Hilarious Things Which Happen When Your Editor Is An Insane Megalomaniac

So I recently got dropped from a wideogame website. My editor never actually specified the voice he would like me to communicate to the public with, or gave me any guidelines on posts. Basically I was given free reign, and as such I ran with it. I only wrote two articles, which he has (as of about 10 minutes ago) pulled. Below is the communication sent between myself and him in the past few weeks. Enjoy the idiocy, humans.

post script: These have not been altered in any way, other than the removal of names/websites/specifics.

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from him to me:

Hello Ashley,

I've been wanting to talk to you about your writing style and how it fits into the site. After having read the articles you have put up onto the site I have noticed a trend in your writing that doesn't really fit into the image we're trying to present. Your articles and reviews are somewhat over-personalized and their content seems to focus more on you rather than the games they should be about or the people who would be reading it. While I do want your subjective opinion about the games you review and the topics you write about it needs to be a much smaller part of the way you write for the site as we are journalists and as such need to be very objective in our writing. It's important to remember that even though we are trying to establish our own internet personas to provide the site with some character we are still a professional site and we need act as such. This goes double for features such as editorials, as people who don't know you personally will have trouble identifying and caring about it. To reiterate I'm writing to let you know of the balance I hope to achieve within the writing style of the entire site. Ultimately I want you to be able to write in a professional and a personal capacity without writing in a casual capacity. If you would like for me to be more specific about this issue I can provide you with some of examples of what I'm talking about and we can have a dialogue, I thank you for your understanding and I look forward to reading your next article.

Regards,
xxxxx
Administrator/Founder xxxx blog
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my reply:

Hi,

I'm a bit interested to know why this is only coming up now. Would I have known that you had misgivings prior to the articles going up, I would have had an easier time tailoring my articles to suit your needs before it even became an issue. Furthermore, I think it would be beneficial for everyone to know that you are looking for a certain 'voice' in the articles you post on the xxx blog, because I'm not sure if that has even been discussed.

Ashley
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Hello Ashley,

The reason I didn't bring it up right away with you is because I wanted to see how your first review turned out and to see if maybe the concerns I expressed were only something relevant to your first article rather than your style. The reason I haven't made a huge announcement to everyone about this is because this is something that was already laid out long before you came on board and they already work within those limits. The big reason I'm talking to you about this is because the site is headed to big things in the very near future (we're getting our business license on Monday) and the site needs a solid foundation to succeed not just in a business sense but in terms the people who write for it as well. Reviews in particular need to be as professional as possible as we will have the developers, publishers, and customers reading our reviews and purchasing or interacting with us accordingly. To make myself clear we aren't pandering to companies but we need to represent their products in as professional a matter as possible. I bring this up because I want you to continue writing for us and the last thing I want is either alienate you or the people behind the games we're reviewing who may feel you haven't given them a well written review. Even though we are dealing with some of the smaller fish of the games industry at the moment we don't want to make dealing with them any harder than it already is not to mention bigger companies will judge us by how we interact with these smaller companies and provide material and advertising accordingly. If you have any questions please let me know and we'll discuss them.

Regards,
xxxxx
Administrator/Founder xxxx blog
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Needless to say, I didn't reply to this last email. I had no clue what to say. Regardless, This was in my inbox this afternoon:

(from him)

Hello Ashley,

xxx colleague has let me know of your decision to leave the site after last week’s discussion of our new rules as a business and I wanted to double check with you before I took any action. It definitely pains me to see you leave our company but I also completely understand why you’re doing it. I’m sorry our organization could not offer to you the writing environment you desired. I wish you well with future endeavours and I will make sure you have full rights to the work you have created with our site so you can use it in other places. Please make sure you keep or a make a copy of your articles and once I have confirmation from you that you have them in your possession I will remove from the site so as not to obstruct those article’s view counts when you post them in other places. As for the press release you have written for us, I will leave that up to you as to whether you would prefer to have that returned or if we can still use it for the launch of the new site. Of course almost all of the above is moot if you’re choosing to stay but I felt it was best to lay all the cards on table here. Anyways if you could get back to me with your decision as whether you’re staying with us or resigning and if so what you would like me to do with press release I would be very grateful.


Regards and I hope you’re well,
xxxxx
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And my inevitable icy reply:

Dear Mr. xxxxx,

I kindly thank you for your continued interest in my writing. I will inform you, however, that as you have as yet to draft a formal contract whereby the authors of this site (myself included) sign over their rights for their intellectual property (articles, podcasts, webcasts, et al,), you have very little say over what any of your contributors do with of their material. That is to say, I would be, at this point, completely within my rights to propagate my material anywhere I wish. It would behoove you to know that this is actually true of all of your contributors. Furthermore, as your current business license applies only to the city of xxxxx, a contract signed by myself (assuming I had done so, which I have not) would be immediately void as I am operating outside of your contract's boundaries.

As such, you are welcome to do whatever you wish with the content I have provided, however bear in mind that this doesn't actually change anything. If you would like to take down my articles, please do so. Further, if you would like to use my press release, feel free to do that as well. To be quite honest, I no longer care.

Warmest regards and good luck in your professional business venture,
Ashley
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And here is his reply, which I did not feel the need to reply to for what I hope are entirely obvious reasons:

Hello Ashley,

I am fully aware that you and all of my current contributors have full rights over their content until a contract has been drafted and then signed by them (a step I will be taking in the not too distant future I assure you). The only reason I wanted to make sure that you had your content along with reassurances that I would remove it from the site was so that when the site does go live and the aforementioned contract is drafted and signed that you know that we have done right by you in a legal capacity. I’m sorry you misunderstood me.

I hope you do share your material with whatever sites will have it and that you succeed in a writing space more applicable to your needs. As I have previously stated I will be removing your content however it is to prevent any future legal issues rather than a lack of quality, I still believe that despite the fact that your content did not line up with our site’s philosophies it was still of a very high quality.

Regards and good luck,

xxxxx