A rambling villain monolog? No thanks. If that's the most eloquent supporter in George's corner I think he's better off burning bridges with FVN people altogether.
Rambling, yeah, but...I dunno, I talked about it with some of my friends and...maybe he did have a point that we all judged him too quickly and all of this wasn't handled well enough. But that's just me.
As a former member of the Echo Project discord, I read this and recalled a few details. Take my word with a grain of salt, though, because it was a while ago since I was there.
I'm starting to think that the "Redd" situation didn't happen not once, but twice, with Orion. I remember that there was one build in particular that got delayed back in early 2023 for a good month, and it later got announced that Horrorbuns and Limecardamom had worked hard to get the job done. It was around that same time that I think, Orion got praise by Redd for doing work on Glory Hounds, which had just released a build right around the same time, and Orion had also got praised for doing work on Arches earlier. I know that Orion was also doing work on The Smoke Room, which, unlike Arches and Glory Hounds, tried updating as close to every month or so as possible while the other two had updates more spread out and "as-they-come". I also found out later that Orion was working on Remember the Flowers at the same time, maybe along with preliminary work on Cleaved and God knows what else. So he had quite a big workload doing coding and other things for what I'm guessing must have been what, up to five projects at roughly the same time? But Orion was never really mentioned in the TSR updates afterwards, and he just kind of phased out from the TSR chats and remained active in the Arches and Glory Hounds chats instead.
Another thing I remember too on top of that was that, around that same time, George had mentioned something about having asked Orion if he was interested in doing stuff for pins for TSR, and Orion said yes but that he had his hands full. The pins never came out that I'm aware of...but then, not long after, Pawprint Press revealed that a pin collection had come out but for Remember the Flowers, and Orion had made an announcement about it on the RtF itch page. I don't know if Orion really got to working on the TSR pins in the first place, but the fact that RtF got pins instead stood out to me.
I don't know what the details were regarding to Orion's pay schedule, he mentioned that there was unpaid volunteer work while working under George. Maybe he was going to get payed after finishing a favor, or after finishing a series of tasks on time. Or maybe he just wants his dues for having put some time into TSR. Usually volunteer work is kind of supposed to be unpaid for anyways because it's, well, volunteering? It's like, an unpaid internship. But, looking back at all of that, I feel like George might have gotten really upset with Orion roughly the same way that he got upset with Redd for supposedly not keeping up with goals and tasks. And I feel bad for Orion if George ever got rough on him. I've been in similar stressful situations myself too at some of my earliest jobs.
Again, take this with a grain of salt because I might be missing details and it has been some time, but looking back at it all, I feel like Orion was putting himself through a lot and also going through a lot to meet deadlines with the work. They seemed to have gotten along well at first but I don't know, things sometimes just fall through before people "jump ship" onto other things. I still think that Orion shouldn't have been that vindictive, though, this could have all just been forwarded to Howly or something, but we all sadly have no control over the spillover.
However, I hope that this might contextualize some details that were mentioned in here.
Since we're on the topic about Echocord, I should mention that not everyone there got along well with Rotshild. I can't even begin to describe his sense of humor, but I found it to be rude in the end. He liked making fun of "thirsty bottoms" and "simps". Some of his jokes even involved what I'm guessing was inflicting physical pain on other characters, but I found that to be off-putting, context or not. This was all from a couple of years ago too. Still, I wouldn't be surprised if some of the "simp trolling" carried over into Cienie's promotion tactics. It looks like a Rotshild thing to do, but that's just me.
Orion, or aluminemsiren as he used to advertise himself, has a long history of committing himself to more than he can realistically fulfill. Most fans of his visual novel work aren't old enough to remember what he did before that. Most people who remember what he did before he hitched his star to the rising FVN market aren't fans of his work.
He took art commissions. Loads of them. Took payment up front. Never delivered, never responded, all but ghosted the bulk of his customers. He was somewhere between a broken stair and a bad joke among the commissioning community, which makes it quite rich that he can now put out statements like "It’s easy to work when you’ve abandoned your previous queue and walked off with hundreds of dollars" (Twitter, November 2023).
When Orion, or aluminemsiren as he used to advertise himself, says georgesquares bullied him for unpaid volunteer work and carefully avoids details of exactly what transpired (but totally promises that he will go into detail if it's really needed), refer back to his ancient and storied pattern of promising the moon to anyone who offers money and disappearing the moment it's too late to file a dispute. Most likely georgesquares held him to the grindstone to make him deliver on 10% of his usual extravagant promises, which is one way to make him do actual work. The other is to kiss his ass and also make him horny enough to get the motivation chemicals firing, which is more difficult but reputably more effective, but who has the time for that lmao
Completely disagree. It was very well deserved. Having spoken privately with some of the people his behaviour affected, i genuinely hope he not only doesn´t work on TSR again, but i hope he doesn´t work on the FVN space every again. What he is undeserving of is of his following. He came into a preexisting, already very popular IP for its niche that was served to him on a silver platter, he filled it with himbos and eye candy out the ass to the point he attracted every horny furry teen under the sun, and then proceeded to act shitty to an enormous number of people, and now we are supposed to cut him slack? No, thank you. He deserves everything that´s coming to him, and i for one i´m glad everything is finally coming out.
I’m going to ask you to delete this. I think you mean well. I really do or I wouldn’t be asking for this. I am glad you didn’t post this sooner, but the next time the internet is riled up against George I expect this to pop up again, and again. And I don’t speak about any of this, ever publicly. I’m happy not being known. I guess I am speaking a little today, and it’s because I’m tired, and I hope maybe you will listen to my request.
It hurts to see slander about my friend. You did this to get something off your chest, and I hope you were successful. I’m also hoping that now you have, you can remove it before it can be used instead to hurt others.
And it will be used for harassment despite your verbal wishes. It’s most of everything negative said about George in one place, in addition to a lot of speculation and editorializing over things that you don’t know about. It will be used as a cudgel, or fuel for gossip, and it will cause harm.
I don’t blame you for not knowing any other side to the story. For you, this is just a story, but for me this was my life, and the lives of my friends, and it was messy, and sometimes it was painful, and personal, and private. It’s not for people to dissect, or for voyeuristic entertainment, or for justifying people’s malice or ill will.
I don’t want people to take up my words as a weapon to harm others. I hope you don’t either. If you would consider the request of someone you don’t know the name of, who has never been accused in any wrongdoing in all of the drama, but has to go through the pain and anger and sadness and stress any way, I would appreciate it.
Greetings, Anon. I understand your concern and where you're coming from. My apologizes for speculating on your friend and others as well as putting your friend in a bad light. I will admit, I was being biased against him throughout the blog. My intentions from writing this blog was to inform people on the situation as well as bring my perspective on why George got fired when I saw people being confused and angry on EP's vague words and blaming the Cienie team. I might delete the blog if I change my mind drastically or if I find new information that goes against my current opinions. However, I still stand by everything I said in the blog, so I don't plan to delete it any time soon. When you say or do something on the internet, it is your responsibility to handle whatever reaction comes your way. You can't stop people from talking about actions you've done in public, and you can't assume that you can say something without consequence. George should have known this, he's been on the internet for at least five years now, probably a lot more than that, and yet he's caused a lot of bad blood with a lot of people. Of course, people are also responsible for their reactions, look at what happened to Cienie after Rotshild made those posts, but that doesn't mean George isn't accountable. I don't think anyone should be harassed, but people should also not do anything that will induce harassment or resentment from others.
I'm not saying that he's a bad person, but he has done things that shouldn't be ignored. I have had people who knew George talk to me in private about his bad behavior. Stuff I can't reveal because they requested that I don't reveal it just yet. They could be lying, of course, but by that logic you could also be lying. Just to be clear, I don't believe that every sin should be punished. Some people have done shitty things in the past and it's okay if they weren't called out for it, c'est la vie. As long as they have changed later on in life, then it's fine. But if you continue your bad behavior, then that's straight up a flaw of you that people should call out. I haven't received any proof that this blog has caused a major amount of harassment for George at the moment, but I will consider deleting it if it causes too much attention. I will also delete it if it turns out that people were lying about George and he was actually wronged. For now though, everything I've heard points to him doing toxic things, and it would be disrespectful to the people he's mistreated (as far as I know) if I deleted this blog. I hope you understand my decision.
First of all, thank you for compiling all this information. I'm sorry your mental health had to struggle to make our lives easier x3.
I've known guys like George Squares before. I've known what it's like to work with them on a team. It can take time to figure out— and fully accept— what they really are. And you're likely to make mistakes in the process of detaching yourself from them. It can be scary. The ways they'll try to hurt you if you dare cut them off. The stuff of horrors.
That's why I'm tempted to go easy on Howly. However, I also know that behind every George Squares is a motley crew of enablers. Broken or corrupt people who have their own reasons for looking the other way. My hope is that Howly was just naïve and unprepared to deal with someone like this. You have to be discerning in this world. Wise as a serpent. Or you'll pay the price.
You're welcome! And no worries, it's what I signed up for when creating this blog in the first place.
I agree with your sentiment. I didn't mention this in the blog but Howly has had a history of being acting naive and immature due situations he's been involved in. He really does strike me as an someone who's inexperienced working in teams who was given a massive audience he wasn't able to properly handle. A week ago, a google doc (basically a book) was released that collected all pieces of information concerning Echo's development. It's a long but good read that I've only skimmed through parts of so far. You can read it here:
From what I've gathered, and from what I've heard other people who read it, Echo was Howly's first project. I don't want to get into what other inappropriate stuff Howly has done because I'm just not interested in stirring up shit. However, while he has done stuff that is frankly toxic, a lot of it was caused by other toxic people and it's clear that he's still figuring himself. I think he means well, but he's not exactly the most mentally stable from what I've seen. He was still responsible for George's actions, but I can see why he'd let this persist. I genuinely think he's maturing, and I only hope that he becomes a better person after this whole mess. But he's a pretty private guy. We don't know what his intentions were for any of his actions, we can only speculate based on what information we do know of him. It's likely we'll know what kind of person he's like. We can only assume the best in situations like these.
Someone wrote this a while back.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YcRhElBuY00Tkddedug8lFCZmG48NIwsJ7pcegMqPkg/edit?usp=sharing
A rambling villain monolog? No thanks. If that's the most eloquent supporter in George's corner I think he's better off burning bridges with FVN people altogether.
Rambling, yeah, but...I dunno, I talked about it with some of my friends and...maybe he did have a point that we all judged him too quickly and all of this wasn't handled well enough. But that's just me.
As a former member of the Echo Project discord, I read this and recalled a few details. Take my word with a grain of salt, though, because it was a while ago since I was there.
I'm starting to think that the "Redd" situation didn't happen not once, but twice, with Orion. I remember that there was one build in particular that got delayed back in early 2023 for a good month, and it later got announced that Horrorbuns and Limecardamom had worked hard to get the job done. It was around that same time that I think, Orion got praise by Redd for doing work on Glory Hounds, which had just released a build right around the same time, and Orion had also got praised for doing work on Arches earlier. I know that Orion was also doing work on The Smoke Room, which, unlike Arches and Glory Hounds, tried updating as close to every month or so as possible while the other two had updates more spread out and "as-they-come". I also found out later that Orion was working on Remember the Flowers at the same time, maybe along with preliminary work on Cleaved and God knows what else. So he had quite a big workload doing coding and other things for what I'm guessing must have been what, up to five projects at roughly the same time? But Orion was never really mentioned in the TSR updates afterwards, and he just kind of phased out from the TSR chats and remained active in the Arches and Glory Hounds chats instead.
Another thing I remember too on top of that was that, around that same time, George had mentioned something about having asked Orion if he was interested in doing stuff for pins for TSR, and Orion said yes but that he had his hands full. The pins never came out that I'm aware of...but then, not long after, Pawprint Press revealed that a pin collection had come out but for Remember the Flowers, and Orion had made an announcement about it on the RtF itch page. I don't know if Orion really got to working on the TSR pins in the first place, but the fact that RtF got pins instead stood out to me.
I don't know what the details were regarding to Orion's pay schedule, he mentioned that there was unpaid volunteer work while working under George. Maybe he was going to get payed after finishing a favor, or after finishing a series of tasks on time. Or maybe he just wants his dues for having put some time into TSR. Usually volunteer work is kind of supposed to be unpaid for anyways because it's, well, volunteering? It's like, an unpaid internship. But, looking back at all of that, I feel like George might have gotten really upset with Orion roughly the same way that he got upset with Redd for supposedly not keeping up with goals and tasks. And I feel bad for Orion if George ever got rough on him. I've been in similar stressful situations myself too at some of my earliest jobs.
Again, take this with a grain of salt because I might be missing details and it has been some time, but looking back at it all, I feel like Orion was putting himself through a lot and also going through a lot to meet deadlines with the work. They seemed to have gotten along well at first but I don't know, things sometimes just fall through before people "jump ship" onto other things. I still think that Orion shouldn't have been that vindictive, though, this could have all just been forwarded to Howly or something, but we all sadly have no control over the spillover.
However, I hope that this might contextualize some details that were mentioned in here.
Since we're on the topic about Echocord, I should mention that not everyone there got along well with Rotshild. I can't even begin to describe his sense of humor, but I found it to be rude in the end. He liked making fun of "thirsty bottoms" and "simps". Some of his jokes even involved what I'm guessing was inflicting physical pain on other characters, but I found that to be off-putting, context or not. This was all from a couple of years ago too. Still, I wouldn't be surprised if some of the "simp trolling" carried over into Cienie's promotion tactics. It looks like a Rotshild thing to do, but that's just me.
No matter how much you admit that you were biased, it's clear that you wanted to dogpile on someone who was down at the time.
This whole thing was meant to further stir the pot and create more bullying, nothing more, nothing less.
Orion, or aluminemsiren as he used to advertise himself, has a long history of committing himself to more than he can realistically fulfill. Most fans of his visual novel work aren't old enough to remember what he did before that. Most people who remember what he did before he hitched his star to the rising FVN market aren't fans of his work.
He took art commissions. Loads of them. Took payment up front. Never delivered, never responded, all but ghosted the bulk of his customers. He was somewhere between a broken stair and a bad joke among the commissioning community, which makes it quite rich that he can now put out statements like "It’s easy to work when you’ve abandoned your previous queue and walked off with hundreds of dollars" (Twitter, November 2023).
When Orion, or aluminemsiren as he used to advertise himself, says georgesquares bullied him for unpaid volunteer work and carefully avoids details of exactly what transpired (but totally promises that he will go into detail if it's really needed), refer back to his ancient and storied pattern of promising the moon to anyone who offers money and disappearing the moment it's too late to file a dispute. Most likely georgesquares held him to the grindstone to make him deliver on 10% of his usual extravagant promises, which is one way to make him do actual work. The other is to kiss his ass and also make him horny enough to get the motivation chemicals firing, which is more difficult but reputably more effective, but who has the time for that lmao
https://artistsbeware.info/search/?q=aluminemsiren&quick=1&type=cms_records2
If anyone needs this, some of aluminemsiren's prior history as an artist is still recorded online.
Those are twelve years old, and it sounds like he refunded the people affected.
"the way he got fired was undeserved"
Completely disagree. It was very well deserved. Having spoken privately with some of the people his behaviour affected, i genuinely hope he not only doesn´t work on TSR again, but i hope he doesn´t work on the FVN space every again. What he is undeserving of is of his following. He came into a preexisting, already very popular IP for its niche that was served to him on a silver platter, he filled it with himbos and eye candy out the ass to the point he attracted every horny furry teen under the sun, and then proceeded to act shitty to an enormous number of people, and now we are supposed to cut him slack? No, thank you. He deserves everything that´s coming to him, and i for one i´m glad everything is finally coming out.
Coherent and in-depth essay.
I’m going to ask you to delete this. I think you mean well. I really do or I wouldn’t be asking for this. I am glad you didn’t post this sooner, but the next time the internet is riled up against George I expect this to pop up again, and again. And I don’t speak about any of this, ever publicly. I’m happy not being known. I guess I am speaking a little today, and it’s because I’m tired, and I hope maybe you will listen to my request.
It hurts to see slander about my friend. You did this to get something off your chest, and I hope you were successful. I’m also hoping that now you have, you can remove it before it can be used instead to hurt others.
And it will be used for harassment despite your verbal wishes. It’s most of everything negative said about George in one place, in addition to a lot of speculation and editorializing over things that you don’t know about. It will be used as a cudgel, or fuel for gossip, and it will cause harm.
I don’t blame you for not knowing any other side to the story. For you, this is just a story, but for me this was my life, and the lives of my friends, and it was messy, and sometimes it was painful, and personal, and private. It’s not for people to dissect, or for voyeuristic entertainment, or for justifying people’s malice or ill will.
I don’t want people to take up my words as a weapon to harm others. I hope you don’t either. If you would consider the request of someone you don’t know the name of, who has never been accused in any wrongdoing in all of the drama, but has to go through the pain and anger and sadness and stress any way, I would appreciate it.
Greetings, Anon. I understand your concern and where you're coming from. My apologizes for speculating on your friend and others as well as putting your friend in a bad light. I will admit, I was being biased against him throughout the blog. My intentions from writing this blog was to inform people on the situation as well as bring my perspective on why George got fired when I saw people being confused and angry on EP's vague words and blaming the Cienie team. I might delete the blog if I change my mind drastically or if I find new information that goes against my current opinions. However, I still stand by everything I said in the blog, so I don't plan to delete it any time soon. When you say or do something on the internet, it is your responsibility to handle whatever reaction comes your way. You can't stop people from talking about actions you've done in public, and you can't assume that you can say something without consequence. George should have known this, he's been on the internet for at least five years now, probably a lot more than that, and yet he's caused a lot of bad blood with a lot of people. Of course, people are also responsible for their reactions, look at what happened to Cienie after Rotshild made those posts, but that doesn't mean George isn't accountable. I don't think anyone should be harassed, but people should also not do anything that will induce harassment or resentment from others.
I'm not saying that he's a bad person, but he has done things that shouldn't be ignored. I have had people who knew George talk to me in private about his bad behavior. Stuff I can't reveal because they requested that I don't reveal it just yet. They could be lying, of course, but by that logic you could also be lying. Just to be clear, I don't believe that every sin should be punished. Some people have done shitty things in the past and it's okay if they weren't called out for it, c'est la vie. As long as they have changed later on in life, then it's fine. But if you continue your bad behavior, then that's straight up a flaw of you that people should call out. I haven't received any proof that this blog has caused a major amount of harassment for George at the moment, but I will consider deleting it if it causes too much attention. I will also delete it if it turns out that people were lying about George and he was actually wronged. For now though, everything I've heard points to him doing toxic things, and it would be disrespectful to the people he's mistreated (as far as I know) if I deleted this blog. I hope you understand my decision.
hello George
Thank you for explaining all this drama, I really wanted to know what had happened to cause this result.
I am now worried about the uncertain future of TSR, it is the VN I love the most and I don't want to see it decline. :/
You're welcome! I wanted to explain this situation to people who weren't really following the drama.
Anyways, I hope things work out for TSR for the better. You know what they say: hope for the best, prepare for the worst.
First of all, thank you for compiling all this information. I'm sorry your mental health had to struggle to make our lives easier x3.
I've known guys like George Squares before. I've known what it's like to work with them on a team. It can take time to figure out— and fully accept— what they really are. And you're likely to make mistakes in the process of detaching yourself from them. It can be scary. The ways they'll try to hurt you if you dare cut them off. The stuff of horrors.
That's why I'm tempted to go easy on Howly. However, I also know that behind every George Squares is a motley crew of enablers. Broken or corrupt people who have their own reasons for looking the other way. My hope is that Howly was just naïve and unprepared to deal with someone like this. You have to be discerning in this world. Wise as a serpent. Or you'll pay the price.
You're welcome! And no worries, it's what I signed up for when creating this blog in the first place.
I agree with your sentiment. I didn't mention this in the blog but Howly has had a history of being acting naive and immature due situations he's been involved in. He really does strike me as an someone who's inexperienced working in teams who was given a massive audience he wasn't able to properly handle. A week ago, a google doc (basically a book) was released that collected all pieces of information concerning Echo's development. It's a long but good read that I've only skimmed through parts of so far. You can read it here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Td8oWYPSJzJNZ1Pawgfgdo1p756K-TrAnHC5tCsktig/mobilebasic
From what I've gathered, and from what I've heard other people who read it, Echo was Howly's first project. I don't want to get into what other inappropriate stuff Howly has done because I'm just not interested in stirring up shit. However, while he has done stuff that is frankly toxic, a lot of it was caused by other toxic people and it's clear that he's still figuring himself. I think he means well, but he's not exactly the most mentally stable from what I've seen. He was still responsible for George's actions, but I can see why he'd let this persist. I genuinely think he's maturing, and I only hope that he becomes a better person after this whole mess. But he's a pretty private guy. We don't know what his intentions were for any of his actions, we can only speculate based on what information we do know of him. It's likely we'll know what kind of person he's like. We can only assume the best in situations like these.