gremlin time

It’s upsetting that she overworks her crew so much that some are falling out of love with their passion…animation. Erin didn’t get fired either, they QUIT so it must’ve been a horrible experience.

The truth always comes to light and I wouldn’t be surprised if more crew members spoke up. I can smell a huge scandal in the near future, and I don’t think we’ll be talking about these projects for much longer. I just want people to SEE this, this kind of stuff always get swept under the rug.

////

Maybe I’ll get back to working on indie projects one day, but Spindlehorse was just such a toxic experience I’m not sure that will be any time soon. I struggle even to draw things for myself. It’s gonna be a while before I’m ready to try and monetize something I’m passionate about by selling my creative labor to others.

It’s not to just that Viv demanded unreasonably tight deadlines (when she even gave us deadlines) but she also demanded our loyalty as employees. We weren’t allowed to speak positively about other shows. Especially not other indie projects. We weren’t really allowed to work on other indie projects either. It was frowned on.

I remember one time Viv got us all on a Discord group call and streamed a crossover episode of Villainous and another CNN show. She encouraged everyone to make fun of it and tear apart every little flaw. She would also speak poorly of other creators, indie or otherwise. I distinctly remember her mentioning that it was *supposedly* utter hell to work with Dana Terrace of The Owl House.

It was just deeply toxic all around. Not just the way the animation and design work was done—that being highly disorganized and unprofessional—but also the culture. When I first joined the studio it felt like Viv treated me as an equal, and I’m sure it felt that way for a lot of us. But gradually a hierarchy came into place. Viv had her favorites (the people who flattered her and rarely if ever showed interest in anything that wasn’t Hazbin or Helluvaboss) and her “executives” of sorts. Her close friends and favorites.

There’s Sam Miller. Who I believe is (or at least was) listed in credits as Background Design Lead or something to that affect, and is essentially Viv’s gal Friday. She was very often considered the de facto leader in Viv’s absence. She was pretty nice in the beginning but as time went on she became more and more rude and abusive towards the artists. It was actually an interaction with Sam Miller that finally caused me to quit. Viv had made herself pretty untouchable and we were meant to go through Sam (at least for background artists) if we had a question for Viv.

I’m not going to go into detail on that last interaction here but it was Sam’s treatment that affected most of us who had issues on that project. We barely interacted with Viv any more.

As far as we were aware, she was spending more and more time rubbing elbows with the increasingly expensive voice talent. That’s likely where most of the budget goes. Merchandising and paying for name brand voice talent like Norman Reedus. Viv herself insisted she had wanted the role of Fizzaroli to go to Wierd Al, but Yankovich’s agent rejected the offer on his behalf. I can’t imagine he comes cheap.

From what I figure, once the first episode of Helluva went live and Viv insisted on uploading a new episode every 1 to 2 months, things got progressively worse. She had little to no sympathy for those of us who needed day jobs to support ourselves. She wanted us to have the turnout of a brick and mortar studio with none of the organization, professionalism, or employee benefits.

I was working between 30 and 40 hour weeks at Starbucks because I had bills/loans to pay. I once pulled an all-nighter to try and meet a deadline which was only given out *when I asked for one* and which turned out to be less than a week away. I stayed up all night to meet the deadline and then went immediately to my 8hr shift at Starbucks. The lack of appreciation was so crushing.

That’s how I’d describe working for Viv: “Crushing”

I looked up to her. That’s why I applied to the show. I was one of the people who defended her when people tried to call her toxic. And then the reality of it was that Viv uses the people who admire her to her advantage. It’s why she hires fans. She knows we’re desperate for her approval so she knows she can get away with pretty much whatever she wants. After I left Spindlehorse I tried salvaging my career but I was just too exhausted. I’m still feeling that burnout and at times it can feel like I might never get my art back. I know I will, but as someone who struggled with mental illness even before working on Helluva, it just kind of wrecked me to have finally “made it” with my animation career only for it to abruptly blow up in my face because if someone I had looked up to.

I know I’m not the only one who left feeling this way. Another friend of mine struggled to get work after leaving Spindle because Viv allegedly threatened other creators not to hire her artists. I can’t verify this myself, so you’re just gonna have to decide for yourself if you believe that one. Personally, I do. While speaking about Viv with the producer of other indie works (and who now works for Bento Box) describing a time she met Viv at a convention. As she recalls it, Viv seemed to find the idea of investing in her artists and their careers pointless and laughable.

It’s upsetting that she overworks her crew so much that some are falling out of love with their passion…animation. Erin didn’t get fired either, they QUIT so it must’ve been a horrible experience.

The truth always comes to light and I wouldn’t be surprised if more crew members spoke up. I can smell a huge scandal in the near future, and I don’t think we’ll be talking about these projects for much longer. I just want people to SEE this, this kind of stuff always get swept under the rug.

////

Maybe I’ll get back to working on indie projects one day, but Spindlehorse was just such a toxic experience I’m not sure that will be any time soon. I struggle even to draw things for myself. It’s gonna be a while before I’m ready to try and monetize something I’m passionate about by selling my creative labor to others.

It’s not to just that Viv demanded unreasonably tight deadlines (when she even gave us deadlines) but she also demanded our loyalty as employees. We weren’t allowed to speak positively about other shows. Especially not other indie projects. We weren’t really allowed to work on other indie projects either. It was frowned on.

I remember one time Viv got us all on a Discord group call and streamed a crossover episode of Villainous and another CNN show. She encouraged everyone to make fun of it and tear apart every little flaw. She would also speak poorly of other creators, indie or otherwise. I distinctly remember her mentioning that it was *supposedly* utter hell to work with Dana Terrace of The Owl House.

It was just deeply toxic all around. Not just the way the animation and design work was done—that being highly disorganized and unprofessional—but also the culture. When I first joined the studio it felt like Viv treated me as an equal, and I’m sure it felt that way for a lot of us. But gradually a hierarchy came into place. Viv had her favorites (the people who flattered her and rarely if ever showed interest in anything that wasn’t Hazbin or Helluvaboss) and her “executives” of sorts. Her close friends and favorites.

There’s Sam Miller. Who I believe is (or at least was) listed in credits as Background Design Lead or something to that affect, and is essentially Viv’s gal Friday. She was very often considered the de facto leader in Viv’s absence. She was pretty nice in the beginning but as time went on she became more and more rude and abusive towards the artists. It was actually an interaction with Sam Miller that finally caused me to quit. Viv had made herself pretty untouchable and we were meant to go through Sam (at least for background artists) if we had a question for Viv.

I’m not going to go into detail on that last interaction here but it was Sam’s treatment that affected most of us who had issues on that project. We barely interacted with Viv any more.

As far as we were aware, she was spending more and more time rubbing elbows with the increasingly expensive voice talent. That’s likely where most of the budget goes. Merchandising and paying for name brand voice talent like Norman Reedus. Viv herself insisted she had wanted the role of Fizzaroli to go to Wierd Al, but Yankovich’s agent rejected the offer on his behalf. I can’t imagine he comes cheap.

From what I figure, once the first episode of Helluva went live and Viv insisted on uploading a new episode every 1 to 2 months, things got progressively worse. She had little to no sympathy for those of us who needed day jobs to support ourselves. She wanted us to have the turnout of a brick and mortar studio with none of the organization, professionalism, or employee benefits.

I was working between 30 and 40 hour weeks at Starbucks because I had bills/loans to pay. I once pulled an all-nighter to try and meet a deadline which was only given out *when I asked for one* and which turned out to be less than a week away. I stayed up all night to meet the deadline and then went immediately to my 8hr shift at Starbucks. The lack of appreciation was so crushing.

That’s how I’d describe working for Viv: “Crushing”

I looked up to her. That’s why I applied to the show. I was one of the people who defended her when people tried to call her toxic. And then the reality of it was that Viv uses the people who admire her to her advantage. It’s why she hires fans. She knows we’re desperate for her approval so she knows she can get away with pretty much whatever she wants. After I left Spindlehorse I tried salvaging my career but I was just too exhausted. I’m still feeling that burnout and at times it can feel like I might never get my art back. I know I will, but as someone who struggled with mental illness even before working on Helluva, it just kind of wrecked me to have finally “made it” with my animation career only for it to abruptly blow up in my face because if someone I had looked up to.

I know I’m not the only one who left feeling this way. Another friend of mine struggled to get work after leaving Spindle because Viv allegedly threatened other creators not to hire her artists. I can’t verify this myself, so you’re just gonna have to decide for yourself if you believe that one. Personally, I do. While speaking about Viv with the producer of other indie works (and who now works for Bento Box) describing a time she met Viv at a convention. As she recalls it, Viv seemed to find the idea of investing in her artists and their careers pointless and laughable.

But op lost me when they started talking softly to the people who do this without meaning to, suggesting that they take precautions like wearing crocs so it hurts less when you kick or keeping your hands in you pockets so you’d be less likely to hit. Giving your phone to a friend so you don’t clock someone with it.

But… my friends. If you’ve ever done this before – like hitting someone for scaring you in a situation you know is simulated because you paid to be let in – maybe the answer isn’t “wear soft shoes”.

Maybe don’t go in the first place.

I know, it’s spooky season and you like to be festive, but if the price of your holiday fun is that you’ll lose control of your actions and probably assault someone, you don’t any need tips and tricks other than “don’t pay people to scare you.” It’s a terrible thing to do to someone and they don’t deserve it. 

Source: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/08/why-bmi-big-fat-scam/

Like, “queer is a slur”: I get the impression that people saying this are like… oh, how I might react if I heard someone refer to all gay men as “f*gs”. Like, “Oh wow, that’s a super loaded word with a bunch of negative freight behind it, are you really sure you want to put that word on people who are still very raw and would be alarmed, upset, or offended if they heard you call them it, no matter what you intended?”

So they’re really surprised when self-described queers respond with a LOT of hostility to what feels like a well-intentioned reminder that some people might not like it. 

That’s because there’s a history of “political lesbians”, like Sheila Jeffreys, who believe that no matter their sexual orientation, women should cut off all social contact with men, who are fundamentally evil, and only date the “correct” sex, which is other women. Political lesbians claim that relationships between women, especially ones that don’t contain lust, are fundamentally pure, good, and  unproblematic. They therefore regard most of the LGBT community with deep suspicion, because its members are either way too into sex, into the wrong kind of sex, into sex with men, are men themselves, or somehow challenge the very definitions of sex and gender. 

When “queer theory” arrived in the 1980s and 1990s as an organized attempt by many diverse LGBT+ people in academia to sit down and talk about the social oppressions they face, political lesbians like Jeffreys attacked it harshly, publishing articles like “The Queer Disappearance of Lesbians”, arguing that because queer theory said it was okay to be a man or stop being a man or want to have sex with a man, it was fundamentally evil and destructive. And this attitude has echoed through the years; many LGBT+ people have experience being harshly criticized by radical feminists because being anything but a cis “gold star lesbian” (another phrase that gives me war flashbacks) was considered patriarchal, oppressive, and basically evil.

And when those arguments happened, “queer” was a good umbrella to shelter under, even when people didn’t know the intricacies of academic queer theory; people who identified as “queer” were more likely to be accepting and understanding, and “queer” was often the only label or community bisexual and nonbinary people didn’t get chased out of. If someone didn’t disagree that people got to call themselves queer, but didn’t want to be called queer themselves, they could just say “I don’t like being called queer” and that was that. Being “queer” was to being LGBT as being a “feminist” was to being a woman; it was opt-in.

But this history isn’t evident when these interactions happen. We don’t sit down and say, “Okay, so forty years ago there was this woman named Sheila, and…” Instead we queers go POP! like pufferfish, instantly on the defensive, a red haze descending over our vision, and bellow, “DO NOT TELL ME WHAT WORDS I CANNOT USE,” because we cannot find a way to say, “This word is so vital and precious to me, I wouldn’t be alive in the same way if I lost it.” And then the people who just pointed out that this word has a history, JEEZ, way to overreact, go away very confused and off-put, because they were just trying to say.

But I’ve found that once this is explained, a lot of people go, “Oh wow, okay, I did NOT mean to insinuate that, I didn’t realize that I was also saying something with a lot of painful freight to it.”

When I speak to them, lesbians who say this seem to be under the impression that bisexuals must have our own history and culture and words that are all perfectly nice, so why can’t we just use those without poaching someone else’s?

And often, they’re really shocked when I tell them: We don’t. We can’t. I’d love to; it’s not possible.

“Lesbian” used to be a word that simply meant a woman who loved other women. And until feminism, very, very few women had the economic freedom to choose to live entirely away from men. Lesbian bars that began in the 1930s didn’t interrogate you about your history at the door; many of the women who went there seeking romantic or sexual relationships with other women were married to men at the time. When The Daughters of Bilitis formed in 1955 to work for the civil and political wellbeing of lesbians, the majority of its members were closeted, married women, and for those women, leaving their husbands and committing to lesbian partners was a risky and arduous process the organization helped them with. Women were admitted whether or not they’d at one point truly loved or desired their husbands or other men–the important thing was that they loved women and wanted to explore that desire.

Lesbian groups turned against bisexual and pansexual women as a class in the 1970s and 80s, when radical feminists began to teach that to escape the Patriarchy’s evil influence, women needed to cut themselves off from men entirely. Having relationships with men was “sleeping with the enemy” and colluding with oppression. Many lesbian radical feminists viewed, and still view, bisexuality as a fundamentally disordered condition that makes bisexuals unstable, abusive, anti-feminist, and untrustworthy.

(This despite the fact that radical feminists and political lesbians are actually a small fraction of lesbians and wlw, and lesbians do tend, overall, to have positive attitudes towards bisexuals.)

That process of expelling bi women from lesbian groups with immense prejudice continues to this day and leaves scars on a lot of bi/pan people. A lot of bisexuals, myself included, have an experience of “double discrimination”; we are made to feel unwelcome or invisible both in straight society, and in LGBT spaces. And part of this is because attempts to build a bisexual/pansexual community identity have met with strong resistance from gays and lesbians, so we have far fewer books, resources, histories, icons, organizations, events, and resources than gays and lesbians do, despite numerically outnumbering them..

So every time I hear that phrase, it’s another painful reminder for me of all the experiences I’ve had being rejected by the lesbian community. But bisexual experiences don’t get talked about or signalboosted much,so a lot of young/new lesbians literally haven’t learned this aspect of LGBT+ history.

We are in the New Browser Wars. This time there’s a helluva lot of money up for grabs, because a lot of it is about running those ads. Monopolies are bad for consumers.

AdNauseam is an adblocker that generates false clicks on the ads it blocks, which costs the corporations that pay for them money.

Privacy Possum messes with the tracking data collected about you, rendering it essentially useless

TrackMeNot generates random search terms across sites, meaning that any data collected about things you actually search is buried in a sea of random bullshit. Makes it very hard for people to figure out what you’re actually doing. You can block terms in the options, which means it won’t search for anything incriminating on your behalf (I think the word bomb is blocked by default)

WhatCampaign replaces tracking analytics used in website code with data that can’t be used to track you. I’m pretty sure it replaces it with “fuck off” by default.

It’s so temporary that the halloween stores don’t even have a real sign, they just hang up a banner outside:

Yes, occasionally Spirit Halloween ends up in small empty spaces in a downtown if the stars align just right. But overwhelmingly the end up in strip malls or freestanding big box stores. You HAVE to drive to them. Nobody lives within walking distance.

Freestanding big box stores are built entirely to order and are meant to be replaced semi-frequently. It’s cheaper to just build a newer, bigger one at another location while promising the local government “so much economic growth!!!” that they cut them a deal on the property taxes for X number of years… and the megachain meanwhile knows exactly when that term is up and  is already hunting for a new location  to start the process anew.

It gets worse.

These buildings are so shoddily constructed and so purpose built they’re almost unusable by anyone except the original builder. To the point where some big box retailers have challenged the assessment of the building while its in use and generating $30 million in profit to have it valued based on resale value as if it was empty and abandoned.. AND HAVE WON.

It gets worse.

HOW CAN IT GET WORSE?!?! Many of these properties also have deed restriction on them. That specifies if sold, they can’t be to a competing retailer.  So if it was a big box department store, it may specify that it can’t be sold to anyone that sells competing merchandise… so basically everything from lawnmowers to food to clothing. what the hell can you put in there?

So the resale value of the building is zero, Which when you go to make the assessment… well I guess no taxes are owed.

And these deed restriction generally last decades.  There ARE good reasons for deed restrictions like that. They’re usually used for agricultural land so it specifies it has to stay agricultural OR for industrial land with contamination issues. You don’t want someone to sell a lead smelter to a  shell company and then have them sell it to someone to turn into residential housing. It’s just taken a very, very specific form here.

So you have thousands of these abandoned structures all around the US that are just slowly rotting and are unsaleable.  They might also be being used to show financial “losses” to reduce taxable income more. 

Spirit sweeps in and is “hey, wanna extract a bit more money without in any way disrupting this cycle?”  and rents the building for two months and does not give a damn about what terrible repair it is in. They won’t be using it next year. There will be a thousand newly abandoned store to inhabit next year!

Fucking iconic. It would also allow suing rapists and domestic abusers with awards starting from 10,000, where if the case is won, half the money goes into a fund for women seeking abortions in other states. It’s modelled exactly from Texas’s unconstitutional bullshit bill. Anyone who opposes the constitutionality of this bill would also be calling into question the anti-abortion bill.

considering that we live in a misogynist and patriarchal society i think it’s really valid for women to say that they hate men. it’s not the most elegant or nuanced critique of patriarchy, but i can’t really blame women for feeling that way sometimes. i think we’re all grown-up enough to recognize that it’s hyperbole born from a very valid frustration with misogyny and all the ways it manifests in our lives. 

i also don’t think there’s necessarily anything wrong with lesbians talking about how unappealing they find men, whether it’s men as a group or one specific man. like obviously it wouldn’t be very nice to tell a man to his face why you find him unattractive, but i don’t think there’s any harm in telling your girl friend you think her new boyfriend is ugly but you’re happy if she’s happy. it’s natural for different people to have different tastes, and a lesbian saying “i think sweaty men are gross” or “tom holland has a yucky face” doesn’t really hurt anyone imo. if it makes you feel insecure about your own attraction to men then that’s a shame but maybe that’s something you need to work on and it’s not actually lesbians’ fault that you feel that way.