storytimediscourse

We are an assemblage of inviduals who worked on Thomas Sander's "Storytime Madlibs" video - we are not here to cancel or hurt anyone, all we want is an honest and open conversation and to make sure no one gets treated unfairly in the future.

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Hello all. We have seen your messages, and we are grateful for the concern. We apologize for the radio silence we have perpetuated over these last couple weeks. It was not our intention to close communication between ourselves and the community. However, we cannot speak about which we don't know. We have not received any more responses from the Foster Dawg team, but, likewise, we haven't reached out recently either. We have made our grievances known, and whether or not the team will choose to publicly acknowledge our concerns is unknown. There is not much more we can do at this time. Thank you all so much for the support.

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Any updates on your ends?

We apologize for not communicating much in these past couple days. There are things happening that we can’t really talk about right now, which is very vague, unfortunately. We apologize for not being able to be more transparent right now. It is also Christmas Eve, and Christmas Day is tomorrow, and there are some of us caught up in the holiday craziness as well. We will share when we can, and thank you again for your patience. Merry Christmas to all who celebrate!

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Thomas is going to stream? Do you happen to know when?

It’s a Patreon stream - at 5PM EST on 12/19. 

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Do you know if there will be any talk about this in the livestream tomorrow?

We are unsure whether or not Thomas will bring it up. However, as a note to all: please refrain from talking about the discourse unless Thomas himself brings it up. We don’t want misinformation to spread and tensions to rise.

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Maybe he wants to wait until its resolved to say anything?

Perhaps that is his reasoning, but we don’t know for sure. On one hand, it could be seen as more mature, that he’s “taking a high ground”, whatever that may mean to him. On the other hand, it’s wrong to ignore something that members of his community obviously care about and are vying for; he can’t ignore it, especially because he knows about it. We don’t know what is going through Thomas’ head, but we have to hope he will do right by us.

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Something I haven’t seen in a lot of these discussions: I have a hard time believing that the team was unaware of animation working conditions and credit considering their previous hiring of animators for the Asides animatic and Putting Others First. Why was this contract so different?

This was Foster Dawg’s first time creating a large multi-animator project (MAP). In this instance, it was a lot of people to coordinate and a lot of people to pay. Now, that does not excuse the amount we were paid, and to restate something we’ve said since the beginning: we are NOT looking to be paid more, we are looking for better pay for future collaborators. They created a budget and decided that it was a fair amount to pay us, even though it wasn’t. We would hope that Foster Dawg understands standard rates of pay for animators, and would wait until they had a proper enough budget to pay us, but they didn’t. Additionally, the contract was, to our knowledge, vague and slightly outdated.

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What do you make of Thomas remaining silent on this matter on all of his social media?

We acknowledge that Thomas Sanders is both a person, and a brand. While we have received communication from the Foster Dawg team, and have received comments regarding Thomas’ opinions within our communication, we are slightly surprised that Thomas has not publicly addressed the situation. However, there are probably reasons we are not aware of that are informing his decision whether to do so or not.

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Any updates?

The most we can share is that we did receive a response from Foster Dawg, as we’ve said before. We know everyone wants information soon, but we hope you can understand, there are many of us who are a part of Storytime Discourse, from different time zones as well - it’s also the end of finals week for a couple of us, and our attentions are drawn to that, as well as you know, general life. We’re taking our time, and trying our best to write efficiently and cohesively. 

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Will y'all ever show us some receipts? So far all we've been getting is a he said , she said , they said scenario so I'd really appreciate it if there was some screenshots being shown? Instead of just texts

Foster Dawg as a whole isn’t denying anything we have claimed. Additionally, the goal is not to expose or cancel anyone, the goal is to bring awareness of the situations to the Foster Dawg team, and the public, so this miscommunication and lack of pay doesn’t happen again. We don’t feel comfortable sharing private messages at this time; we would like to respect the privacy of not only Foster Dawg but each other’s as well. Do know that we do not take this situation lightly, however; we understand the ramifications of our actions. And, as we have stated before - we have received a response from the Foster Dawg team, and are drafting a response in return.

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Hey, i just wanted to ask What is the 'Fosterdawg Team'? I've seen anwers and ask referencing the name. I'm sorry if you've already answered this, i didn't scroll too far down before asking this.

Hello! So Foster Dawg, Inc. is the company that Thomas owns. Foster Dawg used to be an old handle of his, and he used that as the name of his company. So when we say “Fosterdawg” (which we now realize is 2 words, our mistake entirely) we’re referencing Thomas and the team as a whole - everyone that normally works on his videos.

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What did Thomas say about the situation? are you all getting paid properly?

The Fosterdawg team reached out to the Storytime Discourse team with an email. We will share more information with the public when we feel we have written a proper response. Additionally, we are not asking the Fosterdawg team to increase the pay on our now-finished contracts, we are asking that they pay future collaborators more fairly. 

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Can I ask what happened? I don't know, but I want to.

Hello! A great summation that’s going on can be found in the video that @youtuberswithalex made. I will link it below! To stay up to date on other information, check out our Twitter @storytimedisc. 

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Has quill blocked anyone else?

Quil has not blocked anyone else, and has since apologized and unblocked Prince Alex. It has been communicated to us that blocking him was out of stress, and out of wanting to separate their personal Twitter account from the situation; additionally, they were not aware you can mute individuals on Twitter. They acknowledged the harm this did as well, and apologized for the action.

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How many artists are "running" this blog? Can you link main blogs?

We would prefer that we keep this blog as anonymous as possible. While some folks who worked on the project want to be open about their own experiences on their own blogs, others don’t, but they still want to be involved in telling our story. There are a number of us running the Tumblr, and the Twitter, and we write responses together. It is not one person in charge of each, if that’s what you are concerned about.

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Is the team being respectful toward you? Not talking down to you in any way? Artists (especially fanartists) are not alwyas treated with the respect they deserve

The team is being respectful at this time, yes.

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has thomas himself become aware of this yet?

Yes. Thomas, as well as the whole Fosterdawg team, are aware of the situation and have reached out to us.

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It’s surprising that the word of what happened got around so fast. Like, I saw a post about Prince Alex’s video yester day or the day before yesterday and now it’s all over tumblr!

Yeah, it’s pretty crazy! We’re glad the word is getting out, and more people are being made aware. However, please make sure to not spread misinformation!!