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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Welcome back to Hobby Scuffles!

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/EnclavedMicrostate on 2024-07-01 04:03:43+00:00.

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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• Don’t be vague, and include context.
• Define any acronyms.
• Link and archive any sources.
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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/JarJarBrinksSecurity on 2024-06-26 04:15:02+00:00.

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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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/EnclavedMicrostate on 2024-06-24 04:02:17+00:00.

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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• Link and archive any sources.
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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/Upbeat_Ruin on 2024-06-22 18:36:05+00:00.

Hi! Some absolutely glorious drama went down on Neopets earlier this year, and I've been champing at the bit to post about it. This isn't about the A-pea-calypse of Christmas 2023, however; this is something different.

Neopets is a browser-based pet simulation game. It is THE virtual pet site. It wasn't the first of its kind, but it did set a precedent for virtual pet games. It walked so Webkinz, Mweor, Flight Rising, and all the others could run. If you were a kid or an edgy college student in the early noughties, you probably played Neopets at some point. (No, your pets aren't "probably dead". Neopets don't die, dicknips. Your Neopets are either still starving on your long-abandoned account or were wiped from existence in an account purge. Sweet dreams.) Founded in 1999, it continues to this day. Ostensibly the target audience is children, but in practice, most of the site's user base is nostalgic millenials and zoomers. Soon, Neopets will be celebrating twenty-five years of daily omelette distribution, obsessing over magic paint brushes, cake slices falling out of the sky, and spinning wheels to get your pets struck by lightning. Oh, and make that seventeen years of obsessing over UCs.

Okay, so what's a UC, you say. This requires a bit of a history lesson. In 2007, Neopets went through a radical overhaul that changed the site layout to its current form, introduced the premium currency (Neocash), and made it possible to "customise" (dress up) your pets. To achieve this, almost all the pets were converted into standardized (and much more boring) poses and ported to Flash. I say almost, and that's where the seed of this drama is planted.

You see, pets with certain species/color combinations were not automatically converted to the new artstyle. For example, the Faerie Ixi (a pet that looks like a goat) would not be converted, whereas a standard blue Ixi would be. You could choose to convert your pet if it wasn't changed. The pets that didn't get changed were dubbed Unconverted (UC). They couldn't be customised, nor would they ever show any emotions besides the default happy look, but they retained the classic artstyle.

And they became the most coveted assets on the site, bar none. Everyone wants a UC. I want one, you want one, your mother's cousin's roommate wants one. The "Pet Trading" board is a neverending chorus of people screaming about what UCs they want. If you want UC pet traders to even glance in your direction, you'd better have a valuable pet to trade for and a multi-paragraph essay on why you'd be a good owner ready. I don't think actual pet shelters use this much scrunity when adopting out real animals. There's a tier system in place to judge the relative values of 17+ year old JPEGs. ("You think your plushie Mynci is worth the same as my Faerie Draik? Get real!") People have even gone so far as to hack into old, inactive accounts to steal UCs and sell them out for real money (which is against site policy), and people will risk getting their accounts banned forever just to get ahold of those precious, precious UCs. If this behavior sounds familiar to you, I must say: you're correct. UC traders were the original NFT bros. But they're not ready for that conversation.

In the nearly seventeen years since The Great Conversion, the UC situation has gotten so severe that players were begging TNT (The Neopets Team, aka our benevolent overlords) to do something. One common suggestion was to implement a feature to deconvert pets for a Neocash fee. It's two birds with one stone, we said: the move would absolutely print money, and it would also kneecap the UC black market. For years, TNT was all "Yeah, we'll totally do that. Any day now! Sure...”Finally, in January of 2024, TNT announced that they would do just that. They introduced the Styling Studio, a feature that would allow players to apply a skin of the unconverted artwork to their pet. It wasn't the same as actually unconverting the pet, but it would be a way to wear the nostalgic artwork on your account. Also, the mascot for the Styling Studio is a nonbinary emo otter, so the fanbase immediately loved them.

Styling Supplies, the item that allows you to apply the skins, is bought with Neocash. It costs about $14 of real money, although it was released at a markdown price, and most players got free Neocash as part of a site event about two months before. So, many people were able to get the item without needing to pay actual money, or less than they would otherwise. Also, people who already owned a UC pet would get a free Styling Supplies to restore the original look of their pet. Both these details will be important later, so keep them in mind.

And then the Fire Nation attacked. As anticipated, the neo-elite with their UCs did NOT, NOT, NOT like this change. If you go over to r/neopets, you can find posts with screenshots of their angry chat board messages, including such gems as emo poetry about their crushed dreams, "I have multiple grounds to sue for this", melodramatic comparisons to historical monuments being destroyed, complaints about an "important site feature" being paywalled, and language that suggested the UC pets were "survivors" whom TNT was genociding. Yes, people really had the gall to claim that their pixel pets being changed was genocide, in the midst of several ACTUAL GENOCIDES happening in real life. And of course, we had the all-important useless petition against the change being made. No internet drama is complete without one. Many people threatened to quit the site or abandon their former UCs to the pound. (So it wasn't about the artwork after all, despite what they told us for years. They just wanted to feel superior.) Among the more level-headed users, the consensus was "these people really need to go outside and touch grass."

Well, despite the protests, TNT went forward with the change. On the 22nd, Neopets went down for maintenance to implement the big change. (We were warned ahead of time about this.) It was supposed to last until around 10:00 am US Pacific Time on the 23rd, but it went over by several hours. TNT must have underestimated how long it would take to implement the changes. Around 5:00 pm Pacific, the site finally came back up...running at a snail's pace from how many people were logged on. A lot of people joked that it seemed TNT had brought back another piece of early 2000s internet nostalgia: insufferably slow dial-up. Despite the insane lag, users bought the Styling tools they sought and applied the nostalgic art to their pets. Soon, r/neopets was replete with people celebrating having obtained their childhood dream pets at long last.

And what of the former UC owners, suddenly without their bragging rights? Well, to no-one's surprise, very few of them actually quit the site like they promised. Most of them came crawling back on the 24th, quietly took their pets to the Styling Studio (or heartlessly abandoned them to the pound), and hit the boards to start pet trading again. Except now, since Styling Supplies turn into a token of a pet/species combination (e.g. apply it to your Ixi to turn it into a Faerie Ixi, and the Styling Supplies turn into a "Nostalgic Faerie Ixi" token. Makes sense? I hope so.), their language had changed. Oh don't get me wrong, the Pet Trading board was still full of obnoxious clapping and red ball emoticons, but now they were trading "tokens" of certain pet/species combos. Yep, they're called tokens. And they're tradeable digital assets stored on a server, each of which is supposedly unique with a single owner...hmm. It really drove the point home about how this nonsense is hardly different from NFT bros getting mad when someone right clicks their ugly monkey JPEGs.

What's the big takeaway from this drama, you may ask? I've wondered the same thing. I think it serves as a reminder of the impermanence of the internet. Your UC that you worked so hard for...or obtained through "other" means...could go from a status symbol to a whole lotta nothing overnight. It also works as a reminder that at the end of the day, you should be caring for Neopets because YOU want them, not because they're status symbols. Just like real pets, you know? I love my neopets dearly, even though (or perhaps because) the Pet Trading board wouldn't find them "valuable". I wouldn't trade them for all the UCs in the world. Don't be the guy having a meltdown on the neoboards because they can't act superior to the neo-proletariat anymore.

Still, I would love to be a Mootix on the wall in a courtroom as someone explains to a judge why they deserve damages for a website changing how their pixel pet looks.

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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/Naeveo on 2024-06-21 16:50:41+00:00.

The X-Men.

You probably know them.

For the uninitiated: The X-Men is an American superhero franchise that follows a team of "mutants", average people who suddenly gain superpowers through genetic mutations, trying to protect a world that hates and fears them. It started publication in 1963 through Marvel Comics, and was created by writer Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby. In the mid-70's, writer Chris Claremont took charge of the X-Men and turned them from a team of five mutants into an international team with a rotating cast. Under Claremont, the X-Men would create some of the most iconic comic book stories of all time. By the 80's, the X-Men exploded into a massive multi-media franchise that changed the face of the comic book industry.

But in 2019, the X-Men franchise was in a state of disarray.

This is the story about the House of X, how it saved the X-Men, and how it fell apart.

Welcome... to The Krakoa Era!

Krako-What?: How The X-Men Broke

"The Krakoa Era" refers to a period of the X-Men comics from 2019 to 2024 that explored the concept of a mutant nation-state. It's called "The Krakoa Era" because the mutant state is called Krakoa, and is located on a sentient island also called Krakoa. While mutant nation-states have been done before, like with Genosha, what made the Krakoa Era stand out was how it completely retooled the X-Men franchise into a utopian, queer-friendly, solarpunk sci-fi franchise. Krakoa wasn't just a nation-state; it was heaven on Earth built by mutants, for mutants.

But first, a little context why Krakoa was needed in the first place.

You can read more about it here, so I'm going to keep it simple. In 2009, Disney bought Marvel Comics, but did not get the film or TV rights to a vast majority of X-Men characters. That honor belonged to their competitor, 20th Century Fox. So Disney decided to side-line the X-Men with another cast of characters called the Inhumans, whose film/TV rights they did own.

What followed was a slog of content from 2012 to 2017 that saw the X-Men comics (and films) release stinker after stinker.

In 2017, the tide began to change. Marvel would announce the “ResurrXion” relaunch which promised a back-to-roots approach by getting rid of the Inhumans. However, this would only last for two years.

Because Disney bought Fox and its X-Men license in 2019.

Disney could finally use the X-Men franchise to its full extent.

What this called for was a fresh start. And a man named Jonathan Hickman had an idea.

House of X (2019): Fixing X-Men

In 2019, it was announced that all X-Men comics would be canceled and that the entire line would be relaunched under Jonathan Hickman. At this point, Hickman was a superstar. He was hot off of finishing Secret Wars, an event comic that capped off a multi-year saga that began in Fantastic Four and stretched into The Avengers. This run of comics was so influential that several characters from these comics appeared in Avengers: Infinity Wars and Avengers: Endgame. It's an understatement to say fans were excited.

Hickman's first comic would be a 12-issue series called House of X and Powers of X (shortened to HoXPoX from here out) with Pepe Larraz and [R.B. Silva as its artists. HoXPoX would be the only X-Men comic for 3 months. Afterwards, the rest of the comic line would be launched. Marvel teased that this was because HoXPoX so revolutionary that everything else had to wait. Hickman wasn't just heralding a relaunch, he was changing everything about mutantkind. In fact, Hickman had an entire three-year epic already planned out.

To top it all off, Hickman would also have creative supervision over the entire X-Men line (known as "The X-Office"). He would be managing a room of writers and artists all collaborating together to mold a new era. He'd handle the main story, while other writers would come in to flesh out details, spin-out stories, and contribute to the overarching narrative. For comics this was never done before. Sure, comic creators talked and pitched to each other, but never all at once to develop an entire, cohesive line with a multi-year plan.

What Hickman was proposing was a permanent, collaborative, on-going creative team for all X-Men comics directed by one person. An X-Men writer's room.

Then HoXPoX came out.

Without spoilers, HoXPoX covered both the founding of Krakoa, and the secret past of mutantkind. It's a very dense comic that goes through thousands of years of history.

Here's what changed:

• Everyone was back and accounted for. That really obscure character you like? They're on Krakoa now. And they're back with their powers too! And if they were dead? Well, they got better! ~~Clone characters not included for narrative and practical reasons.~~
• Everyone had a fresh start. Part of the deal with Krakoa was that if you're a mutant, you get Krakoan citizenship and you get criminal/legal amnesty for past crimes. All mutant villains had their pasts forgiven. Everyone was welcome on Krakoa to work together to a brighter future.
• The X-Men solved death. Using "The Resurrection Protocols", The X-Men could now revive any mutant with their body, memories, mind, and soul fully intact in two days thanks to five mutants working together. Any character that was dead is back. Any character that could die could be back in a page or less.
• A new mythology. The secrets past and futures alluded to colonies of mutants in the ancient past, in the far-flung future, in space, and in other dimensions. Mutants were made an evolutionary inevitability anywhere life existed. But even in the most successful timelines, mutants fought advanced machine intelligence. Mutants were no longer fighting bigots, but also preparing for war against machine life.
• New aesthetics. Krakoa was a limitless resource, so all technology came from the island's bio-organic sources. For example, instead of a gun, it was a tree gun on Krakoa. In order to bring this new aesthetic to life, Hickman and Tom Muller standardized the X-Men's graphic design across all comics. They made an entirely new language font for mutants, inserted "data pages" in every issue, and homogenized all logos and title pages.
• New culture. Krakoa was a utopian, post-scarcity society. A government called The Quiet Council is formed to manage and protect Krakoa. They would manage the day-to-day economics and politics of Krakoa while everyone else got to enjoy paradise. Muntankind could now form a cultural identity without fear of human violence, oppression, or judgement.
• New world order. Krakoa strong-arms the entire world into recognizing their legitimacy. Overnight, Krakoa became an impenetrable fortress and an overwhelming superpower. All nations had to capitulate to their demands. The X-Men no longer peacefully lived with humanity, they peacefully ruled over it.

To Hickman, these changes would fix everything wrong with the X-Men.

And it sold like crazy. House of X #1 wound up selling 185,000 copies, a monumental achievement in the modern era. It maintained over 100,000 sales for its entire run. For context, most books struggle to crack 50,000 copies.

Critically, these changes were met with universal acclaim. For once, after decades of mistreatment, the X-Men felt like they were succeeding again. Critics thought the idea of a new mutant nation opened exciting new possibilities. Fans loved it because it fixed long-term continuity problems by just getting everyone in one place. As for newbies, HoXPoX needed surprisingly little knowledge in advanced because so much was changed. Only cursory knowledge of key characters was needed.

HoXPoX was a definitive statement. The X-Men were back. It was going to explore the limits of what the X-Men could do, how they could cooperate, and how they could thrive. What challenges would they face as a nation? What could even challenge them? How far could you push this concept?

Powers of X (2019): Fixing Comics

Alongside the reboot, the X-Office wanted to tackle another problem: getting people to read comics.

Comics, at least in America, are published on a weekly basis. Each comic series has at least one issue come out every month. A common complaint is that comics are difficult to ...

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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/EnclavedMicrostate on 2024-06-17 04:02:15+00:00.

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!

The most recent Scuffles can be found here, and all previous Scuffles can be found here

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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/pillowcase-of-eels on 2024-06-16 13:52:32+00:00.

Continued from previous post.

INPATIENT FOLLOW-UP SURVEY: LIFE AFTER THE ASYLUM

It’s very easy to use your problems as an excuse. What’s much harder is to move forwards, as Emilie knows. I find it hilarious that she is the one telling people that they’re ‘inmates.’ You are not an 'inmate’; nor are you a 'number.’ The best way to deal with the Asylum? Leave it. 🐀

This is your story

Should you choose to remember

Well, I hope that it's true

I've finally a reason to let it die

Let it die

You've given me a reason to let it die

Let it die...

(“Let It Die”, 2006 🎵)

Let's see what became of our whimsical cast!

VIPs first, yeah? Courtney Love never stopped Courtney Loving, but she seems to have come a long way since the dark pits of 2005. She recently did an excellent BBC podcast, called “Courtney Love's Women”, about the female musicians that have made a mark on her life. If you need your fix of interesting and problematic lady rock stars, you know where to look next! Nooo, Courtney doesn't talk about her one-time violinist (that would have been wild). That being said, in episode 3, she reminisces about a collab she tried to set up between witch goddess Stevie Nicks and “bitter genius” Billy Corgan, simply sighing that “nothing came of it” – and concludes the anecdote with a quip that feels darkly relevant here.🎤

The erstwhile Bloody Crumpets have gone back to their own things, some with decent success. Veronica is a burlesque dancer and lifestyle-coach-type-person in New Orleans. In the months after she fell out with EA, she underwent life-saving skin cancer surgery (this is your cosmic sign to go get that mole checked! 🐀), and published her own hardback, illustrated, semi-autobiographical book. It got pretty good reviews, and a sweet blurb from Neil Gaiman. Vecona, the Asylum Seamstress, is still a fashion designer; she's grown out of bizarro-goth costumery, and moved on to film noir chic. Lady Jo Hee, the (First) One That Got Away, is rumored to be a cello teacher somewhere. Another Crumpet... sells essential oils, I think? Another is a theater actor who, randomly, had an uncredited role in Men in Black 3. The youngest recruit, who dropped out of the Crumpets to go to clown college, now sings “gay cuntry songs”. (What a resumé. I, for one, am very proud of her.) Some of them are still friends, and hang out once in a while, sans EA.

EA still lives in Manhattan with her partner and her dog.🪞 Per her wishes, that's about all we know. Maybe she's bidding her time for a spectacular comeback. Maybe she's doing angry pull-ups while staring at a list of names taped to the wall, like they do in prison movies. Maybe she's training to become a professional pastry chef📝, which she used to say was her other dream job if the music thing didn't work out. Maybe, like so many of us, she's just taking life one day at a time and trying not to fuck it up.

However she's spending her days now, let us hope that this break from the public eye has given her some breathing room, and time to focus on her health and well-being. Although I suspect that she might have a hard time believing this, a lot of current and former fans truly do wish her the best. Even those still holding out for new art (there's a handful!) would rather she be retired and happy, than working and miserable. We gawk, we balk, we snark, we complain, we wish she would get out of her own way, etc – but I think time and maturity have brought an amount of perspective and empathy, and softened the intensely personal rage and disappointment that used to plague (ha!) the fanbase.

Speaking of which, what became of the fans?

To my knowledge, FantineDormouse pretty much entered the scene, accidentally stepped on the Asylum nuclear button, and exited stage right, never to be heard from again. Not under that identity, anyway. I'd be very curious to hear her side of the story and her perspective on how it all played out, but I also enjoy her status as a Jane Doe, an everyfan of sorts. It could have been anyone!

The Collector, last I heard, got better. He licked his wounds, moved on from his EA obsession, and thankfully found a compatible donor. Oh yeah, right, missing context that I left out because it wasn't useful to the plot at the time: parallel to harassing EA and her mods, the Collector was also gravely ill and actively searching for an organ transplant. I'm bringing this up now to point out, once again, that we often only see a fraction of what people are going through as they spiral into unhinged, self-sabotaging, abusive behavior. (Also: there are no secondary roles, no NPCs, no stock villains in real life. No matter what two-dimensional archetype the internet / the narrative / their own dumbass behavior flattens them into, everyone you will ever interact with or read about, on and offline, is a full protagonist with a complex backstory and many ongoing arcs. We could all probably use the reminder once in a while.)

Since just about everyone else quit (including EA), two former inmates have become the de facto custodians of the shambolic Asylum: Faerie from Wayward Victorian Confessions, and Mika from She Fights Like a Girl / Asylum Oracle. A toast to the REAL Asylum MVPs! This entire write-up is a tribute to their work and dedication. Thank you guys, for everything.

Faerie and Mika (and a number of their predecessors in the game, who also deserve credit) are true blue fans who manage to remain smart, critical, and level-headed – which has allowed them to run and moderate their spaces, in my opinion, with more tact, nuance, and good humor than EA's entourage ever did. These unsung heroes keep the lights on for a handful of us old-timers to hold our... virtual support groups, I guess? Veteran's club? Whenever we feel nostalgic, we can drop by to rant, reminisce, and indulge in our weird little specific interest. I'm happy that after all these years, we can still nerd out and be weird together. Sure, it's giving “Hotel California”, but hey! Do you ever really get over your first love? Or the first cult you escaped from?

For all the rage and vitriol that spilled over the past decade, there's still an overwhelming tenderness and attachment in the way many “reformed” fans talk about EA, whether they still consume her art or not.

Most of it, of course, is tied to the usual reasons that any artist becomes a favorite artist. Namely: people associate her with a pivotal moment in their lives (usually their teens or early adulthood), they credit her words and music for helping them through difficult times, and, crucially, she was a gateway to other things that changed their lives for the better.

I thought about sharing My EA Story to illustrate, but... I really don't need to. Even though the specifics vary, “my” story has been told a hundred times, in a hundred ways, for what feels like a hundred years, by the Great Asylum Polyphonic Ensemble.

Content Warning for the collective ways we were primed to become Plague Rats: mental illness, sexual assault, self-harm, suicide, abortion, death, you know the drill by now.

There was a tweet going round a couple days ago that was like “who was the first woman who taught you it was okay to be angry.” (...) A lot of the answers were Alanis Morisette, Buffy, Fiona Apple, y’know. And i was always aware of those women, but i was really too young to get into them. No, for me, the answer is Emilie Autumn. (...) I was figuring out i was queer and i was fat and i felt weird and awkward and horrible, all the time. But i had good parents and privilege so i didn’t feel like i was allowed to be as miserable as i was. (...) Her music made space for me to feel the things i was feeling. (...) [It]helped me come to terms with my ugly emotions, and maybe in hindsight it wasn’t super healthy romanticizing my depression like that, but it helped me survive y’all.

🔍I discovered her music in a very dark and horrible time in my life and she has helped me through so much, and for that I will be forever grateful.

🐀

I was super suicidal, but her lyrics inspired me to hang on a bit longer. Even through my mental health struggles her music has been my friend, and at times strength.

🐀

TAFWVG helped me quite a bit, at least the original with the diary entries etc. It helped to know there was someone who tho...

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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/pillowcase-of-eels on 2024-06-16 13:35:34+00:00.

Is it ever over?

Will it never end?

What accounts for this morbid fascination with the suicidal girl??

(“I Don't Understand”, 2018 🎵)

Well, you read six installments and came back for more, so... you tell me.

But yes: we are, in fact, almost at the end. Welcome to the FINAL final installment of the Asylum write-up!

(Apologies that it took so long to put out – real life was being super insensitive about my online commitments. Thank you ever so much for the kind words and anticipation - I hope the read rewards your patience. HobbyDrama mods: I will most likely end up splitting this into two back-to-back posts, because reformatting in the comments is a nightmare and I'm not doing that again. Thank you for your understanding!)

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4.1 – 4.2

Part 5

Part 6

Content Warning: BLM flame wars and white nonsense.

Before you get any ideas about where this is headed (2020 was a wild year and nothing is off the table): no, EA did not come out as a raging Holocaust denier, or play Bach partitas at a Proud Boys fundraiser.

The truth is much more nuanced and stupider than that.

BLACKOUT: “WISHING YOU PEACE”

2020 had started out terrible, then quickly gotten much worse, and then a store clerk in Minneapolis called the cops on an unarmed black man over a $20 bill.

You get the mental picture. Grieving, fear, anger. Vigils. Protests. Riots. GoFundMe's for legal fees. Difficult conversations. Google Drives with the complete works of bell hooks and Franz Fanon, “bookmarked for later” and never re-opened. Well-meaning white people and out-of-touch celebrities🔍 awkwardly trying to do their part online. Remember those few weeks when every liberal-leaning individual with “a platform” (ie 120 followers or more on any given social media, including LinkedIn) was either “speaking out” (ie hopping on whichever performative bandwagon would make them look the most not-racist), getting hounded for failing to do so, or getting cancelled for doing it ass-backwards? Aah, to witness history.

EA, who was overall pretty low-key on social media by that point, had been especially quiet whilst her country was figuratively and literally on fire. When she finally tuned in for her usual “Magic Monday” oracle reading post, she did implicitly acknowledge the current events – saying she had been reluctant to post, but that she knew her followers had always been on the side of justice and positive change, and that she was inspired by everyone currently fighting the good fight:

I really didn’t want to do Magic Monday today, because I didn’t want any attention on me or my accounts when it should be elsewhere. ... I am so honored to get to share this spiritual moment with you, but I do want to honor YOU as well by saying that I *know* that ALL of you have always marched in any way you could for love and light and all that is right and just. You don’t need to be reminded or preached at to do so by the likes of me, and thus I wouldn’t dare.

This was too vague and wishy-washy for some fans, who had expected EA to be as vocal about BLM as she had been about other things in the past, like her opposition to Romney during the 2012 election, or her support of the Women's March in 2016:

Listen. I desperately love you and I have been your fan for decades. All week I have waited ... Now is the time to speak in any way and declare open support, even when the community you’re supporting isn’t one you typically focus on. Your entire brand is about giving a voice to the oppressed and not being silenced. You NEED to be posting about and encouraging others to do, to give, and to help. And anything short of that is unacceptable to the person you have created for fans to see. Please please do better if you are truly an ally to any, especially those who have less privilege than you.

In response to the above comment on her Magic Monday post, EA expressed her skepticism at the viability of social media activism, and her discomfort at people demanding shallow virtue signals from random entertainers. A valid and nuanced point, that a number reasonable folks agree with.🔍

She articulated it with diplomacy and zero hint of barely-contained fury:

You are assuming I have more wisdom and resources than you. And I assume that my friends and followers do not have to be told not to be racist. I would not insult you by telling you what you already know. And finally, you assume that what a human does online represents inaction in their real life. ... I can only hope this may be a lesson to you to not look to very very very minor celebrities such as myself in this or any time, but look to yourself instead for the action you wish to see. This is a beautiful opportunity for individual responsibility. Anyone looking to Instagram for guidance is looking for lazy activism and lip service. ... Wishing you peace.

Still, a day later, she caved in and Did the Thing. She posted the black square on #blackouttuesday. You know, the well-meaning online flashmob that had the unfortunate side-effect of making the #blm hashtag unusable for boots-on-the-ground protesters and organizers.

And then... oh boy. One prominent Asylum scholar and historian documented the whole thing with receipts in real time.🔍📝 This link is the source for all the quotes and receipts in this segment. Short of copy-pasting her entire timeline and the content of said receipts, it is REALLY difficult to summarize what went down without trivializing the subject matter, or over-simplifying the point that either party was trying to make.

Still, let me try and milk a readable story from the evidence folder. It went like this.

In the process of mass-deleting every vaguely critical-sounding comment under her #blackout post (as one does), EA somehow blocked one supportive, long-term fan who was actually defending her. Let's call her Adrienne. (Adrienne had corrected another commenter that EA had not used the #blm hashtag, so her black box post was not harming the movement. A civil, constructive exchange had ensued between the two, which was deleted.)

As luck would have it, among EA's (let's face it) overwhelmingly low-melanin fanbase🦠📝, Adrienne happens to be a black woman. And was obviously horrified, when she checked in a week later to see if the new Magic Monday post was up, to find herself blocked by her favorite artist – after EA had spent the last few days sharing proud protest selfies in her Instagram stories, no less.

Adrienne shared the news with her good friend Poppy. Poppy was no less horrified, and conveyed her heartbreak and disappointment to EA on Instagram:

I have been a fan of yours for many years. ... I have purchased so much merchandise that I think in the first year I discovered you I dropped nearly a grand on merch and events alone. I say all this because imagine how I must have felt when you blocked one of my best friends who is also black (...) Black lives matter but you block and ignore your black fans? Black lives matter but you can't be bothered to engage your black fans who comment on your stuff but will have entire conversations in the comment sections of your white fans. I have seen it several times and I tried so hard to say it was a fluke but this just cemented it. (...) You don't care about black lives because if you did you would not have blocked her for absolutely nothing especially when she was defending you from the person jumping down your throat. I wish I could say I was heartbroken, but at this point, all white women seem to do is let me down. I thought you were better.

Poppy, predictably, got blocked on sight.

But Poppy, at the time, had a sizable (5000+) following on Instagram. So when she posted a series of stories about EA ignoring and silencing black fans while trying to score ally points, they made the rounds quickly. In a video that would later be construed as a call to spam EA's social with hate and abuse, Poppy enjoined her followers to go ask EA why she'd blocked her and Adrienne. From a transcript (the original video has been lost):

Go ask her why she’s blocking black fans. Demand...

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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/Hot-Detail-2852 on 2024-06-15 02:04:24+00:00.

Hello! I'm a long-time lurker of this subreddit who made an account just to post this (because I didn't see anyone else posting it and it's been living rent-free in my head since February), so I'm sort of nervous, but I hope yall get just as much of a kick as I did out of this mess!

Just as a heads-up, most of my sources are in Chinese. This is inevitable, as the drama was just not smth that would impact the Western part of the (already-niche) fandom(s) very much, nor would Western fans really understand the significance of this happening during the Spring Festival Gala. That said, if there is an English source, I will explicitly mention so.

And obligatory formatting mention: Since this post deals with Chinese celebrities, the name format will be [family name] + [given name], unless there is an obviously Westernized name, which I'm sure will not be difficult to figure out.

First off, who is Bai Jingting?

Bai Jingting (English-language wikipedia, Baidu) is a Chinese actor. Currently thirty years old, he is most widely known for his youthful, schoolboy roles, although he has since moved onto more serious dramas as well as ancient-fantasy ones. In particular, his breakout roles include Yu Chuyan from The Whirlwind Girl, Gu Nanyi from The Rise of the Phoenixes, Sun Yiqiu from Ordinary Glory, and Xiao Heyun from Reset. However, he may be best known for being a regular cast member on Seasons 1-6 of a popular Chinese variety show, Who's the Murderer.

A ~~little~~ big background: Who's the Murderer

It would be a lie to say that Bai Jingting wasn't already popular before he joined Who's The Murderer (heretofore referred to as WTM; English wikipedia), a variety show where celebrities act as suspects in a murder case which another celebrity, posing as the detective, must solve. However, it's also not an exaggeration to say that WTM was the probable cause of most of his subsequent success.

(Didn't know where to put this since it broke the flow of the story everywhere I tried, but here is a playlist of the Engsubbed episodes of the show if you want to check it out for yourself! Bear in mind that HunanTV's English subs, particularly the earlier ones, are quite hit or miss lol.)

WTM is licensed by HunanTV (also called MangoTV; I will be using both terms interchangeably) from a Korean variety show called Crime Scene. I've never watched the K-version, so I can't tell you what that's about, but what set WTM apart from many Chinese variety shows of back then was its unique style (briefly summarized above) and relative freedom for the celebs to say things.

This was because it was solely an internet show (as in, it was only ever released on a website and not TV), so the editors didn't have to be as strict on the censorship. This led to some really funny moments and golden lines [I couldn't find any English subbed funny moments, sorry :( ] including sexual jokes, borderline cursing, some culture shocks, and general shenanigans. Add this to a great regular cast and guests (i.e. famous TV hosts He Jiong and Sa Beining, who know and get along with basically anyone; popular singer and comedian Da Zhang Wei; the star of this post Bai Jingting; and even pre-Magic-Man-fame Jackson Wang) and you've got the perfect formula for something that anyone of any age can enjoy.

But you can't talk about WTM without talking about Bai Jingting's role in it; after all, he was one of the original regulars. As a decently handsome and fairly intelligent young man with a relatable sense of humor, Bai Jingting gained a lot of fans through this show. In particular, fans loved his spontaneous, out-of-the-box guesses for the truth of the mysteries that somehow always tended to be correct, and they loved to ship him with Emma Wu, a Taiwanese singer and actor also known as Guigui, who was a perfect 'sunshine girl' to his 'grumpy boy'. (This ship later ended up dying, but you probably saw that coming.)

WTM just wrapped up its ninth season this year (2024) to great success, as expected. However, only true fans know (jk jk, that's a little gatekeepy) of the struggles the show, crew, and guests once faced. Between the 6th and 7th seasons, the original producer of the show (Xiaohezi) had a falling-out with MangoTV and left the channel along with many core members of the WTM crew. Aside from 'stealing*' the work of a former MangoTV colleague (推理开始了/lit. The Inference Starts) to make her own show (开始推理吧/The Truth, lit. Let's Start Inferring), she also made a new show called 登录圆鱼洲/The Oasis, which had a very similar game style to WTM, only without all the murder.

** I put 'stealing' in quotes because it was the phrasing that the Chinese fandom used. However, I have not watched The Inference Starts, so I don't know how it actually compares to The Truth. Granted, the names do sound quite similar, and the format of the show is also suspiciously similar to WTM, murders and all…*

Fans of WTM were furious with both shows, and honestly, some of it was for good reason; The Truth used pictures of MangoTV/WTM stars (even their families!) as murder victims, despite those people never appearing on The Truth at all (actually, they were known to have declined her offer of it), nor probably ever giving the crew consent to use their pictures like that. Pretty shitty and honestly kind of petty, yeah? On the less-lawsuit-worthy side, complaints about The Oasis were mostly due to its 'copying' of WTM's general format yet not executing it well… and that one of the regulars was — you've guessed it — Bai Jingting.

This was a pretty big deal for fans of WTM, as after it was revealed quite early in 2022 (or maybe late 2021, I can't remember) that Bai Jingting would not appear in WTM S7, fans assumed that he was busy with filming dramas and didn't want to be distracted by variety shows. As such, fans were understanding of the situation, and WTM S7 debuted to a lot of apprehension, featuring hastily-written plots (that were still extremely well-done imo), emergency friendship guest stars (including some who were recovering from injuries), and an extremely overworked new crew.

Keep in mind that WTM S7 aired about four months prior to The Oasis, and that fans were extremely touched by how put-together WTM S7 was for a show that had lost most of its core crew members. This, along with some parasocial relationship stuff, made the reveal that Bai Jingting was to star in The Oasis particularly shocking to loyal WTM fans, who felt as if he had betrayed the show, MangoTV, and even He Jiong (the backbone of MangoTV and WTM who'd helped him out quite a lot; this is another plot point for later) and the other overwhelmed guests who had pushed back or rushed other schedules just to support the show. Plus, as I'd briefly mentioned before, Xiaohezi had been exposed to have approached several other WTM stars who refused her offer and stayed with MangoTV, which made Bai Jingting's 'betrayal' even more unreasonable to the fandom.

Obviously, fans were divided; hardcore WTM fans held the opinion that he betrayed the show and his colleagues, and hardcore Bai Jingting's fans retorted that he was free to appear on whichever show he liked. In any case, many WTM fans ended up unstanning Bai Jingting, and he never did appear in another WTM episode again.

Subsequent works (the calm before the storm?)

Wow, that WTM section was so much longer than I'd expected, but you really do need a comprehensive understanding of what went on back in 2022 if you want to understand everything that happened and resurfaced in 2024. Anyway, moving on.

For context, Bai Jingting had never been a household name; he was mostly known for idol dramas (targeted towards younger women) and WTM. But after WTM, he starred in a series of fairly popular dramas: Reset, a thriller webdrama based off a popular webnovel; New Life Begins, an ancient romcom webdrama that apparently won several awards; and Destined, an ancient-fantasy drama costarring Song Yi, his girlfriend that he never officially announced that he was dating. Yes, there is a plot point here as well that I will circle back to.

In any case, it seemed like Bai Jingting was doing pretty well on his own, even without all the promotion and support from WTM, and his fans were happy. Even most WTM fans seemed to have let the issue go, opting for a 'let's do well on our own separate paths' kind of mentality.

The Big One: The 2024 Spring Festival Gala

Now, I mentioned that Bai Jingting was never a household name, right? It was fairly unlikely that anyone older than, say, 30-40 years old would know of or be a fan of him. In addition, he only had two dramas air during 2023, spending the rest of it on variety shows...

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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/EnclavedMicrostate on 2024-06-10 04:02:15+00:00.

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 most recent Scuffles can be found here, and all previous Scuffles can be found here

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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/Mysterious-Tea1518 on 2024-06-04 18:40:22+00:00.

Setting the scene

The time is the early/mid-2000s, when both internet drama and I, personally, peaked. It's the age of the web forum, where entire communities have popped up around literally anything. Starting first as a yahoo group, the My Little Pony Trading Post and later the My Little Pony Arena arose from the depths of the internet to corral fans of plastic horses long before Friendship is Magic would capture the collective imagination.

At the time, collectors were seeking out then only relatively recently discontinued Generation one  (G1) and Generation 2 (G2) MLP.  Primarily the former as the later was accused of 2000s pop star anorexia, glorifying unhealthy body images for pastel pink ponies everywhere. You might imagine that with G1 ending in the US in 1992, and G2 dying a slow and painful death first in the US then through Europe in the 2000s, this is a group of die-hard fans of a failed toy line desperate to get their hands on more plastic crack.  Most of the conversation around the community at the time fell in one of two camps:

1.      Look at this toy I’ve found at a: yard sale, church sale, flea market, thrift shop, or even on occasion an actual dumpster.

OR

2.      How do I make my dumpster pony look not disgusting?

 Much collective brainpower went into topic #2. Enthusiasts worked diligently exploring new cleaning techniques which at the time were new life-changing innovations like the Magic Eraser. However, since these are children toys, the answer is sometime a heavy lift.  Mohawk from a kid who just found scissors? Or maybe the pony is so beyond repair that it requires something more drastic?

Forged in the same fire of the newly budding reborn community, collectors began to learn to re-thread hair into their plastic horses. It’s fairly straightforward using a needle and thread (or later a tool- let me tell you, this is an inferior method, but that’s another discussion) to weave hair back into the toy. Interest began to grow for custom ponies, that’s painting the body, it’s cutie mark (symbols on a horse butt), and changing the hair color entirely to give it a new identity.

Where do you get hair?

Early on some people used hair extensions, human hair (ew), or other doll hair to fix their ponies. But where it really stood out was when you were trying to repair a pony with existing hair- you don’t want to get rid of it all, but maybe you just need a little more in some places. Maybe just a tail. It was almost impossible to find hair that matched.

As they do in niches, companies popped up that provided loose hair for toy repair. Mostly they started in the doll hair space, focusing on repairing vintage Barbies whose prices had begun to climb. Barbies and My Little Ponies actually use a different hair type. Barbies use saran, while MLP use nylon. And with the specialization, companies primarily sold natural colors like human-blonde or human-brunette that look a bit… weird… on a pink horse’s head.

A few companies would come and go, but one came onto the scene that managed to lead the pack. While others faltered with poor UX on their websites, bad photography, or poor product, Dollyhair stuck out for having passable photography and website and *really good* hair. I’m talking hair that matched so closely to the originals, it’s almost impossible to tell. More than that, the site laid out original ponies and what their matching colors were. You could just go online, find the pony you had, find the hair it needed, and easily sew that hair back into your pony. This gained more and more attention as into the late 2000s/2010s prices began to rise and supply in thrift shops and garage sales dried up.

Dollyhair

Owned by a woman named Tina, Dollyhair had a damn good product and people wanted it to repair their plastic horses. In 2003, Generation 3 made it onto the scene, gaining even more collectors. More than that, people were beginning to customize these easily available My Little Ponies to an extreme, with gorgeous linework, custom dying or airbrushing.  Conventions popped up to celebrate MLP collecting and the art continued to grow. And, suddenly, Monster High entered the scene and built up customization demand even further. That’s another story for another writer but the crossover was so prolific there was first a Monster High board within the MLP forum, MLPArena, then it grew onto its own. What I’m saying is, Dollyhair was selling a metric fuckton of hair as a preferred vendor for toy collectors. They were well loved as a vendor, with an incredibly niche captive audience, almost NO competition AND the most premium product on the market.

What could go wrong? Well you could be batshit insane and ungrateful of your incredibly forgiving audience.

Order Delays

People would order from Dollyhair and it would take months to receive your order. You’d send an email- no response. “Oh, she has a new baby!” someone says. “Oh, she’s on vacation!” someone says.²  This continues in a loop forever, where months pass and then eventually stuff arrives maybe. Maybe it’s the right order. Maybe it’s not. Luckily, it’s toy horse hair, so no one’s life is on the line.

 She got away with this for a LONG time. If people wanted it quick, they would trade amongst themselves or settle for lower quality competitors. Feedback threads even have evidence of someone offering to share their own correct order to cover her loss out of their pocket just to help a fellow collector.

Doxxing

But if you’re batshit insane, eventually it’s gotta blow. The first example of this I can find is in 2006. Unfortunately, the original post is no longer available however the user’s description of the situation is.

In that user’s words: “I placed a large order of hair with her, and to make a long story short, she didn't send it in a timely fashion, and when I made a feedback post about it, she registered for the board and flew off the handle at me, haranguing me like she was crazy over PM and showing the entire board what a nut she could be in the feedback thread, which I had initially even offered to delete/retract once I got my hair. She also took the liberty of my posting personal info (name and address) on the thread until the mods told her to remove it.”³

That’s right, you could go ahead and publicly doxx your fanbase.  Turns out she had printed a label but never sent the order just delivered the tracking. Eventually the user got an incomplete order and she refused to fix it. Nevermind though, as people *continued to order from her* as she had one of the most accessible and high-quality products. What were we supposed to do?

Enter Heidi

With acknowledgement that there was not a lot of options, a new site (mylittleponyhair.com) emerged!! And if you were worried about the quality, don’t be! Because this isn’t just ANY hair, it’s dollyhair! That’s right, Tina of Dollyhair was SO KIND as to sell mylittleponyhair.com their hair, because the new owner Heidi is her sister! Afraid of ordering from Dollyhair because of Tina’s bad behavior but great quality? Nevermind, this is HEIDI!⁴ Now, collectors are trusting but they aren’t dumb. This was quickly called out, that Heidi had appeared and started a new site immediately after Tina had flounced out of the community. In fact, little mention is made of this website anywhere in the future aside to say that dollyhair and mylittleponyhair are the same site and its stock is tied. ⁵

Hope you’re hungry

To note in this bad behavior is how absolutely personally Tina took all of this. As Heidi disappeared into the background and Tina took center stage again, she was accused of many different bad behaviors. My personal favorite, someone left her a bad review online which led to her taking their personal information and ordering *five different pizzas* to their house, then later getting a call stating “hope it was worth all that hair, honey! Enjoying that pizza, you fat mother f-ing cow!”  as well as the same user getting early morning calls about orgies and people showing up to their house for a yard sale they never had. ⁶

It's the intern’s fault

Somewhere down the line, people were getting their stuff eventually but found that it wasn’t quite as normal. Hair is sold in hanks, or a small handful of a continuous circle of hair that is then cut and divided into hanks. These hanks are then made into plugs (about 15-30 strands of hair) and sewn into the pony. Each hank, typically, is 1 oz and about enough to put hair in a pony. Unless you order from Tina, because suddenly people weren’t able to fill an entire pony’s mane with a hank.  One by one people came online and complained, and then started weighing out hanks. They were all, consistently, short.  People began to ask if this was the new normal, or if their shipping (which appeared to be flat-rate) would decrease because of the decrease in product received. No dice. Instead, Tina showed up in a huff to claim that she had hired a new assistant, and it was her assistant’s fault.  This assistant never appeared again.*

So clearly the community, seeing this bad behavior, wouldn’t continue supporting her right?  No. Wrong. With the opinion of “well people got their stuff eventually” and “it’s still the best hair you can buy” people continued shopping.  Tina would shape up a little, ship things on time for a spell, then once again lapse. Your order would b...

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