So, hear me out. I agree that Nintendo positioning in this whole matter was a mess. They never ever tried to defend her from crazy critics about how she affected localization, despite working in marketing, having no influence over lozalization decisions and actually criticizing the boob slider removal.

I also agree with Jim Sterling: "The very attitude that sees Xenoblade Chronicles X remove a boob slider is the same attitude that got Rapp fired."
It was never a victory for "creative freedom", as it has the same root cause: Nintendo wants to avoid controversial subjects like the plague.
(if you want to read: http://www.thejimquisition.com/nintendos-corporate-culture/)

That said, i just took the time to read about one of the heavier accusations, pedophlia.
And holy sh*t. She definitely never holded her tongue on twitter. I am kinda surprised it actually took Nintendo so much time to fire her, considering how they usually act under this circumstances.

Take a look: https://imgur.com/a/uGLHz
(Also, before i thought the GG guys digged her life for her 2011 essay, but it seems she actually posted about it on twitter. Can't believe she did not saw this coming.)

Your thoughts? To be fair she never defined which should be the age of consent according to her, just criticized the 18 years old line.

I can't comment on whether Alison should have been fired since I don't have the full picture. What I can say, however, is that the Gamergate crowd has created a martyr out of Alison and the Gamergate movement will suffer some stiff losses to the feminists in the near future as a result of this.

The public perception (whether rightly or wrongly) is that Nintendo has sided with Gamergate by firing Alison and this will not be forgotten by the media and those of influence. This outcome was entirely made possible by the petty attacks targeted at Alison by the Gamergate crowd. This perception will give the feminists additional leverage over Nintendo in the future because the company now has to try to restore a balanced public image.

Honestly, if the possibility of a female Link in Zelda U was on the fence before this story broke, I could see this event potentially tipping the scales in favor of the feminists. The Gamergate crowd as well as people like myself who agree with concepts such as preserving masculinity in games are going to experience setbacks because of this incident. Like any legitimate political movement, Gamergate needs to learn to attack the idea while respecting the people with whom we disagree. If we cannot do this then we will lose credibility in the eyes of the public.

EDIT: I read up on some additional details on this case and I feel that I owe the Gamergate community an apology for this post.  It appears that there are some pretty serious accusations against her that any responsible citizen would investigate further.  I would like to note that this story has definitely been distorted against Gamergate by even mainstream gaming journalism sites that I had previously trusted but will no longer.

1) Expecting Nintendo to step in just seems ridiculous to me. It would do nothing to remove her from the line of fire (especially when she kept stirring the pot) and it would just throw Nintendo as a company into the line of fire. It would accomplish nothing but drawing more targets.
-Side point: The "Rapp was harassed due to implications about her involvement with Fire Emblem's localization" narrative has always been a little fuzzy for me. I didn't see any news about it at the time, but from what I can tell the "harassment" was largely the kind that one would put quotation marks around, if you catch my drift...

2) Yes, Nintendo could serve to be less kid oriented in the way they present themselves, however, there is a big difference between what you portray in art and the way your employees behave. Its one thing to publish a game like Bayonetta, it is another for one of the faces of your company to be posting risque pictures posing with a 3DS on their twitter profile.

3) The pedophilia nonsense is irrelevant nonsense. Yes, she made some statements 5 years ago regarding changes in the legal system. Who cares? There is no risk of her harming kids (from what we've seen) and she didn't really do anything wrong in this avenue other than have an opinion. Do people honestly think that you should be fired for an opinion you expressed five years ago?

@Illusion: I think you are vastly overstating the effect this will have on NoJ...

You know the thing that annoys me the most about this whole thing?  If this were about a man, the vast majority of us would not give a damn.  At most, we'd say 'sucks to be him' and go about our business but since this is about a young, not-ugly female, we get 40+ articles pushing a false harassment narrative, petitions, calls for boycotts, devs cancelling games and massive threads across the gaming community.  It's pathetic how thirsty a lot of males involved in video games are.

Yeah, I'm not surprised at all they fired her, even if it's not the case of "other job"...you can't be PR for corporation like Nintendo and tweet whatever is on your mind.

Did I miss something? Or did the OP completely skip over the fact that her side job would have just about anyone fired from a major corporation. You can't have side job in which you post NSFW pictures and expect to keep your job at any company, especially one with Nintendo's "family friendly" image.

Yes and go read the link, some of the statements are as recent as a few months ago, child abuse is a severe crime probably the most severe. Defending it is not acceptable, one of her tweets flat out says don't hate on pedophiles and that tweet was made this past december. People wouldn't stand for anyone defending racist or sexist bahaviour, if this was a man I have a feeling no one would back him at all over it.

I agree that it would be the complete opposite in that everyone would be damning NOA for even hiring a male in that believed and did the same things as Rapp.  It's pathetic how a pair of breasts and a cute face can make a lot of men drop any semblance of common sense.

Actually Nintendo position on this subject is in line with just about any big corporation. There is a quote from this woman where Nintendo came to her and asked her to not tweet about the rap subject and she refused. She put Nintendo in the situation where they had to either support her position or let her go. Putting your employee into a position to support a subjective public opinion is not the smartest thing to do and it leads to termination which was the result. Nintendo just like any corporation do not want any part of public discussion on such subjects where they are then put into a place to support unofficial statements.

Also its not like Nintendo just upped and fired her either. When this stuff started to get out of hand they moved her from her current position and placed her in a new role. This was a clear sign to her that Nintendo did not want to be a part of her public opinion on the subject. They came to her and asked her to stop posting on the subject. After that they fired her because she wanted to continue her crusade.

Nintendo gave her an opportunity and she made the choice to continue her crusade. This firing was not something that came out of nowhere, she knew her actions were leading to this result.

Not to mention that said pictures included ones w/ her holding Nintendo products, while using her actual account with links to Nintendo all over it.  Sorry, that's just dumb, especially for someone who's likely as social media savvy as she is.