The Plot Thickens on the Genshin Impact VA Drama

Is anyone surprised at this point?

So there’s been more going on with the current Genshin Impact Voice Actor drama otherwise known as the Voice Actor Strike or Work Refusal or whatever you want to call it. Between Paimon’s voice actor completely crashing out, and other voice actors attacking anyone that would dare question SAG-AFTRA. This whole thing has been nothing more than a witch hunt which seems similiar to acts that cultists would do anytime someone denounces their cult. (Like Scientology.)

But basically the reason for the strike or work refusal is because after the main Writers Strike last year, they wanted to have protections against AI. However the deal that was struck left out Voice Actors which pissed a lot of people off since the voice actors who were members of SAG-AFTRA were striking on behalf of the Writers and Actors. So they decided to go on strike.

The problem with Hoyoverse and Genshin Impact is that a) Genshin and all Mihoyo/Hoyoverse games are not union games. b) Some people like the voice of Paimon are what’s known as Ficore, which means they get certain privileges that allows them to work during a strike or work refusal whereas other people would get in trouble. Especially when there are rules in place like Global Rule One that basically states that if you are caught working you are subject to being blacklisted, fined and or getting kicked from the SAG-AFTRA union.

Now one such VA has spoken out about it. Venti’s VA; Erika Harlacher. She went on Twitter to speak out that she would love nothing more than to return to voicing VA but she can’t because of the political tension surrounding the strike/work refusal. She also admitted that she has been getting threatening letters from SAG-AFTRA.

Meanwhile, fellow voice actors have been attacking her saying that she’s an adult and should know better. But here’s the direct irony is two of the people going afrer her are KaiserNeko and LittleKuriboh. KaiserNeko worked on DBZ the Abridged Series by Team FourStar and LittleKuriboh created Yu-Gi-Oh the Abridged series. Both series were known for bashing the work of English Voice Actors and the localization of the English and other dubs.

So for them to try and white knight SAG-AFTRA is kind of ironic if you think about it. Also LittleKuriboh tries to claim that he’s a good friend of Erika’s and then tries to bash her, personally if I were Erika I would drop LittleKuriboh as a friend, cause friends don’t do that. Good friends at least don’t do that. And in all honestly, if SAG-AFTRA and their white knights want to claim that they are for the workers then they shouldn’t be forcing people to not work. That’s only going to endanger them in the end, especially if we have another recession looming.

I was just starting in the work force when I got laid off in 2008. It wasn’t a fun time for a few months until I was rehired and had to work on a temporary project before getting my old position back at the same pay. Unless you’re someone who is an experience voice actor and can afford to not work for a certain amount of months, then sure. But not everyone is.

And mind you that once again Mihoyo/Hoyoverse is not inclined to use AI anytime soon and has not made any waves to. Their government literally prohibits it, and like I said in the other post concerning this, China kind of has control over everything so even the English version has to follow what China wants. There’s no way around it. To also add that the voice actor studio that employs Voice Actors also has in their contract that they will not use AI. So why are these voice actors are doing this?

Because they want to force Mihoyo/Hoyoverse into being a union shop game. Something that would potentially do harm to non-union voice actors who would be forced to either join the union by paying $3000 or have to stop working on Mihoyo/Hoyoverse games. Which mind you isn’t very pro-worker. That’s all that this has been, some stupid power grab. Though it seems like some voice actors are being released on Zenless Zone Zero by people not by AI. So we’ll see where this goes.

Honestly, I think with the politics surrounding this, forcing and threatening people to keep in the union is stupid. As is trying to threaten to blacklist them for what? Making money and trying to survive when we might be headed to a recession. Talk about asinine.

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