Thank you for being sane in a sea of insanity, every time i see these games discussed on the western web it's always about how it's fine because korean feminists are "different" and very "extreme" and name dropping how there's a huge feminist goddesses cult behind the government (????). And this information is always shared uncritically and taken as fact.

Thank you for cataloging these issues in english and summarizing controversies.

Thank you, yeah seeing this rampant and often patronizing misinformation is frustrating. The fact that it is said with such conviction is so shameless. I wanted to have a place where all contemporary feminist ideological verification information could be accessed so the reader could get a better understanding of who is attacking these women/feminism and why. I’m not arrogant enough to claim I understand everything just from reading and watching the evolution of this movement since around 2016, this is like absolutely nothing compared to actual residents obviously, and there is of course a salient conversation to be had regarding bigotry like trans/homophobia and racism within the movement but, especially for everything posted here, this is clearly not the reason these misogynist men attack women. We can literally see their thought process in real time for a lot of these cases. They see anything that resembles 🤏 (this part doesn’t even need to happen in some cases, simply the fact that a Korean woman worked on a product is enough like with the Genshin Impact character designer) ➡️ they look for any woman working for the company that makes this product ➡️ whether she has produced the “offending” content doesn’t matter, they target her and trawl through her social media (including private/deleted/old posts) looking for any mention of women’s rights ➡️ no matter how innocuous the post (campaigning for equal pay and enjoying the women’s day google doodle in the case of the Arknights artist) they throw a shitfit and claim this is misandry ➡️ most often the company will grovel, delete the “offending” content and write a simpering apology to their fanbase that frequently will specifically name feminism itself (and not any sort of bigotry) as some dividing force. The incels engaging in this behavior do it because they hate women. They are a group who are violently misogynistic, racist, ableist, homophobic, transphobic, you name it. But instead of being censored, ideologically verified and referred to as a “dividing force” of the South Korean population, they are instead given rapt attention by businesses and have their whims catered to while the women they target lose their jobs, have the “feminist stigma” attached to them while looking for work, are often stalked and harassed and blamed for their own misfortune caused by others. We see this play out pretty much every time and yet there are always people on the western web posting things like “feminists are crazy over there vellmori was fired because she was in the feminist cult, this is normal since feminism is terrorism in Korea” because they read a twitter post or scrolled through namuwiki or whatever. People want to believe this so they do and make it their truth. In their minds these women deserve it. This is to say nothing of the condescension in believing you know the full story of a movement from half-remembering secondhand information or watching a video essay. It drives me crazy seeing this so often, so if this blog can be helpful then I’m happy. Thank you for your message

Two questions I want to ask you: One, how do you personally feel about how all the discussion on Stellar Blade is mainly focused on the character designs rather than ShiftUp as a company and two, are the discussions in SK about the game in any way similar?

this is frustrating of course but not surprising. the design is a product of a misogynist company that exists in a violently misogynistic society, I don’t believe even a conversation that just tries to critique the design alone can happen without acknowledgement of this. of course this isn’t always the case, you can have seemingly non-hypersexualized character designs like some of them in “Limbus Company” and the company that makes this game will still engage in antifeminist incel pandering with their actions in real life, just like there can be a company producing media that seems “progressive” while engaging in fucked up shit in reality. this is common and is often weaponized. but I think the link between company politics and character design is relevant here so we can move forward with this discussion. on the western web you get the “FINALLY A GAME WITH A SEXY FEMININE FEMALE” guys and then you get the “she looks like a sex doll unlike MY favorite sexy video game female” guys who disagree but don’t want to come across as prudes. who creates these designs, who puts them in the game and for what target market? how is it advertised and why? typically this is never mentioned and therefore these conversations just become another childish “my favorite videogame VS your favorite videogame” internet fight. it just feels shallow and pointless. You have shifted the conversation that should at least acknowledge antifeminism in South Korea to stellar blade girl vs nier girl or whatever. it’s easy to react immediately/make memes or quippy twitter posts about the way something is designed based on your own feelings so this is what most people will do. again I do think part of this is because misogyny simply does not register for most people as a serious form of oppression. this is compounded with the fact that the Korean feminist’s struggle is not broadcasted across the western web with the same frequency and in the same way that something like the Hogwarts Legacy controversy was. Personally I find it disingenuous for reviewers especially to not mention Shift-Up’s antifeminist history. It’s not hard to find!

from the accounts I’ve checked the reaction is not as “explosive” as the gamergate 2 attempt that’s happening from western grifters. Shift-Up’s antifeminism has been discussed in regards to the firing, their partner company, the Nikke 🤏 censorship and the game’s designs. their Nikke display at a games convention that resembled a red light district was highly discussed by Korean feminists on twitter when it happened last year. Stellar Blade is not something a lot of people are constantly posting about from what I’ve seen at least. Usually someone will post screenshots from incels on one of their messgeboards but I haven’t seen anything like that recently regarding SB and tbh I don’t really go looking for it.

hello, I got everyone’s messages, the past few days I’ve just been dealing with a flare up of this stupid cyclical chronic illness I have 🙄 it’s kinda hardcore so it takes me a bit to get back on my feet. give me a little bit and I’ll reply/get back to everyone as soon as I can

thoughts from a Korean user on Reddit in the comments of her post recapping the maplestory, studio ppuri and genshin impact incidents. right now I’m reading through a woman’s 160 page ethnographic dissertation on megalia and I plan to post some relevant information here when I’m finished but I thought this a was an interesting first hand account that hits on a lot of main points for westerners to read, especially from someone who does not have english as a first language. I think it’s important to read and share first hand accounts like this so when I happen to see them I try to post here. I’m grateful to anyone who spends time and effort explaining in english the history of movements that typically get completely written off by westerners (trust me this happens a lot especially on Reddit) and how they themselves view these movements. not that you personally have to completely agree with everything here of course but (and this should be a given for anything you read imo) it’s definitely worth a read.

direct article link regarding shift-up, stellar blade developer, removing a woman’s work from their gacha game Destiny Child for defending feminism

I’ll make this its own post (original here) because I’ve seen people believing this didn’t happen, or there was some twitter thread that was deleted so it means it didn’t happen. this is a link to a direct Korean news source regarding what happened:

article regarding SHIFT-UP removing an artist’s work from their gacha game “Destiny Child” after she said there shouldn’t be a problem being a feminist and voiced support for the VA, Kim Jayeon, that Nexon fired for taking a photo of herself wearing a shirt that said “Girls Do Not Need A Prince”. The shirt was part of a fundraiser to help victims of domestic violence (see the npr article linked below) , the rates of which are especially high for women living in South Korea. You can note here that literally anything vaguely feminist is met with “are you megal?” (referring to the defunct website megalia) and it doesn’t even matter how she responds. This woman made some simple statements and is smeared as some feminist terrorist. tbh sometimes it’s an uphill battle trying to explain to anyone, especially on the western internet, that these women aren’t making some evil dogwhistle to the feminist illuminati when they make basic feminist statements. I’ve gotten called “terf/terf sympathizer” (???) for trying to explain that the artist Vellmori was being smeared on the western web with the term “terf” as a targeted campaign by Korean incels who know that term puts a target on your back and nothing else about it. I am of course not saying megalia was a totally unproblematic site with no ideological problems but none of these women being attacked and fired are saying anything like “yeah the homophobia was great” they’re literally advocating for basic women’s rights. I’m also not saying “basic” in a condescending way, on the contrary I think these women are brave for speaking out and have created complex feminist ideologies and movements. “Basic” and “simple” are meant to show the absurdity in the reaction (extreme male anger, firing, censorship, etc) in relation to the original statement (molka is bad, it’s fine to be a feminist, etc).

this is an article in English regarding the VA who wore the shirt:

Whatever your thoughts on megalia the fundraiser wasn’t even made by the main site as you can read in the NPR article. Regardless of your opinion regarding how this was handled it was a misogynistic act of feminist ideological verification.

I was having problems with this because it doesn't happen on my way older blogs but I think my fuckup may have been not logging in and editing on desktop. it would just redirect to tumblr . com/blog instead of blogname . tumblr . com. so I logged in on desktop and slightly edited the theme and it's working as gacha-incels.tumblr.com now. when I tried to check it on a private window it worked and didn't ask me to log in to see posts.

I didn't change much but just saved it on desktop. I was worried I would have to make a completely new site that everyone could access regardless of logging in but I think this should work. Tumblr search sucks ass regardless so I'm still planning on making a navigation post with direct links to the most important informational blog posts here. if anyone is still having problems lmk

gacha game Astra Knights of Veda, also known as Dragon Blaze 2, apologizes to its misogynist fans who were shocked and scandalized upon seeing illustrations that included hands in their natural resting or holding shape- the 🤏. I had never heard of this game so I looked up the developers that are mentioned in that yellow banner:

I agree with this person who said this type of reaction reaction is similar to conspiracy theorists talking about the Illuminati

The images that had these fans passed out on their fainting couches:

It's astounding that these liberal bootlickers *still* can't do the basic ass things of just re-examine those official posts, consult with those who can speak the language and look up the translated threads of the unions' responses.

And before anyone tries to rebuke, no, the things said in both the August & September posts WEREN'T condemnation, just vague corporate reassurances without any statements direct intentions or actions against the perpetrators.

Are these people that cocked up in their echo-chambers to hear out of another person's culture or are they *that* sensitive of hearing of things they like that has done bad things?

ngl at some point it really does feel obscene to me seeing people write about how PM & Limbus are some top tier progressive anticapitalist haven full of lgbt+ characters while Korean women try to tell them the company’s antifeminist actions are actively harming female workers and perpetuating this misogynistic 🤏 witch hunt.

like of course MTL is not perfect here but essentially she’s saying “if you’re a transphobe in PM’s fictional city it’s unacceptable but if you’re a feminist working for PM in reality you’re at risk of losing your job. I’m surprised people who are sensitive to representations of queer fictional characters are indifferent to the labor rights of Project Moon’s employees.” This is just one example, couple of days ago I had posted another, it comes up quite often. these users are trying to tell you that this is something that directly affects Korean women in reality and you just tell them, what? they’re wrong, they don’t get it, actually what PM did was normal in their country and they had no other choice?? it must be fine because the lead singer of mili is a woman and still works with PM and this is actually just like the hays code in the US? I honestly cannot believe someone had the gall to write that last one in their “PM masterpost”. the Korean users telling you this organized boycotts, frequent digital hashtag campaigns to get information out in multiple languages, completely removed fan accounts, created an organization to help victims of feminist ideological verification, monggeu came forward explaining her awful working conditions, Mimi legally took Wonderlab down because she did not want to be associated with project moon. honestly it’s been incredible watching them rise to the occasion and accomplish so much. and you think….what exactly when you see this? that actually all of these people directly affected by the misogynist, incel catering actions of project moon are just misguided fools who don’t understand what happened? that these women are worthy sacrifices for a gambling game because you think it has some epic capitalism takedown and there are male characters who have traditionally female names?

Why do they defend PM so vehemently in the face of critique? I think part of it is this increasingly common phenomenon where these fans need to think project moon must completely have the same progressive political leanings as them because they enjoy consuming the works and they consider themselves progressive, therefore the reverse must be true, that the media they enjoy must also be ideologically progressive because they enjoy it. it’s why they’re so shocked when someone completely different from them in political leanings enjoys PM’s games, we saw this as well when Arknights KR engaged in feminist ideological verification. these high earning gambling games can make all the vague political statements they want but it doesn’t mean jack shit if they’re engaging in antifeminism and harming employees in reality. in the past decade (and especially 2020 until now) “fandom” and “consuming content” have evolved into integral parts of these people’s personalities (especially those who are gen Z and younger) and have significant impacts on how they interact with others and how they see themselves. they wrack their brains coming up with excuses for project moon’s antifeminist actions and this genuinely gets fanfiction tier at some point.

like look at this example from that “PM masterpost” a user here on tumblr made. this is the same one we were discussing earlier that reposted rumors slandering the youth union.

beyond the ridiculous untrue claims (this is nothing like the hays code, what PM did was not normal, Mihoyo isn’t the only company that told incels to fuck off, they also have offices in SK and had literally dealt with a bomb threat at one of their SK events, etc…u get it, I’m not going thru every word) you can see this wild conjecture regarding the actions taken by the 2 studios. To me this is an example that shows how much these people defending Project Moon warp their thinking in order to keep believing this company is “progressive”. The company Mihoyo that did not respond to incels’ increasingly ridiculous harassment, blocked their livestream chat then deleted all their misogynistic comments in the next livestream and was one of the only (if not the only) targeted companies that did not take Studio Ppuri’s work for them down - this is presented as essentially “whatever” and further downplayed by saying “I personally doubt [this] was a part of any deeply held opinion on women’s rights.” And Project Moon, the company that folded to incel demands immediately, fired a woman at their behest, sued unions and condemned them in their later statements while saying absolutely nothing about the incels that caused the incident, put memes in their gacha game from the very community these incels came from, makes sure to dutifully censor any🤏 in their gambling game, worked the Leviathan artist so hard she contemplated suicide frequently and had to get IVs? These things are presented as just inevitabilities of operating in South Korea and PM is lauded as “I can’t believe PM is fundamentally misogynistic.” The editorializing is absurd. imo there also comes a time where you compare your “poor little South Korean gacha game who just got caught in the crossfire and actually they are totally progressive and feminist 🥺” to the “Chinese company Mihoyo who does whatever to keep getting the most money and has no morals about it” that at some point starts to lean heavier on sinophobia. I’m not here to blow smoke up Mihoyo’s ass but I do think their action regarding the korean incels’ harassment was significant at a time when companies were falling over themselves to kiss incel ass. And, as has been discussed before on this blog, Project Moon’s capitulation to incels was also significant just in the opposite, misogynistic direction. idk it just gets so unbelievably frustrating to see English speaking users who believe themselves to be “progressive” or “leftist” making excuses because they want to keep playing videogames without feeling guilt meanwhile the Korean fanbase has consistently mobilized digitally and irl to spread info, protest, raise money, etc. like how are you not feeling any shame whatsoever after seeing how principled they are?

guys….come on now

Update

original tweet

article

Hey, in a post you made a while back (iirc it was somebody's tweet, since looking for it using Tumblr search isn't turning up the result), something had been said along the lines of at least one Limbus VA being a misogynist or saying misogynistic stuff (I don't remember the exact things that were said, just my general recollection). I've tried looking into it but haven't found very much. Do you have any more info on that?

sorry the tumblr search is so fucking bad I’ve been meaning to just make a masterpost with links to posts with information in them. I think you’re probably remembering these tweets

Screenshots and direct links from twitter user moominmercian’s post I’ll put under a cut so the post doesn’t come out super long

I was the anon who asked that question about the masterpost, and yes that was indeed the post. You don't have to publish this if you don't want to, but thank you for explaining the root of the issue the way you did. I was looking at the situation in the wrong way.

yeah sometimes it’s really beneficial to get a different perspective on things, so I’m glad I could help with that!

Update

original tweet

article

Hi, sorry for sending this, I'm trying to gather information on Shift UP's ideological verification of its employees, and the CEO's stance on feminism. would you happen to have sources and articles on the subject?

Thank you in advance.

sorry this is a bit late, I’ve been ill recently so I’ve had to spend my free time sleeping lol 😭

article regarding SHIFT-UP removing an artist’s work from their gacha game “Destiny Child” after she said there shouldn’t be a problem being a feminist and voiced support for the VA, Kim Jayeon, that Nexon fired for taking a photo of herself wearing a shirt that said “Girls Do Not Need A Prince”. The shirt was part of a fundraiser to help victims of domestic violence (see the npr article linked below) , the rates of which are especially high for women living in South Korea. You can note here that literally anything vaguely feminist is met with “are you megal?” (referring to the defunct website megalia) and it doesn’t even matter how she responds. This woman made some simple statements and is smeared as some feminist terrorist. tbh sometimes it’s an uphill battle trying to explain to anyone, especially on the western internet, that these women aren’t making some evil dogwhistle to the feminist illuminati when they make basic feminist statements. I’ve gotten called “terf/terf sympathizer” (???) for trying to explain that the artist Vellmori was being smeared on the western web with the term “terf” as a targeted campaign by Korean incels who know that term puts a target on your back and nothing else about it. I am of course not saying megalia was a totally unproblematic site with no ideological problems but none of these women being smeared are saying anything like “yeah the homophobia was great” they’re literally advocating for basic women’s rights. I’m also not saying “basic” in a condescending way, on the contrary I think these women are brave for speaking out and have created complex feminist ideologies and movements. “Basic” and “simple” are meant to show the absurdity in the reaction (extreme male anger, firing, censorship, etc) in relation to the original statement (molka is bad, it’s fine to be a feminist, etc).

this is an article in English regarding the VA who wore the shirt:

SHIFT-UP’s gacha game “Nikke” recently engaging in 🤏 male freakouts

article in Korean regarding this, I’ll add it but idk how “peripheral” you want to get since i don’t think it’s directly SHIFT-UP (?)

as far as more opinion pieces go, there’s this article written by an artist who was a victim of feminist ideological verification that talks about SHIFT-UP’s gacha “Nikke”

Edit- the actual post seems to have been deleted, I screenshotted and pasted the entire thing on the linked post above but idk how using this would come across since the original post is gone.

I posted some images and MTL on this post

this is a paper that goes over just some of the basics of megalia’s mirroring tactics and how it got started

If anyone has anything else specific lmk and I’ll update this post too, I hope what I’ve posted so far can be helpful

to the person who messaged me off anon regarding shift-up, I got your message and it’s just going to take me a little extra time to gather everything I’ve seen together ✌️