#t9ctalks

Emily (stxrraimi) had, by all accounts at the time, had a great weekend and lovely interactions with Ted. At some point in the past handful of days she appears to have run across accusations being made that Ted was rude to staff at the con, late to everything, was often seen with women in his time off and "played games with them" (?), and most concerningly it was asserted that he behaved inappropriately toward women to the point where multiple complaints were made to the staff (all of these claims made by tedraimisimp, an alleged MM staffer who appears to have deleted their blog?), with no specifics about any particular claims being given publicly, and seems to have taken them to heart -- assuming that her deleting her posts wasn't the result of harassment from fellow fans in the wake of all this, which I really hope wasn't the case.

There were notably also vagueposts about the overall situation from nogoodverybadexorcism and 12d3trvshcktt, as well as suggestions of "grooming" behavior from vasiktomis.

Kijilinn jumped onto the overall train with concern about Emily's account of what had happened and some potentially overly-friendly behavior from Ted which I didn't perceive as such. Opinions seem pretty divided on it but without Emily's posts visible that's hard to say more on since we all have to rely on memory. She's since qualified her statements and recognized the harm in how she expressed her feelings about the matter, which I appreciate and respect.

In the midst of this, heytheredarlin was also concerned about the accusations being thrown around and their severity without substantiation, but later deleted his posts because he felt they were counterproductive and only spreading the harmful claims instead of pushing back effectively. I respect his feelings but I disagree, which is why I'm still talking about this lol.

bloodandsilver2-electricboogalo was also pushing back against the unsubstantiated accusations, and continues to. We are in fact besties and of like mind on this.

While I was not personally present, the con appears to be fairly poorly managed, especially given their lack of any conduct or costume/prop policies, nor any safety guidelines or agreements attendees sign about behaving appropriately. Coupled with the con existing for 11 years and having no contact form and poorly managed social media accounts, I don't find it to be a stretch to say that they should be able to do better, and the fact that they aren't is a sign of negligence. Again, having absolutely no safety and costume/prop policies written is a really big red flag, even for a small, niche convention.

It's not a stretch to me to say that it's possible Ted was cranky with staff if there were management issues. It's also not a stretch to me to assert that maybe he did spend time with various women in his off hours while at the hotel, and maybe some of them had sex.

What is a stretch to me are the assertions that the convention received multiple complaints from attendees about his behavior and chose to do nothing, and somehow no one has said anything at all about it. Unless the matter is actively being pursued through legal avenues, total silence about it is weird...and we all know the US isn't known for treating unwelcome sexual advances as legally important, nor is a small con or a few random young women likely to waste their time trying. People take to social media for that, because it gets results, unlike the courts.

Most concerning of all, the handful of people initially posting these vague statements and bits of speculation, and liking those posts, had mostly removed any personal identifiers including name, age, and pronouns, as well as access to their likes as of this morning. More than one had nearly no blog history dating back to 2019, a likely sign of a purge. The one with the most damning accusations deleted their blog today after providing literally no evidence at any point. That's not really the behavior of someone making well-founded claims, I'd say. If they have nothing to hide, why are they trying so hard to hide it and refusing to speak publicly? Even an anonymized account of what happened would be worth sharing, and yet no one is willing to come forward even with complete anonymity.

I think the whole thing is either straight-up nonsense, or it was a handful of misunderstandings that got out of hand and people panicked when called to account without having anything to present. I would like to believe it's the latter, because I would like to believe people to be in earnest when they try to report concerning behavior. I have never claimed tedraimisimp was lying, only that they made bold claims with no evidence that could potentially turn out to be misunderstandings.

Ted has been a public figure attending conventions both large and small for decades and yet somehow we're supposed to believe no one has ever even tried to say anything about what would presumably be a pattern of behavior?

I'm not saying things didn't happen. I can't know one way or the other because I wasn't there, and can only find so many vlogs and firsthand accounts on the internet (nine vlogs and counting, only two of which even show brief glimpses of him lol). All I'm saying is that the accusations are out of hand considering the absolute nothingness that's been actually documented both at this con and others.

I will, however, retract/amend one statement: MM con staff appear to be wearing a specific type of bright orange shirt while on-duty, at least in part. Not all MM staff were wearing them while on duty, but I did in fact locate through vlogs the mentions of several of the people wearing those specific shirts being staff, meaning they were in fact more visibly identifiable than I had previously stated. Still, the lack of safety policy or any apparent safety department located on-site in a place attendees could access does mean that if there were problems it would likely have to go to a general staff member, who's probably not trained to deal with that kind of situation. That might be exactly what led to this situation, potentially. Regardless, it's yet another oversight on MM's part.

I have found absolutely nothing damning about Ted, aside from the appearance from vlogs that he may in fact have been quite late in getting to his booth on Friday evening -- which is hardly a smoking gun, as they say.

I will keep updating as I find out more. I'd like to find out if this man whose work I enjoy is someone I can wholeheartedly support or not. Eventually, if I can't find enough online to determine my feelings, I'll just have to go and see for myself. And you'd better believe if I find that there are concerning behaviors I witness, I'll document them and provide receipts; regardless of my opinions about what's happened here, I take public safety and "missing stairs" very, very seriously.