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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I'd guess it also has a lot to do with fandom rejecting HIM, now that more people know his story. MCU and WtNV have both given him a hearty no thanks, and his SPN work didn't get him an iota of the love he would have liked. So he's pretending its his choice to withdraw, while planning whatever he'll do next.

Seriously, that ask just required a simple "no, but thanks for asking." There was no need for his whole "TOO COOL FOR YOU POOPYHEADS" explanation with all the reasons he's rejecting the con.

SPN work didn't get him an iota of the love he would have liked.

It used to. I was around for a lot of it. His meta earned him a lot of praise and followers. Unfortunately for him, his master thesis -- that Destiel was planned by the creators and would be made explicitly canon (likely in season 8 or 9) -- has been thoroughly debunked. He was also wrong about a lot of other things, so his "cred" in that fandom is basically shot.

His popularity was also way less about him personally than, say, his DAYD stuff. Part of this I put down to tumblr's interface, which makes it trickier to create the sort of environment Andy's bullshit thrives in.

I remember that! He was so insistent that he knew it would happen, and had all that bullshit going on where he claimed that he was talking people out of killing themselves every time an episode didn't have enough Destiel.

I wonder exactly how he planned to pull that off. I shipped Destiel, but the show was clearly never planning too go there. Was he just hoping to have his new cult established by the time his deadline came up?

Would you be able to go into his SPN fandom failings in a bit more detail?

na

Honesty, most people just didn't pay that much attention to him or his fic or meta, excepting the contingent of people who were really wishful that their ship would become canon. Those people squeed at his meta, but they did the same at every other person who had the same sort of meta. And with the way that tumblr works different people add or subtract things to posts all the time, so it's easy to not pay attention to the fact that he's the one writing those things. So he succeeded on finding the most gullible people. But he failed at gathering them around him. They were already gathered together around a concept and they could take or leave him. So when he tried to carefully lead them down a path, they didn't care because they were already satisfied with their beliefs. He was unnecessary.

Na

One of his favorite bits was to make a totally obvious prediction like 'Sam and Dean will argue this season' or ' We haven't seen the last of Crowley'. Then when he was right (it's a fairly predictable show in the short term) he'd remind everyone of it and point out that believe it or not, he has no inside knowledge...

Trying to get people to speculatevon whether that was true or if he was just incredibly intuitive about SPN. Though as far as I saw, no one but him even
mentioned the possibility of him having insider knowledge. And he didn't successfully that couldn't be deduced from existing spoilers and a basic understanding of narrative tropes.

Successfully PREDICT, that should say.

ayrt

This I agree with:

So he succeeded on finding the most gullible people. But he failed at gathering them around him. They were already gathered together around a concept and they could take or leave him.

This, however I don't:

Honesty, most people just didn't pay that much attention to him or his fic or meta, excepting the contingent of people who were really wishful that their ship would become canon. Those people squeed at his meta, but they did the same at every other person who had the same sort of meta.

Andy was a big meta writer in the Destiel fandom. Like, probably top three of the most popular and widely known at the height of his popularity. He claimed to have thousands of followers, which I believe from the number of notes his Destiel and SPN meta used to receive.

His meta was enough to get him on Profound Radio (who at that point were BNFs, though not a Cassie Clare sense) in a very short time. Andy really love-bombed one of the hosts, who ended up marathon skyping with him for like hours at a time over the course of a few weeks. She developed a huge crush on him and sent him erotic pictures of herself. Stuff of that nature. That ended disastrously when Andy sabotaged the team during GISHWHES.

As time went on, Andy lost a lot of his SPN friends for one reason or another. Mostly his asshole behavior. One of his next marks drifted slowly away due to his notorious rep. His predictions about the show also started failing (no Destiel, no end after season 10, Kevin Tran dying with his role essentially unchanged, etc). His attempts to suck up to Osric also backfired big time when he lost Winjennster and had to answer to fandom about his creepy behavior.

Also, like I said, his fame was less about him as a person and more about giving hope to a bunch of shippers. There was little opportunity for him to create a cult of personality outside the posse and a few other select people. Part of this I put down to how tumblr functions, and the rest I put down to a his "hook" being way less effective because it had very little to do with him. I think Andy himself was unable to get into the show as much as DAYDverse, for example, because he couldn't take any credit for it.

this is untrue. Destiel fandom was huge. I was in it, and pretty deeply for a long time. Andy wouldn't have even been on my radar if it hadn't been for FFA. I'm trying to find a way to say this without sounding like a jerk, but I don't think I can, so I'm going to just be blunt for the sake of clarity.

I gravitated towards the more "mainstream" Destiel crowd. The "Profound Bond Radio" crowd were a subgroup of fandom that came across my area from time to time, were sort of half cringeworthy, half worth an awkward pat on the head, and another half something to pretend didn't exist at all.

Like, probably top three of the most popular and widely known at the height of his popularity. He claimed to have thousands of followers, which I believe from the number of notes his Destiel and SPN meta used to receive.

Many of the people I knew had anywhere between 50-100 thousand followers. And this really isn't an exaggeration. Like I said, Destiel fandom was big. Him having a couple of thousand may or may not be true, but it would not put him anywhere near the big names. He was mostly famous for having wank write ups about him by Aja and the like - for non-SPN related things.

I think this is important to note, because from my perspective the "Profound Bond" crowd which produced meta of the sort that wanted canon!Destiel were already viewed as an embarrassing, gullible subgroup of fandom. He picked the right group, but their wagons were already circled, and he was trying to insert himself into an insular crowd without giving them anything they couldn't already get from each other.

DA

I think this is important to note, because from my perspective the "Profound Bond" crowd which produced meta of the sort that wanted canon!Destiel were already viewed as an embarrassing, gullible subgroup of fandom.

I was hugely into the Destiel fandom and never got this sense.

ayrt

Well, like I said - SPN fandom is pretty massive. It makes complete sense to me that we would have very different experiences.

I remember his Destiel meta only about 30 notes. Maybe one of his high ones would get about 100. He as not pulling 2k or 3k notes on his posts on the regular like the really popular writers. gb2bed, Andy

Yeah, looking at his Destiel meta masterpost: http://andythanfiction.tumblr.com/post/50210715380/destiel-meta-masterpost-updated-2-15-14-no

I don't see anything with many notes. Looking at the ones in bold, which are according to him his "most popular ones or those I’m particularly proud of," I'm seeing 95 notes, 13 notes, 52, 173, 25, 73, 61...the majority of his ~200-odd meta posts are living in the 10-100 notes range. Here are the handful that got over 500 notes, but you can see that he peaked at 1500 even at his most general interest, wide appeal "Dean is bisexual" type meta:

605 notes: http://andythanfiction.tumblr.com/post/57846819541/why-cant-this-be-love
889: http://andythanfiction.tumblr.com/post/51981685436/stuck-in-the-middle-with-you-the-case-for-canon
697: http://andythanfiction.tumblr.com/post/49772946448/and-some-you-just-cant-tell
718: http://andythanfiction.tumblr.com/post/47917682184/seeing-you-for-the-first-time
886: http://andythanfiction.tumblr.com/post/46243577913/ac-dc
556: http://andythanfiction.tumblr.com/post/45938897525/dont-make-them-turn-this-car-around
1,694: http://andythanfiction.tumblr.com/post/43706382778/death-or-glory
1,572: http://andythanfiction.tumblr.com/post/42721086913/aint-my-bitch
1,311: http://andythanfiction.tumblr.com/post/42636543900/i-have-written-an-entire-meta-about-how-dean-has

And 1500 notes in a tumblr fandom like Supernatural is nothing, especially for the content he was writing. The really niche shipper conspiracy stuff? More likely to have 30-60 notes than not. He wasn't a big name meta writer in SPN fandom.

DA

When I joined tumblr in late s8, he was trying to talk to more popular bloggers (trying to suck up, haha), especially octoswan (Osric Chau's housemate). I had the impression that he was more popular than he actually was, since A) whenever he reblogged something from me my notes would spike (i had under 100 followers at the time so, not a great rubric) and B) he got so many anon asks!! Of course back then it never occurred to me that a great number of them were self-sent.

There were a few reasons I think he never got the mass popularity he wanted. There's the niche meta issue, where he's feeding into the canon Destiel conspiracy and not appearing to a broader audience. Then he also just gives off a creepy wanky vibe. Then of course, his blog theme had all the DAYD stuff that nobody in SPN cared about. And the real kicker? The biggest warning posts hit before he could solidify his grip in the fandom.

All of which goes to show that he doesn't need massive popularity to keep his operation running. As far as I can tell, he wasn't that big a deal in HP either, just his corner of it? (since HP was so huge.) All he needs are the devoted few, and enough outer-circle followers to keep up appearances.

Andy CLAIMED a lot of popularity,claiming to be overwhelmed with asks and desperately sending messages out to all those poor anons who were contacting him with Destiel feels to strong to bear. No evidence any of that was real.

Likewise, row a while his sidebar said something like "yes, I'm the one behind those deconstructed SPN episodes", like people were searching out the originator of these works of genius.

I never ever saw anyone but him discussing his work, which makes me think he just assumed if he created a BNF vibe,cream popularity would follow. The MsScribe approach, basically.

Unfortunately for him, his master thesis -- that Destiel was planned by the creators and would be made explicitly canon (likely in season 8 or 9) -- has been thoroughly debunked

To be specific, he claimed that Destiel would be made explicitly canon in the season 9 midseason finale.

Watching him backtrack more and more as that episode approached was extremely amusing.

NA

That was supposedly the "most likely" of several possibilities, including the season 8 finale, the season 9 finale, his theorized season 10 series finale. There were a few others too, I think. Maybe the season 10 break?

But yeah, basically his argument was, "Destiel will happen at some point before the show ends, unless they change their mind for some reason". Really solid stuff!

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