#Malevolent patreon

[anonymousad]

Just learned about your blog, and I have been SO tired of keeping quiet about my issues with Harlan. I was in the Invictus server for about 2 years and I saw so much. I'm going to bullet point what I can remember:

-Harlan has repeatedly posted screenshots of negative reviews/critiques without redacting usernames, despite being advised that it could lead to fans dogpiling

-He has shared screenshots of emails from his family where they said negative things about him, which is wildly inappropriate for a creator to share with his fans

-Some of the perks to being an Invictus patreon member is getting weekly Malevolent episodes (which then get put together as a single longer public episode) and typically an episode ends with a choice and patreon members at certain tier and above can vote on which option is chosen, like a choise your own adventure story. Back in October someone voiced their disappointment in not getting to vote in the patreon poll because Harlan closed it on a Friday instead of a Sunday as normal, he went on an emotional spiral where he lashed out at fans, said "anyone who is unhappy being a patreon doesn't have to be a patreon", and tried to guilt trip people by bringing up his son.

-Other perks of higher patreon tiers include a personal message from a character of your choosing at the $25 tier and a personal thank you video from Harlan and Jo at the $50. I know of multiple people who paid at the $25 tier for months, a few who paid for a whole year at once, who didn't receive these rewards until they reached out and contacted Harlan themselves, months after they had paid for the tier. And they did have to be the ones to message Harlan, when it was brought to his attention that there were many people waiting for their rewards he didn't do any legwork himself to find out who's had never been fulfilled, which is extremely unprofessional.

-Everything up to now has just been the things I saw as a member of the server with access to the patreon channels. I'm friends with an ex-mod, and her getting kicked from the mod team was my sign to give up on the server and finally leave it. I hadn't posted anything in there in months, and I didn't make any sort of "im leaving" post, I just dipped. Apparently they keep track of who's left the server, because Harlan DM'd me saying he was sorry to see me go and he was there if I ever wanted to talk. When I didn't respond overnight, he followed up with "Well, if you ever want to hear my side of this thing with [former mod], I'll be here 🙂". I still don't understand what his intention was in messaging me, but I was curious so I engaged him in conversation and he sent me a screenshot of the message he had sent her explaining why she was being removed from the mod team. I just want to point out that I never asked to see any screenshot. When I asked if he had ever established mod expectations he tried to pass me off to another Invictus admin, despite the fact he was the one who contacted me and I was no longer a member of the server. I told him that he needed better boundaries in his interactions towards fans (or ex-fans in my case) and that there was no reason for him to have messaged me. Instead of apologizing or responding in any way, he simply blocked me.

I am aware of other things that have happened in the server since I left, but I don't want to share stories I haven't been given the ok to bring up or talk about things I've only heard about secondhand. I've been uncomfortable with the way Harlan publicly interacts with people for a long time now, and I kept quiet because I didn't want to start drama but at this point it feels irresponsible to not talk about it.

this anon says they saw a lot over the 2 years they were in the server, so I would like to say upfront that I don't know how much of that is things that have stopped and been addressed and how much has continued more recently.

some of these points seem more related to other aspects than the discord, like apparent issues with the Patreon supporter relationship side of things.

[rotflea]

[autumn-doodles]

Jarthur canon event

[spicy-king]

[dyke-in-crisis]

part 45 is out‼️ time to post the doodle I’ve been holding onto for no reason since last ep

commissions

[pookiethebloodsucker]

guess what i just became obsessed with!!! it's these lads!!!! i love their dynamic so much, and am obsessed with this injoke of theirs.

[crayycrayon]

"I wish we saw more of darkthur" we COULDVE if you guys didn't FUCK IT UP

[yellows-secret-blog]

My top 3 moments where I wanted to kill Arthur Lester for being fucking stupid

(this is not hate, y'all know how I love the babygirl)

3rd place goes to...

Everytime the dude enters a cave, especially that time in Addison when he entered the caved after seeing no trace of the scientist (?) That was supposed to be there and knowing there was a monster in the region. But can I blame him? Probably not, I would do the same

2nd place

When he found those little baby leach-like creatures in the lake down the hotel, and while still keeping his hands on the water, being almost Jane prentiss'ed still was like "well, I guess that's the worse of it, right?" WRONG, WHERE THERE'S BABY THERE'S MOTHER STUPID IDIOT

And final but not least, the moment I realized Arthur mustn't have been very found of physics in high school

The 1st place goes to...

When he used a metal pole against an electric creature back in the dreamlands. Very smart, Arthur. I literally have no comment

Anyway would I do better than him? Of course not, but god did I want to scream at that motherfucker

Anyway

He's my favorite character ever, my special blorbo I fucking love him

[this-too-shall-bleed]

he’s juuuust a little tired.

original

you cannot blame me for immediately seeing john yeah

[realbigpodcastslut]

Now that ep 43 is finally out I really want to point out the line from ep 41:

"In fact… they believed an owl’s call was the foretelling of someone’s death"

*raises fist to the sky* HARLANNNNN

[lastwheeze]

John and Arthur don't talk much about the Dreamlands (which is understandable) but one of my favorite bits of "visual" storytelling in the podcast is when they choose whether to go left or right. In S1 Arthur always went left first, but in S2 he started choosing right as an inside joke with John. In S3 and onwards he mostly stuck to left again. Choosing the right path did lead to the iconic fall before, plus all the whimsy was gone after the pits, so it makes sense that he would try and distance himself as much as possible from something as seemingly insignificant as a right turn.

[the-she-they-in-yellow]

[pigeons-with-jello]

I dont have any s5 predictions more than i have s5 hopes

I hope everyone else also turns out to be a fraud like arthur is

I hope someone tries to sneak up behind arthur and john projects himself out and fucking kills a bitch in front of everyone and arthus has to be like 'soooo thats my bestieee hes sorta murderousss'

I hope arthur gets prosecuted on the grounds of being a fucking witch

I hope yorick wont shut the fuck up and thats hoe they find out arthur isnt the prince

[sunshine-girl-shines]

Me, gnawing at the bars of my enclosure: WHEN DO I GET A NEW EPISODE OF MALEVOLENT?

[stupidsexygrizzop]

cannot understate how not ready for this next chunk of malevolent you are going to be.

[croik]

ngl I'm still baffled that Malev expects us to care, at all, what John did in the Dark World his second time around. Because I do not. It is exactly Faust all over again:

It happened off screen. Supposedly there's good horror shit to be milked here but we don't get to be there for it.

It's been over a year in real time since the event happened before we the audience even got an inkling it happened at all - it is already old news.

Likewise we've seen Arthur and John interact for a full year without any significant effects to their behavior so clearly it didn't impact them THAT much??

Once the truth comes out, Arthur basically has no choice but to just forgive John, the same way John forgave Arthur for Faust even before we learned about it. Because listening to Arthur struggle to forgive John for something he did off screen to strangers who may or may not already be dead while IN HELL, when Arthur is still mad at John for the things John specifically did to him personally, would be silly and a waste of everyone's time.

Is what John did in the Dark World worse than killing a man and eating him to survive? More or less moral than shoving your entire fist into a man's open wound to torture him? Murdering someone who is running away because you're just super mad? Not roasting Arthur here, just saying, scale wise, the bar for "things John did in the dark world that are heinous enough for me to care about" is pretty high. And even if he, I dunno, tortured a hundred ghosts for a while to try to find a way out of the Dark World, I don't really care about that either. The entire premise of the show is that we are encouraging him to be better after being a malevolent god for tens of thousands of years. Nothing he did in the Dark World is worse than whatever KIY has been doing for millennia, surely.

And just like Arthur can say "I can't remember the last time I ate meat!" 15 minutes after reminding us of the time he killed and ate another human being raw, I can't imagine that anything John did will matter until the exact moment the plot decides it should, if it ever does.

I just find it all very tedious and empty drama.