What are you watching on Youtube?

[Rev. Rye]

This is an extremely convoluted saga, so here's my attempt at a comprehensitve and yet concise explanation (beneath the hide button):

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It starts with allegations against a Brony youtuber and musician named BlackGrpyhon. He has some sexual misconduct allegations, but the most concrete one seems to involve his wife Claire Corlett. Claire was the voice actress for Sweetie Belle from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, and he knew her as a child. Before you get the pitchforks out, the consensus among those in the know is that, outside of conventions (which he went to partly due to "Horse Fame," partly because of some minor work on the show itself, and a very sibling-like friendship with Michele Creber [voice actress for Apple Bloom]), they barely met or talked to each other before she turned 18. Unfortunately for those who would accuse him, Claire is his most vociferous defender, and a big part of why is that the Twitter account who pushed the grooming allegations the hardest is working with her emotionally abusive father.

Meanwhile, this controversy touches on another bit of drama involving youtuber ILoveKimPossibleALot (hereinafter referred to as Rachel), Chris from DAGames, and very popular YouTuber Saberspark. About a decade ago, Chris made a joke about masturbating in their shared hotel bathroom, and Something About Mary-style, ended up losing track of where the load went, and it ended up in a pile of Rachel's clothes. The consensus (at least for the most part, I'll explain later) is that this did not actually happen, and was just a tasteless joke made on a podcast. Chris has since apologised to her and, despite apparently accepting his apology, was still pissed off about it. Especially after Chris was hired on Saberspark's production team. It's worth noting that Saberspark is also a friend of BlackGryphon, with Saber even going to BlackGryphon's wedding. This eventually leads to Rachel deciding to make a video, supposedly about the question of sexual harassment in fandom, but mostly about trying to destroy Chris' career.

Then, in the middle of production of this video, Rachel gets wind of a rape accusation against Saberspark. She is warned against including these allegations in this video by multiple parties, but she does so anyway. When the video premieres on May 1, it is an absolute trainwreck, with any possible redeeming qualities drowned out by weird Family Guy-style cutaway gags involving Jerry Seinfeld dating a teenager and Eggman pissing on the moon. This isn't helped by Courtney Peet (sister and rape victim of Lily Orchard) including a section on why implied consent is not a thing, despite Rachel herself invoking the concept while justifying recording a call. Even worse, Courtney fights with another rape survivor over why this needed to be a premiere in the chat.

Once the controversy over the video itself dies down, other parties decide to start investigating the claims against Saberspark. Things start to go wrong once the accuser's identity is leaked: it's Emily "EmuEmi" Jones. Emily is a very controversial figure in her own right. She is a Sonic the Hedgehog influencer who's known for trying to fuck her way into the franchise proper (including having an affair with Ryan Drummond, voice actor for Sonic), and being on Dr. Phil defending her choice of trying to be a teenage mom. Then some aspects of her claims against Saberspark start to fall apart, though she always has an explanation. Around this same time, screenshots of conversations between her, Rachel, and Courtney start getting circulated. Notably, Rachel and Courtney are actually trying to get her to change her story somewhat. Things do not look good for her, but it's not impossible for her to be telling the truth.

So, what's happening on SaberSpark's end? Naturally, he denies the allegations, although it seems he knows Emily. He remembers their relationship in a different way, but can't go into too much detail for legal reasons. Besides, he's still trying to tear his house apart, looking for anything that he could use to clear his name. Given that the events in question happened in 2012, the consensus among observers and investigators was that he probably wasn't likely to get them. On June 20, however, he finally delivered. Eventually, he releases the text conversations between him and Emily. Part of Emily's allegations is that, after the first incident in Sepember 2012, she started to pull away from him. Meanwhile, the texts demonstrates that their
"Friends with benefits" relationship lasted for months after that. And Saberspark ends up being the one who pulled away from Emily and not vice-versa. A crucial part of why ends up being that she lied to him about having an IUD (something which could easily be considered rape by deception on its own), and he had to plead with her to take a pregnancy test. Given that, by this point, he was still living with his parents, he did not believe he could support a child, this is extremely reasonable.

So, in the end, Saberspark is vindicated because he actually found some corroborating information that could clear his name. Unfortunately, after the video above was released, three of the women involved in the drama responded, and, in the face of evidence, doubled down on the claims. Emily insists that her claims, despite being debunked, are still accurate. Rachel eventually uploaded an "apology" video where she apologised for the tone of the original video, but insisted that the claims against Saberspark must be true (she even treated him pleading Emily to take a pregnancy test as a violation of consent), threw herself a pity party where she lists all the misogynistic tropes the haters are falling into, but never explained that this is happening because she demonstrably falsely accused a more popular YouTuber of sexual assault and had it blow up in her face. Indeed, she seems to have gone as far as even claiming that the gross story Chris from DAGames told about her is real, even though she admitted it was just a tasteless fake story earlier. And Courtney ended up having the most vile reaction, insisting that false rape accusations (which, while rare, especially in comparison to the many that never get reported, do still happen) aren't a thing, even when she platformed one and tried to get her to change her story. At her worst point, she said she hopes TheMysteriousMrEnter, one of the investigators, and one who, at the time, gave Emily more grace than she probably deserved, gets raped, 13 Reasons Why-style. I unsubbed from her channel at that point.

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If you think this TL;DR is too long, bear in mind I cut a lot of details out.

TL;DR squared: Some YouTubers try to shoot at the king and miss. HARD.