I Received Something From Tales From The Quarantine!
It was an unasked-for refund for TFTQ
Well, this is strange.
After my criticisms1 of the Tales From The Quarantine Kickstarter project late last night, I received a refund.
Odd, as I had not asked for one. And to pile on top of that, others began to receive digital files of the 201-page anthology.
This is a long one for less than 24 hours of action, so please buckle in.
The Email
First up, the reason for the refund was given:
Hello Michael, It has been brought to my attention that you have left comments on Kickstarter with links to a twitter profile that is currently doxxing me personally and releasing private emails amongst other harassing information. In addition to this, you have used the Kickstarter comment section to promote your own sub stack. Your attempts to falsly announce the project ‘dead’ via multiple public articles on your blog , as well as linking to doxxing sites within those articles, seemingly to promote an anthology that features stolen work and a stolen title from this project as well as leaving harassing comments across multiple platforms (twitter, YouTube, Mastodon, Pinterest and many more) can not be tolerated under our harassment policy. I have decided to refund you fully. Thank you for pledging initially. I’m sure you will understand the situation is untenable in light of your articles and comments and the inappropriate nature of the links posted in the comments and elsewhere. Frazer
Let us take this apart.
you have left comments on Kickstarter with links to a twitter profile that is currently doxxing me personally and releasing private emails amongst other harassing information.
dox
verb
INFORMAL
gerund or present participle: doxxing
search for and publish private or identifying information about (a particular individual) on the internet, typically with malicious intent.
I am assuming here that he is referring to the TalesFromTheTFTQ Twitter account. I do not condone doxxing and have seen no sign of doxxing from this account. Yes, there are leaked emails (where I am mentioned as a “Substack blogger”2), but these have no personal details.
In addition to this, you have used the Kickstarter comment section to promote your own sub stack.
First, where does it say I can’t? I didn’t spam the comments; in fact, I think3 I posted links to the previous articles on this project as a round-up of people's thoughts and where this project appeared to be going.
Your attempts to falsly announce the project ‘dead’ via multiple public articles on your blog
Can you blame me? Yes, there is a digital copy out there4, but it has been so long. Plus, it was one article…
as well as linking to doxxing sites within those articles
See note on doxxing above - no evidence provided.
seemingly to promote an anthology that features stolen work and a stolen title from this project as well as leaving
Stolen work? I assume he is referring to the offer by Dan Whitehead5 - but I would be interested to see who owns the artwork as there is no evidence that there is any trademarks registered.
https://twitter.com/DanWritehead/status/1646414842922770433 6
as well as leaving harassing comments across multiple platforms (twitter, YouTube, Mastodon, Pinterest and many more)
Do you mean those with the locked comments? YouTube, Reddit, Tumblr and Pinterest are all locked. Mastodon has a private account that I didn’t attempt to ask for. As for Twitter:
https://twitter.com/michaeljnimmo/status/1627293821477261319
Please answer me - what did I do wrong?
Note - I have also contacted Kickstarter with this, as I did not ask for a refund.
The fact that the book was then released digitally 15 minutes afterwards seems a little pathetic and vindictive.
The book.
Promised by the 31st of March and delivered on the 13th of April. There was no apology.
Now I’ve been seeing some feedback on the book.
It’s 201 pages long. So this is, at the very least, the 200+ page book that was promised. One question, though - how does that work with printing? I’m pretty sure the pages need to be divisible by 4.
There have also been cases of people who thought they would be included in the book without signs of them. If they weren’t to be included, why were they not told?
And then there are the errors - spellings of creator names and no details added to the book where needed. Will these be fixed for the print version?
This book was also made last week - so all the updates on the book being printed were untrue then?
So when will the book be sent out? That is the question.
So I got a refund and initially wrote off my pledged money. There is the case of the £37,000 sitting in a bank account - how much of that has gone to charity? Well, my refund has gone somewhere:
I’m disappointed more than anything, and I don’t want to use this site/newsletter to be about me personally. I want it to be about comics.
I will work to get a list of all the creatives who were featured in this anthology and feature their works.7
And Frazer, if you are reading this - I would be happy to feature your right to reply
You’d think he would at least link to my work!
I can’t remember for sure, and as I have now been refunded, my comments are deleted.
More on that later
Who knows how to run a Kickstarter
Dammit, Twitter still isn’t embedding
Thought Bubble may be interesting this year, we may have a support group set up.