#storytimediscourse

[storytimediscourse]

Hello All!

We are a group of folks trying to have an open and honest discussion about the way we were treated while working on the Storytime Madlibs video. We are not looking for better treatment/pay for us, we want those that work with Fosterdawg in the future to be treated fairly. The goal is NOT to cancel these creators. Do not attack Thomas or any member of his team, and do not spread misinformation. If you have any questions/comments, please send us your thoughts! 

[lamp-calm-sanders]

I have gotten questions about bad things Thomas has done. I have reblogged posts from people who have explained the situation with the artists much better than I can, I will create a tag for those posts. You can find it under #storytime madlibs on my blog. You can also look at @storytimediscourse which was made by said artists who were screwed over. I’d rather you get info from those places.

What I’ll talk about in this post, is when he played a POC character, this happened when he played an historically black part (Parts that should almost always be played by black people, as they were one of the few parts for POCs/them not being black changes the contexts of the character).

I found this out through scrolling through his TikTok. I was looking for his “Lower Your Expectations Video” and I saw a “Character I Audotioned For/Part I Got” video.

(Image ID: A screenshot of a TikTok by Thomas Sanders. The screenshot shows Thomas in the middle of singing and he is looking towards the right. Towards the bottom of the screen it says the word RENT in white letters with a black outline. Beneath it is a blue text box with the sentence “Auditioned for: Collins” in white. Below that is a green text box that reads “Cast as: Benny” in white letters. There is. Description that says “I was asked to do this & it seemed fun lol” End ID)

Here’s the link to the TikTok: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMeFSn7aH/

For those who don’t know RENT, both Collins and Benny are traditionally played by black men in nearly every professional and large performance. These characters were first played by black men and the context of their characters changes if their not black (Especially Benny)

Now I would say this isn’t a big deal, because honestly I don’t know when this was. Yeah he took a part made for black people but like this could have been college/when he first broke out. However I think it shows, once again, the big issue here.

This is a minor thing, but he’s never apologized. Never saw that it was bad. A huge part of being Anti-racist is acknowledging and apologizing which he didn’t do. However he continues to say he supports black people and being anti racist when even he can’t admit to his own shortcoming.

Again, on its own, it’s something I could forgive or even like not mention. But when paired with everything else he won’t apologize for or admit publically, it just adds insult to injury.

And btw while I want an apology for this, I would much rather have an apology for the worse things he’s done like the b.l/m Roman situation, creating a hostile space for POC Fanders, and in my personal opinion the biggest thing: the Madlibs situation.

[dukeofonions]

So, has Thomas ever acknowledged the storytime madlibs thing?

Publicly, no. There hasn't been anything said from him or the other people involved. The most recent thing said about it is on @storytimediscourse I've just been checking that blog from time to time to see if there's been any news.

[carcinized]

Wait thomas underpays?

this is OLDDDD discourse it was for the mad libs thing and i believe the animated ep of tss, flirting with social anxiety, idk im not up to date anymore i left the fandom over a year ago it might be outdated info. the blog @storytimediscourse was made up of those affected and has good info, however it hasnt been updated in over a year (not since december 2020). i dont remember much and i have no idea if anything has changed or not but yea that was a thing. you can look into it more on your own but thats all the info i have jsdjjsdj

[storytimediscourse]

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.

[storytimediscourse]

Ifl know you all said that you weren't looking to be paid more than you already have, but if the team came forward and offered you the full compensation for the industry-standard amount you all should have been paid in the first place, would you accept it?

Good Morning, and thank you for the question! If the team did approach us and offered to pay us the industry-standard, we wouldn't take it. We signed a contract, and we agreed to the pay. This blog, as well as the Twitter account, have been created to create an open discussion about how the team can be better in the future when working with their collaborators. Offering us more money wouldn't change the past, we are only looking into the future.

- StorytimeDiscourse Team