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discussions on FFA that strongly implied she had wielded control over a small group of loyal followers to her verse.
Curious nonny is curious. Can you elaborate on this, or provide links?
Curious nonny is curious. Can you elaborate on this, or provide links?
as I said, I didn't keep links. I found it by searching dememe for 'carlanime'
At the time it *was* the only full-length "back at the castle" story. There have been several better ones since, that didn't go all Grimdark and didn't clash so extremely with the mood and themes of the original. (And didn't gratuitously kill off characters who weren't specified to have been killed in the original story, either.)
yup, there's so many ways she could've done it that didn't involve posting them on a public forum at all. she wanted people to see them and to talk about them. I bet when teablogger confronted her, her mistaken sense of superiority told her she'd come across as having integrity if she 'fessed up straight away and tried to make it all seem above board. nope. she posted them publicly on tumblr and tagged them. she wanted people to see them.
It's hard to come to any other conclusion. What I don't understand is why.
I feel like she really wants to insert herself more into the "Andy mythos" and be seen as the authoritative voice on who he *really* is as a person. It's attention seeking.
I also feel like she identifies too much with Andy, and that attempting to downplay his behavior absolves her of some of her own past transgressions.
And maybe something has happened in Andy's life where he needs folks to do more damage control online for him. He clearly has been reaching out to her.
Either way, she strikes me as the sort that becomes penpals with incarcerated serial killers. There was a disturbing sense of waxing poetic to her posts, even when she regularly casts Andy as a person who has done horrible stuff.
I also feel like she identifies too much with Andy, and that attempting to downplay his behavior absolves her of some of her own past transgressions.
And maybe something has happened in Andy's life where he needs folks to do more damage control online for him. He clearly has been reaching out to her.
Either way, she strikes me as the sort that becomes penpals with incarcerated serial killers. There was a disturbing sense of waxing poetic to her posts, even when she regularly casts Andy as a person who has done horrible stuff.
"Either way, she strikes me as the sort that becomes penpals with incarcerated serial killers."
me and my friend felt this way as well. - cassandra anon
me and my friend felt this way as well. - cassandra anon
Are you actually adding anything to the discussion at this point by tagging your posts with a signature? I thought de-anoning wasn't allowed in this community without purpose anymore.
I have a question, and I apologise if there's already been discussion on this - there's so much info out there that I'm still trying to get to grips with.
Question: is there a consensus on whether the channelling is just one of many techniques he uses to get power over people, or is it that the actual point of what he's doing is to get people involved in the channelling and he derives satisfaction from that in and of itself? If he was magically banned from doing channelling-type things forever, would he just pick another technique to achieve his goals or is channelling part of the goal?
The reason I ask is that it's such an unusual technique and he seems to be so persistent at it over so many years. As you say, he cycles through any number of other techniques but he does often seem to return to channelling or things that seem like precursors to channelling. Is there a consensus on his level of belief in it or whether it's part of his endgame?
Question: is there a consensus on whether the channelling is just one of many techniques he uses to get power over people, or is it that the actual point of what he's doing is to get people involved in the channelling and he derives satisfaction from that in and of itself? If he was magically banned from doing channelling-type things forever, would he just pick another technique to achieve his goals or is channelling part of the goal?
The reason I ask is that it's such an unusual technique and he seems to be so persistent at it over so many years. As you say, he cycles through any number of other techniques but he does often seem to return to channelling or things that seem like precursors to channelling. Is there a consensus on his level of belief in it or whether it's part of his endgame?
I hesitate to say that there's a consensus because there's no way we can ever know what Andy's really thinking. But in my view (and I should say, I'm a fairly casual Andy watcher), it's just one tool in his toolkit, and he has a lot of other possible tools he can use to achieve his goals: Social Justice Ally™, World-Weary Veteran™, Bishi Wunderkind™, Sad Mentally Ill Person Who's Just Trying To Move On From This One Mistake™, etc., etc.
As to why he keeps going back to channeling (as opposed to picking another, more reasonable con), I have a couple of theories:
1. It works. Or at least, it's worked in the past. Why fix what ain't broke? Now, a normal person might think, "But eventually it stops working," which is true, but Andy doesn't really seem to be able to learn much from past mistakes. I forget where it is, but there's a thread on here about how Andy's never really moved on from the 90s in terms of his pop cultural understanding of things like DID or the Troubles - similarly, he's never really moved on from his early cons.
2. It's just weird enough that it will weed out all but the true believers. Think of Scientology and Xenu, or Nigerian prince scammers and their deliberately-implausible stories: if you keep it fairly lowkey and plausible, then it stays low-stakes and you'll have a high degree of false positives (i.e. people who will initially respond, but pull out the second they get a bad vibe). But people who stick with you even when things get truly whacky ("Olga, your mail order girlfriend, has been kidnapped by the barbarian horde and they're demanding $3,000 US as ransom") are the people who will ignore blaring alarms warning them of danger when you ask them to do things for you.
(Molly is an excellent example of what happens when you try a con - in this case, indefinitely crashing at someone's house - without this preliminary stress testing: you get bounced)
3. It makes him special and unique. Buying in to the channeling means that you believe that Andy, and Andy alone, is the conduit through which you can communicate with all of your favorite literary characters because of his super secret magic powers. It's the perfect way of getting Grade A narc supply. If he wasn't "allowed" to channel, I could see him being a psychic and communing with the souls of dead loved ones, or bending spoons with his mind, or faith healing.
I'd argue that channelling serves a lot of purposes, both as a tool to get narc supply and the narc supply itself. But that doesn't mean he believes in it: I think he could easily find another scam if he wanted to. He sticks with channeling because it's what he knows how to do.
As to why he keeps going back to channeling (as opposed to picking another, more reasonable con), I have a couple of theories:
1. It works. Or at least, it's worked in the past. Why fix what ain't broke? Now, a normal person might think, "But eventually it stops working," which is true, but Andy doesn't really seem to be able to learn much from past mistakes. I forget where it is, but there's a thread on here about how Andy's never really moved on from the 90s in terms of his pop cultural understanding of things like DID or the Troubles - similarly, he's never really moved on from his early cons.
2. It's just weird enough that it will weed out all but the true believers. Think of Scientology and Xenu, or Nigerian prince scammers and their deliberately-implausible stories: if you keep it fairly lowkey and plausible, then it stays low-stakes and you'll have a high degree of false positives (i.e. people who will initially respond, but pull out the second they get a bad vibe). But people who stick with you even when things get truly whacky ("Olga, your mail order girlfriend, has been kidnapped by the barbarian horde and they're demanding $3,000 US as ransom") are the people who will ignore blaring alarms warning them of danger when you ask them to do things for you.
(Molly is an excellent example of what happens when you try a con - in this case, indefinitely crashing at someone's house - without this preliminary stress testing: you get bounced)
3. It makes him special and unique. Buying in to the channeling means that you believe that Andy, and Andy alone, is the conduit through which you can communicate with all of your favorite literary characters because of his super secret magic powers. It's the perfect way of getting Grade A narc supply. If he wasn't "allowed" to channel, I could see him being a psychic and communing with the souls of dead loved ones, or bending spoons with his mind, or faith healing.
I'd argue that channelling serves a lot of purposes, both as a tool to get narc supply and the narc supply itself. But that doesn't mean he believes in it: I think he could easily find another scam if he wanted to. He sticks with channeling because it's what he knows how to do.
it's relevant in the context of our previous observations, yeah. I made comments earlier in the thread, and elsewhere, that aren't signed. I only did so here because I was specifically referencing our history of having discussed certain things about her. calm down.
Hey, gang. I've alluded a few times on tf-talk about Andy love-bombing me and finally got my thoughts together.
There was no visible fallout to the general public, as I only knew Andy a few weeks online, but Things Still Happened, and I want to talk about it as an example of Andy's recurring behaviors.
Who are you: The important context is that I've got decent visibility in some niche fandoms (obvious on my fan blog), and do some work in the convention/costuming/entertainment industry (not as obvious).
Did you know about Andy's reputation before you met him: I initially thought Andy was just some cocky kid trying very hard to impress the community, and later, me. I've had a lot of awkward fans in my time and he seemed like just another.
Ironically, I was part of the Voyager newsgroups back in the VoyagerBabe days. I read about TentMoot on Fanwank, and remember seeing some of the artifacts of Andy's LotR "mindhole" on Abbey's blog. Sadly, I didn't connect the dots because it was all weird, random fandom lore that I hadn't thought about in forever.
Why did you interact with Andy: I've mentored/taught for a long time and thought Andy was just another snot-nosed, albeit talented (not nearly as much as he thinks), little punk trying too hard to be The Best Fan. I've helped a lot of "kids" like him turn fan pursuits into a career and learn how to Adult in the process. I am a Fandom Dad.
What happened: Andy posted one of his WIPs in a community group, asking for feedback. (In hindsight, it was a self-deprecating "shower me with compliments" kind of post.) I gave a decent chunk of constructive crit as my professional opinion because I didn't like how he was positioning himself as making The Most Authentic Cosplay Ever, especially with his first post.
Pretty soon after that, he began to DM me. What followed was a short, but very intense period of love-bombing. Here's the highlights of tactics:
1) Lots of messages, all very long, very fast, very DENSE in content and full of purple prose. Text chatting with Andy requires almost your undivided attention.
2) A rather fanciful presentation of his "real" ethnicity (no, not Irish). Incidentally, it's adjacent to my own.
3) Lighting-round style head-canon swapping, but subtly framing his as more "authentic", usually related to his historic (or other) "expertise" or insider knowledge.
4) Lots of fan/maker one-upmanship, but in a way that seems just like enthusiastic sharing at first. He pushes his own vision of lore a lot, even when it contradicts cannon.
5) Regularly telling me how gifted people think he is, how gifted he has always been.
6) Framing his past in a way that strongly evoked the fictional character he was fixated on.
7) Immediately introducing me to his most ardent apologist as someone who could do me a favor.
8) Constantly framing his WIPs as both super-extra and something he just whipped up one night. Andy tries very hard to come off as highly skilled, but it coming naturally, rather than via study.
9) Combining compliments and negging about my skill in the same breath as a way to get me to do something for free because it wasn't "real work" (the computer did it all) for a practitioner of my "craft".
10) Asking me to do something that is outside my wheel-well because he expects I'll either do the labor of learning the skill or call in favors. (He got me a bit here because I tend to happily do both.)
11) Regularly asking my opinion about something, but dismissing any critique that already isn't what he's planning on doing. It was clear that when he asked for critique, he was just fishing for compliments.
12) Random gift-giving. Some came via fantastic "coincidences" (I was half-expecting a fortune teller at one point), others were just something he tossed off. None of the gifts were researched well, but would look impressive/super thoughtful to layfolk. I asked him for one specific thing as a favor/trade, and he half-assed it, I think partly because I wanted something from his professor that he wanted to offer me, instead.
13) Not acknowledging thank-you gifts/favors; refusing offers when I made them first.
14) Leaning heavily on trade jargon when it wasn't necessary, probably either to impress or intimidate. Over-complicating technical things, in general.
15) Steadily escalating secret-keeping. One was a whopper I'm pretty sure is fake, but I don't want to dig out the truth until I get a chance to hang out with the other party. (Asking about their involvement with Andy is not exactly a great icebreaker.)
16) Massive info-dumps of "insider" knowledge both lore-wise and celebrity-wise.
17) Telling me how eerily alike he and a celeb were, including inappropriate (possibly false) details about the celeb's mental health and personal history. How they met in person and almost had to be dragged apart because they just "clicked". (He has later told other folks he and celeb made out at a party years ago.)
18) Telling me he had celeb's phone number and had standing invites to all sorts of things.
19) Offers of work and exposure.
20) Empathy-mining based on sharing sanitized versions of his past, including living on the streets, references to his "terrible sister", getting shot, losing his it's-complicated-soul-mate (Brittany), etc.
21) Appeals to my social justice sensibilities. These were weirdly random anecdotes with no segue of any kind (I thought Andy was drunk, maybe he was just running out of material.)
22) Lots of random anecdotes that I believe were informed by mining my social media. There were some genuine coincidences, but maybe Andy chose me in part because his passing involvement with some of my niche fandoms would be an easy hook.
Most of Andy's tactics flat-out fizzled with me, some worked to various degrees. I repeatedly got the vibe that I wasn't giving him what he expected or needed. The overall feeling was like he was methodically going through a flow-chart. He first started down the fandom path, then industry, then social justice.
He combines embellishments with lies of omission. He's didn't state any laughably Big Lies (like fighting on both sides of the Troubles), but tried to lead me to fill in the blanks to all sorts of ridiculous conclusions. It's the same effect as lying, but the evidence chain is murky and this gives him plausible deniability because it's not his fault if someone Just Assumed or Came to the Wrong Conclusion.
It's clear he's used to an easily impressed fandom crowd and is adjusting his game for older, industry-adjacent folks. But it's still easy to fool us because we all know someone in this industry whose backstory could be framed in the way that Andy is peddling his. (Do you have an even slightly non-traditional upbringing or talent? You can probably write yourself an Andy-style bio -- give it a shot sometime, lol.)
Did Andy try to channel: No. But he would go pretty deep into his in-universe reasons for various design decisions on a cosplay. This combined with his character-evocative description of his childhood could have been planting the seeds, though.
What did you do when you found out about Andy's past: An awareness post had gone around and Andy promptly ghosted me and my friends. I found Abbey's blog and TB's, ghosted Andy in return, but kept tabs on his social media to track his movements until I could no longer stand it (shortly after the Molly incident).
During this time, Andy made a big deal about unfriending people he only knew via fandom, about seeding posts with different info and friends permissions to root out moles, etc. But he kept many of us new fandom folks for weeks. We lasted several purges; clearly, Andy thought we were still of some use.
Did you give him the benefit of the doubt: Briefly. Due to the timeline being old (thanks for updating it, TB!) and me not having learned yet about his rape admission et al, I wondered if Andy was in recovery. Andy benefits from people like me who have first-hand experiences of mentally ill people really turning their lives around.
But I soon saw red flags all over his Facebook consistent with the tactics abusers use. (Appeals to sympathy, appeals to his authority, inner circle garbage, loads of manipulation all over the place.)
What did you tell your (industry) friends: That they're grownups who can make their own decisions, but they needed to be informed of Andy's past and current dishonesty. I was obligated to talk about him in direct response to some things he did (and tried to do) during his stay with Molly, plus some other things he did elsewhere I cannot discuss.
Why do you think Andy targeted you:
1) I think he saw me as a vector into a new fandom as someone who was fan-famous, but not *too* famous (aka, I'd be hungry for exposure), and with a reputation for helping out semi-strangers.
2) I think he wanted to bum some free work off me for some of his projects and even schoolwork.
3) I think he saw me as a cosplay competitor -- folks often tell me I look like the originating actor, and that my interpretation of the character is even better than the original.
4) My fan blog can be very ALL CAPS shrieky, which Andy probably saw as a sign of immaturity/over-investment in fan stuff (it's a deliberate affectation on my part to blow off steam).
I do not think Andy initially targeted me for my industry connections, as they are not obvious, and when I brought them up, he quickly dismissed them as irrelevant - probably because he didn't think I had any ties to California. (He is shockingly unaware of who's-who when it comes to production/costuming people. I know Cali folks. Including one who works on a set he tried to get access to. We had a talk.)
Do you think you're "immune" to this kind of manipulation: No. We're all susceptible to manipulation tactics. Abusers can tap everything from empathy to hubris. A lot of his tactics didn't work on me not because of willpower, but because I'm genuinely not interested in (or already have access to) 90% of what Andy tried to offer.
He still had me briefly convinced he was a smarmy in-over-his-head kid that needed a mentor. Probably not the type of wooby he was trying to portray, but the end result was the same.
Do you think Andy and his posse will come after you now: Meh. I'm being anonymous and vague on details not because I'm scared, but because I want folks to focus on his pattern of behavior, rather than beat the absurdity of specific details into the ground. I'm also sitting on a few details out of respect for some of his other victims.
How do you feel about everything and why are you talking publicly about this: I've given myself time to process, though I did reach out to TB to chat shortly after everything happened.
I was furious at first (Abbey has a good post somewhere about the rage Andy leaves behind) but that was tempered because I don't want to abuse my professional resources in response. The last thing I want is turning closure into some kind of White Whale. I know some questions will remain unanswered.
I still sometimes feel mad about how I was taken advantage of, how he hurt people, and how friends and I had to clean up the messes he left in his wake.
I hate feeling responsible for shutting off some of his career options, even though Andy is at fault and I am 100% entitled to talk to my industry friends about all of this. (Could be a moot point -- I doubt Andy could handle working in my friends' shops.)
I was hurt he didn't disclose to me he was trans, given some of our history-swapping, and learning how he treats trans folks makes me livid.
I feel a sort of survivor's guilt over what happened to Molly because I know I dodged my own bullet with Andy.
I hate how I will go months without thinking about Andy, then randomly decide to check the tags to see what's he up to, because abusers never really leave your mind for good (I found the thanfictioning tumblr this way, hi).
I hate how the seriousness of his abuse is obfuscated by what appears to outsiders as fanwank.
Above all, I'm frustrated how it's impossible to track and report on his behavior without influencing it. But it's equally frustrating to keep quiet. I feel it's important to educate folks so they can make well-informed decisions about not just Andy, but similar abusers.
What do you think of Andy now: Andy is in no way welcome to any aspect of my life. He strikes me as someone who has experienced no growth since being a teenager, and that would be pathetic if he didn't have a history of being an abuser.
Are you looking for an apology from Andy: Given how his apologies tend to lack in sincerity while layering in more deceit... he's best off never contacting me or my friends again.
What do you plan to do moving forward about Andy: I expect to forget about him again for months, but something will remind me of him and I'll check for news. When things come up (and they have), I talk privately to folks for the most part. I'll make a public post here if it warrants. I really want closure on a few things, but not at the expense of embarrassing innocent parties, so we'll see how that goes.
Ultimately, though, my run-in with Andy is rapidly becoming one of those "you'll never guess who tried to sink his claws into me" stories I tell at parties.
I've also had so many wonderful things happen in my life recently (prestigious job! marriage! press coverage!) that it just goes to underscore that everything he tried to offer was shallow, if not an outright illusion.
I have other questions: I'll try to answer them, but please respect how I want to be vague at this time.
There was no visible fallout to the general public, as I only knew Andy a few weeks online, but Things Still Happened, and I want to talk about it as an example of Andy's recurring behaviors.
Who are you: The important context is that I've got decent visibility in some niche fandoms (obvious on my fan blog), and do some work in the convention/costuming/entertainment industry (not as obvious).
Did you know about Andy's reputation before you met him: I initially thought Andy was just some cocky kid trying very hard to impress the community, and later, me. I've had a lot of awkward fans in my time and he seemed like just another.
Ironically, I was part of the Voyager newsgroups back in the VoyagerBabe days. I read about TentMoot on Fanwank, and remember seeing some of the artifacts of Andy's LotR "mindhole" on Abbey's blog. Sadly, I didn't connect the dots because it was all weird, random fandom lore that I hadn't thought about in forever.
Why did you interact with Andy: I've mentored/taught for a long time and thought Andy was just another snot-nosed, albeit talented (not nearly as much as he thinks), little punk trying too hard to be The Best Fan. I've helped a lot of "kids" like him turn fan pursuits into a career and learn how to Adult in the process. I am a Fandom Dad.
What happened: Andy posted one of his WIPs in a community group, asking for feedback. (In hindsight, it was a self-deprecating "shower me with compliments" kind of post.) I gave a decent chunk of constructive crit as my professional opinion because I didn't like how he was positioning himself as making The Most Authentic Cosplay Ever, especially with his first post.
Pretty soon after that, he began to DM me. What followed was a short, but very intense period of love-bombing. Here's the highlights of tactics:
1) Lots of messages, all very long, very fast, very DENSE in content and full of purple prose. Text chatting with Andy requires almost your undivided attention.
2) A rather fanciful presentation of his "real" ethnicity (no, not Irish). Incidentally, it's adjacent to my own.
3) Lighting-round style head-canon swapping, but subtly framing his as more "authentic", usually related to his historic (or other) "expertise" or insider knowledge.
4) Lots of fan/maker one-upmanship, but in a way that seems just like enthusiastic sharing at first. He pushes his own vision of lore a lot, even when it contradicts cannon.
5) Regularly telling me how gifted people think he is, how gifted he has always been.
6) Framing his past in a way that strongly evoked the fictional character he was fixated on.
7) Immediately introducing me to his most ardent apologist as someone who could do me a favor.
8) Constantly framing his WIPs as both super-extra and something he just whipped up one night. Andy tries very hard to come off as highly skilled, but it coming naturally, rather than via study.
9) Combining compliments and negging about my skill in the same breath as a way to get me to do something for free because it wasn't "real work" (the computer did it all) for a practitioner of my "craft".
10) Asking me to do something that is outside my wheel-well because he expects I'll either do the labor of learning the skill or call in favors. (He got me a bit here because I tend to happily do both.)
11) Regularly asking my opinion about something, but dismissing any critique that already isn't what he's planning on doing. It was clear that when he asked for critique, he was just fishing for compliments.
12) Random gift-giving. Some came via fantastic "coincidences" (I was half-expecting a fortune teller at one point), others were just something he tossed off. None of the gifts were researched well, but would look impressive/super thoughtful to layfolk. I asked him for one specific thing as a favor/trade, and he half-assed it, I think partly because I wanted something from his professor that he wanted to offer me, instead.
13) Not acknowledging thank-you gifts/favors; refusing offers when I made them first.
14) Leaning heavily on trade jargon when it wasn't necessary, probably either to impress or intimidate. Over-complicating technical things, in general.
15) Steadily escalating secret-keeping. One was a whopper I'm pretty sure is fake, but I don't want to dig out the truth until I get a chance to hang out with the other party. (Asking about their involvement with Andy is not exactly a great icebreaker.)
16) Massive info-dumps of "insider" knowledge both lore-wise and celebrity-wise.
17) Telling me how eerily alike he and a celeb were, including inappropriate (possibly false) details about the celeb's mental health and personal history. How they met in person and almost had to be dragged apart because they just "clicked". (He has later told other folks he and celeb made out at a party years ago.)
18) Telling me he had celeb's phone number and had standing invites to all sorts of things.
19) Offers of work and exposure.
20) Empathy-mining based on sharing sanitized versions of his past, including living on the streets, references to his "terrible sister", getting shot, losing his it's-complicated-soul-mate (Brittany), etc.
21) Appeals to my social justice sensibilities. These were weirdly random anecdotes with no segue of any kind (I thought Andy was drunk, maybe he was just running out of material.)
22) Lots of random anecdotes that I believe were informed by mining my social media. There were some genuine coincidences, but maybe Andy chose me in part because his passing involvement with some of my niche fandoms would be an easy hook.
Most of Andy's tactics flat-out fizzled with me, some worked to various degrees. I repeatedly got the vibe that I wasn't giving him what he expected or needed. The overall feeling was like he was methodically going through a flow-chart. He first started down the fandom path, then industry, then social justice.
He combines embellishments with lies of omission. He's didn't state any laughably Big Lies (like fighting on both sides of the Troubles), but tried to lead me to fill in the blanks to all sorts of ridiculous conclusions. It's the same effect as lying, but the evidence chain is murky and this gives him plausible deniability because it's not his fault if someone Just Assumed or Came to the Wrong Conclusion.
It's clear he's used to an easily impressed fandom crowd and is adjusting his game for older, industry-adjacent folks. But it's still easy to fool us because we all know someone in this industry whose backstory could be framed in the way that Andy is peddling his. (Do you have an even slightly non-traditional upbringing or talent? You can probably write yourself an Andy-style bio -- give it a shot sometime, lol.)
Did Andy try to channel: No. But he would go pretty deep into his in-universe reasons for various design decisions on a cosplay. This combined with his character-evocative description of his childhood could have been planting the seeds, though.
What did you do when you found out about Andy's past: An awareness post had gone around and Andy promptly ghosted me and my friends. I found Abbey's blog and TB's, ghosted Andy in return, but kept tabs on his social media to track his movements until I could no longer stand it (shortly after the Molly incident).
During this time, Andy made a big deal about unfriending people he only knew via fandom, about seeding posts with different info and friends permissions to root out moles, etc. But he kept many of us new fandom folks for weeks. We lasted several purges; clearly, Andy thought we were still of some use.
Did you give him the benefit of the doubt: Briefly. Due to the timeline being old (thanks for updating it, TB!) and me not having learned yet about his rape admission et al, I wondered if Andy was in recovery. Andy benefits from people like me who have first-hand experiences of mentally ill people really turning their lives around.
But I soon saw red flags all over his Facebook consistent with the tactics abusers use. (Appeals to sympathy, appeals to his authority, inner circle garbage, loads of manipulation all over the place.)
What did you tell your (industry) friends: That they're grownups who can make their own decisions, but they needed to be informed of Andy's past and current dishonesty. I was obligated to talk about him in direct response to some things he did (and tried to do) during his stay with Molly, plus some other things he did elsewhere I cannot discuss.
Why do you think Andy targeted you:
1) I think he saw me as a vector into a new fandom as someone who was fan-famous, but not *too* famous (aka, I'd be hungry for exposure), and with a reputation for helping out semi-strangers.
2) I think he wanted to bum some free work off me for some of his projects and even schoolwork.
3) I think he saw me as a cosplay competitor -- folks often tell me I look like the originating actor, and that my interpretation of the character is even better than the original.
4) My fan blog can be very ALL CAPS shrieky, which Andy probably saw as a sign of immaturity/over-investment in fan stuff (it's a deliberate affectation on my part to blow off steam).
I do not think Andy initially targeted me for my industry connections, as they are not obvious, and when I brought them up, he quickly dismissed them as irrelevant - probably because he didn't think I had any ties to California. (He is shockingly unaware of who's-who when it comes to production/costuming people. I know Cali folks. Including one who works on a set he tried to get access to. We had a talk.)
Do you think you're "immune" to this kind of manipulation: No. We're all susceptible to manipulation tactics. Abusers can tap everything from empathy to hubris. A lot of his tactics didn't work on me not because of willpower, but because I'm genuinely not interested in (or already have access to) 90% of what Andy tried to offer.
He still had me briefly convinced he was a smarmy in-over-his-head kid that needed a mentor. Probably not the type of wooby he was trying to portray, but the end result was the same.
Do you think Andy and his posse will come after you now: Meh. I'm being anonymous and vague on details not because I'm scared, but because I want folks to focus on his pattern of behavior, rather than beat the absurdity of specific details into the ground. I'm also sitting on a few details out of respect for some of his other victims.
How do you feel about everything and why are you talking publicly about this: I've given myself time to process, though I did reach out to TB to chat shortly after everything happened.
I was furious at first (Abbey has a good post somewhere about the rage Andy leaves behind) but that was tempered because I don't want to abuse my professional resources in response. The last thing I want is turning closure into some kind of White Whale. I know some questions will remain unanswered.
I still sometimes feel mad about how I was taken advantage of, how he hurt people, and how friends and I had to clean up the messes he left in his wake.
I hate feeling responsible for shutting off some of his career options, even though Andy is at fault and I am 100% entitled to talk to my industry friends about all of this. (Could be a moot point -- I doubt Andy could handle working in my friends' shops.)
I was hurt he didn't disclose to me he was trans, given some of our history-swapping, and learning how he treats trans folks makes me livid.
I feel a sort of survivor's guilt over what happened to Molly because I know I dodged my own bullet with Andy.
I hate how I will go months without thinking about Andy, then randomly decide to check the tags to see what's he up to, because abusers never really leave your mind for good (I found the thanfictioning tumblr this way, hi).
I hate how the seriousness of his abuse is obfuscated by what appears to outsiders as fanwank.
Above all, I'm frustrated how it's impossible to track and report on his behavior without influencing it. But it's equally frustrating to keep quiet. I feel it's important to educate folks so they can make well-informed decisions about not just Andy, but similar abusers.
What do you think of Andy now: Andy is in no way welcome to any aspect of my life. He strikes me as someone who has experienced no growth since being a teenager, and that would be pathetic if he didn't have a history of being an abuser.
Are you looking for an apology from Andy: Given how his apologies tend to lack in sincerity while layering in more deceit... he's best off never contacting me or my friends again.
What do you plan to do moving forward about Andy: I expect to forget about him again for months, but something will remind me of him and I'll check for news. When things come up (and they have), I talk privately to folks for the most part. I'll make a public post here if it warrants. I really want closure on a few things, but not at the expense of embarrassing innocent parties, so we'll see how that goes.
Ultimately, though, my run-in with Andy is rapidly becoming one of those "you'll never guess who tried to sink his claws into me" stories I tell at parties.
I've also had so many wonderful things happen in my life recently (prestigious job! marriage! press coverage!) that it just goes to underscore that everything he tried to offer was shallow, if not an outright illusion.
I have other questions: I'll try to answer them, but please respect how I want to be vague at this time.
17) Telling me how eerily alike he and a celeb were, including inappropriate (possibly false) details about the celeb's mental health and personal history. How they met in person and almost had to be dragged apart because they just "clicked". (He has later told other folks he and celeb made out at a party years ago.)
I will have more commentary later, but wanted to say, for the record, that I've talked with Molly and another person about this and can confirm that Andy's story of making out with said celeb is 100% a lie. Their actual RL meeting was also much shorter and less intimate than Andy says it was. This is just sad. And kinda gross.
TB
I will have more commentary later, but wanted to say, for the record, that I've talked with Molly and another person about this and can confirm that Andy's story of making out with said celeb is 100% a lie. Their actual RL meeting was also much shorter and less intimate than Andy says it was. This is just sad. And kinda gross.
TB
TB has a new post detailing how Andy was mean and nasty toward the men in Molly's group of friends:
http://theteablogger.tumblr.com/post/181036532927/for-science
It would be laughable if he weren't so determined to be the alpha male in every situation.
http://theteablogger.tumblr.com/post/181036532927/for-science
It would be laughable if he weren't so determined to be the alpha male in every situation.
Sort of how people giving his fanfic to various actors morphed into the actors loved it so much they hoped it would be filmed and they would be in the starring role? If he wasn’t such an evil gnome, it would be funny and sad at the same time.
He’s barely an epsilon ( Brave New World reference)
SA. I left out another love-bomb tactic. (There were so many.)
Andy's offers of work to me included commissions for celebs, and when he did this, he was sure to be very evocative of the character said celeb portrayed. The connotation was as if I'd be doing work for [character name] themselves! He deliberately made it feel like one character was jealous another was getting a commission.
Blurring these lines between actor and character is something he's done for ages, but it's also a very immature thing to see in a "professional". A job is a job and it's fun to work on things you're a fan of, but being overly twee like that gets really creepy really quickly.
Andy's offers of work to me included commissions for celebs, and when he did this, he was sure to be very evocative of the character said celeb portrayed. The connotation was as if I'd be doing work for [character name] themselves! He deliberately made it feel like one character was jealous another was getting a commission.
Blurring these lines between actor and character is something he's done for ages, but it's also a very immature thing to see in a "professional". A job is a job and it's fun to work on things you're a fan of, but being overly twee like that gets really creepy really quickly.
Thanks for posting. I think a lot of Andy apologists, followers and just curious Andy "fans" often get hung up on thinking "Well he's not leading a Cult Leader NOW..." or "he's not channeling NOW..." and scoff at any awareness blogs or warnings.
But he's still lying, manipulating and using as many unscrupulous tactics as he can get away with and still is a toxic presence that fans and industry folks need to be wary of.
But he's still lying, manipulating and using as many unscrupulous tactics as he can get away with and still is a toxic presence that fans and industry folks need to be wary of.
Andy thinks he is a master manipulator, he really isn't.
Yup. The half-life of his lies has dramatically decreased in recent years, but he's still capable of doing damage.
Did he do this back in the Bagender or DAYDverse days? Like, he's always had this obsession with Alpha male stereotypes but I don't remember any of his former followers/friends mentioning him talking down every guy in the group. Ravensjeep was one of his most recent stans so I wonder what it was about the BecauseScience guy and the other men in Molly's group that made him feel so threatened.
Pure speculation on my part, but maybe it's just envy? I mean, men are relatively thin on the ground in the kind of fandom spaces Andy frequents, so he has the built-in uniqueness of being A Man. Another dude in this crowd, and one who's what Andy wants to be (Internet famous and knowledgeable in something)? Maybe he put him down to lift himself up.
Yes, he did. All the male friends who were part of Bit of Earth were talked down to and belittled. All hut Bob left. Andy gave Bob demeaning nicknames and did everything he could to out-Alpha Bob. He then tried to place most of the blame on Bob for the failures of the Hall of Fire music festival and Tentmoot. He treated Bob like shit.
Bob was one of the finest men I've ever known and I still miss him every damn day. I am eternally grateful that ny husband got to meet him several times before Bob was killed in a roadside accident in 2013.
-KQ
Bob was one of the finest men I've ever known and I still miss him every damn day. I am eternally grateful that ny husband got to meet him several times before Bob was killed in a roadside accident in 2013.
-KQ
Anon who originally asked the question.
Ah, okay. Thank you for clarifying. He always seemed to have a mostly female group of friends/followers and I just figured in was partially due to how little men were in parts of fandom he frequents like the other replier mentioned. It didn't occur to me before the LA fiasco that he might have been alienation any of the men previously.
I'm sorry about your friend Bob. It sounds like he really must have had the patience of a saint. I'm glad that the two of you were able to remain friends up until he passed away.
Ah, okay. Thank you for clarifying. He always seemed to have a mostly female group of friends/followers and I just figured in was partially due to how little men were in parts of fandom he frequents like the other replier mentioned. It didn't occur to me before the LA fiasco that he might have been alienation any of the men previously.
I'm sorry about your friend Bob. It sounds like he really must have had the patience of a saint. I'm glad that the two of you were able to remain friends up until he passed away.
There were a handful of men among the DAYDians, though mostly they were all pretty isolated, lonely, young, depressed or some combination of the above.
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