Key Points        1

Introduction        2

Mysteria Live        3

Shel (Nyantails, Shaldon, Owner of MysteriaLive)        3

Velty Darling        4

Generation 2        4

Valera Kitsu        4

Hana Yong        5

Lycoris        5

Freya Velvet        6

Ki.Ra Bunni        6 

What Lead to Generation 2’s Departure From MysteriaLive                9

Key Points

What Generation 2 expects going forward:

  1. For MysteriaLive as a company to be dissolved and for Shel or any of his associates to not create any more VTuber companies.
  2. A public apology including an acknowledgement of all wrongdoing by MysteriaLive and their employees.
  3. Payment for any and all art, designs, or work completed while with MysteriaLive.
  4. Contract terminations and nullification of the fee for every generation two member.
  5. For MysteriaLive to not use any assets created by Gen 2. ML and any associated party may not use any materials created by the ex-employees for personal or commercial use going forwards. All designs created while with MysteriaLive belong to the talents.

Introduction

For clarity, MysteriaLive will be referred to as ‘ML’ and Nyantails or Shaldon, the CEO and owner, will be referred to as ‘Shel’ from here on out. All direct statements from individuals are written in the first person. This document was created with the combined efforts of the ML Gen 2 girls and anonymous informants to assist with retrieval of information. Most of the statements here can be backed up by screenshots. However, other incidents occurred over voice chat between the talents and management or have since been deleted by ML, and cannot be validated. We ask that you read this document to the end and consider our story.

ML is a VTuber agency that operates in South Africa. On November 12th, 2021, they opened auditions for their second generation. This was opened internationally and did not have any age restrictions. As the auditions began to come in, interviews were conducted and members were selected. There was a tentative line-up as well as several member changes, dating back to months before this incident. The changes were due to the Staff believing the members were “insubordinate, disrespectful, and breaking their code of conduct”.

Several prospects were turned down for being ‘too young’, all the while ML hired a fifteen-year-old girl to play the role of ‘Valera Kitsu’, a character who was made to be Shel and Velty Darling’s daughter. The character also has a breeding mark. The members were not allowed to disclose personal information to each other.

Management wanted to split the generation into ‘lewd’ and ‘seiso’, with the fifteen-year-old being in the ‘lewd’ category. The fifteen-year-old was not aware of this, and the staff pushed for ‘yuri’ interactions between a twenty-year-old genmate and the fifteen-year-old genmate. They wanted to create a ‘degen’ fanbase for the two. The adult was unaware that the other was a minor. When she brought this to the attention of management, she was promptly fired for “insubordination and inciting insubordination”.

The Staff frequently talked about other employees and community members behind their backs, sewing strife, cultivating a hostile environment and isolating the talents from each other. Several talents thought it was their fault when another member got terminated. They were only permitted to speak to each other in a monitored call. Members were not allowed to speak with the others and were only granted more freedoms after begging for change. Talents were guilted into providing free assets for the talents, with no pay.
        Genmates originally tried to resolve the issues privately. They were frequently dismissed and their concerns were not taken seriously/handled in a professional manner. Afterwards, the genmates spoke out publicly in the Discord. The Staff then posted an announcement dismissing it as ‘drama’ and removing all messages regarding the situation, as well as announcing they would be taking the appropriate legal actions against the individuals (again, some of which were minors) as the talents had breached the code of conduct’. 

        All this information is available and can be legally disclosed to the public as an NDA was never presented to talents and therefore was never signed. The contract binding the talents to ML are not yet active and the talents are not held liable for any ‘code of conduct’ breaches that occurred during this timeframe.The company is unable to take any legal action for breach of contract terms, and made themselves the victims. They also held an address for ‘ML loyalists’ in which they discussed how ML was a startup consisting of a group of IRL friends, and said Shel cannot confirm nor deny the following: Intent to press charges against minors, dating an employee, and view/sub-botting. Velty stated that the breeding mark was not intentional, and apologized for not researching well enough. Shel stated he did not believe the models were sexualized. The full audio transcript can be released if needed to validate any of the statements regarding the address below.

In summary, the purpose of this document is to hold Shel and ML accountable for their actions. This is not drama, this is not for attention. We believe that at the core ML is corrupt and needs to be dismantled. We do not want any more talents or children being hurt by MysteriaLive or Shel.

Mysteria Live

  • Haru, a Generation 1 talent, was hired to do the models because Shel felt ‘bad’ that she ‘wasn’t making enough money from her streams’. However, the character designer ended up providing fully fleshed out models and concepts, so Haru was then to just shade all the models. However, Haru does not have the experience/knowledge to shade five different VTuber models, and seems to have had trouble transitioning from traditional art to digital art. We are unsure if the shading was paid, and again done by an employee. Not a professional.


Shel (Nyantails, Shaldon, Owner of MysteriaLive)

  • Includes art of Velty depicted as a child
  • Also states that he is friends with them IRL (ML address). Does not provide a clear response when asked about nepotism and favoritism in ML, and in fact says that he encourages his relationships with all the vtubers.

Velty Darling

  • Turned 18 in January 2022. Shel refused to comment on this underage status when called out on it during the meeting. Instead, he pushed back and said that it was okay for him to be dating his employees.
  • Shel and Velty Darling met after her audition
  • Buying views and subs to reach monetized on YouTube

Generation 2 Rigger

I was contacted on the 27th of November 2021 by Nyantails/Shel where he inquired about my rigging services, as I’d at that time spoken to Lilith and she knew I was a rigger and she recommended me to him.

The initial plan was for me to rig the whole of Gen 2, and Lilith’s 2nd model that was being planned. Lilith’s 2nd model was supposed to be my evaluation to see if I could continue working with them on Gen 2. As we know, Lilith then soon after graduated, so I never got to work on her model.

We agreed that I would still do the rest of Gen 2, so after I got the files for the first model, Kira, I started work as soon as I received my first payment. My pricing is $400 per full body model as a package that includes many different things. Since they said that I’d do all 5 models, I gave them a bulk discount, since $2000 would be quite a hefty price. We agreed on a price in Rands, as I’m also a SA resident and they could EFT me directly. We settled on a model being R5500 (+-$350 at the time), as a bulk discount.

After I started working, I basically finished the model in less than a week and showed them my work, they weren’t happy and I said in order to improve I need updates on the art. At the time I closed my comms as I knew I’d be very busy with their models, but soon after my wait for updates began, I was contacted by Shel, and basically told that I’ll now only be doing 2 models instead of all 5, this was advice from “a marketer they hired off Fiverr.” I said it would be fine, because the arguments made sense from a busines POV, and even then, their minds were already made up, there was nothing I could do to argue.

Thus my 2-month wait for art updates started, while I had only gotten one private client in the time, with no other source of income. I prodded for updates once in December and they said they’re working on it, same responses when I continued to prod them almost weekly ever since 2022 started. The art was being held up because it constantly had to go through management’s approval, and Haru was still inexperienced with digital art and busy with other things, so things went very slowly. I never got paid anything else other than the initial payment in November, and my comms have been closed since then until mid January, when I was already basically broke.

I can’t provide any screenshots as proof of work because Shel’s discord account (our dm’s are gone) and the channel where I did my work in no longer exist.

Generation 2

Valera Kitsu

  • The character of Valera Kitsu is played by a minor, Shel said that Valera Kitsu’s actress was not allowed to tell anyone (including her genmates), or he would fire her because he doesn't want people to think: "What is MysteriaLive doing hiring people this young?".
  • She wasn't told until after the MysteriaLive New Years party that Valera Kitsu was supposed to be Shel and Velty Darling’s daughter from the future when they are married - another extension of the self insert and downright creepy "lore" he had made for Generation 2.
  • I was told to basically mislead everyone by trying to act older than I am. (When talking to staff, say “Professors” instead of “Teachers”, etc.) It all felt so wrong considering the fan base consisted mostly of adults who most likely would feel uncomfortable/would have acted differently had they known that I was a minor. I understand wanting the fans to be kept in the dark about my personal information but it was odd that even my own genmates weren’t allowed to know, given that some of them were casted to play more mature roles.

Hana Yong

  • Shel reached out to Hana asking for emotes for Velty’s monetization. She did them for free as Shel stated multiple times of his money hardships and how he didn’t want to dent his account too much.
  • In the termination email she was required to pay a $100 opt out fee for "emotional damage". She mentioned that she did the emotes for free and stated how much they should have been (it covered more than the opt out fee) but was willing to make it $40. Shel instead said it wasn't right to show her prices after she put his offer down because of his circumstances.
  • After “leaving”, Shel went straight to Lycoris and twisted all her words making her seem like she was in the wrong and everything was her fault.
  • This is a pattern with Shel, as he has done this numerous times with others, including his very own talents such as ex-employee Lilith.
  • This was also something she was afraid of since she stated in her termination letter about how Shel says too many things/going off on his own tangent while revealing information and bad mouthed an ex employee with some personal information.
  • It was reported directly to Shel by an offended VTuber of Gen 2 that his official staff member Peace, who happened to be a real life friend of his- was mocking an asian accent. Shel did nothing about it, and Peace did it again a week later with another member.
  • Shel also accused her of not reaching out. The messages on 1/08/2022 were sent before the email system was implemented.

Lycoris

  • Expected to make one unpaid animatic per month according to Shel, although she was only aware of one “Debut” animatic for the Gen.
  • I felt that the management was disorganized. I thought this because it was a small company and I couldn’t expect them to be super professional.
  • I had a talk with my manager about what was expected and the gist of what they/ I wanted in streams. My manager told me about the separate discord servers and asked if I was okay with lewd things/chat. They also asked if I was okay with the character template I had been assigned. The manager told me about the separate discord servers, and that’s when they told me that they were thinking of splitting the discord servers, based on the audience. They said that they were going to put Freya and Valera into one server, because they were going to both target the “lewd” and “degen” audience. I thought they both agreed to this, and didn’t think anything of it. Later during the day, I got a call from my manager and Hana’s manager telling me that she left. They told me that it was due to the following reasons:
  • She got an interview to another company that was better
  • She had problems with Shel and Mysteria but it wasn’t their fault, she was overreacting.
  • She said Shel did not care about us
  • She left because Valera was a minor and was uncomfortable with our group’s actions. This was the first time I heard of Valera being a minor, which led me to become very uncomfortable with some of the things we talked about with her.
  • They said Hana knew since the start of the contract that Valera was a minor, so she couldn’t complain. I was still shocked about Hana’s departure. During the call, they were very condescending of Hana and told me that she had “bad character” and that she was “two-faced”. They told me not to talk to her again because it would be detrimental to my career as a VTuber and that she would try to harm and dox me. They also said that Hana never tried to talk about any of her problems, so how could they know what was going on inside her head?
  • I talked to Shel after and he told me to delete Hana off all my personal accounts because it’s against the rules.
  • Shel never explained fully about the forms, which was why I asked to call about the issue.
  • I explained to him about the spare model, which I thought would suit Freya more.
  • Freya told Shel it wasn’t okay about keeping the information of hiring minors from us, he refuted this for around 2-3 hours and kept insisting he wasn’t breaking the law and that he did nothing wrong.

Freya Velvet

  • Contract was terminated on 2/1/2022.

Ki.Ra Bunni

  • Expected to write paid lore for MysteriaLive. VTubing and lore writing were promised to be paid separately. It is heavily emphasized on voice call that Kira will be mainly “expanding the lore” alongside her Vtubing and will be paid in accordance to the VTuber’s performance. Once both parties have come to an agreement, the contract would then be “edited” by Shel to “perfectly suit” to the Vtuber in question. Kira then later discovers that the payment for the VTubing and lore writing will not be paid separately. She did not know about her genmates providing “free assets” thus she falsely believed that it is “normal” to provide and be a “part-time” writer for MysteriaLive. As it is stated in the contract, Kira will not be paid for the lore writing except for the month-by-month basis of the calculated salary that the VTuber earns throughout the month.
  • A group DM was made to address the community and share the company’s side of the story alongside a group call where the discussion commenced.
  • In MysteriaLive’s defense, it is said on call and logged accordingly that in the beginning of January, the agency decided that they would not be hiring minors, not because of inappropriate reasons but due to maturity.
  • However, in contradiction to this statement, Kira, who is a minor, received an acceptance email whereas she was approached by the company on January 20th to be called in for an interview. Her audition was sent to MysteriaLive on January 16th, a day after the audition ended.
  • There is nothing wrong with an adult playing this character. But to intentionally search for a minor to play as this character. Please keep in mind this character’s main target demographic was most likely older males.

What Lead to Generation 2’s Departure From MysteriaLive

On February 1st, MysteriaLive members Lycoris, Freya, and Valera had a conversation with Shel discussing what could be done to better Mysteria. There were five main points discussed.

  1. Lore
  2. Discord Boundaries
  3. Privacy and Age Concerns
  4. League of Legends Issues
  5. Model Quality and a Model Change

After the original conversation, Shel requested his managers speak with us because “he couldn’t believe what he was hearing” and needed someone else to verify it. Every manager sent to speak with us was a personal/real life friend of his. They were Hikki, Peace, and Aki. Valera’s manager also attended at her request. Shel insists that Freya Velvet  was very disrespectful during these calls and even insulted his staff, which is why she was terminated.

The following account is by Freya Velvet, the talent who mostly voiced the group's concerns. However, all of it has been thoroughly read and corroborated by the rest of the talents in question - hence her opinions reflect upon all of the others as well.

On the morning of the 1st I (Freya) invited Lycoris to play some League of Legends with me. During our games we got to speaking about how unhappy we were with MysteriaLive as a company and thought of ways to improve things. Since normally, we were too afraid to converse honestly due to fear of Shel reacting negatively, we were really surprised to hear that we shared the same sentiments.

I told Lycoris how unhappy I was with my model and she told me about a spare model that was planned to be used for the 5th person in our group. She said that the model would fit my voice and personality perfectly and that she would speak to Shel about swapping models.

At this point we thought we would tell Valera Kitsu about our feelings to see if any of our other genmates agreed. We found out that Valera did agree and Lycoris asked Shel if she could speak with him. Shel agreed and had a short call with just Lycoris where she explained the problems we were having. After this he said that we could all talk and to join a voice call in the MysteriaLive Staff Discord Server.

Lycoris, Valera, and I joined a voice chat with Shel. Our first issue was the lore. Though we never got a complete lore document, we knew bits and pieces. In the MysteriaLive lore Shel, or Nyantails as his VTuber persona is called, marries his current girlfriend Velty Darling in the future and they have a child (Valera Kitsu). My character Freya Velvet kills Velty and Nyan. I told him that we thought the lore was very inappropriate and that it seemed like we were playing parts in his fanfiction. He replied that the lore was a collaboration between him and his “team” and that generation two would get to have a say, so we moved onto the second topic.

We felt that the MysteriaLive Discord server had a very uncomfortable dynamic between the streamers and the talents and the fans. For a small donation fans are able to access a private chat between any one of the MysteriaLive streamer’s and other fans. This unlimited access to the streamers felt very unnerving and made the Gen uncomfortable as when these fans would say inappropriate things we would be told to ignore it. This applied to all of Gen 2, including the minors - who again, were not allowed to divulge their age to anybody other than Nyan.

I said that I felt that Haru Miya may be uncomfortable with these fans as she tends to ignore their messages without speaking up for herself. I told him that these were just my thoughts on the situation and that I am not actually sure if it makes Haru uncomfortable. Shel said that I should not assume things because he is friends with Haru in real life and that they have discussed why she doesn’t reply. I told Shel that I wasn’t trying to assume things and was just worried for Haru.

The next thing we discussed were age concerns. I told Shel that it was unacceptable to not tell me Valera’s age.

We had been discussing NSFW topics like Hentai and were calling our gen the ‘Yuri’ gen for over a week. At one point we even discussed the idea of having an NSFW anime watch party that would have been held on mine and Valera’s shared discord server. Valera was too scared to tell us her age for fear of being fired.

Shel told me that it was a privacy concern which is why I was unable to know Valera’s age. I told him that there were no excuses for failing to notify his employees that they were working with minors. Especially considering I was hired to play a “sexy sadist” role. He continued to argue with me saying that there was no reason to know. I reminded him that he was watching us interact inappropriately with a child for days on end. He said that tries to give us privacy in our gen chats, but admitted that he did see us calling each other our wives. Shel is a self proclaimed loli and yuri lover, which is why I was so disgusted. He has a small collection of yuri comics in his house. The entire experience made the female employees of generation 2 uncomfortable, as they felt like they were being pulled into his fetish.

League was a very small issue that could be chalked up to miscommunication. We were told that winning the League of Legends Clash Tournament every time was an expectation. I told him that was very unrealistic due to the skill disparity of our team and Shel agreed.

Originally, we were meant to play on EUW because it is where the staff is located, even though the majority of us normally played on North American servers. He also stated he wanted Valera Kitsu (a silver player) to play midlane so that she would feel comfortable when we are NA, despite her 200+ ping and the fact that we had a Masters midlane player on our team who's from NA. This goes back to his favoritism and weird obsession with his 15 year old "daughter".

Our final topic was model quality. I told Shel that I felt Aze was a very talented artist, but the models seemed very outdated and unattractive. Shel really expected our generation to be a big success, so I let him know that I was worried about us actually being able to succeed since VTubing is very cutthroat these days. MysteriaLive does not have any unique skills/talents (such as model quality, extraordinary talent skill, etc) that gives them an edge compared to many corpo and indie VTubers. We learned that Aze was supposed to copy art styles from other artists, which is why his quality was very subpar.

We decided that postponing debut may be the best idea, so that we have more time to increase the quality of the models and give Mysteria the best chance at being successful. We had plans to reshade Ki.Ra Bunni and Valera Kitsu’s models because they were already rigged, completely redo the red assassin model, and possibly switch my model to a different one.

I then found out that Ki.Ra Bunni was also a minor. Again, Shel never mentioned this to me a single time, even during our conversation about ages.

The managers asked us to join a call, but Ki.Ra could not come. When we joined the call I spoke with Peace (one of the managers) and told him it's unacceptable that she was not allowed to be here as she is our genmate and a part of our team. I had already updated Ki.Ra on the situation and that she deserves to be here. Peace and I argued back and forth for a while, before he finally conceded with an “Are you happy, now?”. I told him that I was in fact happy. Ki.Ra joined and I reiterated what was told to Nyan. Peace listened without saying a word until I was finished, repeated what I had said back to me, and said “anything else”. When we said there were no more concerns he said that someone would get back to us and left. The rest of the mods followed.