Most romantic stories struggle to find anything interesting to say after the courtship is over. TV shows like Friends and New Girl often frontload the “will they or won’t they” tension into the early seasons, briefly get their characters together, break them up, then repeat the “will they or won’t they” dance at a glacial pace over the course of the rest of the series’ run. It’s hard to make the actual relationship as interesting as the anticipation. But, you wouldn’t know that from playing Butterfly Soup 2.

Solo developer Brianna Lei’s sequel to her brilliant 2017 visual novel picks up where its predecessor left off, following four queer Asian American high school freshmen — Min-seo, Diya, Akarsha, and Noelle — as they play games with their baseball club, hang out, and explore romance. As the sequel starts, Min-seo and Diya are now a couple after going on a successful first date in Butterfly Soup. Despite the fact that the two are in a happy, stable (for high school at least) relationship, Lei continues to find ways to make their story interesting.

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The game cycles through each of the four characters' perspectives, so we get to see how each feels about themselves and their partner/potential partner. Lei gives us access to Diya’s thoughts, revealing her insecurity about her body. She puts us in Min’s head as they wrestle with shame after being called out after ignorantly saying something casually racist to an acquaintance, worried that Diya won’t like them anymore if she finds out. The game shows that, while relationships provide a sense of stability, our own anxieties can make even good times emotionally fraught.

Noelle and Akarsha in Butterfly Soup 2

The game also shows that conflict in a relationship comes from external factors as often as our own desires. A flashback in Diya's chapter shows her as a third grader, enjoying hanging out with Min-seo while they wait for their parents to pick them up from school. Diya’s mom sees her hanging out with Min and tells her not to associate with them anymore. So, when Diya and Min start dating in high school, they not only have to hide that they have a romantic relationship from Diya’s parents, but also that they have a relationship at all.

The fact that the four teenagers at the heart of the game have to hide their sexuality from their parents gives the story tension. “Will they or won’t they” is a successful narrative device because it provides a central question the characters have to answer through the story, and a goal that the audience can root for them to accomplish. Diya and Min’s relationship doesn’t have that, but it does have an objective: for them to be able to be fully out and not have their relationship controlled by their parents.

Even still, it’s a triumph on Lei’s part that the game manages to remain interesting by keeping two characters together instead of tearing them apart. That’s not to say Lei isn’t also great at writing the “will they or won’t they” stage, though, she pulls that off impeccably, too. Diya and Min-seo may be together, but it remains an open question for most of the game whether Akarsha and Noelle will give it a shot (or, for that matter, if Noelle is even into girls at all). Their dynamic is perfectly written to keep it in question. Akarsha is loud and obnoxiously funny, while Noelle is buttoned-down, deeply concerned with her grades, and logical to a fault. Noelle plays up being annoyed by Akarsha’s antics, too, which can make it difficult to tell how she actually feels about Akarsha. Smartly, Lei also places Noelle’s chapter last so that we don’t get to find out what she thinks until near the end of the game.

It’s a testament to her talent as a writer that Lei is able to pull off both stages of a relationship equally well; the tensions of not knowing, and the complexities of commitment. The early stages may be more exciting, but Lei expertly finds the interesting and emotionally resonant elements in every stage of romance.

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