Overshadowed By Controversy Cleanup

'Tis gone.

EDIT: Topper, removed misuse of OBC on YMMV.Blasto.

Edited by SpongeBat1 on Mar 5th 2024 at 6:05:10 AM

It might qualify instead for Dancing Bear? If its popularity stemmed mostly from being Hartman's last role.

It's more like Just Here for Godzilla

It's been almost a week since I posted about this, so does anybody want to give more input on this?

Looks good!

So about Limbus Company, the good news that six months have passed. The bad news? Hoo boy, this is one of the biggest Wall of Text I've ever seen in YMMV.Limbus Company:

• Overshadowed by Controversy: Ooooh boy, enough for it to become national news in Korea; On August 2023, Intervallo IV.5 dropped and with it the Molar Boatworks Identities of Ishmael and Sinclair - and a group of very vocal Korean players heavily disliked the fact that Ishmael wasn't sexualized enough (despite it actually being the most fanservice-filled Identity at that point in time) and started claiming that the game was being 'tainted' by 'feminism'. This group, which organized itself on South Korea's equivalent of 4chan and calling themselves the 'Reverb Ensemble' (Yes, really. They straight-up named themselves after the previous game's main overarching villains) tried to 'ideology check' the Identity artist - but immediately relented when they realized that the artist was a man. Instead, in an act of misogynistic anger they began targetting the CG artist at that time, who is a woman, harassing her online, making up fake tweets of her being a 'radical feminist' in an attempt to get back at her for...nothing, essentially. Other fans, reasonably, began to worry about the whole situation, and Project Moon quickly responded... which is when the real controversy happens. Project Moon, alongside a Twitter post of various fixes to the game meant to be an Author's Saving Throw for some annoyances at the time, added at the end that the CG artist would no longer work with Project Moon and that Canto IV.5 would be the last story act with her art. The fanbase quickly went into an uproar that Project Moon seemingly gave in so easily to bad apples of the community and completely betraying all their messaging in all their games (the fact that Canto IV featured a CEO who made an employee a scapegoat did NOT go unnoticed) for seemingly no reason. This caused the official Limbus Company twitter account to lose dozens of thousands of followers in the span of a few days and for the game's playercount to dive downwards at a massive rate that would never really fully recover. Project Moon didn't help its case by giving a very badly worded and vague response that threatened to take legal actions on people spreading 'misinformation' on the subject. A statement released months later attempted to clarify this by saying that Vellmori, the artist in question, willingly left the job as a result of the harrassment and that she didn't want the reason for her leaving to be explained in order to avoid it getting worse - but not only did critics point out that this contradicts their first statement about the situation, it still paints Project Moon as cowardly and incompetent in managing to protect workers even in the best possible interpretation of events. The controversy, even if 'resolved' by now, still haunts the game and became a symbol of Korea's infamous 'feminist hunting' corporate practices.

I swear this whole entry gave me an headache trying to read it. Any unnecessary parts that need to be cut out?

The moment the first sentence said "Ooooh boy", I knew I was in for a bad ride...

Yeah, no. While the controversy has become synonymous for the rampant misogyny in South Korea, plus the way Project Moon handled the situation went against the game's "corporations are bad" theme, the game itself still has a fan following and the most I about people discussing the game's controversy pin the blame to the He-Man Woman Haters and the growing concern of misogyny in Korea than either Limbus or Project Moon. This just comes off as not-even-subtle-at-all levels of complaining.

...Is there proof that the game's fandom still exist in the first place? I haven't touched it even with a single-foot pole ever since the whole thing blew up.

Edited by Siegfried1337 on Mar 7th 2024 at 5:15:35 AM

Here's the link to the subreddit for reference. All of the top posts are fanart, memes, discussions, threads or posts related to the game's content, showing that in spite of the backlash, the fandom is still active to this day.

A single subreddit isn't enough to convince me. Not to mention the one time I returned to it, they declared Moon Channel's video on the gender inequality issue in South Korea disinformation, even though it had legitimate talking points. So yeah, I'm not entirely convinced.

Edited by Siegfried1337 on Mar 7th 2024 at 5:59:11 AM

We don't have any evidence that the game's fandom has ceased to exist either. There are many people in gaming communities like this one who prefer to ignore this kind of drama and keep playing, as long as the core experience remains intact.

I see. I will reluctantly agree that the game's fandom is still there, but regardless I still plan to keep the entry due to the game making headlines in South Korea because of that. I only plan to remove the parts that are excessively complaining. Is there any parts that need to be removed aside from the "ooh boy" part (which I plan to remove anyway)?

Edited by Siegfried1337 on Mar 7th 2024 at 8:56:45 AM

Fair enough

I was looking through the page history for OvershadowedByControversy.Web Original and saw a hidden entry for the Fan Film Spider-Man: Lotus that was removed due to it not being six months since the films release. Given that the film released August 2023 and it's now March of 2024 and the only times that I see this film get mentioned is through memes (like the "racist Spider-Man" meme) that reference the controveries surrounding it, I think it's a valid example of Overshadowed by Controversy

• Spider-Man: Lotus was once a much-anticipated Fan Film, with even Jon Watts, the director of the Spider-Man: Home Trilogy, congratulating Gavin for his efforts. However, the hype train would be severly derailed after offensive tweets from the director and actor playing Spider-Man were leaked by someone who (presumably) worked on the film. These days, Spider-Man: Lotus is more known for said racist tweets made by the director and Spider-Man's actor and the various memes that spawned from the controversy than the contents of the film itself. The fact that the film itself ended up being of dubious quality in spite of their bold claims it would rival the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the allegations of grooming a minor against Green Goblin's actor shortly after the film's release certainly didn't help matters either.

The Limbus Company rewrite looks good.

Edited by jlvs200s on Mar 8th 2024 at 8:27:41 PM

Looks good!

Anyways, here's the rewrite for the Limbus Company entry:

• Overshadowed by Controversy: Once a promising entry to Project Moon's other works, the reputation of it has been tainted when during the release of Intervallo IV.5, some players complained that the Molar Boatworks Identities of Ishmael wasn't sexualized enough and claimed that the game was tainted by feminist extremists, and framed the CG artist, Vellmori as one of them, causing Project Moon to supposedly lay her off and starting a series of uproars within not just the fandom, but also by the Korean game community as well. While it was later revealed that Vellmori later voluntary resigned due to the harassment, the incident remains as a major problem of South Korea's infamous gender war issues.

Edited by Siegfried1337 on Mar 8th 2024 at 10:50:10 AM

I think you have a redundant later in there.

Also, it should be "voluntarily resigned".

It may be worth mentioning that the campaign against the artist went beyond the usual angry rants and review-bombing, there were activist turning up outside the developer's office and threatening violence. Makes it more understandable why the company caved in to them (or made it look so).

On YMMV.Blue Peter:

• Overshadowed by Controversy: Richard Bacon's drug scandal is the most memorable moment of his run as a Blue Peter presenter.

Bacon was a presenter for about a year ('97-98) before a Role-Ending Misdemeanor got him fired.

Blue Peter's been running since 1958 and is still going. If there's anything most people think of as an iconic Blue Peter moment, it's the baby elephant Lulu relieving herself in front of the camera.

Bacon's career was resurrected elsewhere, so I'm not even sure this is true for him, let alone the show.

Cut?

Cut.

It doesn't say his admission of taking drugs overshadows the whole show or his career, just his run as a host. That said, I don't know if it's allowed to have OBC entries about specific eras of a show.

From YMMV.Exodus Gods And Kings:

• Overshadowed by Controversy:
  • Right when the first trailer hit, mostly everyone was talking about the cast being white rather than the actual film itself. After the movie dropped with low ratings, the Race Lift will be the only thing anyone will remember the movie for.
  • In an interview before the movie, Bale said "I think [Moses] was likely schizophrenic and was one of the most barbaric individuals that I ever read about in my life." Yeah, that's not gonna alienate the demographics most likely to see this film, right?

The first bullet sounds more like Tainted by the Preview, so does the second one, although I personally think it's too negative.

Thoughts?

The first one might count, as I rarely see the movie brought up without mentioning the whitewashing. Though I feel like the grammar is off.

I've never seen people discuss Bale's comment, so that's probably misuse.

The whitewashing is what I know most remember about the film, but I’ve never heard about Christian Bale’s quote. I think the latter could be cut.