>IRyS has been a hold up for a lot of things. Her original model was
>amazing for mostly static splash images for songs, but it was a
>*nightmare* for actually rigging for movement.

She's also been ill for the last few weeks, seeking treatment for what sounds like late-onset asthma--which is not super at any time, but particularly when your job is "voice performer who sings a lot". It's possible that they spread out the Council 3D showcases as wide as they did in hopes of giving her more time to be ready for the collab at the end, since she'd already her her solo showcase before it started.

....Buuuuut it looks
>like the official 3D debut for *Bae's* model may have been the real
>holdup, as hers was the most recent official youtube 3D rollout, on
>the 30th. Holy cow. She's had her 3D for *ages* but her and Mumei only
>showed them off at the end of September, apparently? Wild.

I think they have to be at Cover's actual studio to make "event-grade" 3D recordings, and it's presumably as much of a logistical hassle to get all of Promise there at once as it has been for Myth, given that of the five, I think only IRyS really lives in Japan. (Although Bae just finished staying there for a few months, and has talked about looking into taking up permanent residence like Calli.) I recall reading somewhere that Mumei, in particular, doesn't much care for international travel, and the last time Kronii went to Japan it was right after major surgery to correct TMD, which can't have left her with the fondest memories of the trip...

>I suppose they were using 'unofficial' models before then. Unlike JP,
>the Myth and Council girls have had like six 3D models over the years,
>with Myth tending towards the Walfe 'Smol' models and Councilrys with
>the Sana-designed 'Beegsmol'

I'm not 100% sure we should count the VRchat stuff as "3D", even though I guess technically it is, and was certainly an ingenious solution to the problem of getting them all together during the period of heaviest travel restrictions.

We should also not count Calvin, just on general principles. :)

--G.
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Aloe's leaving was...I'm going to call it a *half-firing*, or a *forced retirement*. I don't think she was exactly *fired*, but I don't think she was entirely *welcome* anymore, by management either.

The retirement/consentual graduation of vtubers from a company are strange things with regards to whether or not their videos stay. Pikamee's channel was privated, but she left VOMS Project on good terms with everyone. I don't know if we'll ever have a real answer as to what criteria there is for whether or not a vtuber's official history is wiped, but my *guess* as of right now is whether or not both sides are okay with whatever profit share they can work out before hand or not. Maybe the ones who have their channels remain gave up their right to whatever might still be made off of the videos?

If it works anything like they did in the tech industry back when I occasionally encountered them there, noncompete agreements upon termination are a) technically voluntary and b) applicable for a limited time only, usually a year. IANAL, but I don't think they can be perpetual, because that would mean prohibiting people from exercising their means of livelihood forever, which is Not A Thing in the labor laws of most developed countries.

I say "technically voluntary" because in my experience, companies usually use some form of leverage to basically extort departing employees to sign them. You have the choice of signing the noncompete or forsaking something of value the company rightfully owes you, like back pay, severance pay, continuation of medical coverage (in backward societies like the US), or what have you. It's a commonplace example of corporate villainy.

All that said, I have zero idea whether the same conventions apply in the Japanese entertainment industry, but I hear it's generally cutthroat as fuck over there, so very little would surprise me.

>As one of them put it, 'It doesn't matter if other
>people say it, *I* just can't say it.'

"The Secretary can neither confirm nor deny... "

>Aloe's leaving was...I'm going to call it a *half-firing*, or a
>*forced retirement*. I don't think she was exactly *fired*, but I
>don't think she was entirely *welcome* anymore, by management either.

This feels familiar from my time in the tech industry, too. A lot of companies like to force unwanted employees to quit rather than fire them, because then they don't have to go to the trouble of contesting an unemployment claim. Again, I dunno how it works in Japan, but in most US states you can't file for unemployment if you resigned.

>Maybe the ones who have their channels remain gave
>up their right to whatever might still be made off of the videos?

Could be. Maybe that's the tradeoff for not leaving under a noncompete, but that's just speculation.

--G.
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If the heavy use of it in the dubbed romcom manga I listen to is any indicator (questionable), it's a thing in Japan as well. I've heard claims (from more reliable sources) that Japan's laws make it easier to convince somebody to resign than to fire them, which might contribute to companies forcing people to resign.

Peter Eng
--
Insert humorous comment here.

I can spend 8 hours a day in my own head no problem; even if I'm not allowed even to have paper to scribble on.

--G.
I suppose that should be expected of the Lewdtuber of the Year
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My first thought was 'how many are there?', but then from your next comment I see that it's one of the two that I'm aware of.

(The other one does speedruns of a porn game, which is a somewhat bemusing concept, since to get the best time one has to skip all the sex scenes...)

-IA.

(i'd probably have forgotten about melody if it weren't for that fanart of her with the ddlc cast)

Don’t forget to check the traditional art streaming sites, too, they’re often where adult game streamers go to....stream adult games...because art sites know that art will almost invariably involve porn at some point and actually have rules about it that aren’t just “No”.

TBH what seems to be the common streaming formula, 18+ or not (or vtuber or not for that matter), doesn't really work for me. I like coming in knowing that people are going to be doing something specific that's of interest, which mostly seems to translate to gaming stuff. And Kizuna Ai. And Kizuna Ai playing games.

-IA.

(see my taking the week off for agdq... even if half the stuff i was interested in was run when i was asleep)

The funny part to me is that the quote is from one of Melody's non-R18 streams. She's just... like that, wherever she's streaming. (Until quite recently at least one of her colleagues on the non-R18 side evidently didn't even know about her Other Job; the penny only dropped when she showed up for their New Year collab after midnight Eastern in a winded and mentally disheveled state (having just, erm, rung in the new year on the other side), and the ones who were in the know kept trolling her by asking how her NYE yoga class went. Which was pretty hilarious, particularly since she was in no state to cope with being trolled.)

As an aside, that's the thing I like best about her. She doesn't act any differently on one side or the other of the divide, apart from the obvious distinctions in the kind of stuff she's actually doing there. Whether she's [REDACTED] on [REDACTED] or playing Minecraft on Twitch, she's the same purple doofus either way. That makes some people who interact with her Twitter account really mad for some reason, which is also pretty satisfying to my imp of the perverse, as it were. :)

--G.
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I get virtually (as it were) all of my exposure to the JP branch via translated clips, and she doesn't turn up in the ones I come across as often as some of the others for whatever reason,* but I like what I've seen.

--G.
* in Marine's case, I'm reasonably sure I can guess why she appears fairly routinely
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If you’re the type of person who can handle listening to something you don’t understand with no way of knowing wha it is, though, give one of her streams or vods a try, I’d put her in the Ina/Fauna category of streamer, rather than the Korone/Pekora/Kiara/Fuwamoco/Bijou one - they’re loud and definitely fun, but they lack that kind of...easy listening radio DJ “ASMR without trying” vibe. And her streams are usually pretty short it looks like.

Heh. Yes, the Abyssgard twins are many things, but "relaxing" is not generally one of them.

--G.
"Close the door!"
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Rushia, it seems to me, has some emotional, possibly psychological issues, which ended up causing her to keep making things worse and blaming others fur it. I think Cover made the right choice then, because she wasn't too far from dragging the other talents down with her in her flailing about.

I think that if Mel had happened first, they *might* have been able to smooth things over, but after how public and messy Rushia was, it'd seem like blatant favoritism to hit her but not Mel, despite the circumstances being quite different.

In my experience, few (if any) corporations have any problem with practicing blatant favoritism. On the other hand, I don't have any info about what's going on behind the curtain. It does feel as though an example has been made, pour encourager les autres. Whatever the case, it's a sobering reminder that for all the cheerful kayfabe about "protecting smiles" and all that secondhand aidoru-culture tomfoolery, agency vtubing is a business, and it'll fuck anybody like any other business if the invisible hand of Adam Smith so decrees.

It must be a weird psychological position to be in, being an agency vtuber. On top of all the other strange mental stresses involved in being what amounts to a digital puppeteer walking the fine edge of a parasocial unreality, you have the ever-lurking spectre of the knowledge that you don't even own the face and name your hopefully-adoring-but-not-too-adoring-let's-not-make-it-weird-you-guys public knows you by, and that the organization that does own them can take them away at any time.

Granted, things like that have happened to more traditional performers before. The first example I can think of off the top of my head is the late Calvert DeForest, who played Larry "Bud" Melman, the all-purpose comic relief character on Late Night with David Letterman. When Letterman moved to CBS and his show became The Late Show, NBC asserted intellectual property rights to the Melman character and tried to either strong-arm some money out of Worldwide Pants or put DeForest out of a job. He got around that by just... not calling himself Melman any more, but continuing to portray the exact same character, because as it turns out, you can't really trademark a shtick. That was a little different, though. I mean, NBC didn't own DeForest's face.

I dunno exactly where I'm going with this, just that I've thought about this a bunch since I started following various holomembers, and the instability certain sectors of the business have displayed over the last few weeks (mostly outside hololive, admittedly) has kept it near the front of my mind whenever I've been watching them.

Also, unrelatedly, an unnerving percentage of the ones I watch regularly are either Radio Silent For Unspecified Reasons or just outright on vacation right now, which is an odd bit of stellar alignment.

--G.
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Mumei is, I think, worried about/helping Selen Tatsuki with whatever SHE’S been handling since Christmas - they’ve been friends for years, even auditioning to their companies at the same time together. The, being friends plus the timing and Selena continued MIA-ness being my reasons there.

Ina seems to do “working vacations” a fair bit, plus she has an actual for real professional art job on the side that I imagine she’s got to occasionally prioritize.

Kiara And Nerissa are on vacation together...or were? Not sure if they’re back yet, that one’s pretty straightforward.

Moona’s Sick and resting, not sure if you watch her, but...

Who else...I don’t think any of the other ENs are out..oh, looks like Kronii’s been away since the Mario kart tourney. She’s been tweeting up a storm though, so who knows what’s up there.

She mentioned a trip to Japan the last time she streamed, which I think she said she'd be undertaking after a week or two off. I assume that's the usual Cover tomfoolery.

>Kiara And Nerissa are on vacation together...or were? Not sure if
>they’re back yet, that one’s pretty straightforward.

They're back (Nerissa is now sleeping off massive jet lag), but Kiara signed off today until mid-February. She's evidently trying without notable success to interest the Austrian medical system in helping her with what may or may not be fibromyalgia, which, yyyikes.

>Who else...I don’t think any of the other ENs are out..oh, looks
>like Kronii’s been away since the Mario kart tourney. She’s been
>tweeting up a storm though, so who knows what’s up there.

Kronii can't stream right now because she just had phase 2 of the TMD correction surgery she had the first part of last year, and as such, her face kind of... doesn't work at the moment. I hope this phase wasn't as rough as the first one; her stories of how that went are straight-up nightmare fuel, although--the way she tells them--infused with the finest black comedy.

Mori's also off for a few weeks, returning to the US to have an operation of some sort. She was pretty blasé about talking about it in her last stream, though she wasn't specific about what it is beyond describing it as "unfinished business". I think she's planning to drop some prerecorded let's-plays during the gap, like Fauna is doing during her present hiatus.

And Ame's away doing... something... and only streaming sporadically until further notice. Probably some kind of time heist or something, who knows with that one.

Oh, and she's (very, very much) not a holomem, but, Melody's going to Japan to see for herself whether Akihabara is really as crazy as everyone's been telling her it is for the last four years. So at least that one's not shrouded in mystery. :)

--G.
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At least Kronii isn't flying this time. Pressure changes CAN'T have been fun.

Ame faked me out! She's been streaming a bunch lately, after a bit of a break before her birthday, so I figured she was back. :3

Fauna's Outer Wilds are actually prerecorded? Huh!

Kiara does indeed have fibro, and has had for a quite long time, I believe. She's also got asthma.

Jeez, right? Half of the reason I won't fly any more is because of how bad it fucks up my sinuses, and mine haven't recently been dismantled and put back together. And then to have to do work things? They dragged her to a theme park! The poor woman was still occasionally vomiting blood! Only a Canadian could fail to go postal at that moment.

>Kiara does indeed have fibro, and has had for a quite long time, I
>believe. She's also got asthma.

Oof. Those are always rough, but they strike me as particularly unfortunate conditions to have when your profession involves so much... movement. Knowing that, I'm even more impressed at what a spectacular dancer she is. In the all-Myth 3D collab from last spring, it's really striking how much more experienced she is than the others. Which is not to call any of the others bad, but everything Kiara does in the musical numbers has that extra little English that only comes from a certain set of skills acquired over the course of a very long career, skills that make her a nightmare for people like... wait. I seem to have gone off the beam a little. Kiara has that effect on me sometimes. TBH, she's often... a bit much for my taste, and she was the last out of Myth that I really warmed to, but she's got a certain something something. :)

--G.
besides the bakery, I mean, although that doesn't hurt.
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Weirdly enough, despite not being one of the ones with a chronic illness or needing various surgeries, Ame seems to be the most ‘held together by spit and bailing wire’ in like, the whole company. Girls been through it over the years :3

Oh, yeah, that's absolutely come up on stream. It was one of her stories in the Myth game show collab last year. She said she got fairly deep into the audition process, but then chose not to pursue it.

(I haven't rewatched the whole thing just now, but I remember Calli told an amazing story about a pig that turned out, alas, not to be true. :)

>Weirdly enough, despite not being one of the ones with a chronic
>illness or needing various surgeries, Ame seems to be the most ‘held
>together by spit and bailing wire’ in like, the whole company. Girls
>been through it over the years :3

She and Shiori should get together and just swap "I Nearly Died in Childhood" stories for a couple hours. It'd be like the scar comparison scene in Jaws, except cuter and probably more sober. They might still sing "Ladies of Spain", though.

--G.
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yyyyyikes. I would like my brain to stop trying to envision how that went down right now.

--G.
"I went on the Internet yesterday, and I found this!"
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Ordinarily I'd agree, but this is Kronii we're talking about, who's somewhere between "masochistically unfazed by personal harm" and "suicidally unfazed by personal harm". Witness this stream, where Kronii couldn't make her AC and PC work at the same time in the middle of summer, so she just decided to stream anyway, only stopping after 2 hours when stripping naked and eating ice cream couldn't keep herself at operable temperature.

And while you could chalk that one up to an ironclad work ethic, Kronii (a notable lightweight who threw up after 3 cans of beer) recently decided to go drinking with Calli (one of the hardest drinkers in Hololive, and certainly the hardest in EN branch). A reasonable person would pace themselves in this situation; Kronii instead decided to go shot-for-shot with Calli, with predictable results.

"What's wrong with you? Just stop dying!"

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

Fan art inspiration for days.

>And while you could chalk that one up to an ironclad work ethic,
>Kronii (a notable lightweight who threw up after 3 cans of beer)

This makes me wonder: Are they all Olympic-level lightweights in Promise? I don't have data about Mumei or Fauna, but Bae and IRyS have displayed Mio Sakamoto-level tolerance in their time too.

(They're also hilarious drunks, particularly IRyS. I don't ordinarily enjoy the "drunk streamer" thing so much, but DrunkRyS VCing into Kronii's Mario Kart stream and swearing like a sailor was side-splitting.)

>recently decided to go drinking with Calli (one of the hardest
>drinkers in Hololive, and certainly the hardest in EN branch). A
>reasonable person would pace themselves in this situation; Kronii
>instead decided to go shot-for-shot with Calli, with predictable results.

Oh hey, I wrote a scene like this once. :)

>"What's wrong with you? Just stop dying!"

Moko dragged herself partially upright, lit a cigarette, took the first drag, and watched in bemusement as the smoke drifted out of the holes in her thorax. "Thanks for the tip."

--G.
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That said, I think Calli May be the only real drinker in EN? I wouldn’t be surprised if Ame would spontaneously combust if she drank, Ina feels like she’d have a glass of wine and call it there, Sana when she was around, I suspect was on meds which would suggest against consumption of alcohol (wouldn’t be surprised if Kiara is too, at least occasionally). Nerissa and Shiori maybe...no information on Faufau or moomers, and Gura...USED to drink. A lot. Like, Concerningly.

Meanwhile, Calli used to buy the cheapest stuff she could get her hands on, by the gallon, because she just wanted booze, and lots of it. I think she’s largely stopped? Or at least she doesn’t do drinking streams as much anymore that I’ve seen.

On the JP side, barely two weeks go by when there isn’t *somebody* doing one - now, there’s a lot more of them, sure, but it seems like all of them have done at least one. (Korone’s a sleepy drunk, by the way)

Kiara and Nerissa both mentioned passing on the Complimentary Alcohol at the resort during their Maldives "after-action report".

I can't decide whether Shiori would be a Bubbly Drunk, an I LOVE YOU GUYS Drunk, or a Sinister Drunk. Might depend on what she's drinking. It'd be kind of funny, but also kind of terrifying, if alcohol closed her moe gap and made her actually live up to her image.

>Meanwhile, Calli used to buy the cheapest stuff she could get her
>hands on, by the gallon, because she just wanted booze, and lots of
>it. I think she’s largely stopped? Or at least she doesn’t do
>drinking streams as much anymore that I’ve seen.

Yeah, she's talked about that a couple times recently, since someone in chat always asks when she plugs her sake brand--mainly, she stopped drinking alone/online, and mostly only does it when she's with people IRL. Which still happens fairly regularly since she lives in the heart of the maelstrom, but even so, she mentioned with some bemusement that her tolerance is eroding. Drinking Kronii under the table was still easy, but not as easy as she reckoned it should have been. :)

>On the JP side, barely two weeks go by when there isn’t *somebody*
>doing one - now, there’s a lot more of them, sure, but it seems like
>all of them have done at least one. (Korone’s a sleepy drunk, by the
>way)

This... does not surprise me.

I find myself wondering what Subaru's like. I'm gonna guess "even louder, somehow." :)

--G.
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I'm sorry, I misspoke, she's a silly, affectionate, sleepy drunk. :) Like two thirds of their big Among Us collabs are drinking ones, and Korone seems to drift off by the end of it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nf4PtZcmmV0

>I find myself wondering what Subaru's like. I'm gonna guess "even
>louder, somehow." :)

Well, she, Botan and Calli had a 'drinking stream' once...of non alcoholic something. I don't think Subaru actually drinks! So I've proven myself wrong, it seems~

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djKw1yhdC7U

Edit: OH! I'm wrong, this WAS an actual drinking stream, they just also had something non alcoholic I guess.

Son of Edit: Oh, they were all non-alcoholic drinks, and Subaru just...Placebo'd herself into drunkenness? :)

Just like the nightclub scene in Persona 4! :)

--G.
although I'm not sure who would be Rise and who would be Yukiko in that analogy
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The words "Bae," "beer," and "Australian" together in a sentence reminded me of one of the best "Drunk Bae" moments. To set the scene, it was last New Year's and the three lightest-weight drinkers in HoloEN (Fauna, Mumei, & Bae) were streaming the Hololive special only to be plagued bu audio issues due to the branch's infamous tech glitches. Then while trying to fix it, Bae had an "oopsie" and entered a super secret password without hiding the screen from chat. So when mention was made that she should call Irys, of course she grabbed her phone only to realize it had been on vibrate and Irys had called her instead. What ensued was tiny chaos rat having a weepy moment to her wife on the phone about the tragedies of the stream. Finally, it came time to end the call, leading to...

Fauna
"Bae, you have to say goodbye to your wife."

Bae
*In most "drunk Aussie" voice*
"BYE BITCH!"

Irys
*Awkwardly*
"Bye."

And yes, Bae addressed it the very next stream and was very embarrassed to admit that the booze had activated the factory reset. AFAIK, Irys has never held it against her.

--------------------------
CdrMike, Overwatch Reject

Also, how would Fuwawa handle booze? I'm making the assumption that Mococo would be a belligerent drunk, considering her typical state of aggravation.

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

That's likely the case, but I enjoy the perverse counterimage of her having an ineplicably legendary tolerance, laying waste to all who challenge her, like Marion Ravenwood in her first scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark. That's how I would write it in fiction, anyway. :)

>Also, how would Fuwawa handle booze? I'm making the assumption that
>Mococo would be a belligerent drunk, considering her typical state of
>aggravation.

I could see both of them having a mode switch partway along. Fuwawa would start out giggly and bubbly, then subtly make it increasingly obvious that she is the evil twin. Meanwhile, Mococo starts out pugnacious, but at some point passes some invisible inner threshold and instantly dissolves into a clingy, needy puddle.

--G.
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So I got curious and decided to do a little searching, even though I don't know a Kronii from a Krogan*... Looks like if anyone has latched onto this one, it hasn't gotten posted on Danbooru anyway. It's not that I'm disappointed, it's just a little surprising when no one takes the straight lines as it were...

*Though I have already come to know and loathe her... whatever you call the walking clocks. Mascots? Not their fault, it's just that the oversized ones show up right at the point in the first stage of Holocure where a good survival run becomes "you're still winning, but it's not really fun anymore".

>Oh hey, I wrote a scene like this once. :)

So did I! Which I wouldn't bother mentioning, except I just now realized that mine was probably in part inspired by yours, and I don't think I acknowledged the inspiration when I posted the story.

-IA.

(i can at least console myself that one character having a good reason to not know how high her own tolerance actually was is an original twist... maybe)

As with most of the enemies in Holocure, those are representations of her fan base. Most holomems have fan proxies and mascots that are distinct from each other--for example, Calli's mascot is Death-sensei, the little cartoon reaper that hovers around her sometimes, while her fans are represented by skeletons (the Dead Beats).

In Kronii's case, her mascot is Boros, the white serpent who often appears in her vicinity (in at least one of her Live2D models, Boros's mouth is animated to move when she talks, which leads some viewers to speculate that he's the actual vtuber and the woman with the blue hair is the mascot), while her fan base is represented by the clock creatures you know and dread from the break-even point of Holocure. They're called...

... wait for it...

... Kronies.

Look, I didn't name them, I'm just saying. :)

--G.
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Various other mascots/ fan bases are;

Amelia: mascot, her dog Bubba
Fanbae: InvestiGators

Gura: Mascot, Bloop, the little shark in a bubble
Fanbase, Chumbuds (Shrimp)

Calli: Mascot, Death-Sensei, chibi reaper
Fanbase: Deadbeats, skeletons.

(Chumbuds And Deadbeats have gang member versions based on the music video for Q, Animated by the creator of Holocure)

Ina, Mascot, the Ancient One (the floating book she sometimes has or holds)
Fanbase: Takodachis, little octopus looking guy’s with halos

Fauna, Mascot, ....I’m honestly not sure.
Fanbase, Saplings (little plant bulb dudes)

Bae, Mascot, Mr Squeakers (alternatively, herself)
Fanbase, Brats, red rats

Mumei, Mascot, Friend, paper bag with a face on it
Fanbase: .....Hoomans, bird things in owl hoodie cloaks

Kronii, Mascot, Boros, little white snake
Fanbase, Kronies

IRyS, Mascot: Bloom and Gloom, two black and white little imp creatures, with negative/mirrored patterns
Fanbase: IRyStocrats.

Sana, Mascot: Yatagarasu, the....Cheeto snake thing.
Fanbase: Sanalites, bread dogs

I don’t know enough about Advent yet, but Biboo’s fanbase is Pebbles

As I'm hearing from other fans, NDAs in Japan are serious business and Mel is being allowed to exit under what are likely the best terms possible. If Yagoo was a less charitable person, he could not only have blacklisted her from the industry but sued her for breach of contract. Hell, that Rushia was allowed to quietly migrate over to VShojo given the severity of her own acts says a lot about the leniency of management at Hololive.

Honestly, the difference between Mel and Rushia's departures is "We're sorry we have to do this, but rules are rules" versus "If you leave without a fuss, we won't call the cops."

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CdrMike, Overwatch Reject

So their hands were tied at that point, the process simply had to happen, despite nobody wanting it to.

How I *imagine* it going is Mel just casually bringing it up to her manager or someone that she talked to the friend about things, then being told that was a no-no and then the world crashing down on her. I think that’d suck slightly less than said friend ratting her out to Cover and costing friendship AND that part of Mel’s career.

Mel is also, unfortunately, described as a sweet girl but not very bright. If you choose to believe that characterization of her...it's possible she vented using her Mel discord account or twitter DMs or the like and Cover caught her during an audit.

https://youtu.be/lY1WJ_xRN04?si=Sc85g3aozmUhm5PG