Brandysims Drama: Clownery at it's finest.
DISCLAIMER: DON'T HARASS OR SEND DEATH THREATS TO ANYONE I WILL MENTION. SOME OF THESE WILL CONTAIN MY OPINION AND MAY NOT BE 100% CORRECT. PLEASE FORMULATE YOUR OWN OPINIONS ON THE TOPICS I WILL DISCUSS
TW: Mentions of Suicide, Doxing, and Harassment
Like the patreon post I was originally going to do a Google doc going in full detail about the situation. Fortunately, I didn't because it was emotionally charged and very biased.
PLEASE NOTE: I was not innocent in this situation and I have made some emotionally based claims about this situation.
But I want to talk about this. Because even though it is over, there are still long term effects that effected the community especially the BIPOC community in the sims 4.
I will be talking about the Brandysims Drama and it's long term effects on the community and the pettiness of the Black Alpha Community.
Before I go into the drama. I want to talk about main reason behind it. Or at least what I think was the main reason.
Sims 4: Musty Dusty Skin tones and not enough diversity.
Before the big skintones update (Which I love), the sims 4 had less skin tones and some of the skintones don't look so well in game.
Black simmers wishing for improved skintones for YEARS and asked Gurus for it.
This didn't get anywhere until June of 2020 when the black lives matter movement was still active and white simmers started talking about the lack of diversity in game.
Sooner or later bigger names started talking about it with likes of Plumbella, Lilsimse, Pixelade ect.
That is when the big update was announced.
Black simmers also ask for more representation for hairs as most hairs are very poorly textured (Ex. Cauliflower Fro) or badly done in game.
EA and the Sims Team didn't listen until bigger white youtubers started to talk about it and finally improved the hairs.
(except Cauliflower Fro. When are you going to improve THAT sims team? I'm waiting.)
The only reason I say this is because POC, black people especially, feel like they are not represented in thier own game with having horrible textured skin tones and fewer hairs.
Which is why the community relies so much on CC because of this fact.
Because let's be real, EA is money hungry and will milk out the franchise anyway they can and don't care about the fans of respected games.
Now that we have some context. Let's take a look at what happened.
Savvysweet aka Shelly is a Maxis Match Creator that creates hairs for the black community in the sims 4
Here are some of her hairs:
It wasn't until November, she started using a hair base that seemed very detailed:
It wasn't long until December 20th, a Alpha Creator named Brandysims aka Brandy called out Shelly for stealing his base mesh without credit.
With that post, a lot of Brandysims's Fans started harassing and calling Shelly a thief until Shelly made a post on her patreon:
While this happened people pointed out that he also steals meshes from other platforms which is against EA terms of service.
Which gave the Paywall argument up again. I explained this in another post.
Even after Shelly left, people were still harassing and hating on her because of Brandysims.
Eventually Brandysims went to on instagram live to talk about the situation. It was both disrespectful and childish. Told people to "suck my d*ck".
Looked down on her hairs as if his was better.
Showed that 2+ year old DM conversation that was poorly worded.
A lot of people defended Shelly not because stealing a mesh was okay, but because how Brandy handled the situation.
In my opinion, Brandy should have did this way differently because there is a lot of minors that will see that post and think that attacking another creator is ok.
(Also "she added the thick edges on my base mesh" I don't know if he thought it was a permanent edges, but those are edges she custom made by herself that was taken by EA. You can easily take it off. So in hindsight, you were insulting the sims team for those edges Brandy.)
To Brandysims: Even if Shelly stole your base, It's not having a little effect on you or your patreon. You just gave other nasty and greedy creators the option to make a call out post so they could have thier young fans and emotionally charged adult fans to harass a creator off a platform. You didn't act like a bigger person, you acted like a coward and a overall child over something that could have been handled privately.
Which is the saddest part of this whole thing.
But Brandy isn't the only one.
Diversedking and KikoVanity: The enablers
Now I was wasn't going to talk about these two at first in full detail, because they didn't do much in the situation.
After some digging I realize they are just as bad as Brandysims.
I want to start with KikoVanity.
KikoVanity is a Alpha CC Creator that makes nice alpha cc.
She recently was apart of the scandal with Brandysims when she entered the live.
Telling Brandy that what he did was okay. Meaning that she was fine that he threaten legal action and encourage his fan base to harass and witch hunt another creator down for a hair base.
You see how unethical and horrible that is?
Made up a lie for Brandy that was completely debunked in his other one.
KikoVanity: "He stole those because he knew those people!" (Along those lines)
Which in all cases is not true. Brandy stated in his second live that he didn't knew those people.
KikoVanity lied to save a friend's behind so he doesn't have to face any criticism about it.
Another thing I want to add is that she is also patreon locked and even if you unlock it. There is an ad.fly link, even on the website. Which for those who don't know ad.fly can give people viruses for 5 cents.
Which is an overall scummy move.
Diversedking is an alpha creator, who also makes alpha cc,
He also defended Brandysims in his live but only in the chat. Also enabling his behavior.
But that's only because he also has this behavior as well.
He was also attacking another creator who he believed to be Shelly. All because of the similar simstyles. When it wasn't the case.
He also made people believing it was Shelly causing simsecret trolls and his fans to go and harass him.
Now I keep saying simsecret. What is it?
I will quote a tumblr user that will remain anonymous: "It’s a community on LiveJournal that’s been around since the days of Sims 2, where you can send in anonymous secrets on graphics that are then posted for members (and non members) to see and comment on every week. It’s really a shit show most of the time, a lot of hate and drama is started there and it’s a great place to find trolls who send in secrets just to start crap with simmers. It wasn’t as bad back before the simming community hit Tumblr and flourished, but since it has, Sim Secret has started going deeper and deeper into the drama that you can only find on Tumblr. Personally I don’t care if people post on it, I even sent in secrets a couple times back in TS3′s heyday. It’s just one of those things that people either love to hate or hate to love, but frankly, I doubt it’s going anywhere even with people constantly trying to get it shut down. I was just being sarcastic when I posted about it earlier, someone sending in a secret about me, good or bad, doesn’t bother me. I’m too old to give a damn about what people online think about me, besides, I learned a long time ago, long before LiveJournal was even a thing. That if you’re part of an online community, you have to have a thick skin. Not everyone’s gonna like you, or like what you think, or what you say. You can’t let other people, especially people you don’t know, have so much power over you."
In my opinion, I don't really care about simsecret I think it's a bunch of trolls trying to get reactions out of minorities and simmers.
But there were severe cases of bullying and driving a person to go suicidal.
How does this apply to Diversedking?
Well recently he followed and liked an tumblr user who drove out two smaller creators out of a community all because shelly stole a base mesh. They also is a simsecret user.
Here are some screenshots:
Calling Shelly narcissistic and manipulative all because she stole a hair base. Not like she stole multiple of bases but just one.
Also claiming to be a male when it's not true.
This is also the same person that claimed that sims community supporting Shelly is like a cult.
Overall, this is not a good look for both Diversedking and KikoVanity as they are not only petty and scummy people who think the worst of others all because of something so small.
So where is everyone now?
Shelly made her apologies to Brandy and defend a young creator that was thought to be her.
She currently is not active.
As for Brandy he left tumblr and made a website to "start fresh"
Those followed were Diversedking and KikoVanity.
Honestly this is more than a base mesh being stolen. This is a black man telling his fan base to bully and harass a black women because of one thing being stolen that could have been handled professionally. Which gave simsecret trolls a reason to hate her and go after her.
The situation is very messy. I wish it didn't go so far as it should.
Honestly the sims community should be ashamed for letting these types of people even ROAM in thier community with little to no consequences.
This is overall an issue that we as a community should be talking about.
Especially if the community has:
Locking other people's cc behind paywalls
Being mean to a patreon supporter
Bullying a creator out of a community over one hair base
Also as for the simsecret troll. I suggest not going after them. They want attention it's best not to give them that attention.
Also DON'T send death threats to them either. Because they are going to think what they are doing is okay. Also they claim to have a ip tracker. I suggest stay away from them as possible.
They haven't been active since January. So let's keep it that way.
Thank you all for reading this long ass post! It means a lot. I hope my message can do something for this community.