#soooo loonnng

[ants-personal]

tbh if you put your long ass irrelevant introduction card in the main tag of the fandom im goin block you immediately

[my-arlington-academia]

I'm super late and sorry for ruining the good mood after the awesome new sprites reveal! Note: some of this was written before the reveal and some after

(It turned out so long, longer than my school essays and I might've made some wording/formulation mistakes so sorry again.)

Hey so I kind of really have a deep hatred for drama but at the same time I want to talk about what ""happend"" recently because a big part of it seems a bit like BS to me.

(I'm on the SE developers' side btw so if I say something that might offend you I think it's best not to read)

Okay, basically there was some writing for the original chapter 7 "leaked" by a person who was on the team but left months ago and while it didn't seem like that big of a deal at first after hearing both sides of the story I have a bit of a clearer image. So what's written there is what chapter 7 was supposed to be like however it's clear now that the current chapter 7 will have nothing to do with this. Buuut there's a problem there, not going into the whole contract thing (yet) I'd like to say that it doesn't make sense from Cecile's side to call this JUST a fanfiction.

Normally it wouldn't be a problem but what's written there was at some point supposed to be canon, right? This writing is coming from someone who has an insider's perspective unlike us, "outsiders" who were never on the team and have no idea about how the plot is/was supposed to go. A fanfic is, may I quote, "fiction written by a fan of, and featuring characters from, a particular TV series, film, etc." Thus the whole contract thing doesn't matter in that statement since the person/people who wrote this aren't fans, they're people who were on the SE development team.

And so I read the thing (ngl, it was mainly because I was really curious and wanted to see what it was all about) and tbh I can understand Serena's annoyance towards it. I mean, it contains some info on the characters. Info we've never heard of before (and I'm not gonna talk about it just in case some people decided not to read it because I respect that) while most of those were just small glimpses into their personalities/hobbies/background and it didn't seem like there was anything plot heavy, or nothing that I've noticed is supposed to be important for later, it still doesn't change the fact that these informations are canon, right?

I suppose Serena must've read it at some point and approved the writing though that's just speculation on my part.

So long story short, what was posted isn't really a fanfic but more like the plot of an old chapter that got either delayed to a later chapter or like... completed deleted since they left the team and the layout of the chapter is now out to the public so I highly doubt Serena is gonna post something similar to this, or at least if she's still planning on making a Halloween chapter then maybe she'll change how the story was supposed to play out?

Tbh I feel like it would've been smarter to ask first if they can publish the copy of the chapter instead of making a big ruckus out of it. This could've been easily avoided but then again I don't know if they left the team on good terms, not that this part is any of my business though.

Anyway, so then we have the whole "she didn't give us a contract to sign" argument which is... uh, I mean, what did you expect?

SE development started back in 2015 correct? So it's been around 4 years and we're only on chapter 6. Why? Because making the game isn't their full time job and they made that clear multiple times in the past. Besides, correct me if I'm wrong, but 4 years ago wasn't Serena like in her late teens/early twenties or something? I know it might seem cheap to pull out the legendary "she was young" argument but tbh I'm in high school and never have I imagined or taken seriously the thought of making an indie game. If like, next month I decided to do it and found some people who are down for making some assets for the game then a legal contract would literally be the last thing I would think about.

Besides it's not like Serena has ever been secretive about the things she thought were necessary to tell the fandom, or at least I don't get the feeling that she has. Do y'all really imagine her being like "muhahaha! I'm not gonna make a contract with them so I can freely use their work!" ???

The thing with a contract is that it's not only good for the employees but also for the employer if the workers ever do something that they weren't supposed to (like now). And she's not planning on taking "legal" action anyway because like she said, nothing good will come out of it and she technically doesn't have a "right" to do so.

And let's just be realistic here for a second, okay? Like do you guys really think that they're earning a whole lot thanks to sweet elite? There's barely 18k accounts on the site and I'm pretty sure that most of those are doubles or triples in order to go through different routes. Also, we don't know how much of those accounts belong to active players on the game. There's many people out there who play like the first 2 chapters and never touch the game again because they'd rather watch a let's play or they dropped the game. And amongst the people who do play sweet elite regularly (as in, they log in everyday and play the new chapter when it's out) how many people is there who have ever paid for energy? The thing is that the game is still in it's early stages, there's not many chapters yet so it's easy to catch up quickly and tbh their energy system is pretty generous. You receive 5 points per day but you can also use coins to exchange them for energy (which is what most people do in order to catch up).

So point is, I'm pretty sure they don't gain a lot of money out of it and almost all of the work they do, they do it for free in their free time because they like making the game.

So I dunno, it might be pretty shitty of me and naive to think about it in this way but tbh I feel like it was kind of obnoxious of them to just, y'know. Leave because "there's no contract and we're not making any money out of this" then come back months later to post something that we weren't supposed to see and complain about the fact that their writing and sprites are getting used in chapter 6. Like?? I think it's quite clear that the team is planning on replacing all of the sprites and as for the writing what do you expect them to do? Go through every single chapter again and add words to each sentence, replace some words with synonyms and reformulate everything so it can't be considered your writing anymore? That's kinda dumb and a waste of time.

Could've they replaced all the old illustrations first and then posted the episode? Yes but how much time would it have taken? They'd have to make the new artists overwork and they don't have a way to pay them much all at once. Sweet Elite will be around 50 chapters and it's an episodic type of game in which assets get replaced and added as time goes on because if they did everything in one go then there would be almost no time to update the story.

I can't even pretend to understand because quite frankly I'm not an artist, but I CAN at least understand the feeling of wanting to be reconized for the things I do and for the work I put into things. Who wouldn't?

Plus, to be fair I don't think that there's any shame in wanting to be paid for a job but is making Sweet Elite a job? Not completely. Not yet at least. Right now it's more of a part time job/hobby and it's totally okay to quit when you don't feel like working on it anymore. However if the money and the compensation aspect of making it was so important then wouldn't it have been better to say "Sorry, but I refuse to work on this until I sign a contract" right off the bat rather than feeling like you're not appreciated enough and complain about it months later like a really salty potato chip?

Not making a contract, while being a mistake on Serena's part, she never tried to pretend it wasn't. In fact she affirms that she has made many errors and again, like I said earlier a contract is beneficial to both the employees AND the employer so had she been more careful it wouldn't have played out this way. We don't even know the circumstances and her point of view of that whole contract thing, maybe she just thought that it would be better to not make one in order to keep the workers free to leave in any given moment because she knew that she wouldn't be able to pay them enough?

I saw some people in the tags being like "look guys, this is why I don't support sweet elite anymore and why you shouldn't too!" Which is tbh a pretty simple minded way of looking at it. I guess we, as the pitiful hoomans we are, we're more inclined on taking the side of the "weakest" group which means the people who left the team because there was apparently some ""injustice"" but the more I look into it and the more it seems like it was a big misunderstanding.

Dulcet games is so new do you expect to get paid hundreds/thousands for an indie game with a small following in which even the "boss" isn't getting any/much money out of it? Oh, and there's also some being super vocal about leaving because "Cecile's art was the only thing keeping me from leaving" which... lmao. Take it in a humorous tone please but It's like a customer in Walmart saying that they won't come back again because the fancy red t-shirts from the clothing section are gone. Idk man. You can say whatever you want about the team behind SE but I still stand by the belief that it's a great game with good writing and progressive characters. And all the things Serena did so far seem like pretty logical courses of action especially in this situation or am I wrong? Is Serena secretly evil guys? Were we fooled all along.,.,,..,

(Sorry this post started out so serious and ended so stupid, I'm just unable of writing about really seriousssss topics. Serious with 5 Ss because it's so seriousssss. Also did you notice that this whole thing is obvious and dumb if you think about it for longer than 1 minute? The moment someone says they don't get paid for something everyone flips over but the true question is, did they have the means of paying you at that time? Everybody is so quick to jump on Serena's throat without thinking and it's kinda sad. We're so superficial, like if money is mentionned ONCE in a drama suddenly everyone ascends to their most sensitive state of bitterness. As far as we know Serena never forced anyone to stay on the team and it's no secret that she doesn't get much money ESPECIALLY for an indie game company. It doesn't seem like they didn't want to pay them but more like they couldn't afford to at that time and everything wasn't set up in place yet.)