Latest Posts by maplesweater - Page 2

The Hetalia fandom is regrowing again so I think its important to remind people to not associate the Hetalia characters with recent political events happening. We do NOT want this fandom to regrow its old reputation and for it to turn into a dumpster fire. Plus it is so very disrespectful to victims of terrible events.

Thank you :)

Do we have to use royalty free music?

The three of us all have our own differing opinions of using copyrighted music in fangames and such, but there's no rule against it in our jam, so, no, not if you don't want to. The little list of copyright free music sources I put together in the FAQ was just in case someone wanted it.

deviantart.com

.:Sugar Bowl Hetagame Jam Announcement:. by DeathSquadOfficial on DeviantArt

The info is right here!: https://www.deviantart.com/deathsquadofficial/journal/Sugar-Bowl-Hetagame-Jam-Announcement-825099796

Remember that you can ask us anything that you need to!

It's Sugar Bowl Hetagame Jam Time!

We're all ready to go! Check the reblogs for the link to the information, because if I put a link in the tumblr post, Tumblr isn't gonna show it in the tags! :)

Anyway, we hope to see you there!

It's Sugar Bowl Hetagame Jam Time!

We're all ready to go! Check my reblog of this post for the link to the information, because if I put a link in the tumblr post, Tumblr isn't gonna show it in the tags! :)

Anyway, we hope to see you there!

You said ham stuff tomorrow EST... What time EST?

Ah. The thing about that is, I'm not entirely sure myself. I'll need to run something past the other two cohosts first, and I'm not entirely sure when they'll both be up and awake and ready to talk jam stuff again. Sorry. ^^;

Shouldn't be too late in the day, though. And after tomorrow you'll still have plenty of time to see it.

JAM TIME JAM TIME JAM TIME JAM TIME

🖱👾👀👍💪

We have something;;

Special coming sometime tomorrow;;

In my time zone (EST);;

Of the jam variety;;

Stay tuned for more info;;

Or just check the tags for it tomorrow that works too-

GUMI BEST VOCALOID

Idk which company they'd have to commission for that since Crypton doesn't own her but it'd be amazing hh-

On another note, how much do I have to pay Vocaloid so the next collab round includes Gumi?????

I just randomly made something stupid last minute (with the help of @sciencetookmydoubts letting me use her nikki for my dumb crap as per usual) so here ya go Happy Holidays woo

Usually I don't rb stuff like this bc I kinda try to have kind of a blog theme goin on but tbh who cares lol I wanna

AAA Sorry to bug you again, one last jam question... How does judge feedback work? Are there numeric scores that people get in categories (categories like coding, design, ect given a score out of like 5 or 10 for each category based on how well they did?)? Do y'all give out score sheets/written critiques/ect for each game?

Ah don't worry about bugging me, you're fine!

With judge feedback, it's essentially no different from the kind of comment you'd get on a normal game page! It's simply us saying what we liked, what we didn't like, our opinions on the strengths and weaknesses of your project, etc. There's no scoring or anything like that. Every team (including teams comprised of a single person of course) will get individual feedback from each of us judges on their game. In the end, it's really just our thoughts and opinions, not any be all and end all judgement on what is good and what is bad, so don't worry too much about them, okay? ^^

Howdy! Here is yet another jam question... Will y'all be recording a playthrough of each game? Or will y'all be playing it privately?

Hey there, thanks for the question! What we want to do is record our initial playthroughs, but depending on what happens and what kind of time we have, we may not be able to do that. We're gonna try our best to be able to, though. ^^

I'm so excited for the upcoming jam!! Will y'all be doing annual jams from now on?

I'm glad you're excited! I'm pretty excited too, hopefully it'll end up being an enjoyable time for all involved! ^^

As far as hosting annual jams goes, that's really situational and depends on a lot of things that we don't know yet. For example, I've hosted before, but the other two haven't, and it may end up becoming too stressful or unenjoyable for one or both of them to where they wouldn't want to host again. It also depends on how many jam participants we end up getting, how well what we've planned goes over, whether or not the time frame ends up being a bad one, if someone else claims our ideal time frame before we can in the future, etc.

There's also some things that are rather case-by-case. Because we could plan to host again next year, let's say, but if someone's schedule suddenly becomes hectic, we'd either have to work around it, host without them, or cancel.

In the end we just really aren't sure, because in a way if you change anything at all, (which you probably want to, to try and find the most stable formula to create a fun, low stress experience for everyone,) each jam is sort of like hosting for the first time, but with just a bit more knowledge going in.

It could also depend on the general opinion of the jammers on how well we hosted. If our jam finishes and everyone feels we've done nothing but create a trainwreck, then chances are low of us hosting again, at least until we can get a solid idea of what we did wrong and try to figure out how to avoid it at all costs in the future.

So basically in the end all I can say is "we'll see when we get there." Personally, I'd love to host a jam every year if that were possible, but it may not be, we can't say for sure, yet.

I have a jam question! Are we required to work in a group or can we choose to work solo?

Hey there, thanks for the question! ^^

You'd be able to work solo if you wanted, no one's required to group up if they don't want to!

This is the gorgeous, top tier quality art we deserve in this community. Thank you. You are doing us a service.

Momo has something to say about your styling

Hi, it's another game jam question... Can you share the theme and gimmick so I can get an idea of which one of my thousands of half-baked ideas would fit the theme? If you can't that's also fine. Thank you, Maple!

Hello again!

I spoke to the others running this jam with me, and unfortunately we feel that we can't really share the theme or gimmick right now. That'll have to be something that you'll have to wait for the jam announcement for, sorry. ^^;

The one thing that we agreed I can safely tell you is that your characters are gonna need some guts for what we're planning.

Hello! Are y'all still planning on doing a hetagame jam soon? If so, do you have any more information about it?

Oh hi! i wasn't expecting anything about that on here considering this blog is mostly love nikki these days, lol. A welcome surprise indeed!

So the short answer is yes, we're still planning on doing it, and if all goes well we'll be getting things up and running in the near future.

The long answer is that we had originally intended for the jam to begin in December. But that would have the sign ups going on right now. Which, obviously isn't happening. We ran into a few issues and couldn't get everything done on time for our initial slot we'd hoped for. So we pushed everything back some to give us more time to prepare. It's just as well tbh since December is turning out to be a horribly busy month this year for us.

We have the server done, the awards, gimmick, and rules are all decided. Mostly all we need is to get the awards drawn and get a certain video put together and edited. We're waiting on everyone to record their lines on that front. (Including me, oops pff.) So no matter what, this jam WILL happen at some point. We've done too much work to just drop it now, lol. We're very much hoping that the second time slot will work out, though.

As far as details of the jam go, I hesitate to talk about too much, just in case something happens and it needs to get pushed back again for whatever reasons or issues for anyone involved. As well as that, we do want many aspects of this jam to remain surprises, so the most I'd feel comfortable talking about right now are these things;

-We're intending for this jam to be a six week jam. Two months seemed a bit too much last time, but we didn't wanna just throw everyone into a single month jam after such a drought of community events. Would probably be a bad idea.

-You'll be able to know the gimmick and theme of the jam straight away. Everything will be available to you from the jam journal. No waiting until a specific day for a piece of information this time around.

-We're going to be doing much the same thing as our last jam as far as progress goes, where we made videos once a week of us blindly reacting to progress screenshots and such. But this time we're giving me a bit more time to edit the videos together, since last time I pushed to record, edit, and upload all on Saturday, which proved damaging to both my physical and mental health since I'd be at it for hours and sometimes stay up later than was probably healthy at the time. This time around it'd be more like a "record on Friday and have it up by Sunday at the latest" sort of deal.

-Just like last time, this jam isn't exclusive to RPG Maker devs. If you can make some kind of game that you can upload for download or at least provide a link to play, you can participate. And we hope that you'll consider it! The more participants the more fun it'll be!

-And lastly, if all goes according to plan this time around, you should be hearing something about it in late December. I really hope we can get this done for our second choice in time slots, but just in case we don't I'm very sorry in advance. We're trying our hardest to get this done as quickly as possible, but things have been coming up a lot recently.

But anyway, thanks so much for the interest in our jam! I didn't realize until just now that we hadn't mentioned it like, at all in ages. Reminds me I should update our DA group for this. Anyway whenever there's any more news about the jam I'll try to remember to put it here as well as on the DA, since that was one of my original reasons for making this tumblr, lol. To blog about hetagame stuff.

Also uhhh if anyone has any specific questions you can ask if you like. I might have to refuse to answer depending on what ya ask considering some things we want to be surprises for the announcement day, but I am open to questions n' stuff, if anyone who potentially sees this has any. ^^

^^^ This

It's dissappointing because Daybreak is my favorite event. :/

Daybreak event scares me because the war isn’t even just in-game, everyone in the LN fandom is at each other’s throats for a week and it’s terrifying

Yeahhhhhh I second this notion.

I've played this event since the first round and I really miss the first round's atmosphere. It was much more fun because everyone was much chiller and no one was telling others that they were murder apologists for picking a specific anime boy in a dressup game event. It don't matter who you pick here. It's just a popularity contest in an anime dressup game with styling battles thrown in for gameplay. It effects nothing in either real life or the game itself's lore. People can like problematic characters without endorsing their actions. People can like problematic characters without ever mimicking their actions. Most people who like these characters understand that they've done some shit but they like them anyway whether it be due to the character design, personality, character quirks, or whatever else. Because, guess what? Characters are more than their actions. Sometimes the motive behind the actions is almost more important than the actions themselves.

Stuff like this is why I always wanna just turtle up and drop off social media when this event comes around anymore. People get super super toxic towards people who pick Nidhogg and/or Shade for really no good reason :v

Oh and also, please stop acting like the people who pick a character for being hot are in the wrong somehow. That's a perfectly legitimate reason to pick a fictional character in a popularity contest? They can make that choice if they want to? Especially from a game like this where I'd say characterization is definitely one of its weak points. Especially for the main characters, most of then are bland as white bread.

One last note here. I hate to be "that person" who's all "owo uwu think of the children" but uhh y'all do realize this game is mostly marketed at younger girls correct? Can you really justify calling the people who pick these characters murder apologists and all that other nasty shit when there's a good chance the person might be younger and just picking whichever character stands out to them the most? Obviously this crap isn't okay no matter how old the target is but just think on that a bit before you start up again please.

Anyway in conclusion this is my favorite event and I'd appreciate if we could all stop being angry hobgoblins who can't handle different character preferences. There's some of y'all on both sides and both of you need to stop. Please. It's a popularity contest ffs it's really not that serious.

It is starting again. There’s nothing wrong with liking character including very problematic characters (that doesn’t make you a psychopath irl). I really like this event don’t get me wrong but what happened last time was a big shitstorm at some points. I hope this time we can be a bit more respectful and not trash people for their choice like last time! It is just a dressup game after all and we all just want to have fun uwu

So I'm sure others will come along and get better scores

This is within the first hour of the new chapters being available after all

But I just wanted to share my

First ever top 5 score

On a maiden quest or otherwise

I feel so accomplished???? Highest I've ever gotten was top 50 and that was still within the first few minutes of a new chapter being up.

Verreh niceu ✌

I just hope these will be for diamonds and not for $$$ because I know there's stuff in the users shop for both.

Dias I can pay. Money I cannot.

These are going to be in the User's Shop tomorrow after the update

💙

uwu

I love you my dumbass friend @maplesweater

fINALLY

AFTER ALMOST TWO YEARS

I'VE GOTTEN IT

THE REAL LIFETIME SUIT

gIVE ME A NOTIFICATION PLEASE

Right so I was checking out the Nikki's Info update and decided to check out the "What's New" stuff just for fun

And I saw something interesting.

(sorry for the quality I had it open on my laptop)

Anyway, three of these suits stand out to me, as they weren't previously announced. After a few second of staring at their parts, I recognized them from "future events" videos I'd watched in the past.

But I wanted to check and make sure I had my facts straight, so I went into the game to check and see if the suits had been added to the gallery, and lo and behold, I find them.

So what does this mean? Probably that our dev team put the files in too early on accident. But it also means we're getting a stamina event.

Yep, this is a stamina event. And from what I remember it's either relatively cheap or basically free as well. I have no idea when we're getting it, and it makes me a bit concerned for the price of our next hell, but this is still cool, especially considering how long many people have wanted this event for.

Anyway, I'm excited and I was super surprised (and pleased) to find this, and I felt like sharing.

Yknow this is one of my favorite parts from this story because yeah,

He has a point. A good one.

Is peace born from heavy restrictions and loss of free will even really peace? Or is it just keeping everyone in line and susceptible to control? We all know about Queen Elle and how she's a bit of a tyrant. Who benifits from this kind of thing most? Not the average person. If everyone in Miraland's free will was forcibly repressed like this, only those in control could really benifit from it. Lawmakers, leaders, royalty. Nidhogg was one of those people. But he saw the heavy restrictions everyone was under, and how that sort of thing could so easily be taken advantage of, I'm sure. How could he not?

For example, look at the Iron Rose. They steal designs, right? How do you have to solve issues in Miraland? Styling Battles. But the Iron Rose is full of elites, as we've been told many times before. The average person would never be able to win, thus creating a near flawless system where Elle is free to take whatever designs she pleases, only making herself stronger. This is tyranny at its finest. If you control the system, you win.

Now obviously Nidhogg's methods of fighting for freedom leave much to be desired. He's resorted to kidnapping, invasion, theft, and murder. None of which are okay, obviously. But bad practice doesn't make an idea any less valid. Every person deserves to be able to make their own choices, even if these choices do end in violence or bloodshed. Restricting free will is just immoral when you get down to it.

This interaction Post-Lunar is very important to the narrative's true identity coming to light. This story isn't about good vs. evil, peace vs. war, order vs. chaos; It isn't so black and white.

It's about Idealism vs. Realism.

Nikki is an idealist. Fully swept up in the idea that the pre-existing peace is wonderful and the best thing ever. After all, Nikki is from earth where bloodshed and violence are essentially a daily occurrence. Who wouldn't wish for a bloodless paradise? We do, however, get to see a little bit of her idealist nature breaking down in reflection in her dreamweaver, but that's a different story altogether. This is why her characterization can be seen as lackluster, there's much more focus on her idealistic nature and blind faith in the system than there is on any other character traits she may posess. It's important for her to be seen as a simple idealist.

Nidhogg, on the other hand, being born and raised in Miraland, is our realist. He's seen what the restrictions of the blood curse can do and be used for, and he's decided it's time to end it. We've seen it get used and abused to target and take advantage of people with weaker styling skills time and time again, but it's never really focused on at all, save for Lunar's encounter with Mela. The fact that Nidhogg allowed Nikki to try and style battle him as opposed to attacking was probably an example that the system was flawed and could easily be abused. After all, we all know how we had to lose to him 15 hecking times because of his cheat skill that nerfed our points. He was not only trying to win, but also trying to break down Nikki's idealistic veil. When he refuted Lunar's assertions about fate, he was essentially once more opposing the system. The system says you can't do this, so you can't. That's no way to live, for him. Nidhogg is fighting for a world where everyone is fully free to choose their own paths, even if those paths lead to violence or bloodshed. To him, oppression is worse than death.

Now, as to where Nikki's friends fit into this, that's a bit more complicated. Most of them seem to be leaning a bit more towards realism, yet they follow and support Nikki. This is a case of the "weak" flocking to and following the "strong." After all, not a single one of them has managed to beat Nikki in a styling contest. She's irrefutably the strongest in this case, and they know it, considering you can see them turn to Nikki immediately whenever there's an issue that needs to be solved via styling.

As well as that, she's also a figure of idealist hope. If Nikki can make it work in Miraland, surely everything is fine, right? The system is fine and there's no issues, right? Yeah. After all, look at Nikki! Winning for peace and morality! If peace and morality can prevail in this world, then everything's okay!

But everything's not okay.

Just because someone strong seems to be fighting for peace and morality doesn't make the world safe. We know this. Nor does it make the restriction of free will moral. The fact that Nikki exists in Miraland at all is essentially a fluke. Queen Narini brought her there to "help change the world's fate," the true meaning of which we've yet to see. Miraland's system thrives off of the peaceful veil and complacent attitudes that idealism creates. If Nikki had never come to Miraland, what would have happened? Chances are, most things would have gone nearly the same, just without Nikki's presence. Think about it, Nikki has never changed the outcome of any large issue. (In the story we have right now, I'm fully aware of what happened on 4 dreams, but that was different. Bobo is her friend, of course she would have power there.) She can't. She's sticking too hard to her idealistic nature, hoping and believing that everything will be alright. In essence, Nikki is passive in nature, while Nidhogg and his allies are active in nature. And activity will trump passiveness every time.

Nikki's existance is a blinder to those who follow her. Her idealistic outlook and slew of wins definitely make it seem like there could be a place for the existing system to stay in Miraland.

But there's really not. At least, not the way it is now.

It's too easily extorted. Want to win? Take people's designs and cloth. Now they're powerless to stop you. At least in a real fight a person could still resort to using their fists or their surroundings to fight back, or even certain strategies.

So now we come back around to Nidhogg. If there's one thing we can say about him, it's that he's strong-willed. Who else would willingly bear tons of pain just to fight for the freedom of those who'd sooner see him dead than accept his help? If he'd gone about it differently somehow, I'd be pretty comfortable saying he could have stayed a protagonist. But, the thing is, he didn't really have a choice.

Nidhogg's situation is very "damned if you do, damned if you don't." If he had stayed quiet and complacent in his role as Prime Minister, he would have to watch people get taken advantage of daily by the system, knowing that there's a better way, but not having the will to change it. Everyone would still love him, but I have a feeling he'd grow to hate himself and his inactivity.

But if he followed the path of freedom, people would need to die. People would need to get hurt. People would hate him for everything he did, no matter what he did. No matter his motives. No matter if there were other options or not.

Did he really have to kill Lunar? No, not really. But Lunar was ready to fight him. Even if he'd tried to settle things without bloodshed with her, she probably would have attacked him anyway. So in the end, he really didn't have a choice. He knew how it would seem. He's fine with being "the bad guy." Because the bad guy is the one opposing the system.

Nidhogg is a very morally grey person, and he knows it. He accepts it. But he also knows the flaws of the system he's fighting, and to him, those outweigh his own flaws and his own mistakes and immoral actions. He wouldn't be able to understand someone like Nikki, so complacent and idealistic under such a truly oppressing system.

In order to make ripples, someone has to throw the first stone. That's how it always is with change. Someone has to speak up first, and sometimes, those who need the change the most will hate them for it. Because they don't even realize that they need it in the first place. A society like Miraland's does a good job of creating an illusion of stability and peace, so much so that I'm sure most citizens don't even think twice about the fact that what they are allowed to do in order to solve problems is limited to one thing, else they'll experience horrible pain. It almost sounds dystopian when you think about it.

So basically Nidhogg has a really good point and I really hope the writers don't throw it away just to show that Nikki is moral and good and wonderful and all things can be solved peacefully!

Because sometimes they can't, whether we like it or not.

I know what Bobo said afterwards but honestly Nidhogg has a point and I am pretty sure he is implying something else we don’t know about yet. Such a cool and nice chapter, it’s just a shame that Ransa doesn’t have a talksprite.

I just wanna say real fast that my luck is unreal okay? I used my last 800 dias to do a pull 10 hoping to get the last two pieces I needed to completely finish the barbie collab suits and

I am very happy with my life right now I actually managed to finish the collab I hhhh-

I wanna thank the love nikki gods for their generosity real quick 🙏

Now all I need is for Nikki's Info to update so I can play with my new stuff :3

y O

We're getting another Barbie collab you guys

If you check the website just like last time (you can find it on the FB post) you can get reward codes that have this stuff:

Just like last time if you pull every day you're guaranteed to get everything-so no dupes with the special code rewards!

And can I just say real fast dOGGO

Okay but on the suits I looked at them and I'm excited? They look great and we're getting a mystery one too

Anyone else excited? I barely participated last time around and I lowkey regretted it so this is great-

The Adventures of Unamused Boy part 8

He return

By the way in case anyone was wondering I do in fact have a direction for this stuff it's just taking a little bit because of SC's character limit in the captions.

The constellations on her cheeks are so pretty aaaa

FUCK YEAH