Avatar Of Unanswered Emails

TMA sideblog // Jiske (she/her) // 24 // acespec // don't do commisions, soz // you can find my draws under 'tma fanart' or 'faces of tma' // Proud mom of 4 rats // Comes with autism extension pack // Meme scientist in training

[lmk-vibes]

Get a job? The thing that killed Jonathan Sims?

[chasing-crows]

ok but why is Martin convinced that everybody tryna steal his girl.

Like buddy. Your girl is an evil eldritch fear entity in the form of a 5 foot negative three skinny depressed snooty rat man with no ass and undiagnosed autism who hasn’t showered in a month, is probably a closeted theatre kid, and is a total bitch to everyone he knows including you. I promise you you’re not in danger.

[cardboardlife]

I have completed another crochet monstrosity

[fiollaigean]

"the magnus archives sounds cool! what are the content warnings?"

[fiollaigean]

kidnapping stalking insanity sleepwalking cannibalism and teeth, gaslighting gun violence pipe murder and silence and medical trauma and meat. bugs in your body and poisoned black coffee and self-mutilation and lies, police brutality breaks from reality suicide spiders and eyes. paaaaaranoia degloving the uncanny valley and running like prey to survive, agonies torture and drowning and falling and then being buried alive.

[antiquesintheattic]

oh okay

[ofmd-ann]

Edward Teach (S02E05) 💕

[shittyleitnerideas]

leitner that turns your butt spooky

yeah okay

[teachustheinsides]

Plot of a Chuck Tingle novel

[wolfythewitch]

Look at the sky. It's looking back.

[cheetahgirlmuscles]

Let me examine closer *my eyes turn purple and blaze with spiritual power* oh yeah no that's an egret not a heron, it's got black legs

[getmoneyghoul]

[poorcitrusmanagement]

Please participate in my deeply unserious survey

In 2013, the British singer-songwriter Tom Rosenthal posed 25 hard-hitting questions in his song Have Me Met Before. 10 years down the line, it is time we finally get some answers.

For this purpose, my sister and I have set up a survey made up exclusively of the lyrics to Have We Met Before

Have We Met Before - A Community Survey

Welcome to the Have We Met Before Community Survey where we try to find definitive answers to some hard hitting questions. The questions are

So far we've only had entries from family and friends but we'd like to expand our reach. The survey takes approximately 5-10 minutes so if you have time for some whimsy, we hope you contribute to our research.

Reblogs are much appreciated! Also feel free to share this with anyone else you think might enjoy it.

[amisscreant]

With @staff 's recent post saying 1/4 of this site is LGBTQ going around, I'd like to see what the actual demographic is

So!

would you identify yourself as:

LGBTQ+

not LGBTQ+

unsure/questioning

Voting ended onSep 4, 2023

Please reblog for bigger sample size!

[a-mag-a-day]

Favorite quote in MAG 111?

“Yeah, *obviously* except for the vampires.”

“I’m dead serious.”

“How do I stop the Unknowing?” “No, I don’t know.” “WHAT?!”

“Like colours, but if colours hated me.”

“I always wanted my friends to call me Gerry.”

“There aren’t any god-like powers of hope, or love, or indigestion, or whatever”

“I’ll try to make it quick, before the Van Helsings get bored.”

“Yeah, the world changes in horrible ways. For you. I’m a book.”

“Nice lighter. You a spider freak, then?”

Other: put in tags

Voting ended onFeb 9, 2023

[veracosmic]

My life has two phases only;

1) pre tma 2) post tma

[vacationgerry]

[ID: A digitally painted portrait of Gerard Keay from the Magnus Archives. He is a white person with long dark hair and multiple piercings, shown looking downward with a cigarette held between his lips. End ID]

finally got around to finishing this lil thing!

[identityarchitect]

quick summary

:- fable & folly (company competing w/ RQ) marketing director posts an article about RQ mismanagement & exploitation (https://medium.com/@newtschott/whos-afraid-of-alex-j-newall-ae3a67f3a5e1)

- the first version of the article didn’t note that the poster is a marketing director at f&f; this has now been edited in

- they cite approximately three sources in total, mostly coming back to unverifiable anonymous RQ affiliates (ex employees, people who were offered a position, etc). the other two sources are a tweet from RQ specifically about the official discord, and a line in the beginning stating that “The information presented in this article is not only taken from  interviews with my sources, but publicly available data that I was able  to find and access.”. there is no further clarification of what data, where it came from, etc, and the only time a source is linked or references is the aforementioned tweet from RQ.

ETA: this is false! there are multiple sources on multiple different things.

- (https://rustyquill.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Operations-Update-2020-PUBLIC-RELEASE-1.pdf) this RQ operations update was used to source two quotes on RQ’s payment structure. it’s worth noting that the payments listed in the article are all above both the uk minimum wage and (with the exclusion of the £11 figure) the national living wage (https://www.gov.uk/national-minimum-wage-rates, https://www.livingwage.org.uk/calculation)

- (https://twitter.com/TheRustyQuill/status/1438175815615791111?s=20&t=m1Z2vI0Fmpvq3gVt72gIvQ) this rq tweet was used to source a screenshot from rq’s statement about the discord.

- (https://twitter.com/TheRustyQuill/status/1408001969218859008?s=20&t=ngBXzvyzl4PJY9XpOL7DjA) this rq thread was used to source a screenshot from rq about the transcripts.

- there is a relevant link to the unofficial fan transcripts, although i personally wouldn’t necessarily call this a source.

- (https://medium.com/acast/how-to-go-from-0-to-millions-growth-strategies-for-fiction-podcasters-fde8d6dc0cb5) this callum dougherty interview was used to source a quote from callum dougherty about TMA’s success.

- the interview is misquoted. newt’s article quotes:

“Believe it or not, Magnus was something of a hit right out the gate.  Comparative to I guess what would be considered a popular audio-drama  podcast now. It found an audience quite quickly… To borrow a phrase from  Alex Newall [Rusty Quill CEO and founder], I’d also mention that  nothing at Rusty Quill — despite what it might seem — has ever happened  by accident. And the factor that I would consider — and this may be my  own ego — is the show began to grow really dramatically because this was  the point that I came in.”

- this misses out a relevant paragraph, reading

“Though  what I would certainly say is that it was in 2019 that the show began  to grow, and it went on what I would describe as a 10-month journey from  being considered a very popular podcast, to the most popular fiction  podcast in the world. That was a line of growth that looked pretty much  like a straight line upwards, where we were finding month-on-month  listenership doubling at a point. Every single month you could see it —  there were hundreds of thousands, now there was a million this month,  and it would go in that direction.” (emphasis my own)

- newt’s article goes on to state

“As someone who engaged in the fandom side of audio drama for a long time, including the period of Magnus’ rise to popularity to its finale, I remember things quite differently. TMA  wasn’t nearly the smash hit Dougherty describes until about 2019, when  the season four finale saw the consummation of Jon and Martin’s  slow-burn enemies-to-lovers storyline. Until that point, I had never  heard of TMA.” (emphasis my own).

- it’s also worth noting that newt’s article didn’t include the typical ellipses in square brackets to indicate missing text from a quote - it simply has an ellipses, which makes it seem that dougherty trailed off and then continued.

- at the end of the article, there are multiple links to social media accounts of people who may provide a list of laid off employees, intended for those looking to hire ex-RQ employees

- the rest of the claims made are either unsourced or from newt’s anonymous sources.

- tal, one of the editors, not affiliated w/ f&f, says this isn’t a marketing thing, was run past two editors and multiple lawyers

- there’s some truth in the article, mostly a lot of plausible but unverifiable things, and some plain misinformation / bad faith readings [i.e; article states that “there’s a very good chance that the list on Kickstarter of stretch goal guest writers may be the totality of the people in the audio fiction indie world that have still not had an experience with Rusty Quill.” this is provably false; many of the guest writers have RQ podcasts or have interacted with RQ before, although it may be intended to mean bad experiences rather than simply an experience]

- ben meredith retweeted the article w/o comment; not sure what he’s agreeing with. he also liked a tweet reading “Alright, read the thing. I’m terribly sorry for everyone who has been dealt with so badly by Rusty Quill - and I can only imagine the distress that must have incited this action. I hope these concerns are taken seriously, and that these issues are resolved swiftly.“ (https://twitter.com/GejWatts/status/1602420853630697475

- malevolent podcast’s official twitter posted

“I don’t know much but I will say that if you decide to stop listening to my show; a show I work so very hard on, because of an article that presumptively and poorly attempts to speak for me, then I think you’re hurting the thing you intend to be helping.” (https://twitter.com/MalevolentCast/status/1602441871992782849?s=20&t=Z_86aECzgsdU9OgtfoiU6g)

- “harlan guthrie [creator of malevolent], quoted above, spoke on the topic in his discord server, invictus. i’m nor comfortable posting screencaps of his words, which were not intended as a public statement, without permission, but the highlights include: “The timing, authorship, and intent of this article doesn’t sit well with me.” “Overall, this isn’t a watergate, neither is it an expose of a dangerous company, it’s akin to a glassdoor report with half truths. My experience with RQ has been absolutely fine across the board.” “The contract is in no way misleading nor manipulative the way the article would make it seem (no moreso than any other contract)”“ (via orchidbreezefc on tumblr; i am not personally in this discord)

- the creator(? correct if wrong) of The Town Whispers and Tiny Terrors tweeted:

”What do I say here? I work day and night on @/TheTownWhispers & @/tinyterrorspod. I personally create, fund, produce, and direct my shows. What a shame to see someone speak on behalf of what I and others have built for years at our own expense dominate the conversation. No one reached out to me about “the article” ahead of time, no one asked me if I consented to be spoken for, I don’t appreciate people victimizing me & weaponizing it for personal gain, & I don’t appreciate that it’s being passed off as a benevolent act of courage on my behalf.“ (https://twitter.com/ColeWeev/status/1602447361045065728?s=20&t=aAf1T5fen0FzXuAAllevLA)

- woe.begone’s official twitter tweeted: ”The only thing I want to say about The Article is that I am concerned that readers will believe things about my show and my relationship to my network that have not been my experience. I think this is what others mean when they describe feeling “spoken for.”“ (https://twitter.com/woebegonepod/status/1602453798332538881)

- the cellar letters twitter tweeted: ”About the article: I am not going to attempt to invalidate anyone’s thoughts or feelings… but I will say that it absolutely does not speak for me or align with my relationship and experiences with the network or anyone involved at the company.   Love you all. Go create stuff.“ (https://twitter.com/CellarLetters/status/1602457106271330304)

- multiple people have reportedly been blocked by newt on twitter for criticising the article, or asking questions about it. (https://twitter.com/ReassessHistory/status/1602425447098228737?s=20&t=IQ9wZJuHgqX2mgfDvTizqA, https://twitter.com/ReassessHistory/status/1602455204557127681?s=20&t=j22xMz0Hxw0yvW6Oz7B8SQ)

- alexander j newall has given a statement to podnews! it reads;

“Redundancies can be a highly emotional topic but this opinion blog is full of provable factual inaccuracies and its writers include individuals that hold senior positions at competitor companies that stand to monetarily gain from a reputational attack. We were approached for comment under false pretences and were not given a copy of this piece by the author. Numerous cast, crew and contractors have notified us directly in solidary about similarly misleading approaches made to them for this blog.

Rusty Quill has already internally released its 2023 Operations Update which included factual information on these topics along with information on out 93% RQ Network creator retention rate and our independent Employee Satisfaction Survey which scored an exceptional minimum of 4.3 out of 5 in all areas. This Operations update is due for public release in the new year.”

(https://podnews.net/update/audio-drama-company-drama)

- in the “Rusty Quill Plebs” discord, the creator of the storage papers said “The RQN stuff - I’ll just say it’s not entirely accurate or, at least, it’s not the full picture which means it’s painted in an unnecessarily bad light. I can’t comment on the RQO stuff because I’m as much in the dark about that as anyone. But, as others on RQN have said, there’s at least some of that that hasn’t been my experience (and, for the record, I myself am not legally obligated to not say negative things about RQ).”

- annie (an RQ editor) retweeted this (https://twitter.com/serhawke/status/1602375132579827713?s=20&t=Q3iAjLLwsdIqYShTKinvHw)

- this thread also has a useful tweet further up on how to assess the utility of a source:

“PURPOSE - what was it meant to achieve? ACCURACY - can the facts be proven or disproven? CONTENT - what does it actually tell you? LIMITATIONS - what is it NOT telling you? Why? AUTHOR - biased? DATE - was its publication date “convenient” for any reason? Firsthand or hearsay?“

[this method is from their partial study of history in uni]

edits: corrected misinfo about sources in the article, newt’s position in f&f, and f&f’s name. added quotes from rq creators & note about newt blocking people. added RQ’s statement.

[fataldrum]

Who's Afraid of Bad Attempts at Journalism?

Some of you may have seen a callout post on Medium about Rusty Quill. The author claims to have spoken with a number of people who worked with RQ. The allegations are worth considering, but they should be taken with a heavy grain of salt.

I have trouble taking the callout post seriously for a number of reasons.

The author is head of marketing for Fable & Folly. They initially failed to mention this, but later added this incredibly defensive note: "Editor’s Note: [name] is currently the Marketing Director for Fable & Folly Network, but has worked as an independent creator and journalist for longer." That's a huge conflict of interest.

2. I'm not seeing any evidence that this person is a "journalist." They don't list it on the resume on their website. If they are a journalist, they're not doing it on Medium with (as of this writing) 47 followers.

3. The article title is pure clickbait. It suggests Alex J. Newall is someone to be afraid of and makes vague allegations of RQ showing "aggression," but he's barely mentioned in the article at all. It's an unnecessarily inflammatory title, but that's what they seem to want: to stir drama.

4. The article uses TMA character names as pseudonyms. This was extremely distracting and gave the whole post a weird, cartoonish vibe. As was the decision to use the phrase, "Make your statement, face your fear" to link the post.

5. The article depends entirely on anonymous sources. While anonymous sources are necessary sometimes, the problem is that no one can independently verify what they said. They claim the sources asked to be anonymous because they were afraid RQ would retaliate and ruin their careers, or the fandom would attack them. That may be true. Or it may be because they signed NDAs, which would make it illegal to publicly discuss what happened. An NDA would be a good reason not to come forward, but unfortunately, we can't ask them about it, because they're anonymous.

6. They claim RQ has threatened to sue multiple people--okay, what were the circumstances? It literally never comes back up. Were these NDA violations? Breach of contract? No clue, they don't bother to elaborate.

7. They talk about salaries in different currencies without converting, in the same paragraph. Then they bring up the rates for freelance audio engineers, as if freelancers don't generally get higher rates than in-house staff.

8. The author is finding posts on Twitter and blocking anyone who disagrees with them. I've never interacted with the author, but they found my post and blocked me and others on the thread for daring to criticize the article. That alone speaks volumes about their professionalism. (And also explains why I didn't find any critical comments when I first looked: they're probably all banned).

There are doubtlessly far more issues with the post, but those are just the ones that were immediately apparent.

None of this is to say I think RQ is a well-run company. The dismissive treatment of their server mods alone tells me they have serious problems. But we should all think carefully when we read the allegations in the post, and consider the credibility and motivations of the author.

[palant1r]

I have some further thoughts to add. I'm not super experienced in journalism yet, but I've done investigative pieces before and talked with other reporters who have. Also, I work in the US, so things might be different in England — I'll try to keep my insights as general as I can.

This piece refers to itself as a "research, advocacy and opinion piece," but because it's attempting to serve the purpose of doing good to a community through the speaking of truth that is not solely the author's own, I think it's fair to judge it by professional and ethical standards of journalism. I'll put my thoughts in numbers corresponding to fataldrum's numbers.

Newt Schottelkotte should not have written this story.

Someone should have, but not them. Their position as a marketing director within a rival company automatically disqualifies them. Yes, even if despite that, they were able to write the story without bias, they shouldn't have written it. The reason that journalists are taught to avoid conflicts of interest is twofold. The first is to avoid actual bias. The second is to avoid the appearance of bias. No matter how neutrally a story is reported, the appearance of bias will harm the credibility of the facts presented. Just a few months ago I passed on a story to a fellow reporter despite knowing I could report on it without bias and conflict, just because I was friends with the primary source in high school. The story was important and I knew I could do it justice. But important and investigative stories are even more important to avoid conflicts of interest in while writing, because it makes a lot of good work go to waste when people inevitably assume the story is biased, and makes the readers unable to trust the story.

From what I can find, neither of the editors named have experience in journalism.

2. Which brings me to my next point: what makes a journalist? I don't think it's necessarily fair to say that no one can write news or journalistic articles without formal training — after all, everyone has to start somewhere. Indeed, for a long time, delivery boy to beat reporter was a viable career pipeline. "Journalist" isn't a title like "doctor." It just refers to someone who seeks truth and reports it. Particularly in recent years, we've seen some great examples of citizen journalism.

However.

Just because you don't need to go to school to be a journalist doesn't mean that journalism isn't a set of specific skills that can be done well or poorly. Good journalism takes skill and experience. People who set out to do journalism almost never start with investigative pieces like this. Because pieces like this are FUCKING HARD. They're hard to do well, they require specific knowledge and experience, they're exhausting, and the consequences for messing them up are amplified. I did my first investigative piece after about three years of experience and schooling, and I had a full newsroom at my back, including three editors who had worked on similar stories. Looking back, I can see a thousand pitfalls I didn't fall into thanks to them, many of which Schottelkotte did.

The problem isn't that Schottelkotte isn't a professional or experienced journalist. It's that many of the mistakes they made that harm the credibility of the piece would have been immediately flagged by anyone with experience reporting or editing investigative articles. Ironically, just like how in the article Schottelkotte states it's hard to disentangle malice from incompetence in RQ's actions, Schottelkotte's inexperience with journalism makes it hard to disentangle bias from inexperience in the article itself.

People who are not "journalists" can do journalism, and in doing so become journalists. But once someone takes on the mantle of journalist, they become accountable to principles of journalism. I consider "journalist" to be more a descriptor of someone holding a certain set of skills than a job title. Those skills are important.

5. The anonymous sources aren't necessarily a problem. Generally, we don't use anonymous sources unless their information is essential to the story and using their names would have real tangible consequences for them. In this case, both are true, and I think Schottelkotte's disclaimer explains that well. But usually the decision on whether to use anonymous sources is made by an editor. When you read a New York Times article that quotes an anonymous source, there's a level of trust there that the decision was made by editors, that those editors know who the source was, and that they've done their due diligence in checking those sources. Freelancers and amateurs (using amateur here in the literal sense of not being paid and employed as a journalist, not the pejorative sense) do not have that trust. They especially do not have that trust if they have a conflict of interest that they do not immediately disclose.

6. Yup, I noticed that and more. There are tons of points throughout the article where something seemingly very damning is hinted at and then not followed up on. Maybe it just didn't bear fruit, or Schottelkotte hit a wall — Lord knows I've been there. But it's exactly what I'd expect from someone without experience in journalism trying to do an in-depth investigative piece.

7. There are a few other things like this, minor errors and inconsistencies that still harm the article's credibility. The editors should have caught them. I'm confused as to why they didn't. A story like this should have been edited very scrupulously. I've had errors go to print, but not this many.

8. At first, I thought that the lack of disagreeing voices in the article was inexperience — I know that for a piece like this you always talk to people who do not hold the same view as most of your sources, but not everyone would. This is making me think otherwise. It's clear from the twitter response that there are RQ affiliates who would have spoken in contradiction to the main throughline in the article on the record. I don't think Schottelkotte did their due diligence giving them right to reply. They did reach out to Rusty Quill for comment, which, kudos for that.

Now, some further thoughts.

I've written two big investigative pieces. One was about a corrupt individual. One was about the failings of a system. I went into both knowing where I stood, and knowing I was writing, in essence, a criticism — that what I found would indict my subject.

I did my very best to completely excise opinion from my articles.

It wasn't because I wanted to remain objective or neutral. It's because I had faith in my reporting. Facts speak for themselves. Damning information is at its most impactful without the intermediary of the reporter's opinion. That's why I find the frequent opinions expressed in this article galling, because they're all conclusions the reader would have drawn themselves from the facts presented. A good investigative piece doesn't tell you what the truth is — it shows it to you, unadorned and inarguable. Combined with the conflict of interest, the heavy opinion throughout this piece creates a strong appearance of bias.

The word "allegedly" is used a lot in this article, and the beginning of it has some heavy disclaimers. Personally, if I didn't feel confident enough in the truth of my reporting to run the story without disclaimers like that, I wouldn't be comfortable publishing it at all. I think a lot of my colleagues would agree.

Overall, I think this is a case study in why good journalism is important. It's very important to spotlight what Schottelkotte is spotlighting — if there's issues like this going on in a company that is in part financially supported by its fans, that community has a right to know. But even if every single quote and source in the article is completely accurate and within its proper context, the pitfalls that Schottelkotte falls into make them seem less credible by association.

Maybe I'm being too harsh. After all, I highly doubt a mainstream outlet or professional journalist would have picked this up. But it's very aggravating to read an important story like this and see countless points where the story could have been strengthened if anyone who'd ever worked at a newspaper had looked at it for literally ten minutes. And I'm confident that Schottelkotte could have gotten someone with that experience to look at the story. Many people with training in journalism go into different but adjacent fields — just by asking around with my journalism contacts, I could get in touch with marketing people, authors, news anchors, radio personalities, podcast producers, advertising staff, the list goes on. I find it hard to believe that someone working in audio couldn't six degrees of separation their way to a journalist that could look this article over for glaring errors. But then again, I know the journalism landscape is different across the pond.

Personally? I've seen evidence of RQ's mismanagement just from knowing what went down in their discord. I don't believe these quotes were fabricated. Do I believe this story was written with an agenda beyond telling the truth and holding power to account? I don't know. But even that is a problem — a journalist has lost once they lose the trust of their readers. I know that I'm not the authority on journalism, and I've no doubt said something here that I'll find myself disagreeing with later — or something monumentally stupid. But given that this article is likely going to inform how many people interact with RQ and its assorted fandoms in the future, I felt like I couldn't rest easy until I'd said my piece. Hopefully this at least adds something to the conversation.

My ask box is open if anyone has questions or wants to talk further about what I've said here.