[ SECRET POST #3476 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3476 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 44 secrets from Secret Submission Post #497.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

08. http://i.imgur.com/X2x89Bl.png

[(Anonymous)]

Understandable after that mess

I liked HINABN, but the fall out was rather epic and Tessa did some sketchy things

[(Anonymous)]

the new comic is good
so is the one she's doing with johnny wander

maybe she just got sick of the old comic and it was very overwhelming to make and the fandom was too much and she just got freaked out. i dunno. it was years ago, people mess up but they can grow and be better later.

also someone will respond to me and be like SHE NEVER APOLOGIZED and yeah i guess but also i would probably just hope we didn't have to bring the thing up again if i was her especially if i moved on and was better about things now. i dunno

[(Anonymous)]

But wasn't there money involved? I didn't pay too much attention to it while is was going down, but I know accusations of her taking money and then not producing anything from it were being lobbied. Was that ever disproven or cleared up or...? Because if there is any truth to it, then it does make things more dicy.

[(Anonymous)]

from what i could gather she had a fall out with her publisher, which is very unfortunate but does happen, especially to a young creator with her first project.

i don't think she's a perfect innocent angel baby, i just feel like people liked her comic VERY MUCH and then when it went badly people got VERY ANGRY and none of it ever felt proportionate.

she legit seems to be a better artist/person/business person now with a big contract under her belt with established publishers. i just think in internet world people never move on or forgive "sins" and it feels super weird to me.

[greenvelvetcake]

People sank actual, real money into that that was never returned. Why should the fans so easily forgive something like that without even a "my bad" from the author? Like if she can't even sack up enough to apologize, I wouldn't say she'd grown from the experience and was better now.

[(Anonymous)]

+1. Publishing is a money pit, so if she stepped up and said sorry, I doubt people would even be so mad about the money. I doubt she got to keep much, if any, of it. And it would have built goodwill towards her next project.

[(Anonymous)]

She's not really better about things now considering she made people sink money into this yet never acknowledges any of that. The least she could do is stop trying to ignore it and go "sorry, I fucked up". As it is, she's just running away from the issue which is absolutely not a sign of maturity.

[(Anonymous)]

Idk, quiting a comic out of the blue and not even leaving a short, "I'm going on hiatus/quiting" message is kinda a dick move. It kinda implies you don't care about or respect your fanbase. If she had just left a short explanation on why she wasn't continuing instead of just leaving with no warning, there probably wouldn't of been as much backlash imo.

[(Anonymous)]

Except HINABN wasn't an isolated incident. She's ghosted on literally every production she's ever been a part of, disappointing so many people (who for some reason never learn and keep flocking back) every single time, and each time it's the same "waah waah a lot of things were going on and waah that's all i'm going to say about it waaaaah."

Which...whatever, no one's entitled to content, but with HINABN, actual money was thrown in that disappeared into the ether because she was too fucking flaky to deal with anything she'd gotten herself into. People were entitled to refunds; they weren't making donations. They were buying something that never came to them. That's shitty.

She's a decent artist and storyteller, but she's an absolutely shitty businessperson, and I don't blame anyone for being wary of her.

OP

[(Anonymous)]

"Good" is relative, I think it's boring and the story lacks a main, driving focus. It's all very floaty and unfocused and it just all ping-pongs back and forth.

I love Johnny Wander and was interested in their collab at first, but after the first couple pages was yawnin' and waiting for regular JW to start up again.

Also I don't really care if she apologizes or not (Tho the people who donated might like it?) I mostly just want an actual, final explanation on what exactly DID happen. Even one paragraph. One sentence. Is that really so much to ask for? :(

Re: OP again

[(Anonymous)]

*"Tho the people who donated might like it?"

I guess they didn't even donate, they were entitled to refunds - bad wording on my part there

[(Anonymous)]

Does anyone know where there's a good, succinct summary of the whole HIABN scandal? I remember it unfolding, but it took a lot of time and a lot of the details have faded in my brain.

[(Anonymous)]

Tessa took pre-order payments on paperbacks of her comic and then suddenly cut ties with everything. Stopped updating the webcomic, stopped answering messages from fans and the people who paid her never got the product they paid for or their money returned. A lot of people thought she had died.

After a bit some people that were close to her irl finally spread it around that she was still alive. She still never got back to her fans that had paid her, and as far as I know she's never apologized or even acknowledged what she did. Hell, her deviantART page and HINABN website are still exactly as they were the last time she posted - not even a "I've discontinued this webcomic" or anything like that.

[feotakahari]

Her new comic reminds me of when a story has been running so long that the writer no longer feels the need to introduce characters' personalities. They demonstrate their personality traits when the plot calls upon them, but the story doesn't go out of its way to show off what kind of people they are. The thing is, it's been like that since it started, so some of the characters still haven't gotten a proper introduction!

[(Anonymous)]

Why did she drop HINABN? Did she just get bored of it/lose interest like people do with fandoms they've been in for a long time?

[(Anonymous)]

No one knows. Apparently she still refuses to talk about it to this day. It's all very suspicious and shady imo.

[wannabe_influential]

Out of curiosity's sake, what is her new comic called?

OP

[(Anonymous)]

The new comic is called Not Drunk Enough! She hosts it at ndecomic.com.

It started out pretty well imo, very suspenseful, but as someone above commented, it feels like pretty much all the characters aren't being properly introduced and are just kinda floating and, imo, the story just ping-pongs all over the place with no real main, driving force.

Re: OP

[wannabe_influential]

Hmmm, I might give it a little look, see if I'm into but if what you're saying is true, it'll probably be something I'll be vaguely interested in for about a week and then totally forget about

[(Anonymous)]

Same. I haven't even bothered checking out the new comics. I can't go through that again.

The truly surreal part is how very specific my memories are of f!s circa 2010 when we all pretty much had this exact same conversation.

OP

[(Anonymous)]

"The truly surreal part is how very specific my memories are of f!s circa 2010 when we all pretty much had this exact same conversation."

Haha sorry - I know this is a tired topic, I just had to get it off my chest (I also was not around F!S in '10, so I wasn't aware just HOW tired the subject might be D: )

[soldatsasha]

I've never bothered to look up her new stuff, she just leaves too much of a bad taste in my mouth. I've had to flake on paying customers before, too, but that was always after I apologized and GAVE THEM A FULL REFUND. Sometimes life happens, and you can't complete a project, but what she did is just flat-out scamming both her publisher and her fans.

The worst part is HINABN wasn't an isolated project. She'd jumped ship on at least one other comic before that.

But, as much as I loved HINABN when I first read it, upon re-read it's frankly pretty bad. The pacing is all over the place and she crams what feels like two dozen character intros into two dozen pages. The fandom did a hell of a lot more to establish who Hanna and the zombie guy were than the comic itself does.

OP

[(Anonymous)]

Other people were talking about her flaky history further up, too; I'd never actually heard about it! I thought HINABN was the first time. I guess I'll have to google it.

I haven't actually read through it since it stopped - but I don't doubt you. The fandom (The fringes I was a part of, at least) was really fun, and now that you mention it I do remember lots of character-building fanon stuff going around!

Agreed, I've also had the unpleasant experience of having to flake on customers, but refunds and explanations are ALWAYS a thing that happens.

[(Anonymous)]

okay, this can be a wild speculation on my part, but I want to share it for what it's worth.

few years back, I don't even remember when exactly, I attended a con where I had a talk with a webcomic author, my friend, who happened to know TStone personally. we discussed relationships between a comic writer and their fanbase like should the creator get involved in fandom, do they own anything to fans, stuff like that. and of cource I came up with HINaBN as an example of bad relationship between creator and a fanbase. to my surprise my friend defended TStone (and that's how I got to know they know her personally so oops on my part). they said TStone's situation was really difficult to judge clearly but not b/c I'm wrong about fans being hurt, but because there was more to it than was revealed to the public (which DUH I guess?)

so what I gathered from our talk was that TStone, for some unrevealed reason, needed to end HINaBN, otherwise she'd be in a very bad situiation (that if she would've continued it it could've been very bad for her for some reason?) so the legal advise to her was that she just drops it b/c I guess her contract with the publisher doesn't say what to do in this case?

basically, as far as I got it, it means she has to stay silent about why she ended it and about the comic itself b/c as soon as she makes a statement as its creator she may suffer penalties or something like that. (and my friend was like 'see, that's a bad example, she just can't apologise without a lot of harm' heh)

so... this still doesn't explain anything really, but at least the bizzare decision to never give a reason for abandoning popular comic and never apologizing kinda makes sence. I mean, no matter how much job she still gets this was indeed a huge hit on her reputation, guessing by the comments above, among the readers especially, so there had to be a better reason than flakey'ness or fear of popularity or that she got bored.
then again, idk how much my friend knew, or if they were even right, m/b it's simple as that and an excuse. but here you go.