McHanzone Tumblr blog admin Lynn/Trash guilty of misuse of Bullseye Zine proceeds intended for charity.
Please read the following even if you are not a member of any Overwatch fandom. This post contains sensitive information that needs to be brought to light. We ask that you use discretion when reacting to this situation. This individual’s actions have been dishonest and people have every right to express their feelings regarding it. This does not, however, extend to the right to harass, threaten, abuse, or in any other way use hateful or violent language, or language that attempts to incite hate or violence against any individual or group involved in this situation. No such actions or language will be tolerated.
The Mchanzo Discord server moderator team and the Bullseye Zine Organizational Committee have recently discovered information that has shocked and saddened all of us. We were made aware of the situation on October 23rd of 2017, but we have delayed making this news public until all the evidence could be examined, hoping to find that our suspicions were unfounded.
However, now that the facts have been thoroughly investigated, we regret to announce that the McHanzone Tumblr blog administrator and Bullseye Zine organizer Lynn has been taking money from the zine’s proceeds that was intended to be donated to charity (Stonewall Japan and True Colors Fund) and using it for personal purposes. This includes, but is not limited to, transfers of varying sums from the zine’s Paypal account to her personal accounts, as well as multiple purchases of personal items such as Voltron charms. Our trust has been violated, as has the trust of every individual who purchased copies of the zine, along with every contributor, organizer, judge, and supporter of the project.
We must make it perfectly clear that no other person is culpable in this situation, and that Lynn was solely responsible for the misappropriation of the funds.
Unfortunately, this was due to the fact that she had sole control of the zine’s Paypal account, and no other person had access to zine funds in any way. Had such accountability been established at the beginning, this would not have been possible. This was an error on our part, for which we apologize and that we regret deeply, since she chose to use her control over the zine’s funds dishonestly.
This situation was initially discovered and brought to our attention by the other former administrator of the McHanzone Tumblr blog, who goes by the screen name Ghost. Shortly after Ghost retired from the Tumblr blog, they visited the Mchanzo Gmail account to log out. Their attention was drawn to a large number of Paypal receipts, for which there appeared to be no corresponding zine-related purchases. Naturally, they went to Lynn directly, assuming there was some legitimate reason for these transfers. Lynn’s responses were vague and limited to excuses regarding shipping rates and the purchase of chains and other accessories to be used in the packages sent to zine purchasers.
When Ghost pointed out the discrepancies between the zine-related costs and the Paypal transfers, Lynn became defensive, claiming that her mother had pressured her to take sums of money from the zine account amounting to at least $1,400 US dollars, to be used to cover home expenses. She claimed that she would return this money when she received her next paycheck. This money has not been returned, to our knowledge, and when Ghost recently asked her to provide evidence that she had returned the money, Lynn responded only by saying, “Are you kidding me?” and producing nothing.
When Ghost questioned Lynn regarding the numerous smaller transfers and receipts for Voltron merchandise, Lynn became totally unresponsive. She immediately proceeded to lock Ghost out of the Gmail account and, oddly enough, delete her personal Facebook profile.
Screenshots of PayPal Receipts: https://imgur.com/a/wTIEg
As we investigated the financial situation, a number of other facts surfaced that we also feel obligated to share with the public. The reason we think this is necessary is that all of the information together demonstrates a clear pattern of systemic dishonesty, refusal to work as part of a team, placing personal interests above all other concerns, and manipulative, controlling behavior toward others. We have broken the information into two sections, for the purposes of clarity.
The first thing we must say regarding the zine, is that despite the actions of one person, it represents the hard work and dedication of an amazingly talented, supportive, creative, and lovely group of people who gave their time and labor to the zine for no reason other than their love of the McHanzo ship and of creating art and pieces of writing to celebrate it. It is deeply unfortunate that their beautiful work has been marred by this situation, and we urge you to support them and show them all the love and compassion that you can. They are the ones who have truly been injured by this person’s actions, and we wish the very best for all of them.
While speaking together and with those involved in the creation of the zine, and examining .PDF copies of the zine, we have discovered a number of problems with Lynn’s management of the project. Had theft of the funds not occurred, we would have addressed Lynn’s mismanagement of the zine internally, but we now feel obligated to report it, as it is a relevant piece of the larger situation.
1. Creative control issues
Lynn took complete creative control of the zine, disregarding the opinions of the judges and cherry-picking contestants that she personally liked. This included removing candidates that judges had agreed upon based on ships she deemed unseemly or had associations with people she disliked or had spoken out against her. She repeatedly made unilateral decisions about the project and ignored input from the rest of the organizational team.
2. Design and editing issues
Lynn did not allow team members (many of whom are professional graphic designers and book publishers) to assist with the layout. Our editor, whose name is on the zine and who now appears to be responsible for Lynn’s bad decisions, was never sent the proofs of the zine before it went to print (as had been agreed upon), which resulted in a zine that is difficult to read and full of errors. Titles and author names have been omitted from written pieces, making it unclear where one piece ends and another begins. No table of contents has been included in the front matter, so in order to find out who wrote a piece, one must find the contributors list in the very back (where one contributor’s URL has even been misspelled) and reference the page number.
3. Failure to fulfill the terms of explicit agreements and verbal promises
The zine’s panel of judges, who spent many hours examining more than 200 applications to the zine (which included performing background checks on everyone sent through to the next round of voting), were promised free copies of the zine in return for their work. After the work was done (and much of it disregarded), Lynn informed them that due to the finances not meeting the need, the judges would no longer receive what they were promised for their work. There was also this interaction with a user who had been promised a spot.
Additionally, Lynn has failed to distribute the .PDF copies of the zine in the timeframe promised to those who purchased them. There have been multiple instances of her delaying sending out the .PDFs to people due to personal activities, such as traveling to Los Angeles to see Thor: Ragnarok and attending Blizzcon. Neither of these should have taken precedence over sending out products to the individuals who paid for them.
4. Falsely inflated shipping rates
Lynn reported shipping costs for the physical copies of the zine that she falsely inflated, limiting the scope the zine could reach in favor of receiving more money for shipping from purchasers. This was revealed when some of the judges and the other admin confronted her about the prices through private messages. It should be noted that Lynn did not consult Ghost about the prices beforehand.
Zine screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/SqTgO
We have discovered many other instances of personal dishonesty in Lynn’s behavior. For example, in April of 2017, she took payment for an emergency commission from a friend and then never delivered on the content, citing the fact that she and the individual were no longer friends, despite repeated questions regarding whether it would be delivered. It was also revealed by Lynn on the Mchanzo server that she was accepting payment to write other people’s university coursework. She then proceeded to remove people from the server who disagreed with her behavior.
The Mchanzo Central Discord Server
The McHanzone Tumblr blog (mchanzo.tumblr.com) has been run by the two administrators, Lynn and Ghost, for the past year. They also ran the affiliated Mchanzo Central Discord server together, up until very recently, when Ghost stepped back into a less active role while they were caring for some pressing family matters at home. The Mchanzo Central Discord server is actively used by a community of around 700 people who come there each day to socialize over a shared interest, and the Tumblr blog has a following of about 17,000 people. Lynn also manages the Mchanzone twitter account and runs an unrelated Tumblr blog under the name of latinxlance. Her personal twitter account is palancedin.
This information is relevant because in the time since Ghost spoke to Lynn regarding the missing funds, she has begun to behave in an increasingly unpredictable and erratic manner, particularly regarding the Discord server. She made some vague statements about changing things in the server, culminating in her stated intention to simply delete the very popular server which is home to a vibrant and active community of users, and to “start fresh” with an entirely new one, going so far as to delete the server’s logo and replace it with a plain “M” (it has since been restored by a moderator).
When the moderators objected to deletion of the server and asked for her reasons, she stated her wish to disaffiliate the Tumblr blog from the server, citing “complaints” that she had allegedly received from users (she has refused to provide any evidence of any such complaints to the moderator team). She has acted in an increasingly hostile manner toward the other moderators of the Discord server, accusing them of such things as personal disloyalty, maintaining friendships with people with whom she has had conflict in the past, and behaving “passive-aggressively” toward her. She has made threatening statements regarding her anger issues in the moderator chat, and stated to a mutual acquaintance in a private message that she intends to delete the Mchanzo Central server without warning on some unspecified date.
After the mods objected to her deleting the server, she was uncommunicative for several days, despite being active on Twitter and other Discord servers. She then announced on the Mchanzo Central server that it was no longer to be affiliated with the Tumblr blog and stated her intention to “go invisible,” no longer participating in any way, but (significantly) retaining sole ownership of said server. She has refused to transfer ownership to another person, disregarding the wishes of the other moderators and ignoring the fact that Ghost personally built the server from the ground up, and it represents hundreds of hours of their time and labor. It has since become clear that she has done this in order to hold the server hostage, in an attempt to prevent publication of the fact of her theft of the funds from the Bullseye Zine. The rationale being that if she controls the server where everyone communicates, it will be difficult to make the information known, since she can simply delete the server without warning at any time she chooses.
Link to Server Screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/wuBPF
Why does all of this matter?
We believe this information is important to everyone. Lynn is the administrator of an extremely popular blog in the Overwatch fandom, and has gained a lot of influence because of it. She has also retained sole ownership of a popular Discord server, despite stating that she wants nothing to do with it, in order to attempt to control the publication of her theft of charity funds from the Bullseye Zine. We do not believe that a person like this should be allowed to continue to lie, steal, manipulate others, and abuse her power in this way.
We feel that actions need to be taken to rectify this situation:
All money returned to the zine funds, and evidence of this shown to the community.
No further projects like this, involving money, be undertaken by Lynn.
The Mchanzo Central Discord server previously associated with the Mchanzone blog be transferred to one of the other server staff members, rather than left under Lynn’s control. As of November 16th, Lynn has denied requests by server staff to relinquish ownership. In the meantime, some staff of the Discord server have created this alternative for people to join if they wish.
We do not want this situation to reflect on the Overwatch or McHanzo community as a whole. This situation was caused by the actions of one person, and we hope that the rest of the community understands this.
I just want to say, while a message is being sent to the community about something that I was involved in, that since I quit the blog I’ve been talking to a lot of members of the community who had issues with me in my time there, and I understand their criticism and I want to take it all on board. I fully admit that I was complacent to a lot of things that I didn’t agree with in my time at the blog, I sat back and let a lot of things happen that I wasn’t comfortable with, and I let people down in that way. I played my own part in making mistakes, too, and I’m working on tracking down people affected by them and offering apologies, so if you’re reading this and feel like I have something to own up to as well, or if I ever upset you and you want a resolution, please reach out to me in DMs on twitter at http://twitter.com/taibhsemisteire
