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I'm not surprised, they banned SaveRobotech for something he said on this site once.

They never banned me for the things I said on my site, Probably because it would look bad publicity-wise and probably because I had so much on them. They did spend company money to edit me out of the RSC documentary after it was completed, though. I think that was there way of getting back to me.

Oh wait, that's just speculation...

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Haha, what you did back then was pretty funny, outscooping the official site and saying "Why am I first?"

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You know, seriously, after a while it was like "come on, guys!"

My big secret?

blogsearch.google.com,
news.google.com,
news.yahoo.com and
feedster.com.

All I did was type in "Robotech" into those search engines every day and suddenly its like "holy crap.....look at what I found!" And the thing was, I didn't know what to look for. Well, sometimes I did.

Like when they were in negotiations with New Line, an employee of NL was being vague and telling me he worked for the comany HG was negotiating with. After being able to find out where he worked based on just his personal e-mail address (cyber-stalkin skills!), I googled "New Line" and "Shadow Chronicles" and - whallah! I found a site that mentioned the two together. (And when Brooklyn Red Leg found the same site and reported it , I got blamed and got the phone call from Tommy).

But the point was... why didn't they just google the two names together themselves? They knew about New Line looooong before I did, they wanted it to be hush-hush while knowing the fans were prying...why weren't they googling those terms together?

I think that's why I also asked "why am I first?" Because I found this stuff by taking 20 mintues out of my day to do internet searches without knowing to look for. They knew what to look for and could have found out the same stuff in 5 minutes and gotten the info taken down before anyone could find it.

And I was aslo being a cynical ass, I don't think they appreciated that either

You know, unless my job situation changed I don't think I would go back to blogging even if there was stuff to talk about. My old job was kind of slow so that gave me a lot of time to dick around on the net, and the blog served as good creative outlet. I was talking to a professional writer about it once and he said he was kind of envious that an established blog could reach the masses at the click of a button, rather than have to go through all of the corporate red tape and having to prove yourself among a million other competing writers. Even though in the end his work was seen by millions and it fed his family, so I guess it all evens out.

But with my new job I bust my ass and it satifies my creativeness so when I get home at the end of the day the last thing I want to do is entertain the masses.

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Ah jeez, Im sorry man. Thats f'd up

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Not your fault man, don't feel bad.

Basicallly what happened was is that just after I found out about New Line from my contact over there, I googled "New Line" and "Shadow Chronicles" and found that page.

I immediately called Scott Glasgow (he gave me his card at AX) and told him that info wasn't released yet and he should probably take it down. He said it wasn't his site so it would take a while so I'm like "I won't saying"

Then Brook found the same site doing another search and posted about it here

Now keep in mind HG had led us to believe at Comic-Con that that a deal was signed, they just weren't ready to announce it. So, even though I told Scott I wouldn't say anything, I figured that cat was out of the bag now and HG would be ready to release a statement that they signed with New Line.

I didn't really sleuth or look into any further, but I was enouraging the people on that thread who were (the dude BlaqChaos even called New Line- I was liked "Damn!").

But then I started to put everything together. My contact at New Line never actually said the deal was done, this person was saying they were the top candidate for the deal. It started to occur to me that we were given the explanation of "the distributor doesn't want to announce until after Comic-Con" we were more or less being misled. (there's an RT.com news article that uses the same wording, more or less here)

So I see Tommy in the RT.com chat and start grilling on the New Line issue, it's a few pages into that thread from Brook that I linked above. I basically called Tommy out and quite frankly I think I embarrassed him a little.

So during this time, Scott Glasgow's emailing me and asking me to lay off of it. Telling me that he relies on HG for a paycheck and I work in the entertianment industry too and should back off as a professional courtesy. After a few e-mails back and forth I basically told him he was right, I apologized, and I stopped talking about it.

But then a few days later I get an e-mail from Tommy saying he's recieving complaints from "multiple" people on his production staff. Then it says "do I have something to worry about?" I e-mail him back and say "that depends, who's complaining?" No response.

I e-mail Scott, asking him if he knows anything about this and he says "no," and that we're cool and that he had accepted my apology so he doesn't know.

I track down Tommy in RT.com chat and ask him what's up and he insists on calling me, so I'm like "okay." He calls me and I immediatley ask "who are these multiple people?" Tommy then says it wasn't multiple people, but rather multiple complaints from one person - and that was Scott. I told Tommy that Scott and I worked out things out on our own. And the last time I spoke to Scott, we were cool. This incident hasn't been brought up since.

But that's when, if I remember correctly, he started to ask about my journalism experience and if I knew what libel was. He said that he worked at local newspaper in Southern California as a graphic designer so he was well aware of what libel meant. He said that because I called Scott and warned him ahead of time, then published the story, I could be held accountable for libel. He also mentioned that I didn't have insurance money for libel. I pointed out that I never actually published the story, at most I published story about the thread itself.

(damn this is a long post, I didn't think it would be this long, but oh well, I guess I'll finish the story).

So Tommy tells me to just go a little easier on my site, and my response was that I'll report the good and the bad and be fair about both (if you remember, my old site was much more fair than my blog was).

And that was pretty much where the conversation ended. I immediately started doing my research on libel in print and online, I even e-mailed a few experts on print journalsim at the website allexperts.com and they all said I had nothing to worry about.

But I was pretty pissed that both Alan and Tommy told me that my site was basically being used in place of their early marketing efforts, then being told how to run my site and being threatened with libel, I temporarily shut the site down.

Then, in October of 2005 Tommy pops into chat and sends me this PM:

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Tommy: you've done a good job of getting yourself on the company shitlist

Darkwater: what did I do now?

Tommy: nothing

Darkwater: then how would that make me on the company shitlist?

Tommy: it's not my deal - I'm just being the messenger since I noticed you here

Darkwater: I don't understand

Tommy: sorry - if you don't understand, then it's better we don't continue on this track

Darkwater: ok

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I was like WTF??!?!?!? This felt like some sort of mafia-type threat. "I'm just being the messenger." For a second it crossed my mind that I I'd be woken up one morning by two guys taking baseball bats to my legs. Just for a second, though, since I knew that probably wasn't going to happen.

It wasn't until much later I realized what that could have been about. Although my site was down, my forums were still up. Someone posted a story about that was in Italian about Frank Agrama and Berlusconi and I, not actually knowing who Berlusconi was, and not knowing that the article implicated Frank Agrama in aiding Berlusconi, posted the Babbelfish translation. The translation was so bad, I couldn't tell what the article was about.

I think saying I was on the "shit list" is what prompted me to bring my site back (and later my blog). What's funny is that when I brought the site back I mentioned recieving threats from HG and from what Steve Yun told me later at a party, Tommy freaked out and asked the people at HG if anyone had threatened me. When Steve asked me that, I was like "uh, yeah - it was Tommy!" I then told him about the "libel" and "shit list" incidents Maybe using the word "threat" was too strong, but it felt approprate at the time.

What gets me is that looking back on it now, I realize that Tommy was leading us on about the distributor mainly because Alan Letz opened his mouth way too early at these cons. I didn't totally catch it at the time, but Tommy was basically just covering for his boss who didn't know when to not talk.

And in the early days when I was sniffing out the distributor, had Tommy pulled me aside privately and said "Hey, things are taking a bit longer that we'd hoped, but I had to back up what my boss said" I would have been totally sympathetic. But by leading the fans onto something that wasn't there, it only made me look deeper into it.

But, in the end.... its all just a f@#king cartoon

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Well, it's still good to see you, Darkwater, have such a healthy relationship with company executives until today. What a rewarding experience it must be...

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lol someone once asked "imagine if you could use your powers to piss people for good?"

Whatever, it was like a two years ago.

Oh and something that I just remembered, too. My contact at New Line said that there they thought they had RSC just as much as HG did. I was told that RSC made it onto their list of upcoming releases that was used for in-house purposes only. I found that out much later, though