something queer going on

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.

I wrote this for ourflagmeansgay, which is running the first of a series of character- and pairing-focused prompt fests, the first character being Roach. Posted it, got crickets for twelve hours, began to think that maybe I was being a dickhead for posting something so dark to a community that's more about the fun.* (Also, because the format over there is commentfic, there was no way to put this behind a cut, which bothered me.)

So I've pulled it from the community and am reposting here. I may or may not ever post it to AO3.

Enjoy??

(*Roach is, canonically, at least interested in the prospect of cannibalism. It's played for laughs. I love OFMD very very much.)


Title: Devouring
Fandom: Our Flag Means Death
Character: Roach
Content notes: Enslavement, violence, cannibalism, horror. Stealth crossover/fusion with The Magnus Archives, but you don't need to know TMA to get this story.

( Ficlet under the cut )

Still trying to catch up on the question-a-day meme, skipping the ones I'm not super interested in.


August 31: Do you swear a lot?

All the fucking time. When I was young I didn't swear much, but then in my early twenties I had a relationship with a man known to all as "[Firstname] Fucking [Lastname]" and my vocabulary changed forever.


September 1: What Hogwarts house would you be sorted into? Which Fear would try to claim you as an avatar?

Definitely the Lonely. I identify to an uncomfortable degree with Peter Lukas and his lifelong desire to make other people leave him alone. (But I have a Martin-y side as well, that is drawn to the Lonely but also afraid of it and longing for connection.)


September 2: What is the first historical event you clearly remember?

Nixon's resignation, though it depends a bit on how you define "clearly." I was four years old; I remember a boring man on television talking and talking, and everyone shushing me when I tried to get their attention.

For a more adult value of clearly, maybe Reagan's election? I was eleven then, and aware enough to know that I did not care for him or his values.


September 4: If you could eliminate one thing that you did every day, what would it be?

I'm going to assume this means everyday chores and not, like, paid work (which is absolutely what I'd eliminate if I could). So, washing dishes. It never ends, and the number of dishes to be washed always seems disproportionate to the amount of food prepared.


September 7: Have you ever called in sick to work when you weren't actually ill but didn't want to give the real reason?

Sort of? I've taken mental health days disguised as physical health days.


September 10: Would you sign up to be a colonist on another planet if it meant you would never be able to return to earth?

Depends. What are the conditions like on this other planet? Can you live a fairly normal life there, or would you, say, have to live in a dome where all the resources are controlled by a terraforming corporation? And what sort of colonist would I be? Are there intelligent indigenous beings on this planet?

On the whole I would lean towards no, unless conditions on earth were very, very bad.

Some thoughts below the cut on The Magnus Archives 173, "Night Night." Note: not cheerful. Perhaps not 100% coherent.

( Click here to read )

Some reactions to The Magnus Archives 169, "Fire Escape," ( under the cut )

Thoughts on TMA 165, "Revolutions," including one possibly unpopular opinion, ( under the cut )

I re-listened to 154, "Bloody Mary," and ( spoilers for the end of S4 and the aired episodes of S5 )

Some thoughts on 162, "The Cosy Cabin," with spoilers, ( under the cut )

I don't look at a lot of Magnus fanart, and I have Opinions about a lot of what I have seen. (There are conventions in the representation of certain characters that I find canonically doubtful and yet ubiquitous, and therefore irritating.)

But this is a portrait of Jon by Aquarisma1 that I think is 99% amazeballs.* Visual spoilers for the end of S1, but nothing past that.

https://twitter.com/Aquarisma1/status/1237796083620872194

Sadly the artist mostly seems to work in fandoms other than Magnus. (But perhaps happily for you, if you like those fandoms! I know nothing about them.)

(*No, I don't know why Jon's ears are pointy. That's the 1%.)

I've started listening to Stellar Firma, a Rusty Quill sf/comedy-ish series starring Ben Meredith (the voice of Elias on The Magnus Archives, and Zolf and Grizzop and the archaeologist guy on RQG) and his brother Tim Meredith. I wasn't expecting to like it, because I didn't find the trailer funny at all, but I like it a lot.

A little background for those who haven't listened to it: the titular Stellar Firma is a custom planet-making company serving the galactic .01%. Some hundreds of years before our story begins, it happened to rescue the human survivors of environmental disaster on earth, and their descendants are its "citizen employees." One of them is Trexel Geistman (Tim), who designs planets. Badly. Trexel has a clone assistant, David 7 (Ben). Rounding out the cast, at least thus far, are Imogen Harris as I.M.O.G.E.N. the supercomputer and Jenny Haufek as Trexel's line manager, Hartro Piltz.

The show is semi-improvised: listeners submit prompts for planets and each episode Trexel and David design one, more or less, and hope to avoid the wrath of Hartro Piltz.

So far, it's like the darker bits of Red Dwarf crossed with the darker bits of Blackadder crossed with the workplace-dark-comedy bits of The Magnus Archives. It is, you might have guessed, dark, and it is generally very funny.

Content warnings: (ALMOST) ALL THE CONTENT WARNINGS. Seriously. A list for the first thirteen episodes under the first cut ( here )

Pretty much all of this awful stuff is, in context, funny and very much not funny at the same time.

( Some thoughts under the cut, spoilery for character development and backstory, through episode 13, and also spoilery for Rusty Quill Gaming )


Moving on to The Magnus Archives: the S5 trailer is supposed to drop today, and the first episode of S5 will still release on April 2 (April 1st if you're a Patreon supporter, as I am). *bounces with excitement and terror*

I keep thinking about ( a thing that is HUGELY spoilery for character stuff through the end of S4, so avoid if you haven't listened that far )