tf_talk | Gloves Off

My guess is that it was meant to explain his smaller, less "manly man" frame.

OK let me see if I get this straight.

Andy can only write when he is using someone else's universe? He cannot come up with something of his own?

But when he is writing in X universe, he's the bestest writer on the planet and knows things that the creator of the universe didn't know? Or he will change things that others point that the creator has gone on record of not wanting and inform his readers that he knows better than the creator?

Has he had an original thought/concept in his life? Or is everything and anything he has done reflected glory?

Kind of sad if the latter.

He has gone on about being rather androgynous his entire life and taking pride in that.

However the older he gets, the less this is an option. If he is taking T then there are changes that will settle the question. If he is taking all the drugs for all the things he has going on and T then he is dead within a 5 year time frame because T doesn't play nice with anti-psycotics.

Where have you heard t and anti-psychotics have interactions? The only thing I've ever heard is that some anti-psychotics can lower people's testosterone.
Do you have any links?

My guess would be that he'd recently learned about growth plates, and used that as an excuse for being so short for a cis guy. Trans guys who were average size or tall-ish as girls, find that this puts them in the short range as guys. Trans women have the opposite problem, too.

I wouldn't put it quite that way.

Andy is definitely highly creative. It's not just anyone who could have imagined his AU versions of LotR or HP, for example. And the way he constantly reboots his own life requires quite a lot of creativity.

The main reason he will never bother creating his own original canon is because he wants immediate reward. Writing his own novel would require months or years of hard but rewardless work, for what in the end would be a very slim chance of having any success. Why bother doing that when he can get everything he wants writing fanfic?

Also, Andy doesn't create for the sake of creating. He creates to control and manipulate other people. He would feel no intrinsic pride or enjoyment at having created something original. His pride and enjoyment would come from the way he could use that original stuff to manipulate other people. So again, why bother doing that when he can achieve the same aim just as well and much more easily with fanfic?

And anyway, when one of his fanfics does well, he has no shame putting it on the same level, or even higher, as the original canon. In his world where only he matters and he's the bestest, a fanfic of his is just as much an original creation as the canon it's based on. So technically, your question is moot: he *has* created original content. It's just that *you* don't see it that way.

A final note: when I say that Andy is highly creative, I really mean that he's exceptionally good at using and re-using the same few tricks over and over again. He constantly re-tells the same stories with only cosmetic changes, both in his own life and in his fiction. He never grows, he never expands, he never challenges himself. So if he ever wrote original stuff, it would still be just another rehashing of the DAYDverse and the channeling he did with the Bagenders and everything else he's ever created.

I would be shocked if Andy takes his meds regularly and on schedule. He was willing to go off them just for GISHWHES or whatever it's called, and besides that, he constantly gets fired or quits his jobs, stays up all night fucking around on the internet, and lives in filth (ie, the infamous sink full of flies/fridge full of maggots). He had to enlist his friends to help him clean his room. And he's what, 31 or 32 now?

These are not the signs of a highly functional person I would trust to be responsible with their meds.

Testosterone is a natural hormone present in everyone's body (yes, female bodies too) in variable concentrations. "Going on T" only means raising the levels of testosterone from those of a cis woman to those of an average cis man. If doing that were incompatible with taking anti-psychotics, then being a cis man would be too, ie. cis men would die when put on anti-psychotics, along with everyone else who has naturally high levels of testosterone.

I have no expertise about T at all, but I do know that giving sex hormones to people who don't produce them naturally at certain levels can be damaging in ways that are hard to predict.

Hormone replacement therapy was once the most popular treatment for the symptoms of menopause. This sounded well and good, until it was discovered that it significantly increased the risk of heart disease, stroke, blood clots and breast cancer. This wasn't foreseen because in non-menopausal women, estrogren is actually cardioprotective. Go figure.

HRT is still practiced now, but typically with much lower doses and only with women whose problems are so severe they outweigh the risk.

I don't really think anyone wouldn't get satisfaction from creating something. I definitely think he enjoys at least writing tons of words, where a good writer would use about 20% of them. It might not be a graphomania, but a lot of amateur writers think that more words=better work, and Andy is not an exception. So I wonder, does he actually read serious literature? I mean, he can write, but it doesn't look like he learns how to do it better. Which is a shame. The talent gets wasted because he doesn't bother to admit that he's not a genius and even genious people need to learn.

AYRT

I completely agree with what you say here. Going on T presents some dangers *in itself*, definitely, as with many hormonal treatments.

What I was disagreeing with, is the idea that going on T is physically incompatible with taking anti-psychotics to the point of leading to certain death, as AIRT was implying. Going on T can create or enhance mental problems, and it can make the psychosis harder to treat by muddying the waters as to which new problem is due to the psychosis (or to the anti-psychotic meds!) and which is due to the elevated T levels. But to the best of my knowledge, T and anti-psychotic meds are not in any way incompatible meds which are susceptible to lead to life-threatening physical damage in a matter of a few years if taken together.

AYRT

The way I see it, Andy using tons of words has nothing to do with creating stuff, and everything to do with manipulation. Andy uses loads and loads of words to achieve various effects on his readers which are all aimed at the same goal: manipulating people into feeling and thinking what he wants them to feel and think. The story itself is irrelevant: it's only a frame he uses to induce specific feelings and thoughts in his readers/listeners.

For example, DAYD doesn't exist for its own sake. Its purpose is to teach its readers such concepts as "loyalty to the death", and to have the readers-turned-followers apply these concepts to their relationship with Andy. So Andy goes on and on AND ON about these concepts in the fic, to repeatedly flood his readers' brain with them until they become second nature.

I mean, he can write, but it doesn't look like he learns how to do it better. Which is a shame. The talent gets wasted because he doesn't bother to admit that he's not a genius and even genious people need to learn.

His talent is wasted only if you think that he should aim at developing his writing abilities for the sake of growing as a writer. But Andy couldn't care less about that. Andy is not a writer, or an artist, or any kind of creative type. He's a cult leader. Writing, drawing, cosplaying, and all the other creative things he does, are only tools to him in his goal to gather followers. And since they work perfectly fine for that job at the level they are, he logically has no reason to want to waste time and energy upgrading them.

Or rather, I should say that this is true of his writing. He seems to have realized that his drawing, on the other hand, is not good enough to get him devoted followers on Tumblr. The way he's so clearly jealous of Euclase, for example, is quite telling. And so yes, *now* he's willing to learn how to draw better, hence his going to college and attempting to get into art school. But his goal is not to become a better artist for the sake of becoming a better artist, or even to make a career out of it: he only wants to become a better artist so he can draw more followers to himself. His lazy tracing and appalling half-finished pieces he so proudly displayed and lied about for years prove that he absolutely doesn't care about *being* an artist. Art is just a tool for him, like writing or cosplaying, in his only real life work: cult-building.

DA

There was a question as to whether he had had an original, creative thought in his life. The answer is no. The reason DAYD seems much better written (even though it's appalling) in contrast to Sluagh is because in DAYD, all the emotional resonances are ripped from JKR:

- A friend dies saving someone and is honoured with a drink. (Mad-Eye Moody in DH, Krum in DAYD)
- A figure of authority questions the plans of the hero and reluctantly allows them to continue, musing on their adulthood (Bill Weasley in DH, Arthur in DAYD)
- In a time of strife and horror, a beautiful wedding happens, and is cut short by a Patronus bearing bad news (Do I really need to?)
- A baby is born, carrying on the legacy of their parents, even if said parents may not be there to teach said legacy (Ted Tonks in DH, Cecily in DAYD)
- Luna paints a beautiful picture, and is calm in captivity

...the point I'm making is, Andy repeats these points badly, like somebody mimicking notes on a piano. He doesn't understand why or how they work. But he repeats them, which is why people think he writes like JKR. Then he gets Sluagh, which is purely his own work, and we start to see how dreadful he is as a writer if left on his own devices. And as noted, he doesn't care - so long as it brings him more followers, what does it matter?

In other words, Andy doesn't just trace art: he also traces fiction.

I'd even go as far as saying that he traces life itself.

He can see perfectly well (scarily so, even) the outline of what a normal human being looks like, or a heartfelt relationship between two human beings, but he doesn't understand how they work internally. So he can reproduce them well enough if you don't look too closely, but once you start paying attention to details, you realize that everything is slightly off.

This is one reason he constantly creates drama around himself, and relentlessly pushes anyone close to him into endless whirlwinds of activity: so they *don't* have the time and mental energy to notice the details, or at least to string them together.

All of this.

SHIT, this was supposed to be posted in the pit.

Mods, can you delete and I'll repost?

No problem!

Thanks!

So I wonder, does he actually read serious literature?

Surely c18th French and ancient Greek im-a-fucking-expert-at-everything andy would have read loads of serious literature. And probably given the authors some writing tips when he met them on the astral plane.
...
On the other hand, rough and ready homeschooled soldier of fortune Andy probably doesn't have time to read. He's living life, goddamnit, not wasting time getting an education. And his own writing is all the more raw and authentic for it.

Wait, was he one of the people behind almost bullying Euclase off tumblr and out of anything fandom?

No, if anything he tried to suck up to her.

Abbey said he had some original Others, even if they were X-Men-ish. Apparently he incorporated the outlines into DAYD.

I think he's perfectly CAPABLE of creating original things, it's just that it's easier for him to pull on premade heartstrings than try to get people to like his own characters. Because, well, this is Thanfiction. He DOES give off creepy (and oddly flat) vibes, and I think that already having complex, well-rounded characters established in canon gives him some margin with his own off-key fic.

Honestly, I think this is why he compares himself so much to fictional characters. Well-written fictional characters have flaws and so are interesting. Thanfiction would rather chew off six of his toes than admit to a genuine flaw. But by comparing himself to fictional characters, he gets to fish for "reader sympathy" without having to actually admit to being anything but His Perfectness.

Thanfiction: the Gary-Stu of his own life.

Thanfiction: the Gary-Stu of his own life

This is incredibly accurate, so much so that he seems to model his real-life persona on whatever fictional character or actor he happens to admire most at that moment.

It's certainly much easier to flatten other people's rounded and beloved characters, than to create your own non-cardboard-cutout characters and get people to care about them.

Thanfiction: the Gary-Stu of his own life.

I'll second the other nonnie in saying that this is a perfect description!

Yep. It goes something like:

-Various hobbits (awful British accent)
-Elijah Wood ("Jordan Wood"/blue contact lenses)
-Orlando Bloom ("Andy")
-Harry Potter ("I have a lightning scar!"/"Sort me into Gryffindor!")
-Neville ("Fearless Leader"/"Commander"/"I've seen 37 people die violently.")
-Seamus ("I'm Oirish!"/terrible accent)
-Misha Collins ("I'm so quirky yet compassionate!")

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(frozen comment) Re: Andy says his Xtian conversative parents who "sheltered him" let him read Stephen King novels a

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