Congrads on getting this far! Apologies, haven't had a chance to try out your demo yet, will try to get to at some point. Did enjoy Predation a lot though.

"character images need to show up during dialogue/battle/event scenes, with the clothing items they're wearing appearing on top of them in the correct layer order"

As someone who's worked on a number of RPGMaker games, this can be a dark path to tread. There are, and have been for some time a number of pre-existing plugins that can do this to some degree, but as you may have already discovered, trying to play with that many layers dynamically in RPGMaker tends to be very laggy and clunky. In the OOOOLD days of FPS games, they used to "pre-bake" lighting, doing the 'raytracing' and calcs ahead of time and just baking it right into the relevant textures. I've found it's often easier to do the same here: just bake the combos I need, and swap between them. Of course if you want a zillion different layers and combos it becomes impractical at a certain point, but if you can limit yourself to say 20 different combos, it's easier to just pre-render and swap, and much less laggy.

"it's just there's very little official non-Japanese documentation for scripting for MV"

You may already know this as well, but there are basically two layers to this: doing small script insets into common events and map events, and full-on plugins. And even with plugins, there's a big difference between fairly simple ones and making a massive, all-encompassing system for something. The issue you're up against with this isn't so much "how do I script a plugin for RPGMaker" it's "How does javascript work, how does the js-based RPGMaker engine work, and what are all the calls and syntax to hook into and modify it?" On that front, this can be incredibly useful if you're not already aware. It's a very large, dense thing to work with though.

All that in mind however, allow me to speak more broadly, one RPGMaker game creator to another. RPGMaker game work is like trimming a bonsai tree. It's a delicate dance. If you try to go through it with a bulldozer mentality, you're going to have a bad time. Don't think "This is the game I will make" and then try to make EXACTLY that game. Think "This is roughly the game I want to make", look at what's out there, in terms of assets, plugins, and what the game allows for, and build something at the overlap of those circles. Flow like water, as the saying goes. Be adaptable.

ESPECIALLY on your first game (in the engine). Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. You have to look at what's available, and make a game with those parts. If you're going to make a game COMPLETELY from scratch, fresh-coding everything yourself (or via someone you pay), you may as well make something in godot or game maker or even Unity (though I wouldn't recommend the latter at this point). The whole advantage of RPGMaker is that it's got a ton of pre-existing stuff you can slap together like lego bricks to get you 70-90% of the way in terms of programming. Dig the tunnel from both ends: don't just think "I want the game to be THIS, how do I do that?" think "I have these pieces, what can I make with them? Can I make something relevant to the overall thrust of the game I want to make?" Partially I've had to take this approach out of necessity, economic and skill, but in doing so I've actually come to like it: having to dig through pre-existing plugins, tilesets, music, sound etc and build something out of it gets the creative juices flowing in a very useful way. There are all kinds of things in my games that I love that never would have been there if I had just made my first intention for the game a reality, instead of having to bend and flow around what was available.

And of course SOMETIMES you do have to completely do something yourself. All my sprites are obviously original, because there are no pre-existing sprites of...my characters. Obviously the core art assets have to be your own. Obviously it's your call in the end of course, your MANY calls that make up game dev. But I've seen people make this mistake on a lot of game projects, so I want to give a nudge in the other direction, for what it's worth. Barring a handful of simple edits, CS used entirely default RPGMaker assets, pre-existing plugins, pre-existing music and sound (legally available). The only unique work was the core art assets and the sprites, and those were fairly simple. GT got more complex, and Chapter 3 is even more so, but it's still largely pre-existing stuff, just MORE of it, and used in more creative ways. So at least consider trying to work with what's already available, and see what you can make.

And of course, if you have questions, glad to offer what I can in terms of info on various plugins, scripting conventions, what's easy/hard etc.

Having flipped through your demo a bit, I see a bit more what you're trying to do in terms of fight mechanics and graphics, and this is...VERY ambitious. All these different outfits, poses, etc. Even if you do have a flawless programming setup at some point, this is a hell of a thing to have to populate with art and bugtest if something goes wrong. It's important, when making a game, to try to get the biggest bang for your buck for every bit of effort you put into it. You could have HALF, a QUARTER the complexity you have here and still have a sex battle system that feels really dynamic and hot. And it'll then be much easier to troubleshoot, add to, and you can spend that saved energy on other things: making dynamic standalone scenes, or mini-games, or whatever. Designing gameplay is like writing: you don't have to spell everything out, and often it's better if you don't. In writing, "show, don't tell". In game play, "Imply, don't show."

Hey! I just tried out Cruel Serenade myself, loving it so far have just found the ear clips, having a lot of fun! Love Mezz too, as a fan of bunnies and people with attitudes he's already won my heart xD
And also yeah, very true in regard to the scope of what I was/am attempting with this one, but I think (maybe, possibly) there's a way to build it up from a central state machine sort of thing for the base/clothing switching and then simply have states switch in and out based on which variable/switch is being used by MV at the time etc. Like I know all of what I've done is pretty much void coming from an AI but I feel like it's possible to do, and for the most part I think the assets and poses are numerous enough now that the bulk of that work is done too; or at least anything I add will be variations on a theme, or as you say individual segments and events, or new outfits etc. all of which I'm hoping will only require an additional state or addition to a pool when it comes to adding it to the code foundation... I realize I'm just kind of rambling now but I definitely get what you mean, it's a big lumbering thing and ultimately that's why I want to rebuild it with a person so we can work out how to get these things done; I know it's a big scope but... I just want my dress-up femboy bunny game, you know? It's silly but I have this vision in my head and it's so nearly there xD

All this to say I'll be messaging you on here, we should talk more about this stuff for sure!

Excellent, will keep an eye out over there.

Good for you for keeping up with it! C2 is my poison though.

Thanks! Yeah I can imagine, I'm still in that dunning-kruger effect phase of not realizing how complicated this is all gonna turn out, but I may as well try xD

That's the spirit! *High fives*