Season 1 Judging Drama

Though Ms. Paint’s Art Race was created as a fresh start from the controversial Artists Fantasy Season, its first season had its fair share of drama.

## Background

The competition was originally created by Errsmi (Malaria E. Coli), but since he wanted to compete he decided to step down as a subreddit mod for the duration of the season, leaving Maaybells, Icaruskairos, ShadowPaintedRose, and Makananidrive as the judges.

## Week 1

May left the panel shortly after Week 1, after which Icarus appointed himself as head judge. Thus, Icarus, SPR, and Maka remained the main judges of Season 1.

It was later revealed that the hostility from the other Season 1 judges contributed to May's reasons for leaving.

## Week 2

In Week 2, the judges announced the challenge theme publicly as French pastries while messaging the contestants that the theme was simply pastries. This led many contestants to use pastries that were not French, which led to confusion among the audience.

The confusion turned to anger when the judges announced Safira as the winner of the challenge, who had selected not one but various pastries as the inspiration for her look. Dissenters argued that not only had Safira not fulfilled the challenge because of this, but that her look was cliche and uninspired due to the dress having a predictable Marie Antoinette silhouette.

## Week 3

In Week 3, both the winner and elimination decisions were called into question. Mai Lady’s winning look as Mrs. Lovett from Sweeney Todd was praised by the judges for its details and its grandiose silhouette, but others argued that the use of actual pies as props and words sewn directly onto the clothes were too obvious to be considered a fashionable interpretation of the character. But the greater outrage was in response to the judges’ decision to save both of the bottom two, Jarefina and Safira, from elimination. People felt that neither lipsync was impressive enough to warrant a double save, and that the double save ruined the intent of the team format for this particular challenge.

## Week 4

In Week 4, Miyu Moon was criticized by the judges for relying on the color purple in multiple looks. However, the only look where she had used purple prior to this week was her MTQ look, where she had been assigned the color purple.

## Weeks 5-6

As the weeks progressed, the audience began to suspect vote manipulation in the polls. The judges were still targeted for their final decisions, as well as their unwillingness to get rid of the polls. Malaria E. Coli and Sally Spellman, two of the contestants, were labeled as members of the “Salt Squad” for vocally protesting against the judges, and their fans were seen as part of the Salt Squad as well. Tensions between the judges and the community began to rise.

## Week 7

In Week 7, the mods received messages from former AFS host Allovem taking responsibility for the vote manipulation and the bizarre results. However, the judges took no actions against the polls at this time.

Judge Maka revealed that he had been intentionally scoring against Malaria E. Coli and Sally Spellman due to their vocal fanbases. This resulted in a huge uproar among the community, and Sally in particular called Maka out for letting personal feelings affect his judging. Members began to suspect the other judges of acting similarly, due to the often bizarre results. Maka eventually apologized for his actions.

## Week 8

In Week 8, Fossana and Sally Spellman were placed in the bottom two and had to lipsync for their lives. Fossana provided a lipsync look and Sally did not, but the judges decided to send Fossana home and save Sally due to her better performance in the challenge. Many were conflicted by this decision, as the judges had previously eliminated queens for not providing a lipsync, but the majority of the community did not feel Sally deserved to be bottom two in the first place.

## Week 9

In Week 9, Malaria E. Coli and Sally Spellman were criticized by the judges for unrealistic representations of their dragged-up athlete. Malaria was criticized for going too harsh with her athlete's resemblance, when she had literally traced the face of her athlete. Sally was criticized for making her athlete look too much like herself, which the judges called unrealistic. Both critiques were heavily criticized by the audience.

## Week 10

In Week 10, it was announced that the judges would no longer be using the audience polls to make their decisions. Icarus revealed that they had received official confirmation of vote manipulation: a message from an anonymous user that they had been rigging the polls. This conflicted with the fact that they had received confessions of vote manipulation all the way back in Week 7.

Since this challenge was the Elemental Ball, which required not 1 but 3 looks, the remaining contestants were given two weeks. During these two weeks, struggles for power increased behind the scenes.

As the creator of the competition, Errsmi’s intent was resume his position as head mod after the season ended. The judges had changed everything he had planned for the competition and he wanted to return and reinstate the competition as he intended. However, Icarus, the current head mod, was unwilling to relinquish his position. When Icarus found out that Errsmi intended to remove SPR and Maka as judges after Season 1, he leaked this information to the two of them. SPR, in particular, refused to step down. Errsmi argued that the judges had been out of touch with the contestants for the entire competition, and this was backed when contestants outside of the supposed Salt Squad began to speak up against the judges’ lack of activity and questionable decisions. It was also revealed by guest judge OnyxEnvy that May had left the judging panel in Week 1 after tensions with the other judges.

After the backlash, Maka approached the contestants privately, wanting to make amends. He revealed that SPR intended to nuke the sub once the competition ended, confirming that she and Icarus did not care about the contestants, and that the judges had changed the competition to fit their wants instead of the contestants’ wants. The judges ended up not nuking the sub, but instead decided to create their own competition and move on from MPAR once the season ended.

The challenge post was posted several minutes late. When questioned, SPR attributed the tardiness to the huge length of the post. She also stated publicly that the winner of the season would be chosen based on overall performance and track record, which contradicted the judges' private decision that whoever won the ball would win the season.

## Week 11

The finale post was posted even later, with no reason given for the tardiness. This led to uproar fronted by OnyxEnvy. The community called out the judges for not even bothering to let them know that the post was going to be late.

## Post-Season 1

From the crowning onward, the judges remained silent and unresponsive to Errsmi and the rest of the community for several weeks. Requests for them to step down were ignored, and eventually OnyxEnvy was able to remove SPR and Maka but not Icarus due to mod permissions. At Errsmi’s request, Onyx also added Errsmi, Otcishot, and U1tr4me0w as the new official mods.

Two weeks into the off-season, Icarus suddenly appeared with a post announcing the new competition he had created with SPR and Trashystrolling (guest judge during the Elemental Ball challenge), Illustration Drag Race. In this post, he announced that the Season 1 judges would officially be cutting ties with MPAR and moving on to their new competition. However, in addition to the post, he removed all the mods (including the new mods) except for himself, and added SPR back as a mod. This of course led to outrage among the community, but any comments calling out Icarus’ and SPR’s shenanigans were immediately deleted.

Several hours later, Icarus removed himself and SPR as mods and reinstated Errsmi as a mod, revealing that he had removed all the mods because he was afraid that the new mods would immediately delete his post about IDR. He also warned Errsmi that if he decided to ban Icarus and SPR, all the threads about Season 1 would disappear. Errsmi decided not to ban Icarus and SPR, not because he was afraid of losing MPAR history, but because he wanted to put all the past controversy and drama behind them and start fresh. With that, we saw the Season 1 judges bid adieu and the new MPAR judges -- Errsmi (Malaria E. Coli), Otcishot (Sally Spellman), and U1tr4me0w (Miyu Moon) -- take their place.