outside the glass the whole world is magnified

[lotesse]

Abbey/orangeblossom did an AMA over at her journal about VB/Andy/thanfiction over the weekend. All of her retrospective writing on Bit of Earth is fascinating to me - I was there, but on the outside. I interacted with all these people without knowing what was going down in meatspace. Some of the stuff about LotR being real came through, but it seemed like pastiche play at the time, taking Tolkien's mock-editorial stance very faux-seriously. Spoiler alert, it was not.

Abbey left me some of my first ever fic reviews, back when I was just getting started, and I will always think fondly of her for it. But it's such a strange experience to be poking around in the back of an old fandom and recognize one of Andy's pseuds. I wouldn't engage with his work now, but ngl some of the old VoyagerBabe stuff in Due South gets me there, mashes the buttons nicely. idek.

Comments

[wrabbit]

Interesting. I've always been baffled by the cult of Andy thing and why so many people are still worried about him, considering the amount of public, easily googable data there is about his bad behavior.

[lotesse]

... I got dragged down the hole of Andy!wank, which is I guess quite active again? and it looks like he's actively recruiting, plus apparently soliciting money (!) on tumblr, so clearly there's legit cause for concern.

I think Andy is scary because he's all about screwing with safe spaces. Back in the day, Bit of Earth was pretty much the snuggliest corner of LotR fandom - lots of emphasis on healing and care and getting better, strong body positivity/food positivity vibes, Cult of Nice, ect. And you let down your guard, and Andy was there waiting for you to feel safe enough to be vulnerable. I was ... maybe fifteen? when the Tentmoot crash went down, and I was really upset by it. All the kindness and safety suddenly had to be re-evaluated, and it was hugely alienating and disturbing.

[starlady]

The fact that he keeps doing it is ample proof at how good at it he is. Spreading the word is important, since people won't think to Google after they've fallen in with him.

[lotesse]

I mean, we can link his identities to one another pretty concretely now, but it was just a couple of years back that people connected thanfiction/DAYD with VB/BoE. now THAT was a shocker, god! We'd had no idea, no one had, and he'd amassed a whole new following. Andy's modus operandi is to hide important information, and that always merits careful reporting/datatracking

[staranise]

That entire thing gets weirder every time I come back to it.

But that's the thing about charismatic people: they are really exciting and enthralling and awesome right up until they're not.

[lotesse]

It feels a lot less weird now than it did ten years ago!

It was Victoria I fell in love with, or the idea of her. I adored her the way babyfen adore the decent/mediocre tweenfen they will become - she was writing dark melodramatic schmoop and I thought she was so cool - but of course I was shy and would never have approached her! And Andy was already in the process of abandoning that persona, so I was safe at any rate. I can still remember a lot about the fics, though.

[princessofgeeks]

By the time I got into LOTR fandom this particular episode was over, but I heard about it later. Glad you escaped with as little damage as you did.

[lotesse]

def. a learning experience!

[ilthit]

Ah, the link doesn't work. What did they say about BoE? Is Abbey someone I should recognize? I didn't even know Andy was in the Due South fandom...

[lotesse]

oooh it doesn't, I will fix that, you should read some of this stuff. Abbey is orangeblossom, she was Andy's gf and centrally positioned in the whole cult. arguably the BoE webmistress afaik, it was pretty much her baby and she made a lot of the mod posts. She's the one Andy made make the calls to get the money. He talked through her a lot.

Andy was in Due South as a couple of people, apparently - I knew about VoyagerBabe, but I guess zie was also strwriter at the same time, sockpuppeting. Zie does the thing with Fraser that zie did with Frodo and is doing now with Castiel, with the uncomfortable over-identification. There's a bunch of DS stuff messed around in the cult business, too, including a run for the safety of Canada and some late 90s stuff about adopting deaf canines.

I spent all night last night reading through Abbey/orange's blog and tumblr, because she's done some amazing writing on Events. I was really really happy to see that she and Turimel have also made up.

[ilthit]

Ah, yes, Orangeblossom is a name I recognize. I never really talked to her or Andy despite being a Pony regular. It was all so weird.

[starlady]

Well, that was a boggling few hours of reading. I had been aware of almost none of it. I can only imagine what being involved even peripherally must have been like.

[lotesse]

It was such a tiny fringe fanspace for all that wank! I'd thought all the wild business was going down in LotRiPS, but noooo, the Sam Gamgee fansite was the one to enter the annals of Wank History. The bummer of it was that the site instantly vanished, deleting the boards without trace or notice; 's when I kicked over to LiveJournal, when the BoE Prancing Pony MB went 404.