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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/EnclavedMicrostate on 2024-07-08 04:02:35+00:00.

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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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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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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.
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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.

Reminders:

• Don’t be vague, and include context.
• Define any acronyms.
• Link and archive any sources.
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• 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/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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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/EnclavedMicrostate on 2024-06-03 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.

Reminders:

• 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/iLOVEkadoaties on 2024-06-01 16:58:16+00:00.

(Note: ‘retail’ refers to the regular Neopets website, currently owned by NetDragon, previously owned by JumpStart - thank you u/fancytables)

BACKGROUND

Before I begin this post, it is important to talk about what Neopets is and why a classic version of it was created in the first place. Neopets is a virtual petsite where you can own pixel pets, converse with other players on the neoboards, play games, meet people through guilds (which are like clubs geared toward certain interests), and partake in daily activities. Because Neopets is now a 24-year-old site, many of its users have been around for a while and remember what Neopets was like pre-conversion. 

In 2007, Viacom (the company that owned the domain at the time) decided to “convert” all pets in order to introduce customization–a new site feature where you could spend real money to dress up your pets. While pre-conversion Neopets had dynamic poses and character, post-conversion Neopets were static and rather awkward. Most species and color combinations were automatically converted, but owners of certain combinations were given the option to keep their original unconverted pet. This drove up the value of unconverteds (otherwise known as UCs), and created a fierce trading system on Neopets. In a sea of converted pets, everyone wanted an unconverted.

Players had the option to trade around and work their way up to getting one of these highly coveted pets–but starting from ground zero often meant working on a singular trade chain for years, if not decades. This was a daunting task for many. Soon enough, there was a robust black market for unconverted pets…and when I say robust, I mean, people who desperately wanted these “UC” pets were flooding the “black market” with thousands of US dollars per year. 

Millions of players who had been there since the beginning of Neopets would continue to be discouraged by the site's direction for years to come. In 2020, it was announced that Adobe Flash would soon be discontinued. With the termination of Flash, all the beloved Neopets games that relied on it were lost. Three years ago, Neopets further dug its own grave by introducing NFTS. Needless to say, the active player base has dramatically decreased over the years.

NEOPETS CLASSIC IS DEBUTED

Enter Neopets Classic (NPC), a fansite made to model early 2000s Neopets when there were around 3 million active users. For privacy purposes, the name Kiko will refer to the site’s creator (all screenshots with him will be censored in YELLOW). Kiko began working on this project as a way to learn code in his offtime. He began posting screenshots of the progress he was making with NPC on Reddit as far back as 5 years ago (2019). To say Neopets fans were excited is an understatement. When the site eventually opened to the public in December 2020, tons of users rushed to make accounts and create the unconverted pets they had never imagined getting to own, along with names that are probably stuck on frozen accounts from 2003 or so on retail. Instead of Rose6920Neopets, it was possible for a user on Neopets Classic to actually make the pet “Rose”. In its early days, the site was incredibly nostalgic and fulfilling for many people. 

Kiko opened a Patreon account where people could show their support through monthly donations ranging from $1 to $25. Each tier unlocked special rewards on NPC’s Discord server, but the most appealing was the ability to make an NPC account for $1. After the initial wave of sign-ups, the site closed regular sign-ups to manage the influx of users as there were easily 200 members already. The only way people could get accounts after this point was by donating, or to wait for sign-up links to be posted about every month or so to the Discord. After receiving an email from Patreon where they warned him of Neopets copyright issues, Kiko moved to Buy Me A Coffee (BMAC).

A few months into Neopets Classic, there was a surge of site bugs and issues that went unfixed and quickly piled up. Kiko was nowhere to be found for almost two months. There was no communication indicating when users could expect fixes to the issues they were facing in game. Not even the mods were able to tell the users when or even if he would be back. He came back eventually, with no word of apology or explanation for his absence. This left users quite upset at the lack of communication while he was MIA, and not knowing whether their ongoing donations were going to waste if the site never started working properly again. 

Kiko’s prolonged absence opened a door for many cheaters to abuse the site. This included the use of various bots and scripts that could auto-refresh around the site and auto-buy items from shops. Additionally, several users funneled items and neopoints (the in-game Neopets currency) from their side accounts to their main accounts, which was against the rules. Upon his return, Kiko was made aware of the massive cheating issue and started issuing bans accordingly. He created a channel within the Discord titled “Wall of Shame”, where he mocked the users he froze and immortalized their “crimes.” Ironically, Kiko himself had quite a bit of experience with similar illegal behavior on retail Neopets. He had previously been a black market seller of “UC” pets for real money on retail - and Clraik, a forum-based website dedicated to sharing and engaging in Neopets cheats, did not hesitate to expose this in his ban message from their site. Interestingly, Kiko had previously been fairly involved in the Clraik community and even recruited his first Neopets Classic players from there. He eventually deleted the channel.

Kiko also shamed his own playerbase behind closed doors in BMAC-only channels, but the Wall of Shame wouldn't be the first time he did so publicly. During the Halloween event in 2021, players collected candy around the site that came in different varieties. To redeem prizes, you had to collect certain varieties of candies - and if you didn’t have those varieties, you could swap candies with other users to get what you needed. One user made an unpopular choice to ask for multiples of one kind of candy for less of another and received severe backlash from not only the community but Kiko himself. While some users agreed that the player was acting out of line and applauded Kiko’s condemnation of the user, many others were grossly uncomfortable with the site creator openly ridiculing a player who wasn’t breaking any known game rules. Kiko had started a dogpile where members of the community continued to speak against the user, who then felt bullied off the site. A few friends of his followed suit and quit playing.

ART CHAOS

On March 7th, 2022, an NPC artist (who will henceforth be referred to as Carmariller) asked Kiko for permission to add a commissioned pet to the site that had been commissioned by a user with Neopoints. Kiko said yes and gave her permission, noting that it wasn’t any different from a user paying for a commission, as long as the user was fine with it being on the site. Their stone Shoyru design was eventually added to the site. Later on, several other users pitched in together to pay for a commission of another pet design from Carmariller in hopes of it being added to the site. When the site’s main moderator (let’s call her Lupe) found out about this in a public channel, she made it clear that commissions for pets to be added to the site were not allowed anymore, claiming it was unfair for users who couldn’t pay to affect site art through neopoints. However, those who had commissioned the art were confused and upset that this decision was made in direct opposition to the precedent of the Stone Shoyru. Following Lupe’s claims of unfairness, several users chimed in to express that it was problematic that users had commissioned art to be added to the site. Carmariller took a lot of heat from this discourse, which caused them to take a break from NPC. This series of interactions will be important later on.

ISSUES WITH INCLUSIVENESS

During April 2022, it was announced that a spring Easter event would take place on NPC. In the suggestions channel of the Discord server, a user submitted a suggestion to incorporate small nods to other religions because all the events around the holiday season were Christian-centric. This opened the door for a few users to vehemently disagree, stating that religion had no place on Neopets, that the site could never be “100% inclusive”, and that someone will always be upset. What started off as an innocuous suggestion for more inclusive features on the site ended in a heated debate, with many users feeling hurt and angry by the seemingly xenophobic arguments being made against the suggested features. Users from marginalized groups began to feel unsafe in the server as users were allowed to freely speak out against suggestions to make the site and community more inclusive with no mod intervention. When Kiko eventually came online, he did little to comfort those marginalized voices when [he wrote that he wasn’t interested in “pandering to other cultures”, and that “Christian holidays are...

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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/ToomintheEllimist on 2024-05-31 13:58:39+00:00.

The Background

Great British Bake Off (GBBO) is a cooking contest show that has been on BBC since 2010.  It’s long been notable for its refusal to entertain petty drama: in a 2014 incident known as “bingate”, judges famously voted off contestant Iain because he “lost it” after his ice cream was accidentally removed from a refrigerator.  The judges later praise (and favor?) contestants like Nadiya and Rahul who persist through similar mishaps to deliver imperfect-but-intact food.  Many fans saw bingate as a declaration of identity, that GBBO is not an American high-drama competition between cutthroat cheaters “not here to make friends” — it’s a cozy apolitical show where contestants help one another, and the worst drama comes from a mix-up between custards quickly resolved with heartfelt apology.

GBBO is a show about food, not interpersonal drama.  It’s about British food, but also about multicultural influences on British food.  It’s about being polite and caring and utterly British, soldiering on through dropped ice-creams and elbow-smashed rolls.  It’s not about corporate sponsorship, and it’s not about politics.

HOWEVER.  Then came Series 13.  The resultant backlash caused a restructuring of the show, an alleged firing of a host, and a classic series of corporate apologies.

The Blunder

To be clear: what made the Series 13 fuckup unique was NOT (merely) going beyond the judges’ and contestants’ expertise in ways that revealed the hidden imperialism of the show’s assumptions about “coziness," “lack of drama," and "apolitical food." What made the Series 13 fuckup unique was that the show did all that for North American food.

The Imperialism

Butchering foreign recipes, and blundering in describing non-Anglo food, isn’t actually new for GBBO.  S1E2, judge Paul refers to challah as “plaited bread” and claims it’s “dying off,” leading Shira Feder to declare “GBBO has zero Jewish friends.”  Throughout S10, judges Prue and Paul ask contestants of SE Asian descent (Michael, Priya) to “tone down the spice” and stop using “so many chiles.”  Paul openly declares American pie disgusting.  In a brownie challenge (S11E04), literally every contestant fails to make good or edible food.  During “Japan” Week (scare quotes intended), the challenges include Chinese bao and a stir fry where most contestants use Indian flavors.  Hosts mispronouncing non-Anglo food names (“schichttorte,” “babka”) for humorous effect is a running bit on the show.

These incidents were not without backlash, but (until S13) none of it rose to the interest of BBC.

S13E04: Mexican Week

GBBO has had national-themed weeks since S2, with what’s alternately referred to as “Patisserie” or “French Week.”  In S11, it finally expanded beyond Europe with “’Japan’” Week.  And in S13, in what was no doubt an effort to appeal to the simple majority of viewers who view the show through Netflix from North America, the producers gave us Mexican Week.  Or “”Mexican”” Week.  At least there were no bao this time?

This tweet of a butchered avocado foreboded everything wrong with the episode.  Though the U.K. etc. largely consider avocado an exotic luxury (see: the avocado toast meme), in North America it’s been a staple for millennia, #1 produce item in Mexico and #6 in the U.S. last year.  Contestant Carole’s attempts to cut the avocado… like an apple? I guess? result in food waste, and an inedible end product if pieces of the skin or toxic core are mixed in with the flesh.  It calls into question the alleged expertise of the contestant bakers.

Then the episode aired.  It opens with white hosts Noel and Matt in sombreros and sarapes (costume versions, not historical garb), Noel announcing “I don’t think we should make Mexican jokes; people will get upset.”  Matt asks, “Not even Juan?”  And Noel replies, “Not even Juan.”  As NYT points out: both men have a history of blackface and brownface on other shows, so this is hardly out of the norm for them.  It then goes into a montage sequence of the contestants proclaiming their lack of knowledge of Mexican food: “What do Mexicans even bake?”

Then contestant Janusz refers to “cactuses” and judge Prue interrupts him to say “cacti”; Janusz apologizes and corrects it to “cacti.”  Cactuses is a correct plural.  Then Noel’s voice-over complains about the “tongue-twisting title” of bella naranja.  It just keeps coming.  Paul and Prue go on to explain to the viewer that tacos typically contain “pico de GAL-low,” repeatedly saying “gallo” as if it is a singular of “gallows.”  These are the people, let me remind you, who are being paid for their food expertise.  The people who are about to judge food on the extent to which it is “authentically Mexican.”  The people who can’t even say the name of the unofficial national sauce of Mexico.  But in case you were worried that this buffoonery calls into question the whole premise of the show, fear not — Paul “recently visited Mexico”, and Prue “enjoy[s] a tres leces [sp] cake.”

Meanwhile in the tent, the poor contestants try to make tortillas… with the undersides of mixing bowls.  Because there are no tortilla presses, and the show doesn’t appear to know what a tortilla press is.  “Bleh!” one contestant announces, after trying cumin, “It’s burning my mouth… Well, it’s meant to be Mexican, isn’t it?”  All of them speculate on what “pick-io day galliow” could be.

If I could soapbox for a second: it’s not so much that these fuckups happen.  It’s that every single one makes the final edit.  10+ hours of baking, likely 20+ hours of testimonials, and an unknown number of reshoots got turned into a 60-minute episode… and no one bothered to look up the plural(s) of “cactus” or how to pronounce the Spanish word for “chicken.”  GBBO has zero Hispanic friends.  We all get the history of anglicizing words like “lieutenant” and “bangle.”  But it’s not fucking ideal to be evoking that history so blatantly and clumsily, not when (an estimate since Netflix doesn’t do numbers) over 70% of your audience is syndicating this show from the Americas.  To paraphrase Taika Waititi: the recent increase in performers of color is great… but behind the camera, most big shows are still whiter than a Willie Nelson concert.

S13E06: Halloween Week

This was the cherry on the shit sundae.  Meant to be a North American week.  Yes, Halloween originated in the British Isles, but it only became a major holiday in the U.S., and all the bakes were North American.  It just added to the clusterfuck to see judges Paul and Prue deducting for contestants melting the marshmallow in their s’mores, presenting the piñata as Halloween décor, and otherwise anglicizing the hell out of bakes with North American names.

The Consequences

That avocado image went viral, as did the blatant incompetence about s’mo...

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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/LambdaPhi13 on 2024-05-30 02:25:26+00:00.

Improper Classifications

Sat Apr 08, 2023 12:39 PM

This is certainly one of the events of all time.

Welcome to the show, ladies and gentlepeople of r/HobbyDrama. Please, turn off your cellphones (except if you’re using one to read this very post), grab some popcorn, and get comfortable. Today I shall weave you a tale of Discord DMs and late-night forum posts, a tale of backstabbing and backpedaling, a tale of how a nearly decade-long treaty between the two biggest regions in NationStates fell apart, and what any of that even means.

This is the tale of The North Pacific Extortion Scandal.

Preliminary: What is NationStates?

(Note: I’m going to be using a lot of acronyms here in this post, so each word with a corresponding acronym will have that acronym listed in parentheses right next to it. Don’t question it, it’s just a NationStates thing.)

After reading the title, a good portion of y’all probably thought “Wait, NationStates? That website’s still alive?” Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on your perspective, it is. In fact, it’s arguably thriving - NationStates celebrated its two-decade anniversary two years ago and, as of the time I am writing this write-up, is home to 291,701 nations residing in 28,154 regions. It’s quite impressive how long it’s managed to last, really.

Now, for those of you who are unfamiliar, NationStates (often called NS for short) is a political simulation web browser game created in 2002 by author Max Barry. It was initially created to promote his at-the-time newly-released book, Jennifer Government. The game offers the opportunity for users to create, and subsequently govern, their own nation. These nations can also join a region, which usually functions as a cross between a social club/group chat and a nation in its own right, with its own formal government. There are a variety of different regions that a new nation can join, with a variety of themes, from fantasy to Ancient Egypt to leftism to the United Kingdom. NationStates is also home to the World Assembly (WA), a mock United Nations divided into the General Assembly (GA) and Security Council (SC), which are roughly analogous to the real-life UNGA (except our GA can actually do shit) and UNSC, respectively. The GA generally governs things like human rights, trade, world peace, etc, while the UNSC governs geopolitical relations between nations and regions. All you need to know about the WA for this post is that two types of proposals one can pass in the SC are commendations (essentially saying that some nation or region is good) and condemnations (essentially saying that some nation or region is bad), each giving the nation or region in question a shiny new commended or condemned badge. However, both are generally considered as rewards by their recipients - especially since, beyond the aforementioned shiny badge, commendations and condemnations don’t actually do anything.

One can subdivide the NationStates community into many different sub-communities focused on different things. For instance, there is NS roleplay (or “NSRP”), in which users roleplay as their countries and interact with each other on the international stage (this itself is subdivided into roleplay taking place on the NS forums and roleplay held in a single region). The sub-community that is relevant for this particular event is what is known as “NS gameplay”, or NSGP for short, a fascinating little dumpster fire of a sub-community best watched from a distance. In order to grasp what NSGP actually is, first you need to know the following:

• All members of the World Assembly can “endorse” other members of the World Assembly that are within their own region.
• Each region has a position known as the World Assembly Delegate, occupied by the nation which has the most endorsements in that region. When the WA delegate goes to vote for or against WA resolutions, its vote has more weight than the vote of ordinary nations - while all other nations get one and only one vote, the number of votes a WA delegate gets is equivalent to the number of nations endorsing them.
• The region’s government may incorporate the WA delegate in a variety of ways. In many regions, the WA delegate is the executive leader of that region, while in others the WA delegate has no power beyond its increased WA vote weight.
• In many regions, the WA delegate has actual executive power in the region as per game mechanics, including the power to ban nations and change the region’s appearance.

Now, a very long time ago, in the ancient times known only as the Year of our Lord 2003, a couple of NS players realized something. Specifically, they realized that if they all joined the WA, rushed en masse into one region at the same time, and endorsed each other, they could topple the region’s WA delegate and seize the region for themselves, essentially conducting a coup. These lovely folks became known as invaders or, more commonly, raiders, and they made invading regions into something of a hobby. However, not all were happy with the newfound frequency of invasions. Some of these unhappy people went on to form their own groups to defend regions from raids by rushing into regions that were being raided and endorsing the native Delegate. These folks became known as “defenders,” and depending on who you’re talking to they’re either the heroic saviors of innocent regions or buzzkills who hate fun.

Expectedly, raiders and defenders became consistent rivals, nemeses even, as each faction sought to remain one step ahead of the other. This would evolve into military gameplay, often also referred to as raiding/defending (R/D), and over time, the never-ending conflict between raiders and defenders would gain significant importance in other facets of NationStates such as the World Assembly (where defenders are routinely commended and raiders condemned) and inter-regional politics. R / D is the axis upon which all of NSGP revolves around, with entire regions being dedicated to raiding and defending. Most regions involved in NSGP have regional militaries, and almost all of them care about R / D in some way. Some regions are independent, meaning they engage in both raiding and defending - whatever serves the interests of their region. NSGP is a very unique sociological beast, with its own international relations and even its own political ideologies. NSGP is also a very old beast, resting upon a very long and rich history. I could go on about how fascinating it is that this one browser game that was meant to be an ad for a book has developed its own pretend sociology, history and philosophy, but I think I’ll refrain - for now, at least.

Okay, I think we’re ready to dive into the subject of this post. Strap in, folks, and prepare to behold the absolute clusterfuck known as the North Pacific extortion scandal.

The Revelation

On Friday, April 7, 2023 at 8:39 PM UTC, a post was made on the NationStates gameplay forums that would change the world (of this very niche section of the Internet) forever.

This post was made on the official forum thread of Lone Wolves United (LWU), a major raiding organization. Before, LWU had somewhat amicable relations with the titular The North Pacific (TNP), at the time the largest active region in the game and the most powerful region in the World Assembly. TNP has a very long and storied history, spanning from almost since the first few days of NS’s existence. It’s perhaps the oldest democratic region on NationStates, where governmental officials are elected by the residents. It was famously invaded by the New Pacific Order in 2004, and in its early days experienced many notable coups - these could all be their own HobbyDrama posts (honestly, you could fill this subreddit to the brim with the amount of drama NS has spawned). TNP was also unique in that, while it usually aligned itself with defenders, it was officially independent - meaning it was also the largest independent region in the game. In fact, TNP was one of the leaders in codifying independence, being the authors of the historic document “The Independent Manifesto”, which is where the very definition of an independent region comes from. Furthermore, at the time of this scandal, TNP’s delegate had a little over 1000 endorsements, meaning that their vote was often one of the deciding votes in whether or not a resolution passes or fails. (Even now, the current official delegate has around 770 endorsements, which is a decrease from their previous power but is still a lot). To put it bluntly, TNP is a pretty big fucking deal.

Now, LWU’s post didn’t exactly bear good news. In the post, LWU announced that they were cutting relations with TNP following a stri...

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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/Tokyono on 2024-05-28 11:04:03+00:00.

Note: I used google translate to translate all the Dutch sources in this post. Apologies for any translation errors, but I have 0 talent for languages.

I was going to write about the controversies of The Great British Bake Off, but then I came across this mess. Enjoy!

Just a quick note: there are two different types of organ donation law; opt-in and opt-out. In 2007, the Netherlands had an opt-in system. It was seen as very inefficient as it did not meet the needs of patients and there was a long waiting list. Most countries in Europe have an “opt out” system vs the USA which has an “opt-in” one.

The Doctor is in: BNN. Bart de Graaf. And The Great Donor Show.

Reality tv is a diverse genre. There are reality shows about dating, marriage, survival, cake baking, carpentry, …and now, organ donation.

In 2007, BNN, a Dutch broadcaster known for its controversial programming, announced that they would be airing a show called “The Great Donor Show”. It was created by Endemol, a Dutch production company that had created a lot of popular reality tv shows, including Big Brother.

The premise of the show:

It focuses on Lisa, a 37-year-old woman dying of a brain tumour. She must decide which of three patients selected by the producers, aged between 18 and 40, should receive her kidney. Viewers can offer their opinions by SMS text message.

In the Netherlands, organ transplants are subject to strict laws, which prohibit donors from choosing who will receive their organs after their death.

However, an exemption is made in the case of kidney transplants, which can be carried out while the donor is still alive, allowing the donor to choose the beneficiary if there is some link between the two people.

The three contestants were Vincent Moolenaar, Charlotte Trieschnigg, and Esther-Clair Sasabone.

BNN claimed that they produced the show in honour of their founder, Bart de Graaf, who died after waiting seven years for a kidney donation. The show was screened on the fifth anniversary of his death. Proceeds from all the text messages would go to the Dutch Kidney Foundation.

Every-body calm down: The Backlash

The shows announcement was quickly met with both international and national outrage, from politicians, television critics, and medical professionals. Dutch embassies were flooded with complaints . Even the Dutch prime minister at the time, Jan Peter Balkenende, criticised the show, saying it would damage the reputation of the Netherlands. Some Dutch politicians even called for the program to be banned:

CDA MP Joop Atsma wants to see if BNN’s Big Donor Show can be banned.

Atsma hopes that BNN will come to repentance. "The fence is with this program of the dam. A careful medical assessment is thus passed. What are people in the program judged? - On their color? - In their gender? To their sexual orientation?”

Atsma calls Minister Ab Klink (CDA) of Health and Minister of Culture Ronald Plasterk (PvdA) Tuesday to the Question Time in the Chamber. “I want to know if we can ban the program. There is a good chance that it will go against the law. I want to explain if there is a difference in selling an organ to the highest bidder.”

Ronald Plasterk weighed in on the situation::

"The intention of the programme to get more attention for organ donation may be applaudable," said Dutch Education and Culture Minister Ronald Plasterk.

"However based on the information I now have, the programme appears to me to be inappropriate and unethical because it is a competition," said Plasterk, who is a molecular biologist and former chief of the Dutch Cancer Institute.

In the end, the government announced that they wouldn’t ban the program, because there was no basis under the law for them to do so.

BNN’s then chairman, Laurens Drillich, defended the show and explained why they were airing it:

"The chance for a kidney for the contestants is 33%,"…"This is much higher than that for people on a waiting list."

"We think that is disastrous, so we are acting in a shocking way to bring attention to this problem."

He later added that in the five years since Bart De Graaf had died, the situation had gotten much, much, worse.

BNN invited Ab Klink to come onto the show and discuss what the government had done to solve the crisis. But he turned them down. In a poll conducted before the show aired, it was found that 61% of the Dutch population disapproved of the show. Interestingly enough, younger people approved of it much more than older people (44% of under 25s said they would watch it vs 13% of over 65s).

The Dutch Kidney Foundation welcomed the attention that the show had brought to the organ donor issue in the Netherlands, but said that “"their way of doing it is not ours, and it will bring no practical solution". However, the negative attention the show received, made them reach out and ask BNN to stop using their logo in the title of the show. BNN had not asked them for permission and had gone ahead and used their 2007 logo to replace the “o” in the word “show”.

The show aired on the first of June 2007. At the beginning of the broadcast, the presenter, Patrick Lodiers, highlighted the dramatic criticism the show had received, and at the end, he announced that the whole thing was a hoax.

If the vote had been real, then Charlotte would’ve won with 38% of the vote:

In the end, it was the most vulnerable of the three who made the biggest impression.

Twenty-nine-year-old Charlotte talked about the fact that she cannot even drink more than a pint of liquid per day, because that is all her body can handle.

Some 38% of those text messages were votes for Charlotte. However, just as "Lisa" started to announce who she was going to give her kidney to, the presenter intervened.

(Note: it is very difficult to find surviving clips of the program. It is considered lost media. I was able to find this clip on YouTube, as well as the ones linked above, but that’s it.)

It takes some guts: Donation and deception.

It was revealed that Lisa was an actress, but that the three contestants were all real patients in need of a kidney donation. They knew what was going on and agreed to appear on the program to highlight the organ donation issue in the Netherlands.

The reveal had a mixed reception. Ronald Plasterk thought the show was a “fantastic stunt” and that it had inspired him to become an organ donor. He was very happy that it wasn’t real. The then Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende, was also relieved. Ab Klink still though the show was “inappropriate”, but he did find it positive that it had drawn attention to the issue of organ donations. Joop Atsma refused to change his stance, he continued to find ...

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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/EnclavedMicrostate on 2024-05-27 04:02:36+00:00.

Welcome back to Hobby Scuffles!

Please read the Hobby Scuffles guidelines here before posting!

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The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/RadioRavenRide on 2024-05-20 18:16:50+00:00.

If you’ve been around this subreddit for a while, you might be aware of Genshin Impact, an open-world Action RPG developed by Hoyoverse (formerly Mihoyo). However, the actual core gameplay of this game is not as important to this post as it is to others. Instead, the game’s gacha aspect and how it doles out its rewards is what is important here. If you know what gacha games are, feel free to skip this next paragraph.

Gacha games are free-to-play games that, instead of base pricing, battle passes, or direct microtransactions, base most of their revenue around the gacha, a randomized lottery system where you exchange some premium currency for the chance to get what you want. If you, say, wanted to get Jeanne D’Arc Alter in the game Fate/Grand Order, you would put premium currency (Saint Quartz) into her banner (special pool of characters and items). This submission then corresponds to a certain number of pulls, each of which has a set chance to get the character you want, and usually a larger chance to get characters and items of lower rarity. Additionally, many games have a “pity” system, which guarantees that you will get the character or item you are trying to pull for within a certain (usually large) number of pulls. Got all that? The key thing to understand is that while you can pay to get premium currency, this premium currency can also be gained “for free” through normal gameplay. This is the social contract between players and gacha game developers: have fair rates and generous rewards (preferably in that premium currency), and players will stick around to pay and play.

When it comes to Genshin Impact, this social contract between player and developer can be strained. Few would dispute Genshin’s overall quality: its story, exploration, characters, and general production values are through the roof compared to other gacha games and most games you can play for free on a phone. 

However, the gacha system itself is considered to be quite strict: each pull on a limited banner has a 0.6% to summon the limited 5 star character. As such, many players will have to rely on the pity system to reliably acquire 5 star characters. The chance to get any 5 star will increase after 75 pulls, and on your 90th pull you are guaranteed to get a 5 star unit. Key word a 5-star unit, because this guarantee comes with the caveat of the dreaded “50/50”, where there is a chance of getting a standard banner item or character instead of the limited character you actually wanted. As such, to guarantee a limited character, you have to be prepared to spend upwards of 180 pulls on their banner. This would be fine if the game gave a lot of rewards, but that isn’t entirely the case: with 160 primogems per pull, the average player usually gets about 70 pulls per patch (a 6-week content cycle). 

This has led to some grumblings and even outrage in the past when players have felt that Hoyo is too stingy with rewards (see 1st anniversary drama). Nevertheless, Genshin players have generally gotten used to this treatment and kept on playing. It’s not like there would be a better game coming along anyway. (Dun dun dun)

v3.6 and a new challenger approaches

On April 26, 2023, during Genshin Impact version 3.6, HoYoVerse announced the launch of a brand new gacha game named Honkai: Star Rail (HSR). Unlike Genshin, which is an open-world RPG with exploration as a key mechanic, HSR is a turn-based RPG without exploration that focuses more on combat.

From the instant its servers opened, HSR was compared to Genshin. Some of this was deliberate, as the two games are by the same developer and share many design elements: 

• anime art style
• legacy “expy” characters like Bronya, Raiden Mei, Seele
• gacha (obviously)
• same gacha system (160 currency per pull, 90 hard pity, 50/50 mechanic)
• gear based on RNG
• and so on…

Both players and content creators gave HSR a go, both because of it being a new game by the same company, but also because of a phenomenon in Genshin’s yearly content cycle known as the “dry patches”. As mentioned before, Genshin releases its content in the form of 6-week-long patches, which contain new characters as well as events and sometimes main story content. However, the main story of Genshin is confined to Archon Quests, which only last for the first three patches of a version. This has caused many players to perceive patches released later in a version as “dry” and lacking in meaningful content. Sumeru was no exception, as the main quest wrapped in version 3.2, and by version 3.6 and the release of HSR, Genshin was in its usual lull season.

But there were also other grievances in the Genshin community at the time besides the usual complaints about dialogue or lack of endgame. Version 3.5 saw the release of Dehya, a highly anticipated character from the Sumeru Archon Quest, whose kit was generally considered underwhelming and disappointing. HoYoVerse did not respond to player requests to fix Dehya, and the main Genshin Impact subreddit blocked people’s complaints. While this could be an attempt to avoid spam, blocking all discussion of Dehya’s flawed gameplay resulted in even more anger among Dehya mains. While one could argue version 3.6 had content in the form of a new exploration region and story, it was another desert region, which people were growing a bit tired of. Suffice it to say, that many Genshin players were dissatisfied with the state of their game, and were looking to find other games.

To someone who might be burning out of Genshin, HSR had many attractive elements.

• a guaranteed standard 5-star in your first 50 pulls
• more humorous writing, without the involvement of a third party like Paimon
• Simulated Universe - an actual endgame mode
  • on the topic of endgame modes, HSR also has multiple endgame modes that test different characters’ strengths, but Genshin’s only endgame is the pure damage-focused Spiral Abyss
• more pulls (BUT: HSR releases more 5* characters, this will become relevant very quickly)
• auto-battle mode
• no time-gated materials
• PERMANENT EVENTS

Additionally, many of those elements listed above were not available in Genshin.

The full value of those features is a matter of personal taste, but overall, Genshin’s dry state made it easier for players to appreciate a sister game bursting with content. And so it went for several patches, with Genshin and HSR players scuffling back and forth about which game is better. 

L + Ratio

In its version 1.6 Livestream, the HSR developers announced they would be giving out Dr. Ratio, the newest 5* character, for free as a thank-you gift to players for supporting the game. Importantly, this news came out of nowhere.

While a cynic might suggest that this was just a marketing tactic used to get players back in time for version 2.0, the sudden news poured gasoline on the Genshin/HSR civil war.

Infamously, unlike many of its contemporaries, Genshin has never given a 5* character for free. There has never been a standard banner selector, and while there was an early game rumor that players would obtain Kamisato Ayaka at AR42, this was misinformation that has become community layspeak for false rewards and not believing everything you hear. The closest they have ever come to that is giving out Aloy, a collab character who is widely regarded as bad and forgettable.

Moreover, Dr. Ratio was…a good unit. While some people believed he would be weak because he was free, they were quickly disproven once players were able to test him out. So not only was HSR giving out a free 5* character, but that free character was actually usable and competitive in the meta.

With that information in mind, the Genshin and HSR communities devolved into open warfare. The phrases “Genshin could never” and “Genshin is the middle child” were thrown around endlessly.

Why is Genshin Less Generous, Anyways?

There are several potential answers to this question.

Firstly, characters in Honkai Star Rail are probably cheaper to make. The game has a lot less freedom of movement, so characters have fewer moves to worry about. For example, in Genshin, characters can run, jump, glide, and swim in the overworld, but in HSR, characters can only run. Overall, this leads to characters taking less time and money to make, which then corresponds to a higher output of new characters. More rewards may be compensation for t...

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