'd take two good lifelong friends and no boyfriend over a boyfriend at the expense of another great friend

[playchoicesconfessions]

Sent by anonymous

‘My Two First Loves would be a lot less hated by the fandom if Noah and Mason had been gender of choice. It could have been done - just make their sport basketball instead of football. You wouldn’t even have needed the awkwardly shoehorned-in Ava then.’

POST/CONFESSIONS DO NOT REFLECT THE MOD’S PERSONAL OPINIONS!

[blaineslesbian]

Okay, so I know MC canonically has feelings for Mason, and I'm fine with that, but when tf did she steal him from Ava?? I also wasn't aware that we're "seeing" him? 😭

Yeah Ava deserves better, but their breakup was on Mason, not MC

[kcnnarys]

DG meme terrorizer here again I forgot to give you an update: One of said friends has now downloaded choices. She's taking my advice on diamond mining books first so they chose My Two First Loves (after I complained about it to her bc we're both lesbians so I wanted her to understand my struggle) and High School Story let's gooooooooo

omg the ava robbery of mtfl .... it was SICK !! hss a classic it's taught in schools

[cadybear420]

Still in-progress with MTFL and so I got this

Because fuck Ava right? I mean you could have just said "Don't keep your loves waiting too long" instead and that would have been fine

[somerandomjewelleryonthefloor]

EW-

I had to drop MTFL. Its too bad. Ew. I only made it to chapter 43 somehow.

JSUSHEJSUSUWIISOWOW

Ew. Ew ew EWWEE.

The only good thing about his Book is the outfits tbh.

Like look at these!

Anyway I'm rewriting Quartz. She deserves better, and IS better.

I'm writing her into HSS as an OC.

She moves to Berry during the summer break, she falls for Julian (I mean it's Julian, Julian is literally a ray of sunshine like everyone else), she's apart of band as a Sax player as she finally finds her passion in music- and she'll definitely be Valedictorian because she is SMART, and would TOTALLY be on the yearbook committee with Autumn!

She'd also embrace how she actually wants to dress, and she'd her peppy & preppy self with a love of skirts and dresses.

DW Quartz, you're safe at Berry from those... Guys.

The only decent thing about MFTL was Ava tbh. But whatever.

[choices-binglebonkus]

Y'know what my main problem is with the "lean muscle female with hand on hip" body sprite (like the one that's the body sprite for f!Lancelot, f!Vic, f!Manu, MTFL Ava, f!Clarke, Aisha, Eiko, f!Kayden, Angel). The fact that it's nowadays it's pretty much their go-to sprite every time they have a female or GOC LI is more tough or athletic.

As a woman who aspires to be buff, it just feels like a kind of a lazy way to represent buff women? Especially when they've shown in the past to be perfectly capable of having a variety of different buff female sprites– Imtura from BOLAS, the female orc MC in BOLAS, Naomi from VOS, Deimos from ATV, Kepler from ATV, Zaniah from ATV, f!Kieran from TCH and the female elf MC from BOLAS... if they so insist on reusing body sprites why don't they ever reuse those?

And, I mean, we all know PB is already incredibly shite with body type diversity in Choices (there are literally like 2 male LIs ever that can be considered non-muscular), but this is one of the many issues with it and it's been bothering me for a bit. Tired of seeing the same thing every time.

Absolutely right anon

[griffinsboyfriend]

Btw I read MTFL long ago and ended up with Ava. They should have had the two guys get together if this was really an LGBTQ book.

[whatsthesituati0n]

Playing MTFL MC is so frustrating because I clearly have bias towards Noah and I choose all his diamond choices but I'm still forced to romance Mason and Ava 😭

[cadybear420]

I heard how some modern animated shows (like HBO's Velma for instance) sometimes order a season's worth of episodes and break it into two seasons to make it seem like the show was good enough to warrant a second season. And I get similar vibes from MTFL, it feels like it was originally meant to be 20 regular chapters long but PB broke each regular chapter into 5 short-length chapters to make the story seem "bigger" and "grander" than it actually is. Cause I'm gonna be honest, I legitimately feel like my emotions are being manipulated when playing that book

I definitely think the title twist at the end is also definitely a microcosm of the book's emotional manipulativeness cause it really was just bullshit. It's good in theory but just awful in execution. I remember liking MC's photography arc well enough, but the whole storyline agonizing on MC being unable to decide was very overdramatized imo. Like they just went on and on about it to no real end and it made it difficult to take the actually compelling arcs more seriously. It felt like it was trying too hard to make me feel something tbh.

And the fact that Ava being a LI was clearly an afterthought, with or without the whole title business. Ava's CG uses her sprite while Mason's and Noah's are fresh art. And up to the point where MC starts to fall for Ava, there is no buildup to it... no Ava-centric premium scenes, not even platonic ones, but plenty of premium scenes with Mason and Noah. Literally no flashbacks to Ava and MC's friendship, but plenty of flashbacks to Mason and MC's friendship. Literally everything about MC's friendship with Ava is just given through exposition, the scene where MC first falls for Ava and has her bi awakening is literally just her listing off some Ava memories flooding back to her.

TLDR: This book is a mess

sometimes i remember My Two First Loves and i just. why. why is it 100 chapters long. and why is it called that when there are 3 love interests. the whole thing makes no sense

[monaownsmyass]

Tbh, it kinda makes me sad that this is how PB wrote Ava figuring out her sexuality. Every other female LI already knew they liked women. Of course, we have stories about coming out (Kaitlyn Liao and Eiko Matsunaga) but never about discovering and coming to terms with an LI’s sexuality. They had the chance to really write an interesting story about a high school girl realising she doesn’t like boys and that she has feelings for her bff but her bff is seeing other people so she has to learn how to navigate her feelings. They missed a good opportunity here.

[harbingerofdespair]

Her.... hand is already on her hip??😅

[cadybear420]

Oh boy do I have a LOT...

That scene in the Chris getaway date mini book when MC and Becca have to cut up a regular jersey into a cleavage crop top to "make it cute enough for girls to wear" (because girls can't wear regular jerseys apparently)

Literally every time the writing has to talk about "the curves of your waist" because god forbid we want to imagine our female/fem MCs with non-hourglass bodytypes (looking at you Witness and TBB)

Reagan Fucking Dipshit Thorne. Especially "When a woman agrees to be my sub she agrees to obey"

That scene in MTFL Ch2 when MC's dad won't let her wear a crop top and tight skirt and they refer to the default less-revealing outfit as "mom clothes" (because women wearing basic clothing is soooo evul to PB and by this point they didn't even try to hide it)

The entirety of FCL

TDA: deers and horseback riding. You all know what I'm talking about.

The fact that PB had no problem giving us the aforementioned scenes in TDA but still hasn't given us one strap-on scene in any of the wlm, mlw, or wlw routes

Bastien from WB talking about "breeding" with MC

The scene where Kieran slams MC's face into the floor (I didn't do that scene but it can't not be mentioned)

TBB having an end message about "remember to follow your heart"

Addison's treatment in TNA Book 3, the character should have been more sympathetic but it's clear PB wanted us to see her as awful as they made her disgustingly over the top

MTFL's poor treatment of MC's bi discovery and Ava's lesbian discovery, and how it claims to be a story about "navigating sexuality" yet the first half of the story reads like a Wattpad ripoff of "The Kissing Booth" (Which btw was adapted from someone's Wattpad story)

Honorable mentions for the things that aren't outright icky but still piss me off

Untameable's painfully artificial high stakes and forbidden romance

HSS 2 Ch8&9 when the band and cheer root against the basketball team in the name of "avenging Aiden"

HSS:CA 2 when the entire school supports Lorenzo's campaign just because he saved a kitten and get super defensive when MC tells them it was a staged incident

Just the entirety of the sabotage drama in HSS:CA book 1 and how overall mean-spirited it was towards our MC

Aiden dipping my MC at homecoming with ease despite that the earlier chapters went out of their way to establish him as a very crappy dancer

The multiple (3) times they make my MC sit in Michael's lap in their premium scenes (yeah being a wlm Choices player who prefers GNC romance fucking sucks most of the time)

Honestly every time they want my f!MC to wear a premium outfit with a crop top/short shorts/whatever or premium lingerie or whatever the fuck to "get LI's attention" (especially when the m!version is more modest and basic)

The number of times with AME m!MC where characters talk about how sexy and dazzling a premium outfit will be or how it will show off his hot bod and then the outfit in question is this long ass coat that's colored like peepeepoopoo swirl

What’s an ick you got in a Choices book that you can’t get out of your mind?

[cadybear420]

Cadybear's Reviews- My Two First Loves

Welcome to the twenty-seventh official Cadybear's Reviews! Today I'll be talking about My Two First Loves, which I have ranked on the "Rotting Flesh Tier" at 2 stars out of a possible 10. My last and only playthrough of this was back in April-June 2021.

Oh boy! Oh boy oh boy oh boy! I could write a whole essay on everything wrong with this…  

So I will. 

To put it briefly: this story feels like it was adapted from a Wattpad story that was written by a 12-year-old whose only ever exposure to high school media and depictions of teenage sexuality was Glee, and then had serious queer and mature themes slapped onto it in order to make it seem better. Y’know, the equivalent of trying to polish a turd.

Or, heck, it’s probably PB’s attempt at ripping off “The Kissing Booth”, seeing as both have a MC in a love triangle between her childhood best friend and a bad boy named Noah, after all. Which, funnily enough, was also originally adapted from some tween’s Wattpad story. That’s about the equivalent to a dog eating some rotten food, shitting it out, then another dog finds it, eats it, and then shits it right out again. And THEN that second dog’s owner comes along to try to polish that double-toured turd. 

Number 1: The LGBTQ+ tag is clearly an attempt to appease the queer players that they probably think are being whiny. 

Ava’s arc about realizing she’s a lesbian who had been experiencing compulsory heterosexuality is pretty solid in a vacuum. But her being an LI was so blatantly only a last-minute decision PB made during the writing process, and it shows because Ava’s CG just uses her game sprite while Mason’s and Noah’s are fresh art. 

MC starts to fall for Ava sometime around at least 30 chapters in, but we don’t get to officially pursue her as a romance option until about 70 chapters in. I get delaying her as a love interest a bit because of the whole thing with MC realizing she’s bi, but even then, there’s just so few opportunities for building any kind of relationship with her that it hardly feels authentic. 

Speaking of, MC’s supposed bi awakening is completely rushed and treated with about as much value as a Family Guy cutaway gag, even outside of Ava being sidelined. As someone who realized I wasn’t straight three years ago and is still questioning if I’m bi or straight, I understand that people take different amounts of time to figure out their sexuality. But this MC does not spend any period of time figuring out her bisexuality. She basically just goes “Welp, guess I’m bi now”, and then it’s back to being indecisive as per usual except now there’s a female love interest in the mix too.

To add insult to injury, "discussions of sexuality" is placed in a "player discretion" warning, alongside "racial tensions" and "occasionally violence" to boot. How the fuck is discussion of sexuality even remotely on the same level as either of those? If they meant discussions or depictions of homophobia then maybe I could understand… but I don’t even recall seeing any depictions of homophobia in the book, so including this in the freaking warning tags is pointless at best and kind of insulting at worst. 

Not to mention, plenty of other Choices books like MOTY, ILS, D&D, etc. have had discussions about sexuality/LGBTQ+ stuff before, and didn't have to warn us about it. Not even MAH, a later book which had discussions about freaking conversion therapy for Christ’s sake. Sure, some of those books did have content warnings, but they were generally vague and/or mainly warned for violence, and didn’t warn specifically for depictions of queerphobia or discussions of sexuality. Yet for some reason, MTFL feels the need to include a player discretion warning for sexuality discussions, even though it contains far less harsher queer themes. 

Number 2: The portrayal of teen sexuality in this does not feel earnest. 

Let me just say, I found it very jarring how this one was much more sexually charged compared to PB’s other high school books. PB is usually way more “safe” and PG-13 at most when writing high school characters. Even in books like ROD and WEH, where the characters are 18+ and do have smutty scenes, it’s clear that those books are a lot more restricted compared to the adult cast books.  

I mean, with WEH, the safeness makes sense– it was meant to be a serious and tender story from the start, and it does actually follow through on those themes. But ROD feels like it could have easily been as horny with its writing as MTFL was, what with being about a studious “good girl” who goes rebellious. In fact, the story’s loading screen was pretty infamous at first for looking “steamier” than other covers and loading screens.

In actuality though, ROD had only, what, one smut scene? And despite a lot of MC’s outfits being revealing or arguably sensual, there are practically no moments where MC fawned over how “sexy” a revealing diamond outfit looked. Like, I’m pretty sure there were just little to no sexually charged scenes in general. 

My point is, whatever compelled PB to make MTFL *this* sexualized is beyond me. My guess is the fact that PB called this one a story about “navigating sexuality” and thus wanted to focus more on the aspects of sexuality, but if that’s the case… hoo boy, did they do a terrible job at it. 

I don’t really care about the hypersexualized writing of the teenage characters on its own, or how the characters were initially not confirmed 18+ when the earlier smut scenes were written. What I find far more important is the fact that this sort of cliche and formulaic hypersexualized writing is in a book that markets itself as being about “a young woman navigating love and sexuality for the first time”.

Teens do indeed have sex and can be all over the place with their hormones and sexuality. A lot of us have been there in some way, myself included. And there are ways to talk about that type of stuff in a manner that is silly and/or exaggerated, but still earnest and respectful. But the particular way that MTFL handles super-horny teen sexuality, specifically while claiming to be a coming-of-age story, is neither earnest nor respectful. 

The way this story handles these sorts of topics is the writing equivalent to doing a surgery with Fisher-Price toy surgery tools. It’s genuinely difficult to take MC “navigating her sexuality for the first time” seriously when has to constantly blubber about how Mason and Noah are so muscular or how a diamond outfit has “naughty little thigh highs” or how she wants to do a “down and dirty” cheer routine with Ava for Mason and Noah. 

That last one especially feels like the kind of stuff we’d see more in a campy chick flick that doesn’t take itself seriously. Honestly, if this was a more campy high school book with the tone of DLS or the 2023 movie “Bottoms”, it probably wouldn’t be as glaring. But in a book that markets itself as a coming-of-age story, the tone feels completely off and the whole book honestly felt like it couldn't decide what it wanted to be. 

(Also, while we’re on this topic of MC’s premium outfits, I really fucking despise how MC gets so upset about wearing "mom clothes" if you choose to wear the free modest clothing instead of the revealing diamond outfit in Chapter 2. Ugh. Yes, the dad was being shitty about not letting MC dress how she likes, but all it does is it just makes you feel like shit for not wanting to dress in more revealing clothes. Stop making me feel bad for wanting to wear simple non-revealing clothing. Same goes for you, Chris Romantic Getaway story with your “the regular jerseys aren’t cute enough for girls to wear, we have to cut one up into a cleavage crop top in order to make it good for us girls to wear” bullshit.) 

And it just slaps you in the face with these sexual moments too, placing them in frequently whenever it feels like it, and the amount of it that actually contributed to any coming-of-age navigating-sexuality are few and far between. Honestly, it felt like it was trying way too hard to look "mature" with how it handled sexuality (as well as some of the other stuff like them drinking alcohol). Like it maybe was trying to portray teens realistically, but it only does so at a very shallow level. 

It's literally just "Look at the teens that talk about sex and like doing sexy things and having sex and doing grown-up stuff like drinking alcohol, see how MATUUURRREEE they are!" and they don't do anything more with it. It's just tacked on so they can pretend their book is a realistic story about maturing/being mature, when it fails at actually doing so.

I mean, I guess you could argue that the MC is meant to be seen as more messy and hormonal. And in that case, I could give it a pass. But, again, MC’s supposed arc of “navigating sexuality” never goes anywhere from that until the very last few chapters where you choose which LI she ends up with. It’s pretty much the same crap all throughout the book. MC doesn’t navigate sexuality, she just runs around aimlessly in it like a chicken with its head cut off.

Number 3: All the serious themes they try to have in the story are overshadowed by MC’s stupid indecisiveness plot. 

I’ve already said MTFL tries way too hard to make its story seem “mature” with the trashy way it sexualizes its characters. I’ve said it feels like it doesn’t know what it wants to be. Honestly though, this just sums up MTFL’s writing in general. 

MTFL has quite a handful of subplots, and I will admit, all of them are pretty compelling. You have Ava figuring out she’s lesbian, Mack dealing with gang drama, and Mason and Noah dealing with their past and Mason’s dad’s abusive behaviors. And an admittedly decent arc about MC discovering her love for photography instead of cheerleading. 

And then you have MC going on about how she can’t decide between her love interests, which is just the bad apple of the bunch that ruins the rest. It just makes it very hard to take everything else seriously. You ever seen that one meme where the Power Rangers put their hands in a circle but then a Teletubbie tries to join in? It’s the writing-equivalent to that, and MC’s indecisiveness plot is the Teletubbie. 

And maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if MC’s indecisiveness wasn’t the main focus plot of the whole book. I want to take these other storylines seriously. I want to take this story as a whole seriously. But how can I when the main focus of the story is so god damn shallow? No matter how many "soft positive heartfelt" piano tracks and “so sad and tragic sad” piano tracks from WEH they try put over it, it doesn't change the fact that the focus is MC going on and on about being unable to choose between Mason, Noah, and Ava. 

I get teens are shallow and can have shallow issues, but did we really need it to be that big of a focus of the story? Especially when the way it handles it is completely empty? Something like OG HSS was great because even though a lot of the issues the characters had were seemingly shallow and basic (such as the band fighting over which song to play), they do give a little more depth to it and reason to care about it (ie. Aiden starts to feel like a failure at music because of the band infighting). MTFL just throws MC’s indecisiveness at you for 95 chapters and expects you to take it seriously with nothing else surrounding it. 

And they try to pull the twist on the title at the end where it’s all like “LI and photography, the two greatest loves of MC’s life”. Which is an interesting idea in concept, except it feels so artificial and non-earned when MC’s romance plot was spending 95 chapters being unable to decide between the LIs. 

Number 4: It reuses way too much from HSS. 

I know this is a less severe issue, but I just can’t get past it. Sprites, backgrounds, school colors… even plot points like the corrupt principal embezzling from the school, or MC and LI(s) being locked in a large school room (remember when HSS:CA MC and Ajay were locked in the auditorium?). Heck, even MC having lost her mom and having a photography passion connected to that, rings way too similar to one of Autumn’s arcs from the freaking HSS PRIME GAME! Oh yeah, and both of those characters have a love triangle with a golden boy and a bad boy. Holy hell. 

Easily the most noticeable part is the sprites. In my playthrough, I counted 7 whole HSS sprites that were used in MTFL: Sydney became Iris, Payton became Toni, Frank became this random kid in a flashback for Mason and Noah's past, Morgan became a kid in Elijah's gang named Lucy, Lorenzo became Chad, Aiden's mom became Asian Noah's mom, Skye's dad became White Mason's dad (PB really said use that sprite for abusive dads huh). And there’s probably more, I’m sure. 

And the worst offense? They even reuse the iconic bird's-eye view of Berry High in MTFL. Call me petty if you must, but that's just criminal. It's one thing to reuse and alter a bunch of the sprites, uniforms, and backgrounds from the series but to reuse another book series' iconic background like that? Honestly, it feels rather insulting. They couldn't even be arsed to change the "Go Tigers!" on the football field, that’s how little sense it makes to use that background outside of HSS. Fuck’s sake.

I know it’s kind of the norm for Choices to reuse assets throughout different series, but the fact that they do it so much here and majority of it is from HSS just rubs me the wrong way. At best, it’s jarring and lazy. And at worst, it comes off as trying way too hard to be a “more mature” version of HSS. When in reality, it makes HSS:CA’s side characters look like Citizen Kane in comparison. I mean, at least Clint and Natalie and MC stopped whinging about Rory ⅓rd of the way through the series. 

At least when other high-school-setting books like ROD, WEH, and ILITW were made, they at least somewhat bothered to change up a few things and make it feel like an actually different school. They changed up the backgrounds a bit, used different school colors and uniforms, and didn’t reuse nearly as many sprites from HSS.  

In MTFL, all they did was make new cheer uniforms for the non-reused sprites and remove the Berry High logos from everything HSS that they used. Yeah they made some changes, but it’s clear that they didn’t put nearly the same amount of effort into it as they did in the other high school setting books. 

All it does is just make me miss HSS. Like, stop toying with my heart by piggybacking off of a better series (that has better queer rep too) so much. It’s to the point where it feels like they should have just used the time making this book to instead make a HSS senior year (Which, y’know, would be nice, especially since the sendoff we got in HSS:CA 3 was absolute flaming fucking garbage). 

So… in all honesty, I don’t hate this book. But it had a lot of things that annoyed me to no end and it sure as fuck is disappointing wasted potential. It had a great opportunity to be a nice queer coming-of-age story. But instead it felt like a Kissing Booth rip-off with serious themes only hamfisted in order to make it seem more “mature”.

[heygmicheelle]

WELL YOU LOOKED FOR IT! YOU DUMB DUMB DUMB MC!!!!