Lucky Crit · @luckycritgaming
8th Jul 2020 from TwitLonger
Supporting Goosaphone
Today a close friend of mine and fellow creator in the Fire Emblem community revealed her story of sexual abuse. https://twitter.com/Goosaphone/status/1280883234226737155?s=20
Please show her your support and read her message before this one.
I've struggled for a long time knowing the details of this story, and wasn't quite sure which way would be best to deal with it without dividing the community or exposing those who confided in me in the process of doing so.
Let me be clear. I don't want to cancel Mangs. I think cancel culture is abhorrent and often ineffective. People make mistakes and they can learn and grow and be better and deserve the chance to do just that. I don't want to hurt Mang's' livelihood of working for himself and making YouTube videos. But he has shown a considerable pattern of disturbing and manipulative behavior that cannot continue, and this whole situation is even bigger than him, as it affects our community at large. If this problem isn't dealt with now, the Fire Emblem community could end up like the Smash community or any other fandom over the past while that's been racked with allegation after allegation of rampant abuse stories and populated with those who stood complicit with the knowledge they had.
I love this community, and if I can help it, I'm not ever letting that happen.
In late March, 2019, Goosaphone messaged me and confided in me her fears about her rooming situation at the Anime North convention in Toronto, which was to take place in late May. Though we hadn't spoken much and didn't know each other well at that time, she trusted me enough to share this information with me, which I was honored to be present for and vowed to do what I could to help. Ghast and I offered for her to stay in one of the beds in our room, if she ever needed.
I kept a watchful eye while on the Anime North trip, and while Mangs was and is incredibly charismatic, very funny, and fun to be around, I saw moments and drips of this behavior seeping out over that weekend, further confirming the suspicions Goosaphone and I had about him, and that many had made rumblings about over the years. Specifically like the moment in 2017 when Mangs was exposed for soliciting lewd or questionable photos from fans in exchange for placement or favoritism within his Corrinquest playthrough of Fire Emblem Fates. Though at the time that event ended up being downplayed and written off as Mangs being a bit creepy and toxic, the truth is that the full extent of the logs and context were never shown. But I have now seen these logs with my own eyes and it’s the same behavior he continues to perpetuate to this day. At the time it may have seemed like he’d made a mistake and learned his lesson, but clearly he hadn’t. Soleil's story: https://twitter.com/tomefaired/status/1280919230641299456?s=20
On Saturday night, Goosaphone was deciding where she wanted to sleep for the evening, whether it was on an extra bed in Vanguard's room (her mod) or returning to share a bed with Mangs, who she was clearly concerned about being alone with at that point. She was stressed and nervous and didn't know what to do. She wanted to crash in Vanguard's room, but she feared that if she didn't go back to the room with Mangs, he would guilt her into feeling horrible for ditching him or betraying him or leaving him out. Based on previous interactions, she knew what his response would entail if she didn't do what he wanted. All of us that were there at the time tried to help her, but ultimately it was her decision to make, and she ended up returning to the room with him, not wanting to face the backlash and guilt trip she knew she'd receive by not doing so.
Mangs will probably claim that he meant no harm by his actions and ended up hurting her unintentionally or didn't know she would have that negative of a reaction to his touches. He'll probably say it was a mistake and try to own up to it.
But personally, I think this behavior was purposeful, a tactic, and part of Mangs's plan to isolate Goosaphone and do whatever he could to be close to her and see if he could get something sexual to happen between them while they were there together. It wasn't accidental. It's textbook behavior, and he's shown similar behavior in other conversations with women and those who he interacts with (that I've been shown) to get what he wants.
He acts nice and cheery at first, but can never resist the urge to escalate the conversation sexually, and doesn't seem to understand or take it to heart when people get uncomfortable. He backs off in the moment and tries to play that it was just a joke or that he didn't mean anything by it, but from the real conversations I've been shown, he'll always be back to escalate it again the next time he's thinking with the wrong head, which occurs often.
Not long after we were all back home from Anime North, I got a call from Goosaphone and Vanguard where she, while crying, explained the full details of what had happened to her that weekend. It (obviously) had really hurt and affected her, and it continued to weigh on everyone who knew for the next long while.
In the time since, every time she's discussed it with him, Mangs has changed his story about why and how it happened. From he was "asleep the whole time and remembered nothing" to it was "a sex dream he was having about someone else" to he "was drunk and wanted to cuddle and didn't realize she wouldn't be okay with it," (even though he explicitly told her in a message before the trip he wouldn't touch her) and on and on.
From what I've been shown, Mangs has also coerced Goosaphone and others to delete messages and message history that could implicate him, even telling them to send him screenshots of the cleared history to know for sure, which is a completely disgusting and cowardly move that only someone with things to hide would be doing.
I think Mangs has some issues with himself he needs to work out, and I wholeheartedly hope that he seeks the therapy or rehabilitation that may be necessary to fix them. I hope he gets better. But his behavior is inexcusable and I don't want it happening to anyone else ever again, and I'm heartbroken that it happened to Goosaphone and others in our community.
Mangs and I were never close enough to be considered friends, but he was definitely an acquaintance, a kindred spirit who loved Fire Emblem and someone that I really looked forward to working with more throughout the years. I still remember one of his "year ahead" videos where he discussed really wanting to do more collaborations with Lucky Crit in the new year. I felt honored that he was excited about that. I was too.
On April 4th of this year I was honored to be a part of Emblem Food Drive, a charity event Faerghast put together to raise money for those in need in Nova Scotia. I interacted with Mangs a fair bit on that charity livestream, for the first time since the silence of the fall, and I really enjoyed doing so; as like I've stated, Mangs as a character is incredibly entertaining and charismatic. But these talents are also what enable him to be a more effective predator and abuser when he wants to be, and these allegations rang in my mind all throughout those interactions. I wanted to message him after and tell him I knew of his behavior, (this knowledge I shouldn't have known that would forever weigh upon any future interaction with him) in the hopes he'd be shocked and scared enough into changing and being better, but I didn't want to share my receipts and expose those who had confided in me. Without the receipts I knew he’d just shrug it off and squirm his way out of it. Ultimately it wasn't really the right time or my decision to make with how to move this situation forward. I'm glad the truth can finally come out now.
I don't want Mangs canceled, but now you know the truth and you can decide for yourself if you want to continue supporting him or not, or if you believe his view of the events or not. I will not judge anyone who does so. I just don't ever want Mangs to be able to be creepy to women through messages or DMs ever again, or coerce them at cons or events he participates in. I don't want this behavior tolerated in this community, and I don't want him using the uneven power dynamic he has, being a popular and big creator, to solicit people and fans to bend to his will, and guilt them into feeling horrible when they won't.
Without considerable change and real life steps taken to alleviate this behavior permanently, alongside fully acknowledging and apologizing to all of the people he has wronged, I will no longer be working with Mangs from this point on.