After Solstice

"She finds a best friend and a lover in the same person in the City of Lights and Love." - After Solstice's tagline

Official Description
After Solstice is an HM original released on November 28th, 2020, and it was the first HM story which featured an LGBT relationship between two main characters. It was written by Cj Sanchez, Stefan Sanchez, Parker Trinh and Stefen Sanchez.

It will star the voices of Stefen Sanchez (Parker Trinh's base) as the aspiring young photographer, Rio Togami, Pauline Sui (Amree Aguinaldo's base) as the ice skating princess, Anna Sinclair, and Kaela Giddings (Belle Bello's base) as the daydreamer slash traveler, Sydney Crimsen.

Plot
Sydney Crimsen is traveling around the world with her high school best friend, Rio Togami, to fill Rio's portfolio for the Photography Club. One of the places they visit happens to be in Paris, France, where Sydney's middle school best friend, a figure skater, Anna Sinclair, lives in. Before the events of After Solstice, Sydney and Anna were separated since 8th grade, and they never saw each other again, until a few years later, when Sydney and Rio go to Paris.

The girls see each other again, and when they reunite, Sydney realizes she still likes Anna romantically, and she can't bring to tell her for the fear that it might ruin their newly-repaired friendship again. Sydney hesitates to tell Anna her feelings, and she wants to settle in as just friends, though Anna keeps bringing her from place to place in the city, and bonds with Sydney, not knowing what effect it has on her.

In the next few days, Sydney gives Anna a promise ring that she'll one day replace with an engagement ring from her future fiancé, but Anna tells her that she has feelings for her all this time too, and is just also scared. Anna comes out to Sydney that she's in fact, pansexual as Rio predicted, and that she has liked Sydney since they were still in America. Sydney asks Anna to be her girlfriend, and she says yes.

Anna's mother catches them doing couple things, and she scolds Anna for it, saying that she should be with a guy and not a girl.

ot a girl. Her mother forbids her from seeing Sydney and threatens her to go back to America, separating the two again.

On the day of the ice skating competition and Sydney and Rio's departure to go back to America, Anna wins first place, but she's far from happy. Anna realizes she was just forced to like ice skating as a hobby, she suddenly figures out that she wanted to be with Sydney more than being the Ice Skating Princess of Paris, and rushes to the airport to catch up with Sydney, but it's too late since Rio and Sydney already left Paris.

Months later, winter turns into spring, and Sydney and Rio are in UNC for their moving up ceremony practice, but then they see Anna there with her fathers, applying to the same school as them so they can be together again.

Cast



 * Belle Bello as Sydney Crimsen, a freshman who travels around the world, and dreams of traveling the world together with someone she loves.
 * Amree Aguinaldo as Anna Sinclair, the figure skater also known as the Ice Princess of Paris, who's Sydney's best friend, and later girlfriend.
 * Parker Trinh as Rio Togami, Sydney's best friend since high school, who's an aspiring photographer, and also Sydneliese's primary wingman.
 * Eloise Devereux is the CEO of the Shangri-La hotel, Anna's mother, and Andrew Sinclair's ex-wife.
 * Cardlin Sanchez Jr. as Xander Ainsley, the bellboy in the Shangri-La hotel, who is also Anna's upperclassman in Universite du Verre.
 * Jace Blanchett as Julien Laurent, Anna's fan in After Solstice who became one of her love interests in the sequel.
 * Luci Sakuragi as Anais, one of Anna's fans and Julien's younger sister.

Trivias

 * The After Solstice franchise is the first (and so far the only) HM franchise that features girl to girl and boy to boy romance between the lead characters.
 * The book features a lot of LGBTQ+ characters; Sydney and Rio are both bisexual and are both leaning toward girls, and Rio is transgender. Anna is pansexual, Xander is asexual, Arwen is lesbian, Andrew Sinclair is also bisexual (though he's leaning to men), and Thomas Min is gay.
 * Writer Parker Trinh hinted that After Solstice might be followed by a sequel, which is planned to be named "Summer Solstice".
 * Summer Solstice will most likely be a direct sequel of the story, or a short prequel back when Sydney and Anna were in their early teens, set on the time before they were separated.
 * Amree Aguinaldo drew the characters to be featured on the title cards without her knowing it was a fanfiction of her. Parker had to tell a white lie and tell her it was for his story in his English class. It turns out that a month later, he has a school contest for story writing and the category is pride. Parker used After Solstice and he ended up winning the contest.
 * Amree and Belle wouldn't be voicing the characters who are based on them. The reason behind this is because Amree gets too much exposure and she told the staff she's passing the role to someone relatively new, who is Pauline Sui. Amree will sit on the sidelines and will only sing the theme song for the short film, if ever.
 * After Solstice was released a month before the actual winter solstice (After Solstice was released on November 28 2020, and the winter solstice is still a long way later, on December 21).
 * He initially planned to release it on the day of the solstice, but he had other plans and had to release it early.
 * Parker's inspiration for the book is the interactive novel City of Love: Paris, and even used one of its characters' surnames, Raphael Laurent, and give it to Julien Laurent, whose base is Jace Blanchett.
 * The story was planned to have a sad ending; Anna misses Sydney at the airport and they never meet again. The epilogue was just a last minute decision and addition, as Stefen Sanchez, one of Trinh's co-writers, say that the first LGBT story of HM should have a happy ending.
 * There are a lot of things revealed in the preview of a possible sequel:
 * Sydney calls Anna "Buttercup".
 * Anna and Rio can play both tennis and badminton.
 * Sydney, Anna, and Rio are all roommates in the UNC dorms.
 * Xander Ainsley is now the tetartagonist.
 * Julien Laurent, the older brother of Anais and Anna's fan from the first book has given a bigger role, and it's one of Anna's admirers.
 * Three new characters are introduced:
 * Marco Alvarez- Sydney's admirer who is a swimmer from Barcelona
 * Professor McClaren- the main's Science professor and Iris Duncan's crush
 * Iris Duncan- the mains' homophobic classmate
 * Two boys (Julien and Marco) will be Anna and Sydney's admirers respectively, making Anna doubt her relationship with Sydney. Sydney, however, will still be confused and question her own sexuality.
 * There will be no antagonists, the tension will be created by Anna and Sydney themselves as they're being charmed by the boys.