Clover

there are two things im going to be addressing in this post: the haayshi mai valentine's day audio and the statements made by skyler, the VA of dr. kan, on twitter. after this i dont plan to address the situation further unless there are major questions or i miss anything important.

firstly, the valentines day audio. at the very beginning of tetro pink production back in 2022, i recorded two files for a valentine's day gift for a friend on the team who really liked hayashi. one was called sweet, because it was a fluffier scenario with hayashi being nice. the other was called spicy, because it was an interrogation scenario with hayashi being mean. these were alternatively called the pink file (sweet) and the red file (spicy). the names were completely arbitrarily themed and were just meant to differentiate one being mean and one being nice.

concerns have recently arisen that the spicy pack was sexual in nature. im not going to be obtuse and say that i cant imagine how people would see that, because i can easily see how people would see that. regardless, this was not the intention of the pack, which i have since taken down and made unavailable for viewing.

hayashi as a character has always spoken in a way that is somewhat teasing/mocking/playful/notably obtuse when it comes to her bounty hunter persona in tetro. within the show, she threatens to choke people and tie them up semi-frequently. that was the tone carried on through this audio, with several lines referring to tying the listener up or choking them within the context of a violent interrogation. these lines were not meant to be NSFW or indicative of anything NSFW.

i believe these things are being taken out of the context of the scenario to be presented in a bad light. its easy to do this with certain scenarios given the terms that are used or the way characters speak when doing certain things. if a character is tying someone up and interrogating them, especially a character who speaks/acts like hayashi does, there is going to be overlap with certain other themes just by nature of how scenarios play out and how language works. in my opinion, it would be similar if there was audio of - for example - tamba coaching you through stretching with her or something for athletic reasons. there would be talk about spreading or holding legs or bending forward that could all be read as inappropriate, if divorced from the context of the scenario. if i thought that the interrogation audio was sexual in nature, i would not have made it or released it publicly. i am not comfortable voicing content of that nature, so i would not have done it.

one of the reasons this concern is arising is because hayashi is seventeen years old. to be specific, seventeen years old and a month out from turning eighteen. i recorded the audio when i was twenty. while i do not consider the audio to be sexual and i did not intend for it to be sexual, if you read it as such, i can see how this would make people uncomfortable. theres nothing i can say to that. if it makes you uncomfortable, i apologize, but i will stand by the fact that i was not attempting to make anything sexual, and when i was informed that people were reading it that way, i immediately took the audio down. there are no other audios of this nature. sweet & spicy were the only supplementals i ever recorded with mai. i personally consider them to be less explicit than the art i frequently see in tags of tetro characters of the same age or younger making out.

the second matter i wanted to discuss was the inclusion of skyler as dr. kan, a character with explicitly adult themes tied to him in staffside. when i cast skyler two years ago, i was not aware of her age. furthermore, dr. kan as a character was extremely early on in development. the major themes of his character had not been fleshed out yet, and would only be developed further on in production, long after skyler had already been cast and while i was still unaware of skyler's age. this is on me. i should have been aware of skyler's age before including those themes in the character, and if i was going to include those themes, i should not have cast skyler in the role.

skyler has never been made to record anything inappropriate as dr. kan. i thought that by including kan's darker content in staffside and NOT studentside, this would be alright, as skyler would never have to interact with that side of the character. in my mind, it was the same as when children are cast in horror movies and not informed that what they're filming is horror. i understand now that that was an ignorant mindset to go into this situation with.

when these themes arose in written staffside and skyler was made aware of them, i was not under the impression that skyler had any discomfort voicing the character. skyler continued to make jokes and meme posts about kan, continued actively reading and posting about staffside, and dubbed several scenes in staffside on her own accord while expressing an enjoyment of the writing. skyler never raised any concerns to me about voicing the character and continued doing so enthusiastically. i dont believe, with this in mind, that i could have known skyler was uncomfortable voicing this character, as i was being explicitly shown the opposite constantly.

tetro was my first time casting for any sort of real project. i understand that i made obvious mistakes during the casting process, such as not verifying ages for characters like kan that had explicit themes tied to them. that said, to reiterate, none of these themes were ever presented in anything skyler had to voice. when skyler did voice so much as a REFERENCE to these themes, it was in entirely self-directed unofficial dubs that skyler chose to do out of interest and i had absolutely no part in producing. if i had known early on in production that these themes would be present, i would have looked for an older voice actor. in summary, i did not know skyler's age, i did not yet know kan's themes would involve sexual misconduct, i did not ever have skyler voice anything tied to these themes or even referencing them, and i was not aware at any point that skyler was uncomfortable with how the character turned out, as she continued to enthusiastically create kan content of her own volition without my involvement.

in regards to what all of this means for tetro: as of now, i plan to continue producing the series unless it becomes unsustainable. ive spoken a couple times about how stress affects my health, and at this point in time, ive reached a place where i am not able to keep water down due to nausea, which obviously is not a place i want to be in. current considerations are to end student spotlights, which i will try to avoid if necessary, and to close the public discord server, which is a very genuine consideration at the moment. that's it. as of now, considerations for cancelling the series are very low.