Hi everyone! It’s been a long time since I wrote a High School Lolita – my crushing love story (which we will call HSL) devlog! Admittedly, the game is released and I still need to find time to finish that essay about the characters, haha!

But in case you’re asking yourself: nope, that’s not why I’m here today! I’m here to announce two projects I’m working on (well, admittedly, one more than the other for reasons I’ll explain below) and that I think might interest you if you enjoyed HSL!

The first project is an actual sequel for HSL! This is a story, tackling a similarly dark theme, but the story happens thirteen years later! I’ll detail a bit the concept (without revealing too much), but I will spoil HSL: if you haven’t played it yet, you should skip this part of the devlog and only read about the second project!

Okay, we’re good? Good! So, one thing you may ask is the following: Matthieu is dead, what more do you want to tell? Are we going science-fiction with Zombie Matthieu trying to find Chloé to turn her into a zombie and it’s going to be a metaphor for something?

Well… no! Because Chloé isn’t the protagonist of this sequel, and don’t worry, Matthieu remains where he belongs: six feet below! The protagonist of the sequel is actually… Bastien! And the game will focus on the relationship he has with his newly-adopted son!

So, the game will tackle a theme that is actually, in my opinion… worse than the one tackled in HSL. But it is so difficult that I can’t manage to approach it in a similar way than what I did in HSL. To compare, HSL focuses on a character going through abuse, slowly getting deeper into the toxicity of her relationship before the situation gets so bad it breaks in the most horrible way, and the endings bring the hope of rebuilding. The sequel instead focuses on the rebuilding, and its point is that with love, patience, care and comprehension, we can help those who experienced traumatic experiences.

I can’t really start working on it for now as I plan on it being my NaNoRenO 2024 project. It will also be a kinetic novel, which means it won’t contain any choice and will only have one ending. I only want to explore the more positive outcome so I hope you guys will enjoy it!

A trigger warning for the main theme: the theme in question is incest, and tackled in a more realistic fashion than what I did in The Daughters of the Sun (which takes a mythological approach to it…). So I hope you guys will enjoy it!

Now, for the second project, and the most important one: a HSL genderbend!

I don’t remember how, but I realised there was a bias when, in these relationships, the abuser was a woman: women are less likely to be seen as sexual offenders. I studied two cases in particular, and a French one informed me a lot, but I’ll detail it below.

Let’s make something clear: the point of the game isn’t to pretend that men are as oppressed as women or anything. In reality, let’s remember that the vast majority of sexual assault victims is women and that most men victims of sexual violence have been assaulted by men, not by women. So I’m really tackling situations which only happen rarely.

So, the main case that inspired this game (entitled Waterlily on the Froth by the way, which we will call WOTF), is a French case about Gabrielle Russier. She was a literature teacher who fell in love with one of her 10th-grade students, named Christian Rossi, ending up running away with him. The parents sued her for abduction of a minor and, after a lot of events I won’t detail here, she ended up committing suicide.

As you can tell if you played HSL, Gabrielle was an inspiration for Matthieu and, more than that, this case inspired the whole HSL game, but not exactly because of its actual events. No, it has inspired it because of the contrasting visions I had over it: I discovered it when I was 16-17 and found it, back in 2016, hopelessly romantic. To me, it was the story of two souls who couldn’t love each other because of social norms. But now that I’m 24, now that I’m closer in age to a 31-year-old Gabrielle Russier than I am to a 16-year-old Christian Rossi, but to put it more seriously, now that I’m basically in the perfect middle between them, I realise the horror of this situation. Although I’m seven years younger than Russier, and was eight years younger when I wrote HSL, I wouldn’t even consider loving a sixteen year-old, even “despite their age” (but HSL already expands on it). So my point with HSL was to confront my teenage vision of the case (represented by Chloé) to the one I have today.

Now, you might wonder: haven’t I already exploited it for HSL? Why would I want to use the same case for a genderbent version? Well, first, the genderbent version also takes inspiration from the Mary-Kay Letourneau case, which I didn’t know of when I released HSL. But also: here is something I didn’t consider about this case when I wrote HSL.

The case has been illustrated by two films (both entitled Mourir d’aimer, literally To die of love) and five songs. All took Gabrielle’s defence, painting her as a woman in love who served as an example to punish the demonstrations of May 68 and the philosophy of absolute freedom attached to it. More than that, the case has been instrumentalised to support the infamous movement of apology of paedophilia in the 70s. Basically, the movement supported that a child was free to consent so that there wasn’t any point in keeping the sexual majority at 15 years old (as if it weren’t too young already). From a philosophical standpoint, I think they failed to realise consent isn’t only a matter of freedom, but also of reason, but well, I can’t rewrite history I guess…

So, basically, even nowadays, when people talk about the case, Gabrielle Russier is painted as a woman who was unfortunate enough to fall in love with a younger person, rather than a groomer and a sexual offender. So, my main point with my game is to challenge this consensus about Gabrielle, to fight the bias and say that, although I don’t doubt she sincerely loved Christian, and that she indeed served as an example to punish May 68, she was still a child groomer whose feelings put her students through hell (not to innocent Christian’s parents, who also acted poorly).

Now, how do I make it without making it too similar to HSL? Well, the first point is to change the characters. Christophe (Chris) Prévost, who is the protagonist of this game, is a seventeen year-old popular boy at school who failed his literature class. Oopsie! Now, he has to attend tutoring classes with another teacher than his old boring teacher, Mrs. Moreau.

(Don’t worry, the game is completely independent from HSL, I just thought giving him Matthieu’s last name would be a fun easter egg – well, there is symbolism behind this choice, but I won’t explain it for now, the devlog is long enough).

That’s how he meets the charming, attractive and unconventional Gaëtana Ruscitti, the literature teacher he wished he had: she is fun, lively, amusing and definitely the type of teacher any teenage boy would get a crush on – although I refused to make her look too provocative, as I dislike the trope. This freshly-divorced woman doesn’t take things seriously, but that’s how she manages to get her points across in general: the perfect way to help Chris improve his grades!

(yes, she has a third outfit but I can't really show it because of spoilers!)

So, basically, you can already tell the duo is very different from Chloé and Matthieu. Chloé and Matthieu are two similar souls, resembling each other, mirroring each others’ inspirations (there is more going on between them, after all, let’s remember Chloé becomes dependent on Matthieu because he saved her from her bullying). Chris fails to have such a connection with Gaëtana, he just finds her attractive and I mean, come on, him, seducing a teacher?? How cool is that, certainly the best way to impress his friends! Who cares what he feels?

It is also interesting to go from a Chloé excellent at literature and passionate about it to a Chris who is far from being stupid, of course, but performs poorly. A similar contrast is their school situation: Chris is perceived as attractive by his classmates, he is popular, a full-of-life extrovert; Chloé was a withdrawn introvert, who’d rather be alone than bullied.

Gaëtana and Matthieu are similarly opposed: sure, both are excellent literature teachers, knowing how to see more potential in their students than what the students accept to show. But here is the main difference: Matthieu is a much more academic teacher, and that’s how he connects with Chloé. Gaëtana, similarly to Gabrielle Russier, is far from being as conventional: you can read the excerpt below which displays that she isn’t very… serious, although she knows how to do her job.

What she sees in students is more than their academic potential: it’s more connected to their inner force, rage, the flame that makes them unique. And what she sees in Chris definitely interests her.

Phew! That’s what I’m going to say to introduce the premise of this game! Also, main difference with HSL: this game is on a much bigger scale (seven chapters for the main story, and three endings in three chapters; a chapter is estimated between 5k and 10k words). The game will also be commercial, but don’t you guys worry: I intend to thank all the people who supported HSL by offering them free itch keys for WOTF. It’s my way to say thank you for giving its chance to this game which, writing-wise, is still my favourite of mine!

I’ll sometimes post other devlogs to let you know how development is going, and I hope you guys will get interested! I’ll certainly not post any devlog for the actual HSL sequel though, as the game will be developed in one month (NaNoRenO’s rules…), so it wouldn’t make sense.

Thank you for reading me and see you!