Chibi Subaru's Tumblr

Personal Tumblr of Noelle of Naïve Sprites

[naivesprites]

5/15/20 - Health and Family Update; Looking for Artist

Hello everyone,

It seems every time I want to make an update post, something comes up that I need to see play out first.

So far Justin, his dad, and I are safe from the virus.  We’re doing everything we can to protect ourselves.  Masks, hand sanitizer, frequent hand washing, quarantining in the house since before the call to do so, the whole nine yards.

A lot has happened in a relatively short period of time.  Originally my surgery was going to be on April 8th, but at the beginning of that week our dog started to develop a few problems that needed to be investigated that instant.  After getting him to the vet, we learned that he suddenly has developed diabetes.  His diet has been fine his whole life and apparently this is just some sort of freak happenstance.  However, this sudden onset of diabetes pretty much caused him to go blind from cataracts practically overnight.  So a lot of our days are spent helping him get adjusted to his blindness.  We’re hoping to get his levels in range soon so he can have eye surgery to fix the cataracts, but we’re still unsure when/if that will be possible.

After another appointment shift, my surgery is on May 27th, so Justin and I have been cleaning and preparing the house so I can have an easier time getting around while healing.

For roughly six years, Justin’s brother, Willy, has been dealing with stage 4 cancer and the last few months have been exceptionally difficult.  Within less than a month’s time he had to go to the hospital for severe dehydration, which led to pancreatitis, which led to bacterial pneumonia.  Just three days ago, he dealt with the dehydration again along with a 102 degree fever.  This was during their hospice intake appointment and pretty much made their choice to go into hospice for them.  They’ve looked into clinical trials for practically his entire cancer battle, but because of COVID those trails have been closed.  One of the trials they had been waiting for, reopened its application services but looked over Willy’s file and said he would not survive the trial in the first place.  This has been incredibly hard on everyone.  With the two person limit per day at the hospice, everyone is forced to visit at such a slow pace that everyone might not get to see him before the end.  Justin managed to see him yesterday and I’m hoping to visit from the window (bypassing the two person rule) sometime this weekend between other people’s visits.

In between cleaning, family stuff, and my own health, Justin and I have been looking for new artist(s) for sprites, CG, and Kickstarter rewards.  A few of my friends have started to look for people that might be interested in working with us.  With everything that’s going on it’s making it really hard for us to search as much as we’d like to, but we are still searching.

If anyone knows of an artist that might be interested in working with us, please let them know to reach out to us either through Twitter, Facebook, or Kickstarter.  It would help us out greatly and we’d really appreciate it.

[chibisubaru]

My life keeps getting more and more fun....

[naivesprites]

Update 11/24/2019 - Major Health Concerns

Hey all, we’ve got some icky news.

On November 18th I had my second colonoscopy. It turned out they only took one large polyp (that seemed sorta dangerous) because they felt it was pointless to remove the 100’s of smaller ones. They said they wouldn’t be able to keep up with the growth of them and they can only keep me under for so long.

Due to all of this, I’ll have to have ALL of my colon removed VERY soon. My doctor sent a referral to the Cleveland Clinic for a surgeon as they do a LOT of colon removal surgeries and our area doesn’t really have anyone my two doctors would suggest to go to. The other problem we run into is that I’ll have to be in the hospital for 2-4 days and will have 2-3 surgeries over the course of a couple months, so I’m not sure how much work I’ll be able to get done on the game during those time periods. My first appointment will be on November 29th and I’m assuming we’ll be figuring out what type of surgery and when I’ll be having it.

Truthfully, I don’t know what my quality of life will be like afterwards, especially when you pair it with the aftermath I deal with from the thyroid cancer. I do not plan to let this affect things too much, but it probably will at the beginning of treatments and getting used to my new life.

On top of the colon situation, my current thyroid medication isn’t working as well as it used to since the manufacturer has changed suppliers. This is the second time this has happened with my medication. My primary care doctor recommends me going to a Functional doctor as she thinks I need to get a compound thyroid medication specially made for what my body needs and also to finally have a doctor that will look into all of the health issues I have. Problem is that my Medicaid won’t cover Functional doctors and the first appointment would be $936 (and unsure how much subsequent visits will be) which doesn’t cover lab work.

As I’m unable to work and Justin can’t because of his own medical issues along with acting as my caretaker 24/7, we have no income. A low rough estimate comes to $4,000 for the trips up to Cleveland, hotel stays, and doctor appointments between both the colon issues and the Functional doctor. The goal is to diagnose what’s causing the muscle weakness, muscle and bone pain, memory issues, worsening depression, anxiety, and fatigue along with many of the other problems that I’ve been dealing with for seven years. During this time I’ll also be applying for disability, getting treatment, and hoping that I can eventually work again at a real paying job.

I’ve been so proud of all of us for working through whatever has been put in front of us, but lack of funds are truly a roadblock in this situation. I am beyond upset that I need to setup a gofundme for this, but there’s really nothing else I can do. I do not expect any of our fans to donate, but I would very much appreciate it if people could share my gofundme link. I feel like the faster I can get all of this over with, the faster I can put all my focus back on game dev work.

Along with my own personal health issues, Darkenmarr is out of commission for a while. In September her right thumb swelled up out of nowhere. For awhile she was able to still work on Alison’s sprite, but it’s gotten to the point she can’t hold anything in her drawing hand. She had gone to urgent care for help and they claimed it was arthritis, but after talking it over with her, Justin, Darkenmarr, and myself disagree with the diagnosis (we believe it to be fractured somewhere). She’s trying to get the VA to approve her doctors to look at her thumb and it has been taking awhile to get a chance to even talk to people at the VA. There’s also some very personal family stuff going on at the same time that understandably needs more of her attention.

The plan is to contact her on December 12th to see what’s going on and the plan of action at that time. In the meantime, I think Justin and I will focus on helping the other team members with their work and dealing with our health issues while we wait for Darkenmarr’s return.

Since I last posted, though, we did manage to get a couple of backgrounds done and Justin’s been finishing up the look of some of the GUI elements. So some progress has been made at least. Hopefully, we’ll have more to update on in the next post.

[chibisubaru]

I have to say that so far I LOVE Cleveland Clinic. The doctors are great, friendly, very communicative, and great in making sure you understand what's going on. I wish I lived closer to it.

After talking it over and having a short colonoscopy, my doctor said my whole colon and rectum will need to be removed. Due to my age and being overall healthy, other than the few medical issues, he felt I would be able to get the J-pouch (internal and restructure of my intestine), but my weight could be an issue for not only surgery but also for the j-pouch to be successful. It's recommended I lose 25-35 pounds before the surgery, which we're hoping will be 4 months away from now.

My biggest problem is my thyroid medication being off and my muscle weakness, so I'm gaining weight because of the medication and it's hard to exercise because of my muscles. Currently the idea is to do a high protein and low calorie diet. If that doesn't work in one to two weeks, I'll be switching to Atkins as much as I don't want to.

The other thing is going to the YMCA to use their pool as it would be easier on my body plus using like the treadmills for a little while. As the pool gets easier on me and/or I feel I can handle the gym more, start increasing my time at the gym.

Because of this I have to buy gym clothes and swimwear that actually fit me. Yay... more money being spent. Though I have to say thankfully it's Black Friday and Cyber Monday weekend because I was able to get two sports bras for $25 at Lane Bryant.

On the 18th, I have to do an EGD, CT scan, and see my endocrinologist. Based on what's required for the appointments and the times, Justin and I will need to sleep at a hotel overnight.

[naivesprites]

Update 9/6/2019 - Gwyn’s New Sprite

We are happy to announce that we’ve completed Gwyn’s new sprite’s 1st pose.  Below shows a comparison of @darkenmarr‘s first attempt and the finalized sprite.

[kanon-mendi]

If you’re gonna join an FB group, make sure the admins are compliant with everyone and not ban you when you wanted to share stories……..

All because she never made sense of what EXACTLY she wanted in her fckn group after I had done it 3 years prior.

[chibisubaru]

I find this extremely funny because: 1) You only sold in my group TWICE: last year and this year.  The first time Voltage was selling stuff at AX, you were BEGGING people to buy you the Eisuke Wall Scroll for you (promising to pay after the convention), so I know you didn’t sell in the group then.  And yes, I was an admin at that time. 2) I made rules this year so you wouldn’t screw around with people AGAIN and you told me you would follow them.  The rules weren’t hard to understand at all.  And if anyone wants to see what those rules were, I’m MORE than happy to reblog this with them. 3) Instead of following the rules, you break the rules in PM transaction agreements and lie about how PayPal works to make people pay through Friends and Family only.

4) Upcharged people without it being visible to the Buyer.  I’m not against people upcharging as long as it’s reasonable and clear to understand the price is upcharged and by how much. 5) You claimed there are taxes on top of the convention sales prices during the event, though from my knowledge Voltage/Purple Plum don’t charge taxes at Anime Expo.  You went on to claim the tax was 50% to one person so you could claim $5 on a $10 purchase. 6) Disappearing after AX 2018 without telling Buyers anything 7) After disappearing for almost 2-3 weeks, you posted in the group telling Buyers you couldn’t ship items because you only had $20.  Buyers pointed out they’re paying for shipping and haven’t sent you the shipping money yet so this didn’t make sense.  8) Told Buyers you couldn’t ship until after September this year, but you were also very active on social media, even now, but avoided giving updates to the Buyers.  You could have been spending that time shipping stuff out. 9) I am told Buyers are still waiting on items and/or their refunds from last year. 10) You made people pay through Friends and Family even when Buyers are more than willing to pay for Goods and Services PayPal fees, which go towards Buyer Protection on the website.  Your way of being “nice” to your Buyers prevents them from being protected from fraud. 11) Improperly packaging items in ways that will cause damage, for example, causing scratches on items like keychains.  Which I replaced for the Buyer because I felt bad about that happening to them.  I didn’t have to do that. 12) Opened Buyer’s blind boxes even knowing the Buyer wanted to receive them unopened.  Then when Buyer found out, you refused to take pictures of Buyer’s items.  Then claimed you forgot what the Buyer got within their blind boxes.  You clearly had your phone on you, so you could have taken pictures of the items. 13) Not keeping Buyers updated during and after the convention with what step they are at within the transaction.  No estimation on when things will be shipped out unless you were REPEATEDLY bugged for it. 14) Buyers had to beg to get items shipped again this year, especially after finding out others have been shipped already 15) Forgot to buy Buyers items at AX 2019 and Buyer didn’t find out until package got to them.  The Buyer reminded you FOUR TIMES about getting these items for them.  Then Buyer had to wait a bit to get their money back.  Two of these items were merchandise that were convention exclusive. Also I must correct you, I only have power in the one Voltage group, not the Unofficial.  @yukinojowifey1​ runs Unofficial, who happened to buy from you last year and had to deal with hell because of you, and after hearing what happened this year, she decided to kick you out.  After talking to Nuria, the head admin of the group I run, we BOTH agreed to remove you for your unethical business practices.  But no, PLEASE, continue to blame me like you have some personal vendetta against me. You have NO ONE to blame, not this Terrible Lady/Fckn Admin, not Jasmine, not Nuria, not your Buyers, but yourself for being removed from two group.

[yukinojowifey1]

I would kindly like to add that I would’ve blocked you this year from my group selling items (due to how you handled last year’s transactions by promising to reach out on a certain date and disappearing), but decided against it since you were using the same form in my group as you did hers. It was that I heard additional complaints which came to this decision. 

If anyone knows me, I am a VERY generous person. What I will not tolerate, is anyone who uses suspicious methods in terms of transactions. 

I still have screenshots of everything and I am not afraid to post it all if you want to back track. 

This decision is final. If anyone wishes to do business outside of the group, it is outside of our hands, but as far as I am concern, my job as an admin (as well as Noelle) is protect the group as a whole. 

So, next time, instead of being salty, don’t flake on people who purchase from you. Learn open communication to each buyer so they will know they you haven’t forgotten about them and are actively working on it because as a seller (especially one who prefers to do friends and family via paypal which makes it harder for a refund).  Consider it a lesson learned and grow from here. Hopefully you will learn to improve your methods instead of mismanaging your transactions. 

[chibisubaru]

You did disappear in 2018, I have proof via @yukinojowifey1‘s convos with you and your posting history in the Voltage FB group. Well that’s poor on your part for not checking your phone.  Not only do you need to reply to Buyers, but also message them updates and to keep track of them in general. It is possible that there could have been a miscommunication between one of your Buyers and myself due to a small language barrier.  Regardless, the Buyer asked you to take pictures of their Lanyard Tags and you didn’t.  Now you’re telling them you can’t remember what they received. I did talk to you on how to fix your Google form to comply with the rules, multiple times, and you only picked and chose which ones to change.  Then closed up shop in my group once I asked you to make the Service Fees visible to the Buyers in your form.  And why should I have talked to you when you were so adamant to go against the rules in PMs with Buyers?  Calling me fckn admin and terrible lady because I made rules to protect the Buyers. I told you to do Goods and Services because you were asking for a service fee, so you broke PayPal’s rules on that one.  This was not only to protect the Buyers because of what happened last year, but also yourself so you wouldn’t get banned from PayPal.

[yukinojowifey1]

@kanon-mendi Did you forget that when you claimed you couldn’t ship because you were too broke to ship our payments and claimed otherwise? 

And you posted this AFTER I sent a message and requested @calypsomuse to send one as well because when I messaged you, you seemed like you didn’t want to respond to a personal message. 

And this is when you told me the 10th. I didn’t personally hear from you since then. 

I showed NO communication from the 10th. I waited 10 days in hopes you reached out. 

Once again, I said what I said. If Noelle wants to add you back that group, that is her decision, but as for mines. It is a hard NO. 

Noelle tried to save you this year by posting rules of sales and how to do that. YOU SAW THEM and deleted your sales post from Noelle’s group when you refused to comply, but you kept it in mines. You still kept the form requesting friends and family even though her rules stated otherwise. 

I am going by what I said. 

This isn’t a misunderstanding by any part on me. Noelle was kind enough to give you a life raft and you rejected it. That is on you. 

[chibisubaru]

For those that don’t know these are the rules I posted in the group I help run.

These are @kanon-mendi​’s comments to this post

So yeah, we spoke and she still broke the rules.  Also never fixed how she listed her fees in her form before she deleted from the group.

[hikeeb]

Dear all, Remember to be safe out there when buying from individuals not companies. The entire reason that companies like Paypal Goods and Services exist is to provide the buyer and seller protections that smaller companies or hobbyists don’t have time or skills to handle. Using money transfer like Paypal Friends and Family or Venmo doesn’t protect either, but does favor the seller because you are saying the money is a gift. So if you decide to avoid the Paypal fee, if someone scams you like this, you have to deal with the resolution on your own time rather than just sending Paypal the transaction contention. Consider valuing your own time and hassle a little more highly than that.

[chibisubaru]

This is why I tell people in my groups that I prefer them to use Goods and Services when buying stuff from others.  Even if the seller wants them to pay for the PayPal fee, which usually isn’t that much, it will protect them better than Friends and Family.  I know technically sellers aren’t supposed ask buyers to pay for the PayPal fee, but when it comes to people getting others stuff at a convention, I let it slide because I think of it as a service fee and/or insurance. Even if the buyer keeps demanding to use Friends and Family, but you’re hesitant to do so, pay for the fee and do Goods and Services.  There are calculators to help you figure out how much to send.  

Also always double check the seller’s math.  They’re human, too, so they can mess up in their math.

[kanon-mendi]

If you’re gonna join an FB group, make sure the admins are compliant with everyone and not ban you when you wanted to share stories……..

All because she never made sense of what EXACTLY she wanted in her fckn group after I had done it 3 years prior.

[chibisubaru]

I find this extremely funny because: 1) You only sold in my group TWICE: last year and this year.  The first time Voltage was selling stuff at AX, you were BEGGING people to buy you the Eisuke Wall Scroll for you (promising to pay after the convention), so I know you didn’t sell in the group then.  And yes, I was an admin at that time. 2) I made rules this year so you wouldn’t screw around with people AGAIN and you told me you would follow them.  The rules weren’t hard to understand at all.  And if anyone wants to see what those rules were, I’m MORE than happy to reblog this with them. 3) Instead of following the rules, you break the rules in PM transaction agreements and lie about how PayPal works to make people pay through Friends and Family only.

4) Upcharged people without it being visible to the Buyer.  I’m not against people upcharging as long as it’s reasonable and clear to understand the price is upcharged and by how much. 5) You claimed there are taxes on top of the convention sales prices during the event, though from my knowledge Voltage/Purple Plum don’t charge taxes at Anime Expo.  You went on to claim the tax was 50% to one person so you could claim $5 on a $10 purchase. 6) Disappearing after AX 2018 without telling Buyers anything 7) After disappearing for almost 2-3 weeks, you posted in the group telling Buyers you couldn’t ship items because you only had $20.  Buyers pointed out they’re paying for shipping and haven’t sent you the shipping money yet so this didn’t make sense.  8) Told Buyers you couldn’t ship until after September this year, but you were also very active on social media, even now, but avoided giving updates to the Buyers.  You could have been spending that time shipping stuff out. 9) I am told Buyers are still waiting on items and/or their refunds from last year. 10) You made people pay through Friends and Family even when Buyers are more than willing to pay for Goods and Services PayPal fees, which go towards Buyer Protection on the website.  Your way of being “nice” to your Buyers prevents them from being protected from fraud. 11) Improperly packaging items in ways that will cause damage, for example, causing scratches on items like keychains.  Which I replaced for the Buyer because I felt bad about that happening to them.  I didn’t have to do that. 12) Opened Buyer’s blind boxes even knowing the Buyer wanted to receive them unopened.  Then when Buyer found out, you refused to take pictures of Buyer’s items.  Then claimed you forgot what the Buyer got within their blind boxes.  You clearly had your phone on you, so you could have taken pictures of the items. 13) Not keeping Buyers updated during and after the convention with what step they are at within the transaction.  No estimation on when things will be shipped out unless you were REPEATEDLY bugged for it. 14) Buyers had to beg to get items shipped again this year, especially after finding out others have been shipped already 15) Forgot to buy Buyers items at AX 2019 and Buyer didn’t find out until package got to them.  The Buyer reminded you FOUR TIMES about getting these items for them.  Then Buyer had to wait a bit to get their money back.  Two of these items were merchandise that were convention exclusive. Also I must correct you, I only have power in the one Voltage group, not the Unofficial.  @yukinojowifey1​ runs Unofficial, who happened to buy from you last year and had to deal with hell because of you, and after hearing what happened this year, she decided to kick you out.  After talking to Nuria, the head admin of the group I run, we BOTH agreed to remove you for your unethical business practices.  But no, PLEASE, continue to blame me like you have some personal vendetta against me. You have NO ONE to blame, not this Terrible Lady/Fckn Admin, not Jasmine, not Nuria, not your Buyers, but yourself for being removed from two group.

[yukinojowifey1]

I would kindly like to add that I would’ve blocked you this year from my group selling items (due to how you handled last year’s transactions by promising to reach out on a certain date and disappearing), but decided against it since you were using the same form in my group as you did hers. It was that I heard additional complaints which came to this decision. 

If anyone knows me, I am a VERY generous person. What I will not tolerate, is anyone who uses suspicious methods in terms of transactions. 

I still have screenshots of everything and I am not afraid to post it all if you want to back track. 

This decision is final. If anyone wishes to do business outside of the group, it is outside of our hands, but as far as I am concern, my job as an admin (as well as Noelle) is protect the group as a whole. 

So, next time, instead of being salty, don’t flake on people who purchase from you. Learn open communication to each buyer so they will know they you haven’t forgotten about them and are actively working on it because as a seller (especially one who prefers to do friends and family via paypal which makes it harder for a refund).  Consider it a lesson learned and grow from here. Hopefully you will learn to improve your methods instead of mismanaging your transactions. 

[chibisubaru]

You did disappear in 2018, I have proof via @yukinojowifey1‘s convos with you and your posting history in the Voltage FB group. Well that’s poor on your part for not checking your phone.  Not only do you need to reply to Buyers, but also message them updates and to keep track of them in general. It is possible that there could have been a miscommunication between one of your Buyers and myself due to a small language barrier.  Regardless, the Buyer asked you to take pictures of their Lanyard Tags and you didn’t.  Now you’re telling them you can’t remember what they received. I did talk to you on how to fix your Google form to comply with the rules, multiple times, and you only picked and chose which ones to change.  Then closed up shop in my group once I asked you to make the Service Fees visible to the Buyers in your form.  And why should I have talked to you when you were so adamant to go against the rules in PMs with Buyers?  Calling me fckn admin and terrible lady because I made rules to protect the Buyers. I told you to do Goods and Services because you were asking for a service fee, so you broke PayPal’s rules on that one.  This was not only to protect the Buyers because of what happened last year, but also yourself so you wouldn’t get banned from PayPal.

[yukinojowifey1]

@kanon-mendi Did you forget that when you claimed you couldn’t ship because you were too broke to ship our payments and claimed otherwise? 

And you posted this AFTER I sent a message and requested @calypsomuse to send one as well because when I messaged you, you seemed like you didn’t want to respond to a personal message. 

And this is when you told me the 10th. I didn’t personally hear from you since then. 

I showed NO communication from the 10th. I waited 10 days in hopes you reached out. 

Once again, I said what I said. If Noelle wants to add you back that group, that is her decision, but as for mines. It is a hard NO. 

Noelle tried to save you this year by posting rules of sales and how to do that. YOU SAW THEM and deleted your sales post from Noelle’s group when you refused to comply, but you kept it in mines. You still kept the form requesting friends and family even though her rules stated otherwise. 

I am going by what I said. 

This isn’t a misunderstanding by any part on me. Noelle was kind enough to give you a life raft and you rejected it. That is on you. 

[chibisubaru]

For those that don’t know these are the rules I posted in the group I help run.

These are @kanon-mendi​’s comments to this post

So yeah, we spoke and she still broke the rules.  Also never fixed how she listed her fees in her form before she deleted from the group.

[kanon-mendi]

If you’re gonna join an FB group, make sure the admins are compliant with everyone and not ban you when you wanted to share stories……..

All because she never made sense of what EXACTLY she wanted in her fckn group after I had done it 3 years prior.

[chibisubaru]

I find this extremely funny because: 1) You only sold in my group TWICE: last year and this year.  The first time Voltage was selling stuff at AX, you were BEGGING people to buy you the Eisuke Wall Scroll for you (promising to pay after the convention), so I know you didn’t sell in the group then.  And yes, I was an admin at that time. 2) I made rules this year so you wouldn’t screw around with people AGAIN and you told me you would follow them.  The rules weren’t hard to understand at all.  And if anyone wants to see what those rules were, I’m MORE than happy to reblog this with them. 3) Instead of following the rules, you break the rules in PM transaction agreements and lie about how PayPal works to make people pay through Friends and Family only.

4) Upcharged people without it being visible to the Buyer.  I’m not against people upcharging as long as it’s reasonable and clear to understand the price is upcharged and by how much. 5) You claimed there are taxes on top of the convention sales prices during the event, though from my knowledge Voltage/Purple Plum don’t charge taxes at Anime Expo.  You went on to claim the tax was 50% to one person so you could claim $5 on a $10 purchase. 6) Disappearing after AX 2018 without telling Buyers anything 7) After disappearing for almost 2-3 weeks, you posted in the group telling Buyers you couldn’t ship items because you only had $20.  Buyers pointed out they’re paying for shipping and haven’t sent you the shipping money yet so this didn’t make sense.  8) Told Buyers you couldn’t ship until after September this year, but you were also very active on social media, even now, but avoided giving updates to the Buyers.  You could have been spending that time shipping stuff out. 9) I am told Buyers are still waiting on items and/or their refunds from last year. 10) You made people pay through Friends and Family even when Buyers are more than willing to pay for Goods and Services PayPal fees, which go towards Buyer Protection on the website.  Your way of being “nice” to your Buyers prevents them from being protected from fraud. 11) Improperly packaging items in ways that will cause damage, for example, causing scratches on items like keychains.  Which I replaced for the Buyer because I felt bad about that happening to them.  I didn’t have to do that. 12) Opened Buyer’s blind boxes even knowing the Buyer wanted to receive them unopened.  Then when Buyer found out, you refused to take pictures of Buyer’s items.  Then claimed you forgot what the Buyer got within their blind boxes.  You clearly had your phone on you, so you could have taken pictures of the items. 13) Not keeping Buyers updated during and after the convention with what step they are at within the transaction.  No estimation on when things will be shipped out unless you were REPEATEDLY bugged for it. 14) Buyers had to beg to get items shipped again this year, especially after finding out others have been shipped already 15) Forgot to buy Buyers items at AX 2019 and Buyer didn’t find out until package got to them.  The Buyer reminded you FOUR TIMES about getting these items for them.  Then Buyer had to wait a bit to get their money back.  Two of these items were merchandise that were convention exclusive. Also I must correct you, I only have power in the one Voltage group, not the Unofficial.  @yukinojowifey1​ runs Unofficial, who happened to buy from you last year and had to deal with hell because of you, and after hearing what happened this year, she decided to kick you out.  After talking to Nuria, the head admin of the group I run, we BOTH agreed to remove you for your unethical business practices.  But no, PLEASE, continue to blame me like you have some personal vendetta against me. You have NO ONE to blame, not this Terrible Lady/Fckn Admin, not Jasmine, not Nuria, not your Buyers, but yourself for being removed from two group.

[yukinojowifey1]

I would kindly like to add that I would’ve blocked you this year from my group selling items (due to how you handled last year’s transactions by promising to reach out on a certain date and disappearing), but decided against it since you were using the same form in my group as you did hers. It was that I heard additional complaints which came to this decision. 

If anyone knows me, I am a VERY generous person. What I will not tolerate, is anyone who uses suspicious methods in terms of transactions. 

I still have screenshots of everything and I am not afraid to post it all if you want to back track. 

This decision is final. If anyone wishes to do business outside of the group, it is outside of our hands, but as far as I am concern, my job as an admin (as well as Noelle) is protect the group as a whole. 

So, next time, instead of being salty, don’t flake on people who purchase from you. Learn open communication to each buyer so they will know they you haven’t forgotten about them and are actively working on it because as a seller (especially one who prefers to do friends and family via paypal which makes it harder for a refund).  Consider it a lesson learned and grow from here. Hopefully you will learn to improve your methods instead of mismanaging your transactions. 

[chibisubaru]

You did disappear in 2018, I have proof via @yukinojowifey1‘s convos with you and your posting history in the Voltage FB group. Well that’s poor on your part for not checking your phone.  Not only do you need to reply to Buyers, but also message them updates and to keep track of them in general. It is possible that there could have been a miscommunication between one of your Buyers and myself due to a small language barrier.  Regardless, the Buyer asked you to take pictures of their blind box items and you didn’t.  Now you’re telling them you can’t remember what they received. I did talk to you on how to fix your Google form to comply with the rules, multiple times, and you only picked and chose which ones to change.  Then closed up shop in my group once I asked you to make the Service Fees visible to the Buyers in your form.  And why should I have talked to you when you were so adamant to go against the rules in PMs with Buyers?  Calling me fckn admin and terrible lady because I made rules to protect the Buyers. I told you to do Goods and Services because you were asking for a service fee, so you broke PayPal’s rules on that one.  This was not only to protect the Buyers because of what happened last year, but also yourself so you wouldn’t get banned from PayPal.

[kanon-mendi]

If you're gonna join an FB group, make sure the admins are compliant with everyone and not ban you when you wanted to share stories........

All because she never made sense of what EXACTLY she wanted in her fckn group after I had done it 3 years prior.

[chibisubaru]

I find this extremely funny because: 1) You only sold in my group TWICE: last year and this year.  The first time Voltage was selling stuff at AX, you were BEGGING people to buy you the Eisuke Wall Scroll for you (promising to pay after the convention), so I know you didn’t sell in the group then.  And yes, I was an admin at that time. 2) I made rules this year so you wouldn’t screw around with people AGAIN and you told me you would follow them.  The rules weren’t hard to understand at all.  And if anyone wants to see what those rules were, I’m MORE than happy to reblog this with them. 3) Instead of following the rules, you break the rules in PM transaction agreements and lie about how PayPal works to make people pay through Friends and Family only.

4) Upcharged people without it being visible to the Buyer.  I’m not against people upcharging as long as it’s reasonable and clear to understand the price is upcharged and by how much. 5) You claimed there are taxes on top of the convention sales prices during the event, though from my knowledge Voltage/Purple Plum don't charge taxes at Anime Expo.  You went on to claim the tax was 50% to one person so you could claim $5 on a $10 purchase. 6) Disappearing after AX 2018 without telling Buyers anything 7) After disappearing for almost 2-3 weeks, you posted in the group telling Buyers you couldn’t ship items because you only had $20.  Buyers pointed out they're paying for shipping and haven’t sent you the shipping money yet so this didn’t make sense.  8) Told Buyers you couldn’t ship until after September this year, but you were also very active on social media, even now, but avoided giving updates to the Buyers.  You could have been spending that time shipping stuff out. 9) I am told Buyers are still waiting on items and/or their refunds from last year. 10) You made people pay through Friends and Family even when Buyers are more than willing to pay for Goods and Services PayPal fees, which go towards Buyer Protection on the website.  Your way of being “nice” to your Buyers prevents them from being protected from fraud. 11) Improperly packaging items in ways that will cause damage, for example, causing scratches on items like keychains.  Which I replaced for the Buyer because I felt bad about that happening to them.  I didn’t have to do that. 12) Opened Buyer’s blind boxes even knowing the Buyer wanted to receive them unopened.  Then when Buyer found out, you refused to take pictures of Buyer's items.  Then claimed you forgot what the Buyer got within their blind boxes.  You clearly had your phone on you, so you could have taken pictures of the items. 13) Not keeping Buyers updated during and after the convention with what step they are at within the transaction.  No estimation on when things will be shipped out unless you were REPEATEDLY bugged for it. 14) Buyers had to beg to get items shipped again this year, especially after finding out others have been shipped already 15) Forgot to buy Buyers items at AX 2019 and Buyer didn’t find out until package got to them.  The Buyer reminded you FOUR TIMES about getting these items for them.  Then Buyer had to wait a bit to get their money back.  Two of these items were merchandise that were convention exclusive. Also I must correct you, I only have power in the one Voltage group, not the Unofficial.  @yukinojowifey1​ runs Unofficial, who happened to buy from you last year and had to deal with hell because of you, and after hearing what happened this year, she decided to kick you out.  After talking to Nuria, the head admin of the group I run, we BOTH agreed to remove you for your unethical business practices.  But no, PLEASE, continue to blame me like you have some personal vendetta against me. You have NO ONE to blame, not this Terrible Lady/Fckn Admin, not Jasmine, not Nuria, not your Buyers, but yourself for being removed from two group.

[naivesprites]

Update 6/19/19

Hi, everyone! It’s been a while since an update, but we’ve made a lot of progress on A Very Important Date!  

Things have settled down some in our personal lives and been working really hard on the game and Kickstarter rewards.  @darkenmarr​ has finished designing our body pillowcases and we’re about to start ordering them for our backers.  We will order these in one week, so any fans that want one can preorder a pillow from our Storenvy site so they can be among our first batch of orders.

Darkenmarr has been working on completing the shadows and highlights of our main sprites.  We’ve already shown our flat colored versions and a few completed versions to our Kickstarter backers.  Now we’ll start introducing our flat colored ones on our various social media.

On the coding and GUI side, we only have a few more menus to finish up before that part of the game is completed. We believe we have a total of ten backgrounds remaining.  Once those are done, Justin and I can focus more on the writing of the routes, instead of dividing our attention.

That’s what we’re showing off today, but we have a lot more to show you.  Stay tuned this weekend for more!

[chibisubaru]

Voltage Festival 2019 Entry

[Location: Living Room]

I take my seat on my couch and stare at the blank document on my computer screen.  My fingertips gently tap on my keyboard as the words appear on the screen.

[Noelle] “Let me start off by saying that I have no idea where I would be right now if it wasn’t for finding Voltage in 2013.  I’m pretty serious when I say that.”

[Justin] “Need help?”

[Noelle] “Probably.  It’s that thing for the contest.”

[Justin] “Oh, so it’s a big deal then.  Okay, why don’t we just talk it out?  You can script it out later.  It’s just supposed to be us talking anyway, right?”

[Noelle] “That is true.”

I sigh as I think about the year before joining the Voltage fandom.

[Noelle] “In the month of September 2012, we found out I had thyroid cancer.”

[Justin] “Yep.  Wasn’t something we really wanted to hear.”

[Noelle] “The following month, October 3rd, I had my thyroid removed and from then on my life changed.  Suddenly, I lost interest in everything.  I stopped playing games, watching shows… I was barely talking to my friends and I would only leave the house if I absolutely had to.  I wasn’t depressed, but it was like I just didn’t really care about anything anymore.”

[Justin] “I would try to get her to do stuff, but it wasn’t easy.  She just ate, slept, and did school work.  Within that first year of college she was able to join an honor society, so at least something good happened.”

[Noelle] “So, because of the honor society and still being cancer free, my dad gifted me my first iPhone.  As soon as I got my hands on it, I was in the App Store downloading anything that looked interesting.  And that’s where I found one of the Voltage Apps.  I downloaded it and bought a story.  I read through it in one sitting and then immediately bought another one.”

[Justin] “That’s when the dam burst.  That’s pretty much all she did for three months.  Needless to say, our finances took a bit of a hit during that time, but I noticed that she was slowly getting interested in other things.  You were... happier.”

[Noelle] “It quickly got to the point where I was so excited for new releases that I tried to crack the code of their release pattern on their calendar.  Every time I would unlock a new piece of that puzzle, which story was about to release, I would make a post in the Voltage FB page’s community section before they made their own post.”

[Justin] “She would sit there checking over and over for the update and then she’d be ecstatic once one finally showed up.”

[Noelle] “People started to expect my posts, which allowed me to make friends.  Eventually another fan, Nuria, said to me that we should make a Voltage fan group on Facebook, so we could report when a new story comes out, but also fangirl over the games.  At the time, I was too busy with school and playing these games during my free time that I didn’t think I could run a group like that.  Luckily Nuria stepped in and made it, eventually making me an Admin to the roughly 4,000 members.”

[Justin] “She was making so many new friends that I couldn’t keep up with their names anymore.  She was very happy, but there was one thing that hadn’t come back to her.”

[Noelle] “Yes.  Finding Voltage and becoming one with the fandom made me do things again, and helped me make new friends, but there was a major part of my life still missing.  Before the cancer, I would write stories all the time, but I hadn’t as much as picked up a pen since I was diagnosed.  After playing Voltage games for roughly eight months, I started to wonder if I could write an otome game script.  Just for fun.”

[Justin] “Right.  Fun....”

Justin rolls his eyes and then glares at me.

[Noelle] “Well, it was supposed to be for fun anyway.  It eventually became a huge project that we’re still working on to this day.”

[Noelle] “Other than being an Admin and hunting for release dates to give to other fans, I really wanted to show Voltage how much they meant to me.  At the very beginning of 2015, Voltage held a cosplay contest for Kissed by the Baddest Bidder and I knew just the character to dress up as.  Ota Kisaki.”

[Justin] “We had to go to bunch of stores to try to find a headband that worked.  It was… time consuming, but she had fun.”

[Noelle] “I went on to be one of the winners from that contest and I won a deck of cards based on that story.”

[Noelle] “In May of that same year, to continue to show my love for Voltage, I started to think about what other characters Voltage could make routes for in their already established games and wrote posts about them.  The first one was for Prince Leonardo from Be My Princess and my second entry was for Hikobei from Enchanted in the Moonlight.”

[Justin]  “Yeah... Hikobei.”

[Noelle] “My one that got away.”

Justin rolls his eyes again, definitely not understanding my love for my kappa friend.

[Noelle] “Later that year, Voltage had their Fourth Annual Story Writing and Illustration Contest for Romance Apps for 2015.  Though I was busy with my own project and school, I entered two scripts into the International Story Writing Category.  At the same time, Voltage USA was looking for writers, so I sent the Associate Producer samples of my writing and the writing prompt that they requested from me.”

[Justin] “Having to write three different scripts while still writing for our own project was super stressful, but she still had fun.”

[Noelle] “I really wanted the writing job with Voltage in general, and with having no experience with the Japanese language, Voltage USA seemed ideal for me.  Voltage USA was coming out with all these newer apps that I really enjoyed already and I felt it would be a dream to work for them.”

[Noelle] “Sadly, things didn’t go that way, but I did get great feedback from the Associate Producer.”

(What to talk about next....?  Oh yeah!)

[Noelle] “So, with that loss, I felt I had no hope of winning the writing contest.”

[Justin] “As it got closer to when the winners would be announced, she started getting depressed again. Then one night, I heard a scream from the other room.”

I start to laugh hard as I remember what he’s talking about.

[Noelle] “I’m so sorry.  It was really late at night in April of 2016 and I got an email notification on my phone, but the alert cut off most of the important details.  Confused, I went to my mailbox and squealed so loudly once as I read the subject line, ‘Congratulations! from Voltage Script Writing Contest.’”

[Justin] “I came running into the room because I thought she was like choking or she hurt herself or something.”

[Noelle] “Choking on excitement, maybe.”

[Noelle] “Well, I was so excited and surprised that I couldn’t formulate words, so you still had no idea what was going on when you came in.”

[Justin] “She was just pointing and making noise, so I finally looked at your laptop screen.  At first we both didn’t believe it...  but we still ended up calling both our parents to let them know.  At, like, four something in the morning.”

[Noelle] “Even though I knew I had won because of the email, it didn’t really hit me that I won until I got my trophy on April 28th.  As a writer, I felt like my writing was validated now.  From that moment on, any time I question my skills, I just look to my trophy.”

[Justin] “The only downside was that you got so many new friends requests after that.  You had to explain that you didn’t work for the company.”

[Noelle] “Yeah, but that didn’t ruin my fun from playing the games and being in the fandom.”

[Noelle] “If it wasn’t for Voltage, I wouldn’t have made so many new friends, my life might have taken a completely different direction, and I might have never left my zombie state from after the cancer.”

[Justin] “And for that, we can never thank them enough.”

[Justin] “Sound good to you?”

[Noelle] “I think so.  It’s a bit cliche in spots but it’s true.  You say I’m happy a lot.”

[Justin] “Well, you were.  And you are.  Besides as long as you’re true to yourself, it’s all that matters.”

[Noelle] “Yep.  There’s nothing truer than my undying love for that kappa.”

[otomesweetheart]

Review: A Very Important Date demo

A Very Important Date is an upcoming commercial game by Naive Sprites. It will be available through itch.io and Steam for Windows/Mac/Linux and for iOS and Android devices. The demo is available on…

I went back and forth on how to get this to Tumblr as well as Wordpress, but it’s just not formatting well on Tumblr with all the pictures (and wordpress was crossposting it weird).  So for this review at least, I’m just going to link to the Wordpress instead!

The Kickstarter ends this Friday July 21st!

[naivesprites]

We've Hit 100% + a Quick Update!

Hello, everyone!

Today we get to give out some wonderful news!  We’ve hit 100% funding on Kickstarter! But this isn’t the end of our Kickstarter adventure!  We have 18 days left on our campaign and we have seven stretch goals to aim for.  The first of these stretch goals is to have a Boys Love side story in A Very Important Date’s main game.  This will be a three to four chapters short story that will feature our main game’s cast.  If this goal is reached, any $30+ tier will get this side story for free! (If you do not want this side story, it could be traded for a future side story instead.) We wouldn’t have been able to do this without each and every one of you!  Thank you so much for getting us this far and for letting me live out a dream I’ve always had!  We all can’t wait to show you the future of A Very Important Date. Currently Justin and I are working on fixing up Harlan’s third chapter and once it’s finished, we’ll be going back into the first three chapters to add in choices.

On the programming side, the addition of the Log and the Fast Forward features are in the process of being implemented. On the art side, Justin is looking through references and sketching out a new background for Lordless.  The finished piece will be featured in Sven’s main story. Darkenmarr is working on some of our sprites, even sketching some of the spin-off characters. We hope to be able to show those off soon! Geoff has reworked the last song we asked him to do, and it sounds great! With that one finished, he’s now moved on to working on our romantic song.  We hope to have the recently finished song up on SoundCloud soon for everyone to hear. And with that another update comes to a close. Again, I can not thank all of you enough for giving us a shot and getting us to 100%!  Backers be on the lookout for a post within the week showing off 2 new backgrounds, WIP images, and an early peek at our newest song, “Septima Impetus.”

[naivesprites]

Mobile App News and Nusantara: Bermuda Triangle

Hello all you wonderful people!

I was looking through the tier info on our Kickstarter and realized, other than the annoying spelling mistakes (Hoursefly? Butterly? ARG!!!), that I made a different kind of mistake. In some tiers I didn’t specify that the Main Stories and Epilogues rewards are for Steam only. But then I got to looking into the availability of promo codes for the mobile devices, seeing if the big two changed their policy from the last time I checked.

From my research last year, I knew that Google Play allowed 500 promo codes to developers every quarter for apps and in-app items, but Apple was finicky and only allowed codes for the app itself, not the in-app items, which didn’t help us. A Very Important Date was always planned for a mobile release, but giving free stories to backers for mobile seemed like it wasn’t going to be doable in our last try at Kickstarter because of Apple’s weird policies. So being under this impression, we kept the Stories/Epilogues tier rewards Steam exclusive for this campaign.

Well, things have changed it seems. Google Play’s policy has remained the same, which is great. Apple, however, has changed their policy to allow 100 codes per in-app item up to total of 1,000 codes max during a 6 month period. Once that code is generated it only has a lifespan of 28 days, though. That’s great, although weirdly limited.

So the way it looks right now, we’re tentatively saying that backers with Stories/Epilogue tier rewards can choose between Steam, iOS, or Android versions, bearing any changes to Apple’s or Google Play’s policies between now and the time of A Very Important Date’s release. If there are any changes, the Steam release will still be our go to.

We’d also like to take the time to showcase another romantic fantasy otome/visual novel! From the makers of the free-to-play Nusantara: Legend of the Winged Ones, comes the beautiful Nusantara: Bermuda Triangle from SweetChiel, which is currently on Indiegogo!

Be sure to check out their demo on Itch.io! Currently, their Indiegogo campaign is at 62% with only 7 days left! Let’s make sure they meet their goal!

[naivesprites]

Kickstarter is ALIVE!

Hello, everyone! We are happy to announce that our second attempt at Kickstarter is now LIVE!

This time our goal is $3,500 and will feature more digital rewards, like Exclusive CG/Event Illustrations, a digital copy of our soundtrack, our AVID Spin-off BL Game, and possibly getting all 8 of AVID’s suitors!  

This doesn’t mean our physical rewards are gone, though!  Backers at certain tiers or those that want to add-on physical items can still possibly get our metal keychain, 5x7 character prints, body pillowcases, or our acrylic charms!

Also, for backers at the $15 Lotus Tier, not only will you get our digital soundtrack, you’ll also get access to our exclusive Kickstarter backers live streams on our private Facebook group!  We do hope to do a Backer Only Live Stream within the first week, possibly during the con if hotel wifi allows for it, but we don’t know for sure yet.  Tomorrow night we hope to be able to post a date and time after Justin, Noelle, and Darkenmarr look over their con schedule together.

We’ve also learned that sometimes posts with links involving Kickstarter campaigns are finicky and sometimes won’t appear in Tumblr’s search.  We love our game, our story, and our characters and want to bring this experience to as many people as possible.  We ask if everyone who sees this post could kindly share it to help reach more people.  We greatly appreciate it!

Thank you all!  We hope to update everyone on our A-kon experience soon!

[naivesprites]

This year we’ll be at A-kon in Fort Worth, TX!  Noelle ( @chibisubaru), Justin, and @darkenmarr will be there to sell merchandise, talk to fans, and work on sketches.  While we’re at the con, we’ll be promoting our Kickstarter and any profits from game related merchandise that we make at the con will go towards the campaign.  We hope to see you there!

[naivesprites]

Update 5/23/17 | Kickstarter

Hello, everyone!

We have some exciting news for you today!  Our team plans to launch our next Kickstarter attempt on June 6th at 12PM eastern time.  This time our initial goal will be set at $3,500 USD, which covers the remaining songs and backgrounds that we still need for the game.  If we reach stretch goals, that money will help us pay for the character art and CGs along with additional objectives like additional poses and additional CGs. This Kickstarter will also include our Spin-Off game (title still in the works), which will be in the reward tiers.  This spin-off game will have a male lead with four possible suitors: two males, one male-to-female transgender, and one female.  This game will be released some time after Connor’s and Lowell’s first season stories.

We’ll also be increasing the number of main stories and epilogues that backers can get as rewards from five possible suitors to all eight!  So instead of only being rewarded with stories for Gwyn, Emil, Rory, Harlan, and Sven, backers could also get stories for Connor, Lowell, and Julianna as well! We’ll be adding more digital rewards this time and removing some physical rewards like the T-shirt.  The remaining physical reward items will be changed into add-on items, except for the metal 2 inch key chain. Please, share this post to help build awareness for our Kickstarter and expect more information on the topic soon.

[naivesprites]

Live Stream Test Tonight

Tonight on a private FB group at 7:30 PM eastern, we’re doing a quick live stream test with our backers from our first attempt at Kickstarter.   If you were a backer, but haven’t joined the group and want to see the stream tonight, please message @chibisubaru.  Be sure to tell us what your Kickstarter name is and we’ll give you the link to the group.

[homeosapphic-deactivated2019111]

[angstriddentrashhuman]

I honestly did not expect our national park service to be so fucking savage.

[dr3ad-m0on-deactivated20180609]

Lol 😂😂😂😂😂😂