Regarding everything going on with Pressure, I'm not going to mince words about this, but I do have a lot of them. The harassment of the dev team is unacceptable, and I'm completely baffled by what seems like a crusade to take everything they say in as much bad faith as possible. I’m someone who hates asking for things – I end up buying most of the games I’m in, because I don’t even wanna ask for a key. But I’m asking you to stop with this.
They have not been perfect. But to be honest, they’re doing better than I expected. This insane sudden explosion of popularity comes with so much spotlight and responsibility, and it takes more of a toll than people realize, before you even factor in any kind of fiasco, which they’ve had multiple of now. Plus, they’re young. Yes, to me 21 is young. I’m 31 and I still think of myself as young. But I made some of the worst fucking mistakes of my life when I was 21. It’s all the dangers of assuming you need to be in control now, but without the steering wheel. Hell I only started to face any kind of “success” around 30 and even still I’m learning how not to fuck it up.
In so many ways, they are real ones, more than a lot of teams out there because rather than doing or saying whatever maximizes engagement (and therefore profit) the most, they’ve tried to stick to some sense of creative integrity for what they personally wanted and were comfortable with, and never even tried to enforce anything beyond the realm of a Discord server.
I didn’t get into this the last time because I was at QuakeCon and by the time I got back and ready to talk, the dust kinda cleared so I didn’t wanna kick it up again. But I’ll get into it now. Personally, you know me, I’ve always loved every single piece of fan content that people make for the stuff I’m in. Gabriel in dresses, Doc yaoi, M-Preg Stalker, you name it and I’ve been all for it. My reputation precedes me, I’m kind of a nuts shitposter and a lot of that stuff is funny, I am insane and I love dissolving norms in boiling acid.
It’s not all comedy either, a lot of it’s hot, or beautiful, or just someone’s way of expressing wonderful nonconformity, or finding trans acceptance or pushing through any kind of the multitudes of adversity we face in this fucked up world and I am so proud to be part of anyone’s journey with any of that. I am also so thankful that people love the stuff I’m in enough to spend time making anything about it. My default setting is always to try to be as supportive as possible of every single fan I can – because without the fans, we’re making it for nobody, in our spare time, from day jobs we like a whole lot less. The fans give us everything and my gratitude for community is infinite.
But everyone, including me, has lines. Mine are usually a little deeper in than most – because I’m insane. And I’ve stumbled a bit learning about those lines for this project. As much as I think it's important to support the fans and show love and be accepting – I also think it’s important to respect the creators’ boundaries. As far as I can tell, the boundary set here was, “We’re not saying nobody can depict these things, but we just don’t want it here on our official Discord server, because we feel we have a right to try to curate what we see in this abode of ours.” I think most teams would see the dollar signs and just say whatever gets as many people as possible Engaging with the Product. That’s something these folks chose to do differently. They chose to be real with you and try to actually make that domain reflect themselves, for better or for worse (well worse is how it turned out I guess), they were honest. They have consistently chosen what I would consider to be dangerous transparency in so much stuff. It’s not business smart. That’s because they’re not soulless CEOs. They’re just kids making art they are passionate about. I think they don’t have filters wherever Zeal’s from.
I’m spending a lot of time on this because I think this single thing is actually where a lot of animosity is coming from. It put a lot of friction between the devs and the community off the bat because most communities aren’t used to showing a creator something and hearing “No, I don’t like that.” And sure, maybe that’s coming off a little cold and rubs you the wrong way. I’ve been a fan of some stuff and gotten hit with a bit of that in the past and it feels bad. But I always try to channel energy forwards – I think, if you don’t feel your expression about the project is adequately appreciated, you should spend your time expressing yourself where you will feel appreciated. You can definitely say “This puts me off from the game” and express that feedback, but seriously, in the interest of loving yourself, don’t spend more time where you don’t feel loved. I hope this doesn’t come off as “WELL IF U DON’T LIKE IT LEAVE!!”, I don’t want anyone shooed away from anything I’m in. But I want people to take care of themselves, and working hard to drag yourself through a place you feel you aren’t wanted, is not loving yourself. There is always somewhere you are wanted. Always, no matter who you are.
But no matter what you feel about that boundary with fan content – whether it’s fair or not, there’s no way in hell it justifies the onslaught of harassment they have faced. I know, people are upset about more than just that one thing, I’ll get into that stuff too, but I think this thing is kinda where a lot of the friction begins and I just want to make it abundantly clear where I stand with any of it since I didn’t do so last time around. And before you say it’s hypocrisy that they cared about that but not preventing people from being genuinely awful: they had rules in the Discord for both things, and the latter is a lot harder to police than it looks.
Let’s get to the meat of this, what’s causing a lot of the upset right now, and that is the stuff on the Discord. I’m going to be completely honest here. I fucking hate Discord servers. I feel like they’re too much work, and bullshit, and they always either have some horrible incident going on, or they’re always going to eventually. To me it feels like there are two kinds of Discord server: Glorified Group Chat, and Fucking Rome. Even the former can go to shit, but if you go beyond like 20 members, you’re definitely becoming the latter. In my opinion, it’s too difficult to actually create a safe environment on a Discord server. Any asshole can blow in and start dropping whatever poison they want and not only will someone be hurt, but the existence of this poison reflects equally on you for hosting it. That sounds unfair but it’s how people are being treated in this situation for some reason. I sure as hell never had the time or manpower to manage something like that, which is why my Discord is just announcements only and this whole thing has made me 1 million percent sure it’s staying that way. To be honest, I’ve been kind of over Social Media in general for a long time too, but that’s irrelevant right now.
I told the dev team that if I were them, I would shut down the whole Discord, or just turn it into being just for announcements only, and I hope they take my advice. Because you know what? I’m fucking worried about these kids. And I know the devs aren’t the only ones who are hurting in this whole mess – I hate that anyone is having a bad time. But all eyes are on them right now and I’m losing sleep at night worrying that they’re gonna get harassed into fuckin killin themselves or something. Or at least just disengaging from their creativity entirely, something I don’t want because I think they’re really just getting started and have lots of fun stuff to make and show the world. I want them to disengage and unplug from as much as possible or do whatever it takes to take care of their mental health. People are upset at the dev team for not being proactive enough with bad shit in the community by going “well people shouldn’t do that…”, but then I watch those same people handwave the death threats and violations of boundaries happening to the devs and they themselves just say something like “well people shouldn’t do that…”.
So much of what people are attacking them for right now is just stuff other assholes were doing or saying, and people feel they haven’t cleaned it up well enough. To me, it looks like that means the worst you can accuse them of is poor community management – sure, they don’t even have a community manager I don’t think? Even on that front, people treated Zeal’s thread like he didn’t address anything, but he did what I feel is reasonable which is say “These things were fucked up, we don’t want that, if this happens report it using the system we have, and I’ve personally talked to the staff who didn’t handle some of this shit the right way when they did see it.” I don’t know what the hell else he’s supposed to do, he’s not a really outwardly dramatic guy like I am so maybe he didn’t feel emphatic enough, but to me that’s addressing the stuff.
There was that one message that got turned into a copypasta by a dev. I’m going to be honest with you. Worse things would have happened to that message than a brief stint as a copypasta in a LOT of gaming servers. That doesn’t make it right, but the quick glance and seeing that as being memey copypasta nonsense -- especially in a tumultuous community like Pressure where so many people are at this point more engaged with discourse than the actual game and love to meme about it – that is a very DISCORD thing to happen. Zeal addressed this in his thread and said that should have been handled better and he talked to the dev about it. I genuinely have no idea what else they’re supposed to do, unless you want to start getting into the fun medieval punishments. But I see people acting like this alone PROVES the team is homophobic, people are throwing around wild labels, stuff that I don’t think makes sense.
There’s also some little jokes people are upset with – Sebastian doing rainbow capitalism and marking up the same items for having a rainbow on them – I’ve seen folks treating this stuff as if it’s further evidence that the team is homophobic. What the hell? This is like, a normal joke about bastard characters, especially salesmen – it’s not real – well, it can’t be real because Sebastian isn’t real. But it isn’t even canon or in the game or anything. I would think nothing of this. Instead, I see people demanding that Zeal has to reveal his sexual orientation in order to be forgiven. What the fuck? What the actual fuck? You guys wanna go see if he floats, too? Nobody ever needs to talk about their orientation more than they want to, it’s for someone to be open with on their own journey and comfort. This one kinda hits home with me – you wanna try to drag me out of a closet too?
Queerbaiting. I’ve long pondered if I myself am queerbaiting. The honest to god truth is I’ve never been “TRYIN TO GET THAT JUICY LGBT MONEY!!”, I just want to be supportive as possible. I express such openness all the time because I want everyone to know whoever they are or however they love, they’re valid. Especially fans of the stuff I’m in. I feel like queerbaiting is possibly something you CAN do even on accident, and I’ve never figured out if I’m walking this line the right way. I just keep being supportive because I know that’s what’s right. Is that perspective more profitable? Probably, if we’re being honest. That’s what makes this subject something I’m always worrying about. But I genuinely give a damn and would do this shit the same way if it was less profitable. I know that’s true. That’s all I can do, I think.
The ring, or any in-game mention of Sebastian’s wife being Zerum, was never ACTUALLY just to “make people cope”. I know you saw text messages from her convos saying stuff like that, but I remember from the very first session where the concept was floated and voiced to life, that it’s more like a fun bit and some harmless self-indulgence. Devs can play with their canon, in fact, they should! Zerum saying stuff “oh they’ll cope with this one…” is clearly just trying to steel herself for inevitable walls of hate that she’s going to get for what should be just having fun and enjoying her character. Plot twist: she’s the one coping, with lots of harassment and death threats.
I actually hate that I apparently can’t even make silly little references to this bit now without people deciding that it’s being done specifically to spite them, or like it’s forced at gunpoint when we record. What the hell? When I voice anything off the cuff it’s just because I’m trying to screw around and make the devs happy. That’s our real job as voice actors, is to bring a smile to these poor bastards who have been slaving away often for years before they even got to the VO part of the process. To me it’s the same way I like to voice stuff for so many fans – it makes someone happy. Let me tell you what Sebastian is to me. He’s not real. He is a cartoon character who is very fun to voice, and he makes people happy. He can’t marry anyone. I’m married – I’m real, my marriage is real, in real life. None of the blorbos in your screen are real. Except Sorlag and she will eat me alive one day if God has mercy.
There has been some weird stuff going around about Zerum. First of all, some folks took to the idea of crusading for her (by doing something she didn’t want them to do), and decided to attack others for doing fan content she expressed she didn’t personally like, but she herself did not send those people to do that and does not try to go around attacking all the various Sebastian content online. It’s not right to treat those instances as an extension of her will.
Hell, she even straight up tells me I can go ahead and do all kinds of ridiculous fan requests directly for people as I’ve been doing on Ko-fi for a while now. I’ve worked closely with her to try to make sure the stuff I’m doing is not too far beyond her comfort zone for what is floating around out there from the official actor for the character. This is way more freedom than most professional industry gigs will give you, and part of what I love about working indie. At first, I was doing all kinds of stuff, like I always did with all my characters, because I didn’t realize where those boundaries were at first. I’ve always tried to respect the boundaries of the projects I work on while still having fun with the roles and with the fans. You have no idea how many things I choose not to record for as any given one of my roles. The people I work with generally don’t put a tight leash on me, because they know I care about those boundaries, and because they know it’s just a ton of fun for the fans that I screw around. (Also: this relates to what I was saying earlier, about maximizing Engagement, with the Product, not being this team’s top priority, which is kind of real if you ask me).
To be honest, it’s a tricky line to walk, and sometimes I think about not doing it anymore like how I do. I incur great risks by doing this and every day I have to make decisions that mean either disappoint a fan, or disappoint the creator who trusted me with the role. But it’s so fun, and it makes so many people happy, so I keep going with it, because it feels like what’s right. But there’s very good reason most VA’s aren’t out there just doing whatever like I am. As described before – I am insane, and I love dissolving norms in boiling acid.
But as I learned boundaries for this project, and especially once it dawned on me how many KIDS are playing this thing, I’ve really tried to reel it in a bit on how intense I go with Sebastian requests and engagement with fan stuff, on my OWN volition. Because I want to respect the creator’s boundaries, and because I want to be careful what kind of Freaky shit I’m putting out there for the character, as the official VA of the character, for a ROBLOX game which has such a large percentage of children playing it. This is the same reason I’ll probably never do a Pressure stream like folks want me to – because as the official VA, it would send a flare for a TON of kids to come to my channel to experience “Basically Official Content”, but my streams are NOT for kids. I’ve been cracking down on that a lot lately to avoid minors in a very adult space, which I have another thread about where I wrote too damn much text.
This experience that I’ve had working with Zerum, where we talk, and I tell her to take care of herself amidst what seems to be a constant myriad of death threats, and we share memes about our favorite fishy bastard, and I check with her to try to make sure I’m still on course with respecting boundaries, and we have fun during the sessions, doing all kinds of dumbass bits and random memes along with genuinely enjoyable exploration of how this character emotes and what’s going on in this game’s universe – sure paints a whole different picture than what I’ve been seeing some folks say about me. I’ve been seeing folks say that she is putting me off from voicing the role entirely, or forcing me to do VO I’m not comfortable with. Let me dispel that. I love this role, I love working on this project, and I have had nothing but a pleasant experience working with this team. Including Zerum. Nobody I work with makes me do jack shit. I’ve walked out on so many opportunities it would make your head spin. I try to just be a good worker and 99% of the time I am but I can be a real diva if I don’t like something. I’ve got less time than ever so I spend it on what I like.
This team, has taken care of me, in ways no other project has. I have been made to feel like a VIP at every opportunity working with them. And I’m going to put this out there because god damn it, it’s a good deed that SHOULD be known: they cut me in for a small percentage of the plushie sales and it was enough to help me take care of some major stuff. Let me pull back the curtain here: that generally doesn’t happen with VO. With VO, the industry standard rate for Non-Union work is somewhere around $250/hr, with a lot of work happening for much less, especially in the indie space. You can read all about voice acting rates here:
https://globalvoiceacademy.com/gvaa-rate-guide-2/.
Sounds like a lot, right? But many professional VAs are barely making minimum wage once you account for the hundreds of auditions and everything you actually need to put together to do the work completely unpaid. You are not in sessions for most of the week. Voice acting on gigs, is perhaps the thing you do the least of in voice acting. Many PROFESSIONAL VAs aren’t lucky enough to even be full-time. We all do it because we love it. Riches or not, I get to do my dream job and stay alive, that’s enough for me and I know it’s the same for most if not all of my fellow actors. We have fun, and we support each other. That’s enough.
I, have been very lucky. Don’t mistake this for me crying the blues. I’m doing pretty well, I’m so thankful every day, and it’s because of booking a ton of shit (most of which none of you will ever even know about, not because it’s explicit but because it’s so random or obscure or only on like a dozen phones overseas), and because of so much support from the fans. I’m doing better than I ever expected to. I worked random minimum wage dead end day jobs for well over 10 years while doing VO on the side as a hobby, so I pretty much accepted I would die that way too. I can only be grateful for how far I’ve come.
Typically, royalties of any kind aren’t a thing in VO. You get that session rate, and that’s it, no matter how many millions and millions of dollars that game goes on to make. Union work can pay a little better, but not by much and their leadership just threw us all under the bus for AI so I don’t wanna talk about them right now. The truth about the VO career for a LOT of actors, is that the payment is largely subsidized by you, the fans. Many VAs work the con circuit pretty heavily to help make enough money to call this a job (you see a lot of anime VAs doing cons because anime pay is notoriously dogshit lol, any VA working on anime genuinely loves anime btw because they are NOT doing it for the money…), many do Cameos (I moved it to Ko-fi), or print signings (I’ve been on Streamily for a bit now), or Twitch streams, or YouTube channels – the gigs themselves, in most cases, will not cover enough to build a life.
I want you to know all this because it’s important context for when I tell you about this dev team’s generosity. Despite that very common industry standard of VAs just getting the session rate and that’s it – this team, completely unprovoked, nobody asked them to, not even me, chose to cut me in for a small percentage of the plushie sales. They did this out of their own free will because they felt my work was such a big part of why people loved the character, and my involvement really helped inspire them to press on. Nobody, has ever done this for me before. Don’t get me wrong – the people I’ve worked with through the years have been wonderful and I have no complaints. I’m thankful for every project I’ve been a part of.
But that kind of sincere appreciation – where I was truly brought in to feel just as involved with the character’s success, was out of nowhere but the heart. And this is a different subject now, but it’s given me the courage and basis to try to negotiate for some similar deals with other stuff in the future, which have accepted. To me, royalties on an actual game or project, eh it makes sense that if anyone royalties should be going to devs and other contractors before a VA. But direct merch of that CHARACTER, to me it seems very reasonable to think that the VA is a big part of why people love that character, and it seems other clients see the reason here too. It’s not like I’m about to be a millionaire off this, hell I’ll probably never even own a home, but it’s a big deal that could seriously change my life. All from the kindness of their god damn hearts. I am nothing but grateful to this team.
I know, this is a very, very long post. I really spent a bit thinking I should probably just say nothing, because I worry that my position here could just stoke the fire rather than calm it down. It takes me hours to write all this shit, and hours more to even try to understand what’s happening. I’m not that smart and pretty much every time I say anything that isn’t on a script in my life, I end up regretting it. But you wanna know what I want? I want everyone to feel better, truly. I want everyone to just take a breather from this, relax, stop hurting each other, Sebastian Voice “STOOPP FIGHTTINNGG!!”, and enjoy their lives. Maybe even enjoy the game itself.
I’ve gotten a lot of messages about this. Most of them have been attempting to leverage me in very weird ways against the devs I work with, the devs who brought me on to even be who you know as the VA in the first place. The reason I’m writing about this, is that I know, that whether it’s on my stream, or my general online presence, people are going to bring this up, because they want to know where I stand with it. I am so thankful to the community because I know we are nothing without them. But I cannot accept the harassment these folks have faced. Hell I didn’t even get into the fucked up shit that happened with Ren, or how Cyborg, brilliant artist, always so sweet and modest, straight up quit the project yesterday.
So I knew I needed to address this. And because I can see how serious it has gotten, I knew if I was going to address it, I needed to do so thoroughly, and genuinely. I write way the fuck too much, I know that, I overthink everything and it’s pretty much the least favorite thing about me for everyone who knows me. People are afraid to write me because they know I might write back. But I don’t wanna “address this” by just saying something on stream like “eh people are too hard on the devs” and then the rest of the stream is just a chat trying to argue with me about it.
I’d rather get this all out of the way. I’d rather make my stance clear, and ask that if you really take issue with it, please don’t come hanging around my door looking to stir it up. I’d rather you know right now. Then, if you really, really cannot accept I feel this way, you can tell me here of course, but don’t come around after that. I just don’t want anyone around who is sending harassment to the dev team, I’m not comfortable with that. If you sorta disagree, maybe you kinda just don’t like the devs, that’s fine, we can coexist that way, if you want. I don’t need everyone to like everyone I like. I don’t go on my stream to talk about discourse or try to sway people to agree with me on things. I go on my stream to make dick jokes and play Arena Shooters.
If you do agree with me, please, don’t take this post as a call to arms to go fight people on MY behalf. That’s not what I want you to do. I want you to take a breath and go do something nice for yourself. A treat, a walk, a bath… (wait, am I a dog? Why was that what I thought of…?)… Whether or not this fuckin novel makes you think less of me, whether the last time I saw you was the last time I’ll see you, I hope you know I really mean this: thank you. Thank you for your support, for liking this cool game enough for it to even get this far with you, for enjoying my work, for the positivity you HAVE shown me, and of course thank you if you actually read this behemoth. I hope you go and enjoy something. I hope we all feel better soon. Thank you.
