Queen of my Heart

It's Friday, folks!  For me, it comes at the end of a very long week (I've worked 37 of the last 72 hours.)  Progress on the game has been slower as a result of this insanity, which I mentioned last week I knew was coming, but thankfully is now over for the time being.  The good news is that I just blew through the halfway point of the re-renders.  Working backwards in the alphabet, I'm up to Q - for Queen of the Ring!  (A-E is fully remastered, so just F-P to go.)

A couple of weeks ago, I said I was going to talk about Jess and Poppy, then proceeded to spend the whole time talking about Poppy.  So I'd better redress the balance today.  Jess isn't a girl to let these little slights go.

As I said the other day, I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that the wrestling quest was better received than I'd assumed.  I probably needn't have worried as in this quest, we got to see Alancia's original super-brat in a number of interesting situations, including a few different punishments, molesting our girl at the naughty window and we rolled around on her bed with her naked for a bit and even got a taste of her panties at the end.

Jess's popularity owes a lot to her character.  When I created her, I had a very clear idea in my head of what I wanted her to be.  I, like most of you, very much enjoy domination and humiliation as a fetish and set out to make a game in which the main character would be everybody's bitch.  Since the main character is a schoolgirl, this necessitated a school bully.

The first thing I wanted in my bully was privilege.  This is important as it allows her to punch down at Missy in a few extra ways.  Early ideas for Jess included her being a bit more posh, perhaps even a popular girl.  That idea eventually gave way to her being a member of the bad girls, because with having the orchard fights, I wanted an antagonist that could also physically threaten Missy.  A popular girl would employ more subtle methods than violence.  

So we have a girl that's from the posh end of town, but isn't entirely comfortable with it.  We explored a little of this in Queen of the Ring, in which one of the barriers Jessica must overcome is her mother's distaste for physical competition.  When this story continues, with the inter-school tournament, we may learn more about Jessica's complicated relationship with her parents!

The second thing was low cunning.  It can be amusing to have Jess occasionally outwitted by Missy and Abbie, such as in the second period group events, but it would be a mistake to assume this means she's stupid.  Jessica is devious in ways that are only just becoming clear, and Missy underestimated her badly in Queen of the Ring, ending up being held down and tickled by five girls as a result!

I'm very pleased with the way she came out.  Some of her lines have been a joy to write and her general disdain for pretty much everything and everyone around her, together with her typically schoolgirl sulkiness and aloofness give her, (I think,) a sense of real depth.  She likes to push Miss Paris, but will never go too far, complying, for instance with punishments like stripping when she's given them.

We do occasionally see a vulnerable side to her though.  Her bravado can disappear quickly when she's humiliated after losing in the orchard and she is grudgingly thankful to Missy whenever the latter shows mercy or restraint, again, in the orchard fights or by not telling Miss Paris when Jess misbehaves.  As development progresses, we'll learn more about her still.

But, again, real talk.  Jess isn't popular because of her hidden character depths or her poor-little-rich-kid backstory.  She's popular because she's an obnoxious bully with a crush on her victim.  So let's round off by talking about that!

In act one, so far, the things Jess has been able to do to Missy have been fairly tame.  She's got us in a bit of trouble with the teacher, humiliated us a bit if we lost to her at volleyball, or in a fight, even stolen our skirt so we had to run around the field without it.  But even the more extreme things, like stripping Missy and riding her around, or being made to kiss her butt happened in relative privacy in front of just the other bad girls.

This is about to change.  The Reign of Jess fires the starting gun on the escalation of Jess's antics.  I'm taking the safety off her.  She has plenty more humiliations in store for Missy.  But dominant players reading this shouldn't despair - you'll get the opportunity, as you have so far, to do most of them right back to her!

That's all for today, but please enjoy the custom image of her at the top in 4K.  You can download below.

Have a great weekend!

Trinian