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INTEREST: Vic Mignogna No Longer a Member of RWBY Cast

HeWhoSlapsAll wrote:

Now we're comparing him to Weinstein? Way to make a leap. Until evidence surfaces, there's comparison when it comes to their actions. He's insensitive and that piggyback ride was dangerous, but vile? We've no evidence of vile behavior. So far, he comes of as an entitled prick of a narcissist. Not evil, or conniving. Not yet, anyway.

I'm going to go ahead and call bollocks on this. Vic Mignogna has a very long history of abusing peer pressure and fame to get away with increasingly terrible behavior. It has reached the point where he's openly running a "fan club" that consists mostly of impressionable middle-school girls and is managed by his mother, who shamelessly calls herself the Matriarch and grooms those girls into harassing people who speak up against her son online, and somehow that is considered "okay". Every other year he gets called out on his behavior, and every time his fanboy brigade pretend to be concerned citizens in an effort to paint him as an innocent and perfectly harmless soul who doesn't realize what he's doing, while everyone else is oh so mean and terrible and paranoid and reading far too much into it.

I'd understand if this happened once or twice, but this has reached the scale of a mythical cycle at this point. It happened back when he was cast as Viral in Gurren Lagann, it happened again when he was cast as Folken in Escaflowne, then again when he was cast as Rohan Kishibe, and now it's happening again. At this point he has played enough free get out of jail tickets to compile a bloody poker deck.

At this point I'm just interested what he needs to do to finally be held responsible for his nonsense, because to his fans fifteen years of sexual harassment and power abuse is apparently just not enough.

But me talking about those two things is technically me talking about how they feel. Or is it me talking about how they act in response of how they feel?

Regardless, it's connected. Still, talking about how people feel is valid because people have a tendency to overreact and/or react too quickly. Hell, some people don't react at all, and years later you realize you let a dude's ego grow too big. Hey, that sounds familiar.

After watching the video Vic made in response to these allegations, I find I have very mixed feelings. On the one hand, my heart breaks for the rare few whose lives or careers are upended by a false accusation. HOWEVER, I've also personally been on the other side of that; seeing someone cry crocodile tears (even if s/he genuinely sees themself as the victim when they are in fact victimizing others), only for their behavior to stay the same.

As much as I want to acknowledge that yes, false accusations do exist, the number of them is so infinitesimal compared to those who have suffered real abuse and are petrified to step forward. Victims' lives are forever tied to this and everything about them is raked over the coals of public opinion, marring everything about them in the name of "finding the truth."

TL/DR: An explanation video is discussion-worthy, but I have to stand with those brave enough to risk public shaming and verbal attacks in order to speak out against abuse.

NervClaX wrote:

Innocent until proven guilty. The accused have rights too.

This is not a court of law.

Yes, some victims get slandered when coming out, but at some point it's your fault for doing nothing about it. Sorry, but as someone who beat the crap out of his bully in middle school I've got very little patience for people do don't care of their own issues quickly, but would rather let it stew and act like they weren't part of the problem.

Quote:

"I'm fairly confident these tweets are instead being highlighted because they are Vic's professional colleagues, and so what they have to say on the matter is potentially relevant (especially if some of them, like Monica Rial, can attest to having directly confronted Vic about the his behavior with fans in the past.) Now, the fact that at least so far, the other voice actors speaking out about this publicly are pretty much all speaking against Vic"

How do you know that? ANN have clearly not tried reaching out to anyone other than Vic, and #KickVic. Just looking up those Twitter replies there was this group packet with people of a different impression. This took me 10 seconds to find. Yet you're telling me ANN actively tried to get a different perspective (outside twitter of course) and couldn't find one, not a single one? ANN didn't even bother to write he denied the charges.

This has been waiting to break into public knowledge for years. And it's overdue.

As a high level convention "insider" I can say we at the top level who were involved in booking various talent were aware of allegations regarding several of the popular con guests.

It's a lot of heresay. Rumors. One con head quietly passing cautions to another con head. But also police reports. Reports from venue security. And people we knew who chose to keep quiet because the con was important to them.

Allegations like this go back years and years, not just limited to anime con guests but also scifi, comic, fantasy cons into the 70s. The story was always the same: some name talent popular with fans was caught doing untoward things and it was either hushed up, or ignored, or just buried. It's not that a lot of work was spent hiding it but somehow nobody talked and word didn't get around and the secrets were kept.

Why? Because cons lived and died by the guests they could book. You throngs out there demanded we book people we KNEW were dangerous or risky. None of you knew what we knew. None of you knew WE didn't want to be alone in elevators or anywhere else with certain guests and we sure didn't want them at the damn con, but we had to sell tickets to pay for the show, and name guests sold tickets.

What what the hell are we supposed to do when we have hundreds of fans demanding we book some guest? You won't accept no. You can't possibly imagine the indigestion in our stomachs knowing what we knew and having to book these pigs anyway, while everybody acted like they were superhero guests and we were the villains!

So we signed the contracts and enabled these predators to prey on fresh blood over and over again. Hell, they didn't even have to hide it once they became so insanely popular as guests. No con would risk NOT booking them. I know of several such guests who contacted the con I worked for and basically had a list of demands to appear. A rider. Flight, hotel, per diem, etc. All paid by the con. Or the guest would not show. That's right. These folks did their dirty work and got paid by the con to do it!

Ticket sales were always more important.

Vic's not the only one. There are others. Some are name guests and others are more like perennial superfans who show up and con after con. Some have active restraining orders keeping them from some cons but not others. EVERY con knows who they are. They have discussed it at the top of their directorial structure. Their head of security knows and probably has a plan to try (TRY) to keep things under control or at least wraps.

It's long past time for this silence to end and the dirty horrible truth to come out.

S0crates wrote:

"*zip*

You also claim ANN didn't write he denied the charges, but they covered that. They printed his entire statement with the denial. So I am seriously questioning now whether you are arguing in good faith.

I can't find the statement after rereading this article, so I assume you must mean a different article. If you do mean this article, then ANN wrote that he apologized, then linked a video. I'd argue many people won't watch a 15 minute video of a person who they'd perhaps assumed to have done something bad, but if you truly believe this is sufficient then I'll leave that to your judgment. I've said how I interpreted it, and how and why it could be viewed as unethical reporting and even give consequences if my interpretation is viewed as universal. We just had a giant libel scandal, where several media companies may not survive, following the falsely accusations against Covington Catholic students (over supposed harassing of a native American). I'm urging ANN as the biggest and best anime news media to not involve themselves in cases that may cause them similar backlash (in addition to me finding it unethical on a private basis), and if you are familiar with such cases you know how devastating they can be. There is no reason for ANN to do this, especially not if we all agree that gossip is not this network's focus. My agenda is for them to better themselves towards that goal and continue their already (mostly) exemplar service of reporting anime news. Just because they are mostly good does not put them above criticism. You may question my motives, but that is it. My biggest fear is that if ANN mess up in these "side stories" (if they become the norm) then there are no alternative for us, and it would take years to build up a new network of similar quality and reach. ANN's reporting are also crucial for the industry as they serve statistical data, translations and other exclusivity for a Western audience none other can provide. It is in many ways like catching a respected scientist for shoplifting. I feel they're best off leaving "risky gossip" to other places, but we've been over this so I won't repeat that point.

S0crates wrote:

*zip*

You seem to be insinuating that because of Vic's status somehow ANN should not report on his documented behavior because there might be backlash. Which suggests they should just ignore it. Yea, that's a great idea for a news source. Ignore the news. I hate to break it to you but the news isn't always good, but that doesn't make it worth less in terms of covering it. You are right that ANN is one of the largest news sources in the anime community. Thousands upon thousands go onto the site for various reasons every week. Which means if they did not report on something that affected that community in such a large manner as this they would not be doing their job worth a damn. I suppose if he was some nobody VA it would be ok then as there would be less chance of backlash?

The fact you are calling this topic "gossip" is also a slap in the face to those who feel they have been harassed by Vic... That is again bad journalism.

Psycho 101 wrote:

S0crates wrote: *zip* You seem to be insinuating that because of Vic's status somehow ANN should not report on his documented behavior because there might be backlash. Which suggests they should just ignore it. Yea, that's a great idea for a news source. Ignore the news. I hate to break it to you but the news isn't always good, but that doesn't make it worth less in terms of covering it. You are right that ANN is one of the largest news sources in the anime community. Thousands upon thousands go onto the site for various reasons every week. Which means if they did not report on something that affected that community in such a large manner as this they would not be doing their job worth a damn. I suppose if he was some nobody VA it would be ok then as there would be less chance of backlash? The fact you are calling this topic "gossip" is also a slap in the face to those who feel they have been harassed by Vic... That is again bad journalism.

I don't know what soapboxing nor TMZ is, but I do know what libel is. And by backlash I mean lawsuits, not people being angry.

If this is true: https://twitter.com/kungfuman316/status/1091589345830682624
then you'll be forced to settle. This is libel.

Get yourself a lawyer and ask him yourself. I try my darnest to help you out so that you don't end up in exactly what that situation is (if it is true), but you're not making it easy. You're in deep water here, don't you get it? All you can do now is hope this Vic doesn't find out. There's a reason why media companies got specialists writing about court cases...

Here's someone who's actually done the research.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rL9oDQpNy-o&t=1396s

I don't know what soapboxing nor TMZ is, but I do know what libel is. And by backlash I mean lawsuits, not people being angry.

If this is true: https://twitter.com/kungfuman316/status/1091589345830682624
then you'll be forced to settle. This is libel.

Get yourself a lawyer and ask him yourself. I try my darnest to help you out so that you don't end up in exactly what that situation is (if it is true), but you're not making it easy. You're in deep water here, don't you get it? All you can do now is hope this Vic doesn't find out. There's a reason why media companies got specialists writing about court cases...

S0crates wrote:

I don't know what soapboxing nor TMZ is, but I do know what libel is. And by backlash I mean lawsuits, not people being angry. If this is true: https://twitter.com/kungfuman316/status/1091589345830682624 then you'll be forced to settle. This is libel. Get yourself a lawyer and ask him yourself. I try my darnest to help you out so that you don't end up in exactly what that situation is (if it is true), but you're not making it easy. You're in deep water here, don't you get it? All you can do now is hope this Vic doesn't find out. There's a reason why media companies got specialists writing about court cases...

This picture is nowhere in the original article, presumably either because it was concealed to protect the identity of the person or pulled at their request. Either way, it's resolved.

I'd advise you to actually check for updates on articles in the future (EDIT: I was being unnecessarily hostile, I apologize).