This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/GoshDarnBatgirl on 2025-04-30 18:16:30+00:00.

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Sometimes dead is better.

- Stephen King

On rare occasions, a hobby drama occurs that's hardly a drama at all. There is no uproar. There's not really even any Discourse. In these rare moments, a fandom reaches an equilibrium where everyone experiences only one, shared emotion: confusion.

This writeup concerns one such incident. Today I'll be providing an autopsy on the very, very brief life and re-death of Shepard's Death Statue.

Note: This write-up references a major in-narrative event that occurs at the beginning of Mass Effect 2 (released in 2010 and re-released in 2021). It's impossible to do this write-up without referencing that event. For those reasons, I've decided not to use spoiler tags. Proceed at your own risk.

Important Background

This Incident involves tie-in merch for an event that happens in-game, so here's a quick background.

Mass Effect is a series of science-fiction RPGs produced by BioWare. In the original trilogy of games, players control a customizable character - Commander Shepard. Players can choose their Shepard's gender, backstory, class, and make decisions on their behalf in the games (including which companion NPC to romance). If players don't want to customize the appearance of their Shepard, they can choose one of the default options. To make a distinction between body types, Shepard is often described as "MaleShep" or "FemShep" in the fandom.

The BioWare Gear Store is the officially-licensed seller of merchandise for BioWare games. They sell clothing, collectibles, body pillows, and statues. Their statues were and continue to be a popular merchandise item. The Mass Effect statues typically depict popular romanceable characters or one of the default Shepards.

Shepard's Death is a dramatic scene that happens right at the beginning of the second Mass Effect game. You can watch it on YouTube for the full experience, but as a quick summary: Shepard's starship The Normandy is hit by a sudden attack from an unknown enemy. The player controls Shepard as they scramble to evacuate their crew. One crew member refuses to leave until the last moment, culminating in a dramatic moment where Shepard sacrifices themselves to save them. We see Shepard float in space as air hisses from their damaged spacesuit - the title credits slowly fading in as we watch Shepard flail and eventually go still. It's definitely a memorable moment. The BioWare Gear Store decided to make it even more memorable.

No One's Ever Really Gone

On June 12, 2023 The BioWare Gear Store added a new product listing, accompanied by a press release. You can click on those links for archived versions of each (text is also copied below) or just explore some of the photos directly:

• Imgur gallery version
• Main product listing photo
• Alternate angle
• Outside of box

I strongly recommend clicking on those links to see the actual photos of the product. Words truly fail to capture them. However, we do have some words direct from the listing:

DIE ONCE, COME BACK STRONGER

The Mass Effect Shepard’s Death Statue depicts Mass Effect 2’s dramatic opening scene: Commander Shepard expelled from a crumbling Normandy and hurtling through space to her untimely demise. Only 2,000 pieces are available worldwide and each statue comes with a Certificate of Authenticity.

The press release includes a few more descriptive details:

In that final moment, with the Normandy blasted to smithereens, Shepard found themselves adrift in the abyss of space with seemingly no hope for survival. The Mass Effect Shepard’s Death Statue captures the dramatic moment of Commander Shepard's tragic demise, leaving an indelible mark on every fan's heart.  

With impeccable attention to detail, the statue portrays a female Shepard suspended above a shattered piece of the Normandy by two transparent acrylic posts. Shepard, in her black N7 armor, is seen floating in a dynamic pose with exquisite detailing to replicate her in-game look. Likewise, the ravaged piece of the Normandy features lifelike dents and weathered details.  

The press release also gives collectors some inspo for displaying this unique piece:

Whether displayed along with your gaming collection or as a conversation starter in your living space, the statue serves as a reminder of the powerful narrative and emotional impact the Mass Effect series has had on gamers around the world.  

So...yes. We have a collectible statue depicting a beloved character's corpse as it drifts into space. Definitely a conversation starter.

The comments sections on social media posts accompanying the press release were filled with confusion and a hearty supply of quips. Many commenters thought it was a gag For the most part, this statue wasn't deemed Offensive it was just....odd*. Most of the statues on the BioWare Gear Store depict characters lounging or posing - with perhaps an occasional mid-fight pose. A monument to Shepard's dramatic demise wasn't exactly something fans were clamoring for.

**The Mass Effect fandom is never 100% in agreement so there were some rumbles. Most of the actual criticism was the lack of merchandise at the time featuring FemShep and the choice to make one of the few statues available depicting her death. For the most part, this criticism was left in comment sections, not whipped up into a call to action for BioWare.*

The Re-Death of Shepard's Death

The same day they went up, the listing and the press release were quietly removed. A statement was posted to the BioWare Gear Store's Twitter, and anyone who pre-ordered the statue was sent an email with similar language:

Hi all,

Earlier today, we announced the sale of our latest Mass Effect Shepard statue. This statue was intended to be part of a series, commemorating some of the key and most emotional moments in the series. The way we announced it did not convey that properly, nor does it give the moment in the series the credit it deserves.

As a result, we'll be pausing sales on the statue until we can share the larger plan with you.

Thank you,

BioWare Gear Store

In a poetic way, the story of the Shepard's Death statue echoes the scene it was created to capture. A sudden and unexpected moment that creates uncertainty and anticipation of what will come next. In the game, Shepard returns from the dead. In our world, that larger plan never did reveal itself. But it did certainly start a conversation.

....

References:

Polygon

Kotaku

Just Shepard Things (tumblr)

BioWare Gear Store Press Release (via the Wayback Machine)

BioWare Gear Store Product Listing (via the Wayback Machine)

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/EnclavedMicrostate on 2025-04-28 04:02:01+00:00.

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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:

• Don’t be vague, and include context. If you have a question, try to include as much detail as possible.
• Define any acronyms.
• Link and archive any sources.
• Ctrl+F or use an offsite search to see if someone's posted about the topic already.
• Keep discussions civil. This post is monitored by your mod team.

Certain topics are banned from discussion to pre-empt unnecessary toxicity. The list can be found here. Please check that your post complies with these requirements before submitting!

Previous Scuffles can be found here

r/HobbyDrama also has an affiliated Discord server, which you can join here: https://discord.gg/M7jGmMp9dn

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/hawkshaw1024 on 2025-04-23 22:11:43+00:00.

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Preview image

Content note for fascism and occasional bad language.

Today we're unpacking some incredibly stale drama from the 1960s. If you're deep into the Franco-Belgian comic book fandom, you might have encountered statements like this:

While several translations [of Astérix et les Goths] were made, including an English version in 1974, one translation for West Germany later drew criticism from the creators for including political propaganda and had to be reprinted as a result.

There is rarely any further information, just passing references that a translation "was rejected for being too extreme" or "had to be redone after complaints from the publisher." Today we'll be unpacking what, exactly, happened with this infamous first edition, and why it's so bad. Sources for this are readily available, but they tend to be in French or German; any translation errors should be assumed to be mine. I've tried to sprinkle in quotations and pictures were possible, but a lot of this will be me summarising stuff. Apologies.

A final note before we start: When I say "German" or "Germany," I mean the modern people and country. "Germani" and "Germania," meanwhile, refer to a people and a region of the ancient Roman era. This distinction matters because of nationalist myths that entangle them, and we do not cede an inch of ground to these people.

Background information

Okay, so, Germany. That's a country in central Europe. This story takes place in the 1960s, when there were two of them - a "West Germany" (capitalist democracy) and an "East Germany" (communist dictatorship.) Our story takes place in West Germany during the 1960s.

Asterix the Gaul (orig. "Astérix le Gaulois"), written by René Goscinny and illustrated by Albert Uderzo, is a French comic book franchise. It's about two Gaullish warriors, Asterix and Obelix, who live around 60 BCE and have non-historical adventures across the Roman empire. The comic began publication in 1959 and by the 1960s, it was one of the biggest things going.

Fix and Foxi and Lupo modern were comics magazines as well, but West German. You can think of them as a local variant of "Walt Disney's Comics and Stories," and they were ran by business patriarch Rolf Kauka - once known as "the German Walt Disney." From the late 1950s to the early 1970s, these were some of the most successful comics magazines in West Germany.

As for Paul Rudolf Kauka (1917-2000), he was the founder and editor-in-chief of Kauka Publishing, and he is the central character of today's story. He was a real piece of work.

Introducing: Rolf Kauka (1917-1952)

Kauka was born in eastern Germany in 1917. Before the second World War, he was as a group leader in the Hitler Youth; during that war, he served as a junior officer in the Wehrmacht. (That being the regular army.) He was eventually assigned to the Eastern Front, where he reached the rank of Oberstleutnant (First Lieutenant) and received multiple awards for exceptional performance.

After the war, he settled down in West Germany, and decided to try his hand at publishing. He got his start cranking out pulpy entertainment such as "true crime" stories, which brought him modest success. Kauka had greater ambitions, however, and he waited for an opportunity to come his way.

This opportunity arrived in the form of American comic books. Comic strips had existed before, of course, but comic books were new. They were met with general disdain - just another vile Americanism brought over by occupying soldiers, like jeans and bubblegum. Go read a real book, dummy.

Manfred Schmidt (1970): Soon after the war I got my hands on a colourful comic brought from the United States, which was called Superman. (...) I decided to start parodying this completely primitive style of storytelling so thoroughly that no one would care about such bubble-filled stupid-literature meant for illiterates.

But some people saw potential in these American-style comic books and magazines, a group which included Rolf Kauka.

Kauka's publishing empire (1953-1964)

So, he started cranking out his own comics. These had little artistic value and were heavily derivative, and most of them were one-shots. Kauka proved to have good business instincts, however. After a few false starts, he hit gold with cheeky fox twins Fix and Foxi, who would then form the core of a publishing empire. (Fix is the one with the slightly messier hair.)

They live in a society of animal-people, where they have low-stakes adventures such as picking apples, building soapbox cars, and playing pranks on city wolf Lupo. This was a big hit with the post-war German youth.

Kauka himself contributed little to the comics, but he always kept total editorial control. He was a patriarch and a small-business tyrant, who ran his business in the military style and received neither input nor criticism from his subordinates. He always claimed personal credit for everything his company did, and it would be rude if I didn't hang him with all this rope that he just gave me.

Also, every magazine opened with a "Your Rolf Kauka" column, written by him alone, and full of just... honestly, I'm not sure what to call this.

Hello friends! One can argue over whether a child stops being a child at age 10 or 14. But what then? What should we call the ex-child? Our mother's tongue has no modern word for this. We are retarded. It is embarassing, but there is no fitting word for a girl and a boy between 14 and 21. (...) The German language borrowed from the American slang here, and imported the meaningless wordlet "teenager." On one hand, you are the youth, the future of Europe - but on the other side of the medal, you are simply, dumbly, lumply, the "teenagers." (...) Have you ever thought about how much disdain and immaturity is concealed behind this imported "word creation?" (...)

50 Marks to the one who finds a way out of this conundrum and turns up a good replacement for this boring nothing. (...) Are you a bobbysoxer, a youth, a maiden, a boy, a sprocket, a young lady, a young gentleman - a teen, rowdy, young citizen, damsel, lassie? (...)

Your Rolf Kauka.

Then, in the early 1960s, Kauka Publishing reached a bulk licencing deal with Franco-Belgian publishing houses Dargaud and Dupuis, who had comics. The package included big titles such as Lucky Luke, The Smurfs, Gaston, Tintin, Spirou... and Asterix. German versions of these were released starting right away.

... I say "versions" and not "translations," because they barely resembled to the source material. The writers renamed characters, dropped and re-arranged panels, and rewrote storylines if Kauka didn't like them. They took a heavy-handed approach, even by the standards of the 1960s, but it sometimes went okay. The Kauka version of "Die Schlümpfe" (The Smurfs/Les Schtroumpfs) or "Tim und Struppi" (The Adventures of Tintin/Les Aventures de Tintin) still have their fans. They caught on, so I guess it must've worked well enough.

Where it absolutely didn't work at all was with Asterix. Those books, Kauka had apparently decided, needed to be fortified with A Message. He wasn't gonna let his workers waste their time messing around with some shortstack Frenchman when divine Germania was waiting just across the Rhine.

Siggi und Babarras (1965-1966)

So, Astérix and Obélix were resettled and renamed to "Siggi" and "Babarras," Germanic warriors. (Remember, Germanic, with a "g" as in "golf.") The first Asterix book that received a German version was Asterix and the Golden Sickle, rendered here as "Siggi und die Goldene Sichel." It was published in spring of 1965 via "Lupo modern," which was a Kauka magazine for ~~teenagers~~ eh, sprockets.

In the original story, Astérix and Obélix set out to get a new golden sickle for their druid, foiling a plot of the Lutetian prefect along the way. This also happens in the translation, but the details are. Uh. Here, let me just go over the opening page real quick.

Roughly around the turning point of history, the Germani have to desperately defend themselves against unwanted guests from all directions. Except for the small fortress of Bonnhalla, on the right side of the Rhine, all Germania is currently under occupation. There, a small group of dedicated fighters has curled up and fortified itself against the overwhelming might of the enemies.

Those leftover Germani are not under serious attack by the enemies. "Perhaps we can make use of them as allies or gladiators at some point," they think. Bonnhalla is nevertheless standing on lost ground, and all thoughts of reunification with the brothers and sisters across Germania have been buried unde...

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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/Murderbotmedia on 2025-04-22 05:25:59+00:00.

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tw: violence. lots of it. some of the videos are rough

It’s Stanley Cup season, which means it’s a good time to dust off one of the most infamous games in NHL history. But to understand why a playoff game turned into a bloodbath, even by old-school hockey standards, you have to know the background.

THE ABYSSOPELAGIC BACKGROUND:

Hockey is a team sport played on ice by people with sticks and knives on their feet, better known as ice skates. Running into other people is permitted and encouraged, within reason. Fights happen, but not as often as people think, and there are a bunch of informal rules about it. Rule infractions result in being sent for a time-out, with minor infractions lasting for 2 minutes and major infractions 5 or, more rarely, 10. Serious violations get you kicked out of the game, with potential for suspensions and fines. The National Hockey League is an international professional hockey league made up of 32 teams from Canada and the United States. It was formed in 1917 in Montreal and is widely considered to be the best hockey league in the world, with players from 18 different countries. The championship trophy is the Stanley Cup, a 34-pound 3-foot-high monster of a trophy that predates the creation of NHL by 24 years and has a long, storied history of deep reverence except for two weeks a year where people put spaghetti in it.

THE DEEP BACKGROUND:

The Detroit Red Wings are one of the oldest and most decorated teams in the NHL. Formed initially as the Detroit Cougars in 1926, they changed their name to the Detroit Red Wings in 1932 and have stuck with it (and the winged wheel logo, which...yeah) ever since. They’ve won 11 Stanley Cups, third behind Montreal and Toronto. From 1979 until 2017, they played their home games at the Joe Louis Arena.

The Colorado Avalanche, also knows as the Avs, were formed in 1995 when the Quebec Nordiques ran into serious money issues and had to be sold. The franchise moved to Colorado and the name changed. They won the Stanley Cup that same year, and have won it twice since.

THE MEDIUM BACKGROUND

The Avalanche played their first NHL game at home on October 6, 1995, against the Red Wings. It was a good game, with the Avalanche winning 3-2. No bad blood. So far, so good.

THE SHALLOW BACKGROUND

The Avalanche had a fabulous year, ending the regular seasons in a high-enough spot to make the playoffs where they advanced, round after round, to face the Red Wings in the best-of-seven 1996 Conference Finals.* The first two games saw the Avalanche win, so things were starting to get tense. The Wings had been the best team in the regular season that year, and hopes were high that the Stanley Cup drought they’d been in since 1955 would finally end.

And then it all went very wrong.

First period of the third game, Adam Foote of the Avalanche got hit hard into the boards by Red Wing Vyacheslav Koslov. It was a nasty hit, and no penalty was called.

A brief note: hockey as it is played today isn’t the same as it used to be. Enforcers** aren’t really a thing anymore because teams would rather hire players who, y’know, can help them win. Penalties for injuring or attempting to injure are called more frequently and have harsher consequences. Eye for an eye, hit for a hit isn’t nearly as prevalent as it used to be.

But! This is 1996, before the kinder, gentler style of hockey currently played evolved. The Avs were pissed, and in response, near the end of the game, Avs player Claude Lemieux sucker punched Koslov. Not cool; he got suspended for a game and fined $1000, but things were even now, right?

Right? Uh, guys?

THE INCITING INCIDENT

May 23, 1996. During the first period of game six, Lemieux checked Red Wing Kris Draper into the boards in one of the nastiest hits in hockey history. Draper left the ice with a broken jaw, cheekbone, orbital socket, nose, and a concussion. He needed reconstructive surgery and had his jaw wired shut. Lemieux was ejected and suspended for two games.

The Avalanche won the game, and went on to win the Stanley Cup.

BLOODY WEDNESDAY

March 26, 1997. It’s the fourth time the Red Wings and the Avalanche have squared off since the Draper hit and tensions are running high. And by high, I mean stratospheric. The first two games since the hit, Lemieux didn’t play due to illness, and he was only given limited ice time on the third, and thus those games had been fairly uneventful.

But this time, Lemieux was going to be back and the Wings had home ice advantage and decided to use it. Red Wings coach Scotty Bowman brought up the Draper hit to rev up the team. The Detroit News ran an op-ed comparing Lemieux to a carjacker and mocked up a wanted poster with his face on it (I could not find the actual op-ed, but there are several sources that quote from it). Extra security was called in for the Avalanche, including bomb-sniffing dogs and the whole team basically stayed locked in their hotel rooms for their own protection.

Less than five minutes into the first period, Av Brent Severyn and Red Wing Jeremy Pushor got into it. Five minutes later*** Red Wing Kirk Maltby and Av Rene Corbet scuffled. Nothing too significant; mostly the fights seemed like a pressure release. Penalties were assessed and play continued. Then, with 1 minute and 38 seconds remaining in the first period, everything went to hell.

BRAWL IN HOCKEYTOWN

Avalanche player Peter Forsberg and Red Wing Igor Larianov ran into each other in an accidentally-on-purpose collision, and when the referees went to break it up everyone else just piled on whoever was nearest. Red Wing Darren McCarty went after Lemieux hard enough that I will not be describing it. Avs goalie Patrick Roy left the net to defend his teammates, leading to a) a midair clothesline right out of the Looney Tunes and b) one of the greatest goalie fights in hockey history.**** Eventually everyone calmed down, slush was shoveled over the blood on the ice and the rest of the game was uneventful.

Just kidding. It took 15 seconds for another fight to start.

Five more fights happened in the second period; at 0:04, 3:34 (two at the same time), 7:24, and 11:26. A hockey game is 60 minutes. There were 144 penalty minutes and two ejections handed out during the game. (And again, this is old-school hockey. Nowadays the penalites would have been much, much harsher with a lot more ejections and a whole mess of fines) It was finally over and now things would settle down.

THE IMMEDIATE AFTERMATH

Things did not settle down.

On May 22, it happened again, with 234 penalty minutes assessed and a $10,000 fine to Avs coach Mark Crawford for an obscenity-filled rant.

November 11, McCarty and Lemieux fought again right after the game started.

April 1, 1998, it happened yet again, complete with goalie fight; 228 penalty minutes.

THE LONGER AFTERMATH

The Avs-Red Wings rivalry has cooled off in the past 20 years, partly because league restructuring meant they didn’t play each other very often and partly because everyone inv...

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This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/EnclavedMicrostate on 2025-04-21 04:01:47+00:00.

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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:

• Don’t be vague, and include context. If you have a question, try to include as much detail as possible.
• Define any acronyms.
• Link and archive any sources.
• Ctrl+F or use an offsite search to see if someone's posted about the topic already.
• Keep discussions civil. This post is monitored by your mod team.

Certain topics are banned from discussion to pre-empt unnecessary toxicity. The list can be found here. Please check that your post complies with these requirements before submitting!

Previous Scuffles can be found here

r/HobbyDrama also has an affiliated Discord server, which you can join here:

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/thevintagebonita on 2025-04-20 21:48:23+00:00.

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TL;DR: Imagine if Mean Girls and The Devil Wears Prada had a messy little baby in stripper heels and a Marilyn Monroe wig... and that baby grew up, started a fashion brand, then set it on fire from the inside out. That’s the energy we’re working with here.

Pinup Girl Clothing looked like the dream. Body positive, inclusive, empowering. The dresses, tops, pants, jumpsuits slapped. The community was loud and loyal. It felt like more than just a brand, it felt like a movement. I am purposely not linking to the brand because this woman doesn't deserve your interested traffic. So let's be real, this is the story of a brand that built a cult following, climbed to the top of the vintage world then belly flopped straight into a pit of drama. Let’s get into it.

The Rise of PUG

In the early 2000s, Pinup Girl Clothing was a brand new shiny thing that people couldn't take their eyes off of because they'd never seen anything like it. Laura Byrnes launched the brand with some story about designing clothes for strippers, which... sure, I guess that makes sense when she had no design or fashion experience. The brand really caught on, though and Pinup Girl Clothing carved out a lane for every retro loving chica who wanted vintage style but couldn't find it in a world where everthing vintage was (and kind of still is) a 26" waist.

PUG was giving vintage, but sexier. For women who’d never seen themselves in fashion before, especially in a scene run by skinny white girls, that was everything. It like changed people's lives overnight.

If you were into burlesque, rockabilly, retro photoshoots or just liked your clothes with a little extra flair because you're an extra person (like me), you knew PUG. It wasn’t mainstream and, honestly, it didn’t need to be. The fanbase was small but loud and they lived for every new drop. The vibe was glamorous but still felt like something you could touch. The models looked like real people and like you constantly felt this sense of belonging to something and that felt fucking good.

The fans of this brand put the owner on a pedastal and she went super power hungry mode all while claiming her husband was abusive and stealing money from her. Things seemed like they were going pretty awesome from the outside but the inside was like built of cardboard and tape.

The Cracks Begin to Show

By 2017, the sparkle of this pretty started to wear off. On the outside, PUG still looked like the dream but it was already startibng to get to full meltdown mold with accusations flying everywhere and lawsuits piled up so here's a few:

Listrak Inc. v. Pin Up Girl Clothing case #: 19GDCV00011National Commercial Recovery Inc. v. PUGF

Employees were getting let go left and right and they started talking about how crazy shit was for them working at this company and the worst part was like every single person called this their dream job. Whole departments just disappeared and even this one girl I'm in the middle of interviewing told me, that she was running an entire brand while the company kept pretending to be some buzzing. I was told that even the owner's eldest daughter quit like that's what this is about.

In another wild case, Laura Byrnes didn't pay an employee who went out in public and talked about the poor situation that the fashion industry of Los Angeles was in regards to paying people. This woman was an immigrant mother of three and when Laura Byrnes didn't pay her, she took her to court and won. Laura Byrnes, on the other hand, didn't accept this and went to sue the Department of Labor to get out of it, not once but fucking twice, losing both times.

And just to sprinkle a little more chaos on top, Laura Byrnes started calling herself the "Supreme Overlord."

That’s not a joke. She gave herself a full on villain name like she was auditioning for the next Marvel phase. I wish I was kidding.

Culture Wars and Collapse

So it wasn’t just the money getting fumbled all over the place. The brand started crashing and burning on the cultural side too and alienated an entire group of customers.

One of the worst flops in the collection in this time frame was called Opium Dreams. It looked like someone just decided to get all the Asian motifs they could find and put them on a dress and sell it. These were like stereotypical Asian prints, zero cultural awareness and a heavy dose of orientalist nonsense. Like, who looked at this and thought, “Yes, let’s run this.”

Right after that drama failed to land, there was a Chinese New Year-themed drop that crashed and burned.

People called it out, and rightfully so. They said, “Maybe don’t do this.” but instead of apologizing or learning anything, Laura Byrnes came back with the wildest response. She said it was fine because, wait for it, one of her employees was Korean.

Not Chinese. Korean. Apparently, that was supposed to make it okay. Because in her world, naming one Asian person on payroll means you get a cultural appropriation hall pass.

The internet and fan/customer base was not having it. In a first of many boycotts, and a petition started making the rounds. People were like, “Ma’am. We came here for dresses, not racism.”

Longtime fans saw it for what it was. And this was also the first time that Laura Byrnes started banning customers from the company's social media and painted herself to be a victim in all of this. She even tried to pick physical fights with customers.

Check the receipts here:

[Proudly going down in history]

[Getting silenced on socials]

[Black models trotted like slaves at auction]

All that wasn't even a tip on an iceburg of crazy.

The Micheline Pitt Lawsuit

This is where things start to take a turn for the worst and in some cases the brand could never overcome this in the eyes of some of its regular customers. Micheline Pitt, former VP and Creative Director and one of the brand’s most recognizable faces, had a very public falling out with Laura Byrnes. In a wild twist after Micheline left the company quietly, she noticed that Laura Byrnes continued to use her designs and artwork after she peaced out.

In 2017, all the lawsuit issues were settled out of court but, of course, that wasn't thend because Laura Byrnes could not let this shit go. She started private facebook groups, texts and chats dedicated to talking shit about Micheline Pitt, claiming she was the victim and everyone should believe her. What people participating in this didn't know was that there was a non-disparagement agreement as part of the settlement and Laura wasn't allowed to talk about Micheline at all.

When Micheline found out about all of this, because, of course she did, she took Laura straight back to court.

Laura's defense was barely enough to acknowledge. She presented her version of the story in which she claimed that she was the victim. The court was like, “Cool story, where’s your proof?” countering Micheline's 37 exhibits documented and continued harassment.

WHen that didn't work, Laura claimed it was about free speech and her First Amendment rights were being violated to say whatever she wanted. In full public record, the judge was like, nope, that's not how a non-dispargement thing works. You agreed to be civil.

The judge looked at Micheli...

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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/serillymc on 2025-04-18 23:52:47+00:00.

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You guys really really liked my last MCYT writeup, so I thought I’d return with more. This is one I actively tried to avoid being dragged into, but was pretty much unavoidable for a good few years.

I’ve only ever seen two other characters cause this much of a divide in a fanbase - those being the infamous Vriska Serket of Homestuck, and Warriors’s Ashfur, who has a whole writeup of his own.

Content warning for discussions of fictional abuse, and just general fandom assholery (threats, accusations of abuse apologism, the works).

And don’t worry, we won’t be leaving the realm of fiction and fandom drama here - at least, I’ll try my best not to.

Because searching on Twitter is a pain in the ass, you’ll see me mostly referencing Tumblr posts and discussion on the subreddits DreamWasTaken2 and dreamsmp here.

Introduction: What even is Dream SMP, anyways?

This might seem like a straightforward and obvious question to anyone who’s been active on social media in the past few years, but a lot of people know less than they might think.

Dream SMP was a fictional roleplay series that falls somewhere between the genres of “political drama” and “improv comedy”, that takes place entirely within the game of Minecraft. 

It’s not the first of its kind by any means - in fact, it takes a lot of inspiration from the more comedic SMPLive, which debuted a year prior - but it definitely popularized the whole “semi-serious plotline told in a multiplayer Minecraft server” thing, at least in recent times. MCYT in general tends to do a lot of kayfabe stuff, but Dream SMP is one of the most explicitly delineated series from reality.

In Dream SMP fandom, “c!” is used before a name to distinguish between a character and their player. I will be using this throughout for the sake of clarity.

In the server, YouTuber and now infamous guy-no-one-wants-anything-to-do-with Dream plays a power-hungry ruler of sorts who abuses his role in order to exercise power over rebellious teenage character c!Tommy. This isn’t exaggeration – the dynamic between these characters is very explicitly written to be abuse, to the point of c!Tommy attempting suicide because of it. c!Dream is unambiguously written to be a villainous character.

Here’s the thing – Dream, the YouTuber himself – has some very dedicated fans, who fawn over him and find him very attractive. Often, these fans don’t have too much of an interest in the SMP’s plotline itself, but still watch it because it has Dream in it. This leads to conflict between them and fans who are primarily interested in the SMP for the story it’s telling and the characters.

Our story today focuses on c!Dream, a long drawn-out fan war with him at the center, and the two camps of fans who make up the combatants of this war.

This fan war is known simply as apologist discourse, and its primary belligerents are known as Dream apologists and Tommy apologists, respectively.

Exile

Before we get into the drama itself, I have to very briefly explain the Exile Arc, Dream SMP’s darkest and most infamous plotline.

The Exile Arc was the result of the viewers voting on a Twitter poll to decide whether or not c!Tommy would be exiled from L’Manberg (a fictional country in the server) and forced to live on the outskirts. Of course, being the drama-hungry little shits we were, we all ran in droves to vote to have him banished.

And thus, c!Dream led him away… Unbeknownst to the viewers at the time, he would psychologically and physically torture c!Tommy over the span of a real-world month, making him forfeit his belongings, attacking him if he disobeyed, actively sending away visitors who were concerned for his wellbeing, and explicitly telling him he cannot kill himself because it’s “not his time to die”.

To say the Exile Arc wasn’t one of, if not the most popular plotline in Dream SMP would be a huge understatement. The fans love their angst, as anyone who’s been in a fandom can attest, and exile was angst fodder on a level never before seen in the series.

However… While c!Dream was never portrayed as a good guy before… It was the first time we would see him in an overtly villainous role as opposed to a merely antagonistic one. And this led to a lot of discourse.

For one thing – some fans disagreed with the idea that the Exile Arc was abuse at all, which most other fans aggressively pushed back against.

Apologism

The term “apologist” came into use at some point – I’m not sure when. It might have come from people calling c!Dream fans who tried to argue that he wasn’t abusive “abuse apologists”, but the term came to more generally mean a fan of a character who justified their actions, typically without exceptions.

To be clear, the use of “apologist” was by no means exclusive to this particular spat – for example, defendants of c!Techno’s actions (such as the bombing of L’Manberg, aka “Doomsday”) were called “Techno apologists” and would occasionally receive backlash as well, but never to the extent of this particular fanwar. Dream SMP was a piece of media where it was hard to find a character who hadn’t done something egregious at some point, so you could find “apologists” for pretty much every character. (Every character is someone’s favorite, after all. Mine's resident hidden depths funnyguy c!Connor.)

As for the topic of this writeup: on one side, we have the Dream apologists, whose beliefs range anywhere from “I think c!Dream is a bad guy, but not irredeemable” to “I think c!Dream is misunderstood and did nothing wrong”, while on the other side we have the Tommy apologists, who generally tend to believe “c!Tommy did nothing to deserve the treatment he got from c!Dream”, and occasionally “c!Tommy did nothing wrong ever”.

Opinions within these groups obviously vary from person to person. Some Dream apologists believe Exile specifically was wrong, but that his other actions were fine.

There was also, of course, a vocal third group that found both sides of this debate annoying. And I will give the Dream apologists credit that a lot of their opposition liked to treat fiction and reality as if they were the same thing, making serious accusations over shit that isn’t real. 

DreamSMP isn’t real, but my feelings are. Being annoying in fiction is a greater sin than being a murderer or abuser

My personal favorite part of this whole thing is the time someone posted an obviously fake story to AITA about calling their friend an abuse apologist for liking c!Dream – the consensus obviously being “YTA, it’s not real”, lmao.

Monster Under the Bed

One infamous event arose when a group of Dream fans on Twitter harassed an artist for making horror art of c!Dream and c!Tommy, depicting c!Dream as a monster under c!Tommy’s bed. The artist actually was followed by Dream’s official fanart account, which made these Dream fans even more upset. When someone pointed out that Dream had discouraged harassment, they received death threats and ridicule.

This event would also lead to the coining of the content warning label “TADCA”, standing for “Tommy and Dream Catch-All”. TADCA drew a lot of criticism from Dream fans, for a couple of different reasons.

One of the common criticisms was that TADCA content tended to portray the events even darker than canon already did, which people thought was inappropriate because the characters were too closely linked to their players. Others even called some of the content labeled as TADCA “borderline pedophilic”.

Another artist that Dream followed drew the two referencing a screenshot from the film Perfect Blue, which made fans even more upset due to the film’s plot, assuming the artwork to carry romantic connotations.

While I obviously don’t know the intentions of any artist who drew artwork for the TADCA tag, I do believe that most of them did not have any ill intent and were simply trying to depict a dark plotline they found interesting in an artistic manner.

Cruel and Unusual Punishment

When c!Dream was imprisoned in Pandora’s Vault, he was horrifically mistrea...

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TL;DR: Okay so imagine if Mean Girls and The Devil Wears Prada had a baby in a leopard print wig and stilettos... and then that baby grew up and torched her own company from the inside out. Pinup Girl Clothing looked like the ultimate girlboss dream. Body positive, inclusive, empowering. The dresses were cute, the vibes were fierce, and the fans were ride or die. But behind all that retro glam? Whew. Chaos. Ghosted designers, unpaid invoices, lawsuit after lawsuit, and a founder who seriously called herself the Supreme Overlord—out loud. In writing.

This is the story of a small indie fashion brand that built a cult following and then face-planted into drama so hard it left a wig-shaped crater. Buckle up.

The Rise of PUG

Back in the early 2000s, Pinup Girl Clothing came out swinging. Founded by Laura Byrnes, in some sort of weird 'I designed clothes for strippers' story, the brand carved out a space for every retro-loving babe who wanted to channel old Hollywood glam without starving themselves into a bias-cut coffin. The clothes were cute, the size range was refreshing, and the branding? Chef’s kiss.

It was giving we do vintage, but make it hot. And for women who had never seen themselves reflected in fashion before—especially in a space dominated by skinny white girls—this was huge.

If you were into burlesque, rockabilly, retro photography, or just liked your wardrobe with a side of winged eyeliner and sass, you knew PUG. It wasn’t quite mainstream, but it didn’t need to be. It had a cult following that lived and died by new releases. The vibe was aspirational but still felt like a club you could join. The photography was high-glam, the models looked like real people, and the messaging felt like it was about us. Finally.

But the thing about putting women on pedestals is, sometimes the foundation’s made of cardboard and vibes. And under the surface? Shit was already starting to buckle.

The Cracks Begin to Show

By 2017, the sparkle started to fade. Outwardly, it was still giving dream girl energy. Behind the scenes? Full meltdown in heels.

Lawsuits piled up:

• Listrak Inc. v. Pin Up Girl Clothing (case #: 19GDCV00011)
• National Commercial Recovery Inc. v. PUG
• Factory beefs over unpaid bills

Employees were being let go left and right. Departments vanished overnight. One poor soul, who I am currently interviewing, later said she was literally the only employee left for most of 2018 and 2019. One person. Running a whole brand. While the company pretended to still be this bustling, glamorous fashion house? Girl.

And if that wasn’t chaotic enough, Laura Byrnes started referring to herself internally as the "Supreme Overlord."

Yes. That’s real. She gave herself a villain name like this was a Marvel audition. You cannot make this up.

Culture Wars and Collapse

So the brand wasn’t just messing up finances—they were also fumbling everything when it came to culture.

One of the worst flops? A collection called "Opium Dreams" that looked like it was ripped from a 1940s propaganda reel. Stereotypical Asian motifs, zero cultural awareness, and just straight-up orientalist nonsense. And right after that? A Chinese New Year-themed drop that landed with the grace of a lead cheongsam.

When people (rightfully) asked, “Hey… maybe don’t do this?” Laura Byrnes doubled down and said it was okay because—wait for it—one of her employees was Korean. Not Chinese. Korean. Because in her world, cultural appropriation gets a free pass if you can name-drop one Asian person on payroll.

The internet was not having it. A boycott kicked off. An online petition started circulating. People were like, “Hey girl, we wanted dresses, not casual racism.” Customers and fans who had supported PUG for years started calling it what it was: performative empowerment with a whole lot of red flags.

The cracks in the brand's image? Now full-on fault lines. Check out her racist bullshit in links here:

proudly going down in history

getting silenced on socials

black models like slaves at auction

By this point, the empowerment branding had fully imploded. And people weren’t just shook—they were done.

The Micheline Pitt Lawsuit

Really it was 2017–2018 when the glossy glam of PUG started to peel. Micheline Pitt—former VP, Creative Director, and one of the brand’s most recognizable faces—had a very public falling out with Laura Byrnes. And no, this wasn’t just some petty internet beef. This was about copyright infringement and the unauthorized use of Micheline’s designs and images after she peaced out.

It was loud. It was messy. And it was the first time the public got a real look at just how deep the drama ran inside this so-called empowerment brand. Things were settled out of court. But of course… that wasn’t the end.

Flash forward to 2021, and Laura Byrnes was back in court again—this time for violating a non-disparagement clause from the earlier legal settlement. Because apparently, she couldn’t resist running her mouth in a private Facebook group literally created to drag Micheline Pitt. Like… girl.

When Micheline found out? She took it straight back to court.

Laura’s defense? She tried to claim she was the victim. The court was like, “Cool story, where’s your proof?” Meanwhile, Micheline rolled in with 37 exhibits documenting harassment.

So Laura pivoted to a free speech argument, saying her First Amendment rights were being trampled. The judge hit her with a quick reality check: that’s not how contracts work.

In fact, the judge straight up said there was a clear pattern of harassment and abuse. He granted Micheline the restraining order. And the public record now shows Laura Byrnes as the aggressor. It was a whole mess—and one that made a lot of people in the community go, “Wait… what the hell is going on behind the scenes over there?”

“The owner of the company stated to several people that it was worth breaking their non-disparagement clause because they believed that they were standing up to a bully.”

Meanwhile, Micheline went on to build her own successful brand. And the girlies took notes.

"They said it was about women supporting women. But it was never that. It was about control."

Hope Johnstun's Story

Textile artist and creative director Hope Johnstun was contracted in 2020 to bring new life into the brand. I have her entire story documented here. She did that and more. Her original prints and dress designs made up over 25% of PUG's bestsellers for three consecutive years between 2020-2023. She managed influencer campaigns, coordinated international photo shoots, and helped keep the creative side of the business afloat.

In return? She was never fully paid.

As of June 2023, she was still owed $25,000. She was ghosted during payroll cycles. The company used her designs even after she was let go. They allegedly altered her original artwork and kept selling it without compensation.

Hope tried to resolve the matter privately. She followed contract protocol, sought arbitration, and even switched attorneys due to mounting stress. Nothing moved. Eventually, she went public.

The Community Exodus

By 2021, the shine was gone. Influencers began cutting ties. Affiliates stopped being paid so why should they continue to support the brand? People who once championed the brand now avoided it entirely and they were jumping ship. If they dare speak out about any issues, Laura Byrnes would have them removed and blocked from all social media.

Customers noticed.

• Orders were delayed.
• Customer service stopped responding.
• [Were they going ...

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Warning: Basic information about Webtoon

For those who don't know, Webtoon is a platform and publisher of multiple webcomics. It's well-known for its scroll-down webcomics, also known as webtoons

For the sake of clarity, I will only use the term "Webtoon" as the company name and "Webcomics" as online comics name from now on.

Webtoon quickly became an industry giant as artists can easily post their webcomics for free and most of webcomics don't have a permament paywall. Also, it has special webcomics made by artists with the help of Webtoon's editors.

You see, webcomics on Webtoon are divided into two categories, Canvas and Originals.

Canvas webcomics are basically indie webcomics. Artists agree to the terms and conditions of Webtoon's website and then they can upload their work, hoping it will become popular. When that happens, eligible artists can join different programmes and earn money. If they are extra lucky, their webcomic can become Original.

Authors of Originals have a publishing contract with Webtoon. Artists get regular payments for their work and help from Webtoon in the form of editors and ads, while Webtoon gets exclusivity rights. The specifics of the contract are unknown and each artist has a slightly different contract. Not all Originals come from Canvas, but many of them do.

Press Start

Say hello to Let's Play

"Sam wants to be a game developer, but before her career can get started, a popular gaming personality posts a video of himself playing her first game and gives it a bad review. To make matters worse, she soon finds out he's her new neighbor! A story about gaming, memes, and social anxiety. Come for the plot, stay for the doggo."

It appeared on 26th May 2017 and it was doing alright. It's hard to say how popular it was back in the old days, but thankfully the abandoned Canvas version is still there and you can see few thousand views.

On 18th October, Mongie (the author) announced that Let's Play would be an Original webcomic on 7th November. There was a big interest as gaming youtubers were famous and popcultural references were in. Plus, there was Markipiller shaped bait aka one of male love interests, Marshall Lee.

The comic was practically an instant success, breaking the counter of likes before it got updated and it was the most popular webcomic for weeks.

Drama patch

With fame comes criticism and drama.

Most of the discourse was fairly contained within the fanbase, but sometimes it leaked to social media. Let's Play had a couple of dramas (PoC representation and Discord server being deleted, tone shift, etc.), but they are not easy to find. Except for discussion about mature content, which will become important later on.

There was a typical Twilight/50 Shades of Gray discussion that every slightly questionable and focused on sexuality romance goes through. Depending on where you went, people were either loving it or they were shredding it apart. Some points of the discussion include the shift from a romantic comedy focused on gaming to a sexy romance, the potrayal of the protagonist's self-growth, the nature of her romantic relationship (predatory? toxic?), depiction of consent, etc.

The last bit caused minor controversy regarding its presence on Webtoon as Webtoon readers tend to be young. 70%+ of US readers is under the age of 24 and 75% of readers worldwide consists of younger millenials (currently 29-44 yo) and Gen Z (13-28). Plus, Webtoon has a history of trying to create a safe space for readers of all ages and mishandling mature content.

To make it worse, Webtoon readers complained about the lack of mature tag for Let's Play for quiet some time. I can't confirm when the whole discussion started, but all I can say is that Let's Play got its mature tag fairly late.

Red Ring of Death

Now let's focus on Webtoon. Webtoon had (and still has) its problems. Many problems. And by many I mean, I am saving resources for a potential write-up about Webtoon's downfall.

Anyway, Webtoon Exposed was a big topic in 2022. A brand new account suddenly popped up on Twitter and started posting about Webtoon's practices. Including how much it pays.

According to the account, Webtoon base pay varied widely but the average base pay was $800-$1200/episode (40-60 panels) and later for $1000-$1200/episode for new originals. Meanwhile, creators of Originals pre-2020 could have a fairly low rate ($500-$800).

The situation gets worse if you are working for the Indonesian or the LATAM branch of Webtoon. LATAM/Indonesian creators and staff would get paid half of what US creators earn, which is especially weird for the LATAM branch as it's based in Los Angeles. Also, Webtoon was supposedly preying on bilingual artists who were posting on US and LATAM Webtoon website by picking their comics as just LATAM originals get them as cheap as possible.

There was also a whole drama about Webtoon advertising its webcomics as a "side hustle". To keep it short, Webtoon was doing cheeky one-sentence advertisements. One of the ads had this sentence "Comics are literature's fun side-hustle." Multiple creators got angry as many of them were making 40-50 coloured panels (sometimes with small GIFs) per week. Basically, working full-time.

Pick "Run Away"

The whole thing happened in September, but it left bitter aftertaste for a long while.

Going back to Let's Play, season 3 served a big plot twist, which had mixed opinions. Then on 9th November, another sudden twist was revealed. Mongie posted an open letter to fans of Let's Play. The following two paragraphs are especially important.

Unfortunately, I must report some sad news. I will not be returning with season 4 of Let’s Play at WEBTOON. This was an incredibly difficult decision, and no single event led to it. There have been ongoing difficulties for several years, most of which I can’t discuss, nor is this the appropriate forum. But some concerns include Let’s Play being excluded from marketing, despite promises to the contrary, and placing LP behind an age gate when there are series with far more controversial content that isn’t restricted. My representation has voiced these concerns and others to the necessary individuals at WEBTOON, but the blame was reflected back at me for incredibly far-fetched reasons. These issues, among many others, have made me feel marginalized and that WEBTOON does not value Let’s Play or me.

On top of this, I have been watching other creators courageously voice their concerns, particularly over the last year. Whether it be about the ad campaign that considers our profession a “side hustle.” The pay disparity for LATAM creators. Or the ongoing lack of transparency and errors in accounting that I’ve experienced personally. WEBTOON is no longer the right platform for me or Let’s Play.

"Too much water"

Disclaimer: Unfortunately, many comments have been lost due to Mongie deleting her Twitter/X account and turning off comments. Thus, I am working with what I could find on Nitter and Reddit.

Having one of the biggest creators on Webtoon leave was a shock. Lots of people were supportive of her decision, but there have been people pointing out how Mongie benefited from Webtoon's practices.

Marketing

Marketing has been a big topic. Let's Play was one of two English webcomics to get 10 ~4-5 minutes long animated shorts. Some webcomics never got a video on or even a short. Webtoon had a tendency to over-advertise their most popular series, while barely giving any attention to new ones or those returning from hiatus.

However, Mongie also has a point about marketing. Let's Play didn't get any more videos on YouTube and Webtoon's instagram wasn't promoting as much as it used to.

Age restrictions

Age ratings for films and video games are messy, but Webtoon's? They are fairly vague and you never know what will not pass. Even creators themselves are confused and there is only a functioning system for profanities.

It's [so bad](https://www.google.com/search?q=webtoon+censorhip+double+standards+site%3Awww.reddit.com&amp%3Bsca_esv=fd65b2cb91237410&amp%3Bbiw=1280&amp%3Bbih=551&amp%3Bei=RcDpZ...

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Original Title: [American Comics] The Most “Legitomite” Art Thief in Comics, or the Guy who United Nazis and Hippies Against Himself, Got Banished From Comics, And His Multiple Attempts at a Comeback, How He Then Fell For a Different Art Thief, and His Name Became Synonymous with Theft

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xxx

Introduction

Over the years I’ve written several posts that follow the same pattern. Something happens at a convention, usually an argument, and it causes major controversy both in the comics industry and among fans online for weeks. This story does all that and dwarfs the others. No, Clayton Crain did not run off with Granito’s wife but there will be some twists and turns as well as multiple songs. Get ready for the Charlie Sheen of comics!

Rob Granito has had an amazing career and would hold comics under a spell for about two months. His art style is so versatile, “he can pretty much paint anything.” “His name has been attached to major projects for […] Warner Brothers, DC and Marvel Comics, Disney, MTV, and VH1.” He worked on Batman: The Animated Series and Batman Beyond under Bruce Timm as well as Spider-Man, Iron Man 2, and Samurai Jack. He’s a novelist. And amid all these accomplishments, he still found time to draw Canvin and Hobbes [sic] (which ended in 1995). And he was only 36 (in 2011)!

Granito had some real art cred too. “The White House commissioned portrait work for the President.”

His only fan says, "tara strong voice of batgirl has a batgirl of his in her home , so does the voice of optimus prime, Kevin Conroy THE voice of Batman, […] and so on and so on LOL”

If you’re thinking “wow, what an incredible career,” “that math doesn’t check out” or “nobody but Bill Watterson ever drew Calvin and Hobbes”, I’m not here to burst your bubble. You’re right. It is incredible. It’s all a lie (Granito’s age might be true).

That’s because Rob Granito is a fraud.

He’s a fraud so big, his name has become synonymous with art theft. Let me tell you how Rob Granito got exposed and driven out of comics as well as his attempts to return to the industry by ~~absolutely crazy~~ unconventional and creative means. This story has it all from atrocious grammar, sock puppets, blatant lies, a political team-up, interviews, songs, and a second famous comics grifter.

Rob Granito is a con artist, but he’s also a con artist. He wasn’t a successful convention artist who made a killing. He was a struggling artist hitting con after con, away from his family, and never made it. There are many of those. Not many inflate their biographies the way Granito did, but by all accounts, he was just getting by.

Who On Earth Is Rob Granito?

We don’t know a lot about Robert Granito (early interview (2008). It’s safe to assume that the little he’s shared about himself are lies but according to him, he was born in 1975. An “internationally known artist and illustrator”, he’d been hitting the convention circuit since 2000. 

He first gained mainstream attention in March 2011 when, a few days before he was slated to appear at Megacon, comics blogger Rich Johnston of Bleeding Cool ran an article on him. “l’ve been sent a number of allegations saying that Rob is basically nothing but a chancer, faking a biography in order to sell his work,” so Johnston reached out to Granito who initially ignored him. Then he wrote back and revealed himself to be quite the writer with a distinct style (“borderline illiterate”, so his detractors). I’d kill to read anything written by Granito without an editor or spellcheck. Whether it’s old emails, a blog, or notes to himself. Anything.

Granito claimed to have done a “butt load” of covers for Shaddow of the Bat (“I dont know the [issue] numbers”) as well as the Batman and Calvin and Hobbes US Postal Service stamps. He was “currently working iwth Jay Diddilo on a batman title that has not yet been released.”

This raised more questions. Foremost, who the hell was Jay Diddilo? There was Dan DiDio, editor-in-chief of DC Comics, but nobody had ever heard of Diddilo. Granito clarified, “Jay is one of the big Writters for DC I probbibaly spelled his name rite.” 

Otherwise Granito “was a ghost artist for most of the projects I did.” Johnston contacted the artists Granito had ghosted for, who all had incredibly different styles, and they had never heard of him. He would have been in high school when those works came out. (Comics have employed high schoolers but it’s been a while). He also definitely hadn’t drawn the USPS stamps.

American comics are not a business where ghosting is common, so Granito’s claims rang false immediately. We don’t have any other famous ghost artists in sequential arts.

How could this happen? Honestly, artists like Granito are a dime a dozen. Most don’t lie about credits but you’ll find exhibitors selling prints that aren’t theirs in every artist alley. Artist alleys operate in a legal gray zone: technically, most artists there are selling works that are copyright infringement. Artists are aware of this. Publishers turn a blind eye to the matter. If Granito drew Superman in his style, nobody would have minded. The problem was that he didn’t have a recognizable style and his artwork did.

Shockingly, an old interview later surfaced where Granito claimed to be working with Jay Diddilo a year prior. DC, however, confirmed that they had never heard of Granito or Diddilo, and had no plans to work with either.

It was beginning to look like Granito had lied about everything until someone with insider knowledge came in to defend him in a comment section:

“No he is legitomite i was a DC Assistant Editor until a year ago and we used Rob as a ghost artist on a number of books we used he is well known on the “insiders” level of the industry and did alot of promotion art for DC and Marvel dont believbe rumors i worked at DC as an art director for 6-7 years and we used Rob alot he is legit”

It’s safe to assume that that assistant editor and/or art director was Granito. It marked the beginning of Granito defenders with consistently poor spelling making it into comments sections.

Johnston closed his article by asking anyone who could verify Granito’s credits to reach out “[b]ecause right now there are some angry people looking to confront him at the next show he goes to.”

He could not have been more right.

Rob Granito Vs. The Internet

Johnston was woken up the next day by “a phone call from someone in the Granito camp. […] [P]eople close to him have expressed to me that […] they don't know where they stand anymore. It'll be interesting to see if ANYONE sticks by Rob after this.” Granito’s social media disappeared but his website (with his phone number) stayed up.

More people came out of the woodwork to share their experiences with Granito and those were not positive either. I couldn’t find a single “no, no, he’s a great guy; this is a huge misunderstanding” that didn’t sound like Granito. His one fan, frequent customer, and self-proclaimed best friend quickly asked to be excluded from the narrative. Another customer, the owner of a whole wall of Granitos, recalled, “I have never once seen him draw anything. Every artist, big-name or small-time, draws at his/her booth.”

A Facebook group called “Robert Granito is a Fraud” sprang to life, amassing over 3,000 members. Granito got an urban dictionary entry. Granito means “to blatantly take one person's work and reproduce it for monetary gains without giving credit to the original creator of said work.” Use in a sentence: “Man, I saw your work at the convention, some other dude was selling it! You've been granito'd!" Granito had incredible longevity and still gets used today.

Some confirmed that Granito was a fixture at cons, often selling artwork signed by the Batman voice actors (though if you looked it up online, the signatures didn’t match). “I was at Toronto Comic-Con this weekend, and he made hundreds, and hundreds of dollars on his worthless art.”

A video asking conventions to ban Granito.

In his multiple follow-ups, Johnston documented so...

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This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/QuarterTarget on 2025-04-05 17:51:30+00:00.

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Note: This post will not focus on one specific event, but rather a handful of smaller dramas from all around this years prelude to the contest.

Who/what/why/when is a Eurovision?

For the uninitiated, Eurovision is an international song contest that has been held annually since 1956, except for in 2020, when everyone decided to stay home and learn how to bake sourdough for no discernible reason. Around 40 countries participate each year, almost all European, except for Australia and Israel (plus Morocco did too one time in the 80s and never again). In 2024, the contest took place in Sweden and drew an audience of over 160 million viewers worldwide, plus an additional 7 million watching live via YouTube.

Now for this writeup, the details of how the contest works aren't terribly important, because we’re more interested in the nonsense that happens before the competition even starts. All you really need to know is that this year's contest is being hosted in Basel, Switzerland, thanks to Nemo securing the win for the Swiss with this absolute banger. The Grand Final will take place on May 17th. Mark your calendars—or don’t. I'm not your dad.

So how does each country pick their singer/band/turkey?  It varies. Every participating nation is represented by a national broadcaster (think the BBC for the UK), and they’re the ones who get to decide how and who to send. Some broadcasters go for an internal selection, like the BBC usually does. Others hold full-blown national selection contests, ranging from a quality well produced show to whatever the fuck Moldova does each year. (More on that later).

Now that that's done, lets get into a few of the mini dramas that have occurred this year. So far.

Part 1: Clickbait gets clickbaited.

Montenegro is a small and rather pretty looking country situated on the Adriatic Sea. Its Eurovision history is rather spotty. They technically participated as Yugoslavia, then as the Republic of Serbia and Montenegro before having its first debut as a separate country in 2007. It didn't really go well for them, with their best result so far being 13th.

In 2021, Montenegro withdrew from the competition citing "modest results" and financial constraints. A polite way of saying: "This costs money and we’re bad at it." They returned in 2022, briefly flirted with the idea of staying, then noped out again. In 2024 they toyed with it again, suspense mounted, then, finally, they confirmed: Montenegro would return to Eurovision in 2025 and stay indefinitely for real this time. Probably. Unless they change their mind again. No promises. To mark their grand return, Montenegro organized a national selection show very creatively titled Montesong. The event was held on November 27, 2024, and the winning entry was a track called Clickbait by the band NeonoeN. With that, Montenegro became the first country to officially confirm their 2025 entry.

Until like a week later.

You see, Eurovision has very specific rules about song eligibility. Chief among them:

The songs (lyrics and music compositions) submitted to represent each Participating Broadcaster must be original and must not have been released and/or publicly performed in part or in full before 1 September 2024 (the “Release Date”).

It’s a simple enough rule. And yet, NeonoeN managed to completely cock up: a video surfaced of them performing Clickbait live at a music festival… in June. Of 2023. A full 15 months before the allowed release date. In Eurovision terms, that’s practically ancient history. They were given a choice to submit a new song, but the band felt stated they were tired of the drama surrounding it (they had been jerked around a bit by Twitter in particular) and instead withdrew their participation completely, and Eurovision 2025 was back to 0 confirmed artists, until like an hour later, where the second place Nina Žižić confirmed she would be participating with her song "Dobrodošli" which, fittingly, means “Welcome.”

Part 2: Moldova doing Moldova Things

Moldova has long held the role of Eurovision’s quirky side character. They often send amazing bangers like literally epic sax guy or a song about a train, whilst other times they send rather dull and forgettable songs. The country is equally infamous for its extremely low budget national selection process, Etapa Națională, with technical issues (for example, 2022s official internet live stream was adorned with a huge ACTIVATE WINDOWS for the entire show) and questionable performers, like the rather creepy Sasha Bognibov, who has participated in Etapa every year since 2007 with beautiful lyrics like "I like the girls of 13 years old", "My lesbian girl", "Love me like my daughter", "I have big sex with my ex" and many more. He performs these with unwavering sincerity and a horrible voice. It is unknown if he is trolling or not.

For 2025, TRM (Moldova’s national broadcaster) announced the return of Etapa Națională as the selection method for their Eurovision entry. Artists and composers could submit entries between November 19 and December 27, 2024. By the deadline, a total of 30 valid submissions had been received. These would be whittled down to 10 finalists via a live audition process. Then, for reasons unexplained (as is tradition), TRM suddenly announced they would be selecting 12 finalists instead. Presumably someone miscounted, or they just didn't have the heart to say no to that many people. But it wouldn’t be a Moldovan national final without random chaos.

Enter: Eblansh Band. Or rather, exit Eblansh Band.

On January 16th, Eblansh Band, one of the would-be contestants, abruptly withdrew from the competition. The official explanation was that one of their team members had been hospitalized in Romania. Unfortunate, right? But then, it became clear that Eblansh Band did not, in fact, exist. According to various sources, they were allegedly a Ukrainian Telegram meme group who submitted an AI-generated song as a joke. Somehow, this managed to pass TRM’s selection filter (which, one suspects, may consist of a single unpaid intern and a dartboard). Even funnier, the word "eblan" is a Russian insult roughly meaning "a man who behaves like an idiot." The clues were all there, really. The band dropped out when they realized they were expected to perform live, a demand that their fictional existence could not accommodate.

And if that weren’t enough, another contestant, Valleria, was disqualified on the day of the auditions for arriving 20 minutes late. Just twenty minutes. Eurovision waits for no diva apparently. Valleria announced via a YouTube comment she would be applying to represent San Marino instead—a country known for its generous open-door policy when it comes to Eurovision hopefuls. She was, unsurprisingly, unsuccessful. San Marino is instead represented this year by an Italian song about how great Italy is.

TRM somehow managed to choose 12 finalists. Hopes were briefly raised. Perhaps, against all odds, Moldova was about to put on a real show.

Then, without warning, Etapa Națională was unceremoniously scrapped. Gone. Cancelled. Ghosted. The broadcaster, TRM, announced that the quality of the submitted songs was, in their words, so irredeemably bad that holding a full televised final simply wasn’t worth the expense. No, that's literally what they said. The quality of the songs did not merit spending money.

This was extremely cruel to the artist, who weren't even that bad in the first place. They received basically no support from TRM either, they had to pay for accommodation, transport, etc. and had to set up the stage at the auditions and finals themselves. Then, TRM decided that they would just internally select Bacho and Carnival Brain with their song "Semafoare”. They were the front runners to win anyway, so that's okay, right?

Well, days later, Moldova withdrew from the competition entirely.

This came as something of a surprise, given that TRM had spent the entire previous month trumpeting their increased Eurovision budget. What changed? Nobody knows, I assume corruption or poor planning, as is common with Moldova. Bacho and Carnival Brain, understandably blindsided by this reversal of fortune, pleaded with TRM to reconsider. They even went the extra mile and found a private sponsor who was willing to fund Moldova’s entire participation—a rare moment of actual competence in this story. TRM, in response, said no. Just… no.

And that was the story of Moldova in Eurovision 2025, which TRM carried out with all the elegance of a karaoke machine being kicked down a flight of stairs.

Part 3:  Kant is not served.

Malta is a country that doesn’t really do that well in Eurovision in the grand scope of things. More often than not, they send harmless, radio-friendly pop songs that quietly vanish into the void somewhere. But every now and then, Malta pulls out something truly memorable. And this year, they did not disappoint.

They served [Kant](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4lsnI...

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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/Notmiefault on 2025-04-03 18:02:56+00:00.

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What is the difference between cheating and optimizing? It’s a question that plagues a lot of competitive videogames, but none more so than World of Warcraft’s Race to World First, the weirdest esport on the planet.

Exploits have always been a controversial part of the Race since its inception, but over the span of two races across 2023 and 2024, they became a central point of contention among fans. Settle in, grab a drink and maybe a snack, and enjoy the petty minutia of the lives of World of Warcraft’s most elite players.

But first, for those new, a little background:

Background (you can skip this part if you’re familiar with WoW / Race to World First)

Released in 2004, the MMORPG World of Warcraft (WoW) is one of the most successful videogames of all time. Players create characters to do battle in the fictional world of Azeroth, a kitchen-sink fantasy setting where players fight dragons, gods, lovecraftian horrors, and each other. The game is heavily multiplayer focused, with pretty much all of the most difficult content in the game requiring a coordinated group of players to participate in. One of the most popular activities in World of Warcraft is raiding.

A raid, in simplest terms, is a mega-dungeon consisting of a series of bosses that are designed to be tackled by groups of ~20 players. There’s a variety of difficulties of raid, the highest of which is called Mythic - Mythic raids are nightmarishly hard, and are only even attempted by hardcore players, who generally put hundreds of hours over many months just to clear a single Mythic raid. Raiders typically organize into Guilds, groups of players who work together over months to complete the raid.

The Race for World First (RWF) has been an unofficial event in World of Warcraft since 2018 (actually since the game’s launch, but 2018 is when Guilds started streaming). Whenever a new raid is released, members of the top raiding guilds will take time off work to play World of Warcraft 12+ hours a day, 7 days a week, to rush through the new raid to try and be the very first guild to complete it on Mythic difficulty. Each race generally lasts 1-2 weeks.

A number of Guilds compete in the RWF, but the top two teams for years have been Echo and Liquid. All you really need to know about these guilds is that Echo is based in Europe and led by Scripe, while Liquid is based in the US and led by Max. As a result, the fanbase that follows the race is divided large across geographic lines, with European fans cheering for Echo while US fans cheer for Liquid.

Let’s Talk about Exploits

At the highest level, World of Warcraft is a game about optimization. Top players make an art out of extracting every teeny tiny ounce of value out of every facet of the game to complete the most difficult content possible, as fast as possible. However, the line between “optimizing” and “cheating” can be a surprisingly fuzzy one. Take split raiding, for example.

In WoW, you can only kill raid bosses once a week for loot, and bosses generally drop one piece of loot for every five characters in the raid, to divvy up as they see fit. That means, in an average clear of 10 bosses, each character can expect to get around two pieces of gear. However, top players figured out that if they make a bunch of extra characters they don’t care about, and run the raid multiple times with just a few “mains” and the rest “helpers”, they can funnel all the gear onto those few mains, getting way more gear quicker…at the cost of all those helper characters getting nothing, and having to run the raid over and over and over again. It’s nightmarishly boring and tedious, nobody likes it, and yet they do it, because it’s the fastest way to get strong and, if they didn’t, someone else would and would beat them.

The developer, a small indie company called Blizzard, never intended split raiding to be a thing. It certainly goes against the spirit of the law - characters aren’t supposed to be able to get so much loot so quickly. However, no single thing they’re doing breaks any particular rule, and the developer hasn’t found a way to stop them from doing it without making the game worse for all the normal people who raid as intended. As a result, Split Raiding is considered by both the WoW community and Blizzard to be legal. In this case, it’s an optimization.

The issue of “Optimization vs Cheating” are a recurring issue in the Race for World First. It came to a bit of a head, however, in the wake of Amirdrassil.

Amirdrassil, the Dream’s Hope

Released in November of 2023, Amirdrassil was the final raid of the Dragonflight expansion. Leading up to the race, a bug was discovered that allowed players to, through an excruciatingly boring grind, get a lot more reputation (an arbitrary score awarded for doing various mundane tasks in the game world) with the newest faction, which rewarded them with a moderately powerful item they shouldn’t have been able to unlock for at least another week. Similar Reputation grinds in the past had slipped by Blizzard unchallenged. This time, however, Blizzard put their foot down, reverting the gains, taking away the items, and giving a (very minor) time penalty to everyone who exploited it.

Why was this an exploit rather than an optimization? When it comes to bugs in the game’s code, the litmus test has historically been “is this a behavior that would occur in normal play?” In this case, the bug involved spam-clicking an object as quickly as humanly possible. That was deemed not normal behavior, so Blizzard brought down the hammer. Players on both Liquid and Echo had exploited the bug and were punished, though many more on Liquid than Echo.

Echo would ultimately win the race, but since the win it has come out that Echo used an extremely suspect program to accomplish it, much more controversial than the reputation exploit, involving an AddOn.

What the hell is an AddOn?

If you’ve read any of my previous posts, you know I’m a sucker for weird deep dives into mind-numbing game systems. The thing is, you don’t really need to understand what I’m about to talk about in exhausting detail, but I want to talk about it anyway. As a compromise, I’m putting all the boring stuff in a quote box like this:

this

If you aren’t interested, just skip the big box, I’ll do a quick TL;DR at the end.

AddOns are user interface mods for WoW - programs designed by third parties that alter the visual experience. This might seem like a minor thing, but they are exceptionally powerful - they can do anything from telling you your character’s exact map coordinates, to scanning the game’s player-driven auction house and building a trendmap of prices to help players manipulate the economy, to reminding you to drink water every 30 minutes. AddOns have been with the game since its early days and are deeply ingrained - it’s rare to find a player who doesn’t use at least one or two.

One of the most popular types of AddOns are called WeakAuras, collections of mods that feed the player important information about a particular boss fight, often going so far as to make strategic decisions to help bosses be easier to manage. [Nerd note: WeakAuras actually do a lot more than that but that’s the important bit for this story] An example:

Say there is a boss who, at certain points in the fight, will randomly select two players in the raid and place a bomb on them, making them each glow. One player needs to stand still while the other moves away in order to defuse the bomb, otherwise it explodes.

Let’s say on one particular attempt, the players selected are a hunter and a paladin. The way Blizzard intends such a mechanic to be handled is as follows:

1. The raid leader looks at their screen and observes that it’s the hunter and the paladin who are glowing.
2. The raid leader strategizes, determining that hunters are more mobile than paladins and that the hunter should therefore be the one to move.
3. They then communicate that strategy to the raid: “Hunter move out, Paladin stand still.”
4. The hunter and paladin each execute the strategy, moving or not moving as the raid leader instructed.

Observe, Strategize, Communicate, Execute. This is the standard means by which a lot of boss mechanics are intended to be solved. Now, however, let’s include an AddOn. The mechanic goes out:

1. The AddOn observes that the hunter and paladin have been selected.
2. The AddOn consults a table that was programmed into it, ranking the specs by mobility, and sees that the hunter has a higher mobility than the paladin and should be the one to move, thus strategizing instantaneously.
3. The AddOn communicates this information to the players - on the Hunter’s screen it suddenly pops up in big letters “RUN AWAY” while on the Paladin’s screen it pops up with “STAND STILL”.
4. The players, quite possible having no idea what mechanic is even happening or why they’re doing what they’re doing, follow the instructions on the screen, executing the AddOn’s strategy.

Of the four steps, three of them - Observe, Strategize, and Communicate - have now been done by a program in a split second, completely ...

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This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/Genuinely-No-Idea on 2025-04-02 06:03:33+00:00.

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[Obvious note: do not attempt to contact any of the individuals mentioned. A lot of them have burned their bridges pretty well, so you'll probably have some difficulty with it either way.]

[Another note: this is my first write-up, I don't know if it's any good, please be constructive and don't crucify me if it's not.]

Background

I suppose the best place to start here is with Scratch itself. Scratch is a block-based coding language developed by MIT, intended to teach the core concepts of computer programming to kids without freaking them out with matters of syntax or things of that nature. It’s designed to be a “low floor, high ceiling” approach to teaching coding, which it is incredibly successful as. The fundamentals of the language are incredibly easy to learn, and can be used to create simple games, animations, web toys, and other programs. However, given some commitment, Scratch has been used to create some genuinely incredible work, from games that wouldn’t be out of place on the Switch, to hypnotic scrolling renders of the Mandelbrot Set, to an epic animated web series whose parts, placed together, equal the length of an average feature film. One might think Scratch is not the place to go for complexity, and most of the time, they’re right. Not always, though. Not always.

One of the main draws of Scratch, however, is its community. Programs (“projects”) created with Scratch can be uploaded to the site, where other users can interact with it by liking it, favoriting it, commenting on it, or even remixing it (making a copy of the project, changing it however the user likes, and sharing it). There are also customizable profiles, studios meant to showcase projects (having comment sections, many inevitably turn into dedicated chat rooms), and a full-fledged forum with a wide range of topics. Especially in recent years, it’s become something of a “my first social media” for a lot of kids, which, as you can imagine, has led to its own issues (but that’s a whole other post).

One of the most important things to understand about Scratch is this: like a lot of online spaces of this type, Scratch has (or had, as the case may be) its own internal culture that is difficult to explain to outsiders. While it is more fragmented now, there used to be a thriving monoculture that all users shared, even complete with folklore (the highly-exaggerated tale of unpopular user turned hacker “Kaj,” a somewhat interesting story in its own right). Ask someone who joined the site during its heyday about “Lyrics Taken Literally”, “x__0”, or “Slatch” and you’ll see what I mean.

A part of this culture especially worth noting is the Scratch Team, the group of developers and moderators who head the site. They’re a group of professional adults who are being paid for their work and go through a lot of stuff (based on my own experiences with the site, I would not be surprised if they have seen some Facebook-level perverse crap). Nonetheless, and this is important, dumping on the Scratch Team is basically the website’s national pastime. They view their moderation as inefficient and inconsistently applied, they dislike their perceived ban-happiness, their lengthy ban appeal response time, their progressive political views,  so on and so forth. You cannot go anywhere without seeing pure, unrestrained disdain for the Scratch Team.

So basically, Scratch had a monoculture once. However, this monoculture has essentially died in the years since Scratch 3.0 was introduced. But boy, did it go out with a bang.

Scratch 3.0

From the beginning, Scratch and its projects were based in the Adobe Flash Player, which, as it is well-known, was never widely liked among technology experts and professionals and had many known vulnerabilities. This criticism resulted in Adobe’s 2018 announcement that Flash Player would reach its end of life in 2021. Of course, the writing had been on the wall for years, leading the Scratch Team to begin development of an HTML5-based update in 2016, moving a lot of stuff around, making it mobile-friendly, and generally fixing stuff up.

The first demo for Scratch 3.0 is previewed in 2018, and guess what, the community loathes it. The code editor and the “stage” have switched sides, everything has been simplified, so on and so forth. Exactly how you’d expect a website composed largely of children to react to change. A select few are utterly outraged at the proposed update, and throw hissy fits and whatnot. This is foreshadowing. Keep note of this.

The Major Player (and Various Others)

Optifict is the guy who started it all. He was known for being a bit of an edgelord in the comments (about as much of one as you can be on Scratch), and he had made a popular project in which he vented about being banned for supposedly impersonating the Scratch Team on a joke account called ScartchToem. This led to him becoming rather critical of the Scratch Team, pushing the boundaries of what he could say on the site, and so on and so forth. When he wasn't offensive, he was being a pretty stock form of cringeworthy; think 2018-era "PewDiePie is the GOAT, I love Bitch Lasagna" type stuff. Rather unassuming for someone who was about to usher in an unexpected, but important event for the site.

There are various other users who I will mention in this article but don’t quite count as “major players,” so they get a bulleted list:

• Pahunkat, an animator who became very popular around 2018
• -Cinematic-, a game developer known for creating the multi-part narrative project “Scratch: Story Mode”
• TNTSquirrel, an animator who started on Scratch but had begun dabbling in Adobe Animate around this time
• DerpAnimation, a very popular animator who created perhaps the definitive project about the Thanos Cat movement

And so, with this, things were lined up just right for the change to take place.

3.0—and Thanos Cat—Cometh

The days leading to the introduction of 3.0 spurred a change, and not just in the design of the site. Hundreds, if not thousands of users, had changed their profile pictures to an edited photo of the site’s mascot, Scratch Cat, with the face of the Marvel villain Thanos (remember that at this time, the world was still deep in the throes of Infinity War-mania). Tracing this image back to its roots revealed a studio titled “Thanos snapped half of Scratch from existence” (later renamed to “Thanos Cat Snapped Half of Scratch from Existence!”), started by resident pot-stirrer Optifict.

Thanos Cat was, essentially, a protest movement against Scratch 3.0. It was not necessarily due to disliking the change, however. Among the grievances originally listed was the lowering of project file sizes, which would essentially cripple larger projects created with 2.0. As many skilled and popular users declared their intentions to move on from Scratch due to 3.0, the managers of the Thanos Cat studio further expressed concern that the number of original, quality projects on the site would decrease.

Some of these Scratchers (many of whom also donned Thanos Cat profile pictures) included:

• Pahunkat, who had posted the first part of a planned series of animations about the switch to 3.0, to be titled “Pahuncafe.”
• -Cinematic-, who didn’t give any particular reason, but had a Thanos Cat picture and left shortly after 3.0’s introduction.
• TNTSquirrel, who stated that a large project he had planned had been irreparably corrupted during the shift to 3.0.
• DerpAnimation, who dramatized the Thanos Cat mythology as an animated parody of Infinity War. A Scratch: Endgame was also planned, but never came to fruition.

The Scratch Team eventually took notice of the Thanos Cat movement, though they never responded. Instead, they simply marked the studio as NFE (Not For Everyone), meaning it would still exist, but wouldn’t show up in the site’s search results. Optifict placed a tongue-in-cheek message on the studio’s description as a result: “that’s how mafia works.”

The NFE marking, as far as I could tell, was the end of the Scratch Team’s official acknowledgement of the movement.

What Did this Movement Accomplish?

Ultimately: just about nothing. They got mad, and made their distaste known, and nothing changed. Which may well have been their intent. The movement had no discernible goals, made no demands, and was essentially just a big, angry trend. 3.0 moved on as usual. Thanos Cat went strong for a couple more months and then fizzled out. Many users who remember it have left the website, and users whose only Scratch memories are of 3.0 have taken their place.

If it Accomplished Nothing, then Why Write All of This?

I mention it because Thanos Cat was the nail in the coffin of a particular era of Scratch history. Really, it was the swan song for Scratch monoculture, when everyone knew what was happening on the website. When everyone knew names like Optifict and Pahunkat, and could recognize what Thanos Cat meant. That doesn’t happen anymore. Scratch is split into its own little corners, all insulated from the others. The only remnant is the site's most-followed user, Griffpatch. Projects rarel...

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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/Tokyono on 2025-04-01 08:22:52+00:00.

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Hello hobbyists!

This thread is for community updates, suggestions and feedback. Feel free to leave your comments and concerns about the subreddit below, as our mod team monitors this thread in order to improve the subreddit and community experience.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/Philiard on 2025-03-31 17:28:31+00:00.

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0. A Forewarning

This post extensively discusses instances of misogyny and harassment against women. The works featured in this post include frequent depictions of gore, extreme violence, and body horror.

If you are already familiar with Limbus Company, the lion's share of the drama begins in Section IV.

I. Introduction

Limbus Company is a 2023 gacha video game available on mobile and desktop through Steam. It is developed by Project Moon (or simply PM), a South Korean video game studio also known for their games Lobotomy Corporation (or LobCorp) and Library of Ruina. Their works are known for their intricate stories, well-developed characters, and an extremely depressing setting. All of their works take place in a setting known only as "The City," in which dismemberment, rampant death and destruction, and increasingly ridiculous methods of torture are always on the menu.

Limbus Company follows a group of thirteen "Sinners," a group comprised of people named for and based on literary figures. Unlike LobCorp and Ruina, which were full single-player games, Limbus is a constantly-updated gacha made explicitly for the purpose of making more money to fund Project Moon's future endeavors. Despite this, the game has garnered a reputation for its generosity towards non-paying users, the quality of its story on top of the fact that the vast majority of the content is permanent, and the quality of its character design.

Frequenters of gacha games will be familiar with the genre's reliance on "waifubaiting"; tempting users into spending on characters by playing up their attractiveness or their relationship with the self-insert main character. Limbus slides away from this, with the entirety of its main cast wearing some combination of dress shirts, jackets, waist-high pants, you get the idea. Fanservice is rare, and PM relies more on emotional connection to characters and the strength of their writing.

II. The Stars of the City

Limbus Company is still a gacha game at the end of the day, and many still tend to get attached to the characters for less-than-wholesome reasons. Some may be familiar with Outis, a woman whose ~~bootlicking~~ subservience to the main character, Dante (one of the Sinners, and non-playable), has drawn the attention of a crowd whose main interest in her is drawing her with comically large boobs.

Ishmael is another frequent target of thirstposting; she's a sailor known for her dry wit, calm demeanor, and extreme rage when it comes to anything related to her former captain. Ishmael was a popular character from the jump, and she was nearing her apex of screentime and fandom interest around when this drama took place, mainly due to her being set to star in the game's next story chapter. Naturally, fan artists and those who were simply horny for Ishmael were looking forward to any future content related to her.

Sinclair is kind of the opposite. He's never been particularly popular, and has in fact been decently controversial. Some dislike him due to his perception as Project Moon's "golden boy," due to receiving a number of meta-defining Identities that quickly made him an indispensable character. Others dislike him for more basic reasons. He tends to be a target of female attention in-game (the game's first big villain, Kromer, is obsessed with him), which gets in a way of those who want to kiss those pretty ladies themselves a tad.

III. All Aboard the Magic Hell Bus

"What is an Identity?", I hear you ask. Identities are the primary thing Limbus sells, being alternative versions of the twelve playable Sinners that have radically different skills, passives, and designs. They imagine what the Sinners may have become if they had walked a different path in life, and naturally, they're the primary thing players pull for when spending gacha currency.

Expectations for the Identities to accompany the Magic Hell Bus event, revealed on July 21st, were high. It's a beach episode, after all, though a non-traditional one; the Sinners are going to a radioactive beach infested by crabs while they wait for an upgrade to their transportation that'll let them get to where Ishmael's story chapter takes place. It was expected, then, that Ishmael would receive some special focus.

Sinclair would receive his Molar Boatworks Fixer Identity, featuring an open jacket and a choker, a nice little bit of fanservice if you think he's cute. Ishmael, meanwhile, would receive her own Molar Boatworks Fixer Identity, featuring a skintight wetsuit that pretty prominently shows off her breasts. You may not be able to actually see anything, but from Samus Aran to Solid Snake, most gamers are generally in agreement that skintight outfits are sexy.

Well, except South Korean gamers. They didn't take it as well.

IV. How We Got Here

Needless to say, Ishmael's Identity was controversial, but explaining why is a bit complicated.

First, the matter of censorship; it's not uncommon for developers of risque games to adhere to censorship by slapping a wetsuit or similarly covering clothing over top of scantily-clad women. Censorship is a hot-button issue basically anywhere, and Sinclair's Identity only fanned the flames; he gets a slutty swimsuit while our beloved Ishmael is covered up entirely? This is censorship!

Second, Limbus Company was in a pretty bad content drought at the time, and many were chomping at the bit to blow up at something. The Magic Hell Bus was the first piece of story content it'd gotten in months, and the "Uptie IV" update, which added an additional tier of power to each Identity, was seen as a huge resource sink for little reward.

Finally, let's not mince words: feminism is very contentious in South Korea. Women have to deal with many of the issues you'd expect, with lower wages, sexual harassment, and general misogyny all being problems they face. Men, on the other hand, do have to face two years of mandatory military service under pretty crappy conditions. As such, there is a large contingent of "anti-feminists" on the South Korean web who do not look kindly on anything they see as prosecuting against men. You may have heard of infamous instances of claiming that the "OK hand" gesture is a sneaky way of making fun of men with small penises.

V. Uninvited Guests

When the controversy was still in the cradle, a dedicated group of trolls raked through Limbus's credits, looking for any ammo they could use against PM. Naturally, they went after the artist of Ishmael's Identity, blaming him for the censorship and lack of sexiness.

Well, actually, no, that artist is a man. Instead, their target was Vellmori, a young South Korean illustrator PM had recruited to create CG illustrations. Her artwork (example) was known for its strong expression work and dynamic poses, even if it was a bit different from Limbus's normal art style. Most people may have not known her by name beforehand, but fans knew her style.

Some trolls have dug up a few scattered retweets Vellmori had made in support of South Korean feminist causes, like abortion and the Women's Party. Once evidence was solid that a dirty feminist was in their midst, attacks were swift and brutal. Disgruntled users collaborated on the South Korean forum DC Inside, and demanded that PM fire Vellmori and disown the "radical feminism" they had allowed to ferment in their office.

The most often talked about and infamous incident was when a crowd of seven men actually showed up at and entered PM's offices. This isn't unheard of in South Korea, but a lot of people, especially Westerners, took it as a pretty explicit threat. (I've heard apocryphal tales that they were also cosplaying as the main villains of Library of Ruina, but I've never seen solid evidence of this.)

VI. The Outcast

On July 25th, 2023, Project Moon CEO Kim Ji-hoon released an official statement. Long and short: they had fired Vellmori due to her personal accounts containing "content that could potentially bring harm to the company and its employee." While her prior work would remain in the game, any and all future content would not include her work.

Needless to say, a lot of people were extremely pissed off about this. The bad guys won, and Project Moon let them win. Fans were quick to retaliate, with boycotts and physical protests being organized against Project Moon. Limbus Company has a pretty staggeringly high player base of queer and female players, and they wer...

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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/EnclavedMicrostate on 2025-03-31 04:02:20+00:00.

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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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• Link and archive any sources.
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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/Armascout on 2025-03-31 03:31:58+00:00.

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Background

This is something that happened a few years ago but is still an active discussion due to the complexity of it.

For those unaware the SCP Foundation is an online collaborative horror writing project. It's been around since 2008 and is about the aforementioned organization and its efforts to protect the world from anomalous threats.

Part of the writing for the site involves what are called author avatars. Basically characters who are members of the foundation that are representatives of the authors. This is something entirely optional but back in the early years of the site it was very common for contributors to do.

Several of the popular characters on the wiki such as Dr. Gears, Dr. Clef, Dr. Kondraki, etc are all author avatars.

One of if not THE most popular author avatar was Dr. Bright. 

Dr. Bright

Dr. Bright was the in universe author avatar for site contributor Admin Bright who was a member of the site for over a decade including being staff for many years.

The character of Dr. Bright was an immortal researcher who had the ability to possess others through the use of an amulet that contained their soul.

Due to the versatile nature of the character they were incredibly popular and used in many articles and tales many of which were not created by Admin Bright.

Some of the best works featuring Bright such as “The Executions of Dr. Bright” weren’t even written by Admin Bright. Admin Bright created the character but others took them and made great stories using them.

Something that should be noted is that SCP is not always serious and grimdark. There are sections on the wiki for less serious SCPs and stories. These are -Js (joke SCPs) and more comical or goofy tales that use regular SCPs. This side is sometimes called “lolfoundation” but it depends on who you talk to.

One of if not the most popular things about Dr. Bright was his “List of things Dr. Bright is no longer allowed to do at the Foundation”

This was a joke list that was not representative of the Dr. Bright character but rather just things Admin Bright felt were either funny or made for funny implications.

Entries included but were not limited too:

1. If an SCP file says never to do something, it is not because we want to control your mind. ~~Yes it is.~~
2. No, it's not, and Dr. Bright may not edit this document.
3. Dr. Bright is not from an alternate timeline.
4. Dr. Bright cannot issue orders to "preserve the timeline".
5. Or to "corrupt the timeline".
6. Or to "screw with those history nerds".
7. Chainsaws are not the solution to every question.
8. Nor is 'More Chainsaws'.
9. Or "Chainsaw cannons"
10. Except for that one time. And yes, it was awesome.

By the time of its deletion this list had 280 different entries in it.

This list became the representative for the Dr. Bright character and many fans offsite (myself included) saw him as a Bugs Bunny type jokester of the foundation. 

Videos reading or illustrating the “Bright List” have MILLIONS of views.

Onsite the list was more mixed with some contributors liking it and others not.

Particular scrutiny came to entries with more concerning implications or overtly sexual themes such as

1. Dr. Bright must never come in contact with anyone under the age of 18. ~~Let him contact them. It's the only way they'll learn~~. Just because it is a learning experience, does not mean anyone needs to come in contact with Bright.
2. Bright is not allowed to administer spankings to Dr. Rights as punishment, as it only causes more rules to be broken.

No, it doesn't matter that they are both "consenting adults", no matter how much either of them argue otherwise.

Dr. Rights is not allowed to spank the monkey.

Nor is she allowed to shock the monkey.

Or anything else related to the monkey.

This was something that remained mostly onsite and the division regarding it didn’t become more widely known until later.

The Drama

During the time that Admin Bright was a member of staff they were in charge of the Anti-Harassment Team. Aka the group of people responsible for making sure site staff, contributors, etc weren’t using their position or involved in harassing others.

In 2020 Admin Bright retired from staff.

Two years later they were banned when it came out that they had used their position to sexually harass members of the community including minors.

Bright had used their position as head of the anti harassment team to hide their abuse for YEARS.

The Aftermath

Following the downfall of Admin Bright the community had to decide what to do regarding the list.

For a year it remained with a warning message about its contents.

Some authors who had previously used Dr. Bright went back to their earlier works and either wrote him out or (in the case of djkaktus) replaced them with a “Dr. Ellias Shaw. Who serves the same purpose as Bright but isn’t named after Admin Bright.

However the list itself still remained. When they were banned it had come out Admin Bright had used the list as a way to lure victims or a form of credibility.

In 2023 a retiring staff member deleted the list before retiring. It was reinstated afterward but this caused discussion regarding it to reemerge.

Ultimately the list was deleted with a message replacing it regarding Bright's actions and as an apology from site staff for inadvertently allowing Bright to get away with abuse for years.

 

Today

Today Dr. Bright is seen as a stain on the site's history.

People still debate whether Bright's contributions should be deleted. It should be noted their work isn’t SUPER PROLIFIC but the Bright character is used in hundreds if not thousands of different tales, articles, media, etc. Completely rewriting everything to remove them would be virtually impossible.

It's not the site author's faults that Dr. Bright is named after a staff member who was abusive. They couldn’t have known.

The issue is that SCP isn’t limited to the wiki. There are millions of “offsite fans” on youtube, tiktok, twitter, etc who aren’t aware of Admin Brights actions. These fans sometimes still reference Dr. Bright, unaware of their creators actions.

There's a network of SCP: Secret Laboratory servers named “Dr. Brights Facility” they were founded before everything about Admin Bright came out to the public but they are stuck being associated with them due to no fault of their own.

There are some members of the community who believe Dr. Brights work should be deleted or that works containing the character should be rewritten. 

There are others who believe they should be kept but with warnings regarding Admin Brights behavior. 

My thoughts

Until relatively recently I was an offsite fan but I was vaguely aware of the Dr. Bright drama. I think it really sucks that the community has to give up this character (even writing stuff with the Dr. Shaw replacement is generally discouraged). But it's entirely understandable.

What are your thoughts?

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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/Ataraxidermist on 2025-03-30 18:34:29+00:00.

Original Title: [Emilia Pérez] The heartwarming movie about a Mexican transgender drug-lord that angered Mexicans, transgender people, probably some drug-lords too, and a truckload of other people too for good measure.

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Well hello you handsome devil, fancy seeing you here in the graveyard of fake good intentions, broken legitimacy and glittering jewellery turning out to be fake. A perfect setting for a tale of ignorance, wilful ignorance, proud ignorance, the unsurprising response this ignorance brought, and a dash of racism because why wouldn’t we?

Look around you and take a deep breath. Smell the glitter, the gold, the decay and damnation. We are in the world of movies. Stars, champagne, heart-breaking and tear-inducing tragic pieces inspiring generations and showing the world the way forward. At least that's what movies hope to be.

In practice, it’s mostly dull, senseless drivel, and idiocy. For a change in scenery, this isn’t happening in Hollywood. Oh no. Far worse.

We’re in France.

Careful, you nearly passed out when I said the f-word.

In F… that country, there is a peculiar movie industry. I have lots of personal feelings about it, more on that later, we're here for one particular movie.

Here's a basket. Go on, dip your hand into it and fish out the beast. There. Big script you hold in your hands. Emilia Perez. Smell it, that's the smell of black powder aching to find it's match and light up like Sputnik.

This is the story about a transgender Mexican drug lord made by a guy who has no idea about any of these subjects.

May God have mercy on our souls.

Every good sin starts with a backstory

Emilia Perez is a movie by Jacques Audiard. As no good story takes place in a void, let me give you some context first.

Jacques Audiard was born in 1952 to Marie-Christine Guibert and Michel Audiard, a legendary french screenwriter who left his mark on the french cultural landscape. Michel worked on classics like Les Tontons Flingueurs (crooks in clover in English), or A Monkey in Winter with Jean-Paul Belmondo, another French movie giant. Michel Audiard's style was prominently seen in the dialogues: witty, irreverent, full of endlessly quotable moments and plenty of sarcasm.

If I may allow myself a personal tangent, I am someone with little interest in black and white movies, but have a gander at Les Tontons Flingueurs, either with subtitles or a translated version if it exists. Some of it will be lost in translation, obviously, but it should retain enough juice to make it worth your while, I consider it the epitome of French class and humor.

Admittedly, recent discovery that Michel was part of an antisemitic and collaborator group during the war stained the legend, but that debate isn't for this thread.

With such a father, it's no surprise son Jacques entered the world of cinema in turn. He started working on movies like The Professional, no, not the one with that french giant Jean Reno, this one starring giant Jean-Paul Belmondo, and with music from yet another legend, Italian Ennio Morricone.

After playing support, Jacques Audiard got behind the camera himself.

While I'm not fond of his style, Jacques has shown to be no slouch in the movie-making department. You may have heard of or seen The Beat That My Heart Skipped, A prophet, or Rust and Bone (if I could recommend one of these three, pick The Beat that my Heart Skipped). Over time, he garnered many awards, both in the Cannes film festival and internationally.

Yes, being the son of a giant helps and the movie world is rife with nepotism, but credits where it's due. His movies do look like they come from the heart (mostly), and many awards were absolutely deserved.

And then, in 2024, he filmed and produced a little known piece called Emilia Pérez.

Emilia Pérez is a Spanish-language French musical crime drama depicting Mexicans and Mexico while being filmed in a studio in Bry-Sur-Marne near Paris.

Still with us?

It follows a Mexican cartel leader (Karla Sofía Gascón, an openly transgender actress) aiming to disappear and transition into a woman, helped by her lawyer (Zoe Saldaña, who is in about every successful movie ever). Also stars Selena Gomez, because we can't have nice things.

It touches on themes like fear and shame, the safety of your loved ones, truth and freedom, and then some. It won jury prize at Cannes, got 13 Oscar nominations and won 2, and some other awards.

The ingredients were good:

An awarded director, a modern story about actual societal issues that gives the role to a transgender woman and advocates for freedom in songs while depicting a country and its people that aren't often seen in movies. It should have been loved and adored by the transgender, the Mexicans, Spanish-speaking public, general public, and then some. Except the "no politics in my movie" crowd, but that's to be expected.

Somehow, everything that could have gone wrong went wrong.

Mexicans, transgender associations, Spanish-speaking public and a good chunk of the general public can't stop dunking on the movie. So does the "no politics in my movie" crowd, which is good because if they hadn't, I wouldn't have dared writing about the subject.

Villain, thy name is Opportunism

You'd think a name is straightforward. It's just a name, it shouldn't hide mind-breaking conundrums like Thus Spoke Zarathustra or Studies in Zoroastrian Exegesis, right? But as my beard turns gray and my eyes piercing, I realize that what seems simple and straightforward is often the most complicated. Like the movie Donnie Darko. Or any future documentary about Roman Polansky.

Where do we start? Normally my existence is a calm river, it goes from point A to B and I merely have to follow the flow.

Emilia Perez is closer to nitroglycerin blowing up inside a rusted iron container hanging over a chasm and sending debris in a 360° arc. Try to work with that.

Oh well, I can start with what I believe to be the spark that lit the fuse. A spark named Jacques Audiard.

Jacques is man with a vision for his movies, that much is true. In fact, he doesn't seem too bothered when his vision openly conflicts with reality, and I believe this here is the root of (most of) the problems that would come up.

I don't keep tabs on Oscars, and I admit I have a 100% venomous distaste for the current French movie industry (more on that later), so I didn't hear much about the movie.

But then I saw... THE INTERVIEW.

In which Jacques Audiard casually calls Spanish the language of poor people and immigrants at 3:40. Needless to say, Spanish media and people raised a few eyebrows hearing that.

So did I. Dude doesn't speak a word of Spanish, and yo hablo un poco espanol, but bear with me. It does make some sense that the Spanish empire, one of the biggest colonizer in the history of the world, spread its language and then left many broken countries speaking Spanish. Under that light, I get the argument.

...Then again, that would make French the language of the poor and the immigrants just as much because if there's one department they are aiming for first place, it's colonizing.

Spanish-speaking countries around the world felt a little bit rattled to say the least. Argentinian linguist Alicia Maria Zorrilla pointed out in La Nacion that the statement shows Audiard knows nothing about Spanish, that there is no language for the poor or the rich, and that the only superiority lie...

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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/Tokyono on 2025-03-28 15:47:02+00:00.

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Getting back into writing posts! I am always looking for more weird hobby-related things to write about, so if you have any suggestions- please tell me about them! Hope you all enjoy reading this!

I don’t know much about theme parks, but I’ve watched a ton of Defunctland videos, so let’s do this!

Who is Walt Disney?

Wait- what am I doing? Everyone knows who Walt Disney is. Well..err…

~~Who is Walt Disney?~~ Walt Disney – The relevant bits.

Before he created Disneyland, Walt Disney worked in animation. His career started in Kansas City, Missouri where he made cartoons for advertisements. He moved to Hollywood, California, in 1923, where he and his brother Roy created a studio and started making animated shorts. In 1928, Walt created Mickey Mouse with fellow animator Ub Iwerks, and in 1937, he created Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The rest is history. He became known as an animation pioneer and legend.

But at the same time, Walt experienced a revelation while at the local park one day with his two daughters:

While Diane and her sister, Sharon, were whirling around on the carousel, Walt's mind was elsewhere. He was dreaming of a place where children and their parents could enjoy a safe, clean, entertaining experience together; where parents wouldn't be relegated to uncomfortable park benches, trying to make the time pass with a bag of peanuts. As Walt recalled, "The idea of Disneyland lay dormant for years, but it came along when I was taking my kids around to these kiddie parks. I'd take them out...every Saturday and Sunday. Those were some of the happiest days of my life. They were in love with their dad...And while they were on the merry-go-round riding around 40 times or something, I'd be sitting there trying to figure out what you could do."

That idea did indeed lie dormant for years.

The troubled road to Disneyland

In 1939, he asked two of his animators to draw up plans for an amusement park. The task took them six weeks. In the end their design would have many of the features that would be in Disneyland years later: “including a carousel, a Main Street promenade, a train circling the park’s perimeter and a Snow White ride.”.

Then, err, Walt’s attention became devoted to a little event called World War 2. 90% of the output of his animation studio shifted to producing USA army propaganda. He was too busy to work on the theme park thing. In 1948, three years after the war ended, Disney wrote a letter to Dick Kelsey, one of his production designers, outlining his ideas for a theme park. He finally had the time and energy to devote himself to his new calling.

Creating the park would still take many years, as first of all, he had to find a place to build it. In 1952, he approached the city council of Burbank, California (the location of his animation studio) and asked if he could buy some land from them to build a theme park. They rejected him on the basis of not wanting the city to cultivate a “carny” atmosphere. But Walt, undeterred, started looking for other, bigger, better locations for his park.

He found it in Anaheim, where in May 1954 he purchased a 160 acres of land, consisting mainly of orange groves. Step one: check. Step two: find money to build the theme park.

Walt needed many millions to make his dream a reality. He sent his brother, Roy, to New York to take out a 9 million dollar loan, but it still wasn’t enough. So, he took money from his life insurance policy and sold vacation properties. Even this wasn’t enough. The ABC network came to his rescue, offering him 5 million dollars if he made a program for them about the creation of Disneyland. Walt accepted, realising that the program would let him advertise his park directly to consumers. It also let him introduce the four areas that would be open on opening day: Adventureland, Frontierland, Fantasyland, and Tomorrowland.

In the end, the budget rose to over 17 million dollars. Most in the entertainment industry, and even his own brother, thought the plan was crazy and that the park would fail. It was dubbed “Walt’s Folly”.

However, Walt had a few tricks up his sleeve. He announced that he would charge people a dollar to enter Disneyland, and that it would have more than one entrance. Although these things sound mundane now, back in the 1950s they were revolutionary, as at the time, theme parks would let people enter for free, through a single entrance.

Production on Disneyland started in July 1954. Walt did another crazy thing: he pledged that the park would be open within a year. This rushed schedule would be responsible for many of the problems on opening day…but not all of them.

Opening Day. July 17, 1955

ABC transmitted a telecast for the opening of the park. The hosts were: Art Linkletter, Bob Cummings, and…Ronald Reagan. It would have an audience of 70 million people. Even before the park opened, things went wrong. Walt Disney locked himself into his private apartment on main street. It didn’t take long for him to be freed, but it foreshadowed the chaos to come.

After being introduced by Reagan, Walt delivered his opening speech:

"To all who come to this happy place: welcome. Disneyland is your land. Here age relives fond memories of the past...and here youth may savor the challenge and promise of the future. Disneyland is dedicated to the ideals, the dreams and the hard facts which have created America ... with the hope that it will be a source of joy and inspiration to all the world."

As the park opened, one ginormous issue quickly became apparent.

There were too many damn people.

July 17 wasn’t the official opening day. It was meant to be an invitation-only press event, for journalists, celebrities, local dignitaries, corporate sponsors and other figures to visit the park before the real opening day, July 18.

Walt and park staff expected 20,000 people- about 28-35,000 showed up (figures vary- third party vs the accounts of Disney imagineers.) Many of these ‘extra guests’ bought counterfeit tickets and strolled through the park’s gates unchallenged. Some scaled a fence after someone set up a ladder, charging $5 per person. Others simply climbed over a wall into in a heavily wooded area- the background for Jungle Cruise.

Of course, this made the ticket system completely redundant:

"I was a Ticker Taker. Opening Day was a hectic day. The plan was to invite people at different hours so that we could spread out all of the arrivals. But it didn't work out that way. Everyone wanted to come out early to see the stars." Unfortunately, overcrowding wasn’t the only problem Walt faced, and it compounded many other issues.

Rides

Due to Walt rushing construction, many rides weren’t operational by opening day. For example, Peter Pan’s Flight kept breaking down, so Walt shuttered it and had the ride operator, 18-year-old Bob Penfield, run the King Arthur Carousel instead.

“Oh, everything broke down; you know new attractions,” Penfield said. “I was supposed to start on the Peter Pan attraction, but it wouldn’t run, so I went over to the carousel.”

In the end, only 20 rides were open on July 17.

Issues extended to ride management. There were so many people that operators were overwhelmed. At Autopia, children jumped the lines and grabbed cars. By far the worst example of th...

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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/EnclavedMicrostate on 2025-03-24 04:02:09+00:00.

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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:

• Don’t be vague, and include context.
• Define any acronyms.
• Link and archive any sources.
• Ctrl+F or use an offsite search to see if someone's posted about the topic already.
• Keep discussions civil. This post is monitored by your mod team.

Certain topics are banned from discussion to pre-empt unnecessary toxicity. The list can be found here. Please check that your post complies with these requirements before submitting!

Previous Scuffles can be found here

r/HobbyDrama also has an affiliated Discord server, which you can join here:

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/RadioRavenRide on 2025-03-23 21:47:14+00:00.

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Disclaimer: About Research and Sources

Because this drama happened a while back, many of the sources (such as Twitter accounts) are missing or have been deleted. This post is the best attempt to compile an entire story of what happened. If you feel like this post is missing anything, please feel free to make a comment with an addition or correction.

Introduction: Leaks and Leak Culture

As long as humans wanted to know things, we’ve wanted to know things first. Take London during the 17th and 18th centuries. Licensed stock brokers traded in the Royal Exchange, but in order for data to get through, it had to cross from the port. In between the port and the Exchange was Exchange Alley, where all the unlicensed brokers traded in both stocks and rumors while hanging out in coffeehouses. This meant that any sort of new information generally reached the alley before the official Exchange.

On the other hand, the information in the alley was not guaranteed to be reliable. One time, a man riding a horse announced the death of the queen, which caused a massive sell-off due to uncertainty of the next monarch’s policies. However, it was revealed to be a ruse by some other traders to buy low and sell high. Such is the risk of early information.

The gaming industry has given rise to a digital Exchange Alley, as people wanting to follow the latest news and excitement flock to leakers who serve up these tantalizing tidbits of information. Leakers usually post concept art, speculation, and datamined content online regarding games and the video game industry as a whole. Anything that isn’t officially announced information can technically count as a leak. An example of a leak is “This quarter’s Nintendo Direct will reveal these games.”

Because leaks are technically a breach of trade secrets, it is common for leakers to remain anonymous, and for their credibility to be judged based on the veracity of their leaks. Keep this in mind.

The Leak Ecosystem

Leaks are usually posted online in several different places: Twitter, 4Chan, and Resetera. There’s also the subreddit r/GamingLeaksAndRumors, but leak subreddits usually are dedicated to discussing leaks and not creating them. This is for many reasons, chief among them that leakers want to avoid potential DMCAs from game studios that might bring down the entire subreddit.

Normally, people don’t consider random leaks (i.e. “source: trust me bro”) to be good proof. However, if an official announcement has information that was referenced in a previous leak, the credibility of that leaker increases. Thus, people will look forward to hearing from that leaker more, and take their leaks as potential predictions.

This, as many things on the Internet, has been codified into a tier ranking. Every year, there is a community reliability poll on r/GamingLeaksAndRumours ranking leakers based on their records. The most accurate leakers are usually well-established Twitter accounts or actual journalists, and the most unreliable leakers are taken less seriously or get their leaks straight up banned.

Now, with an understanding of how the leaking world operates, let’s discuss one specific leaker who never quite decreased in reliability, but certainly lost a lot of community trust in another way.

Enter Midori

As mentioned in the previous section, every good leaker needs an origin story. We start with, as many stories do, on Twitter. In 2023, a spinoff of the popular JRPG Persona 5 named Persona 5 Tactica was announced. Later, it was announced that this game would come with a DLC named “Repaint Your Heart” that stars the new characters from Persona 5 Royal. This announcement was quite a surprise, so fans and rumor-lovers decided to see if there was anyone who had leaked this prize info ahead of time. As far as I can put it together, there was indeed a leaker who shared this information. They had the Twitter handle @MbKKssTBhz5 and had a Japanese name I’m pretty sure is read as “Midori”, which means green in Japanese. Their tweets didn’t have the best English, but they were still pretty clear unlike the vague hints and literal emoji strings that other leakers gave. While I cannot find the original leak, here is a reddit post that references this leak: https://www.reddit.com/r/GamingLeaksAndRumours/comments/14lx19x/leaker//_who//_released//_image//_of//_akechi//_and//_yoshizawa/.

While not all of their information was true, they had a stream of reliable leaks that anticipated announcements most people did not see coming, especially when it came to Sega:

• Persona 3 Reload receiving a DLC covering The Answer instead of a rerelease
• The development of a new Virtua Fighter, more than a decade after VF5
• Jet Set Radio coming back
• Information about the roster of Persona 5 X, which at this point people did not think was a real game

Besides these leaks, Midori would also verify the output of other leakers, calling them “Correct Information” to approve. I can’t verify them all, but the general impression that I get is that Midori had an incredibly strong record. Additionally, there are many leaks that have yet to be verified, such as the nature of Persona 6 and a sequel to Sonic Frontiers. Midori also gave and verified Nintendo and later Square Enix leaks, but was generally more in tune with other leakers on those and wasn’t as prophetic as with Sega leaks.

When r/GamingLeaksAndRumours came out with their Credibility Tier List, Midori was listed as Tier 1, the highest tier alongside journalists Jason Schreier and Tom Henderson.

A Rising Star

Ok, but there are lots of trusted leakers. What’s so special about this one? As Midori became trusted for reliable leaks, people also learned some things about them. Midori disclosed they were a Japanese girl trying to learn English. Their tweets were often in broken English, which people generally excused due to English being their second language.

(note that the original tweets are no longer available, so I’ve linked people’s reactions to some of these leaks on Reddit)

Midori refers to an upcoming Nintendo Direct as “peak”

Midori clarifies that they’re just excited about the Nintendo Direct

The Internet, being a totally normal place where people do not get obsessed over online personalities whose lives they know nothing about, took this information and ran with it. Although he later posted an apology, one user tried to deduce Midori’s age based on the release date of Persona games and asked for their number. Another user posted this Midori plush depicting their profile picture.

As a response to these individuals, Midori later clarified that they had a boyfriend and hoped that their admiring fans would “find cool girlfriend soon” (exact words). Nevertheless, their solid record ensured that they remained a popular figure in the leaking community.

She Quits! Wait, She’s Back!

Leaking is a difficult balance. You want to give out enough information to get people excited and increase the trust they have in you, but you also can’t drop everything, or you might face serious consequences from the company whose NDA you might be breaking. For that reason, many leakers, even popular ones, remain anonymous, and most leak consumers acknowledge that leaks should not be taken as fully indicative of the final product. However, gamers and leaked consumers are still a difficult group to fully satisfy, and many leakers have come and gone because of these risks.

While they were active, Midori announced they were quitting multiple times, citing multiple reasons. I am not sure how many times they quit(I vaguely remember 3), each time came with a strong emotional reaction. Case in point, one time the blame was assigned to Zippo, a highly controversial figure in the leaking scene.

However, each time Midori would come back with a new leak. These comebacks also signified a change in leaking content, such as leaking about new companies. So even with these short retirements and crazy fans, it seemed like nothing could stop Midori from becoming and ...

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CW: This post contains brief mentions of depression, suicide, infidelity, and sexual harassment/assault — please read this at your own discretion.

My very first write-up! (all on mobile, so apologies if the formatting is weird) This gets convoluted VERY quickly, and there are many names involved, BUT I will try my best to make this all make sense. This requires quite a bit of context before we get into the whole tweet thing, so buckle up.

What’s a Genshin and what does it Impact?

Genshin Impact is an extremely popular anime-style mobile open world rpg that was released in September of 2020 by the company HoYoVerse (keep this name in your noggin for later). The game includes a large open world map with exploration and a fast paced battle system. The game is monetized through gacha mechanics: a system that entices players to spend in-game currency (that can also be purchased for real currency) for the chance of getting an in-game item (in this case, either weapons or characters). In Genshin, this comes in the form of "wishes", which is what you use to pull for the chance of a desired character or weapon.

The Initial Impact

To say Genshin Impact exploded upon its release is a MASSIVE understatement. No matter your opinion on the game, it’s an indisputable fact it broke multiple revenue records within months of its release, and is one of the highest grossing mobile games in history. To this day, it is the most popular game within its niche: having little competition except for other games HoYoVerse has also published.

With its mounting popularity, it’s no surprise that content creators would soon begin to jump on the bandwagon. A handful of notable creators began to rise on YouTube and Twitch — from playing the latest events, discussing characters and their battle prowess, giving guides on game mechanics, analyzing the story, and much more.

As such, these creators (all grown adults by the way, I feel that also needs mentioned) began to talk with one another and collaborate on videos and streams, slowly building friendships and friend-groups who share a similar enjoyment for the game. Some of these creators would even be picked by HoYoVerse to participate in events and receive sponsorships. All seemed joyful!

PvP

This all starts with two creators in particular: Tectone and Atsu

Tectone is a former Genshin content creator you may be familiar with already for… several reasons. He’s been in a slew of controversies, which all have their own convoluted series of events. All you need to know for right now is that he no longer plays Genshin due to his numerous gripes with the game, and he is not quiet about it. This has alienated him from most of the Genshin creator space and he is often referred to as a "drama-farmer".

Atsu is a Genshin content creator who was known for pulling for characters, reviewing people’s accounts, and, most notably, collaborating with his friend group on videos. For the sake of the drama, just remember the names Dish and Tuonto. These friends of his are also big creators within the Genshin space.

Both Atsu and Tectone were initially friends and collaborated on videos. However, they had a messy public falling out that is honestly not worth going into depth about. Just know it was petty and that they now hate each-others guts and have done so as far back as 2021. I won't be going too into depth concerning their beef in this post as it's pretty much the same thing every time.

The Tweet.

Some quick context: Genshin Impact does scheduled livestreams on Twitch and Youtube before each update to show a preview of what's to come. Creators will often record their reactions to this and upload them to YouTube.

On January 19th, 2024, another Genshin content creator, Zy0x, tweeted “the duality of man” with a screenshot of two thumbnails related to the most recent livestream at the time. The first video, by Doro44, expressed a positive reaction towards the stream. The second video by Tectone expressed a negative reaction towards the stream.

Now, as popular of a game as Genshin is, people expect a lot from it. These expectations are often not met, which leads to a lot of negative criticism. The most notable in relation to this drama is the lack of free rewards and quality of life improvements — a large reason for Tectone’s progressive distaste for the game, going so far as to call for a boycott due to a lack of rewards for the games upcoming "Lantern Rite" event: a huge yearly event to commemorate Chinese New Year as HoYoVerse is a Chinese company. More specifically, Genshin only gave 3 free wishes as a thank you gift for the event, which for many felt like a slap in the face. Doro44 is known for being a pretty positive creator in the space and stays pretty much drama free.

What initially started as a harmless tweet quickly escalated into heated debates. On one hand, people were accusing Tectone of inciting negativity about the game and saying his community were harassing others for enjoying and playing the game. On the other hand, people were accusing Doro44 of overpraising the game for money and saying he should express his criticism for the game more.

This all culminated in a now-deleted twitter thread by another content creator, Fobmaster, talking about how Tectone incited a lot of negativity within the community. They have since resolved their beef and are on ok terms. Atsu quickly followed with his own (also deleted) twitter thread, expressing a similar opinion to Fobmaster. What makes Atsu’s thread so significant is that in his last paragraph, he insinuated that a certain creator was spreading misinformation to Tectone about other creators in the community due to them having a grudge against Atsu, but Atsu did not say who this was:

"p.s. if you're reading this Tectone & your source for some of these claims you are making happens to be a [creator] that bears a personal grudge against me, please be aware, you are likely being manipulated."

Now of course, such a public vague-post like this would get people speculating. Who is this mysterious unknown creator supposedly spreading lies to Tectone? And why did this person have a grudge with Atsu?

The Big Reveal

On February 3rd, a creator known as Braxophone (Brax) tweeted the link to a google document titled About Atsu with the caption: “Please tell me what I did, or move on.” To sum it up:

• Brax was the creator Atsu was talking about.
• Atsu allegedly spread lies about Brax to other creators.
• Brax accidentally posted a picture of Tuonto’s then-girlfriend’s face without knowing she didn't want her face shown publicly, which is one of the reasons Atsu doesn't like him.
• Atsu allegedly disliked Brax and actively alienated him from other creators, something that was a factor in Brax’s declining mental health and depression.
• Atsu allegedly had the ability to get people blacklisted from working with HoYoVerse due to Atsu’s connections with HoYoVerse staff. Brax believes Atsu got him blacklisted.
• A certain creator at a party “caused trouble” for some women and people were allegedly silenced by Atsu. (Keep this in mind for later.)

Now to say this blew up would be an understatement, with the tweet accumulating a whopping 10 million views. Many expressed their disappointment with Atsu, even including some of Atsu’s closest friends in the replies, and showed their support for Brax.

Atsu didn’t take this sitting down. In response, he posted (yet another deleted) tweet basically refuting all the claims in this document, accusing Brax of borderline-stalker behavior, lying about a blacklist, and bringing up private conversations and situations he shouldn't have, including a sexual assault in which the victim did not want put out in public. This tweet was clearly very heated, which didn't help his case in the public eye. This was followed up by a 6 hour (yes) Twitch stream essentially reiterating the same points. Tectone would make a reappearance with his own stream (and several youtube videos), supporting Brax and expressing his very potent dislike for Atsu.

Another Genshin content creator, Mtashed, along with Asmongold, an extremely popular twitch streamer unrelated to the Genshin community, talked with Atsu on seperate streams to clarify Atsu’s connections to HoYoVerse. (only Asmongold's stream is available but please take my word on Mtashed). Someone like Asmongold getting involved shows the sheer magnitude this drama had, and the YouTube video reposting this stream has almost 1.5 million views. Atsu did confirm in both streams he had some degree of control as to what creators could be sponsored by HoYoVerse, which led many to conclude he had the ability to also get creators blacklisted. This didn't help Atsu’s case, and as such, many began to express further disappointment with him. Even another popular unrelated YouTuber, SomeOrdinaryGamers, made his [own video](...

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