It was brought to my attention that a sentence in Ferdinand's route is potentially offensive for some readers, even in context:

I'm deeply sorry about that. It never crossed my mind that this sentence could have such a double meaning and that would make some people feel uneasy. My most sincere apologies!

However, that being said, I had the unpleasant surprise of, once again, seeing a post blowing up on social media, leading to endless uninformed comments of the most offensive kind, and the obligation of explaining myself and my work. Again. This happened with A Hand in the Darkness and once again with My Burning Heart, and, to be honest, it's a bit exhausting trying to deal every time with people who hide behind a screen to criticize in the bluntest possible way about something they don't know enough to have an opinion, just jumping on the wagon of a post by someone they follow. This leads to inane comments such as this one from yesterday:

Okay, genius, please tell me how you would travel from Haiti to Paris by train! Or how could Ferdinand and his sister save enough money for a trip by plane across the ocean in 1950. For someone asking for "sensitivity readers", these kinds of comments and others directly calling me racist don't sound very sensitive to me. I don't appreciate being called a racist by someone who hasn't talked to a Romani person in their life. I have Romani neighbors, Romani students, Romani acquaintances. Heck, the street above mine is even called Romani Street!

Gilles' route in Night and Day deals about how the Romani people suffered during WW2 and the following decade, how they weren't even considered war victims like the Jews, lost absolutely everything, and were forced to start anew under the conditions the French government stated. On top of that, Gilles is an outcast in his own society, running away from home at age 16, and surviving in the streets since then. Did he make some questionable life choices? Yes, he did. Don't expect him to be an exemplary citizen.

...Which leads to the thick of this long ramble: Gilles and Ferdinand aren't "representation", and they were never meant to be. They are characters in a story. Their personality is dictated by the plot, by their background, but Night and Day, same as my other works, is not trying to cater to the kind of readers who only want shallow "good rep" characters for the sake of it, even if that means altering historic settings like some recent TV series. When I first released A Hand in the Darkness, I received many messages from gay men who felt the game represented their own struggles trying to figure out themselves when they were teenagers. That was a delightful surprise, but it wasn't the main purpose of the game and its characters. I just want to tell stories. It's what makes me feel alive, what makes all the hardships of daily life easier to endure. I need this creative outlet. Every revenue I get from my games goes to pay the artists and to get other assets to make more games. That's it.

And I find it saddening that in 2022 we still need to explain creative contexts.  We still need to defend creative freedom. Because in the self-proclaimed "land of freedom" some people believe that the color of fictional people's skin is more important than real people. If I ever wanted to write a story with representation, I would write about the problems immigrants face when they reach their promised land (every single First World country), which top 2 are coping with a different language and a different culture, with race being on the third place, not the first. Oh, but guess what? I already did, partly, with Ferdinand.

So, TL;DR I will keep writing the stories I want to write, and I won't have my creative freedom coerced by a loud minority of uninformed, shallow people who enjoy pointless discourse on social media. I hope we won't go back to darker periods of recent history and we'll keep being allowed to create in peace, and enjoy whatever we like, without censorship.

My goal was never to be a mainstream VN dev or writer, anyway. So as long as there's someone out there who enjoys my stories, I'll keep making them!