something queer going on

I would apologize that it's been over a month since I've posted (or, alas answered comments), except that I seem to do that so often that it's become its own routine. I've been meaning to post, really! But the stars (the desire, the time, and the energy to post) have not aligned.

( Some updates under the cut, including allergies, work, shoes, books, and podcasts. It gets a bit long. )

Yesterday on Medium, Newton Schottelkotte (with editing by Tal Minear and Wil Williams) published Who's Afraid of Alex J. Newall?: The Layoffs, Lapses, and Lessons of Rusty Quill.

It's a disheartening and important read for fans of The Magnus Archives and other RQ shows.

RQ has always presented itself as a company dedicated to making podcasting, and the world, a bit better. In particular, RQ said it wanted to foster opportunities for new talent, for people with ideas but without experience and connections.

That doesn't seem to be what they've done. Schottelkotte's piece, based on interviews with present and former RQ staff and creators from RQ's network shows, plausibly shows RQ's business practices as a mix of incompetence and greed. Predatory contracts, misuse of NDAs and non-disparagement clauses, ridiculously bad accounting, communication so poor it seems actively hostile: it's all here. Far from creating opportunities for podcast creators, RQ has shut them out of interaction with other distributors and platforms, locked them into bad contracts, and skimmed outrageous percentages of their income.

I've been uncomfortable with what I've heard of RQ's business practices for a long time, and the recent layoffs made it worse. Even before that, I couldn't help wondering why so many people who'd been with RQ for a very long time didn't seem to want to keep working with them once their shows ended.

I didn't pledge to the Magnus Protocols Kickstarter because I had so many doubts. And now, I think I need to end my Patron support of RQ as well. (I almost did that a few months ago when the layoffs were first announced, but I waited because I didn't want to believe RQ could actually be that unethical.) It makes me really sad.

I'll probably still listen to the Magnus Protocols. I mean, I'm also still on Twitter. But, just as I'm trying to make my Twitter presence unprofitable for Elon Musk, I don't want to contribute financially to RQ any more than I can help.

I'm still hoping they can get their shit under control and do better. But they don't get more of my money until they do.


ETA: Rusty Quill's public response is here. Thanks to rydra_wong for the link!

At this point I don't know what to believe. I've seen companies lie through their teeth against whistleblowers; I've also seen people and organizations (for instance, every trans person who's at all a public figure, and every organization that supports us) smeared via selective quoting, misinterpretation, anonymous sources, and bad-faith, willful misinterpretation. I hate to think someone would smear RQ just for profit or a grudge, but I know it happens. I also hate to think I would be one of those fans who denies accusations of wrongdoing by their beloved content-maker regardless of the evidence.

I guess what I would like to see is some genuine disclosure and transparency. Right now it's Schottelkotte's unsupported word (the sources are unverifiable because anonymous) vs. RQ's unsupported word (the actual policies and documents are undisclosed). What a fucking mess.

If the accusations of exploitation and predatory contracts turns out to be untrue, RQ really needs to learn some lessons from this about how to communicate, both internally and with fans.

1) I voted yesterday. It was easy, with hardly any wait, because I'm lucky enough to live in a place where there's no voter-suppression effort happening.

2) Work is frantic and will only get more so for the next two months. One person from my team (I have a team now! if you can call two people a team) has been out since Sunday due to possible COVID exposure and a winter storm that closed the COVID test locations for a few days. The other is going to be out on Tuesday because she's working at the polls, which is an excellent thing for her to do but may mean I'll be trying to do 3 people's jobs by myself. I worked an 11-hour day on Wednesday, and a 9-hour day on Thursday, and I am tired. Today's a day off, then back to work tomorrow, but at least it'll be a short day to make up for the long ones.

3) Today, not having a physical therapy appointment (those ruin me for the entire day), I lounged around and then managed to tidy up a bit, vacuum, and mop the kitchen floor. This made me feel a bit less despairing about my own little corner of the world.

4) The rest of the world, on the other hand . . . *sigh*. After I finished my tidying I looked at the latest COVID numbers for my area, and they are not good. New Mexico was doing really well for the first months of the pandemic, due to an early and fairly strict lockdown. Then we opened up a lot and are now reaping the consequences.

5) I'm reading Allie Brosh's Solutions and Other Problems, which I bought as an actual paper book after finding it in, of all places, a supermarket book section. I'd been meaning to buy it on paper, but hadn't wanted to order from Amazon and was putting off ordering it from anywhere else. It's good and enjoyable but also pretty harrowing in places.

6) Paper books are heavy! Especially when they're made of the thick high-quality paper that can have illustrations on both sides without bleed-through. This is the first paper book I've bought, or even read, in a long time, because I switched to ebooks when my vision was bad (before my cataract surgery), liked them, and never switched back.

7) I want to buy Jonny Sims' upcoming novel Thirteen Storeys as a paper book, and I may end up ordering it from Amazon UK because I know they know how to ship books overseas. Don't wanna order from Amazon, but . . .

8) I actually don't think Amazon is innately terrible--small local businesses are over-romanticized and the usefulness of centralization is under-valued. I just wish it would be properly regulated and taxed.

9) I wish I could post coherently about anything, but I am so tired. So so so tired. Depleted. I've been working through 7+ months of pandemic now, and my supposedly progressive employer took away our "hero pay" (*spits in disgust at that patronizing name*) at the end of August, and they're also being obstructive and shitty about giving me a job title or a wage that remotely compensates for everything I'm doing, and they're also being obstructive and shitty about covering trans-related healthcare ("maybe next year; no, not 2021, 2022."). I work and sleep and nothing is fun except Rusty Quill, and right now that's not fun either because Discourse is happening again, and I am so tired.

10) Sorry? I know this is hard for everybody. But I'm very tired.

11) ETA 1: Yesterday I ran into someone I used to work with, who greeted me with, "If it isn't Miss [Deadfirstname] Lastname." Now, this is a very nice person, who doesn't know I'm trans because I wasn't out when we worked together, and it wasn't a discussion I wanted to have on the sidewalk outside a store, so I went along with it. Awkward.

12) ETA 2: To end on a happier note: I'm roasting a bunch of veggies (potatoes, carrots, butternut squash, cauliflower, and daikon) and cooking a pork chop for dinner. I'm looking forward to eating real food after too long (due to work + tiredness) of reheated frozen things.

Since 2020 continues to be relentlessly awful for the world in general (pandemic) and the US in particular (pandemic + literally everything else), I want to post about a few things I've been enjoying.

1) I've regained most of my ability to read books, and at the moment I'm slowly working my way through The Big Book of Modern Fantasy, edited by Ann Vandermeer and Jeff Vandermeer. Sensibly, rather than trying to read it in big gulps like a novel, I'm reading about one story a day, and in consequence liking it more than I often like anthologies. Some of my favorites so far are "Signs and Symbols" (Vladimir Nabokov; it plays fun/scary interpretive games with the reader); "Lean Times in Lankhmar" (Fritz Lieber; Lankhmar is the clear inspiration for Terry Pratchett's Ankh-Morpork, which I didn't know because this is the first Fritz Lieber I've ever read); and "Famas and Cronopios" (Julio Cortazar; weird whimsy that probably has political currents I'm not noticing, but is also just super fun).


2) The Rusty Quill Gaming podcast is my go-to at the moment for a little bit of comfort. For the unfamiliar, this is a podcast of people playing a tabletop RPG, and I would never have expected it to be my thing until I tried it. The story and world-building are fascinating, the performances are great, and the players/performers are clearly having a lot of fun. Fair warning that the events of the story are often grim*, but it's also full of kindness and friendship and hope. I think that the group has made a conscious decision recently to go a little lighter; episodes recorded since the pandemic have focused on character development and providing a sort of emotional "breathing space" which is very very welcome.

There are about 170 episodes and counting, but you should start at the beginning as it's all one continuous story and nothing will make sense if you hop in later. And give it a little time to grow on you; initially there's a lot of focus on action, but as the players and the GM get more comfortable, it's balanced out by increasingly important emotional arcs and Rusty Quill's characteristic interest in ethical questions.

(*A sort of content note ( under the cut )


3) Another podcast, because while I'm able to read again, I can't seem to watch things. I don't even want to try; it just doesn't appeal, somehow. Anyway, The Curious Cases of Rutherford and Fry is a fantastic BBC science podcast, featuring mathematician Dr. Hannah Fry and biologist Dr. Adam Rutherford. The science is (as far as I can tell) good, and Fry and Rutherford have a really delightful bantery rapport. I listened to a few of their most recent episodes and have now gone back to the beginning to hear them all.


4) I'd love your recs for other podcasts, especially fiction podcasts (genre fiction with queer characters preferred), and extra-especially ones with good voice acting. I've hit a wall with some podcasts due to the acting. The latest casualty was The White Vault, which should have been my jam (cosmic horror! in the Arctic!), but one of the actors seemed to take his inspiration 80% from Christian Bale playing Batman, and 20% from Colonel Flagg (a CIA-agent villain on M*A*S*H), and I just couldn't stand it.

Alas, I think that The Magnus Archives (where not all the acting is stellar, either, but where nobody is Acting in an obvious and mannered way--or if they are, like early!Jon, there's a reason) has ruined me for all other audio dramas.

Some things have happened lately:

1) I injured my shoulder at work yesterday. Really I would say I re-injured it, since it's been bothering me for, oh, a year and a half now. The initial injury was work-related too: I was vacuuming at work and something just went wrong in my shoulder (rotator cuff, probably) and it's never fully healed. I didn't report it because I was embarrassed by the triviality, and more importantly terrified of my then-manager, whom I tried to avoid as much as possible. Until now haven't brought my shoulder problems up with my doctor for various reasons, including but not limited to $$$ and whether surgery, if surgery were recommended, would actually do any good, and in any case wanting to save up my $$$ and time off for the surgery I actually want.

But yesterday it caught up with me. I currently am the curbside pickup department at work, the other person having quit a couple of months back. So I do everything from admin to loading groceries into people's cars. And yesterday, having loaded groceries into somebody's hatchback SUV, I reached up (and up and up) to close the hatch. I felt the strain, but reached up just a little more, and then oh noes, much sharp pain in left shoulder, followed by aching and weakness in my shoulder and down my upper arm. All of which has happened before, but this time I had a definite work-related trigger and a non-horrible manager, so I reported it and went to urgent care. Diagnosed with shoulder impingement (which seems to be Medical for rotator cuff injury), given an ice pack and a sling for support, referred to physical therapy, and placed on work restrictions that are not going to be easy to actually follow: no lifting above the waist and limiting my use of my left arm for most of the next month. The timing is very bad, because my only other help (1 person, 1 day a week) has just gone on vacation for the next two weeks, and since HR has been taking their sweet time about approving a hire, it was decided that I would just handle it all myself, limiting the number of pickups if necessary, until we managed to hire someone. Well, now I can't move boxes full of groceries, so either I get some help or we don't do curbside pickup. (And I don't know what I'll do for work--the plan had already been to move me more to the admin side, since I'm good at it and we need someone to coordinate, but we're not ready.)

Bad, bad timing.


2) After my visit to Urgent Care* yesterday, I had just gotten home and lain down with an ice pack on my shoulder when the UC clinic called me. I was informed that they'd just discovered that my account from my last visit (in late 2018, with bronchitis) was in collections for nonpayment and they recommended that I call the collections agency. Now, my insurance should have paid for this. I never had a clue that they hadn't paid for it. I never got any kind of bill or notice, and I am mightily wrathful. I need to call the collections agency and call my insurance company and I really, really don't wanna. I should do it today, but I am putting it off until next week on the grounds that I really, really don't wanna, and also I am tired and my shoulder hurts and I just. don't. wanna.

*I'm not sure if Urgent Care is a thing outside the US. It's developed here over the last 20 years or so? Basically, Urgent Care clinics handle cases where you need immediate treatment that can't wait for a regular doctor's appointment, but that aren't life-threatening emergencies. Got an earache or a shoulder injury? Go to Urgent Care. Having a heart attack? Go to the nearest Emergency Room (and hope they take your insurance). Urgent Care in itself is a pretty good system, really, but it's tied in to the increasing difficulty of seeing your own doctor if you're lucky enough to have one (despite what advocates of the US system like to claim, long wait times to see a doctor are normal here too) and the exorbitant cost of emergency treatment, which can run into tens of thousands of dollars for a single visit.


3) If the electricity goes off in my apartment complex, even for a second, all the main fire alarms start to sound. (Not the ones in people's apartments, but the ones outside.) It's been hot lately, with people running their AC and using a lot of electricity, so this has happened several times. Last night, it started at 3:30 in the morning and continued until almost 6:00. I'm very glad today is one of my days off.


4) Much less important than 1) and 2), but for some reason irritating me much more: after listening to the latest Rusty Quill Gaming, I commented on Patreon that I hoped ( a little spoilery, I guess, for recent character stuff )

Today I gave myself an apocalypse buzzcut. It was . . . sort of accidental? In that I didn't mean to cut the front of my hair quite that close, but by the time I realized, it was too late to do anything but buzz it even shorter.

It reveals rather mercilessly how much my hair is graying, and how much it's thinning as well. (Thanks, testosterone! Though I suppose a balding trans guy is a lot less likely to get called "ma'am," so, well, thanks, testosterone.) I like how the texture feels, though--suede!

While I was clipping away I took a bunch of pictures of the back of my head, so that I could see what the hell was going on back there. And one of them turned out, by chance, kind of cool. ( Pic under the cut )


I am not, by the way, nearly as bald as that picture makes me look. The lighting was less than ideal.

Anyway, I had planned to take the polish off of my nails today, because I have a doctor's appointment on Thursday about my HRT. But fuck it, I might as well keep it. Though I will have to remove it anyway, and re-do, because it's badly chipped.

In other news, I've somewhat regained my ability to read books, so I'm slowly working my way through An Unkindness of Ghosts, by Rivers Solomon. It's tough going--the story is engaging, but the content is painful. ( More details about the premise under the cut, potentially triggery )

When An Unkindness of Ghosts gets to be too much, which is often, I'm re-reading Jane Austen. Mansfield Park at the moment, which is my least favorite Austen, but I keep thinking I should give it more of a chance. But . . . eh. It's not just that it feels prematurely Victorian, but that the whole book focuses on morality about the wrong things. Oh no, look at all this sexual immorality that our pure heroine is untempted by! Look at the (*gasp*) amateur theatricals! Meanwhile, everyone's entire fucking life is built on the income from a Caribbean plantation, or in other words on the income from the forced labor of enslaved people. (Come to think of it, this particular book may not be such a contrast with An Unkindness of Ghosts after all.)

Apart from reading I'm still heavily into everything Rusty Quill. I'm enjoying the leisurely unfolding of the flight to Svalbard on Rusty Quill Gaming, and I've watched at least part of a whole bunch of Twitch streams.

I'd still like to play Ensemble if anyone's interested, though my brief glance at the rules suggests that the mechanics are weirdly un-remote-friendly. (I know they started designing it long ago, but I'd have though they could suggest how to modify it for remote play, at least.)

Today I am mostly feeling self-loathing and fraud fear. Hello, old buddies, it's been a while.

It was brought on by a comic I read on Twitter, about someone's process of gender exploration and discovery. It starts out with this person's feelings of transmasculine identity (which they hadn't really acknowledged or understood until their mid-30s) and their desire to change their body to be more masculine. So I'm nodding along in recognition.

And then came the kicker. The next bit was about gender stereotypes, and they listed ways in which they felt conventionally masculine and also ways in which they felt conventionally feminine. Again, I'm nodding along.

Next panel: "So, I'm not a man."

Picture me, staring in horror and going "WTF that's not how it works!!! You don't have to conform to every stereotypical trait of your gender!!! FUCK THAT."

Comic goes on to conclude with the person realizing they're non-binary.

Just to be clear, I am NOT questioning this person's identity. They feel non-binary, they are non-binary. Awesome!

But it felt so much like they were calling my identity into question. Not conventionally masculine = not a man. Right? Right???

Echoing every single doubt I've ever had for so many years. Maybe I'm not really a man because I cry. Maybe I'm not really a man because I like to cook. Maybe I'm not really a man because I have no interest in team sports. Maybe I'm not really a man because sometimes I think I would like to color my hair or wear nail polish or eyeliner or fancy clothes.

I mean, I know all of this is bullshit. I don't consider men to be "not men" if they do those things and have those interests! So why does it sound so much more plausible when I think it about myself?

BRB, need to stomp on some brainworms.

. . . okay. I know that I'm a man. I've known for years, and if confirmation were needed, the changes in my body that have happened since I started on testosterone have all felt very right and welcome. I also know that gender stereotypes are not only bullshit, they're tools of oppression. Everyone should enjoy what they enjoy, regardless of gender.

But damn, the doubt and fear that cisnormativity instills in us are powerful.



This is one reason why I take such comfort and pleasure in Rusty Quill stuff (you knew I'd get there eventually, yeah?): seeing a bunch of cis (as far as I know) men who are doing masculinity in a whole bunch of different ways, some of which involve hair dye and nail varnish and baking, and also having feelings and trying not to be toxic disasters. Men like that are everywhere, of course, but it's handy to have several of them gathered together.

Today, I again dipped my toes into the waters of the wider Magnus Archives fandom, and then quickly pulled them out again and ran away.

Spoilers through the end of S4 only, ( under the cut )

The last few days have not been good, emotionally.

Work related badness (including attempted violence not directed at me) under the cut. ( Click here )

The other thing is that Rusty Quill, which has been a huge source of comfort to me over the past few months, is not quite as comforting as it was. More under the cut. ( Click here. )

I'm watching the Rusty Quill Streams Gameblast, a charity livestream from a few months back in which Mike and Anil intended to play video games, but so far have been mostly having technical difficulties, changing into new t-shirts (it was a reward for donations at a certain level [just the t-shirts; the actual changing is off-camera because it's not that kind of stream]) and putting on nail polish (another reward).

And I've realized that, come the day when people can gather again, I would happily watch a livestream that was just Mike and Anil (and anyone else from Rusty Quill who wanted to participate) hanging out and painting each other's nails and trying on outfits and makeup and eating baked goods. Also perhaps actually baking, because I have a feeling that "Anil and Mike make a cake" would be comedy gold. Especial if Alex helps, or more likely fails to help.

They could play games too, if they wanted.

I would literally pay money to watch this.


(In re: the whole "parasocial relationships and what even are boundaries" thing: on the stream, someone in the chat proposed a stretch goal that at 700 pounds raised, Mike and Anil should hug. And I thought "oh yes please hug but also oh dear, that's maybe kind of creepy for people to request that." And Mike was all "yay, we could hug, I'm good with that." And then he looked at Anil and said, "Are you okay with that, Anil?" And it was a genuine question, a genuine seeking of consent. And Anil was fine with it, and they reached 700 pounds and they hugged a BIG BIG hug and had a little conversation about how happy they were to be able to do the streams together, and it was nice. And I feel less creepy now.)


ETA: I tweeted a somewhat more restrained version of my wish for a "Mike and Anil and co. hang out and paint their nails" livestream, and Mike replied with "Hold that thought." *bounces*