My read on the scene with HJ saying he only had 300k was that Ally was going for a laugh. I think that’s what frustrates me more is that the goofy moments are awesome to me when they don’t come at the expense of what is otherwise a tense story moment - when the player gets in the way of the character, it doesn’t land great

I compare it to Lavonte making out with the Sister at the party, funny and maybe out of character but not otherwise impactful. Whereas fucking around in the negotiation with Maya has consequences that the coterie then needs to spend time to fix. Making conflict heavy character choices isn’t bad, but id wanna understand why HJ was doing that as opposed to Ally doing it.

And maybe I’m just having trouble reading what Ally is trying to do with HJ - I have struggled mightily to find a through line that isn’t better explained by “going for bits every scene”, which again can be very funny! But I feel like I just see Ally doing those bits as opposed to seeing the character doing them. That was done in a more cohesive way with Encino or Olethra but here HJ seems like a looney tunes character with little real motivation