Voltage Festival 2019 Entry
I take my seat on my couch and stare at the blank document on my computer screen. Â My fingertips gently tap on my keyboard as the words appear on the screen.
[Noelle] âLet me start off by saying that I have no idea where I would be right now if it wasnât for finding Voltage in 2013. Â Iâm pretty serious when I say that.â
[Justin] âNeed help?â
[Noelle] âProbably. Â Itâs that thing for the contest.â
[Justin] âOh, so itâs a big deal then. Â Okay, why donât we just talk it out? Â You can script it out later. Â Itâs just supposed to be us talking anyway, right?â
[Noelle] âThat is true.â
I sigh as I think about the year before joining the Voltage fandom.
[Noelle] âIn the month of September 2012, we found out I had thyroid cancer.â
[Justin] âYep. Â Wasnât something we really wanted to hear.â
[Noelle] âThe 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 wasnât depressed, but it was like I just didnât really care about anything anymore.â
[Justin] âI would try to get her to do stuff, but it wasnât easy. Â She just ate, slept, and did school work. Â Within that first year of college she was able to join an honor society, so at least something good happened.â
[Noelle] âSo, because of the honor society and still being cancer free, my dad gifted me my first iPhone. Â As soon as I got my hands on it, I was in the App Store downloading anything that looked interesting. Â And thatâs where I found one of the Voltage Apps. Â I downloaded it and bought a story. Â I read through it in one sitting and then immediately bought another one.â
[Justin] âThatâs when the dam burst. Â Thatâs pretty much all she did for three months. Â 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. Â You were... happier.â
[Noelle] âIt 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. Â 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 pageâs community section before they made their own post.â
[Justin] âShe would sit there checking over and over for the update and then sheâd be ecstatic once one finally showed up.â
[Noelle] âPeople started to expect my posts, which allowed me to make friends. Â 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. Â At the time, I was too busy with school and playing these games during my free time that I didnât think I could run a group like that. Â Luckily Nuria stepped in and made it, eventually making me an Admin to the roughly 4,000 members.â
[Justin] âShe was making so many new friends that I couldnât keep up with their names anymore. Â She was very happy, but there was one thing that hadnât come back to her.â
[Noelle] âYes. Â 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. Â Before the cancer, I would write stories all the time, but I hadnât as much as picked up a pen since I was diagnosed. Â After playing Voltage games for roughly eight months, I started to wonder if I could write an otome game script. Â Just for fun.â
[Justin] âRight. Â Fun....â
Justin rolls his eyes and then glares at me.
[Noelle] âWell, it was supposed to be for fun anyway. Â It eventually became a huge project that weâre still working on to this day.â
[Noelle] âOther 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. Â 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. Â Ota Kisaki.â
[Justin] âWe had to go to bunch of stores to try to find a headband that worked.  It was⊠time consuming, but she had fun.â
[Noelle] âI went on to be one of the winners from that contest and I won a deck of cards based on that story.â
[Noelle] âIn 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. Â The first one was for Prince Leonardo from Be My Princess and my second entry was for Hikobei from Enchanted in the Moonlight.â
[Justin] Â âYeah... Hikobei.â
[Noelle] âMy one that got away.â
Justin rolls his eyes again, definitely not understanding my love for my kappa friend.
[Noelle] âLater that year, Voltage had their Fourth Annual Story Writing and Illustration Contest for Romance Apps for 2015. Â Though I was busy with my own project and school, I entered two scripts into the International Story Writing Category. Â 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.â
[Justin] âHaving to write three different scripts while still writing for our own project was super stressful, but she still had fun.â
[Noelle] âI really wanted the writing job with Voltage in general, and with having no experience with the Japanese language, Voltage USA seemed ideal for me. Â 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.â
[Noelle] âSadly, things didnât go that way, but I did get great feedback from the Associate Producer.â
(What to talk about next....? Â Oh yeah!)
[Noelle] âSo, with that loss, I felt I had no hope of winning the writing contest.â
[Justin] âAs 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.â
I start to laugh hard as I remember what heâs talking about.
[Noelle] âIâm so sorry. Â 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. Â Confused, I went to my mailbox and squealed so loudly once as I read the subject line, âCongratulations! from Voltage Script Writing Contest.ââ
[Justin] âI came running into the room because I thought she was like choking or she hurt herself or something.â
[Noelle] âChoking on excitement, maybe.â
[Noelle] âWell, I was so excited and surprised that I couldnât formulate words, so you still had no idea what was going on when you came in.â
[Justin] âShe was just pointing and making noise, so I finally looked at your laptop screen. Â At first we both didnât believe it... Â but we still ended up calling both our parents to let them know. Â At, like, four something in the morning.â
[Noelle] âEven though I knew I had won because of the email, it didnât really hit me that I won until I got my trophy on April 28th. Â As a writer, I felt like my writing was validated now. Â From that moment on, any time I question my skills, I just look to my trophy.â
[Justin] âThe only downside was that you got so many new friends requests after that. Â You had to explain that you didnât work for the company.â
[Noelle] âYeah, but that didnât ruin my fun from playing the games and being in the fandom.â
[Noelle] âIf it wasnât for Voltage, I wouldnât 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.â
[Justin] âAnd for that, we can never thank them enough.â
[Justin] âSound good to you?â
[Noelle] âI think so. Â Itâs a bit cliche in spots but itâs true. Â You say Iâm happy a lot.â
[Justin] âWell, you were. Â And you are. Â Besides as long as youâre true to yourself, itâs all that matters.â
[Noelle] âYep. Â Thereâs nothing truer than my undying love for that kappa.â