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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/diamondsandglass on 2024-04-08 00:19:18.

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Special thanks to u/Turret_Run for inspiring me to actually finish writing this with their excellent Rooster Teeth write-up. Additional thanks to the friends I’ve alienated by getting their help with editing this post.

Hello HobbyDrama, it’s good to be back. I normally pop up here bi-yearly to post about ballet drama. You may have read my last post about Olga Smirnova’s defection from Russia.

What is “RWBY”?

First of all, it’s pronounced “ruby.” The main character’s name is also Ruby. It’s not as confusing as you might expect. Ruby is a 15 year old mega-competent anime warrior with a scythe that is also a gun. Every weapon in this show can be described as “blank and also a gun”. And there are a lot of weapons.The show is ostensibly about a team of four girls, led by Ruby, who are all going to Beacon Academy to become warriors defending their world, referred to as hunters/huntresses. The main characters are Ruby (already discussed), Weiss (her rival/friend/confusing rival-friend), Blake (a reserved, mysterious huntress), and Yang (Ruby’s half sister and team’s leading pun machine). Each character is represented by a color- red, white, black, and yellow respectively.

RWBY has had a… messy production history. It was originally conceived by Monty Oum, a well–known 3D animator. He pitched it to his friends at Rooster Teeth, a small media company he’d worked with in the past for their show Red vs. Blue. They loved it and agreed to make it, but the men they appointed to write it hadn’t ever written a show before. They’d really only written for Red vs. Blue. This led to a lot of writing issues (that HBomberguy explored more than I can in his video- ) that were only compounded as the show got more bigger. That’s not really within the scope of this post, but it is important to keep in mind whenever we talk about RWBY.

What is “shipping”?

If you’re on the internet at all, you’ve heard of shipping. It’s the concept of pairing two (or more) characters together because you think they’re cute. At best, it’s harmless fun. At worst, it causes fandom-splintering drama, as is the case in this post.

What is Bumblebee?

As you can probably guess if you think back to the character’s color schemes, Bumblebee is the punny ship name for Blake and Yang. It is also occasionally stylized as Bumbelby (by at the end for Blake and Yang). There were a lot of popular ships from the show (Renora and White Rose stick out), but to me Bumblebee was by far the biggest. That’s possibly personal bias, but if we carefully sift through the dregs of Tumblr, DeviantArt, and Reddit’s own r/RWBY, we can find enough fan art of the two to wallpaper a teenager’s bedroom (which I may or may not have done). There are posts from today all the way back to the dawn of the show and everywhere in between about how cute they would be together.

If I had to break down the main reason this ship exists it would probably be one of four reasons:

1. They share a lot of important character growth moments
2. People love shipping the introvert character with the extrovert
3. Black and yellow look good together
4. People wanted to see queer rep in the show

This last point sticks out, as a good chunk of the people who shipped Bumblebee would cite this along with their other reasoning. RoosterTeeth has a reputation as being a progressive company (that we now know was certainly unearned, per Turret-run’s post and others) so people were hopeful that RWBY would include a diverse cast of characters. However in terms of actual representation there was a grand total of one person of color in the first two seasons. The first explicitly queer couple in the show didn’t confess feelings for each other until season 9 (more on this in the “Spoilers” section). As of this writing RoosterTeeth is in corporate death mega-hell, so there might never be a tenth season. People felt as though Bumblebee had a good chance at becoming canon, especially since there was a good amount of fan support for the ship. So imagine how they felt when Blake and Yang were ripped apart for Blake to be put on a literal ship with someone else.

What is Black Sun?

I don’t want to make it seem like Bumblebee was a universally beloved ship. In fact, there were people who hated it. Some just didn’t like the idea of these two together, many were sick of the deluge of Bumblebee fans drowning everything else out, and most chose to take up another ship in defiance. At first people jumped ship (so to speak) for Monochrome or Freezerburn (Blake x Weiss and Yang x Weiss respectively, although I prefer the ship name Yellow Snow for Yang x Weiss). However at the end of season 1 an alternative appeared in the form of a golden man with a monkey tail.

I need to take a brief tangent here to explain the concept of faunus. RWBY has a race of people called the faunus, who are humans with minimal animal characteristics. The faunus are discriminated against by humans, although this is handled really poorly in a way that would require its own separate post to explain. At the end of season 1 Blake is revealed to be a faunus with cat ears. She’s spent all season hiding these under a bow that looks suspiciously like cat ears.

This is all revealed when the gang almost literally runs into Sun, a faunus with monkey characteristics. After some brief tension which is quickly and unsatisfyingly resolved, Sun sticks around as a side character for the next 2 seasons. Some people turned to him as an alternative ship for Blake, and gave the ship the name Black Sun

Black Sun vs. Bumblebee

There were a number of relatively minor incidents that stirred up drama between the two factions early in the show. The first was Sun’s initial appearance, but in the second season there was an arc about a school dance. This dance was unimportant to the main plot, but very important if you care about petty shipping drama. Most relevant to this post, we get to see Yang and Blake dancing together, only for Blake to switch over to Sun mid-song. It’s not a super dramatic moment in the show, but it sure was to the fandom.

However even more dramatic were the events of season 4. The world starts going to shit at the end of season 3, and season 4 starts with Blake catching a ship to her parent’s house. Sun secretly slips aboard this ship, and surprises Blake. These two spend a season bantering and fighting sea monsters, while Yang is bedridden with trauma. Sun has been upgraded to a semi-main character at the worst possible time for Bumblebee shippers.

Black Sun has been Bumblebee’s main rival in shipping since Sun first appeared. Blake and Sun share a fair amount of screentime, even before sailing away into the sunset together. They also share being faunus, which doesn’t actually mean they have any shared experiences but people seem to think it does for some reason. Bumblebee shippers hated Black Sun because they felt Sun was taking up too much screen time, and were worried that RoosterTeeth were heading towards making these two get together instead of Blake and Yang. Black Sun shippers hated Bumblebee because Bumblebee shippers are annoying (self very much included). It was war.

Oh god oh fuck

June 2017. The RWBY volume 4 soundtrack is released. What would normally be a mundane occurrence suddenly explodes the RWBY fandom (or FNDM) thanks to track 8. The song is called“BMBLB”.Obviously this is an ode to the majesty of the humble honeybee, and not at all related to the ship of the same name. JK it’s a soft song about two women being in love filled with bumblebee and cat puns. You know who likes puns? Yang. You know who has cat ears? Blake. You get the idea.

Every RWBY forum is immediately flooded with posts about the song (ex- 1 2 3). Bumblebee shippers were elated. Black Sun shippers were FURIOUS. Everyone was confused.

No one working on the show had given any indication that a song like this was coming. The whole previous season made it seem like Black Sun was the staff’s preferred ship. So to go out of their way to release a song that had nothing to do with the season on the very end of the soundtrack seemed a little weird. One might almost say… suspicious.

Weird accusations and conclusions

This was meant to be a short, easy post while I was working on Ballet and Defection. I don’t know where I went wrong.

So, why was Bmblb written, and why put it out right now? Some people started to claim this counted as queerbaiting, since they were willing to hint at Bumblebee but never show it in the actual canon. Some people argued the songwriter/singer duo of Jeff and Casey Lee Williams had just gone AWOL and the writers hadn’t been consulted on the song at all. Some people vehemently claimed that the song was a love ballad from Yang to her motorcycle, which was named bumblebee. I’m not sure if anyone ever ac...

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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/caeciliusinhorto on 2024-04-07 14:00:10.

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The Hugo Awards are a reliable source of Hobby Drama, which has been written up several times here. This is its most recent incarnation.

For the uninitiated, the Hugo Awards are some of the most important awards for science fiction and fantasy, nominated and voted on by people who attend WorldCon, an annual science fiction convention which takes place in a different city every year.

Prologue: Chengdu WorldCon

The venue for WorldCon is decided by a vote of members of a previous WorldCon. The site selected for 2023 was Chengdu, China: this was as controversial as you would expect. The anti-Chengdu position was that (1) China is run by a repressive government which practices censorship and is involved in human rights violations up to and including genocide, and (2) a lot of the votes from Chinese fans looked dodgy and there was suspicion of ballot stuffing. The pro-Chengdu position was (1) this is WorldCon, not USA-and-bits-of-north-western-Europe-Con, and so we shouldn't decide that we can't hold it in China because we don't like their government (2) quite a lot of WorldCon members don't particularly like the US government's human rights record either, and (3) everything will be fine don't worry about it. The first two points perhaps had some merit, but events would prove the third very wrong indeed.

The Hugo Awards

The 2023 Hugos started off normally enough. There were some early teething problems with the nominations system going down, and final voting was initially delayed, before an erroneous shortlist was published, and finally the correct shortlist was released later than anticipated. This was unfortunate but nothing disastrous or too dramatic. As usual there was discussion about who was and wasn't on the shortlist. For instance, many expected that R. F. Kuang's Babel, which won the Nebula and Locus (two other prominent science fiction awards), to be shortlisted. When it wasn't on the list, there was speculation that Kuang might have declined the nomination.

The Hugo Awards were presented on October 21. Following the awards ceremony, statistics are made available for both the nominations and the final vote. Usually these are published immediately after the ceremony so that the stats nerds have something to talk about at the afterparty, though according to the rules there is a 90-day window for publication. Chengdu's stats were highly unusually not published on the day of the ceremony. There were various discussions about the delay before the stats were eventually published, and the Hugo administrator, Dave McCarty, explained that this was because of work and family commitments. The finalist voting statistics were eventually published at the beginning of December, while nomination statistics were not posted until 20th January 2024: the last possible moment.

Statsgate

Once the statistics were finally published, it soon became apparent that something weird was going on. Most obviously, six nominees on the longlist were marked as "not eligible" without any further elaboration – including the previously mentioned Babel by R.F. Kuang. This was especially odd because other works ruled ineligible were explained – e.g. The Art of Ghost of Tsushima was ineligible because it was published in 2020. Of these six, one was relatively uncontroversial: "Color the World" by Congyun Gu was ineligible due to its date of publication. It wasn't clear why this wasn't explained, as it was for The Art of Ghost of Tsushima, but as the ruling was correct this was generally considered only a minor concern. The other unexplained ineligible nominees were:

• Babel by R.F. Kuang (novel)
• "Fogong Temple Pagoda" by Hai Ya (short story)
• Sandman: "The Sound of Her Wings" (dramatic presentation short form)
• Paul Weimar (fanwriter)
• Xiran Jay Zhao (Astounding Award for Best New Writer)

All of these were deemed ineligible for apparently no reason. Dave McCarty, who was responsible for the Chengdu Hugos, explained:

After reviewing the Constitution and the rules we must follow, the administration team determined those works/persons were not eligible.

This satisfied approximately nobody.

There was some speculation that "Fogong Temple Pagoda" had, like "Color the World", been ruled ineligible due to its publication date, but if so this was an error: the English translation was first published in 2022, making it eligible. Speculation about why the other nominees had been ruled ineligible quickly began: one leading theory was that someone somewhere had deemed them politically unacceptable to the Chinese government. The fact that two of these nominees, R.F. Kuang and Xiran Jay Zhao, are of Chinese descent and speak Chinese, and might therefore deliver an acceptance speech in Chinese critical of the Chinese government, was cited in favour of this. If there was a political reason, though, it probably didn't apply to "Fogong Temple Pagoda", as Hai Ya's novelette "The Space-Time Painter" was not disqualified.

The Sandman episode was doubly controversial because the entire Sandman series had been nominated for Best Dramatic Presentation Long Form, where it was ruled ineligible because "The Sound of Her Wings" was a nominee in BDP Short before being disqualified for unexplained reasons. This is an edge case which isn't explicitly spelled out in the rules, so the BDP Long disqualification is technically correct, but it feels questionable and especially given all of the other issues many people were pretty annoyed.

Statsgate: We need to go deeper

This section goes deeper into the rabbit hole; if you don't care about the minuitae of voting systems, the TL;DR is that the stats released were provably mathematically impossible in a bunch of different ways and you can skip to the next heading.

The unexplained disqualifications were the most obvious irregularity, but they were hardly the only one. In three categories, the numbers given for nominations were provably wrong. The way nominations work is that each nominator gets one vote per category, which is divided up among the up to five works they nominate; when a work is eliminated from the ballot, its votes are redistributed according to what else was on its nominators' ballots. So if I nominate Alice, Bob, and Carol in one category, they each get 1/3 of a nomination. When Carol is eliminated, my vote for her is redistributed and Alice and Bob each get 1/2 a nomination from me. If Bob is then eliminated, Alice gets my entire nomination in that category. Therefore the sum of the points available must be less than or equal to the number of ballots cast.* In three categories, the longlisted works collectively ended up with more points than ballots were cast – for instance, 1,652 from the 1,637 ballots cast in the Best Novel nomination. The most egregious category was Fanwriter, where the fifteen longlisted candidates had a collective 364 points out of 241 ballots – over 50% more than was mathematically possible!

Another anomaly again related to Babel. Across all of the rounds of voting for which statistics were released, Babel did not gain a single point. This is very implausible: it would be possible only if not a single one of Babel's nominators also nominated any of the eight unsuccessful longlisted works. In fact, the fanwriter Camestros Felapton collected 20 Best Novel ballots from his followers, which showed that this was not the case: based on checking only twenty ballots, in one round the nominations for at least three of the finalists were undercounted.

A third issue was the so-called "cliff" in the nomination data. Normally the nominations tail off gradually: for example the top 10 nominees in a category might get 100, 95, 90, 80, 75, 70, 60, 50, 35, 30 votes respectively. Instead what happened was that after around the top six or seven nominees, there was a sudden drop in many categories. Best novel in particular often has a very flat distribution, as so many novels are published (and nominated) every year it's unlikely for any given one to do exceptionally well compared to the others. In 2023, the top seven nominees for Best Novel all got between 831 and 767 votes, with the eighth-place nominee dropping to only 150. This is an enormous and uncharacteristic drop, and the same phenomenon is noticeable in the nomination data for best novella, series, fanzine, and fan artist. (For a v...

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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/EnclavedMicrostate on 2024-04-01 06:04:46.

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Welcome back to Hobby Scuffles!

Please read the Hobby Scuffles guidelines here before posting!

As always, this thread is for discussing breaking drama in your hobbies, offtopic drama (Celebrity/Youtuber drama etc.), hobby talk and more.

Reminders:

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• Define any acronyms.
• Link and archive any sources.
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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/actually_a_demon on 2024-03-31 10:32:56.

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First of all: hello everyone! I was a lurker in this sub for quite a bit, but this time i finally decided to leave my contribution to the community with a music related drama that i feel like a lot of people don't know/don't talk a lot about. Before starting however, i want to clarify that english is not my first language so sorry in advance for any grammatical errors i might make. All good? Perfect. With that in mind, let me spill the tea.

Introduction: who the hell are Fifth Harmony?

Fifth Harmony (often shortened to 5H, wich i will use everytime i need to refer to them for the sake of brevity) was an American girl group based in Miami, composed of, you guess it, five girls: Ally Brooke, Normani, Dinah Jane, Lauren Jauregui, and Camila Cabello. You might know her for her solo career (mainly the hit songs "Havana" and "Bam Bam") and because she actually left the group in December 2016. The history of why and how she left and all the mess behind it is a whole another can of worms which i don't have the time to explain here, so i will greatly gloss over this. The thing yall need to know for this story is that the group signed a joint record deal with Simon Cowell's label Syco Records and L.A. Reid's label Epic Records after forming in the second season of 2012 American edition of The X Factor. Basically, it was the female american equivalent to One Direction.

They were a big deal in the following years, at least for a girl group perspective, relasing their first EP "Better Togheter" and touring in some low-budget concert in various malls in certain zones of America, to build a fanbase. This fanbase was composed for the vast part by teenage/preteen girls, and they begin to call themselves "Harmonizer". They will grow a lot in numbers in the follwing years, and they will also develop a full on parasocial relationship with the girls. This was that period of time in the music industry when celebrities where actually very active on Twitter and the girls will engage personally a lot with the fandom. Keep this in mind because it would be VERY important later. In 2015 they released their debut album, “Reflection", and their singles "Worth It" and "Sledgehammer" became immensely popular not only in America, but also in Europe. They actually won a Grammy in 2014, so it was kinda a big deal. In 2016 they released their second album, "7/27", with the single "Work from Home" which peaked at number four on the Billboard Hot 100, making it the first top five single by a girl group in a decade on that chart. However, Camila Cabello left to pursue a single career and the remaning girls will go on to make another album the following year, their last one: "Fifth Harmony", with the singles "Down", "He Like That" and a feat with Pitbull, "Por Favor" (which is the most 2017 thing i have ever heard, but i digress). Right now the group is offically "on hold" and every single one of the girls is doing something solo with various degrees of success: Camila Cabello made three albums and she is going to drop a fourth, Lauren Jauregui started to make R&B under an indipendent label , Normani should drop her debut album this year (hopefully), and Ally and Dinah made a bunch of pretty underwhelming singles. Now that you know all of the (really watered down and drama-free) history of the girls, let's jump right in the real reason you clicked on this.

The beginning of the end: the rising of lesbian shipping and "Camren"

Remember when i said that the fandom developed a parasocial relationship with the girls? You also remember how i said they were basically the female version of One Direction? Well, that resulted also in the rising of: shipping. Now. I need to be completely fair here. Shipping members of boybands/girlbands was always a thing and it wasn't a such mind breaking news, neither was invented by 1D fans. Also the lesbian/gay rumors about members of said groups were made since the dawn of time (remember the Spice Girls lesbian rumor that turned out to be true?), but in this specific case there were a lot of similar fandom dynamics between Harmonizers and Directioners. You will soon see why.

Since their early formation on X Factor 2012, an initally small subsect of Harmonizer started to ship togheter Camila Cabello and Lauren Jauregui. It started fairly tame, with video compilations , gifs, pictures of them and things of that sort. The girls themselves were asked about this phenomenon during an interview and they seemed ok with it, if not downright amused, stating that the fans could do "wathever makes their boat float". Is important to note that they were actually very good friends at that time and that they were visibly close on camera, showing affection, hugging and things of that sort. Keep also in mind that they were minors. This will be important later.

Now, the term "Camren" was not even invented by fans. It was Lauren Jauregui herself to coin it on a Twitter post and since that day it became the official name of the ship. Even Dinah was actively playing with fans on Twitter about this, embracing what at that time was basically a meme/inside joke in the community for basically the entire course of 2012-early 2013. To be fair, they were other ships between the girls (Camila x Dinah, Normani x Dinah, Normani x Lauren) but Camren was the "main" ship that at this point every Harmonizer knew. During this period of time it was treated as and inside joke by the majority of the community, like i said earlier. No one was getting hurt and the girls seemed to have fun with it, sometimes actively fueling the speculations with certain snapchat photos and Twitter exanges. You noticed how similar it is to the Harry Styles x Luis Tommlinson situation? Well, if you are familiar with that story you can imagine how things went down in the following years. Spoiler: they got progressivly worse for everyone involved.

The Gate of Hell Opens: the Sun and the Moon and the Gay Drawings

Now we are in late 2013. The girls are doing good: their popularity was growing and they were doing small concerts and meets and greets. Even when they started to slowly gain fame outside the X Factor circle, they continued to have the same kind of relationship with fans and being active on Twitter, answering to them and whatnot. But Twitter was not the only social 5H used: they also had personal Tumblr blogs Camila and Lauren in particular were VERY active on the site, posting poetry, drawings, quotes, typical Tumblr edgy teen stuffs. (ssweet-dispositionn was Lauren's blog and waakeme-up was Camila's, now deactivated) But hey, it was the norm in 2013 after all. Not that deep, right? Oh no...oh no. You are all so wrong. It was a matter of time since that particular subset of Harmonizer (wich from now on i will call "Camren shippers") started to notice something interesting in their Tumblr posts. Now, before going on, is important to specify that the Camren ship affair begin fairly tame and small, but it started to rapidly grow in intensity during late 2013. This was also due to some videos the girls posted on their official youtube channel, in wich they would do cover of songs, vlogs and things of that sort, it's also worth mentioning some old twitcams in this discussion. Camren shippers at that time were analizing those videos and basically everything that this two poor girls posted in search of "proof" that their ship was real. They analized looks, body language, things they said and everything that was potentially "alluding" to a romantic relationship. It was not a joke or a meme anymore, people were absolutely serious and 100% sure that Camila and Lauren were in love with each other and that they were keeping it secret because...management bad or something. This was the main point shippers used to justify their research of "proof" (read as: obsessive behaviour) and "hidden signals", because in their mind the girls were "trying to tell us without being explixit about it to avoid the anger or management" (how convinient, am i right? lmao). Basically the same things Directioners were saying about Larry.

That being said, let's return to the main point: those people quickly started to not...

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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/Tokyono on 2024-03-25 11:10:13.

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Welcome back to Hobby Scuffles!

Please read the Hobby Scuffles guidelines here before posting!

As always, this thread is for discussing breaking drama in your hobbies, offtopic drama (Celebrity/Youtuber drama etc.), hobby talk and more.

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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/Naeveo on 2024-03-23 20:48:22.

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After reading a handful of recent threads on other comic book drama I decided I would dip my toes in and tell a more recent story about a new comic book publisher, Bad Idea, and their quest to make everyone hate them (or love them) by being as gimmicky as possible.

It's a story of how collectors, speculators, and comic book stores burned themselves out of Bad Idea's comics because of Bad Idea's bad ideas.

So What Is Bad Idea?

Bad Idea Corp, or Bad Idea, is an American comic book publisher that launched in 2020. It was started by several former executives from Valiant Comics, who all left the company after it was bought out by a Chinese entertainment company, and a few executives from Hivemind Entertainment, a media production company that has been involved with shows like The Expanse and Netflix's The Witcher. Like Valiant Comics, Bad Idea was in the business of making schlocky, grindhouse comic books. The more 90's the idea, the better.

But what quickly set Bad Idea in the industry apart was their early promise to never publish trades, new printings, digital versions, or variants of any of their comics. And they wouldn't use Diamond, the biggest (arguably only) comic distributor in the business at the time. You had to order directly through them.

This was an extremely bold promise. What Bad Idea was promising was unprecedented.

It meant: Every comic would be sold in limited quantities. Comics will not be reprinted to meet demand. Every comic would only be sold in stores. And you have to order it only from them since they will be the only ones printing and shipping it.

What this meant for readers and stores was that to read any Bad Idea comics costumers would have to go to comic book stores every week and pray it was in-stock. If you missed out, you missed out. You wouldn't be able to get it anywhere else... ever

And to not use Diamond Distributors? They held the monopoly on comic book distribution since the 90's. The last comic book publisher that even attempted to self-distribute was Marvel it caused them to go bankrupt. (Sidenote: Both DC and Marvel have both abandon Diamond Distributors since 2021, but that's entirely different, dumber story.)

It went against every piece of wisdom in the comic book industry. It was a Bad Idea (tm).

Hollywood Here We Come

Despite these terrible decisions and promises, it immediately interested retailers. And to understand why you have to understand a cornerstone of modern comic book collecting: "speccing"

"Speccing", or speculating, is when a collector or investor attempts to predict which comic books are going to be used as a basis for a movie or a TV show. In the age of the Disney's Marvel Cinematic Universe, DC Universe, and massive shows like The Walking Dead, this has become massively popular and lucrative. For example, if you bought The Walking Dead #1 for $2.50 in 2003, and you held it in mint condition until now, you could sell it for a meaty $1000. Alternatively, you could attempt to predict which comic book characters are going to show up in a big, blockbuster superhero movie or show, such as popular Spider-man character Miles Morales' first appearance going for around $600 despite it being first released at $3.99 in 2011. If you specced right, you could make some absurd returns.

It's not the entire community, but it is a major part of the community.

Now, Bad Idea's executive branch created a lot confidence behind the company since the leadership's previously saved Valiant Comics with an extensive and successful relaunch in 2012. The connections to Hivemind Entertainment, a Hollywood company, created a clear pipeline for Bad Idea's comics to be adapted into movies or TV shows. Here was a company creating original content being headed by comic book veterans partnering with Hollywood playmakers-- if there was any company on the market that could make the next The Walking Dead, it was probably these guys.

And Bad Idea knew it.

We Paid Gilbert Gottfried To Annoy Comic Book Shops

After announcing their existence, Bad Idea also announced it would only be selecting 20 comic book stores to carry their books... if they met their strict conditions.

What were these conditions? To quote Bad Idea:

• Rule 1: Comics are limited to one person.
• Rule 2: Comics must be sold for no more than cover price for 30 days from street day
• Rule 3: Comics can be offered for pre-order but cannot be shipped to anyone before street day
• Rule 4: Comics must be displayed in the highest traffic section of your store
• Rule 5: Stores must prominently display each promotional material for a mandated time period

Failure to comply meant Bad Idea would immediately cut you off from ever selling their books ever again.

Normally, these types of conditions would be a death sentence for a new publisher. Bad Idea's conditions meant comic book stores couldn't mark up Bad Idea comics to meet demand, sell in bulk to speculators, and that their comics had to take up prime shelf space. Speculators, however, ate this up. It meant that Bad Idea was purposely making their comics hard to find and stock, and that each comic would have a small number of copies-- essentially a perfect storm to inflate values.

Comic book stores, despite their best interest, were intrigued.

The first chance anyone had to talk to Bad Idea was at ComicPRO 2020, a comic book retailer convention. Bad Idea announced their first two titles, Eniac by Matt Kindt and Doug Braithwaite, and Megalith by Lewis LaRosa (remember this one for later), and that they will be expanding the list of stores to 50. All announced by Gilber Gottfried and other celebrities on Cameo.

Oh, and if you wanted in you had to sign up right now. The first 50 stores to sign would immediately be accepted into Bad Idea if they followed guidelines. The rest were out of luck. Better luck next year.

....Actually, make that the first 100 stores.

It was pretty clear Bad Idea was creating an atmosphere of gimmicks, FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out), and artificial scarcity by announcing "limited lists", have people fight over them, only to expand it later to meet demand.

But something was happening and retailers wanted to capitalize on it. 100 comic book stores was still a short list, and the two books that were announced had top-tier talent on it. Matt Kindt was already a massively popular writer for creating Mind MGMT and writing Keanue Reeves' BRZRKR, and Lewis LaRosa was a titan of an artist in the comic industry. It was the kind of talent that perked ears.

Then COVID hit.

COVID, The Button, and The Hero Trade

The first few months of COVID hit everyone hard but it hit comic book stores especially hard since their entire model is based on customers coming in literally every week to buy a stack of comics. In light of this, Bad Idea quietly postponed their May 2020 launch to a later date.

And in the meantime, Bad Idea's social media was hacked by a Big Red Button.

Bad Idea would only launch their comics if a button was pressed one billion times. Until then... zero announcements and zero comics. Everyone was left in the dark. But now the comic book buying public knew Bad Idea existed, and they were interested in hearing more, so they clicked that button. A lot.

It quickly reached that goal around August 2020. But still no news.

Then, in September, a comic called The Hero Trade showed up at the doorsteps of comic stores.

The Hero Trade is a one-shot short story, only 8 pages, about a back-alley scumbag selling body parts of superheroes to whoever could pay. This black-and-white book was randomly sent to 200 comic book stores unannounced and the comic had no credits in it. Most had no idea what this comic was and assumed it was worthless self-published comic from an unknown creator trying to get stores to buy more copies by handing out free samples.

However, two weeks later Bad Idea announced that they published The Hero Trade. Not only that, but they announced ...

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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/joebutmynameisntjoe on 2024-03-22 13:59:46.

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So this is a story all about how my life got flipped, turned upside down. Well not me, it was actually Mark Webber and Peter Dumbreck who’s lives (or cars rather) got flipped and turned upside down. This is the story of how Mercedes made a car so unstable, that it decided that staying on the ground is for suckers.

The Mans race innit

The year is 1999, and despite the worlds fears of inevitable extinction due to the evil computers, we still had to go racing. The race in question is the 24 Hours of Le Mans, one of the most important races in motorsport. Taking place at the monstrous, 13km long Circuit De La Sarthe, Le Mans is just one of those races that one knows of. It forms the triple crown of motorsport (the achievement of winning Le Mans, the Monaco Grand Prix and the Indy 500), only accomplished by F1 legend Graham Hill. It makes for compelling action and great storylines, including the famous rivalry between Ford and Ferrari in the 1950s and 1960s (which deserves its own post if it doesn’t have one). But in 1999, one funky looking car and its dubious engineering lead to one of the most spectacular series of events that motorsport has ever seen.

Endurance Racing! Its like Racing, but Longer!

Unlike other forms of racing, the objective for an endurance race of any kind is entirely different. The intuitive thing to assume is that the person who crosses the line first after an allotted amount of time or laps would be declared the winner. This however is not the case for endurance races. As the name suggests, it’s a marathon, not a shootout. As the race progresses over 24hrs, the cars will travel more and more distance. The winner of the 24hrs of Le Mans is the car that manages to cover the most total distance within 24hrs. This means that a car needs to be able to strike the right balance between being fast and being reliable. The fastest car on the circuit won’t win the race if it keeps breaking down and needing repairs. The most reliable car wont win if it doesn’t have the speed to cover a greater distance. As a result, the winners of Le Mans are always the team that manage to find that perfect mix between speed and endurance.

Yes, Mercedes once dominated outside of F1 too

In the modern era, the 24hrs of Le Mans is the flagship race of the WEC (World Endurance Championship). In the 90s however, it wasn’t attached to any particular championship. In 1998, Mercedes had been dominated the GT1 class, having won all 10 races of the 1998 FIA GT1 Championship. As a result, many teams withdrew from the competition, leaving the FIA to cancel the GT1 Championship for 1999. The ACO (who organized Le Mans) however had recently started their own racing class, known as LMGTP (Le Mans GT Prototype). For some context, a GT1 car was a racing car that had been derived from a production road car. The LMGTP class was a further evolution on the GT1 car, which moved further away from the production road car and had become a little too fast to compete in any other GT class. As a result, teams could design cars specifically to tackle the Circuit De La Sarthe, which would make for incredible racing. Thus, Mercedes got work building its masterpiece, the Mercedes CLR. It is based off of the Mercedes CLK GTR, their highly successful GT1 car from 1997, which in turn was based off the Mercedes CLK line of luxury coupes. Since the car didn’t have to follow the FIA’s homologation rules (the rules essentially state that road going versions of the car must be produced) teams could get down to building Le Mans specific monsters without worrying about how the car might function as a street legal car.

The Prep Phase

By May of 1999, the Mercedes CLR was ready for pre-season testing and qualifying for Le Mans. The CLR had been designed with two things in mind. Weight saving, and sleekness. The Circuit De La Sarthe is a mammoth 13km circuit, known for its extremely long straights, tight braking zones, high speed corners and undulating terrain. As a result, success at Le Mans can only be achieved if the car has the right mix of sleekness to prevent drag and increase speed, enough downforce to negotiate the high-speed corners, as well as endurance in the brakes and engine to be able to survive this constant cycle of extreme speed and hard braking. Thus, Mercedes designed a car that was long, sleek and low to the ground. Unfortunately for Mercedes, the car proved to be middling in May testing. The Mercedes designers made some changes before the race in June. This is when things began to go very, very wrong. It was at this time, that the Mercedes CLR began to take up an interest in aviation, to soar through the sky like a Top Gun pilot.

The newest advancement in aviation technology

Thursday qualifying begins, as the Mercedes cars number No.4, 5 and 6 looked to put their cars in a good starting spot for the race. However, very early into the session, the No.4 car driven by Mark Webber crashes violently into the barriers. The track marshals manage to safely extract Webber, who escapes with soreness in a few parts of his body, but relatively unharmed. The crash had occurred in a part of the track that was mostly inaccessible to the public and away from TV cameras. So, the Mercedes mechanics and engineers were shocked to hear Webbers accounts of the incident. According to Webber, he had been following an Audi in from of him and was looking to overtake. When the car reached the crest of a hill, and moved out of the slipstream of the Audi, the cars nose seemed to lift up into the air, and the whole car took to the sky and somersaulted backwards before landing back onto the track and sliding into the barriers. Webbers engineers initially didn’t quite believe that this could have been the case. Regardless, the No.4 car was repaired, and the team set their sights on the rest of the weekend.

On the morning of the race on Saturday, the teams set out for a warmup session before the race. However, yet again, Mark Webber and the No.4 CLR seemed to reach the crest of a hill, rotate upwards and somersault backwards in the air. The car landed on its back and skidded, before coming to a rest in a runoff area. Marshals managed to extract Webber again, with Webber thankfully receiving no serious injuries. This had scared Mercedes enough however to remove the No.4 car from the race. TV Cameras had not caught the crash, but images of the car lying on its roof were broadcasted around the world. There was something seriously wrong with the Mercedes CLR, and Mercedes were soon about to realize that it wasn’t just the No.4 car.

The other two Mercedes cars started 4th and 7th in the race. The race progressed normally until lap 76. Peter Dumbreck in the No.5 car was running in 3rd, trying to catch the Toyota of Thierry Boutsen in 2nd. As the CLR approached the Toyota over the crest of a hill, the CLR once again lifted off, somersaulting into the air before crashing into the trees off to the right side of the track. The crash was so violent that a tree branch pierced the cars monocoque, between the drivers seat and fuel tank. Dumbreck had been knocked unconscious by the initial impact, but awoke, and managed to escape the car. This time, the TV cameras had captured the whole scene. This proved to be the final nail in the coffin, as the final No.6 car was called back into the garage to retire, thus ending the race. BMW ended up winning the race, much to the chagrin of Mercedes.

A scientific flip

What happened to the Mercedes CLR is a game of physics. I will try and explain this as best I can with my 10th grade physics, but if anyone see’s anything that needs correcting, feel free to leave a comment.

In order for a car to go fast, it has to be sleek and aerodynamically slippery, so the air can run over the car with the least resistance. However, if you want your car to have downforce (essentially have your car pushed down onto the road by the air, making it more planted and more likely to go faster through corners), you need the air to have more resistance as it goes over the car. A rear wing (or spoiler) on the back of a car is an example of a device that increases downforce, by literally “spoiling” the air passing over the car. The trade-off is that this creates drag, which can slow the car down. For a race car to be successful, a balance must be found between its speed and its downforce. Mercedes had wanted to make this car as fast as possible. Since cars at Le Mans are at full throttle for over 85% of the lap, they prioritized their speed over the downforce. This is why you got a car that was so sleek, to increase the aerodynamic slipperiness. Here is where I am going to have to distinguish between overbody and underbody downfo...

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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/EnclavedMicrostate on 2024-03-18 05:02:19.

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Welcome back to Hobby Scuffles!

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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/WarmKitten on 2024-03-17 05:30:30.

Original Title: [Classic rock] Bad trips, Christian cults, multiple brawls, multiple lawsuits, blown out nasal cavities and more infidelity than a daytime soap opera - a brief history of the world's most fractious rock band

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CW: A lot. Drugs, infidelity and intergender violence among them.

You've almost certainly heard of the band Fleetwood Mac. If you haven't, you live under a rock and get your internet by siphoning it from elsewhere with an underground DSL cable. To those people, I will summarise in brief;

Founded in 1967 and active until fairly recently, Fleetwood Mac are a commercially successful and critically acclaimed rock institution. It's likely that the average reader knows them from their period of activity from the mid-1970s to the late 1980s, with their iconic lineup of the titular Mick Fleetwood and John McVie, as well as songstress Christine McVie and the singer-songwriter pair of Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham. But FM are unique in that, throughout their run, they've been jammy British blues, psychedelic pop, countrypolitan, stadium pop rock, balladeering AOR and just about anything else you could reasonably fit into the remit of 'pop rock'.

They're similarly unique for being an exceptionally rare classic rock act with lead vocals rotating between men and women, as well as for their crossover appeal with the authentic rockers and the radio pop crowd alike. One of these things indirectly fuelled the other, but I get ahead of myself.

Here's a brief-as-possible rundown of the many trials and tribulations of those guys who recorded the best songs you hear at the supermarket. The full story of these incidents could fill a quite-large book, so this will really just be the bullet points.

• In 1970, founding guitarist and the band's biggest star, Peter Green, already mentally declining, takes some bad LSD at a commune in Munich and spirals until he exits the band.
• The second of their original guitarists, Jeremy Spencer, leaves their hotel room before a show in 1971 to 'get some magazines' and never returns. He is found by manager Clifford Davis days later at a latter-day-Christian commune and refuses to return.
• Danny Kirwan, the last of their founding guitarists, succumbs to alcoholism and becomes sullen, reclusive and paranoid. He fights regularly with Spencer's replacement, Bob Welch, and it culminates in his termination after a blowup before a show in 1972.
• Kirwan's replacement, Bob Weston, has an affair with Mick Fleetwood's then-wife Jenny Boyd, while touring to promote Mystery to Me in 1973. When Mick finds out, he fires Weston, cancels the tour and briefly disbands Fleetwood Mac.
• Recently fired manager Clifford Davis attempts to assert intellectual ownership over the name 'Fleetwood Mac', resulting in litigious response from Mick Fleetwood, Christine & John McVie and Bob Welch.
• With the lawsuit ongoing, in 1974 Fleetwood Mac become the only major rock band to not be represented by a manager. Mick Fleetwood assumes de-facto managerial duties.
• The same year, Fleetwood approaches American folk singer Lindsey Buckingham to join FM. Buckingham agrees only on the condition that his then-girlfriend and performing partner Stevie Nicks is also invited. This alone is not drama, but it is the first domino.
• Following the success of the band's second (and more well known) self-titled album, the McVies divorce and Nicks & Buckingham split up. Tensions flare as suspicions of infidelity, towards all present members of the band, emerge. These tensions would comprise the substrate of the lyrics on their next album.
• The band considers crediting their drug dealer in the liner notes for their soon-to-be smash success Rumours, but renege on the plan when said drug dealer winds up murdered.
• While touring for Rumours, Nicks and Buckingham get in regular on-stage fights, no doubt exacerbated by the former's cocaine addiction.
• Nicks' cocaine habit blows out her nasal cavity. No, seriously.
• Mick Fleetwood reconciles with Jenny Boyd just long enough to remarry her before promptly cheating on her with Stevie Nicks.
• In 1978, Mick Fleetwood cheats on Stevie Nicks with her married friend Sara Recor, obliterating the relationship between all three.
• While touring for Tusk in New Zealand in 1980, Nicks and Buckingham get into an onstage fight which spills backstage. Buckingham throws his guitar at Nicks, Christine responds by bull-rushing the fuck out of him.
• In 1984, Mick Fleetwood files for bankruptcy. Drugs are blamed.
• Stevie Nicks checks into rehab at Betty Ford to corral her worsening cocaine habit in 1986.
• Following the release of Tango in the Night in 1987 (ed; their best album, don't deny it) Buckingham, agitated to breaking point with Nicks, quits the band, thus ending their most iconic and lucrative period.
• In late 1990, Stevie Nicks' frustrations over song placement culminates in her departure. That same year, Christine quits touring with the band, fully burnt out on the road life.
• Their 1995 album Time, featuring Buckingham-Nicks replacements Bekka Bramlett, Billy Burnette and Dave Mason is critically mauled and performs dismally commercially. It fails to chart in the U.S. and only sells 32,000 copies in its first year. Personally, I thought it was okay.
• Lindsey Buckingham returns in 1997. His second stint with the band would produce only one studio album, 2003's Say You Will.
• Christine McVie leaves the band in every capacity in 1998. She would return many years later.
• In 2018, the now solely-touring Fleetwood Mac lose Buckingham again. This time, it's a dispute over touring commitments. Buckingham would pick up where he left off in the 1980s by sueing his former co-workers for breach-of-contract. Somewhere in the world, Clifford Davis cracks open a cold beer and laughs.
• In 2022, Christine McVie, the longest tenured member after the two namesakes, passes away. With her goes any hope for reconciliation with Buckingham and any motivation to continue the band. Though not yet made official as of writing, the group is, for all intents and purposes, defunct.

So there we go. Fleetwood Mac. A band made great not in spite of their decades of turbulence and interpersonal animosity, but in large part because of it.

EDIT: No matter how much you proof, goofs get through the net.

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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/RedstoneRusty on 2024-03-16 14:55:21.

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Two weeks ago, an RLCS team named Young Money Clan (YMC) consisting of the English players Reeho, Nuqqet, and Little Motion, were banned from participating in the remainder of an RLCS tournament as well as any tournament for the next year because they intentionally lost multiple series in order to manipulate their seed in the playoff bracket. This was in an effort to try to steal a spot at the upcoming major tournament.

What is the RLCS?

Since 2015, the RLCS has gone through many different format iterations. First, it was a system where North America and Europe would select their best 8 teams and have them qualify to the world championship through a league play, with the top 4 teams from each region qualifying to the LAN. Then in season 3 (2016), Oceania was added and they would select their top 2 teams. Then in season 7 (2019), South America was added and they would select their top 2 teams as well.

The Dark Times

In early 2020, season 9 of the RLCS was underway and the world championship was scheduled to take place in Dallas. Then COVID happened and the world championship was cancelled. For the next few years, in order to combat the lull in the esport that would happen with no LANs, Psyonix (the developers of Rocket League) decided to overhaul the whole system. Season 10 became season X. There would be no more league play, instead, there would be a new system of splits. The Fall split, Winter split, and Spring split would each have 3 regional tournaments allowing teams to not only collect prize money every event, but they would also collect circuit points, which they need to qualify for each split's major tournament and ultimately the world championship. We didn't know it at the time, but for season X, these majors would all still be held online, and so would the world championship, due to COVID still existing.

Regional Struggles

For season 2021-2022 (yes that is the actual naming convention), there were big changes, mostly for "minor regions". Middle East/North Africa, Asia Pacific, and Sub-Saharan Africa were all added to the RLCS framework and they would all get their own professional productions for their streams. Most importantly, LANs were back baby! The first LAN was in Stockholm, Sweden, and consisted of 5 teams from NA, 5 from EU, 2 from OCE, 2 from SAM, 1 from MENA, and 1 from APAC. But wait, what happened to SSA? Well, they only get a spot at the world championship because ???? These regional spots were the same throughout the season. It was the same thing in the following season, 2022-2023.

For the 2024 season (ah yes, that's better), there was a 5 month off-season and with it, massive changes. I won't go into too much detail about them because that could be its own post. The important ones for this story are that SSA would now get a spot at the majors and there would no longer be any barrier for teams to compete in regions that they don't live in. In previous seasons, there had been multiple teams who migrated from their home countries to other regions in order to compete in a more competitive region and get better at the game. There had also been notable examples of the other way, going to a less competitive region in order to get free wins.

Young Money Clan

Reeho, Nuqqet, and Little Motion, are English rocket league players. Reeho and Little Motion had previously attempted to qualify for a couple of regionals in Europe, but were eliminated. They are what we call bubble players. They are good enough to make solid runs in qualifiers but they are nowhere near the level of top teams in their region. They saw the rule changes in the 2024 season as an opportunity. No longer would they be eliminated in qualifiers for a region they stand no chance in. They decided to just compete in Sub-Saharan Africa. This meant that they would be competing with about 160 ping, a massive disadvantage. Most players would call anything above 100 completely unplayable. However, YMC managed to not only qualify for the first regional, they came 2nd. And then they came 2nd in the following regional as well. The only team that was consistently able to beat them was called Limitless.

Because Limitless had won both regionals, they had a big lead in points. Limitless had 32 points and YMC only had 24. That meant that if Limitless could get top 4 in the 3rd regional, they would secure their spot in the major. YMC knew this and decided that now was their time to strike, so they flew down to Reunion island in order to compete in the final regional with more competitive ping. But that alone wouldn't guarantee them the win. There was only one way to make sure Limitless didn't make it to top 4. YMC had to manipulate their seeding to meet Limitless in the quarter-finals.

The Format

Ok, time to get a little technical. The regional format is a swiss stage with the top 16 teams, which decides the seeding for the single-elimination top 8 bracket. If you don't know how swiss works, basically if you win 3 series, you're into the top 8. If you lose 3 series, you're eliminated. It's a really good way to separate out the top 8 teams without making everyone play everyone. The important part is that game differential matters a lot. It determines which team you will play against in the following rounds.

On Friday, March 1st, the regional 3 swiss was played. For the first 2 rounds, everything went the same as always. Limitless and YMC both found themselves in the 2-0 matches for round 3, but they weren't playing each other. In round 3, Limitless swept their series. YMC had a bit of a delay in starting but then they won the first game 6-2. Then it all happened. They lost the next 3 games, losing that series, then they got swept in round 4. Then after another big delay, they swept round 5, securing their place as 7th seed in the top 8 bracket. So what happened? Basically, YMC saw Limitless qualify with 2nd seed in the bracket and then immediately started trying to manipulate their own seed to be 7th, since those seeds play each other for top 4. Here are some montages of what that gameplay looked like:

Anyone who has seen these players in the past month knows that this is blatant throwing and the motivation was clear from the start. The delay's were happening because YMC wanted to see the outcome of the other series to determine how many games they needed to lose for the right seed.

Before YMC even got the chance to play against Limitless in the quarter-final match they tried so hard to get, all 3 players were disqualified from the rest of the event and given a year-long ban not just from the RLCS, but from any rocket league competition. More here:

Because YMC were the only team that could have overtaken Limitless in the points standings, their disqualification meant that Limitless immediately qualified to the upcoming major in Copenhagen.

What Did We Learn?

The consensus among the Rocket League community about this is pretty simple. YMC were villains in this story from the start. If they wanted to take this spot away from SSA the "right way", they would have spent the entire split in the region, populating the ranked servers with better talent. A rising tide lifts all boats after all and having this team in the region would have given the other teams way better practice. Even if YMC made that decision before the 3rd regional, they could have gone and won that regional fairly and Limitless would have qualified for the major. Then next split, YMC could have won all 3 regionals and qualified for the next major and the world championship.

Note: This is a repost because I wasn't aware of the 14 days rule the first time around. Now that amount of time has passed.

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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/Turret_Run on 2024-03-16 14:41:34.

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It’s now been a little over a year since the ttrpg community experienced an event that rocked it to its core, when Wizards of the Coast, the developers of Dungeons and Dragons, attempted to enforce a policy that would all but destroy its flourishing third-party publishing community. After the dust settled, many were unsure about how things would look going forward. Would D&D collapse as players and publishers abandoned it? Would nobody care? Would a new system rise to prominence? Time will tell, but we can talk about what’s happened since.

What happened

If you want a great deep dive into the events, I highly recommend the hobbydrama done by u/ pandamarshmallows For a short(ish) version:

The OGL, (short for Open Game License) is a longstanding licensing agreement between Wizards of the Coast, the publishers Dungeons and Dragons, and publishers who want to make content using the system as a basis. As is the name, it was incredibly open, giving free reign to make D&D content so long as it didn’t include a handful of creatures and terms, with no need to compensate Wizards of the Coast. It’s been incredibly beneficial for both parties, helping cement D&D as the TTRPG. However as the guard at WOTC changed, it’s been seen less as a cornerstone and more giving money away. While there were efforts to quietly kill it, they didn’t get brazen until the end of 2022.

On January 5th, 2023, former io9 and now Rascal reporter Lin Codega published an article on tech blog io9, detailing how in a leaked press release, Wizards intended to announce the “OGL 1.1” . Along with a lot of other things, this new license required developers to effectively give full rights of whatever they made to Wizards of the Coast, that you could be subject to a 25% royalty fee on revenue, with a loose promise to only go after folks who make 750k or more in revenue, and saying you could no longer use the original OGL. Needless to say, it didn’t go well. The community banded together, rocked their shit, and Wizards backed off, even putting all of 5e under a creative commons license as an apology. However, that wasn’t enough for a lot of folks.

Even if it was never officialized, attempting to put something like this in place was a massive breach of trust. People's livelihoods relied on that promise of a free and open system, and they were planning to change it out of the blue. Even if 5e is under Creative Commons, it’s also reaching the end of its life, so nothing was stopping them from using loopholes to make 3rd party publishing difficult like they did with 4th edition. While players didn’t have the same financial concerns, they recognized that a lot of D&D’s value is from those third-party companies, or they just didn’t like the idea of their game being fucked over by C-suite decisions. Either way, people on both ends announced their intention to leave 5e behind. Now that a year has passed, we can see how well that’s going.

Honor Among Thieves

In March of 2023, Wizards/Hasbro released a feature-length film D&D: Honor Among Thieves. When things went down, one of the first things people did was announce their intention to boycott the film. Since it was a few months out, many people thought it could serve as a litmus test for whether the sentiments of the event held firm. The result? Debatable! As of writing, they’ve made $208 million against a $150 million budget. In terms of “we made more than we spent” it’s a dub, but if you go by the 3x budget metric used by a lot of hollywood it’s a flop. You could go on about how much it may have made were it not for the OGL and what is a theatrical success in a post-COVID/streaming world, but it’s perfectly in that spot where you can make a claim either way.

The dice popcorn buckets, however, are still wildly overpriced on eBay so if anyone wants to sell theirs for 30-50 bucks please DM me I’ll cover shipping.

Wizards: Kinda forgive and hope you forget

In terms of PR, Wotc’s plan seemed to be “pretend it never happened”. They continued to chug along, releasing a new adventure book Keys from the Golden Vault, which didn’t sell well but I’ll get to that later.

In April of 2023, Wizards had a Creator Summit, a conference between them and major D&D creators. It was the first direct interaction people had with Wizards since it all went down. The company tried to just ignore it but at the urging of the creators, they got into the OGL along with longstanding issues with diversity, which based on writeups went pretty well. It was the first step in healing the rifts between Wizards and the community.

They would immediately burn that when, 3 weeks later, they sent Pinkertons to a guy who accidentally got some magic the gathering cards (Wizards of the Coast owns both games) about 2 weeks early.

Yes, those pinkertons.

They would bring the controversy back to 5e when it was discovered that several of the illustrations for their upcoming book Glory of the Giants, were made using AI. After outcry, they banned the use of AI artwork... for D&D, Magic got caught using it for marketing. It seems that the company isn’t planning any more efforts to return to players good graces, but is trying to woo back publishers.

At the start of December, Wizards quietly announced a collaboration with Ghostfire Gaming, one of the most popular 5e publishers, andhad famously said back when the OGL happened they were considering transitioning to a new system. Two of their books, Dungeons of Drakkenheim and Grimm Hollow: Lair of Erathis, are now available on D&D Beyond, allowing for easier play.

On February 13th They did the same with Hit Point Press,putting their Humblewood campaign setting on the site. We can talk about how they’re only doing this after they’re planning to move to a new edition, but we have to recognize this is a shakeup. However we're not sure if people are biting

Insert hype pun here

While there isn’t exactly something quantifiable, it’s become increasingly obvious that the dynamic between players and WotC has shifted, at least in terms of response to new content. While people are still big on talking about D&D, they’re not savoring new sourcebooks in that same fashion anymore. Even the adventure books aren’t getting much talk. Not too long after the fiasco, they released a new adventure book, Keys from the Golden Vault. For a while, it was being outsold not by another D&D book, but by Fever Knights, a ttrpg published by comic artist Adam Ellis. The people who wouldn’t stop talking about a new book aren’t there for it anymore.

Nat OneDnD

In my defense, the joke’s right there!

As I mentioned earlier, part of the reason people didn’t care much about the OGL win is because there’s a new edition on the horizon, OneDnD. Whether it’ll be a 5.5 for a 6th edition is sort of unclear. There have been a lot of business peak promises throughout its development, including AI, “backward compatibility” with 5th edition, and this being a “forever edition” but with the release on the horizon, we’re seeing how that’s forming.

Over the remainder of 2023, Wizards released playtest content for OneD&D, with surveys to gauge satisfaction. The responses on the surveys have been nonplussed. The response in forums like r/DNDnext have also been less than stellar, with many at best uninterested in the new edition, and some restating their intention to move to leave D&D for a new system once they finish their campaigns. People are also not excited about the release schedule, which has the Players Handbook releasing in September, the Dungeonmasters Guide in November, and the Monster Manual in... February 2025. While they had a similar release timeline with 5th edition, they also didn’t seriously kick off until someone else lit the matches. And those guys are heating up on their own now.

New competitors

After the events of the OGL, several developers came forward with their intention to make a new game that would fill the same long-form fantasy niche of D&D. There are three that are of note:...

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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/Inquilinus on 2024-03-14 19:20:57.

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What is Teppen?

Teppen is a popular variety TV show airing in Japan. At Teppen, celebrities from all fields compete in different skills outside of their main profession. The most famous Teppen competition is the piano contest, in which celebrities play a song of their choosing on piano and are scored out of 100 by a group of judges. This competition is hosted yearly to semi-yearly, usually with 5-10 celebrities competing. Many celebrities, inside and outside of the music field, have competed over the years, including a few AKB48 members. (Japanese Wikipedia page for Teppen.)

What is AKB48?

AKB48 is a large Japanese idol group founded in 2005 by producer Akimoto Yasushi. They dominated the Japanese music charts of the 2010s, having 37 of the top 50 selling songs of the decade, including #1-#16. AKB48 is based in Akihabara, and has sister groups throughout Japan, such as HKT48 in Hakata, Fukuoka. Between the main group and the sister groups, they have hundreds of members at any one time. One such member was Matsui Sakiko.

Who is Matsui Sakiko?

Matsui Sakiko (born 1990) joined AKB48 in 2009 as part of the 7th generation. She grew up playing piano, and became AKB’s resident piano girl, often playing during concerts. As a member, she attended and then graduated from Tokyo College of Music, specializing in piano. She was never a particularly popular member, having never been picked for the lineup (senbatsu) of an AKB48 single (though she did join the senbatsu one time due to the yearly rock-paper-scissors tournament, but that’s a story for another time.)

1st-9th Teppen

Sakiko joined the Teppen piano competition for the first time in 2012. This was Teppen’s 3rd piano competition, the first two having been won by Sayuri (born 1969), a comedian famous for her piano skills, who was considered the queen of the contest. Sakiko managed to score 86 points, which won her the competition. This caught the eye of Akimoto Yasushi, AKB48’s producer, who allowed Sakiko to release a solo album, mostly of piano renditions of AKB songs.

Sakiko and Sayuri would join the 5th Teppen* in 2013. This time, Sayuri retook her crown, with Sakiko receiving 2nd place. They would meet again at the 7th Teppen in 2014, this time reversing their fortunes: Sakiko the champion and Sayuri the runner-up. A rivalry quickly ensued, and Teppen created a special one-off competition just between Sakiko and Sayuri at the 9th Teppen later that same year. Sayuri was the victor.

*There was no piano competition at the 4th, 6th, and 8th Teppen.

However, another member had entered the fray: HKT48’s Moriyasu Madoka.

Who is Moriyasu Madoka?

Moriyasu Madoka (born 1997) joined HKT48 in 2011 with their 1st generation. She was immediately popular, and selected for the senbatsu for nearly every HKT48 single. She was also known for her piano skills. She had participated in piano competitions throughout her childhood, placing 9th in a nation-wide junior high school competition. However, as a popular member, she was extremely busy and wasn’t practicing piano consistently. She participated for the first time in the 7th Teppen and did very well, receiving 87 points. She hadn’t seriously played piano in two-and-a-half years at that point. After the competition, she announced that she would start practicing again and would be back.

The 10th Teppen

Six celebrities entered the 10th Teppen in early 2015. The last three scheduled to perform were Madoka, Sakiko, and Sayuri, in that order. The high score when it came to Madoka’s turn was 84. Madoka performed a rendition of Kubota Saki’s 70s hit “Ihojin”, impressing the crowd. One of the guests yelled out, “You’ve already won, haven’t you!” Madoka received 91 points, enough to take the top spot at the time. Next was Sakiko. She performed “Let it Go” from Frozen. To her surprise, she got 94 points, passing Madoka. She said that, listening to Madoka’s performance backstage, she was about to give up emotionally. Last was Sayuri. She performed “A Cruel Angel's Thesis”, the opening song for Neon Genesis Evangelion. Sayuri got 95 points, making her the champion once again.

Here are all three performances. Madoka’s performance starts at 1:25, Sakiko’s at 5:35, and Sayuri’s at 10:00.

(I am a total layman when it comes to piano, so I would appreciate insight from anyone more musically-inclined! I tried not to give my opinion or analysis earlier, but as a layman, I thought Madoka’s performance was clearly the most impressive.)

Aftermath

There was a huge amount of controversy after the episode aired. Many believed that Madoka easily should have won. There were accusations that the judges rigged it to further the Sakiko vs Sayuri storyline. The station received dozens of complaints questioning their scoring criteria. Music producer Fukada Yasuhiko objected to the scoring, saying that if Madoka got a 94, then Sakiko and Sayuri should’ve gotten an 83 and 80, respectively. He even suggested this result will have negative effects for children learning piano. The station responded that there was no evidence of rigging and stated "the performance is judged comprehensively based on the difficulty level of the arrangement, the expressiveness of the pieces, such as whether the pieces are played with passion, and the accuracy of the pieces, such as whether there are any mistakes." Source (Japanese).

Following Years

Teppen continued with their piano competition. Madoka, Sakiko, and Sayuri all entered in the 11th Teppen in late 2015. This time, Madoka got 1st place, with Sakiko tying for 2nd.

Sakiko graduated from AKB48 in 2015, and Madoka graduated from HKT48 in 2021. Both of them continued to participate in Teppen, before and after graduation. Sakiko won the 13th, 14th, 19th, and 20th Teppen competitions. Madoka never received 1st place again, nor did Sayuri. However, Madoka, like Sakiko, did release a solo album of piano music in 2020. Both Sakiko and Madoka are active in the entertainment industry and as pianists.

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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/EnclavedMicrostate on 2024-03-11 05:03:03.

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Welcome back to Hobby Scuffles!

Please read the Hobby Scuffles guidelines here before posting!

As always, this thread is for discussing breaking drama in your hobbies, offtopic drama (Celebrity/Youtuber drama etc.), hobby talk and more.

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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/throwaway426542 on 2024-03-11 04:47:29.

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Hello everyone, i stumbled across this subreddit randomly and seen this post by u/maverden

This is a very nice written up post and better than anything i could ever do, but it seems a big part of neopets history was missed out revolving the economy so im gonna do my best to expand on top of this

WHO AM I? My name is Jesse, if you played neopets at all in the 2007-2016ish era you would have probably seen me on the forums, i had my friend group like many but i mainly hung around the Avatar and Trade chat, with some casual bouts on the Battle Chat. You may have recognized some of my names jesse_on_ice, financial_crisis, arctic_troll etc. I was a notorious troll on neopets in my younger years and was constantly banned, most people either loved me or absolutely hated me there wasn't really any in-between, i was a nuisance. And most thought i cheated and this (at least a time) was not true. I was a fairly rich restocker/auction sniper/reseller. Then something changed. One day i got banned “for protection” on my main because i lent a friend 200 million neopoints for a stamp, banned for protection usually happens when tnt suspect your account was hacked. Long story short they wouldn't give my account back because of all my previous infractions and my antics on the boards, this is when i started on the cheating side of neopets. (early 2014)

Now that we have some of my backstory out of the way lets continue.

In March 2014 Jumpstart bought out neopets.com from Viacom, later that year around September the servers started migrating servers this caused massive lag and BIG problems for the long-term economy of neopets. From this migration of servers they wanted to keep the site active during the migration period, this caused the site to lag and this caused an unintended side effect. Item Duplication. Now if you dont know what Item duplication is and why its a big issue i implore you to google, but its quite simple the item is double

A friend of mine found this out on like the day the servers started migrating, i was one of the first people to know about it because she showed us on skype as a bug, and reported it to tnt as she was an honest player. The friend group she showed though, some of us were not so honest and the dupe was going to be found out eventually anyway. It was as simple as spam clicking an item. When you moved an item to say your gallery from your inventory a drop down menu would appear and you would click where to send the item, gallery, shop, safe box etc. Etc. Well when you spammed the confirmation box it would make unintended copies of that item. And you can see how this would easily be abused.

(also a side note and a funny story, there was a really rare and strong battledome item called the moehog skull you could only get by winning an expensive scratchcard, i actually won one and sold it for $140 USD right before the majority of people discovered the duping, it was a good business decision on my end since it devalued to shit)

Anyway back on topic, there was always a stable economy in neopets aside a few items

There was obviously the Darigan Sword of Death, which is a 1 of a kind item owned and sold by featheralley to a user (i forgot his name) for his gallery. Then there were other items which would always gain value because they were so old and rare some examples being retired items, smugglers cove items, prize code items etc. Etc.

These items would sell for 100s of millions of neopoints just to sit in somebodies' collection, and before the duping 100 million was a lot. Some of those items above were glossed over in the above post the Super Attack Pea is the one I'm going to talk about

the Attack Pea family was released in the smugglers cove, the smugglers cove was a rare event that would stock super rare items at the time only available for that event, so if you got a Super Attack Pea when they were released that was going to be the only time you could ever get one. And its been a while but im pretty sure they stocked at a certain time on a random minute, so it would be at 44 seconds on a certain minute for example. So you would refresh every minute at 44 seconds for example, but if you refreshed too often you could get banned from the cove for an hour. So it was always a luck and skill component (and a bit of internet speed, as you would need to fight the other people for it)

And if i remember correctly again, there was only 100 of each item released at the cove (i think later they offered more, but the early days it was only like 100 or 150)

Now for the fun part, these items got duped like fucking crazy, there were people like me who would do stuff like this just for fun because at the time i was a notorious troll, i would make a “fun auction” post on the forums and link to my auction trades and just see 8 of one of the rarest item in the game selling for funny numbers.

these at the time sold for over 500 million neopoints. And i had a lot more of these, i would estimate i had about 2000 of them.

And when the general public learned about this, this deflated every single item in the game. Well every rare notable item, i think our friend in the other post glossed over item rarities etc. Well the super super top end items people couldn't get ahold of to dupe just went up in value, widening that gap. because only select people had them. And those accounts were inactive or items so rare nobody thought about, or if they were duped it was in secret (a lot of rare items that were previously thought gone forever or so rare they may as well be gone forever came out over the next few months)

There were side effects however. A LOT of people got banned, innocent or not, people with duped items got banned. It actually killed the playerbase of an already dying game as neopets didn't have the best reputation as they were slowly releasing ways to kill the economy already making desirable things like krawk and draik neopet easily obtainable. (previously they were super rare, and weren't like other limited pets you could make on a certain day)

And you know what, as much as this dupe had an effect on the currency side of the game, it could have gotten worse, and if you were an avid neopets player and hunted avatars i apologize profusely, because this dupe also extended to games, you may have heard of bilge dice, well im not gonna bore you with the details, I'll just link you to the rules

Unfortunately, this game has been removed and you have me to thank. Because i found out an exploit using the same technique as duping where you just spam click the result to see if you won which would stack your points and completely broke the game. Keep in mind getting even 10 wins in a row in this for the avatar is extremely difficult and yet with the server migration creating all the lag this was possible, i released the method on the forums and the game got taken down a day later. I actually had a score of a 192 that i lost the screenshot of.

I would say I'm not proud of it, but that would be a lie, getting an entire game taken down because I was some dumb internet troll is just funny to me.

There was however 1 more hidden use of this duplication glitch, my friend Ana actually discovered this and she shared it with me, to my knowledge we were the only 2 people to know about this method which has since been patched (at least i hope so) this worked well after the duping had actually been solved because we were still doing this 2 years later.

The Money tree had an NC donation thing attached to it where you could refund your Neocash with an upcycle fortune cookie

and i actually again dont remember the specifics but you could donate 2 items a day and get some neocash back for those donations neocash for those who are unaware are used for special items with real world cash, not the regular ingame currency neopoints, either way you could buy this upcycle fortune cookie do the donate thing and its meant to be sort of like a recoup for items you no longer need or want, however if you spam clicked on the donate it would multiply the amount of neocash you got back, so instead of 25 you could get 250 etc. And this worked. And i didnt care too much about the cosmetics side of neopets so i never actually did anything with it, it was all for the “thrill” i guess but i made out with well over $40,000 USD of neocash that i could have easily sold offsite, i honestly should have but i didnt want to just implicate a bunch of random people in obvious fraud and at the time i was doing this i was kind of done with neopets.

I have a lot of stories about neopets including real life scandals, marriages, the drama in the neopets black market, and the notorious database leak (i acutally still have that somewhere) i know a LOT. So if there is anyone who is actually good at writing and played neopets and wants to collab feel free to hit me up, my remembering skills are a bit sketchy but with some research i could probably dig it all back up from my memory.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/serillymc on 2024-03-10 17:49:20.

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Before any of this starts, I need to lay out some context.

The Hell is a MCYT?

MCYT, for the unaware, is an acronym that stands for "Minecraft YouTubers", though in actuality it tends to refer to any online video creator regardless of platform who makes Minecraft content. Contrary to popular belief, MCYT isn't a new term - it was coined sometime in the early 2010s to refer to Team Crafted and its adjacent creators, with the earliest uses I could find going back to 2014.

I won't go into the entire history of the MCYT community as it isn't particularly relevant, though there are some things worth noting. First is that older MCYT fandoms were a lot closer to typical fandoms than the "standoms" of today, likely due to Twitter being less popular at the time.

Second is that in the mid-2010s, MCYT went into almost radio silence as Minecraft content simply wasn't popular anymore. While some people like Hermitcraft stayed afloat just fine, Minecraft content wouldn't really reach its past levels of popularity again until the creation of SMPLive in 2019, which is the topic of today's post.

What is SMPLive?

SMPLive was a SMP (survival multiplayer) server created by CallMeCarson (though in reality, it was cscoop's idea) in 2019, with the gimmick being that when online on the server, players must be streaming their perspective. The server popularized livestreamed SMPs as a genre and is a good portion of the reason why Dream SMP and now QSMP exists. The server was comedy-focused, though had a notable amount of roleplay elements with events such as a cult war against "Spawn City" (the hub city of the server) and various court cases, and streamers would often play up characters for the audience. The best way I could describe it would be like a Minecraft sitcom.

SMPLive gained an unexpected audience with teenage girls, who formed a fan community on Twitter known as "SMPtwt", which was a stan Twitter group dedicated to the members of the server. SMPtwt would get themselves into a lot of controversies, but most of them aren't relevant to the topic at hand. There was also a notable following on Tumblr, known as SMPblr, which mainly seems to trace its origins back to 2018 Mineblr and Hermitblr (the Hermitcraft fandom on Tumblr) and tended to have very different views than SMPtwt (which will become relevant later on).

One side note regarding Hermitblr that is a topic for another post, but should at least be mentioned, is that a group of Hermitblr members actually harassed Hermitcraft member ZombieCleo off Tumblr for saying that if you have a problem with shipping, you should just block shippers instead of posting hate. This would set a precedent for MCYT fandom prioritizing their own moral beliefs over the wants of the people they claim to be fans of, which alongside the effects of SMPRonpa's aftermath, still affects the fandom to this day.

Survival of the Fittest

In late 2019, a young fan on Wattpad would begin publishing their Danganronpa AU fanfiction known as "SMPRonpa: Survival of the Fittest". Unbeknownst to them, this fic would gain a lot of popularity on SMPtwt, with fans livetweeting about updates and creators even noticing.

That's right! Despite what would go down later, most content creators who acknowledged SMPRonpa did so positively - joking about it and discussing it with fans, chatting with the author, etc. One creator, ToxxxicSupport, would even defend it, saying it's "purely based on entertainment just like a horror movie would be - no one would ever want us to actually get hurt".

SMPblr, on the other hand, was vehemently opposed to the fic, and well, fanfiction in general, honestly, regardless of content - anything they considered "stan shit". These are beliefs they would claim to be based in the desire to not make content creators uncomfortable, though like with early Hermitblr's shipping war, a lot of it was based more in their own ideas of what's morally okay in fandom rather than anything a content creator had said themselves.

Regardless, the fic would be completed in December 2019, but what was to follow would permanently affect how the MCYT fandom would treat fanworks.

And before I forget to mention it, the freezer thing in the title is a joke related to a death in the fanfic that's been heavily memed even long after the fanfic was deleted - in which Slimecicle is hit over the head with a guitar and stuffed in a freezer. It's constantly poked fun at by fans and Charlie himself for its absurdity. Here's a funny clip of Sneegsnag joking about it.

Let's Address Fan Culture

On December 11, 2019, CallMeCarson would go live with a starting soon screen that simply contained the message:

this is gonna be a serious stream addressing some bullshit fan culture that has creeped my friends and I out. If you're coming here for laughs I'm sorry but occasionally I have to address more serious topics. I recommend going to schlatt's stream if you came here for fun or you are just an average viewer who doesn't care. he is playing Rabbids Go Home

(This would go on to be a widely mocked copypasta among both fans and other content creators.)

In this stream, Carson would go on to disavow various elements of "fan culture" that he claimed made him and his friends uncomfortable. While several topics were discussed, the most relevant to today's topic is that he would single out and discuss SMPRonpa by name.

This would lead to a wave of harassment and threats towards its teenage author, who was not expecting this to happen. They would follow their promise to delete the fanfic if someone mentioned being uncomfortable, and the fanfic was gone. In 2021 they would return to make this comment about the harassment they faced. (TW: mentions of death threats and suicidal thoughts)

The "serious stream" would also lead to the creation of the blog smp-boundaries which is now somewhat infamous for being outdated and sometimes including unsourced and misleading information, but was weaponized in many a fan discourse argument.

Lost to Time

And for 3 years, it was gone. Completely lost to time, with only snippets transcribed from screenshots that floated around what remained of SMPtwt and the controversy left to prove it ever existed. And a lot of people thought, given it was published on Wattpad (which makes it significantly difficult to download works) and the timeframe, that it would never resurface.

A lot of people would search. It became sort of the white whale of lost media related to MCYT - everyone wanted to read it, out of morbid curiosity or genuine interest.

It's probably also worth noting that in 2021, CallMeCarson would be exposed for sexual misconduct with fans and completely disavowed by his former friends and co-workers. Some of these friends and co-workers would also speak about their own experiences with Carson, with Schlatt saying he had lied to him about seeking therapy when Schlatt just wanted to see him improve, and his former roommate Noah Hugbox recounting Carson's rude treatment of him and their other two roommates Cscoop and Traves in an interview (something that would be corroborated in Schlatt's video, where he mentions hearing horror stories from Carson's roommates).

Years went past, and the fic continued to remain lost, but it became sort of an urban legend, a warning fans would tell each other. During the height of Among Us and Squid Game's popularity, you'd hear people mention SMPRonpa as a "what not to do".

Additionally, with no way to verify the fic's content, rumors would spread making it out to be a lot worse than it is. While SMPRonpa, in actuality, was a violent (but not notably graphic) fanfiction based on a video game, with time it became this boogeyman of a fic to avoid becoming the next iteration of, a gory mess about killing content creators and their families in real life. (Note: No content creator families are involved in SMPRonpa at all, besides one very short flashback with no violence.)

The Triumphant Return

On January 5, 2024 - ironically, the same day 3 years ago that CallMeCarson would be exposed - I was sent a copy of SMPRonpa by an anonymous individual. A full copy.

I knew it was real - everything lined up perfectly with the many screenshots I had collected over the years. We finally had our white whale.

And so, I published the copy, with a note asking the reader to not seek out the author, who had - on and wanted nothing to do with the fic any...

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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/Jagosyo on 2024-03-09 06:09:41.

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This is my first hobbydrama post and it's recounting some drama that happened slightly before I joined the hobby. So I hope you will bear with me regarding sourcing. I like history, I like learning new things, I don't actually enjoy hunting for drama that much.

First, some context.

Star Wars action figures have a long and storied history which I won't recount much of here. What you mainly need to know is the license originally went to Kenner and played a significant part in making them a relative giant in the toy industry. Producing 3.75 inch figures (1/18 scale) that became an industry standard, many a child in the ancient years of 1977-1985 enjoyed the wonders of Star Wars through Kenner toys.

But what does one do when they are no longer a child and longs for the nostalgia of yesteryear? They pay exorbitant amounts for unopened figures and convince themselves plastic in a box is display art of course! Discontinued in 1985 to lagging sales and renewed in 1995 to capitalize on movie remasters, a new line of Star Wars figures coming from Kenner (Now owned since 1991 by Hasbro) appeared. They actually looked good and not like questionably carved lumps of plastic! Incredible. The golden age of Star Wars Action Figure collecting had arrived.

We now skip ahead a few years in our tale. It is a dark time for the galaxy. Kenner's headquarters were closed in the year 2000 and their product lines merged into Hasbro. George Lucas releases his well-regarded prequel masterpieces and Star Wars toys line an entire isle in Toys R Us. George Lucas's prequel masterpieces turn out to be not so well-regarded and Toys R Us closes because some asshole decided to dump debt onto them and then declare bankruptcy. The mighty isles of Star Wars toys eventually fall silent.

But what's this? A New Hope on the horizon?! Disney purchases Star Wars?! Sequel movies are being made?! They'll be good?! This can only mean one thing. More Star Wars Action Figures.

You now have the context to begin our story. You see Star Wars collecting had become a big thing, and it makes up a reasonable (in times, perhaps the majority) of sales of figures. The most die-hard of these adult collectors have been collecting a long time and have large, sealed in-box collections of figured taking up space on their walls. They obviously want to continue expanding this collection of matching boxes, and Hasbro wants money so a compromise is made in the Senate.

Hasbro releases not one, not two, but three Star Wars action figures lines. The first two, Retro and Vintage, are 3.75 inch and styled after the original 1977 line and the 1995 line respectively. The third, 2013's Black Series, are about 6 inches (1/12 scale) and more expensive. We are interested in the third.

I can't really say what the original plans for the Black Series line was, because that's ancient history I wasn't around for. The initial few years of the figures were... Not good. Bad sculpts, horrific faces, over production of expensive figures for a unproven block of sequels meant the line struggled. Star Wars mania meant the line didn't die.

By the release of Rise of Skywalker things were looking grim for Star Wars, but had improved for Black Series. It was still expensive, but new improvements in action figure technology meant the faces looked good now. Whatever the line had originally been intended to be, it was now squarely aimed at adult collectors looking for Star Wars characters to display on the shelves and rising prices mostly excluded anyone but that market.

Oh, also there were life-size replicas of helmets and lightsabers under the Black Series logo, nobody sane knows why. We're not talking about it*

This finally brings us to our tale, if you are unaware, Hasbro actually makes a number of nostalgia bait toy lines aimed at adult collectors now. They sell these through retailers and the Hasbro Pulse site, where you can also find The HASLAB. Haslab is basically a crowd funded effort to get particularly high-budget items into the hands of collectors that Hasbro might not otherwise be willing to make. Basically it's a bit like Kickstarter, buyers will make a pledge for a product and if that product meets a certain number of pledges, Hasbro will make it for everyone who pledged (and paid of course). Additionally, meeting certain pledge thresholds means Hasbro can afford producing some extras to go along with your expensive piece of plastic. All in all, it's a good system that lets people get things they wouldn't otherwise, like a 27 inch, $575 Unicron.

In 2021, the Black Series got their turn. The very first Haslab Black Series and oh boy is it a doozy, The Rancor. For the low price of $350, a 1/12 scale rancor could be yours! If enough backers are met, you could also get some fabulous additions! A Gamorrean Guard! A bunch of...skulls and cardboard! Salacious Crumb! Luke Skywalker! We've had three of those figures released before!

...Now if you are a Star Wars fan, you may perhaps be wondering about some notable, shall we say, absences from that list of figures. Malakili would be later added to the base funding line of the Rancor after some very negative feedback, but that negative feedback was in large part centered around one other character.

Oola

The unfortunate ill-fated dancer at Jabba's Palace has a rather interesting toy history. She's only appeared in 1/18 scale twice, once as a mail-away that a lot of people missed and made her one of the more valuable figures for a while and once as a Wal-mart exclusive alongside Jabba himself. She's never appeared in 1/12 scale. Why? Well probably because she's a female side character with a few seconds screen time. Traditionally those aren't terrible popular with kids. You also kind of need Jabba to go along with her, which raises the price on buying them together instead of say, Luke Skywalker or Princess Leia. Also, possibly, Lucasfilm didn't want to deal with moms complaining about little Jimmy seeing a half-naked lady from his favorite Star Wars movie on the toy isle. Who knows?

THE FANS KNOW! You see this isn't the only snub for a scantly clad Star Wars lady. Slave Leia, AKA Jabba's slave outfit, AKA Huttslayer Leia, AKA that poster you had on your wall has had exactly one Star Wars Black Series release in the product's first year and it is an abomination

Why would Hasbro do this? Why would they not make a beloved cultural icon for young teenage men everywhere with the new photo-real facepainting technology? Why would they not include Oola in the Rancor's backer rewards? There's only one possible option. Conspiracy! Disney, Hasbro and Lucasfilm were conspiring to keep scantly clad female Star Wars characters out of the hands of adult collectors because of the unfortunate implications of sex slavery in GEORGE LUCAS'S STAR WARS!

Meanwhile, Yakface (Not his real name), a prominent leaker and source of news of shipping data for Star Wars products, mostly Black Series and Vintage Collection, posts a funny slogan on his twitter which is preserved on reddit here. This accidentally sparked a rallying cry for wrongfully deprived adult collectors of their scantily clad female action figures. No Oola. No Moolah. They would not be denied by woke Disney, Hasbro and Lucasfilm. NO OOLA NO MOOLAH!

Yeah so the Rancor didn't get funded.

If you clicked the link up earlier you might have noticed, 500 backers off. There was anger, there was finger pointing, there were ragebait videos. There was a Megathread

It wasn't really Yakface's fault. He got pointed at as a scapegoat by a few people, but generally most people agree it was a mix of poor backing rewards (Nobody wanted cardboard murals), bad communication (Yakface did more promotional work on the Rancor's funding stages and the addition of Malakili than Hasbro's socials did) and an expensive price point for a relatively young toy line (Most adults with Star Wars money collect Vintage Collection).

As for a supposed ban on Slave Leia and Oola, both have been featured as merchandise in Disney's parks.

Haslab has been a relatively successful program. Funding about 75% of their projects. Notably, the only other Black Series item, the Third Sister Lightsaber Replica* has not been funded.

Well, that's the sad tale of the Rancor. Never to grace our non-existent shelf space with his glorious girth. The only prototype that exists probably sits on some executives table or some Hasbro museum somewhere. Which would make for an excellent heist movie, but not a very good funding reward.

Disclaimers:

I don't care how you wish to display your figures, in box, out of box, it's your figure! Do what you want.

I would've paid $350 for the Rancor, fortunately for my wallet I missed it.

I'd like scantily clad women for my Star Wars collection.

Please reline the Replica Helmets and Lightsabers to something less confusing Hasbro, thank you*

*I lied.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/imnanbaboya on 2024-03-06 20:26:56.

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Quick Definitions

TVXQ are a K-pop group, a very long-lasting and frankly iconic one. They just caught up on their 20 year anniversary (and released their first Korean album in, like, 4 years!) last year, having debuted at the end of 2003, and they have as colorful as a history as that kind of lifespan suggests. Previous write-ups on this subreddit have covered things such as lawsuits, gay shipping, and crazy stalkers — that (and the fact that they have multiple write-ups here in the first place) says a lot about what kind of stuff TVXQ got involved with. Since this story takes place in 2004, TVXQ will be treated as they were then: a fresh-faced, 5-member group taking over the scene.

A few other terms to know would be Cassiopeia or Cassies, referring to TVXQ's fandom; SM Entertainment, the company that made and manages TVXQ; and rotation, referring to changing out members of a group. Other than that, if you're familiar with K-pop terminology, you shouldn't have much problem navigating this. So, let's set the scene.

(Also, a note before we start — a majority of the posts linked here will be in Korean, as most English fan forums from the time are long gone. I can't speak much about what happened overseas, but there is this blog post from an international Cassie who was there at the time. It's a good read — I recommend it for those wanting a first-hand account. I wasn't there at the time, so I can only repeat and make inferences from what I read!)

The Rotation Rumors

It was 2004. After a 2-single run, TVXQ had just released their 1st full album, TRI-ANGLE, and their fanbase was as strong as ever. With this album came a "storybook" like their previous releases — a "storybook" in TVXQ terms is like your normal K-pop photobook but with more stuff. This storybook, however, came with even more stuff than usual; most importantly, it contained essays written from the group members' perspective. One of these essays explained the process of forming the group: SM divided trainees into groups, choosing their lead vocalists to create a "dream team." That was describing past events, as the storybook explicitly stated that this "dream team" was TVXQ’s predecessor. But the statement following, saying that SM was preparing various solo "projects" for the members of TVXQ, intensified the misconception. Cassiopeias — TVXQ’s fandom — saw this as TVXQ being a project group where members could leave for solo activities and be replaced. They could be replaced! They could be replaced, and no fan wants a group where their bias could disappear willy-nilly.

So TVXQ fans got worried. At first, it started as simple talk of a Chinese member, and fans were up in arms at SM Entertainment, TVXQ’s company. As far as taking action, some talked about boycotting TVXQ related products and protesting in front of SM (A fun note is that those who actually did protest in front of SM were told exactly what SM would say time and time again... that no one was being replaced). TVXQ’s fanbase slanted young back then, so a lot of people believed the rumor without questioning, but some cast doubt on this affair. All the while, during an uncertain time in Cassieland, one forum came upon the nation — a little place called the "Seryun Sejun Official Anti Cafe."

Seryun Sejun, Please Disappear

There were scattered talks of a Seryun Sejun before the big fuss. Apparently, the "Seryun" part comes from a stage name the youngest member, Changmin, was supposed to have before going with Max. (TVXQ’s stage names were formatted like [stage name] [real first name], e.g. U-Know Yunho.) Back then, the rumor was the same, with Sejun replacing one of the original TVXQs, but nobody had any reason to believe it. Now, though, everybody was looking for a name to this menace, and Seryun Sejun came like a five course meal to a starving child.

The "Seryun Sejun Official Anti Cafe" (세륜세준 공식 안티카페) was founded on November 19, 2004, around the same time the rotation rumors gained traction. I don’t think the place started the rumors — it probably started from whisperings by the same people who spouted them in the previous months — but it’s a very important site in Sejun history. SGA, as it shortened itself (based on its Korean initials), was hosted on the (still-existent) Daum Cafe service, a place where anyone can make their own community. Think of it as a mix between a web forum and Reddit. But SGA paid host to a curious image of an incomplete TVXQ. Taken from the same storybook that started the mess, the picture depicts 4 members of the original TVXQ — U-Know Yunho (whose name I should note is misspelled in the picture as "Yunno"), Xia Junsu, Micky Yoochun, and Max Changmin — but where Jaejoong should be, a stranger is in his place. As this picture was on the front page of the Seryun Sejun Official Anti Cafe, this stranger was purported to be none other than Sejun, who would take Jaejoong’s spot in TVXQ.

The day after SGA's founding, SM stated to news outlets that they wouldn’t be changing out anyone. At the time, the rumor was still new, so with SM's statement it looked like it was starting to cool down. TVXQ fans were still worried, though, and they were still flaunting the "5 - 1 = 0" mentality. (Silly TVXQ fans, that's not how math works!) But on November 21, 2004, something happened that would set the scandal aflame.

The Yoochun Crying Incident, and the Endless Rumor Mill

The 326th episode of Inkigayo, a show where K-pop artists come to perform and promote their songs, was aired on the 21st of November 2004. One of the many highly regarded artists appearing on that day was TVXQ, who sang their song "I Believe" — but during the performance, Yoochun burst into tears. Not just domestic fans, but international fans got worried — what could have driven Yoochun to tears? The answer that many Korean fans came to was that it was the member rotation. From this point, things got serious.

Sejun became the TVXQ fandom's number one enemy in the blink of an eye. Not only was he going to replace Jaejoong, he had also made Yoochun cry! Everyone wanted to know who this menace was, and they flooded to SGA, making it reach 1,000 members by the 22nd. Some fans were enraged — like any good anti, Sejun's detractors made disparaging nicknames, the most common of which being Segyun (meaning "virus" in Korean). Some used a calmer, more polite approach to protect TVXQ, believing the rumor, while skeptics kept their heads on the ground. Others thought more positively of Sejun, though they were not the majority by far. What's definite is that a large amount of Cassies were under the impression that this was happening — there were pictures of this interloper, letters apparently written by members' friends, even news articles seemingly confirming it. (We'll get to those later.) It was an emergency situation.

But the funniest part of this is the rumor mill. The most consistent claim was that Sejun was Chinese, due to SM saying in another statement that they were planning to add a Chinese member. Sometimes Sejun was the son of Lee Soo-man, founder of SM Entertainment and number two enemy of Cassies at this point. There was that one post that claimed Jaejoong was in a coma and that 2 Cassies had ended their own lives? And according to one Naver KnowledgeIN post, Jaejoong joined YG after being replaced by Sejun. Then there was Makkang Joongi, someone who I couldn't fit into the main section. Makkang Joongi had already been floating around before the rotation rumors, and after them he made a bit of a comeback as another potential replacer. This "Makkang" figure was actually the actor Lee Joongi, who was an SM trainee when TVXQ was being planned. From this, p...

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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/EnclavedMicrostate on 2024-03-05 05:38:49.

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TW: Bullying

Before we begin, a glossary of terms for those who may need one. In particular, 'graduation' (a voluntary retirement of a given VTuber identity, whether indie or corporate) will come up a lot; the other specific term is '[Virtual] Livers' (rhyming with 'divers'), Nijisanji's specific term for its VTubers.

Writing this in early March 2024, chances are that the name 'Nijisanji' will ring a bell if you have engaged with just about any online space with even the slightest connection to weeb fandoms in the last few weeks. The scandal resulting from the termination of Nijisanji English's Selen Tatsuki on 7 February has become a matter of considerable attention reaching well outside the VTuber bubble, and may well hang over the agency for the rest of its existence. But it's worth remembering that this was not the first scandal to rock Nijisanji, and especially not the first to revolve around its international branches. The recent blow-up has some rather older precedents.

Where did Nijisanji come from?

On 29 November 2016, tech startup Activ8 debuted Kizuna AI, voiced and acted by Kasuga Nozomi, as the first self-proclaimed 'Virtual YouTuber'. Unbeknownst to her creators, their apparent dominance of the medium was not to last. AI's time as the face of the industry was to end in flames in 2019, as Activ8's attempts to follow through on their original vision of the 'eternal idol' ran up against a fandom that had developed its own set of expectations about VTubing, driven by the proliferation of new VTuber personas that had become inextricably tied to the talents behind them. And at the arguable forefront of that movement was Nijisanji.

Nijisanji, officially styled NIJISANJI and often informally stylised as 2434 (ni shi san shi), is the brainchild of Riku Tazumi (born c.1996), who dropped out of his studies at Waseda University in 2017 to establish Ichikara Inc, and set to work developing a Live2D tracking app, offering a much cheaper and less labour-intensive alternative to the full-body studio 3D then in vogue. On 11 January 2018, Ichikara publicly unveiled Nijisanji, the name of its official app, and opened auditions; eight successful applicants debuted from 8 to 16 February. Nijisanji's bursting onto the scene with Live2D arguably kicked off modern VTubing as we know it, leading competitors like Cover to copy the format, and paving the way for an eventual explosion in the number of independent VTubers as the cost of entry continued to fall. Aggregator site Userlocal would claim that there were over 1000 VTubers by the end of March, and 6000 by the end of the year; 61 belonged to Nijisanji. (source).

We could get bogged down in early Nijisanji history forever, but the meat of this story requires us to leave Japan and 2018 behind and move away in both space and time. Before we get to that, though, why do Japanese VTuber agencies set up overseas operations, anyway?

Why expand overseas?

Even today, the exact limit of the Japanese market for VTubers is not really known, but from the very beginning, the industry has been keenly aware both of the eventual limits of the domestic space and the potential room for growth in foreign markets that will be receptive to Japanese cultural exports. Rarely has a media company sought to have less of an audience. But we also ought to account for the fact that a lot of VTuber agencies have their origins as tech startups, where you get a lot of initial funding and then need to find a way to become profitable before it runs out. Overseas expansion carries with it a certain amount of risk, but when there is only so much money before it all runs out, those are risks that may need taking.

Where to first?

If you look at the history of the major VTuber ventures, it is notable that their first priority of expansion has usually been China, then other Asian regions, and then finally the English-language market, if they ever get there. Regional markets are just easier logistically (both in terms of timezone difference and in terms of shipping for physical goods), and presumed to be more predictable in terms of spending, and historically, the largest of these markets has been the Chinese one. Activ8 did some limited English outreach with Kizuna AI, but their experiment with Multiple AI explicitly included one voice actor to serve as her Mandarin voice. Hololive's overseas expansion went in the order China -> Indonesia -> English. Brave Group, whose modus operandi has often revolved around buying up existing ventures rather than introducing its own, acquired the Chinese agency MUGEN-LIVE in 2022, and only started an English-language branch with V4Mirai the year after. What I'm saying is that we in the Anglosphere have tended to be a pretty distant, fourth-tier concern for the Japanese VTuber industry. Nijisanji would be no exception.

Only Nijixon could go to China

When I earlier wrote that Nijisanji debuted 61 Livers in its first 10 months, that was not entirely true. Nijisanji had licensed its app and its branding to a different company, who proceeded to launch Nijisanji Shanghai and Nijisanji Taipei, each of 8 members, at the end of August 2018. In other words, some 77 people signed on to become official Nijisanji talents that year.

Trying to find out what exactly happened to 二次三次虚拟主播企划 (er ci san ci xuni zhubo qihua, or 'Nijisanji Virtual Streamer Project'; evidently sometimes shortened to '"Nijisanji" Project') is tricky given the relative lack of attention from back in the day and the retroactive scrubbing of a lot of material. Thanks to /u/kirandra I was put on to this writeup concerning Nijisanji Shanghai, but this too is a rather later retrospective. Probably the only comprehensive timeline comes from the relevant page on Chinese ACGN wiki Moegirl.org.cn, which has no citations. So, bear in mind that the following is pretty dry and summative because I have to work with what I could find.

On 8 July 2018, a Facebook page for Nijisanji Taipei emerged, with a cover image featuring silhouettes of its eight members. The project would be formally announced on the 17th on Facebook (focussing on Taipei), Bilibili (focussing on Shanghai), and Weibo (ditto) with auditions open until the 27th. Over the course of the next few weeks, promo images would be teased until, on 24 August, both branches formally began debuting talents.

The debut announcement simply said that Nijisanji had partnered with unspecified 'local company/ies' (在地企業), something which may at the time have been seen as innocuous but which, with the benefit of hindsight, was a bit of a major red flag. Per the summary by Shitantan in the linked writeup, it very quickly became apparent that the quality of models in both instances was noticeably poorer than what was on offer from Nijisanji's main branch. Things got worse after debut, as rumour had it that agency management were abusive towards their talents, linked to a continual wave of graduations from the Shanghai branch which began in November with the exit of Siddel. By March 2019, only one of eight remained, Saitania Liun Linse, and her graduation had already been announced and scheduled for that June (in the event, she brought it forward to 10 May). In mid-February, Monmon would be the first Taipei member to graduate.

The news then came, in late March or early April 2019, that 'Nijisanji' Project's affiliation with Ichikara would cease, and the remaining seven members of Nijisanji Taipei, along with Saitania, would rebrand as VEgo. This was formally announced on 2 April on both Weibo (this was their final post on the site) and Facebook, although the process of rebranding had started a little earlier. VEgo trundled along for another year, but continued losing members until the final one, Talency, left on 31 March 2020, having been alone at the agency since the departure of Siarurin on 8 February. And so came the end of Nijisanji's first overseas foray. Whatever specific events behind the scenes caused all these exits may never be known at this point, but clearly neither the setup nor the management of the two branches was done with particularly great competence.

Tangent: It is commonly asserted across several sites, primarily wikis (including Moegirl, Chinese Wikipedia, and the Virtual YouTubers Wiki on Fandom.com), that Nijisanji's partner was the Japanese-owned, Taiwan-centred influencer and marketing firm, Capsule Inc., with considerable inconsistency over whether it was the 'core' business in Taiwan, its (now-defunct) Hong Kong subsidiary, ...

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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/lupinedreaming on 2024-03-04 18:49:23.

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The Beginning of the Journey:

Allow me to set the scene: It is the late 2000s. It is after school, and you are a young teen with too much internet access and no social life. What do you do? You go visit one of your favorite forums to lurk on — phantomoftheopera.com.

You browse around for a bit, trying to decide what thread you’d like to read. You settle on one that’s something about a hidden plot and symbolism in the 2004 adaptation of the Phantom of the Opera musical.

As you begin to read, you are very confused. The author of this thread is talking about lens flares, lighting, and camera angles all pointing to a secret, secondary plot hidden within the movie. All of this, the OP says, was completely intentional on the director’s part. Even though you are at an age where you’ll believe some pretty far fetched stuff, this still sounds TOO out there for you.

Unknowingly, you have stumbled across what has infamously become known in the POTO fandom as the Hidden Plot.

Explaining the Hidden Plot (Kind of):

You may be asking, “What exactly IS the Hidden Plot?”

Good question, and one that is a little complicated to answer due in part to the fact that many sites that hosted threads about the Hidden Plot are now lost to the internet sands of time. It seems they can’t even be accessed via the Wayback Machine. (Trust me, I tried.)

So, I’ve done my best to cobble together an overview based on the recollections of POTO fans who were there when this theory was being actively posted, as well as info provided in this Google doc, which has direct quotes from the author of the Hidden Plot. The doc was helpfully provided by glassprism on Tumblr (thank you!).

I have made sense of the Hidden Plot based on the above linked doc, this post from rjdaae, and a summary of the Hidden Plot on the FFnet bio seemingly written by the main author of the theory. I’m not going to link her bio so no one leaves her mean comments.

A Summary of the Hidden Plot:

The basic idea of this fan theory is that there is a second, deeper story embedded into the 2004 POTO movie. This story is conveyed through cinematography, lighting, clothing, sets, the placement of props, and more. The Hidden Plot is as follows:

Erik is literally the King of Music. What does that mean? Well, I’m not sure what it means beyond the fact that he feels he is in charge of the opera house, but I think there’s some supernatural element. Christine is his Queen of Music, naturally.

Speaking of a supernatural element, in the Hidden Plot, the “Phantom” is not a persona that Erik uses. Oh, no, the Phantom is a literal evil spirit that possesses Erik sometimes.

Raoul factors into this by being a Priest of Light (I’m also not sure what that means) and is … ERIK’S BROTHER!! Yep.

Somehow, Christine and Raoul save Erik from the clutches of the evil spirit, and Christine and Erik become King and Queen of Music and go off into the light. (Or something like that.)

Wait … What? Where Did the Theory Author Get This Stuff From?

Like I mentioned earlier, apparently this Hidden Plot is revealed through EXTREMELY subtle “clues.”

I’ll give a couple examples of the theory author’s own words, which were compiled in the Google doc:

Evidence for Erik being King of Music:

“** ERIK: “Since the moment I first heard you sing, I have needed you with me to serve me to sing, for my music, my music”

“** These also seem like key words that Erik is king of music. This is his kingdom. He wants her to serve him as his queen, to sing for him, and he uses "me"--first person, showing Phantom is gone. (Kings send a servant {or more} to do their bidding and bring s person to them for an audience, just as what happened when the Phantom went to collect Christine and bring her to the king. The Don Juan song shows that is what happened.)”

Example of using the movie’s lighting to hint at the Hidden Plot:

“** When he helps her out of the boat, a long ray of blue light goes across her head, followed by another blue ray of light going through his middle--his heart (spirit). (This isn't just about being a reflection from the light—because if it were it should logically have happened many more times all the times they showed white light, and didn’t. It happens other times in story, and always in the same places on their bodies, sometimes without any white light showing.) Also, as he sings to her "Turn your face away from the garish light of day"--another blue line of light goes across his back (his middle, where his heart would be).”

Evidence that Raoul is Erik’s brother:

“** Because the white horse is symbolic of Raoul and they made a point of putting it next to the family crests in Erik’s lair, I believe this is a clue showing Raoul is a relation (Erik’s brother), and that Erik is actually a de Chagny. Count de Chagny to be exact.”

What Are the Origins of the Hidden Plot? Who Came Up With It?

I thought that the Hidden Plot originated circa 2007-2009, which is when I was actively lurking on POTO.com and saw it pop up there.

However, it appears to date back further than this.

According to rjdaae and this forum thread, the Hidden Plot first popped up shortly after the 2004 film. Its first home was on the WB message boards, and then moved to different forums across the internet. As I mentioned earlier, it appears that all of these forums are now gone, and all that remains of the Hidden Plot are pieces saved in the aforementioned Google doc and people’s recollections of threads discussing the Hidden Plot. But I digress.

As for who came up with the Hidden Plot, according to ya-chai 2 in this forum thread, two unnamed people first came up with the Hidden Plot, but its most fervent advocate and writer was someone who used to go by the username Honeyphan.

However, the idea that it was created by two other people shpuld be taken with a grain of salt, as that’s the only source I’ve found saying the theory was made by someone other than Honeyphan.

At any rate, who IS Honeyphan? Based on old profiles of hers I found, she is/was a huge fan of the 2004 POTO film and created lots of fanfic and photomanips for it. She appears to be a pleasant enough person and a very dedicated fan with some unusual inclinations toward the conspiratorial, if the Hidden Plot is anything to go by.

What was the Fan Reaction to This?

Largely the fan reaction seemed to be, and still is, skeptical amusement. POTO fans generally do not seem to hate the Hidden Plot but find it very silly and entertaining.

However, based on fans’ recollections, there was a group of very dedicated people who discussed and espoused this theory.

Quoting again from ya-chai 2 again, it sounds like proponents of the Hidden Plot might have brought their passion into the real world:

“At one point there were supposedly sessions where forum members met at each other's houses to discuss it. That's all I know about that.

“I do know that both Gerard Butler and Patrick Wilson were asked by members of the WB forum if they were aware of any hidden story. Both actors denied knowing anything about a so called hidden story.”

If you’re a very charitable and understanding person, you might be wondering why the Hidden Plot had any attention at all. After all, there are lots of POTO AUs out there, and this could pass as one.

The reason why it has gotten so much attention over the years is very well explained in this post by ancientphantom: “What differentiated it from regular shipping and fanfic-writing was A) the extreme insistence that it was actually part of the movie and not invented by fans, and B) the willingness to create “evidence” out of the most ridiculous details, including the timing of random lens flares, what shoes everyone is wearing, how we should interpret hairstyles, and of course the memorable Stockinggate.”

What Can We Conclude from All of This?

My general takeaway is that the Hidden Plot is an early example of something we’ve seen in other fandoms in more recent years — intense fans insisting that a conspiracy theory surrounding their favorite piece of media IS real. I think the best example of this phenomenon is the Johnlock Conspiracy.

The Johnlock Conspiracy actually has a lot in common with the Hidden Plot, imo, in that proponents of both pointed to subtle clues planted in cinematography, decor, etc., which revealed the “true” story.

But yeah, that’s about it! That’s what I could dig up about the Hidden Plot.

If you’d like to see some additional insight from POTO fans who were there when this was being written, you can check out the comments of this write up that I also posted on r/box5

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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/EnclavedMicrostate on 2024-03-04 06:34:11.

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Welcome back to Hobby Scuffles!

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As always, this thread is for discussing breaking drama in your hobbies, offtopic drama (Celebrity/Youtuber drama etc.), hobby talk and more.

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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/EnclavedMicrostate on 2024-02-26 05:01:11.

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Welcome back to Hobby Scuffles!

Once again, a reminder to check out the Best Of winners for 2023!

Please read the Hobby Scuffles guidelines here before posting!

As always, this thread is for discussing breaking drama in your hobbies, offtopic drama (Celebrity/Youtuber drama etc.), hobby talk and more.

Reminders:

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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/EnclavedMicrostate on 2024-02-19 05:01:05.

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Welcome back to Hobby Scuffles!

Once again, a reminder to check out the Best Of winners for 2023!

Please read the Hobby Scuffles guidelines here before posting!

As always, this thread is for discussing breaking drama in your hobbies, offtopic drama (Celebrity/Youtuber drama etc.), hobby talk and more.

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Hogwarts Legacy discussion is still banned.

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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/maverden on 2024-02-16 14:17:15.

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I can't tell you how excited I am to make one of those r/hobbydrama posts with an incomprehensible title that makes perfect sense by the end.

In my previous post, I gave a broad overview of some of the stranger parts of the history of Neopets, going back pretty much to the site's founding. Now I'm back again, to document some newer drama that's unfolded over the past year-and-a-bit. But first, some background.

What is Neopets? I went over this quite extensively in my previous post, so please refer to that if you want a detailed rundown. In brief, Neopets is a browser game, founded in late 1999, in which you create virtual pets and explore the fictional world of Neopia through them. The site has changed ownership several times over its history, which I'll discuss later.

Neopets is akin to a sandbox game. There are many different activities which can be explored separately from each other. Most players dabble in a bunch of different things, but many also have one or two aspects of the game that they're especially involved in. New content gets released daily, and for a site with 24 years of history that's a lot of content.

A few notes that will become relevant:

TNT: Short for The Neopets Team, the group who work on the game. Includes programmers, artists, moderators, and so on - even a company lawyer at one point. Someone in the comments of my previous post described the relationship between TNT and the players as parasocial. While this was more true 10-20 years ago, it remains a good descriptor - players have an odd fascination with the various staff members and their roles. At its best, this creates a sort of synergy, with memes and in-jokes forming a bond between players and staff.

Neopoints: Abbreviated NP, the in-game currency. Mainly used for buying and selling items. To provide a sense of scale, a casual player might get 20,000-50,000 NP per day from dailies. In many ways, it's significantly easier to earn NP now than in earlier years of the site.

Items: Many parts of Neopets revolve around obtaining different items, which you can keep in your inventory (which has limited capacity) or store in your safety deposit box (which is effectively infinite and protects you from random events). Items can be bought and sold using NP. Some items can be bought from NPC shops, others are available from other sources. Users can also buy or sell items to each other.

Some item types include books, which you can read to your pet (but each can only be read once); food, wearable items to customize your pet's appearance, paint brushes to change your pet's color and aesthetic, weapons for battling, and stamps and other collectable items. These last two categories will be major points of this post. Stamps can be put into a stamp album, and other users can view your collection. The stamp album is divided into different pages, each following a theme, and each stamp occupies a specific spot on a specific page. Currently there are 43 pages, with 25 stamps each (although not all pages are complete - which is to say, there are spots for which no stamp currently exists).

Items have numerical rarity levels, which will also be a focal point several times in this writeup. I'll put a brief explanation here; skip this quoted block if you don't care about the technical details.

Items with rarity 1-99 are buyable from the main, NPC-run shops. Items appear (restock) in these main shops at semi-random intervals several times an hour. The higher an item's rarity, the less often it appears. Rarity 99 (r99) items barely ever show up, and as such can be very expensive on the secondary market

Items with rarity 101-179 are "Special", a broad category that refers to any items not available from the main shops. These items may be obtained from dailies, events or plots, random events, and a variety of other sources. The vast majority of Special items are r101 - since there's no distinction between items in this rarity range, the dev team can afford to be lazy here. There are a few other rarity categories, but they won't become important here.

Most aspects of the game have a wide difficulty curve. In other words, activities are very easy to get into, but become very, very, very hard to excel in beyond a certain point.

Want to read books to your pet? There are about 300 books priced at 1000 NP or less. You'll probably get 2 or 3 books for free just doing your dailies. But if you want to get your pet on the monthly high-score table for the number of (unique) books read? Be prepared to spend several years and hundreds of millions of NP just to get to the very bottom of the top 100.

Want to collect avatars, which are basically secret achievements that double as icons you can use on the on-site messageboards, the Neoboards? You can rack up like 60 in an afternoon with a bit of clicking. Want to, again, get on the monthly high-score table - which comes with its own avatar? Better get to playing those old Flash games really well, because avatar scores are absurdly hard.

Want to collect stamps? Again, you'll probably pick up a few doing your dailies. Want to get all 25 stamps on a single page and earn the associated avatar for that page? That sound you're faintly hearing is the entire playerbase laughing at you while also sobbing.

Now, this all sounds like a good way to keep your players motivated - after all, there are always more goals to strive for! But consider how both the demographics and competitors have evolved over time.

Back in the 2000s and early 2010s, we were all elementary and middle school kids making our first accounts. We had all the time in the world to pour into getting really good at a game. And Neopets' competitors - other browser games - all had more or less the same idea; just think of the kind of dedication people (still) put into Runescape. But the Neopets playerbase now is pretty much the same as it was back then (albeit dwindled a lot). Most people have been playing a looong time, and we're adults with jobs and kids. We no longer have the time, or indeed the energy, to work as hard as we used to on something that's supposed to be fun. The gaming market has evolved, too - mobile games reign supreme on the casual gaming scene, and that simple gameplay and achievable goals are what Neopets now has to compete with if it wants to keep its players - or Fyora willing, get new players.

Players leave, but very few new ones join, so the number of active players keeps declining. Among other problems, this means that anything valuable on a dead account - be it desirable pets or rare items - gets removed from the potential pool of circulation. So that old retired item you have your eye on will just keep getting rarer as the people who might sell it to you stop playing. Add to that the problem of wealthy players artificially driving up prices by buying and hoarding loads of valuable items, and the lack of money sinks that would remove NP from the player economy, and the site has a serious inflation issue.

How bad? Just between 2021 and 2023, the price of many desirable items increased 2-3 times, or more. People who spent years saving for an expensive stamp or powerful weapon found the object of their desire now selling for twice what it was just a few months ago. Once again: achievable goals are fun, impossible goals aren't.

TNT clearly saw this problem. And the way they're choosing to deal with it is at once extremely obvious and absolutely bonkers.

Give the People What They Want

One of the oldest recurring annual events on Neopets is the Advent Calendar, which runs for the entire month of December. Every day, users are treated to a short seasonal animation taking place somewhere in Neopia, along with a small sum of NP and 2-3 items. The prizes are different each day, and as a rule, those prizes are new items made specifically for the Advent Calendar, as opposed to preexisting items. Most prizes are junk that go straight into your safety deposit box, but it's still a popular site event - because who'd argue with free stuff and cute daily animations?

(The next few paragraphs have a number of links; first to Neopets itself, and then to Jellyneo, a major fansite. While most pages on Neopets require an account to view, this doesn't seem to be a problem for the ones I'm linking here.)

In December 2022, the Advent Calendar started as normal, but people quickly realized it was a bit... different. The animations were much simpler than past years. Rather than 10- to 30-second videos from recent previous years, we were instead treated to the likes of animated comic pages and short loops. This wasn't too surprising since 2021 had already started the trend of simpler animations. But some days didn't have animations at all, opting instead for mobile wallpapers or even printable coloring pages. This was well-received overall - the longer animations were starting to look pretty janky, so shor...

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This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/lynndotpy on 2024-02-13 23:14:13.

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Xpost from another Halo sub, with some changes.

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If you know Halo fans, you know they're always pissed about the games.

The hatred towards 343 Industries for their releases are well documented. But you might be surprised to learn that controversies did not start with 343i's first release, Halo 4.

Nor did the hatred start with Halo: Reach for its armor abilities and retcons.

Nor did the hatred start with Halo 3 for its equipment and lcak of a PC release.

Nor did the hatred start with Halo 2 for its Arbiter missions, vehicle hijacking, and buggy, butt-cheek ridden PC release.

Nor did the hatred start with the release of the first game, Halo CE.

No, Halo was hated by Halo fans ever since Bungie left Apple to become a Microsoft exclusive.

This is the untold story of the origin of Halo gamer rage. One of a fanbase alienated, decades ago.

The story of Halo, the mysterious sequel to Marathon

The context: Bungie's devout followers were Mac gamers, excited to see the followup of Oni and Marathon. Halo was touted as a dramatic technological leap forward, hyped with ARGs and worldbuilding.

But before it was Halo, it was the untitled "Blam!" project. Scant leaks slipped through the lips of NDA-bound playtesters.

It was 1999 when Steve Jobs introduced Jason Jones to debut Halo at MacWorld.. Over the coming year, screenshots of a mysterious world with the best graphics people had ever seen would drop in increasing numbers, with scant lore drops, with promises of a technologically advanced simulated environment.

Being Halo fans, there was much lore speculation about Halo and how it might tie to Marathon.

You can see in the archives of halo.bungie.org how dedicated these fans were. There's analyses of quotes, theories trying to answer "who's that cyborg?", and, of course, the Cortana Letters.

The community was composed of ravenous, thriving, technical Mac gamers. This was a time when people had their own websites, running on their own servers, built by hand from HTML and CSS and gifs running on kilobyte modems. The computer was a shrine which connected people to an underground world of adherents.

It might be silly to think of now, but at the time, people were buying the best Mac desktops they could so they could run Halo, with their old computers running mail-servers and web-servers, if they were so lucky as to have DSL.

For many, Halo was the shining point of the optimism which encapsulated the coming year 2000. Un-fricking believable things were coming. This is how PC Gamer described it, October 1999:

The game is Halo and our first look at it blew our minds. It's set in a future in which the human race is on the run from a ruthless alien race called the Covenant. As billions perish on humanity's colonized planets, a human military unit decides to make a last stand on an ancient ring-shaped structure thousands of miles in diameter. The surface of this bizarre stellar body is a lush natural environment. It's on this "halo" that mankind will stage its greatest battle.

and

Halo has us on the edge of our seats. It might well be the next huge advance in multiplayer action games.

Of all the mysteries, there was exactly one thing people knew for certain: Halo for the Mac was going to revolutionize the real-time strategy genre.

Then, Bungie ruined Halo.

It started as as a string of pains and rumors. Myth wiping hard-drives, Bungie tight on cash, rumors about acquisitions, and all the while Microsoft was looking for something to make it feasible to make a name in the console space.

But the rumors were quickly confirmed.

To this day, this is still considered the darkest day for Mac gaming.

Announced June 19th, 2000, Microsoft bought Bungie and bought Halo to be an exclusive for their new console, the "X box".

The vitriol was voluminous. Kilobytes of gamer range spewed at Bungie from all directions. People felt they knew Bungie personally, and they felt betrayed.

Over 12 years later, Mac gamers would describe that day as "apocalyptic".

The IRC logs

To address the kilobytes of vitriol spewing at them across message boards, emails, and IRC, Bungie hosted a moderated Q&A on IRC. They opened the chat moments at a time to respond to questions.

The chatlog is here:

Give it a read. Takes range from skeptical to unhinged, unbridled anger. My favorite is Adezj, with their typo-ridden takes:

5:31 PM: Adezj -Why O Why didnt i take the blue pill and stayed in wonderland  
                    when Halo was going to be released on PC and Mac?!

Really, read the chatlogs. Keep in mind, this was the least vitriolic place people were

When Halo ultimately released on November 15th, 2001, it wasn't to longtime Bungie fans. The Halo fanbase that spawned from there was majority new players, who did not even know Halo was once an RTS for the Mac.

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TLDR: When Bungie sold to Microsoft, the excitement for Halo turned to the vitriolic gamer rage we know today. Halo fans have hated Halo since before Halo even had a name.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/error521 on 2024-02-12 17:45:36.

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With the heated political (and literal) climate that the world finds itself in these days, people more and more find themselves wanting to take up the role of an activist, and try to make a real difference in the world. This kind of thing always tends to come and go in waves, and the Trump administration definitely brought into full force. The pandemic only exemplified this, doubly so when the 2020 BLM protests kicked off and every company on the planet was pressured (...I guess?) into posting a black screen on Twitter and removing episodes of sitcoms that had vaguely satirical uses of blackface.

Before those protests eventually settled down once they achieved their ultimate goal of getting Cleveland's voice actor on Family Guy replaced, one company that decided to throw their hat into the activism ring was Epic Games, who decided to address it within their uber-popular multiplayer game, Fortnite. I'm sure anyone reading this has at least heard of Fortnite, but for those who only know it as "that thing all the kids are into these days", well, I'll give some context.

Fortnite is an enormously successful online...well, it's a lot of things, but nominally it's a "battle royale" third-person shooter where 100 players are dumped onto a map and have to gather weapons and loot to be the last one standing. It's got a fairly distinct, cartoony art-style, no real gore or blood, and all those darned Twitch streamers swarmed to it like flies, meaning it is enormously popular with kids and young teenagers in particular. Naturally, Epic has heavily captailzed on this by including things like popular dances (which has caused no small share of controversy) and crossovers with popular IPs - both trendy and vintage - like DC, Marvel, Star Wars, and Rick & Morty. So if you ever wanted to see, Darth Vader, Rick Sanchez, Catwoman, and Iron Man get into drive-bys while Eminem plays on the car radio, you know where to look. Besides GTA modding, anyway.

However, that doesn't do justice to just how much of an insane, surreal fever dream Fortnite actually is. The game radically changes every other week with new modes, weapons, features, and radical map changes. You can go away for a month and come back to a game with a completely overhauled map, new weapons, and about a million gameplay changes, most of which will, again, completely change within the next month. The game constantly gets new events, including ones with the aforementioned crossover IPs, but also weirder stuff like in-game screenings of movies (including screenings of the Christopher Nolan films Batman Begins, Inception, and The Prestige), digital concerts with artists like Marshmello, Ariana Grande, and Travis Scott, and occasionally splashy, promoted events where they find some elaborate justification for nuking the entire map. If you remember that "Metaverse" shit companies were hyped about a few years ago, Fortnite is arguably not far off from what they were trying to accomplish.

So, with the plans to broaden what Fortnite could really be and a want to help in some small way to improve society, Fortnite decided to make a big statement by...removing police cars from the game. Which...okay.

Anyway, after this truly monumental step, Epic decided they weren't done. They decided they were going to host a discussion viewable in-game, titled "We The People" starring Killer Mike of Run the Jewels fame and Van Jones, Jemele Hill and Elaine Welteroth of "I think I saw them on my Twitter timeline once" fame.

You can watch that here and putting aside all political opinions, it's really hard to ignore that this event was extremely dull, especially for the theoretical kids and pre-teens who would be watching it. It's such a dry, uneventful conversation, there's nothing to make it more interesting or interactive than just watching a YouTube video, and it's not at all presented in a way that would be easy for kids to understand or relate to. Do you really think the 10-year old who begged their mom to buy a Stormtrooper skin is gonna be deeply invested in the conversation about what percentage of products at retail should be from black owned businesses? But you did get an emote for signing in when it was on, so at least there's that.

Anyway, as you might expect, instead of sitting their white asses down and listening, players instead just literally threw tomatoes at the screen and spammed emotes and pings everywhere to disrupt the experience. You could get mad at them acting like a bunch of 12-year olds, but, well, most of them were probably literally 12. And I believe all that happened during the aforementioned movie screenings as well, so it wasn't exactly exclusive to this or something Epic couldn't have anticipated.

There was another event later in the month talking specifically about voter suppression that I can't find any footage of, which probably tells you about how much interest it gathered. Regardless it's clear that this whole approach needed a rethink, something more interactive, something easier for kids to get invested in. And one year later, Epic...tried a lot harder, I'll give them that.

So Martin Luther King Jr. Did civil rights, had a dream, not a fan of capitalism, got shot in the head by someone who may or may not have been working for the government. So, in August, out of the blue, the world was greeted with a Fortnite trailer elegantly titled "Celebrate MLK: TIME Studios Presents March Through Time in Fortnite". It's a trailer of these goofy cartoon characters walking through protests and a MLK museum while dramatic music and the "I have a dream" speech plays. It's almost impossible to take seriously, and as you might expect the general reaction was bafflement and disbelief.

Can you imagine a world where kids see MLK and are like "Oh yeah! that's the guy from Fortnite!"

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the amount of Victory Royales they have.

The Fortnite MLK event is going to reduce the amount of 12 year olds calling you racial slurs over mic by 27%.

He's turning in his grave so fast he could power a city

Pouring out my chug jug in solidarity

It should have been Malik instead, not only he was for armed resistance.. he was a camper too

the intent behind the Fortnite MLK event doesnt distract from the fact that i just had to type the words "the Fortnite MLK event"

That said, while it was largely met with mockery and derision, there were a few defenders. After all, despite how silly it may seem, maybe it could still be a great way to teach kids about race. So let's talk about the actual event itself.

As the title implied, the event seemed to largely be spawned by TIME Magazine apparently inspired from when they did a similar thing as a Virtual Reality experience, with some of Fortnite's community map makers being roped into it. It was also pushed by Epic in-game quite heavily, so they were clearly enthusiastic about the idea.

Whoever it was that was most involved, it was clear that they did genuinely learn a lot from Fortnite's last attempt to tackle racism - it's much more interactive and engaging. Instead of just watching a boring video, you explore a map filled with all sorts of historical landmarks, footage of MLK Jr. giving the speech, lots of little bits of information and trivia to read, plus quizzes and puzzles to complete. It felt like actually exploring an interactive museum instead of the equivalent of your teacher pulling up a YouTube video while she goes outside for a smoke.

Overall, while we can question if Fortnite is an appropriate platform for these kind of heavy topics, this event overall went over much better, and was considered a respectful and educational tribu - Nah, I'm kidding, it was a fucking mess.

The most obvious problem was that Fortnite is a game that has a lot of crossovers, both with real-life celebrities and fictional characters. And, shocker, a lot of those crossovers come off as hilariously out of place when contrasted with such a serious, real-life topic. Like, you ever thought you'd see Rick Sanchez and the Xenomorph solemnly reading about the civil rights movement?

Oh, and how about those emotes? Now, Epic had some foresight here, and disabled some of the ones that could most obviously used to be offensive like [facepalming and laughing emojis](https://www.reddit....

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