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Thought Project: Relapse [pt 1] [pt 2] [pt 3] [pt 4] [pt 5]

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hello! for those of you who might not know me, i'm brin. i was a moderator in the official isat server for a little over a year (from january 2024 to march 2025); me and ocean were the first two brought on after the first mods decided to grab some help. ocean is also my friend, and we speak very regularly.

by nature of my position i have quite a bit more context than the majority of people in the fandom. i cannot speak to anything adrienne is thinking here (nor will i speculate), and i am not going to give any private details, whether it is in private or otherwise. so don't ask for that please. :P but i can say that i've seen everything i'm going to be talking about here, and a lot more besides.

the reason i'm making this post is because i've seen a lot of people theorizing, especially after adrienne's vague reply, that ocean and adrienne might have some history that everyone else is just unaware of, with, often, the implication that ocean may have been negative towards adrienne in private. ocean is an incredibly kind, sweet person who's done nothing but care for this game and its fandom and it really sucks to see that xe are having to deal not only with suddenly being ripped from a fandom that she's given years and so much of her heart to, but being doubted by people who fully admit they do not have the whole story but all the same assume he must be in the wrong. i asked ocean if it'd be okay to clarify a few things (after all, i don't want to speak for her, of course), and i've been given permission.

in any case, here are the facts as i know them:

in march of 2022, ocean joined the isat server. it was much much smaller then, and adrienne was more active, so they spoke now and then in that capacity. (i wasn't there for this--i joined the server in nov 2023--but in the process of making my spreadsheet documenting everything adrienne had said about the game on social media, i saw all of adrienne's posts in the server, and ocean was frequently there at the same time as an active fan.) they didn't have any private interactions at this point.

in january of 2024, ocean is made a moderator; they continue to be a moderator from then until march of 2025. i know of three, and only three, DMs between them during this time period. all of them had to do with important moderation-related concerns and were worded politely. in the server mod chats they had the very occasional limited but professional interaction, including the one they've mentioned in 2024 in which we both notified her that the mirror picture standee's colors were off.

when ocean quit being a moderator in march 2025, xe also left the server. she isn't and wasn't discord friends with adrienne, and they didn't have any shared servers when ocean left, so after that point ocean had no private way of contacting adrienne other than the ones open to any fan.

adrienne usually has asks closed. not that ocean is the sort to send harassing asks anyway, but even if he was, mechanically it wouldn't really be an option.

ocean has publicly interacted with adrienne three times from then on: in february of this year, when the keychains were announced, ocean replied to the post (with an @ to adrienne) letting her know that mira's skin on the keychain seemed to be a bit too light. then, a couple days ago, as we know: ocean makes a post about the whitewashing issue, @ ing adrienne (in case tumblr had eaten the mention from february). adrienne makes a vaguely worded post on the matter; ocean reblogs from them, thanking her for talking to yetee and adding a link to xer original post for context because people were confused in the notes. to one person in particular saying they thought the post was a joke because isat is in grayscale, ocean clarified, and is blocked immediately thereafter.

as far as interactions go, that should be the extent of it. in terms of things that could, theoretically, be construed as negativity, ocean does and always has been vocal as a fan of color about issues of race and racism within the fandom (something that has been a big issue long prior to this point, and something which frankly imo is a labor they provided to the fandom that she shouldn't have needed to provide). on occasion, she would express feelings about things within the game that they wish were different--for example, that sif had been visibly nonwhite in the game, because as it stands the fandom draws him very white; or that their background as a person of color had not been spoken about as though it was optional.

none of these tagged adrienne in any capacity, and xe were in my opinion always very polite and understanding of adrienne's circumstances and feelings even speaking privately. other fans have spoken about the same issues and adrienne has expressed understanding and gratitude for them expressing their thoughts (for example, here). ocean was incredibly passionate about the game and about its characters of color and loved them dearly and was always very clear about that. other fans have also brought up whitewashing before (with no response) as well as other issues with merch (with a response) and there were no issues at this point.

again, i cannot and will not speculate on what adrienne's motivations were here--what posts of oceans they saw, what she thought of them, and her thoughts in any regard around this issue are all fully beyond my ability and right to say anything about. i just really needed people to know that there aren't huge sordid secrets here. ocean's a wonderful, brave, kind person who put her heart and soul and time and effort into this fandom and never had any idea that adrienne may have had any issues with anything xe were saying or doing--in my opinion, reasonably so; certainly no issues were ever communicated prior to this point in the limited interactions they had.

in any case. i very much understand the confusion and hurt here. it's not about me, but i'm pretty fucking poleaxed by this situation too. but i hope in all of this we can just be understanding of ocean's pain, being removed so suddenly and without warning from something he loved so much. your opinions on what adrienne did are your own, but please, please be certain to respect ocean in the process. the fact is that adrienne's blog isn't just their personal but also in stars and time's official mouthpiece, and the official blog removing xer access without any apparent rhyme or reason is something that is i think very reasonable for ocean to be hurt by even if you do not personally get it or think there is a reason from adrienne that you can accept. i am not at all saying in the midst of all this that anyone needs to think that adrienne is some cartoon villain here, and i do not want adrienne alone at the end of all this. optimally, i just would hope that she too can understand why what they did caused ocean pain and would be willing to apologize for that pain regardless of the reasoning behind it.

I see people out there accusing xem of conspiracy lol secret beef between id5 and Ocean!

Bullshit.

Ocean has been a fan for so long, Ocean was a mod for the isat server and loves this game. Ocean is a real normal person and he is heartbroken this is happening!! They didn't want any of this to happen! She wanted a fucking printing issue that's been going on for over a year and has been brought up multiple times and has been said would be fixed, to finally be fixed!!!

This isn't about being blocked, its about being silenced. If you choose to believe this is about something simple being blown into drama, you can get the hell off my blog. Block me, try to fight me so I can block you.

And for those who are like “well there’s no proof that you were treated differently compared to others” here we go exhibit A: When a fan politely points out that the yetee poster had backwards hands, Adrienne responded immediately, directly and positively. She then makes an updated post saying the poster was fixed . No one was blocked.

As well as exhibit b: where a different fan made a post politely saying that there was missing pages in the artbook, compared to the digital artbook.

Adrienne once again responded immediately, without even needing to be @, thanked the person and explained directly to the fan saying she’d contact serenityforge to fix the issue at hand. An announcement was made and everyone who had missing pages got it mailed and there was complimentary merch. No one was blocked.

Vs

Compared to that same post advertising the poster made on tumblr when myself and others in the comments, the tags and RBs mentions the mirabelle keychain being sold alongside the poster had coloration issues it was ignored for a month straight. No response.

There was only an actual response when I made my post in March @ing her directly in a separate post (after waiting and assuming in good faith that maybe people’s concerns got lost in the notifs, since tumblr is notoriously glitchy especially because of this new update.)

To those wondering why I didn’t ask this privately, I had actually initially done so before regarding the mirror standee way back in 2024 while I was still in the isat discord as a moderator in the staff chat. I was told that it was just the lighting of the display photo and it would look more accurate in person/ that Adrienne would let yetee know directly if things were amiss. I trusted this and it still came out pale, and when my friends who received said pale merch contacted yetee via email it wasn’t really any real response back to help reconcile it. I let it slide thinking that maybe things would improve over time, that this is a smaller game dev and maybe their contract with yetee couldn’t allow changes to be made after it was created. I still gave everyone the benefit of the doubt and saw how kind and understanding Adrienne was to other fans informing her of printing errors that I thought it would be fine to inform her and everyone else as well.

I was unable to ask about this recent merch drop privately, because tumblr asks were not available and neither were DMs.

Adrienne makes a statement , some people in the notes were confused by the wording and started to make jokes, I clarify and explain that it was regarded to the misprint causing mirabelle skin to become lighter and it’s then and only then am I blocked, and my polite response clarifying the situation was removed entirely from people to see.

Many people have tried to ask why this was done or if it was an accident and asking for an answer and everyone who was concerned have as of now been ignored entirely. It’s bad optics.

Had Adrienne not blocked me on tumblr, bluesky, Instagram and everywhere else, I would’ve just taken her response as sincere when she said that she wanted to fix things. I outright said thank you, and in my original post nowhere did I blame Adrienne for the miscolor. I specifically cited yetee’s printers as the source of the issue.

But because of them doing that, and because a lot of the conversations of the situation is getting downplayed and dismissed by some of the official moderation in her games official discord has led me to lose faith in this being a simple miscommunication. This was just targeted.

I’m no longer making any posts regarding this situation, because I think I’ve made myself as clear in my intent as I can be. I am never buying anything from the dev or participating in this fandom again. The response to this was cruel and as much as I genuinely loved this game, the story, the characters and positive times I had with the community- I can’t overlook this either. I’ve had years of people downplaying racism happening to me and my loved ones, so seeing it repeated in a space I thought was safe was worse.

This is what I said regarding Adrienne’s response to her merch getting whitewashed:

This is because of different people in the notes making jokes, and assuming it to not be as serious or not specifically about whitewashing. I wanted to help clarify and was not meant to be hateful. Adrienne’s response was to block me and only me so that my post wouldn’t show up at all in the notes for other people. I wonder why that is: