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thanfiction (thanfiction) replied to your LiveJournal post in which you said:
To everyone celebrating it today, I mean.
Some year I'm going to spend Thanksgiving with an American family. (I'll wait to be invited, I mean, I won't just show up on your doorstep with the children.) It always looks like so much fun--you make a much bigger deal of it than Canadians do, and just once I want to be there for it.
Their reply was:
You know when I said that DenCo was open door to anyone who wanted to come, I just wish you and the kiddos had known a bit sooner. We'd have loved to have you.
To everyone celebrating it today, I mean.
Some year I'm going to spend Thanksgiving with an American family. (I'll wait to be invited, I mean, I won't just show up on your doorstep with the children.) It always looks like so much fun--you make a much bigger deal of it than Canadians do, and just once I want to be there for it.
Their reply was:
You know when I said that DenCo was open door to anyone who wanted to come, I just wish you and the kiddos had known a bit sooner. We'd have loved to have you.
Tumblr
To necromommycon@yahoo.ca
Jul 10, 2013
andythanfiction asked a question
Hey, would you be willing to share your phone number and/or get on Skype? I'd like to talk to you but I'm having kind of a lousy paranoia night and I'd rather not put it all in writing.
http://andythanfiction.tumblr.com/post/44496687605/how-many-languages-do-you-know
How many languages do you know?
Six to varying degrees from fluent to I-can-talk-to-small-children
http://andythanfiction.tumblr.com/post/26741450761/books-covers-and-judging-them-not-lest-ye-be
Actually, that guy is me. He’s 28, and he’s been on his own since he was a teenager. He got the tattoos years ago, and they’re in French (which he speaks, along with Spanish, Classical Greek, Latin, and Gaelic)
More to come, I'm sure.
How many languages do you know?
Six to varying degrees from fluent to I-can-talk-to-small-children
http://andythanfiction.tumblr.com/post/26741450761/books-covers-and-judging-them-not-lest-ye-be
Actually, that guy is me. He’s 28, and he’s been on his own since he was a teenager. He got the tattoos years ago, and they’re in French (which he speaks, along with Spanish, Classical Greek, Latin, and Gaelic)
More to come, I'm sure.
http://andythanfiction.tumblr.com/post/45250481854/what-languages-do-you-speak-fluently
What languages do you speak fluently?
The only one I’m currently in full practice on is English, though Supernatural’s getting me much stronger on my Latin again. I’ve been there in Irish, French, and Spanish at various times in my life, but I wouldn’t call myself truly fluent (which to me means able to express myself with complete ease and no need to pause to consider how to say anything, only what to say) in any of those atm due to disuse, though I could probably get there again quickly.
What languages do you speak fluently?
The only one I’m currently in full practice on is English, though Supernatural’s getting me much stronger on my Latin again. I’ve been there in Irish, French, and Spanish at various times in my life, but I wouldn’t call myself truly fluent (which to me means able to express myself with complete ease and no need to pause to consider how to say anything, only what to say) in any of those atm due to disuse, though I could probably get there again quickly.
http://www.dailyrepublic.com/news/fairfield/hate-extortion-lies-underlie-fairfield-murder-suicide/
Hate, extortion, lies underlie Fairfield murder-suicide
By Jess Sullivan
May 9, 2011 |
FAIRFIELD — Five months ago, the relationship between Jason M. Eisenberg and Brittany M. Quinn had become so ugly that he sent her mother an email that included this: “I pray that the Lord’s most terrible wrath be upon your daughter’s head.”
The email was included in court records for a restraining order Eisenberg tried unsuccessfully to obtain to keep Quinn from moving back into their Venus Drive home after they broke up in June 2009 and she moved away. She moved back in late last year.
Eisenberg shot Quinn multiple times Saturday afternoon. Shortly after killing her, he put the murder weapon to his head and fatally shot himself. Eisenberg also shot two roommates at the home he and Quinn bought back in 2008. Anthony Chambers, 41, was fatally shot in the head and chest.
Andrew Blake, 27, who had locked himself in a bedroom, was shot in the foot after Eisenberg fired through the door. He called 911 after the first shots were fired.
Police on Monday labeled Eisenberg and Quinn’s relationship as a common law marriage, adding that they were also business partners. Court records reflect that they had a heated, combative relationship over money.
Eisenberg and Quinn had been embroiled in an ugly dispute over selling the Venus Drive home and another home they bought in Sacramento in 2007. Eisenberg, 37, sued Quinn, 27, last year over the homes. She countersued him last week, claiming that he forged some documents when trying to sell the Sacramento home and that he lied when he claimed he was the only one to put up money for buying the Venus Drive home.
Police say Eisenberg was served notice Friday on Quinn’s lawsuit. She was dead the next day.
In the past, Quinn had made other, more serious accusations against Eisenberg. Those accusations came after she demanded that he pay her $195,000 back in April 2010, telling him in emails that if he didn’t pay up she would cry rape and claim he committed larceny and tax fraud.
“The actions taken if such a step should be required by your noncompliance with this sole and final offer of settlement will, if deemed applicable, extend to criminal charges including but not limited to grand theft/larceny, physical assault, sexual battery, kidnap and sexual assault,” Quinn wrote in one email.
Eisenberg did not pay. Instead, he went to Fairfield police to report possible extortion.
Quinn later filed police reports with Fairfield police and with police in Napa and Sacramento. Fairfield police deemed Quinn’s claims of domestic violence as not credible.
Quinn’s demand for money defined her relationship with Eisenberg as employee-employer — working for him and his advertising and website production company, Skyhouse Media, that he ran out of the Venus Drive home.
Quinn claimed she held more than a dozen different job titles between February 2006 and June 2009 when she left their Venus Drive home. Each job was listed with an hourly billing rate. For example, Quinn claimed she wad worked 1,200 hours as a massage therapist for Eisenberg at $13.53 per hour for a total of more than $16,000. Her 4,380 hours as a personal chef at $19.82 per hour was worth more than $86,000, she claimed.
The money demands were done via email after she had moved away. Eisenberg tried unsuccessfully to track down Quinn. He even talked with her mother, who thought maybe she was somewhere in Southern California.
After being gone for nearly a year and a half, Quinn showed up at Eisenberg’s front door shortly before Thanksgiving in November 2010.
Eisenberg’s attempt to get a restraining order was fought by Quinn, who said barring her from the home “would render me entirely homeless and destitute and cause extreme undue hardship.” She claimed that she had been “reduced to living in a tent for 60 days” and had been spending nights sleeping in a friend’s car in a Sacramento apartment complex.
Judge John Ellis did not block Quinn from the house but he did order her not to harass, annoy or threaten Eisenberg.
Quinn expressed cautious optimism that everything would work out.
“I have arranged for an additional neutral unrelated third party (Mr. Andrew Blake) to reside peaceably with me as an independent witness to all proceedings,” she told Ellis.
Blake was the only witness to survive the shootings.
Hate, extortion, lies underlie Fairfield murder-suicide
By Jess Sullivan
May 9, 2011 |
FAIRFIELD — Five months ago, the relationship between Jason M. Eisenberg and Brittany M. Quinn had become so ugly that he sent her mother an email that included this: “I pray that the Lord’s most terrible wrath be upon your daughter’s head.”
The email was included in court records for a restraining order Eisenberg tried unsuccessfully to obtain to keep Quinn from moving back into their Venus Drive home after they broke up in June 2009 and she moved away. She moved back in late last year.
Eisenberg shot Quinn multiple times Saturday afternoon. Shortly after killing her, he put the murder weapon to his head and fatally shot himself. Eisenberg also shot two roommates at the home he and Quinn bought back in 2008. Anthony Chambers, 41, was fatally shot in the head and chest.
Andrew Blake, 27, who had locked himself in a bedroom, was shot in the foot after Eisenberg fired through the door. He called 911 after the first shots were fired.
Police on Monday labeled Eisenberg and Quinn’s relationship as a common law marriage, adding that they were also business partners. Court records reflect that they had a heated, combative relationship over money.
Eisenberg and Quinn had been embroiled in an ugly dispute over selling the Venus Drive home and another home they bought in Sacramento in 2007. Eisenberg, 37, sued Quinn, 27, last year over the homes. She countersued him last week, claiming that he forged some documents when trying to sell the Sacramento home and that he lied when he claimed he was the only one to put up money for buying the Venus Drive home.
Police say Eisenberg was served notice Friday on Quinn’s lawsuit. She was dead the next day.
In the past, Quinn had made other, more serious accusations against Eisenberg. Those accusations came after she demanded that he pay her $195,000 back in April 2010, telling him in emails that if he didn’t pay up she would cry rape and claim he committed larceny and tax fraud.
“The actions taken if such a step should be required by your noncompliance with this sole and final offer of settlement will, if deemed applicable, extend to criminal charges including but not limited to grand theft/larceny, physical assault, sexual battery, kidnap and sexual assault,” Quinn wrote in one email.
Eisenberg did not pay. Instead, he went to Fairfield police to report possible extortion.
Quinn later filed police reports with Fairfield police and with police in Napa and Sacramento. Fairfield police deemed Quinn’s claims of domestic violence as not credible.
Quinn’s demand for money defined her relationship with Eisenberg as employee-employer — working for him and his advertising and website production company, Skyhouse Media, that he ran out of the Venus Drive home.
Quinn claimed she held more than a dozen different job titles between February 2006 and June 2009 when she left their Venus Drive home. Each job was listed with an hourly billing rate. For example, Quinn claimed she wad worked 1,200 hours as a massage therapist for Eisenberg at $13.53 per hour for a total of more than $16,000. Her 4,380 hours as a personal chef at $19.82 per hour was worth more than $86,000, she claimed.
The money demands were done via email after she had moved away. Eisenberg tried unsuccessfully to track down Quinn. He even talked with her mother, who thought maybe she was somewhere in Southern California.
After being gone for nearly a year and a half, Quinn showed up at Eisenberg’s front door shortly before Thanksgiving in November 2010.
Eisenberg’s attempt to get a restraining order was fought by Quinn, who said barring her from the home “would render me entirely homeless and destitute and cause extreme undue hardship.” She claimed that she had been “reduced to living in a tent for 60 days” and had been spending nights sleeping in a friend’s car in a Sacramento apartment complex.
Judge John Ellis did not block Quinn from the house but he did order her not to harass, annoy or threaten Eisenberg.
Quinn expressed cautious optimism that everything would work out.
“I have arranged for an additional neutral unrelated third party (Mr. Andrew Blake) to reside peaceably with me as an independent witness to all proceedings,” she told Ellis.
Blake was the only witness to survive the shootings.
http://www.wcvarones.com/2011/05/greenspans-body-count-anthony-chambers.html
Today's episode of Greenspan's Body Count occurred at 5245 Venus Drive in the town of Green Valley between the hellholes of Vallejo and Vacaville in northern California.
Jason Eisenberg, a 37-year old producer of local TV commercials, had bought a foreclosure with his girlfriend Brittany Quinn back in 2008. Aspiring to be young real estate moguls, they also had another house in nearby Sacramento county. Well, they took out some home equity, the housing values kept dropping, and you know the rest of the story. So Saturday Jason went on a killing spree, killing not only himself and Quinn, but also their roommate Anthony Chambers.
Court records show that Quinn sued Eisenberg last Wednesday for equity in their house and to be the sole owner of another home in Sacramento County. The year before, Eisenberg sent what Quinn believed to be a notarized document transferring the title of a home in Sacramento to her. However, Eisenberg then removed Quinn from the $158,400 home equity line of credit. Quinn is still listed on the mortgage loan for $47,999.
Eisenberg also opened a restraining order case against Quinn last November.
The next month, police said Quinn obtained a civil court order allowing her to move back into the residence. However, since that time, they continued to disagree about their property, assets and living arrangements, authorities said.
Today's episode of Greenspan's Body Count occurred at 5245 Venus Drive in the town of Green Valley between the hellholes of Vallejo and Vacaville in northern California.
Jason Eisenberg, a 37-year old producer of local TV commercials, had bought a foreclosure with his girlfriend Brittany Quinn back in 2008. Aspiring to be young real estate moguls, they also had another house in nearby Sacramento county. Well, they took out some home equity, the housing values kept dropping, and you know the rest of the story. So Saturday Jason went on a killing spree, killing not only himself and Quinn, but also their roommate Anthony Chambers.
Court records show that Quinn sued Eisenberg last Wednesday for equity in their house and to be the sole owner of another home in Sacramento County. The year before, Eisenberg sent what Quinn believed to be a notarized document transferring the title of a home in Sacramento to her. However, Eisenberg then removed Quinn from the $158,400 home equity line of credit. Quinn is still listed on the mortgage loan for $47,999.
Eisenberg also opened a restraining order case against Quinn last November.
The next month, police said Quinn obtained a civil court order allowing her to move back into the residence. However, since that time, they continued to disagree about their property, assets and living arrangements, authorities said.
Andy claims LOTR bores him to the point of sleep in 2013
(Anonymous) 2015-04-13 11:28 pm (UTC)(link)http://andythanfiction.tumblr.com/post/34495418231/i-like-stephen-king-style-supernatural-realism
I like Stephen King-style supernatural realism, but not Harry Potter-style “and technically this is in the here and now but we’re going to use a version of that where none of the rules apply.” LotR and high fantasy or Star Wars/most scifi makes me want to vomit myself to sleep. Star Trek is childhood nostalgia feels but nothing more. I was busy in the early 2000s and only have seen one episode of Buffy, the singing one, which was funny enough but didn’t really interest me. I find Dr. Who enjoyable in a “oh, you’re watching that, cool, I’ll join you” way but can’t get into the fandom and it gives me no creative bunnies or really any feels beyond some about Rose/Ten that are entirely my own issues about losing a companion. Ditto Sherlock. Ditto Movie!Avengers. Torchwood I like a lot more but wish that there was more characterization and less sexploitation, and again, I don’t really have any fandom interest or creative feels. Hunger Games I could write a lot of meta about and I enjoyed the costuming, but it passed from my interest faster than a take-out Chinese lunch special. Glee I watch for cultural relevance and iPod fodder and the enviable talents of Chris Colfer and Darren Criss. I would be all over Bernard Cornwell fandom if it existed outside Sharpe, ditto Clive Cussler. My opinions on most things are pretty evident on my blog. Not really a shipper. The Daydverse also gives a pretty good sampling of the kinds of stories that interest me.
So, the reason for all that, and the question I’m posing: Do you think I’d like Supernatural?
No, not do YOU like Supernatural. Do you think I would like Supernatural?
I like Stephen King-style supernatural realism, but not Harry Potter-style “and technically this is in the here and now but we’re going to use a version of that where none of the rules apply.” LotR and high fantasy or Star Wars/most scifi makes me want to vomit myself to sleep. Star Trek is childhood nostalgia feels but nothing more. I was busy in the early 2000s and only have seen one episode of Buffy, the singing one, which was funny enough but didn’t really interest me. I find Dr. Who enjoyable in a “oh, you’re watching that, cool, I’ll join you” way but can’t get into the fandom and it gives me no creative bunnies or really any feels beyond some about Rose/Ten that are entirely my own issues about losing a companion. Ditto Sherlock. Ditto Movie!Avengers. Torchwood I like a lot more but wish that there was more characterization and less sexploitation, and again, I don’t really have any fandom interest or creative feels. Hunger Games I could write a lot of meta about and I enjoyed the costuming, but it passed from my interest faster than a take-out Chinese lunch special. Glee I watch for cultural relevance and iPod fodder and the enviable talents of Chris Colfer and Darren Criss. I would be all over Bernard Cornwell fandom if it existed outside Sharpe, ditto Clive Cussler. My opinions on most things are pretty evident on my blog. Not really a shipper. The Daydverse also gives a pretty good sampling of the kinds of stories that interest me.
So, the reason for all that, and the question I’m posing: Do you think I’d like Supernatural?
No, not do YOU like Supernatural. Do you think I would like Supernatural?
Re: Andy claims LOTR bores him to the point of sleep in 2013
(Anonymous) 2015-04-18 03:47 am (UTC)(link)I was busy in the early 2000s
Wow.
some about Rose/Ten that are entirely my own issues about losing a companion.
*shakes head* Again Brittany.
Wow.
some about Rose/Ten that are entirely my own issues about losing a companion.
*shakes head* Again Brittany.
Re: Andy claims LOTR bores him to the point of sleep in 2013
(Anonymous) - 2015-04-18 20:22 (UTC) - ExpandAndy's bizarre post about wanting to make out with his underage followers
(Anonymous) 2015-04-13 11:48 pm (UTC)(link)I’m so glad you’re not all here, because I’m in a really friendly mood and I would probably make out with most of you. Which would be bad because a lot of you are underage and I’m like half again older than of age even if I don’t look it. So there would be jail. I would probably even be willing to try making out with some of the boys if they were pretty because it’s like, you don’t have to be sexually attracted to someone for making out to be fun expecially if you’re drunk and they’re pretty, and I’ve gotten a lot more relaxed about omg would that make me gay since being around fandom.
ETA: I’m glad I’m not a fictional character because if an andro-pretty fictional boy said that on Tumblr there’d be like planetary levels of shipping inside of ten minutes. If I were fictional, I’d come back sober and find out I’d been shipped with chairs and grapefruit and my entire follower list. One at a time and in groups. Even the dead frog. AND WHY DOESN’T THE DEAD FROG HAVE A TUMBLR YET, HUH, KAREN? DON’T YOU LOVE HIM ANY MORE! BECAUSE I DO! I LOVE EVERYONE!
ETA: I’m glad I’m not a fictional character because if an andro-pretty fictional boy said that on Tumblr there’d be like planetary levels of shipping inside of ten minutes. If I were fictional, I’d come back sober and find out I’d been shipped with chairs and grapefruit and my entire follower list. One at a time and in groups. Even the dead frog. AND WHY DOESN’T THE DEAD FROG HAVE A TUMBLR YET, HUH, KAREN? DON’T YOU LOVE HIM ANY MORE! BECAUSE I DO! I LOVE EVERYONE!
Re: Andy's bizarre post about wanting to make out with his underage followers
(Anonymous) 2015-04-14 12:30 am (UTC)(link)Link to post:
http://andythanfiction.tumblr.com/post/34663445569/im-so-glad-youre-not-all-here-because-im-in-a
http://andythanfiction.tumblr.com/post/34663445569/im-so-glad-youre-not-all-here-because-im-in-a
Re: Andy's bizarre post about wanting to make out with his underage followers
(Anonymous) - 2015-04-14 00:31 (UTC) - ExpandRe: Andy's bizarre post about wanting to make out with his underage followers
(Anonymous) - 2015-04-14 02:58 (UTC) - ExpandRe: Andy's bizarre post about wanting to make out with his underage followers
(Anonymous) - 2015-04-14 14:58 (UTC) - ExpandAndy gushes breathlessly about "babies" telling him their "sexual fantasies"
(Anonymous) - 2015-04-14 01:06 (UTC) - ExpandAndy admits to sending anons when caught lying/using anonymizer
(Anonymous) 2015-04-14 05:57 am (UTC)(link)Should these posts disappear from Andy's or agentsex's blog, I'll upload screenshots. Screenshots would probably be better for this anyway, but posting the text here will save people the trouble of transcribing it if the need ever arises.
Andy denies sending anons, ever:
http://andythanfiction.tumblr.com/post/87406146157/not-me-not-in-my-name
I do not send Anons. I do not send people to send Anons. I do not send people to say things for me. Anyone who claims on Anon to BE me or be sent by me or acting "for” me or in any way shape or form otherwise representing my wishes IS LYING.
http://thetigerisariver.tumblr.com/post/101675180409/hey-remember-that-very-dramatic-ask-i-got-on-25th
hey, remember that very dramatic ask I got on 25th of october, which refferred to delwynmarch as a “monster”?
finally got around to checking out my statcounter and found this morsell
[picture description: a screenshot from statcounter of a single IP (Cox Communication - Williamsburg, Virginia, US) 70.161.160.253 I titled “Andythanfiction or inner circle” that visited my blog 4 times thrice in 25th october and once 31st October the visits were directly to my blog, no reffered link, or to my askbox (no refferal either)
once it was reffered from an anonymisation service
[link referred from]
http://5.hidemyass.com/ip-1/encoded/Oi8vYWdlbnRzZXgudHVtYmxyLmNvbS8%3D
[link referred to]
http://5.hidemyass.com/ip-1/encoded/Oi8vdGhldGlnZXJpc2FyaXZlci50dW1ibHIuY29tL2Fzaw%3D%3D&f=norefer
the last link shows that the IP visited this post on my blog; this will become relevant later]
hm.
apparently this anonymous asker lives in Williamsburg, Virginia and *also* creeps on other ppl’s blogs under anonymisers?
I’ll let you reach your own conclusions -_- from my end let me just say “ew”
agentsex I feel like you should know that you have an anonymous, uh, creeper (I am sure there is some *perfectly reasonable* explanation as to why your friend might be checking your blog anonymously, uhm)
(unfortunately I am a terrible floof and thus didn’t check the anon ask I got in september, neither did I think to log the IP andy used to send me an actual non-anon ask, bleh)
oh and as for the moth post -
[picture desc: a screencap of andy’s blog with the moth post, the date on the post says 3 days ago, my clock shows it’s november the 3rd
some random details that could help identify my computer have been blacked out]
he does reblog it the same day, but from a different source, so, you know, not super hard evidence
***
what he also does reblog the same day is this post
[picture description: screencap of the notes on the mentioned post, which shows that andy reblogged this post from into-the-weeds]
this gets reblogged directly from the person I reblogged it from, whom he doesn’t follow; I think this strongly implies he was creeping around my blog but didn’t want to show it
That is all folks! I hope you enjoyed my amateur sleuthing* hour!!
*how the fuck do you spell this garbage word /angry Clint noises/
http://agentsex.tumblr.com/post/101687134488/thetigerisariver-hey-remember-that-very
I happened to be on the phone with Andy when I got the notification for this post this morning. (I had asked him some questions in relation to this post and he called me, so it was a coincidence, I guess?) That IP is definitely Andy; he says he saw this post in the tag for his name, and visited your page to leave you a comment to tell you that he hadn’t sent that message. I don’t know if you got a message from him that day or not. He also admitted to using proxies to send anon messages a few times, but I don’t know if he did it that day.
So I’m checking the time-stamps to see if it backs up his story - I don’t know when you *received* the ask, but the IP for the person who left it would probably show up on your list a few minutes before you got the comment, unless Tumblr delayed it. If you get email notifications, you can look at the time that you received the email. I’ve tested this method with known users and it kind of works - if you get a bunch of anons at the same time, then it doesn’t work so well.
I liked the post and used XKit to check the datestamp on the post. This should be the time and date that it was posted (unless Tumblr or XKit is being weird).
Timestamps are supposed to be displayed in my timezone, which is Pacific Standard Time (daylight savings just ended). I don’t know what timezone your statcounter uses, but it looks like it backs up his story - maybe? If you want to know if Andy left that anon, you’ll have to do some more checking.
The proxy referral is weird to me. Aren’t proxies supposed to hide your IP? If Andy was using a proxy to hide his IP but it’s still tracing his IP, then it doesn’t seem to be doing its job. I did link to your blog on Oct. 24, so that’s probably why the referral leads back to my blog. I don’t have enough experience with Statcounter to know.
Andy denies sending anons, ever:
http://andythanfiction.tumblr.com/post/87406146157/not-me-not-in-my-name
I do not send Anons. I do not send people to send Anons. I do not send people to say things for me. Anyone who claims on Anon to BE me or be sent by me or acting "for” me or in any way shape or form otherwise representing my wishes IS LYING.
http://thetigerisariver.tumblr.com/post/101675180409/hey-remember-that-very-dramatic-ask-i-got-on-25th
hey, remember that very dramatic ask I got on 25th of october, which refferred to delwynmarch as a “monster”?
finally got around to checking out my statcounter and found this morsell
[picture description: a screenshot from statcounter of a single IP (Cox Communication - Williamsburg, Virginia, US) 70.161.160.253 I titled “Andythanfiction or inner circle” that visited my blog 4 times thrice in 25th october and once 31st October the visits were directly to my blog, no reffered link, or to my askbox (no refferal either)
once it was reffered from an anonymisation service
[link referred from]
http://5.hidemyass.com/ip-1/encoded/Oi8vYWdlbnRzZXgudHVtYmxyLmNvbS8%3D
[link referred to]
http://5.hidemyass.com/ip-1/encoded/Oi8vdGhldGlnZXJpc2FyaXZlci50dW1ibHIuY29tL2Fzaw%3D%3D&f=norefer
the last link shows that the IP visited this post on my blog; this will become relevant later]
hm.
apparently this anonymous asker lives in Williamsburg, Virginia and *also* creeps on other ppl’s blogs under anonymisers?
I’ll let you reach your own conclusions -_- from my end let me just say “ew”
agentsex I feel like you should know that you have an anonymous, uh, creeper (I am sure there is some *perfectly reasonable* explanation as to why your friend might be checking your blog anonymously, uhm)
(unfortunately I am a terrible floof and thus didn’t check the anon ask I got in september, neither did I think to log the IP andy used to send me an actual non-anon ask, bleh)
oh and as for the moth post -
[picture desc: a screencap of andy’s blog with the moth post, the date on the post says 3 days ago, my clock shows it’s november the 3rd
some random details that could help identify my computer have been blacked out]
he does reblog it the same day, but from a different source, so, you know, not super hard evidence
***
what he also does reblog the same day is this post
[picture description: screencap of the notes on the mentioned post, which shows that andy reblogged this post from into-the-weeds]
this gets reblogged directly from the person I reblogged it from, whom he doesn’t follow; I think this strongly implies he was creeping around my blog but didn’t want to show it
That is all folks! I hope you enjoyed my amateur sleuthing* hour!!
*how the fuck do you spell this garbage word /angry Clint noises/
http://agentsex.tumblr.com/post/101687134488/thetigerisariver-hey-remember-that-very
I happened to be on the phone with Andy when I got the notification for this post this morning. (I had asked him some questions in relation to this post and he called me, so it was a coincidence, I guess?) That IP is definitely Andy; he says he saw this post in the tag for his name, and visited your page to leave you a comment to tell you that he hadn’t sent that message. I don’t know if you got a message from him that day or not. He also admitted to using proxies to send anon messages a few times, but I don’t know if he did it that day.
So I’m checking the time-stamps to see if it backs up his story - I don’t know when you *received* the ask, but the IP for the person who left it would probably show up on your list a few minutes before you got the comment, unless Tumblr delayed it. If you get email notifications, you can look at the time that you received the email. I’ve tested this method with known users and it kind of works - if you get a bunch of anons at the same time, then it doesn’t work so well.
I liked the post and used XKit to check the datestamp on the post. This should be the time and date that it was posted (unless Tumblr or XKit is being weird).
Timestamps are supposed to be displayed in my timezone, which is Pacific Standard Time (daylight savings just ended). I don’t know what timezone your statcounter uses, but it looks like it backs up his story - maybe? If you want to know if Andy left that anon, you’ll have to do some more checking.
The proxy referral is weird to me. Aren’t proxies supposed to hide your IP? If Andy was using a proxy to hide his IP but it’s still tracing his IP, then it doesn’t seem to be doing its job. I did link to your blog on Oct. 24, so that’s probably why the referral leads back to my blog. I don’t have enough experience with Statcounter to know.
Andy jokes with agentsex about abusing people/"ruining lives"
(Anonymous) 2015-04-14 07:44 am (UTC)(link)http://imgur.com/a/LfUer
From late 2012, I believe. This is in addition to the whole Ciyarra child trafficking whooper.
http://andythanfiction.tumblr.com/post/38506684705/the-porn-industry-is-so-rape-centered-there-is-no
On the list of things you know nothing about and have no right to insert yourself into, what I do and don’t know about being a sex worker is really fucking high.
http://andythanfiction.tumblr.com/post/38507383142/let-me-guess-you-were-sold-into-child-sex-slavery
Let me guess you were sold into child sex slavery by the IRA but fought your way out with a broadsword and a pair of nail scissors?
Or I’ve done a couple of photoshoots that didn’t involve clothes or art and put my way with words to use on both gay and straight phone sex lines more than once when rent has been beyond tight. And that, fucktard, is as far as you’re getting into invading my privacy, and it’s only being answered at all because I don’t believe in slutshaming, even when it’s couched in that much other asshattery as an implication that being a sexworker is something that I am falsely claiming for sympathy cookies.
http://andythanfiction.tumblr.com/post/38508625273/were-you-ever-actually-involved-in-the-sex
Were you ever actually involved in the sex industry? Obviously you don't have to answer.
I did already answer this (I’ve done some erotic fetish photoshoots and some phone sex work when money’s been tight), but thank you for being far more polite about the ask and acknowledging my right to privacy.
And Abbey's take on it (spoiler: he's lying):
http://kumquatwriter.tumblr.com/post/82098535393/was-andy-a-sex-worker-during-the-time-you-knew
Fine Andy, you want to take it there, take it there. No, he was not a “sex worker” and he was not a phone sex operator. Ever. On one single afternoon, for two hours, he did one modeling session. I will freely admit I don’t know what exactly happened in that two hour afternoon. I know that he never bothered to inflate it into a drama or make a big deal. He was extremely matter of fact about it, said there was a little nudity but nothing much, and moved on. It was definitely not “hardcore porn” nor was it with any other people.
...
Rule of thumb: if Andy claims something out of nowhere that is dramatic, traumatic, scandalous and salacious…it’s almost guaranteed to be a lie, or at best a vast exaggeration.
http://andythanfiction.tumblr.com/post/38506684705/the-porn-industry-is-so-rape-centered-there-is-no
On the list of things you know nothing about and have no right to insert yourself into, what I do and don’t know about being a sex worker is really fucking high.
http://andythanfiction.tumblr.com/post/38507383142/let-me-guess-you-were-sold-into-child-sex-slavery
Let me guess you were sold into child sex slavery by the IRA but fought your way out with a broadsword and a pair of nail scissors?
Or I’ve done a couple of photoshoots that didn’t involve clothes or art and put my way with words to use on both gay and straight phone sex lines more than once when rent has been beyond tight. And that, fucktard, is as far as you’re getting into invading my privacy, and it’s only being answered at all because I don’t believe in slutshaming, even when it’s couched in that much other asshattery as an implication that being a sexworker is something that I am falsely claiming for sympathy cookies.
http://andythanfiction.tumblr.com/post/38508625273/were-you-ever-actually-involved-in-the-sex
Were you ever actually involved in the sex industry? Obviously you don't have to answer.
I did already answer this (I’ve done some erotic fetish photoshoots and some phone sex work when money’s been tight), but thank you for being far more polite about the ask and acknowledging my right to privacy.
And Abbey's take on it (spoiler: he's lying):
http://kumquatwriter.tumblr.com/post/82098535393/was-andy-a-sex-worker-during-the-time-you-knew
Fine Andy, you want to take it there, take it there. No, he was not a “sex worker” and he was not a phone sex operator. Ever. On one single afternoon, for two hours, he did one modeling session. I will freely admit I don’t know what exactly happened in that two hour afternoon. I know that he never bothered to inflate it into a drama or make a big deal. He was extremely matter of fact about it, said there was a little nudity but nothing much, and moved on. It was definitely not “hardcore porn” nor was it with any other people.
...
Rule of thumb: if Andy claims something out of nowhere that is dramatic, traumatic, scandalous and salacious…it’s almost guaranteed to be a lie, or at best a vast exaggeration.
In addition, this makes Andy just like a famous actor doing sex scenes.
http://andythanfiction.tumblr.com/post/38513556085/the-way-you-described-phone-sex-made-it-sound
Ok, then, will someone please call up every actor and actress who has ever done a sex scene or been in a sexualized or “fan service” scene or photo shoot and tell them they’re a victim and couldn’t consent? Because, you know, in return for financial compensation, they took their clothes off and did sexual things with their bodies with people they didn’t have actual relationships with that were sometimes uncomfortable or even painful and made themselves say certain things and have certain reactions that other people specified and controlled for the sake of third party sexual gratification. So I guess they’re all whores and therefore simultaneously evil and victims.
Those
Poor
Babies
http://andythanfiction.tumblr.com/post/38513556085/the-way-you-described-phone-sex-made-it-sound
Ok, then, will someone please call up every actor and actress who has ever done a sex scene or been in a sexualized or “fan service” scene or photo shoot and tell them they’re a victim and couldn’t consent? Because, you know, in return for financial compensation, they took their clothes off and did sexual things with their bodies with people they didn’t have actual relationships with that were sometimes uncomfortable or even painful and made themselves say certain things and have certain reactions that other people specified and controlled for the sake of third party sexual gratification. So I guess they’re all whores and therefore simultaneously evil and victims.
Those
Poor
Babies
Andy neglects a mouse to death & threatens to "get rid of" a pet sparrow
(Anonymous) 2015-04-15 08:11 pm (UTC)(link)WARNING: ANIMAL ABUSE/NEGLECT
From Abbey/Kumquatwriter, here:
http://tf-talk.dreamwidth.org/272.html?thread=231696#cmt231696
(trigger warning - I started out to just reply but ended up talking about upsetting stuff)
For the record, in case it was missed: boo was found on a busy sidewalk, at least half a block away from any trees, screaming his head off a foot away from an equally busy street. He was so tiny -not a fledgling, he was still a nestling. Never did figure out how he got to where he was. Maybe a predator (cat maybe?) snagged him and then dropped him?
I've been asked about the animal abuse stuff and haven't been able to talk about it. I can say I saw no evidence in all the time I lived with him that Andy actually cared about any animal. At all. Like, creepily so; there's something detached about him.
I don't know and never knew what he meant by "get rid of" Boo. Those memories are spotty from emotion. I remember holding Boo in my cupped hands and sobbing and saying no. And pleading, or promising I'd do better or fix whatever the reason he was giving was. God, it makes a lump come up in my throat.
I WILL say that I vividly remember the first few days with Boo, when everyone we talked to (a pet store and an Audubon hotline) said he'd die for sure. Specifically I remember deeply fearing that one of his hardcore soldier or rural/outback characters would kill him. Like, just with his hands and then be all shocked that I was hysterical because it was "mercy" or how they do things "in the outback" (remember the "Australian kid" that named him kookie buki) or whatever.
I'm going to make myself answer the question I've gotten on this topic and how it relates to the rabbit, because it is something that haunts me to the point that I feel physically ill. Because I've already put myself into that headspace and don't want to come back to it. Yes, I know of one incident aside from the rabbit where he neglected a pet to death. It was a mouse. We had three, one was mine and one was diamonds and one was Andy's. Mine died first - just got up one morning and she was gone, only a week or two after we'd gotten them. Diamond's died later I think. It *might* have escaped, I really can't remember, but it wasn't horrifying whatever it was.
Andy ultimately left his mouse, cage and all, on the top shelf of a closet, forgotten for... well, for long enough.
I have felt guilty about that ever since. I should have made sure he was taking care of it. I should have taken charge of that poor little mouse. He'd been taking care of it for quite a while in its little cage - I wasn't particularly attached to it because it wasn't my pet I guess? I wasnt paying attention and i shoild have been. There's no excuse that I let it happen, but it did happen and I've been terrified to tell anyone because I feel so awful about it.
I'm sorry. This thread turned into flooding, I really just started out to say where we found Boo. I'm going to post it because I don't want to go back to this story another time.
From Abbey/Kumquatwriter, here:
http://tf-talk.dreamwidth.org/272.html?thread=231696#cmt231696
(trigger warning - I started out to just reply but ended up talking about upsetting stuff)
For the record, in case it was missed: boo was found on a busy sidewalk, at least half a block away from any trees, screaming his head off a foot away from an equally busy street. He was so tiny -not a fledgling, he was still a nestling. Never did figure out how he got to where he was. Maybe a predator (cat maybe?) snagged him and then dropped him?
I've been asked about the animal abuse stuff and haven't been able to talk about it. I can say I saw no evidence in all the time I lived with him that Andy actually cared about any animal. At all. Like, creepily so; there's something detached about him.
I don't know and never knew what he meant by "get rid of" Boo. Those memories are spotty from emotion. I remember holding Boo in my cupped hands and sobbing and saying no. And pleading, or promising I'd do better or fix whatever the reason he was giving was. God, it makes a lump come up in my throat.
I WILL say that I vividly remember the first few days with Boo, when everyone we talked to (a pet store and an Audubon hotline) said he'd die for sure. Specifically I remember deeply fearing that one of his hardcore soldier or rural/outback characters would kill him. Like, just with his hands and then be all shocked that I was hysterical because it was "mercy" or how they do things "in the outback" (remember the "Australian kid" that named him kookie buki) or whatever.
I'm going to make myself answer the question I've gotten on this topic and how it relates to the rabbit, because it is something that haunts me to the point that I feel physically ill. Because I've already put myself into that headspace and don't want to come back to it. Yes, I know of one incident aside from the rabbit where he neglected a pet to death. It was a mouse. We had three, one was mine and one was diamonds and one was Andy's. Mine died first - just got up one morning and she was gone, only a week or two after we'd gotten them. Diamond's died later I think. It *might* have escaped, I really can't remember, but it wasn't horrifying whatever it was.
Andy ultimately left his mouse, cage and all, on the top shelf of a closet, forgotten for... well, for long enough.
I have felt guilty about that ever since. I should have made sure he was taking care of it. I should have taken charge of that poor little mouse. He'd been taking care of it for quite a while in its little cage - I wasn't particularly attached to it because it wasn't my pet I guess? I wasnt paying attention and i shoild have been. There's no excuse that I let it happen, but it did happen and I've been terrified to tell anyone because I feel so awful about it.
I'm sorry. This thread turned into flooding, I really just started out to say where we found Boo. I'm going to post it because I don't want to go back to this story another time.
Some questions have been cut down for brevity's sake.
http://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/97974.html?thread=480802230#cmt480802230
As a pre-exposure and (though to a lesser degree) post-exposure DAYD nonnie, I'd gladly answer anything about that time period that I can recall.
As for Danaoffthedancefloor... she's probably example #1 that I would give to people who think that no real emotional harm can come from getting involved with Andy. Definitely not the only example I could give but... definitely one of the most upsetting and raw.
Ok, what kind of things did he claim about himself pre-exposure and once he was exposed how did he try and justify it? Were you inner circle enough to know of the channelling?
Did you go to the DAYDcon at the end of 2009?
Were you still around when Abbey published her blog including her "Letter to the DAYDians" in 2011? How was that received in the inner circle/justified by Andy?
No, I didn't go to the DAYDcon in 2009. IIRC, DAYDcon actually occurred after the big reveal, so even if I had wanted to go before (and to be honest? part of me did! Andy was fun in a way, even when you knew he was full of shit!), I was too apprehensive to go after. From what I can tell, everyone had a good time having snowball fights, making stew, talking DAYD long into the night. They had fun. Andy was fun.
Unfortunately, I don't know personally how people who were still deep in DAYDverse took the Letter to the DAYDians. I was almost entirely gone by that point. I was, afaik, the person who explicitly asked Abbey to address the DAYDians, since I'd seen evidence of the obvious horrorshow that the Trail of Tears hike was going to be, but I wasn't speaking with Andy or any other DAYDians by that point in time.
BUT Turimel does have a post on her LJ that somehow got hold of a Skype conversation in the DAYD community, and it looks like it's from right around the same time. A little earlier in 2011 than Abbey's "Letter," so it's not in reaction to that specifically, but it is directly addressing all of the wank in Andy's words. Warning as always for transfail on Turimel's blog, but if you want to see just how brainwashed some of the true believer fans were, this isn't one to miss.
http://turimel.livejournal.com/105515.html
What were your apprehensions about the Trail of Tears hike? What was Andy's obsessions with match making? Because didn't 3 DAYD couples get married?!
Did you know Brittany? Do you know anything of interest concerning her relationship with Andy? I don't mean share anything that may cause any member of her family pain if they chanced upon it, I mean more concerning Andy's describing her as "a close friend" just after she was killed, but has over time become Andy's "life partner"?
What were your apprehensions about the Trail of Tears hike?
My disclaimer for this is that in the post-reveal period leading up to Brittany's murder, I was involved very minimally in DAYDverse things. I (like a good number of people, I suspect) saw the news about Brittany's murder when Andy posted it on LJ and Facebook, which I browsed pretty casually, and I initially thought for sure that it was fake. Until the story was corroborated in the media, I assumed that this was typical Andy: a grand story of woe involving someone with a tragic past, the assumption of a new identity, and the chance to turn a real person into a writing exercise and a talking point, as he frequently did. Of course, tragically, I was wrong this time.
The Trail of Tears hike rubbed me the wrong way for a lot of reasons, first of which was the purple prose that Andy wrote as a eulogy for Brittany. I just mentioned that Andy uses people he knows as writing exercises, to the point where it sometimes feels like he takes a kernel of their realities and then embellishes and ups the drama and (lately) deepens the social justice hook that will let him reel other people in. There were details of the sort of abuse that Brittany allegedly suffered at her partner's hands that I'm hesitant to mention because they were extremely graphic... but I'll say that, knowing Andy, I doubted those allegations because they were so graphic. Maybe that makes me a bad person, but... I knew that Brittany really had been murdered. I didn't know if I could buy everything that Andy wrote about her in his eulogy post, and the fact that he used that post as a launch point for the ToT hike bothered me. Andy also mentioned (in a chat, I think, or on his LJ or Facebook) that Brittany's family had barred him from her funeral, which was a major red flag. Families don't bar their daughter's friend (especially a friend who was injured in the same shooting) from her funeral unless there's something really wrong.
It also didn't sit well with me that Andy suddenly became the authority on intimate partner violence, to the point where he could essentially go on tour evangelizing (after putting all his followers to work setting things up for him, of course). I doubted the motives and lgitimacy of the "It's About Power" campaign, which Andy talked about getting true blue charity status for, and knew 100% that it would be abandoned once he'd used it to get all of the hike swag sponsored. Totally right about that.
Also, as other people have pointed out (and as you say above), the "lover/life parter" definition evolved over time. It felt like Andy was deifying Brittany in some way, which I can understand from anyone who is grieving a friend or family member who dies tragically. But... it was just that as Brittany evolved from being a follower to an acolyte to a favored friend to a special friend to a soulmate to a life partner, it seemed more and more clear to me that Andy was manipulating her memory for his own gain, knowing damn well that nobody could question him about what he was saying because, well... Brittany really was dead, and Andy really was wounded, and you're a big asshole if you question his grieving process.
Did you know Brittany? Do you know anything of interest concerning her relationship with Andy?
I didn't know Brittany well, but we did overlap in DAYDverse so I definitely knew of her, read her stories, etc. I knew that she was one of Andy's fiercest fans, and I knew that around the time of the reveal, she was emerging as one of the clear favorites. TBH, and not to speak crap about the dead, but here goes, Brittany set off some of my alarm bells in the same way that Dana Off the Dancefloor does: too willing to pretend along with Andy, to do things like adopt new accents, get sucked into crazy stories, do his bidding, etc. Ceirdwenfc has mentioned publically that Brittany and she didn't start out on the best terms. This was because Brittany was aggressively asserting herself for Andy's attention, driving a wedge (intentionally or not, I don't know for sure) between Andy and Ceirdwen. (And Ceirdwen, though I really do think she's a nice person, does not respond well to being separated from Andy.) It was also because Brittany was the one who most encouraged Andy in the Undead Shaman Wizard Eating Your Children saga that splashed Ceirdwen and her kids all over people's blogs.
That's pretty much all I remember about Brittany. One of her younger brothers was a DAYDian too... she went on a hike up the west coast with Andy at one point... that' sabout it.
What was Andy's obsessions with match making? Because didn't 3 DAYD couples get married?!
I think that it was 2 couples and 1 couple that didn't work out:
* Welsh Guy, American Girl (Married after the ToT Hike)
* American Couple (I think married in Vegas shortly after DAYDcon.)
* American Girl (minor!!), Kiwi Guy (There was a big plan to marry them off to each other, but it fell through. This was so fucked up.)
The first two couples, afaik, are still married, and neither couple is on good terms with Andy. Recently, someone found blog entries from the woman from the first couple, detailing how badly Andy had messed her up on the hike. She's since moved or deleted. I don't blame her.
I don't know what the deal is with Andy and match-making, but Abbey says that it goes way back. If I have to guess, I think it's probably that Andy knows that matchmaking gives him the abilioty to be a puppeteer and to get himself actively entwined in two people's lives and then to pull away quickly if he feels like it once they're together. It also gives him the chance to prove a point through the people involved in the couples. In the DAYD cases, in no telling order, the points he tried to make had to do with disability, self-esteem, distance being no obstacle, the power of shared struggle to unite strangers... I guess he's a Romantic in a weird way!
The question I'd like to know in regards to Brittany is, did she really believe Andy could channel? Because a relatively recent spin on their relationship is Andy claiming it was Brittany who was the first person who realised his channelling was a symptom of his mental illness and encouraged him to get help in 2009 but they put it off because they couldn't afford it. But then there's the Undead Shaman emails which gives the impression she really believed it and also recently Andy said when defending himself against the Finelookingcat sexual assault allegations that for his birthday in 2010 he was ensconced away in a bedroom somewhere with Brittany and a couple of other DAYDians in one of the astral plane battles or something. I always had the impression she died still fully believing in Andy's powers, which of course he's now contradicting with the whole "Brittany wasn't an enabler, she could see I was mentally ill" angle.
Also, was Cfc involved in the channelling at all? For some reason I've always thought she wasn't and I'm not exactly sure why I've come to that conclusion. Maybe because when the whole Undead Shaman emails went public, because it involved her indirectly, and if she were aware of the channelling, she'd have been directly involved or something?
Also, could you shed any light on the loyalty oath business?
"The question I'd like to know in regards to Brittany is, did she really believe Andy could channel?"
From what I could tell? Yes. Brittany frequently wrote about spirituality (something that Andy began to talk about more and more frequently when he was trying to reel Brittany in), and it seemed to me that she really did believe that Andy could channel. From how involved Brittany was in the Undead Shaman Wizard thing, but also from how she seemed to eat up the Skype chat channeling and to vocally back up Andy's claims that this was a spiritual thing and that you were simply intolerant or close-minded if you didn't believe that Andy could 100% actualfax bring Colin Creevy and Terry Boot out of him, she seemed to buy it.
Maybe this really was part of her spirituality. Maybe she came to believe it out of a necessity to get herself close (closest) to Andy. Maybe she evolved her perspective through more time with Andy and eventually did counsel him that this business was mentally ill and that he needed help. I'm not sure. I doubt the last possibility, though. Andy's "Brittany was my mental health savior" line reeks of post-murder revision to me.
The other, more sinister possibility is that Brittany was just as calculating and manipulative as Andy was and consciously voiced her belief in his channelling abilities so that she could lean on them later, when convenient for her. I believe it's been brought up before how interesting it was that when everything was going to shit, Brittany and Andy made Ceirdwen (Brittany's only real competition at the time for Andy's right-hand woman) and her family the focal point of their ridiculous attempts at obfuscation via astral plane happenings. I haven't completely worked out what I feel about this theory (I watched the USW thing unfold when everyone else on the web did, so I don't really have much more "insider" information on that horrorshow), but if Abbey's history with Andy is to be believed, I sort of think that this reading is too cynical. Maybe Brittany was conniving from the very getgo. But I think it's more probable that as she fell more and more into Andy's orbit, it got harder and harder to separate herself from his lies.
"Also, was Cfc involved in the channelling at all? For some reason I've always thought she wasn't and I'm not exactly sure why I've come to that conclusion. Maybe because when the whole Undead Shaman emails went public, because it involved her indirectly, and if she were aware of the channelling, she'd have been directly involved or something?"
I saw a post here recently claiming that Ceirdwen didn't know about the channelling. AFAIK, this is completely untrue: I was aware of the channeling at least as far as it happened in the Skype chat (the "Room of Requirement"), which Ceirdwen was an active part of and witness to. IIRC, she didn't lap it up the way Andy's newer sycophants did, so I'm not sure what she thought of it privately, but she definitely witnessed it as it was happening. Very possibly there was more, weirder, and more dangerous channelling talk going on in other forums that Ceirdwen wasn't aware of, but she knew that Andy was claiming that his characters were literally speaking through him. She did know.
"Also, could you shed any light on the loyalty oath business?"
OK, what's so distasteful about the fact Cfc knew about Andy's channelling is this: she bangs on and on about how Abbey being older than Andy and her being married and owning a house and having a degree in psychology and gender studies Abbey should have realised that Andy was a mixed-up, gender-confused obviously mentally ill teenager and Abbey should have got him help rather than enabling that mental illness by believing everything he claimed.
So if it's true that Cfc was aware of Andy's channelling how come she, with her much larger 17 year age gap and her whatever degree it is she has (something about homeschooling?), she didn't realise he was obviously mentally ill rather than believing everything he claimed? Because in order to have been his friend from the very beginning of DAYD, since early 2008 she's going to have to have been witness to lie after lie after lie after reframing after reimagining after no-this-time-it's-the-truth-for-reals-I-promise. She's going to have to have believed all those ridiculously grandiose cutting-off-baby's-arms-in-Africa stories, believed that the stupidly macho Irish version of Andy Blake was a real person rather than a hodge podge of exaggerated fiction, she would have had to lived through the whole Andy Blake/Amy Player reveal, actually believed that Amy Player was Andy's mentally ill twin sister and believed he could channel his Harry Potter characters, yet...it's only since Andy's officially made mental illness and schizophrenia part of his narrative publicly that she's all "I knew he was mentally ill all along and any decent person would have seen the same and got him help rather than flown him across state for sex" and come down hard on Abbey about her believing Andy rather than recognising him as ill. And this is only a very recent stance, since 2012. So how come between the years of 2008-2011 Cfc didn't realise Andy was ill when he was obviously exhibiting behaviour that is now part of the mental illness narrative with the channelling? It just doesn't stand up to any kind of scrutiny at all.
Unfortunately, this is going to be another one of those times when I've got to disappoint people. Sorry, nonnnie! I very vaguely remember there being a loyalty oath, but I don't remember it or its details clearly enough to feel comfortable writing about it. (I'm not out to sensationalize stuff that I don't completely remember!) There was definitely a chain of command that people took seriously, but I don't know if that was because of an oath or because people just got really wrapped up in Andy's games.
http://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/97974.html?thread=480802230#cmt480802230
As a pre-exposure and (though to a lesser degree) post-exposure DAYD nonnie, I'd gladly answer anything about that time period that I can recall.
As for Danaoffthedancefloor... she's probably example #1 that I would give to people who think that no real emotional harm can come from getting involved with Andy. Definitely not the only example I could give but... definitely one of the most upsetting and raw.
Ok, what kind of things did he claim about himself pre-exposure and once he was exposed how did he try and justify it? Were you inner circle enough to know of the channelling?
Did you go to the DAYDcon at the end of 2009?
Were you still around when Abbey published her blog including her "Letter to the DAYDians" in 2011? How was that received in the inner circle/justified by Andy?
No, I didn't go to the DAYDcon in 2009. IIRC, DAYDcon actually occurred after the big reveal, so even if I had wanted to go before (and to be honest? part of me did! Andy was fun in a way, even when you knew he was full of shit!), I was too apprehensive to go after. From what I can tell, everyone had a good time having snowball fights, making stew, talking DAYD long into the night. They had fun. Andy was fun.
Unfortunately, I don't know personally how people who were still deep in DAYDverse took the Letter to the DAYDians. I was almost entirely gone by that point. I was, afaik, the person who explicitly asked Abbey to address the DAYDians, since I'd seen evidence of the obvious horrorshow that the Trail of Tears hike was going to be, but I wasn't speaking with Andy or any other DAYDians by that point in time.
BUT Turimel does have a post on her LJ that somehow got hold of a Skype conversation in the DAYD community, and it looks like it's from right around the same time. A little earlier in 2011 than Abbey's "Letter," so it's not in reaction to that specifically, but it is directly addressing all of the wank in Andy's words. Warning as always for transfail on Turimel's blog, but if you want to see just how brainwashed some of the true believer fans were, this isn't one to miss.
http://turimel.livejournal.com/105515.html
What were your apprehensions about the Trail of Tears hike? What was Andy's obsessions with match making? Because didn't 3 DAYD couples get married?!
Did you know Brittany? Do you know anything of interest concerning her relationship with Andy? I don't mean share anything that may cause any member of her family pain if they chanced upon it, I mean more concerning Andy's describing her as "a close friend" just after she was killed, but has over time become Andy's "life partner"?
What were your apprehensions about the Trail of Tears hike?
My disclaimer for this is that in the post-reveal period leading up to Brittany's murder, I was involved very minimally in DAYDverse things. I (like a good number of people, I suspect) saw the news about Brittany's murder when Andy posted it on LJ and Facebook, which I browsed pretty casually, and I initially thought for sure that it was fake. Until the story was corroborated in the media, I assumed that this was typical Andy: a grand story of woe involving someone with a tragic past, the assumption of a new identity, and the chance to turn a real person into a writing exercise and a talking point, as he frequently did. Of course, tragically, I was wrong this time.
The Trail of Tears hike rubbed me the wrong way for a lot of reasons, first of which was the purple prose that Andy wrote as a eulogy for Brittany. I just mentioned that Andy uses people he knows as writing exercises, to the point where it sometimes feels like he takes a kernel of their realities and then embellishes and ups the drama and (lately) deepens the social justice hook that will let him reel other people in. There were details of the sort of abuse that Brittany allegedly suffered at her partner's hands that I'm hesitant to mention because they were extremely graphic... but I'll say that, knowing Andy, I doubted those allegations because they were so graphic. Maybe that makes me a bad person, but... I knew that Brittany really had been murdered. I didn't know if I could buy everything that Andy wrote about her in his eulogy post, and the fact that he used that post as a launch point for the ToT hike bothered me. Andy also mentioned (in a chat, I think, or on his LJ or Facebook) that Brittany's family had barred him from her funeral, which was a major red flag. Families don't bar their daughter's friend (especially a friend who was injured in the same shooting) from her funeral unless there's something really wrong.
It also didn't sit well with me that Andy suddenly became the authority on intimate partner violence, to the point where he could essentially go on tour evangelizing (after putting all his followers to work setting things up for him, of course). I doubted the motives and lgitimacy of the "It's About Power" campaign, which Andy talked about getting true blue charity status for, and knew 100% that it would be abandoned once he'd used it to get all of the hike swag sponsored. Totally right about that.
Also, as other people have pointed out (and as you say above), the "lover/life parter" definition evolved over time. It felt like Andy was deifying Brittany in some way, which I can understand from anyone who is grieving a friend or family member who dies tragically. But... it was just that as Brittany evolved from being a follower to an acolyte to a favored friend to a special friend to a soulmate to a life partner, it seemed more and more clear to me that Andy was manipulating her memory for his own gain, knowing damn well that nobody could question him about what he was saying because, well... Brittany really was dead, and Andy really was wounded, and you're a big asshole if you question his grieving process.
Did you know Brittany? Do you know anything of interest concerning her relationship with Andy?
I didn't know Brittany well, but we did overlap in DAYDverse so I definitely knew of her, read her stories, etc. I knew that she was one of Andy's fiercest fans, and I knew that around the time of the reveal, she was emerging as one of the clear favorites. TBH, and not to speak crap about the dead, but here goes, Brittany set off some of my alarm bells in the same way that Dana Off the Dancefloor does: too willing to pretend along with Andy, to do things like adopt new accents, get sucked into crazy stories, do his bidding, etc. Ceirdwenfc has mentioned publically that Brittany and she didn't start out on the best terms. This was because Brittany was aggressively asserting herself for Andy's attention, driving a wedge (intentionally or not, I don't know for sure) between Andy and Ceirdwen. (And Ceirdwen, though I really do think she's a nice person, does not respond well to being separated from Andy.) It was also because Brittany was the one who most encouraged Andy in the Undead Shaman Wizard Eating Your Children saga that splashed Ceirdwen and her kids all over people's blogs.
That's pretty much all I remember about Brittany. One of her younger brothers was a DAYDian too... she went on a hike up the west coast with Andy at one point... that' sabout it.
What was Andy's obsessions with match making? Because didn't 3 DAYD couples get married?!
I think that it was 2 couples and 1 couple that didn't work out:
* Welsh Guy, American Girl (Married after the ToT Hike)
* American Couple (I think married in Vegas shortly after DAYDcon.)
* American Girl (minor!!), Kiwi Guy (There was a big plan to marry them off to each other, but it fell through. This was so fucked up.)
The first two couples, afaik, are still married, and neither couple is on good terms with Andy. Recently, someone found blog entries from the woman from the first couple, detailing how badly Andy had messed her up on the hike. She's since moved or deleted. I don't blame her.
I don't know what the deal is with Andy and match-making, but Abbey says that it goes way back. If I have to guess, I think it's probably that Andy knows that matchmaking gives him the abilioty to be a puppeteer and to get himself actively entwined in two people's lives and then to pull away quickly if he feels like it once they're together. It also gives him the chance to prove a point through the people involved in the couples. In the DAYD cases, in no telling order, the points he tried to make had to do with disability, self-esteem, distance being no obstacle, the power of shared struggle to unite strangers... I guess he's a Romantic in a weird way!
The question I'd like to know in regards to Brittany is, did she really believe Andy could channel? Because a relatively recent spin on their relationship is Andy claiming it was Brittany who was the first person who realised his channelling was a symptom of his mental illness and encouraged him to get help in 2009 but they put it off because they couldn't afford it. But then there's the Undead Shaman emails which gives the impression she really believed it and also recently Andy said when defending himself against the Finelookingcat sexual assault allegations that for his birthday in 2010 he was ensconced away in a bedroom somewhere with Brittany and a couple of other DAYDians in one of the astral plane battles or something. I always had the impression she died still fully believing in Andy's powers, which of course he's now contradicting with the whole "Brittany wasn't an enabler, she could see I was mentally ill" angle.
Also, was Cfc involved in the channelling at all? For some reason I've always thought she wasn't and I'm not exactly sure why I've come to that conclusion. Maybe because when the whole Undead Shaman emails went public, because it involved her indirectly, and if she were aware of the channelling, she'd have been directly involved or something?
Also, could you shed any light on the loyalty oath business?
"The question I'd like to know in regards to Brittany is, did she really believe Andy could channel?"
From what I could tell? Yes. Brittany frequently wrote about spirituality (something that Andy began to talk about more and more frequently when he was trying to reel Brittany in), and it seemed to me that she really did believe that Andy could channel. From how involved Brittany was in the Undead Shaman Wizard thing, but also from how she seemed to eat up the Skype chat channeling and to vocally back up Andy's claims that this was a spiritual thing and that you were simply intolerant or close-minded if you didn't believe that Andy could 100% actualfax bring Colin Creevy and Terry Boot out of him, she seemed to buy it.
Maybe this really was part of her spirituality. Maybe she came to believe it out of a necessity to get herself close (closest) to Andy. Maybe she evolved her perspective through more time with Andy and eventually did counsel him that this business was mentally ill and that he needed help. I'm not sure. I doubt the last possibility, though. Andy's "Brittany was my mental health savior" line reeks of post-murder revision to me.
The other, more sinister possibility is that Brittany was just as calculating and manipulative as Andy was and consciously voiced her belief in his channelling abilities so that she could lean on them later, when convenient for her. I believe it's been brought up before how interesting it was that when everything was going to shit, Brittany and Andy made Ceirdwen (Brittany's only real competition at the time for Andy's right-hand woman) and her family the focal point of their ridiculous attempts at obfuscation via astral plane happenings. I haven't completely worked out what I feel about this theory (I watched the USW thing unfold when everyone else on the web did, so I don't really have much more "insider" information on that horrorshow), but if Abbey's history with Andy is to be believed, I sort of think that this reading is too cynical. Maybe Brittany was conniving from the very getgo. But I think it's more probable that as she fell more and more into Andy's orbit, it got harder and harder to separate herself from his lies.
"Also, was Cfc involved in the channelling at all? For some reason I've always thought she wasn't and I'm not exactly sure why I've come to that conclusion. Maybe because when the whole Undead Shaman emails went public, because it involved her indirectly, and if she were aware of the channelling, she'd have been directly involved or something?"
I saw a post here recently claiming that Ceirdwen didn't know about the channelling. AFAIK, this is completely untrue: I was aware of the channeling at least as far as it happened in the Skype chat (the "Room of Requirement"), which Ceirdwen was an active part of and witness to. IIRC, she didn't lap it up the way Andy's newer sycophants did, so I'm not sure what she thought of it privately, but she definitely witnessed it as it was happening. Very possibly there was more, weirder, and more dangerous channelling talk going on in other forums that Ceirdwen wasn't aware of, but she knew that Andy was claiming that his characters were literally speaking through him. She did know.
"Also, could you shed any light on the loyalty oath business?"
OK, what's so distasteful about the fact Cfc knew about Andy's channelling is this: she bangs on and on about how Abbey being older than Andy and her being married and owning a house and having a degree in psychology and gender studies Abbey should have realised that Andy was a mixed-up, gender-confused obviously mentally ill teenager and Abbey should have got him help rather than enabling that mental illness by believing everything he claimed.
So if it's true that Cfc was aware of Andy's channelling how come she, with her much larger 17 year age gap and her whatever degree it is she has (something about homeschooling?), she didn't realise he was obviously mentally ill rather than believing everything he claimed? Because in order to have been his friend from the very beginning of DAYD, since early 2008 she's going to have to have been witness to lie after lie after lie after reframing after reimagining after no-this-time-it's-the-truth-for-reals-I-promise. She's going to have to have believed all those ridiculously grandiose cutting-off-baby's-arms-in-Africa stories, believed that the stupidly macho Irish version of Andy Blake was a real person rather than a hodge podge of exaggerated fiction, she would have had to lived through the whole Andy Blake/Amy Player reveal, actually believed that Amy Player was Andy's mentally ill twin sister and believed he could channel his Harry Potter characters, yet...it's only since Andy's officially made mental illness and schizophrenia part of his narrative publicly that she's all "I knew he was mentally ill all along and any decent person would have seen the same and got him help rather than flown him across state for sex" and come down hard on Abbey about her believing Andy rather than recognising him as ill. And this is only a very recent stance, since 2012. So how come between the years of 2008-2011 Cfc didn't realise Andy was ill when he was obviously exhibiting behaviour that is now part of the mental illness narrative with the channelling? It just doesn't stand up to any kind of scrutiny at all.
Unfortunately, this is going to be another one of those times when I've got to disappoint people. Sorry, nonnnie! I very vaguely remember there being a loyalty oath, but I don't remember it or its details clearly enough to feel comfortable writing about it. (I'm not out to sensationalize stuff that I don't completely remember!) There was definitely a chain of command that people took seriously, but I don't know if that was because of an oath or because people just got really wrapped up in Andy's games.
***This part may be lacking certain comments found at the FFA link, because it's difficult to parse from the conversation who is DAYD!anon and who isn't. I've only included comments that I'm pretty certain are from them.***
Oh god a genuine pre-exposure DAYDian! I have so many questions I don't know where to start! Ok, what kind of things did he claim about himself pre-exposure and once he was exposed how did he try and justify it? Were you inner circle enough to know of the channelling?
AYRT
I'm going to start with a copy/paste of myself from one of the older threads that I just got around to now:
I'd heard about VB in a vague, Whisper Down the Lane way before (the big reveal), but I'd never heard enough to connect the dots even when I was actively interacting with Andy and the DAYDverse. I knew that he was lying about some things from the getgo (vague but fatal heart condition? seen dozens of friends brutally murdered? obviously fake Irish accent? fought on both sides of the Troubles? looked into a little African child's eyes to reassure him that it would be OK as he cauterized a post-field-amputation limb? Suuure...) but thought that he was nice enough until the DAYD character channeling started and everything took a turn for the really fantastically insane and asinine.
As you can see from above, whose examples are all things I absolutely, no doubt in my mind recall Andy saying, the things that Andy claimed about himself in the early DAYD days weren't just implausible. They were so obviously lies that to see people around him openly believing in them could very easily make you feel like either you were the only sober person in a room full of kids tripping out of their minds or that you were the one with tenuous grips on reality. But people did believe him. Some people believed him extremely vocally and went out of their ways to voice their belief in him, particularly when the claims were bogus beyond belief. If you've ever seen the Skype conversation that Turimel somehow got her hands on, you'll see for yourself people totally eating up the story about Amy Player being Andy's mentally ill twin sister.
In the case of the story about cauterizing the amputated limb of that little black baby in an African warzone, you would expect rational, adult people (and though the DAYDverse crew was a high percentage of teens, there were absolutely adults in there also) to call BS immediately, but nobody did. Andy got his asspats and his oohing and aahing from the group, with people wondering how he had the strength to do something like that, reminding him that he was probably that little boy's savior, etc.
Other claims that I know for sure Andy made, in addition to the ones that everyone has heard about the IRA, the bar fight that got him a claymore scar across his chest, the evil twin, the Undead Shaman Wizard, etc. (I'm not going to list anything that I can't say for certain that he claimed.):
* I can perform a field tracheotomy with a drinking straw, and I've had to do it.
* I've seen dozens of people murdered before my eyes.
* I was the first male born in seven generations of women, so it's really no surprise to my family that I have psychic capabilities.
* I traveled the world almost entirely for free, partially by stowing away on cargo ships. You can travel anywhere if you're resourceful enough!
* I fucked ((I don't remember the number, but something obscene, high double digits)) women by the time I was 18. (He shared things like this a lot, and back then (before he became ~enlightened~it was always "fucking," not "making love" or even "having sex." Women were dainty damsels and the essence of mother earth on one hand and conquests to be notched on bedposts at the same time. Other details about his sexual exploits include fucking a married women in the kitchen while her little children played in the other room.)
* I work at a Starbucks where professors from the nearby university come in and chat with me in Ancient Greek.
* When I was at work today, a coloratura soprano with a world-class opera company came into the shop and sang an aria to pay for her drink.
* I just know things about people. For instance, when I was little, I blurted out that the pastor of our church was cheating on his wife (I'd just had a feeling about it), and it turned out that I was right. I ruined him. This is part of why my mother hates me.
* The reason I can't write or read "Gaelic" is because I was never schooled a day in my life. I learned to speak it because it was the only language my grandfather used with me, but I'm illiterate and really just going by sound. So if the "Gaelic" dialogue in my "novels" isn't totally right, remember that it's because everything I know, I taught myself.
I guess some of those aren't that interesting, but they do illustrate a point: Andy lies (or at least he did) about everything. From the massive (his evil twin sister) to the totally mundane. He can't just work at Starbucks... he has to work at a Starbucks where colorful characters waltz in and out singing arias. He can't just be perceptive... he has to be psychic.
Speaking of psychic: if the character channelling was supposed to be a secret, it was the worst kept secret ever. I was definitely not in the innermost inner circle (which at the time had a military structure: Andy was the "Fearless Leader," and he designated the most loyal DAYDians as explicit military ranks), and I saw the channelling on clear display. In Skype group chats, DAYD characters would "come through" Andy and talk with the group. Colin Creevy was a big one, and so was a character (whose name I now forget) who was a budding chef. Michael Corner and Terry Boot also came in to talk to everyone. It seemed to differ slightly from the channeling that Abbey described, since Andy here was presenting things more like he was a medium. He knew that he was having characters speak through him. People could request that a certain character stopped by. It 100% was not an issue of alters, at least as Andy presented it. It was totally conscious and deliberate.
Andy framed the channeling in terms of belief, almost religious belief. If you didn't believe that he was bringing the voices and spirits of real people (real people. not characters. not fictional people. real people who existed on other planes of reality) out through him, if you dismissed it as nonsense, then you were clearly a small-minded person with no appreciation for all of the mysteries of the universe. How can you know that ghosts don't walk among us? How do you know that there isn't a pantheon of gods who weave themselves into our lives? How do you know that this DAYD Hogwarts student isn't actually typing into Andy's computer, giving you a recipe that he Creole grandmother held dear to her? You can't know. And if you pretend that you can, well then you're arrogant, simple-minded, and dull.
And like I said. People at it up. "Is Colin here tonight?" "Hold on. Let me get him." Etc.
After he was exposed... boy, I barely even remember. I was so shocked by the evil twin sister thing and the fact that people believed it to even register much of what Andy was saying. He made himself kind of scarce and closed ranks, at which point I was not among any kind of inner circle at all, and pretty soon after, I lost touch with everyone from the DAYD days, though I occasionally do look into some of their posts and sigh.
Thank you so much for sharing. I'm curious if he ever got called out for his lies what his response was - i.e., did someone ever challenge him on the fake accent or the IRA connections or the having been to Africa?
You're welcome! I always see people saying that there's this big black hole from the early DAYD days, and I thought maybe I could shed some light.
If people did call Andy out on the whoppers, I never saw it happen. The thing was? He had an answer to everything. I'm sure he could have told you exactly why he'd been in an African warzone, and he did tell the Podcast interviewers why his accent might have been a bit different (short version: he was raised in America, so his accent was 80% Belfast, 20% Virginia. How exotic!). I do vaguely remember someone questioning the Irish language text that he used either in one of his stories or in an LJ icon, and he did have an answer for that, too: short version, as described above, he was illiterate, since he'd grown up speaking the language but not being taught how to read or write it, and there are so many regional dialects of the language that nobody could possibly tell him he was wrong unless they knew every bit of slang from every corner of Ireland.
And if you already believe him, it's not hard at all to believe that.
You say that there was a military hierachy to the inner circle, can you share which of the well known DAYDians were involved in that and what their "rank" was? I'm imagining Cfc would be Andy's second-in-command or something.
Ooh, sorry Nonnie, but I think I'm going to have to let you down on this one. I remember clearly that the ranks were the ones he used for the characters in DAYD (first and second lieutenants for each house based on how people self-identified or how he identified them) and that many people referred to Andy as "Fearless Leader," "Commander," and "Sir" and waited for his permission to do or say things. I think that Ceirdwen existed outside of this military-style ranking system in her role as mod of the LJ, but I could be wrong about that. In terms of who was in what role, that's lost to memory. I could take a few guesses, but TBH, the ones that I might remember aren't well-known DAYDians. In fact, if I'm thinking of the right people, several of them were driven out hard when Andy tired of them. That was later, though.
In terms of Ceirdwen... I worry for her and have for a long time. She probably doesn't remember me, but we talked a few times back in the chat, and watching her blog to make sure that she's OK is pretty much my main link to DAYD and Andy at this point in time. I know that she's a grown woman who can make her own decisions about things, but I also know that her life seems to revolve to a scary degree around Andy and that her moods and state of mind (which she blogs about or vagueblogs about frequently) really do seem to be intimately tied up with how he's treating her at a given time period. (And often... he's not treating her particularly well. Andy is really good at hurting people through ignoring them.)
Wow, what an amazing infodump! Thanks DAYDian nonny! My question is: how many people did he actually hurt and do you know if any of them are doing ok nowadays? Because that's who I always think about the most.
You're welcome! Ha ha ha, it feels good to get some of this out in a weird way.
In terms of who Andy hurt... that's really a question, isn't it? I guess it all depends on what kind of hurt we're talking about. Andy hurt my feelings by not being there for me in something when I thought he'd be there (as he's done to countless people... he has an uncanny habit of losing his phone or getting locked out of his email when he knows that people need him) but I'd like to think that I've gone on with my life without his shadow hanging over me. But people like Abbey know too well that he can do a lot more damage than hurt feelings and making people feel left out. I'm esp. worried about two long-term DAYDians (both have been discussed on FFA) who seem scarily codependent in their relationships with him... I wouldn't be beyond believing that one of them would be honest to goodness suicidal if he ever succeeded in removing himself from their life. I pray that never happens.
There are at least four people (the husbands and wives of two separate DAYDian couples) who used to be very close with Andy and now do not speak with him, afaik. The A's had their names dragged through the mud (by Andy, who'd hardcore glommed onto them) shortly after they were married, though I don't remember enough about what exactly he said to feel comfrotable elaborating. At least one half of the K's wrote about how much Andy messed her up, but she's removed these posts. On a better note, though, I htink that both of these couples are pretty happily married and doing OK for themselves now, several years out.
There was another girl who was desperate for Andy's attention who he doted on for a while and then dumped, and when she didn't take the hint, he vilified her to the group, too, and basically ensured that nobody would make her welcome. I think that a friend was also forced out with her. A boy too, who was let down more slowly by Andy but who was equally desperate for attention from Andy and, iirc, fell really, really depressed when it was withdrawn. I don't know how either of them are doing now, but I do remember thinking that the boy had rebounded. I don't know for sure.
There's another guy (a bit older) who I would have described as outright sycophantic and who was one of the people Andy cut off cold "for his mental health." I thought for sure that this man would go to pieces over it, but recent events seem to say that not only did he manage OK, but he no longer idolizes Andy and even resents Andy's behavior toward him and others during the DAYD years. Very surprising, but some of the best news that I've seen come out of this most recent Andy wank.
So many people bailed after the reveal, and I have no way of knowing how many of them were hurt. It's a lot. Not trying to be dramatic, but it's probably way more than I'm aware of. For now, I don't know... Andy is a human being who should have the privilege of having friends, but I can't help but to worry over the people who get too close to him. He's done significant damage in SPN. He'll do it wherever he moves next too.
Oh god a genuine pre-exposure DAYDian! I have so many questions I don't know where to start! Ok, what kind of things did he claim about himself pre-exposure and once he was exposed how did he try and justify it? Were you inner circle enough to know of the channelling?
AYRT
I'm going to start with a copy/paste of myself from one of the older threads that I just got around to now:
I'd heard about VB in a vague, Whisper Down the Lane way before (the big reveal), but I'd never heard enough to connect the dots even when I was actively interacting with Andy and the DAYDverse. I knew that he was lying about some things from the getgo (vague but fatal heart condition? seen dozens of friends brutally murdered? obviously fake Irish accent? fought on both sides of the Troubles? looked into a little African child's eyes to reassure him that it would be OK as he cauterized a post-field-amputation limb? Suuure...) but thought that he was nice enough until the DAYD character channeling started and everything took a turn for the really fantastically insane and asinine.
As you can see from above, whose examples are all things I absolutely, no doubt in my mind recall Andy saying, the things that Andy claimed about himself in the early DAYD days weren't just implausible. They were so obviously lies that to see people around him openly believing in them could very easily make you feel like either you were the only sober person in a room full of kids tripping out of their minds or that you were the one with tenuous grips on reality. But people did believe him. Some people believed him extremely vocally and went out of their ways to voice their belief in him, particularly when the claims were bogus beyond belief. If you've ever seen the Skype conversation that Turimel somehow got her hands on, you'll see for yourself people totally eating up the story about Amy Player being Andy's mentally ill twin sister.
In the case of the story about cauterizing the amputated limb of that little black baby in an African warzone, you would expect rational, adult people (and though the DAYDverse crew was a high percentage of teens, there were absolutely adults in there also) to call BS immediately, but nobody did. Andy got his asspats and his oohing and aahing from the group, with people wondering how he had the strength to do something like that, reminding him that he was probably that little boy's savior, etc.
Other claims that I know for sure Andy made, in addition to the ones that everyone has heard about the IRA, the bar fight that got him a claymore scar across his chest, the evil twin, the Undead Shaman Wizard, etc. (I'm not going to list anything that I can't say for certain that he claimed.):
* I can perform a field tracheotomy with a drinking straw, and I've had to do it.
* I've seen dozens of people murdered before my eyes.
* I was the first male born in seven generations of women, so it's really no surprise to my family that I have psychic capabilities.
* I traveled the world almost entirely for free, partially by stowing away on cargo ships. You can travel anywhere if you're resourceful enough!
* I fucked ((I don't remember the number, but something obscene, high double digits)) women by the time I was 18. (He shared things like this a lot, and back then (before he became ~enlightened~it was always "fucking," not "making love" or even "having sex." Women were dainty damsels and the essence of mother earth on one hand and conquests to be notched on bedposts at the same time. Other details about his sexual exploits include fucking a married women in the kitchen while her little children played in the other room.)
* I work at a Starbucks where professors from the nearby university come in and chat with me in Ancient Greek.
* When I was at work today, a coloratura soprano with a world-class opera company came into the shop and sang an aria to pay for her drink.
* I just know things about people. For instance, when I was little, I blurted out that the pastor of our church was cheating on his wife (I'd just had a feeling about it), and it turned out that I was right. I ruined him. This is part of why my mother hates me.
* The reason I can't write or read "Gaelic" is because I was never schooled a day in my life. I learned to speak it because it was the only language my grandfather used with me, but I'm illiterate and really just going by sound. So if the "Gaelic" dialogue in my "novels" isn't totally right, remember that it's because everything I know, I taught myself.
I guess some of those aren't that interesting, but they do illustrate a point: Andy lies (or at least he did) about everything. From the massive (his evil twin sister) to the totally mundane. He can't just work at Starbucks... he has to work at a Starbucks where colorful characters waltz in and out singing arias. He can't just be perceptive... he has to be psychic.
Speaking of psychic: if the character channelling was supposed to be a secret, it was the worst kept secret ever. I was definitely not in the innermost inner circle (which at the time had a military structure: Andy was the "Fearless Leader," and he designated the most loyal DAYDians as explicit military ranks), and I saw the channelling on clear display. In Skype group chats, DAYD characters would "come through" Andy and talk with the group. Colin Creevy was a big one, and so was a character (whose name I now forget) who was a budding chef. Michael Corner and Terry Boot also came in to talk to everyone. It seemed to differ slightly from the channeling that Abbey described, since Andy here was presenting things more like he was a medium. He knew that he was having characters speak through him. People could request that a certain character stopped by. It 100% was not an issue of alters, at least as Andy presented it. It was totally conscious and deliberate.
Andy framed the channeling in terms of belief, almost religious belief. If you didn't believe that he was bringing the voices and spirits of real people (real people. not characters. not fictional people. real people who existed on other planes of reality) out through him, if you dismissed it as nonsense, then you were clearly a small-minded person with no appreciation for all of the mysteries of the universe. How can you know that ghosts don't walk among us? How do you know that there isn't a pantheon of gods who weave themselves into our lives? How do you know that this DAYD Hogwarts student isn't actually typing into Andy's computer, giving you a recipe that he Creole grandmother held dear to her? You can't know. And if you pretend that you can, well then you're arrogant, simple-minded, and dull.
And like I said. People at it up. "Is Colin here tonight?" "Hold on. Let me get him." Etc.
After he was exposed... boy, I barely even remember. I was so shocked by the evil twin sister thing and the fact that people believed it to even register much of what Andy was saying. He made himself kind of scarce and closed ranks, at which point I was not among any kind of inner circle at all, and pretty soon after, I lost touch with everyone from the DAYD days, though I occasionally do look into some of their posts and sigh.
Thank you so much for sharing. I'm curious if he ever got called out for his lies what his response was - i.e., did someone ever challenge him on the fake accent or the IRA connections or the having been to Africa?
You're welcome! I always see people saying that there's this big black hole from the early DAYD days, and I thought maybe I could shed some light.
If people did call Andy out on the whoppers, I never saw it happen. The thing was? He had an answer to everything. I'm sure he could have told you exactly why he'd been in an African warzone, and he did tell the Podcast interviewers why his accent might have been a bit different (short version: he was raised in America, so his accent was 80% Belfast, 20% Virginia. How exotic!). I do vaguely remember someone questioning the Irish language text that he used either in one of his stories or in an LJ icon, and he did have an answer for that, too: short version, as described above, he was illiterate, since he'd grown up speaking the language but not being taught how to read or write it, and there are so many regional dialects of the language that nobody could possibly tell him he was wrong unless they knew every bit of slang from every corner of Ireland.
And if you already believe him, it's not hard at all to believe that.
You say that there was a military hierachy to the inner circle, can you share which of the well known DAYDians were involved in that and what their "rank" was? I'm imagining Cfc would be Andy's second-in-command or something.
Ooh, sorry Nonnie, but I think I'm going to have to let you down on this one. I remember clearly that the ranks were the ones he used for the characters in DAYD (first and second lieutenants for each house based on how people self-identified or how he identified them) and that many people referred to Andy as "Fearless Leader," "Commander," and "Sir" and waited for his permission to do or say things. I think that Ceirdwen existed outside of this military-style ranking system in her role as mod of the LJ, but I could be wrong about that. In terms of who was in what role, that's lost to memory. I could take a few guesses, but TBH, the ones that I might remember aren't well-known DAYDians. In fact, if I'm thinking of the right people, several of them were driven out hard when Andy tired of them. That was later, though.
In terms of Ceirdwen... I worry for her and have for a long time. She probably doesn't remember me, but we talked a few times back in the chat, and watching her blog to make sure that she's OK is pretty much my main link to DAYD and Andy at this point in time. I know that she's a grown woman who can make her own decisions about things, but I also know that her life seems to revolve to a scary degree around Andy and that her moods and state of mind (which she blogs about or vagueblogs about frequently) really do seem to be intimately tied up with how he's treating her at a given time period. (And often... he's not treating her particularly well. Andy is really good at hurting people through ignoring them.)
Wow, what an amazing infodump! Thanks DAYDian nonny! My question is: how many people did he actually hurt and do you know if any of them are doing ok nowadays? Because that's who I always think about the most.
You're welcome! Ha ha ha, it feels good to get some of this out in a weird way.
In terms of who Andy hurt... that's really a question, isn't it? I guess it all depends on what kind of hurt we're talking about. Andy hurt my feelings by not being there for me in something when I thought he'd be there (as he's done to countless people... he has an uncanny habit of losing his phone or getting locked out of his email when he knows that people need him) but I'd like to think that I've gone on with my life without his shadow hanging over me. But people like Abbey know too well that he can do a lot more damage than hurt feelings and making people feel left out. I'm esp. worried about two long-term DAYDians (both have been discussed on FFA) who seem scarily codependent in their relationships with him... I wouldn't be beyond believing that one of them would be honest to goodness suicidal if he ever succeeded in removing himself from their life. I pray that never happens.
There are at least four people (the husbands and wives of two separate DAYDian couples) who used to be very close with Andy and now do not speak with him, afaik. The A's had their names dragged through the mud (by Andy, who'd hardcore glommed onto them) shortly after they were married, though I don't remember enough about what exactly he said to feel comfrotable elaborating. At least one half of the K's wrote about how much Andy messed her up, but she's removed these posts. On a better note, though, I htink that both of these couples are pretty happily married and doing OK for themselves now, several years out.
There was another girl who was desperate for Andy's attention who he doted on for a while and then dumped, and when she didn't take the hint, he vilified her to the group, too, and basically ensured that nobody would make her welcome. I think that a friend was also forced out with her. A boy too, who was let down more slowly by Andy but who was equally desperate for attention from Andy and, iirc, fell really, really depressed when it was withdrawn. I don't know how either of them are doing now, but I do remember thinking that the boy had rebounded. I don't know for sure.
There's another guy (a bit older) who I would have described as outright sycophantic and who was one of the people Andy cut off cold "for his mental health." I thought for sure that this man would go to pieces over it, but recent events seem to say that not only did he manage OK, but he no longer idolizes Andy and even resents Andy's behavior toward him and others during the DAYD years. Very surprising, but some of the best news that I've seen come out of this most recent Andy wank.
So many people bailed after the reveal, and I have no way of knowing how many of them were hurt. It's a lot. Not trying to be dramatic, but it's probably way more than I'm aware of. For now, I don't know... Andy is a human being who should have the privilege of having friends, but I can't help but to worry over the people who get too close to him. He's done significant damage in SPN. He'll do it wherever he moves next too.
DAYD era skype chat from Turimel's journal - Andy claims he's being framed re: Amy Player
(Anonymous) 2015-04-15 11:20 pm (UTC)(link)WARNING: TURIMEL'S TRANSFAIL
Jul. 7th, 2011 08:51 pm The 100% True Story About Everything.
I had to share this. Amy's own words, courtesy of a friend with really good connections at Skype. A good lesson for everyone to remember--nothing you say on the internet is truly private.
For your reading (dis)pleasure... Andrew's summary of the 2009 wank, Project Eleanor, BoE, Amy, Jordan and you... from a Skype chat just a week or two ago.
The story now seems to be that Amy Player is just some random stranger to whom you tried to link him out of revenge. Too bad nobody in the world believed you (except those thousands of FW posters), haha!
How do you make up an evil twin and then un-make her up and STILL HAVE PEOPLE BELIEVE YOU? Only Andrew knows!!
But for a random crazy stranger... Andrew sure does know a lot about Amy and the little details of Project Eleanor and BoE.....
FAN 1: I hope I'm not opening old wounds but what's the story about Andy being a scammer of some sort?
FAN 2: Long story short (too late) Andy's sister and a vengeful ex attempted to connect Andy with a female scam artist who'd caused a bit of a scandal in Lord of the Rings fandom a few years ago. Some still believe that Andy and this Amy are one and the same.
FAN 1: And they still are trying to make it believable?
FAN 2: Apparently. It's become something of a running joke around here - - how bad Andy fails at con-artistry.
...
FAN 1: But... if Andy is that girl... who is the blue-haired (now purple-haired) guy on the profile pictures? :P
FAN 2: *shrug* You're expecting logic from these people?
.......))later that day((.......
ANDREW BLAKE: Back in the spring of 2008, I had a three week online flirtation with a woman named Shannon, who goes by Luvscharlie online. She seemed sweet enough at first, btu then I got very uncomfortable with her obsession with porn, with being the "perviest" and "kinkiest" in her circle of friends, with fandom popularity, and the extent to which she neglected her daughter for fandom. I ended the relationship, and she persued, and she acted like I'd left her at the friggin' altar when I said No Means No. So a year and a half later, one of her friends of friends who writes Supernatural real-person slash porn gets in a fandom scandal, and several other juicy fandom scandals from years past are referenced, including the "Great VB/TentMoot debacle". Never not wanting to be In The Know, Shannon hunts it up, and notices a resemblance between me and this "VB." Half hoping that it is me and she can make my life hell, not caring if it isn't because it'll make my life hell anyway, she sends my Twitpic address and all other info she can find on me to Turimel and says that the Great Con Artist Has Been Found.
Turimel has two options: She can say that yes, there's a resemblance, but there's really no other evidence beyond state of birth and look connecting the two, and further investigation would be required to make sure it wasn't a sibling, cousin, or coincidence... or she can go howling into the middle of fandom shrieking that all the mockery of her before for being a lunatic was wrong because here is PROOF that VB's AT IT AGAIN because her latest scamming scam of scamdom is PRETENDING TO BE MALE and inviting people out to DC for something called "Daydcon" which we all KNOW will just be a ruse to sell thousands of fake tickets and run cackling into the night with money!!!
We all know what she chose.
And then she got laughed out of Harry Potter when the Big Scam Convention turned out to be, well, Daydcon. There was a lot of"wow, this whole thing is freaky," but then the world moved on and left her sulking and embarrassed. She's had a year and a half to stew, and then she gets another "opportunity," this time to prove that no, she's not a paranoid obsessive loser, I Really Killed People This Time ZOMG!
An here we all are, and she's wrong again, and she'll be shown up as wrong again, and she'll go off sulking into her corner, and three years from now some troll will send her word that I've had or adopted a kid, and she'll find some cute baby-in-bath pictures and start shrieking that My Latest Scam Is Child Porn. It's how she rolls.
I've had people who actually want to kill me, who have killed people before with no compunction, for things I've actually done. Some bitch ranting erroneously on her LJ?
There is no fucking way that can touch me at all.
I live big, live passionately. I have people who would die for me and people who would die for the chance to have me dead. I've seen 37 friends die violently. I've been shot 4 times. I've been stabbed, strangled, beaten, burned, left for dead...an internet brouhaha doesn't register as anything more than a mosquito bite. And it's a lot more amusing.
And while we're getting things out there, I did some digging to find out for sure about the LotR mess of 2001-03 when the scandal broke, just to be sure that I wouldn't have cops at my door with outstanding warrants and a lot of annoying explanations and paperwork when I was trying to prepare a meetup.
The Big Scandal, of course, which everyone's heard right now, is that Amy was supposedly impersonating Elijah Wood, stalking LotR actors, stole $3000 from Reading is Fundamental, and ran this huge scam of a pretend LotR convention hat stole tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of dollars from dozens of fans and sponsors and stars, all of which she pocketed.
The reality is about as closely related as how I supposedly seduced Brittany into leaving her poor kindly husband, accused him of horrible abuse, and slowly drove him mad until he had no choice but to try and kill us all to prevent us stealing everything he had and leaving him beggared in the streets and then, when he showed up with the gun, threw Brittany and Tony into his path, dared him to shoot, and dove for cover.
The reality: Amy was deeply into LotR roleplaying and did a lot of chats and even had a few RPG journals, one of which was, yes, an RPF RPG where she did play as Elijah. She was a big fan of him and Sean Astin, and did start a Sam Gamgee fan club, but no worse a fan than many other people. She was a least bisexual, possibly lesbian, possibly trans - she's been legitimately confused about that at least since she was 10 - and when she decided to try living as a boy for a while, she took the name Jordan Wood, which maybe was a bit fangirly juvenile, but she was 17. There was speculation that she was a cousin by some people, which she never quashed, but she never actually made any claims.
There was a big project to build a reading garden for Reading is Fundamental; Project Eleanor. They had a special screening to raise money for the project, which had been budgeted about $1400, and the extra was supposed to go to RiF. The screening raised $3000, but due to some errors in how much wood they were going to need for the deck and some other unforeseen expenses, Project Eleanor wound up costing $3400. So no, nothing got donated to RiF, and yes, Amy reimbursed herself the expenses she'd paid out of pocket, but the whole thing wound up COSTING her $400, and there was nothing TO give to charity. The police conduced an extensive investigation of this and determined that the only wrongdoing was that she hadn't filed a license before holding a raffle, and she was fined $400 for an illegal gambling activity. They also found out that she'd not filed any of the right paperwork, but determined that it was ignorant, not criminal, and simply issued an injunction that sad all over it that it was not a statement of guilt or wrongdoing but that she agreed not to engage in a financial capacity with any charity in the state of Oregon for 2 years or until she had taken certain classes.
With Project Eleanor having been a technical, even if not financial success, and having gotten a lot of attention, admiration, and having gotten to spend the day with one of her favorite actors, Amy made a really stupid choice. Rather than saying "I overstepped myself a bit with this, but it was good, let's scale it back a bit and do it again," she decided to go A Billion Times As Big. She was going to throw an LotR convention that would make ComiCon look pathetic!
Now, I don't know about you, but if a teenaged kid with zero convention experience was spouting big dreams like that after having sort-of-failed and barely pulled off and netted no proceeds with their last event...I'd not be lining up to throw money at it.
However, she was gushing about how she was going to get All The Actors There, and people who are already tits-deep in fandom will do a lot of stupid if they think they can meet The Movie Stars.
So she does her damndest, but she frankly hasn't got clue one. Her mouth's writing checks that her knowledge can't keep, and she says that stuff's going to happen with no idea how she'll pull it off, figuring it's a lot easier than it is. She's talking so big and confident, that for a while, she does have a lot of the actors agents on board and have them booked, because she's telling the agents about this huge convention with thousands of people etc etc. Then people start looking further, and pulling out, and more and more "did you remember to do the - - -" starts catching up wither her. The whole damn thing implodes. It's not a scam, it's a really badly run event. Everyone who has put anything into it, herself included, loses their shirts. There is no convention.
Turimel starts screaming that Amy has obviously run off with all the tens of thousands of dollars from the thousands of tickets and al the hundreds of vendors and movie stars and does manage to get Amy arrested. Tey find out that it was just epically poorly run, there is no money, there were barely 50 tickets sold and the venue has refunded them all, the vendors she never got table fees from and there were only a dozen... that it was a disaster that had been grossly inflated but by the cocky mouth of a kid who thought they could do it and were doing it, not a scam artist.
Turimel refuses to believe it, and is further horrified to hear from the police that the person they arrested was technically a girl, which throws her into epic spasms of OMGNOEZ!!!
So, she has two options.
1) Either she gave about 10K on her credit card for deposits (all of which was refunded, btw) to a gender-confused, emotionally messed-up teenage kid who was making grandiose promises that should have easily been seen through as unable to follow through on despite best intentions. IN other words, that she was a 45 year old woman who made a really stupid decision out of being blinded by her own fandom obsessions.
2. SHE'S THE VICTIM OF A HORRIBLY LYING ICKY DIRTY TRANNY BITCH~
Except, well, number two didn't get her far. So she had to start coming up with "better reasons" why she was so upset. So the numbers started inflating, the charges got wilder, etc.
She stopped mentioning the deposits had been refunded. She started claiming the huge success Amy had promised as money stolen rather than money that never happened, etc.
But no matter how wild she got, her attention and martyr status dried up fairly soon, especially as more people started calling her on her bullshit. So she published a book - well, she had to self-publish on a vanity press - that was basically her LJ between a set of covers. And she had the chutzpah to actually add the cost of printing and promoting (which didn't work) to the Amount Amy Stole From Her.
But the book went nowhere, and no one was listening any more, and she was herself an internet laugingstock, and she sulked and brooded and stewed and festered her hate - remember, after helping with the convention she was suppose to beBFFs with a dozen movie stars and the biggest queen in the LotR fandom by now - until Shannon came along and made her a very happy woman by handing her the Golden Boy of Harry Potter fandom on a silver platter.
She's 55 now, mother of three, and a doctor for an insurance company.
All because she's still incredibly bitter that she didn't get to spend a weekend hanging out with the Fellowship and becoming a fandom superstar.
Amy's got problems, oh yes. But Turimel's got bigger ones, and if anyone's walking the fine edge of criminal and getting away with it, it's her with the slander, libel, and harassment.
[Turi here: Baby, if you ever want to accuse me of slander and libel, take me to court. Please. Bring it on. Here, have some evidence: Amy Player is a con artist. She is currently posing as a male named Andrew Michael Blake. She established this identity with a fraudulent Virginia driver's license. There ya go, "Andy." Take that to the cops and say you want to press charges. What's holding you back?]
I've actually talked to the cops about it, but I can't get a restraining order because she's wrong about who I am... she keeps threatening and spreading lies about *Amy.
It's like David Ecks, who has made his living screaming about the vast alien government conspiracy.
FAN 3: So you can't stop her because her accusations are too ridiculous for a legal response?
ANDREW BLAKE: He can't be sued for slandering the Alien Overlords because there aren't any, and yes ))Fan 3(( that's exactly it.
...
ANDREW BLAKE: I will warn you fairly that if Holly (EDITOR NOTE: author of the article about the ToT hike) doesn't come down hard on the side of Amy/Andy is Evilest Evil, she'll be on Turimel's shit list, and Streetlight will be smeared on Turi's journal as yet another dupe in my pocket at best, an outright co-conspirator at worst. But that's not actually a big deal, I don't personally think.
FAN 1: Well... Turi has...what? 3 followers?
FAN 2: All of those posts on the article were from variations on the same screenname. One from Facebook, one from AOL, one from Yahoo.
ANDREW BLAKE: About a dozen. A lot of whom are just in it for the troll factor of watching the scandal and screaming and poking it all.
Has anyone seen her latest post? It's baffling to me. So these two emails... they don't have identical IP addresses. The IP addresses indicate different computers in the same area. At that time, Amy was living in Newport News, the biggest military center in the country, and claiming that it was someone she knew locally and personally. So wouldn't it be a sign that it was TRUE that the IPs were different computers from the same area? And, um, apparently Matt was in the Marines and Matt = Jason and Brittany = Amber? Except that I = Amy = Matt = Jason? I'm so fucking confused. What is she even accusing there?
Jul. 7th, 2011 08:51 pm The 100% True Story About Everything.
I had to share this. Amy's own words, courtesy of a friend with really good connections at Skype. A good lesson for everyone to remember--nothing you say on the internet is truly private.
For your reading (dis)pleasure... Andrew's summary of the 2009 wank, Project Eleanor, BoE, Amy, Jordan and you... from a Skype chat just a week or two ago.
The story now seems to be that Amy Player is just some random stranger to whom you tried to link him out of revenge. Too bad nobody in the world believed you (except those thousands of FW posters), haha!
How do you make up an evil twin and then un-make her up and STILL HAVE PEOPLE BELIEVE YOU? Only Andrew knows!!
But for a random crazy stranger... Andrew sure does know a lot about Amy and the little details of Project Eleanor and BoE.....
FAN 1: I hope I'm not opening old wounds but what's the story about Andy being a scammer of some sort?
FAN 2: Long story short (too late) Andy's sister and a vengeful ex attempted to connect Andy with a female scam artist who'd caused a bit of a scandal in Lord of the Rings fandom a few years ago. Some still believe that Andy and this Amy are one and the same.
FAN 1: And they still are trying to make it believable?
FAN 2: Apparently. It's become something of a running joke around here - - how bad Andy fails at con-artistry.
...
FAN 1: But... if Andy is that girl... who is the blue-haired (now purple-haired) guy on the profile pictures? :P
FAN 2: *shrug* You're expecting logic from these people?
.......))later that day((.......
ANDREW BLAKE: Back in the spring of 2008, I had a three week online flirtation with a woman named Shannon, who goes by Luvscharlie online. She seemed sweet enough at first, btu then I got very uncomfortable with her obsession with porn, with being the "perviest" and "kinkiest" in her circle of friends, with fandom popularity, and the extent to which she neglected her daughter for fandom. I ended the relationship, and she persued, and she acted like I'd left her at the friggin' altar when I said No Means No. So a year and a half later, one of her friends of friends who writes Supernatural real-person slash porn gets in a fandom scandal, and several other juicy fandom scandals from years past are referenced, including the "Great VB/TentMoot debacle". Never not wanting to be In The Know, Shannon hunts it up, and notices a resemblance between me and this "VB." Half hoping that it is me and she can make my life hell, not caring if it isn't because it'll make my life hell anyway, she sends my Twitpic address and all other info she can find on me to Turimel and says that the Great Con Artist Has Been Found.
Turimel has two options: She can say that yes, there's a resemblance, but there's really no other evidence beyond state of birth and look connecting the two, and further investigation would be required to make sure it wasn't a sibling, cousin, or coincidence... or she can go howling into the middle of fandom shrieking that all the mockery of her before for being a lunatic was wrong because here is PROOF that VB's AT IT AGAIN because her latest scamming scam of scamdom is PRETENDING TO BE MALE and inviting people out to DC for something called "Daydcon" which we all KNOW will just be a ruse to sell thousands of fake tickets and run cackling into the night with money!!!
We all know what she chose.
And then she got laughed out of Harry Potter when the Big Scam Convention turned out to be, well, Daydcon. There was a lot of"wow, this whole thing is freaky," but then the world moved on and left her sulking and embarrassed. She's had a year and a half to stew, and then she gets another "opportunity," this time to prove that no, she's not a paranoid obsessive loser, I Really Killed People This Time ZOMG!
An here we all are, and she's wrong again, and she'll be shown up as wrong again, and she'll go off sulking into her corner, and three years from now some troll will send her word that I've had or adopted a kid, and she'll find some cute baby-in-bath pictures and start shrieking that My Latest Scam Is Child Porn. It's how she rolls.
I've had people who actually want to kill me, who have killed people before with no compunction, for things I've actually done. Some bitch ranting erroneously on her LJ?
There is no fucking way that can touch me at all.
I live big, live passionately. I have people who would die for me and people who would die for the chance to have me dead. I've seen 37 friends die violently. I've been shot 4 times. I've been stabbed, strangled, beaten, burned, left for dead...an internet brouhaha doesn't register as anything more than a mosquito bite. And it's a lot more amusing.
And while we're getting things out there, I did some digging to find out for sure about the LotR mess of 2001-03 when the scandal broke, just to be sure that I wouldn't have cops at my door with outstanding warrants and a lot of annoying explanations and paperwork when I was trying to prepare a meetup.
The Big Scandal, of course, which everyone's heard right now, is that Amy was supposedly impersonating Elijah Wood, stalking LotR actors, stole $3000 from Reading is Fundamental, and ran this huge scam of a pretend LotR convention hat stole tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of dollars from dozens of fans and sponsors and stars, all of which she pocketed.
The reality is about as closely related as how I supposedly seduced Brittany into leaving her poor kindly husband, accused him of horrible abuse, and slowly drove him mad until he had no choice but to try and kill us all to prevent us stealing everything he had and leaving him beggared in the streets and then, when he showed up with the gun, threw Brittany and Tony into his path, dared him to shoot, and dove for cover.
The reality: Amy was deeply into LotR roleplaying and did a lot of chats and even had a few RPG journals, one of which was, yes, an RPF RPG where she did play as Elijah. She was a big fan of him and Sean Astin, and did start a Sam Gamgee fan club, but no worse a fan than many other people. She was a least bisexual, possibly lesbian, possibly trans - she's been legitimately confused about that at least since she was 10 - and when she decided to try living as a boy for a while, she took the name Jordan Wood, which maybe was a bit fangirly juvenile, but she was 17. There was speculation that she was a cousin by some people, which she never quashed, but she never actually made any claims.
There was a big project to build a reading garden for Reading is Fundamental; Project Eleanor. They had a special screening to raise money for the project, which had been budgeted about $1400, and the extra was supposed to go to RiF. The screening raised $3000, but due to some errors in how much wood they were going to need for the deck and some other unforeseen expenses, Project Eleanor wound up costing $3400. So no, nothing got donated to RiF, and yes, Amy reimbursed herself the expenses she'd paid out of pocket, but the whole thing wound up COSTING her $400, and there was nothing TO give to charity. The police conduced an extensive investigation of this and determined that the only wrongdoing was that she hadn't filed a license before holding a raffle, and she was fined $400 for an illegal gambling activity. They also found out that she'd not filed any of the right paperwork, but determined that it was ignorant, not criminal, and simply issued an injunction that sad all over it that it was not a statement of guilt or wrongdoing but that she agreed not to engage in a financial capacity with any charity in the state of Oregon for 2 years or until she had taken certain classes.
With Project Eleanor having been a technical, even if not financial success, and having gotten a lot of attention, admiration, and having gotten to spend the day with one of her favorite actors, Amy made a really stupid choice. Rather than saying "I overstepped myself a bit with this, but it was good, let's scale it back a bit and do it again," she decided to go A Billion Times As Big. She was going to throw an LotR convention that would make ComiCon look pathetic!
Now, I don't know about you, but if a teenaged kid with zero convention experience was spouting big dreams like that after having sort-of-failed and barely pulled off and netted no proceeds with their last event...I'd not be lining up to throw money at it.
However, she was gushing about how she was going to get All The Actors There, and people who are already tits-deep in fandom will do a lot of stupid if they think they can meet The Movie Stars.
So she does her damndest, but she frankly hasn't got clue one. Her mouth's writing checks that her knowledge can't keep, and she says that stuff's going to happen with no idea how she'll pull it off, figuring it's a lot easier than it is. She's talking so big and confident, that for a while, she does have a lot of the actors agents on board and have them booked, because she's telling the agents about this huge convention with thousands of people etc etc. Then people start looking further, and pulling out, and more and more "did you remember to do the - - -" starts catching up wither her. The whole damn thing implodes. It's not a scam, it's a really badly run event. Everyone who has put anything into it, herself included, loses their shirts. There is no convention.
Turimel starts screaming that Amy has obviously run off with all the tens of thousands of dollars from the thousands of tickets and al the hundreds of vendors and movie stars and does manage to get Amy arrested. Tey find out that it was just epically poorly run, there is no money, there were barely 50 tickets sold and the venue has refunded them all, the vendors she never got table fees from and there were only a dozen... that it was a disaster that had been grossly inflated but by the cocky mouth of a kid who thought they could do it and were doing it, not a scam artist.
Turimel refuses to believe it, and is further horrified to hear from the police that the person they arrested was technically a girl, which throws her into epic spasms of OMGNOEZ!!!
So, she has two options.
1) Either she gave about 10K on her credit card for deposits (all of which was refunded, btw) to a gender-confused, emotionally messed-up teenage kid who was making grandiose promises that should have easily been seen through as unable to follow through on despite best intentions. IN other words, that she was a 45 year old woman who made a really stupid decision out of being blinded by her own fandom obsessions.
2. SHE'S THE VICTIM OF A HORRIBLY LYING ICKY DIRTY TRANNY BITCH~
Except, well, number two didn't get her far. So she had to start coming up with "better reasons" why she was so upset. So the numbers started inflating, the charges got wilder, etc.
She stopped mentioning the deposits had been refunded. She started claiming the huge success Amy had promised as money stolen rather than money that never happened, etc.
But no matter how wild she got, her attention and martyr status dried up fairly soon, especially as more people started calling her on her bullshit. So she published a book - well, she had to self-publish on a vanity press - that was basically her LJ between a set of covers. And she had the chutzpah to actually add the cost of printing and promoting (which didn't work) to the Amount Amy Stole From Her.
But the book went nowhere, and no one was listening any more, and she was herself an internet laugingstock, and she sulked and brooded and stewed and festered her hate - remember, after helping with the convention she was suppose to beBFFs with a dozen movie stars and the biggest queen in the LotR fandom by now - until Shannon came along and made her a very happy woman by handing her the Golden Boy of Harry Potter fandom on a silver platter.
She's 55 now, mother of three, and a doctor for an insurance company.
All because she's still incredibly bitter that she didn't get to spend a weekend hanging out with the Fellowship and becoming a fandom superstar.
Amy's got problems, oh yes. But Turimel's got bigger ones, and if anyone's walking the fine edge of criminal and getting away with it, it's her with the slander, libel, and harassment.
[Turi here: Baby, if you ever want to accuse me of slander and libel, take me to court. Please. Bring it on. Here, have some evidence: Amy Player is a con artist. She is currently posing as a male named Andrew Michael Blake. She established this identity with a fraudulent Virginia driver's license. There ya go, "Andy." Take that to the cops and say you want to press charges. What's holding you back?]
I've actually talked to the cops about it, but I can't get a restraining order because she's wrong about who I am... she keeps threatening and spreading lies about *Amy.
It's like David Ecks, who has made his living screaming about the vast alien government conspiracy.
FAN 3: So you can't stop her because her accusations are too ridiculous for a legal response?
ANDREW BLAKE: He can't be sued for slandering the Alien Overlords because there aren't any, and yes ))Fan 3(( that's exactly it.
...
ANDREW BLAKE: I will warn you fairly that if Holly (EDITOR NOTE: author of the article about the ToT hike) doesn't come down hard on the side of Amy/Andy is Evilest Evil, she'll be on Turimel's shit list, and Streetlight will be smeared on Turi's journal as yet another dupe in my pocket at best, an outright co-conspirator at worst. But that's not actually a big deal, I don't personally think.
FAN 1: Well... Turi has...what? 3 followers?
FAN 2: All of those posts on the article were from variations on the same screenname. One from Facebook, one from AOL, one from Yahoo.
ANDREW BLAKE: About a dozen. A lot of whom are just in it for the troll factor of watching the scandal and screaming and poking it all.
Has anyone seen her latest post? It's baffling to me. So these two emails... they don't have identical IP addresses. The IP addresses indicate different computers in the same area. At that time, Amy was living in Newport News, the biggest military center in the country, and claiming that it was someone she knew locally and personally. So wouldn't it be a sign that it was TRUE that the IPs were different computers from the same area? And, um, apparently Matt was in the Marines and Matt = Jason and Brittany = Amber? Except that I = Amy = Matt = Jason? I'm so fucking confused. What is she even accusing there?
http://turimel.livejournal.com/105515.html?thread=885803#t885803
If I didn't hate him before, I certainly hate him now. Especially when I was pretty much front and center for everything he did with (and to) luvscharlie and his version of things has nothing to do with reality. As for her being laughed out of HP fandom? Really? Really?
Funny that considering she's still writing HP fic and running HP fests and generally being in and around HP fandom while he was pretty much laughed out of/shunned from HP fandom other than his little circle of DAYD losers. He was never a Golden Boy and he certainly ain't now.
Some of us still have access to the drunk voice post that he left luvscharlie publicly declaring his love for her -- days before he put up a post claiming they'd split up amicably. A situation, I might add, that she had NO idea about and only found out after people who cared about her (myself included) emailed her/pm'd her to see if she was okay. The voice post, btw, was proof that he was speaking with a good ol' boy Southern accent one week and an over the top Oirish accent the next.
Also, the accusations he makes about her parenting skills makes me murderous given that she's one of the best and most attentive moms I know. That psycho schmuck wishes he was half as well-adjusted as luvscharlie's little girl.
She also had no clue about any of the LOTR mess whatsoever until it came to light.
I've had people who actually want to kill me, who have killed people before with no compunction, for things I've actually done.
LMFAO. Unbelievable. That's right, Andy, it's the IRA coming to get you.
If I didn't hate him before, I certainly hate him now. Especially when I was pretty much front and center for everything he did with (and to) luvscharlie and his version of things has nothing to do with reality. As for her being laughed out of HP fandom? Really? Really?
Funny that considering she's still writing HP fic and running HP fests and generally being in and around HP fandom while he was pretty much laughed out of/shunned from HP fandom other than his little circle of DAYD losers. He was never a Golden Boy and he certainly ain't now.
Some of us still have access to the drunk voice post that he left luvscharlie publicly declaring his love for her -- days before he put up a post claiming they'd split up amicably. A situation, I might add, that she had NO idea about and only found out after people who cared about her (myself included) emailed her/pm'd her to see if she was okay. The voice post, btw, was proof that he was speaking with a good ol' boy Southern accent one week and an over the top Oirish accent the next.
Also, the accusations he makes about her parenting skills makes me murderous given that she's one of the best and most attentive moms I know. That psycho schmuck wishes he was half as well-adjusted as luvscharlie's little girl.
She also had no clue about any of the LOTR mess whatsoever until it came to light.
I've had people who actually want to kill me, who have killed people before with no compunction, for things I've actually done.
LMFAO. Unbelievable. That's right, Andy, it's the IRA coming to get you.
For The Fallen
Daydian Friends and Family:
I'm sorry that I haven't been on in a while, and that I haven't been able to get this out sooner, but my life, which I am currently very grateful to have, has rather been turned upside down recently, and not in the usual ways of work and errands and random bad luck parking tickets.
Last Saturday, May 7, there was a shooting in Fairfield, California, at the house I shared with m_oquinn. I was fortunate to survive having merely taken a bullet to the ankle. m_oquinn was not so fortunate. She was killed instantly.
For those of you who only knew her on the comm, she was m_oquinn. She read DAYD back in 2008 when it had just been written, and lurked first at my personal LJ and then on the comm. In the summer of 2009, she gathered the courage to leave her abusive relationship and became active with us for the first time, coming to my attention when she sunk her teeth into the rather mammoth project of reviewing every single sketch I then had up on DeviantArt. I should have known then that she had my own taste for shooting high. We started corresponding, and she was instrumental in making Daydcon '09 happen; running the auction, helping coordinate things, and even putting in almost $2000 of her own money towards Daydian tickets. She and I drove cross-country in a blizzard, spent a summer helping magikcat112 and dn_solis get on their newly-married feet, and walked 1100 miles up the Pacific coast with deadskyblacksun. She was always willing to help fellow Daydians and host gatherings, and gave everything she had to others.
For those who knew her in person, however, she was a lot more. To them, she was Brittany Quinn, or as a particularly irrepressible two year old dubbed her, M'Bidney. She was twenty-seven years old, born two days after St. Pats to bright blue eyes, a cinnamon spatter of freckles, and a pile of corkscrew curls the envy of every '80s curling rod, the oldest of nine children in the Napa Valley of California. She raised her siblings almost single-handedly, despite poverty that had eight children in a two-bedroom cinder-block house, homeschooling all of them through high school while teaching herself. There is a picture of her making dinner at the stove, experience clear in her confident handling of the pan and tools, stretching the meat with oatmeal, directing her younger siblings to cut the onions and set the table...when she was five.
By the age of twelve, she had done logging, horse-breaking and cattle-wrangling, been a mother and teacher to eight, and could run a household to the envy of any 19th century homesteader, canning and baking, gardening, making herbal remedies, and making clothes. But she was also fascinated with geology and medicine, science, sociology, and most of all, the wide and varied world of people and their diverse cultures. She was equally comfortable making tortillas as wheat rolls as blinis as steam buns, and she always wanted to meet you, learn from you, talk to you, help you. It didn't matter who you were. You were a human being in Brittany's eyes, and that made you her friend and valuable to her.
She taught English in China, bringing home a t-shirt covered in carefully penned messages from her students, most of them begging her to come back for another semester. When the tsunami hit Indonesia, she traveled to the hardest-hit province, tucking her exuberant curls under a hijab in the only fundamentalist Muslim area and learning the prayers and verses from the Koran to offer comfort on their terms as she helped them dig out their homes and fed the hungry. She was active in multiple churches and aid organizations, and volunteered with the Queen of the Valley hospital as well as donating her skills as a certified massage therapist to several elder hospices and her skills as a licensed California Tax Preparer for abused women at a local shelter. She had her right foot crushed not once, but twice and her nose broken as a teacher of equestrian therapy for autistic children, and sometimes her convictions and generosity meant sleeping on the street, but she laughed off those prices as incidental fees of an active life.
For four years, she was also trapped in a relationship with an abusive man who also employed her under slavery conditions in his business, where she learned the trade of advertising and audio-video production and determinedly built a network of contacts across the East Bay area. At first, she was wrapped up in how she could use his business to help others and attain more skills that could be useful for the less fortunate, not to mention that she was more than accustomed to a harsh life of brutally hard work. Eventually, however, she realized that being beaten and screamed at, locked out and forced to sleep in storage sheds and closets, and worked 16-20 hours a day to ever-changing standards was unacceptable, and backed by her friends at the shelter, she got out. Unfortunately, walking out the door didn't end the legal battle to separate herself from this man, and after she had given everything she had to the Alberigis, she was left with no other choice but to move back in to one of the jointly-owned properties.
I went with her, trying to help keep her safe, and we almost made it. We had been careful and thorough, managing to stay away from him and utilize all the proper legal and police protections to hold on while the courts did their job. He stalled, he forged, he threw fits, but we kept our heads down and worked steadily. Illustration. Catering. Waiting tables. Murals. Massage. Digging gardens. Running errands. Doing taxes. Slowly but surely, we dug ourselves out from having given everything away the summer of '10.
On the morning of the 7th, we ran the numbers, and the news was good. We'd be able to get out again by the first of June, then head off to New Zealand for the cross-country trek, come back to our own room in the Napa Valley, work the grape harvest and bottling, and have an apartment in the Bay Area from which we could finish off the court proceedings. It was all going to be okay after all.
She enrolled for pre-med classes, happydancing around the room that she was going to be finally able to pursue her childhood dream of becoming a pediatrician for Doctors Without Borders. I said only if I could get my nursing certificate alongside my marketing degree so that I could come help sometimes. It was a deal. I had a client; Bonita the Fruit Bat Counts from One to Ten, a children's book to benefit the Costa Rican Rainforest. She offered to make tea and then give me a foot rub while I worked, because she was too excited and keyed up to focus on her grant applications just yet. I laughed, and said this seemed like a great deal to me, did we have any of that Chinese jasmine stuff from New Year left, and she left the room to wash out the tea kettle.
Footsteps on the stairs.
Eight shots.
Looking down the barrel of a 9mm six inches from my face.
It jammed.
Three times.
Calling 911.
Trying to talk him down.
A bullet in my ankle and two in his head.
Twelve minutes, fourteen seconds between the first shots and me in the back of an ambulance begging to know if Brittany was alive and getting my answers in the evasive looks of the medics and the overheard chatter of the scanner in the front cab. It was not okay any more.
For me, it will be okay again. For Brittany, it won't. That bright, beautiful, vibrant life is over. It ended too soon, too fast, too brutally, but that doesn't mean its influence on the world has to be snuffed off as quickly, or that it has to end with a handful of sweat-rumpled flower petals tossed on before the first shovel of rich Napa soil hits the casket lid with a hollow patter of false finality.
Officially, there will be services for her at the Cornerstone Church in Napa, California, at 2pm on Saturday, May 21, 2011. When we discussed what-ifs, she always said that the Daydians were her friends and family without question, and if you can read this post, you're more than welcome by Brittany's account to attend her memorial. There is also a request by the family that in lieu of flowers, you consider a donation to NEWS, the local Napa shelter for battered women and children.
For myself, however, I cannot be content with that. She was worth so much more than a donation card, an afternoon in a starched collar, and where should we have dinner tonight before I take you back to the airport thank you so much for coming.
Brittany had her heart set on the New Zealand trek. Taking primarily the Te Araroa from the top of the North Island to the bottom of the South Island in what she was damned determined would be record-breaking time, there wasn't a day that went by that she wasn't talking about it, and she had pulled in every connection that she'd ever made to try and get her portion of the to-do list done, insisting on taking the bulk of the gear collection because of her wide network and fervent work ethic. She used to say without really joking at all that she'd do it over her own dead body if need be.
And so I will. Deadskyblacksun, Captain_person, and dave_agnew have also renewed their commitment to this trek, and we are going to walk it in her name. Kate_lb is also trying to get the time off work to take Brittany's place on the team. Yes, I will walk all 1,864miles with the bullet still in my ankle if I have to.
We will do it for Brittany, we will do it for domestic violence awareness, and to raise money for victims of domestic violence rather than the original plan of the Christchurch Earthquake. We will do it in her name, and we would like to do it with your help. In the next post, I will be putting up what was originally Brittany's part of the to-do list. I think that if one extraordinary woman could do it, an extraordinary community definitely can in her memory.
For the fallen. We have lost our first.
Daydian Friends and Family:
I'm sorry that I haven't been on in a while, and that I haven't been able to get this out sooner, but my life, which I am currently very grateful to have, has rather been turned upside down recently, and not in the usual ways of work and errands and random bad luck parking tickets.
Last Saturday, May 7, there was a shooting in Fairfield, California, at the house I shared with m_oquinn. I was fortunate to survive having merely taken a bullet to the ankle. m_oquinn was not so fortunate. She was killed instantly.
For those of you who only knew her on the comm, she was m_oquinn. She read DAYD back in 2008 when it had just been written, and lurked first at my personal LJ and then on the comm. In the summer of 2009, she gathered the courage to leave her abusive relationship and became active with us for the first time, coming to my attention when she sunk her teeth into the rather mammoth project of reviewing every single sketch I then had up on DeviantArt. I should have known then that she had my own taste for shooting high. We started corresponding, and she was instrumental in making Daydcon '09 happen; running the auction, helping coordinate things, and even putting in almost $2000 of her own money towards Daydian tickets. She and I drove cross-country in a blizzard, spent a summer helping magikcat112 and dn_solis get on their newly-married feet, and walked 1100 miles up the Pacific coast with deadskyblacksun. She was always willing to help fellow Daydians and host gatherings, and gave everything she had to others.
For those who knew her in person, however, she was a lot more. To them, she was Brittany Quinn, or as a particularly irrepressible two year old dubbed her, M'Bidney. She was twenty-seven years old, born two days after St. Pats to bright blue eyes, a cinnamon spatter of freckles, and a pile of corkscrew curls the envy of every '80s curling rod, the oldest of nine children in the Napa Valley of California. She raised her siblings almost single-handedly, despite poverty that had eight children in a two-bedroom cinder-block house, homeschooling all of them through high school while teaching herself. There is a picture of her making dinner at the stove, experience clear in her confident handling of the pan and tools, stretching the meat with oatmeal, directing her younger siblings to cut the onions and set the table...when she was five.
By the age of twelve, she had done logging, horse-breaking and cattle-wrangling, been a mother and teacher to eight, and could run a household to the envy of any 19th century homesteader, canning and baking, gardening, making herbal remedies, and making clothes. But she was also fascinated with geology and medicine, science, sociology, and most of all, the wide and varied world of people and their diverse cultures. She was equally comfortable making tortillas as wheat rolls as blinis as steam buns, and she always wanted to meet you, learn from you, talk to you, help you. It didn't matter who you were. You were a human being in Brittany's eyes, and that made you her friend and valuable to her.
She taught English in China, bringing home a t-shirt covered in carefully penned messages from her students, most of them begging her to come back for another semester. When the tsunami hit Indonesia, she traveled to the hardest-hit province, tucking her exuberant curls under a hijab in the only fundamentalist Muslim area and learning the prayers and verses from the Koran to offer comfort on their terms as she helped them dig out their homes and fed the hungry. She was active in multiple churches and aid organizations, and volunteered with the Queen of the Valley hospital as well as donating her skills as a certified massage therapist to several elder hospices and her skills as a licensed California Tax Preparer for abused women at a local shelter. She had her right foot crushed not once, but twice and her nose broken as a teacher of equestrian therapy for autistic children, and sometimes her convictions and generosity meant sleeping on the street, but she laughed off those prices as incidental fees of an active life.
For four years, she was also trapped in a relationship with an abusive man who also employed her under slavery conditions in his business, where she learned the trade of advertising and audio-video production and determinedly built a network of contacts across the East Bay area. At first, she was wrapped up in how she could use his business to help others and attain more skills that could be useful for the less fortunate, not to mention that she was more than accustomed to a harsh life of brutally hard work. Eventually, however, she realized that being beaten and screamed at, locked out and forced to sleep in storage sheds and closets, and worked 16-20 hours a day to ever-changing standards was unacceptable, and backed by her friends at the shelter, she got out. Unfortunately, walking out the door didn't end the legal battle to separate herself from this man, and after she had given everything she had to the Alberigis, she was left with no other choice but to move back in to one of the jointly-owned properties.
I went with her, trying to help keep her safe, and we almost made it. We had been careful and thorough, managing to stay away from him and utilize all the proper legal and police protections to hold on while the courts did their job. He stalled, he forged, he threw fits, but we kept our heads down and worked steadily. Illustration. Catering. Waiting tables. Murals. Massage. Digging gardens. Running errands. Doing taxes. Slowly but surely, we dug ourselves out from having given everything away the summer of '10.
On the morning of the 7th, we ran the numbers, and the news was good. We'd be able to get out again by the first of June, then head off to New Zealand for the cross-country trek, come back to our own room in the Napa Valley, work the grape harvest and bottling, and have an apartment in the Bay Area from which we could finish off the court proceedings. It was all going to be okay after all.
She enrolled for pre-med classes, happydancing around the room that she was going to be finally able to pursue her childhood dream of becoming a pediatrician for Doctors Without Borders. I said only if I could get my nursing certificate alongside my marketing degree so that I could come help sometimes. It was a deal. I had a client; Bonita the Fruit Bat Counts from One to Ten, a children's book to benefit the Costa Rican Rainforest. She offered to make tea and then give me a foot rub while I worked, because she was too excited and keyed up to focus on her grant applications just yet. I laughed, and said this seemed like a great deal to me, did we have any of that Chinese jasmine stuff from New Year left, and she left the room to wash out the tea kettle.
Footsteps on the stairs.
Eight shots.
Looking down the barrel of a 9mm six inches from my face.
It jammed.
Three times.
Calling 911.
Trying to talk him down.
A bullet in my ankle and two in his head.
Twelve minutes, fourteen seconds between the first shots and me in the back of an ambulance begging to know if Brittany was alive and getting my answers in the evasive looks of the medics and the overheard chatter of the scanner in the front cab. It was not okay any more.
For me, it will be okay again. For Brittany, it won't. That bright, beautiful, vibrant life is over. It ended too soon, too fast, too brutally, but that doesn't mean its influence on the world has to be snuffed off as quickly, or that it has to end with a handful of sweat-rumpled flower petals tossed on before the first shovel of rich Napa soil hits the casket lid with a hollow patter of false finality.
Officially, there will be services for her at the Cornerstone Church in Napa, California, at 2pm on Saturday, May 21, 2011. When we discussed what-ifs, she always said that the Daydians were her friends and family without question, and if you can read this post, you're more than welcome by Brittany's account to attend her memorial. There is also a request by the family that in lieu of flowers, you consider a donation to NEWS, the local Napa shelter for battered women and children.
For myself, however, I cannot be content with that. She was worth so much more than a donation card, an afternoon in a starched collar, and where should we have dinner tonight before I take you back to the airport thank you so much for coming.
Brittany had her heart set on the New Zealand trek. Taking primarily the Te Araroa from the top of the North Island to the bottom of the South Island in what she was damned determined would be record-breaking time, there wasn't a day that went by that she wasn't talking about it, and she had pulled in every connection that she'd ever made to try and get her portion of the to-do list done, insisting on taking the bulk of the gear collection because of her wide network and fervent work ethic. She used to say without really joking at all that she'd do it over her own dead body if need be.
And so I will. Deadskyblacksun, Captain_person, and dave_agnew have also renewed their commitment to this trek, and we are going to walk it in her name. Kate_lb is also trying to get the time off work to take Brittany's place on the team. Yes, I will walk all 1,864miles with the bullet still in my ankle if I have to.
We will do it for Brittany, we will do it for domestic violence awareness, and to raise money for victims of domestic violence rather than the original plan of the Christchurch Earthquake. We will do it in her name, and we would like to do it with your help. In the next post, I will be putting up what was originally Brittany's part of the to-do list. I think that if one extraordinary woman could do it, an extraordinary community definitely can in her memory.
For the fallen. We have lost our first.
Screencap in case of deletion: http://s18.postimg.org/m6f4w9ayx/For_The_Fallen_2015_04_17_22_36_27.jpg
Andy's account of the shooting - 2 year anniversary version, part 1
(Anonymous) - 2015-04-22 12:55 (UTC) - ExpandAndy's account of the shooting - 2 year anniversary version, part 2
(Anonymous) - 2015-04-22 12:56 (UTC) - ExpandAndy's account of the shooting - 2 year anniversary version, part 3
(Anonymous) - 2015-04-22 12:59 (UTC) - Expandhttp://andythanfiction.tumblr.com/post/12929412240/supposed-to
Supposed To
Putting this here and on Facebook because I don’t know where else to put it and I just need to get it out. No, I don’t expect anything to come of it.
***
She married the wealthy older man whom her parents wanted for her and whom she was told would help take care of her 8 siblings after her father had walked out on them. She did what she was supposed to.
She endured 4 years of mental, emotional, physical, financial, and sexual abuse, working 60-100 hour weeks for his business, remodeling his houses, waiting on him hand and foot, obeying his every order, and taking care of his sick, elderly father. She did what she was supposed to.
When it became clear that he had never loved her, that she would never please him, and that he would never help her family, she ended the abuse cycle and walked out. She did what she was supposed to.
After leaving with little more than the clothes on her back and a few belongings stuffed into her car, she got a job, found a series of friend’s couches to crash on, and started the long, arduous legal process of trying to get back from him the rest of her property. She did what she was supposed to.
The California Bar Association Certified, Legal Aid recommended lawyer whom she scraped up $275 to pay a consulting fee told her that if she wanted the judge to validate that she had rights to equity on the property she was entitled to (and on the title of), she needed to “assert right of residence” and move back in with her abuser. She did what she was supposed to.
That same lawyer told her to bring a witness, not a relative, who would be willing to live with her in this dangerous situation and testify in court if he did anything. She asked me, and I agreed, because she was my friend and I could not let her go into that alone. We did what we were supposed to.
For six months, she filled out legal forms, submitted documentation, and went to court appearances precisely on schedule while we both worked odd jobs to make ends meet and put up with a childish man who trashed our bikes, screamed all night, made bizarre phone calls to the police, and turned our utilities off. We dutifully reported every single incident to the police and she continued to pursue her legal rights because she did not want him to win and think he could do it again to another woman…which he was already lining up to do. We did what we were supposed to.
On the morning of May 6, she served him papers that were required by the State of California to inform him, among other things, that she had turned him into the IRS, as she was a certified California tax preparer and would lose her license if she didn’t report the things she had found in his tax report. He told her if she wasn’t out of his life by morning, he’d put a bullet in her head. She called the police. She did what she was supposed to.
The police showed up. He refused to speak to them. They asked if he had a gun, she said she didn’t know. They asked if he’d ever tried to kill anyone before. She said only himself. They asked if he’d been violent before. She said yes, but there had never been charges pressed. They said there was nothing they could do and left. They did not do what they were supposed to.
At noon on May 7, he came into the house with a gun. He shot and killed her while she was washing dishes. He shot and killed another man who had been renting a room to take care of his elderly father. He tried to kill me, but the gun misfired. I was shot in the ankle with a ricochet. He left the room. He did not do what he was supposed to.
I barricaded the door behind him and called 9-1-1. where I stayed on the phone for 20 minutes, instructing the SWAT team of everything I could hear including the additional shots fired when he killed himself. I followed every instruction they gave me. I did what I was supposed to.
The SWAT team charged the house. They found him dying at the top of the stairs, but still alive. I was the only living person in the house. They had me throw the phone aside, cuffed me, ascertained I could walk on the gunshot wound, and marched me downstairs, asking me to identify the shooter on the way past. I complied with everything. I did what I was supposed to do.
They took me to the hospital and asked me if I had insurance. I said no. They didn’t even remove the gauze pad the medic had put on my ankle. They just determined that the bleeding wasn’t life threatening and told me to leave with the police officer. I did what I was supposed to do.
I sat for hours with the police being interrogated and providing them every detail of which I was capable. I treated my own ankle as best I could from a police first aid kit. I called my friends and hers from a borrowed phone. I asked only for a sandwich. I made written and oral statements on the record. I did what I was supposed to do.
I was put up in a hotel room four miles from the house for the night. They gave me my phone back and nothing else. I got in at 10pm, having spent 10 hours being interrogated. I spent the next 2 hours calling everyone who had known her on my contact list so they didn’t have to read about it in the papers, with the exception of her family whom the police had said they wished to contact in person. I did what I was supposed to do.
A friend of mine came by the next morning. We had no vehicle nor money, so we walked the 4 miles to a shopping center near the house. I borrowed money from other friends who wired it to me so that I could buy clothes that weren’t bloody pajamas and replacements for my blood-soaked dressings. I reported in to the police again. I did what I was supposed to do.
I waited until the biohazard team and DA’s office were done with the scene and was given 4 hours to remove all my possessions from the property. While I was there, I heard some of his friends saying they were going to find all that bitch’s legal shit and burn it. I salvaged all the legal records and her most personally prized belongings as well. I did what I was supposed to.
I immediately turned the legal records over to the police and the personal belongings over to her father and siblings. I did what I was supposed to.
The police had seized my computer because she had correspondence with him on it and had prepared legal documents on it. I explained that it contained my business software, tax records, and vital business documents such as contracts. They gave me forms to fill out to get it back and told me in the mean time to get another equivalent computer and an external hard drive: they wouldn’t be able to give me back the actual computer, but they would copy the hard drive and give me that and I would be reimbursed for the new computer and hard drive. I borrowed more money and got exactly what they said. I did what I was supposed to.
I was asked by the police to stay in the area for more interrogation. I told them I had nowhere to stay. They told me to set up in a cheap motel across from the police station and gave me more forms to fill out, telling me to submit the receipts and I would be reimbursed. I borrowed more money. I did what I was supposed to.
I went in multiple times over the next few weeks to speak to the police and answer their questions. They never charged me with anything. I was never even a person of interest. They called me a model witness. I did what I was supposed to.
The detective on the case sent me to Victim Witness Services at the DA’s office. They sent me to a doctor for my ankle and told me they would reimburse me for the computer, my lost job contracts, pay my medical bills, and pay the costs of moving me because my residence had been destroyed. They wanted all my original receipts and many forms. I did what I was supposed to.
Over two weeks after I had been shot, I had the bullet removed from my ankle. I listed VWS as my insurance on every form as I had been told. I opted out of anesthesia because I wanted to be lucid for her funeral. Even though her family did not want me to attend because they thought I’d had an affair with her, I was holding services online for her friends who couldn’t be there. I did what I was supposed to.
I moved to Colorado to stay with the only friends who could take me in at such short notice. I was hugely in debt now, but I believed it would be okay. They were going to reimburse me for what I’d had to spend as the victim of a violent crime and pay my medical bills. I had done what I was supposed to.
While I waited, I started an anti Domestic Violence organization and put together a 1000 mile hike in her name, because long-distance trekking had been a shared passion of ours and when she was killed, she had been planning one for the summer. I walked 1000 miles on a 9 week old bullet wound, promoting domestic violence awareness the whole way. I did what I was supposed to.
Weekly, then daily after the “4-6 weeks” I’d been told to expect for reimbursement had passed, I called to try and find out what was going on. While I was out of state on the hike, I left a trusted friend of mine with a Power of Attorney and instructions to keep petitioning for me. I did what I was supposed to.
The medical bills were never paid. I have never been reimbursed. My credit is trashed. I still don’t have my business records or a copy of my hard drive. No one at the police department, VWS, or the DA office will answer the phone. I have called hundreds of times, left hundreds of messages, sent dozens of emails. They have all my receipts. Legal aid services won’t take my case out of state. I can’t afford a lawyer. I am hugely in debt. Now, Disney’s “Brave” is being promoted everywhere, and the princess looks just like her. It’s tearing me to pieces. For the first time since the incident, I’m having nightmares. I am eligible for counselling, but that’s through VWS too. They still won’t answer the phone. It’s been six months. They won’t do what they’re supposed to.
Her life is over. Mine is a wreck. I should be writing. I should be doing my job. I can’t, both because I don’t have the physical things I need and because I’m just shattered. I don’t understand.
We did what we were supposed to.
Supposed To
Putting this here and on Facebook because I don’t know where else to put it and I just need to get it out. No, I don’t expect anything to come of it.
***
She married the wealthy older man whom her parents wanted for her and whom she was told would help take care of her 8 siblings after her father had walked out on them. She did what she was supposed to.
She endured 4 years of mental, emotional, physical, financial, and sexual abuse, working 60-100 hour weeks for his business, remodeling his houses, waiting on him hand and foot, obeying his every order, and taking care of his sick, elderly father. She did what she was supposed to.
When it became clear that he had never loved her, that she would never please him, and that he would never help her family, she ended the abuse cycle and walked out. She did what she was supposed to.
After leaving with little more than the clothes on her back and a few belongings stuffed into her car, she got a job, found a series of friend’s couches to crash on, and started the long, arduous legal process of trying to get back from him the rest of her property. She did what she was supposed to.
The California Bar Association Certified, Legal Aid recommended lawyer whom she scraped up $275 to pay a consulting fee told her that if she wanted the judge to validate that she had rights to equity on the property she was entitled to (and on the title of), she needed to “assert right of residence” and move back in with her abuser. She did what she was supposed to.
That same lawyer told her to bring a witness, not a relative, who would be willing to live with her in this dangerous situation and testify in court if he did anything. She asked me, and I agreed, because she was my friend and I could not let her go into that alone. We did what we were supposed to.
For six months, she filled out legal forms, submitted documentation, and went to court appearances precisely on schedule while we both worked odd jobs to make ends meet and put up with a childish man who trashed our bikes, screamed all night, made bizarre phone calls to the police, and turned our utilities off. We dutifully reported every single incident to the police and she continued to pursue her legal rights because she did not want him to win and think he could do it again to another woman…which he was already lining up to do. We did what we were supposed to.
On the morning of May 6, she served him papers that were required by the State of California to inform him, among other things, that she had turned him into the IRS, as she was a certified California tax preparer and would lose her license if she didn’t report the things she had found in his tax report. He told her if she wasn’t out of his life by morning, he’d put a bullet in her head. She called the police. She did what she was supposed to.
The police showed up. He refused to speak to them. They asked if he had a gun, she said she didn’t know. They asked if he’d ever tried to kill anyone before. She said only himself. They asked if he’d been violent before. She said yes, but there had never been charges pressed. They said there was nothing they could do and left. They did not do what they were supposed to.
At noon on May 7, he came into the house with a gun. He shot and killed her while she was washing dishes. He shot and killed another man who had been renting a room to take care of his elderly father. He tried to kill me, but the gun misfired. I was shot in the ankle with a ricochet. He left the room. He did not do what he was supposed to.
I barricaded the door behind him and called 9-1-1. where I stayed on the phone for 20 minutes, instructing the SWAT team of everything I could hear including the additional shots fired when he killed himself. I followed every instruction they gave me. I did what I was supposed to.
The SWAT team charged the house. They found him dying at the top of the stairs, but still alive. I was the only living person in the house. They had me throw the phone aside, cuffed me, ascertained I could walk on the gunshot wound, and marched me downstairs, asking me to identify the shooter on the way past. I complied with everything. I did what I was supposed to do.
They took me to the hospital and asked me if I had insurance. I said no. They didn’t even remove the gauze pad the medic had put on my ankle. They just determined that the bleeding wasn’t life threatening and told me to leave with the police officer. I did what I was supposed to do.
I sat for hours with the police being interrogated and providing them every detail of which I was capable. I treated my own ankle as best I could from a police first aid kit. I called my friends and hers from a borrowed phone. I asked only for a sandwich. I made written and oral statements on the record. I did what I was supposed to do.
I was put up in a hotel room four miles from the house for the night. They gave me my phone back and nothing else. I got in at 10pm, having spent 10 hours being interrogated. I spent the next 2 hours calling everyone who had known her on my contact list so they didn’t have to read about it in the papers, with the exception of her family whom the police had said they wished to contact in person. I did what I was supposed to do.
A friend of mine came by the next morning. We had no vehicle nor money, so we walked the 4 miles to a shopping center near the house. I borrowed money from other friends who wired it to me so that I could buy clothes that weren’t bloody pajamas and replacements for my blood-soaked dressings. I reported in to the police again. I did what I was supposed to do.
I waited until the biohazard team and DA’s office were done with the scene and was given 4 hours to remove all my possessions from the property. While I was there, I heard some of his friends saying they were going to find all that bitch’s legal shit and burn it. I salvaged all the legal records and her most personally prized belongings as well. I did what I was supposed to.
I immediately turned the legal records over to the police and the personal belongings over to her father and siblings. I did what I was supposed to.
The police had seized my computer because she had correspondence with him on it and had prepared legal documents on it. I explained that it contained my business software, tax records, and vital business documents such as contracts. They gave me forms to fill out to get it back and told me in the mean time to get another equivalent computer and an external hard drive: they wouldn’t be able to give me back the actual computer, but they would copy the hard drive and give me that and I would be reimbursed for the new computer and hard drive. I borrowed more money and got exactly what they said. I did what I was supposed to.
I was asked by the police to stay in the area for more interrogation. I told them I had nowhere to stay. They told me to set up in a cheap motel across from the police station and gave me more forms to fill out, telling me to submit the receipts and I would be reimbursed. I borrowed more money. I did what I was supposed to.
I went in multiple times over the next few weeks to speak to the police and answer their questions. They never charged me with anything. I was never even a person of interest. They called me a model witness. I did what I was supposed to.
The detective on the case sent me to Victim Witness Services at the DA’s office. They sent me to a doctor for my ankle and told me they would reimburse me for the computer, my lost job contracts, pay my medical bills, and pay the costs of moving me because my residence had been destroyed. They wanted all my original receipts and many forms. I did what I was supposed to.
Over two weeks after I had been shot, I had the bullet removed from my ankle. I listed VWS as my insurance on every form as I had been told. I opted out of anesthesia because I wanted to be lucid for her funeral. Even though her family did not want me to attend because they thought I’d had an affair with her, I was holding services online for her friends who couldn’t be there. I did what I was supposed to.
I moved to Colorado to stay with the only friends who could take me in at such short notice. I was hugely in debt now, but I believed it would be okay. They were going to reimburse me for what I’d had to spend as the victim of a violent crime and pay my medical bills. I had done what I was supposed to.
While I waited, I started an anti Domestic Violence organization and put together a 1000 mile hike in her name, because long-distance trekking had been a shared passion of ours and when she was killed, she had been planning one for the summer. I walked 1000 miles on a 9 week old bullet wound, promoting domestic violence awareness the whole way. I did what I was supposed to.
Weekly, then daily after the “4-6 weeks” I’d been told to expect for reimbursement had passed, I called to try and find out what was going on. While I was out of state on the hike, I left a trusted friend of mine with a Power of Attorney and instructions to keep petitioning for me. I did what I was supposed to.
The medical bills were never paid. I have never been reimbursed. My credit is trashed. I still don’t have my business records or a copy of my hard drive. No one at the police department, VWS, or the DA office will answer the phone. I have called hundreds of times, left hundreds of messages, sent dozens of emails. They have all my receipts. Legal aid services won’t take my case out of state. I can’t afford a lawyer. I am hugely in debt. Now, Disney’s “Brave” is being promoted everywhere, and the princess looks just like her. It’s tearing me to pieces. For the first time since the incident, I’m having nightmares. I am eligible for counselling, but that’s through VWS too. They still won’t answer the phone. It’s been six months. They won’t do what they’re supposed to.
Her life is over. Mine is a wreck. I should be writing. I should be doing my job. I can’t, both because I don’t have the physical things I need and because I’m just shattered. I don’t understand.
We did what we were supposed to.
Yet ANOTHER account, similar, but with embellished/different details
(Anonymous) 2015-04-16 11:15 pm (UTC)(link)http://andythanfiction.tumblr.com/post/45514769969/less-than-10-feet-away-now-i-thought-you-were
Let me draw you a diagram.
[image of house layout]
On the left are the stairs to the top floor of the house. Jason came up these. We did not hear him because he said nothing and moved quietly, and his truck had been parked some distance away so that we would not see him drive up. He had entered through the back downstairs door by the kitchen. The dog did not bark. It knew him. We were talking about what we wanted to do with our weekend. It was Saturday, May 7, 2011, noon. There was a farmer’s market coming up soon, the first one for the year in Napa. Brittany offered to make tea. I said sure. We were in the room you see on the lower right hand side of the diagram.
She went to the bathroom immediately adjacent our room that we shared with the handyman/other boarder who was living in the bedroom you see at the top righthand side of the diagram. I was sitting on the bed, using the computer. She turned on the tap in the bathroom to rinse the electric kettle.
There were two sharp bangs, not actually very loud. The house echoed oddly. There were no screams, no cries, no words. The children at the end of the cul de sac had fireworks a few days before. I thought they had bigger ones. I picked up my cell phone to call 9-1-1 and ask the police to come confiscate them before someone was hurt. I didn’t know it, but Brittany was already dead where you see the 1 on the diagram.
The other bedroom door opened. There were another half-dozen bangs in rapid succession. You will note the 2 on the diagram. He hadn’t been expected. Jason was getting rattled. It was overkill. Point blank from less than two feet away.
He heard me say “Hello” to the dispatcher. He entered my room. He held the gun in my face. There was eye contact. I held very, very still and kept the eye contact, looking at him hard. I thought that my only hope was to make him SEE ME. Make myself be a person to him. Make him look in my eyes. It was less than a foot away. He pulled the trigger. It jammed. Multiple times. He was holding it sideways, like a gangster in a music video. He shook it, looked down the barrel, left the room.
I jumped up, pushed Brittany’s massage table in front of the door, locked it, crouched down in the corner where you see the 3. He got angry. I was on the phone with the police. He screamed things. He fired through the door. The bullet ricocheted off the metal frame of the massage table. It hit me in the ankle. I didn’t feel it. I was on the phone with the dispatcher. It was 12:04. My phone said so. It seemed shorter and longer. He was yelling. I tried to adjust position. Slipped. Looked down. Saw blood. Told them I’d been shot. I didn’t know how many times, I thought probably only once, but I hadn’t felt that one.
There were two more shots.
There were no more shots. The SWAT team came. They yelled for him through loudspeakers, then broke into the house. I was still on the phone with 911. The dispatcher told me to move away from the door and stand in the middle of the room with my hands on the back of my head and the phone on speaker. I did. The SWAT team broke in. Cuffed me. Frisked me.
They lead me out into the hallway. I was having trouble keeping my footing. My ankle was weird and bleeding a lot. It was slick. The floors were hardwood. It still didn’t hurt. I saw Brittany. She was on her back, still holding the kettle. The tap was still running. Her chin was tilted back, there were medics. She wasn’t moving. All I could see of her head was the underside of her jaw. I have been told that was a good thing. She was wearing purple leopard fuzzy pajama pants, jelly-bean print panties from the Jelly Belly factory down the road, and a grey Henley with no bra. Her toenails were teal. So were mine. We’d gotten silly and painted them the night before. I kept mine until it all chipped off.
They moved me past her quickly. Maybe half a second. A SWAT officer blocked my view on purpose. I saw even less of the other victim. He was dead. I knew that. He had no medics. He had no chest. He was all over the walls and the door.
Jason was lying where you see the 4, sprawled across the top of the stairs. He was still alive. His chest was heaving. He was squirming. He was making noises like a broken whistle in a bag of jelly. He had no face. One of his teeth was sticking in the floor. They asked me to identify the shooter. Clothes. Beard. Gun. I verified them all. I wanted to step on him. On his twitching hurting face hole. But I didn’t want him on me, and they made me step over him.
They said he took twenty minutes to die. They say the others were dead before they hit the floor. I’m glad.
They took me outside. There were police, medics, press. I did what I was told. They checked my hands with some kind of swab and took me out of the cuffs. I couldn’t have my phone back. I was in my pajamas. I was bloody. The medic put a gauze pad on my ankle and taped it. It soaked through. They added another. It soaked through. They didn’t add any more. I went to the hospital, the police station, the hotel. I talked a lot, calmly, to official people, then got my phone back from the police and talked a lot, calmly, to all the people who weren’t next of kin who were in the phone numbers who the police wouldn’t call. Her friends. Her clients. Her godmother.
I can remember just fine.
Her birthday is this week. She would have been 29. She isn’t.
Let me draw you a diagram.
[image of house layout]
On the left are the stairs to the top floor of the house. Jason came up these. We did not hear him because he said nothing and moved quietly, and his truck had been parked some distance away so that we would not see him drive up. He had entered through the back downstairs door by the kitchen. The dog did not bark. It knew him. We were talking about what we wanted to do with our weekend. It was Saturday, May 7, 2011, noon. There was a farmer’s market coming up soon, the first one for the year in Napa. Brittany offered to make tea. I said sure. We were in the room you see on the lower right hand side of the diagram.
She went to the bathroom immediately adjacent our room that we shared with the handyman/other boarder who was living in the bedroom you see at the top righthand side of the diagram. I was sitting on the bed, using the computer. She turned on the tap in the bathroom to rinse the electric kettle.
There were two sharp bangs, not actually very loud. The house echoed oddly. There were no screams, no cries, no words. The children at the end of the cul de sac had fireworks a few days before. I thought they had bigger ones. I picked up my cell phone to call 9-1-1 and ask the police to come confiscate them before someone was hurt. I didn’t know it, but Brittany was already dead where you see the 1 on the diagram.
The other bedroom door opened. There were another half-dozen bangs in rapid succession. You will note the 2 on the diagram. He hadn’t been expected. Jason was getting rattled. It was overkill. Point blank from less than two feet away.
He heard me say “Hello” to the dispatcher. He entered my room. He held the gun in my face. There was eye contact. I held very, very still and kept the eye contact, looking at him hard. I thought that my only hope was to make him SEE ME. Make myself be a person to him. Make him look in my eyes. It was less than a foot away. He pulled the trigger. It jammed. Multiple times. He was holding it sideways, like a gangster in a music video. He shook it, looked down the barrel, left the room.
I jumped up, pushed Brittany’s massage table in front of the door, locked it, crouched down in the corner where you see the 3. He got angry. I was on the phone with the police. He screamed things. He fired through the door. The bullet ricocheted off the metal frame of the massage table. It hit me in the ankle. I didn’t feel it. I was on the phone with the dispatcher. It was 12:04. My phone said so. It seemed shorter and longer. He was yelling. I tried to adjust position. Slipped. Looked down. Saw blood. Told them I’d been shot. I didn’t know how many times, I thought probably only once, but I hadn’t felt that one.
There were two more shots.
There were no more shots. The SWAT team came. They yelled for him through loudspeakers, then broke into the house. I was still on the phone with 911. The dispatcher told me to move away from the door and stand in the middle of the room with my hands on the back of my head and the phone on speaker. I did. The SWAT team broke in. Cuffed me. Frisked me.
They lead me out into the hallway. I was having trouble keeping my footing. My ankle was weird and bleeding a lot. It was slick. The floors were hardwood. It still didn’t hurt. I saw Brittany. She was on her back, still holding the kettle. The tap was still running. Her chin was tilted back, there were medics. She wasn’t moving. All I could see of her head was the underside of her jaw. I have been told that was a good thing. She was wearing purple leopard fuzzy pajama pants, jelly-bean print panties from the Jelly Belly factory down the road, and a grey Henley with no bra. Her toenails were teal. So were mine. We’d gotten silly and painted them the night before. I kept mine until it all chipped off.
They moved me past her quickly. Maybe half a second. A SWAT officer blocked my view on purpose. I saw even less of the other victim. He was dead. I knew that. He had no medics. He had no chest. He was all over the walls and the door.
Jason was lying where you see the 4, sprawled across the top of the stairs. He was still alive. His chest was heaving. He was squirming. He was making noises like a broken whistle in a bag of jelly. He had no face. One of his teeth was sticking in the floor. They asked me to identify the shooter. Clothes. Beard. Gun. I verified them all. I wanted to step on him. On his twitching hurting face hole. But I didn’t want him on me, and they made me step over him.
They said he took twenty minutes to die. They say the others were dead before they hit the floor. I’m glad.
They took me outside. There were police, medics, press. I did what I was told. They checked my hands with some kind of swab and took me out of the cuffs. I couldn’t have my phone back. I was in my pajamas. I was bloody. The medic put a gauze pad on my ankle and taped it. It soaked through. They added another. It soaked through. They didn’t add any more. I went to the hospital, the police station, the hotel. I talked a lot, calmly, to official people, then got my phone back from the police and talked a lot, calmly, to all the people who weren’t next of kin who were in the phone numbers who the police wouldn’t call. Her friends. Her clients. Her godmother.
I can remember just fine.
Her birthday is this week. She would have been 29. She isn’t.
http://andythanfiction.tumblr.com/post/43429974074/not-even-a-mile-in-your-shoes-just-trying-them
Not even a mile in your shoes, just trying them on, and I still got blisters
There was a man in the train station today who was drunk. He was in his early 20s, heavyset, about 6'1", and sitting down with my hair and my eyeliner and my tight jeans and my big jacket and my pretty face, he thought I was a girl. He came up to me and sat right down without asking, putting his bag in such a way that it blocked me from getting up without shoving it out of the way. He leaned close, getting way in my personal space. He smelled bad. He said you know, too many people don’t appreciate short hair and glasses on girls. I think it’s adorable.
My first response was to tell him to get bent, you drunk fuck, I’m not a goddamned girl. But I caught myself. I realized that his accident had, just for a minute, taken away my privilege, even though I knew I still had the safety of being able to “reveal” at any moment. I decided to not correct him, to experience as close as I could the casual harassment that I read about so often on your blogs. So when he asked me my name, I kept my voice quiet, soft, and just said Andy, not Andrew. I let him assume that it ended in an i.
He said his name was Alan Lucas, that George Lucas was his great-uncle, did I know who that was? I looked like a geek girl, with my computer, but he couldn’t help but notice it was an HP running Windows 7. I really should use Linux. He could set it up for me. He tried to take it from my hands. I didn’t let him, and he promised he wasn’t going to hurt it like I was a three year old. I said no thank you again, and I realized that I was intimidated by him in a way I wouldn’t have been if I had been interacting with him with both of us aware of my gender.
He offered me a drink from a nasty half-full bottle of flat coke heavily laced with some kind of cheap whisky. I said no thank you. He said one little drink wouldn’t hurt, that he was being generous, that this was really good whiskey, $400 a bottle. He said he had a contract with the US government to make top-secret new weapons and was a genius computer engineer like Tony Stark, then laughed and asked me if I’d seen the Avengers, asked if I thought Thor was a hottie, or was I - he leered, and his teeth were stained - more the Black Widow type. Because if I was, that was cool. He was cool with lesbians. He’d slept with a lot of them. He was good with his tongue. He wagged it at me.
I showed him my left hand, where I wear the ring on my ring finger in memory of Brittany. I said I’m not interested. He ran a hand through my hair and told me not to be a bitch, he was just being nice. I said I was working on something, would he please leave me alone. His face twisted up as if I’d randomly come up to him on the street and kicked him in the balls, and for a moment, I was very afraid, because I knew absolutely that he was simply deciding what he wanted to do to me with utterly no concern for whether it was ok or not, because by wounding his pride and turning him down, I’d warranted whatever vengeance he chose as the injured party. Finally he just grabbed his bag, knocking over mine and almost knocking my computer off my lap very much on purpose and stomped off, grumbling very loudly that you try to be nice to a girl…why do they have to be such fucking dumb bitches, fucking dyke sluts, deserve what they get.
I still don’t understand what it’s like to live with that every day. I can’t. I won’t. There is absolutely no equivalence between five minutes in a train station where I could have revealed my gender at any moment and being trapped not only in a culture where it’s constant but where if he’d go further, you’d be blamed, whether you’d ‘pissed him off’ or 'lead him on.’ I can’t understand really what it is to have to calculate everything you do by that paradigm. But even that little glimpse was incredibly eye-opening, and made it all so much more real.
And I’m sorry. As a guy, I’m so sorry that you have to exist in that reality, and I’ll try to do everything I can to change it.
Tagged: rape culture, street harassment, nice guys, feminism, supernatural meta, meta
Not even a mile in your shoes, just trying them on, and I still got blisters
There was a man in the train station today who was drunk. He was in his early 20s, heavyset, about 6'1", and sitting down with my hair and my eyeliner and my tight jeans and my big jacket and my pretty face, he thought I was a girl. He came up to me and sat right down without asking, putting his bag in such a way that it blocked me from getting up without shoving it out of the way. He leaned close, getting way in my personal space. He smelled bad. He said you know, too many people don’t appreciate short hair and glasses on girls. I think it’s adorable.
My first response was to tell him to get bent, you drunk fuck, I’m not a goddamned girl. But I caught myself. I realized that his accident had, just for a minute, taken away my privilege, even though I knew I still had the safety of being able to “reveal” at any moment. I decided to not correct him, to experience as close as I could the casual harassment that I read about so often on your blogs. So when he asked me my name, I kept my voice quiet, soft, and just said Andy, not Andrew. I let him assume that it ended in an i.
He said his name was Alan Lucas, that George Lucas was his great-uncle, did I know who that was? I looked like a geek girl, with my computer, but he couldn’t help but notice it was an HP running Windows 7. I really should use Linux. He could set it up for me. He tried to take it from my hands. I didn’t let him, and he promised he wasn’t going to hurt it like I was a three year old. I said no thank you again, and I realized that I was intimidated by him in a way I wouldn’t have been if I had been interacting with him with both of us aware of my gender.
He offered me a drink from a nasty half-full bottle of flat coke heavily laced with some kind of cheap whisky. I said no thank you. He said one little drink wouldn’t hurt, that he was being generous, that this was really good whiskey, $400 a bottle. He said he had a contract with the US government to make top-secret new weapons and was a genius computer engineer like Tony Stark, then laughed and asked me if I’d seen the Avengers, asked if I thought Thor was a hottie, or was I - he leered, and his teeth were stained - more the Black Widow type. Because if I was, that was cool. He was cool with lesbians. He’d slept with a lot of them. He was good with his tongue. He wagged it at me.
I showed him my left hand, where I wear the ring on my ring finger in memory of Brittany. I said I’m not interested. He ran a hand through my hair and told me not to be a bitch, he was just being nice. I said I was working on something, would he please leave me alone. His face twisted up as if I’d randomly come up to him on the street and kicked him in the balls, and for a moment, I was very afraid, because I knew absolutely that he was simply deciding what he wanted to do to me with utterly no concern for whether it was ok or not, because by wounding his pride and turning him down, I’d warranted whatever vengeance he chose as the injured party. Finally he just grabbed his bag, knocking over mine and almost knocking my computer off my lap very much on purpose and stomped off, grumbling very loudly that you try to be nice to a girl…why do they have to be such fucking dumb bitches, fucking dyke sluts, deserve what they get.
I still don’t understand what it’s like to live with that every day. I can’t. I won’t. There is absolutely no equivalence between five minutes in a train station where I could have revealed my gender at any moment and being trapped not only in a culture where it’s constant but where if he’d go further, you’d be blamed, whether you’d ‘pissed him off’ or 'lead him on.’ I can’t understand really what it is to have to calculate everything you do by that paradigm. But even that little glimpse was incredibly eye-opening, and made it all so much more real.
And I’m sorry. As a guy, I’m so sorry that you have to exist in that reality, and I’ll try to do everything I can to change it.
Tagged: rape culture, street harassment, nice guys, feminism, supernatural meta, meta
Warnings for Andy-typical level of body shaming. Also some not really graphic mentions of sexual activity.
http://andythanfiction.tumblr.com/post/45518493531/its-brittanys-birthday-in-three-days-and-most-of
It’s Brittany’s birthday in three days and most of her important things including Gorilla were lost in the box with all my important things and I’ve utterly failed at producing the content I promised for my own ‘verse that hardly anyone even reads any more because I’m so bad about it or even functioning and I just gave oral in a WalMart parking lot to someone I could hardly stand to look who stank and oozed stuff under their gut fold and thought I was sixteen because I didn’t feel worth saying no and I’m so broke my phone’s been cut off because my friend’s in a bad place too and I gave her all my money and both my last childhood cats died in the past few months and I just saw that some time last night my fish died too and I don’t even know why that matters so much but now I can’t do GISHWHES or go to a Convention and try to meet Misha now because I’ve been told his people and Creation have been told I’m going to try to scam them or some shit and my sister is here so I have to smile and lick whatever shit she dishes out or cause Family Drama and I’m trying to at the very least still produce clever meta for SPN but I’m not even finding the words for that and please, I’m a person, ok? Contrary to rumor, I do have motherfucking feelings. I know what compassion is. I give it. I live by it. Can I just please have some for this once and beg you to please fucking back off for a day or two? I’m not leaving. You can’t hurt me away. I’m stronger than that. But you can win enough to make me beg you for a fucking break. I hope that makes you feel good inside and proud of yourself.
Tagged: and I know this will be passed around the wank groups, and mocked and laughed at and ridiculed, and used as proof of my latest whatever, and what a manipulative cunt I am, and what an awful person who doesn't deserve to share oxygen with them, and I don't even care any more.
http://andythanfiction.tumblr.com/post/45489008828/remember-when-i-said-i-had-a-big-problem-with-no
Remember when I said I had a big problem with no? Yeah. So maybe I just got home from having spent the night with someone I wasn’t even remotely attracted to and just met and wasn’t even meaning to so much as talk to and don’t ever intend to see again, having made them feel like they were some kind of sex deity because I couldn’t bear to say no when they started flirting with me…because I felt too guilty about how behind I am on my fanfic obligations and the fact that my cell phone is off until I get my next paycheck so I can’t call my friend when she’s sad.
Did I mention I have issues with saying no? And kind of a history of being a slut because of it and because of how it makes me feel like I can validate someone and do something nice for them if I can make them feel physical pleasure?
Because it’s a problem when you hook up with someone you met at WalMart while out to get almond milk.
*facepalm*
http://andythanfiction.tumblr.com/post/45611634874/so-you-were-just-in-walmart-with-a-carton-of
So you were just in Walmart with a carton of almond milk and some fugly dude comes up and is like "hey, you look 16, suck my cock?" and you're like "OMG, I can't say no!" Yeah, cool story, bro. Happens to me all the time.
Anonymous
Or I was at Walmart with a carton of almond milk and a woman asked me if I was vegetarian. I said no, but I was pretty knowledgeable about milk substitutes, why? She thought she might be lactose sensitive and was trying to cut out dairy, but soy milk tasted weird to her. Grassy. We discussed nut milks and rice milks, and she apologized for keeping me so long. I said it was ok, all I’m really going home to is a blog and a pile of things I’m procrastinating. She said she knew how that felt, minus the blog. No one would be interested in what she had to say. I said that wasn’t true. For example, I was going to buy her a cup of coffee right now at the in-Walmart McDonalds to hear what she had to say. She said it was cute, but my mother would be missing me, and was it sad that the first man to offer to buy her a drink was a 16 year old boy? I said I was pretty much double that, and there were many more important things to judge herself on, like that it mattered to her whether it would bother my Mom. We talked a long, long time. About what is not your business. She felt unwantable, like there was no point in trying to improve anything in her life because she’d never be someone who someone else could desire, and that she’d just gone in all the wrong directions and wasted too much time and now she was a useless failure marking time. I wanted to make her feel like she mattered. I made poor choices as to how.
Happens to me all the time.
http://andythanfiction.tumblr.com/post/45518493531/its-brittanys-birthday-in-three-days-and-most-of
It’s Brittany’s birthday in three days and most of her important things including Gorilla were lost in the box with all my important things and I’ve utterly failed at producing the content I promised for my own ‘verse that hardly anyone even reads any more because I’m so bad about it or even functioning and I just gave oral in a WalMart parking lot to someone I could hardly stand to look who stank and oozed stuff under their gut fold and thought I was sixteen because I didn’t feel worth saying no and I’m so broke my phone’s been cut off because my friend’s in a bad place too and I gave her all my money and both my last childhood cats died in the past few months and I just saw that some time last night my fish died too and I don’t even know why that matters so much but now I can’t do GISHWHES or go to a Convention and try to meet Misha now because I’ve been told his people and Creation have been told I’m going to try to scam them or some shit and my sister is here so I have to smile and lick whatever shit she dishes out or cause Family Drama and I’m trying to at the very least still produce clever meta for SPN but I’m not even finding the words for that and please, I’m a person, ok? Contrary to rumor, I do have motherfucking feelings. I know what compassion is. I give it. I live by it. Can I just please have some for this once and beg you to please fucking back off for a day or two? I’m not leaving. You can’t hurt me away. I’m stronger than that. But you can win enough to make me beg you for a fucking break. I hope that makes you feel good inside and proud of yourself.
Tagged: and I know this will be passed around the wank groups, and mocked and laughed at and ridiculed, and used as proof of my latest whatever, and what a manipulative cunt I am, and what an awful person who doesn't deserve to share oxygen with them, and I don't even care any more.
http://andythanfiction.tumblr.com/post/45489008828/remember-when-i-said-i-had-a-big-problem-with-no
Remember when I said I had a big problem with no? Yeah. So maybe I just got home from having spent the night with someone I wasn’t even remotely attracted to and just met and wasn’t even meaning to so much as talk to and don’t ever intend to see again, having made them feel like they were some kind of sex deity because I couldn’t bear to say no when they started flirting with me…because I felt too guilty about how behind I am on my fanfic obligations and the fact that my cell phone is off until I get my next paycheck so I can’t call my friend when she’s sad.
Did I mention I have issues with saying no? And kind of a history of being a slut because of it and because of how it makes me feel like I can validate someone and do something nice for them if I can make them feel physical pleasure?
Because it’s a problem when you hook up with someone you met at WalMart while out to get almond milk.
*facepalm*
http://andythanfiction.tumblr.com/post/45611634874/so-you-were-just-in-walmart-with-a-carton-of
So you were just in Walmart with a carton of almond milk and some fugly dude comes up and is like "hey, you look 16, suck my cock?" and you're like "OMG, I can't say no!" Yeah, cool story, bro. Happens to me all the time.
Anonymous
Or I was at Walmart with a carton of almond milk and a woman asked me if I was vegetarian. I said no, but I was pretty knowledgeable about milk substitutes, why? She thought she might be lactose sensitive and was trying to cut out dairy, but soy milk tasted weird to her. Grassy. We discussed nut milks and rice milks, and she apologized for keeping me so long. I said it was ok, all I’m really going home to is a blog and a pile of things I’m procrastinating. She said she knew how that felt, minus the blog. No one would be interested in what she had to say. I said that wasn’t true. For example, I was going to buy her a cup of coffee right now at the in-Walmart McDonalds to hear what she had to say. She said it was cute, but my mother would be missing me, and was it sad that the first man to offer to buy her a drink was a 16 year old boy? I said I was pretty much double that, and there were many more important things to judge herself on, like that it mattered to her whether it would bother my Mom. We talked a long, long time. About what is not your business. She felt unwantable, like there was no point in trying to improve anything in her life because she’d never be someone who someone else could desire, and that she’d just gone in all the wrong directions and wasted too much time and now she was a useless failure marking time. I wanted to make her feel like she mattered. I made poor choices as to how.
Happens to me all the time.
Woman in the Walmart parking lot - Andy claims it wasn't consensual/invokes rape culture
(Anonymous) 2015-04-18 06:37 pm (UTC)(link)http://andythanfiction.tumblr.com/post/45516262723/why-was-the-encounter-not-quite-consensual-in-your
>Why was the encounter not quite consensual in your opinion? That's an odd addendum that wasn't included in your initial immediate reaction. I'm assuming it was on your part?
Anonymous
Because I said yes but I didn’t actually want it. It was consent, but not good consent. And although not applicable in my circumstance, I really hope that your day job isn’t as a rape counselor. Protip for the future: If I had been raped, it’s not your job to decide if my stories line up well enough. You’d be astonished how many people either tell themselves or others or both one thing until they can handle or are given no choice but to face or admit the truth.
>Why was the encounter not quite consensual in your opinion? That's an odd addendum that wasn't included in your initial immediate reaction. I'm assuming it was on your part?
Anonymous
Because I said yes but I didn’t actually want it. It was consent, but not good consent. And although not applicable in my circumstance, I really hope that your day job isn’t as a rape counselor. Protip for the future: If I had been raped, it’s not your job to decide if my stories line up well enough. You’d be astonished how many people either tell themselves or others or both one thing until they can handle or are given no choice but to face or admit the truth.
Woman in the Walmart parking lot - Andy says there was "fucky consent"
(Anonymous) - 2015-04-18 18:45 (UTC) - ExpandWoman in the Walmart parking lot - At least Andy raised "gut-fold" woman's self-esteem!
(Anonymous) - 2015-04-18 18:53 (UTC) - ExpandWoman in the Walmart parking lot - Andy denies fat-shaming
(Anonymous) - 2015-04-18 21:47 (UTC) - Expandhttp://andythanfiction.tumblr.com/post/32065505933/hey-j-k-r-doggs-imma-let-you-finish-but-i-got-some
HEY J.K.R-DOGGS IMMA LET YOU FINISH BUT I GOT SOME REAL PROBLEMS WITH YOUR RACIAL ALLEGORIES
impossiblebreakfast:
I’m just going to open here with a simple fact:
I love Harry Potter.
And I know you’re thinking yeah, well, I found this post so I pretty obviously —
No.
Stop.
I love Harry Potter. I found Harry Potter as a clinically depressed mixed-race seven-year-old, and it changed me. I couldn’t tell you what my life was like prior to that day at BJ’s Wholesale Club (please hold your dick jokes until the end of the lecture) when my mother finally bullied my tiny little hipster ass into picking up that one wizard thing that everyone was talking about, not even if I wanted to tell you, because it’s there even in memories it can’t be. Wasn’t I reading it just before that one seizure I had when I was three? Wasn’t I playing Dueling Club with my brother that one time right after I turned five and my mother caught us sneaking around on the roof? I’m pretty sure I had at least one barbie named after Angelina Johnson…
Read More
Hey, I just read your essay about racism in Harry Potter, and I’m going to admit right now that yes, I’m white, so no, I don’t get it. Not the way you do, and I’m lucky for that. I was also not a big Harry Potter fan. I read them for the first time as an adult, and a lot of things squicked me very badly about it; one of the biggest of which was the magic-centric assimilation and the vanishing/tokenizing of individuality. No one had a heritage, a religion, anything but occasionally an accent. The Muggle world was erased, creepily, even for those who grew up there. What’s the function of a rubber duck? *shivers*
Anyway, I’m writing you because I wanted to offer you something. For me, it started as a dare, but it’s become a major labor of love for the last four and a half years. I re-wrote Deathly Hallows from Neville’s perspective back at Hogwarts, and it’s exploded into a subfandom, three novels, 100+ one-shots, and 400+ pieces of art. It’s called the Daydverse (named after “DAYD”, the short form of the first novel, “Dumbledore’s Army and the Year of Darkness.”
Yes, it is still primarily about white people, that’s regrettably the playing field she gave us. But in getting to add and expand as much as I have, there has become a hell of a lot more diversity and room for not only PoC to exist, but to be seen and loved and explored and embraced as fully-fledged characters without whom the ‘verse would be so much shallower…and the Muggle-borns get to keep their culture, too, as the Creevey brothers in particular would happily attest. And yes, most of it’s in the expanded 'verse, not as much DAYD itself, but that’s because DAYD is about a 17 year old sheltered white cis straight boy kind of getting fist-fucked by life into adulthood, and there is a learning curve. And no, it’s not perfect, but if straight white boys think they have to be perfect or only write their own, we get…well, this mess. And I’m always willing to listen.
Go to my Deviantart (thanfiction dot deviantart dot comm) and peruse the Daydverse folder. Go to my Tumblr and peruse that. Check out the first novel and maybe the 'verse, and maybe, I hope, I can offer you a little bit of the magic back, even if it’s in a more adult world with a little less sparkly ponies. Not to play Great White Savior, to “earn cookies”, or to pretend that what I write is “post-racism” or beyond critique. Just because I’ve gotten letters from all kinds of PoC, people of size, people of faith, people of differing sexuality, etc. who have said that it mattered to them.
Again, it’s not a “perfected” Harry Potter, or, God forbid, a “Harry Potter For Politically Correct People”. It’s just something loosely based off of Harry Potter that at least makes a fucking attempt. And sometimes, when you’ve gone vegan because of the horrors of animal abuse in the meat industry, even a tofu dog might have its place.
Thanks for your time
(I’ve thrown in an excerpt from Chapter 1 of DAYD below)
***
Ginny scowled up at him from where she had been using her wand on the sprained ankle. “You’re not suggesting that we should just roll over?”
“Or that we let ourselves be punching bags in the style of the brilliant Mr. Finnigan, I hope,” added Lavender.
“I don’t know what I’m suggesting,” Neville admitted. Then he looked at Seamus again, a thought occurring to him. “I’ve wanted to ask you, what was that hex you used on Carrow? I didn’t recognize it. Is it something Harry taught you personally?”
Seamus blushed, adding an overall pink tinge to his multi-colored features. “Nah, it’s not even approved. I shouldn'ta done it.”
Colin’s eyes widened. “It’s like an Unforgivable, then?”
“Not even!” Seamus started to shake his head, then thought better of it and closed his eyes, moaning softly before he spoke again. “It’s one of the old ones from my Nana – Gaelic. All the Ministry-approved spells are off of nice, proper, respectable Latin, you know, but the Celts had their own brand of magic, even if it got pushed off as all backward. It’s mostly died out now, but some of the old ones still remember a bit here and there, mostly hexes and jinxes and the odd witch’s charm, you know, for tellin’ what kind of baby you’ll be having and the like.”
Parvati looked suddenly fascinated, sitting up very straight and tossing back her heavy black braid. “My grandfather was a Fakir in Bombay, he used to tell us that there was all kinds of magic we would never learn at Hogwarts – he tried to have us sent to India to learn – but when our parents refused, he taught us a few spells. Padma can even control snakes.”
Ginny gasped. “She’s learned Parseltongue?”
“No, she can’t talk to them, only make them do what she wants.”
“Great!” Seamus grinned. “Tell her to make that big one You-Know-Who’s got eat him.”
Parvati gave him a look of exasperation. “That’d be nice, but it’s just little ones – normal ones – like cobras and adders. And I know a few French spells from one of the boys from Beauxbatons.”
Excited now, Lavender leaned over the back of the couch. “Anthony Goldstein comes from a family of wizards that go all the way back to the Essene scholars, I bet he knows some stuff in Hebrew. Vane’s always going on that her family are genuine Rom – those are gypsies – and Ernie’s family was so deep in the Clan wars that they didn’t start going to Hogwarts until a hundred and fifty years ago, so maybe he has something like Finnigan, old Gaelic magic.”
“His’d be Erse , not Gaelic. We’re not the same, and we whipped Scotland at Quidditch last year.” Seamus pointed out defensively.
Neville and Ginny stared at one another, startled by this sudden burst of exotic spell knowledge that had broken out, and then Ginny giggled. “I don’t know about you, Neville, but I feel rather plain all of a sudden.”
He couldn’t help grinning back. “Yeah. I mean, my family’s just been, you know, wizards. Normal old British wizards. Tut tut, conjure you a cuppa?” He put down the bowl and waved his wand, summoning an empty teacup from across the room and lifting it to her in an extravagant motion, pinky broadly outstretched.
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4315906/1/Dumbledores-Army-and-the-Year-of-Darkness
HEY J.K.R-DOGGS IMMA LET YOU FINISH BUT I GOT SOME REAL PROBLEMS WITH YOUR RACIAL ALLEGORIES
impossiblebreakfast:
I’m just going to open here with a simple fact:
I love Harry Potter.
And I know you’re thinking yeah, well, I found this post so I pretty obviously —
No.
Stop.
I love Harry Potter. I found Harry Potter as a clinically depressed mixed-race seven-year-old, and it changed me. I couldn’t tell you what my life was like prior to that day at BJ’s Wholesale Club (please hold your dick jokes until the end of the lecture) when my mother finally bullied my tiny little hipster ass into picking up that one wizard thing that everyone was talking about, not even if I wanted to tell you, because it’s there even in memories it can’t be. Wasn’t I reading it just before that one seizure I had when I was three? Wasn’t I playing Dueling Club with my brother that one time right after I turned five and my mother caught us sneaking around on the roof? I’m pretty sure I had at least one barbie named after Angelina Johnson…
Read More
Hey, I just read your essay about racism in Harry Potter, and I’m going to admit right now that yes, I’m white, so no, I don’t get it. Not the way you do, and I’m lucky for that. I was also not a big Harry Potter fan. I read them for the first time as an adult, and a lot of things squicked me very badly about it; one of the biggest of which was the magic-centric assimilation and the vanishing/tokenizing of individuality. No one had a heritage, a religion, anything but occasionally an accent. The Muggle world was erased, creepily, even for those who grew up there. What’s the function of a rubber duck? *shivers*
Anyway, I’m writing you because I wanted to offer you something. For me, it started as a dare, but it’s become a major labor of love for the last four and a half years. I re-wrote Deathly Hallows from Neville’s perspective back at Hogwarts, and it’s exploded into a subfandom, three novels, 100+ one-shots, and 400+ pieces of art. It’s called the Daydverse (named after “DAYD”, the short form of the first novel, “Dumbledore’s Army and the Year of Darkness.”
Yes, it is still primarily about white people, that’s regrettably the playing field she gave us. But in getting to add and expand as much as I have, there has become a hell of a lot more diversity and room for not only PoC to exist, but to be seen and loved and explored and embraced as fully-fledged characters without whom the ‘verse would be so much shallower…and the Muggle-borns get to keep their culture, too, as the Creevey brothers in particular would happily attest. And yes, most of it’s in the expanded 'verse, not as much DAYD itself, but that’s because DAYD is about a 17 year old sheltered white cis straight boy kind of getting fist-fucked by life into adulthood, and there is a learning curve. And no, it’s not perfect, but if straight white boys think they have to be perfect or only write their own, we get…well, this mess. And I’m always willing to listen.
Go to my Deviantart (thanfiction dot deviantart dot comm) and peruse the Daydverse folder. Go to my Tumblr and peruse that. Check out the first novel and maybe the 'verse, and maybe, I hope, I can offer you a little bit of the magic back, even if it’s in a more adult world with a little less sparkly ponies. Not to play Great White Savior, to “earn cookies”, or to pretend that what I write is “post-racism” or beyond critique. Just because I’ve gotten letters from all kinds of PoC, people of size, people of faith, people of differing sexuality, etc. who have said that it mattered to them.
Again, it’s not a “perfected” Harry Potter, or, God forbid, a “Harry Potter For Politically Correct People”. It’s just something loosely based off of Harry Potter that at least makes a fucking attempt. And sometimes, when you’ve gone vegan because of the horrors of animal abuse in the meat industry, even a tofu dog might have its place.
Thanks for your time
(I’ve thrown in an excerpt from Chapter 1 of DAYD below)
***
Ginny scowled up at him from where she had been using her wand on the sprained ankle. “You’re not suggesting that we should just roll over?”
“Or that we let ourselves be punching bags in the style of the brilliant Mr. Finnigan, I hope,” added Lavender.
“I don’t know what I’m suggesting,” Neville admitted. Then he looked at Seamus again, a thought occurring to him. “I’ve wanted to ask you, what was that hex you used on Carrow? I didn’t recognize it. Is it something Harry taught you personally?”
Seamus blushed, adding an overall pink tinge to his multi-colored features. “Nah, it’s not even approved. I shouldn'ta done it.”
Colin’s eyes widened. “It’s like an Unforgivable, then?”
“Not even!” Seamus started to shake his head, then thought better of it and closed his eyes, moaning softly before he spoke again. “It’s one of the old ones from my Nana – Gaelic. All the Ministry-approved spells are off of nice, proper, respectable Latin, you know, but the Celts had their own brand of magic, even if it got pushed off as all backward. It’s mostly died out now, but some of the old ones still remember a bit here and there, mostly hexes and jinxes and the odd witch’s charm, you know, for tellin’ what kind of baby you’ll be having and the like.”
Parvati looked suddenly fascinated, sitting up very straight and tossing back her heavy black braid. “My grandfather was a Fakir in Bombay, he used to tell us that there was all kinds of magic we would never learn at Hogwarts – he tried to have us sent to India to learn – but when our parents refused, he taught us a few spells. Padma can even control snakes.”
Ginny gasped. “She’s learned Parseltongue?”
“No, she can’t talk to them, only make them do what she wants.”
“Great!” Seamus grinned. “Tell her to make that big one You-Know-Who’s got eat him.”
Parvati gave him a look of exasperation. “That’d be nice, but it’s just little ones – normal ones – like cobras and adders. And I know a few French spells from one of the boys from Beauxbatons.”
Excited now, Lavender leaned over the back of the couch. “Anthony Goldstein comes from a family of wizards that go all the way back to the Essene scholars, I bet he knows some stuff in Hebrew. Vane’s always going on that her family are genuine Rom – those are gypsies – and Ernie’s family was so deep in the Clan wars that they didn’t start going to Hogwarts until a hundred and fifty years ago, so maybe he has something like Finnigan, old Gaelic magic.”
“His’d be Erse , not Gaelic. We’re not the same, and we whipped Scotland at Quidditch last year.” Seamus pointed out defensively.
Neville and Ginny stared at one another, startled by this sudden burst of exotic spell knowledge that had broken out, and then Ginny giggled. “I don’t know about you, Neville, but I feel rather plain all of a sudden.”
He couldn’t help grinning back. “Yeah. I mean, my family’s just been, you know, wizards. Normal old British wizards. Tut tut, conjure you a cuppa?” He put down the bowl and waved his wand, summoning an empty teacup from across the room and lifting it to her in an extravagant motion, pinky broadly outstretched.
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4315906/1/Dumbledores-Army-and-the-Year-of-Darkness
Andy describes how he passes himself off as an "expert" & admits to conning people
(Anonymous) 2015-04-16 08:59 pm (UTC)(link)Complete with references to Tony Stark and Frank Abagnale. Andy is "impressive as fuck", you guys, and don't you forget it.
http://andythanfiction.tumblr.com/post/43797085598/hi-there-just-wanted-to-say-youre-awesome-and
I wish I remembered where I got the information, but my data intake is so broad-spectrum and voracious…I’ll go on learning binges, and then it’s literally like asking someone who’s gone on an eating binge (and I’ve done that before too) exactly how many cookies they consumed from the second box. Seriously. I’ll be like NEED TO KNOW THE THING, and then ten books, 70-odd wiki articles, God knows how many blog entries and journal articles, a dozen youtube lectures and 32 manic sleepless hours later, I come blinking out the other side able to pass myself as having at least a University minor in the Thing…and because of the way my brain can then build webs and patterns that instantly connect it to all my other Things and create new Things out of that, I can often pass for as much as graduate studies.
http://andythanfiction.tumblr.com/post/43847485246/not-to-sound-pissy-or-arrogant-or-anything-but-i
Not to sound pissy or arrogant or anything, but I find it a bit insulting when you imply that you doing 32 hours of reading on a subject (no matter how much you cram into that, which I don't doubt is a lot) is equivalent to anyone else spending 3 or 4 years of their life studying it. You're clearly intelligent, but you can't be that much better than everyone else, and if you are it's possibly a bit harsh/tactless to say so. I hope I interpreted the comment wrong or something...
This is why I deliberately phrased it as “able to pass myself as.” It’s like the difference between saying I can build an entire fully functional, furnished, up to code suburban split-level house in 24 hours vs I can build a complete living room/dining room/kitchen open floorplan set that would pass on even the most stringent HD camera as a fully-functional, furnished, up to code suburban split-level house in 24 hours. They’re both impressive as fuck. They both work for the creation of fiction and certain social situations (and yeah, when I was younger, I took advantage of this skill and had something of a Frank Abagnale streak). One’s just frankly not possible and, you’re right, insulting to the people who do build houses.
***
For the curious:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Abagnale
Frank William Abagnale, Jr. is an American security consultant known for his history as a former confidence trickster, check forger, and impostor between the ages of 15 and 21. He became one of the most famous impostors ever,[1] claiming to have assumed no fewer than eight identities as an airline pilot, a doctor, a U.S. Bureau of Prisons agent, and a lawyer.
http://andythanfiction.tumblr.com/post/43797085598/hi-there-just-wanted-to-say-youre-awesome-and
I wish I remembered where I got the information, but my data intake is so broad-spectrum and voracious…I’ll go on learning binges, and then it’s literally like asking someone who’s gone on an eating binge (and I’ve done that before too) exactly how many cookies they consumed from the second box. Seriously. I’ll be like NEED TO KNOW THE THING, and then ten books, 70-odd wiki articles, God knows how many blog entries and journal articles, a dozen youtube lectures and 32 manic sleepless hours later, I come blinking out the other side able to pass myself as having at least a University minor in the Thing…and because of the way my brain can then build webs and patterns that instantly connect it to all my other Things and create new Things out of that, I can often pass for as much as graduate studies.
http://andythanfiction.tumblr.com/post/43847485246/not-to-sound-pissy-or-arrogant-or-anything-but-i
Not to sound pissy or arrogant or anything, but I find it a bit insulting when you imply that you doing 32 hours of reading on a subject (no matter how much you cram into that, which I don't doubt is a lot) is equivalent to anyone else spending 3 or 4 years of their life studying it. You're clearly intelligent, but you can't be that much better than everyone else, and if you are it's possibly a bit harsh/tactless to say so. I hope I interpreted the comment wrong or something...
This is why I deliberately phrased it as “able to pass myself as.” It’s like the difference between saying I can build an entire fully functional, furnished, up to code suburban split-level house in 24 hours vs I can build a complete living room/dining room/kitchen open floorplan set that would pass on even the most stringent HD camera as a fully-functional, furnished, up to code suburban split-level house in 24 hours. They’re both impressive as fuck. They both work for the creation of fiction and certain social situations (and yeah, when I was younger, I took advantage of this skill and had something of a Frank Abagnale streak). One’s just frankly not possible and, you’re right, insulting to the people who do build houses.
***
For the curious:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Abagnale
Frank William Abagnale, Jr. is an American security consultant known for his history as a former confidence trickster, check forger, and impostor between the ages of 15 and 21. He became one of the most famous impostors ever,[1] claiming to have assumed no fewer than eight identities as an airline pilot, a doctor, a U.S. Bureau of Prisons agent, and a lawyer.
Re: Andy describes how he passes himself off as an "expert" & admits to conning people
(Anonymous) 2015-04-16 09:03 pm (UTC)(link)Abignale is best known for having been played by Leonardo DiCaprio in the (frankly excellent) movie "Catch Me If You Can." I wouldn't be surprised at all to hear Andy has studied his memoir (or at least watched the movie a few times) to perfect his own act.
Re: Andy describes how he passes himself off as an "expert" & admits to conning people
(Anonymous) - 2015-04-16 21:08 (UTC) - ExpandAndy compares himself to Frank Abignale, but says he DOESN'T behave like him
(Anonymous) - 2015-04-16 22:18 (UTC) - ExpandRe: Andy compares himself to Frank Abignale, but says he DOESN'T behave like him
(Anonymous) - 2015-04-16 22:39 (UTC) - ExpandRe: Andy compares himself to Frank Abignale, but says he DOESN'T behave like him
(Anonymous) - 2015-04-16 22:50 (UTC) - ExpandAndy admits he blamed his real sister for his abuse of others
(Anonymous) 2015-04-16 10:33 pm (UTC)(link)http://andythanfiction.tumblr.com/post/113659970612/winjennster-just-told-everyone-you-blamed-your
Winjennster just told everyone you blamed your real sister for what you did as Amy Player, then when she found out [sister's] real name, you lied and said Amy was her middle name. So much for you "mental illness" excuse. You expect us to believe you're so crazy you don't know your sister's name? Jenn asked your mom about it and she confirmed YOU were Amy, not [sister's name], so good job on botching that bullshit story.
No, I knew damned well my sister’s name. I lied, and it was one of the biggest specific I-can-point-to-that turning points since I started therapy. When I was first confronted about the stuff about my past online, I panicked. I had a group of friends that I valued hugely and who only knew me as Andy, and I felt like I would rather shove hot coals up my nostrils than have them know I was AFAB, much less the stuff I’d done. I still loathed myself for the former and hadn’t even begun to forgive myself for the latter, and I felt like if they knew, they’d be disgusted by me on multiple levels and walk away. So as I said, I panicked and I told a stupid, ridiculous lie to try to make it go away.
It (obviously) didn’t work and (in hindsight just as obviously) backfired, and I almost lost all my friends, but their reactions were a huge eye-opener. They really, truly, honestly didn’t give a shit about the things I was afraid they would, still knew I was 100% a guy, and were only upset that I’d lied. So I came clean about that and a lot of other shit, and a few months later was able to gather up and do it in public as well…and again, the general reaction mirrored what theirs had been. Sometimes, you face your fears - even if you have to be dragged to it kicking and screaming - and not only are they not so bad, you discover you’ve been doing 3000% more damage to yourself and others out of your fear of them.
Not all of that damage was reparable, but as I said, it was a turning point (one of several but one of the biggest, because lying and feeling like I had to hide who I was in so many ways had been SO MUCH a part of my life for so long that it was damned near reflexive), and for the past fourteen months since I got called out on that and had to face the music, it’s been a sometimes scarier but much better place on all possible counts to own who I was and has helped me not continue the destructive patterns. Ironically, I was clinging to a lot of the same patterns that had made me the person I was so ashamed of out of shame at having been that person, but although recovery isn’t a “wake up and suddenly you’re totally better” thing, I’m definitely leaving that person behind more every day.
Winjennster just told everyone you blamed your real sister for what you did as Amy Player, then when she found out [sister's] real name, you lied and said Amy was her middle name. So much for you "mental illness" excuse. You expect us to believe you're so crazy you don't know your sister's name? Jenn asked your mom about it and she confirmed YOU were Amy, not [sister's name], so good job on botching that bullshit story.
No, I knew damned well my sister’s name. I lied, and it was one of the biggest specific I-can-point-to-that turning points since I started therapy. When I was first confronted about the stuff about my past online, I panicked. I had a group of friends that I valued hugely and who only knew me as Andy, and I felt like I would rather shove hot coals up my nostrils than have them know I was AFAB, much less the stuff I’d done. I still loathed myself for the former and hadn’t even begun to forgive myself for the latter, and I felt like if they knew, they’d be disgusted by me on multiple levels and walk away. So as I said, I panicked and I told a stupid, ridiculous lie to try to make it go away.
It (obviously) didn’t work and (in hindsight just as obviously) backfired, and I almost lost all my friends, but their reactions were a huge eye-opener. They really, truly, honestly didn’t give a shit about the things I was afraid they would, still knew I was 100% a guy, and were only upset that I’d lied. So I came clean about that and a lot of other shit, and a few months later was able to gather up and do it in public as well…and again, the general reaction mirrored what theirs had been. Sometimes, you face your fears - even if you have to be dragged to it kicking and screaming - and not only are they not so bad, you discover you’ve been doing 3000% more damage to yourself and others out of your fear of them.
Not all of that damage was reparable, but as I said, it was a turning point (one of several but one of the biggest, because lying and feeling like I had to hide who I was in so many ways had been SO MUCH a part of my life for so long that it was damned near reflexive), and for the past fourteen months since I got called out on that and had to face the music, it’s been a sometimes scarier but much better place on all possible counts to own who I was and has helped me not continue the destructive patterns. Ironically, I was clinging to a lot of the same patterns that had made me the person I was so ashamed of out of shame at having been that person, but although recovery isn’t a “wake up and suddenly you’re totally better” thing, I’m definitely leaving that person behind more every day.
Andrew Blake
15/11/2011 10:41
Andrew Blake
So, now that you've spent a week behind the curtain on my Facebook, Tumblr, and Livejournal and seen the super secret inner workings of the koolaid drinking goosestepping absolute control brainwash cult of the Daydians, has it lived up to your expectations, or have I sadly disappointed you with my criminal mastermindedry?
Carla [redacted]
15/11/2011 10:51
Carla [redacted]
Your criminal mastermindery, alas, is NOT up to the heights I'd been led to suspect. Not only that, but you have completely failed to attempt to brainwash me or induct me into a sinister cult. Tsk, tsk. (Unless you're being evil and culty on Tumblr, which I freely admit I forget to log into most days, but I won't get my hopes up. :P
Andrew Blake
15/11/2011 11:03
Andrew Blake
Where do you stand so far on wanting to know more of the Great Saga from my side?
Carla [redacted]
15/11/2011 11:10
Carla [redacted]
Well, I'm dithering about asking you about money. On the one hand, that seems incredibly rude; on the other, I've worked out logically that you CAN'T owe Turi "tens of thousands" of dollars (yes, I've seen that actual phrase bandied about), so I'm somewhat curious as to what the other side of that whole...thing is.
Andrew Blake
15/11/2011 11:18
Andrew Blake
Check your email (the one listed on your Facebook) and we'll start there. It's not the money parts, but it gives you the framework, and I am more than happy to answer money questions...those are actually the ridiculously easy ones.
Andrew Blake
15/11/2011 11:46
Andrew Blake
Sent it a while ago. Awaiting your reply and questions.
(And no, it is not to be discussed with Cfc or the other Daydians, if you'd please)
15/11/2011 10:41
Andrew Blake
So, now that you've spent a week behind the curtain on my Facebook, Tumblr, and Livejournal and seen the super secret inner workings of the koolaid drinking goosestepping absolute control brainwash cult of the Daydians, has it lived up to your expectations, or have I sadly disappointed you with my criminal mastermindedry?
Carla [redacted]
15/11/2011 10:51
Carla [redacted]
Your criminal mastermindery, alas, is NOT up to the heights I'd been led to suspect. Not only that, but you have completely failed to attempt to brainwash me or induct me into a sinister cult. Tsk, tsk. (Unless you're being evil and culty on Tumblr, which I freely admit I forget to log into most days, but I won't get my hopes up. :P
Andrew Blake
15/11/2011 11:03
Andrew Blake
Where do you stand so far on wanting to know more of the Great Saga from my side?
Carla [redacted]
15/11/2011 11:10
Carla [redacted]
Well, I'm dithering about asking you about money. On the one hand, that seems incredibly rude; on the other, I've worked out logically that you CAN'T owe Turi "tens of thousands" of dollars (yes, I've seen that actual phrase bandied about), so I'm somewhat curious as to what the other side of that whole...thing is.
Andrew Blake
15/11/2011 11:18
Andrew Blake
Check your email (the one listed on your Facebook) and we'll start there. It's not the money parts, but it gives you the framework, and I am more than happy to answer money questions...those are actually the ridiculously easy ones.
Andrew Blake
15/11/2011 11:46
Andrew Blake
Sent it a while ago. Awaiting your reply and questions.
(And no, it is not to be discussed with Cfc or the other Daydians, if you'd please)
1/2011 13:18
Andrew Blake
Thank you. I admit that there is a certain amount of hostility towards Abbey, but it's mostly based in WTF. As in WTF kind of 23 year old woman with a degree in psychology and gender studies meets a 17 year old kid like that and instead of trying to get them help, starts an affair with them, moves them out to live with her, cuts them off from family and friends, helps them fake their death, demands he make all her dreams come true, then abandons him completely after 7 years with 25K in her debt, sends him letters and packages promising she still loves him if he'll work hard enough, then dumps him utterly and two years later turns him in to a woman whom she knows has a deranged vendetta only loosely based in reality and thinks he's the antichrist?
Carla
15/11/2011 13:50
Carla
And now for something COMPLETELY different: I can't figure out how to reply on Tumblr, but what DO you charge for commissions, and how do you accept payment? (I mean: paypal, or something else?) And roughly what would it cost to ship something to Canada?
Andrew Blake
15/11/2011 13:55
Andrew Blake
My rates depend on medium and style, but vary between $10-$300 per figure (with digital black and white line art on the low end and oil paint on the high end) unless you're looking at the 25, 50, or 80% off sales I have going on right now. To ship, it needs to be manual, not digital, and the rates are whatever the client wants it shipped (insured, super-protected certified overnight vs standard first class mail for example). You can look up prices for your preferred shipping method on usps.com, ups.com, or fedex.com
Did I mention thank you for being a decent human being about all this? Because there are too, too few of them.
Carla
15/11/2011 14:05
Carla
You're welcome, really. You seem like someone I'd like; I can barely be arsed to bash people I hate, so I'm certainly not going to be harsh to anyone I might sort of like.
Andrew Blake
Thank you. I admit that there is a certain amount of hostility towards Abbey, but it's mostly based in WTF. As in WTF kind of 23 year old woman with a degree in psychology and gender studies meets a 17 year old kid like that and instead of trying to get them help, starts an affair with them, moves them out to live with her, cuts them off from family and friends, helps them fake their death, demands he make all her dreams come true, then abandons him completely after 7 years with 25K in her debt, sends him letters and packages promising she still loves him if he'll work hard enough, then dumps him utterly and two years later turns him in to a woman whom she knows has a deranged vendetta only loosely based in reality and thinks he's the antichrist?
Carla
15/11/2011 13:50
Carla
And now for something COMPLETELY different: I can't figure out how to reply on Tumblr, but what DO you charge for commissions, and how do you accept payment? (I mean: paypal, or something else?) And roughly what would it cost to ship something to Canada?
Andrew Blake
15/11/2011 13:55
Andrew Blake
My rates depend on medium and style, but vary between $10-$300 per figure (with digital black and white line art on the low end and oil paint on the high end) unless you're looking at the 25, 50, or 80% off sales I have going on right now. To ship, it needs to be manual, not digital, and the rates are whatever the client wants it shipped (insured, super-protected certified overnight vs standard first class mail for example). You can look up prices for your preferred shipping method on usps.com, ups.com, or fedex.com
Did I mention thank you for being a decent human being about all this? Because there are too, too few of them.
Carla
15/11/2011 14:05
Carla
You're welcome, really. You seem like someone I'd like; I can barely be arsed to bash people I hate, so I'm certainly not going to be harsh to anyone I might sort of like.
Re: Facebook messages: Carlanime/Necromommycon and Andy
(Anonymous) - 2015-04-16 23:11 (UTC) - ExpandRe: Facebook messages: Carlanime/Necromommycon and Andy
(Anonymous) - 2015-04-16 23:12 (UTC) - ExpandRe: Facebook messages: Carlanime/Necromommycon and Andy
(Anonymous) - 2015-04-16 23:15 (UTC) - ExpandRe: Facebook messages: Carlanime/Necromommycon and Andy
(Anonymous) - 2015-04-16 23:19 (UTC) - ExpandProof Andy's lying about Brittany's NZ hike & wrock interests
(Anonymous) 2015-04-17 12:13 am (UTC)(link)Andy uses Brittany to get stuff he wants. We know this:
http://andythanfiction.tumblr.com/post/39609134107/looking-for-a-music-human-to-fulfill-a-promise-to
Then Brittany (short version for the n00bs: flawless, amazing, my life partner, brutally murdered in spring 2011, no I’m never gonna be over it). She got her teeth into the album project and made it her baby. She believed in it, loved it passionately. She pulled in contacts, made deals, called up old friends like Bobby Singer trying to pull off a surprise party for a Big Bad. And it was working. She’d gotten about a half dozen professional musicians into it, lined up studio time, and even found a producer with professional equipment and experience.
And then she was murdered, two weeks before we were supposed to start recording.
It’s come to mean a lot more to me since; become a symbol of all the things she left unfinished.
So I went back to the DAYD facebook community to looked at the time before Brittany died. There WAS a flurry of wrock-related activity before her death, but none of it was from Brittany. NONE. It was entirely Andy:
http://imgur.com/a/DZRL3
I've included all the comments re: planning wrock and censored people's real names, with the exception of Andy (though I've left CFC's fandom initials). If you see a white space where a name should be, pretend it actually says NOT BRITTANY.
Because she never commented on the wrock project. At all.
Brittany was a member of this comm. She posted on it. It should be clear from the comments above that this was the central organizing point for wrock. And there is not a single comment from Brittany on the matter anywhere.
What DID she post about?
How she didn't want to let Andy down because HE wanted to do the NZ hike so badly:
http://i.imgur.com/2RIBLi7.png
Yes, the hike he sold in her eulogy, like this:
http://tf-talk.dreamwidth.org/600.html?thread=262744#cmt262744
Brittany had her heart set on the New Zealand trek.
...
She used to say without really joking at all that she'd do it over her own dead body if need be.
And so I will.
http://andythanfiction.tumblr.com/post/39609134107/looking-for-a-music-human-to-fulfill-a-promise-to
Then Brittany (short version for the n00bs: flawless, amazing, my life partner, brutally murdered in spring 2011, no I’m never gonna be over it). She got her teeth into the album project and made it her baby. She believed in it, loved it passionately. She pulled in contacts, made deals, called up old friends like Bobby Singer trying to pull off a surprise party for a Big Bad. And it was working. She’d gotten about a half dozen professional musicians into it, lined up studio time, and even found a producer with professional equipment and experience.
And then she was murdered, two weeks before we were supposed to start recording.
It’s come to mean a lot more to me since; become a symbol of all the things she left unfinished.
So I went back to the DAYD facebook community to looked at the time before Brittany died. There WAS a flurry of wrock-related activity before her death, but none of it was from Brittany. NONE. It was entirely Andy:
http://imgur.com/a/DZRL3
I've included all the comments re: planning wrock and censored people's real names, with the exception of Andy (though I've left CFC's fandom initials). If you see a white space where a name should be, pretend it actually says NOT BRITTANY.
Because she never commented on the wrock project. At all.
Brittany was a member of this comm. She posted on it. It should be clear from the comments above that this was the central organizing point for wrock. And there is not a single comment from Brittany on the matter anywhere.
What DID she post about?
How she didn't want to let Andy down because HE wanted to do the NZ hike so badly:
http://i.imgur.com/2RIBLi7.png
Yes, the hike he sold in her eulogy, like this:
http://tf-talk.dreamwidth.org/600.html?thread=262744#cmt262744
Brittany had her heart set on the New Zealand trek.
...
She used to say without really joking at all that she'd do it over her own dead body if need be.
And so I will.
Another post claiming that the wrock was Brittany's big thing
(Anonymous) 2015-04-17 03:12 pm (UTC)(link)http://andythanfiction.tumblr.com/post/19750659337/blatant-bribery
BLATANT BRIBERY
I have in my possession some things that are very special to me: the original concept sketches of the Daydverse main characters, the original DAYD chapter art, and the original DAYD cover art. These are currently hanging on my bedroom wall.
[three crappy pictures]
They are not, however, as important to me as something else. You may know about my friend Brittany who was murdered last year, or you may not. If you don’t, read the link here: http://www.facebook.com/groups/DAYDFB/doc/146378462101378/
Before she died, the Daydverse project she was most enthusiastic about - moreso even than A Peccatis - was the wrock album that I’ve been working on since honestly before I began writing DAYD. She had, with all her trademark enthusiasm, lined up several of her musician and production-inclined friends and even persuaded studio time to make it a reality. Then she was killed.
Almost a year later, I have been working to try and get it made in time for the anniversary of her murder, but I’ve had no luck in finding someone to arrange and produce, even though the lyrics and melodies are finished and there have been several offers of vocalists and musicians to perform. I know that we’re down to the wire, but I also know it’s not impossible to get an album out by the anniversary of the murders on May 7, with all profits to go to a fund set up in her name at the local domestic violence shelter.
So here’s the offer: If someone either does the arrangement and mixing/production for me (I can supply the lyrics, melodies, and performers) or sets me up with a friend/relative/guy next door with a band and we get this done in time, they not only get full credit, but the above-listed pieces of art and my hand-written notes where I first sketched out the arc of the ‘verse when I decided to expand it past a one-shot. If they want more, just name their price, and short of money I don’t have, I’ll do anything reasonably in my power to give it to them.
BLATANT BRIBERY
I have in my possession some things that are very special to me: the original concept sketches of the Daydverse main characters, the original DAYD chapter art, and the original DAYD cover art. These are currently hanging on my bedroom wall.
[three crappy pictures]
They are not, however, as important to me as something else. You may know about my friend Brittany who was murdered last year, or you may not. If you don’t, read the link here: http://www.facebook.com/groups/DAYDFB/doc/146378462101378/
Before she died, the Daydverse project she was most enthusiastic about - moreso even than A Peccatis - was the wrock album that I’ve been working on since honestly before I began writing DAYD. She had, with all her trademark enthusiasm, lined up several of her musician and production-inclined friends and even persuaded studio time to make it a reality. Then she was killed.
Almost a year later, I have been working to try and get it made in time for the anniversary of her murder, but I’ve had no luck in finding someone to arrange and produce, even though the lyrics and melodies are finished and there have been several offers of vocalists and musicians to perform. I know that we’re down to the wire, but I also know it’s not impossible to get an album out by the anniversary of the murders on May 7, with all profits to go to a fund set up in her name at the local domestic violence shelter.
So here’s the offer: If someone either does the arrangement and mixing/production for me (I can supply the lyrics, melodies, and performers) or sets me up with a friend/relative/guy next door with a band and we get this done in time, they not only get full credit, but the above-listed pieces of art and my hand-written notes where I first sketched out the arc of the ‘verse when I decided to expand it past a one-shot. If they want more, just name their price, and short of money I don’t have, I’ll do anything reasonably in my power to give it to them.
Andy floats "supernatural inspiration" and "matrix download" as an explanation for DAYDverse
(Anonymous) 2015-04-17 10:28 pm (UTC)(link)From March 6, 2013:
http://andythanfiction.tumblr.com/post/44702974164/you-and-your-universe-amaze-me-sometimes-where
You and your universe amaze me sometimes. Where does it all /come/ from?
Something on the exact razor’s edge between balls-out mental illness and supernatural inspiration. I literally just kind of KNEW all of a sudden, like I’d received a massive download from the Matrix, and it’s only been a matter of getting it all out on paper since.
http://andythanfiction.tumblr.com/post/44702974164/you-and-your-universe-amaze-me-sometimes-where
You and your universe amaze me sometimes. Where does it all /come/ from?
Something on the exact razor’s edge between balls-out mental illness and supernatural inspiration. I literally just kind of KNEW all of a sudden, like I’d received a massive download from the Matrix, and it’s only been a matter of getting it all out on paper since.
http://andythanfiction.tumblr.com/post/44719960350/starry-starry-night
There’s a lot of myths and misunderstanding surrounding the intersection of mental illness/neuroatypicality (in my case, ADHD, situational depression, a form of schitzophrenia, high IQ, and dyscalcula)
There’s a lot of myths and misunderstanding surrounding the intersection of mental illness/neuroatypicality (in my case, ADHD, situational depression, a form of schitzophrenia, high IQ, and dyscalcula)
ADHD is now ADD, "a form of schizophrenia" is now paranoid schizophrenia, +PTSD, -dyscalcula
(Anonymous) 2015-04-19 11:44 am (UTC)(link)http://andythanfiction.tumblr.com/post/46570208132/have-you-ever-been-with-either-narcissism
>Have you ever been with either narcissism personality disorder or borderline disorder or have any useful information for anyone who has?
Anonymous
No, no, and no, nor any other form of personality disorder, so I’m afraid I have absolutely no experience with it and wouldn’t presume to give advice. My funtimes have been in situational depression, ADD, PTSD, and paranoid schizophrenia with delusions. Which, you know, have been more than enough to ruin the last fifteen years or so of my life and a lot of lives around me, so I don’t exactly mourn lacking further experience. I’m already putting the pieces back together from a plenty deep hole..
>Have you ever been with either narcissism personality disorder or borderline disorder or have any useful information for anyone who has?
Anonymous
No, no, and no, nor any other form of personality disorder, so I’m afraid I have absolutely no experience with it and wouldn’t presume to give advice. My funtimes have been in situational depression, ADD, PTSD, and paranoid schizophrenia with delusions. Which, you know, have been more than enough to ruin the last fifteen years or so of my life and a lot of lives around me, so I don’t exactly mourn lacking further experience. I’m already putting the pieces back together from a plenty deep hole..
Re: ADHD is now ADD, "a form of schizophrenia" is now paranoid schizophrenia, +PTSD, -dyscalcula
(Anonymous) - 2015-04-19 12:42 (UTC) - ExpandRe: ADHD is now ADD, "a form of schizophrenia" is now paranoid schizophrenia, +PTSD, -dyscalcula
(Anonymous) - 2015-04-19 12:56 (UTC) - ExpandRe: ADHD is now ADD, "a form of schizophrenia" is now paranoid schizophrenia, +PTSD, -dyscalcula
(Anonymous) - 2015-04-19 13:26 (UTC) - ExpandRe: ADHD is now ADD, "a form of schizophrenia" is now paranoid schizophrenia, +PTSD, -dyscalcula
(Anonymous) - 2015-04-19 13:42 (UTC) - ExpandAndy declares he's dying & is glad his son (a sparrow) won't be there to see
(Anonymous) 2015-04-18 05:10 am (UTC)(link)http://luvscharlie.livejournal.com/218182.html
For those of you who have been on this LJ for any length of time, it is no secret that I have a very serious heart defect. Part of the valve on my aorta did not form properly, and every time my heart beats, it bulges like a weak spot on an old tire – sort of a cardiac hernia, you might say. One of these days, it is going to go boom, that’s all there is to it, because my only other options due to the precise placement of it would be a full or partial transplant, which for numerous personal reasons, I have decided against.
I actually wasn’t expected to live to adulthood, as they didn’t think my heart would be able to handle the growth, and in an odd way, I didn’t. I stopped growing at about fifteen – xrays show that the growth plates in my wrists still aren’t even closed – as if my body knew its limits and was trying to preserve itself. That taken into account, I’ve previously been given a life expectancy of somewhere between two and five years from now.
However, I’ve been having some trouble recently for the first time in my life. Loss of energy, occasional lightheadedness when I exert myself particularly, fingers and hands swelling (I was using my own hand for a reference and realized I’d lost most of the definition on the back of it) as well as some pretty nasty pain and swelling in my legs and feet when I am on them for more than a few hours, trouble with my hands being cold. Nothing debilitating or even more than annoying, but it seemed potentially circulatory, and Than’s no fool.
So I went to the cardiologist this morning (he helps me pro bono because of something I did for his daughter when she was in a bad situation), and wound up doing only a half day of work because of the number of tests he wanted to run. It’s thinning faster than he had anticipated…looks like I’ve got a little less than a year, after all.
THERE IS NO NEED TO TRY AND GIVE ME ANY EMOTIONAL SUPPORT ON THIS, REALLY!
I am FINE. I have known I’m on the short and glorious route for years, and this has never been something that upset me, though I am not in any form of denial and never have been. See dozens of previous posts, mostly of the meme variety, as well as my Faith essay for the long version of this. I am posting this not as some kind of OMGI’mDYING thing, but to let the flist know, because I know a lot of you care about this sort of thing, and I want to give you time to prepare, even though I’ve warned you before and even though I know that several of you to whom I’m closest have flat out told me verbatim that you refuse to accept that I’m terminal.
Honestly, I’m kind of awestruck at how perfectly this has all worked out. Really, it couldn’t be better. Louise and Connor are settled in by now to wherever they are with whomever they are, so they don’t have to deal with losing me like that, nor do I have to worry I’ll ‘blow’ in front of my son. I don’t have a car right now, so when I’m in real danger of popping, I’ll not have to worry about taking out others, I don’t have the kind of job where anything will be ruined by my absence, and I’ll have just about exactly enough time to finish both the DAYDverse and my current people-projects (someone crossing the line to adulthood, someone coping with loss, someone finding faith, and a few others) without having enough time to get embroiled in something I’d leave half-done or being tempted to start another major life phase or project. Looking back, I genuinely can’t say there could have been a better time for this, and the amount of notice I have is exactly right to make sure loose ends are tied up without rushing or dallying.
It’s so beautiful the way that everything falls together when you just do your own little part, isn’t it? I can’t even imagine a reason to be upset by this, and every reason to be grateful.
For those of you who have been on this LJ for any length of time, it is no secret that I have a very serious heart defect. Part of the valve on my aorta did not form properly, and every time my heart beats, it bulges like a weak spot on an old tire – sort of a cardiac hernia, you might say. One of these days, it is going to go boom, that’s all there is to it, because my only other options due to the precise placement of it would be a full or partial transplant, which for numerous personal reasons, I have decided against.
I actually wasn’t expected to live to adulthood, as they didn’t think my heart would be able to handle the growth, and in an odd way, I didn’t. I stopped growing at about fifteen – xrays show that the growth plates in my wrists still aren’t even closed – as if my body knew its limits and was trying to preserve itself. That taken into account, I’ve previously been given a life expectancy of somewhere between two and five years from now.
However, I’ve been having some trouble recently for the first time in my life. Loss of energy, occasional lightheadedness when I exert myself particularly, fingers and hands swelling (I was using my own hand for a reference and realized I’d lost most of the definition on the back of it) as well as some pretty nasty pain and swelling in my legs and feet when I am on them for more than a few hours, trouble with my hands being cold. Nothing debilitating or even more than annoying, but it seemed potentially circulatory, and Than’s no fool.
So I went to the cardiologist this morning (he helps me pro bono because of something I did for his daughter when she was in a bad situation), and wound up doing only a half day of work because of the number of tests he wanted to run. It’s thinning faster than he had anticipated…looks like I’ve got a little less than a year, after all.
THERE IS NO NEED TO TRY AND GIVE ME ANY EMOTIONAL SUPPORT ON THIS, REALLY!
I am FINE. I have known I’m on the short and glorious route for years, and this has never been something that upset me, though I am not in any form of denial and never have been. See dozens of previous posts, mostly of the meme variety, as well as my Faith essay for the long version of this. I am posting this not as some kind of OMGI’mDYING thing, but to let the flist know, because I know a lot of you care about this sort of thing, and I want to give you time to prepare, even though I’ve warned you before and even though I know that several of you to whom I’m closest have flat out told me verbatim that you refuse to accept that I’m terminal.
Honestly, I’m kind of awestruck at how perfectly this has all worked out. Really, it couldn’t be better. Louise and Connor are settled in by now to wherever they are with whomever they are, so they don’t have to deal with losing me like that, nor do I have to worry I’ll ‘blow’ in front of my son. I don’t have a car right now, so when I’m in real danger of popping, I’ll not have to worry about taking out others, I don’t have the kind of job where anything will be ruined by my absence, and I’ll have just about exactly enough time to finish both the DAYDverse and my current people-projects (someone crossing the line to adulthood, someone coping with loss, someone finding faith, and a few others) without having enough time to get embroiled in something I’d leave half-done or being tempted to start another major life phase or project. Looking back, I genuinely can’t say there could have been a better time for this, and the amount of notice I have is exactly right to make sure loose ends are tied up without rushing or dallying.
It’s so beautiful the way that everything falls together when you just do your own little part, isn’t it? I can’t even imagine a reason to be upset by this, and every reason to be grateful.
http://luvscharlie.livejournal.com/218182.html
Longer post about my trip coming after work. Short version: It was GREAT.
It has also given me an idea that combines three things on my "so, I've got a year, huh?" list:
1. Meet as many flisters as possible
2. Get in some more traveling
3. Help as many people as possible.
Longer later, but the upshot is this...I will post 2-3 weeks in advance every time I have a 60-hour consecutive stretch or longer off of work. If you want me to come visit you in that time, you just have to get me there, and I don't care how. Train, plane, bus, automobile, floo, rickshaw, camel, whatever. Don't eat much, am not picky, and will sleep anywhere.
Get me there, and for roughly two days, Than is yours...to chat, cook, bake, clean, watch your kids, help them with homework, beta your fic, write fic for you, draw for you, make you a costume, paint a mural in your house, do your yardwork, give you a back rub...anything non-sexual you can think of wanting from a handsome, intelligent, and multi-talented young man, really. I'd love to be able to offer to just go on my own, but there are a very limited number of times I can afford that, and I'm afraid I have to be very judicious with those. If you'll get me there, however, I am SO eagerly yours, and just ask ceirdwenfc...I REALLY mean it when I say I'll show up!
Longer post about my trip coming after work. Short version: It was GREAT.
It has also given me an idea that combines three things on my "so, I've got a year, huh?" list:
1. Meet as many flisters as possible
2. Get in some more traveling
3. Help as many people as possible.
Longer later, but the upshot is this...I will post 2-3 weeks in advance every time I have a 60-hour consecutive stretch or longer off of work. If you want me to come visit you in that time, you just have to get me there, and I don't care how. Train, plane, bus, automobile, floo, rickshaw, camel, whatever. Don't eat much, am not picky, and will sleep anywhere.
Get me there, and for roughly two days, Than is yours...to chat, cook, bake, clean, watch your kids, help them with homework, beta your fic, write fic for you, draw for you, make you a costume, paint a mural in your house, do your yardwork, give you a back rub...anything non-sexual you can think of wanting from a handsome, intelligent, and multi-talented young man, really. I'd love to be able to offer to just go on my own, but there are a very limited number of times I can afford that, and I'm afraid I have to be very judicious with those. If you'll get me there, however, I am SO eagerly yours, and just ask ceirdwenfc...I REALLY mean it when I say I'll show up!
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