This is a repost. I am not the original author (see disclaimer at the bottom).

I am surprised there aren’t any posts about Chronicles of Elyria on HobbyDrama yet! The community was so rife with drama from start to finish that I don’t even know where to begin.

Throwaway because I will probably be doxxed if I post on my main.

What is Chronicles of Elyria?

Chronicles of Elyria was pitched as a Kickstarter in May 2016 as a dynamic MMORPG with procedurally-generated quests, a fully destructible environment, closed economy, finite resources, and survival elements. The goal was $900k, but they made about $1.3 million in the initial campaign, and through their subsequent crowdfunding efforts made close to $8 million total over the next few years.

What went wrong?

In terms of lofty ideas, Chronicles of Elyria was right up there with Star Citizen, but with a fraction of the funds. We’d be here all day if I went into detail about all of the game’s proposed features, because it’s like they were trying to be Crusader Kings meets medieval life simulator meets Harvest Moon meets survival game meets action RPG all at once. Browse through their Developer Journals; even without a background in game development, it’s clear that the scope of what they were trying to pull off would have been ambitious for a major studio, let alone a small crowdfunded team.

The game’s initial release date was a laughably unrealistic Q4 2017, so it was no surprise that this would get pushed back again and again over the course of development. However, on March 24, 2020, lead developer Caspian made an announcement that rocked the community: State of Elyria: Into the Abyss (autoplay warning). In his typical long-winded fashion, Caspian spent the bulk of the post outlining the milestones the team reached over the past year, but only in the last few paragraphs did he mention that due to financial stressors from COVID-19, they ran out of money and had to lay off the entire team, shuttering development of Chronicles of Elyria. Because of several factors I’ll cover in the next few sections, the community did not take this well. In less than two weeks, the Washington State Attorney General’s Office reported they had received over 150 official complaints against Soulbound Studios, the most they had ever received for a company in that amount of time. Community whales formed a 'CoE Lawsuit' discord and discussed plans for a class-action lawsuit, demanding accountability and refunds. Some of them even pledged over $20k on the game, and they weren’t going to let Caspian cut and run.

Amidst threats of legal action, on April 9 Caspian dropped another blog post, A Letter from Soulbound Studios to Our Community claiming that the March 24 post came from a “very emotional place.” He said that the community misinterpreted his intent, and that he was actually trying to communicate that he was still working on the game while looking for ways to secure additional funding. As you can expect, this was just as poorly-received as his last announcement.

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Wait, why did people spend so much money on this game? And how did the drama get so spicy?

By its own design the game stirred up drama even before release. With social stratification based on medieval feudalism literally built into the system, there was no way around it; the developers cheekily called it the “Dance of Dynasties.” There were multiple tiers of "pledges" and if I’m remembering correctly, the prices after the kickstarter were $500 for a Mayor title, $1000 for Count, and $3000 for Duke. The most coveted were of course the King/Queen titles, which had people shelling out a whopping $10000 for the chance to be royalty in an unreleased game. Even with the limited supply (6 kingdom slots per server iirc), these kingdom packages sold out all but one server. A few monarchs even purchased TWO kingdom slots to guarantee their supremacy on their chosen server.

It’s very difficult to overstate the cult-like mentality of the community during the “peak” years of 2016-2018. There was an official CoE discord server where the developers frequently engaged with players, but most of the drama happened in what were called the Discords of Elyria. These were community-run discords for individual kingdoms, duchies, counties, towns, and baronies. Each had their own cliques of ‘advisors’ and elite roleplaying cabals.

No, ‘elite roleplaying cabals’ is not an exaggeration; these people were spending thousands of dollars for a title to justify RPing as nobility to lord over the peasant rabble. This attracted a lot of entitled narcissists; the game’s structure practically encouraged it! I’ll give you an anecdotal example: I was really active within a kingdom discord and was eventually appointed as an advisor (the equivalent of what a guild officer would be in a normal MMO). This title was almost useless until release, so it was mainly just a glorified clique with a secret discord channel where we would theorycraft and talk shit about people we didn’t like in the kingdom. But I was the only one on the advisory council that did not possess a noble title, and a Countess kicked up a big fuss about this. Just like the real-life aristocracy, she was scandalized! Wording it in an RP-appropriate way with paragraphs of purple prose, she claimed that the $60 I pledged to the funding of the game wasn’t enough to prove I was fully committed. She and her cronies were so bothered that they tried to get me off the council. They went around DMing a bunch of people, accusing me of being a spy because I used to RP with some guy that left for a rival kingdom, and dredged up screenshots of year-old discord posts as proof my conduct was “unbecoming” of a representative of the kingdom.

There’s a saga behind that story and many others; I can absolutely go into more detail in another post if enough people are interested in the byzantine “Dance of Dynasties” and the inter- and inner-kingdom drama that went down during the development of this beautiful disaster of a game… and developer involvement in said drama. If you want to waste several hours of your life, there is plenty of RP cringe archived on the read-only forums. For now, that’s just a small slice to help illustrate how detached from reality and cult-like this community was. Going back to the downfall...

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Early Red Flags

As I alluded to, there were already red flags when the game was first pitched on Kickstarter. Despite hitting the initial $900k and going well into their stretch goals, the devs were still encouraging players to crowdfund long after the Kickstarter ended. There were several additional promotional events (somewhat outdated post that doesn't include everything) selling both cosmetic items and mechanically useful items, despite the developers going through hoops to justify over and over again why the game was not pay to win (it was). Eventually, the constant promotions and gamey tactics prompted community members to question why we were seeing more promotional events than development updates.

The devs then admitted that the original Kickstarter campaign was meant to raise enough to be able to create a demo to attract investors and secure a stream of income that didn’t rely on crowdfunding. Unfortunately, no investors took a gamble on a risky debut from an inexperienced team, and despite Caspian making a few weird statements on Discord and implying they had “other sources” of funding that they did not have to divulge to the community, he too later admitted that they were relying solely on crowdfunding to make this game work.

Well, this news was a departure from their previous claim that all they needed was 900k to develop the game for a Q4 2017 release, and that all funds would be used towards the development of Chronicles of Elyria. No one knew this was all just for a demo to attract investors, and people were justifiably upset.

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The Community Begins to Turn

There was (and still is, last I checked!) a particularly loyal and obsessive subset of the community. At the slightest hint of criticism they’d quickly jump in to defend the game and devs. The community moderators were no better, and a lot of posts were censored or deleted from the forums. The developers had built up a sort of cult of personality with their over-involvement with the community. Despite a hilarious lack of transparency about the actual development of the game, they were… uncomfortably close to the playerbase.

Caspian complained about specific players on the official discord and publicly accused two kingdoms of cheating during a cheap browser event meant to (surprise) raise more money. A player made a post on the forums saying the community outreach manager should be replaced (he was known for being snarky and condescending). Said community outreach manager actually private messaged people that upvoted the post, basically saying “if you think I should be replaced, please don’t contact me if you ever need anything in the future.”

Yes, that came from the guy handling outreach.

The "Map Selection" event was rife with its own kingdom vs kingdom drama, but the devs weren't able to redeem themselves here. After months and months of delays for a map event, Caspian failed to deliver the high-resolution maps as promised on November 5, 2018, claiming they were taking too long to render.

"Remember, remember, the 5th of NoRender" became a meme and rallying cry across the community in reference to the constant delays and deception, to the point where people were banned just for saying it in the official discord.

Then there was the issue of Prelyria. Prelyria was the low-poly pre-alpha client of the game they were developing. Meant to be like a graybox, it became a lot more involved than that and seemed to eclipse the development of the “real” game. People felt they had been bamboozled when they looked back:

Pre-alpha video May 2016

Pre-alpha video September 2019

Some players with industry experience were pointing out that the amount of time the devs were spending on building the Prelyria assets and developing the low-poly client first (it was a lot more involved than a simple graybox) was actually going to be more cumbersome and definitely not save all the time the devs hoped it would. At this point, Caspian still looked like a well-intentioned idea guy with his head in the sky, and most people didn’t think he was intentionally scamming anyone. Personally, I believe Caspian definitely started out in earnest, but he spoiled his own vision with mismanagement and obfuscation.

Funding was always a touchy subject.

Despite first claiming they only needed $900k to finish the game, then saying no wait actually we need like $3 mil, Chronicles of Elyria raised almost $8 million in total and after 4 years in development had nothing close to a minimum viable product.

We later learned that $500k of that initial $900k came from Caspian himself. This of course was not disclosed until after the Kickstarter.

On March 20, 2020 (four days before the infamous Into the Abyss announcement), the devs released an exciting update claiming that Pre-Alpha Testing Has Officially Begun! Players that had pledged (iirc) $1000 or more now had access to test Alpha I! But excitement quickly faded as players realized this wasn’t really an alpha, but a 10-15 minute demo showing off movement and parkour mechanics and ONLY that. I didn’t have alpha access so I don’t know how bad the demo really was, and those who played it are still under NDA, but I heard it was terrible, and looked like something that could be slapped together in a couple weeks using Unity store assets.

Let’s look again at the timeline Caspian pulled out at the end of 2017 when he admitted the Q4 2017 release date wasn’t going to happen:

• V3 of the Website (Q3 2017)
• ElyriaMUD (Q4 2017)
• Alpha 1 (T1 2018)
• Server Selection (T1 2018)
• Settlement / Domain Selection (T2 2018)
• KoE (T2 2018)
• Design Experiences (T3 2018)
• Alpha 2 (T3 2018)
• Beta 1 (S1 2019)
• Prologue & CoE Adventure Toolkit (S1 2019)
• Exposition (S1 2019)
• Beta 2 (S1/S2 2019)
• Stress Test (Any paid account)(S2 2019)
• Launch (S2 2019)

By March 2020, the only milestones they hit were V3 of the Website, Server Selection in November 2018, and Settlement/Domain Selection (after a series of delays that included a period of radio silence lasting over 100 days, it began somewhere around Summer 2019 and never officially concluded).

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The Downfall

Now for the big question I’m sure all of you have: why was it such a big deal when he announced they ran out of funding?

Indeed, projects are cancelled or become vaporware all of the time. While it's obvious Caspian and team were drowning in too many ideas and not enough tangible progress, why was this scummy enough to warrant hundreds of complaints to the AG and a class-action lawsuit?

About a week before the March 24 announcement, Caspian launched the “Settlers of Elyria” event. It’s hard to explain out of context, but basically all the unclaimed duchies, counties, and baronies were going on sale, and players could purchase them at reduced prices.

Yes, up to a day before he announced he laid off the entire team, he was allowing people to spend thousands of dollars on fake titles. Worse was the fact that this event was designed for new members of the community that didn’t have a chance to buy titles before or weren’t able to because of the prohibitive cost.

Illegal? Maybe not. Fucked up? Absolutely. This, combined with Caspian taking a PPP loan right afterwards painted a damning portrait of a man squeezing every last penny out of this failed endeavor before he ran.

Caspian kept the official discord open for a couple days after announcing the shuttering of the studio, but on March 29, he “fired” all of the community mods and deleted the discord, claiming that people were saying “horrible, unimaginable things” about him. There were rumors that he was cheating on his wife with a (much younger) community member. Apparently, a dev was corroborating these statements and providing receipts. Whether these awful rumors were true or not, Caspian’s reaction in the mod forum was nuclear.

The Future of CoE

After nearly six months of radio silence, a few days ago on December 17, 2020, Caspian gave interviews to MassivelyOP and MMORPG.com and released an “update” video that is a nothingburger rehash of old 'gameplay' footage and platitudes. He keeps saying that CoE is in development, but he has nothing to show. He keeps saying some of the staff have volunteered to work on it, yet based on their LinkedIn profiles it looks like most of the original team have found jobs elsewhere. He refuses to release the results of the studio’s audit. The new FAQ on the website is an obvious attempt to avoid lawsuits and in the two interviews he hilariously continues to extol his own transparency while being as transparent as a brick wall.

People are still able to find justifications for Caspian's actions and to this day are in the community-run discords and subreddit trying to keep the hype train going. Maybe it's a combination of Stockholm Syndrome and Sunk Cost fallacy, but a lot of people still maintain absolute trust in his vision. I personally did not invest a significant amount of money (but I did waste my time, RIP), but it's still as saddening as it is maddening. Yes, those "Dance of Dynasty" posts on the forum might be cringey now, but people put SO MUCH creative energy and passion into coming up with lore for their kingdoms and duchies and towns and such, and despite being a skeptic for most of my time with the community, it was an incredibly unique experience to be part of this group. I just wish they would move on; put that energy into something productive and not waste it on a failed game. Caspian used them and he will continue to use them if people keep giving him a platform.

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EDIT: added more links

EDIT2: Obligatory "wow I didn't expect this to blow up!" but I really didn't! Thanks for the gold x2!

Disclaimer

This is a repost from reddit. I really missed this sub so I decided to post some top articles from time to time until hopefully one day this community will be large enough to produce its own content.

Read the original here

This is a repost. I am not the original author (see disclaimer at the bottom).

G'day Curd Nerds! I'd like to tell you about a bit of hobby drama that is not so much a tempest in a teapot as it is a bit of a ripple in a teacup. It's drama that's so small, in such a peaceful little corner of the internet that I almost hesitate to bring it here- except, the resolution has such a unique blend of petty and wholesome that I thought perhaps others might find the story diverting.

The ingredients:

First, the Cheeseman: On youtube, there is a man whose entire channel revolves around cheese. His name is Gavin, and telling you this is not doxxing because that is literally his channel name. You can find his channel here: https://www.youtube.com/c/GavinWebber/featured However, in the spirit of not using real names (even ones so thoroughly public), I will be referring to him here as The Cheeseman.

I came across his channel in March and got hooked on his videos because literally all he uploads (aside from Q&A livestreams) is videos where he walks through cheesemaking recipes, explaining the process the whole time in a very mellow, soothing voice, and tasting videos for the cheeses he's made. His videos are very calming, and exactly what I needed because, y'know, pandemic. His channel has 251K subscribers, which is nothing to sneeze at, but also not enormous. It's also home to one of the most generally positive comments sections of any I've seen; I don't often read comments sections so it's very possible I've missed things, but generally all I see is positive comments and conversations among folks who have attempted to make the cheeses in the videos.

Next, the cheese: Grana Padano

Grana Padano is a type of Italian cheese similar to Parmigiano-Reggiano. It's a hard cow's milk cheese with a grainy, crumbly texture. It's also PDO, that is "Protected Designation of Origin", and has been since 1996. Essentially, just like champagne is only champagne if it comes from the Champagne wine region of France, otherwise it's just sparkling wine (and Destiel is only Destiel if it comes from Supernatural, otherwise it's just sparkling bury your gays), Grana Padano is only Grana Padano if it comes from the Po river valley in northern Italy, otherwise you cannot use that name to describe a cheese.

Which brings us to: The Consortium for the Protection of Grana Padano Cheese

This is a legally-recognized group whose purpose is "preserving Grana Padano and its Protected Designation of Origin (in Italian, Denominazione di Origine Protetta or DOP) status; in promoting it, supporting its development and taking care of its interests and in providing correct information to the public." You can view their website here:

https://www.granapadano.it/en-ww/the-consortium.aspx

They have all kinds of detailed explanations of exactly who they are and so forth, but the salient details for the purposes of this drama are that 1) these are the people who make the cheese, and have a vested interest in keeping tight control over the name, and 2) they do have the legal authority to do so. For the purposes of this writeup, I will be referring to them as The Consortium.

Step 1: Warming The Milk

So a while back, the Cheeseman had uploaded a video entitled "How to make Grana Padano Style Cheese". I don't have the exact date the original video was uploaded, nor can I link to it, because it has now been taken down, however I can deduce that it must have been uploaded about 15 moths ago, which would have been sometime in August 2019. Because most cheeses take time to age, the Cheeseman generally uploads an initial preparation method where he makes the cheese, and then after aging for the prescribed length of time, he uploads a second tasting video where he shares the results of aging the cheese. The tasting video for the Grana Padano Style cheese went up October 17, 2020, and is viewable here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1Qj2i3PMy4 The video description indicates a 14-month aging period.

In the original video, the Cheeseman makes it very clear multiple times that the cheese he is making is inspired by Grana Padano, and is intended to be as close as he can get to the style of this cheese, but no matter how close he gets, it can never be called Grana Padano because of the PDO status. However, that wasn't good enough for the Consortium.

Step 2: Curdling

Three days ago on November 26, the Cheeseman uploaded a video, viewable here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_AzMLhPF1Q&t=2s

In it, he shares that he was sent a cease and desist letter from "an intellectual property company" on behalf of the Consortium, wherein they declare that the Cheeseman's video "is a clear infringement of the Consorzio’s intellectual property rights." They go on to say that "Indeed, your video seems to describe how to create counterfeited replicas of Grana Padano."

​

Let us all take a moment to contemplate the implications of counterfeit cheese.

​

Ok moment over.

​

They conclude by "kindly asking" for the removal of the video within 5 days of the receipt of the letter, and caution that if he fails to comply, they "will not hesitate to take the necessary steps to ensure the protection of its trademark rights."

The Cheeseman included in the description of the video a link to the PDF of the letter, which you can view there, if you're so inclined (there's not much more there than what I've included, though). I've chosen not to include it here directly because even though he posted it himself, it still includes some personal information and I'd prefer not to link to it directly.

After reading the letter out, he talks a bit about the letter and the original video, playing the snippets where he specifies that he is not and cannot make true Grana Padano cheese due to the PDO nature of the cheese; however he theorizes that he must have gotten pretty close with his recipe based on their concern over "counterfeit replica cheese". He concludes by encouraging his audience to go check out his original Grana Padano video soon if they're interested, because he does intend to comply with the takedown request and remove the original video exactly within the timeframe requested (and no sooner).

Step 3: Pressing and Draining

This is where things get interesting, because at this point, the Cheeseman shares that the Consortium has actually apologized to him.

The very next day on November 27, 2020, the Cheeseman uploaded a video (viewable here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Xy_KkZDiTE ) updating his audience on the Grana Padano situation. You see, he received a letter from the Director General of the Consortium in reference to the cease and desist letter, and the Cheeseman's video on the subject. As with the previous video, the Cheeseman linked to a PDF of the letter right in the video description, and although I will pull some quotes from it, I will refrain from linking it directly here. Basically the gist of it is that they were aware of his video and were going to let it slide (and indeed, it had been up for over a year unchallenged), however the video had been "reported to us [...] by our direct superiors at the Ministry and the EU Committee."

The Director General went on to say "We had not intervened before because your good faith is clear from your video and we are very sorry to see you and your community so angry towards us."

The Cheeseman responds: "Well personally I'm not angry, but the community has spoken I suppose, [Director General], that's just what they do on the internet" (This is, quite possibly, the most understated and true description of the internet that I have ever heard.)

The Director General adds a postscript:

"Ps. On a further note, you didn’t quite get the “real recipe” of Grana Padano...it is “slightly” different [smile emoji] So if ever you come to Italy, once this awful pandemic is over, we would like you to be our guest and we will take you to one of our dairies, where one of our master cheesemakers can teach you all the tricks of the trade."

The Cheeseman's response to this is gracious, but reaffirms that he doesn't believe he's in the wrong, and shares his intension to re-upload a "grainy Italian hard cheese" video.

Step 4: Aging the Cheese

As promised, yesterday (November 28, 2020), the Cheeseman reuploaded his Grana Padano cheesemaking video under the name "Chease & Desist Style Cheese with Taste Test. To Italy with Love 💛" viewable here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqPP24IU1to

It is, as promised, exactly the same as the original video, except he's dubbed over every instance of "Grana Padano" within the video with "Chease and Desist". He's also combined the making video with the later tasting video, although the original taste test video was not specifically mentioned in the original cease and desist letter, nor was it ever requested to come down. Indeed, as I mentioned earlier, that original tasting video (with the name of the cheese unaltered) is still up, and as a matter of fact, it shows up in the first page of google results for Grana Padano!

Tasting Notes:

If you've read all this, I hope it's brought some amusement. I know it's not as dramatic as most stuff in this sub, but a small-time home cheesemaker getting communication directly from an international cheese consortium was a level of absurd that I had to share. If there are any further developments and if people are interested, I will be happy to provide updates.

[edited to add the link to the apology video]

[edited again because I messed up numbering my steps and it was driving me nuts]

Disclaimer

This is a repost from reddit. I really missed this sub so I decided to post some top articles from time to time until hopefully one day this community will be large enough to produce its own content.

Read the original here

This is a repost. I am not the original author (see disclaimer at the bottom).

Supernatural just ended its 15 year run. To catch up, you can read about the recent Destiel love confession; an actor who appeared in 4 episodes and harassed fans; a comprehensive writeup of the fandom in general, especially "tinhatting"; more general fandom drama; or a racist Haiti AU fic. Supernatural provided no shortage of drama.

But if you don't want to read all those previous writeups, the summary for this one is:

Over the course of the show's run, the fans were divided in to two groups. Group One were people who thought the show should be focused on the brothers, Dean and Sam (played by Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki, respectively. Some shipped the brothers together. Group Two were people who thought Castiel (played by Misha Collins) should have a more prominent role and fuck Dean (ship name "Destiel"--you've heard of it). (Edit: There is, arguably, a third group of people who watched the show as a show, but I haven't actually met anyone who has).

It became abundantly clear that The Powers That Be (writers, producers, Jensen and Jared) were in the former group (minus the "Wincest" shipping). They shunted Misha/Cas off for episodes at a time with flimsy excuses, tried to write him completely off in one season and then haphazardly brought him back after fan uproar, and hazed/bullied Misha on set (ex: Misha talked about how Jared would tickle his balls out of the cameraman's view so that it looked like Misha was messing up his lines, among other things).

Misha said his final scene was his now-infamous love confession, which many fans lovingly described as "embarrassing." After fifteen years of pent-up tension, Castiel finally gets the courage to confess his love to Dean--and Dean responds with facial expressions that were memeified as "trying not to say a slur" to "trying not to commit a hate crime." Then, after confessing his love, Castiel gets sucked away to supermegahell, never to be seen again!

But fans knew that couldn't be his last scene...As one tumblr post said, "honestly it's quite impressive how supernatural, a show in which everybody dies & no one stays dead, has managed to convince a huge chunk of people that one of its leads is not coming back for the finale"

And it's true. Pretty much every character, major or minor, on SPN has died at least six times. Fans pulled out release photos, social media pics, and lines from interviews to prove without a shadow of a doubt that Castiel would be in the last episode--whether Destiel was made official or not.

What really gave fans hope, though, is that actor Jensen Ackles said he felt "uneasy" about the ending:

"And I just walked out of there kind of uneasy. I don’t know if it was just the fact that I just heard the ending of a show that had been going for 15 years and I’m just too close to it to really accept a finality to it."

And since he's historically uneasy about Destiel, fans connected the dots: Destiel would be canon in the finale!

So did we see Cas again? SPOILERS, obvs.

Here's what happened in the finale: Sam and Dean are bored. After everything was literally resolved in the penultimate episode, the world is pretty peaceful. Cut to commercial. Finally, they find a hunt. Cut to commercial. They follow some leads. Cut to commercial. They fight the monsters. Dean gets impaled on, like, a nail on a barn column or something and with his dying breath he tells Sam he's proud of him and asks for permission to die. This takes, like, a full 15 minutes. Cut to commercial. There's a montage of Sam being sad and petting a dog. Cut to commercial. Dean goes to heaven, reunites with a loved one (not Cas) and drives around. Cut to commercial. Montage of Sam raising a kid and Dean driving around. Cut to commercial. Sam dies a natural death of old age. Cut to commercial. The brothers reunite in Heaven.

Oh, and there was an emo version of Carry On, Wayward Son.

Basically the episode was three montages in a trenchcoat, with the lead characters meeting anticlimactic ends. Dean Winchester dies of tetanus. Sam wears a powdered wig from a Halloween discount store to show the passage of time.

Cas is mentioned twice throughout the episode, one line where Dean or Sam is like "I'm sad Cas is gone" and Sam or Dean is like "We have to move on and keep fighting" and one line that implies Cas escaped from supermegahell, somehow, but no more on that.

The response:

" Wow y’all got hate crimed harder than Sherlock fans did. I am very very sorry"

"GAY RIGHTS TOOK A STEP BACK THIS FINALE SINGLEHANDEDLY REPEALED SAME SEX MARRIAGE"

" that episode seemed like a love letter to Wincest shippers and a HUGE fuck you to destiel shippers ngl"

" they really hated cas and misha so much that they spent the finale pandering to the fans who wanted the brothers to fuck"

But even the Wincest shippers weren't happy, because the ending was boring and Dean's death was lame. But no one was more upset than Destiel shippers, who held out hope that Cas would return. So of course there's the angry hashtag:

" you're right dabb, it WAS bold to end 12 years of queerbaiting with a bury your gays and then never mention your queer lead again, very bold !! #cwspnisoverparty"

" The fact that Cas is trending because the whole fking world is raging about his pathetic excuse for an ending. He deserved so much better. #cwspnisoverparty"

" SPAM REPORT CW_SPN AND GET THAT SHIT SUSPENDED PLEASE THAT'S ALL I WANT and trend #cwspnisoverparty BUT MOSTLY REPORT THAT ACCOUNT THERE'S NO BIGGER FUCK YOU THAN THAT PLS"

And the angry tweets to the writer of the finale ep:

" ANDREW DABB IS THE WORST FCKING THING THAT EVER HAPPENED TO THIS SHOW AND DEAN WINCHESTER"

" sweet boy..... god i am so sorry i will miss him so much i'm plotting my revenge on @andrewdabb right fucking now. cas deserved better. cas deserved BETTER. #Supernatural"

" The #Supernaturalfinale feels like an insult. Like @cw_spn and @andrewdabb actually just kicked me in the chest and walked away laughing. What the HELL was that? "

And of course it wouldn't be a disappointing queerbait finale if there weren't a Fake Episode conspiracy:

" All I want to say is that I hope @andrewdabb releases the original script, which I very much feel was more found family friendly, but that they couldn’t execute any longer due to COVID. The fandom deserves to see it. #Supernatural"

And it turns out the most likely reason Jensen struggled with the ending is because Dean dies like a punk.

---

EDIT:

OK, let me clarify a few things:

• "Homophobically gay" and "Jensen/Dean is about to commit a hate crime/say a slur" are popular memes describing the 15x18 confession and Destiel in general. Ill-phrased and insensitive phrasing perhaps, but pretty popular (and also accurate).
• The remark about hazing/bullying: Misha has said that the pranking has crossed a line a few times, but the cast seems mostly friendly regardless. On the writing/producing side, his treatment seems unpleasant compared to Jared and Jensen's, but he seems fine with it and gets paid nicely. I don't want to fall down a rabbit hole of conjecture and conspiracy theorizing. If I find the specific interviews, I will provide them, but they are from a long, long time ago and there is a lot of SPN content. Like, a lot. The show's been on for 15 years.
• A lot of people think the show is bad because it is bad, not just because Destiel didn't become canon. The plot, characters, and writing in general were messy as fuck from an objective standpoint, regardless of any personal stakes.
• I forgot to mention that the finale monster of the week were vampire clowns or as the fandom calls them vampire Juggalos.
• Link to one of the interviews where Misha talks about ball fondling: https://youtu.be/8bwzaP3l_28
• In my rush to post the writeup out I glossed over the non-shippy reasons why the episode was terrible and the fandom reactions, so here is an update: UPDATE It hasn’t even been 24 hours and Jim Beaver deactivated his tweet because of fans’ rage tweeting.

Jim Beaver played Bobby, the boys’ surrogate father. He’s generally a fan favorite, but some fans flipped out because he returned for the finale but Cas didn’t:

“y'all somehow managed to bring back jim beaver and mark pelegrino but misha was the one that couldn't make it bc of covid... the third fucking person on the call sheet. ofc he was the one y'all found to be expendable.”

“You literally brought Jim Beaver who’s a person of RISK be there amongst other 80 people on a bridge NONE OF THEM WEARING MASKS and you’re telling me that you couldn’t bring Misha Collins???? naa im calling this homophobia…”

“Like let’s not act as if Jim isn’t 70 years old that you placed there among the crew with no care and also the vamp chick from season 1 that NOBODY remembers... y’all just don’t like Misha Collins there, just say it”

“the show brought back mark pellegrino, jake able, jim beaver, vampire #207 and etc but misha and shoshannah two pivotal and essential characters to sam and deans story and the show were just too much”

He posted, “Thanks to all the kind people and thanks to all the unkind people. I’m deactivating my account. So long.”

Steering away from the Destiel drama, tetanus, juggalo vampires, and wigs were also big stars of the night:

“saw six people go "TETANUS?!" on the timeline and assumed bid*n caught it but its DEAN WINCHESTER????”

“I’ve never seen supernatural but the person who said that dean never got his tetanus shot because he thinks vaccines turn you gay is the funniest person alive”

“things Old Man Sam looks like: https://couldnt-think-of-a-funny-name.tumblr.com/post/635275319674372096/things-old-man-sam-looks-like-an-english

Disclaimer

This is a repost from reddit. I really missed this sub so I decided to post some top articles from time to time until hopefully one day this community will be large enough to produce its own content.

Read the original here

This is a repost. I am not the original author (see disclaimer at the bottom).

Background

Supernatural is a CW show about two brothers, Dean and Sam, running around fighting monsters and having a lot of angst and drama with each other. It was goofy some episodes, serious in others, and tried to tackle complicated issues within the episodes. It also featured two conventionally attractive white guys. So you can see why it got popular pretty fast.

It got especially popular on Tumblr, which was the hotbed of all fandom discourse for the longest time on the internet. It was so popular on there, that it became one of the Big Three: Supernatural, Dr. Who, and Sherlock. It was one of the biggest shows on the entire internet, and it was very popular with teenage girls.

The Rise of Destiel

When it first came out, the shipping community of tumblr, a.k.a all of Tumblr, was kind of a mess, because there weren't many non-heterosexual ship options for them, as that's what Tumblr prefers over anything else. So the shippers made one of the first popular incest ships on the internet, Wincest, out of pure desperation. And if you weren't into Wincest, then you just didn't get a lot of room in that part of the fandom.

See Wincest in it's earliest forms on Fanfiction.net Wincest was in the many of the first fics in the Supernatural tag on Ao3

Wincest was so big it was even referenced in the show, when Dean and Sam visit a Supernatural(the in-universe book series about their lives written by a man with prophetic visions) Convention and meet two gay lovers who cosplayed as them.

Wincest was undethronable, until it was dethroned. When Season 4 premiered we were introduced to a new conventionally attractive white boy, Castiel. You see, Castiel was an angel who raised Dean from hell, making them basically soul-bonded forever. Even from the very beginning, he went on about how he and Dean has a special connection, and it really helped that Dean was way more popular than Sam on the show, despite Sam starting out as the main character.

You can see the progression, Wincest was dead, long live Destiel. The fics flooded Ao3, which was now the dominant fanfic site, and each new one spawned ten more based on it. The fandom blazed past everything else, with the most popular fic Twist and Shout reaching over 34,000 total kudos and 1,187,975 hits.

The popularity of the Ship boosted the show into the stratosphere on Tumblr, who finally had their gay ship to drool over. Destiel became fandom canon. One example of the many multi-gif posts made to glorify it

The show was peaking. Many girls I knew in middle school were obsessed, with the show and the pairing. Also me, I was also completely obsessed. I was very much in love.

The GayBaiting and The Fall

A lot of this section is directly ripped from this 2014 article, so please give it a read for more context.

The showrunners noticed, how could they not? They also noticed if they played upon the idea that Dean could be a lil' gay, let the show reference Castiel being so in love with him, and use a lot of romcom tropes, and maybe TELL THE ACTOR FOR CASTIEL (MISHA COLLINS) TO PLAY CAS LIKE A "JILTED LOVER" WITH DEAN, then they could drive the fandom into a frothing mess.

Queerbaiting was born on the back of this show. Queerbaiting refers to when a show teases a gay relationship for clout but never confirms it so they can have deniability. Supernatural proves that if you want a show to be popular, going to the gays never fails. Again, and Again, and AGAIN, the show teased the atmosphere between them. Just go back to the manips post and feel it.

But as time went on, and the show continued, and nothing changed or got confirmed, people on tumblr started losing interest. Newer shows to queerbait with came out, real homosexual relationships started to happen. Voltron. The shows fandom started to repress their Supernatural days and move on, especially as supernatural started entering it's 12th season. A new era had begun...

... .......

Season 15, episode 18

Season 15 was the last season of Supernatural ever, everyone looked upon this with relief, glad it was finally ending and the cast could move on. I actually started to pay attention to Supernatural in this season, out of pure interest for where it would go. The fandom made jokes about how funny it would be if they actually confirmed Destiel this season. Believe it or not, I actually thought it would happen because of Supernatural reaching the era of the Gays, 2020.

And then, episode 18 aired on the 5th of November. And then, Castiel started giving a speech about Dean, while looking directly into his eyes, and then he says, I Love You.

And then he gets dragged down to super mega ultra hell for experiencing a moment of true happiness.

What I want you to do is visit this link, https://www.tumblr.com/search/supernatural, or this one, https://www.tumblr.com/search/destiel, and scroll for a bit.

Because there's no way I can possibly condense for you the pure mixture of hilarity and fucking insanity the entire website devolved into. I'll try but I seriously don't think a single writer could capture the wild west of Tumblr at this point.

It started small, the Destiel tag was #9 on trending, every Supernatural blog in existence was reblogging and going crazy. And then people who had repressed their Supernatural memories noticed something was going on. And then popular blogs noticed what was going on. And then everyone on the entire website noticed something was going on. Tumblr refugees on Twitter noticed.

Tumblr became a supernova.

The Fallout

People were crying because it finally happened

People were making fun of them for immediately killing their gay character

A lot

People made fun of Jensen Ackles for looking extremely constipated during the confession

A lot

A lot

[A Lot](https://eyesandangels.tumblr.com/post/634075957607694336/deans-not-homophobic-hes-just-nevada-speed-at

LMAO

They make fun of the confession scene a lot

I mean come on it was pretty homophobic to kill off your fandom's beloved just after he confesses his love so that you don't have to explore a relationship

Yeah...

Blogs that hadn't posted in years reanimated.

And on top of all of this, other shit was completely going down. Georgia and Pennsylvania flipped colors. A fake Putin rumor spread. Hetalia was coming back. Season 5 of Sherlock was coming back(another queerbaiting show). MHA Spoilers

show spoiler

Dabi was confirmed to be Touya todoroki

Here's a really funny video recapping some of the insanity

Tumblr rose from the dead to and everyone is still going stir-fucking crazy. This is 2014 tumblr recaptured in it's purest essence so please enjoy the shitshow while you can.

Thanks Everyone

Disclaimer

This is a repost from reddit. I really missed this sub so I decided to post some top articles from time to time until hopefully one day this community will be large enough to produce its own content.

Read the original here

This is a repost. I am not the original author (see disclaimer at the bottom).

I quite enjoyed writing and receiving feedback on my Halsey post, so I thought I'd do another post about a different fandom. This time, we're delving into the extremely chaotic Adam Driver standom.

PLEASE NOTE: SEVERAL COMMENTS, USERNAMES, ETC. ARE LINKED AND SCREENSHOTTED HERE FOR EVIDENCE'S SAKE. DO NOT HARASS ANYONE INVOLVED. DO NOT DOXX ANYONE OR ATTEMPT TO CHASE THEM DOWN.

TL;DR: The Adam Driver fandom is split down the middle. Things came to a head when a fan from one side of the fandom gave Adam a wooden carving of his dog and he called them out in a New Yorker article months later. It turned out the person who made the wood carving is associated with fans who are convinced he is divorced from (or in the process of divorcing) his wife after Adam had an affair with Daisy Ridley. Wank ensued.

I'm going to start with the event and work backwards to the context. Let's start with the basics.

Basic Terminology: What is a Stan?

Eminem's song "Stan" describes a so-called "stalker fan," someone who is obsessed with an artist to the point of shaping their entire life around them. The term gained some prominence on Livejournal gossip blog "Oh No They Didn't" to describe superfans of artists, actors, and celebrities. Currently, a "stan" is anyone who posts exclusively or semi-exclusively about a famous person, group, or band, and a "standom" is a fandom made up of stans.

I've previously posted about Halsey stans; this post, however, is about Adam Driver stans.

Who is Adam Driver?

You most likely know 36-year-old Adam Driver from his work in the Star Wars franchise as the fearsome Kylo Ren, son of Han Solo and Princess Leia Organa. (WARNING: Article may contain spoilers.) What you may not know about Adam is his strange backstory, his marriage to his wife Joanne Tucker, and his rich filmography outside of Star Wars.

Born in California and raised in Indiana in a conservative family, Adam had dreams of leaving his small town of Mishawaka to become an actor. However, after 9/11, Adam, like many Americans, found himself swept up in the wave of patriotism that seized the USA, and he applied to become a Marine. He served for three years at Camp Pendelton, California as a mortarman and speaks fondly about his time in the Corps, as well as the friends he made. He was later honorably discharged for breaking his collarbone in a mountain biking accident and watched with guilt as his friends went on to fight in the ongoing War on Terror in the Middle East.

However, Adam was already reconsidering his career path during his service. A training exercise involving white phosphorous took a turn for the deadly, and he recalls:

I was like, ‘I’m going to smoke cigarettes and be an actor when I get out.’ Those were my two thoughts. I wanted to smoke cigarettes and be an actor.

After leaving the military, Adam, like many marines, had trouble adjusting to civilian life and puttered around the Midwest doing odd jobs. His second application to the acting school, Julliard, was accepted, and Adam dropped everything to move to New York City. During his education, he fell in love with acting and found its controlled release of emotions therapeutic. You can hear his TED talk about how acting helped him express himself and adjust to civilian life here.

He met his wife, Joanne, in his cohort. The two married in 2013 and went on to found Arts in the Armed Forces, or AITAF: a charity dedicated to bringing free, high-quality theater to military bases and to veterans's families.

Adam is famously shy and reclusive. He and his wife successfully hid the fact that they had a son for two years. While he isn't rude to fans, coworkers, or industry professionals, Adam is defensive of his personal space and reacts poorly to being candidly photographed in public.

He does not have social media, giving fans very little opportunity to speak or interact with him. If you want to say hi to him at all, you either have to wait for a charity auction, camp out for a red carpet, or attend an AITAF event and hope that he's there in-person. So when Adam announced a Broadway run in 2019, fans were thrilled at the opportunity to finally meet their idol.

March-July 2019: "Burn This"

Burn This is a somewhat obscure play by playwright Lanford Wilson. A Broadway revival was performed in 2019 with Keri Russel as the main character, Anna, and Adam as her love interest, Pale. The two begin a hasty love affair when Robbie, Pale's brother and Anna's roommate, dies suddenly in a boating accident and Pale comes by to collect Robbie's belongings. Robbie was gay, and the play takes place during the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s.

The play isn't done often, partially because Pale is a challenging role: a fast-talking cokehead from New Jersey with violent mood swings. Pale is openly homophobic, yet spends the play trying to figure out how to mourn his brother. It takes skill to capture the subtlety in Wilson's writing and not downgrade Pale to a violent brute with no emotion. Adam originally played Pale during his tenure at Julliard and took on the role again for the Broadway revival. The play did so well that it was nominated for a Tony for Best Revival, and Adam was nominated for Best Actor in a Stage Play.

The "Burn This" Stage Door

It's common among theater fans to wait at the stage door to greet the actors, get their programs signed, and even (if they're lucky) chat with their idols for a bit. Occasionally, the crowd is sparse, but stage doors for famous actors are usually heavily crowded, even mobbed. Security is often needed for the safety of the crowd and the performers. Tom Hiddleston, for example, had a huge crowd 5-6 people deep at its thinnest when I met him after Betrayal in 2019.

Adam was no exception: the Burn This stage door usually had a moderate crowd after every show, and so the Hudson Theater was outfitted with several security guards and barricades, including a personal bodyguard for Adam himself. Early videos of the stage door show a small crowd, but as the play wore on, security measures became more intense.

In spite of the crowd, the Burn This stage door was usually pleasant and calm. Adam exited the theater promptly after the show ended each night, and he was incredibly sweet and patient with fans outside of the stage door. Throughout almost all of spring, Adam patiently stopped to sign every single person's Playbill, shake hands, and say hi. On one memorable occasion, he carried his dog, Moose, from the stage door to his car before coming back to sign programs. Plenty of videos exist on Twitter, Tumblr, Youtube, and Reddit of peaceful interactions.

From my own experience at the door, I can personally say he will slow down for fans and happily greet them if they are calm and polite.

If.

June 2019: Someone Jumps The Stage

Stage door interactions slowed down around May. I was fortunate enough to meet Adam at the stage door, as were many friends who went around May 4th; others, however, waited for Adam, only to be told he was not coming. This sort of lag is normal, especially in the middle of a play run that's showing 8 performances a week: the actors are usually tired and want nothing more than to go home and get some sleep.

However, some fans were not satisfied. Some especially dedicated playgoers began staking out all entrance/exit points of the Hudson Theater. Sure enough, on days he didn't sign, Adam was leaving through the main entrance of the theater, accompanied by a small security detail. (Bear in mind that the main entrance =/= the stage door: the stage door was behind the theater and on an entirely separate street.)

A video was posted on Twitter in June 2019 of Adam leaving the main entrance of the Hudson Theater with his head down; in the background, you can hear a small crowd of people shouting after him. One woman gets right to the door of his car, but she is otherwise non-aggressive, and Adam gently turns her down before getting into the vehicle.

Reactions to this post were brief and basically amounted to, "Hey what the fuck OP," but this was only the tip of the iceberg when it came to weird, out-of-touch fan behavior.

Days later, a strange Twitter thread emerged, detailing a drunk woman who had to be kicked out of the Hudson and blocked from going near Adam at the stage door. Details of the thread were corroborated by others who were either at the same show or friends with OP. The story goes like this:

A woman got a little too tipsy on 17 dollar beers at the Hudson and sat through the entire show without incident. However, just after bows had ended and the actors had left, the woman stood up, made her way to the front of the stage, and climbed up. She then promptly made her way backstage, where she reportedly gave Keri Russel a huge fright before being escorted out by security. Once she was outside of the backstage area, the stage jumper persisted in trying to dodge security and get in front of Adam, insisting she was a "friend." Adam came out and signed as normal, not once paying attention to the screaming woman trying to dodge several security guards. Adam made his way home unscathed, and the stage jumper was never seen again.

But somehow, this was not the incident that made the news. At this point, you may be wondering why this was not the most memorable incident of the Burn This stage door. How could Adam or Keri not talk about the drunk woman who suddenly appeared backstage?

That's because the incident that did make the news has its roots deep in Adam Driver standom. Those roots dig into some very dark places.

We have arrived at the most famous incident at the Burn This stage door: the dog carving.

Summer 2019: The Dog Carving

In the summer, an Adam Driver stan by the username Missus-Misanthrope waited at the stage door with a special gift for Adam Driver: a wood carving of his beloved dog, Moose.

I have seen a picture of the (supposed) carving, but to maintain Missus-Misanthrope's privacy, I will not be posting a screenshot here. Essentially, it's a small, flat block of wood with Moose's smiling face woodburned into it. I am not a fan of Missus-Misanthrope (or her kin in our fandom) by any means, but it is extremely well-done.

When Adam made his way to her at the stage door, Missus-Misanthrope greeted him and handed him the carving. A GIF of this interaction is here.

At the beginning of the GIF, Adam is looking down, presumably at the wood carving. He nods at it and thanks Missus-Misanthrope with a smile. He turns hands it off to his security team. There is a long pause where he appears to be either waiting for his security team or examining the carving. Finally, he turns back to Missus-Misanthrope without making eye contact and continues signing Playbills. His expression is neutral.

Let me be abundantly clear: this exact GIF is impossible to find. This write-up took a while, partially because I was looking all over for the damn thing. It has been scrubbed from the Internet. The original Imgur post is set to "private." Accounts have been erased, posts have been either deleted or archived, and Twitters have been suspended, deactivated, or moved. It took over a week of me asking everyone I knew, combing individual Twitters by date, and abusing the Wayback Machine before someone eventually found it and sent it to me.

Missus-Misanthrope wanted this GIF gone from the Internet. This was the interaction Adam Driver remembered from his stage door. This interaction would become infamous months later, in October, when it came up during an interview.

October 2019: The New Yorker Article

During the Burn This run, author Michael Schumer interviewed Adam Driver for the New Yorker. The article was released in October 2019 and can be found here. I highly recommend it: it's a stunning interview, capturing a lot of the nuances of Adam's personality as he goes about his pre-show ritual.

However, this interview made waves because of Adam's off-hand comment about fan interactions at the stage door (emphasis mine):

On the couch was a piece of fan art he had received at the stage door. During “Girls,” strangers would often share details about their sex lives with him. (One guy stopped him in the subway and said, “I love that scene where you pee on her in the shower,” then turned to his girlfriend and said, fondly, “I pee on her all the time.”) But “Star Wars” has made him uncomfortably famous. “This one woman who has been harassing my wife came to the show and gave me a creepy wood carving that she made of my dog,” he said.

The stage jumper, the fans pursuing him at all doors into and out of the Hudson, seemed to fade away in comparison to this ten seconds of stage door history. Adam mentions the "creepy wood carving," and it is never touched upon again. But that one sentence sent stans into fits.

Some began gleefully sharing the original GIF of the interaction; others laughed at Missus-Misanthrope or showed her pity. Still more questioned whether or not it was appropriate to give Adam a portrait of his dog at all: even though Adam has featured Moose in photoshoots, stage door interactions, and even a news interview, opinions are mixed about how much fans are allowed to comment on his personal life. The wood carving of Moose seemed to toe that line in an uncomfortable way and ignited heated discussion on what behavior was "allowed" and "not allowed."

But there is a short passage just after Adam's comment about the wood carving that hints at the dark heart of this scandal:

He and Tucker have a young son, whose birth they kept hidden from the press for two years, in what Driver called “a military operation.” Last fall, after Tucker’s sister, who was launching a peacoat business, accidentally made her Instagram account public and someone noticed the back of his son’s head in one picture, the news wound up on Page Six.

Under what circumstances would Adam and Joanne have to hide a child for two years? Recall that Adam was not just scandalized by the wood carving (emphasis mine):

“This one woman who has been harassing my wife came to the show and gave me a creepy wood carving that she made of my dog."

No, something about Missus-Misanthrope herself had made him deeply uncomfortable. The wood carving wasn't the whole of the issue: it was something about how the fandom had treated his wife and the news of their child.

Here was where the real drama about this tiny wood carving lied.

Daiver Fandom and adamdriverfans

Missus-Misanthrope was part of a subreddit called "adamdriverfans." Not to be confused with the main Adam Driver subreddit, "adamdriver," adamdriverfans is incredibly small (only about 3000 subscribers) and, on the surface, appears to be a normal subreddit about Adam and his work. EDIT: It's 3,000 subcribers, not 300. Missed a zero!

However, probe deeper, and adamdriverfans reveals its true nature. The subreddit is, in part, a haven for discussion between Daivers, or people that "ship" Adam Driver and Daisy Ridley and want them to be in a relationship. ("Ship" is short for "relationship.")

Daivers are not to be confused with "Reylos," Star Wars fans who want Adam and Daisy's respective characters, Kylo Ren and Rey, to date. Daivers go one step further and want the actors to be together. Any Daivers found on adamdriverfans are the most extreme iteration of this kind of 'shipper: they believe that Adam and Daisy had an affair, followed by a falling-out somewhere around The Force Awakens, and that Lucasfilm (and their respective publicists) have been keeping them separate. This line of thinking also posits that Joanne is an ice queen keeping Adam on a short leash.

This is not to say that all posters on adamdriverfans are Daivers; many want what's best for Adam and see it as their right to comment on Adam's personal life. But it's challenging to separate posts from true-blue Daivers, posts from those who think Adam and Daisy had an affair, and posts from users who simply hate Joanne Tucker. In my opinion, it's impossible to go near the subreddit unless you believe, on some level, that Joanne and Adam should separate, and that Daisy is a factor in that separation.

Multiple posts exist trashing Joanne Tucker and questioning whether or not the baby is Adam's. Someone doxxed Adam and Joanne and discovered multiple residences, fueling speculation on whether or not they were "secretly" divorced or otherwise separated. There is "evidence" that their marriage is a sham or otherwise a marriage of convenience.

Supporters of Joanne and Adam's marriage and critiques of the subreddit are considered "blind" mean girls ignoring the truth and looking for someone to bully. In reality, the fans on adamdriverfans are hostile towards non-members: One poster even called other women "creepy" for asking to shake Adam's hand at the stage door. Still another post implies that fans who don't believe the rumors are waiting for their chance to sleep with Adam.

For its part, the mods of adamdriverfans posit the subreddit as a place for healthy discussion. Other stans treat adamdriverfans as a joke, leading the mods to be mostly hostile to those questioning the constant dunking on Adam and his wife. Dissenters have even been speculated to be PR people deflecting any discussion of Joanne and Adam's relationship in the hopes of saving *Burn This'*s ticket sales:

4Chan is full of PR people trying to shut down discussion by posting outrageous, disprovable claims in an effort to discredit all info about Joanne. You are a threat because you have a credible story.

This is why Burn This is selling slowly. There are tickets available for every single night and whole parts of the theatre are empty on some nights. Joanne is a PR disaster. They can’t even call on their friends and connections to help fill the seats

It's worthy of note that the Daiver and anti-Joanne communities extends into TikTok and other social media: for example, there is an entire Instagram account called "ihatejoannetucker" dedicated to posting personal photos and making fun of Joanne. Here, I focus on adamdriverfans because it was the main vehicle for Missus-Misanthrope to post her thoughts and feelings.

MissusMisanthrope's Backstory

Missus-Misanthrope had been recognized by Adam for a reason: she had already tried to pass a carving (speculated to be the very same dog carving given in 2019) to Adam via Joanne at an AITAF donor event in 2018.

Bear in mind that AITAF events are primarily for celebrating veterans and bringing accessible theater to them and their families. They are not fan events for Adam Driver. However, Missus-Misanthrope saw her opportunity to interact with Adam when she saw Joanne and a friend at the bar (bolding for emphasis by me):

I am an artist and had two gifts that I wanted to try to get to Adam. One was an anniversary plaque for AITAF, the other was a portrait of his dog. When I saw Joanne, I thought she would be the perfect person to help me accomplish this.

From the second I approached her, she made me feel like garbage. I was polite, I thanked her for her work with AITAF. When I said that I had gifts for Adam, she asked me if I was a veteran. When I said no, she narrowed her eyes at me and asked me "how did you get IN HERE?" as though she suspected that I had... snuck in?

"I donated money that was very hard to come by and purchased a ticket" I responded.

She chuckled smugly and said "oh... you're a DONOR. No. I can't help you."

I was taken aback... I was not sure that I heard her correctly. "You can't do anything? If I give them to you can you..."

"No"

Then she turned to the woman she was with and said "Lindsay, this... DONOR has PRESENTS for ADAM."

Then they both just... laughed? Like how could I EVER think that they would let me give my STUPID presents to ADAM.

Missus-Misanthrope continued describing feelings of hurt, dismissal, and betrayal.

I felt like they both viewed me like I was NOTHING.

I have never felt like such a freaking idiot in my life.

So... that was something. I almost cried. Went into the situation really admiring Joanne. Left the situation feeling really disillusioned and crappy and like I did something wrong. It sucked to look forward to that event so much and work hard to overcome anxiety to travel to NY alone and have some awful crap like that happen.

She implies that, had Adam not commented his gratitude towards donors later on in the event, she would not have felt appreciated or seen (emphasis mine):

Adam was very vocal about his appreciation of the donors to AITAF so at least I didn't feel like complete useless trash.

I hope she isn't treating a lot of donors like this. This could really make some people look at AITAF in a different light if she is the only person they interact with.

A later comment in the same thread underlines feelings of betrayal (emphasis mine):

I have played it over and over in my head and I literally didn't do anything wrong. I mean, even if I had, she is a grown woman... why was she laughing at me? I felt like I was in a freaking nightmare.

Her behavior was so ugly and childish. If she is doing this to people, they NEED to speak up. I don't know why anyone feels like they need to protect her if she is really treating people this way. This type of behavior coming from her can impact the reputation of Adam and AITAF.

I am going to be sending an official complaint to AITAF about my experience. It was just so, so not okay.

By the time Missus-Misanthrope attended the stage door in 2019, she had already publicly expressed dislike of Joanne and became a valued member of adamdriverfans. And Adam, whether through his wife or through other incidents at other AITAF events, knew full well who she was.

October 2019: Your Friendly Neighborhood Pariah

Fans elsewhere quickly identified the "creepy wood carving" girl as Missus-Misanthrope. EDIT: I've been informed that it was not fans, but Missus-Misanthrope's husband, who identified her. Her husband left an angry comment (now deleted) on the author's Twitter.

adamdriverfans, predictably, went absolutely apeshit.

The article was deemed to be "angry" and vengeful towards fans like Missus-Misanthrope for no reason. A poster deemed calling Missus-Misanthrope out in the article "classless." There was worry that Missus-Misanthrope was now in danger due to Adam's comment:

This fan has NOTHING. Who is going to protect her from the onslaught of Adam’s rabid fans and even the media who will likely try and track her down?

Other members of adamdriverfans said that Adam was well within his right to say something:

People are taking this way too personally. The fact is, there are a lot of Adam Driver "fans" out there who have been too creepy, taken things too far, and done gross stuff like deliberately scribble his wife out of photos they took together. Are those fans in the minority? Yeah, I'm positive of that.

But he has every right to his opinion and every right to express boundaries like any other person out there. I'm not even a huge fan of the dude and I get where he's coming from, regardless of how awkwardly he puts it.

He doesn't owe anybody anything. No one is entitled to him being 24/7 super nice and positive and not mentioning stuff like this.

Those who side with Missus-Misanthrope say that Adam was targeting Missus-Misanthrope on purpose:

My issue with the article was not that Adam expressed being creeped out by a fan/defending his wife. My issue is that he targeted someone specific. This fan had been having issues with AD and giving him this specific woodcarving for a YEAR now. I believe that this specific fan was mentioned on purpose. I don’t believe in coincidences.

But what about Missus-Misanthrope? Well...she didn't feel good, to put it lightly. In a statement to the subreddit entitled "Your Friendly Neighborhood Pariah," Missus-Misanthrope defended her behavior at the 2018 AITAF event:

I simply approached her in a common area of the theatre because I was advised by AITAF staff that I could talk to her about handing my gifts for AITAF and Adam off to someone who was able to help. Had I not been told that she was someone who could help me after the AITAF folks said that I should "definitely try to get the gifts to Adam" because "he will love them" I would not have even spoken to her.

All I was trying to do was give something to someone that I admire and to a foundation that I support. I wasn't trying to break up a marriage or be manipulative. I was following advice from people who work for AITAF and it ended up turning into a very unpleasant situation.

Regarding the stage door interaction, Missus-Misanthrope felt attacked and exhausted:

Less than 24 hours later, I was being attacked and insulted for basically just existing in the same place as Adam. I now just wish I had never gone.

This fandom makes me sad and a little bit sick. I am going to just continue existing as I have been in the past. I am just doing my best. If people hate me, I doubt that I can change that. I have no control over what anyone does but my own self. So I am just going to focus on being a decent person and treating others with kindness.

The mods on adamdriverfans followed up with a post on Missus-Misanthrope:

Here at this sub we have had the pleasure and privilege of knowing MissusMisanthrope and we have seen firsthand how brave she has been in the face of so much bullying and harassment – all because she had spoken about incident with Joanne Tucker and for daring to give Adam Driver a gift. What happened yesterday though is on an entirely different level altogether. What has happened to MissusMisanthrope feels like a horror story of the worst possible outcome of being a fan of a celebrity:

Bullied by the celebrity’s wife and staff.

Bullied and doxed by fans of the celebrity.

Finally, being bullied by the celebrity himself.

But curiously, according to adamdriverfans, Adam had pointed out the wrong fan:

The absolutely tragedy of this situation is (and I can not state this enough) is that he singled out the wrong person. Again, HE SINGLED OUT THE WRONG PERSON. There is another person who actively harassed JT and her family on social media (the infamous StalkerChan) but, let’s be absolutely clear about this, that wasn’t MissusMisanthrope.

This meant that there was a mysterious other fan behaving inappropriately, and that Adam had mistaken Missus-Misanthrope for the other fan.

Regardless of the error, the dice had been cast, and the votes were in: Adam Driver hated his fans, and Missus-Misanthrope was, indeed, a fandom pariah.

Aftermath: Exodus, Post Purging, and the Downward Spiral to Doucheville

I want to emphasize how challenging it was to dig up receipts for this post. That's because, shortly after the article broke, Missus-Misanthrope deleted all of her social media, and adamdriverfans began deleting older posts. When I began compiling evidence in September 2020, many old posts, tweets, etc. were completely gone. The GIF of the infamous stage door interaction had been almost completely wiped from the Internet: the original post on Imgur is private.

Shortly after the New Yorker article, Adam opened an Omaze charity campaign: By donating money to AITAF, you would be entered into a raffle to attend The Rise of Skywalker premiere with him.

However, Adam had previously voiced his distaste for peddling his autograph for money:

I don’t want to start getting into favors. It’s not about me and Star Wars. It’s about the people that we’re trying to serve and if you don’t get that then I’d rather not be associated with your money.

As a result, this Omaze campaign was met with negative reactions from those who sided with Missus-Misanthrope, with the general opinion that Adam was now a "sellout," a slave to his wife's desires to "save" AITAF from bad press. Many questioned if the Omaze campaign was an effort to repair relationships with fans after the Missus-Misanthrope scandal. Others questioned whether Adam was on a downward spiral in general, linking his "sellout" behavior to his weight loss and (supposed) fighting with Joanne.

Either way, one comment seemed to sum up the drama nicely:

It seems he is on a downward spiral to Doucheville.

Many announced that they were leaving the fandom after the Omaze campaign and after the New Yorker article. However, given the proximity to the mass exodus from the Star Wars fandom after The Rise of Skywalker hit theaters in December, it is unclear how much of the Adam standom exodus is Star Wars related and how much is Missus-Misanthrope related.

Regardless of the opinions of those on adamdriverfans, the Omaze campaign was a success. A veteran (coincidentally named Joanna) won and met Adam. A fan-run campaign started after The Rise of Skywalker raised a whopping 90,000 dollars for AITAF, funding their 2020 fiscal year and landing a personal thank-you from Adam himself. Needless to say, bad press from Missus-Misanthrope's interactions with Adam and Joanne did not stick.

It is unknown whether or not Adam will do another Broadway run in the future.

EDIT: I'm super overwhelmed and delighted by the positive reception to this post. Thank you so, so much for the great discussion and for reading this (and for giving it awards!). If you're spending money to give me awards, it would be stellar if you could give that money to BLM instead.

Disclaimer

This is a repost from reddit. I really missed this sub so I decided to post some top articles from time to time until hopefully one day this community will be large enough to produce its own content.

Read the original here

This is a repost. I am not the original author (see disclaimer at the bottom).

This is a really old piece of drama, but I only discovered it recently after getting into Anna Rudolf’s Twitch channel (note: I don't think this breaks the rules because she wasn't a Twitch streamer at the time, and she's still primarily a chess analyst).

Warning: I don’t play a lot of chess, I’ve never followed chess competitively, and when this happened the only thing I really cared about in life was Webkinz. Even so, it’s pretty clear that this was screwed up.

Anna Rudolf is a Hungarian chess player. At the time this happened, in 2007, she was 20 years old. Since then she’s become an International Master, a Woman Grandmaster, and a member of the Hungarian Olympic Chess Team. She no longer plays competitively, but instead works as a commentator and analyst, and since the pandemic has been streaming through Twitch (her channel is here if you’re curious). If you were a Soothouse fan (RIP), you might recognise her from this video.

This took place at the Vandeouvre Open, whose current website calls them the “Biggest Chess Tournament in France”. At the tournament in 2007 there were 100 players, with the highest ranking being a chess grandmaster named Christian Bauer. Anna had a ranking of 2293 at the time, and was not yet ranked as a master.

Chess uses a ranking system where points are added or taken away based on games won while supervised. To achieve a higher ranking you need to have a point total within that range (for example, at the time Christian Bauer had a ranking of 2634, which made him a grandmaster since it is in the range of 2500-2700). So tournaments are an opportunity for chess players to move up and down the ranking, and have the opportunity to play those similarly ranked or higher ranked then they are.

Anna came into the tournament extremely strong. She was not expected to do particularly well, so there was a lot of surprise when she won her first four games in a row. Her second game, and the one that caused all the controversy, was against Christian Bauer. This caused a lot of talk about how she could have done so well, and some players began to suspect cheating.

It should be noted here that the normal way that people cheat in chess is through using a computer to calculate what the optimal next move will be. As supercomputers became more refined through time, and the Internet has made it easy to communicate their suggestions to chess players on site, concerns have arisen among high level players that any competitor could have a supercomputer.

Another important note is that Christian Bauer himself did not believe that Anna cheated. During the game and directly after the game it didn’t even occur to him. Afterwards he heard other players suggest it, and did briefly consider that it might be a “very unlikely” possibility. But then a friend of his used a supercomputer to prove that Anna’s moves did not line up with what a computer would have suggested, and that caused him to switch back to the “Anna did nothing wrong” side. He also said in later interviews that he made an error late in the game that Anna exploited perfectly, explaining how she won against someone with a much higher ranking. This is in line with what basically every other member of the chess community believes.

While several people gossiped about her cheating during the tournament, one competitor, a Latvian named Oleg Krivonosov, wanted to make actual allegations. He was dismissed by his fellow chess players because his claim had no evidence and no logical basis.

But he did not stop to listen to common sense. Krivonosov was hellbent on the idea of Anna cheating, so he rounded up fellow Latvians Oleg Lazarev and Ilmars Starostits to brainstorm with him. The next day, they went back to the competition and claimed that they knew exactly how she was cheating.

And what was their airtight hypothesis? Well, during her competitor’s moves Anna would get up and walk around, go to the bathroom, and apply her lip balm.

“Aha!” they must have crowed triumphantly, “Her lip balm is the supercomputer!”

Yeah, really.

To be fair, they did not literally think that she had disguised a 2007 supercomputer as a tube of lip balm. They thought that the tube was using the internet to receive signals from a nearby supercomputer, which she then used to make her next move. Which, considering the properties of both 2007 technology and of lip balm tubes, is basically just as preposterous.

Incredibly, they were not laughed out of the country. In fact, Anna went on to play two of them. The first, Lazarev, ended in a draw. Even with the accusation of cheating, Anna was doing pretty well.

The second Latvian she played, Starostits, went out of his way to make sure that she knew that he “knew” that she was cheating. He refused to shake hands, asked the arbiter to take away her bag (which the arbiter did, for some reason), and also got her banned from using her lip balm or from leaving the hall during the tournament.

A large part of chess playing is psychological. When you feel good and you’re doing good, you’re more likely to win or win again. Anna had been doing well all tournament, and presumably feeling on top of the world. This, alongside Bauer’s mistake, is the explanation most people give for her winning streak.

On the other hand, being publicly called a cheater, having your opponent refuse to shake hands, and then being treated like a criminal by the supposedly-objective arbiter, has about the opposite effect. Anna went on to lose that game, although it was a pretty even match to the end.

It also turns out that Starostits, aside from faulty logic and a strong sense of justice against twenty-year-olds who use lip balm, had a good motive to try and throw Anna off. If she had taken a draw in that game she could have finished in the top three. Starostits needed a win.

If that was his strategy, it worked. Starostits went on to take second. Thankfully, Anna also had somewhat of a happy ending in the rankings. She went on to take ninth place (she was expected to land around twenty-second), which allowed her to qualify for International Master and Woman Grandmaster.

In the aftermath, basically everyone sided with Anna. She left her last match crying, and many of her competitors went out of their way to comfort her. During the prize-giving ceremony, the president of the Vandeouvre club made a point to clear her name, telling everyone that she was just the victim of an amoral play. The crowd supposedly clapped for her for five minutes straight.

Krisonov, her original accuser, still could not let go of the belief that she was cheating. He promised to show up at the next tournament they both attended, Capelle-La-Grande, and accuse her again. If he did make these accusations they were dismissed out of hand, as no record of them shows up online.

The arbiters at Vandeouvre caught a fair amount of flack for their whole part in this. There was absolutely no evidence of her cheating at the time, and the arbiter either ignored internal protocols about how to deal with accusations of cheating (which are meant to prevent exactly what happened, a false accusation throwing a winning player off of their game), or the tournament simply didn’t have any.

False rumours swirled around online afterwards. Anna herself didn’t really comment on it, but her supporters found themselves having to clarify that most players she played were not ranked much higher than herself, and that her only incredibly high ranked competitor admitted to making a mistake that lost him the match.

For better or for worse, that weekend still influences her legacy. Anna continued playing for many more years, but that particular tournament is seen as one of the highlights of her competitive play. And the “scandal” is one of the first things to come up when you search for her online.

From what I could find, the incident is still occasionally brought up in general discussions of chess today, mostly in regards to two concepts: cheating with technology, and feminism.

Anna was a young, attractive woman in a field that is generally seen as male-dominated. Most of the rationale of her accusers was “he couldn’t lose to her”, and in an interview done by the Atlantic in 2019, she noted that a lot of the comments she received were very explicitly along the lines of “he couldn’t lose to a woman.”

The other chessplayer she was being interviewed with (Judit Polgar) noted that there were many times when male chessplayers did not believe her results because they did not believe that she could be that good, and that female chessplayers need to have a “strong character” to carry on. She called the experience a “teaching from life of how unfair [chess] can be”.

Even with the attempts in the last few years to promote women within male dominated fields, only two of the top one hundred chess players are women. In just 2015, one of the top English chess players, Nigel Short, claimed that men are just better at things like “chess” and “parking” than women, and later criticised his detractors as “shrill feminists”. Men tend to play chess more than women, and women tend to do worse playing competitively against men than they would playing against women.

As technology becomes smaller, the fear of chessplayers cheating becomes larger. In 2007, Christian Bauer said that he thought there was no worry of “cheating paranoia”. This actually seems to be mostly accurate.

In the thirteen years since, there have been a few large cheating scandals. None of them (from what I can see), however, have triggered any sort of witch hunt or disproportionate rule changes. While the situation with Anna stands out as what chess paranoia could lead to if unchecked, it does not seem to be any kind of herald of the future.

That’s pretty much the drama. If you’re a chess person and notice something I got wrong please let me know and I’ll edit it in.

Disclaimer

This is a repost from reddit. I really missed this sub so I decided to post some top articles from time to time until hopefully one day this community will be large enough to produce its own content.

Read the original here

This is a repost. I am not the original author (see disclaimer at the bottom).

Introduction

Most people floating around the fandom areas of the Internet have probably heard of Warrior Cats. This past post about some of the franchise's drama does a fantastic job of explaining how the series and its fandom work, but I'll provide another summary for those of you who don't enjoy clicking links.

Warrior Cats (or simply "Warriors" depending on where you live) is a nearly two-decade old children's fantasy series about "Clans" of dozens of wild cats who live according to a code of honor. Originally just a single six-book plot, its success spawned countless sequels, prequels, and standalone stories. There are over 80 books in the series now, including six full main story arcs of six books each—and they're not slowing down any time soon, with five more books releasing just this year and the seventh arc currently underway. The series was created by author Victoria Holmes, while the books themselves are ghostwritten by two other authors, all collectively sold under the pen name "Erin Hunter." Plots in these books typically revolve around bloody battles between the different Clans, mystical prophecies received from the spirits of cats who have died (known as StarClan), and, of course, mountains upon mountains of romantic drama and love triangles.

To quote the other post: "Are the books any good? Well… no, but that’s irrelevant." Some of them are quite good, but most are mediocre at best—and in any case, it's not the books per se that draw in legions of twelve year-old fans. The world Warriors created has generated a massive online fandom of kids, teens, and young adults earnestly designing their own cats and entire fan-made Clans for the sake of fanfiction, roleplay, fanart, and more.

Ashfur: The Origin

In 2007, while writing the draft for Warriors's third main story arc, Vicky Holmes had one thing in mind: Ashfur. This third arc, titled "Power of Three," was about a trio of cats—siblings—who each possessed a superpower that they were destined to use to save the Clans. But that was only window dressing for Vicky's true goal. It was no secret that she had... a fondness, shall we say, for tragic scenes dripping with drama, and she'd had one of these in mind ever since beginning to brainstorm PoT's plot: A mother's children are threatened, and the only way she can save them is to reveal the shocking truth: They are not hers. From this one kernel of drama came everything else.

And so Power of Three, a story about young cats with superpowers, was entirely structured around a scene unrelated to that idea. At the end of book five, a fire breaks out in the forest, and our three heroes are trapped by the flames. Their mother, Squirrelflight, tries to clear a path for them to escape, but her way is blocked by Ashfur—a cat who was a rival for her romantic affections in the previous story arc, in which Squirrelflight was a main character, before she chose her fellow protagonist Brambleclaw as her mate. The scene that follows is widely considered the most recognizable and iconic moment in Warrior Cats, featured in countless pieces of fan art and animated videos: Surrounded by the fire, his eyes aglow with hatred and madness, Ashfur raves about how he's never forgiven Squirrelflight for being "faithless" to him. In a speech rivaling General Hux from The Force Awakens for its intensity and anger, he echoes incels worldwide and recounts just how badly he's been wronged because this woman wouldn't go on a date with him. He utters the infamous line: “Upset? I’m not upset. You have no idea how much pain I’m in. It’s like being cut open every day, bleeding onto the stones. I can’t understand how any of you failed to see the blood. . . .” He even reveals that he secretly helped the villain of the previous arc attempt to murder Squirrelflight's father, just as he's now going to let her children burn to death—all to get revenge for being turned down.

I've already spoiled what happens next: Squirrelflight, to save the protagonists' lives, reveals to Ashfur that they are not, in fact, her children. Her motherhood was a deception, and not even Brambleclaw knows that he is not their father. She does not tell Ashfur who their true parents are, but what she's already said is enough—Ashfur now has a new path for his revenge. He's going to publicly reveal to all the Clans that Squirrelflight lied, destroying her standing and humiliating her.

It is eventually revealed, in the sixth and final book of PoT, that the trio's true mother was Squirrelflight's sister Leafpool, who as a Clan "medicine cat" (essentially a faith doctor) was forbidden to bear children, hence the lie. Ashfur is killed by one of the protagonists, but the full details of the secret are still revealed to all the Clans, shaming both Squirrelflight and Leafpool.

We now skip ahead to book 4 of the following story arc. One of our protagonists visits StarClan (the cat heaven) in a vision, and notices Ashfur present among them. Shocked, they ask another StarClan cat—a wise mentor figure—why Ashfur was allowed into StarClan, instead of being sent to the Dark Forest, the cat hell, for his crimes and attempted murders. Serenely, speaking with Vicky Holmes's full intent, the mentor figure replies: "His only crime was to love too much."

Ashfur: The Fandom

It is impossible to overstate just how big of a deal Ashfur became in the Warriors fandom for years to come. Now, naturally, in a series with hundreds of named characters and plenty of other drama-filled stories to go around, the fandom had lots of things to talk about... but Ashfur was constantly near the top of the list.

It'll come as no surprise to anyone who's spent time in a fandom with lots of young teenagers that there was a large movement viewing Ashfur as... "Misunderstood." He became practically idolized by lots of young fans—particularly young female fans—as a symbol of romantic tragedy. Contrasting this were fans who, rightfully, wondered what the hell Vicky was thinking when she wrote that line about "loving too much" and pointed out that Ashfur was both a misogynist and a murderer... etc, etc, etc. The Ashfur wars raged for years across every fandom platform—Tumblr, Youtube, forum boards—spurred on in large part by two factors.

The first is easy: Kids don't really have a good perspective of what a healthy relationship looks like. Trying to murder a woman's children because you want her that badly... can seem beautiful, in a twisted way. And it helps when the books themselves end up confirming this interpretation for you.

The second factor is a phenomenon that affects nearly every aspect of the Warriors fandom: A lot of fans... don't really read the books. Remember, the books themselves aren't the draw! The world is the draw. Kids want to make their own unique cats with names like Darknesstalon and Furyscythe (those names definitely wouldn't fit into the world of the books, if it's unclear). They don't care what happened in some new book that released this year. For a lot of people, the world of Warriors is a purely creative one—and a lot of kids actually found their way into the fandom solely through fan content, without ever touching an actual book. So when your whole knowledge of Ashfur is based on fan animation videos that show off the tears in his eyes as he pleaded with Squirrelflight to love him back—

You get the picture.

Working Partners

Around 2013, following the conclusion of the fourth arc, Vicky Holmes passed on her torch. Though she still retains some involvement with the series, the books' plots are now created by a team of writers called Working Partners, while still being ghostwritten by the same two authors from before. WP's involvement with the fifth arc onwards has produced a number of changes in the writing and decisions made about how to handle characters, some negative, some positive.

This brings us to the seventh and current story arc, "The Broken Code," which began releasing in spring 2019. In writing this arc, the new team by all appearances took note of a number of common fan complaints about the series that had existed for years. This included a number of questions about the series's status quo that the books themselves typically ignore, such as "Why do the cats arbitrarily segregate themselves into different Clans when they all have the same culture and almost always have to unite to fend off outside threats?", "Why aren't medicine cats allowed to have children, that's a stupid and unnecessary rule?", or "Why do none of the characters seem to notice or care that their leaders always promote their relatives to positions of power?" (This last one is of course because characters in positions of power are almost always protagonists, and protagonists usually end up being relatives of other protagonists.) Every indication from TBC so far is that questions like these will be addressed in the series itself, possibly ending with lasting systemic change for the Clans.

Even more than any of those questions, the new team became aware of one particular fan complaint: Ashfur. By now the Warriors fandom had been around long enough to become somewhat more mature—though Ashfur stans still existed, the general consensus was totally aware that he was an outright villain who was in no way a dreamy misunderstood boyfriend. And so the time came that Working Partners, in planning out The Broken Code, had a brilliant idea: Make Ashfur the villain. Bring him back, as a sinister Big Bad for the seventh arc, and satisfy the fandom by showing once and for all that he's not some relatable lovestruck sadboi. More than that, retcon his placement in StarClan as a trick all along—Ashfur lied his way into heaven and has been plotting his revenge ever since.

"But, wait, isn't he... dead?" you ask, confused. Yes, but this is Warrior Cats, and death is kinda irrelevant. The entire plot of the fourth arc was about evil dead cats returning to fight a final battle and getting killed again, this time for good. If the new team could come up with a convincing way to make Ashfur insert himself back into the plot as a spirit, there would be nothing stopping them from reusing him.

This would have made shockwaves among the fandom no matter what, but the discourse was set into motion even before the release of TBC's first book. Kate Cary, one of the series's two ghostwriters, confirmed on her blog that a "controversial character" would be returning for arc 7. She gave no details beyond that, but most fans assumed this meant a villain, and speculation began. Could it be this character? Or this one? Or what about this other one...? And Ashfur's name, of course, came up a lot.

And then the rumor started. Ashfur. Leaked to the fandom from an unknown source came the whispers that it was Ashfur—it was Ashfur big time. Ashfur, the rumor said, was going to possess and take over the body of a living character and wreak havoc. Plenty of people believed it. Plenty of other people likewise dismissed it—the writers would never do something like that.

Heh.

The Broken Code

The first book of The Broken Code released in April 2019 and kicked things off with a bang. StarClan has gone totally silent for unknown reasons and isn't communicating prophecies and wisdom to the living cats like they normally do. Over the course of the book, one of our new young cat protagonists is spoken to by a mysterious unseen spirit. You see, Squirrelflight's mate Brambleclaw—now the leader of his Clan and named Bramblestar—is ill, and this spirit knows how to cure him. Acting on its instructions, the protagonist convinces all the cats to bury Bramblestar in snow to bring his fever down.

He dies.

Then he comes back to life! All the characters cheer. Bramblestar shakily gets up... looks around... and then walks over to Squirrelflight. "Greetings," he says in a deep voice. "It's good to be with you again."

Heh.

The book ends with another one of the protagonists on a walk through a totally different part of the forest, when he suddenly encounters... Bramblestar?? But it's a ghost. The ghost-Bramblestar runs towards him, yelling "Help! Please help!" The protagonist flees in terror. The atmosphere of the scene is excitingly horror-esque in a way that no Warriors book before has been.

Things only escalate in books 2 and 3, with each passing book amping up both the intense ominous feeling of the story and the chilling menace of the living "Bramblestar's" actions. In book 2, "Bramblestar" spends all his time with Squirrelflight, creepily fawning over her and insisting she approve all her actions with him. At the same time, he uses his position as the respected leader of a Clan to push for aggressive punishment for cats who commit minor infractions. He argues that he knows why StarClan has gone silent—it's because the Clans aren't obeying their Code strictly enough. In book 3 he pushes the other Clans to join him in a war against the cats that refuse to bow to his new regime, a war that ends near book 3's conclusion with him beaten and captured by the heroes and their allies.

As this goes on, the fandom starts to realize something. The impostor pretending to be Bramblestar... is an incredible villain. His writing hits notes of darkly intimidating behavior rarely seen in this mediocre kids' series, whether it's publicly threatening other cats for disobeying him, trying to murder a protagonist in the dark of night, or even—in one scene—privately gloating to one of the protagonists about how successful his plan to fool everyone has been. And all of this contrasts beautifully with the other side of his personality that emerges whenever Squirrelflight's name comes up: an obsessive, unhealthy, pathetic interest in her. He makes dumb mistakes and is easily tricked whenever another character leads him to believe he might get to spend more time with her. He drops everything and forgets all his other priorities if she's involved. He's a simp. And the two styles of behavior blend perfectly in the scenes where his true personality comes out—when Squirrelflight begins to push him away, knowing that something is wrong, he becomes violent and brutal, verbally abusing her and at one point bodily throwing her off a small ledge. It's a thorough, shockingly cold and real portrayal of a man obsessed with owning a woman. In a children's fantasy book about anthropomorphized cats.

Of course, most of the fandom knew it was Ashfur. The rumors and leaks helped, but even from the first book of the arc it was obvious. His main goal being "habe sex w/ Squireflit" is more than enough to prove that, but there were other hints too. In book 1, a protagonist has a vision of the cats' territory being suddenly set aflame—and of flakes of ash falling into his fur. (Yes, the book uses those words.) In book 2, the impostor references specific past events that Ashfur would be overly concerned with, and is clueless as to significant events that happened shortly after Ashfur's death. In book 3, in the scene where the "horror" vibe peaks, the impostor's spirit emerges temporarily from Bramblestar's body and menacingly threatens a protagonist—and though its appearance is smoky and indistinct, the protagonist can see its eyes are a bright blue, just like Ashfur's.

That book (which released earlier this year) ends with the impostor captured and Squirrelflight about to announce to all the cats that she believes she knows who he really is—but by that time the cover of book 5 had already been revealed. This is the cover, and this is official artwork of Ashfur.

Ashfur: The Fandom, Redux

I hope you were all anticipating this last part, because our story wouldn't be complete without it. Despite all the hints above and more I didn't mention... the fandom, as always, had diehard holdouts who refused to believe it was Ashfur at all costs. Thus did the last 1.5 years in the fan community become a strange rebirth of Ashfur wars, with many of the same elements of the original ones. Because, you see, one of the chief arguments the Ashfur deniers used was that Ashfur would never do these things. He would never try to murder other cats. He would never wreak havoc and turn the Clans against themselves. He would never hurt Squirrelflight like that!

I assume I don't need to provide counter-arguments.

Other arguments came from a variety of places. Some fans, as always, clearly had no idea what was actually going on in the current books, and were arguing from a place of ignorance. Some latched onto theories that the impostor was instead whoever their personal favorite villain was. Some argued that, while Ashfur was evil and murderous, he would never take the actions that the impostor had and try to manipulate all of the Clans, because he only cared about Squirrelflight. These people were essentially in denial, since anyone who follows the news knows that men can do absolutely horrific things to unrelated people when acting on anger about being rejected.

At one point I encountered a post suggesting that Mothwing—a still-living, female, non-blue-eyed atheist—was the impostor and that all the Ashfur theories were ignoring the obvious truth... though it was probably a troll.

Even when the book 5 cover was revealed, the holdouts for the most part insisted there was no proof that the cat on the cover was Ashfur and not another cat with a similar appearance. And when all else failed, they had one argument they could always fall back on: It doesn't matter whether it is Ashfur, it matters whether it should be Ashfur. Ashfur coming back as a villain, they argued, would be a stupid twist. It would ruin the story and there was no hope of the books being good if it really was him. Massive positive fan response to TBC and adoration for its new characters tended to disagree.

The Reveal

And now we come to the close. With book 3 having ended on a cliffhanger like that, most fans eagerly began the wait for the release of book 4 this November. While it seemed like Squirrelflight was seconds away from saying Ashfur's name, most fans were hesitant to assume that would happen. After all, this is Warriors, a series famous for its meandering plot and refusal to let characters actually figure out the mysteries before the last book of an arc. Everyone prepared to be disappointed when they opened book 4 and found Squirrelflight saying "I know who the impostor is... but I can't tell you yet!!"

Nope! A couple weeks ago, a small preview of the book was released online. In chapter 1, Squirrelflight says "It's Ashfur." In chapter 2, the characters trick Ashfur into saying "Yes, I am Ashfur" to Squirrelflight—complete with two fantastic villain monologues, one where he talks about his lust for her, and one where he rages at the other characters that he still has more plans and they haven't beaten him yet.

With any luck, the remaining three books of the arc are going to be fantastic, and all because teen girls in 2010 had the hots for an angsty murdering incel wHosE oNLy CriMe WaS tO LoVe ToO mUcH.

TLDR: Woman writes children's fantasy cat books where a man tries to burn a woman's children alive because she wouldn't go out with him. Online fandom argues for years over whether he was actually evil or just a sexy misunderstood bad boy. New writing team takes over cat books a decade later, sees online controversy, and decides to bring the character back as a villain again, leading to fantastic books with chilling villain scenes and transforming the incel into one of the best-written characters in the series.

Disclaimer

This is a repost from reddit. I really missed this sub so I decided to post some top articles from time to time until hopefully one day this community will be large enough to produce its own content.

Read the original here

This is a repost. I am not the original author (see disclaimer at the bottom).

The story I am going to be telling you today involves a lot of jealousy, some drama and most importantly, lots of pettiness. I'm going to talk about the drama surrounding the infamous Vantablack, which, at the time, was the blackest substance in the world.

It was created in 2014 by a nanotechnology lab to be used in engineering projects, particularly regarding space (it can help telescopes and cameras by absorbing stray light, among other things). Here's some pictures of how stuff painted with this substance actually looks like-- I promise you, it's not photoshop. This thing is actually pretty amazing, as it absorbs 99.965% of visible light. As you can guess, this substance was quite the discovery and it became quite rare not only due to its copyright but also due to its relative toxicity, or at the very least heavy duty usage.

Naturally, the art world was gaga over it and wanted to be able to use it. However, it was not something available to the public, much less to the art world which I assume isn't the main interest of most scientists. That was, until a spray version of it called Vantablack S-VIS was licensed exclusively to Anish Kapoor in 2016. Who is that, you may add? He's a famous indian sculptor and artist. Did I also mention that he's one of the richest artists in the world? Well, his cash made it so that this spray paint was licensed for use exclusively for him and his studio. No one else could get it. And believe me, they tried, but they were quickly turned away by the company who made the product.

Of course, everyone was quite angry at this. Artist all over the world were expressing their disappointment at this licensing. Christian Furr, a british artist commissioned to paint the Queen, called black "the dynamite of the art world" (x) and that it was unfair for only one man to be able to use it.

However, no one was angrier than british artist Stuart Semple. So angry in fact, that he retaliated by creating a paint himself named the World's Pinkest Pink, in which you're required to basically pinky promise that you're not Anish Kapoor, have nothing to do with him, or are not planning on buying it for him. Here's a link to the store page where you can clearly see the disclaimer, and a video of him in his youtube channel explaining his reasoning. For those who don't want to click the link, it reads:

*Note: By adding this product to your cart you confirm that you are not Anish Kapoor, you are in no way affiliated to Anish Kapoor, you are not purchasing this item on behalf of Anish Kapoor or an associate of Anish Kapoor. To the best of your knowledge, information and belief this paint will not make its way into that hands of Anish Kapoor. 

#ShareTheBlack

That in itself it's pretty ballsy, as basically Kapoor is not someone to fuck with. So much so, museums and people who have worked with him declined to say anything about him in regards to the Vantablack license.

Unfortunately, Semple's efforts were quite futile as Kapoor managed to get a hold of this paint and posted a picture on instagram giving it the middle finger.

Fear not, though! As Semple's pettiness was not yet defeated. He then came up with a very black acrylic paint, called Black 3.0 (here's a picture of a piece painted with it andthe youtuber I was watching that actually inspired this post). Not quite the blackest black in the world, but by Semple's own words:

IT IS IMPORTANT TO NOTE: this is not the blackest black in the world. It is however a better black than the blackest black in the world as it is actually usable by artists. 

....

*Except Anish Kapoor  

At this point, Semple has many versions of his blackest black. A Black 2.0, named "The world’s mattest, flattest, black art material", which is second to Black 3.0 in terms of blackness (absorbs 96% of visible light); Black 3.0 mentioned above (absorbs 99% of visible light); a Black 1.0 in pigment form, called "The OG" or the legacy, and a Raven black that's part of a rainbow collection called Potion. Funny enough, this last one does NOT have a disclaimer against Kapoor! Instead it reads:

After 15 years of making his own paints, Stuart Semple has been able to formulate and release a new breed of acrylic paint. For the first time his FULL RAINBOW palette is available to all artists* can share in these incredible colours.

*YES all artists! It's time the miserable ones had a bit more colour in their life - Stuart wants to share the rainbow with them, he thinks they need it.

I have yet to find any information about whether or not Kapoor himself cares about any of these other paints however. I don't know why he would when he holds the blackest paint already. I have also yet to find if he has commented anything else beyond that one instagram post.

At first I thought this was fun and amicable banter... But at this point I think it's truly just a general dislike for the guy, or at least contempt at his attitude. In an interview Semple says:

“He’s got like 40,000 Instagram followers, doesn’t follow anybody back, doesn’t write back to anybody,” Semple says. “It’s the equivalent of walking into a house party and just shouting about yourself and not having a conversation with anybody. You’d look like an idiot.”

So yeah, it's pretty much not an amicable think. Nevertheless, the drama ends quite in the standstill, as Kapoor hasn't pronounced himself about this issue anymore and Semple has also moved on it seems. I can't really say who's the winner in this, but what I can say is that I LIVE for Semple's pettiness that continues until now, and I like his attitude. But that's just a personal opinion.

E: u/HellaHotLancelot has graciously shared with us this post on tumblr that kind of has a follow up and TLDR of this issue, as well as some memes back when saying you were going to go to these weird events on facebook was The Thing to do. I did not know about the glitter thing which I am DYING for. It's the drama that keeps on giving despite being 4 years old.

Disclaimer

This is a repost from reddit. I really missed this sub so I decided to post some top articles from time to time until hopefully one day this community will be large enough to produce its own content.

Read the original here

This is a repost. I am not the original author (see disclaimer at the bottom).

Background: Cross stitching is a hobby that I'm sure many of you are familiar with, but if you're not, it's the art of making tiny little crosses in fabric to create a pretty picture. Cross stitching has many different styles, from the more traditional to the less traditional.

As with any crafting hobby, there tend to be multitudes of mini ongoing dramas (is DMC really the best thread maker around, it is rude to cross stitch swear words, is it cultural appropriation to stitch sugar skulls, is it disrespectful to stitch Jesus smoking a joint, why do metallic threads exist anyway), but this situation has blown up in the past few weeks and it's quite significant in terms of fallout, both monetarily and time-wise.

Heaven and Earth Designs (HAED)

One popular type of cross stitch is full coverage - that is, that you cannot see any of the fabric under the thread, there are no gaps. These can get pretty intense. In the cross-stitching world, HAED is the Ultimate Provider of Full Coverage Cross-Stitch designs. Here's an example of one being stitched up. They take years to create and are intense labours of love.

The reason HAED is so popular is that they purchase a license to produce cross stitch charts of copyrighted artwork. Again, like in many other crafts, copyright breaking pattern designers run rampant and stitchers tend not to want to give those people their money. Additionally, the owner of HAED has in the past claimed that she hand charts her patterns herself, spending anywhere between 4-40 hours per chart - that sort of quality is invaluable in a world full of people making a quick buck by scanning a picture they found on google through a pattern converter software and flogging it on etsy.

As they purchase a license for the art, HAED patterns get expensive. Kits cost around $200, and the cost inflates depending on what fabric you want to use and how many colours (and subsequently how many skeins of floss) you have to buy. Looking at one I was previously planning on purchasing, it would set me back about $400 total - plus the other tools that you'd use when stitching something this size. Not insignificant.

Floss, Chart Design and some Colour Theory

As I said above, DMC is widely considered to be the premier floss producer (maybe Anchor is you're European). Most kits come with DMC thread included, most independent charters will use DMC, they are by far the dominant force in embroidery circles. This is for good reason - their quality control is exceptional, they give a lovely finish, they feel nice to stitch with and they're available in all good craft stores.

When you're stitching up a large piece, you use lots of different colours to give the piece depth, texture, and importantly, gradient. This means that while you may not know why you need twelve different shades of blue for a small area, it turns out when you stitch it up the detail is fantastic. However, obviously DMC cannot create a colour for every conceivable colour in existence - currently, there are 500 options, which while a lot still means that when pattern makers create designs from existing art, there is some adjustment needed to be made.

Back in 2018, DMC launched 35 new colours to their range to fill in gaps where there currently isn't a good colour option, and to help with transition shades - this doesn't happen often, so it was a Big Deal. Crucially for this story, they introduced 08 and 09, Dark Driftwood and Very Dark Cocoa respectively. Browns are really useful in lots of designs, so these new colours were put to work immediately.

Chart Design is...complicated (and I don't do it myself so bear with me). As I said above, the gold standard way to create a pattern is to create it by hand yourself. A more common (and still very effective) way is to run a picture or design through some conversion software, and then adjust the result after (more common when it's a full picture as opposed to text + flowers).

Important to note that the software is quite sophisticated and will use the surrounding colours to determine the colour chosen, to ensure there is a nice consistent gradient between the colours.

Pattern Maker

When the 35 new colours were added, they were updated in the various common pattern making software. However, for one software there was an issue - the RGB values for 08 and 09 were updated wrong. So when you ran the picture through, it would think it had got it right but in fact it was not. This was quickly picked up by most pattern makers, who would manually change the RGB values in the software and merrily continue on. The pattern software producers also noticed the error and sent out an email explaining the error and instructing the users on how to fix it. However, as you can imagine (because this is a drama post) HAED did not, and continued to make patterns containing 08 and 09 for over two years when the result was a poor match.

The Drama

HAED has its own fans who are very quick to defend HAED and the owner. Some stitchers quickly noted the error with 08 and 09 (there's quite a popular app where you can mock up what the design will look like before stitching), and several people posted questions about why the mock-up was looking a bit dodgy - they were told that the issue was with the app.

Someone posted in 2019 this example of how 09 was fucking up their project. Initially, this was explained away as an issue with dye lots.

As things can take so long to stitch, sometimes if you replace a skein of floss after a few years there may be a subtle difference in the shade because it's a different dye lot. As I mentioned at the beginning, DMC is the premier choice of floss because they are incredibly consistent between dye lots, so this is very rarely an issue, and certainly not to the extent the above picture shows. Thread Bare did an excellent write up of why the dye lot argument is bullshit, with pictures, so if you're interested in more technical detail I would encourage you to look at that.

What makes this drama worse is that the only way you could really get any information from or to the owner is through their Facebook page, which was quick to delete or ridicule commenters who expressed concerns about their patterns.

Even as recently as June 2020, HAED sent an email out blaming the error on dye lots. Quoting from the email "we are seeing this more often" - at what point would it occur to them that perhaps this is an issue with them and not an issue with everyone else?

They sent customers pictures to try and prove there was a dye lot error, whereas it was really just a lighting difference.

Well - as of July 2nd they admitted it is an error with the charting.

[Despite admitting there was an error with the charting, they only closed their store down after 3 days following the backlash that they were still selling known faulty charts with no warning on the site]

But wait - surely this charting error wouldn't affect HAED, as she hand creates the patterns herself? Well, obviously that claim was total bullshit. Honestly - it wasn't super surprising, the rate that new, ultra-complex patterns were added to the shop meant that if you thought about it for at least a few moments you could infer that she didn't hand create these patterns herself.

What's worse is that she also doesn't appear to employ test stitchers. Test stitchers are common and will, as the name suggests, test stitch a piece before or even just after sale, just to make sure the final result is good enough. While you wouldn't expect someone to test stitch an entire 300,000 stitch pattern, most would consider it reasonable to test stitch a small area, particularly an area with the new colours used.

The owner claims that 14000 patterns are affected - even assuming this is a mistype, 1400 patterns is an overwhelming amount to fix.

Reminder - these kits cost $200+ each, and she's not doing anything more than running it through some software.

Now, some of you might think, "surely you can just sub in 08/09 with a similar colour and then it'll be fine"? This is the proposed solution by HAED themselves (see the suggestion in the email to sub out 09 with 3371). In the "re-charted" patterns she's sent out already, this is in essence what she has done, and there have already been push backs that it still looks awful.

To wheel back to colour theory - there is no floss that corresponds to the incorrect RGB values that were used. And - without getting too technical again, but by subbing around one colour for another, it creates a domino effect with surrounding colours. This may not be an issue in patterns that are meant to look blocky, but in HAED patterns they are meant to look as realistic as possible - one colour throwing off the surrounding colours ripple effects all the way through the pattern.

So now there are a bunch of stitchers that are several hundred dollars and potentially several hundred hours into these pieces, only to be told that they will be sent a 'recharted' pattern at some point over the next few months (which will probably not be a proper rechart, but a substitution of a colour one-to-one), and some stitchers are already several thousand stitches into their pieces.

Some additional examples of the errors/ 'fixes'/mockups

This stitcher (the error is the left-hand side of the birdhouse) was sent a replacement pattern that still looked awful when ran through a mock-up, so has changed it herself (it took her four days to frog the error out and start again)

This edited area looks abysmal and has been told by the owner that it is correct and fine

The top left next to the needle minder is very poorly coloured, and this poor person is about 150,000 stitches in.

The HAED 'mockup' vs the predicted result

This fireplace is light purple-brown vs the intended dark brown

The left is the 09 chart and the right is the fix - the right is still not great.

The Fallout

People are mad and upset. This is an expensive item that is faulty, there was a known error for two years that was not fixed, and people who did express concern were deleted/banned from the Facebook page. People may well be hours and hours into their chart only to be told it's going to look shit. HAED are rapidly losing their image as the premier full coverage producer, it is a major fall from grace.

There is no other way to get information than through the Facebook group, and not only are they banning anyone criticising HAED from their group, they're banning members who criticise HAED in other groups pre-emptively.

There is also the question about how this is going to work going forward - if 08 and 09 are removed from the pattern, there is going to be no way to tell if a pattern for sale was affected by this situation or not [Aside from the drama, the HAED website is absolutely awful to browse at the best of times]. You could end up paying for a chart that may never have been charted correctly in the first place.

A lot of people have been moving to different full coverage creators, who do employ test stitchers, run the software with edits made afterwards, and don't just whack in the picture, turn the number of colours to 250 and the biggest size and hope for the best.

A number of people are calling out the owner for lying about creating the charts herself in the first place when this is now very obviously not true.

There are also many stitchers submitting refunds through their credit cards for faulty goods.

There's also some rumblings that not only have 08 and 09 been affected but the other 32 new colours - if that's true it could very well sink HAED completely, if they haven't been sunk already.

Others are contacting the artists that licence their work to HAED explaining the issues and the terrible customer service, and already there are rumours they will retract their licence as a result (no screenshots of this as it's only rumoured at the moment). Some very kind artists are letting people who purchased faulty kits run the original, high def artwork through a better pattern creating software so they have an accurate pattern to use.

For me, personally, the fallout involved a very emotional throwing away of the kit I had invested over a few hundred hours in and picking up one of the other dozen non-HAED kits I have instead.

Disclaimer

This is a repost from reddit. I really missed this sub so I decided to post some top articles from time to time until hopefully one day this community will be large enough to produce its own content.

Read the original here

This is a repost. I am not the original author (see disclaimer at the bottom).

Oh man, you guys, I can’t believe no one has written up the Sad Puppies yet! This is a tale of literary drama that went very nearly mainstream, tangentially involving a few people you’ve probably heard of, and it’s just packed with comically obvious villains and delicious schadenfreude. I sincerely hope that in a decade or two someone makes it into a heartwarmingly overwrought Oscar-bait docudrama. In the meantime, here’s what happened.

Tl;dr: science fiction had its own, somehow even dumber Gamergate.

This got so, so long, I’m sorry. You guys seemed to enjoy the extended Snapewives etc writeups so I kinda just went for it.

Diversity: The Final Frontier

Science fiction is, historically, a white guy-heavy club. There are notable exceptions, but for the most part when you say ‘sci fi’ people are going to think of classic 1950s-1970s genre giants like Heinlein and Asimov. Early editors and publishers deliberately cultivated a white male only scene. And, relevantly to the entire huge-ass essay I’m about to write, it’s stubbornly white and male. Although the field started opening up in the 80s with authors like Octavia Butler and Lois McMaster Bujold making inroads, and nominations for the Hugos (the genre’s highest awards, ie the Nerd Oscars) were actually about 50% given to female authors in 1992-93, backlash hit hard. From 1998-2009, no more than 25% of Hugo nominees were women, and some years as low as 5%. I can’t find hard numbers for racial diversity but it wasn’t any less bleak.

At a time when wider society was increasingly talking about maybe not gatekeeping literature quite so much, the science fiction fandom had spoken: stories of utopian societies and incomprehensibly advanced alien technology are relatable, but black people? This is not the way.

What changed in 2009 was Racefail. I’m not going to try and even summarize it, because it was an extremely complicated, contentious movement featuring about eight million people who won’t be relevant to the rest of this post. The extremely short version is that Racefail was an approximately year-long series of conversations, essays, responses, and counter-responses about racism and sexism in the speculative fiction community and the ways that non-white-guy people get shut out of the traditional publishing process. This was years before Gamergate, but it was an earlier example of the way online fan communities were starting to exert their authority.

In the wake of Racefail, a new generation of female and POC authors came out of the woodwork to participate more actively in the speculative fiction community, especially by finding easy-to-reach internet-based fans not locked behind magazines or publishers. Almost overnight the Hugo nominations looked a lot more balanced (40% female/60% male authors in 2010, 50/50 in 2011). A lot of really good contemporary talent blossomed, and we got some awesome novels that might never have seen the light of day. Problem solved!

The Hugos

That was just the exposition, sorry. The actual drama is going to center around the Hugo Awards. Like the Grammys and Golden Globes, the Hugos are the industry awards of the ‘Speculative Fiction’ (science fiction and fantasy) world, given out every year for accomplishments in a number of categories.

(It’s sci fi and fantasy, but this post is mostly going to be about the sci fi side, for reasons that mostly come down to science fiction being preferred literature of Logical and ~~Euphoric~~ Enlightened Gentlemen. Fantasy is for girls. Apparently.)

Unlike the Grammys etc, the format of Hugo nominations is somewhat unusual. Anyone who buys a ticket to the World Science Fiction Convention (aka Worldcon) can make nominations; the top five nominees are put through a ranked-choice vote by the same community. Every category also has a No Award option, intended to be used if voters think any or all of the nominees don’t deserve to be considered.

The decentralized nature of the award elections means the process can be fairly easily taken over by even a relatively small coordinated bloc. No one had ever really worried about this before, because no single author could ensure themselves an award and who else would bother gaming the Hugos?

Well, these guys would, as it turns out.

The Sad Puppies are born

History? In my spaceships?

The Sad Puppies movement was born in 2013, in the comment section of the blog of a science fiction author named Larry Correia. Correia lamented his lack of industry recognition, describing his work as ‘unabashedly pulp,’ and therefore discriminated against. In other words, modern fans cared more about books with literary and cultural merit than his good ol’ action stories about square-jawed spacemen punching bad guys and hooking up with sexy aliens. And that’s not fair. :c

Correia’s anger reflected a trend in reactionary science fiction blogging, which is a sentence that I did not expect to type when I woke up this morning. You see, the Puppies had their own explanation for the post-Racefail diversity burst: obviously it’s impossible that anyone actually likes books by or about women and/or nonwhite folks, so the increasing success of those authors was just pity awards and book sales, driven by liberal guilt and the desire to look Hashtag Woke. Conservative white male authors were convinced that they were, actually, the ones being discriminated against - some said the industry was anti-Christian, some yelled about the dreaded SJWs. Regardless of the cause, they weren’t winning everything anymore, which couldn’t possibly be the result of a fair process, so something had to change.

(The name ‘Sad Puppies’ is a reference to those emotionally manipulative Sarah McLachlin animal cruelty ads that had everyone crying themselves to sleep back in the day. Correia edited together a humorous video featuring himself as one of the pitiful little doggos who would die of Neglectitis without your ~~donation~~ vote!)

Let’s game the Hugos!

So Correia and friends dubbed themselves a movement and decided they’d raise support to get his latest book the Best Novel award at the 2013 Hugos…

...and failed. Completely. His book didn’t even make it to the election. Clearly Team Sad Puppies had to step up their game, so they advertised more and put together a whole slate of nominations in anticipation of the 2014 Hugos, intending to collectively win multiple categories.

...and failed, again. Of the seven Puppy nominees that reached the ballot in 2014, only one did better than ‘dead last’ and one actually lost to No Award, ie worse than last. “This was really a year that underscored that a younger generation of diverse writers are becoming central to the genre and helping to redefine and expand it,” noted nerd culture news repository Gizmodo, serenely unaware that there had even been a right-wing protest vote bloc.

Under Correia, the Sad Puppies had been pretty much entirely useless at achieving their actual goals. But interest in their club had spread through the rightwing geek internet, and a monster was waking…

Enter Players 1 and 2

deep breath

Time to introduce arguably the two central figures of Puppygate, ie the people I’m most focused on fantasy casting for my imaginary melodramatic reenactment film: NK Jemisin and Theodore Beale.

NK Jemisin is a sci fi/fantasy author and also black woman who incorporates themes of colonialism, oppression, and cultural conflict into her work; she was actually one of the pro-diversity voices of Racefail from way back at the top of this page. She’s also a really good writer. Her work burst onto the scene in 2010 to huge success and near universal critical acclaim and she’s since won approximately every fantasy literature award on the planet, refusing to back down from her political stances along the way.

Theodore Beale is better known as alt right culture war polemic Vox Day, who you might be familiar with if you were unfortunate enough to pay attention to Gamergate. He’s also an author, having created his own publishing house to distribute his Christian-themed fantasy books and “a guide to understanding, anticipating, and surviving SJW attacks.” He has been described as a “graspingly untalented bigot” (by John Scalzi) and “holy shit, that guy is a straight up literal Nazi” and once attempted to create a conservative alternative to Wikipedia.

The two are not friends.

In 2013, Vox Day ran for president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA). He lost, but NK Jemisin used her keynote speech as guest of honor at a large convention to publicly express her alarm that 10% of the SFWA membership had voted for a man who once referred to women’s suffrage as a “complete and unmitigated disaster” and had a lot of thoughts about something called ‘white tribalism’. In response, Vox Day used the official SFWA Twitter to link to a post on his blog in which he said that “genetic science presently suggests that we [ie white and black people] are not equally homo sapiens sapiens,” referred to Jemisin as a “half-savage,” and called her editor a “fat frog,” among a whole lot of other stuff. After a bunch of dumb waffling about civility and drama the SFWA kicked him out.

The incident apparently focused Vox Day on the dreadful oppression faced by rightwing white guys who write books about dragons. This all went down in 2013; now we’re jumping back to...

2015: Shit Gets Real

Puppies everywhere

In preparation for the 2015 Hugos, OG Sad Puppy Wrangler Larry Correia (remember him? No one else does) was succeeded by an author named Brad Torgerson, a guy who had been nominated for a couple industry awards but never found enough success to quit his day job.

About five minutes later, Vox Day popped up to announce his own splinter movement, the more extreme Rabid Puppies. While the Sads’ voting slate was officially a ‘suggestion,’ the Rabs were clear that they meant to be a unified bloc. Finally, someone was taking a stand against identity politics and affirmative action, by… only voting for books written by politically acceptable white guys.

Anyway.

War of the Puppies

2015 was inarguably the Year of the Puppies. Newly organized and energized and taking notes from the still-raging Gamergate movement, the Puppy candidates dominated the Hugo ballots - the Sad Puppies got 51 finalists, while the Rabid Puppies achieved 58. They swept several categories, meaning all five candidates were Puppy-approved. It escaped no one’s notice that Vox Day, Torgerson, Torgerson’s inner circle, and Vox Day’s publishing house were healthily represented, as well as a bunch of other authors who clearly were not on the ballot on the strength of their writing.

The whole thing took the rest of Worldcon by surprise - no one had ever tried to game the results at anything close to this scale before. The speculative fiction community was in an uproar. The Puppies were widely criticized for both their ideology (the Sad Puppies made a half-hearted attempt to pretend to disapprove of the Rabid Puppies and their openly white supremacist leader, convincing approximately nobody) and for their blatant abuse of the process. Much more successful and popular white guys like George R. R. Martin and sci fi writer Alastair Reynolds disowned them. Reasonably famous internet writer guy and former president of the SFWA John Scalzi started an all-out war against the movement, becoming their #2 nemesis - second only to Jemisin, who had become a symbol of everything the Puppies wanted banished from science fiction.

(Funnily enough, Scalzi won the 2013 Best Novel Hugo that Correia started the Sad Puppy movement to get.)

And the winner is…

When the panic died down, calls went out among the Worldcon community to No Award the Puppy candidates. The way this works is that in every category, No Award is essentially a sixth nominee. As the vote is ranked choice, a voter who feels that a given book or author is undeserving of the nomination can rank that book/person below No Award. Anyone who scores below No Award doesn’t place at all (so if NA gets third, the fourth, fifth, and sixth-place books get no recognition). If No Award wins the vote, no Hugo is awarded in that category at all. Prior to 2015 this was a rare occurrence.

The result: No Awards to every one of the categories with only Puppy candidates. No Award beat every Puppy-approved candidate in all of the other categories, with the sole exception of Guardian of the Galaxy winning Best Dramatic Presentation in the Long Form. No wins for Brad Torgerson or Vox Day.

Oops.

2016: Pounded In The Butt By My Reactionary Politics

Okay, So That Didn’t Work

By 2016 the Sad Puppies had completely lost control of Vox Day. They retreated to focus on gaming the votes at the brand new Dragon Awards of DragonCon, which at least kept them quiet. Newly crowned Supreme Puppy Emperor Vox Day vowed to DESTROY THE HUGOS AND LEAVE NOTHING BUT A SMOKING PIT and so forth.

The problem was that no one wanted to run on the Rabid Puppy ticket. Previous years had made it clear that associating yourself with the Puppies was a good way to win absolutely nothing at all, since even people who didn’t care about the ideological fight going on would vote against Puppy candidates in distaste for their gaming of the process. In fact, the only work or author to finish in anything other than last place after receiving a Puppy endorsement was Guardians of the Galaxy, which… probably didn’t need their help.

Guardian’s victory became the movement’s new strategy. Instead of nominating themselves, the Puppies would claim whichever independently successful authors weren’t entirely politically unacceptable. Then, when ‘their’ candidates won, so would the Puppies! It was foolproof.

The authors themselves (at least the ones who knew they’d been chosen by the Puppies; some had no idea) were… displeased. They demanded to be taken off the slate, to no avail. Neil Gaiman called the Puppies ‘sad losers.’ A few near-certain winners dropped out of the race to spite Vox Day. There was disagreement about whether authors who were essentially human shields should be No Awarded. In the end, the Puppies finally picked up a few ‘wins,’ but only with authors who weren’t associated with the movement.

And there was one victory they couldn’t celebrate at all: NK Jemisin became the first African American author to win the coveted Best Novel award for her book The Fifth Season.

THE BAD DOGS BLUES

There were a few Puppy-driven nominees on the ballot in 2016: joke nominees. The Puppies decided that if they couldn’t steal awards from minority authors, they’d delegitimize them. One of their most absurd picks was an obscure anonymous author who apparently wrote nothing but bizarre supernatural gay erotica.

That’s right: the Sad Puppies gave us Chuck Tingle.

Tingle accepted the nomination and used it to troll the hell out of his benefactors. Apparently no one had remembered to register RabidPuppies Dot Com, so Tingle bought it and redirected it to an LGBT charity and NK Jemisin’s marketing page. He arranged for feminist game developer and noted target of shrieking, incoherent Gamergate rage Zoë Quinn to give his acceptance speech. Lastly, he published the classic Slammed in the Butt by my Hugo Award Nomination, which I confess I have not read.

The End of the Puppies

Changes to the Hugo award process in 2017 reduced the effectiveness of bloc voting, but by that point it didn’t really matter. Gamergate had run out of momentum and the world had moved on. The Sad Puppies quietly disbanded; Vox Day and the Rabid Puppies struggled on for another year, but managed only 12 nominations and no wins. NK Jemisin took Best Novel again for the sequel to last year’s winning book.

Finally, in the scene that will almost certainly form the last triumphant shot of the melodramatic dramatization of this saga, in 2018 female authors won all the major Hugo categories, and NK Jemisin became the first person to win three consecutive Best Novel awards, one for every book in her Broken Earth trilogy.

In conclusion, I am going to go look at pictures of real, adorable, non-bigoted puppies. Thanks for reading!

Disclaimer

This is a repost from reddit. I really missed this sub so I decided to post some top articles from time to time until hopefully one day this community will be large enough to produce its own content.

Read the original here

This is a repost. I am not the original author (see disclaimer at the bottom).

If you don't know anything about lolita fashion, let me give you a quick primer. Lolita is a style of Japanese street fashion originating in 1970s Harajuku. While the name might squick Westerners, the fashion has nothing to do with that awful pedophilic book. The style actually originates from a feminist rebellion by young women against societal and parental expectations that they should dress and act a certain way in order to attract a husband. Instead, early lolitas created clothing which was heavily influenced by cutesy little girl's styles in order to dissuade men from approaching them. These days, lolita is worn around the world. Most people only wear it for special occasions like meetups with other lolitas and outings. They have lolita events at conventions, sponsored tea parties, and a bustling online buy/sell community.

The fashion itself focuses on a few key elements: poofy dresses or skirts, modest cuts with minimal skin showing, lace/ruffles/frills, and carefully coordinated looks where every element matches. There are plenty of sub-styles but the most popular are sweet, classic, and gothic. Sweet lolita is full of pastel colors, baby animal motifs, sweet foods, and fluffy stuff. Classic looks like a Victorian doll, using more subdued color palettes and simple or older-looking prints. Gothic focuses on black or very dark colors, crosses, bats, and spikes, while still maintaining the key elements of the overall style. There's other sub-styles too, like wa-lolita, pirate lolita, military lolita, and country lolita, but most follow one of the main three styles.

Before I begin this story, I should familiarize you with the idea of 'brand' or 'burando'. Brand is the term used when referring to items made by Japanese lolita companies like Angelic Pretty (AP), Baby the Stars Shine Bright (BtSSB), Alice and the Pirates (AatP), Metamorphose (Meta) and Innocent World (IW). Lolita isn't cheap to buy and brand items tend to be the most expensive. A new release dress from AP often runs around US$550. They also tend to have very small sizing, especially in the bust. Secondhand brand dresses can be just as expensive depending on how rare the style is. Prior to rerelease, the AP print Cat's Teaparty was going for upwards of 1k secondhand due to the rarity and desirability. People get insane about finding their dream dress and are willing to pay prices which seem ridiculous to those not involved in the fashion. There are cheaper options out there, especially Bodyline (which has some juicy drama I'll write about in a post soon) and Taobao, but some people pride themselves on being labeled 'brand whores' for only ever wearing brand items.

Kelly Eden and the $1,500 Dress

If you're not familiar with Kelly Eden, she's a cosplayer, model, YouTuber, massive weeaboo, and subject of much drama. She's claimed to be the most kawaii person in the United States, said that her video about Sailor Moon makeup made the price go up, sold all of her Hello Kitty merch after Sanrio refused to sponsor her, and claimed Disney was copying her look in one of their shows. Her house is adorable but all in all she has a history of entitlement and spoiled behaviour.

Back in 2017, Kelly went on a trip to Japan to do some work on a TV show. While she was there, she and her friends decided to hit up Akihabara, a very popular Japanese shopping district. This isn't your average western shopping center with a Banana Republic and Annie Anne's Pretzels. It's multiple buildings across many stories chock full of electronics, games, collectibles, toys, trading cards - basically the dream of every Japanese media collector and gadget geek. It also hosts department stores with some niche street fashion brands, including the main store of Angelic Pretty, the most widely known and popular lolita brand in the world.

Kelly and her entourage decided to visit the AP store for some shopping. Her group wanders the store until she hits upon The Dress. The Dress is gorgeous, an elaborate pink number dripping in ruffles and bows. It's every bit an over the top sweet lolita dress. After telling her friend she thinks it must be expensive, her friend converts the yen price on the fly, saying that it's $148. $148. When the average price of a brand new AP dress is around $550. In her later video, Kelly claims that she knows the average price of an AP dress and that she assumed it was on sale. AP is rarely, if ever, on sale. She asks to try it on and the shop staff decline. Note that this is common in lolita when an item is particularly expensive. They don't want to risk the dress being ruined by someone while they're trying it.

Kelly has a large chest, much larger than what is typically accommodated by brand dresses, and says she isn't sure if it would fit her. After debating the price and if it would fit, she decides to purchase the dress, figuring she could just return it if it wound up not fitting her. After all, it's just $148. She never takes out her phone to convert the price. She never asks shop staff for a conversion. She never considers that AP and other lolita brands have a no returns, no refunds policy. She never asks any questions while handing over her credit card, even after her debit card was declined. She looks directly at the price tag, agrees that it’s $148, and buys it.

That night she gets an email from her bank asking if she tried to make a $1,500 purchase on her debit card in Akihabara earlier in the day. Having never actually significantly considered why the dress she bought was so cheap, she freaks out, says it wasn't her, and cancels her card. The exact card she'd been holding earlier in the day. In Akihabara. At the time there was supposedly fraud. And which was still in her wallet.

Riiiight.

At long last she finally manages to figure out that the dress she thought she’d bought for a great bargain is actually anything but. It’s not $148. It’s roughly $1500. Ten times the price she thought she’d bought it for. Like any spoiled influencer who realizes they’ve made a grave, grave mistake, she freaks out and demands a refund. A refund from a store where giving refunds is Not A Thing They Do. Ever. Note The Emphasis Here.

Thing is, as I said in the intro to this post, there is a bustling secondhand lolita market. Brand new dresses can regularly go for nearly the same price online as in store simply because they’re easier to buy or because the release sold out. Kelly also has a sizable fanbase which is already known for buying her spare stuff and would likely have zero problems getting someone to buy this expensive dress from her. But either she doesn’t know this or she doesn’t consider it, because she marches down to the store after they say over the phone that they won’t return it.

The store obviously isn’t happy to see her. They know why she’s here. She has a translator go back and forth with the store manager, demanding to return it, telling them she’s not leaving until she has her money back. Dresses sold at these stores can’t have any flaws or damage at all, so the moment it leaves the store, while it could be sold second-hand, they can’t take it back and sell it again. The store staff have to thoroughly inspect the whole dress to be sure it isn’t damaged or worn. At long last, after having a fit in the store, they reluctantly agree to return it and she leaves.

After getting back from her trip, Kelly publishes a vlog detailing the whole fiasco. She makes herself out to be the hero who made a mistake and was horribly inconvenienced, but some viewers are quick to point out that she’s definitely not the victim here. Word gets out to the lolita community proper and shit hits the fan. Lolitas, outraged by her mistreating the store staff and talking bad about their favorite brand, bash her to hell and back across social media. A popular snarky lolita YouTuber, Tyler Willis of Last Week Lolita News, does a video ripping her a new one. This is soon followed by another popular YouTube lolita, Lovely Lor, doing a less snarky, more explanatory video also explaining exactly what she did wrong and why everyone is so upset.

Kelly doesn't take it well. She tweets up a storm, blocks a lot of popular lolita and kawaii influencers including Tyler and Lor, and ultimately, unable to take the criticism, deletes the video. It now only lives on in the clips in Tyler’s video. Lolitas continue to make jokes about her to this day and she has zero respect or credibility in the community.

I have other lolita drama I can write up if there's interest, like how one brand's CEO hosted model hunts to find a foreign wife.

Disclaimer

This is a repost from reddit. I really missed this sub so I decided to post some top articles from time to time until hopefully one day this community will be large enough to produce its own content.

Read the original here

This is a repost. I am not the original author (see disclaimer at the bottom).

In 2015, Neelix was a well respected member of the Wikipedia community. He'd been on Wikipedia for nine years and made more than 180,000 edits. He'd written several featured articles, helped lead Wikipedia education programs, and served as an administrator for four years. So it came as a surprise when, on November 5th, an anonymous user reported Neelix to Wikipedia's noticeboard for "chronic, intractable behavioural problems", accusing him of vandalism on a mass scale.

First, a little background information. Most new pages on Wikipedia go through a process where an experienced user reviews the page and checks it for any issues. Pages that are inappropriate are tagged for deletion and the creator is warned; users who repeatedly create inappropriate pages are banned. Pages created by admins are automatically exempt from this process, because it's assumed that admins know better than to create junk pages. It is this assumption that allowed Neelix to escape notice for so long.

The anonymous user had stumbled across a handful of questionable redirect pages created by Neelix. Some were just silly and pointless, like "Anti-trousers" redirecting to "Pantslessness", or "Sixteen-headed" redirecting to "Polycephaly". But others were puerile, if not outright offensive, such as "Titty cancer" for breast cancer or "Boobie builder" for breast reconstruction. Many users were shocked to learn that these pages were created by an administrator. Another admin remarked that "if I saw this kind of crap from a new account I'd block it instantly as a vandal".

The rabbit hole went deeper. The reporting user originally complained about "dozens" of inappropriate redirects. As others looked into Neelix's page creations, that figure changed to thousands. You can get a sense of the scale of the problem from looking at this list of deleted pages. Tittypumps, tittypumping, tittypumpers, tittypumped, titpumps, titpumping, pumps titties, pumps tits, boobypumping, boobypumpers, boob pump... and that's just for one article. It soon became clear that Neelix had created redirects based on various permutations of the words "tits" and "boobs" for almost every single breast related article on Wikipedia.

Maybe Neelix meant well but got carried away. One could argue that it's reasonable to redirect "boob sex" and "tit fucking" to "mammary intercourse". But it's much harder to defend redirects like "Titty tumors", "Segmental removal of the titties", "Constructions of the booby", "Hypoplastic tits" and "Atrophy of the titties". And there were thousands more of these! Neelix had created over 80,000 redirects, and a substantial portion of them were about titties and boobies. A commentator quipped: "Thank God he apparently never heard the term "jugs" or "rack", or this would have been many times worse".

Some users speculated that Neelix's account had been hacked, but this was not the case. Several Wikipedia editors knew Neelix in real life and were able to confirm that he was in control of the account. Everyone was baffled. Why would an admin create so many terrible redirects? "It just seems so childish", one user said. "These are pages a high school vandal would make, not an experienced editor."

No explanation was forthcoming. Neelix said, "I apologize for creating unusual redirects. When creating them, I did not think the community in general would be against them. Again, I am very sorry." But he did not explain what he was thinking when he created thousands of pages like "Suckling of the boobies" and "Tumorous titties".

With dozens of users poring over Neelix's edit history, other issues came to the surface. In 2013, Neelix had created an article about Tara Teng, the 2011 winner of the Miss Canada beauty pageant. Teng's pageant win and her subsequent activism against human trafficking granted her enough notability for a Wikipedia article. But Neelix's article on Teng was perhaps a bit too detailed for her level of fame. By the time Neelix was done with it, Teng's biography was over 5,600 words long - longer than the article on the Dalai Lama! The article included five different photos of Tara and such important details as "In October 2012, Teng appeared unannounced at restaurant Szechuan Chongqing" and "In February 2013, Teng was asked to attend a sleepover called "Beautiful, You" at G.W. Graham Middle-Secondary School in Chilliwack".

This article was first noticed by users on the Hipinion.com forum, who mocked it in a thread titled "This is the story of a beauty queen as told by her stalker". The Wikipedia criticism forum Wikipediocracy took note of it as well. The article was soon edited down to a reasonable size, although not without complaints from Neelix - he and his friends accused everyone who trimmed the article of being sockpuppets. This incident was mostly forgotten until someone in the redirect thread pointed out a disturbing fact:

Neelix started making breast redirects immediately after Tara Teng posted a picture of herself breastfeeding on Instagram.

Anyway, the community now had to decide what to do with tens of thousands of titty pages. Some users suggested deleting all 80,000 of Neelix's redirects. But there were some good ones mixed in with the bad. And what to do with Neelix? This behavior would have gotten a normal user blocked within minutes, but Neelix was a respected admin. It didn't seem right to block him.

After several days of discussion, the noticeboard report ended with Neelix being banned from creating redirects but keeping his admin privileges. No longer able to make boob redirects, Neelix voluntarily gave up his adminship and retired from Wikipedia. A new deletion criterion was invented: any redirect created by Neelix could be instantly deleted without discussion.

It took until April 2018 to delete all the titty redirects.

Disclaimer

This is a repost from reddit. I really missed this sub so I decided to post some top articles from time to time until hopefully one day this community will be large enough to produce its own content.

Read the original here