i’m not trying to pick a fight with you. you are not involved in the hallowzine. you should not be speaking on michaela’s behalf at all, honestly. all i am saying is that you were not being completely truthful or transparent in the answer to the above ask to a concerned person.
i did not call her a scammer. at no point in my original post did i call her a scammer. you can be pissed, but for one second, try to see this from everyone else’s point of view. according to michaela, we had at least 250 physical zine sales. if EVERYONE bought the zine only package, with no merch, priced at $25, and if there were 250 sales exactly, that alone come out to $6,250. i know for a fact that a lot of people bought the bundles and merch only and pdf sales are not included in the 250 number. michaela also said that we allegedly had at least 250 sales because the 250 sale charm stretch goal was unlocked ‘at the last minute’. she never gave us an exact number, but if she’s telling the truth that there were at least 250 sales of physical zines, then the zine made at least $6,250.
furthermore, at least 250 bought the zine, according to michaela. that’s 250 people who just have their money in limbo right now. that’s 250 people who don’t know if and when they’re getting their money back. that’s 250 people who have been kept entirely in the dark.
so yes, michaela does owe us her time at this point. she walked away with thousands of dollars. she left the only real point of contact that she had with her contributors, on the day of the celebration you’re talking about, and people were desperately trying to get a hold of her, because she closed down a project without talking to ANYONE, and just… had over six thousand dollars. when you walk away from a project without telling anyone what’s going on, yes, you do owe someone a fucking response.
trust me, i get that there’s personal/medical reasons. i had surgery in august on my spine/near my spinal cord that caused some very bad neurological issues for me. at the same time, i was on multiple zine projects as a mod, but i communicated with people and my fellow mods. michaela has barely communicated with anyone. the remaining former mods have opened up the mod chat for us to see what happened, and michaela gave no updates in the mod chat from 9/17 until 11/26, when one of the server mods had to ping her and ask her wtf was going on because contributors wanted to know. also, the mod in charge of the pdf said that michaela never messaged them about the pdf, and that’s supported by the mod chat messages. there’s nothing about michaela asking for the pdf or giving any info about it, even when questioned. the pdf mod also said that there were no DMs they received from michaela and that michaela would not answer or respond to any of their questions about the pdf.
also, many of the contributors offered to format the pdf. michaela said no to every one of them. this was during the production.
and the fact that you tagged all her other zines she also had to work on calming storms of panic with all the other mods she works with
this is untrue. i don’t know why you’re saying this. it’s an absolute lie. i didn’t even mention her name until the bday zine post, which was sent to me by a concerned person. i never mentioned michaela or her url or anything until that post, and i definitely did not tag her other zines. if she had to work on calming the panic, then that’s because other zine mods were rightfully concerned about the things she was handling, because i did not ever tag them or message them. please don’t spread this sort of untrue stuff.
someone tried to contact her with THE WRONG EMAIL. it was an email created that was only used to host the google drive, but wasn’t the one meant for contact.
this isn’t that person’s fault. why did michaela have two zine emails in the first place? no one even knew about the quirkortreat one until she recently posted it. the only one people knew about was the bnha.hallowzine one. and she should’ve been monitoring both emails, since both of them are business emails for the zine that have been given out to people before.
yesterday michaela had to handle a panic attack, deal with all her other zines, and try not to have another panic attack while driving throughout the city with clients in her car. so i’m sorry that she hasn’t dedicated every minute to gathering all of her receipts for you.
i’m sorry she had a panic attack, but michaela promised both me and the former mod she’s in contact with that she would get the information to us, last night. it’s been over 24 hours right now, and she’s gone radio silent. she said that she would be home from work last night and would get everything to us, and that’s the last we heard from her. again, i’m sorry she had a panic attack and i’m sorry that she had surgery, but when you walk away with $6,000+ you need to fucking get this stuff done.
i get why that may have seemed like she just up and left and took all the money to you, but it wasn’t. it’s a day we celebrate that she survived having emergency brain surgery.
literally no one knew that. no one at all. this is the first time i am ever hearing about this. so that’s why people are calling her a scammer.
please stop complaining about her being called a scammer. and please stop blaming everyone else. look at it from everyone else’s perspective– michaela left the zine with over six grand, is basically completely out of contact, has her friends fighting on her behalf, and has broken multiple promises for information, as well as hasn’t refunded anyone yet. to people, that looks like a scam. when someone walks away with that amount of money and doesn’t even apologize or explain yeah, it’s going to look like a scam. stop trying to make other people look like the villain just because they’re calling her a scammer. these are people who lost money on this project and haven’t even been apologized to. they’re the victims here, not the villains.
this was me talking on michaela’s behalf and i’m not going to do it again. i’m angry that contributors pushed to her fall apart to this degree.
it’s the same with contributors–we put a lot of hard work into this zine. that’s our art and writing. it’s not just something you can throw away. michaela closed down the project without warning, took the money with her, and left all the zine contributors to pick up the pieces she left behind. it sucks. and we’re not the villains either. stop making us out to be.
and that pushing? she did not answer our questions. she wasn’t responding to us. i can show you screencaps if you like (but i’d have to get permission from the contributors involved) but we asked her over and over and over again for proof that she ordered anything or receipts or even, god forbid, a confirmation of the number of orders we got! and over and over, michaela refused to answer our questions and lied to us about things being ordered. we weren’t evil contributors who hounded her with messages. we were contributors who were continuously lied to and just wanted a few answers that michaela refused to give.
running a zine is hard and not everything can be answered quickly and not everything can satisfy everyone.
don’t talk to me like i haven’t run a zine before. yeah, it’s a lot of work, but michaela wasn’t doing anything. she wouldnt give us proof for anything. we threatened to pull out because michaela wasn’t answering questions and would not give us updates and was lying to us over and over. i’ve run zines. i’ve run projects. the number one thing you do is be transparent with people, and michaela was the opposite of that to her mods, contributors, and buyers.
fortunately, she was able to instead borrow money from her parents to pay everyone back despite the expenses already put into the zine on merch and shipping supplies. that’s her christmas present. money from her parents to make sure everyone who ordered the zine gets a refund.
i’m sorry if this is rude, but i don’t really care if it was her christmas present. that does not make me feel bad for her. over 250 people spent their money on this zine. they deserve their money back. and they also deserve an apology.
so honestly–stop defending michaela. it’s only making her look worse, that she can’t even defend herself and is instead having her friends do it. stop making people into villains for thinking that michaela might be a scammer. stop playing the victim.
