We Do Talk About Fight Club

I recently left Mighty Narwhal Productions, a company I helped to found. While I initially said this departure was amicable, paying attention to the line that we don’t talk about Fight Club, later issues have made it so that it’s important that I speak about what occurred with one individual in particular— Jason Andrew— which included a hostile work environment, sexist behavior, abusive work practices, and encouraging xenophobia.

The first thing I need to do is apologize. I am not an innocent in the events I am about to describe. I took part in them, allowed them to happen, or remained quiet when I should have spoken up for others. I can say that I was bogged down in work or I just wanted to make sure the hard work of many people saw the light of day, but that’s trying to justify the means. My intentions don’t matter. The actions do. On that note, I am not claiming anything about the people I name here other than Jason. The information I provide about Jason comes from memory, opinions based on past experiences with him, and the physical documentation I have access to. Some of this information is hearsay from him.

The second thing I need to say is that Mighty Narwhal is not just Jason Andrew. I feel like he made it seem that way more than once, but I think that’s part of his need for attention and the spotlight. He was an idea man, but the fact that there were successful events or books at all is on the shoulders of everyone else around him. I believe he was poor planner at best and knows how to surround himself with capable people. In no way am I trying to make it seem like people should not support Mighty Narwhal; I do believe they should not support Jason being a part of the company.

I was initially introduced to writing for gaming through By Night Studios. I was asked to write a plot kit for their Vegas event as a “try out.” I completed the process, although my try outs kept getting extended into additional work. Even this process was fraught with things that bothered me, but I found it more important to focus on finally being able to write for games. While I was at the event, Jason told me multiple times that Ree Soesbee was a troublesome employee who was not producing work and acting like a diva. Therefore, they were trying out new people to replace her. I was told not to speak with her, while Jason spent the weekend discussing how badly she was doing. At one point, there was a situation where she was emotionally distressed, and he laughed about how he thought she was melting down.

In addition, I later found out I was pitted against another female (Laura Dasnoit). While I am unsure at who made the decision, I was informed they needed another female to replace Ree. Jason told me that Laura failed out of the project because she did not know how to take constructive criticism and she was complaining that he was too harsh.

While I was at By Night Studios, numerous other events occurred. Some of the same things occurred within Mighty Narwhal. I’m only listing a few of them, but there were more.

• When I was first hired for BNS, Jason told me a story about how he would seed different versions of a story with different people. If he heard one of the versions of the story, he would knew who was talking about what and not hire that person as they could not be trusted to keep their mouth shut.

• During a telephone call while developing Black Furies, one of the other writers told me that women don’t want to throw chops, they just want to dress up. I immediately spoke up that there are plenty of women who like to throw chops. I was angry at this statement, and mentioned it to mutual friends of the person and myself. Somehow, this made it back to Jason, and he asked me to sit down with him at Midwinter. What occurred was a conversation where I was told that Ree had previously accused the company of sexism, so Jason was very disturbed that I had spoken about the phone call to others. I was told I would learn to play nice and not talk about what happened at By Night. We don’t talk about Fight Club. He insinuated that doing otherwise would result in firing me as a freelancer.

• He hired two of his sexual partners as freelancers for By Night; he later hired the same two people for Mighty Narwhal. He frequently complained that they turned in work late and that most of it was not good. In some of these cases, he would claim he was giving them one more chance and coaching them. They continued to turn in late work that did not meet standards, according to him. However, he kept them as freelancers and paid them. In the case of Mighty Narwhal, he paid one of them in advance of other freelancers on word count that I do not believe was even completed at the time.

• The same person who made the comment about women throwing chops would frequently degrade my work, speak down to me, and ignore me in areas where I was a subject matter expert. Sometimes, this was followed up with them reskinning the same work and claiming it as their own. I complained about this process more than once, and Jason frequently told me that the most important thing was the team, and I should remain quiet in order to keep the peace. At one point, after that person (a white male) lectured me on how it was not whitewashing to let white people play indigenous people *in a game framed in cinema*, I spoke to Jason about the need to intervene. He told me he had spoken to the person and told them that they needed to understand sometimes women were more emotional and, essentially, couldn’t take frank discussion or feedback.

• After By Night was sold, there was still unfinished work on Changeling the Dreaming. From what I can piece together, Jason was approached by the new owner and asked to complete the project. I was excluded because I had previously reached out to the company about the person above as well as another employee who had allegedly made racist statements. I was considered too opinionated or forthright. Jason said they didn’t know how to “handle” me. He said he wanted me to complete the project with him, but only if I could put aside my differences and let the past go. I told him him could be polite and professional, but I would not let go of previous problems for the sake of peace. Especially since I had not even received an apology over any of it. I completed the work with little assistance from Jason. After I turned this work in, Jason told me Shane Robinette (someone I previously refused to work for) was still in charge of By Night Studios and had only been taken off the paperwork for the sake of optics. He had this information in advance, from what I can tell, and withheld it. Or, it’s not right at all and just another way to hit back at By Night.

My time at By Night Studios and Mighty Narwhal overlapped significantly. While I’ve tried to keep the incidents with their relative companies, there are some situations that occurred within the domain of both.

• Jason put down several of his writers, including April Douglas, Renee Ritchie, Jeffrey Fowler, Jimmy Reckitt, Aen (I could not find her last name), as well as some additional freelancers. He called one of them a dud, another a child, and claimed one was a C level writer. This came up again during the Kickstarter, as we trended on Twitter for our low pay rate. While Jeff and I attempted to find a solution, Jason made fun of the status of one of the Twitter personas because of their Go Fund Me, claimed he hired a bunch of noobs to give them a credit, and insinuated they didn’t deserve more pay, even saying that he and I wrote most of the book. Whenever he felt threatened, I felt his first line of approach was to attack those around him.

• In my opinion, he continuously violated any boundary I set for him when it conflicted with his desires. Only a few examples are below.

  • When the partners found out he was hiring writers and artists without even running it past us first, we had an entire conversation about how he needed to run potential hires past us prior to making them an offer. He tried to tell us it wasn’t our business because he was the Creative Director. At some point, we came to an agreement that as a business, he was required to run new hires past us. He complied with this only a couple of times before continuing to hire anyone he wanted without asking. Jeff stated he had to pay someone he didn’t even know was writing for us. In addition, Jason reached out to people with problematic histories, and only after the fact did he tell us who they were. He had to be informed they were not appropriate freelancers or artists. These histories were easily found in a google search.

  • He asked for the passwords to all of the social media sites, including our web page, in case I was “hit by a bus.” I complied, telling him to not log into these accounts, post from them, or otherwise interact with them since I had to make sure we shared a consistent message and brand. Instead, whenever he offered social media ideas that I vetoed because they were not appropriate, he would log in anyway to make these posts. In addition, he logged into my personal account for the website, even after I told him it was my personal account, to stay out of it, and I would handle any transfers to Jeff. He changed all of the information in the account to his own. He did the same with the Kickstarter, responding to questions in what I considered a confusing manner as well as adding new tiers whenever he felt Jeff or I weren’t responding quickly enough. He also made changes to the web page despite having no idea how it even worked.

  • After being told not to touch documents in review, he would regularly change them, adding our taking out information after they were edited and were in the final pass. He did the same with folders in Dropbox while we were in layout. When he was asked not to move things around, he came back that he should be able to since (he thought) I wasn’t working in those folders. Even after I had given him clear direction, and Jeff had to reiterate it, he would still move things.

  • He asked me for art direction for the core book. I created a Google document that outlined our art needs and provided suggestions for those pieces. Instead, Jason ignored this document and ordered art based on what he wanted, which meant some chapters had no art, some chapters had multiple art pieces for the same page, and some things were just not usable for what we needed at all. Whenever I tried to make corrections based on layout, he would tell me it’s not what I asked for when the needs were clearly outlined, and then blame me for his confusion when I pointed back to the document.

  • He asked me to design the Monster section for the book. I created a system that removed Qualities from this specific type of NPC and specifically told Jason that it was for ease of use. He added them back in and said nothing about it until we were in review and layout. He did not discuss it with me during the process or to advise on why he changed them until it was too late to do anything about his changes.

  • At some point, I needed to to speak to one of our artists to create a cover for one of my projects. As I was handling the KS, layout, and reviews at the same time, I needed additional time for this. Jason decided to give art direction instead which in no way met the needs of the project. He later brought this late email back up to chastise me so often I personally commented I felt like Hillary Clinton and “but her emails.”

• Many times when I expressed dissatisfaction with his actions, he would call me rude or tell me I was obviously angry. This was usually followed up without how I should be nicer or how kindness would get me much further. I felt I was not allowed to be frustrated by his actions without being attributed to emotional responses or me being thought of as mean. Whenever he was condescending, inappropriate, or hostile it was because he had other things going on that excused such behavior.

• He suggested we hire a new partner because she had put in a lot of work at an event. He wanted to do this to reduce costs; he was not interested in paying her for her time. This is in accordance to how my departure was handled. I initially decided to leave after there was an incident with Jason’s past legal history. As part of “proving” his side of events, he sent me the court case. My reading of this case made me physically ill, as I believe the story he told was very different from what happened. Jeff convinced me to stay another six months; what I felt was verbal abuse and a hostile work environment made it better for me to leave earlier for my mental health.

  • I was one of the two primary writers of the book, per his own admission.

  • I handled social media, social media questions, PR for multiple incidents where Jason was called out for his past, graphical design, and the website.

  • I handled editing and back end reviews, including sensitivity reviews (I had to take a section about how cool nazi uniforms were from Punching Nazis, handle a section on Lovecraftian racism, and many other topics of that nature).

  • I was responsible for answering emails for the information mail box.

  • I handled numerous financial tasks for Jeff, including setting up Drive Thru after the KS because Jeff was having issues pulling a backer report or didn’t know how to send out complementary copies.

  • I had to take over answering questions in the Kickstarter after the pay controversy because Jeff was worried about his responses.

  • I did research on costs for things like add ons, new artists to approach, and additional needed staff— including an editor that Jason allegedly claimed credit for.

  • When our initial layout artist had to back out of the project, I did layout for the Core Book, the Extended Edition, and the GM Screen, coordinating the multiple style changes made while we were in this process and requesting the additional art when Jason failed to follow the art brief. I worked with the printer to get the book to them, including proofing the hard copy.

  • I created numerous art pieces for the Extended Edition because there was not enough art for it.

  • After all of this, after being life support for Jason’s dream, the initial offer to “buy” me out was $1000; I received this after almost three months after I stated my intent to leave. They claimed this was because I was not willing to let them have the Cassiopeia project— I didn’t trust Jason. The only reason I received the $2000 final offer they gave me was I previously locked Jason and Jeff out of the Social Media because I noticed Jason making misspelled and poorly worded posts, and I was still officially responsible for those accounts. In addition, while I did not discuss the reasons for my departure outside of my immediate family (who saw the years of nonsense I lived through), Jason saw fit to badmouth me to others. I did not trust him to not sabotage the social media as I felt he had already showed a lack of maturity and professionalism.

• His final apology to me, after I had expressed that I felt he abused me for months, was that he was sorry I felt that way. These are the last words he’s spoken to me.

• In any given situation, Jason never listened to what I said. I had to funnel most it through Jeff so Jason wouldn’t just outright ignore me or be hostile with me. Jeff was not usually met with the same belligerence.

The following statements are made in general, regardless of the situation, and include some opinion.

1. Jason has called people with mental health issues crazy or insane rather than addressing them as people. He has done this to discredit their statements against him.

2. Jason has, in fact, badmouthed every person, save one, I’ve seen him professionally interact with. He’s called his peers, such as Ric Connelly and Jason Carl, dumbasses and fuckups, making fun of one of them for having nothing anymore. He’s done the same with people who pulled his events out of the fire. He called one of the people who ran his Ravenswood discord server a whale who would spend a lot of money on us if we paid them a modicum of attention. Jeffrey is allegedly one of his closest friends, and he’s told us on phone calls that Jeff was incapable of doing even the smallest project that was placed in front of him. He’s said not just negative, but humiliating (in my opinion) things about his own romantic partners, such as his own wife could not be trusted to keep secrets so she didn’t get to know important stuff.

3. Jason is incapable of respecting others when it conflicts with what he wants. This includes speaking poorly of them, being hostile with them, or just outright ignoring him. When he decides he is right, which is most of the time, he is always right no matter the means he goes to for proving it.

There’s a lot more. There’s always a lot more. For some of this, I have physical documentation. Jason removed me from the Facebook stakeholders group and blocked me, but I don’t think he’s aware I can still access its history, and I downloaded a significant amount of it because I strongly felt he would spin this story to his favor. In addition, I have sole access to the Stakeholders email list we used to communicate. Other information came through in phone calls and in person meetings. In the case of the Midwinter “We Don’t Talk Fight Club” meeting, I have the information verifying that he asked me to it and some talk of what it was about.

I expect this might also cost me some of the reputation I’ve built up as a solid worker and good writer; it’s already cost me some relationships with people I truly like when I reached out to warn them of some of this behavior. A lot of the industry asks you to put your head down and shut up, and anything other than that is considered stirring up shit. However, at this point in my career, I’m more concerned with newer writers being subjected to the same things. Others will say that Jason has always been amiable to them, and I will say he is to your face and as long as you don’t seriously challenge him in any way. But, think about how he has talked about others in your presence and know he’s doing that about you as well.

Again, I am not innocent. Coming from a LARP background, I have my fair share of shit talking. I have always tried to treat people relatively well and be forthright with them, but I’ve failed at that a lot more than I like. I involved myself with things that were not in alignment with what I want, at least, to be my values. I’m in the process of making amends for that, because it wasn’t fair to people like Ree, April, Renee, Jeff, or pretty much anyone I interacted with that I partook in that kind of BS. That said, someone who doesn’t see the wrong in that, who shows what I believe are sexist and threatening behaviors and doesn’t even attempt to hold themselves accountable, shouldn’t be at the head of a company like Mighty Narwhal either.