Quoted By:
>An old conclusion I remember seeing when Rushia's whole ordeal had ended (1/2)
Before I begin, let me preface it with an important context: all the decisions that Mikeneko makes during the whole drama is made under a very stressful situation with a mentally fraught mind worsen by depression. We will never know if Mikeneko will choose to do otherwise if any of these factors changes, but this is the decision she had made, and we should keep her mental condition in mind when judging her actions.
For Mikeneko, the whole drama seems rather straightforward: her stream had leaked a discord message that implies she is in relationship with mafumafu, so she must clear her name ASAP lest she create a huge fan exodus due to this leak. In Mikeneko's mind, Mikeneko IS Rushia, so Rushia's fanbase IS Mikeneko's fanbase, and if she cleared her name for that one account, the other account will also follow. That is not an unreasonable assumption without precedence: Matsuri's similar drama on her alternative public account had spilled into her main Hololive account, and many fans of Coco had migrated to kson's account, Coco's alternative public account. All of Mikeneko's interaction with Korekore hinges on this fact, which will be an important assumption later on when we discussed on Rushia's eventual termination.
For Cover however, this drama is not so straightforward. From the company's perspective, this drama is actually TWO drama happened together at the same time:
1. Their talent had leaked a message that implies she is in relationship with another famous talent.
2. Their talent had leaked a message that pointed to their (currently active) alternative public personality/social media account.
Up until now, Cover had adopted an "Don't ask, don't tell" policy on their talents' alternative public personality, with high possibility of being adopted into a NDA with the talents. The talents are allowed to keep using that public personality even for commercial works, as long as they do not mention Cover and it's IP on said commercial works, and vice versa. This is very generous on Cover side in the entertainment industry, because I can't imagine any of the big players on this industry will allow any of their talents to even keep using an alternative account while they are working under their label. But that also means in Cover's perspective, Mikeneko IS NOT Rushia. To Cover, those are two separate individuals, and the action of one (ideally) should not be representative of others.
When the leak happens, Cover now found itself in a troublesome spot of how to handle these two issues simultaneously. The relationship issue is nothing new in this industry, and the PR strategies to handle this kind of issues are well documented. The other issue however, is way more difficult to handle. Even in the Western side of things, the issue of whether fan should publicly acknowledge the existence of these alternative public personalities is still an ongoing discussion/debate. Should Cover even acknowledge the existence of this practice now, or keep silence, risking the fanbase (and potentially Cover's sponsors) to asking even more difficult questions on these accounts, and forced Cover's hand in an even more unfavorable environment?
Cover first public announcement pointed their current policy on those two issues. Their policy on first issue is 'it's the talent's own personal life, so we will not take any action toward that other than preventing further harassment towards them', which is an implicit policy that had been expressed by other members previously, but now officially acknowledged by Cover itself.
