tf_talk | continued Thatfucker discussion

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continued Thatfucker discussion

Since we've been kicked off FFA for the week, please feel free to continue the anon discussion here. Apologies if this is a big flop - I've never made a DW community before!

The rules are vaguely the same as they are over on FFA. Please refrain from being too much of an asshole, making personal attacks, posting identifying information or engaging in transfail.

ETA: If there's information you'd like to see archived (journal/blog posts related to Andy, etc.), please dump it here and link to it from the main post for discussing.

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The thing about DAYDverse is that Andy did his best to convince everyone that it wasn't just an LJ community or Facebook group. It wasn't just a group of friends doing something they enjoyed together. It wasn't even just "his own subfandom" (which is the way he still commonly refers to it).

At the same time that Andy insisted that it wasn't a cult, he was always open about telling people that he and DAYDverse were going to change their lives--and change the world. He harped on that constantly and was always passive-aggressively encouraging DAYDians to talk about how he'd already changed their lives for the better.

Just one example: Operation Phoenix. I'm not sure exactly when it started, but it was sometime before October 2010. The original post about it was "lost", but there's still a list of tasks (http://daydverse.livejournal.com/239184.html) on the LJ community. The tasks were divided and themed after the HP houses. Gryffindor had community service tasks; Hufflepuff's list was mostly about creating new DAYD content; Ravenclaw was about learning and applying knowledge; and Slytherin was self-improvement. I don't think that Andy came up with all of these by himself; CFC helped and they seem to have had input from other DAYDians. People were supposed to report on the community and their personal LJs about the progress they made. This went on for months.

At the same time, they had "Dumbledore's Bootcamp" going. There is really no information available at this point, but it appears to have been a physical fitness program and they used to have a Sparkpeople group for it.

None of this is a bad thing on its own. Far from it. But knowing Andy's history and current behavior, I find it extremely hard to believe that he was doing this for altruistic reasons. He wanted people to improve their lives and to connect that improvement directly with him and DAYDverse so that they'd feel like they owed him something. So they'd feel like they needed him and would be worse people without his influence in their lives. So that when people commented on the change in them, they would attribute it to Andy and DAYDverse and he'd have another potential target.

Andy also was always after the DAYDians to promote the community and his fic/art everywhere possible. He did plenty of aggressive promotion himself, well into his tumblr days--in one notable instance, he replied to someone's essay about racism in Harry Potter with some crap about how DAYD was superior and had more diversity and was endorsed by "PoC, people of size, people of faith, people of differing sexuality, etc." (I'll put the text and a link in the Pit.) He wanted DAYDverse to grow and grow and grow, to spread his influence and extend his reach. It didn't work very well, but he kept trying for years. He took credit for marriages and relationships between DAYDians, DAYDians having babies, and more.

So yes, he absolutely did expect more deaths. Each of them no doubt would have merited another eulogy, either from Andy himself or from someone close to him that he told to do it because he couldn't be bothered. Each of them would have been woven into Andy's epic personal narrative of a chivalrous Irish auto-didact soldier-writer-artist-counselor-life coach. I think that at one time he hoped to keep DAYDverse going strong for years to come.

TB

This is so unbelievably disturbing. He really wanted this to be a long-term thing, didn't he? *shudders*

+1. On the facebook comm, Andy referred to himself as "God of this fandom" and declared that it stopped being a mere fanfic long ago. There was even a map set up with tacks in it, documenting the locations of every DAYDian in the world, in case "someone needs something." I think if Andy wasn't such a fuck-up, he could have turned into a fairly functional cult.

I was not aware of the map, but I have seen Andy say that he is/was "God" to the DAYDians--I also heard it on the Poufwa podcast. Both of these things are incredibly disturbing.

TB

What you're describing sounds to me like a religion, like a religious cult.

* There's an original revelation revealed by a god and recorded in sacred books which contain all the foundational principles and mythology of the religion.

* There's an infallible leader to whom absolute obedience and loyalty are due.

* The message of the sacred books is nothing less than life-changing.

* The mission of the group is to change the world for the better, to fight evil and do good.

* The members are challenged to grow ever more perfect, to never rest and be satisfied with who they are.

* There are rites and rituals to perform, and constant reinforcing meetings to attend.

* The members are given missionary duties to spread the word as far and wide as possible.

* The members are encouraged to devote their life to the sacred work, and if necessary, to be ready to lay it down for the sacred cause.

* The members are expected to meditate and ponder on the teachings and stories contained in the sacred books, and to follow the example of the saints whose lives are depicted in them.

* The members are encouraged to marry within the group and to "be fruitful and multiply".

* And when one of them dies, they become a holy martyr, a saint like the ones in the sacred books, who becomes revered as well, complete with meditation/prayer centered around them (the "Tea with Brittany" ceremonies).

No wonder Andy expected it to last years, possibly forever: he was trying to create an entire new religion!

A lot of this reminds me of Scientology. Does anyone know if Andy read Diabetics?

Diabetics is a brilliant typo.

But I agree. I watched Going Clear a few nights ago, and I've been struck repeatedly since watching it by how much it and Andy remind me of one another.

+1

I've been fascinated by cults for a long time, and one of thing I've noticed is that they are all the same. They use different terminology, but under that, it's the same stuff over and over.

Yep, there seems to be a common playbook for cults regardless of if leaders have heard of each other. Hell, the freaking FF7 cult had similar hallmarks, right down to the channeling and fighting ~~undead shamans~~ spirits: http://demon-sushi.com/warning/ (possible trigger warnings for general cult stuff and some domestic violence mentions in certain stories)

AYRT

Stupid auto correct. And I am diabetic, go figure. I saw that documentary as well, and have been thinking the same thing.

I haven't had the time to watch Going Clear, but I did watch "I Escaped a Cult" on Netflix and it described the Aggressive Christianity Mission Training Corps, and the similarities here are chilling. There was a lot of talk about how the members of the church were part of 'God's Army', and how they lived in a faux-military style, with the leaders of the cult wearing home made military uniforms and constantly talking about battling for souls. Had he had time and further influence, I could see Andy turning 'Dumbledore's Army' into his own version of that.

Ooh, that's on Netflix! I caught some of that on TV and was fascinated. I'll have to go watch the whole thing.

And yeah, there was a strong military vibe. I think it's an outgrowth of the Us vs. Them that a lot of cult leaders foster. It's also there in Scientology (the SeaOrg) and Jonestown (Jim Jones used to have White Night drills, I believe they were called, to practice what they'd do if they were invaded). And of course there's Koresh and the Branch Davidians.

Some of these actually stockpiled weapons, etc, but some were just claiming to do 'spiritual battle', which is what Andy's already framed things like the Undead Shaman Wizard to be about. So yeah, it's definitely part of his approach.

That is a beautiful, beautiful typo, anon!

AYRT

Am I the only one who hates auto correct? Oh well LOL!

I doubt it. Andy tends to resent successful people who do things better than he can. He's super petty about JKR, for example, and makes a point of saying he only "skimmed" HP and actually doesn't like it very much.

I think he resents the fact that he (in his view) has to play second fiddle to whoever's playground he plays in. He wouldn't model his cult activity after someone else's actual cult. They probably have similarities because all cults play on similar vulnerabilities in their members.

He still used JKR's work to advance his own, though. (And I don't believe he merely skimmed the books.) Sure, he resents the hell out of her, but without her he'd never have had DAYD.

Speaking of which, I wonder how he felt about Tolkein and Peter Jackson.

The best part is how he uses her work to elevate his own: on the daydverse tumblr (not sure if he had it anywhere else, but I'm sure it was), there were several graphics posted listing how much of a "bamf" characters like McGonagall were, listing actual quotes from JKR's text and then dropping his own shoddy writing in at the end, like they were all from the same source

This is also similar to what he does in some of his traced drawings. I remember for example a pic of Alex Kingston as River Song in which he had made her already bright and voluminous hair even brighter and longer, as though it wasn't bright and long enough in the original picture.

Abbey has said that he had a Joseph Smith type story (my words, not hers) about Tolkien finding and translating the Red Book of Westmarch. I think he may have channeled Tolkien, but I'm not positive.

Now he says that Tolkien is boring and he can't stand reading his work. The implication is that Tolkien isn't gritty enough for him, unlike Stephen King, Clive Cussler, Tom Clancy, et al--the "front of the bookstore shit" that "Rennie Gade" said he was into on the Bit of Earth group back in 2001.

I'm not sure how Andy feels/felt about Peter Jackson, but he does reblog LotR gifsets once in a while, and he still makes the occasional reference to the series. That always makes my skin crawl. He probably at least pretended to respect Jackson when he was in Rings fandom and sharing "insider knowledge" as Elijah Wood.

TB

I agree that he wouldn't follow the example of Dianetics, which was written by a mere human being after all... but he might try to *improve* on it, like he oh-so-accidentally improved on JKR's HP when he wrote DAYD.

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