I think Eva's aware that she lost the thread (as it were) somewhere along the line and neither endings feel all that satisfying so we're on the 'mopping up the arcs on the various LIs and second-string NPCs' phase. I think the project got away from her quite early on and she's been battling with it for a while. Too many variables. Too many options. All of them are fun and so none of them feels particularly satisfying and dramatic.
Stories are full of peaks and valleys as there are multiple rising actions, climaxes, and resolutions throughout; rarely is it ever one unless it's a short story. The beach house has been a long anticipated event, many storylines either got resolved or had a major breakthrough, which I'll go over later. It makes perfect sense that the chapter after the beach house is going to feel "off" because it's going to be a transitional chapter into the next series of plot threads. That feeling will only be amplified because we're waiting for it to be written instead of immediately moving on. Once the game is complete I doubt anyone will be saying this chapter doesn't fit. I believe that is what
notstaged was getting at.
Yeah... I think the themes of the game played out in the run-up to the Beach house. There was an obvious conclusion to Lena's arc there - Is she going to have a boyfriend and do the whole waitress/singer thing or is she going to become a party girl who wants nothing more than to be paid to go to Dubai and have sex with old men? THAT was a conclusion for Lena.
I'm not sure what you mean here. Lena's "Party Girl" lifestyle hasn't even started yet, that's what Billy's event should be exploring. Her singing career is waiting on the "battle of the bands" event that was only just introduced in chapter 11. What Lena did with Seymour was lock in her Posh / luxurious lifestyle and potentially also her modeling career. Modeling yet to be determined as others can still take photos even without Seymour, and Wildcats also assumedly exists outside of Seymour's influence. None of Lena's story arcs really came to a close at the beach house, or even after, outside of locking in her romance with Ian or the throuple. Lena has a lot of story to go, I'd argue she actually has more than Ian at the moment to resolve.
Problem is that there isn't a similar arc for Ian... Ian has improved his life but he hasn't really had to make any serious decisions. He's gotten into working out, he got a promotion at work, he got a novel that might get published, but beyond that the only real choice before him is whether he gets serious about one girl or follows Jeremy in being a ho.
And, for the record, Ian has had plenty of resolutions to his story beats at the beach house too. If you need examples; Ian's relationship with Emma and how that effects Perry, Ian's relationship with Cindy and how that effects Wade, the Throuple, Ian can resolve to continue his playboy lifestyle or lock in on one woman. We just haven't seen those results yet, as we were covering Lena's PoV to start this chapter and haven't had an Ian PoV. We're still going to be waiting on Ian's book contest, hopefully next chapter, another round of the MMA tournament, what a fuckboy Ian will look like now that he's commited, and his living situation. Even if Ian has a good relationship with Perry he thinks to himself about moving out, and with a dedicated girlfriend, and his recent promotion, he has a good chance of moving out.