All of what you say, I feel, can be applied in very much the same way to his relationship with Ryou. He decides to try out a relationship with her as a way to distance himself and forget about his problems. He is also altruistic in a sense by sacrificing his own feelings to appease both Ryou and Kyou.
While my words might have been confusing, I don’t exactly consider him a self-insert either. I do push that the choices in the game are made by the player, I don’t see the player as a self-insert to Tomoya… I see the player more as an arbitrary being, (post-CLANNAD spoilers) existing in the illusionary world. This player views the daily life of Tomoya and subtly controls Tomoya’s direction in the main game, as a means to help obtain light orbs. I’m sorry, I have a very weird way of looking at the lore of Clannad, but I feel like it fits everything else in the game.
So while, yes, you are right in that:
I feel like there are those rare cases, maybe once every other route, where he does something strange… I told you I feel like him giving Nagisa that push was out of character, but I answered your thoughts on that above.
Man, there are just soooo many stories that deal with this, and I personally think that it’s much much easier said than done. And even if it was easier done, then we wouldn’t have much of a story, then would we?
Heeeey congrats, you’ve found the one thing I dislike about this route! Since I put big importance into the choice mechanism of all VNs, having this change-of-events be something not directly related to your choices does kinda tick me off :komue: