Kiwi Farms
Please keep this thread for general discussion on the drama or the presentation of new information/personalities. Existing cows related to this drama have their own threads and discussion about them or posting of their latest social media rants should go into those locations. This OP has been edited several times as the drama developed. A changelog is located at the bottom.
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Anime conventions are usually steady affairs. Places where lonely weebs can brave the sun for a few short glorious days, meet with the voices behind their cherished heroes, and leave disappointed. On a day lost to memory, this would be no exception. A young Fujoshi attempted to get a prominent Anime voice actor by the name of Vic Mignogna to autograph her yaoi fan art involving a character he voice acted. Vic has stated he didn't sign it, because he doesn't sign any noncanon material like that. This led to an angry fujoshi pushed whisper campaign against Vic, citing homophobia. One such Fujoshi was a girl named Allison Cooke going by the twitter handle HanLeia.On January 16, HanLeia made a tweet blasting vic for being a homophobic bigot. By the end of February 2019 lawsuits were being threatened, tens of thousands of dollars were being crowdfunded to pay for them, tons of ink was being spilled on geek culture blogs, thousands of hours of youtube videos were rendered and the US Governments Joint Counter Terrorism task force was making calls asking wtf was going on. Welcome to the Weeb Wars.
=THE MAIN CHARACTERS=
Vic Mignogna
Voice Actor~He's done Edward Elric from Full Metal and more recently Broly for Dragonball
Fired from Funimation
Likes warm hugs
Twitter
Facebook
Twitter Archive
Facebook Archive
Dox
Marzgurl
Power Word Kaylyn Saucedo
Worked for Channel Awesome
Twitch thot
Twitter
Facebook
Twitch
Twitter Archive
Facebook Archive
Monica Rial
Voice Actress~She did Bulma from Dragonball
Works for Funimation
Mad at the Internet
Twitter
Facebook
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Facebook Archive
Dox
Sean Schemmel
Voice actor~ He's done Goku. But not as good as the original
Works for Funimation
Bipolar
Twitter
Facebook
Twitter Archive
Dox
Samantha Inoue-Hart
Animator, Translator, Investigator
Works for Funimation and others
Fat
Currently in DFE mode on Social Media
(Picture shown in Landscape as Vertical mode is unable to truly capture her)
Mike Ensley
CEO of PensaCon
He took over after the last CEO was arrested for running an interstate drug ring
Probably autistic, charged with felony domestic battery
Currently in DFE mode on the social media
Dox
Lynzee Loveridge
Interest Editor for Anime News Network
Wrote the initial hit piece on Vic Mignogna that included the photos disavowed by the girl in them
Really likes cats
Twitter
Twitter Archive
Dox
Jamie Marchi
Voice Actor and Translator for Funimation
Is really vocal about how much she hates vic on twitter
True fan of Lorena Bobbit
Twitter
Facebook
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Facebook Archive
Dox
Ron Toye
AKA Ron Soye
Fiance to Monica Rial, Mortgage broker for The Tuttle Group
Really likes emoticons
Twitter
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Dox
Todd Haberkorn
Voice Actor for Funimation
Unwilling participant to the drama
Only worth 10% what Vic is on GoFundMe
Twitter
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Jessie Pridemore
Cosplay Thot
#Metoo'd Haberkorne to back up accusations against vic
Only did blackface once
Twitter
Facebook
Twitter Archive
Facebook Archive
Dox
HanLeia
Power word: Allison Cooke
Former student of UH-Manoa
Militant fujoshi who started something way bigger then her
Twitter has been nuked
Twitter Archive
Facebook
Facebook Archive
Dox
Japan Dox
Chris Sabat
Producer, Voice Actor and ADR for Funimation~He has done Piccolo and Vegeta
Thinks he plots like Cersei Lannister, is actually more a Walder Frey
Twitter
Twitter Archive
Facebook
Facebook Archive
Dox
Shane Holmberg
Some guy who helps organize cons, according to himself
Graduated Sumo Cum Lard from the Google School of Law, serial abuser of innocent chairs
Twitter
Twitter Archive
Facebook
Facebook Archive
Dox
=BACKGROUND TO THE AUTISM=
Nothing happens in a vacuum, and this drama supernova is no exception. There had already been deep concern about so called SJW infiltration into the anime dubbing space. This can be a problem because translating anything is not an exact science so much as an art. There are many words and concepts in one language that have no direct translation into another. This means a translator has to take some creative license with the words to try and get the point across. This has led to a sneaking suspicion that Anime subbing companies like Funimation were indulging in...creative...translation of the original Japanese works to better fit their own personal political agendas.
In a translation of the Anime "Prison School", a girl accuses a character of "being one of those GamerGate creep shows". This was in 2015.
This is a problem for a couple reasons. First of all, GamerGate was a strictly western phenomenon that had little to no traction or notice in Japan. The idea that it would be featured prominently in a Japanese anime was ludicrous on its face. It was later revealed that this gem was snuck into the translation by a man known as Tyson Reinhart. A truly amazing individual who goes by the inspired title "Kill Nazis" on Twitter. (Which you can find here). A cursory glance over his more recent twitter shows he has a severe case of Trump Derangement Syndrome, many fear posts about right wing violence, rapey supreme court justices, and everything else you would expect to find on the twitter feed of someone who puts Kill Nazis as their handle.
Another similar incident from the same time period came from the Anime "Hajimete No Gal"; "My First Girlfriend is a Gal". Gal is a Japanese word that has no real translation into English. It sort of means Slut, but not really. Best way to describe it is a "Trashy outgoing woman who is interested in fun and being slightly rude in public, but not TOO rude or trashy". See what I mean about translation? I am sure my quick and dirty description of the word Gal will bring an autistic screech somewhere, and they would not be entirely wrong. Now compare the Funimation translation to the Fan translation.
Fan Translation
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Funimation Translation
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Note how Part Timer got translated to toothless cuck. The boss was clearly an inartful caricature of a modern American right winger in the translation where in the Fan translation he's more of a pompous douche bag. For Anime Fandom, this was the smoking gun, and led over the years to an undercurrent of suspicion that never truly boiled up to the surface. You could see the bubbles percolating when other incidents started to occur. Such as the censoring of the Rape scene in SAO 3, Alicazation more recently.
This leads us to Vic Mignogna specifically. The man is in essence the perfect foil for the SJW, in that he is an (arguably) attractive white male with hugely prominent voice acting roles. Most notably as Edward Elric from Full Metal Alchemist. It also does not hurt that he kinda looks like the character if you squint hard enough, resulting in him gaining a legion of devoted fangirls and a fan club called the "Risembool Rangers" which is run by his mother. The man is also an outspoken christian who as part of his appearances at Anime Conventions requires that a space be set aside for him to hold bible studies with his fans should they be interested in attending. In short, he was the perfect canary for this particular coal mine.
Considering how fraught the culture wars have become in "the current year", one would think the folks at Funimation would handle internal corporate drama with tact and grace so as to avoid the appearance of impropriety. You would of course, be very wrong.
=HOW IT ALL WENT DOWN=
On January 16, HanLeia made the following tweet
Archive
The ever vigilant kiwis over at the anime observation division of the Farms made passing note of the situation. Nothing seemed to indicate the coming storm until @ATaxingWoman saw that known anime voice acting big shots like Monica Rial were adding likes to the tweet thread that was gaining viral traction. It went on to its current status with hundreds of replies, and thousands of retweets/likes.
In earlier drafts it was stated that Allison Cooke was the Fujoshi who asked vic for his signature on the Yaoi art. Allison has since claimed that this is not true, and as there is no evidence to contradict her statement the OP was changed accordingly to reflect this.
On January 17, Kaylyn Saucedo (Marzgurl) tweeted at Funimation to draw attention to the allegations towards him from HanLeias post.
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In this same twitter thread she also attempts to organize the coming brigading to get him fired, making the first recorded post containing #kickvic
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One thing to know about our friend Kaylyn here is that she got her start on Channel Awesome, a known den of cancer and autism with its own thread here. She is also a notorious e-begger who routinely asks for help on GoFundMe to help pay for her adult responsibilities like taking care of her own cat.
She is also now plotting her next moves on Pretty Ugly Little Liar
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Then, on January 30, an article written by Lynzee Loveridge dropped on the Anime News Network.
Original
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The article was essentially a rehash of everything said on twitter, and relied primarily on "Anonymous sources" and pictures of Vic hugging fans at Cons to make the case that Vic Mignogna was a serial abuser of underage girls. For example
Sounds pretty bad, doesn't it. Included was a picture of the alleged assault
In response to the accusations in ANN and on twitter, Vic's employers at Rooster Teeth and Funimation (which is owned by Sony) began an immediate internal investigation into the claims, and then promptly fired Vic a week later on February 5th. The end. Or so they thought. A common and recurring theme in any good drama like this is that the people involved often make critical mistakes from the outset and then when those mistakes are discovered often tend to double down which only makes the situation worse.
The first mistake was assuming the the rest of the world was like twitter and that "#believeallwomen" would be sufficient to prevent people from asking too many questions. This was a mistake however because of the aforementioned "Risembool Rangers", Vics personal club of fan girls. It was as inevitable as the dawn that many of them would rise to defend their e-husband. Which is a huge problem for believing all women because then you will need to decide which women to believe when they inevitably start disagreeing and catfighting with each other.
Rather then responding to the outrage with tact or even better, silence and meaningless corporate platitudes, Vic's coworkers at Funimation went after the fans for daring to question the narrative they had presented that Vic was fired after it was revealed he'd literally raped hundreds of underage girls at conventions. Leading the charge was Monica Rial, known primarily for being the voice of Bulma in Dragonball who claimed that not only were the allegation true, but that Vic had sexually assaulted her himself.
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This leads to the second mistake. Make sure you got some evidence to back up your claims, and at a bare minimum the things you HAVE presented as evidence check out. The picture from ANN posted above was publicly denounced by the girl involved.
She stated that she gave vic permission to hug her and that her parents were present. She was also not underage at the time either as was alleged. In another video posted to youtube, another girl who had her photos being used smear Vic Mignogna on another website did her own public denunciation on youtube. She also alleged that her situation was by no means unique.
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With regard to Monica Rial's claim to being literally raped by Vic, his fans started to demand she show some sort of proof that her claim was true. Police reports, forensic, video, second hand witnesses, something. To say that this demand led to a triggering would be a massive understatement.
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Within days Monica Rial was a meme. Not a good start.
Not to be outdone, another voice actor at Funimation named Jamie Marchi went on the record
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This tweet will factor greatly later. In a lawsuit for defamation, one of the things that needs to be shown, especially with a public figure like Vic Mignogna is that the people behind the defamation acted with actual malice rather than just incompetence. This tweet in particular is emblematic of the kind of things that were going on behind the scene at Funimation. Marchi's hard move against twitter is also what fully solidified in the minds of the anime fandom that something dire was afoot. She was infamously fingered for a particularily bad and overly political translation of an anime called "Dragon Maid". And its just...you need to watch it to believe it.
She would then go on to also accuse Vic of sexual assault.
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Much like Rial, when the demands came to provide some sort of evidence that the accusations were true she raged and deflected.
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Which lead to the ultimate declaration. Keep in mind now, this woman is high up in Funimation and was most likely also involved in the investigation that led to Vic's firing. It is here that she straight up claims that an accusation is enough, and that once accused you are guilty until proven innocent. Because innocent until proven guilty supports rape culture!
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In response to what was happening and the attacks from his coworkers at Funimation, Vic made a public apology at a con which you can watch here. Note just how many fangirls still showed up to listen.
=PENSACON AND COMICSGATE=
Considering how loud the Funimation crew were, along with the #kickvic SJW lynch mob, it was inevitable the autistic drama would be noticed by nerd war drama channels on youtube. In particular, the crew from the Comicsgate. On February 13, YellowFlash reported on what was being dubbed AnimeGate. The story was quickly picked up by other Comicsgate and Star Wars drama pushers Jeremy Hambly (TheQuartering), Jeremy Griggs (Geeks and Gamers) and Ethan Van Sciver (ComicArtistPro secrets) YellowFlash seems to have come to the story independently. What drew the attention of Griggs and Van Sciver was the supernova of Autism coming out of PensaCon with respect to #kickvic
As part of Vic Mignogna’s ongoing unpersoning was the cancellation of his appearances at various anime conventions. PensaCon was no exception to this, but what made them unique was how vocal they were about doing so, and the combative nature with which the Cons official twitter account engaged with hostile fans. There is no way to know for sure, but it is assumed by most that the man behind the PensaCon tweets was the CEO of the con himself, Mike Ensley. What follows was an increasingly escalating war of words played out on the cons official twitter. Before it got nuked the Cons account threatened to arrest anyone caught supporting Vic, and most infamously of all sent ominous threats directed at people who questioned why they were being targeted by the Cons official twitter when they had not even tagged them in their conversations. To which they responded “We have eyes everywhere”.
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It was at this point things started to go downhill for #kickvic. Samantha Inoue-Hart, an animator and translator with Funimation who was involved with the internal investigation into the allegations claimed that Vic supporters had called in a Swatting to her home. To support the claim she posted this picture showing the damage to her door.
There was just one problem. She had posted the EXACT SAME PICTURE to her facebook nearly THREE YEARS AGO. Only that time it was a burglary not a Swatting. People in #Istandwithvic immediately went to town on this with a plethora of videos. In response to this sudden revelation, Samantha was reached out to by ANN to clarify things, leading to the retarded dodge that she posted old photos because she didn't want to dox herself.
Police also sent a fax report that shows that no, there was no swatting.
A police officer came by her house, looked at the door, and saw it was broken.
This gem of a facebook post also came up.
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And in this archive is a longwinded exposition by Harte on how its cruel to require accusers to be cross examined by the accused, or to provide proof to the public at large to back up the accusations.
So let this one sink in. Literally a day after Vic is fired one of the women involved in the internal investigation was publicly talking about how she personally disliked Vic, and did not believe accusers should be required to provide proof. A week later she made up from whole cloth a swatting incident to make Vics supporters look bad. Not a good look for Funimation or #kickvic. As the feeding frenzy took off, she began to nuke all her social media. This was not before she dragged in the voice actor for Goku Sean Schemmel who came out publicly in support of her in her time of tribulation and lambasted the evil people who were harassing his colleagues. A very ill timed effort at white knighting that also led to massive back pedaling and the nuking of his social media. As for Harte, she no doubt held the hope that by deleting fucking everything, the information just posted above would never see the light of day again. About that.
Now with massive interest in what was going on (FFS look at the Google metrics) A private facebook group that was dedicated to getting vic fired had this gem leaked.
With evidence #kickvic was actually considering fabricating evidence, the blood was in the water. The Nerd Rage pile of explosive autism on the internet was reaching its peak, and it was at this point that Mike Ensley down at Pensacon struck the match that blew this thing sky high. After Jeremy Griggs (Geeks and Gamers) published a video talking about the drama, his press passes to PensaCon were revoked. They also played “The Toxic Fandom” card.
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This basically rang the dinner bell and led to Jeremies pal Ethan Van Sciver to also report on the situation and the earlier posts where Pensacon was threatening to have people arrested. In response to this, Ensley sent an angry email to Van Sciver threatening to sue him for defamation.
As part of the raging at Van Sciver, Pensacon (and it is assumed Mike Ensley was behind the official pensacon emails as well, though not 100% confirmed) included in the email an offhand comment that they had received bomb threats as a consequence of his and Jeremies coverage of them. In response to this, Van Sciver asked to see the bomb threat so he could show it to people and let them know about it. They obliged, but went on to say that it was in the hands of law enforcement and that Van Sciver should not show anyone. He showed people anyway, which led to people tweeting about it and tagging @fbi in them. The next morning, a Special Agent from the FBI working for the Joint Counter Terrorism Task Force (A coordination body between Homeland Security, the FBI, and the Department of Defense) called Van Sciver and demanded to know what was going on. Apparently they had received no such information from Pensacon about any bomb threats and they really wanted to know what Van Sciver knew about it as the con was taking place at a Government owned facility.
== THREATS OF A LAWSUIT==
So to recap, some angry thots in mid January accused Vic Mignogna of being a homophobic rapist on twitter. By the end of January he was done in Julius Caesar style by his coworkers at Funimation, who it turned out personally hated him and were also not above faking a Swatting incident to make Vic look bad. And by mid February with a nerd feeding frenzy in full swing their supporters were threatening to have people arrested and faking bomb threats that drew the attention of the FBI.
Enter Nick Rekieta, attorney at lol (and known fan of the farms, we love you too Nick!). At his urging, Vic Mignogna retained the legal services of Beard-Harris, a litigation law firm in Texas. Among their lineup of partners includes the State Senator for Texas Senate district 1. Even more fun, The "Harris" in the firm name went to seminary at Nazarene College for a BA in Religion before getting his Juris doctorate at Southern Methodist. Considering the smell of anti-christian bias, this portends fireworks. Up until this point, a major defense the #kickvic crowd had was that “innocent until proven guilty only applies in a court of law”. So Nick laid out just how this was going to go down and how it would be brought into a court of law in a very informative livestream that is well worth the watch for the legally autistic.
The tl;dr is that there is provable actual malice, clear defamation of character, tortiuous interference with a contract, and many of the people involved have shot their credibility publicly over the past month. It also did not help that once Vic had been purged many of them benefited professionally and financially from his absence by getting his parts and positions. He also started a gofundme that in two days raised over 50,000 dollars. #kickvic was not happy with the news that they may have to back up what went down in court. Not happy at all. Especially when they discovered that the most likely State of venue for this lawsuit will be Texas, the State Funimation is Headquartered in. In Texas, not even the truth is a defense against tortiuous interference, which means at a minimum Marzgurl is doomed as she was the one who tweeted directly at Funimation. But nobody believes this will stop just with Marzgurl. Worse, if this does go to trial, it will be a Texas Jury that Funimation and all the people presented here will need to explain this situation too. Everyone say hello to @MarzGurl!
In a desperate effort to fend this turn events off, #kickvic began to claim that Nick was a grifter scamming people for cash and that the gofundme was fraudulent and Nick was not a "REAL" Lawyer.
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In response to this, Vic Mignogna himself came out and publicly stated that no, the GoFundMe was legit and that Nick Rekieta was his friend. You can find the statement here
With the fake lawyer narrative now shot, #kickvic resorted to the tried and true method of trying to shut down something SJW’s want shut down. They called Rekieta a racist.
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According to Nick the photo is from over a decade ago and long before he was lawyer. Figuring they had something to run with, #kickvic decided they would try and get Nick disbarred. Because reasons. Yet they can’t even do this correctly as they sent their report to an agency not involved with the disbarment process at all.
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Not to be content with this, a twitter sperg for #kickvic who claimed to be a bigshot with the conventions and was challenging Rekieta's legal expertise dared to get Rekieta to invite him onto his show for a debate. So Rekieta accepted and what followed was perhaps the greatest in the field documentation of a player character encountering an NPC.
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Not to be outdone by Sir Shane of the Battered Chair, another white knight stepped foreword to do battle with Rekieta in the form of Rial's fiance Ron Toye. Up until this point, Ron was just a average mortgage broker dating a D list celebrity. Over the span of two weeks however he transformed into a lolcow noted for his excessive use of emoticons. He also implicated himself in the potential civil conspiracy surrounding Vic's firing, threatened to make fraudulent claims to the Minnesota State Bar against Rekieta, and was the recipient of the sole tweet by Ty Beard.
Rekieta would go on to do an interview with Ty that confirmed this was in fact his twitter account. It was following this interview that it was revealed that not only were they representing Vic, but also Todd Haberkorn. Haberkorn had entered this mess early when the initial allegations against Vic first surfaced and was among the crowd moving swiftly to distance themselves from him. Until Jessie Pridemore stepped in and accused him of raping her at a convention as well. Another #metoo story following the rest, alleging a severe problem of systemic misogyny and rape culture in the Anime voice acting community.
There was a problem. of course. According to Todd, he and Jessie had consensual sex at a Con, and afterwords she got furious when he refused to take the relationship further. The Archive of the incident and the chat logs are here. the original post has since been deleted. tl;dr Pridemore claimed to be emotionally unstable, Todd wasn't interested in hooking up further and she got mad.
== KAMEHACON ==
With an actual lawfirm now on retainer to the tune of 100,000 dollars, and cease and desist letters going out, you would think that at long last sanity would prevail and the drama would die down as everyone waited for the shoe to drop. This would mostly be true. Following some very panicked tweeting, Jamie marchie went radio silent except for pushing a dubious fundraiser for a dubious charity. For the most part, the only person out in the field making ill advised statements was Ron Toye who among many things refused to retract by saying "We" (Implying him and Monica) welcome a lawsuit and will defend the truth of their statements. A very bad thing to do over twitter without legal representation. It was on March 20th that Rekieta dropped another bombshell. Apparently while Ron was publicly flapping his gums, Monica Rial, Shane Holmberg and Chris Sabat had been pulling a Mark Waid by threatening conventions that had decided they would allow Vic to attend. In the case of KamehaCon, they even did so after having been told Vic was under contract. This was made all the worse as they apparently were not content to bothering the Conventions once about this issue but repeatedly and consistently. Essentially, they blew up the owners phone and email until they caved, potentially raising issues of criminal harassment and extortion, on top of very cut and dry Tortious Interference. Up until this point Chris Sabat had avoided being fingered in any of the goings on, content to apparently work behind the scenes. Someone at the conventions leaked the info though. Worse, by implicating Sabat in activities occurring long after the Cease and Desist letters and notifications of pending legal action Funimation is now almost certainly drawn in as Sabat has known Vice Principle status with the company.
These leaks were revealed to have emerged out of Kamehacon, a Texas located Dragon ball con, and one of the few if not the only dragonball specific conventions in North America. Kamehacon had initially dropped Vic along with many other conventions, but on the 22nd of March, the con announced that they had reinvited vic and that he would be attending. Monica immediately flipped out and carried out her threat to not attend.
When it was revealed she intended to breach her contract with the Con, many began to speculate that this could open her up to further litigation. Fortunately for her the con owner was by all accounts completely done with the drama and just wanted it all to go away and so agreed to let Monica out of her contract. Interestingly though, Chris Sabat did not carry out the threat and chose to go. And how convenient! He had a whole stack of signed Bulma pictures for people who stopped by his booth. Things had otherwise not been going so good for Sabat as he had planned a tour of his studio Okatron 5,000, where con goers could see where Vegeta got voiced to the tune of hundreds of dollars. Inexplicably the tour had to be cancelled, with the official explanation being a scheduling conflict. Unofficially however it was rumored that Toei, the Japanese company that owns Dragonball had finally taken note and was not happy with the shenanigans. The Japanese voice actor of Vegeta, Ryo Horikawa who was also scheduled to attend cancelled around the same time the Okatron tour was axed.
As the convention got under way, Monica Rial and Ronald Toye would hold a rival signing event an hour away at a small comic book store.
The event was notable for the fact she had to share space with a pokemon go gym and that she needed to clear out to make way for a Yu Gi Oh tournament after a few hours. Monica and Ron would claim hundreds of people showed up, but cursory analysis by the kiwis would show that at best she maybe had a couple dozen people. Which all things considered was more then was expected.
Some fun things to note in the picture. All the "happy" children and the dude in the camo jacket to the left. That mall ninja is the vaunted "security" that was hired to make Monica feel safe. And apparently he does a better job of it then a government facility patrolled by actual police. It would later turn out the guy was a man going by the name Jeffrey Allen. He only got a passing mention here, until the 19th of May he decided that he would foray onto the farms as @1Tonka_Truck had pulled off a successful Dox of him in the thread covering Monica Rial. Apparently the man claims to be an Air Force Veteran with an intelligence background, is a 6 degree blackbelt in an obscure form of korean martial arts, has trained both Korean and German Special Forces, and is a very big guy. Sounds legit to me! Even more legit was him challenging @Null to "be a man" and remove all that false and libelous information from this webzone. He got his own thread here instead. Everyone say hello to @GlueStick.
For his Part, Vic was given an entire floor at the convention with an hours long line to meet him. So much for the fandom being united against him.
By all accounts it seemed things were going to be drama free. Nothing was going to happen and the geeks and weebs would be able to go about their business. Enter the Thots, because if there is a lack of drama in geekdom, then the Thots will like the breaking of dawn show up to provide it. Dominique Skye, a known costhot whose real name is Dominique Montez had been an outspoken proponent of #kickvic and defender of Rial. She was doxed in this very thread, leading to an intense amount of salt and the appearance of @Null and @emspex on Rekieta to explain how Doxxing works.
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Early on in the signing at Rial's event she was observed showing up. How may you ask? Well because she decided to cosplay Bulma. And not Bulma from 99% of Dragonball. Oh no. She decided to cosplay as that one time Bulma dressed up like a playboy playmate. A few hours later she would be found at the convention holding a guest pass that was not hers and secretly recording on a camera. She could offer up no explanation as to why she was filming, where she got a guest pass, or what she was doing. She would be thrown out for trespassing. Nobody bothered to ask why she was dressed as a stripper on the way to a Gay Op either, but inquiring Kiwis would like to know.
And how may you ask, did Staff find out she was at the con? Because she stopped for pictures!
Apparently the dude immediately posted the picture to twitter and Con Staff reacted as she was a known problem source. I doubt she was hard to find in the crowd, though the guy who posted it was mortified that he wrecked her chances at playing secret agent.
It would later turn out in mid May that not only was Monica Rial breaching her existing contract with the con, but that the initial breach with Vic occurred back in January at the private urging of Ron Toye who leveraged his position as an agent of the Tuttle Group to convince Kameahacon to drop Vic from its line up of guests. To do this he would claim that numerous women, including Monica were going to come foreword with stories about how they were abused, and that a criminal investigation was in progress. That last part was of course blatantly false. There was no criminal investigation, and what investigation was going on was done by Sony who determined the most agregious incident was Vic ate a Jelly Bean with Monica Rial's name on it and stated "Guess I just ate Monica Rial".
The entire saga of the twitter DMs was outlined in another of Rekietas live streams.
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Some of the DM's in question.
So you may be wondering. Where did these DM's come from? Well, they came from Ty Beard himself who rumor has it got them from Kameahacon. After Toyes lawyer released a truly terrible answer to the lawsuit he gave them over to Rekieta. And how do we know they are legit?
Ron Toye confirmed it himself. He's not worried at all
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== THE LAWSUIT ARRIVES ==
As Kamehacon wound down all eyes would turn to Ty Beard where intense rumor, pushed largely by Rekieta indicated a lawsuit would drop the Monday following the Con. There was plenty of storm warnings. Ty had revealed on a stream with Rekieta that he had sent a formal Demand for Retraction to Ron Toye...and it was 400 pages long.
An entire ream of paper was required to produce all the alleged defamatory tweets by Ron Toye, and by all accounts the entire lawsuit with the evidence collected by Vic's lawyers attached was around 20 pounds in weight. This led to jokes about what it would be like for UPS to show up with a huge box containing your defamation. UPS customer service would respond that if people needed assistance in moving large packages to hit them up with a DM.
Jury is out on whether it was a bot or an actual person. Perfect timing nonetheless.
Monday came and went however without any filings, and the word from Ty was that it was due to last minute evidence arriving that required them to review their documents and potentially add more defendants. There was far too much smug on this issue to be contained, and so an entire thread was created to collect all the "lol, no lawsuit!" Which can be found here. Then on Thursday, April 18, the shoe finally dropped with the case of Victor Mignogna v. Funimation Productions LLC. Named as defendants were also Monical Rial, Jamie Marchi, and Ronald Toye. Ty alleged his causes of action to be Defamation, tortious interference with business prospects, tortious interference with existing contracts, civil conspiracy, and damages in excess of 1 million dollars. You can find the thread on the lawsuit here.
While it was generally assumed all responses would appear within a month, the only major response came from Monica and Ron's lawyer. And oh boy was it a dumpster fire. The whole thing is documented more extensively in the relevant lawsuit thread, but it bears mentioning here just what happened as a consequence to this. Up until this point, the primary platforms that the Fujoshi whisper network had been using to spread their rumors about Vic were done through a Tumblr Blog, and the Website Pretty Ugly Little Liars. The same hugbox Marzgurl was using early on in the drama. Both PULL and the Tumblr Blog were named as principle sources in the defense pleading. This is a bad thing for both as they are now named parties possessing relevant information pertaining to this matter. Which means they can be forced to give up their dox. In another twist of shakesperian irony the primary parties that would be most interested in doing this would be Monica, Ron, Jamie and Funimation themselves, rather then Vic. Shifting blame is after all a time honored tactic in trying to limit your liability. Suffice to say the Tumblr Blog got nuked within days of the defendants response being filed, but you can find the archive here.
As for Jamie Marchie, her galaxy brain plan to deal with the lawsuit is to hide in her house and not answer the door when the process server comes knocking. In a filing with the court, Process Server Lamont Aldridge attempted to serve Jamie Marchi 5 separate times. On several occasions he observed her car was by the house and on one occasion she even peeked out the windows at him. She never opened the door. When people called her out on this, she made the following twitter statement.
Oh, and did you catch her name change? She's now @runningfromthelawl on twitter now. Stunning a brave, I am sure the judge will be as amused as we are. Ty subsequently got a court order drafted that would allow Mr. Aldridge to nail the lawsuit to her door like Martin Luther nailing his 95 theses to the church.
Relevant documents are here.
==EXTRA INFO==
Best TL;DR so far summarizing the causes of the drama
Video Summarizing the drama from early on in it
This post draws much of its info from an aggregation of this multimedia thread here
Thanks to everyone in it, and for @Cod of war for starting it. Thanks also to @damian for helping me find the facebook archives for Samantha Harte and how archiving needs to work in general. Thanks also to @Jaimas for the info on Jamie Marchie.
Other Youtube Channels not mentioned also covering the shenanigans
Super Saiyan Paul
Clownfish TV
That Umbrella Guy
And so many more
Vics Fanclub official facebook
Vics gofundme
Anime Outsiders Podcast on the situation
An infamous io9 article regurgitating #kickvic talking points
Farms thread for Amanda Winn Lee.
Farms Thread for Hope Chapman, the Boyfriend/girlfriend of ANN "critic" Zach Bertschy
Content aggregation for unrelated Nick Rekieta stuff
Beth Elderkin Dox
Justin Sevakis Dox
Sarah Wiedenheft Dox
Michael Toole Dox
DC Douglas Dox
Dominique Skye Dox
Adam Sheehan Dox
Jamie McGonnigal Dox
Kristel Rose Mobley Dox
Any of the people mentioned are free to post in this thread (if they dare) if any of the statements contained are inaccurate. Claims of inaccuracy will not however automatically result in retraction without the presentation of clear evidence contradicting the contents contained within. There will be no response to any messages received in private for changes or retractions.
HOW TO ARCHIVE PROTECTED TWEETS: https://webrecorder.io/
This post has been edited to update information as it develops. You can read the changelogs here, here, here, here, here and here.
----
Anime conventions are usually steady affairs. Places where lonely weebs can brave the sun for a few short glorious days, meet with the voices behind their cherished heroes, and leave disappointed. On a day lost to memory, this would be no exception. A young Fujoshi attempted to get a prominent Anime voice actor by the name of Vic Mignogna to autograph her yaoi fan art involving a character he voice acted. Vic has stated he didn't sign it, because he doesn't sign any noncanon material like that. This led to an angry fujoshi pushed whisper campaign against Vic, citing homophobia. One such Fujoshi was a girl named Allison Cooke going by the twitter handle HanLeia.On January 16, HanLeia made a tweet blasting vic for being a homophobic bigot. By the end of February 2019 lawsuits were being threatened, tens of thousands of dollars were being crowdfunded to pay for them, tons of ink was being spilled on geek culture blogs, thousands of hours of youtube videos were rendered and the US Governments Joint Counter Terrorism task force was making calls asking wtf was going on. Welcome to the Weeb Wars.
=THE MAIN CHARACTERS=
Vic Mignogna
Voice Actor~He's done Edward Elric from Full Metal and more recently Broly for Dragonball
Fired from Funimation
Likes warm hugs
Twitter Archive
Facebook Archive
Dox
Marzgurl
Power Word Kaylyn Saucedo
Worked for Channel Awesome
Twitch thot
Twitch
Twitter Archive
Facebook Archive
Monica Rial
Voice Actress~She did Bulma from Dragonball
Works for Funimation
Mad at the Internet
Twitter Archive
Facebook Archive
Dox
Sean Schemmel
Voice actor~ He's done Goku. But not as good as the original
Works for Funimation
Bipolar
Twitter Archive
Dox
Samantha Inoue-Hart
Animator, Translator, Investigator
Works for Funimation and others
Fat
Currently in DFE mode on Social Media
(Picture shown in Landscape as Vertical mode is unable to truly capture her)
Mike Ensley
CEO of PensaCon
He took over after the last CEO was arrested for running an interstate drug ring
Probably autistic, charged with felony domestic battery
Currently in DFE mode on the social media
Dox
Lynzee Loveridge
Interest Editor for Anime News Network
Wrote the initial hit piece on Vic Mignogna that included the photos disavowed by the girl in them
Really likes cats
Twitter Archive
Dox
Jamie Marchi
Voice Actor and Translator for Funimation
Is really vocal about how much she hates vic on twitter
True fan of Lorena Bobbit
Twitter Archive
Facebook Archive
Dox
Ron Toye
AKA Ron Soye
Fiance to Monica Rial, Mortgage broker for The Tuttle Group
Really likes emoticons
Twitter Archive
Dox
Todd Haberkorn
Voice Actor for Funimation
Unwilling participant to the drama
Only worth 10% what Vic is on GoFundMe
Twitter Archive
Jessie Pridemore
Cosplay Thot
#Metoo'd Haberkorne to back up accusations against vic
Only did blackface once
Twitter Archive
Facebook Archive
Dox
HanLeia
Power word: Allison Cooke
Former student of UH-Manoa
Militant fujoshi who started something way bigger then her
Twitter has been nuked
Twitter Archive
Facebook Archive
Dox
Japan Dox
Chris Sabat
Producer, Voice Actor and ADR for Funimation~He has done Piccolo and Vegeta
Thinks he plots like Cersei Lannister, is actually more a Walder Frey
Twitter Archive
Facebook Archive
Dox
Shane Holmberg
Some guy who helps organize cons, according to himself
Graduated Sumo Cum Lard from the Google School of Law, serial abuser of innocent chairs
Twitter Archive
Facebook Archive
Dox
=BACKGROUND TO THE AUTISM=
Nothing happens in a vacuum, and this drama supernova is no exception. There had already been deep concern about so called SJW infiltration into the anime dubbing space. This can be a problem because translating anything is not an exact science so much as an art. There are many words and concepts in one language that have no direct translation into another. This means a translator has to take some creative license with the words to try and get the point across. This has led to a sneaking suspicion that Anime subbing companies like Funimation were indulging in...creative...translation of the original Japanese works to better fit their own personal political agendas.
In a translation of the Anime "Prison School", a girl accuses a character of "being one of those GamerGate creep shows". This was in 2015.
This is a problem for a couple reasons. First of all, GamerGate was a strictly western phenomenon that had little to no traction or notice in Japan. The idea that it would be featured prominently in a Japanese anime was ludicrous on its face. It was later revealed that this gem was snuck into the translation by a man known as Tyson Reinhart. A truly amazing individual who goes by the inspired title "Kill Nazis" on Twitter. (Which you can find here). A cursory glance over his more recent twitter shows he has a severe case of Trump Derangement Syndrome, many fear posts about right wing violence, rapey supreme court justices, and everything else you would expect to find on the twitter feed of someone who puts Kill Nazis as their handle.
Another similar incident from the same time period came from the Anime "Hajimete No Gal"; "My First Girlfriend is a Gal". Gal is a Japanese word that has no real translation into English. It sort of means Slut, but not really. Best way to describe it is a "Trashy outgoing woman who is interested in fun and being slightly rude in public, but not TOO rude or trashy". See what I mean about translation? I am sure my quick and dirty description of the word Gal will bring an autistic screech somewhere, and they would not be entirely wrong. Now compare the Funimation translation to the Fan translation.
Fan Translation
Archive
Funimation Translation
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Note how Part Timer got translated to toothless cuck. The boss was clearly an inartful caricature of a modern American right winger in the translation where in the Fan translation he's more of a pompous douche bag. For Anime Fandom, this was the smoking gun, and led over the years to an undercurrent of suspicion that never truly boiled up to the surface. You could see the bubbles percolating when other incidents started to occur. Such as the censoring of the Rape scene in SAO 3, Alicazation more recently.
This leads us to Vic Mignogna specifically. The man is in essence the perfect foil for the SJW, in that he is an (arguably) attractive white male with hugely prominent voice acting roles. Most notably as Edward Elric from Full Metal Alchemist. It also does not hurt that he kinda looks like the character if you squint hard enough, resulting in him gaining a legion of devoted fangirls and a fan club called the "Risembool Rangers" which is run by his mother. The man is also an outspoken christian who as part of his appearances at Anime Conventions requires that a space be set aside for him to hold bible studies with his fans should they be interested in attending. In short, he was the perfect canary for this particular coal mine.
Considering how fraught the culture wars have become in "the current year", one would think the folks at Funimation would handle internal corporate drama with tact and grace so as to avoid the appearance of impropriety. You would of course, be very wrong.
=HOW IT ALL WENT DOWN=
On January 16, HanLeia made the following tweet
Archive
The ever vigilant kiwis over at the anime observation division of the Farms made passing note of the situation. Nothing seemed to indicate the coming storm until @ATaxingWoman saw that known anime voice acting big shots like Monica Rial were adding likes to the tweet thread that was gaining viral traction. It went on to its current status with hundreds of replies, and thousands of retweets/likes.
In earlier drafts it was stated that Allison Cooke was the Fujoshi who asked vic for his signature on the Yaoi art. Allison has since claimed that this is not true, and as there is no evidence to contradict her statement the OP was changed accordingly to reflect this.
On January 17, Kaylyn Saucedo (Marzgurl) tweeted at Funimation to draw attention to the allegations towards him from HanLeias post.
Archive
In this same twitter thread she also attempts to organize the coming brigading to get him fired, making the first recorded post containing #kickvic
Archive
One thing to know about our friend Kaylyn here is that she got her start on Channel Awesome, a known den of cancer and autism with its own thread here. She is also a notorious e-begger who routinely asks for help on GoFundMe to help pay for her adult responsibilities like taking care of her own cat.
She is also now plotting her next moves on Pretty Ugly Little Liar
Archive
Then, on January 30, an article written by Lynzee Loveridge dropped on the Anime News Network.
Original
Archive
The article was essentially a rehash of everything said on twitter, and relied primarily on "Anonymous sources" and pictures of Vic hugging fans at Cons to make the case that Vic Mignogna was a serial abuser of underage girls. For example
Sounds pretty bad, doesn't it. Included was a picture of the alleged assault
In response to the accusations in ANN and on twitter, Vic's employers at Rooster Teeth and Funimation (which is owned by Sony) began an immediate internal investigation into the claims, and then promptly fired Vic a week later on February 5th. The end. Or so they thought. A common and recurring theme in any good drama like this is that the people involved often make critical mistakes from the outset and then when those mistakes are discovered often tend to double down which only makes the situation worse.
The first mistake was assuming the the rest of the world was like twitter and that "#believeallwomen" would be sufficient to prevent people from asking too many questions. This was a mistake however because of the aforementioned "Risembool Rangers", Vics personal club of fan girls. It was as inevitable as the dawn that many of them would rise to defend their e-husband. Which is a huge problem for believing all women because then you will need to decide which women to believe when they inevitably start disagreeing and catfighting with each other.
Rather then responding to the outrage with tact or even better, silence and meaningless corporate platitudes, Vic's coworkers at Funimation went after the fans for daring to question the narrative they had presented that Vic was fired after it was revealed he'd literally raped hundreds of underage girls at conventions. Leading the charge was Monica Rial, known primarily for being the voice of Bulma in Dragonball who claimed that not only were the allegation true, but that Vic had sexually assaulted her himself.
Archive
This leads to the second mistake. Make sure you got some evidence to back up your claims, and at a bare minimum the things you HAVE presented as evidence check out. The picture from ANN posted above was publicly denounced by the girl involved.
She stated that she gave vic permission to hug her and that her parents were present. She was also not underage at the time either as was alleged. In another video posted to youtube, another girl who had her photos being used smear Vic Mignogna on another website did her own public denunciation on youtube. She also alleged that her situation was by no means unique.
Funimation and kickvic, please stop!
I decided to recount what became of me and other individuals that were victims of photo theft with how everything didn't cease or blow over with the most rec...
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With regard to Monica Rial's claim to being literally raped by Vic, his fans started to demand she show some sort of proof that her claim was true. Police reports, forensic, video, second hand witnesses, something. To say that this demand led to a triggering would be a massive understatement.
Archive
Within days Monica Rial was a meme. Not a good start.
Not to be outdone, another voice actor at Funimation named Jamie Marchi went on the record
Archive
This tweet will factor greatly later. In a lawsuit for defamation, one of the things that needs to be shown, especially with a public figure like Vic Mignogna is that the people behind the defamation acted with actual malice rather than just incompetence. This tweet in particular is emblematic of the kind of things that were going on behind the scene at Funimation. Marchi's hard move against twitter is also what fully solidified in the minds of the anime fandom that something dire was afoot. She was infamously fingered for a particularily bad and overly political translation of an anime called "Dragon Maid". And its just...you need to watch it to believe it.
She would then go on to also accuse Vic of sexual assault.
Archive
Much like Rial, when the demands came to provide some sort of evidence that the accusations were true she raged and deflected.
Archive
Which lead to the ultimate declaration. Keep in mind now, this woman is high up in Funimation and was most likely also involved in the investigation that led to Vic's firing. It is here that she straight up claims that an accusation is enough, and that once accused you are guilty until proven innocent. Because innocent until proven guilty supports rape culture!
Archive
In response to what was happening and the attacks from his coworkers at Funimation, Vic made a public apology at a con which you can watch here. Note just how many fangirls still showed up to listen.
=PENSACON AND COMICSGATE=
Considering how loud the Funimation crew were, along with the #kickvic SJW lynch mob, it was inevitable the autistic drama would be noticed by nerd war drama channels on youtube. In particular, the crew from the Comicsgate. On February 13, YellowFlash reported on what was being dubbed AnimeGate. The story was quickly picked up by other Comicsgate and Star Wars drama pushers Jeremy Hambly (TheQuartering), Jeremy Griggs (Geeks and Gamers) and Ethan Van Sciver (ComicArtistPro secrets) YellowFlash seems to have come to the story independently. What drew the attention of Griggs and Van Sciver was the supernova of Autism coming out of PensaCon with respect to #kickvic
As part of Vic Mignogna’s ongoing unpersoning was the cancellation of his appearances at various anime conventions. PensaCon was no exception to this, but what made them unique was how vocal they were about doing so, and the combative nature with which the Cons official twitter account engaged with hostile fans. There is no way to know for sure, but it is assumed by most that the man behind the PensaCon tweets was the CEO of the con himself, Mike Ensley. What follows was an increasingly escalating war of words played out on the cons official twitter. Before it got nuked the Cons account threatened to arrest anyone caught supporting Vic, and most infamously of all sent ominous threats directed at people who questioned why they were being targeted by the Cons official twitter when they had not even tagged them in their conversations. To which they responded “We have eyes everywhere”.
Archive
Archive
It was at this point things started to go downhill for #kickvic. Samantha Inoue-Hart, an animator and translator with Funimation who was involved with the internal investigation into the allegations claimed that Vic supporters had called in a Swatting to her home. To support the claim she posted this picture showing the damage to her door.
There was just one problem. She had posted the EXACT SAME PICTURE to her facebook nearly THREE YEARS AGO. Only that time it was a burglary not a Swatting. People in #Istandwithvic immediately went to town on this with a plethora of videos. In response to this sudden revelation, Samantha was reached out to by ANN to clarify things, leading to the retarded dodge that she posted old photos because she didn't want to dox herself.
Police also sent a fax report that shows that no, there was no swatting.
A police officer came by her house, looked at the door, and saw it was broken.
This gem of a facebook post also came up.
Archive
And in this archive is a longwinded exposition by Harte on how its cruel to require accusers to be cross examined by the accused, or to provide proof to the public at large to back up the accusations.
So let this one sink in. Literally a day after Vic is fired one of the women involved in the internal investigation was publicly talking about how she personally disliked Vic, and did not believe accusers should be required to provide proof. A week later she made up from whole cloth a swatting incident to make Vics supporters look bad. Not a good look for Funimation or #kickvic. As the feeding frenzy took off, she began to nuke all her social media. This was not before she dragged in the voice actor for Goku Sean Schemmel who came out publicly in support of her in her time of tribulation and lambasted the evil people who were harassing his colleagues. A very ill timed effort at white knighting that also led to massive back pedaling and the nuking of his social media. As for Harte, she no doubt held the hope that by deleting fucking everything, the information just posted above would never see the light of day again. About that.
Now with massive interest in what was going on (FFS look at the Google metrics) A private facebook group that was dedicated to getting vic fired had this gem leaked.
With evidence #kickvic was actually considering fabricating evidence, the blood was in the water. The Nerd Rage pile of explosive autism on the internet was reaching its peak, and it was at this point that Mike Ensley down at Pensacon struck the match that blew this thing sky high. After Jeremy Griggs (Geeks and Gamers) published a video talking about the drama, his press passes to PensaCon were revoked. They also played “The Toxic Fandom” card.
Archive
This basically rang the dinner bell and led to Jeremies pal Ethan Van Sciver to also report on the situation and the earlier posts where Pensacon was threatening to have people arrested. In response to this, Ensley sent an angry email to Van Sciver threatening to sue him for defamation.
As part of the raging at Van Sciver, Pensacon (and it is assumed Mike Ensley was behind the official pensacon emails as well, though not 100% confirmed) included in the email an offhand comment that they had received bomb threats as a consequence of his and Jeremies coverage of them. In response to this, Van Sciver asked to see the bomb threat so he could show it to people and let them know about it. They obliged, but went on to say that it was in the hands of law enforcement and that Van Sciver should not show anyone. He showed people anyway, which led to people tweeting about it and tagging @fbi in them. The next morning, a Special Agent from the FBI working for the Joint Counter Terrorism Task Force (A coordination body between Homeland Security, the FBI, and the Department of Defense) called Van Sciver and demanded to know what was going on. Apparently they had received no such information from Pensacon about any bomb threats and they really wanted to know what Van Sciver knew about it as the con was taking place at a Government owned facility.
== THREATS OF A LAWSUIT==
So to recap, some angry thots in mid January accused Vic Mignogna of being a homophobic rapist on twitter. By the end of January he was done in Julius Caesar style by his coworkers at Funimation, who it turned out personally hated him and were also not above faking a Swatting incident to make Vic look bad. And by mid February with a nerd feeding frenzy in full swing their supporters were threatening to have people arrested and faking bomb threats that drew the attention of the FBI.
Enter Nick Rekieta, attorney at lol (and known fan of the farms, we love you too Nick!). At his urging, Vic Mignogna retained the legal services of Beard-Harris, a litigation law firm in Texas. Among their lineup of partners includes the State Senator for Texas Senate district 1. Even more fun, The "Harris" in the firm name went to seminary at Nazarene College for a BA in Religion before getting his Juris doctorate at Southern Methodist. Considering the smell of anti-christian bias, this portends fireworks. Up until this point, a major defense the #kickvic crowd had was that “innocent until proven guilty only applies in a court of law”. So Nick laid out just how this was going to go down and how it would be brought into a court of law in a very informative livestream that is well worth the watch for the legally autistic.
The tl;dr is that there is provable actual malice, clear defamation of character, tortiuous interference with a contract, and many of the people involved have shot their credibility publicly over the past month. It also did not help that once Vic had been purged many of them benefited professionally and financially from his absence by getting his parts and positions. He also started a gofundme that in two days raised over 50,000 dollars. #kickvic was not happy with the news that they may have to back up what went down in court. Not happy at all. Especially when they discovered that the most likely State of venue for this lawsuit will be Texas, the State Funimation is Headquartered in. In Texas, not even the truth is a defense against tortiuous interference, which means at a minimum Marzgurl is doomed as she was the one who tweeted directly at Funimation. But nobody believes this will stop just with Marzgurl. Worse, if this does go to trial, it will be a Texas Jury that Funimation and all the people presented here will need to explain this situation too. Everyone say hello to @MarzGurl!
In a desperate effort to fend this turn events off, #kickvic began to claim that Nick was a grifter scamming people for cash and that the gofundme was fraudulent and Nick was not a "REAL" Lawyer.
Archive
In response to this, Vic Mignogna himself came out and publicly stated that no, the GoFundMe was legit and that Nick Rekieta was his friend. You can find the statement here
With the fake lawyer narrative now shot, #kickvic resorted to the tried and true method of trying to shut down something SJW’s want shut down. They called Rekieta a racist.
Archive
According to Nick the photo is from over a decade ago and long before he was lawyer. Figuring they had something to run with, #kickvic decided they would try and get Nick disbarred. Because reasons. Yet they can’t even do this correctly as they sent their report to an agency not involved with the disbarment process at all.
Archive
Not to be content with this, a twitter sperg for #kickvic who claimed to be a bigshot with the conventions and was challenging Rekieta's legal expertise dared to get Rekieta to invite him onto his show for a debate. So Rekieta accepted and what followed was perhaps the greatest in the field documentation of a player character encountering an NPC.
Real Lawyer Explains Vic Mignogna to Some Guy From Twitter - LIVE
JUSTICE CHAT: https://streamlabs.com/rekietalaw MERCH: https://teespring.com/stores/rekieta-law TONIGHT we have an impromptu Livestream discussion between me...
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Not to be outdone by Sir Shane of the Battered Chair, another white knight stepped foreword to do battle with Rekieta in the form of Rial's fiance Ron Toye. Up until this point, Ron was just a average mortgage broker dating a D list celebrity. Over the span of two weeks however he transformed into a lolcow noted for his excessive use of emoticons. He also implicated himself in the potential civil conspiracy surrounding Vic's firing, threatened to make fraudulent claims to the Minnesota State Bar against Rekieta, and was the recipient of the sole tweet by Ty Beard.
Rekieta would go on to do an interview with Ty that confirmed this was in fact his twitter account. It was following this interview that it was revealed that not only were they representing Vic, but also Todd Haberkorn. Haberkorn had entered this mess early when the initial allegations against Vic first surfaced and was among the crowd moving swiftly to distance themselves from him. Until Jessie Pridemore stepped in and accused him of raping her at a convention as well. Another #metoo story following the rest, alleging a severe problem of systemic misogyny and rape culture in the Anime voice acting community.
There was a problem. of course. According to Todd, he and Jessie had consensual sex at a Con, and afterwords she got furious when he refused to take the relationship further. The Archive of the incident and the chat logs are here. the original post has since been deleted. tl;dr Pridemore claimed to be emotionally unstable, Todd wasn't interested in hooking up further and she got mad.
== KAMEHACON ==
With an actual lawfirm now on retainer to the tune of 100,000 dollars, and cease and desist letters going out, you would think that at long last sanity would prevail and the drama would die down as everyone waited for the shoe to drop. This would mostly be true. Following some very panicked tweeting, Jamie marchie went radio silent except for pushing a dubious fundraiser for a dubious charity. For the most part, the only person out in the field making ill advised statements was Ron Toye who among many things refused to retract by saying "We" (Implying him and Monica) welcome a lawsuit and will defend the truth of their statements. A very bad thing to do over twitter without legal representation. It was on March 20th that Rekieta dropped another bombshell. Apparently while Ron was publicly flapping his gums, Monica Rial, Shane Holmberg and Chris Sabat had been pulling a Mark Waid by threatening conventions that had decided they would allow Vic to attend. In the case of KamehaCon, they even did so after having been told Vic was under contract. This was made all the worse as they apparently were not content to bothering the Conventions once about this issue but repeatedly and consistently. Essentially, they blew up the owners phone and email until they caved, potentially raising issues of criminal harassment and extortion, on top of very cut and dry Tortious Interference. Up until this point Chris Sabat had avoided being fingered in any of the goings on, content to apparently work behind the scenes. Someone at the conventions leaked the info though. Worse, by implicating Sabat in activities occurring long after the Cease and Desist letters and notifications of pending legal action Funimation is now almost certainly drawn in as Sabat has known Vice Principle status with the company.
These leaks were revealed to have emerged out of Kamehacon, a Texas located Dragon ball con, and one of the few if not the only dragonball specific conventions in North America. Kamehacon had initially dropped Vic along with many other conventions, but on the 22nd of March, the con announced that they had reinvited vic and that he would be attending. Monica immediately flipped out and carried out her threat to not attend.
When it was revealed she intended to breach her contract with the Con, many began to speculate that this could open her up to further litigation. Fortunately for her the con owner was by all accounts completely done with the drama and just wanted it all to go away and so agreed to let Monica out of her contract. Interestingly though, Chris Sabat did not carry out the threat and chose to go. And how convenient! He had a whole stack of signed Bulma pictures for people who stopped by his booth. Things had otherwise not been going so good for Sabat as he had planned a tour of his studio Okatron 5,000, where con goers could see where Vegeta got voiced to the tune of hundreds of dollars. Inexplicably the tour had to be cancelled, with the official explanation being a scheduling conflict. Unofficially however it was rumored that Toei, the Japanese company that owns Dragonball had finally taken note and was not happy with the shenanigans. The Japanese voice actor of Vegeta, Ryo Horikawa who was also scheduled to attend cancelled around the same time the Okatron tour was axed.
As the convention got under way, Monica Rial and Ronald Toye would hold a rival signing event an hour away at a small comic book store.
The event was notable for the fact she had to share space with a pokemon go gym and that she needed to clear out to make way for a Yu Gi Oh tournament after a few hours. Monica and Ron would claim hundreds of people showed up, but cursory analysis by the kiwis would show that at best she maybe had a couple dozen people. Which all things considered was more then was expected.
For his Part, Vic was given an entire floor at the convention with an hours long line to meet him. So much for the fandom being united against him.
By all accounts it seemed things were going to be drama free. Nothing was going to happen and the geeks and weebs would be able to go about their business. Enter the Thots, because if there is a lack of drama in geekdom, then the Thots will like the breaking of dawn show up to provide it. Dominique Skye, a known costhot whose real name is Dominique Montez had been an outspoken proponent of #kickvic and defender of Rial. She was doxed in this very thread, leading to an intense amount of salt and the appearance of @Null and @emspex on Rekieta to explain how Doxxing works.
Null, Drexel, and Emspex talk Vic Mignogna, Doxing, and Online Harassment
JUSTICE CHAT: https://streamlabs.com/rekietalaw MERCH: https://teespring.com/stores/rekieta-law Tonight we discuss doxing and online harassment. We discuss c...
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Early on in the signing at Rial's event she was observed showing up. How may you ask? Well because she decided to cosplay Bulma. And not Bulma from 99% of Dragonball. Oh no. She decided to cosplay as that one time Bulma dressed up like a playboy playmate. A few hours later she would be found at the convention holding a guest pass that was not hers and secretly recording on a camera. She could offer up no explanation as to why she was filming, where she got a guest pass, or what she was doing. She would be thrown out for trespassing. Nobody bothered to ask why she was dressed as a stripper on the way to a Gay Op either, but inquiring Kiwis would like to know.
And how may you ask, did Staff find out she was at the con? Because she stopped for pictures!
Apparently the dude immediately posted the picture to twitter and Con Staff reacted as she was a known problem source. I doubt she was hard to find in the crowd, though the guy who posted it was mortified that he wrecked her chances at playing secret agent.
It would later turn out in mid May that not only was Monica Rial breaching her existing contract with the con, but that the initial breach with Vic occurred back in January at the private urging of Ron Toye who leveraged his position as an agent of the Tuttle Group to convince Kameahacon to drop Vic from its line up of guests. To do this he would claim that numerous women, including Monica were going to come foreword with stories about how they were abused, and that a criminal investigation was in progress. That last part was of course blatantly false. There was no criminal investigation, and what investigation was going on was done by Sony who determined the most agregious incident was Vic ate a Jelly Bean with Monica Rial's name on it and stated "Guess I just ate Monica Rial".
The entire saga of the twitter DMs was outlined in another of Rekietas live streams.
Anime Outsiders Talks About Toye Texts and ISWV
JUSTICE CHAT: https://streamlabs.com/rekietalaw MERCH: https://teespring.com/stores/rekieta-law Anime Outsiders joins me to talk about the bombshell texts fr...
www.youtube.com
Some of the DM's in question.
So you may be wondering. Where did these DM's come from? Well, they came from Ty Beard himself who rumor has it got them from Kameahacon. After Toyes lawyer released a truly terrible answer to the lawsuit he gave them over to Rekieta. And how do we know they are legit?
Ron Toye confirmed it himself. He's not worried at all
Ron Toye on Twitter: "I don’t mind that you have them ;) not afraid o…
archived 16 May 2019 14:26:33 UTC
== THE LAWSUIT ARRIVES ==
As Kamehacon wound down all eyes would turn to Ty Beard where intense rumor, pushed largely by Rekieta indicated a lawsuit would drop the Monday following the Con. There was plenty of storm warnings. Ty had revealed on a stream with Rekieta that he had sent a formal Demand for Retraction to Ron Toye...and it was 400 pages long.
An entire ream of paper was required to produce all the alleged defamatory tweets by Ron Toye, and by all accounts the entire lawsuit with the evidence collected by Vic's lawyers attached was around 20 pounds in weight. This led to jokes about what it would be like for UPS to show up with a huge box containing your defamation. UPS customer service would respond that if people needed assistance in moving large packages to hit them up with a DM.
Monday came and went however without any filings, and the word from Ty was that it was due to last minute evidence arriving that required them to review their documents and potentially add more defendants. There was far too much smug on this issue to be contained, and so an entire thread was created to collect all the "lol, no lawsuit!" Which can be found here. Then on Thursday, April 18, the shoe finally dropped with the case of Victor Mignogna v. Funimation Productions LLC. Named as defendants were also Monical Rial, Jamie Marchi, and Ronald Toye. Ty alleged his causes of action to be Defamation, tortious interference with business prospects, tortious interference with existing contracts, civil conspiracy, and damages in excess of 1 million dollars. You can find the thread on the lawsuit here.
While it was generally assumed all responses would appear within a month, the only major response came from Monica and Ron's lawyer. And oh boy was it a dumpster fire. The whole thing is documented more extensively in the relevant lawsuit thread, but it bears mentioning here just what happened as a consequence to this. Up until this point, the primary platforms that the Fujoshi whisper network had been using to spread their rumors about Vic were done through a Tumblr Blog, and the Website Pretty Ugly Little Liars. The same hugbox Marzgurl was using early on in the drama. Both PULL and the Tumblr Blog were named as principle sources in the defense pleading. This is a bad thing for both as they are now named parties possessing relevant information pertaining to this matter. Which means they can be forced to give up their dox. In another twist of shakesperian irony the primary parties that would be most interested in doing this would be Monica, Ron, Jamie and Funimation themselves, rather then Vic. Shifting blame is after all a time honored tactic in trying to limit your liability. Suffice to say the Tumblr Blog got nuked within days of the defendants response being filed, but you can find the archive here.
As for Jamie Marchie, her galaxy brain plan to deal with the lawsuit is to hide in her house and not answer the door when the process server comes knocking. In a filing with the court, Process Server Lamont Aldridge attempted to serve Jamie Marchi 5 separate times. On several occasions he observed her car was by the house and on one occasion she even peeked out the windows at him. She never opened the door. When people called her out on this, she made the following twitter statement.
Oh, and did you catch her name change? She's now @runningfromthelawl on twitter now. Stunning a brave, I am sure the judge will be as amused as we are. Ty subsequently got a court order drafted that would allow Mr. Aldridge to nail the lawsuit to her door like Martin Luther nailing his 95 theses to the church.
Relevant documents are here.
==EXTRA INFO==
Best TL;DR so far summarizing the causes of the drama
Video Summarizing the drama from early on in it
This post draws much of its info from an aggregation of this multimedia thread here
Thanks to everyone in it, and for @Cod of war for starting it. Thanks also to @damian for helping me find the facebook archives for Samantha Harte and how archiving needs to work in general. Thanks also to @Jaimas for the info on Jamie Marchie.
Other Youtube Channels not mentioned also covering the shenanigans
Super Saiyan Paul
Clownfish TV
That Umbrella Guy
And so many more
Vics Fanclub official facebook
Vics gofundme
Anime Outsiders Podcast on the situation
An infamous io9 article regurgitating #kickvic talking points
Farms thread for Amanda Winn Lee.
Farms Thread for Hope Chapman, the Boyfriend/girlfriend of ANN "critic" Zach Bertschy
Content aggregation for unrelated Nick Rekieta stuff
Beth Elderkin Dox
Justin Sevakis Dox
Sarah Wiedenheft Dox
Michael Toole Dox
DC Douglas Dox
Dominique Skye Dox
Adam Sheehan Dox
Jamie McGonnigal Dox
Kristel Rose Mobley Dox
Any of the people mentioned are free to post in this thread (if they dare) if any of the statements contained are inaccurate. Claims of inaccuracy will not however automatically result in retraction without the presentation of clear evidence contradicting the contents contained within. There will be no response to any messages received in private for changes or retractions.
HOW TO ARCHIVE PROTECTED TWEETS: https://webrecorder.io/
This post has been edited to update information as it develops. You can read the changelogs here, here, here, here, here and here.