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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DA

Yeah, in general, context is very important with Andy's statements. I may, occasionally, find myself saying "well, come on, it seems like a bit of a reach to read a lot into that"...until I step back and remember the context in which he's saying it. For example, plenty of people fib on the Internet, or spin a mildly amusing thing that happened to them into a more interesting/funny story for Twitter/Tumblr/their blog/whatever. I know I have. But not nearly as many people lie on the Internet as often and as calculatedly as Andy does, for as long as he has, doing as much damage as he has in the process.

This is one of those situations. If almost anyone else said it, I'd say we were overanalyzing and yeah, maybe he really is moving on, good for him. But with Andy, the context matters, and there are two important parts of the context for me:

Andy has built up a huge narrative -- I might even call it a mythology -- around Brittany and her murder. She hasn't been his "friend" in previous tellings, she's been the love of his life.

As has been noted on this comm, Andy has seemed to be withdrawing from his current identity. He's talked about being sooooo busy, just too busy to keep up with fandom. He's deleted a lot of his own past work.

So for him to suddenly claim he just got so busy he forgot it was the anniversary of the murder of a "friend" he's been, until very recently, claiming was the love of his life definitely sets off a "he is laying the groundwork for another reinvention" alarm for me. I wonder if he's not trying to spin some new narrative in preparation for a jump to a new identity. We've talked about Avengers fandom, and I could see him trying to paint himself as Steve and Brittany as Bucky -- any other fandoms he's made overtures towards where there's a major male character with dead friend angst?

Yes. I sense he's retiring the Cult of Brittany as he abandons the DAYDverse, and it's both a chilling reminder of how ruthlessly he discards people and an indicator that he's moved on.

I dunno about this one. It kind of feels like Andy's in a no-win situation here. He calls her the love of his life and blogs in emotional ways about her and it's all false, put on, and exaggerated and used to manipulate others. He calls her his friend and forgets to blog about her and he never cared at all and is callous in the way he discards people. Exactly how should he be dealing with his grief and when should he be allowed to move on?

Concern troll much?

It's a given that we're approaching Andy's posts here from the perspective that most if not all of what he writes is disingenuous. What is it in this case, if you're being earnest, that makes you think this time, as opposed to all of the other times he's used Brittany to promote his wizard rock ambitions or his vacation plans or his fanfic, he's genuinely processing grief?

+1

If he really is moving on, then good for him, like I said above (I'm the DA with the numbered list a couple of comments up). There's absolutely no right or wrong way to grieve in the privacy of one's own heart or therapist's office. But he's the one who's established a pattern of using Brittany and her murder as part of his own narrative -- and as a tool for the manipulation and abuse of others. I see no reason to give him the benefit of the doubt and believe that this is a genuine indication that he's going to stop rather than just discarding a narrative that's no longer useful to him.

I think it's disingenuous to pretend anyone in this thread is attempting to proscribe how Than should mourn, especially since at least one person has directly stated they don't want to do that. What people are sidestepping, quite reasonably, is the retconning of reality such that his "life partner" is now being described as a friend.

Yes, Andy is in a no-win situation because he put himself there.

Exactly how should he be dealing with his grief and when should he be allowed to move on?

What grief? What moving on? Andy never grieved for Brittany and he never will, because he never cared about her. He doesn't need to move on from anything, because he's never been in a sad place because of her death.

Ok, there are two issues here:
1) how is he supposed to grief?

Well, anyway he feels like it, tbh. He can mourn her as the love of his life or as a friend in a difficult situation or anything in between. The problem lies in #2:

2)Being consistent

As you said, he is a good friend, but not love while she is alive. after death, she has been everything from idol to be worshipped, queer relationship partner, to normal friend. The truth is, most outsiders don't really care which one it was, just that he present *one* version of the truth.

which leads up "how can he win"? By realizing trust is earned, slowly. If he *is* finally being truthful about Brittany, it will take a long time of consistent, non-exploitative statements to establish a pattern that he is being trustworthy on this issue.

Anon above you

which leads up "how can he win"? By realizing trust is earned, slowly.

You know, this made me realize that even asking how Andy can *win* is the wrong way to look at it. There's nothing to win here. There's no contest, no competition. One could argue that there's a prize (trust) but as you point out, trust is *earned*, not won. The difference is subtle in most cases, but here it's paramount, because using "win" instead of "earn" is playing by Andy's twisted rules instead humanity's normal rules.

We argue that he's long lost any right to be trusted on anything, and that he has to earn people's trust again by acting consistently truthful in all matters. He tries to change that argument into something along the lines of, "If I can jump this hurdle, and this one, and that one over there, then I've won and you have to trust me no matter what else I do, or else it's unfair!" But trust doesn't work like that, and we must not let him try to lay down any such rules.

For starters, if he wants to earn people's trust again, he should stop pretending to be suffering from a mental illness he clearly doesn't have, and even more so stop pretending that it was that mental illness which made him abusive against his will. As far as I'm concerned, as long as he doesn't admit that he knew all along that he was being abusive, and that he was doing it on purpose and with the full intent of being abusive, there will be no trust to be earned back.

+1

It's only a "no-win" scenario if one views it as a game.

I think you all are turning into a little bit of an echo chamber. Clearly anon wasn't referring to it as a game. No-win is used for a lot of things that aren't treated as games. It's common slang to mean that no matter what they do, someone will criticize them for it. And I agree in this situation. Look, I think Andy is as big a slimeball there is. But the facts are that he was close with her. And you aren't inside his head. You don't know if he's actually grieving or not. Evil awful people can grieve.

I feel like there's this big "gotcha" mentality around him where if he posts over the top (because he does over the top crap, yes) emotionally about her, then GOTCHA Andy, you're using her death to manipulate him. If he doesn't post much about her, then GOTCHA Andy, you never really cared about her.

There are millions of other things that people can point to and talk about that actually happened, with the people he hurt clearly stating what he did. Talk about those. But Jesus, no matter how you feel about him, and no matter what you think lead to that, someone in his life died. Have some respect.

*Even awful people can grieve, but I guess the point works with "evil awful people can grieve" too.

See, I don't have any problem believing that he's grieving in some fashion. But taking someone who was a friend, gradually ratcheting up the descriptions of their relationship until the were life partners, creating the "tea ceremony" shit and encouraging people who didn't even know her to meditate on [his version of] her? Those are all inherently DISRESPECTFUL uses of a real person. When people discuss his revisionist approach to his relationship, they aren't denying that he lost someone; we're pointing out that EVEN IN THE FACE OF LOSS he can't fucking stop lying.

See also his grandfather: another real person, whom he probably loved, but still lied about.

+1
He's spent years developing her hagiography, was going on about it fairly recently and all of a sudden he's practically forgotten her? It's hard to buy any narrative as his true feelings at this point.

if he posts over the top (because he does over the top crap, yes) emotionally about her, then GOTCHA Andy, you're using her death to manipulate him. If he doesn't post much about her, then GOTCHA Andy, you never really cared about her.

Why are you presenting this as though these were two opposite options? Andy uses Brittany's death to manipulate people AND he never really cared about her.

no matter how you feel about him, and no matter what you think lead to that, someone in his life died. Have some respect.

We've consistently shown more respect for Brittany's memory than he ever has. This says everything there's to say about the respect we owe him on this matter.

If he was grieving, perhaps he should have more respect for her than to use her memory as the basis for emotional grandstanding about Saint Brittany of the Tea Ceremony. And to claim she was his soulmate when she was a friend. And so on and so forth. And then to go back on all of that and go 'Oh, got too busy to post about her, eh'.

Also, no one would have noticed that he didn't post much about her if he hadn't *pointed it out himself*.

I'd be a lot more "respectful" if HE showed respect for her memory, rather than turning it into yet another 'canon' where he can stretch it and squeeze it whichever way it suits him to reshape it today. To give him some slack, if this is the start of him doing so, I respect that. It just makes the falseness of what came before unusually glaring for the moment.

AYRT

What he feels in his heart is absolutely his own business. He can process it however he needs to.

But I'm not looking into his heart. I'm making no claims to know what's in his heart. I'm looking at what he's said and done in public. And what has he said and done in public? As I said elsewhere in the thread, he's the one who made performative grief a part of his current persona. He's the one who's used his Grief (capitalized to distinguish his public performance of it rather than whatever true grief he may feel/have felt) as a tool to manipulate and abuse others.

I have absolutely no reason to believe that this one time he's being sincere as opposed to every other calculated comment and post he's ever made. And I am under no obligation to give him the benefit of the doubt when there are years of evidence warning me against doing so.

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