Picture this: you’re me on November 30th, 2025. Finals week is a bitch, and you have a project to present tomorrow. So, as usual, you click over to Youtube to find lofi music or some video essay to play in the background while you finish up the presentation’s visuals.

Out of the corner of your eye, you see a video thumbnail: “Tetro Danganronpa Blue Chapter 3 Full Audio”. It’s a long video. Huh!, you think. Chapter 3 has only just started releasing. Tetro is popular enough for fans to make fake clickbaity episodes? Wow. You ignore it and go about your day.

A day later, it’s December 1st. You’ve just finished your presentation, and you’re looking to wind down, so you scroll through Youtube again. Out of the corner of your eye, you spot a thumbnail: “Tetro Danganronpa Blue Chapter 4 Full Audio”. You sit up in your chair. The view count is oddly high, and it’s premiering right now. You click on it.

It’s real.

Oh no, you think. The curse must have struck again.

WHAT IS DANGANRONPA?

If you’re an edgy teenager or young adult, you’ve heard of Danganronpa. It’s a Japanese visual novel series, each game having the premise of 16 teenagers with extraordinary talents being stuck in a killing game in which they must kill another classmate and get away with it in order to escape. The first game, Trigger Happy Havoc, released in 2010, with a small English fanbase carried by a written fan translation on the forum Something Awful. The series gained more traction in the west after the official English translation of the first 2 games released in 2014. However, it REALLY took off in 2020, likely due to a combination of COVID and the third game’s recent release. It was especially popular among teenagers and young adults, who were drawn to its colorful characters and dark content. It especially dominated the cosplay community. So yeah. It was huge.

FAN PROJECTS

Danganronpa had the perfect formula for fanmade killing games. Its general format (16 students, each with a specific extraordinary talent, killing each other over the course of 6 chapters), was replicable, and the whole ‘talent’ system practically begged people to make their own killing games, often referred to as “fangans”, with their own casts of original characters. And they did!

There are countless fanfictions, fan roleplays, fan video series, and fan games. Well, started ones, at least. Because here lies the problem:

It’s actually really hard to make a full Danganronpa story.

Remember: you need at least 5 compelling mysteries, and you need to develop a cast of 16 characters. And these games are loooooong. So, thus began the fangan curse: the vast, vast majority of fangans never get completed. It’s become a meme in the community by this point. Hell, I even tried and failed to complete a fangan. The story goes like this: Someone wants to make a fangan, typically a fan game. They design their cast of 16 characters and excitedly search for voice actors on Casting Call Club. Voice actors audition and are selected, then the project goes nowhere. It’s a tale as old as time. And even when promising fangans do manage to release a chapter or two, most fizzle out due to internal issues.

So when a fangan actually does get completed, it’s a huge deal. Enter Tetro Danganronpa: PINK.

TETRO DANGANRONPA PINK

Tetro Danganronpa: PINK (which I’ll just refer to as Pink going forward) was done in a pretty untapped format for fangans: an audio drama. Here’s how it worked: installments of the series were released on Youtube in short episodes, each usually only a few minutes long. The episodes were fully voice acted, with minimal but stylish visuals that mostly just displayed captions and character portraits to indicate who was speaking. Each Friday, an in-game day was covered, with the release of 6 or so episodes scattered throughout the day.

This project succeeded for a variety of reasons:

1. Von Babbitt, the creator, did most of the work by herself. She was the sole writer and artist as well as the main editor. The only work that was mostly outsourced was the voice acting. Although this is a lot of work for one person, yes, managing a project team can be a nightmare. By doing the bulk of the work herself, she was able to keep a steady workflow.
2. The script was completed and all of the audio was recorded before the series started releasing. This was HUGE. Although visual and audio editing is obviously a huge undertaking, the audio’s completion massively cut down the work that needed to be done between episode releases.
3. The format was pretty minimal. Though there was a ton of voice acting, the visuals were pretty minimal; once the sprites and general graphic design format were laid out, Von didn’t really need to create many new assets during the series’ run. Once everything was set up, the project could just hit the ground running.
4. Weekly releases. You know how fanbases for TV shows tend to be more active when episodes release weekly rather than all at once? This is because weekly releases keep people engaged with a steady stream of new content, fostering discussion and the creation of fan theories. This steady release schedule worked wonderfully in Pink’s favor, especially in an ocean of fangans with yearly updates if fans were lucky enough to get any at all.

So yeah. This series was successful. The voice actors, many of whom were active in fan spaces, art, and weekly release schedule attracted a loyal fanbase that quickly brought Tetro massive popularity in fangan spaces. And that’s not all. You see, Pink started on July 26th, 2024 and ended on May 2nd, 2025. A fangan not only being completed, but finishing within one year? That was unheard of.

So when the sequel started releasing, people were hyped.

The Tetro series was always conceptualized as a trilogy: Pink, Blue, and White. Blue started releasing on August 1st, 2025, to massive popularity. However, on November 29th, 2025, shit hit the fan.

THE LEADUP

Let’s back up a bit. Although things exploded in late November, tensions had been brewing for a while before then. Now, something I want to mention right now for context is that Von had some (if not all) staff members (including VAs) for Blue and White sign NDAs. So, if you’re wondering why any of them stayed silent about any of this, that’s why. Okay, now onto the timeline.

On May 6th, 2025, Twitter user burnie468484 posted a lengthy Google Doc accusing Von of tracing and passing AI art off as her own. Later, on September 11th, an even more comprehensive AI art allegation Google Doc was created by Twitter user gonefishing235, as well. Now, the use of AI art at all is generally seen as a huge taboo in fan spaces like these, with Von herself even outwardly condemning it. However, the major grievance here was that Von had allegedly scammed people by using AI for art commissions through which she had made hundreds of dollars. Though these documents gained a bit of attention, it was generally dismissed, as many fans and VAs came to Von’s defense and refuted the claims.

During mid October, the AI art allegations began to gain a bit more traction on Twitter. One involved individual was Keluminary, who didn’t directly work on Tetro, but is roommates with one of the VAs and friends with a few others. Remember him; he’ll be important later. Though more AI art evidence was being circulated, the main grievance here was that Von ran Tetro as a volunteer-based fan project and thus didn’t pay any of the VAs (some of whom were underaged, more on that later) or other staff members (editors, moderators, etc) despite asking for and receiving thousands of dollars through Ko-fi from Tetro fans. These Twitter users urged fans to donate to the VAs instead of Von.

On October 29th, the entire character death order for Blue was leaked on Twitter by an anonymous account. Now, the prevailing theory is that this person is one of Von’s exes who had recently been cancelled in the fangan community for grooming minors. An “I’ll take you down with me” sort of situation. However, since this theory has not been proven, I won’t state their name here, as they’re otherwise irrelevant to the drama. This leak didn’t initially gain a lot of traction, as there was no real proof to back it up.

On November 29th, the entire White character list was leaked. The oldest source of the leak I can find is this tweet that seems to imply that Keluminary was the leaker. Keluminary clarified that he “knew people who knew people”, implying that one of the staff members violated their NDA to privately leak the cast list, and Keluminary was the one who spread it around. Many people believe that the initial leaker was the same anonymous person who leaked the Blue death order, but again, this hasn’t been confirmed. Regardless, this White leak gained a lot more traction than the Blue leak, as this one had actual art assets tied to it, giving it more credibility. The AI art allegations had been growing steadily by this point, so people opposed to Von used the chaos from the White leaks to blow the lid on this entire situation.

DISASTER

The Tetro fan community descended into chaos. The AI art allegations finally started to catch on, causing more people to go back and see if there was anything else shady that Von had allegedly done. And find they did. There’s a laundry list of allegations, so to keep things comprehensible, I’ll put them in a nice bulleted list.

• GROOMING A MINOR: Von, who is currently 23, had allegedly sent sexually suggestive messages to a then 17 year old when Von was 20, then waited until they were 18 to send a picture of her cleavage to them. (x) (x)
• TRACING + AI ART: The tracing and AI art allegations were strengthened by these screenshots, posted by Twitter user WallahiHumbugg, that heavily indicated that Von had used NovelAI for art requests in the past. Von has also outright mentioned using AI before. Again, the major grievance here was that Von had scammed people, earning hundreds of dollars through AI-generated art commissions.
• WRITING CRITICISMS: Around this time, some plot details for Blue were leaked. And they were. Uh. Something. You see, the series had always been pretty dark, with many of the murder motives including blatant torture, for example. However, the leaks were considered gratuitously torture-porny (and fetishistic, some argued) even by the fans’ standards. For reference, one of the leaked motives included fingernails being ripped out, shock therapy, cannibalism, and a lobotomy. Remember, all of this was fully voiced. Also keep in mind that some of the VAs were minors at the time of recording, and none of the VAs were warned beforehand about just how dark the story would get/the content they would be expected to record. Other criticisms of Von’s writing had been circulating for a while, especially regarding her mistreatment of female characters as well as ableism (some fans took issue with how almost (if not) every single disabled character had their disability used against them then died horribly).
• UNPAID LABOR: I already explained this above, but Von didn’t pay any staff members yet directly asked for and earned money through Ko-fi from Tetro fans. Von also briefly sold official Tetro merch (mentioned here and here), and allegedly earned upwards of 4 thousand dollars from Tetro in total, calculated here.
• STAFF MISTREATMENT: Once their NDAs were rendered obsolete (more on that later), many VAs came out to detail unprofessionalism on Von’s part. One particular accusation was favoritism towards the more popular/well-established VAs. More examples are given in a video by Youtuber Lechgang.
• NSFW WEIRDNESS: Von sent NSFW art of a Pink character to their VA, PancakeKING, unprompted. She also posted sexually suggestive audio content of a 17-year-old character she voiced in Pink on her Ko-fi. She generally has a bit of a history of being weird about her 17-year-old characters, detailed here and here.
• ALT ACCOUNTS: Since at least 2020, Von has allegedly run a ton of alt accounts which she has used to romantically pursue and/or harass people. She used many in the official Tetro Discord server, acting as mods, personal friends, and test audiences. She also previously ran a discord called New Bot City in which she claimed users could interact with advanced AI bots, all of whom were just alts of her. Beyond this, she ran a bunch of unaffiliated ones, as well.
• BULLYING: There are allegations of bullying dating back before Tetro, as well. (x) (x), (x) (x), (x)

There are more allegations, but these were the main ones I could find.

THE AFTERMATH

On November 30th, Von unceremoniously put the series on an indefinite hiatus in a now deleted post. She then deleted the staff Discord server and abandoned all of her public accounts.

Many of the VAs were pissed, as hours of their unsaved work (that some had wished to put in their voice reels) had suddenly been deleted without warning. Luckily, one of the Blue VAs, Felix Wiscan, managed to recover the audio for the entirety of Blue from Tetro’s test audiences, who had had the audio downloaded. Felix then uploaded all of it to their Youtube channel, giving the fans a bit of closure.

More art for Blue was leaked, and although a few details about White’s outlined plot* were given by the White VAs, we’ll likely never know the planned death order or major plot beats. Many of the White VAs were devastated by the cancellation in general, as many were new VAs who were overjoyed to be part of such a popular project with an active fanbase.

As for the fan community: Some fans are moving on, directing their attention to other fangans. Speaking of which, many fangans that had adopted the Tetro audio drama format were renamed to remove references to Tetro. As for the fans who stayed: Many fan artists have redrawn Blue’s sprites, allowing people to use those instead of the original AI-generated assets for Blue fan works.

*^(Some sources say that White had only been written or recorded up to halfway through the Chapter 1’s investigation, but one of the VAs mentioned recording 60+ hours of audio for their character, so we don’t really know exactly how far along in development White was before its cancellation.)

And that’s how things sat for a while. Until…

VON’S STATEMENT

On February 3rd, 2026, after two months of radio silence, Von posted one final statement on Twitter before deleting her account the next day.

In it, she thanks everyone for their support, apologizes for being impulsive and manipulative, and admits that she isn’t in a great mental state. She doesn’t address any specific allegations, but does say that she didn’t retain any earnings from Tetro, as all of the funds went back into supporting the project. She states that she’s going to try to move on, and that she may write again one day in the far-off future. She ends her statement by expressing that she’s sorry for how things ended and that she wishes everyone well.

It. Uh. Was not received well, to say the least.

People dragged her for not actually specifically addressing the allegations, and some doubted her claims that she really walked away with no money. It generally just left a bad taste in people’s mouths.

CONCLUSION

So there you have it. I mostly just feel sorry for the staff members and victims of all of this.

This goes without saying, but please don’t try to track Von down and send hate. I’m not endorsing any witch hunts. I instead urge any of that attention to instead be directed towards supporting the VAs. Twitter user pakutheta has compiled a list of their VAs’ socials if you wish to support them.

Thanks for reading.

For archival reasons, I’ve also created image galleries here and here of screenshots of every xcancel link provided above. Furthermore, Youtuber mahimeghan has also compiled a Google Drive folder of evidence, as well. Special thanks to u/ALiteralBucket for posting some of these allegations in a Scuffles thread a while back!