Artkour/gorehund issues

So I’ve tried to address this group before and either gotten shut down or accused of just holding a grudge and pushing a personal agenda but honestly I’m over it, I wanna bring some pretty shit behavior to light in the community regarding artkour and gorehund.

In part I’m bringing this up because of cordial’s tweet on how they’ve been made to feel but also to discuss a trend of abusive toxic behavior from this group starting with my own experiences.

Gorehund was an incredibly close friend of mine and I lived with them off and on until 2016 where their toxic behavior came to a head and I cut off all contact with them. We’d let our friend Cass who owned Bigjaw costumes move in with us and began working with them on suits but our work environment quickly dissolved, Robin (gorehund) wanted a lot of control in this business and created a lot of hostility in our workroom to the point that I eventually felt too uncomfortable and stopped working with them, leaving only Robin and Cass. Eventually Cass fired Robin because she would lie and misrepresent herself as having ownership in Bigjaw to people as well as constantly asking for advance payment for work she would promise to do either for bills or to go to cons while never delivering on said work. As a reaction to this both Robin, and Kour who had started coming to our house to work with Robin (and was even storing materials in our workroom) started vindictively lying to Cass’ customers about things such as their workflow as a disabled person to scare them into demanding refunds eventually driving Bigjaw and Cass’ reputation into ruin, not only from a business perspective but damaging many of their friendships and forcing them into extreme financial stress due to issuing refunds over the unsubstantiated rumors Kour and Robin had spread about them. Their justifications for what they’d done often stemmed from pointing to the situation as Cass being undependable despite the fact that Kour and Robin created the situation, in many ways exacerbating seizures Cass had through the stress that left them unable to work for days at a time. Cass was also dealing with a family member being missing and presumed dead at the time as well as managing a lot of family discord, during this Robin and Kour demanded access to Cass’ personal business emails and bank statements, and when they refused because it made them uncomfortable (and Robin, not actually having ownership in the business frankly had no goddamn business having access), Kour and Robin began pushing the narrative that Cass was untrustworthy. During all of this I practically begged Cass to say something about it or let me share my experience but they always declined, fearful of the retaliation Kour or Robin would rile up against them. I’m only now fully explaining this situation because Cass has finally gotten out of Florida away from these people and income independent from the fandom.

Cass and I did the majority of work on a body suit for one of Kour’s suits with touchups from Robin where my seams needed fixed and Kour eventually stole fur from us to remake the body before sale to exclude Cass and I, also never returning the body to us or paying us for keeping it.

Robin herself has been the target of at least 2 artist beware postings, the most recent I’m aware of she placed the blame on commissioners for not managing her time, as if they’d paid her to be her secretary and at the time of me moving out, her portfolio was full of traditional badges that she’d done long before and just never sent to the commissioners. I have no knowledge if she eventually did send them out after I moved but when I last lived with her she still had a lot of them.

Cass and I’s circumstances with the gaslighting and aggression we lived with along with the stress we’ve dealt with since extend in detail long beyond this summary but I want to focus on other people’s experiences with them.

Back when Robin designed her inkblot toon shirt another artist had a similar idea for commissions completely unrelated to Robin’s, even though it was a coincidence they apologized and backed off on doing said commissions, despite this Kour went out of their way to interrupt interactions at cons between this artist and their customers to intimidate and bully them. I’m omitting their name because they like Cass was, are concerned about retaliation from Kour and will leave it up to them to ID themselves but I’m bringing this up because it’s part of a trend where Kour intimidates people with smaller followings who may feel they would not be able to stand up to Kour’s social presence, often on behalf of Gorehund’s grudges.

Artists we are close with who vend their merch and art in the dealers den skipped going to FWA this year due to feeling unsafe there from the past few years of harassment and intimidation they’ve received from Robin and Kour’s circle, again Kour’s actions being not unlike that of an attack dog on behalf of Robin. Again, I will keep these people anonymous and allow them to identify themselves at their own discretion out of respect for their fear of backlash. The point in sharing these stories is I want to point out that there is an established pattern of this group harassing and intimidating people usually, those who they perceive will not stand up for themselves against the social clout Kour and Gorehund’s circle have. There are literally people who feel unwelcome at cons where they -make their livelihood- because of this group.

Since cordial’s post we have heard similar stories from multiple people in private and would encourage you to add on to this if you have one and feel comfortable enough to do so, their bullying is predicated by their assumption that you feel unable to stand up for yourself against their social presence and collecting our shared experiences is the best way to combat this behavior.

In addition Kour has been brought in on a joke Robin has made for years about making a horse suit and naming it “nickers” so she can yell things like “get that nicker out of here” which… hopefully I don’t have to spell out where that’s coming from. I believe this screenshot is from 2015 so it’s not new but given how long this joke has been a thing I’m doubtful they’ve moved beyond it. [screenshot of nickers/sha neigh neigh tweets]

I won’t sit here and tell you you’re a bad person for owning their merch or hanging out with them because it’s likely you had no idea, however we as a fandom HAVE to stop looking past the fucked up behavior of people just because we like their art or suits or had fun with them in a room party for an hour or two or whatever. We NEED to stop idolizing people based on their suits or art or personality and hold people accountable, if you enjoy someone’s work why would you let them get away with being abusive or manipulative instead of demanding better from them? When you know someone continues to act abusive and don’t hold them accountable for it, don’t ask them to do better, then we have a problem. Stop enabling people to spend their social currency on treating others like shit just because you like their art or are thirsty for their suit(s).