First of all, I’m just going to ignore Peter at this point, because he doesn’t deserve my attention. He never had anytbing to do with this project, and his rambling isn’t bringing anytbing valuable to the table– so I have nothing to say in response to his pathetic gaslighting attempts.
Also, I just want to make it know that I don’t condone chocolateintheair’s sock puppeting or the fact that he purportedly leaked one of Peter’s scans. The enemy of my enemy is NOT necessarily my friend.
So, with all of that being said…
Gregor said:
Then the rug pull and Tristan now holds a finished scan not just for himself but for an exclusive, non-transparent group of donors… all while being “obsessively paranoid about copyright issues”? Did this obsession develop recently?
That’s honestly a fair question, and I feel like I do owe you an answer. No, it didn’t develop recently– I’ve been nervous for a considerable amount of time at this point, beginning around when all of the Reddit leaks happened and I found out about the FPRR server.
Conveniently, the embarrassingly long hm delay in the print getting shipped out gave me a PLENTY of time to mull things over and reconsider how comfortable I really was with sharing a scan on such a widespread scale, especially of a movie owned by a company as litigious as Disney, and ESPECIALLY with how popular this particular project has become.
I kept flip-flopping between whether I should follow through against my comfort zone, or take the financial plunge of refunding a massive number of people with the inevitable risk of getting shit from people– and ultimately, I decided the latter on a whim two nights ago.
To be clear, I am cognizant of the fact that the likelihood of copyright issues are perhaps relatively low– but the off-chance of it happening has still worried the ever-loving balls out of me. We’re all comfy right now sharing this stuff willy-nilly, but what if something changes down the road and the studios suddenly decide to do something about it? It’s the sort of thing that could happen with us having never seen it coming, and I don’t want to receive the brunt of the consequences if that ends up happening.
As for certain people getting the scan– I hate to say it, but the people in my inner circle and the few others that I haven’t refunded are sincerely the ONLY PEOPLE THAT I TRUST NOT TO LEAK THE SCAN, aside from some non-OT donors who aren’t really a part of this community and learned of the project through other means. I understand why this doesn’t come off in the greatest way, and I’m sorry that this is how it has to be, but I don’t really have any good way of truly knowing who on here is and isn’t trustworthy, so unfortunately the only solution I see is to refund everybody else who hasn’t received the scan yet.
What is lacking from Tristan and trolls here is some empathy for how this outcome would make an excluded donor feel. Tristan, you realize all donors had to deal with your caliber of shit of dragging your feet on this crowdfund and lack of communication along the way, right? What an embarrassing attitude coming from you and your clique of donors.
It’s true, I made promises and didn’t keep them in the end. I kept saying and saying that the scan would come, and then I didn’t deliver– and at the end of the day, I guess your guys’ reaction was the natural consequence, and it’s one that I saw coming. I ought to take at least some accountability here, as I was the one who bought the print and decided to post publicly about it. I appreciate all of the support that people were willing to give, and once again– I am sorry that things are ending on such a disappointing note.
At the end of the day, though, I’m only human, and still a fairly young one at that; I’m still discovering and learning a lot of things about myself and the things I value as an individual, and this project has led me to draw a LOT of conclusions about my feelings towards public projects such as this. I went into this with a go-for-the-glory mindset- “I’ll have a place in Internet history”- but I’ve grown to the point where that just doesn’t matter to me anymore.
Simply put, I’m not comfortable funding film scans outside of a private environment anymore, and that’s not in an attempt to gatekeep or anything like that– it’s a simple matter of myself and how I personally feel, especially after seeing the behavior of some people. Unfortunately it led me to make a very large decision that impacted a lot of you negatively, and I’m not ignorant of that. The very least I can offer is a sincere apology, which I already gave you guys when I sent your money back.
There is some seriously rich irony in you calling me unempathetic. At the end of the day, I DO feel bad for everybody I’ve screwed out of not getting the scan, especially after waiting such a long time, because it IS unfair and I DID lead them on only to pull the rug out from everybody’s feet. It’s YOU guys- the ones hurling accusations at me and showcasing a clear lack of emotional maturity or understanding of my perspective- that I DON’T feel bad for, and it’s people like you that led me to make this decision in the end.
I don’t even remember if you donated or not, but if anything, I’m glad that you and Simps and ONLY you and Simps aren’t getting the scan, because you’re both being total pricks. Your reaction only reinforces how much I DON’T regret refunding people at the end of the day.
Just remember that it’s people like you who posted the links to Reddit, who leaked Rob’s Blu-Rays right after removing him from the server they were leaked in, who booted me out of the same exact server with no warning for a rule I didn’t know about regarding something that very clearly was NOT my fault, who belligerently insist that there’s NO possibility of studios eventually getting upset if too much attention is brought our way, and who continue to belittle me for making a normal, well-adjusted life decision in the name of my own comfort, who drove me to cut things off like this. People like Slashman who similarly got shafted have been incredibly kind and reasonable in their posts to this thread and their DMs– so why the hell can’t you?
Here are a couple of other, miscellaneous things I want to clarify (will add more if I think of it):
- THE SCAN HAS NOT LEAKED AS OF MY POSTING THIS, despite what people were saying earlier in the thread. I don’t know where people are getting this- maybe I worded myself poorly- but I’m doing this as a preventative measure, NOT in reaction to any leaks happening.
- I WILL MAKE AN EFFORT TO PUBLIC SHARE AS MUCH OF THIS SCAN AS I COMFORTABLY CAN. As I said, at some point down the line, I plan on at least posting clips to YouTube and/or archive.org. People do in fact deserve to see this scan, even if I’m not comfortable sharing the entire thing with such a large number of people.
At the end of the day, I don’t owe anybody anything. I’m just a guy who is doing what he feels he must do for himself, and if you have an issue with that, then fuck you. I could have ran with the money that you guys gave me, and I chose to send it back because it was the right thing to do.
I’m sure that you guys will pick apart what I’ve said here and find minor things to get hung-up on, but I just don’t care at this point, because I’ve made up my mind about how I feel and what I want to be. I will post the aforementioned clips online as well as clips from other projects I take part in, but otherwise consider this my official bow-out; I am no longer publicly a part of this community, and if I must die a villain to all of you, then so be it. Sayonara.