So, this "Gruppeteer" guy has a YouTube Channel. The upload date on the interview is 12/16/2016. This is Steph's write-up on the "News" site:
What’s a “Gruppeteer”, you ask? According to his various online profiles, he’s a young guy from New Hampshire, who hosts a YouTube show called Cartoons VS Cancer, and who “likes wearing pants”.
Gruppeteer Hansen invites people from the cartooning and animation industries to join him for interviews on his YouTube channel (Gruppet Studios); the Cartoons VS Cancer series is a fundraiser for his friend Maddie, who’s fighting Ewing Sarcoma.
He contacted us and asked to speak to Lynn, who agreed — below you can watch their interview, which they conducted via Skype.
Not sure if it's because no one set up Lynn with a camera for her side of the "Skype" session, but for whatever reason, the video consists of the "Gruppeteer" in an ugly "Snoopy" Christmas sweater and Santa hat, having an audio-only telephone interview with Lynn, allegedly via Skype--so you only see this guy reacting (or not reacting) to what Lynn is saying. There were times I seriously thought the video had frozen up, he was so still.
Random notes:
- Our intrepid interviewer correctly pronounces "Johnston" (including the "T") the first and last time he says the name, but just about every mention in between comes out as a lazy "Johnson."
- In her inevitable story about naming the main characters, Lynn once again revises Elly Jansen's story, this time aging her up so she dies "in high school."
- She of course wastes no time name-dropping "Sparky and Jeannie Schulz," this time in the context of saying that she and her family made an annual trip to their arena in Santa Rosa.
- Grup-guy walks right into her trap, sharing that he read the "Schulz" biography and asking if "Sparky" really did threaten to have Snoopy hit by a truck if Farley were to die in the strip. And of course she repeats the "stupid girl" story.
- She tells a story about when "Ziggy was sick." She of course means Ziggy's creator, but she can't seem to think of his name, so she's all, "the guy who draws the little character Ziggy." She and other cartoonists ostensibly banded together to contribute scripting to the comic but could not replicate the art.
- The worn-out old story behind the worn-out old "canoe accident" arc
- Repeat of the lie that she never allowed anyone else to draw the characters--just inking
and coloring. - Webmaster Steph gets a shout out, and Lynn appears to be suggesting that Kevin Strang still colors the strip.
- Sings praises for graphic novels, as if she knows something about this.
- Lynn's advice for getting into the industry, again, is "do lots of stuff for free."
- Lynn has another rant about us. "The crazy people online who will lash out at you." Lynn is now calling us "the fungus people." Apparently, we are all basement-dwellers. "Their life is to say horrible things to creative people who deserve better."
- "A girl came up to me at a book signing in the States, and she told me who she was. And she was a 'fungus person'!" Sheesh, I wonder who that was! Lynn says that the "fungus person" in question told Lynn her online handle and wanted Lynn to sign a book. Lynn told her to "go away," and the "fungus person" asked her if she realized how important their role was, offering feedback, but Lynn refused to see the criticism as constructive. And the "fungus person" was just "furious." Gruppeteer applauds like a little seal over Lynn's refusal to sign this snarkertroll's book, as Lynn allows that perhaps she was being "discourteous." There goes Lynn's latest effort to dispel that stereotype about Canadians being relentlessly polite.
- I am guessing this took place during the "Coffee Talk" days. Lynn noted that the person submitted questions she herself did not see, but that Steph received and screened.