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This started out as a supplement to “On Andy and Violence” and quickly got away from me. The timeline covers the major events that I am aware of regarding each of the usernames and pseudonyms that Andy has used over the years. I’m leaving out a couple of brief relationships and a lot of sexuality/gender-related wank because this is not about gender or sexuality, for fuck’s sake. I will use the preferred pronouns that pertain to whichever of Andy’s aliases I am discussing at the time.
Andy’s participation in the Sharpe fandom is mostly absent because I don’t have access to the archives that I need. All I have to go on is fanfiction, which is not terribly helpful.
This portion of the timeline covers 1998-2001.
1998 Date Unknown Sometime between July and November, Amy Player, using the e-mail address player@widomaker.com, shares her first Sharpe fic on the Sharpe Yahoo! group. She says that she is 15 years old and lives in a “small rural part of America” without access to a library: she must wait several months for the bookmobile to bring the Sharpe books to her. Amy directly addresses Bernard Cornwell, author of the novels, in the introductory note to her fic.
September 29 Strwriter makes her first post on alt.startrek.creative. Some members of the Star Trek: Voyager and Due South fandoms will eventually get to know Strwriter as Amy Player.
Strwriter says that she is 15 years old; a college student holding down at least two jobs; and a professional actress, singer, and dancer with a national touring company. She uses the e-mail address player@widomaker.com. Strwriter writes fanfiction, does fanart, and enjoys running fanfiction contests.
November 13 Voyagerbabe makes her first post on alt.startrek.creative. Some members of the Star Trek: Voyager and Due South fandoms will eventually get to know Voyagerbabe as Ciyarra Tallaver.
Voyagerbabe claims to be an 18-year-old college student and a victim of childhood sexual abuse. She and Strwriter say that they are best friends and coworkers. In March 1999, Voyagerbabe tells alt.startrek.creative that between the two of them, they have three majors and five jobs. Voyagerbabe uses the e-mail addresses voyagerbabe@my-dejanews.com and voyagerbabe@hotmail.com and the AIM username VBabe47. Voyagerbabe writes fanfiction and helps Strwriter maintain her website and run fanfiction contests.
1999 May 5 Voyagerbabe introduces Strwriter to alt.tv.due-south.
Periodically throughout 1998-1999, Strwriter and Voyagerbabe each make posts on Usenet and Yahoo! groups for Star Trek: Voyager and Due South about the “identity crisis” between the two of them. In 1998, they claim that they are both using Strwriter’s computer to read and post to Usenet groups because Voyagerbabe doesn’t have a home computer and can’t access newsgroups at the library. In April 1999, Voyagerbabe says that she finally has her own computer. Occasionally one or the other will somehow lose internet access, so they still post on each other’s behalf.
End of July Both Strwriter and Voyagerbabe are effectively done participating in Star Trek fandom.
October 20 Someone claiming to be Amy’s mother, Cyd, posts to alt.tv.due-south using the same player@widomaker.com address that Strwriter uses. There is no way to be certain as to who this really was.
2000 August 30 Strwriter bows out of online fandom altogether, allegedly having been forbidden by her parents to use the internet for non-academic purposes.
Voyagerbabe continues to participate in Due South fandom via Usenet and Yahoo! groups.
2001 Voyagerbabe’s participation in Due South fandom gradually declines throughout the year. She begins going by VBabe and the initials VB.
March 14 VB announces to Ride Forever, a Due South Yahoo! group, that she is engaged. Her alleged fiancé is a real person and his name will not be mentioned here. (This is the guy who became known as “Some Ozzie Bloke” during the BoE era, though I’m almost certain that he never wrote any of the posts that were attributed to him in that group.)
May 1 VB informs Ride Forever that she has miraculously learned to draw over the course of a single evening spent with a book, so now she can contribute fanart as well as fic. Someone else in the thread points out that she’d previously posted her own good quality fanart to the list–oops!
June 3 Victoria Bitter posts for the first time to hhfic, a Horatio Hornblower Yahoo! group. She says that she is a twenty-year-old waitress and theme park portrait artist (with a birthday of 24 September), that she has been a living history interpreter for ten years, that she travels internationally for her work as an actress, and that she was born in London, England. Victoria Bitter was active at least a little before this point, but since the A&E boards for HH have long since been taken down, I can’t pinpoint her first appearance more accurately than this. She continues to use the e-mail address voyagerbabe@hotmail.com.
September 24 VB makes her last post in the Due South Yahoo! group Ride Forever (cross-posted to hhfic and probably other groups that I haven’t spotted yet). The post is about an “unknown person” who has allegedly hijacked her AIM account, VBabe47.
December 27 On hhfic, Victoria Bitter briefly joins in a discussion of names found in The Lord of the Rings, Hornblower, and the works of C. S. Lewis. This is her last post to that group and her last participation in HH fandom of which I am aware.
This timeline covers the major events that I am aware of regarding each of the usernames and pseudonyms that Andy has used over the years. I’m leaving out a couple of brief relationships and a lot of sexuality/gender-related wank because this is not about gender or sexuality, for fuck’s sake. I will use the preferred pronouns that pertain to whichever of Andy’s aliases I am discussing at the time.
I should also note that I’m excluding nearly everything that happened on Bit of Earth’s Prancing Pony message board, which went down with Tentmoot, because I was never a member and thus do not have any of that material.
Finally, I’ve only briefly mentioned events like Hall of Fire and Lost Palantir because most of the information currently available on them is in Turimel’s book and I don’t feel like going through it all over again. While the book contains a lot of useful documentary evidence (canceled checks, letters and e-mails, et al.) and info on who specifically ran around and did what to prepare for BoE events, it also contains a great deal of venomous editorializing. Plus all the transfail, which I can sometimes handle wading through, but not today.
(Part I)
Part II of the timeline covers 2002 - March 2007.
2002 January 4 Victoria Bitter, still using the e-mail address voyagerbabe@hotmail.com and the AIM (and now Yahoo!) username VBabe47, starts the Bit of Earth Yahoo! group (henceforth known as BoE). That same day, she e-mails the webmaster of Sean Astin’s official website to let them know about the group and encourage Sean to get involved.
This version of Victoria Bitter says that she is a twenty-one-year-old college student born in Sheffield, England who is engaged to the previously mentioned Ozzie Bloke.
January 8-9 “Chris”, the Marine that VB supposedly met at a showing of The Fellowship of the Ring, posts twice to BoE. Chris uses the Yahoo! handle Rennie Gade and the e-mail address vivazebool@hotmail.com. I’ve already discussed why I think this is actually Victoria Bitter.
February 12 “Some Ozzie Bloke” allegedly posts to BoE under Victoria Bitter’s name because she has an eye infection and can’t see well enough to type. He says that he is reading her e-mail and posting fic and art for her, in addition to recording all of her lectures for school. When she has to go to the hospital, he brings her laptop along so that he can continue reading aloud to her (fanfiction, email, and messages on BoE) and communicating on her behalf. All of this leads up to someone getting one of VB’s sketches signed for her by Sean Astin. This is probably VB herself looking for attention. Mysterious medical ailments, friends and SOs who read messages/e-mails/fic and liveblog the illness, and extremely odd behavior in hospitals are by now well-known hallmarks of Münchausen by Internet.
February 17 Victoria Bitter starts a LiveJournal account. Her profile lists the AIM username VBabe47. In a meme, she acknowledges that her legal name is Amy Player. This establishes the first definitive link between Amy Player and Voyagerbabe/VB, but no one realizes the significance at the time.
Sometime between February and April, VB reveals her Amazing Channeling Powers to Abbey over chat. She mentions wanting to “reach out” to LotR cast members, specifically Orlando Bloom and Elijah Wood.
April 5-7 VB attends Connexions, where she meets many fellow fans and LJ friends and begins a brief romantic relationship with Versaphile. VB speaks with a fake British accent. The less said about Connexions, the better, probably.
April 19 The Great Hobbit Brain-Dump, in which VB claims to receive Merry’s soul and his lifetime of memories. “Merry” chronicles his experiences in the brandagamba LiveJournal and teaches people pseudo-Westron via chat.
May 8 VB writes that she has officially ended her relationship with Versaphile.
June 2 Victoria Bitter flies to Oregon for a week-long visit with Abbey, during which she channels LotR characters in person.
Late August or early September Abbey flies to Virginia to visit VB.
September 7 In response to the drama surrounding MsAllegro’s Domlijah tinhattery (just Google it if you’re curious), VB has Abbey post a stern message to BoE on her behalf, due to “computer problems”.
September 11 Victoria Bitter approaches Sean Astin at a 9/11 memorial event in NYC and asks him to participate in a community service project. Later that day, she announces Project Elanor on BoE. She is now using the e-mail address victoriabitter@bitofearth.net
October VB moves in with Abbey. Diamond, Shopping Cart Bob, and Little Sam eventually join them. (The group will henceforth be referred to as The BagEnders because that’s what they called themselves.) VB starts building the cult in earnest.
November 3 Victoria Bitter makes her final post to BoE and to her LiveJournal and withdraws from online fandom.
This is about the point at which the “Jordan Wood” alias first comes to light. He tells Abbey that he has taken on the “duplicate soul” of Elijah Wood. Sometimes he claims that Elijah’s split soul didn’t want to go back to his body; at other times, he says that it simply couldn’t. He tells some other people (eventually to include Turimel) that he is Elijah Wood’s cousin. Both stories are kept secret for a while. Abbey and Jordan start telling people that Victoria Bitter is dead.
Jordan starts writing as “Elijah” on LiveJournal as PadawanS (short for Padawan Sidious). Despite several posts that Strwriter and Voyagerbabe made between 1998-2001 regarding “their” distaste for homosexuality and slash, and despite VB’s aggressive response to MsAllegro’s Domlijah tinhatting, Jordan/“Elijah” engages in quite a bit of the same behavior on LJ, TheOneRing.net, and message boards on other sites. He uses claims of insider knowledge regarding the LotR cast and the film industry to make it all sound more plausible.
Jordan also alleges that Elijah’s “abusive” family is involved with the IRA and wants to drag him into it as well. This represents just a fraction of the lies that Jordan tells about himself, Elijah Wood, and other LotR cast members. Over the next thirteen months, he will do a great deal of damage that changes the way that New Line Cinema and many of the actors involved in LotR deal with fans and fandom.
November 30 Mr. Frodo makes his first post to BoE, announcing the Line Party at Lloyd Cinema in Portland, OR for the release of The Two Towers. He identifies himself as Bit of Earth’s Public Relations Director and uses the e-mail address mrfrodo@bitofearth.net. He also had a misterfrodo LiveJournal, but like padawans, it has long since been purged.
December 18 The Line Party takes place. Jordan Wood/Mr. Frodo runs the event with Abbey. They dress as Sam and Frodo, with Jordan’s hair glued to their feet–they tell people that it’s from their friend who recently died. The event goes very well and everyone is excited to plan another event.
2003 January 13 Mr. Frodo posts to BoE to warn members that someone is posing online as Victoria Bitter. He now calls himself BoE’s Assistant Director.
January 31 Mr. Frodo makes his last post to the BoE Yahoo! group, congratulating Sean Astin on his appointment to a Presidential Council.
February 20 BoE’s website message board, The Prancing Pony, is redirected to one of Versaphile’s LJ entries, which presents photographic evidence that Jordan Wood and Victoria Bitter are the same person. Jordan is able to sweep it under the rug pretty quickly by blaming a “bitter ex”.
April 6 Project Elanor takes place with Sean Astin and his family in attendance. Again, Jordan and Abbey run the event together. Project Elanor does not go entirely according to plan and the money that people thought would go to RIF goes to pay for supplies…but the group does create a lovely reading garden that still exists today.
July 25-27 BoE’s Hall of Fire Summer Music Festival is pretty much a failure. This seems to be mostly Jordan’s fault due to poor planning, procrastination on a grand scale, and delegating tasks without giving anyone adequate resources or the power to make real decisions.
August The BagEnders move from Milwaukie to Salem, OR with help from Turimel.
September 20 BoE’s Lost Palantir Film Festival goes on, featuring a video appearance by Sean Astin, although the festival is not very much like it was supposed to be.
October 1 Jordan tries to obtain an Oregon driver’s license and a Social Security card under the name “Jordan Gabriel Wood”, using an obviously fake “Certificate of Naming” from a nonexistent pagan commune in Estacada. It doesn’t work. Later, he will try this again with a falsified birth certificate based on Abbey’s real one. That doesn’t work, either.
October 3 Jordan sends the Amy Player pseuicide letter to his parents on the same day that the BagEnders move to San Dimas, CA. Turimel assists again by cosigning a loan with Diamond.
October 10 A detective knocks on Turimel’s door looking for Amy Player, who he insists is the same person as Jordan Wood. Everything goes rapidly downhill from here.
October 21 Abbey sends an e-mail (presumably dictated by Jordan) to Amy’s parents and CC’d to Turimel, stating that Jordan Wood (BoE’s Director of Celebrity Relations) is not their daughter and that Amy has attempted to steal his identity. The e-mail also accuses Shopping Cart Bob of attempting to blackmail Jordan and other members of BoE.
Jordan spends the next month and a half being evasive about TentMoot preparations and his identity with Turimel, the police, and everyone. I am really sorry, but I am not going to keep digging through that book to get more solid dates on this. I’ve already had to reread more of it than I wanted to do. Just know that a lot of actors, artists, consultants, and crew from LotR, not to mention their agents and PR people, are put through the wringer over this, as are the BoE volunteers who are trying to help. During and after the whole fiasco, Jordan also says a lot of terribly insulting, disgusting, sometimes libellous things about these same people via e-mail and on message boards.
December 9 TentMoot fails epically. Jordan commits pseuicide in front of Abbey, Diamond, and Little Sam. Two days later, Jed Brophy, Paul Randall, and Brian Sergent arrive at LAX for TentMoot. Lawrence Makoare never gets out of New Zealand. Andy sabotages the BagEnders’ apartment and blames Turimel and Shopping Cart Bob for everything. Little Sam’s parents take her home soon after.
December 15 Jordan is arrested in Portland and detained for questioning by the Marion County, OR Sheriff’s Department re: identity theft. He is released the same day. No criminal charges are ever filed. Abbey and Jordan end up paying a fine and being forbidden to solicit money for charity in the state of Oregon.
January 2004 - January 2007 A lot happens offline over the course of three years. Abbey and Diamond have both written about it. To sum up: Jordan/“Elijah Wood” has “died” and the “new core” says that he’s Orlando Bloom because of course he fucking is. Recall that VB had told Abbey in 2002, during the same chat in which they discussed psychically “reaching” Elijah Wood, that Orlando Bloom would be another good channeling candidate. “Orlando” goes by Andy.
Turimel publishes her book. Abbey and Andy begin working as costumed characters in Hollywood. Diamond eventually gets out of the cult. Abbey continues to live under Andy’s thumb as he goes on channeling more and more “Others”. He moves on from LotR to The Chronicles of Narnia (starting with Peter Pevensie/Blakewell) and ends up “bringing through” a large cast of teenage WWII-era soldiers with abusive backgrounds. He legally changes his name to Andrew Michael Blake. And then…
2007 Early February Having concocted a “plan” to move to Toronto under false pretenses, Andy and Abbey fly from LA to Buffalo via Atlanta with their bird, Boo (AKA “his son, a sparrow”). They try to walk across the border to Canada. It doesn’t work. Andy throws an incredible tantrum and the border guards let them sleep in their office. Abbey’s mother comes to the rescue the next day.
February - March Operation Catch and Release. Abbey’s mother is beyond amazing.
March 4 Andy posts the first of many fauxpologies on the amy_player LiveJournal. No one is buying it. He explicitly admits to being both Strwriter and Voyagerbabe, but makes no mention of the name Andrew Blake.
Not long after this, Abbey and her mother fly back to Virginia. Abbey breaks things off with Andy. She takes Boo and leaves. Andy throws another gigantic tantrum and continues to harass her with letters for about a year afterward.
Unfortunately, there are significant gaps and not many precise dates available for Part III. Because of all the negative attention he’d received following his exploits in LotR fandom, Andy spent a couple of years trying to fly under the radar. He didn’t post publicly as much as he used to, other than his writing and artwork. His “channeling” activity took place primarily in chat (text and sometimes audio) and there were strict rules about what participants were and were not permitted to post for the purpose of sharing information about DAYD characters. Once Abbey blew his cover, Andy put nearly everything not directly related to DAYD on lockdown. And in the years since then, many former DAYDians have locked or deleted their LJs, Twitter accounts, etc. as part of the process of getting away from Andy and moving on with their lives. This means that while we know the outline of major events during the DAYD era, details are sometimes sketchy.
Another issue is that many former DAYDians are quite understandably reluctant to discuss the specifics of Andy’s “channeling”, conversations they’ve had, etc. It would be fairly easy, in many cases, for him to trace information back to specific people, and he has a history of siccing his current friends and followers on those who speak out. Those whom Aja interviewed for her article ended up getting hurt in a completely different way. For these reasons, I haven’t attempted to contact any DAYDians myself, but have done the best I could with the records that remain available online and the information shared by former DAYDian anons on FFA.
(Part I) | (Part II)
Part III of the timeline covers March 2007 - January 2010.
March 2007 - April 2008 Andy drops off the map for a while. He lives with his parents for at least part of this time and they get him into therapy.
Supposedly he is in a rock band that later becomes a wrock (wizard rock) band and one of the members prompts him to read the Harry Potter series. I have yet to find any reference to Andy’s specific role in the band other than that he writes lyrics for them.
2008 April Andy writes “Dumbledore’s Army: Still Recruiting” in response to a fanfic challenge on The Quidditch Pitch. By June 15, he has expanded it to the 256K-word “Dumbledore’s Army and the Year of Darkness”.
Not much is known of Andy’s activities for the rest of this year (see above note), other than that he aggressively promotes DAYD on LJ and other forums and in reviews of other people’s fanfiction. He refers to DAYD as “[his] own canon” and reportedly talks about sending it to J. K. Rowling as Book 8, or publishing it himself. The few discrete events for which we have dates are listed below.
May 3 Andy participates in a podcast (no longer available) at The Quidditch Pitch. No Irish accent is evident.
June (more precise date unknown) At this point, Andy is allegedly homeless and living in his car and/or his parents’ barn, using a local library for Internet access.
For about three weeks, Andy and luvscharlie talk on the phone daily. She allows him to use her PayPal account to collect money for his fanart commissions. They seem to have a falling-out by June 23. (Details of this were publicly available at one time, but have since been locked and I don’t have a copy.)
June 22 In a meme response on luvscharlie’s LJ, Andy claims to have a “Harry Potter lightning scar on [his] forehead” and says in response to a comment from CFC that he looks just like Harry and his parents look just like Harry’s parents. He refers to himself as a “mashup” of Harry and Neville, as well as Sirius and (I think) Remus.
Please note what Andy says about luvscharlie, her accent, lust, etc. It all calls to mind similar little flirtatious comments that he used to make to Abbey when he was first insinuating his way into her life. Also note luvscharlie’s follow-up comment, which strongly suggests that she ended their relationship.
August 19 Andy leaves the “shipperchibbies” comment at the fanficrants LiveJournal community. Choice quote:
This fandom is infested with girls. Little bubble-headed shipperchibbies who spaz all over me because I write from the perspective of a guy, as a guy. … I’ve been told that my guys are blunt, aggressive, hot-tempered, that my fics are unnecessarily violent, that my guys aren’t sensitive enough about their feelings and the feelings of the girls they deal with. Um, well, I hate to break it to you, Hannah Montana, but guys are like that, and moreover, war is like that. We do not speak the same language you do.
In this and other posts linked below, Andy also expresses contempt for m/m slash and those who read and write it, which is interesting given the quantity of Frodo/Sam fanfiction and fanart that he produced as Victoria Bitter.
September 7 Andy posts to the Dark Lord Potter forum to advertise DAYD. It begins:
It’s great to see somewhere that a heterosexual guy can be a heterosexual guy in this fandom without tiptoeing around all the fangirls and slashers trying not to offend anyone when he doesn’t want Harry weeping into his chocolate ice-cream to Evanescence because Draco hasn’t bent him over the table in the Great Hall lately or because you write that Seamus has had those kind of fantasies about the Patil twins…and so has any other red-blooded seventeen-year old boy.
That isn’t the end of the misogynistic and hetero-/cissexist comments, but it is representative. Other than that, Andy lists many of his media likes and dislikes and says that he looks just like Harry Potter (“I am 5'8, skinny, glasses, messy black hair, and a lightning-shaped scar on my forehead”). He also mentions that he hates J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis, which is worthy of mention mainly because of his fandom history. In a later post on the same thread, he claims to be self-educated.
Andy’s signature on this forum reads, “Dear fangirls: Was it the beatings, the torture, the dismemberment, the sadism, the poisoning, or the graphic deaths that gave you the idea I would be so sensitive to your feelings?”
December 30 Andy submits his now-infamous application to Hogwarts sorting community platform_934. Among other things, he claims to be Irish, to have fought in militias on both sides of the Troubles, to have saved numerous lives, and to have a heart condition that will kill him in less than ten years. He speaks of having been left for another man by “a woman [he] loved for almost seven long years” (Abbey) who “took [their] son from [him] without so much as a goodbye” (“his son, a sparrow”). Despite this, he heroically doesn’t hate “the fairer sex”.
Andy also says that DAYD is the first thing he’s ever written, that he has a genius IQ, and that despite never having attended any school, he has “an astonishing breadth of completely self-aquired [sic] knowledge” and knows “4.5 languages”. No word on whether any of them is Westron. In the end, the comm labels him a Muggle.
That same day, Andy begins teaching a “writing seminar” at his plot-with-plot LJ community. He says that he is qualified to do this, in spite of his lack of formal education, because “I’ve pulled off in eight months from dead zero what takes most people years - decades, if you include school - to sort of meander towards.”
After much pontificating on what “makes” a writer, Andy issues his first two assignments. The second includes the directive to go without food and any liquid other than water for three days. In future posts, he will write at great length and in detail about creating protagonists, antagonists, and plot–again, despite allegedly never having received instruction in writing and never having written anything in his life before DAYD.
2009 Late February Andy makes an LJ post about his “very serious heart defect”. He says that he hadn’t been expected to survive to adulthood and was eventually told that he had two to five years to live (from the date of the post). Recent developments, however, have led his doctor to revise his life expectancy to less than a year. He makes reference to his ex “Louise” (Abbey’s middle name) and their son “Connor” (the sparrow) and repeatedly assures his friends that he’s fine, doesn’t need emotional support, is grateful for how “perfect” the timing is, etc.
Shortly thereafter, Andy requests that his friends pay for him to come and visit them before he dies:
1. Meet as many flisters as possible 2. Get in some more traveling 3. Help as many people as possible.
Longer later, but the upshot is this…I will post 2-3 weeks in advance every time I have a 60-hour consecutive stretch or longer off of work. If you want me to come visit you in that time, you just have to get me there, and I don’t care how. …
Get me there, and for roughly two days, Than is yours…[for] anything non-sexual you can think of wanting from a handsome, intelligent, and multi-talented young man, really. I’d love to be able to offer to just go on my own, but there are a very limited number of times I can afford that, and I’m afraid I have to be very judicious with those.
February 27 One of Andy’s friends starts the than_love LJ community (now deleted) to raise money for aforementioned travel expenses. At least one of his former friends is on record as saying that she gave Andy $400 to travel to Germany and spent $250 on his artwork, but he ceased all communication when she stopped spending money on him.
March 2 The DAYDverse LJ community is created. It is owned by Andy and co-moderated by ceirdwenfc (CFC), whom Andy refers to as his “First Lieutenant”, “the very first DAYDian” and everyone’s “second mother”. The DAYDians refer to Andy by titles that include “Chief”, “Fearless Leader”, and “Supreme Commander”. Other DAYDians will later be designated as “House Lieutenants”.
Sometime Later I will not link to it or give a specific date, but at one point on the community, in the midst of a lot of DAYD audiobook casting posts, Andy asks 14- through 28-year-old DAYDians to post their pictures. He then tells each of them how much they look like this or that DAYD character and tells some of the women that they’re hot.
March 4 luvscharlie informs the DAYDians that Andy is a liar who is obtaining money from them under false pretenses.
March 27 In response to an inquiry about his claims in the app to platform_934, Andy messages LJ user birdseyeview to assure her that everything he said was true. He brushes off luvscharlie as another “bitter ex”.
Andy says that he’s a US citizen from Virginia but of 100% Irish heritage and raised as an Irishman by his “Irish-born-and-bred-lived-in-Belfast-until-he-was-in-his-30s Irish grandfather”. Supposedly he grew up in rural isolation and had little to no contact with other children. Andy strongly implies that his grandfather intended to send him back to Ireland to settle a personal score related to the IRA. He claims to have spent some time living in Ireland and to have “fought with both the RHD and RIRA”. He says that his accent is real, but that he hid it for years to fit in…and compares this to President Obama going by “Barry” in his youth.
Andy goes on to explain that women can’t handle bluntness and strong opinions, so he knew that his app might not go over well. He humblebrags about his allegedly high IQ and insists that his fatal heart condition is real and he has no reason to fake it. The message ends with a trademark Andy device, the “clever”, self-deprecating postscript full of irrelevant information disguised as disarming honesty. It includes the assertion that he has “a real-life lightning scar on [his] forehead”.
May 11 Andy shows off his DA tattoo to the DAYDverse comm. He says that he initially did it himself with a sewing needle and ink from a pen, and has now had an actual tattoo artist go over it.
May 22 - 30 Andy travels to Germany at the expense of members of the DAYDverse community.
June 4 Andy explains to the DAYDians that he doesn’t just write the story:
I see, hear, feel, taste, smell, live it from every angle. …
The ‘writing process’ isn’t creative - it’s all there just as much if not more than my own memories…
…the character’s physical pain 'comes through’ and I find my back aching from the decade-old scars of a flogging when no whip has ever touched me or I can barely stand because the nerves in my completely intact legs are having a field day with phantom pain and abused pressure points.
Yes, I know it’s mental. Have I ever said I’m otherwise? Kind of explains the intimate relationship I have with them, though, and why the most common refrain from readers is that they are eerily, unnaturally real. They are real to me, whatever that says about my sanity. The only level on which I can separate their 'reality,’ their 'memories’, their 'experiences’ from my own is the cold factual knowledge that they never lived. Honestly, I’ve sometimes wondered if I’m hooking in to past lives or ghosts on some psychic plane and my conscious brain can only interpret it by plugging it into a pre-existent matrix of a fantasy world.
July 1 Andy encourages people to engage in dialogue directly with the DAYD characters on the comm. “Think of me as their agent…post your question here, let me know who its for, and you’ll get your response from that character.” This subthread is of particular note, as “Luna” tells a DAYDian who is attempting to treat this as a roleplaying exercise that she doesn’t know what IC and OOC mean. After he explains the abbreviations, “Luna” says, “…I guess it’s all IC, then, because you’re not talking to Andy at all here.”
July 29 Andy apparently travels somewhere else at the DAYDians’ expense.
August 16 Andy tells the DAYDians that life is about to imitate chapter fifteen of DAYD, in which Manly Warrior Neville learns that the DA has decided to relieve him of command temporarily because he is out of control. He responds by flying into a violent rage, followed by sobbing and a week or so of wallowing in isolation and self-pity before I got bored and stopped skimming. Presumably Andy is trying to communicate that he is stressed and over-committed by equating himself with Neville.
August 19 On the DAYDverse community, Andy claims to “have English, Ulster Gaelic, French, Latin, and Greek myself, as well as the thinnest smatterings of German picked up this spring and some reasonably conversational Spanish.”
August 24 Andy posts a DAYDcon proposal to the DAYDverse community. The next day, on the DAYDcon logistics post, he informs people that he doesn’t want to know if they’re under eighteen because then he’ll have to exclude them.
August 25 luvscharlie points out the podcast in which Andy participated, sans Irish accent, in 2008. No one seems to notice.
August 26 Andy informs the DAYDians that a planned-and-paid-for trip has fallen through, but that he’s received a full refund on his air travel to Ireland. There is no indication that he intended to return the money to the DAYDian(s) who paid for the plane ticket.
Later that day, he suggests that they also hold “Left Coast and/or UK/Ireland” DAYDcons.
September 1 (possibly earlier) - Unknown Andy and many (if not most) of the DAYDians maintain an LJ chatroom, and eventually a Skype chat as well. The chatroom on LJ is known as the Room of Requirement (RoR). According to a former DAYDian, members cycle in and out such that it is active nearly 24/7. While chatting in the RoR, Andy makes a number of claims about his past and current life, including:
[I’ve] looked into a little African child’s eyes to reassure him that it would be OK as [I] cauterized a post-field-amputation limb.
I can perform a field tracheotomy with a drinking straw, and I’ve had to do it.
I’ve seen dozens of people murdered before my eyes.
I was the first male born in seven generations of women, so it’s really no surprise to my family that I have psychic capabilities.
I traveled the world almost entirely for free, partially by stowing away on cargo ships. You can travel anywhere if you’re resourceful enough!
I fucked ((I don’t remember the number, but something obscene, high double digits)) women by the time I was 18. (He shared things like this a lot, and back then (before he became ~enlightened~it was always “fucking,” not “making love” or even “having sex.” Women were dainty damsels and the essence of mother earth on one hand and conquests to be notched on bedposts at the same time. Other details about his sexual exploits include fucking a married women in the kitchen while her little children played in the other room.)
I work at a Starbucks where professors from the nearby university come in and chat with me in Ancient Greek.
When I was at work today, a coloratura soprano with a world-class opera company came into the shop and sang an aria to pay for her drink.
I just know things about people. For instance, when I was little, I blurted out that the pastor of our church was cheating on his wife (I’d just had a feeling about it), and it turned out that I was right. I ruined him. This is part of why my mother hates me.
The reason I can’t write or read “Gaelic” is because I was never schooled a day in my life. I learned to speak it because it was the only language my grandfather used with me, but I’m illiterate and really just going by sound. So if the “Gaelic” dialogue in my “novels” isn’t totally right, remember that it’s because everything I know, I taught myself.
Andy also channels Harry Potter characters and his own OCs in the RoR. DAYDians reportedly ask to speak with the character of their choice and Andy “brings them out”. Then people talk to the character and ask them questions, and Andy answers as the character, in first person. According to the former DAYDian in the comment linked above, Andy remembers every channeling experience (which differs from his claims as Victoria Bitter and Jordan Wood) and extensively lectures RoR participants about multiverse theory, spiritualism, and allegedly similar channeling practices in other cultures (all of which he used when selling Abbey, Little Sam, and Diamond on his “abilities” years before).
September 2 Andy posts to the DAYDverse LJ community to solicit money to send people to DAYDcon.
Auctions, commissions offers, and other fundraisers continue for the next couple of months, with DAYDverse members soliciting on their own LJs and in completely unrelated communities and mailing lists.
September 14 Andy participates in PotterFicWeekly podcast episode 87 (posted on the Poufwa site 9/19/09). He tells the hosts that he never attended any school whatsoever and had never written any fiction at all or any non-fiction other than grocery lists, until DAYD. He says that he writes chronologically and always just knows what will happen next. Andy claims that everything he posts is a first draft, that he never outlines, takes notes, or edits his work other than correcting typos; and that he types everything directly into FF.net or LJ.
Later, he tells his story of having been in a rock band for which he wrote lyrics, and how one of the other band members asked him to read Harry Potter. He explains that he had previously shied away from the series because he looks exactly like Harry. Andy describes himself and his friend mocking fanfiction authors and being disgusted by the extremely poor quality of what they read, prompting his friend to tell him to enter the current challenge on The Quidditch Pitch. Though Andy is quick to backpedal and say that there is a lot of great fic out there, he also makes sure to note that he won the challenge (with, again, the first thing he had ever written in his life) and that people loved his work. He says that he finished DAYD in five weeks while living out of his car.
There is a lot of talk about how dark, violent, and edgy “Sluagh” is. Andy gleefully relates, “I pride myself on the fact that I have received eight separate reviews from people who have literally, not metaphorically, gotten physically ill [after reading chapter fifteen].” He criticizes Rowling’s worldbuilding and cites Stephen King and Tom Clancy as his primary influences for “Sluagh” and “A Peccatis” respectively. Andy alludes to having lived in Belfast and says that his portrayals of the IRA and RHD are real and accurate. He also professes extensive knowledge of Celtic and Arthurian mythology.
When the subject of Poufwa host Mike arises, Andy becomes extremely hostile because their interpretations of Snape’s character differ. His comments about Mike (before Mike even arrives) include:
He’s afraid of me!
He has no idea there is a lynch mob for him at DAYDverse comm.
It’s single entendre only with that man, and yet he can bend himself around like a Chinese contortionist to try and make a loving and heroic event out of Snape chopping up kittens for dinner.
Savant. Mike is a savant.
They were lighting the pitchforks and sharpening the torches for Mike. They were, and they are, and I don’t recommend he shows his face in [the DAYDverse community].
Andy also says that, to the DAYDians and as far as the DAYDverse is concerned, “I am God.”
When Mike finally arrives, Andy asks him, “Two questions: What kind of lube do you prefer, and how do you see that Snape is a sweetheart when it is written that far up on the inside of your own colon?” He will repeat twice more, in different ways, the assertion that Mike has his head up his own ass. Eventually things become so awkward and inappropriate that the editor cuts off the end of the podcast and inserts a separately-recorded “apology” from Andy, in which he blames “the infamous Irish temper” for his bad behavior as a guest on the show.
September 17 Andy makes a lengthy post accusing the DAYDians of launching some sort of hate campaign against Mike and other Poufwa hosts. Later, he edits it to say that it was all a misunderstanding and nothing happened and no one is angry. He seems to blame a particular DAYDian who is also a Poufwa host for much of the “confusion” regarding Mike specifically. This reads as an attempt to mask or off-set Andy’s own behavior toward Mike during his appearance on the Poufwa podcast.
October 27 In the midst of a long post dealing with RoR drama, Andy states that English is not his native language.
December 5 Andy announces that two of the DAYDians are engaged, following “…a staggering monumental effort by a large number of daydians including a 190-hour marathon Skype session”.
December 10 Abbey anonymously breaks the news to Turimel that Andy has adopted the alias Thanfiction and made a name for himself in the Harry Potter fandom.
Andy is active as Thanfiction on LJ, FF.net, adult-fanfiction.org, Fiction Alley, DeviantArt, Twitter, YouTube, and (much later) Tumblr and AO3.
Later that same day, Andy sends $100 to Turimel via PayPal (transphobia warning) and promises to continue paying her $50 a month up to the amount of $1000. In exchange, he asks her to quit posting about him, unless he “ever actually cause[s] a scam or scandal” or stops paying. Turimel receives no further payment from Andy.
December 11 Turimel and Snacky make nearly simultaneous reports on Thanfiction to Fandom Wank. (Warning for transphobia in the first report and in the comments for both.)
December 18 DAYDcon begins at a hotel in Washington, D.C. (12/18 - 12/21). Activities include watching Andy draw, talking for hours, making stew in water glasses and hotel ice buckets, having a massive snowball fight, watching The Fellowship of the Ring, DAYD readings, photo sessions, and casting each of the con attendees as a DAYD character.
Part of the group then moves on to upstate NY for a day or so. This excursion is followed by a cross-country trip in a van, making brief stops in several states and finally arriving in California on 12/24, where Andy stays for a short while with Brittany Quinn and some other friends.
December 26 The “Undead Shaman Wizard” psychic battle takes place. Brittany and Andy e-mail idiomagic:
Cfc is under some kind of attack, something is trying to literally eat her kids. … there is something big and something dangerous and deadly. … the children are in the house in the woods being eaten by monsters-Andy is down and when his shield over those kids break. it. is. over.
Please note that CFC was offline at the time and had no idea that this was happening.
They ask for help, claiming that they are too exhausted from DAYDcon to keep fighting on their own. Idiomagic leads them on, asking for more info, and Andy and Brittany respond with the children’s full names, home address, and much more personal information about them and CFC. They attribute the attack to a “Spirit/Astral form of technically dead but v. powerful Seneca Sachem-level shaman, plus allies and minions. I know this sounds crazy, but is true.” When idiomagic presses for more, asking about a secondary target and challenging the idea of allies/minions, they continue:
A source said that it was above “ the wheel” with each spoke a world and the hub a connection place. it was a shaman/wizard cross in late 16th possibly but that has passed from place of dead to something above that. Several targets have been hit so far. Not sure who or what is current secondary. The “allies” seem to have been neutralized by someone from the hub as a favor to Andy.
At this point, idiomagic gets tired of playing along and tells them that she knows they’re faking it and that Andy has been lying about a lot of things–including having an evil twin.
Given Andy’s claims in 2012-15 that Brittany was the first person to see his mental illness for what it was and try to help him (part of the “mutual saviors” narrative that he ties in with Destiel), I feel that it is important to point out that Brittany was the one writing and sending the e-mails to idiomagic.
December 27 This now-deleted LJ post by idiomagic is the earliest public mention I can find of the “evil twin” to whom Andy attributed all of his actions as Victoria Bitter/Jordan Wood when he discussed the December 11 Fandom Wank reports with the DAYDians. Idiomagic also mentions Andy’s claims to have IRA connections and a scar from having been wounded with a Claymore during a pub fight.
December 28 Details of the Undead Shaman Wizard battle hit LJ, courtesy of idiomagic.
2010 January 15 Having returned from California by this point, Andy steps back “from daydverse and more or less from the internet.” Among the reasons he cites is “the wank” from December, including some allegations that he says were “proven patently false,” and some of which were “pure ridiculous rumor and slurs, others [based] on a grain of truth.” Andy also mentions his “heart condition”.
Yes, I was told last year that I had a very short amount of time, and I still technically have about six weeks of that left. But I’ve beaten the odds before. Will I do it again? Will I drop dead tomorrow? I don’t know. Frankly, no one does. That doesn’t mean, however, that the way I’m living now makes sense.
Please be aware that I am being very selective and limited in what I include about Brittany. The timeline is not about her and will not explore her background, the history of her marriage and its dissolution, or the legal battle with her ex. I reserve the right to make separate posts about claims that Andy has made that may relate to some of these topics, but I am trying as much as possible to respect Brittany’s privacy and that of her family.
I am also trying to respect the privacy of the former DAYDians who participated in the DAYDverse LJ community, in Skype chats with Andy, and in the Trail of Tears hike. Because Andy often included people’s real first and last names in chat logs and announcements, I will not be linking directly to every post that I refer to, but I’ll include screenshots with names and personal info redacted whenever possible.
Many thanks to E for reviewing this, to Abbey for her assistance, and to the other former DAYDian who answered some questions for me.
(Part I) | (Part II) | (Part III)
Part IV of the timeline covers Spring 2010 - July 2012.
2010 Despite claims that he plans to decrease his activity online and related to DAYD in general, Andy continues to participate in RoR chats and to post fic and art to the DAYDverse community and his than_art community.
Spring Andy flies out to California to visit Brittany. When it’s time for him to leave, he “misses his flight”. He never books another one. He and Brittany live in Sacramento until September.
September - October Andy, Brittany, and E (another DAYDian) spend two months hiking from Santa Rosa, California to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. According to E, Andy channels during the hike and Brittany believes and supports him, affirming his stories even when Andy isn’t around.
October - November Andy and Brittany alternate between couch-surfing and sleeping in tents or in a friend’s car.
In November, the DAYD Facebook group is created by someone who (at least at the time) is not connected to Andy in any way.
November 26 (approximation) Andy and Brittany move into an upstairs room in the Fairfield house that Brittany co-owns with her former common-law husband. Her ex (Jason Eisenberg) and his father live downstairs. Shortly afterward, the Eisenbergs bring in another roommate who takes the other upstairs room.
2011 February 14 Andy is alerted to the existence of the Facebook group by someone on DeviantArt. He joins it and says that it can now be considered “authorized”.
March 11 Andy announces a New Zealand hike on the DAYD Facebook group and LJ community. He says that he, Brittany, and E plan to “kidnap” New Zealand DAYDian D and hike the Te Araroa trail until D’s “ransom” has been paid in donations to the New Zealand Red Cross Christchurch fund.
March 19 On her Facebook, Brittany publicly posts a note in which she accuses her father of abuse and neglect and severs contact with him. In her August 2014 AMA, Abbey says, “Oh, that letter is so disturbing. It’s Andy all over it. So much of it is just like what I wrote to my mother under his direction/coaching.”
April 2 Brittany posts to the Facebook group to say that she needs help getting gear and tickets together for the New Zealand hike. She asks DAYDians to brainstorm with her and specifically says, “I promised Andy I would make this happen and I am not going to go back on that promise.”
May 1 Andy makes a post in DAYDverse to commemorate the anniversary of the Battle of Hogwarts.
May 6 Andy e-mails a long list of “assignments” for the New Zealand hike to Brittany, E, D, and another NZ DAYDian (M) who has decided to participate. He informs them that, “if everyone doesn’t do [their jobs], we’re all going to be fucked.” They only have about a month and a half to get everything together.
May 7 Jason Eisenberg murders Brittany Quinn and Anthony Chambers (the other person living in the Fairfield house). He tries to kill Andy and ends up shooting him in the ankle through the bedroom door. Eisenberg subsequently kills himself.
May 16 Andy posts his “eulogy” for Brittany to the DAYD Facebook group. In the final paragraphs, he says:
Brittany had her heart set on the New Zealand trek. … She used to say without really joking at all that she’d do it over her own dead body if need be.
And so I will.
…
In the next post, I will be putting up what was originally Brittany’s part of the to-do list. I think that if one extraordinary woman could do it, an extraordinary community definitely can in her memory.
For the fallen. We have lost our first.
It’s worth noting that deceased members of Dumbledore’s Army are commonly referred to as “the fallen” by Andy and the DAYDians, and “For the Fallen” was used as a rallying cry in DAYD chapter seven. Andy is explicitly tying Brittany’s death into his fictional universe.
Andy mentions that DAYDian K is preparing to take Brittany’s place on the hike.
That same day, he posts the e-mail with the New Zealand hike assignments to the DAYDverse LJ community. (In that image, things that I thought were especially odd/questionable are highlighted in green and my commentary is highlighted in purple. My snarky comment about “getting into Canada” is in reference to this, of course.) The post again indicates that K will be going on the hike. It also says that instead of raising money for survivors of the Christchurch earthquake, they will now be soliciting donations to Napa Emergency Women’s Services.
May 20 or thereabouts Andy moves just outside of Denver, Colorado, where he lives with K and another DAYDian (and eventually E) until early 2012.
May 23 Andy announces on Facebook that K and M will be unable to go on the hike.
May 24 Andy posts to the DAYDverse LJ community about the aftermath of the murders. He publicly thanks several DAYDians for helping him in various ways. Andy also says:
A lot of people have been asking me what happened exactly. I am more than happy to tell them in person or over the phone. I will not be giving any more detailed version of what happened in writing of any form… I WILL NOT force a blow-by-blow on any grieving victim. And putting a written version out there that can be emailed to them, linked to them, quoted out of context, sensationalized, etc is doing just that.
…despite having given his version of the events of the murder in the eulogy that he posted publicly on May 16.
At the end of this post, Andy announces that plans for the hike have changed. He, E, and D will now be hiking the Trail of Tears to benefit survivors of domestic violence.
Later that day, Andy announces a bottle drive on the DAYDverse community. He and his roommates plan to sell hot sauce “to raise money for the Brittany Quinn memorial trek”. The labels on the bottles and the accompanying brochures are to include “labels” commonly applied to victims of abuse and quotes about people’s personal experiences related to abuse. The chilies from which the hot sauce is made were allegedly given to Andy in Brittany’s memory by “local ethnic grocers” that he and Brittany used to visit.
May 26 Andy asks DAYDverse if the May contest is still on, “or did that go by the wayside (understandably!) with Brittany’s murder?” The theme of the contest is “What If They’d Lived?” He announces the upcoming June contest and solicits people to work on the wrock album, website, and cookbook.
He also announces in this post that the hike will take place from July 1 through September 1-15 and that instead of collecting funds, the group will be encouraging people to donate time or money to the domestic violence charity of their choice.
Finally, Andy says that he will not be creating any new DAYDverse material until after the hike:
One’s plans for fandom have a tendency to take a backseat to fast-tracking an attempt to help someone out of a dangerous living situation, then that situation turning violent in the form of a double homicide-suicide, getting shot, having to move, and having to re-plan a 3000K hike from scratch.
May 29 Andy starts up the It’s About Power Twitter.
May 30 Andy announces the It’s About Power website and Facebook group on DAYDverse. The website has an unsettling design that includes red text on a black background, with banner text in an intimidating all-caps font (”Morpheus”, if I remember correctly). This is the logo.
The website includes writings about domestic violence that Andy will later re-post to his tumblr, bios of the hikers, a vague pledge agreement to do something to prevent domestic violence or raise awareness, and a bio of Brittany that closely resembles Andy’s “eulogy” for her. There is also a request for men from around the world to send in video clips featuring “something that gives them power, makes them feel powerful, or that they feel is an expression of their own power without needing to take power from someone else.” I’m not linking to the archived website here because it contains DAYDians’ full names and personal information, but I will write more about it in a later post.
Andy’s bio on the website claims that he has “long enjoy[ed] outdoor survivalism as a hobby” and has “completed hikes of similar length before”. At this point, the only previous hike of similar length that Andy has taken is the one with Brittany and E in Fall 2010.
June Andy continues to post about contests, to post occasional art, and to participate in very lengthy chats in the Room of Requirement. When he posts chat logs, he cheerfully ignores his own instructions to replace people’s real names with LJ usernames.
June 4 Someone identifying himself as Brittany’s father comments on Turimel’s LJ [warning for misgendering/transphobia at the link] under the username “beachcomberbob”. He comments on Brittany and Andy’s relationship and on It’s About Power, referring to the hike as a scam. Regarding the eulogy that Andy wrote, he says that most of it is “extreme exaggerations, fanciful lies and…self-serving imaginations”.
June 7 Andy contradicts his statement of a week before by saying that he will write a custom 3000+ word oneshot in the DAYDverse for anyone who will create and share a live-action DAYDverse trailer or music video.
June 12 Andy announces on the DAYDverse comm, the DAYD and It’s About Power Facebook groups, and the It’s About Power Twitter that the New Zealand DAYDian (D) will not be able to participate in the hike. Note that this is said to be due to “unforeseen difficulties with his employment” and Andy had taken responsibility for arranging his leave of absence. D’s spot is being filled by K and the hike is now due to begin on July 15.
Andy says on the DAYD Facebook group that Brittany had wanted D to come on the hike in order to change his life, which Andy describes as “being destroyed from the inside out”. He says that D is “letting her down”. Another DAYDian makes an angry Facebook post that excoriates D for not going on the hike and blames him for delaying it in a way that makes it evident that Andy’s public statements are much more neutral than closed-door conversations he’s had about this. He really seems to have thrown D under the bus.
Andy tells D to start a blog to chronicle his own efforts to change his life. It is evident in his first few posts that D is extremely depressed about being unable to go on the hike and is blaming himself for all sorts of things. Andy never bothers to comment on the blog.
June 16 An online amateur journalist publishes an article about It’s About Power and the upcoming hike. (I will not link to the article because it includes the hikers’ full names.) The article paraphrases chunks of Andy’s eulogy for Brittany, quotes from the IAP website, and asks readers to donate gear and other items for the hike as follows:
Lean bison meat or beef Bison or beef tallow Starbucks Via Dried unsweetened cherries Electrolyte sport beans like Jelly Belly Extreme Sport Beans Plain purple T-shirts: 3 women’s small, 3 men’s medium, 3 men’s XL Motel points or gift certificate at national chain for 1-2 nights. 3 Greyhound bus gift certificates, points, miles or similar (Tulsa OK to Denver, CO one-way) 3 Portable personal ultralight water filters 3 Petzle Tikka or similar brand combination LED/xenon headlamps Rechargable batteries for above 6 pair men’s small (shoe size 7.5) merino wool socks or similar lightweight absorbent hiking socks 1 men’s size small convertable ultralight cycling jacket (Pearl Izumi, Canary Eclipse, or similar)
June 23 Andy announces that the delay for which D has been so harshly criticized has proven to be a good thing. He solicits loans/donations of a few remaining gear items and frequent flyer miles…and of over 100 lbs of meat and 30 lbs tallow, as he plans to make his own pemmican for them to eat during the hike.
Late June or Early July In a Skype chat with DAYDians [warning for transphobia at that link], Andy tries to brush everything under the rug by saying that Turimel, Amy Player/Victoria Bitter (whom he claims not to know), and his “bitter ex” luvscharlie have all been spreading vicious rumors about him on the Internet. He also makes a number of libelous accusations about luvscharlie. Previously in the chat, a friend of his repeated Andy’s earlier lie that his evil twin sister was the one behind his earlier abuse and cult-building activities.
July 1 Andy informs the Facebook group that the hikers still need more meat and 60-day cell phone plans.
July 13 Andy posts one more time before leaving for the hike. In this post, among other things, he implies:
that E and K and the hike itself are in some way a burden, though it was his idea in the first place. that unlike him, E and K can afford to “just do these kinds of things on a lark”. that by going on the hike, he personally is saving victims of domestic violence.
July 15 The hike officially begins in Murphy, North Carolina. The hikers tweet and update their blog fairly frequently to keep their friends apprised of their progress. Andy writes that he (and sometimes E and/or K) gives talks about domestic violence at various churches, shelters, and other organizations along the way, as well as giving interviews to the press.
Years later, it will be revealed that when E and K tweeted or posted on the blog, “it was basically parroting stuff [Andy]’d said or wanted [them] to say.”
I don’t have enough precise dates for a detailed breakdown of the hike to be practical, so here is a summary.
July 15 - September 9 Some of the info below comes from the IAP Twitter and the Q&A. Most of it comes from the IAP blog, which has long since been deleted. I am not linking to the archive because it includes the hikers’ full names and other personal information.
Before the hike even begins, Andy coerces K into going on birth control because he is already trying to play matchmaker for her and E. (Source: message from Andy to carlanime) Andy, E, and K share a small tent every night. They do not get adequate sleep, even when Andy isn’t making them hike through the night. They also are not always able to camp in safe places. Much of the route (which Andy planned) involves construction zones, roads with no shoulder, and generally unsafe terrain. They have many close calls with large trucks. They often do not have sufficient food or water for the energy they’re expending on walking a minimum of 20 miles a day. The hike takes place at the height of summer and the heat and humidity are extreme. At times, Andy will not allow the group to stop when one of them needs medical attention. Sometimes they receive help from actual medical personnel that they meet along the way, and sometimes Andy “channels” a doctor and makes up a potentially dangerous “treatment” that doesn’t work. Conversely, when Andy doesn’t feel like walking, he fabricates injuries and illnesses (mostly affecting E) that require them to stop. Many churches and private individuals provide the hikers with food, shelter, rides, and other forms of assistance along the trail. One church gives them a wheelchair to use as a water cart, but K ends up having to ride in it after an injury. Andy shares a lot of “insights” with E and K as to how he thinks relationships should work, the ease and virtues of “vagabonding” (and the dull mediocrity of a more conventional lifestyle), healthy eating, Southern culture, and more. Andy draws E and K into many long conversations about their pasts, their families, their beliefs, their dreams, their psychological issues (diagnosed by Andy), how to “make their lives matter”, and so forth. Ultimately he manipulates K into writing letters to her family that include false accusations of abuse and commentary on their relationships, as part of her process of growing out of being “a perpetual twelve-year-old“ and “a middle-class princess”. This fits the pattern that Andy established with Abbey and Brittany. Andy blames K for dropping his phone and causing him to lose “all [his] pics of and txts from Brittany”. Toward the end of the hike, in an Oklahoma VA facility, Andy apparently pretends to have medical expertise and lies to an elderly veteran about his (the veteran’s) medical condition. E loses over 60 lbs in less than two months. K has lingering health problems to this day as a result of the hike.
September 12 Having actually fallen in love over the course of the hike (no thanks to Andy), E and K get married in Las Vegas. Despite what he said to K before the hike, Andy will later claim that he was the rational one who thought they should wait.
October 3-8 Andy posts to the IAP blog, Facebook group, and Twitter to ask people to donate to cover the fees necessary to complete E’s immigration process. In typical Andy fashion, the post is guilt-inducing and manipulative. The first post is titled, “Are Love and Legal Immigration Worth $1?” and asks, “…please, dig through your pocket change, give up something off the dollar menu, and donate a dollar to their future.” In the end, they do raise enough money to cover the fees, but Andy’s posts result in a lot of negativity toward E and K.
Andy is pretty quiet through the rest of October.
November 1 Andy joins Tumblr. He immediately begins promoting DAYD, posting art, and posting DAYD- and social-justice-related image macros. Much of this is cross-posted to the Facebook group and most of the DAYD-related content makes it to the LJ community as well.
Andy says that he regularly googles DAYD-related search terms and friends or follows everyone who reads and likes his fic. He occasionally posts things about his life with his roommates, with emphasis on how much he says that he does for them (cooking, driving, making costumes). A couple of weeks in, he starts posting about Brittany.
E has shared various anecdotes about living with Andy from September 2011 through the end of March 2012. Andy never works during this time, other than odd jobs from Craigslist, to which he usually drags E, K, and/or their other roommate. Thus he rarely has money for rent, though he somehow manages to purchase makeup and cosplay supplies anyway. When rent is due, Andy tends to fake illnesses or mental distress, or to flip his sleep schedule to avoid everyone. E describes him as, “untidy, unhygenic, lazy, loud, inconsiderate, rude to neighbours,” and says that he “act[s] out on a daily basis.” Andy tries to manipulate E via food deprivation and regularly tries to drive a wedge between E and K and their other roommate.
At the same time, Andy is manipulating the third roommate by encouraging her to be emotionally dependent on him and then rejecting her, vague-blogging about it, and blaming it on her so-called emotional immaturity. The draw-her-in/push-her-away cycle repeats itself several times. He will continue to do this to other women both online and in person over the next several years.
2012 End of March After several months of this behavior, Andy informs E and K that he wants to move out on his own because their other roommate is “triggering” to him. They simply wish him luck. That night, Andy writes a long e-mail as one of the DAYD characters, criticizing all three of his roommates. He sends it to them and to their friends. The next day, E and K tell Andy that they’re through dealing with his bullshit. Andy responds with an emotional, melodramatic fauxpology and begs them to stay with him, but it’s too little, too late. E and K move out soon after and cut off contact with Andy.
The third roommate stays with Andy for a while.
May After Andy visits his parents, he and the other roommate move to South Dakota, where they both get jobs at a Christian summer camp outside Rapid City.
July Andy’s supervisor at the camp allegedly becomes aware of his history and fires him because of it. He and the other roommate go their separate ways, with Andy returning home to live with his parents, who put him into therapy again.
In the next installment, I will backtrack a little to go over Andy’s Tumblr posts and a few other items of note from the LJ and Facebook communities in more detail. Everything will be put in its proper order when it goes into the Google doc; for now, I just wanted to get to the end of E and K’s part of the Andy saga.
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Teablogger's timeline, part 1
(Anonymous) 2015-05-05 04:05 pm (UTC)(link)Andy Blake: A Timeline (Part I)
This started out as a supplement to “On Andy and Violence” and quickly got away from me. The timeline covers the major events that I am aware of regarding each of the usernames and pseudonyms that Andy has used over the years. I’m leaving out a couple of brief relationships and a lot of sexuality/gender-related wank because this is not about gender or sexuality, for fuck’s sake. I will use the preferred pronouns that pertain to whichever of Andy’s aliases I am discussing at the time.
Andy’s participation in the Sharpe fandom is mostly absent because I don’t have access to the archives that I need. All I have to go on is fanfiction, which is not terribly helpful.
This portion of the timeline covers 1998-2001.
1998
Date Unknown
Sometime between July and November, Amy Player, using the e-mail address player@widomaker.com, shares her first Sharpe fic on the Sharpe Yahoo! group. She says that she is 15 years old and lives in a “small rural part of America” without access to a library: she must wait several months for the bookmobile to bring the Sharpe books to her. Amy directly addresses Bernard Cornwell, author of the novels, in the introductory note to her fic.
September 29
Strwriter makes her first post on alt.startrek.creative. Some members of the Star Trek: Voyager and Due South fandoms will eventually get to know Strwriter as Amy Player.
Strwriter says that she is 15 years old; a college student holding down at least two jobs; and a professional actress, singer, and dancer with a national touring company. She uses the e-mail address player@widomaker.com. Strwriter writes fanfiction, does fanart, and enjoys running fanfiction contests.
November 13
Voyagerbabe makes her first post on alt.startrek.creative. Some members of the Star Trek: Voyager and Due South fandoms will eventually get to know Voyagerbabe as Ciyarra Tallaver.
Voyagerbabe claims to be an 18-year-old college student and a victim of childhood sexual abuse. She and Strwriter say that they are best friends and coworkers. In March 1999, Voyagerbabe tells alt.startrek.creative that between the two of them, they have three majors and five jobs. Voyagerbabe uses the e-mail addresses voyagerbabe@my-dejanews.com and voyagerbabe@hotmail.com and the AIM username VBabe47. Voyagerbabe writes fanfiction and helps Strwriter maintain her website and run fanfiction contests.
1999
May 5
Voyagerbabe introduces Strwriter to alt.tv.due-south.
Periodically throughout 1998-1999, Strwriter and Voyagerbabe each make posts on Usenet and Yahoo! groups for Star Trek: Voyager and Due South about the “identity crisis” between the two of them. In 1998, they claim that they are both using Strwriter’s computer to read and post to Usenet groups because Voyagerbabe doesn’t have a home computer and can’t access newsgroups at the library. In April 1999, Voyagerbabe says that she finally has her own computer. Occasionally one or the other will somehow lose internet access, so they still post on each other’s behalf.
End of July
Both Strwriter and Voyagerbabe are effectively done participating in Star Trek fandom.
October 20
Someone claiming to be Amy’s mother, Cyd, posts to alt.tv.due-south using the same player@widomaker.com address that Strwriter uses. There is no way to be certain as to who this really was.
2000
August 30
Strwriter bows out of online fandom altogether, allegedly having been forbidden by her parents to use the internet for non-academic purposes.
Voyagerbabe continues to participate in Due South fandom via Usenet and Yahoo! groups.
2001
Voyagerbabe’s participation in Due South fandom gradually declines throughout the year. She begins going by VBabe and the initials VB.
March 14
VB announces to Ride Forever, a Due South Yahoo! group, that she is engaged. Her alleged fiancé is a real person and his name will not be mentioned here. (This is the guy who became known as “Some Ozzie Bloke” during the BoE era, though I’m almost certain that he never wrote any of the posts that were attributed to him in that group.)
May 1
VB informs Ride Forever that she has miraculously learned to draw over the course of a single evening spent with a book, so now she can contribute fanart as well as fic. Someone else in the thread points out that she’d previously posted her own good quality fanart to the list–oops!
June 3
Victoria Bitter posts for the first time to hhfic, a Horatio Hornblower Yahoo! group. She says that she is a twenty-year-old waitress and theme park portrait artist (with a birthday of 24 September), that she has been a living history interpreter for ten years, that she travels internationally for her work as an actress, and that she was born in London, England. Victoria Bitter was active at least a little before this point, but since the A&E boards for HH have long since been taken down, I can’t pinpoint her first appearance more accurately than this. She continues to use the e-mail address voyagerbabe@hotmail.com.
September 24
VB makes her last post in the Due South Yahoo! group Ride Forever (cross-posted to hhfic and probably other groups that I haven’t spotted yet). The post is about an “unknown person” who has allegedly hijacked her AIM account, VBabe47.
December 27
On hhfic, Victoria Bitter briefly joins in a discussion of names found in The Lord of the Rings, Hornblower, and the works of C. S. Lewis. This is her last post to that group and her last participation in HH fandom of which I am aware.
Teablogger's timeline, part 2
(Anonymous) 2015-05-05 04:06 pm (UTC)(link)This timeline covers the major events that I am aware of regarding each of the usernames and pseudonyms that Andy has used over the years. I’m leaving out a couple of brief relationships and a lot of sexuality/gender-related wank because this is not about gender or sexuality, for fuck’s sake. I will use the preferred pronouns that pertain to whichever of Andy’s aliases I am discussing at the time.
I should also note that I’m excluding nearly everything that happened on Bit of Earth’s Prancing Pony message board, which went down with Tentmoot, because I was never a member and thus do not have any of that material.
Finally, I’ve only briefly mentioned events like Hall of Fire and Lost Palantir because most of the information currently available on them is in Turimel’s book and I don’t feel like going through it all over again. While the book contains a lot of useful documentary evidence (canceled checks, letters and e-mails, et al.) and info on who specifically ran around and did what to prepare for BoE events, it also contains a great deal of venomous editorializing. Plus all the transfail, which I can sometimes handle wading through, but not today.
(Part I)
Part II of the timeline covers 2002 - March 2007.
2002
January 4
Victoria Bitter, still using the e-mail address voyagerbabe@hotmail.com and the AIM (and now Yahoo!) username VBabe47, starts the Bit of Earth Yahoo! group (henceforth known as BoE). That same day, she e-mails the webmaster of Sean Astin’s official website to let them know about the group and encourage Sean to get involved.
This version of Victoria Bitter says that she is a twenty-one-year-old college student born in Sheffield, England who is engaged to the previously mentioned Ozzie Bloke.
January 8-9
“Chris”, the Marine that VB supposedly met at a showing of The Fellowship of the Ring, posts twice to BoE. Chris uses the Yahoo! handle Rennie Gade and the e-mail address vivazebool@hotmail.com. I’ve already discussed why I think this is actually Victoria Bitter.
February 12
“Some Ozzie Bloke” allegedly posts to BoE under Victoria Bitter’s name because she has an eye infection and can’t see well enough to type. He says that he is reading her e-mail and posting fic and art for her, in addition to recording all of her lectures for school. When she has to go to the hospital, he brings her laptop along so that he can continue reading aloud to her (fanfiction, email, and messages on BoE) and communicating on her behalf. All of this leads up to someone getting one of VB’s sketches signed for her by Sean Astin. This is probably VB herself looking for attention. Mysterious medical ailments, friends and SOs who read messages/e-mails/fic and liveblog the illness, and extremely odd behavior in hospitals are by now well-known hallmarks of Münchausen by Internet.
February 17
Victoria Bitter starts a LiveJournal account. Her profile lists the AIM username VBabe47. In a meme, she acknowledges that her legal name is Amy Player. This establishes the first definitive link between Amy Player and Voyagerbabe/VB, but no one realizes the significance at the time.
Sometime between February and April, VB reveals her Amazing Channeling Powers to Abbey over chat. She mentions wanting to “reach out” to LotR cast members, specifically Orlando Bloom and Elijah Wood.
April 5-7
VB attends Connexions, where she meets many fellow fans and LJ friends and begins a brief romantic relationship with Versaphile. VB speaks with a fake British accent. The less said about Connexions, the better, probably.
April 19
The Great Hobbit Brain-Dump, in which VB claims to receive Merry’s soul and his lifetime of memories. “Merry” chronicles his experiences in the brandagamba LiveJournal and teaches people pseudo-Westron via chat.
May 8
VB writes that she has officially ended her relationship with Versaphile.
June 2
Victoria Bitter flies to Oregon for a week-long visit with Abbey, during which she channels LotR characters in person.
Late August or early September
Abbey flies to Virginia to visit VB.
September 7
In response to the drama surrounding MsAllegro’s Domlijah tinhattery (just Google it if you’re curious), VB has Abbey post a stern message to BoE on her behalf, due to “computer problems”.
September 11
Victoria Bitter approaches Sean Astin at a 9/11 memorial event in NYC and asks him to participate in a community service project. Later that day, she announces Project Elanor on BoE. She is now using the e-mail address victoriabitter@bitofearth.net
October
VB moves in with Abbey. Diamond, Shopping Cart Bob, and Little Sam eventually join them. (The group will henceforth be referred to as The BagEnders because that’s what they called themselves.) VB starts building the cult in earnest.
November 3
Victoria Bitter makes her final post to BoE and to her LiveJournal and withdraws from online fandom.
This is about the point at which the “Jordan Wood” alias first comes to light. He tells Abbey that he has taken on the “duplicate soul” of Elijah Wood. Sometimes he claims that Elijah’s split soul didn’t want to go back to his body; at other times, he says that it simply couldn’t. He tells some other people (eventually to include Turimel) that he is Elijah Wood’s cousin. Both stories are kept secret for a while. Abbey and Jordan start telling people that Victoria Bitter is dead.
Jordan starts writing as “Elijah” on LiveJournal as PadawanS (short for Padawan Sidious). Despite several posts that Strwriter and Voyagerbabe made between 1998-2001 regarding “their” distaste for homosexuality and slash, and despite VB’s aggressive response to MsAllegro’s Domlijah tinhatting, Jordan/“Elijah” engages in quite a bit of the same behavior on LJ, TheOneRing.net, and message boards on other sites. He uses claims of insider knowledge regarding the LotR cast and the film industry to make it all sound more plausible.
Jordan also alleges that Elijah’s “abusive” family is involved with the IRA and wants to drag him into it as well. This represents just a fraction of the lies that Jordan tells about himself, Elijah Wood, and other LotR cast members. Over the next thirteen months, he will do a great deal of damage that changes the way that New Line Cinema and many of the actors involved in LotR deal with fans and fandom.
November 30
Mr. Frodo makes his first post to BoE, announcing the Line Party at Lloyd Cinema in Portland, OR for the release of The Two Towers. He identifies himself as Bit of Earth’s Public Relations Director and uses the e-mail address mrfrodo@bitofearth.net. He also had a misterfrodo LiveJournal, but like padawans, it has long since been purged.
December 18
The Line Party takes place. Jordan Wood/Mr. Frodo runs the event with Abbey. They dress as Sam and Frodo, with Jordan’s hair glued to their feet–they tell people that it’s from their friend who recently died. The event goes very well and everyone is excited to plan another event.
2003
January 13
Mr. Frodo posts to BoE to warn members that someone is posing online as Victoria Bitter. He now calls himself BoE’s Assistant Director.
January 31
Mr. Frodo makes his last post to the BoE Yahoo! group, congratulating Sean Astin on his appointment to a Presidential Council.
February 20
BoE’s website message board, The Prancing Pony, is redirected to one of Versaphile’s LJ entries, which presents photographic evidence that Jordan Wood and Victoria Bitter are the same person. Jordan is able to sweep it under the rug pretty quickly by blaming a “bitter ex”.
April 6
Project Elanor takes place with Sean Astin and his family in attendance. Again, Jordan and Abbey run the event together. Project Elanor does not go entirely according to plan and the money that people thought would go to RIF goes to pay for supplies…but the group does create a lovely reading garden that still exists today.
July 25-27
BoE’s Hall of Fire Summer Music Festival is pretty much a failure. This seems to be mostly Jordan’s fault due to poor planning, procrastination on a grand scale, and delegating tasks without giving anyone adequate resources or the power to make real decisions.
August
The BagEnders move from Milwaukie to Salem, OR with help from Turimel.
September 20
BoE’s Lost Palantir Film Festival goes on, featuring a video appearance by Sean Astin, although the festival is not very much like it was supposed to be.
October 1
Jordan tries to obtain an Oregon driver’s license and a Social Security card under the name “Jordan Gabriel Wood”, using an obviously fake “Certificate of Naming” from a nonexistent pagan commune in Estacada. It doesn’t work. Later, he will try this again with a falsified birth certificate based on Abbey’s real one. That doesn’t work, either.
October 3
Jordan sends the Amy Player pseuicide letter to his parents on the same day that the BagEnders move to San Dimas, CA. Turimel assists again by cosigning a loan with Diamond.
October 10
A detective knocks on Turimel’s door looking for Amy Player, who he insists is the same person as Jordan Wood. Everything goes rapidly downhill from here.
October 21
Abbey sends an e-mail (presumably dictated by Jordan) to Amy’s parents and CC’d to Turimel, stating that Jordan Wood (BoE’s Director of Celebrity Relations) is not their daughter and that Amy has attempted to steal his identity. The e-mail also accuses Shopping Cart Bob of attempting to blackmail Jordan and other members of BoE.
Jordan spends the next month and a half being evasive about TentMoot preparations and his identity with Turimel, the police, and everyone. I am really sorry, but I am not going to keep digging through that book to get more solid dates on this. I’ve already had to reread more of it than I wanted to do. Just know that a lot of actors, artists, consultants, and crew from LotR, not to mention their agents and PR people, are put through the wringer over this, as are the BoE volunteers who are trying to help. During and after the whole fiasco, Jordan also says a lot of terribly insulting, disgusting, sometimes libellous things about these same people via e-mail and on message boards.
December 9
TentMoot fails epically. Jordan commits pseuicide in front of Abbey, Diamond, and Little Sam. Two days later, Jed Brophy, Paul Randall, and Brian Sergent arrive at LAX for TentMoot. Lawrence Makoare never gets out of New Zealand. Andy sabotages the BagEnders’ apartment and blames Turimel and Shopping Cart Bob for everything. Little Sam’s parents take her home soon after.
December 15
Jordan is arrested in Portland and detained for questioning by the Marion County, OR Sheriff’s Department re: identity theft. He is released the same day. No criminal charges are ever filed. Abbey and Jordan end up paying a fine and being forbidden to solicit money for charity in the state of Oregon.
January 2004 - January 2007
A lot happens offline over the course of three years. Abbey and Diamond have both written about it. To sum up: Jordan/“Elijah Wood” has “died” and the “new core” says that he’s Orlando Bloom because of course he fucking is. Recall that VB had told Abbey in 2002, during the same chat in which they discussed psychically “reaching” Elijah Wood, that Orlando Bloom would be another good channeling candidate. “Orlando” goes by Andy.
Turimel publishes her book. Abbey and Andy begin working as costumed characters in Hollywood. Diamond eventually gets out of the cult. Abbey continues to live under Andy’s thumb as he goes on channeling more and more “Others”. He moves on from LotR to The Chronicles of Narnia (starting with Peter Pevensie/Blakewell) and ends up “bringing through” a large cast of teenage WWII-era soldiers with abusive backgrounds. He legally changes his name to Andrew Michael Blake. And then…
2007
Early February
Having concocted a “plan” to move to Toronto under false pretenses, Andy and Abbey fly from LA to Buffalo via Atlanta with their bird, Boo (AKA “his son, a sparrow”). They try to walk across the border to Canada. It doesn’t work. Andy throws an incredible tantrum and the border guards let them sleep in their office. Abbey’s mother comes to the rescue the next day.
February - March
Operation Catch and Release. Abbey’s mother is beyond amazing.
March 4
Andy posts the first of many fauxpologies on the amy_player LiveJournal. No one is buying it. He explicitly admits to being both Strwriter and Voyagerbabe, but makes no mention of the name Andrew Blake.
Not long after this, Abbey and her mother fly back to Virginia. Abbey breaks things off with Andy. She takes Boo and leaves. Andy throws another gigantic tantrum and continues to harass her with letters for about a year afterward.
Teablogger's timeline, part 3 - I
(Anonymous) 2015-05-05 04:07 pm (UTC)(link)Unfortunately, there are significant gaps and not many precise dates available for Part III. Because of all the negative attention he’d received following his exploits in LotR fandom, Andy spent a couple of years trying to fly under the radar. He didn’t post publicly as much as he used to, other than his writing and artwork. His “channeling” activity took place primarily in chat (text and sometimes audio) and there were strict rules about what participants were and were not permitted to post for the purpose of sharing information about DAYD characters. Once Abbey blew his cover, Andy put nearly everything not directly related to DAYD on lockdown. And in the years since then, many former DAYDians have locked or deleted their LJs, Twitter accounts, etc. as part of the process of getting away from Andy and moving on with their lives. This means that while we know the outline of major events during the DAYD era, details are sometimes sketchy.
Another issue is that many former DAYDians are quite understandably reluctant to discuss the specifics of Andy’s “channeling”, conversations they’ve had, etc. It would be fairly easy, in many cases, for him to trace information back to specific people, and he has a history of siccing his current friends and followers on those who speak out. Those whom Aja interviewed for her article ended up getting hurt in a completely different way. For these reasons, I haven’t attempted to contact any DAYDians myself, but have done the best I could with the records that remain available online and the information shared by former DAYDian anons on FFA.
(Part I) | (Part II)
Part III of the timeline covers March 2007 - January 2010.
March 2007 - April 2008
Andy drops off the map for a while. He lives with his parents for at least part of this time and they get him into therapy.
Supposedly he is in a rock band that later becomes a wrock (wizard rock) band and one of the members prompts him to read the Harry Potter series. I have yet to find any reference to Andy’s specific role in the band other than that he writes lyrics for them.
2008
April
Andy writes “Dumbledore’s Army: Still Recruiting” in response to a fanfic challenge on The Quidditch Pitch. By June 15, he has expanded it to the 256K-word “Dumbledore’s Army and the Year of Darkness”.
Not much is known of Andy’s activities for the rest of this year (see above note), other than that he aggressively promotes DAYD on LJ and other forums and in reviews of other people’s fanfiction. He refers to DAYD as “[his] own canon” and reportedly talks about sending it to J. K. Rowling as Book 8, or publishing it himself. The few discrete events for which we have dates are listed below.
May 3
Andy participates in a podcast (no longer available) at The Quidditch Pitch. No Irish accent is evident.
June (more precise date unknown)
At this point, Andy is allegedly homeless and living in his car and/or his parents’ barn, using a local library for Internet access.
For about three weeks, Andy and luvscharlie talk on the phone daily. She allows him to use her PayPal account to collect money for his fanart commissions. They seem to have a falling-out by June 23. (Details of this were publicly available at one time, but have since been locked and I don’t have a copy.)
June 22
In a meme response on luvscharlie’s LJ, Andy claims to have a “Harry Potter lightning scar on [his] forehead” and says in response to a comment from CFC that he looks just like Harry and his parents look just like Harry’s parents. He refers to himself as a “mashup” of Harry and Neville, as well as Sirius and (I think) Remus.
Please note what Andy says about luvscharlie, her accent, lust, etc. It all calls to mind similar little flirtatious comments that he used to make to Abbey when he was first insinuating his way into her life. Also note luvscharlie’s follow-up comment, which strongly suggests that she ended their relationship.
August 19
Andy leaves the “shipperchibbies” comment at the fanficrants LiveJournal community. Choice quote:
This fandom is infested with girls. Little bubble-headed shipperchibbies who spaz all over me because I write from the perspective of a guy, as a guy. … I’ve been told that my guys are blunt, aggressive, hot-tempered, that my fics are unnecessarily violent, that my guys aren’t sensitive enough about their feelings and the feelings of the girls they deal with. Um, well, I hate to break it to you, Hannah Montana, but guys are like that, and moreover, war is like that. We do not speak the same language you do.
In this and other posts linked below, Andy also expresses contempt for m/m slash and those who read and write it, which is interesting given the quantity of Frodo/Sam fanfiction and fanart that he produced as Victoria Bitter.
September 7
Andy posts to the Dark Lord Potter forum to advertise DAYD. It begins:
It’s great to see somewhere that a heterosexual guy can be a heterosexual guy in this fandom without tiptoeing around all the fangirls and slashers trying not to offend anyone when he doesn’t want Harry weeping into his chocolate ice-cream to Evanescence because Draco hasn’t bent him over the table in the Great Hall lately or because you write that Seamus has had those kind of fantasies about the Patil twins…and so has any other red-blooded seventeen-year old boy.
That isn’t the end of the misogynistic and hetero-/cissexist comments, but it is representative. Other than that, Andy lists many of his media likes and dislikes and says that he looks just like Harry Potter (“I am 5'8, skinny, glasses, messy black hair, and a lightning-shaped scar on my forehead”). He also mentions that he hates J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis, which is worthy of mention mainly because of his fandom history. In a later post on the same thread, he claims to be self-educated.
Andy’s signature on this forum reads, “Dear fangirls: Was it the beatings, the torture, the dismemberment, the sadism, the poisoning, or the graphic deaths that gave you the idea I would be so sensitive to your feelings?”
December 30
Andy submits his now-infamous application to Hogwarts sorting community platform_934. Among other things, he claims to be Irish, to have fought in militias on both sides of the Troubles, to have saved numerous lives, and to have a heart condition that will kill him in less than ten years. He speaks of having been left for another man by “a woman [he] loved for almost seven long years” (Abbey) who “took [their] son from [him] without so much as a goodbye” (“his son, a sparrow”). Despite this, he heroically doesn’t hate “the fairer sex”.
Andy also says that DAYD is the first thing he’s ever written, that he has a genius IQ, and that despite never having attended any school, he has “an astonishing breadth of completely self-aquired [sic] knowledge” and knows “4.5 languages”. No word on whether any of them is Westron. In the end, the comm labels him a Muggle.
That same day, Andy begins teaching a “writing seminar” at his plot-with-plot LJ community. He says that he is qualified to do this, in spite of his lack of formal education, because “I’ve pulled off in eight months from dead zero what takes most people years - decades, if you include school - to sort of meander towards.”
After much pontificating on what “makes” a writer, Andy issues his first two assignments. The second includes the directive to go without food and any liquid other than water for three days. In future posts, he will write at great length and in detail about creating protagonists, antagonists, and plot–again, despite allegedly never having received instruction in writing and never having written anything in his life before DAYD.
2009
Late February
Andy makes an LJ post about his “very serious heart defect”. He says that he hadn’t been expected to survive to adulthood and was eventually told that he had two to five years to live (from the date of the post). Recent developments, however, have led his doctor to revise his life expectancy to less than a year. He makes reference to his ex “Louise” (Abbey’s middle name) and their son “Connor” (the sparrow) and repeatedly assures his friends that he’s fine, doesn’t need emotional support, is grateful for how “perfect” the timing is, etc.
Shortly thereafter, Andy requests that his friends pay for him to come and visit them before he dies:
1. Meet as many flisters as possible
2. Get in some more traveling
3. Help as many people as possible.
Longer later, but the upshot is this…I will post 2-3 weeks in advance every time I have a 60-hour consecutive stretch or longer off of work. If you want me to come visit you in that time, you just have to get me there, and I don’t care how. …
Get me there, and for roughly two days, Than is yours…[for] anything non-sexual you can think of wanting from a handsome, intelligent, and multi-talented young man, really. I’d love to be able to offer to just go on my own, but there are a very limited number of times I can afford that, and I’m afraid I have to be very judicious with those.
February 27
One of Andy’s friends starts the than_love LJ community (now deleted) to raise money for aforementioned travel expenses. At least one of his former friends is on record as saying that she gave Andy $400 to travel to Germany and spent $250 on his artwork, but he ceased all communication when she stopped spending money on him.
March 2
The DAYDverse LJ community is created. It is owned by Andy and co-moderated by ceirdwenfc (CFC), whom Andy refers to as his “First Lieutenant”, “the very first DAYDian” and everyone’s “second mother”. The DAYDians refer to Andy by titles that include “Chief”, “Fearless Leader”, and “Supreme Commander”. Other DAYDians will later be designated as “House Lieutenants”.
Sometime Later
I will not link to it or give a specific date, but at one point on the community, in the midst of a lot of DAYD audiobook casting posts, Andy asks 14- through 28-year-old DAYDians to post their pictures. He then tells each of them how much they look like this or that DAYD character and tells some of the women that they’re hot.
March 4
luvscharlie informs the DAYDians that Andy is a liar who is obtaining money from them under false pretenses.
March 27
In response to an inquiry about his claims in the app to platform_934, Andy messages LJ user birdseyeview to assure her that everything he said was true. He brushes off luvscharlie as another “bitter ex”.
Andy says that he’s a US citizen from Virginia but of 100% Irish heritage and raised as an Irishman by his “Irish-born-and-bred-lived-in-Belfast-until-he-was-in-his-30s Irish grandfather”. Supposedly he grew up in rural isolation and had little to no contact with other children. Andy strongly implies that his grandfather intended to send him back to Ireland to settle a personal score related to the IRA. He claims to have spent some time living in Ireland and to have “fought with both the RHD and RIRA”. He says that his accent is real, but that he hid it for years to fit in…and compares this to President Obama going by “Barry” in his youth.
Andy goes on to explain that women can’t handle bluntness and strong opinions, so he knew that his app might not go over well. He humblebrags about his allegedly high IQ and insists that his fatal heart condition is real and he has no reason to fake it. The message ends with a trademark Andy device, the “clever”, self-deprecating postscript full of irrelevant information disguised as disarming honesty. It includes the assertion that he has “a real-life lightning scar on [his] forehead”.
May 11
Andy shows off his DA tattoo to the DAYDverse comm. He says that he initially did it himself with a sewing needle and ink from a pen, and has now had an actual tattoo artist go over it.
May 22 - 30
Andy travels to Germany at the expense of members of the DAYDverse community.
June 4
Andy explains to the DAYDians that he doesn’t just write the story:
I see, hear, feel, taste, smell, live it from every angle. …
The ‘writing process’ isn’t creative - it’s all there just as much if not more than my own memories…
…the character’s physical pain 'comes through’ and I find my back aching from the decade-old scars of a flogging when no whip has ever touched me or I can barely stand because the nerves in my completely intact legs are having a field day with phantom pain and abused pressure points.
Yes, I know it’s mental. Have I ever said I’m otherwise? Kind of explains the intimate relationship I have with them, though, and why the most common refrain from readers is that they are eerily, unnaturally real. They are real to me, whatever that says about my sanity. The only level on which I can separate their 'reality,’ their 'memories’, their 'experiences’ from my own is the cold factual knowledge that they never lived. Honestly, I’ve sometimes wondered if I’m hooking in to past lives or ghosts on some psychic plane and my conscious brain can only interpret it by plugging it into a pre-existent matrix of a fantasy world.
July 1
Andy encourages people to engage in dialogue directly with the DAYD characters on the comm. “Think of me as their agent…post your question here, let me know who its for, and you’ll get your response from that character.” This subthread is of particular note, as “Luna” tells a DAYDian who is attempting to treat this as a roleplaying exercise that she doesn’t know what IC and OOC mean. After he explains the abbreviations, “Luna” says, “…I guess it’s all IC, then, because you’re not talking to Andy at all here.”
July 29
Andy apparently travels somewhere else at the DAYDians’ expense.
August 16
Andy tells the DAYDians that life is about to imitate chapter fifteen of DAYD, in which Manly Warrior Neville learns that the DA has decided to relieve him of command temporarily because he is out of control. He responds by flying into a violent rage, followed by sobbing and a week or so of wallowing in isolation and self-pity before I got bored and stopped skimming. Presumably Andy is trying to communicate that he is stressed and over-committed by equating himself with Neville.
August 19
On the DAYDverse community, Andy claims to “have English, Ulster Gaelic, French, Latin, and Greek myself, as well as the thinnest smatterings of German picked up this spring and some reasonably conversational Spanish.”
August 24
Andy posts a DAYDcon proposal to the DAYDverse community. The next day, on the DAYDcon logistics post, he informs people that he doesn’t want to know if they’re under eighteen because then he’ll have to exclude them.
August 25
luvscharlie points out the podcast in which Andy participated, sans Irish accent, in 2008. No one seems to notice.
August 26
Andy informs the DAYDians that a planned-and-paid-for trip has fallen through, but that he’s received a full refund on his air travel to Ireland. There is no indication that he intended to return the money to the DAYDian(s) who paid for the plane ticket.
Later that day, he suggests that they also hold “Left Coast and/or UK/Ireland” DAYDcons.
Teablogger's timeline, part 3 - II
(Anonymous) 2015-05-05 04:07 pm (UTC)(link)September 1 (possibly earlier) - Unknown
Andy and many (if not most) of the DAYDians maintain an LJ chatroom, and eventually a Skype chat as well. The chatroom on LJ is known as the Room of Requirement (RoR). According to a former DAYDian, members cycle in and out such that it is active nearly 24/7. While chatting in the RoR, Andy makes a number of claims about his past and current life, including:
[I’ve] looked into a little African child’s eyes to reassure him that it would be OK as [I] cauterized a post-field-amputation limb.
I can perform a field tracheotomy with a drinking straw, and I’ve had to do it.
I’ve seen dozens of people murdered before my eyes.
I was the first male born in seven generations of women, so it’s really no surprise to my family that I have psychic capabilities.
I traveled the world almost entirely for free, partially by stowing away on cargo ships. You can travel anywhere if you’re resourceful enough!
I fucked ((I don’t remember the number, but something obscene, high double digits)) women by the time I was 18. (He shared things like this a lot, and back then (before he became ~enlightened~it was always “fucking,” not “making love” or even “having sex.” Women were dainty damsels and the essence of mother earth on one hand and conquests to be notched on bedposts at the same time. Other details about his sexual exploits include fucking a married women in the kitchen while her little children played in the other room.)
I work at a Starbucks where professors from the nearby university come in and chat with me in Ancient Greek.
When I was at work today, a coloratura soprano with a world-class opera company came into the shop and sang an aria to pay for her drink.
I just know things about people. For instance, when I was little, I blurted out that the pastor of our church was cheating on his wife (I’d just had a feeling about it), and it turned out that I was right. I ruined him. This is part of why my mother hates me.
The reason I can’t write or read “Gaelic” is because I was never schooled a day in my life. I learned to speak it because it was the only language my grandfather used with me, but I’m illiterate and really just going by sound. So if the “Gaelic” dialogue in my “novels” isn’t totally right, remember that it’s because everything I know, I taught myself.
Andy also channels Harry Potter characters and his own OCs in the RoR. DAYDians reportedly ask to speak with the character of their choice and Andy “brings them out”. Then people talk to the character and ask them questions, and Andy answers as the character, in first person. According to the former DAYDian in the comment linked above, Andy remembers every channeling experience (which differs from his claims as Victoria Bitter and Jordan Wood) and extensively lectures RoR participants about multiverse theory, spiritualism, and allegedly similar channeling practices in other cultures (all of which he used when selling Abbey, Little Sam, and Diamond on his “abilities” years before).
September 2
Andy posts to the DAYDverse LJ community to solicit money to send people to DAYDcon.
Auctions, commissions offers, and other fundraisers continue for the next couple of months, with DAYDverse members soliciting on their own LJs and in completely unrelated communities and mailing lists.
September 14
Andy participates in PotterFicWeekly podcast episode 87 (posted on the Poufwa site 9/19/09). He tells the hosts that he never attended any school whatsoever and had never written any fiction at all or any non-fiction other than grocery lists, until DAYD. He says that he writes chronologically and always just knows what will happen next. Andy claims that everything he posts is a first draft, that he never outlines, takes notes, or edits his work other than correcting typos; and that he types everything directly into FF.net or LJ.
Later, he tells his story of having been in a rock band for which he wrote lyrics, and how one of the other band members asked him to read Harry Potter. He explains that he had previously shied away from the series because he looks exactly like Harry. Andy describes himself and his friend mocking fanfiction authors and being disgusted by the extremely poor quality of what they read, prompting his friend to tell him to enter the current challenge on The Quidditch Pitch. Though Andy is quick to backpedal and say that there is a lot of great fic out there, he also makes sure to note that he won the challenge (with, again, the first thing he had ever written in his life) and that people loved his work. He says that he finished DAYD in five weeks while living out of his car.
There is a lot of talk about how dark, violent, and edgy “Sluagh” is. Andy gleefully relates, “I pride myself on the fact that I have received eight separate reviews from people who have literally, not metaphorically, gotten physically ill [after reading chapter fifteen].” He criticizes Rowling’s worldbuilding and cites Stephen King and Tom Clancy as his primary influences for “Sluagh” and “A Peccatis” respectively. Andy alludes to having lived in Belfast and says that his portrayals of the IRA and RHD are real and accurate. He also professes extensive knowledge of Celtic and Arthurian mythology.
When the subject of Poufwa host Mike arises, Andy becomes extremely hostile because their interpretations of Snape’s character differ. His comments about Mike (before Mike even arrives) include:
He’s afraid of me!
He has no idea there is a lynch mob for him at DAYDverse comm.
It’s single entendre only with that man, and yet he can bend himself around like a Chinese contortionist to try and make a loving and heroic event out of Snape chopping up kittens for dinner.
Savant. Mike is a savant.
They were lighting the pitchforks and sharpening the torches for Mike. They were, and they are, and I don’t recommend he shows his face in [the DAYDverse community].
Andy also says that, to the DAYDians and as far as the DAYDverse is concerned, “I am God.”
When Mike finally arrives, Andy asks him, “Two questions: What kind of lube do you prefer, and how do you see that Snape is a sweetheart when it is written that far up on the inside of your own colon?” He will repeat twice more, in different ways, the assertion that Mike has his head up his own ass. Eventually things become so awkward and inappropriate that the editor cuts off the end of the podcast and inserts a separately-recorded “apology” from Andy, in which he blames “the infamous Irish temper” for his bad behavior as a guest on the show.
September 17
Andy makes a lengthy post accusing the DAYDians of launching some sort of hate campaign against Mike and other Poufwa hosts. Later, he edits it to say that it was all a misunderstanding and nothing happened and no one is angry. He seems to blame a particular DAYDian who is also a Poufwa host for much of the “confusion” regarding Mike specifically. This reads as an attempt to mask or off-set Andy’s own behavior toward Mike during his appearance on the Poufwa podcast.
October 27
In the midst of a long post dealing with RoR drama, Andy states that English is not his native language.
December 5
Andy announces that two of the DAYDians are engaged, following “…a staggering monumental effort by a large number of daydians including a 190-hour marathon Skype session”.
December 10
Abbey anonymously breaks the news to Turimel that Andy has adopted the alias Thanfiction and made a name for himself in the Harry Potter fandom.
Andy is active as Thanfiction on LJ, FF.net, adult-fanfiction.org, Fiction Alley, DeviantArt, Twitter, YouTube, and (much later) Tumblr and AO3.
Later that same day, Andy sends $100 to Turimel via PayPal (transphobia warning) and promises to continue paying her $50 a month up to the amount of $1000. In exchange, he asks her to quit posting about him, unless he “ever actually cause[s] a scam or scandal” or stops paying. Turimel receives no further payment from Andy.
December 11
Turimel and Snacky make nearly simultaneous reports on Thanfiction to Fandom Wank. (Warning for transphobia in the first report and in the comments for both.)
December 18
DAYDcon begins at a hotel in Washington, D.C. (12/18 - 12/21). Activities include watching Andy draw, talking for hours, making stew in water glasses and hotel ice buckets, having a massive snowball fight, watching The Fellowship of the Ring, DAYD readings, photo sessions, and casting each of the con attendees as a DAYD character.
Part of the group then moves on to upstate NY for a day or so. This excursion is followed by a cross-country trip in a van, making brief stops in several states and finally arriving in California on 12/24, where Andy stays for a short while with Brittany Quinn and some other friends.
December 26
The “Undead Shaman Wizard” psychic battle takes place. Brittany and Andy e-mail idiomagic:
Cfc is under some kind of attack, something is trying to literally eat her kids. … there is something big and something dangerous and deadly. … the children are in the house in the woods being eaten by monsters-Andy is down and when his shield over those kids break. it. is. over.
Please note that CFC was offline at the time and had no idea that this was happening.
They ask for help, claiming that they are too exhausted from DAYDcon to keep fighting on their own. Idiomagic leads them on, asking for more info, and Andy and Brittany respond with the children’s full names, home address, and much more personal information about them and CFC. They attribute the attack to a “Spirit/Astral form of technically dead but v. powerful Seneca Sachem-level shaman, plus allies and minions. I know this sounds crazy, but is true.” When idiomagic presses for more, asking about a secondary target and challenging the idea of allies/minions, they continue:
A source said that it was above “ the wheel” with each spoke a world and the hub a connection place. it was a shaman/wizard cross in late 16th possibly but that has passed from place of dead to something above that. Several targets have been hit so far. Not sure who or what is current secondary. The “allies” seem to have been neutralized by someone from the hub as a favor to Andy.
At this point, idiomagic gets tired of playing along and tells them that she knows they’re faking it and that Andy has been lying about a lot of things–including having an evil twin.
Given Andy’s claims in 2012-15 that Brittany was the first person to see his mental illness for what it was and try to help him (part of the “mutual saviors” narrative that he ties in with Destiel), I feel that it is important to point out that Brittany was the one writing and sending the e-mails to idiomagic.
December 27
This now-deleted LJ post by idiomagic is the earliest public mention I can find of the “evil twin” to whom Andy attributed all of his actions as Victoria Bitter/Jordan Wood when he discussed the December 11 Fandom Wank reports with the DAYDians. Idiomagic also mentions Andy’s claims to have IRA connections and a scar from having been wounded with a Claymore during a pub fight.
December 28
Details of the Undead Shaman Wizard battle hit LJ, courtesy of idiomagic.
2010
January 15
Having returned from California by this point, Andy steps back “from daydverse and more or less from the internet.” Among the reasons he cites is “the wank” from December, including some allegations that he says were “proven patently false,” and some of which were “pure ridiculous rumor and slurs, others [based] on a grain of truth.” Andy also mentions his “heart condition”.
Yes, I was told last year that I had a very short amount of time, and I still technically have about six weeks of that left. But I’ve beaten the odds before. Will I do it again? Will I drop dead tomorrow? I don’t know. Frankly, no one does. That doesn’t mean, however, that the way I’m living now makes sense.
Re: Teablogger's timeline, part 4 I
(Anonymous) 2015-06-28 04:11 pm (UTC)(link)I am also trying to respect the privacy of the former DAYDians who participated in the DAYDverse LJ community, in Skype chats with Andy, and in the Trail of Tears hike. Because Andy often included people’s real first and last names in chat logs and announcements, I will not be linking directly to every post that I refer to, but I’ll include screenshots with names and personal info redacted whenever possible.
Many thanks to E for reviewing this, to Abbey for her assistance, and to the other former DAYDian who answered some questions for me.
(Part I) | (Part II) | (Part III)
Part IV of the timeline covers Spring 2010 - July 2012.
2010
Despite claims that he plans to decrease his activity online and related to DAYD in general, Andy continues to participate in RoR chats and to post fic and art to the DAYDverse community and his than_art community.
Spring
Andy flies out to California to visit Brittany. When it’s time for him to leave, he “misses his flight”. He never books another one. He and Brittany live in Sacramento until September.
September - October
Andy, Brittany, and E (another DAYDian) spend two months hiking from Santa Rosa, California to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. According to E, Andy channels during the hike and Brittany believes and supports him, affirming his stories even when Andy isn’t around.
October - November
Andy and Brittany alternate between couch-surfing and sleeping in tents or in a friend’s car.
In November, the DAYD Facebook group is created by someone who (at least at the time) is not connected to Andy in any way.
November 26 (approximation)
Andy and Brittany move into an upstairs room in the Fairfield house that Brittany co-owns with her former common-law husband. Her ex (Jason Eisenberg) and his father live downstairs. Shortly afterward, the Eisenbergs bring in another roommate who takes the other upstairs room.
2011
February 14
Andy is alerted to the existence of the Facebook group by someone on DeviantArt. He joins it and says that it can now be considered “authorized”.
March 11
Andy announces a New Zealand hike on the DAYD Facebook group and LJ community. He says that he, Brittany, and E plan to “kidnap” New Zealand DAYDian D and hike the Te Araroa trail until D’s “ransom” has been paid in donations to the New Zealand Red Cross Christchurch fund.
March 19
On her Facebook, Brittany publicly posts a note in which she accuses her father of abuse and neglect and severs contact with him. In her August 2014 AMA, Abbey says, “Oh, that letter is so disturbing. It’s Andy all over it. So much of it is just like what I wrote to my mother under his direction/coaching.”
April 2
Brittany posts to the Facebook group to say that she needs help getting gear and tickets together for the New Zealand hike. She asks DAYDians to brainstorm with her and specifically says, “I promised Andy I would make this happen and I am not going to go back on that promise.”
May 1
Andy makes a post in DAYDverse to commemorate the anniversary of the Battle of Hogwarts.
May 6
Andy e-mails a long list of “assignments” for the New Zealand hike to Brittany, E, D, and another NZ DAYDian (M) who has decided to participate. He informs them that, “if everyone doesn’t do [their jobs], we’re all going to be fucked.” They only have about a month and a half to get everything together.
May 7
Jason Eisenberg murders Brittany Quinn and Anthony Chambers (the other person living in the Fairfield house). He tries to kill Andy and ends up shooting him in the ankle through the bedroom door. Eisenberg subsequently kills himself.
May 16
Andy posts his “eulogy” for Brittany to the DAYD Facebook group. In the final paragraphs, he says:
Brittany had her heart set on the New Zealand trek. … She used to say without really joking at all that she’d do it over her own dead body if need be.
And so I will.
…
In the next post, I will be putting up what was originally Brittany’s part of the to-do list. I think that if one extraordinary woman could do it, an extraordinary community definitely can in her memory.
For the fallen. We have lost our first.
It’s worth noting that deceased members of Dumbledore’s Army are commonly referred to as “the fallen” by Andy and the DAYDians, and “For the Fallen” was used as a rallying cry in DAYD chapter seven. Andy is explicitly tying Brittany’s death into his fictional universe.
Andy mentions that DAYDian K is preparing to take Brittany’s place on the hike.
That same day, he posts the e-mail with the New Zealand hike assignments to the DAYDverse LJ community. (In that image, things that I thought were especially odd/questionable are highlighted in green and my commentary is highlighted in purple. My snarky comment about “getting into Canada” is in reference to this, of course.) The post again indicates that K will be going on the hike. It also says that instead of raising money for survivors of the Christchurch earthquake, they will now be soliciting donations to Napa Emergency Women’s Services.
May 20 or thereabouts
Andy moves just outside of Denver, Colorado, where he lives with K and another DAYDian (and eventually E) until early 2012.
May 23
Andy announces on Facebook that K and M will be unable to go on the hike.
May 24
Andy posts to the DAYDverse LJ community about the aftermath of the murders. He publicly thanks several DAYDians for helping him in various ways. Andy also says:
A lot of people have been asking me what happened exactly. I am more than happy to tell them in person or over the phone. I will not be giving any more detailed version of what happened in writing of any form… I WILL NOT force a blow-by-blow on any grieving victim. And putting a written version out there that can be emailed to them, linked to them, quoted out of context, sensationalized, etc is doing just that.
…despite having given his version of the events of the murder in the eulogy that he posted publicly on May 16.
At the end of this post, Andy announces that plans for the hike have changed. He, E, and D will now be hiking the Trail of Tears to benefit survivors of domestic violence.
Later that day, Andy announces a bottle drive on the DAYDverse community. He and his roommates plan to sell hot sauce “to raise money for the Brittany Quinn memorial trek”. The labels on the bottles and the accompanying brochures are to include “labels” commonly applied to victims of abuse and quotes about people’s personal experiences related to abuse. The chilies from which the hot sauce is made were allegedly given to Andy in Brittany’s memory by “local ethnic grocers” that he and Brittany used to visit.
May 26
Andy asks DAYDverse if the May contest is still on, “or did that go by the wayside (understandably!) with Brittany’s murder?” The theme of the contest is “What If They’d Lived?” He announces the upcoming June contest and solicits people to work on the wrock album, website, and cookbook.
He also announces in this post that the hike will take place from July 1 through September 1-15 and that instead of collecting funds, the group will be encouraging people to donate time or money to the domestic violence charity of their choice.
Finally, Andy says that he will not be creating any new DAYDverse material until after the hike:
One’s plans for fandom have a tendency to take a backseat to fast-tracking an attempt to help someone out of a dangerous living situation, then that situation turning violent in the form of a double homicide-suicide, getting shot, having to move, and having to re-plan a 3000K hike from scratch.
May 29
Andy starts up the It’s About Power Twitter.
May 30
Andy announces the It’s About Power website and Facebook group on DAYDverse. The website has an unsettling design that includes red text on a black background, with banner text in an intimidating all-caps font (”Morpheus”, if I remember correctly). This is the logo.
The website includes writings about domestic violence that Andy will later re-post to his tumblr, bios of the hikers, a vague pledge agreement to do something to prevent domestic violence or raise awareness, and a bio of Brittany that closely resembles Andy’s “eulogy” for her. There is also a request for men from around the world to send in video clips featuring “something that gives them power, makes them feel powerful, or that they feel is an expression of their own power without needing to take power from someone else.” I’m not linking to the archived website here because it contains DAYDians’ full names and personal information, but I will write more about it in a later post.
Andy’s bio on the website claims that he has “long enjoy[ed] outdoor survivalism as a hobby” and has “completed hikes of similar length before”. At this point, the only previous hike of similar length that Andy has taken is the one with Brittany and E in Fall 2010.
June
Andy continues to post about contests, to post occasional art, and to participate in very lengthy chats in the Room of Requirement. When he posts chat logs, he cheerfully ignores his own instructions to replace people’s real names with LJ usernames.
June 4
Someone identifying himself as Brittany’s father comments on Turimel’s LJ [warning for misgendering/transphobia at the link] under the username “beachcomberbob”. He comments on Brittany and Andy’s relationship and on It’s About Power, referring to the hike as a scam. Regarding the eulogy that Andy wrote, he says that most of it is “extreme exaggerations, fanciful lies and…self-serving imaginations”.
June 7
Andy contradicts his statement of a week before by saying that he will write a custom 3000+ word oneshot in the DAYDverse for anyone who will create and share a live-action DAYDverse trailer or music video.
June 12
Andy announces on the DAYDverse comm, the DAYD and It’s About Power Facebook groups, and the It’s About Power Twitter that the New Zealand DAYDian (D) will not be able to participate in the hike. Note that this is said to be due to “unforeseen difficulties with his employment” and Andy had taken responsibility for arranging his leave of absence. D’s spot is being filled by K and the hike is now due to begin on July 15.
Andy says on the DAYD Facebook group that Brittany had wanted D to come on the hike in order to change his life, which Andy describes as “being destroyed from the inside out”. He says that D is “letting her down”. Another DAYDian makes an angry Facebook post that excoriates D for not going on the hike and blames him for delaying it in a way that makes it evident that Andy’s public statements are much more neutral than closed-door conversations he’s had about this. He really seems to have thrown D under the bus.
Andy tells D to start a blog to chronicle his own efforts to change his life. It is evident in his first few posts that D is extremely depressed about being unable to go on the hike and is blaming himself for all sorts of things. Andy never bothers to comment on the blog.
June 16
An online amateur journalist publishes an article about It’s About Power and the upcoming hike. (I will not link to the article because it includes the hikers’ full names.) The article paraphrases chunks of Andy’s eulogy for Brittany, quotes from the IAP website, and asks readers to donate gear and other items for the hike as follows:
Lean bison meat or beef
Bison or beef tallow
Starbucks Via
Dried unsweetened cherries
Electrolyte sport beans like Jelly Belly Extreme Sport Beans
Plain purple T-shirts: 3 women’s small, 3 men’s medium, 3 men’s XL
Motel points or gift certificate at national chain for 1-2 nights.
3 Greyhound bus gift certificates, points, miles or similar (Tulsa OK to Denver, CO one-way)
3 Portable personal ultralight water filters
3 Petzle Tikka or similar brand combination LED/xenon headlamps
Rechargable batteries for above
6 pair men’s small (shoe size 7.5) merino wool socks or similar lightweight absorbent hiking socks
1 men’s size small convertable ultralight cycling jacket (Pearl Izumi, Canary Eclipse, or similar)
Re: Teablogger's timeline, part 4 II
(Anonymous) 2015-06-28 04:12 pm (UTC)(link)Andy announces that the delay for which D has been so harshly criticized has proven to be a good thing. He solicits loans/donations of a few remaining gear items and frequent flyer miles…and of over 100 lbs of meat and 30 lbs tallow, as he plans to make his own pemmican for them to eat during the hike.
Late June or Early July
In a Skype chat with DAYDians [warning for transphobia at that link], Andy tries to brush everything under the rug by saying that Turimel, Amy Player/Victoria Bitter (whom he claims not to know), and his “bitter ex” luvscharlie have all been spreading vicious rumors about him on the Internet. He also makes a number of libelous accusations about luvscharlie. Previously in the chat, a friend of his repeated Andy’s earlier lie that his evil twin sister was the one behind his earlier abuse and cult-building activities.
July 1
Andy informs the Facebook group that the hikers still need more meat and 60-day cell phone plans.
July 13
Andy posts one more time before leaving for the hike. In this post, among other things, he implies:
that E and K and the hike itself are in some way a burden, though it was his idea in the first place.
that unlike him, E and K can afford to “just do these kinds of things on a lark”.
that by going on the hike, he personally is saving victims of domestic violence.
July 15
The hike officially begins in Murphy, North Carolina. The hikers tweet and update their blog fairly frequently to keep their friends apprised of their progress. Andy writes that he (and sometimes E and/or K) gives talks about domestic violence at various churches, shelters, and other organizations along the way, as well as giving interviews to the press.
Years later, it will be revealed that when E and K tweeted or posted on the blog, “it was basically parroting stuff [Andy]’d said or wanted [them] to say.”
I don’t have enough precise dates for a detailed breakdown of the hike to be practical, so here is a summary.
July 15 - September 9
Some of the info below comes from the IAP Twitter and the Q&A. Most of it comes from the IAP blog, which has long since been deleted. I am not linking to the archive because it includes the hikers’ full names and other personal information.
Before the hike even begins, Andy coerces K into going on birth control because he is already trying to play matchmaker for her and E. (Source: message from Andy to carlanime)
Andy, E, and K share a small tent every night. They do not get adequate sleep, even when Andy isn’t making them hike through the night. They also are not always able to camp in safe places.
Much of the route (which Andy planned) involves construction zones, roads with no shoulder, and generally unsafe terrain. They have many close calls with large trucks.
They often do not have sufficient food or water for the energy they’re expending on walking a minimum of 20 miles a day.
The hike takes place at the height of summer and the heat and humidity are extreme.
At times, Andy will not allow the group to stop when one of them needs medical attention. Sometimes they receive help from actual medical personnel that they meet along the way, and sometimes Andy “channels” a doctor and makes up a potentially dangerous “treatment” that doesn’t work.
Conversely, when Andy doesn’t feel like walking, he fabricates injuries and illnesses (mostly affecting E) that require them to stop.
Many churches and private individuals provide the hikers with food, shelter, rides, and other forms of assistance along the trail. One church gives them a wheelchair to use as a water cart, but K ends up having to ride in it after an injury.
Andy shares a lot of “insights” with E and K as to how he thinks relationships should work, the ease and virtues of “vagabonding” (and the dull mediocrity of a more conventional lifestyle), healthy eating, Southern culture, and more.
Andy draws E and K into many long conversations about their pasts, their families, their beliefs, their dreams, their psychological issues (diagnosed by Andy), how to “make their lives matter”, and so forth. Ultimately he manipulates K into writing letters to her family that include false accusations of abuse and commentary on their relationships, as part of her process of growing out of being “a perpetual twelve-year-old“ and “a middle-class princess”. This fits the pattern that Andy established with Abbey and Brittany.
Andy blames K for dropping his phone and causing him to lose “all [his] pics of and txts from Brittany”.
Toward the end of the hike, in an Oklahoma VA facility, Andy apparently pretends to have medical expertise and lies to an elderly veteran about his (the veteran’s) medical condition.
E loses over 60 lbs in less than two months. K has lingering health problems to this day as a result of the hike.
September 12
Having actually fallen in love over the course of the hike (no thanks to Andy), E and K get married in Las Vegas. Despite what he said to K before the hike, Andy will later claim that he was the rational one who thought they should wait.
October 3-8
Andy posts to the IAP blog, Facebook group, and Twitter to ask people to donate to cover the fees necessary to complete E’s immigration process. In typical Andy fashion, the post is guilt-inducing and manipulative. The first post is titled, “Are Love and Legal Immigration Worth $1?” and asks, “…please, dig through your pocket change, give up something off the dollar menu, and donate a dollar to their future.” In the end, they do raise enough money to cover the fees, but Andy’s posts result in a lot of negativity toward E and K.
Andy is pretty quiet through the rest of October.
November 1
Andy joins Tumblr. He immediately begins promoting DAYD, posting art, and posting DAYD- and social-justice-related image macros. Much of this is cross-posted to the Facebook group and most of the DAYD-related content makes it to the LJ community as well.
Andy says that he regularly googles DAYD-related search terms and friends or follows everyone who reads and likes his fic. He occasionally posts things about his life with his roommates, with emphasis on how much he says that he does for them (cooking, driving, making costumes). A couple of weeks in, he starts posting about Brittany.
E has shared various anecdotes about living with Andy from September 2011 through the end of March 2012. Andy never works during this time, other than odd jobs from Craigslist, to which he usually drags E, K, and/or their other roommate. Thus he rarely has money for rent, though he somehow manages to purchase makeup and cosplay supplies anyway. When rent is due, Andy tends to fake illnesses or mental distress, or to flip his sleep schedule to avoid everyone. E describes him as, “untidy, unhygenic, lazy, loud, inconsiderate, rude to neighbours,” and says that he “act[s] out on a daily basis.” Andy tries to manipulate E via food deprivation and regularly tries to drive a wedge between E and K and their other roommate.
At the same time, Andy is manipulating the third roommate by encouraging her to be emotionally dependent on him and then rejecting her, vague-blogging about it, and blaming it on her so-called emotional immaturity. The draw-her-in/push-her-away cycle repeats itself several times. He will continue to do this to other women both online and in person over the next several years.
2012
End of March
After several months of this behavior, Andy informs E and K that he wants to move out on his own because their other roommate is “triggering” to him. They simply wish him luck. That night, Andy writes a long e-mail as one of the DAYD characters, criticizing all three of his roommates. He sends it to them and to their friends. The next day, E and K tell Andy that they’re through dealing with his bullshit. Andy responds with an emotional, melodramatic fauxpology and begs them to stay with him, but it’s too little, too late. E and K move out soon after and cut off contact with Andy.
The third roommate stays with Andy for a while.
May
After Andy visits his parents, he and the other roommate move to South Dakota, where they both get jobs at a Christian summer camp outside Rapid City.
July
Andy’s supervisor at the camp allegedly becomes aware of his history and fires him because of it. He and the other roommate go their separate ways, with Andy returning home to live with his parents, who put him into therapy again.
In the next installment, I will backtrack a little to go over Andy’s Tumblr posts and a few other items of note from the LJ and Facebook communities in more detail. Everything will be put in its proper order when it goes into the Google doc; for now, I just wanted to get to the end of E and K’s part of the Andy saga.