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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/Upbeat_Ruin on 2024-07-28 21:50:12+00:00.

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Hi! In my last post here, I made passing mention of the Miniverse Make-it-Mini brand and some recent issues with it. Some people in the comments expressed interest in a write-up about the situation, so...here it is. The first version of my writeup got prematurely posted by accident, and Reddit's lousy post editor kept me from fixing it properly. I really hate Reddit's post editor.

MGA Entertainment is a large toy corporation that operates out of Los Angeles, California. It was founded in 1979, and the current CEO is Isaac Larian (misspelled as “Larain” in my last post – my bad). Among several other IPs, MGA owns a brand called Miniverse Make-it Mini. Since that's kind of redundant, I'll just refer to it as Miniverse.

Miniverse is a line of tiny replicas of various objects, with an emphasis on food products. It's not to be confused with Mini Brands, a rival IP from Zuru. They come in play kits, but also in surprise blind-capsule form. MGA seems to be allergic to actually telling you what you're buying. You get a package of itty-bitty components and assemble them into a finished tiny object, making it a craft project on top of a toy. The kits seem like they'd be a lot of fun. As a kid, I loved playsets with lots of teeny accessories, like My Little Pony, Littlest Pet Shop, and LEGO. Had Miniverse been around in my childhood, it probably would have been right up my alley.

So what's the problem? Oh, nothing much, except that the Miniverse will burn your skin and give you a hacking cough.

Yeah...so these play kits that are marketed to children and placed in the toy aisle, they're made by pouring liquid UV resin and leaving it to cure. Specifically, they contain the acrylates hydroxyethylmethacrylate (HEMA) and isobornyl acrylate (IOBA), in amounts exceeding federal standards. For those who don't speak science, this type of resin is a serious irritant in its liquid form and can cause allergic reactions. (It no longer poses these hazards once cured and hardened.) Getting it on your bare skin will irritate it and possibly give you a chemical burn, and it can cause respiratory issues in a poorly ventilated area. Like a child's bedroom, for example.

And it did cause issue. MGA received 26 incident reports about Miniverse kits, most of them being about skin burns and irritation. One consumer reported that resin fumes from the kits had triggered their asthma. An additional 3 reports can be found on saferproducts.gov's report page by searching “Miniverse”, alleging skin burns, nose and throat irritation, and the resin sticking to skin with extreme difficulty in removing it. Unlike with the Glamper incident, this time MGA couldn't get away with making a halfhearted “product safety notice” on their Facebook and telling consumers to go through their clunky customer service process for a return. It was time for a recall, to get that stuff off the shelves ASAP.

The CPSC issued a recall on June 25, 2024 for 21 million units in the United States and an additional 1 million in Canada. Consumers had the option of returning either the complete unopened product, or the unused resin if they had already opened the item. Then, they would receive a refund or a replacement product of equal value, at their choice.

I work in claims at a department store, which means that I process merchandise returns, and pulling recalled items is part of the job. When this all went down, I was there. I'd estimate that we lost a couple hundred dollars' worth of product to the recall; the pulled product filled an entire L-cart. While my supervisor was packing it up to ship it back to the manufacturer, she complained about what a dumb situation this was. I said something to the effect of, “You'd think this is something they'd have caught in product testing,” and her response was an incredulous “Right?!”

Then again, this is MGA, the same company that gave us the LOL Surprise Glamper, the beast that feasts on little girls' fingers. Their product safety division doesn't seem to know wtf they're doing. This isn't some little oopsie. HEMA and IOBA are listed on safety data sheets for hazardous chemical handling companies and public health orgs. This is stuff that I would have to double bag and place in a black toxic waste bucket if I was throwing it out at my job. But there it was, packaged in bright inviting capsules for young children to handle, stamped with phrases like “All you can eat!” What the hell.

A week after my store pulled all its Miniverse inventory, I happened to find a capsule that had survived the recall. I took it to claims so it can be sent back to the manufacturer, but not before snapping some pictures for my write-up. I'm glad I found it before it could sneak into an unsuspecting customer's home. I'm also glad that customers didn't harass me about it. Apparently, some people have been behaving poorly in light of the recall, to the point where the subreddit for Miniverse has to have a note to not take your anger out on retail employees in its pinned post about the recall.

That type is so tiny. Note how there are no safety warnings for resin. There's only the standard small parts warning, and a brief line telling you to read the instructions. If you're unfamiliar with UV resin, it would be easy to buy a Miniverse kit thinking you can just hand it off to your 8-year-old and let them take it from there.

Now, where the Miniverse franchise will go from here remains to be seen. It appears that MGA has changed something about the kits, because some are now available for pre-order as of July 25. Most likely, they have either reformulated the resin or rebranded Miniverse for adult craftspeople. If you ask me, the latter is what should have been done in the first place. Other than that, it seems that MGA has gone radio silent.

For those injured, some law firms are offering their services. It seems that they might be gearing up for a class-action suit. Currently, no litigation has occurred of which I know; we appear to only be in the consultation phase at the moment.

By the way, if you've been wondering why the Mini Brands line from Zuru has not been recalled but Miniverse has, that's because Mini Brands toys are not resin casting kits. They're just tiny, ready-made models. No resin, no recall.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/musicloverrmm on 2024-07-27 07:21:32+00:00.

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What happens when a whole bunch of ruthlessly dedicated band nerds are left on a virtual Lord of the Flies island with essentially no moderation, rules, or technological help at all? My friends - buckle up - because we are dogs are taking a ride in God’s hot car - and he is about to forget all about us.

What Are The Marching Arts?

The simplest way to describe the marching arts would be derivatives of marching bands, whether in high schools and colleges across the USA - although they are starting to become popular in other countries as well.

Many high schools in the USA have competitive marching bands - ranging from a few dozen kids playing pop music to huge groups that travel and compete nationally. The largest of these can be pretty impressive. These groups can consist of upwards of 250+ students, and compete in circuits like Bands of America (BOA) and USBands. Sometimes kids practice and audition for years to get into these groups, and sometimes fees can run into the thousands of dollars for these groups to travel and compete. Some of them are seriously impressive - some bands from Texas, Indiana, and Oklahoma especially are world renowned and have several national titles under their belts. College marching bands are impressive, but besides very specific events like Honda Battle of the Bands, don’t really compete against each other in the same way high school bands do.

Drum Corps is similar, but not the same as marching band. Drum Corps International (DCI) is the circuit for these corps (Don’t call them bands - trust me, you will regret it), and these groups, consisting of students 21 years of age and younger, compete in a summer circuit. The differences between marching band and drum corps are negligible at this point - but the very basics are that drum corps are independent non-profit organizations that recruit students from around the country, and that drum corps don’t include woodwind instruments (like flute, saxophone, etc) while marching bands do. Drum corps is termed as marching music’s major league, and just like some BOA bands, are pretty impressive. 

Color guard groups are the flags and weapons you see performing with marching band and drum corps. Color guard groups perform in Winter Guard International (WGI) indoors during the Winter, and once again have their own circuit and competitions. WGI groups can be both high school and independent groups. Drumlines also compete during the Winter in WGI, with battery (marching drums) and pit percussion (the instruments you see on the sideline).

All four of these distinct activities more or less make up the marching arts. People in these groups are very niche, very passionate, and very skilled in what they do. Many folks spend SIGNIFICANT money training, auditioning, learning, and then touring with these groups. I was involved in high school marching band and drum corps - but never got around to color guard or drumline. Just so you understand the demographics of the folks we’re dealing with here - these are opinionated, talented folks.

Fantasy Marching Band?! 

Fantasy Marching Arts (FMA) is a fantasy game in which you can create marching groups, audition performers, design shows, rehearse, and then compete against other groups. You can create one of each of the four categories (drum corps, marching band, color guard, drumline) each season. A season runs around three months and has pre-season, competition season, and a finals season before the cycle refreshes and restarts again. The website has been up since 2010, and we are currently in S123. 

It is a very clicky game. To score points on a scale of 100, you rehearse your sections by clicking a button until your ‘energy’ points run out. As the season goes on, your groups get better. As you compete and do well not only do you win against other players, but you can earn money and reputation, which puts you in a better starting point in the next season as you are able to attract better members, staff, and statistics.

Another way of earning money is by hosting your own events. They cost a LOT of money to set up, so it usually takes a few seasons before you can host your own event. When other groups apply to attend your event, they have their own reputation stats, and the better groups attend your event, the more tickets you sell, therefore the more money you earn (remember this for later). 

The longer your group is around, the more opportunities they have to host events, gain reputation, hire staff, and increase the show difficulty to get better scores. The game is quite fun. I’ve been around since Season 1 - and even though I’ve had years where I don’t play, my groups are quite good. I do like though that I never win every time. There is always some hotshot that signed up three seasons ago that is now beating me. If I ever got to the point where I would win every time, I would just quit and restart because what is the fun in that?

Players get very into the lore of the game, and there’s a good mix of current high schoolers all the way up to middle-aged folks who still love the activity. Players have come and gone, but some keep up written commentaries and game recaps, others had folks submit their group logos for a visual graph of rankings. It is super fun and people get really into it, especially on discord. People can also get passionate and there can be drama - like for example somebody took up an entire week with their events when everyone else puts their events on the same day.

Fantasy Marching Arts Deists

So all of this is good and well and all - but what happens when the entire game is run by a single person, and then that person just… disappears? 

Adam (not real name) is the sole designer, moderator, and owner of FMA. He is a game designer, music designer, and marching band show designer (the latter is a little questionable and as the community is very small, I’ve never seen a group with a show by him). In the first few years of FMA, he was the one manually resetting the season, fixing bugs, and moderating the website. Many dedicated players publicly asked if they could assist him, even on a volunteer basis, but these requests were always denied or ignored.

Here’s the thing - Adam has not - publicly - done anything with the website since 2015. His last log-in to the site at all was back in April. But there are no work logs, no moderation done, no password resets (which were all being done manually), no event changes, no algorithm tweaks, no bug fixes, and no suggestions responded to since 2015. 

The rent must still be paid on the domain obviously, as the site is still up, and the seasons still reset so we can play, but even this has a huge asterisk. S116 ended, but instead of resetting after approximately two hours for S117 it just…. Didn’t. We were left in S116 limbo for a day and a half while we panicked on the forums group, assuming that this was our time to go and the FMA Rapture was nigh. One of the other original players from S1 suggested that he/she/they were friends on Facebook with Adam, but he hadn’t been active there in months, either. Eventually the season reset and we were able to do S117 (with two less days to rehearse… grrrrr). 

My password was compromised in a data breach - and FMA is still the only website that has my old password because I can’t reset it. 

There is a pay to play element of the site - you can pay real money for actual influence, in game money, etc - which people still do, as you can see how they have purchased these things each time a new season updates. It is a little frustrating to hear this because FMA is not a passive income kind of site unless you have a full moderator.

The aforementioned S1 player was made a moderator after the S117 debacle - but this player doesn’t seem to be able to do anything except for moderate forum posts - which is a start as we will soon see. Nothing technical like fixing profiles, banning members, etc. seems to even be possible.

There are a handful of players that have broken the game, have everything unlocked, and would win every time if they entered events. There is absolutely nothing stopping them from doing so, but it can be quite demoralizing if you see they are competing and often, is enough for you to decide to take a season off. These players essentially have gentlemen's agreements to take seasons off, only enter one group at a time, etc. It’s been nice because it has afforded newer players more oxygen in the game, but there are no mechanics in place for them to do this if they didn’t want to.

The FF Phenomenon 

Like mentioned before, really good groups can take several seasons to get up and going. But what happens when a single player takes advantage of the mechanics of the game to advance themselves in relevance? Enter the user FF (abbreviation). 

FF had, at one point, 26 profiles. He didn’t enter any of his groups into any events except his own. He would farm influence with each group, but instead of helping other players by entering them into their events (increasing their money), he had EACH group create their own event, and then entered each group into the others events. He was farming influence and money at a rate that was INSANE. Within three seasons, each of his 26 profiles leaped ahead of groups that had been around for DOZENS. FF single handedly reaped the benefits of 26 different players in a span of three seasons.

Because Adam was never on, we couldn’t...

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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/ToErrDivine on 2024-07-25 08:42:12+00:00.

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Hi, everyone, welcome back to the Drake-Kendrick writeup. Previous posts can be found here, here and here. Following on from the last post, this post is going to be talking about and mentioning the following potential triggers: domestic abuse, pedophilia, sex trafficking and sexual assault.

Act Six: Salting The Earth- ‘Not Like Us’/‘Champagne Moments’/‘BBL Drizzy’

On the morning of May 5, 2024, less than 24 hours after the gauntlet of ‘6:16 in LA’, ‘Family Matters’ and ‘meet the grahams’, I woke up, decided that there was no point in getting up and went back to sleep for an hour. In that hour, Kendrick decided to prove me wrong by dropping his last diss track against Drake, ‘Not Like Us’.

I’m going to be honest, this song makes me happy, but I’ll explain why later. For now, let’s take a look at it. First off, Kendrick made his major message clear with the cover, which is a photo of Drake’s mansion covered in the red markers used to note the presence of registered sex offenders. So Kendrick was coming for Drake’s blood right out of the gate.

In ‘Not Like Us’, Kendrick:

1: Issues another threat to Drake while also alluding to his ghostwriters (‘Psst, I see dead people’)

2: Mocks Drake for his constant references to Compton (for example, Drake posted a photo of himself wearing a Compton Community College shirt after he took down ‘Taylor Made Freestyle’), which reinforces the idea that Drake is a culture vulture (‘What’s up with these jabroni-ass niggas tryna to see Compton?’)

3: Declares his intention to keep going after Drake regardless of any blowback he gets because of Drake’s industry ties (‘The industry can hate me, fuck ‘em all and they mama’)

4: Points out that half the industry just fucking hates Drake (‘How many opps [opponents] you really got? I mean, it’s too many options’)

5: Compares himself to NBA legend John Stockton, who spent a lot of his career playing alongside Karl Malone, who raped and impregnated a 13 year old when he was 20 in 1983 (‘I’m finna pass on this body, I’m John Stockton’)

6: Says that despite being a devout Christian, he’ll still beat Drake’s arse if he has to (‘Beat your ass and hide the Bible if God watchin’)

7: Says that he won’t let Drake try to flee from the feud (‘Walk him down, whole time, I know he got some ho in him/Pole on him, extort shit, bully Death Row on him’)

8: Says that Drake is a pedophile and child molester (‘Say Drake, I heard you like ‘em young/You better not ever go to cell block one’)

9: Again tells any woman who gets involved with Drake that by doing so, they’re endangering their young female relatives (‘To any bitch that talk to him and they in love/Just make sure you hide your lil’ sister from him’)

10: Takes direct shots at members of OVO- in particular, he implies that Drake has a better relationship with Chubbs (OVO’s head of security) than he does with his own son; that PARTYNEXTDOOR does cocaine, and asks why Drake signed Baka Not Nice after he was arrested and charged with sex trafficking (that charge was dropped because the victim refused to testify, but he was convicted of assaulting her and a weapons charge) (‘They tell me Chubbs the only one that get your hand-me-downs/And Party at the party playin’ with his nose now/And Baka got a weird case, why is he around?’)

11: Says that Drake is a pedophile and child molester (‘Certified Lover Boy? [Drake’s 2021 album]Certified pedophiles’)

12: Says that Drake is a pedophile and child molester (‘Why you trollin’ like a bitch? Ain’t you tired? Tryna strike a chord and it’s probably A Minor’)

(For bonus points, as a chord, A Minor has no black keys in it, hence why it’s not a chord that's especially favoured by Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney.)

13: Draws a line in the sand to make an ‘us vs them’ story where the opposing side are either pedophiles or supporting pedophiles (‘They not like us, they not like us, they not like us’)

14: Asks if Drake really thought that the West Coast rappers would just sit around and let him disrespect Tupac, and tells him that coming to California in the future is going to be a mistake (‘You think the Bay gon’ let you disrespect Pac, nigga? I think that Oakland show gon’ be your last stop, nigga’)

15: Says that Drake threw Cole under the bus by collaborating with him on ‘First Person Shooter’, but then dissing him on ‘Push Ups’ and ‘Family Matters’ (‘Did Cole foul, I don’t know why you still pretendin’’)

16: Insults OVO (the logo of which is an owl) and everyone associated with it (‘What is the owl? Bird niggas and bird bitches, go’)

17: Tells Drake that his attempts to shape the general story of the feud into a form that’s favourable to him won’t work because fans aren't stupid, though that's debatable (‘The audience not dumb/Shape the stories how you want, hey Drake, they’re not slow’)

18: Says that he’s got more to reveal if Drake wants to keep going (‘Rabbit hole is still deep, I can go further, I promise’)

19: Compares Drake to B-Rad, the protagonist of Malibu’s Most Wanted- a rich, sheltered white guy who wants to become a rapper despite being terrible at it and appropriates black culture (‘Ain’t that somethin’? B-Rad stands for ‘bitch’ and you Malibu’s most wanted’)

20: Says that Drake is better suited to being a menial than the person with any authority or power (‘Ain’t no law, boy, you ball boy, fetch Gatorade or somethin’)

21: Calls Drake a pussy (‘Pussy’)

22: Taunts Drake, telling him to stop spending his time posting stuff on Instagram and thinking of captions and get back in the studio to continue the feud (‘Tell the pop star quit hidin’/Fuck a caption, want action, no accident’)

23: Suggests that Drake slept with his mentor Lil Wayne’s girlfriend while Wayne was in jail- please note that while Drake did admit to having slept with her, she said that it had happened before she and Wayne dated while Wayne said that he found out while he was in jail, so I don’t know whether Kendrick got the timeline wrong or if he’s calling them liars and cheaters (‘Fucked on Wayne girl while he was in jail, that’s connivin’)

24: Tells Drake to not disrespect Serena Williams after Drake called Serena’s husband a groupie- like Kendrick, Williams is from Compton, but I don’t know if there’s any other link there, though Drake allegedly dated Williams in the past (‘From Alondra down to Central, nigga better not speak on Serena’)

25: Says that Drake is a pedophile and child molester who surrounds himself with other pedophiles and sex offenders (‘And your homeboy gon’ need subpoena, that predator move in flocks/That name gotta be registered and placed on neighbourhood watch’)

26: Compares himself to legendary wrestler Shawn Michaels, who had a notorious feud with Canadian wrestler Bret Hart (‘Sweet Chin Music [Michaels’ finishing move] and I won’t pass the aux, ayy’)

27: Says he’s got five more diss tracks ready to go in addition to the ones he’s already released (‘How many stocks do I really have in stock? Ayy/One, two, three, four, five, plus five, ayy’)

28: Refers to Drake as a ‘Freaky-ass nigga’ or a ‘fan’ and mocks his nickname of ‘the 6 God’ by calling him ‘a 69 god’, which may be comparing him to rapper Tekashi 6ix9ine, who is widely considered to be a snitch after he cooperated fully with prosecutors and testified against his former affiliates (‘Devil is a lie, he a 69 god, ayy/Freaky-ass niggas need to stay they ass inside, ayy’)

29: Likens Drake to the white settlers in Atlanta who profited off slavery, and says that Drake is disconnected from Black culture and merely sees collaborating with artists from Atlanta as a way to make money, thus profiting off their culture (‘Atlanta was the Mecca, buildin’ railroads and trains/Bear with me a second, let me put y’all on game/The settlers was usin’ townsfolk to make ‘em richer/Fast-forward, 2024, you got the same agenda/You run to Atlanta when you need a check balance’)

30: Starts naming Atlanta artists Drake collaborated with: first up is Future- Kendrick says that Drake collaborated with him to get his songs played in clubs (‘You called Future when you didn’t see the club (Ayy, what?)’)

31: Says that Drake collaborated with Lil Baby so he could refresh his knowledge of Black slang, in order to keep looking like someone who’s part of and in touch with Black culture (‘Lil Baby helped you get your lingo up (What?)’)

32: Says that Drake collaborated with 21 Savage, who’s a member of the Bloods, to give himself gang cred by affiliation (‘21 gave you false street cred’)

33: Similarly, he says that Drake collaborated with Young Thug to prop up his e...

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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/Smackrel-of-Piss on 2024-07-22 16:42:00+00:00.

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Destiny 2 is a game not unfamiliar with controversy. It's name get shared far and wide for many reasons, both good and bad, but if there is one thing everyone can agree on regarding Destiny 2 it is that the Raids are one of the best parts about the game. I previously made a post about Destiny 2 regarding the Craftening Event, and I felt that this raid focused event was one worthy of a retelling. First, some recap.

Destiny 2 (D2) is a first person looter shooter mmo-lite, meaning you pew pew at enemies for bigger and better gear alongside friends and strangers across the game. Raids are an endgame activity where 6 Guardians team up to fight the biggest and baddest enemies in the game, who all come with their own unique encounters and mechanics involving teamwork and cooperation.

Throughout D2's lifespan there have been numerous Raids released, 13 to be exact (not including the one which this post revolves around), and each one has had their Day One Raid Race. This is when streamers, content creators, and players alike all compete to see who can finish the new Raid first within 24-48hrs. It is intensely competitive on the streaming side, which will be talked about later, and whichever fireteam of Guardians who successfully finish first become Legends within the continuity and the lore of the game, as well as receiving some cool prizes straight from Bungie. These Raid Races take time, hours go by without completion until one team stands victorious.

So you may think to yourself "okay, well, I'd guess it would take 2-4 hours to do that, maybe 5 or 6 for harder ones", and for the most part you'd be semi-correct, but you are not prepared for the history and notoriety that is the Salvation's Edge Raid Race, the longest race in Destiny 2 history.

A Finale Worth Fighting For

June 4th, 2024

The Final Shape (TFS) is the most recent expansion drop for D2, bringing an end to the years long overarching story being told about Light and Darkness since D2's launch in 2017 (and D1 since 2014). In the main story campaign players focus on getting a foothold inside the new destination in which the big bad, The Witness, has been working towards enacting the Final Shape, the end of free-flowing life. After getting our Vanguard Command back and working together, we find where The Witness is weaving it's verse. An order of a full on assault on it's giant monolith is made and fireteams are given the greenlight to go forth and bring an end to this foe before it can calcify all life to a standstill.

June 7th, 2024

Salvation's Edge (SE), the finale raid, goes live at 1pm EST and the Raid Race begins with hope at an all time high, spirits soaring, and excitement so thick you can cut it. Everyone wondered what the raid tied to a finale of storytelling would have in store, and many hoped it would live up to the high expectations. Everyone expected a race, but what was actually waiting for them all was a marathon.

Encounter 1: Substratum

Groups enter the raid, do some jumping and traversing, and find themselves at the first encounter, Substratum. This is a mechanic encounter, meaning there's no boss to damage and beat, just enemies to clear and new mechanics to learn and complete in order to finish the encounter. Now normally that isn't a problem, with enough time players typically learn an encounter's mechanics rather quickly, but this is where Bungie threw a wrench in the system. The Final Shape is being made, literally, as teams are fighting their way up the Monolith to stop The Witness. This takes form as a eponymously named timer debuff that is roughly 3-4 minutes that, when finished, kills everyone and wipes the team. So now teams don't have the luxury of figuring out mechanics as their own pace, it is now a race against the clock, against The Witness in every...single...encounter. Players will find ways to extend that timer but it will always be there, ticking down, bringing a sense of urgency to every attempt.

Time goes by as teams struggle to both figure out the mechanics, kill adds (filler non-boss enemies), and deal with the timer, but progress is being made. Hours 1 and 2 go by, and a few teams are on the cusp of finishing the encounter. 2 hours and 40-ish minutes after launch, Encounter 1 was completed, and some teams moved on to the next.

Here's a fun fact, in this same amount of time entire other Raid Races had been finished. Wrath of the Machine, Eater of Worlds, Scourge of the Past, Crown of Sorrow, and Root Of Nightmares were all beaten in the time it took for Encounter 1 of SE to be cleared. That's right, I didn't type that wrong, whole raids have launched, been explored, figured out, and beaten in the time teams took to get through this ONE encounter. Excitement was high now as people were hoping for a good length race for this raid after the previous one, Root of Nightmares, was done so quickly in 2hr30min, and it was looking like it would be. Well they weren't wrong, it definitely would be long.

Encounters 2 and 3: Dissipation and Repository

I'll keep things brief here because compared to the rest of the raid, these next two encounters were figured out and completed quickly by the first few teams in the lead. Dissipation was a boss fight encounter while Repository was another mechanic encounter, each with their own new spin on what teams had learned so far from the first encounter Substratum.

Damage was pumping against the Herald of Finality in Dissipation (Swords go brrr) and pings were ponging in the 3 arenas inside Repository. At roughly 4 hours and 30 minutes, 2 whole hours after the first encounter clear, one team had made their way into the fourth encounter. Team Elysium, which are (in)famous in D2 for good reason (holding many day one wins), were the first to enter Verity. They began the meat of the raid, the one encounter to forever rule the minds of every racer that day, and the main subject of this post.

Encounter 4: VERITY

4 hours and 30 minutes after launch

The first team, Elysuim, makes their was inside the sterile circular room and immediately things caught their attention. Six statues stand before them. Statues of Guardians, but not just any Guardians though, it was them. Each player was represented with their current gear, their fashion, standing with their shoulders slightly slumped forward in an uncanny way. In the back of the room was another statue that would change as players walked towards it to match them, and projected shadow-shapes morphed together on the wall behind it. The mood was immediately different here, and then things took off. Players were split up, the room changed, statues were holding shapes both 2D and 3D, enemies were dropping shapes, and the Witness was Noticing Them. Hoh boy, this is just getting started.

Verity is a mechanic puzzle encounter, the likes of which we have only seen once before in The Last Wish with the Vault encounter. This has given Verity the nickname Vault 2.0, which is fitting since like Vault, Verity was the major roadblock and time consumer of this raid race. It introduced totally new mechanics and rules that players needed to figure out and be very efficient with since the Final Shape timer was, of course, still active.

Time goes by and a few more teams drop into Verity, but it seems like no progress is being made. This room was turning out to be more complex than anyone could imagine.

7 hours after launch, 3 hours into Verity

The total time of the race passes various other Day One's. [Leviathan, Crown of Sorrow, Garden of Salvation, D...

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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/RX8Racer556 on 2024-07-17 18:55:19+00:00.

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Project SEKAI COLORFUL STAGE! feat. Hatsune Miku (or Project Sekai for short) is a rhythm/gacha game developed by Colorful Palette and published by Sega. To avoid confusion with American video game publisher Sekai Project, the game is known as Hatsune Miku: Colorful Stage! outside Japan.

Chances are, you've probably heard of Hatsune Miku, so I won't be going into Miku herself or her developers Crypton Future Media as she isn't important to this story.

Ready Steady

Now, even though Hatsune Miku is right there in the title, in practice the game is actually centered on five different music groups made up of 20 original characters made for Project Sekai. After all, it would be pretty difficult to push a gacha game with only Miku and the other five Crypton Vocaloids (branded as 'Virtual Singers' to sidestep Yamaha's copyright on the Vocaloid name).

In game, each of these groups have their own 'SEKAI', another world separate from the real world and accessed through their smartphones by playing an "Untitled" song on their phones. Each of the groups use their SEKAI to compose music, practice dances or just relax and chat with the Virtual Singers and each other.

With that, let's introduce the two Project Sekai characters that are central to this story.

"The leading star will only be me!"

Akito Shinonome is a member of Vivid BAD SQUAD (aka Vivibasu or VBS), a group of street performers seeking to surpass a legendary music event called 'RAD WEEKEND'. While he seems pleasant and polite at first glance, he drops this facade and reveals his actual gruff personality when around people he is familiar with.

”I am the Jackpot Sad Girl, still unable to comprehend each other”

Mafuyu Asahina aka 'Yuki' is a member of Nightcord at 25:00 (aka Niigo or N25), a group of anonymous musicians and artists that gather online at the titular hour to work on music and the accompanying artwork and music videos. At school, Mafuyu is the brilliant honour student that excels in academics and sports while being kind and helpful to everyone. But as the above song line implies, this too is just a facade. Pressured by her mother's expectations that she dedicate herself to studying in order to become a doctor, Mafuyu has lost her sense of taste and identity, and struggles with displaying her true emotions or figuring out what she likes or dislikes. This video sums up her two sides (and dragged me down the ProSeka rabbit hole.

Akito and Mafuyu also have one degree of separation through two of Mafuyu's fellow Nightcord members: Akito's elder sister Ena aka 'Enanan' and Akito's schoolmate Mizuki aka 'Amia'.

So, we have a couple of two-faced people that also happen to be separated by one degree of separation. It was probably inevitable that someone would ship these two together.

The Fanfic and the Breaking Point

Now, the original fanfic that started all this was deleted eons ago, so I can't tell you when it was first posted. Not that it matters, because someone else mirrored it on Twitter in June 2021.

Reddit mirror here for those not wishing to use Twitter/X

For those unable to stomach bad fanfiction, this fic's pacing is faster than a bullet train and the characterisation is either really overexaggerated and/or out of character. This feels like elementary/primary schoolwork at best. And I was skimming over the whole thing while cringing all the way.

As far as I can tell without dredging through Twitter or Discord, this Twitter post didn't make a splash initially. It would take over a year for things to really kick off. But when it did? Oh boy....

The breaking point seemed to be the Japanese server's announcement of the game’s 2nd anniversary Cheerful Carnival (team vs team) event 'This Festival of Twilight Colours' on 23 Sep 2022. The reason for this was that the accompanying gacha for this event included new limited cards for both Mafuyu and Akito, and because Mafuyu is facing left in her card artwork whereas Akito was facing right, you could set up their card artworks to face each other.

All it took was for someone to remember the fanfic, and all hell broke loose.

”Generally speaking, everyone's C-R-A-Z-Y”

Memes, memes everywhere. Here are a few highlights:

Akito actually hugging Mafuyu in a Hunger Games simulator (complete with a copypaste of the fanfic as the top comment)

Winning a Cheerful Carnival Show with the winning team being named ‘Comeheremfychan’ and all of their members having Mafuyu and Akito cards

Someone accidentally set up Akito and Mafuyu’s character models to dance to Romeo and Cinderella, resulting in them getting up close to each other as part of the choreography

The Mafuyu summoning circle

A certain infamous 4-panel comic

A comic of Kanade aka 'K' (the 4th Nightcord member) finding the fanfic while in the Backrooms, except her eyesight is too poor to read it

And it wasn’t just limited to Reddit. YouTube videos of in-game conversations involving Akito and Mafuyu racked up comments either referencing and/or joking about the fanfic. Even a later event story involving Mafuyu staying over at Ena and Akito’s house had a few comments on the fanfic too.

USSEE USSEE USSEEWA

General reactions could be divided into four camps:

1. Not knowing what was going on and asking for context

2. Laughing and crying as hilarity ensued

3. Hilariously dramatic ”NOOOOOOOOO!”

4. Being sick and tired of the meme being overused to hell and back

Understandably, those in camp 4 were really, really annoyed at the explosion in Akito/Mafuyu memes.

But it would end eventually. The meme eventually died down around early 2023. After all, there are only so many ways to say or meme ‘Come here, Mafuyu-chan’.

And I made a crappy custom profile as a memento of the meme for the lolz XD

THE END

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/EnclavedMicrostate on 2024-07-22 04:02:08+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

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/Available_Reason7795 on 2024-07-07 19:12:46+00:00.

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I once talked about CLAMP in my last post on the Cardcaptor Sakura dub and how that screwed up and Nelvana was unfairly blamed by fans and critics for all of the trouble by was Kids WB did. Now it’s time to talk about another CLAMP that almost suffered the same fate as Cardcaptor Sakura, but got lucky due to a bidding war from two tv blocks for children.

What is Magic Knight Rayearth?

Magic Knight Rayearth is a magical girl manga series created by CLAMP that ran November of 1993 to April of 1996. The anime premired in October 17th, 1994 and ended on November 27th, 1995 and also included an alternative three part OVA version simpliy titled Rayearth that was relesed on July 25th, 1997 through December 10th, 1997, with a director's cut titled Wings of Hope that was released on October of 1998. The plot focuses on three school girls: the tomboysish and headstrong leader hikaru Shidou, the beautiful, but brash Umi Ryuuzaki, and the shy, intelligent Fuu Hououji. During a field trip to the Tokyo Tower, the three girls get transported to another world named Cephiro and they learned that the princess of Cephiro named Emeraude was kidnapped by the high priest named Zagato and it's up to them to rescue the princess. Once they defeated Zagato, they learned the horrible truth: Emeraude has fallen in love with Zagato and has actually summoned the girls to kill her so that no one can harm the Pillar of Cephiro. After a long battle, the Magic Knights kill the Princess and were transported back to Tokyo in distraught of the fact that they had to kill Emeraude. Magic Knight Rayearth was widely praised by fans and critics for its use of great visuals, wonderful storytelling, and likable characters. It was also broke new ground as being the first mecha magical girl work as well as an isekai in advance. However, it was very niche in the States and people were wondering how could an anime that popular as Magic Knight Rayearth be so niche in the states? The answer might had to do with an attempt to get in on TV in America and a bidding war between two tv blocks that ended up Rayearth to be not airing on television.

Fox Kids and Toonami’s battle for the bid on Rayearth

Fox Kids was a beloved Saturday morning cartoon block that ran from September 8th, 1990 through September 7th, 2002. It aired some of the most iconic shows such as Power Rangers, Batman TAS, Beast Wars, Spider-Man TAS, X-Men 92, and many others. It also aired anime such as Digimon, Mon Colle Knights, Shinzo, Medabots, and Monster Rancher. So wanting for more anime, Fox Kids set out to look for an anime that would satisfy their needs for an audience. Fox Kids set their eyes on Magic Knight Rayearth hoping it would increase their anime invasion schedule, but another block was also wanting to air Rayearth on their program and it wanted to air two more anime alongside Rayearth. Cartoon Network's Toonami block launched on March 17th,1997 and it was starting to become the new hottest trend of the late 90s and early 2000s for kids and teens who wanted to see anime on Cartoon Network. Toonami grabbed Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball Z in 1998, after the two got low ratings on syndication. With their success on making Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball Z popular in the US with their consitent time slots, they were wanting to see which anime would they want to air next. Toonami expressed their interest in three anime that would unfortunately be snatched by Fox Kids in 2000: Slayers, Vision of Escaflowne, and Magic Knight Rayearth.Fox kids wanted to get the three anime before Toonami did and while they did succeeded in snatching the rights of those anime, two of them never were aired on television because one of the anime that they aired, Escaflowne, flopped on the block because it had a lot of heavy censorship that it had and that made fans mad. Since the failure of Escaflowne on Fox Kids, you may think that this would be Toonami's chance to air the other two anime that Fox Kids didn't air, but nope instead Fox Kids decided to sit on the licenses of the two anime, Slayers, and Rayearth, as a way to spite Toonami making them too old to air on television.

The lost dub of Magic Knight Rayearth

Everyone knows about both the Bang Zoom and Manga (New York) dubs for both the tv series and the ova, but people may not know that another studio had a dub for the show that was only used for the pilot. TMS used Summit Media Group and Ocean Production Studios to plan launch for US TV that fall of 1995 for Fox Kids. However, due to the initial flop of Sailor Moon, both dubs were not well received in conventions due to the name changes and the replaced dub intro that sounded something for an 80s action cartoon. Thankfully, both Manga Entertainment (New York) and Bang Zoom came to the rescue to dub the tv and ova series in a year apart in 1999 and 2000.

Magic Knight Rayearth could have been the next Sailor Moon on US Television with Toonami airing it, but instead it was snatched away by Fox Kids' ambition to create and anime schedule that could rival Toonami's. But then on July 2, 2024, Clamp and TMS was announcing that Rayearth will be coming back for its 30th anniversary in a remake of the anime and fans were excited. I hope when the remake anime is dubbed, it would finally get a chance to air on Toonami Rewind.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/ToErrDivine on 2024-07-21 02:50:47+00:00.

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Hi, everyone, welcome back to the Drake-Kendrick writeup. Previous posts can be found here and here. This is the point where we start getting into the more serious topics. This post is going to be talking about and mentioning the following potential triggers: domestic abuse, pedophilia, sex trafficking, sexual assault, child abandonment, and IDK, probably a partridge in a pear tree. Let's get to it.

Act Four: Firing The Cannons- ‘Buried Alive Part 2’/‘Family Matters’

At this point, Drake was in a pretty precarious position. He was now full-on feuding with Kendrick Lamar, he’d gone out of his way to piss Lamar off, and it had absolutely worked. But he’d done that by disrespecting Tupac Shakur, who multiple commenters told me is practically revered as a god in the West Coast rap scene. If Drake thought the number of people gunning for him was unfair before, it was about to get a lot more slanted against him.

Basically, what I’m trying to say is that Drake had put himself in a position where everything was riding on his winning the feud. If he managed to pull off the win, his insulting Tupac would be regarded as an incredibly ballsy move, one that would give him serious cred as the guy who slagged off the West Coast’s god and survived. But if he lost, he’d be the guy who was stupid enough to think that slagging off Tupac was a smart move. So what he had to do now was win, and win decisively. He needed a master stroke, and it was called ‘Family Matters’.

Before we get to ‘Family Matters’, however, there’s something to cover first. I mentioned back at the start that Kendrick did one of the tracks on Drake’s album Take Care, ‘Buried Alive Interlude’. Well, as part of the promo for ‘Family Matters’, Drake remixed it and added new vocals in Kendrick’s cadence. So, let’s take a look at ‘Buried Alive Interlude, Part 2’.

In this parody, Drake does the following:

1: Says that he would have to be dead for Kendrick to supplant him as the number one rapper (‘For you to make it to the peak, peak/It’d have to be the death of me, death of me’)

2: Says that thirteen years after they met, Kendrick is embarrassed that he’s not on Drake’s level (‘Lookin’ in the mirror, still embarrassed’)

3: Tells him to stop saying that he knows stuff about Drake that he won’t say (‘Stop talkin’ how you gon’ spare us’)

4: Says that Kendrick acts like a toddler throwing a tantrum whenever the topic of Drake is brought up (‘React like an infant whenever I am mentioned’)

5: Says that Kendrick can only get people to pay attention to him and his music if some sort of conflict is involved, whether it’s writing music about social issues or feuding with another rapper (‘It’s like you need tension to get attention’)

6: Says that the real cause of all this is that Kendrick is jealous of Drake’s success (‘You always said how you wanna bury me alive/Jealousy disguised as your motherfuckin’ pride’)

7: Brings up the tour in 2012, but says that Kendrick was just riding Drake’s coat-tails (‘Took you on your first tour with us, tryna catch a vibe/I was headline, you was standin’ on the side/Brought you and that other hoe along for the ride/First time people lined up for your ass’)

8: Suggests either that A, Kendrick gets material for his songs off Twitter, or B, people on Twitter overanalyse Kendrick’s songs and gives them meanings that aren’t there (‘It feel like Twitter ghostwritin’ your reply’)

9: Says that the general response to Kendrick’s side of the feud is basically ‘Hey, good on you for trying’ (‘Streets out here talkin’ like, ‘At least a nigga tried’)

10: Asks why the feud took so long to happen if Kendrick felt this way a decade ago (‘It’s how you felt in 2011, why we wastin’ time?’)

11: And finally alludes to Kendrick talking about how becoming famous metaphorically kills your old self on the original interlude (‘Dreams come true, crodie, this is where you die’)

I haven’t seen a lot of people talk about ‘Buried Alive Part 2’, but I feel it was worth mentioning. With that done, let’s move on to the real topic: ‘Family Matters’.

Drake was gunning for blood on this one. 'Family Matters' is seven and a half minutes long, and he did not stint on the attacks. The thing is, though, he actually attacked multiple rappers, so it isn’t seven and a half minutes solely of attacks on Kendrick (thank Christ, this is already going to be too goddamn long as it is).

That being said, Drake doesn’t let up on Kendrick, so let’s do this. In 'Family Matters', Drake:

1: Makes it clear that he’s being as vicious as he is on this track because Kendrick keeps bringing up his son, which is a tad hypocritical given what Drake’s about to say (‘I’ve emptied the clip over friendlier jabs/You mentioned my seed, now deal with his dad/I gotta go bad, I gotta go bad’)

2: Brings up other rappers who have (or allegedly have) gang ties, thus calling out Kendrick’s comparative lack of street cred (‘You know who really bang a set? My nigga YG/You know who really bang a set? My nigga Chuck T [The Game]/You know who even bang a set out there is CB [Chris Brown]’)

3: Says that J Cole is the one who’s losing sleep over the feud, not Drake (‘And, nigga, Cole losin’ sleep on this, it ain’t me’)

4: Demands that Kendrick back up his allegations of Drake being a snitch with proof (‘You better have some paperwork or that shit fake tea/Can’t be rappin’ ‘bout no rattin’ that we can’t read’)

5: Suggests that Kendrick is only perpetuating the feud because he’s desperate for attention (‘Out here beggin’ for attention, nigga, say please’)

6: Suggests that Kendrick’s previous activism for Black rights is all a façade and he doesn’t really care about it (‘Always rappin’ like you ‘bout to get the slaves freed/You just actin’ like an activist, it’s make-believe’)

7: Says that Kendrick made it rich but hasn’t given any kind of monetary support to his hometown, though this one is easily proven false (‘Don’t even go back to your hood and plant no money trees’)

8: Interprets Kendrick’s line about ‘we hate the bitches you fuck’ as being about race so he can call Kendrick a hypocrite for insulting Drake for sleeping with women of all races when A, Kendrick’s fiancée is also biracial, and B, Kendrick admitted to cheating on her with white women (‘Say you hate the girls I fuck, but what you really mean? I been with Black and white and everything in between/You the Black messiah wifin’ up a mixed queen/And hit some vanilla cream to help out with your self-esteem’)

9: Suggests that Kendrick and Whitney, who were high-school sweethearts, haven’t been in love for a long time and are only staying together for the sake of Kendrick’s image (‘On some Bobby shit, I wanna know what Whitney need/All that puppy love was over in y’all teens’)

10: Asks why Kendrick has never appeared with his son in any of the photos released since he was born, which will come up again shortly… (‘Why you never hold your son and tell him, ‘Say cheese’?’)

11: Says that they could have left their families out of the feud, but Kendrick started it (‘We could’ve left the kids out of it, don’t blame me’)

12: Brings up Kendrick having previously cheated on his fiancée and put her through a lot of suffering in the process *points to the third disclaimer* (‘You a dog and you know it, you just play sweet/Your baby mama captions always screaming ‘Save me’/You did her dirty all your life, you tryna make peace’)

13: Alleges that Kendrick is not the actual father of his son, and that his son was actually fathered by Kendrick’s childhood friend and right-hand man, Dave Free (‘I heard that one of ‘em little kids might be Dave Free/Don’t make it Dave Free’s/‘cause if your GM is your BM secret BD/Then this all makin’ plenty fuckin’ sense to me’)

14: Tells Kendrick to just break up with Whitney (‘Ayyy, let that shorty breathe’)

15: Alleges that Whitney was unfaithful to Kendrick and will be unfaithful to him again in the future (‘Shake that ass for Drake, now shake that ass for free/Yeah, yeah/Well, not that kind of free, I’m talkin’ ‘bout my nigga Dave’)

16: Brings up Kendrick’s height again (‘He always said I overlooked him, I was staring straight/These bars go over Kenny head no matter what I say/I know you like to keep it short, so let me paraphrase’)

17: Says that Kendrick uses his cousin Baby Keem as a ghostwriter, and that the only Kendrick songs that become hits are the ones that Keem wrote- it should be noted that the title ‘Family Matters’ may be at least in part referencing ‘family ties’, Keem and Lamar’s song together (‘*K-Dot shit is only hitti...

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Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/1e8cgyj/raphiphop_the_drakekendrick_lamar_feud_acts_four/

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/StabithaVMF on 2024-07-20 10:00:02+00:00.

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Sometimes when there is a hobby that is so niche as to have a community in the dozens, you have no choice but to get along with everyone else.

And I’m not talking about a few dozen in your local scene, but a few dozen in the single online forum dedicated to this community in the world. It was mostly US based, with Canadians (French and regular), British, Russian, and even an Australian. Like I said, this was the only place online for this.

Back in 2006, I was part of one of these communities, dedicated to action figure customising. Not just any action figures, but a singular type that hadn’t been in production for over a decade outside knock-offs, and had its heyday in the 80’s. Since then it’s had a revival with high-end collector’s figures, new media and all that. But at the time it was limping along on fumes.

The forum was one of the main hubs for this community in general, as with no new products being released the customizers were the ones producing new stuff. There were resellers, collectors and other associated people who were part of the community as well, because it was an active forum and had a good admin.

So, this forum was run by Hank. He was, in my opinion, a good forum operator. He banned politics entirely, was clear on the rules and was active in the community. The main rub was the archive. See, people could submit their custom figures (customs) to his site to be archived. You could upload photos, notes on construction, or a bio.

People made customs to be more cartoon or comic accurate, to make characters who never receive an official toy, or their own characters. Some people made them “realistic”, updating them to modern sensibilities.

However sometimes Hank would reject submissions to the archive. Being an early 2000s website submissions were added manually, so if Hank didn’t like something he had the final say. This caused some friction as he would reject things for obvious reasons like being offensive, but also for rather esoteric reasons particular to the hobby.

As I mentioned this is not just any action figures, but a particular style. It is not limited to a singular brand, as copies were made to cash in. But they have a particular style. For example, if I say He-Man toy, you can picture it: huge muscly arms and legs doing that squatting pose, limited articulation and the hips and shoulders.

If someone went to submit a version of Skeletor made from Monster High parts, Hank would reject it. The reasoning is sure, it’s made to look like part of the property that spawned the hobby, but it’s made from something else so doesn't count.

After a few arguments about this, Hank relaxed the rules somewhat: other styles would be allowed, but they would have to be the same or very similar scale. All good, right?

Enter Doug.

Doug and Hank had beef. The core issue is that they just did not like each other. A severe clash of vibes. Cliques were formed. Doug thought Hank’s moderation of the forum was too strict, and he was unfair in applying it, going easy on his friends and harder on Doug’s. This is not an entirely untrue accusation.

See, the mods had a hidden board: The Bridge. This was where they would discuss moderation issues. It was also where they would gossip and bitch about Doug and his crew. Now this was mostly petty bullshit like Doug arguing a movie was bad when Hank liked it and that sort of thing. Sometimes it was saying if Doug didn’t like Hank’s site, he could just make his own. The most common reason for this was when Doug butted up against the no politics rule.

For the most part Doug was being annoying, but it was clear as day Hank hated Doug’s guts. Doug felt the same, and would often snipe about Hank and his cronies hiding away in The Bridge to gossip about everyone else. Hank would often let certain behaviours slide when performed by more popular members (ie being insulting to other members), where Doug would get pilloried for coming close.

One particular thing they clashed over was the yearly awards. A little awards show was held each year “hosted” by dioramas of figures, awarding community members for best customs, best dioramas*, best technique and the like. These awards were voted on by the community, and the awards show put together by Hank and the mods.

Doug and his crew felt slighted on occasion, claiming bias due to Hank rigging the voting at times (resulting in temporary bans), which in my opinion further inclined people to not vote for Doug. Things came to a head when, to try and foster community, a little online festival was held in addition to the awards, and a special prize was offered.

One thing to know is that the forum had its own, somewhat Byzantine, meme culture. There were certain characters from the cartoon who had special meaning in the forum, running jokes about something a particular poster said once etc. A particular badge of community was getting a flair under your username.

Unlike many forums which allow you to set your own flair, or assign one based on the number of posts you have made, here the only way to get one was for Hank to bestow one upon you. They were almost entirely silly, sometimes embarrassing, but something of a status symbol. Doug took umbrage that he and his friends did not get any, while Hank’s personal friends did.

So, this festival had quizzes, games, and a contest: A mod made a bunch of dioramas with their figures, and people had to caption them. The community would then vote for each picture, and the winner of each would get to choose a custom flair for themselves!

Entries were posted, and votes were tallied.

Doug and his friends did not win.

I did (lol). Doug complained it was nothing but a popularity contest, which one of the other winners pointed out that yeah no shit it was for whose joke was most popular. This member also set their flair to “Popularity contest winner”. I was jealous I didn’t think of that first.

Doug and Hank got into a huge fight, and Doug was banned for a month. This spurred Doug to go and make his own website, with its own gallery with looser rules for submitting (you may have been able to self-upload, but it’s been so long I can’t remember) and posting on its forum. A few people joined and posted to both archives and forums, or just both archives, but mostly just Doug and his friends left.

Doug and Hank fought again shortly after on the main forum, over Doug talking about how his new site was so much better and everyone should come join him. Since he had his own site and it would no longer be completely exiling him from the community, Hank permabanned him.

Now, around this time, I also got access to The Bridge as I was given mod powers. First thing I did was search my own username to see what they’d been saying about me. Thankfully not much, mostly about prospectively asking if I’d be a mod. But Doug was right, there was a LOT of shit-talking. Myself and a couple of the newer mods did push back on this, like if you wanted Doug to make his own site, why are you spending all this energy bitching about his site being inferior? Why are you talking about what Doug’s wife looks like?

I certainly should have done more, but I was young and these were my friends, you know? Lesson learned on that one.

Doug's site was, strictly speaking, worse. But it was new and had no experienced web designers and lacked the years Hank had. Hank's had a whole suite of custom emojis**, the archive, a news page, and years of content that had been refined over time, so of course it was better to use.

I also got annoyed with it all as honestly, without Doug & co, traffic was on the forum down because many of the other main members were mods, so would post to The Bridge where there were far fewer rules rather than the main forum. It honestly began to sour me on the whole site because The Bridge was turning to a secret clubhouse, and while Doug may have been an ass he was being proved right on this one.

Things still trundled along for a while with relations between the two sites thawing, so that the next year for the festival, Hank extended an olive branch to Doug. See, Hank was well aware that as the sole place for this community for years, he did have something of a responsibility to the community. That’s why he’d held off for so long on perma-banning Doug: he didn’t want to just remove someone entirely due to a personal grudge. He now wanted to mend fences, bring the two sites together at least for a week or two.

As part of this peace offering, Doug would be brought back and have mod powers over the special festival sub-forum, which until he proved he'd behave was the only place he could post. He was let back in a couple of days before the festival to help set up threads and the like, and all was going well.

Until it wasn’t.

It started when the forum’s web guy happened to glance at the list of online users, which also shows what section of the forum that user is looking at. And he saw Doug was browsing The Bridge. You know, the secret shit-talk and gossip board. And had been for several hours.

Web guy messages Hank: “Doug is in The Bridge!”

Hank realises that when he made Doug a mod for the festival sub-forum, it automatically added him to The Bridge, and he hadn’t remove him. Doug had spent the last couple of days going through years of shit-talking and sending the screenshots to forum members. He may even have let some log in to his account so they could see it themselves.

...

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Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/1e7s6hl/action_figure_customisation_that_awkward_moment/

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/Tokyono on 2024-07-19 14:04:14+00:00.

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Hello everyone,

Following the discussion that was had in the last post, we've made some alterations to the rules. We've sought to a) simplify the rules as a whole, b) respond to user feedback in terms of what is and isn't working, and c) update the rules to better reflect how we've been actually enforcing them. From today, here's what the rules look like.

A lot has stayed the same, but to summarise what has changed:

• Rules 2 (do not insult or attack other users) and 3 (no slurs or hate speech) have been merged; the basic sentiment applies to both anyway and so it's simple enough to combine them into a single civility rule.
• Rules 4 and 13 have been combined into a single rule while still covering the essentials of both; in the earlier iteration there was some implied contradiction.
• Rule 12 has been rewritten into a new rule 3.
• The sidebar has been heavily cut down (see last thread).

The rule 9 change has not been implemented yet, as it received a mixed response and I believe we need to discuss it more. Some have been quite clear that they do not want to see more social media-related drama and others have argued that there is nothing wrong with them even if they don’t want them to be specifically encouraged. As it currently stands there would seem to be three two possible options to pursue: a) leave the status quo as is and work things out as they go along, b) explicitly allow youtuber and influencer posts, relying on rule 6 ('consequences must be detailed') and rule 8 ('no low-effort posts') to weed out poor-quality writeups, or c) explicitly ban them and restrict them to scuffles.

Just to note, more general hobby drama involving hobby related youtube channels does not fall under these options (e.g. a craft channel is caught faking videos, or a speedrunning channel is caught cheating runs). If push really comes to shove, we will hold a poll on this issue. But I believe an open discussion will suffice. Please weigh in below.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/ToErrDivine on 2024-07-17 05:09:43+00:00.

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Hi, everyone, welcome back to the Drake-Kendrick writeup. Part one can be found here.

Act Two: The First Charge- ‘Push Ups’/‘Taylor Made Freestyle’

‘7 Minute Drill’ was released on April 5, 2024. Just over a week later on April 13, a couple of demo versions of a diss track Drake was making, 'Push Ups', were leaked. On April 19, it was officially released.

OK, so, there is a lot to talk about here. See, Drake didn’t just respond to Kendrick, he took a whole lot of shots at a lot of different rappers. But let’s be real, I don’t think anyone’s really interested in what Drake said about Future or Metro Boomin or the Weeknd. You want to hear about what he said about Kendrick. So, here it is.

(Well, there are bits that aren’t about Kendrick that are important, but we’ll get to them later.)

In 'Push Ups', Drake does the following:

1: Directly rebuts Kendrick’s claim that he was ‘snatchin’ chains and burnin’ tattoos’ in ‘Like That’ (‘You won’t ever take no chain off us’)

2: Mocks Kendrick for being short, as Kendrick is around 5’5 while Drake is around 6’0 (‘How the fuck you big steppin’ with a men’s size seven on?’ and ‘Pipsqueak, pipe down’ and ‘Top say drop, your little midget ass better fuckin’). One should also note that the cover for ‘Push Ups’ is the chart for the US size seven shoe.

3: Alleges that Kendrick’s deal with his old label, Top Dawg Entertainment (which he signed when he was 16) was so one-sided that Kendrick had to give them 50% of everything he earned (‘Extortion baby, whole career, you been shook up/’cause Top told you ‘Drop and give me fifty’, like some push-ups, huh’ and ‘Top say drop, you better drop and give them fifty’)

4: Says that Mr Morale & the Big Steppers didn’t do well commercially in the long run (‘Your last one bricked, you really not on shit/They make excuses for you ‘cause they hate to see me lit’)

5: Mocks Kendrick for having previously appeared on songs by Maroon 5 and Taylor Swift (‘Maroon 5 need a verse, better make it witty/Then we need a verse for the Swifties’)

6: Says that Kendrick isn’t just surpassed by Drake, but by other artists as well (‘You ain’t in no big three, SZA got you wiped down/Travis got you wiped down, Savage got you wiped down’)

7: Points out how unfair the feud has become as it’s now Kendrick and multiple others against Drake ‘What the fuck is this, a twenty v one, nigga?’ and ‘Drop and give me fifty, all you fuck niggas teamin’ up’)

8: Mocks Kendrick’s previous attempts to compare himself to Prince while disparaging Drake comparing himself to Michael Jackson ‘What’s a prince to a king? He a son, nigga’)

9: Says that Drake is more beloved in Kendrick’s hometown of Compton than Kendrick himself (‘Get more love in the city that you from, nigga’)

10: Compares himself to Whitney Houston in a way that brings up Kendrick’s fiancée, Whitney Alford, and might be intended to imply through a double entendre that Alford is cheating on Kendrick (‘I be with some bodyguards like Whitney’)

10: Says bluntly that the beef did not start with ‘Like That’ and has in fact been brewing for some time (‘And that fuckin’ song y’all got did not start the beef with us/This shit been brewin’ in a pot, now I’m heatin’ up/I don’t care what Cole think, that Dot shit was weak as fuck’)

11: Implies that Kendrick can’t make any move in the feud without permission, will have to ask Anthony Tiffith (CEO of Top Dawg Entertainment and a producer who’s worked with Kendrick since 2004) either to see if he can have that permission or for instructions to settle the feud despite Kendrick having left TDE in 2022, and won’t have any support from the label or fellow signees in the feud (‘Nigga callin’ Top to see if Top wanna peace it up/“Top, wanna peace it up? Top, wanna peace it up?”/Nah, pussy, now you on your own when you speakin’ up’)

12: Implies that Interscope Records and Kendrick begged Twitch star Kai Cenat to stream with Kendrick for extra publicity (‘Beggin’ Kai Cenat, boy, you not fuckin’ beatin’ us’)

13: Says that Kendrick has nowhere near Drake’s levels of money, fans and chart ratings (‘Numbers-wise, I’m outta here, you not fuckin’ creepin’ up/Money-wise, I’m outta here, you not fuckin’ sneakin’ up’)

14: And finally, warns everyone on the opposing side to back off, lest they force Drake to reveal things they don’t want the world knowing (‘This ain’t even everything I know, don’t wake the demon up’)

(Not gonna lie, 'Push Ups' is actually pretty good, questionable veracity of the lyrics aside.)

Now, if Drake had left things with ‘Push Ups’, it would have gone a lot better for him… but he didn’t. As for why, I have a theory- as I previously mentioned, a couple of early versions of ‘Push Ups’ had been leaked the week before. Whether or not Drake was responsible, I think he saw the leaks as both a motivator and a goad to Kendrick- something that would urge him to release his own song. And since Kendrick hadn’t released a response by the time ‘Push Ups’ officially came out, I think Drake released the second song to goad him into a response. And that was a big mistake.

The mistake in question is the aforementioned ‘Taylor Made Freestyle’. Why was it a mistake? Because it features vocals from Drake- of course- and of AI versions of Tupac Shakur and Snoop Dogg, and Drake didn’t get permission beforehand to use simulacra of their voices. One of those men is alive, well, and fully able to tell Drake to knock it the fuck off in a variety of creative and interesting ways, and the other is a long-dead rap legend with a lot of people ready and willing to come to the defence of his memory if they feel that he’s been slighted. You know, like in the hypothetical case of some idiot making an unauthorised AI version of his voice to use on a diss track.

*long sigh, headdesk* I’m genuinely surprised that nobody in Drake’s camp told him that this was a terrible idea. (Unless, of course, somebody did tell him and he ignored them, which is always possible.)

(Also, I’d just like to say that I think it’s a bit hypocritical of Drake to say that he was mad about Ice Spice using AI Drake for a song without permission and then turn around and pull this shit.)

So, why Tupac and Snoop Dogg? Well, the former is obvious- Kendrick has idolised Tupac since he was eight years old, when his father took him to see Tupac and Dr Dre shooting the since-unreleased version of the video for ‘California Love’. He claimed to have had a vision of Tupac once who encouraged him to keep going, penned a tribute letter to Tupac for the 19th anniversary of his death, and at the end of To Pimp A Butterfly (originally named ‘Tu Pimp A Caterpillar’- spell out the acronym), he created… well, I’m not really sure what to call it. Basically, Kendrick took the audio of Tupac’s replies in a not especially well-known interview given a few weeks before his death, recorded new questions of his own and added the replies in, creating an entirely different interview. So, on the one hand, this definitely works as an attack, and I can absolutely see what Drake was going for, but it’s still a very dumb move. I mean, even setting aside everyone else’s response, this was guaranteed to really piss Kendrick off. Bad idea, people.

As for Snoop Dogg, I don’t know if he and Kendrick are particularly close friends or anything, but he’s a California rapper who’s held in great esteem, they’ve collaborated in the past, and in 2011, a group of West Coast rappers including Snoop Dogg symbolically and publicly ‘passed the torch’ to Kendrick, crowning him as the new king and spiritual leader of West Coast rap. One can see the implied insult here.

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Drake used the undead AI voice of Tupac Shakur for the following:

1: Mocks how Kendrick is held in high acclaim by rappers from the West Coast (‘Kendrick, we need ya, the West Coast saviour’)

2: Goads Kendrick into continuing the feud properly rather than just throwing back some more sneak disses (‘Engraving your name in some hip hop history/If you deal with this viciously/You seem a little nervous about all the publicity’ and ‘We need a no-debated West Coast victory, man/Call him a bitch for me’)

3: Attempts to head off the obvious insults that Kendrick could make toward him, namely A, that he’s a light-skinned Black Canadian man in the American rap scene, and B, the continued rumours about him being a pe...

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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/EnclavedMicrostate on 2024-07-15 04:02:07+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.

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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

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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/ToErrDivine on 2024-07-14 04:28:36+00:00.

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Hi, everyone. I’m ToErrDivine, and while you might have seen me commenting here and there and/or posting in the Scuffles, this is my first proper writeup for r/HobbyDrama. Today (with mod approval re the time limit), I’m going to start my analysis of one of the most glorious clusterfucks I’ve seen in quite some time: the 2024 rap feud between Drake and Kendrick Lamar.

…this is going to take a few posts.

Before I start, I have some disclaimers for you:

1: I’m not going to pretend that I’m not a little bit biased here: I’m a fan of Kendrick’s music, but not of Drake’s- I wouldn’t say I’m a Drake hater or anything, but his music just isn’t really my thing. I will try to remain as neutral as possible.

2: I am not a rap expert or rap historian, so I am in all likelihood going to miss and overlook things. Sorry. Feel free to tell me if I missed something or got it incorrect. Also, this is not meant to be the comprehensive guide, covering every single detail- I’m trying to be broad, but I’m not going to hunt down everything they said on every interview over the years.

3: If you’re coming into this expecting a clear, unproblematic hero and obviously shitty villain, don’t. The majority of the people in this writeup have either done something shitty or publicly supported someone who did something shitty. Sometimes it just be like that.

4: As far as I know, as of me writing this, all claims made in the diss tracks regarding anyone committing a crime have not actually been proven, nor has any evidence been offered, so they should be taken with a grain of salt.

5: As anyone who’s read any of my declasses knows, I talk way too much. Also, a good deal of the length of these posts is because I was told that I need to include the lyrics. You wanted lyrical receipts; by God, you’re getting lyrical receipts.

So, with that, let’s start at the beginning, because there is a lot to go through with regard to this subject.

Prelude: Dramatis Personae & Background

Who are Drake and Kendrick Lamar?

(Feel free to skip this part if you’re already familiar with them, I just like to be thorough.)

Drake, full name Aubrey Drake Graham, is a Canadian musician and actor. He was born on the 24th of October, 1986 in Toronto, to Dennis and Sandra Graham. He is a dual citizen of America and Canada, and while he mainly grew up in Toronto, he would also spend each summer in Memphis with his father after his parents divorced when he was five. At 15, he landed a major role on Degrassi: The Next Generation, and has had a fair few minor roles in TV shows and movies. However, his real focus was on music. With the assistance of famous rapper Lil Wayne, who appeared on some of Drake’s early mixtapes, Drake managed to achieve success as a rapper and musician, and founded his own record label, OVO Sound, in 2012. If you’re not familiar with him, you might have heard of his songs ‘Hotline Bling’, ‘Nice For What’ and ‘God’s Plan’. He’s got a whole lot of nicknames, but the relevant one here is ‘Drizzy’, which you might have seen him referred to on occasion.

Kendrick Lamar, full name Kendrick Lamar Duckworth, is an American rapper. He was born on the 17th of June, 1987 in Compton, to Kenneth Duckworth and Paula Oliver. Lamar was raised in Compton and became interested in rap at an early age. He found mainstream success with his second album, Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City, and has won a variety of awards for his works, including being the only musician to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music who wasn’t a classical or jazz artist. He also founded his creative communications company, pgLang, in 2020. If you’re not familiar with him, you might have heard of his songs ‘Swimming Pools (Drank)’, ‘Bitch Don’t Kill My Vibe’ and ‘HUMBLE’. His original rap name was ‘K.Dot’ or just ‘Dot’, which he’s still called and uses on occasion.

Before I continue, I want to point something out here- namely that while we are talking about two famous rappers who are quite close in age, if you look at their lives, they couldn’t be more different: Drake is Canadian and Kendrick is American. Kendrick is Black; Drake is mixed-race, born to a Black father and a white mother. Both men grew up poor and had sub-par home lives, but Drake lived in Toronto and in comparatively safer circumstances (though absolutely not ideal), while Kendrick’s family experienced homelessness and he witnessed acts of violence from a young age- he’s talked about seeing a teenage drug dealer shot dead when he was five. To the best of my knowledge, Drake has never been involved with gangs, while Kendrick grew up surrounded by gangs- he isn’t and wasn’t a member of any gang, but he knew a lot of people who were. Kendrick is engaged to his long-time partner, Whitney Alford, and has two children with her; Drake has never been married. (We’ll get to the kids part later, trust me.) Kendrick is solely a rapper; Drake sort of crosses over between rap, pop and hip hop. Kendrick raps about gang violence and social issues; Drake sings about relationships and feelings.

(Disclaimer: there are other differences I could bring up, but I’m not trying to get too personal here, and I am not trying to bring up anything that could start fights in the comments, so if I haven’t mentioned something here, it’s for a reason.)

I’m not bringing this up in order to judge either man, or to play the Misery Olympics- Drake wasn’t raised in a neighbourhood that was surrounded by gangs, but that doesn’t mean that he automatically had an easy life (he’s talked about being the breadwinner for himself and his very ill mother as a teenager). What I am trying to say is that these are two very different men from very different backgrounds who led very different lives and both wound up becoming internationally-famous, wealthy, respected rappers, and those differences impacted heavily on this feud.

Now, let’s get to the background of the actual feud, shall we?

What is a rap feud?

I mean, yeah, this is pretty obvious, but I may as well cover it anyway: rap feuds are what happens when two or more rappers decide that they have an issue with each other, and decide to publicly flay each other alive through diss tracks.

Rap feuds can start for a variety of reasons: maybe the rappers involved just fucking hate each other, or maybe one of them did or said something completely unrelated to the other, but the other one took exception to it anyway. Whatever the reason, they make songs telling everyone involved to go fuck themselves in a variety of creative ways until they either resolve it themselves or one person admits defeat. Aside from the presumed catharsis of being able to publicly release a track telling your nemesis that they need to fuck themselves with a cactus immediately, rap feuds have a couple of other benefits: one, you can make yourself look really cool (provided you don’t screw it up or get defeated), and two, they make for excellent publicity, something all entertainers want.

(I was going to say that also, in this day and age, rap feuds don’t generally involve people getting shot, but unfortunately that’s not the case. RIP, Foolio.)

So, with that, let’s travel back in time to 2011. Drake and Kendrick are friends and collaborators in the early stages of their careers- Drake has just released his second album, Take Care, and Kendrick has just released his first, Section.80. Up until this point, the two are on good terms. Kendrick said in an interview that he met Drake after his first show in Toronto, and called him ‘a real good dude. He got a real genuine soul. We clicked immediately.’ Kendrick does the vocals for one of the songs on Take Care, ‘Buried Alive Interlude’, where he raps about meeting Drake. In that song, he says that Drake gave him a taste of what being rich and famous was like (‘A black Maybach, 40 pulled up Jeep/No doors, all that nigga was missin’ was Aaliyah’), and that he’d previously thought that Drake was going to promise him a future collaboration but not follow t...

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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/Tokyono on 2024-07-12 10:45:48+00:00.

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Hello everyone, the mods have been discussing all of the comments in the Town Hall thread and we took a long look at the rules and (another) look at the sidebar.

Here are our proposals:

• Merge rule 2 and 3. Both are basically saying the same thing.
• Cut rule 4, as it was confusing people (doxing and redacting personal info was already concluded in rule 13- more on this in a moment).
• Change rule 9 from no “Influencer / YouTuber / Reddit drama” to just no “Reddit drama”. We’ve allowed VTuber posts for a while and that's just a subset of youtuber/influencer drama. Reddit drama won’t be allowed under any circumstances as a) r/subredditdrama exists and b) encouraging brigading is against reddit TOS and is notoriously hard to police (I have to deal with this on another sub I mod and it's a real headdache to constantly monitor).
• Move up rule 12 and make it rule 2. We cut the sidebar description and put it at the top of the rules. One of the biggest concerns raised in Town hall was that newcomers would be confused by the numerous rules of the subreddit, and the unclear definition. We agree and we feel the content of the subreddit should be much clearer to new members. We are also considering getting rid of the “not a hobby” section and just changing it a line of “If you don’t feel your potential post fits the sub, then please message the mods and ask” or something like that. We are aiming to encourage a more diverse range of topics, possibility just banning stuff such as politics, and banned topics (rule 14).
• Loosen up rule 13. We would change it to: “Sources must be provided if possible.” This would be put in place to encourage more personal stories a la the days of old, while also limiting the risk of mis- or disinformation about topics with some kind of public record. Personal info (in screenshots etc) would still need to be redacted as far as is practicable. The bit about “Sources can either be linked in the text or included as a list at the end of the post, or in the comments. If sources are linked in the comments, said comment(s) must be posted as soon as the post goes live” will still be included.

Please share any suggestions or critiques that you have.

With my own $0.02 I just want to add for rule 9 that I believe so much youtuber/influencer drama is so petty and biased that it doesn’t really fit the subreddit.

Town Hall link here

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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/PresidentWeevil on 2024-07-12 00:36:26+00:00.

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This is the story of how one single LEGO minifigure became a symbol of vengeance against scalpers everywhere, and how the LEGO Company made it happen with one of the finest corporate trolls ever seen.

But first, we need to talk about the scourge that is

LEGO Investors

LEGO investors are a subset of 'influencers' on the collecting scene. Their primary goal is to turn LEGO into a speculative asset; buying sets exclusively for their potential future worth. There are whole websites and YouTube channels dedicated to this farce. I will not be linking any of them.

These people will buy, and encourage their fans to buy, new 'hot' sets in droves, specifically to inflate their value. This, of course, leaves legitimate LEGO fans, and kids everywhere, with empty shelves, because the toy equivalent of cryptobros have hoarded pallets of every new set into the back of their moms' pickup so they can resell them later for negligible profit.

The Venator

In 2023, LEGO released the Ultimate Collector Series Venator-Class Republic Star Cruiser. This was a tremendously requested set, with the Venator being one of the most popular Star Wars ships. The set retailed for $650, and came with two minifigures, exclusive to this one very expensive set:

Admiral Yularen

And the one we're all here for, Captain Rex

The Rex Minifigure

Captain Rex is a very popular character amongst fans of the animated Star Wars universe. He'd had minifigs before, but they weren't great. They were back during the Clone Wars era of LEGO Star Wars, where everyone had face prints attempting to mimic the art style of the show, which instead just made everyone look distantly related to Gollum. An updated modern Rex was a very hotly requested fig, and this new Rex was hot shit. Arm and leg printing is a big deal for minifig nerds as it's a rare special detail, and the return of the cloth pauldron (the shoulder flap thing) was also a big winner. This figure may as well have been made of solid gold to the investment goblins.

The Scalpocalypse

The Venator instantly became one of the hottest scalpable sets in recent LEGO history. They were flying. And the first thing the goblins did when they got hold of them, was extract Rex, resell the set, and then sell Rex for a preposterously inflated price. Desperate Rex fans had no choice, because this minifig was exclusive to the Venator. Rex's aftermarket value grew and grew, reaching listed heights of people trying to sell him for over $350. And people were buying. And many of those buyers were investment goblins themselves, essentially trading this figure back and forth, increasing its market value rapidly, all because of future worth speculation.

You may notice that some of the 'cheaper' listings of Rex on that list do not include the cloth pauldron. Why is that? Did these goblins lose it? Was it missing from some sets? Oh no.

LEGO's cloth goods and accessories are made in different factories to their minifigures. Rex had become such a hot scalpable item, that factory workers were stealing them from assembly lines, without their pauldron, which was included later in the packaging process. The Rex mania had gotten so insane that people were committing industrial heists to get these figures to sell aftermarket.

The Rex-onning

We don't know why this next development happened. We don't know if it was always planned, or if it was a response to the scalping fiasco that had developed over the prior months. It could well have been an intentional troll from LEGO.

Because in late 2023, one of the leading LEGO inside leakers posted this scoop on an upcoming release.

It couldn't be true. A $12.99 kids set? The same exact figure? It must be lies.

The Rex market went into panic.

And then in early 2024, LEGO officially revealed this.

It was true. LEGO did it. Rex was no longer exclusive to a $650 collector set. The very same arm-and-leg-printed, cloth pauldron minifigure that people were smuggling from Mexican factories to charge hundreds upon hundreds for online, was being re-released less than a year later in a set worth $12.99.

The scalper meltdown was catastrophic.

Investment goblins everywhere now had garages full of a collectors' set that they could no longer profit from by reselling one of its figures for half the price of the entire set. Now it was worth...RRP. And if they yanked Rex from it? It was now worth even less.

In amongst the explosive market crash, one thing we all gained was possibly the single funniest goblin meltdown in toy collecting history. This post has now become a legendary copypasta in LEGO meme communities.

If you look at the price guide for Rex on LEGO marketplace Bricklink, you can see Rex's sale history across this year. Scroll back to January. You'll see Rex selling for over $120. Scroll up to today, and watch the decimal point inch further and further up his price tag, until you get to his sale price today: $5.

Did LEGO do this just to dunk on the scalpers and the goblins? Did they do it to cut down on the heists people were pulling in their factories? Was it all for the memes? We don't know. But we do know that this is how LEGO undercut a scalpers' market into dust with a $12.99 kids set you can buy right now from your local toy retailer.

One question remains, though.

Why didn't anyone scalp Yularen?

Fuck that guy. He doesn't even have printed arms and legs.

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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/Maffewgregg on 2024-07-08 12:55:16+00:00.

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Myst's sequel Riven finally got remade after two years of hard work, so let's talk about that one thing that is still debated amongst fans!

(Note: This wasn't intended to be a separate post but it broke the word limit when it was half-done as a post in the HobbyScuffles weekly thread so here we are. Spoilers for a game released in 1997).

To greatly summarise: In Myst, you play The Stranger who discovers a book that sends him to an island. This is a key feature of the series, with Linking Books being used to send people to travel to different areas by touching the first page.

Later, you find the brothers Sirrus & Achenar who both ask The Stranger to help them escape their current situations but they're both clearly bastards and helping them results in the bad ending. We find out later their Dad got sick of them being bastards and tricked them both into using Linking Books to desolate Ages that do not contain Linking Books to any other area. Whoever is stuck in that situation can see whoever is holding the Linking Book at that time, and the only way to get someone out of this predicament is to use the Linking Book yourself and swap places with whoever is stuck. Which will then stuck you there. With me so far?

In the good ending, you find Atrus who is stuck in K'veer because his bastard sons removed a page from the Linking Book there which disabled it. If you're smart, you'll have brought the missing page so you can both return to Myst (if you forget it then you find yourself stuck with Atrus forever and he isn't particularly thrilled). Atrus burns the Linking Books his sons used so that no-one may be deceived into trading places with them and thus trapping them forever and that sets up Riven, the sequel.

So now we've established the mechanics let's throw a spanner into the works (which is probably how you solve one of the puzzles in this series): Atrus gives The Stranger a very specific type of Linking Book called a Trap Book and tells you to use it on his bastard father Gehn. Gehn is already stuck in Riven but it's a huge place so it's not that bad compared to the other examples of being trapped in Myst. Atrus knows Gehn wishes to return to Myst so the Trap Book is designed to look like a Linking Book that will take him there. OK?

So you find Gehn who imprisons you but attempts to be nice because he is curious about this book you've got on you that certainly looks like the thing he wants. He's not dumb though and asks The Stranger to use it first as he suspects it's a trick. Doing so causes you to get stuck in the Book but you wait a bit and Gehn's desire gets the best of him leading him to use it shortly afterwards, trading places with yourself and trapping Gehn.

Here's the thing: When you use the Prison/Trap/whatever book, you don't teleport/travel/link/whatever to a different location as established in Myst, you get stuck IN THE BOOK ITSELF, which is depicted as an endless black void.

Atrus tells us that by just adding in the right formula to an existing linking book, you can make it into a trapping book. The formula partially severs the link between the Ages. When someone uses the book, they become permanently trapped in the void between the Ages, unless someone else uses the book afterward and displaces the first person back into the place from which the last person linked. Anyone who didn't know the formula would be unable to tell which is a real Linking Book, and which a Trapping Book. (RIVEN; Atrus Journal)

The game ends with Atrus being signalled to Link to Riven to take the book containing Gehn before sodding off back to Myst and leaving you to fall into the Star Fissure which Atrus hopes will take you home (it doesn't, cheers mate).

Sirrus & Achenar would appear in later games thanks to a helpful retcon but Gehn or the book he's "in" were never seen again. I guess it's possible Atrus was willing to forgive his bastard sons but not his bastard dad.

Years after the game's release, Richard A. Watson (Cyan programmer and lore creator/contradictor) caused general annoyance by stating the Trap Book broke the game's kayfabe:

Q. That means that the method used to trap Gehn wouldn't have worked as shown in Riven (using the Book to trick him to use the Book and set you free)?

A - You catch on quick! We were willing to sacrifice D'ni historical accuracy for a playable, immersive game with Riven, just as we did with Myst. In the D'ni historical accounts, the person helping Atrus had to use his/her wits in a different way to get Gehn to use the Prison Book. But simulating this was not an option with Myst/Riven's intentionally intuitive, minimal, immersive interface (i.e. no dialog boxes, no "pick which one of these three preset phrases" conversation trees, etc.). Your end of any conversations had to be implied or determined by where/when you clicked the mouse button. We took advantage of the one-in-one-out concept implied in Myst to keep the interface simple while being clear to all who played Myst (since 95% of them don't care enough about the nit picky details of the back story to see the problem anyway.)

Q. So if all this is true, then Sirrus and Achenar are only trapped in their Books because they didn't take a Linking Book to Myst (or another Age) with them?

A. Right again. They were not in the habit of carrying their own Linking Books. Every Age they had ever visited always already had a Linking Book back to Myst.

Q. But Gehn _was_ in the habit of of carrying a return Linking Book.

A. Yes, he was.

Q. So he never was really trapped?

A. According to the D'ni historical accounts, yes, he was trapped.

Q. How was he trapped, then?

A. I think you've got enough info to work this one out on your own...

:)

(more of this here, his site is very comprehensive)

I can see why it annoyed people at the time (Myst fans take their games as serious as house fires) but it's clearly different from the other books and no other books like this would feature in the games again. And weren't the Prison/Linking Books supposed to show whoever is trapped in there? Wouldn't Gehn have seen your dumb face staring back at him in an endless abyss?

And then years later Cyan would hand-wave the whole thing away by proclaiming that yeah Watson is right and those Trap Books are bollocks, with Gehn getting a passing mention in Myst V about being stuck in a Prison Age (like Sirrus & Achenar) but which one is never stated and that's it.

So the remake finally got released last month and it was suspected that maybe they'd change some elements to reflect this but...no it's the same as it was in the original (you can see it here if you're interested) presumably because it would have been too confusing and more work to change it to something else which is fair enough. And probably would have had people complaining about the change because they haven't played the sequels etc etc etc.

So yeah, that's the post. Like the games themselves, there's no proper ending here so go check out the lovely Myst community to continue debating what happened to Gehn and also how do you do that Animal Stones puzzle again?

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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/EnclavedMicrostate on 2024-07-08 04:02:35+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.

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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/Available_Reason7795 on 2024-07-07 01:37:30+00:00.

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What is CLAMP and Cardcaptor Sakura?

CLAMP is one of the most beloved manga creators of all time from the 90s to present day. It was created by an all female group that consists of Nanase Ohkawa as the leader and writer, Tsubaki Nekoi, Satstsuki Igarashi, and Mokona. CLAMP was so influential to the manga and anime world both in Japan and the USdue to its artstyle and its themes for the female audience. CLAMP works includes Magic Knight Rayeath, X, Chobits, and the anime that is discussed in this topic of the day: Cardcaptor Sakura

Cardcaptor Sakura was one of CLAMP's most iconic and best well-known works and one of the most popular and beloved magical girl anime alongside Sailor Moon. It stars the titlular character named Sakura Kinomoto as she releases a set of magical cards known as Clow Cards that were created by and were named after the powerful sorcerer Clow Reed and each card has a special ability and take an alternate form when it's activated. The being that guards the cards is named Cerberus (Kero for short) helps Sakura on her journey to find the missing cards. Along the way her best friend, Tomoyo Daidouji creates her battle costumes and films her adventures and battles. Sharon Li, a descendant of Clow Reed comes along from Hong Kong to act as a rival that wanted to recapture the cards for himself then she develops in the story turn friend turned love interest in the ending of the story. Cardcaptor Sakura was universally praised for its visual aesthetics, wonderful story, and likeable characters. Its journey to the US though would be a different story and it would become one of the biggest executive meddling of an anime ever.

Cardcaptor Sakura's journey to the West

Following its success in Japan, in 2000, Cardcaptor Sakura was about to make its way to the west where it was going to be the next magical girl anime that they have ever seen. It was licensed by Canadian children entertainment company named Nelvana in Toronto and it needs no introduction to the many people who grew up in the 80s, 90s and 2000s knew them because they made shows like Franklin, Little Bear, Max and Ruby, The Magic School Bus, Rupert, and many others. But while Nelvana did licensed the show, it was actually recorded in Ocean Productions in Vancover who did dubbed such hits like the Gundam franchise, Ranma 1/2, Black Lagoon, and Death Note. Nelvana did some changes to the anime like changing the name to Cardcaptors, the background music in the dub and removed some of the queer elements of the show, and gave a dub soundtrack and a new theme song. Despite the changes, it was a hit in Canada, the UK, and Australia and was well recieved in those regions. In the US however, the dub was received with less praise than it was aired in Canada. how come the dub that was praised in Canada be hated in the US? the answer might have to do with a certain Saturday morning cartoon block and its changes were more extreme than the one that Canada did.

The executive meddling of the American version

Kids WB first aired the show on June 17, 2000 and it ended on December 14, 2001 and while the dub was still done by the same studio, Kids WB made more changes that would made fans pin the blame on Nelvana instead of them. One of the major changes that Kids WB did was that they cut the episode order from 70 to 39-40 episodes for commercials run time. They also aired the episodes out of order with the eighth episode being the first episode aired. But the most baffling and unforgiveable change that Kids WB did was that they tried to turn the show from a magical girl anime from a shonen anime for boysby making Sharon Li the main character because they think that a girl protagonist wouldn't be marketable enough. While Nelvana dub did air all 70 episodes, aired them in order, and kept the shoujo elements of Cardcaptor Sakura, Kids WB turned the same dub into a Pokemon equalivent shonen anime for boys. As bad as the Tokyo Mew Mew Power (4kids) and the old Sailor Moon dubs (Dic/Cloverway) dubs were, at least they didn’t try to turn a magical girl anime into a shonen anime and make it to have a male protagonist. Fans and critics were not happy about the extra changes that Kids WB did and asked Nelvana to release the Japanese version uncut and Nelvana did answer their calls and teamed up with Pioneer to give the fans the version that CLAMP wanted the audience to see.

So there you have it, what we have here is a magical girl anime that had a dub that was edited by Canada and was screwed over in the US and was edited more than what Canada did. Nelvana got unfairly hated for the censorship of Cardcaptor Sakura, all because Kids WB had a insulting view on the girl audience at the time. People should forgive Nelvana ore and be mad at Kids WB for the trouble that they did to Cardcaptor Sakura, the fans, the critics, and most importantly, Nelvana.

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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/Available_Reason7795 on 2024-07-06 00:12:56+00:00.

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4kids Entertainment, one of the most hated children’s entertainment companies in the world in the 90s and 2000s, has always been a talk of the town when it comes to how the boom for anime dropped in the 2000s, how they censor media, how animation and children's programming declined in quality in recent years, and how why people can't enjoy dubbed anime. Yet one thing that still puzzles me to this day is why was this company so hated by people back then. What was what was going through people's minds when they condemned 4kids even after they were gone. Then the answer dawned on me and it was suprising. People hate 4kids so much for the same reason why it was founded in the first place: marketing and licensing products.

Before 4kids was even called 4kids, it was called Leisure Concepts in the 1970s and during that era in the 80s, the company's main goal was to license and market toys to kids of some of the most famous cartoons of that era: Thundercats, Silverhawks, and GI Joe. That drew in a lot of kids that wanted the toys and products of their favorite shows and with that, Leisure Concepts gained a lot of money in the next few years following. in 1991, Alfred R Kahn of Cabbage Patch fame decided to rename the company from Leisure Concepts to 4kids Entertainment. now renamed as 4kids Entertainment, the company was hot on the trail to make more licensing and merchandising and they next hot hot would be anime, but the question is, which anime do they need? The answer would come in 1998 when they got Pokemon. With the success of Pokemon in the states, 4kids was out making Yugioh a hit in 2001 and it also did well with them.

However as time passed on, this is where the problems start to occur with 4kids. The 2000s was not like the 80s, people weren't interested in cheap quality programs of the 80s anyome. They want shows that don't talk down to them and treat them like adults with knowledge and brains with shows like Avatar, TMNT (2003), Invader Zim, and Samurai jack. This creates a problem with 4kids as most of their shows (except Shaman King and TMNT 2003) were all light hearted and had a lot of whacky cartoon edits and dumbed down material. This in turn angered most of the audiences that were not putting up with lighthearted cartoons that 4kids was providing and they hated them for it.

Another problem that would come in later of how people see 4kids was Al Kahn's dismissal and disregard for the target audience and the medium he was supposed to be licensing and marketing to.This made people believe that 4kids had no respect for the medium and the target audience in the world of children's programming. Then in 2011-12, 4kids was accused of fraud from the Yugioh franchise by Konami and Tv Tokyo and that made people realized that 4kids was really that horrible at children's media and licensing products and wasn't going to let another company to be like them.

So in short, 4kids was hated not because of censorship, but it was created to license and market children's media and products. The audience in the 2000 have different tastes that the audiences of the 80s and 4kids felt like outdated and out of touch with the changing norms of society's tastes in media. I can seen that people need to see that there is more to 4kids than what thwy think they know and this is the real reason for their hate. I highly recommend watch the 4kids Flashback podcast, it was very fun to listen to and get new information about 4kids.

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/Chaosmusic on 2024-07-05 03:01:28+00:00.

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Truck Nuts are the stupid plastic testicles you see on the back of trucks and other vehicles. I knew they existed but did not know their history until listening to an episode of The Dollop podcast dedicated to it, and it is quite the ride.

John Saller was riding 4x4s with some friends in the late 1980s and saw someone riding one with a pair of testicles hanging from the back. Another version of the story is he heard someone yelling "Ernie, show 'em you got balls!" which he claims gave him the inspiration to make this into a business. Upon inquiring, he heard about woman in Arizona making human sized fake testicles. He wanted to make bull sized testicles to hang off the back of pickup trucks to really make them stand out. He used CAD software to make a design and approached a plastic injection company in SoCal owned by Chad Tombyll. John was apparently embarrassed to describe exactly what he wanted. It took Chad an hour and a half of listening to John before he realized he was talking about making giant plastic balls. They go into business together and John named the company Bulls Balls with the slogan "Made To Swing".

Meanwhile, David Ham in New Mexico saw a custom made pair in a desert rally and wanted to make them himself as a business. He was not as lucky as John, the first 9 plastic injection companies refused to make them for him, but the 10th finally agreed. David started his company, Your Nutz, 2 years after Bulls Balls.

Despite John launching first, both men claimed to have invented the idea. Just to clarify, both men who say they have invented Truck Nuts did so after seeing someone else with them.

Truck Nuts start off as a niche product, but in the late 90s, the internet takes off and both companies launched websites. Thanks to people posting pictures of their vehicles with Truck Nuts, sales for both companies explode. Some dealerships even started offering them as optional accessories at purchase. They ranged in size from 4.5 to 10 inches in length and came in multiple colors including pink or chrome, ones covered in flames and, of course, American flags.

Both websites say that they were the inventor of Truck Nuts and both men are incensed that the other makes that claim. Neither could provide definitive proof. Their rivalry increases and both men claimed the other had called to harass them as well as also exchanging angry emails. However, when interviewed for an article by Vice, Ham refused to provide any of the emails. I will be referring to the Vice article and include a link below.

Truck Nuts become so popular that theft becomes a problem with owners reporting that the nuts get regularly stolen off their trucks. Bulls Balls made 2nd Generation Trucks Nuts with a chain and lock to prevent theft.

As the popularity of Truck Nuts grows, some government officials start to take notice. Maryland State Senator LeRoy E. Myers said they were vulgar and immoral. In 2007, Myers made a proposal to "prohibit motorists from displaying anything resembling or depicting 'anatomically correct' or 'less than completely and opaquely covered' human or animal genitals, human buttocks or female breasts". Other jurisdictions followed but few succeeded. Senator Jim King of Jacksonville complained about the attempted legislation, saying he had a set on one of his vehicles, which he described as “all pimped out.” They are no more than “an expression of truckliness”. He later admitted he removed them from his truck after insistence from his wife, so we know who has the balls in that household.

As an interesting side note, during my research I saw that Myers had been accused and charged of sexual harassment.

According to the Dollop episode, so many states tried to ban Truck Nuts that the ACLU stepped in, saying Truck Nuts represent an idea and are thus protected speech by the 1st Amendment. I was not able to find any article or information to corroborate that. Some jurisdictions did include Truck Nuts under certain anti-obscenity laws which included fines, more on that later.

Ham was upset by these attempts to ban Truck Nuts thinking it would hurt business while Saller was more amused and thought the attempts only created free publicity and drove sales.

In 2009, Ham created a new website called allthenutz.com with the intent of it being a centralized warehouse to sell all Truck Nuts and related accessories, including the Bulls Balls from his competitor, Saller. Ham claimed he placed a wholesale order for Bulls Balls from Saller but did not receive them nor did he receive a refund. Saller claimed they realized what Ham was doing and cancelled the order and did provide a refund. Not sure how that resolved, if it did. However, somehow Ham did get some Bulls Balls and started selling them on his website without Saller's permission.

This led to a post on the Bulls Balls website called "Truck Nuts – A Quest for the Truth", questioning Ham and his brother Kenneth's business ethics and the quality of the nuts they sold. It includes price and size comparisons and a series of blog posts detailing some of the shenanigans that they claim Ham and All The Nutz got up to. (link below)

Now we get to the most bizarre escalation of the story. Upset about the post, Ham drives from New Mexico to California to the plastic injection company that makes Bulls Balls, Tombyll Plastic. Owner Chad Tombyll (the person that John Saller took 90 minutes to explain the idea of fake plastic testicles) met with a man calling himself Bozzy Willis who wanted to place an order for Bulls Balls. Unfortunately for "Bozzy", Chad recognized him as David Ham and had him escorted from the building. When he learned of this, another post appeared on the Bulls Balls website making fun of David "Bozzy Willis" Ham.

Immediately after this episode, a slew of negative reviews for Bulls Balls started popping up online, including a Facebook user, interestingly going by the name Bozzy Willis, who continued to post on the Bulls Balls Facebook page until 2013. Accusations included price fixing and deceitful business practices. Even Bulls Balls web host, John Beaman, was attacked in these reviews. When the Vice reporter asked Ham about these posts, he replied, "That is Saller's vile lies again." Additionally, blogs started popping up also bad mouthing Bulls Balls and promoting Your Nutz and All The Nutz. Many of the posts were copied and pasted from blog to blog. Strangely, when the reporter asked Ham about the blog posts, he responded, "I'm sure I wrote several of them."

The online war came to a head on Ripoff Report, a consumer reporting website for people to report on companies that they think are fraudulent. Running from Jan to Sep 2009, it started with a complaint against Bulls Balls from someone claiming to have ordered from the website and not receiving their order. The complaint also bizarrely mentions that "This guy has a felon conviction for assult with a deadly weapon, he doesn't return calls." The complaint is anonymous but mentions their location as New Mexico, which coincidentally is where Ham is from.

What follows is a 17,000 word back and forth over several posts between individuals, sometimes anonymous, sometimes admitting that they are Ham and Saller, sometimes not (I did not read the entire exchange, I am going by the Vice article but will include a link to it). Accusations of lying, shady business practices, threats, harassment, and even posting of maybe real, maybe not Cease and Desist letters. This by two (three if you believe that David Ham enlisted his brother Ken) old men who barely know how to use the internet. For example, some of the posts, claiming to be consumers will suddenly mention that they were John or David.

According to Chad, the stress of dealing with all of the negative online press took it's toll on John where it was consuming more of his time than the actual running of the business, including dealing with lawyers. The breaking point seemed to be a post on one of the boards that John and David had been bickering on by a potential customer who was sickened by the arguing and that neither company deserved his business. He saw Truck Nuts on a truck and was excited to Google them to find more about the company that makes them and "I find all this crap. Both companies should be ashamed of yourselves. Hang that on your truck!" The post was signed No Longer A Truck Nut Buyer. John replied saying he completely agreed. He made one final post on the Ripoff Report thread and then ceased responding to attack posts online. With John not responding, David Ham slows down the online attacks.

In 2011, a woman in South Carolina was given a ticket by Bonneau Chief of Police Franco Fuda for having Truck Nuts, citing the state's obscene bumper sticker law. She received a $445 ticket, but Chief Fuda also insisted on a trial, wanting the case to send a message against what he perceived to be public obscenity. After three failed attempts due to having too small of a jury pool, no trial date was set. It is not known if the defendant, Virginia Tice, 65, paid the $445 fine.

Aftermath

After the Ripoff Report exchange, both companies went back to neutral corners and just existed for awhile without major incidents. Bulls Balls webhost John Beaman passed away and some time around 2013, Saller sold the company to Chad Tombyll, citing bad health. Saller passed away in 2014. Ham responded with his usual class: "I read that both his ...

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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/Tokyono on 2024-07-01 10:12:20+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.

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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/Upbeat_Ruin on 2024-07-01 22:53:47+00:00.

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CW: This post will be discussing finger injuries. Also, if you look into my sources, you may run into some gnarly photos of bleeding fingertips, torn fingernails, and sobbing little girls. If that's going to be a problem, you might wanna skip this post.

MGA Entertainment (henceforth referred to as MGA) is a massive toy company operating out of Los Angeles, California. Founded in 1979 and owned by Isaac Larain, the multibillion-dollar company operates as a sort of rival to Mattel and, to a lesser extent, Hasbro. IPs under their wing include but are not limited to: Bratz, LaLaLoopsy, Little Tikes, Rainbow High, the ill-fated Miniverse (that one might be a Hobby Drama post for another day), and the stupidly popular LOL Surprise. Do you know that weird Poopsie Slime Surprise unicorn that Moistcritikal made a video about a few years ago? Yeah, MGA owns that, too.

Anyway, LOL Surprise is a line of creepy bug-eyed, kissy-lipped, scantily dressed dolls that usually come in what I describe as “blind pods” - you have to open a container and unwrap lots of layers of packaging to reveal the goodies. They often have extra gimmicks like being buried in kinetic sand or revealing a new outfit when dipped in water. Described by MGA as “the perfect unboxing toy,” it capitalizes on Gen Alpha's obsession with “surprise” blind bag toys, unboxing videos, and Youtube. And oh boy, they struck platinum with this one. Despite being introduced only recently in 2016, the brand has exploded in popularity and it doesn't show any signs of stopping soon. It's everywhere, on everything they can slap a licensed character on.

You'll notice in this post that I'm not particularly kind with how I describe LOL Surprise or MGA, and well, I'll admit that I don't like this IP or company. I'm creeped out by how sexualized these toddler-proportioned dolls are, how much plastic waste all this gacha shit generates, and how it's promoting mindless consumerism and iPad babery. The kids who are into LOL Surprise lose interest in the trinkets very quickly, since they're designed for a fleeting moment of gratification after the toy is unwrapped, with little regard for staying value. I hate how they claim to be all about diversity, but each doll has perfect skin and perfect proportions and “diversity” accounts to mainly just making them in various shades of brown. So diverse...when they're not stealing designs from Black artists, that is. These dolls are everything your parents hated about Bratz on steroids.

But that's not why we're here today. I'm mean to MGA in this post because I honestly believe this company does not GAF about child safety. And you will soon see why.

In the winter of 2019, LOL Surprise rolled out their big-ticket item for the Christmas season that was sure to end up on millions of kids' lists. It was a “2-1 Glamper”so your dollies could go glamorously camping in a luxury van. Innocuous enough, and at least that has some replayability. The “2-1” part refers to how you could open the vehicle up into a playset. And that's where the problem came from.

This feature was operated by pressing a button in a hole on the bottom of the camper, which would open the panels. I must stress this for later: the toy was intentionally designed this way. Children were instructed to insert their fingers into this hole to press the button inside. But apparently, you couldn't press it too hard. A lot of children (and a few parents) found this out the hard way when they inserted their fingers into the hole to push the button and got their fingers stuck between two plastic panels that moved in opposite directions. The finger and the panels couldn't be moved without extreme pain, often leading to lost circulation, cut skin, and torn fingernails. In most cases, the fire department or paramedics had to be called to saw the toy off of the victim's hand. That's one Christmas these poor kids will never forget.

Concerned consumers were quick to report the issue. Articles about the Glamper's clamper ran on the news, and instructional videos on how to remove stuck fingers appeared on Youtube. There are 12 separate incident reports (search "glamper" to find them) about this damn thing on the Consumer Product Safety Commisions' Report a Product page. Each one is the same thing: a child (or a parent, in one case) between the ages of 6 and 10 inserted their finger in the switch hole and it became painfully stuck. One parent likened it to a “Chinese finger trap” that pinched the fingers harder the more they attempted to free their child from the toy. Again, I have to stress that the Glamper was intentionally designed for children to insert their fingers.

And what was MGA doing in the middle of all this? Nothing. They never issued a recall for the Glamper. They gave copy-pasted “Your safety is our priority. The product was tested by a third party laboratory and found to be in full compliance with safety standards” responses to all the reports on the CPSC website. “Full compliance” my ass. A fully compliant product doesn't try to gulliotine little girls' fingers. I don't know who MGA has testing their products, but they must be incompetent AF.

They finally did damage control on December 27, 2019...not by recalling the damn Glamper, but by making a “product safety notice” post on LOL Surprise's official Facebook. Yes, really. It promised that customers who returned the camper with its box and a receipt within 30 days of purchase would receive a full refund or replacement.

...do you see the problem? Remember, this was a Christmas season toy. Most people got their Glamper as a gift, meaning that they didn't have a receipt, and who keeps the box after opening the toy unless it's a Lego set? Also, a lot of these campers were bought months before Christmas, well after the 30-day window. The “product safety notice” post's comment section is replete with angry customers saying things to the effect of, “And what am I supposed to do if I don't have a receipt? I wasted $120 on this thing!” To which MGA sheepishly replied that anyone with the camper could call their customer service line or go to the website to have a refund sorted out. The infamously slow, clunky customer service feature. Yeah.

Despite this fiasco, MGA and LOL Surprise continue to reign surpreme in the toy aisle. They're still selling that fucking camper, by the way. Apparently it's been redesigned to either have a caution statement telling kids to carefully press the button or have a safer overall design. But if I were a parent, I wouldn't let them get within ten feet of that thing. I'd take them on a real camping trip. The actual woods would probably be safer at this point.

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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/actually_a_demon on 2024-07-01 13:11:14+00:00.

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Honestly? I find it absurd that no one has talked about this here. Don’t get me wrong, i love me some Archie Sonic and Ken Penders drama, but honestly this entire franchise is so full of weird shit that i find unbelivable that no one has ever tought of doing this. So i will do it myself. I wanted to make it all in a big post originally, but i then realized that it would be way too long, so i decided to split it up in two parts.

First of all, a proper introduction is needed.

What is Sonic exactly?

If you are familiar with video games or if you’re ever being on the internet, you have probably a pretty good idea of what Sonic is. But even if you already know, i’m going to explain some things that the general public probably isn’t aware of, so don’t skip this part. Trust me.

Sonic the Hedgehog is a Japanese video game series mainly belonging to the platform, action and science fiction genres, produced by Sega and developed by the Japanese studio Sonic Team. The series bears the same name as its main character, Sonic the Hedgehog, the current and official mascot of Sega. Born in Japan , the series landed for the first time ever worldwide on June 23 1991 with the first video game also called “Sonic the Hedgehog”, released on the Sega Mega Drive console. The series will continue to land on consoles made by Sega until 2001: In that year, following the decline of Sega Dreamcast, it continued its career on consoles developed by Sony, Microsoft, PC, mobile devices and Nintendo (particulary ironic because Sonic was originally created to rival Mario's success). Over time, many of the original developers and producers (among which it’s worth mentioning the programmer Yuji Naka) left the company to found new independent companies or join other Japanese software houses. However, currently the series still has many veterans on its side including the game designer Takashi Iizuka, currently head of Sonic Team and producer and executive director of the series, the chief artist and designer Yuji Ukewa, one of the designers of the secondary and main characters of the saga since 1998 and Sachiko Kawamura, the main designer of the saga with her colleague Uekawa.

Sonic however suffered from a very evident case of adaptation inconsistency, particularly regarding it’s lore and characters. To be fair, it wasn’t uncommon in the 90s (and even today) for a japanese media to be potrayed differently in countries outside of Japan, but Sonic suffered particularly from this. Just to make an example, in the american cartoon “Sonic The Hedgeogh”(also called by fans “SatAM”) and in the very first game, Sonic and friends were described as the inhabitant of an alien planet called Mobius, whereas in the original Japanese manual the planet isn’t even slightly mentioned, suggesting that the game takes place on a moving magical island in our Earth. Beside that, the saga is also infamous for not being linear with the videogames itself and not caring about continuity. Long story short, each adventure takes place in it’s own little contained universe, with few exceptions. This caused some problems when Sega recently founded a Sonic Lore Team to fix some inconsistencies and do what is basically a soft reboot of the franchise, unifying it with the original japanese lore. They did this mainly by removing the ages from all the character bios on the official Sonic Channel and stating once and for all that Mobius doesn’t exist and humans are in a fact a thing. Additionally, they also tried to suggest that every game was always supposed to be connected, when it’s evident that it was never their main preoccupation over the past 20 years. I know that this part may sound like it’s condiscending, but in reality i find it just funny.

To make the point clear, in Sonic Adventure 2 the main villain literally destroys the moon with a laser and when people started to slowly relize that in later games the moon was still intact, when asked about it Takashi Iizuka replied that it was just rotating and that’s why we never saw it destroyed.I hope that’s all I need to make you understand that Sonic Team or Sega never really cared about an overarching narrative for the franchise. Which in itself is fine, but the way they managed to handle it was probably less great. It has reached a point where the american interpretation of Sonic is totally different from his japanese incarnation. Long story short evey non-japanese licensed media (mainly comics, cartoons and the movie that came out recently) contains lore that is new and, often, completely disconnected from the original video games. This as you can guess sparked a debate in the fanbase about what Sonic is even supposed to be. Some people really like the american adaptation of the lore, SatAM, Archie Comics and all of that, others despise it with all their beings. Sonic fans in general are infamous for being extremely divided: over which game is better, which version of Sonic is better, which character has suffered the worst character assassination, and who is the best. This context is extremely important to understand what happened in 2014 and what lead to the creation of Sonic Boom.

Interlude: the uncertain state of the franchise

Let’s be real: late 2000s/early 2010s was not a good period for the blue blur. After the Sonic Chronicles lawsuit, the disaster that was Sonic 06 (which can honestly be its own Hobbydrama post) and the general lukewarm reception of modern games, Sonic Team realized that maybe it was time to change their narrative approach. And so they did what was basically a soft reboot of the franchise.

The time is 2010.

All the crazy ass anime shit and melodrama the early 2000s games were known for were completely thrown in the bin, choosing instead to focus on a more light hearted tone and plot, similar in spirit to a Mario game. They also hired new writers for the american division of Sonic Team, mainly Ken Pontac and Warren Graff, which would go on to write Sonic Colors in the same year and Sonic Lost World in 2016. Those two are particulary infamous in the community because the way they wrote those games was universally considered horrible: the overall tone of the story is incredibly childish and immature, filled with the unfunniest joke you will ever hear in a children’s media and the characters were reduced to empty, stereotypical blobs of themselves. Sonic himself was written to be incredibly childish and annoying, but others major characters suffered worst fates. Amy Rose’s sprinkles of development in Sonic Adventure? They no longer exists, she’s simply Sonic’s fangirl who follows him everywhere. Tails’ self confidence after the events of Sonic Adventure 2? It no longer exists, he is just an insecure and scared kid who idolizes Sonic and follows him everywere he goes. He’s also now a tecnology genius and not simply a mechanic for some reason. And the fiery hotheaded strongman of the main trio, Knuckles? Now he’s just potrayed as a stupid himbo. Actually, remember this because it will be important later.

With this context in mind, we can FINALLY talk about what the fuck happened in 2014. And to do so we need to watch a…particular promo image.

What…what the fuck is this???

Well, this was the first promo image we ever got for the newly announced TV series, Sonic Boom, coming to Cartoon Network during November. For the context of this story, is important to know that the cartoon is much more comical and it takes itself less seriously than other famous Sonic animations such as Sonic X, SatAM or the more recent Sonic Prime. It obviously takes place on another continuity and had also a cheaper budget, as you can probably tell by watching some clips. Basically it’s an episodic comedy where things happen and characters do stuffs, literally. There is not a plot, only character related drama. It lasted for two season before it was canceled and as it neared its end, the jokes and fourth-wall breaks became increasingly more unhinged, even bordering on full on shitpost. They even go as far as suggesting that Amy, one of the main characters, is bisexual. Which is a real thing that i wrote talking about a ugly looking Sonic cartoon. To be fair, the entire bisexual Amy affair goes way deeper than that considering it was a very specific inside joke, but we don’t have time for that. Also honestly i don’t care. Good for her i guess? The history of the downfall of the Sonic Boom cartoon as a whole has also the potential to be an Hobbydrama p...

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Strap in, this is going to be a long one with how many players are mentioned. But this is one of my favorite sagas in baseball.

There are many great sports rivalries. Ohio State vs Michigan, Frazier vs Ali, Duke vs UNC. But among all sports, the rivalries of baseball have tradition and history behind them, making them way more intense. The Yankees and the Red Sox first met in 1903, the Dodgers and the Giants first met in 1889, & the White Sox and the Cubs first met in 1906. Every team has their 1 or 2 rivals they loathe. One of those rivalries, which has never seen the same spotlight, is between the Cincinnati Reds and the Pittsburgh Pirates. And it all came to a head in 2019.

Let the Flames Begin

Back in the infancy of what is now the MLB, the Pittsburgh Alleghenies defeated the Cincinnati Red Stockings 10-9 in the first ever meeting between the two teams. Due to the amorphous nature of the early baseball leagues, the teams didn’t play each other from 1887 to 1890. But the teams have played uninterrupted since then.

There’s not much to speak of in terms of the rivalry until the 1970s when the 2 Hall of Fame stacked teams would frequently meet in postseason clashes. The first was in the 1970 National League Championship Series which the Reds won in a 3 game sweep. The next time would be 2 years later, once again in the NLCS where it was even more dramatic. In the final game of the 5 game series, the Reds were down by 2 and down to their final 3 outs. They ended up winning the game on a wild pitch with 2 outs, ending the Pirates World Series dreams. 1975 was similar to 1970, as the Reds swept the Pirates once again, going on to then win the World Series against the Red Sox. 1979 saw the Pirates gain one back, as they swept the Reds and went on to beat the Baltimore Orioles in the World series.

The 80s were a down decade for both teams. But as fate would have it, they once again met in the 1990 NLCS. The Reds beat the Pirates in the series, 4 games to 2, and went on to sweep the Oakland A’s to win. And until 2013, there’s not much to talk about with these teams. They were placed into the same division, the newly formed NL Central, in 1993. But both teams saw a staggering amount of mediocrity. Bad management, bad ownership, players leaving town for better prospects, you name it. Despite typical rivalry games, the next time the teams saw a significant rivalry game was in the 2013 Wild Card game. The 2013 Pirates posted a pretty good record of 94-68 while the Reds snuck into the game due to a weak National League. The game saw the normally All-Star Reds pitcher Johnny Cueto completely melt down as the Pirates scored 5 runs in 4 innings while 40,000+ Pittsburgh fans mockingly chanted his name. The Pirates obviously won that game, but ended up losing to another divisional rival, the St. Louis Cardinals, in the National League Divisional Series. But once again, mediocrity struck for both teams, which honestly continues to this day, with both teams showing flashes of greatness but not being able to capitalize on it.

But why do these teams and their fans hate each other so much? This just seems like typical sports rivalry at this point.

This is Why

The cities of Cincinnati and Pittsburgh sort of have a rivalry outside of sports, but it all stems from sports. Only ~288 miles separate the once major American cities. Outside of baseball, the two cities saw short rivalries between their college football teams and their soccer teams, but most of the animosity comes from the professional football rivalry between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Cincinnati Bengals. The football rivalry has seen some ugly moments which only fueled the animosity between the fans of the teams and the residents of the cities. With all of these factors together, anytime teams from Cincinnati and Pittsburgh meet up, there is bound to be some bad blood.

Pressure

It’s 2019 and both teams suck. The Reds haven’t had a winning season since 2013, while the Pirates had started declining in 2016. But the rivalry hadn’t slowed down at all.

On April 7, the Reds visited the Pirates for a four game series. In the 2nd inning of game four, newly signed Derek Dietrich of the Reds crushed a ball that landed in the Allegheny River. Dietrich, being the big personality that he is, stood still for a good amount of seconds and admired his home run. As he crossed home plate, Pirates catcher Francisco Cervelli said something to him. Dietrich’s next time up, Pirates pitcher Chris Archer intentionally threw behind him.

In baseball, one of the ways teams retaliate for things is by the pitcher intentionally throwing at, sometimes hitting, the batter when they come up to bat. It’s a controversial move as it is dangerous.

The umpires immediately warned both teams, but Reds manager David Bell ran out onto the field to argue that Archer should be thrown out of the game for intentionally throwing at a player. And as is typical in baseball, the benches cleared and the players got in a big mass and stood around. This is pretty common for baseball “fights.” But most players aren’t Yasiel Puig.

Puig, who was also a recent acquisition for the Reds, had a reputation as a massive hot head. While everyone else stood around and yelled, Puig had to actually be held back by teammates. As it seemed like teams were going back to their benches, Puig broke out of the hold of a teammate and tried to swing at Cervelli, who had been yelling at him. But Puig was held back by another teammate. The whole “fight” can be seen here. In the aftermath, 5 players and Bell were ejected from the game with Archer receiving a 5 game suspension, Puig a 2 game suspension, and Bell a 1 game suspension.

The next couple of months would only serve to heighten the drama. On May 27, Dietrich was once again hit by a Pirates pitcher, but no words were exchanged. His next at-bat, Dietrich launched a home run and took his sweet time going around the bases. 2 days later, Reds Third Baseman Eugenio Suarez was hit by a pitch on the hand. Some words were exchanged between Suarez and the pitcher, but didn’t seem heated. Bell was once again ejected as he felt the Pirates pitcher should be thrown out for hitting Suarez. Outside of the teams, the Pirates announcers were equally as heated. One of the announcers, John Wehner, started suggesting that Dietrich's grandfather would be embarrassed of him and would be rolling in his grave. Dietrich's grandfather had actually been a coach in the Pirates organization for many years. But now, the teams wouldn’t see each other for 2 months. Surely things would settle by then, right?

Grudges

July 30. The Pirates quickly took control of the game, having 7 runs by the 5th inning. Meanwhile, the Reds seemed to be languishing at the plate, only scoring 2. In the 7th inning, Pirates pitcher Keone Kela threw at Dietrich’s head, which he later confirmed he did intentionally to “protect his teammates”. As is the rule and because some players were yelling at each other, warnings were issued to both teams. In between the innings, first baseman for the Reds, Joey Votto was seen arguing with Kela. The next time the Reds were up to bat, Puig had a pitch on the outside that the umpire called a strike. In anger and disbelief, Puig threw his helmet on the ground and stood off to the side for a bit while Bell argued with the umpire and was subsequently thrown out. In the top of the 9th on the first pitch, the Reds pitcher threw behind the batter and was thrown out of the game. Then out comes Amir Garrett to pitch for the Reds.

Here We Go Again

Similar to Puig, Garrett was known as a showboating, hot-head. As he takes the mound, he is visibly amped up. The umpire steps in to warn him about retaliating which Garrett seems to acquiesce to. Garrett then gave up even more runs which was accompanied by heckling from the Pirates dugout. Seemingly done with it, Garrett calls out the pitching coach and they converse for a bit with Garrett agitated and pointing at the Pirates dugout. As the coach turns to signal for a replacement pitcher, Garrett throws his glove on the ground and charges the Pirates dugout, immediately swinging, but missing, a Pirates player. There are many things that happen here. I highly recommend watching the video of the brawl and the breakdown by Jomboy to get the full picture, but I’m going to do my best to summarize the hectic events that ensue.

• [Amir Garrett is immediately taken down but continues throwing punches while on the ground. Fun fact, this photo was chosen as one of CNN’s Pictures of 2019.](https://www.cincinnati.com/gcdn/presto/2019/07/31/PCIN/a988ba7b-1498-49ab-ac93-5b839413a2a0-073019RedsPirates_10.jpg?crop=...

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