guardians_song (
guardians_song) wrote2013-06-13 10:22 pm
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Spork Commentary on (Thanfiction) Amy Player’s “Apology Letter”
Unkind? Perhaps. But as it recently went off the Web Archive – and had to be retrieved from screencaps – and I have a ScrapBook backup of the page, I figured now’s as good a time as any.
For the kind-hearted on my f-list, I would like to point out the following:
1 – Thanfiction is a master manipulator. In my politically-incorrect opinion, this is how he manages to get such a fanbase when he sets up shop in a fandom – if writing is, in part, selling your story to the reader, then whoo boy does he have an M.A. in selling stories. As such, if you get drawn in? That’s not because the truth is so compelling, it’s because he’s an expert in making it sound as compelling as possible. I’ll be unpacking his tricks as I go, but still. Do not suspend your disbelief.
2 – He’s known to incorporate elements from others’ stories. So if something rings true to you – does it ring true because it originated with him, or because he knew someone who’d actually gone through something similar very well?
3 – Most importantly in this poor-pitiful-repressed-FTM narrative – Thanfiction’s preferred targets are WELL-KNOWN to be vulnerable, naïve, and somewhat immature young women. And how is he presenting himself here? As a pooooor vulnerable, naïve, and somewhat immature young woman (who turned out to be a desperately angsty and troubled young man straight out of cliché fanfiction). Gee, what a coinkydink. Particularly when it comes to adding those lovely touches of authenticity to your seminal memoir of loss, lunacy, and self-discovery.
To Whom It May Concern
You have known me as Amy Player, as Strwriter, as Voyagerbabe, VB, Victoria Bitter, Mr. Frodo, and Jordan Wood.
I hear he’s leaving out “Merry Brandybuck” and “Orlando Bloom” from that list, at the very least…
I am NOT re-entering fandom by making this statement,
(Amy Player) So you totally won’t associate me with that “Thanfiction” guy due to soon appear in the Harry Potter fandom, right? After all, I’m not re-entering fandom! Pinky swear!
and I want it known from the very beginning that I am doing so completely alone.
Please translate as “I am not at all doing this because people have been screaming for my blood, or at the very least a payback and an apology, for years – nope, not at all.”
No one knows I'm going to make this post,
(Thanfiction) It’s just between me, you, and the entire Internet. I mean – forget that last part, please.
In all seriousness, do you see the manipulation technique there? ‘It’s a secret to everyone.’ He’s trying to make the readers feel like the privileged recipient of a secret by dividing the world into Real Life and Online Life – and, for obvious reasons, that’s a division that appeals to a lot of people in fandom.
I probably need to emphasize that part further because one of Thanfiction’s known manipulation techniques in person is to play the us-against-them card for all he claims to be worth – and that he sets baits in all his self-descriptions by placing great emphasis on what a loyal person he is and how many bad people there are in the world and how everyone he’s talking to is so good and unlike all those mean people who betrayed him. And, in Tumblr activism, he’s now actively fishing for women who have suffered abuse and for young women deeply troubled by pressure from Society In General.
The man is an absolute fucking genius at manipulation and may I add, this is why I start to sidle away from HP discussions that praise the Slytherins’ skills at ~manipulation~ a bit too much, because THIS SORT OF THING IS WHAT POPS INTO MY HEAD .
and I am probably going to catch a lot of hell from people
(Thanfiction) Look at how much I’m sacrificing for you!
This guy is so bloody creepy because he is such a craftsman at what he does. Every. Single. Line. Is spun carefully to evoke a response. He is a genius in a field where no one should ever be a genius.
Alternatively, he’s just very practiced and any schmuck could do the same with his past social career. *smirks*
who have told me that I should just move on with my life
(Thanfiction) Did I mention I’m sacrificing for you?
and not poke the crazy online people.
Two-in-one bonus here! Three-in-one, actually, if I stretch it.
He is simultaneously informing the readers that:
1) those people think you’re crazy (those untrustworthy people, precious)
2) he doesn’t think you’re crazy (since he’s deigning to talk to you)
3) *subtext* you have acted in a manner that would make people consider you “crazy online people” – but it’s all right, he respects you, and he accepts you even though you really aren’t worthy of it.
Note that he specifically referred to “crazy online people”, rather than saying “and not stir up trouble” or some more earthy variant. He chose to waggle his finger at the readers, and he chose to emphasize that he is making a sacrifice to do this.
In my experience, a more typical version of the above clause goes:
‘…and a lot of people would say that I should just move on and not dredge up things better left untouched.’
Note the difference? The people are advising rather than punishing. There is no mention of “crazy online people”. Furthermore, the badness is pinned directly to the “things” done in the past, rather than those crazy people online.
It’s amazing what a few altered words can do…
However, I can't do that.
Note that he emphasizes “I can’t do that” rather than “it would be wrong” – even though his next sentence refers to “basic ethics”. Yes, he literally makes it special that he goes along with basic ethics… even though the very phrase implies that these are minimum grounds for decency.
I’d congratulate him for his guts of steel, but all signs in context point to him having such narcissism that he really believes he can get away with anything with minimal consequences. It doesn’t take guts when you believe you have nothing that you’ll lose.
It is basic ethics that when you have wronged someone, you cannot move on without apologizing,
(Thanfiction) Fuck actually paying them back, though. Or personally apologizing to them rather than turning it into an ~EPIC POST~.
and I have wronged a lot of people.
If I was feeling petty, I would link to some hypnosis-site article about the importance of setting up a lulling rhythm in order to place people’s critical thinking and analysis systems on standby. However, that probably counts as pseudoscience, so I’ll just ask you to keep that in mind when Thanfiction inexplicably strays into the Department of Redundancy Department.
What I am doing here is not a plea for sympathy, nor an excuse, nor any attempt to weasel my way out of anything.
Like the above. Yeah, those are the same thing. Why’s he putting that in an apology note? Simple. Because this isn’t an innocent apology note. This is a narrative, and as such he’s pulling out the tools of parallelism and repetition and all the other tricks in every high-school rhetoric pamphlet.
But since he brought it up, let’s take him at his word and start a count! Every time he pleas for sympathy, excuses his actions, or tries to weasel out of anything, I’ll put down a point of “ALAS! PITY ME!” Let’s get started…
I am 23 now, an adult, and I need to take an adult's responsibilities for the actions of my teen years,
Mm-hmm. Note that he deliberately brings in that he was a teen and now knows better as an adult, rather than just saying “I need to take responsibility for what I did in the past”.
and for the ramifications they have had.
And note that he’s specifying the RAMIFICATIONS separately from the ACTIONS – and if you can’t guess what’s coming later on, this is a red flag that he’s going to be pleading innocent on his actions while giving lip service to how sad he is about all the bad things that happened because of them.
Not only that, but I don't believe that you are all just crazy people.
WHEE! Let’s count what he’s doing here:
1) Specifying NOT that the readers AREN’T crazy people, but that HE BELIEVES that they aren’t crazy people – salvation comes from his opinion, dear readers, and you owe him one!
2) Specifying that you are not all JUST crazy people – you may INDEED be crazy, but there are extenuating circumstances! And who compassionately recognizes these circumstances? Need you even ask?
3) Specifying that you are not ALL just crazy people – there are indeed SOME crazy people in your midst… and who gets to decide which ones of you are crazy? Hem, hem.
Scumbag. So blatant about it, and yet so confident he won’t get caught.
I count about 8/19 people in the replies who fell for it, so… *sigh*
I was one of you once,
Do I even need to point out that he’s talking to them like an AA counselor to alcoholics? ‘I was also one of you sinners upon a time…’
and I know that there are many very decent individuals among you
Forget subtlety on my part – you ass, is it SO hard just to say “you’re good people”?!
Yes, right, because then he wouldn’t be running a divide-and-conquer against the non-“good people”. But overwritten crap sets my teeth on edge on principle, what with my sporking background, and his prose certainly qualifies as such.
who know nothing other than that you were lied to and used, and you deserve to at least hear the other side of the story, both so that you can make your own judgments as rational people,
>implying that Rational People will make the Right Judgment
>implying that they really need to ~understand~ that there was another side to the story about their being taken to the cleaners
>implying that they are poor ignorant fools who “know nothing”
>implying that he holds the power of True Knowledge in his hands
>implying-implying-implying –
[profanity omitted]
and so that you can stop worrying that somewhere, out there, the next post in your favorite fandom might be VB, poised to strike again.
(Amy Player) Eh-heh. I would never do such a horrible thing, all right. Nope. Nopedy-nope-nope. Say, would anyone like to read a totally awesome fic called Dumbledore’s Army and the Year of Darkness? The writer is so very brilliant and so very handsome…
For the record, I have in fact moved on with my life,
(Thanfiction) – straight into HP fandom.
and have spent the last several years trying to make amends of it. I have gotten a lot of therapy,
*spittake*
THERAPY qualifies as MAKING AMENDS? Good grief! PRETEND to have some sense of shame!
and what I am writing here is the product of a huge amount of self-exploration and difficult self-confrontation,
(Thanfiction) – in my mirror, every morning. *blows kisses to self*
as well as professional help and guidance.
I can almost believe that.
By all accounts, therapy does a marvelous job of teaching psychopaths the correct lingo and the proper thought processes to which to pretend. So it would really just be paying for research courses in his favorite career.
I have re-connected with my family,
Heartwarming narrative checklist item #1…
moved away from Hollywood, have and intend to have in the future no contact with any fandom of any kind,
I emphasize that he must really not have thought he’d ever get caught, as surely such a manipulative bozo would have otherwise realized how stupid that line would make him seem in the end.
Also, he’s overcome the addiction, check #2 off…
re-discovered God,
Check #3 off…
changed my name, come to terms with myself as a transgender man, and am now seeking both gender reassignment surgery,
And check #4 off, for he has ~found himself~ and is moving on. And yes, he will say he’s found the love of his life later on. Bleurgh.
I also think this is unhealthy because it glorifies goals that are downright unrealistic in a lot of situations (such as those with abusive parents/abusive religions/abusive pasts in general) and insists that THIS IS THE ENDPOINT FOR ALL YOUR TROUBLES. But that would be going off-topic, and he wouldn’t give a damn, anyway.
normal employment, and a normal, healthy life.
Yes, it’s a real pity, isn’t it? With his talents, he could easily become a politician or televangelist. So much potential wasted. The makers of cheap hair pomade and tacky suits weep for the loss of a prospective top client…
As previously stated, this confession/setting things straight is part of that.
I first came to online fandom shortly after puberty, under the name of Strwriter. I was a passionate Star Trek fan, and the idea that I might be transgender had not yet even vaguely occurred to me.
Welcome to his bringing up his trans status when it’s absolutely irrelevant, which he’ll be doing a lot. Why? Why, because he’ll be hiding behind it as an excuse for all his wrongs, of course.
What I did know was that I was unusually intelligent,
…The first mark of a middling-high IQ is how desperately its bearers brag about it. I’ll be blunt about this. If somebody in the genuine genius range starts bragging, it’s either because they have nothing else to brag about, because they’re socially-incompetent enough that they’re trying to use their IQ as a bludgeoning tool, or because they were career child prodigies.
Thanfiction was not a child prodigy, or we would have heard about it. He’s not socially incompetent – alas. And he certainly thinks he has more to brag about than his intelligence – his “loyalty”, his “courage”, and his words-per-week output, to name just a few of his favorite topics.
Therefore, he reeks to high heaven of being someone who isn’t at the top of the scale and privately knows it. Keep this in mind whenever he brags about how unusually intelligent he is.
and that none of the other girls particularly liked me
*sigh* I don’t like highlighting this comment, because it may well be true, but it’s the phrasing. “None of the other girls” serves to separate him out from the rest, which plays into the us-versus-them dynamic that I discussed earlier, and I have a creeping suspicion he’s angling a hook for some of the socially-ill-adjusted young ladies who might be reading…
That DOESN’T conflict with his actually having suffered through social isolation, mind. But people in general bring up details they have in common with those to whom they’re speaking to build a rapport. And he’s specific about “none of the other girls” when he could have just said “and didn’t get along with other children”. …It just seems off, that’s all. And some of the prior stuff was definitely toying with the audience.
(I did not have any real co-ed opportunities, so all I knew of boys was from books and movies)
Uh…huh. Hands up, who actually believes he was THAT sheltered? Is he trying to play Ariana Dumbledore here? Did his parents keep him locked in the basement whenever he wasn’t at school?
Oh, screw it. This is Thanfiction. He’s probably claimed that at some point.
and that I desperately longed to be accepted. I knew that on the internet people could have all kinds of different identities and be whomever they wanted to be, but I didn't understand much beyond that, and both through age (13) and the kind of blindness only the naively intelligent are capable, I didn't really care.
…This is a genuine slip here. He’s trying to hide it behind the “only the naïvely intelligent” line, but he outright confesses that he didn’t care about anything beyond the freedom to pretend to be whoever he wanted. Watch.
What I knew is that I could type anything to anyone and they would like me.
So, right there, he confesses to an utter lack of conscience and consideration of anyone on the other end of the communication.
This is a Thanfiction quote that ought to be framed. He walks right into it because he doesn’t understand well enough that this isn’t normal. He excuses it with naïveté, but he fails to understand that it wouldn’t be normal even for sheltered 13-year-olds. He really does not grasp that a 13-year-old would be expected to have a rudimentary innate grasp of empathy, honesty, and/or morality.
Guys. I was a sheltered 13-year-old – sheltered 15-year-old, in fact, by the time I got my LJ account. I can testify that I was a blithering idiot with a tendency to rages, ineptitude, and thoughtlessness.
But I never thought for a moment about creating a false identity.
An account I could abandon at will – sure! I’ve always kept that in mind. And if I started anew someplace else, I wouldn’t mention who I’d previously been. But outright lying?
No. I don’t think I would have lied, under such hypothetical circumstances, even if asked to my face. I just would have not responded to the question.
When I lie, I strongly favor lying ‘by omission’ – and it’s mainly because I want to be left alone. I take no pleasure in it, and take a helping of shame and unhappiness. I don’t like lies. I want to be honest. I fantasize about being so honest that I… end up pissing off huge amounts of people… which is why I stick to fantasies on that particular front, really…
Point being, in my blithering, bumbling attempts to get approval and attention (and entertain people), I never once thought of “typing anything to anyone” to make them like me. And Thanfiction doesn’t even seem to realize that anyone in his place could possibly not want to do the same.
As I said. That quote should be framed.
“ALAS! PITY ME!”: 1
This started getting out of hand beyond the usual teenage online self-role-playing
Eh? Tell us more about that, Thanfiction?
(And yes, behold, he’s calling it “usual” in order to lull people into complacency. Ah, Thanfiction? That part is HARD to miss.)
when I discovered an entire new world on the internet...sex. I was aware of the mechanics of it, previously, and that it was something that was very nice for married people to do, and terribly sinful and bad for unmarried people,
(Thanfiction) Look how ~naïve~ I was!
but there had never been any remote appeal to anything about it before. I had been warned that pretty soon, I would be wanting it with boys, but I dismissed that as utterly ridiculous.
It stopped becoming ridiculous as soon as I started discovering increasingly explicit fanfiction. However, it was a discovery far more upsetting to me than simply "oh, THAT'S what all the fuss is about." To my horror, I realized that I was a horribly perverted person. I was thinking about it all the time, but in badbadbad ways.
Thanfiction occasionally likes to do this babytalk thing as a form of cutesy dismissal.
It’s really creepy.
What I know now is that I was thinking about it from the male perspective, with an almost preternatural instinct to the male half of things,
Gee – if you’re trans, one might think that, why, you had “an almost preternatural instinct” for the “male half of things” because you are male. That’s a very interesting way of phrasing it you have there, particularly because you’re bragging. Say, shouldn’t that be “with a natural instinct”?
but at the time, I just knew that like so many things about me before, it wasn't SAME. I became fascinated and obsessed with boys, true, but not the way I was 'supposed' to be. I was tremendously covetous. I wanted to know everything about men's bodies and men having sex in the way that anyone obsesses about something they desperately and unobtainably desire to possess, and simultaneously, I was hungry for information about the women's side of things, hoping to find somewhere in all these women expressing their sexuality whatever it was I was missing. And always, always the hunger for acceptance. For someone to tell me - preferably many someones - that I was wonderful, perfect, fabulous, talented, etc. to counteract the constant sick feeling that something unknown was hideously wrong with me.
Look, I won’t cover this paragraph because I don’t want to touch transwank with a ten-foot pole. And if I question the supposed evidence here, I am certain to get hit with transwank. I did type up a long analysis, but – not worth it.
And that’s precisely what Thanfiction would like, of course.
Fuck. It. All.
Of course, all of the groups that held adult fanfiction were off-limits to a 14 and later 15 and 16 year-old, but that was okay.
He couldn’t be bothered to just lie about age and not about the rest?Plus, not all the groups were off-limits. Fanfiction.net existed, and heaven knows the M rating is carpeted with porn! Does he expect us to believe this?!
(EDIT 6/27/2013: A comment has added more information on that time period:
-In the time period he's referencing, FFN didn't exist. [Just assuming for the sake of argument that he really did get into fandom when he was 14 and oh so very innocent lol.] I think he was born in 1983, so I think he would have been 15 when the Pit was founded, and like all old-internet things, it was small and very unreliable for the first two or three years, so I think it's not implausible that he bypassed FFN in his early years and was hanging out in places with different content rules (spoken or unspoken) - I first got into fanfic on a phBB board, and the terms of service for such sites forbid porn.
As such, I've struck-out the relevant sentence, and I'll concede that Thanfiction may not have had access to scarcely-filtered NC-17 fanfiction without at least having to lie about his age. However, I repeat that he only would have had to lie about his age. Spinning out an entire new identity was completely unnecessary. Certainly, I think he was the only age-limit-evading teenager who made up an identity as a former child sex-slave.)
I needed in desperately, I rationalized, so I'd just make another identity. In retrospect, the choices I made there were psychologically pretty transparent.
In other words, poor Thanfiction didn’t fully understand his reasons for doing it. Funny that he phrases it in terms that could also read “Obviously I was young and stupid – I was careless enough not to cover my ass”.
Also note the emphasis on desperation, so that his “rationalization” is excusable, and on “in retrospect”, in order to establish that he’s not that person any more. That’s true…
I created an identity who was horribly scarred, sick, messed up, and dirty, with a terrible, sexually deviant past...but it wasn't her fault, of course.
…Nowadays he prefers identities who are horribly scarred, sick, messed up, and dirty, with a terrible, brutal, violent, and savage past, BECAUSE HE IS A MAAAAN AND MEN ARE VIOLENT AND SAVAGE AND GRIMDARK!11! See? Totally different person.
Thus, I thought, I could explore as much as I needed to, and no one would hate me for being so hungrily curious about THAT,
And nobody questioned why somebody with a “terrible, sexually deviant past” knew nothing about sex?
nor be shocked and hate me if I let slip any clues how messed up I was about it. Of course, I tried not to let that show, faithfully parroting the other women both in conversations and in fic, so that hopefully I could just find out what was wrong with me and how to fix it without them knowing.
Ever heard of “lurk moar”? As in “something that doesn’t require the former-child-sex-slave shtick”?
Yes, I took it too far...WAY too far, including visits in person and telephone conversations behind my parent's back.
Yeah, I’d say that went WAY, WAY too far at the “visits in person” point. Master of understatement, he is. Notice how he acknowledges it just enough to gloss over it?
But at the time, it seemed justified.
“ALAS! PITY ME!”: 2
After all, I couldn't let anyone know how bad I really was,
“Couldn’t”? Past tense? |P
nor could I stop what seemed my only hope for finding a way to fix it, as it was the only thing in my life that addressed sexuality at all.
“ALAS! PITY ME!”: 3
“ What I am doing here is not a plea for sympathy, nor an excuse, nor any attempt to weasel my way out of anything. ”
Funny how the above two sentences look an awful lot like “excuses”, “pleas for sympathy”, and “attempts to weasel his way out of things”. Actually, if I incremented it EVERY time he pled for sympathy, I’d be literally incrementing it every other sentence. So I’m only doing it every time that gets really blatant as a get-out-of-trouble card.
But since I’m doing an analysis of manipulation – he’s playing a song on the proverbial violin about how isolated he was and how this was his only, only hope and how he was exploring his sexuality. I wonder if he’s intentionally attempting to appropriate the cliché gay narrative? As a slash writer, he’d know it by heart. Funny how he uses the specific phrase “sexuality” as opposed to “sex” or even “eroticism”.
Looking back at some of the stories I was writing then, I find it almost tragically laughable –
Oh, woe, he’s a ~tragedy~. I repeat – he’s spinning a narrative here, and the narrative, as I said, is that of “ a pooooor vulnerable, naïve, and somewhat immature young woman (who turned out to be a desperately angsty and troubled young man straight out of cliché fanfiction) ”.
there is remarkably good writing
Let’s start another count!
“UNUSUALLY INTELLIGENT”: 3
interspaced with saccharine pap cut and pasted straight out of the cliche generator.
(Thanfiction) Now I prefer grimdark pap cut and pasted straight out of the cliché generator. ‘Cos I’m a MAN.
You can almost sort it sentence by sentence into "VB writing" and "VB Fitting In".
Oh, if only all of us had the gall to claim only our good youthful accomplishments as our own and dismiss the rest as fitting in.
“ALAS! PITY ME!”: 4
Then, at 16, I found slash. I had been in entirely het groups previously, who were very scornful of slash, and had simply dismissed it as BAD,
Much like he’d do on fanficrants.
Can’t forget that the people who remembered him at this point were mainly slash fans. Again – us-versus-them! He’s trying to feed people’s already-existing persecution complexes, start new ones, and emphasize that his first identity was one of those Outsiders, but he then he became One of You.
Marketing sobs for the loss of one of its geniuses. Admittedly, not for the multiple convictions for fraud that he’d undoubtedly rack up…
but then I stumbled across my first one by accident, as it was unmarked. Like the old children's game of hot and cold,
What is with his obsession with childish things?
Yes, I know. He laid it out already, the idiot. It’s so he can cast himself as “ an identity who was horribly scarred, sick, messed up, and dirty, with a terrible, [morally] deviant past...but it wasn't [his] fault, of course. ” And if he casts himself as childlike, then he can prey on nurturing instincts.
I practically heard my psyche whisper "warmer!"
Notice that he’s being carried along by forces outside his control. He’s casting himself as the victim.
Fucking brilliant fucker. I just realized – he’s making HIMSELF into the Woobie Villain . This is the exact damn narrative I laid out. What’s more, he’s inviting everyone to act out the Empath McWhiteknight role with him. And he’s also spinning his worst acts as the Sympathetic Psychopath.
The concept of homosexuality was even vaguer to me than that of sex had been. I knew it was men who did sinful sex things with other men, or women who did sinful sex things with other women, and that it was a lifestyle choice that they made. But here COMMA! for the first time, were stories about people wrestling with "I'm different, it's my shameful secret, it's about sex and gender, and I'm compelled to lead a double life to hide it."
Yes, we really believe you’re COMPELLED to lead your double (triple, quadruple) lives, Thanfiction.
“ALAS! PITY ME!”: 5
All remaining vestiges of moral restraint went flying out the window COMMA! as I had to get into the slash community.
“ What I am doing here is not a plea for sympathy, nor an excuse, nor any attempt to weasel my way out of anything. ”
“ All […] moral restraint went flying out the window, as I had to ”
“ALAS! PITY ME!”: 6
And you know something? I, and many other people, managed perfectly well without false identities. This sounds pretty if you believe his claims, but it falls apart the moment you bring in ANY experience.
Same with the things he mentions in his “male perspective” paragraph, but as I said, I’m avoiding transwank.
Surely IT was there.
(Thanfiction) The dead parrot!
This was closer than anything I'd yet found. But it had to be hidden even more carefully, so the lies grew thicker and faster, and I got better at them, discovering refinements such as "if you're an American, you're a smarty-pants, if you're British, you're just cool"
Pandering to the Anglophiles, much?
(Thanfiction) Oi’m not like that now. Oi’ll have you know, now Oi’m OIRISH!
at blending just enough truth into my fictions, and playing different stories to different people.
*eyeroll* “At blending just enough truth into my fictions”… currently known as “confessing just enough to seem honest”.
The good news of this phase was that it opened me up for the first time to the amazing discovery that God created more variety among humanity than Heterosexual Male and Heterosexual Female, and that there were people out there who were tolerant of that.
Yep, he’s poaching the gay narrative. For his trans narrative, mind, for which it makes little sense. Yes, I know he identified as a lesbian before identifying as a trans male. But he mentions the word “lesbian” three times, twice in the context of channeling male characters. The other is in a certain infamous line that I won’t spoil for you. He’s trying to spin this as Being Male and screwing it up in the process…
Well, unless you think he’s trying to get all the benefits of the Tragic Young Gay Man narrative that fandom eats up without having to be an actual gay man. But would Thanfiction ever do such a sleazy thing? (Hint: YES.)
It also, however, messed me up in a lot of ways.
“ What I am doing here is not a plea for sympathy, nor an excuse, nor any attempt to weasel my way out of anything. ”
“ALAS! PITY ME!”: 7
Already socially awkward, I became flat out incompetent off the internet.
Call bullshit. The internet can help make people more competent. But, of course, that doesn’t fit with the victim narrative.
Already having serious problems with out of control behavior from the hormones of puberty (estrogen and I DO NOT MIX)
Yeah, yeah, you’re so very male. It’s not like women ever have trouble with their hormones, right? Oh, wait.
I was further driven to half-psychosis both by the stress of maintaining these webs and by the lack of sleep from regularly spending entire nights on the internet with my new-found hope and curse.
(Tumblr users) Cry us a river; that’s our normal state.
…Actually, that explains a LOT about Tum- *chased down by an angry mob*
“ALAS! PITY ME!”: 8
Already having serious problems with the truth (never easy for someone who is lied to every day by their own body, as I've found out) lying was becoming more second nature than telling the truth as I tried to keep the increasingly growing spider's web out of my offline life.
Don’t give personal information! Problem solved!
Also, that’s a dangling modifier, unless he’s saying the lying was the object already having problems with the truth.
More importantly… as I’m doing a line-by-line analysis, I need to point out that he’s spinning HIMSELF as the real victim of HIS “webs” of lies. Woooow, that takes guts. WOW.
I also at that time started to hate and resent my parents, my upbringing, and my religion with a desperate fervor. THESE people were far closer to understanding what I was,
Us-versus-them, particularly playing on those estranged from their parents. Lovely man, isn’t he.
and the slashed characters were far closer to BEING what I was (ironically, I identified far more fully with the most well-written male slash characters than I ever had with female characters)
*SNAPS* YES! YES! SO DO I!
And you know WHY?! Because the WELL-WRITTEN ones get to be actual HUMAN BEINGS rather than a collection of touchy-feely stereotypes! MALE characters don’t have to be NURTURING and FEELING and SENSITIVE and ALL THAT CRAP! They can do whatever they want, whenever they want, and wherever they want! They can hold actual OPINIONS without having to apologize to everyone! They can be assholes without having to come up with shitloads of rationalizations! They can be cold and unfeeling and get APPLAUDED for it!
Female characters almost always have to have a ~core of femininity~ somewhere under their tough shell, just waiting for the right man or wounded child to bring it out. Oh, and that tough shell’s probably only there because of their hard past and their tragic betrayals and bullshit and bullshit and bullshit. But male characters, that’s optional. They can be assholes if they like, and people may hate them for it, but no one questions the fundamental existence of males who are pure assholes. With women, at the very least it’s that they’re ~*~*~*~*~*~*VICTIMS OF THE PATRIARCHY*~*~*~*~*~*~ and so they don’t know any better. Because that’s what women are. Powerless, pitiful victims. And men, why, they get to have whatever personalities they want – and to want them. Because they’re actual full people.
…I’m done. I’m done. Never mind.
than anyone around me, and they all hated and feared their families, the real world, and the Christian Church.
…Okay, what did I say about us-versus-them? :D Thank you for laying it out for me, Thanfiction! Way to make the divide-and-conquer explicit!
Lessons learned and internalized with the uniquely stupid fervor of the very young.
“ What I am doing here is not a plea for sympathy, nor an excuse, nor any attempt to weasel my way out of anything. ”
Looks like all three.
“ALAS! PITY ME!”: 9
Sadly for me, most people who are that phenomenally messed up at such a young age and with so little experience are usually sniffed out and helped for what they are very quickly.
They ARE? Funny, I’ve seen quite the opposite. Occasionally with excruciating consequences.
But wow, congratulations for placing the burden on OTHERS to help you out with your little pathological liar problem, turning it into a tearjerker, and all but crying ‘Where were the aaaaadults?’ Oh, and good job on hiding behind your “phenomenally messed up” status and pleading that you were so very inexperienced, Mr. I’m-not-making-excuses.
“ALAS! PITY ME!”: 10
I was a little too good for my own good,
“UNUSUALLY INTELLIGENT”: 4
and although occasionally people caught me as a liar, no one ever saw past all the facades that were hiding THE BIG SECRET...
IN ALL CAPS…
that I still didn't even know the answer to.
Psst! It’s called “rank sociopathy”. Happy now?
And again, he’s making himself out to be the tragic figure. Not, you know, the people to whom he lied. ‘No one heard my pleas for help!’ That’s how he’s structuring this.
At 17, I entered college, my first experience
I’d start a ~LIKE A VIRGIN~ count if it wouldn’t require me to go back and count so many times.
Ah, hell. I’m not as lazy as I think.
~LIKE A VIRGIN~: 14 up to this point, now 15.
…And that’s a conservative count.
simultaneously with formalized education, with a full, co-ed social structure, and with living away from home...while leading a quintuple life online,
QUINTUPLE? Sweet gad, I gave him too much credit by only going up to quadruple! I mean – What? Does anyone know where the other three lives came from?!
still struggling with my unknown terrible thing, clinically deranged to the point of paranoid episodes once a month, and with a psychotic, obsessive need to make people like me.
“ALAS! PITY ME!”: 11
Pointing out manipulations is starting to tire me out. But I’ll add that he’s angling for sympathy with the “psychotic, obsessive need” by adding that he was also “deranged” and “struggling”. Oh, poor woobie, driven to insanity by his demons. Watch.
“… while leading a quintuple life online [driven by] a psychotic, obsessive need to make people like me. ”
Not so touching any more, is it?
Oh, and I was abruptly adopted as the pet of an egotistical manic-depressive failed artiste with delusions of grandeur
(Thanfiction) MY ROLE MODEL! 8D
who was simultaneously the most loved and hated professor in the theater department,
(Thanfiction) LIKE ME! 8D
(In a deleted comment thread on this post which I can’t access, he apparently claimed to be the founder, in many ways, of LOTR slash fandom. No, I’m not kidding. I think he really does have delusions of being the most loved and hated fan ever, so I’m calling deliberate parallelism.)
And, as a note, he’ll drop this in a moment. Why? Here’s my guess. It doesn’t fit into the troubled young male narrative to be shaped and exploited by a man. That marks him as submissive and a man’s “pet”, which really doesn’t fit with what he wants. He wants to be a well-meaning soul who of course gets to act authoritative (particularly towards troubled young females) now that he’s all healed.
and by the most bohemian inner core of theater people,
Divide-and-conquer against anyone who could testify as to his behavior back then. This dismissive behavior culminates MUCH later on in an unspeakably foul libel. But we’ll get to that when it happens.
including trying to have a boyfriend with a semi-gothic Australian.
“Trying to have a boyfriend with a semi-gothic Australian”? *spittake* What, were you two trying to adopt one?
Yeah, that's right, I was in theater on top of it, having never been in any actual production since a summer-camp-type thing at the age of 10. If I had ever wondered what it must have been like watching the Hindenburg, ring-side seats to my mental health that year must have been pretty close.
Hooray, making the loss of three dozen people into a sideshow to your pity festival! :D SUCH a sensitive and feeling soul, folks!
The lying reached nuclear levels, and I was starting to lose touch with reality and begin facing an actual nervous collapse,
“ What I am doing here is not a plea for sympathy, nor an excuse, nor any attempt to weasel my way out of anything. ”
“ALAS! PITY ME!”: 12
He really thinks the readers can’t remember these things, can he?
when "salvation" came to me. Oh, Jesus Christ, if I could undo ONE mistake...
“ALAS! PITY ME!”: 13
No one is probably going to believe me,
You’re right. We don’t.
But by anticipating the readers’ reactions, he tries to dissipate it by showing self-awareness. ‘It’s the truth, guys! Honest.’
but I can't even remember her name, though her face is as clear in my memory as if she were sitting next to me. She was the Priestess, and she had all the answers.
Eheheheh. Funny thing here. Remember what I said about being dominated by a man? Well, there’s nothing wrong in the troubled young male narrative with a man being led astray by a WOMAN. So that’s who he’s going to focus on. It was this WOMAN who led him into deceit and decadence and derangement.
Yes, the Christian Church, my parents, and their narrow thinking were the problem. Yes, there was something different about me, but no, I wasn't messed up. Yes, I felt oddly divorced from my body, and increasingly from reality.
*under breath* Not that it’s necessarily a trans thing, but he has a ~narrative~ to tell.
Yes, I had serious problems at this point being ABLE to tell the truth, because everything I said might endanger another lie and make someone not like me and/or find out. Yes, I felt terribly alone. But all this wasn't because something was wrong with me, it was because I was special, wonderful, gifted, a miracle, even.
Funny. This is exactly how Thanfiction draws in his “cult” members, by all accounts.
Let’s just say I’m skeptical about whether he got fed this line or was the one feeding it.
I was a Paladin, she told me, a spiritual and psychic warrior capable of channeling the spirits of others...ghosts, demons, the living, the dead, even the non-human.
Demons are non-human, you twit.
The Church would never accept me, but The Goddess knew what I really was and loved me, and the Priestess would help me love and understand myself as a rare lesbian Paladin.
rare lesbian Paladin
The reason I felt divorced from my body is that I could separate from it to allow the souls of others...it's also why I felt so connected to the male characters from my writings, because male spirits regularly flowed through me because my lesbian energies were very compatible to them.
*tries not to laugh too hard*
More seriously, this was the line HE fed people. Now he’s blaming it on a woman. Mm-hmm. He also tried to claim Amy Player was his evil twin sister when the Thanfiction account first got found out. Lovely how he tries to offload all his evils on a female figure, isn’t it?
Already near my wit's end, I swallowed it, hook, line, and pentacle.
“ What I am doing here is not a plea for sympathy, nor an excuse, nor any attempt to weasel my way out of anything. ”
“ALAS! PITY ME!”: 14
It was the closest thing I'd ever had to an answer, and most tellingly, I thought, she had approached ME with it, telling ME my darkest shames and where they had come from.
Yeah, I heard you did that to a lot of people.
And in all harshness, I think Thanfiction fished for answers and steered any such “Priestess” towards the ones that sounded coolest. He’s describing HIS methods here. While it’s entirely possible the Priestess mentored him in his bullshit, I don’t think he actually bought into any such lines – because, as I’ve noted, he’s a controlling personality, remember? He’d probably chew his hand off before submitting to any external forces. On the other hand, he is a very good actor…
At the time, it seemed an unquestionable miracle. Now, I see that I was flying psychological flags and signs miles high to anyone who knew how to read them.
Oh, poor Thanfiction! So naïve! So innocent!
~LIKE A VIRGIN~: 16
All of this, of course, had to be carefully guarded against anyone who was Closed Minded, but the pagans have had to keep their secrets for millennia, so that seemed okay. I got drawn in deeper and deeper without even realizing it, and in hindsight, I honestly can't say how I managed to start believing that faeries and gnomes and dark wizards and all these non-human creatures straight out of Dungeons and Dragons were real...and talking to her through me. But I did. Profoundly.
Funny, Abbey Stone says the same thing.
Except, for her, there was no “priestess”. Just you.
By the time Lord of the Rings came out in winter of 2001, I had all but completely dropped out of the real world, existing only for my online web and my life as a Paladin.
So you were a proto-World Of Warcraft player? *attacked by angry mob of WoW addicts*
I was spending weeks alone in my apartment, skipping classes, ignoring friends and family. My Priestess had told me that it was yet another example of how The Sacred has to be slipped in to the truth of the ages in a way unbelievers can handle, but that Tolkien wasn't just making a metauniversal statement. Nae, the Red Book of Westmarch was more real than the Christian Bible, being a single faded volume found by the Professor and painstakingly translated to prove the truth of a history lost to the brutal censorial axes of the post-Constantine Romans.
*cracks up* This is, in fact, the line of bullshit he was feeding people! He’s just trying to claim it didn’t originate with him! It was just ~the Priestess~!
…Actually, it’s really creepy how he started blaming a female personality even before he completely broke with Amy Player.
I was such a strong Paladin, in fact, that I could probably call forth a vision of the finding...
The finding? By WHO? Gollum?
*cracks up* Please tell me he didn’t just confess to first “channeling” Gollum!
(Thanfiction) We wants attention, precious! We WANTS it!
and, of course, I did, which proved it. But you know what? I can now say that I can tell every one of you to call forth a vision of Mickey Mouse beating an elephant with a bunch of carrots, and you all will. It's the human imagination. A miracle in itself, yes, but...
And that summarizes Thanfiction very well, doesn’t it?
If another Thanfiction mega-wank ever arises, I’ll need to prepare icons of exactly that. But should it be a rare lesbian paladin Mickey Mouse beating an elephant with a bunch of carrots? That would truly convey the WTFery…
Well, anyway. I was still keeping those lives mostly separate,
His life as a Paladin and his life as an online fan, apparently.
So, from his POV, did LOTR fanfic count as historical fiction?
and I got into Lord of the Rings fandom surprisingly separate from my increasingly bizarre spiritual journey through same. I was already active in Sharpe fandom, Sean Bean was in Lord of the Rings...and when I followed the line, I found an enormously active slash fandom. In I went, discovering that here was a place where my intensive immersion recently into fantasy thinking served my pen even more praise than my experience with 18th century living history had served me in Hornblower!
*SPITTAKE*
*CRACKS UP*
That was his earlier charade, you see. Previous lives as soldiers.
(EDIT 6/27/2013: A comment informed me that he might have been referring to a "tween summer job doing historical re-enactment in Colonial Williamsburg." That makes more sense. My reason for assuming the past-life explanation was a text file that I came across while reading through the VB-wank archives, which appears to show several (friends-locked?) posts from Thanfiction on his
victoriabitter account. One post in particular is answering a meme, in which he said:
53. [Dream of mutilated bodies, blood, death, and gore?] Thanks to a combination of military past-life memories, love of militaria, and a nasty temper, yes.
So I assumed, especially given his later infatuation with militant grimdarkery, that he was literally claiming to have 'living experience' with 18th-century history. However, as the alternative explanation makes more sense in light of Thanfiction's attempt to claim here that all the other-lives stories stemmed from psychosis, it is probably correct.)
The formation of BitofEarth the mailing list and website went exactly as it appeared...honestly, the best records of that are to be found on the list itself. All the shenannigans with me were happening on chats, my livejournal, and emails having nothing to do with BoE yet, and everything to do with what they always had: PLEASE VALIDATE ME!
Add “Tumblr” to that list, and it fits pretty well to his present antics.
And sweet gad, here we turn back to reality, and here the manipulation starts up again…
“ALAS! PITY ME!”: 15
Spring of 2002, I had what I now consider the beginning of my legal separation from reality. It's okay, we've had counseling now, and the relationship has been repaired, but 2002-03 were really close to the brink of divorce, and it began in March.
A rather glib description of a psychotic break…
I had been recently informed by my Priestess that a halfling spirit from the past would soon contact me, that he was trapped in a terrible darkness, and that only I could save him.
I suspect this should be read as “I decided to come up with a story where I played Link to Merry Brandybuck’s Princess Zelda, and went fishing around for patsies.”
I was already close friends with Orangeblossom, (though I am going to leave her out of this statement as much as possible, as I AM doing this alone and am not going to speak for her)
*snork* Possibly because, if I recall correctly, he was on the edge of a break-up with her. Yeah, would be kind of inconvenient if she turned evidence against him upon hearing how he’d spun their relationship…
and what happened next is already a matter of public record, and, fairly perhaps, ridicule. Yes, I did believe that I was channeling Merry, and then others. I believed it completely, and letting my desperate ego hide my low self-esteem, I believed it all the more because I didn't think I was good enough to make up anything as compelling as it became.
…Wow, he has to stroke his ego even when he’s trying to tell us all how insecure he was.
“UNUSUALLY INTELLIGENT”: 5
June of 2002, I went to meet Orangeblossom in person in Oregon. It was a deeply profound experience, getting to "channel freely' with someone else in person,
(Thanfiction) REAL-LIFE PATSY! 8D
and there it wound up taking a still-further turn into the bizarre. Focusing on trying to 'reach' Frodo, I found myself 'bringing' Elijah Wood by accident. I since understand that what I was really doing was an uncontrolled mix of free-association and role-playing, but at the time, I thought it was all very real.
In other words, he’s covering his ass for the story he told, while admitting that it was bullshit. But not HIS fault, mind! ACCIDENTAL bullshit!
“ What I am doing here is not a plea for sympathy, nor an excuse, nor any attempt to weasel my way out of anything. ”
What were you saying about the latter two, Thanfiction?
“ALAS! PITY ME!”: 16
Though even I was reluctant at first to believe it could be possible to have channeled a living human being, my doubts were shattered when things I had "channeled" were proven to be true in the DVD release and in interviews that hadn't occurred yet. What had actually happened, of course, is that I already knew a near-fanatical amount about that young man from being a fan to the level I was, and any good profiler can tell you that someone with a gift for getting into the heads of others (like a writer) and enough information can often predict other people's actions to a creepy extent.
Yes, yes, you’re so very gifted.
“UNUSUALLY INTELLIGENT”: 6
Yet from my point of view, it was irrefutable evidence, and this one felt more right than anything previous (no surprise, as I was for the first time role-playing a human male, near my own age, struggling with sexual identity issues
Funny, I thought your version of Elijah Wood was gay, not trans. Kind of two very different things there… -_____-
and trying to juggle what people expected of him with his true self).
(Thanfiction) Mainly people expecting me not to be a sociopath.
But yes, this is “irrefutable evidence” that he’s trying to glom onto all the tragedy and angst of a Generic Gay Narrative for his own tale.
Notice that at this point he’s segued entirely into the “ desperately angsty and troubled young man straight out of cliché fanfiction ” that I described? Where’d all that naïveté go? Ah, right – because a male can’t play the ~LIKE A VIRGIN~ shtick, because that corresponds to stereotypical feminity, and Thanfiction just loves stereotypes.
Thankfully, the angst is covered by “ALAS! PITY ME!”, so I don’t need a new count. I just need you to remember that line I keep repeating…
I believed heart and soul that I was channeling the spirit of Elijah Wood. I have tried to explain this away as just "role playing that got out of hand" before, or as "poking the tinhats", but that's just excuse-making to try and hide how phenomenally fucked up I was.
“ What I am doing here is not a plea for sympathy, nor an excuse, nor any attempt to weasel my way out of anything. ”
“ALAS! PITY ME!”: 17
Being Elijah gave me the ability to be a boy, and I clung to it with a fervor I didn't know I was capable of, nor was willing to admit to. I believed that something had clearly gone wrong with the Paladin powers, because "Amy" was less and less willing to return (given the option, I was loathe to be a lesbian girl again)
Yes, why be a girl when you can be a man and so hook lost young women looking for a wise mentor figure/daddy-substitute?
*twiddles thumbs* Not that I’m suggesting that he had anything but honest motivations for coming out as trans, of course. Not at all. …Gee, Mr. Transwank, what big teeth you have! *runs*
and Elijah was slowly splitting off a second consciousness from himself and taking over my body. This is about as far from reality as it ever got, and lasted through all of 2003. Yes, I thought I was the split-off duplicate channeled soul of Elijah Wood the entire time I was planning and attempting to execute Project Elanor and all the other BitofEarth events.
Yes, that is crazy.
Yes, that is fucked up.
No, I don't think that absolves me.
Except he so obviously thinks it does. But thanks for the new quote, Thanfiction.
As Elijah, I tried to deal with the 'terrible situation' of being split off from myself and trapped in a girl's body (the closest I had yet come to confronting being transgender, as the only other exposure I had to the concept was MsAllegro, who sets off every NO alarm in ANYONE'S book)
Nice divide-and-conquer against one of your former friends, pal. And yes, I know MsAllegro’s background, but he is in NO place to preach about setting off “ every NO alarm in ANYONE’S book ”. Honor amongst thieves, anyone?
as best I could, even taking some people 'into my confidence' to 'tell them the truth.' Which was spinning farther and farther away from what anyone else on this planet knew as reality.
I also got BitofEarth into HUGE trouble from a fire triangle of three different major problems, all of which I am owning up to freely.
(Thanfiction) Welcome to my nonexistent sense of shame!
1: I was relying on a lot of "knowledge" which I wasn't aware I was making up.
Uh-huh. What was that about owning up to it, these things not absolving you, and about this not being an excuses-excuses session?
“ALAS! PITY ME!”: 18
This was primarily about the movie industry, publicity, and my "friends" on the cast and crew. Again, using the profiling principle, I was right enough of the time that I got an amazingly long way
“UNUSUALLY INTELLIGENT”: 7
before it began crumbling around my ears, but in the end, the house (or the real world) always wins.
Funny that you should use a gambling metaphor for something you claim was not intentionally seeing how far you could go before it crashed.
2. I was at this point completely unraveled from what was and was not true about my own life, and what I believed about myself and my past could change from moment to moment. This did not engender what you would exactly call a spirit of trust, which is something very important when you are working on a project of that magnitude.
He admits he was a youthful pathological liar, that he knew how to feed different stories to different people, and that he was an expert in mixing truth with lies, and now he insists that noooo, this time it was unintentional changing from moment-to-moment?
You really think we’re stupid, don’t you, Thanfiction?
“ALAS! PITY ME!”: 18
3. Aware that I had lost everyone in my previous life - whether that was as Amy OR Elijah - I hung a crazed amount of importance on BitofEarth, the people in it, and them all continuing to like me at all costs. Especially Orangeblossom, whom I had fallen in love with by then.
(Thanfiction) It’s your fault! It’s all your fault for making me like you!
In order to try and maintain this, I took on ridiculously more than I could handle.
“ What I am doing here is not a plea for sympathy… ”
“ALAS! PITY ME!”: 19
If someone wanted it, I promised it. If I could find a way to do it - lie, cheat, hook, or crook - I did it, or if I couldn't, I came up with an excuse that made it not my fault.
And you still are!
I delegated my hugely overloaded plate to others, but when they weren't happy with the work, or if something went wrong, I took it back onto myself rather than confront them or drive them, even if I already had more than I could handle.
*plays a tune on the smallest violin in the world, then smashes it to pieces*
“ALAS! PITY ME!”: 20
I considered the success of Orangeblossom's and everyone else's whims at BitofEarth to be the stuff of life or dearth,
*snerk* Dear me, misspellings are not good for drama…
and had completely lost all perspective. And if you're fighting for your life, not a convention or organization, you'll do anything, say anything, promise anything, and prop yourself up on a house of cards hoping you can find glue before the wind blows.
May I summarize the above three points? All the lies involved were purely accidental, and his screwing things up was because people put way too much pressure on poor little Thanfiction, who only wanted to be liked. It wasn’t his fault. He was just a martyr.
Manipulating bastard.
And yes, he explicitly turned it into a matter of life or death. Oh sweet gad. Here you see part of Later Thanfiction starting to appear – once he adopted the Andrew Blake identity, he made EVERYTHING into a matter of life and death. Did he tell you about that time he fought for the IRA, and that time that he rescued a woman from a hurricane (apparently a scene out of the Millennium Trilogy), and that time he got into a claymore battle, and –
Yeeeeeeeah…
Well, as everyone knows, the wind blew big time and I didn't have any glue. Seeing the sure destruction of TentMoot and the exposure of the lies I had told to try and pull it off, I tried to kill myself.
*twiddles thumbs* Funny, Orangeblossom herself has a different take.
TL;DR? When TentMoot fell through, he faked a suicide attempt to get into a 48-hour lockup so that all the blame would fall on the heads of his “friends”.
“ [H]e had mostly taken NyQuil Liquicaps, Advil and multivitamins.”
And his claims about being so desperate to please people?
“ When we visited him in the hospital, he said he’d “panicked and snapped” because he was so hurt and devastated. He maintained that he had gotten a donation that really did fall through, all the way up until after the next core switch. At that point, it became my fault, because I had “pushed Jordan so far” and he had been so terribly desperate to please me.”
Yep. Excuses and manipulation.
Scumbag.
I am actually very thankful for this, as the mandatory rest in the mental hospital was my first step towards re-connecting with reality.
No, BitofEarth was not a scam. I was never trying to get anything out of anyone, and I have never profited so much as a dime from any cast or crewmember, nor anyone associated with New Line Cinema.
What’s that name of that “charity” of yours, Thanfiction? “It’s About Power”?
As a matter of fact, Orangeblossom and myself spent ourselves into destitution and still OWE about $1,200 to Jeanine in money she spent on us because we were pumping every dime into BoE, and about $100 to the Kiwi's for money they spent on themselves because we had abjectly nothing. I was never trying to con anyone, or to get anything out of it, even attention, as anyone who was in that inner circle can recall that I ducked the spotlight as though it were poison.
Yes, but I hear that was because you were trying to avoid the whole ‘Hobbit Cult’ thing coming to light.
All I wanted was to make a lot of people happy,
“ What I am doing here is not a plea for sympathy, nor an excuse, nor any attempt to weasel my way out of anything. ”
“ALAS! PITY ME!”: 21
but I did it in a way that was maladjusted to say the least, and with the facts as truly beyond the bizarre as they are, I can certainly understand and hold no malice against those who could see no possibility but a deliberate scam.
Do I really need to point out the manipulation here?
After the fall of BitofEarth, I tried a home-based business selling credit-card readers with a guy who I'd met at the mental home, but he WAS a scam artist,
Karma, vot ist zat?
and I was soon standing on the sidewalk in San Dimas with Diamond, Orangeblossom, an eviction notice, and not a red cent to my name. Begging at gas stations for money and gas to get us there, we made it into Hollywood, where we crashed on a friend's couch for a few days until we could scrape together the money taking pictures as costumed characters on the Boulevard to get a cheap motel room.
We lived hand to mouth that way for all of 2004 and the first half of 2005, trying to repair our lives. The maelstrom that destroyed BitofEarth, horrifying and painful as it was, was, in the end, I believe, the work of God.
You mean that maelstrom which YOU caused.
Unless you’re calling yourself God.
“ What I am doing here is not a plea for sympathy, nor an excuse, nor any attempt to weasel my way out of anything . ”
You REALLY think the readers are BLIND, don’t you.
“ALAS! PITY ME!”: 22
It also destroyed the 'duplicate Elijah' and I had to start over looking myself hard in the face. It was about this time that we separated from Diamond, who had begun having fits of temper where she would bite and attack us and herself, as well as stealing alcohol. We have heard several stories about her going through quite the litany of roommates with several different horror stories of lies and dozens of identities on her part, but I don't trust gossip, and it's not my business anyway. I haven't seen her in over 3 years, and I hope that she is well and has gotten the help she so clearly needed.
BULL. FUCKING BULL.
Here’s a quote from the comments:
“ Di was a innocent and beautiful young woman who bought EVERYTHING you BOTH said. YOU had her moved to LA and used her until you didn't need her anymore. She would have NEVER been in that situation if it wasn't for BOTH of your lies. ”
Diamond also comments on Abbey Stone’s blog. She was a VICTIM, did NONE of the things of which he accuses her here – and the only benefit of this section is that you can see here how Thanfiction treats those who are no longer useful to him.
The only thing that is making me not go into a blind rage is how fucking TRANSPARENT it is. It is so bad that it’s a JOKE. ‘ I heard from several different sources that she worships the Devil, devours baby kittens at high noon, and had carnal knowledge of a sperm whale, a chicken, and an Arkansas governor – but I don't trust gossip, and it's not my business anyway. ’ For the love of GAD. I’m not exaggerating by much.
Oh, and –
“ with several different horror stories of lies and dozens of identities on her part ”
How interesting to see you describe yourself, Thanfiction!
Terribly afraid at being pinned as a con artist when I hadn't stolen from anyone,
Oh really.
and seized with panic attacks at the thought of being made to live as Amy Player, a girl, I tried to adopt a new identity so that I could sort myself out while still living as a male.
What’s that? Yet more excuses?
“ What I am doing here is not a plea for sympathy, nor an excuse, nor any attempt to weasel my way out of anything. ”
“ALAS! PITY ME!”: 23
No movie stars this time, no big deal, just a drifting 'actor, writer, jack-of-all-trades' with a mysterious past he wouldn't talk about.
*rolls eyes* And did you get that identity out of a romance novel? Was the studly Viking, the decadent rake, or the hard-hearted nobleman next on your agenda? Oh, right – you choose “Highland warrior”. *HEADDESK*
I got a lot of therapy,
(Thanfiction) *scribbling furiously* So WHAT do I say to the vulnerable young women searching for father figures, again?
(Therapist) Er… is it too late for me to refund your money and flee?
found out about transgender, saved up money, got an apartment, and started looking at building up a long-term life again.
In October, an opportunity presented us to move to Toronto to help manage a small cafe and live in an attached apartment as roommates with the owners. We felt that this was a perfect opportunity, as not only could we fully move back into the 'normal' workforce, but we could get a fresh start and be really honest with people, as we didn't have pre-existent relationships there created under a need to hide my insanity or my gender situation.
(Thanfiction) It’s yoooooour fault for making me dishonest! You! You! You!
We told people that we were moving out East, flying to New York (this was true, flying to Buffalo and meeting our employers there saved over half on tickets) so that we could leave that far behind and live like normal people.
God, however, does not allow Jonah to flee Ninevah. The Toronto opportunity was a scam, and we were stranded in Buffalo. In early February. Of this year. Nothing makes you look at your life like twenty degrees below freezing windchill.
(Thanfiction) Next time, I have to scam someone out of a fur coat…
(Orangeblossom) Um, forget NEXT time. We’re FREEZING TO DEATH! IN REAL TIME!!!
(Thanfiction) Silence, wench, I’m trying to scheme!
See Abbey Stone’s actual account here. In fact, she mentions this “apology” during the second part of this post.
I had already become a Christian again over the course of my therapy, once I knew that I was just another example of God's infinite diversity and not some terrible creature,
I am not kidding when I say people like Thanfiction are why I cannot take the “God’s unconditional love” line seriously. I believe in a JUST God. I cannot simultaneously believe in a just God and an unconditionally loving God.
Apologies to any people who believe in an unconditionally loving God.
but at the border, it seemed like He was speaking to me.
****You can't run. You can change, and you have changed, you can grow up, and you have grown up, you can mature, and you have matured, and you can go on to live a normal life, but you must deal with what you have done in the past. I may be able to wipe your sins clean as though they never happened, but that does not absolve you of needing to face those you sinned against.*****
…
…
…
*sourly* All evidence is against something like this actually occurring in this story. It’s probably more along the lines of something he copied off a therapist.
Nonetheless. He’s expecting us to believe this, and so I suppose some people think this is morally plausible.
At this time, it was known that Thanfiction was a thief, a liar, and a cheat. Shall I clarify that the wank would NOT be this massive if he had merely “channeled” everyone and their giraffe, caused shitloads of fandom drama, or, hypothetically, run in circles writing grimdark badfic. In fact, he did write rather epic grimdark badfics in his later incarnations, so we know that he just annoyed people when he did that – and that even his enemies didn’t really go back on the warpath until the reports of the cultish activities amongst the DAYD fans came out.
He hurt people. Badly. How much money did Turimel lose, again? $10,000? Sounds about right. And I think he got Sean Astin and several other LOTR stars stuck in the middle of nowhere… And so on and so forth.
So for him to smugly go on about how he needs to just give them an “explanation” (a BULLSHIT explanation) and so on to have all debts cleared - *flips him the middle finger* Sorry. Forget it.
So we called Orangeblossom's mother, and my parents, and we have reconnected with our families. I am home now, as I write this, patching things up with my parents, and at the end of this month will be moving on to a regular job and apartment with Orangeblossom and our little pet bird.
HIS SON, THE SPARROW!
Our relationship has grown from two severely screwed up people clinging to each other to something amazingly precious and tried by fire, and we hope to spend the rest of our lives together.
Funny epilogue to that line – Orangeblossom ran like hell after her next reunion with him. I think their relationship ended with him literally screaming incoherently with rage as her mother drove away with her in tow… Don’t believe me? Just check the links.
I do not expect forgiveness or absolution from any of you, but I do ask of you one thing. Please do not try to destroy me any further unless I warrant it.
And he soon warranted it.
If I am caught with so much as a toe out of place in a charity,
“It’s About Power” sound familiar, Thanfiction?
organization, business, or online,
(Thanfiction) If I’m caught with an entire leg and a tractor out of place online, however – HOW DARE YOU BRING UP MY OLD LIFE!11!!
feel free to light the pitchforks,
So good at manipulation, so incompetent at basic metaphors.
but as for the past...I beg you. I was little more than a child, and a profoundly messed up one.
“ALAS! PITY ME!”: 24
There was a police investigation, charges were never filed, civil fines were paid. I am currently trying to set aside as much as I can per month of my paycheck (as soon as I have one) to pay off the last of my financial obligations to Jeanine,
I believe this took the form of trying to bribe her to shut up for $100 seven years late. …Yep, here’s the post.
but I am really and truly trying to be a healthy and law-abiding grown man, no matter how disastrously crazy I was as a young girl. Please, please...you have my social security number, my date of birth, my other vital stats, many of you.
(Lit-Pitchfork Mob) How about your immortal soul?
(Thanfiction) Funny about that – the Devil also asked. Turns out I don’t have one.
I live in fear every day that I will find things done in my name for spite,
(Thanfiction) I mean, come on, people! Don’t you trust me to ruin my life and reputation MYSELF?!
that I will get a job only to find people parked outside my office yelling for my head,
(Thanfiction) Instead, I just ended up getting my girlfriend killed in a murder-suicide by her ex-husband. But it’s totally the online people I fear.
that years from now I will adopt a baby and have people organizing an internet campaign to call Social Services and get it taken...that my life will be ruined because in 2003, I tried to organize a fan convention when I should have spent that year in a mental hospital.
No, it’s all the batshit insanity that CONTINUED – Oh, never mind.
“ What I am doing here is not a plea for sympathy, nor an excuse, nor any attempt to weasel my way out of anything. ”
You went back on all of the above multiple times. You really think no readers can connect point A to point B. You…
See, there’s a funny thing about text – you can go back and reread. It’s not like your fast-talking in real life. If you write something, you can’t say “Never happened! You’re a liar!” later in the post.
Idiot.
“ALAS! PITY ME!”: 25
I don't want your forgiveness. I'm willing to accept your anger, your hate. I don't think this will just go away.
As a note – again, it would have if he HADN’T STARTED IT RIGHT BACK UP AGAIN!
I know that the written word endures, that the things I wrote can never be taken off of the internet thanks to Google Cache and the Wayback Machine,
Oh, you nearly escaped due to robots.txt. But some people had scree-ee-een-caaaaaaaps… (And ScrapBook copies, in my case. *coughs*)
and that there will always be a book out there commemorating what I have done, and what people thought of me because of that. My lowest and darkest moments will always be public sport and satire, because I lied, and that is a sin, and to sin is both to hurt others and to bring their retribution upon you.
“ALAS! PITY ME!”: 26
Actually, you know something? I’m going to do something I highly dislike and double-count that because of how low a blow it is and how thoroughly it’s aimed at getting the soft-hearted of the world to turn over their emotional wallets. I’m showing self-restraint. I really want to triple-count that.
“ALAS! PITY ME!”: 27
Scum, scum, scum, scum.
I am not trying to escape, indeed, I am confronting it all head-on and with what I hope you can see is soul-baring honesty.
Well, there you can see that he’s coaching you on what to think and feel. Oh, whatever. It's almost over.
Comments are not locked. I will even answer your questions on specific matters, and answer them in full honesty, as I know that however lengthy, this has just been an overview.
I have stopped running. I have confessed my sins. I await the consequences. I deserve no forgiveness.
In context, this is blatant coaching for people to cry out “No! No! We forgive!” I suspect that, for those who came from strongly religious backgrounds, this combined with the entire speech-from-God above is supposed to be the cue for the cries of “Everyone deserves forgiveness!” – I don’t know, since I didn’t grow up with such a background. But he did, so…
I honestly don’t know. I despise this guy, because I see just how well his story’s cued to take the naïve, soft-hearted, and/or insecure to the cleaners. And my family has dealt with people like him in real life… and, unfortunately, has more than a few people who have been taken in by people like him. Minus the cult activity, but plus a whole lot more of financial fraud. Lives WERE ruined.
“ALAS! PITY ME!”: 28
not at your lives.
(In all seriousness, I just felt briefly nauseated. One of said people like him used to write glurgey twaddle about God’s blessings and love in letters – said person also has the nastiest eyes I’ve ever looked into at close quarters and a constantly-hateful expression on her face whenever she’s not putting on the charm. I got… a slight flashback to the sheer dishonesty in those notes at that line…)
Just Me
FINAL COUNTS:
“ALAS! PITY ME!”: 28
“UNUSUALLY INTELLIGENT”: 7
~LIKE A VIRGIN~: 16
And we’re done.
For the kind-hearted on my f-list, I would like to point out the following:
1 – Thanfiction is a master manipulator. In my politically-incorrect opinion, this is how he manages to get such a fanbase when he sets up shop in a fandom – if writing is, in part, selling your story to the reader, then whoo boy does he have an M.A. in selling stories. As such, if you get drawn in? That’s not because the truth is so compelling, it’s because he’s an expert in making it sound as compelling as possible. I’ll be unpacking his tricks as I go, but still. Do not suspend your disbelief.
2 – He’s known to incorporate elements from others’ stories. So if something rings true to you – does it ring true because it originated with him, or because he knew someone who’d actually gone through something similar very well?
3 – Most importantly in this poor-pitiful-repressed-FTM narrative – Thanfiction’s preferred targets are WELL-KNOWN to be vulnerable, naïve, and somewhat immature young women. And how is he presenting himself here? As a pooooor vulnerable, naïve, and somewhat immature young woman (who turned out to be a desperately angsty and troubled young man straight out of cliché fanfiction). Gee, what a coinkydink. Particularly when it comes to adding those lovely touches of authenticity to your seminal memoir of loss, lunacy, and self-discovery.
So if you say “there but for the grace of God go I” – noooo. And, I repeat, I’ll be explaining why as I go.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
To Whom It May Concern
You have known me as Amy Player, as Strwriter, as Voyagerbabe, VB, Victoria Bitter, Mr. Frodo, and Jordan Wood.
I hear he’s leaving out “Merry Brandybuck” and “Orlando Bloom” from that list, at the very least…
I am NOT re-entering fandom by making this statement,
(Amy Player) So you totally won’t associate me with that “Thanfiction” guy due to soon appear in the Harry Potter fandom, right? After all, I’m not re-entering fandom! Pinky swear!
and I want it known from the very beginning that I am doing so completely alone.
Please translate as “I am not at all doing this because people have been screaming for my blood, or at the very least a payback and an apology, for years – nope, not at all.”
No one knows I'm going to make this post,
(Thanfiction) It’s just between me, you, and the entire Internet. I mean – forget that last part, please.
In all seriousness, do you see the manipulation technique there? ‘It’s a secret to everyone.’ He’s trying to make the readers feel like the privileged recipient of a secret by dividing the world into Real Life and Online Life – and, for obvious reasons, that’s a division that appeals to a lot of people in fandom.
I probably need to emphasize that part further because one of Thanfiction’s known manipulation techniques in person is to play the us-against-them card for all he claims to be worth – and that he sets baits in all his self-descriptions by placing great emphasis on what a loyal person he is and how many bad people there are in the world and how everyone he’s talking to is so good and unlike all those mean people who betrayed him. And, in Tumblr activism, he’s now actively fishing for women who have suffered abuse and for young women deeply troubled by pressure from Society In General.
The man is an absolute fucking genius at manipulation and may I add, this is why I start to sidle away from HP discussions that praise the Slytherins’ skills at ~manipulation~ a bit too much, because THIS SORT OF THING IS WHAT POPS INTO MY HEAD .
and I am probably going to catch a lot of hell from people
(Thanfiction) Look at how much I’m sacrificing for you!
This guy is so bloody creepy because he is such a craftsman at what he does. Every. Single. Line. Is spun carefully to evoke a response. He is a genius in a field where no one should ever be a genius.
Alternatively, he’s just very practiced and any schmuck could do the same with his past social career. *smirks*
who have told me that I should just move on with my life
(Thanfiction) Did I mention I’m sacrificing for you?
and not poke the crazy online people.
Two-in-one bonus here! Three-in-one, actually, if I stretch it.
He is simultaneously informing the readers that:
1) those people think you’re crazy (those untrustworthy people, precious)
2) he doesn’t think you’re crazy (since he’s deigning to talk to you)
3) *subtext* you have acted in a manner that would make people consider you “crazy online people” – but it’s all right, he respects you, and he accepts you even though you really aren’t worthy of it.
Note that he specifically referred to “crazy online people”, rather than saying “and not stir up trouble” or some more earthy variant. He chose to waggle his finger at the readers, and he chose to emphasize that he is making a sacrifice to do this.
In my experience, a more typical version of the above clause goes:
‘…and a lot of people would say that I should just move on and not dredge up things better left untouched.’
Note the difference? The people are advising rather than punishing. There is no mention of “crazy online people”. Furthermore, the badness is pinned directly to the “things” done in the past, rather than those crazy people online.
It’s amazing what a few altered words can do…
However, I can't do that.
Note that he emphasizes “I can’t do that” rather than “it would be wrong” – even though his next sentence refers to “basic ethics”. Yes, he literally makes it special that he goes along with basic ethics… even though the very phrase implies that these are minimum grounds for decency.
I’d congratulate him for his guts of steel, but all signs in context point to him having such narcissism that he really believes he can get away with anything with minimal consequences. It doesn’t take guts when you believe you have nothing that you’ll lose.
It is basic ethics that when you have wronged someone, you cannot move on without apologizing,
(Thanfiction) Fuck actually paying them back, though. Or personally apologizing to them rather than turning it into an ~EPIC POST~.
and I have wronged a lot of people.
If I was feeling petty, I would link to some hypnosis-site article about the importance of setting up a lulling rhythm in order to place people’s critical thinking and analysis systems on standby. However, that probably counts as pseudoscience, so I’ll just ask you to keep that in mind when Thanfiction inexplicably strays into the Department of Redundancy Department.
What I am doing here is not a plea for sympathy, nor an excuse, nor any attempt to weasel my way out of anything.
Like the above. Yeah, those are the same thing. Why’s he putting that in an apology note? Simple. Because this isn’t an innocent apology note. This is a narrative, and as such he’s pulling out the tools of parallelism and repetition and all the other tricks in every high-school rhetoric pamphlet.
But since he brought it up, let’s take him at his word and start a count! Every time he pleas for sympathy, excuses his actions, or tries to weasel out of anything, I’ll put down a point of “ALAS! PITY ME!” Let’s get started…
I am 23 now, an adult, and I need to take an adult's responsibilities for the actions of my teen years,
Mm-hmm. Note that he deliberately brings in that he was a teen and now knows better as an adult, rather than just saying “I need to take responsibility for what I did in the past”.
and for the ramifications they have had.
And note that he’s specifying the RAMIFICATIONS separately from the ACTIONS – and if you can’t guess what’s coming later on, this is a red flag that he’s going to be pleading innocent on his actions while giving lip service to how sad he is about all the bad things that happened because of them.
Not only that, but I don't believe that you are all just crazy people.
WHEE! Let’s count what he’s doing here:
1) Specifying NOT that the readers AREN’T crazy people, but that HE BELIEVES that they aren’t crazy people – salvation comes from his opinion, dear readers, and you owe him one!
2) Specifying that you are not all JUST crazy people – you may INDEED be crazy, but there are extenuating circumstances! And who compassionately recognizes these circumstances? Need you even ask?
3) Specifying that you are not ALL just crazy people – there are indeed SOME crazy people in your midst… and who gets to decide which ones of you are crazy? Hem, hem.
Scumbag. So blatant about it, and yet so confident he won’t get caught.
I count about 8/19 people in the replies who fell for it, so… *sigh*
I was one of you once,
Do I even need to point out that he’s talking to them like an AA counselor to alcoholics? ‘I was also one of you sinners upon a time…’
and I know that there are many very decent individuals among you
Forget subtlety on my part – you ass, is it SO hard just to say “you’re good people”?!
Yes, right, because then he wouldn’t be running a divide-and-conquer against the non-“good people”. But overwritten crap sets my teeth on edge on principle, what with my sporking background, and his prose certainly qualifies as such.
who know nothing other than that you were lied to and used, and you deserve to at least hear the other side of the story, both so that you can make your own judgments as rational people,
>implying that Rational People will make the Right Judgment
>implying that they really need to ~understand~ that there was another side to the story about their being taken to the cleaners
>implying that they are poor ignorant fools who “know nothing”
>implying that he holds the power of True Knowledge in his hands
>implying-implying-implying –
[profanity omitted]
and so that you can stop worrying that somewhere, out there, the next post in your favorite fandom might be VB, poised to strike again.
(Amy Player) Eh-heh. I would never do such a horrible thing, all right. Nope. Nopedy-nope-nope. Say, would anyone like to read a totally awesome fic called Dumbledore’s Army and the Year of Darkness? The writer is so very brilliant and so very handsome…
For the record, I have in fact moved on with my life,
(Thanfiction) – straight into HP fandom.
and have spent the last several years trying to make amends of it. I have gotten a lot of therapy,
*spittake*
THERAPY qualifies as MAKING AMENDS? Good grief! PRETEND to have some sense of shame!
and what I am writing here is the product of a huge amount of self-exploration and difficult self-confrontation,
(Thanfiction) – in my mirror, every morning. *blows kisses to self*
as well as professional help and guidance.
I can almost believe that.
By all accounts, therapy does a marvelous job of teaching psychopaths the correct lingo and the proper thought processes to which to pretend. So it would really just be paying for research courses in his favorite career.
I have re-connected with my family,
Heartwarming narrative checklist item #1…
moved away from Hollywood, have and intend to have in the future no contact with any fandom of any kind,
I emphasize that he must really not have thought he’d ever get caught, as surely such a manipulative bozo would have otherwise realized how stupid that line would make him seem in the end.
Also, he’s overcome the addiction, check #2 off…
re-discovered God,
Check #3 off…
changed my name, come to terms with myself as a transgender man, and am now seeking both gender reassignment surgery,
And check #4 off, for he has ~found himself~ and is moving on. And yes, he will say he’s found the love of his life later on. Bleurgh.
I also think this is unhealthy because it glorifies goals that are downright unrealistic in a lot of situations (such as those with abusive parents/abusive religions/abusive pasts in general) and insists that THIS IS THE ENDPOINT FOR ALL YOUR TROUBLES. But that would be going off-topic, and he wouldn’t give a damn, anyway.
normal employment, and a normal, healthy life.
Yes, it’s a real pity, isn’t it? With his talents, he could easily become a politician or televangelist. So much potential wasted. The makers of cheap hair pomade and tacky suits weep for the loss of a prospective top client…
As previously stated, this confession/setting things straight is part of that.
I first came to online fandom shortly after puberty, under the name of Strwriter. I was a passionate Star Trek fan, and the idea that I might be transgender had not yet even vaguely occurred to me.
Welcome to his bringing up his trans status when it’s absolutely irrelevant, which he’ll be doing a lot. Why? Why, because he’ll be hiding behind it as an excuse for all his wrongs, of course.
What I did know was that I was unusually intelligent,
…The first mark of a middling-high IQ is how desperately its bearers brag about it. I’ll be blunt about this. If somebody in the genuine genius range starts bragging, it’s either because they have nothing else to brag about, because they’re socially-incompetent enough that they’re trying to use their IQ as a bludgeoning tool, or because they were career child prodigies.
Thanfiction was not a child prodigy, or we would have heard about it. He’s not socially incompetent – alas. And he certainly thinks he has more to brag about than his intelligence – his “loyalty”, his “courage”, and his words-per-week output, to name just a few of his favorite topics.
Therefore, he reeks to high heaven of being someone who isn’t at the top of the scale and privately knows it. Keep this in mind whenever he brags about how unusually intelligent he is.
and that none of the other girls particularly liked me
*sigh* I don’t like highlighting this comment, because it may well be true, but it’s the phrasing. “None of the other girls” serves to separate him out from the rest, which plays into the us-versus-them dynamic that I discussed earlier, and I have a creeping suspicion he’s angling a hook for some of the socially-ill-adjusted young ladies who might be reading…
That DOESN’T conflict with his actually having suffered through social isolation, mind. But people in general bring up details they have in common with those to whom they’re speaking to build a rapport. And he’s specific about “none of the other girls” when he could have just said “and didn’t get along with other children”. …It just seems off, that’s all. And some of the prior stuff was definitely toying with the audience.
(I did not have any real co-ed opportunities, so all I knew of boys was from books and movies)
Uh…huh. Hands up, who actually believes he was THAT sheltered? Is he trying to play Ariana Dumbledore here? Did his parents keep him locked in the basement whenever he wasn’t at school?
Oh, screw it. This is Thanfiction. He’s probably claimed that at some point.
and that I desperately longed to be accepted. I knew that on the internet people could have all kinds of different identities and be whomever they wanted to be, but I didn't understand much beyond that, and both through age (13) and the kind of blindness only the naively intelligent are capable, I didn't really care.
…This is a genuine slip here. He’s trying to hide it behind the “only the naïvely intelligent” line, but he outright confesses that he didn’t care about anything beyond the freedom to pretend to be whoever he wanted. Watch.
What I knew is that I could type anything to anyone and they would like me.
So, right there, he confesses to an utter lack of conscience and consideration of anyone on the other end of the communication.
This is a Thanfiction quote that ought to be framed. He walks right into it because he doesn’t understand well enough that this isn’t normal. He excuses it with naïveté, but he fails to understand that it wouldn’t be normal even for sheltered 13-year-olds. He really does not grasp that a 13-year-old would be expected to have a rudimentary innate grasp of empathy, honesty, and/or morality.
Guys. I was a sheltered 13-year-old – sheltered 15-year-old, in fact, by the time I got my LJ account. I can testify that I was a blithering idiot with a tendency to rages, ineptitude, and thoughtlessness.
But I never thought for a moment about creating a false identity.
An account I could abandon at will – sure! I’ve always kept that in mind. And if I started anew someplace else, I wouldn’t mention who I’d previously been. But outright lying?
No. I don’t think I would have lied, under such hypothetical circumstances, even if asked to my face. I just would have not responded to the question.
When I lie, I strongly favor lying ‘by omission’ – and it’s mainly because I want to be left alone. I take no pleasure in it, and take a helping of shame and unhappiness. I don’t like lies. I want to be honest. I fantasize about being so honest that I… end up pissing off huge amounts of people… which is why I stick to fantasies on that particular front, really…
Point being, in my blithering, bumbling attempts to get approval and attention (and entertain people), I never once thought of “typing anything to anyone” to make them like me. And Thanfiction doesn’t even seem to realize that anyone in his place could possibly not want to do the same.
As I said. That quote should be framed.
“ALAS! PITY ME!”: 1
This started getting out of hand beyond the usual teenage online self-role-playing
Eh? Tell us more about that, Thanfiction?
(And yes, behold, he’s calling it “usual” in order to lull people into complacency. Ah, Thanfiction? That part is HARD to miss.)
when I discovered an entire new world on the internet...sex. I was aware of the mechanics of it, previously, and that it was something that was very nice for married people to do, and terribly sinful and bad for unmarried people,
(Thanfiction) Look how ~naïve~ I was!
but there had never been any remote appeal to anything about it before. I had been warned that pretty soon, I would be wanting it with boys, but I dismissed that as utterly ridiculous.
It stopped becoming ridiculous as soon as I started discovering increasingly explicit fanfiction. However, it was a discovery far more upsetting to me than simply "oh, THAT'S what all the fuss is about." To my horror, I realized that I was a horribly perverted person. I was thinking about it all the time, but in badbadbad ways.
Thanfiction occasionally likes to do this babytalk thing as a form of cutesy dismissal.
It’s really creepy.
What I know now is that I was thinking about it from the male perspective, with an almost preternatural instinct to the male half of things,
Gee – if you’re trans, one might think that, why, you had “an almost preternatural instinct” for the “male half of things” because you are male. That’s a very interesting way of phrasing it you have there, particularly because you’re bragging. Say, shouldn’t that be “with a natural instinct”?
but at the time, I just knew that like so many things about me before, it wasn't SAME. I became fascinated and obsessed with boys, true, but not the way I was 'supposed' to be. I was tremendously covetous. I wanted to know everything about men's bodies and men having sex in the way that anyone obsesses about something they desperately and unobtainably desire to possess, and simultaneously, I was hungry for information about the women's side of things, hoping to find somewhere in all these women expressing their sexuality whatever it was I was missing. And always, always the hunger for acceptance. For someone to tell me - preferably many someones - that I was wonderful, perfect, fabulous, talented, etc. to counteract the constant sick feeling that something unknown was hideously wrong with me.
Look, I won’t cover this paragraph because I don’t want to touch transwank with a ten-foot pole. And if I question the supposed evidence here, I am certain to get hit with transwank. I did type up a long analysis, but – not worth it.
And that’s precisely what Thanfiction would like, of course.
Fuck. It. All.
Of course, all of the groups that held adult fanfiction were off-limits to a 14 and later 15 and 16 year-old, but that was okay.
He couldn’t be bothered to just lie about age and not about the rest?
(EDIT 6/27/2013: A comment has added more information on that time period:
-In the time period he's referencing, FFN didn't exist. [Just assuming for the sake of argument that he really did get into fandom when he was 14 and oh so very innocent lol.] I think he was born in 1983, so I think he would have been 15 when the Pit was founded, and like all old-internet things, it was small and very unreliable for the first two or three years, so I think it's not implausible that he bypassed FFN in his early years and was hanging out in places with different content rules (spoken or unspoken) - I first got into fanfic on a phBB board, and the terms of service for such sites forbid porn.
As such, I've struck-out the relevant sentence, and I'll concede that Thanfiction may not have had access to scarcely-filtered NC-17 fanfiction without at least having to lie about his age. However, I repeat that he only would have had to lie about his age. Spinning out an entire new identity was completely unnecessary. Certainly, I think he was the only age-limit-evading teenager who made up an identity as a former child sex-slave.)
I needed in desperately, I rationalized, so I'd just make another identity. In retrospect, the choices I made there were psychologically pretty transparent.
In other words, poor Thanfiction didn’t fully understand his reasons for doing it. Funny that he phrases it in terms that could also read “Obviously I was young and stupid – I was careless enough not to cover my ass”.
Also note the emphasis on desperation, so that his “rationalization” is excusable, and on “in retrospect”, in order to establish that he’s not that person any more. That’s true…
I created an identity who was horribly scarred, sick, messed up, and dirty, with a terrible, sexually deviant past...but it wasn't her fault, of course.
…Nowadays he prefers identities who are horribly scarred, sick, messed up, and dirty, with a terrible, brutal, violent, and savage past, BECAUSE HE IS A MAAAAN AND MEN ARE VIOLENT AND SAVAGE AND GRIMDARK!11! See? Totally different person.
Thus, I thought, I could explore as much as I needed to, and no one would hate me for being so hungrily curious about THAT,
And nobody questioned why somebody with a “terrible, sexually deviant past” knew nothing about sex?
nor be shocked and hate me if I let slip any clues how messed up I was about it. Of course, I tried not to let that show, faithfully parroting the other women both in conversations and in fic, so that hopefully I could just find out what was wrong with me and how to fix it without them knowing.
Ever heard of “lurk moar”? As in “something that doesn’t require the former-child-sex-slave shtick”?
Yes, I took it too far...WAY too far, including visits in person and telephone conversations behind my parent's back.
Yeah, I’d say that went WAY, WAY too far at the “visits in person” point. Master of understatement, he is. Notice how he acknowledges it just enough to gloss over it?
But at the time, it seemed justified.
“ALAS! PITY ME!”: 2
After all, I couldn't let anyone know how bad I really was,
“Couldn’t”? Past tense? |P
nor could I stop what seemed my only hope for finding a way to fix it, as it was the only thing in my life that addressed sexuality at all.
“ALAS! PITY ME!”: 3
“ What I am doing here is not a plea for sympathy, nor an excuse, nor any attempt to weasel my way out of anything. ”
Funny how the above two sentences look an awful lot like “excuses”, “pleas for sympathy”, and “attempts to weasel his way out of things”. Actually, if I incremented it EVERY time he pled for sympathy, I’d be literally incrementing it every other sentence. So I’m only doing it every time that gets really blatant as a get-out-of-trouble card.
But since I’m doing an analysis of manipulation – he’s playing a song on the proverbial violin about how isolated he was and how this was his only, only hope and how he was exploring his sexuality. I wonder if he’s intentionally attempting to appropriate the cliché gay narrative? As a slash writer, he’d know it by heart. Funny how he uses the specific phrase “sexuality” as opposed to “sex” or even “eroticism”.
Looking back at some of the stories I was writing then, I find it almost tragically laughable –
Oh, woe, he’s a ~tragedy~. I repeat – he’s spinning a narrative here, and the narrative, as I said, is that of “ a pooooor vulnerable, naïve, and somewhat immature young woman (who turned out to be a desperately angsty and troubled young man straight out of cliché fanfiction) ”.
there is remarkably good writing
Let’s start another count!
“UNUSUALLY INTELLIGENT”: 3
interspaced with saccharine pap cut and pasted straight out of the cliche generator.
(Thanfiction) Now I prefer grimdark pap cut and pasted straight out of the cliché generator. ‘Cos I’m a MAN.
You can almost sort it sentence by sentence into "VB writing" and "VB Fitting In".
Oh, if only all of us had the gall to claim only our good youthful accomplishments as our own and dismiss the rest as fitting in.
“ALAS! PITY ME!”: 4
Then, at 16, I found slash. I had been in entirely het groups previously, who were very scornful of slash, and had simply dismissed it as BAD,
Much like he’d do on fanficrants.
Can’t forget that the people who remembered him at this point were mainly slash fans. Again – us-versus-them! He’s trying to feed people’s already-existing persecution complexes, start new ones, and emphasize that his first identity was one of those Outsiders, but he then he became One of You.
Marketing sobs for the loss of one of its geniuses. Admittedly, not for the multiple convictions for fraud that he’d undoubtedly rack up…
but then I stumbled across my first one by accident, as it was unmarked. Like the old children's game of hot and cold,
What is with his obsession with childish things?
Yes, I know. He laid it out already, the idiot. It’s so he can cast himself as “ an identity who was horribly scarred, sick, messed up, and dirty, with a terrible, [morally] deviant past...but it wasn't [his] fault, of course. ” And if he casts himself as childlike, then he can prey on nurturing instincts.
I practically heard my psyche whisper "warmer!"
Notice that he’s being carried along by forces outside his control. He’s casting himself as the victim.
Fucking brilliant fucker. I just realized – he’s making HIMSELF into the Woobie Villain . This is the exact damn narrative I laid out. What’s more, he’s inviting everyone to act out the Empath McWhiteknight role with him. And he’s also spinning his worst acts as the Sympathetic Psychopath.
The concept of homosexuality was even vaguer to me than that of sex had been. I knew it was men who did sinful sex things with other men, or women who did sinful sex things with other women, and that it was a lifestyle choice that they made. But here COMMA! for the first time, were stories about people wrestling with "I'm different, it's my shameful secret, it's about sex and gender, and I'm compelled to lead a double life to hide it."
Yes, we really believe you’re COMPELLED to lead your double (triple, quadruple) lives, Thanfiction.
“ALAS! PITY ME!”: 5
All remaining vestiges of moral restraint went flying out the window COMMA! as I had to get into the slash community.
“ What I am doing here is not a plea for sympathy, nor an excuse, nor any attempt to weasel my way out of anything. ”
“ All […] moral restraint went flying out the window, as I had to ”
“ALAS! PITY ME!”: 6
And you know something? I, and many other people, managed perfectly well without false identities. This sounds pretty if you believe his claims, but it falls apart the moment you bring in ANY experience.
Same with the things he mentions in his “male perspective” paragraph, but as I said, I’m avoiding transwank.
Surely IT was there.
(Thanfiction) The dead parrot!
This was closer than anything I'd yet found. But it had to be hidden even more carefully, so the lies grew thicker and faster, and I got better at them, discovering refinements such as "if you're an American, you're a smarty-pants, if you're British, you're just cool"
Pandering to the Anglophiles, much?
(Thanfiction) Oi’m not like that now. Oi’ll have you know, now Oi’m OIRISH!
at blending just enough truth into my fictions, and playing different stories to different people.
*eyeroll* “At blending just enough truth into my fictions”… currently known as “confessing just enough to seem honest”.
The good news of this phase was that it opened me up for the first time to the amazing discovery that God created more variety among humanity than Heterosexual Male and Heterosexual Female, and that there were people out there who were tolerant of that.
Yep, he’s poaching the gay narrative. For his trans narrative, mind, for which it makes little sense. Yes, I know he identified as a lesbian before identifying as a trans male. But he mentions the word “lesbian” three times, twice in the context of channeling male characters. The other is in a certain infamous line that I won’t spoil for you. He’s trying to spin this as Being Male and screwing it up in the process…
Well, unless you think he’s trying to get all the benefits of the Tragic Young Gay Man narrative that fandom eats up without having to be an actual gay man. But would Thanfiction ever do such a sleazy thing? (Hint: YES.)
It also, however, messed me up in a lot of ways.
“ What I am doing here is not a plea for sympathy, nor an excuse, nor any attempt to weasel my way out of anything. ”
“ALAS! PITY ME!”: 7
Already socially awkward, I became flat out incompetent off the internet.
Call bullshit. The internet can help make people more competent. But, of course, that doesn’t fit with the victim narrative.
Already having serious problems with out of control behavior from the hormones of puberty (estrogen and I DO NOT MIX)
Yeah, yeah, you’re so very male. It’s not like women ever have trouble with their hormones, right? Oh, wait.
I was further driven to half-psychosis both by the stress of maintaining these webs and by the lack of sleep from regularly spending entire nights on the internet with my new-found hope and curse.
(Tumblr users) Cry us a river; that’s our normal state.
…Actually, that explains a LOT about Tum- *chased down by an angry mob*
“ALAS! PITY ME!”: 8
Already having serious problems with the truth (never easy for someone who is lied to every day by their own body, as I've found out) lying was becoming more second nature than telling the truth as I tried to keep the increasingly growing spider's web out of my offline life.
Don’t give personal information! Problem solved!
Also, that’s a dangling modifier, unless he’s saying the lying was the object already having problems with the truth.
More importantly… as I’m doing a line-by-line analysis, I need to point out that he’s spinning HIMSELF as the real victim of HIS “webs” of lies. Woooow, that takes guts. WOW.
I also at that time started to hate and resent my parents, my upbringing, and my religion with a desperate fervor. THESE people were far closer to understanding what I was,
Us-versus-them, particularly playing on those estranged from their parents. Lovely man, isn’t he.
and the slashed characters were far closer to BEING what I was (ironically, I identified far more fully with the most well-written male slash characters than I ever had with female characters)
*SNAPS* YES! YES! SO DO I!
And you know WHY?! Because the WELL-WRITTEN ones get to be actual HUMAN BEINGS rather than a collection of touchy-feely stereotypes! MALE characters don’t have to be NURTURING and FEELING and SENSITIVE and ALL THAT CRAP! They can do whatever they want, whenever they want, and wherever they want! They can hold actual OPINIONS without having to apologize to everyone! They can be assholes without having to come up with shitloads of rationalizations! They can be cold and unfeeling and get APPLAUDED for it!
Female characters almost always have to have a ~core of femininity~ somewhere under their tough shell, just waiting for the right man or wounded child to bring it out. Oh, and that tough shell’s probably only there because of their hard past and their tragic betrayals and bullshit and bullshit and bullshit. But male characters, that’s optional. They can be assholes if they like, and people may hate them for it, but no one questions the fundamental existence of males who are pure assholes. With women, at the very least it’s that they’re ~*~*~*~*~*~*VICTIMS OF THE PATRIARCHY*~*~*~*~*~*~ and so they don’t know any better. Because that’s what women are. Powerless, pitiful victims. And men, why, they get to have whatever personalities they want – and to want them. Because they’re actual full people.
…I’m done. I’m done. Never mind.
than anyone around me, and they all hated and feared their families, the real world, and the Christian Church.
…Okay, what did I say about us-versus-them? :D Thank you for laying it out for me, Thanfiction! Way to make the divide-and-conquer explicit!
Lessons learned and internalized with the uniquely stupid fervor of the very young.
“ What I am doing here is not a plea for sympathy, nor an excuse, nor any attempt to weasel my way out of anything. ”
Looks like all three.
“ALAS! PITY ME!”: 9
Sadly for me, most people who are that phenomenally messed up at such a young age and with so little experience are usually sniffed out and helped for what they are very quickly.
They ARE? Funny, I’ve seen quite the opposite. Occasionally with excruciating consequences.
But wow, congratulations for placing the burden on OTHERS to help you out with your little pathological liar problem, turning it into a tearjerker, and all but crying ‘Where were the aaaaadults?’ Oh, and good job on hiding behind your “phenomenally messed up” status and pleading that you were so very inexperienced, Mr. I’m-not-making-excuses.
“ALAS! PITY ME!”: 10
I was a little too good for my own good,
“UNUSUALLY INTELLIGENT”: 4
and although occasionally people caught me as a liar, no one ever saw past all the facades that were hiding THE BIG SECRET...
IN ALL CAPS…
that I still didn't even know the answer to.
Psst! It’s called “rank sociopathy”. Happy now?
And again, he’s making himself out to be the tragic figure. Not, you know, the people to whom he lied. ‘No one heard my pleas for help!’ That’s how he’s structuring this.
At 17, I entered college, my first experience
I’d start a ~LIKE A VIRGIN~ count if it wouldn’t require me to go back and count so many times.
Ah, hell. I’m not as lazy as I think.
~LIKE A VIRGIN~: 14 up to this point, now 15.
…And that’s a conservative count.
simultaneously with formalized education, with a full, co-ed social structure, and with living away from home...while leading a quintuple life online,
QUINTUPLE? Sweet gad, I gave him too much credit by only going up to quadruple! I mean – What? Does anyone know where the other three lives came from?!
still struggling with my unknown terrible thing, clinically deranged to the point of paranoid episodes once a month, and with a psychotic, obsessive need to make people like me.
“ALAS! PITY ME!”: 11
Pointing out manipulations is starting to tire me out. But I’ll add that he’s angling for sympathy with the “psychotic, obsessive need” by adding that he was also “deranged” and “struggling”. Oh, poor woobie, driven to insanity by his demons. Watch.
“… while leading a quintuple life online [driven by] a psychotic, obsessive need to make people like me. ”
Not so touching any more, is it?
Oh, and I was abruptly adopted as the pet of an egotistical manic-depressive failed artiste with delusions of grandeur
(Thanfiction) MY ROLE MODEL! 8D
who was simultaneously the most loved and hated professor in the theater department,
(Thanfiction) LIKE ME! 8D
(In a deleted comment thread on this post which I can’t access, he apparently claimed to be the founder, in many ways, of LOTR slash fandom. No, I’m not kidding. I think he really does have delusions of being the most loved and hated fan ever, so I’m calling deliberate parallelism.)
And, as a note, he’ll drop this in a moment. Why? Here’s my guess. It doesn’t fit into the troubled young male narrative to be shaped and exploited by a man. That marks him as submissive and a man’s “pet”, which really doesn’t fit with what he wants. He wants to be a well-meaning soul who of course gets to act authoritative (particularly towards troubled young females) now that he’s all healed.
and by the most bohemian inner core of theater people,
Divide-and-conquer against anyone who could testify as to his behavior back then. This dismissive behavior culminates MUCH later on in an unspeakably foul libel. But we’ll get to that when it happens.
including trying to have a boyfriend with a semi-gothic Australian.
“Trying to have a boyfriend with a semi-gothic Australian”? *spittake* What, were you two trying to adopt one?
Yeah, that's right, I was in theater on top of it, having never been in any actual production since a summer-camp-type thing at the age of 10. If I had ever wondered what it must have been like watching the Hindenburg, ring-side seats to my mental health that year must have been pretty close.
Hooray, making the loss of three dozen people into a sideshow to your pity festival! :D SUCH a sensitive and feeling soul, folks!
The lying reached nuclear levels, and I was starting to lose touch with reality and begin facing an actual nervous collapse,
“ What I am doing here is not a plea for sympathy, nor an excuse, nor any attempt to weasel my way out of anything. ”
“ALAS! PITY ME!”: 12
He really thinks the readers can’t remember these things, can he?
when "salvation" came to me. Oh, Jesus Christ, if I could undo ONE mistake...
“ALAS! PITY ME!”: 13
No one is probably going to believe me,
You’re right. We don’t.
But by anticipating the readers’ reactions, he tries to dissipate it by showing self-awareness. ‘It’s the truth, guys! Honest.’
but I can't even remember her name, though her face is as clear in my memory as if she were sitting next to me. She was the Priestess, and she had all the answers.
Eheheheh. Funny thing here. Remember what I said about being dominated by a man? Well, there’s nothing wrong in the troubled young male narrative with a man being led astray by a WOMAN. So that’s who he’s going to focus on. It was this WOMAN who led him into deceit and decadence and derangement.
Yes, the Christian Church, my parents, and their narrow thinking were the problem. Yes, there was something different about me, but no, I wasn't messed up. Yes, I felt oddly divorced from my body, and increasingly from reality.
*under breath* Not that it’s necessarily a trans thing, but he has a ~narrative~ to tell.
Yes, I had serious problems at this point being ABLE to tell the truth, because everything I said might endanger another lie and make someone not like me and/or find out. Yes, I felt terribly alone. But all this wasn't because something was wrong with me, it was because I was special, wonderful, gifted, a miracle, even.
Funny. This is exactly how Thanfiction draws in his “cult” members, by all accounts.
Let’s just say I’m skeptical about whether he got fed this line or was the one feeding it.
I was a Paladin, she told me, a spiritual and psychic warrior capable of channeling the spirits of others...ghosts, demons, the living, the dead, even the non-human.
Demons are non-human, you twit.
The Church would never accept me, but The Goddess knew what I really was and loved me, and the Priestess would help me love and understand myself as a rare lesbian Paladin.
rare lesbian Paladin
The reason I felt divorced from my body is that I could separate from it to allow the souls of others...it's also why I felt so connected to the male characters from my writings, because male spirits regularly flowed through me because my lesbian energies were very compatible to them.
*tries not to laugh too hard*
More seriously, this was the line HE fed people. Now he’s blaming it on a woman. Mm-hmm. He also tried to claim Amy Player was his evil twin sister when the Thanfiction account first got found out. Lovely how he tries to offload all his evils on a female figure, isn’t it?
Already near my wit's end, I swallowed it, hook, line, and pentacle.
“ What I am doing here is not a plea for sympathy, nor an excuse, nor any attempt to weasel my way out of anything. ”
“ALAS! PITY ME!”: 14
It was the closest thing I'd ever had to an answer, and most tellingly, I thought, she had approached ME with it, telling ME my darkest shames and where they had come from.
Yeah, I heard you did that to a lot of people.
And in all harshness, I think Thanfiction fished for answers and steered any such “Priestess” towards the ones that sounded coolest. He’s describing HIS methods here. While it’s entirely possible the Priestess mentored him in his bullshit, I don’t think he actually bought into any such lines – because, as I’ve noted, he’s a controlling personality, remember? He’d probably chew his hand off before submitting to any external forces. On the other hand, he is a very good actor…
At the time, it seemed an unquestionable miracle. Now, I see that I was flying psychological flags and signs miles high to anyone who knew how to read them.
Oh, poor Thanfiction! So naïve! So innocent!
~LIKE A VIRGIN~: 16
All of this, of course, had to be carefully guarded against anyone who was Closed Minded, but the pagans have had to keep their secrets for millennia, so that seemed okay. I got drawn in deeper and deeper without even realizing it, and in hindsight, I honestly can't say how I managed to start believing that faeries and gnomes and dark wizards and all these non-human creatures straight out of Dungeons and Dragons were real...and talking to her through me. But I did. Profoundly.
Funny, Abbey Stone says the same thing.
Except, for her, there was no “priestess”. Just you.
By the time Lord of the Rings came out in winter of 2001, I had all but completely dropped out of the real world, existing only for my online web and my life as a Paladin.
So you were a proto-World Of Warcraft player? *attacked by angry mob of WoW addicts*
I was spending weeks alone in my apartment, skipping classes, ignoring friends and family. My Priestess had told me that it was yet another example of how The Sacred has to be slipped in to the truth of the ages in a way unbelievers can handle, but that Tolkien wasn't just making a metauniversal statement. Nae, the Red Book of Westmarch was more real than the Christian Bible, being a single faded volume found by the Professor and painstakingly translated to prove the truth of a history lost to the brutal censorial axes of the post-Constantine Romans.
*cracks up* This is, in fact, the line of bullshit he was feeding people! He’s just trying to claim it didn’t originate with him! It was just ~the Priestess~!
…Actually, it’s really creepy how he started blaming a female personality even before he completely broke with Amy Player.
I was such a strong Paladin, in fact, that I could probably call forth a vision of the finding...
The finding? By WHO? Gollum?
*cracks up* Please tell me he didn’t just confess to first “channeling” Gollum!
(Thanfiction) We wants attention, precious! We WANTS it!
and, of course, I did, which proved it. But you know what? I can now say that I can tell every one of you to call forth a vision of Mickey Mouse beating an elephant with a bunch of carrots, and you all will. It's the human imagination. A miracle in itself, yes, but...
And that summarizes Thanfiction very well, doesn’t it?
If another Thanfiction mega-wank ever arises, I’ll need to prepare icons of exactly that. But should it be a rare lesbian paladin Mickey Mouse beating an elephant with a bunch of carrots? That would truly convey the WTFery…
Well, anyway. I was still keeping those lives mostly separate,
His life as a Paladin and his life as an online fan, apparently.
So, from his POV, did LOTR fanfic count as historical fiction?
and I got into Lord of the Rings fandom surprisingly separate from my increasingly bizarre spiritual journey through same. I was already active in Sharpe fandom, Sean Bean was in Lord of the Rings...and when I followed the line, I found an enormously active slash fandom. In I went, discovering that here was a place where my intensive immersion recently into fantasy thinking served my pen even more praise than my experience with 18th century living history had served me in Hornblower!
*SPITTAKE*
*CRACKS UP*
That was his earlier charade, you see. Previous lives as soldiers.
(EDIT 6/27/2013: A comment informed me that he might have been referring to a "tween summer job doing historical re-enactment in Colonial Williamsburg." That makes more sense. My reason for assuming the past-life explanation was a text file that I came across while reading through the VB-wank archives, which appears to show several (friends-locked?) posts from Thanfiction on his
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
53. [Dream of mutilated bodies, blood, death, and gore?] Thanks to a combination of military past-life memories, love of militaria, and a nasty temper, yes.
So I assumed, especially given his later infatuation with militant grimdarkery, that he was literally claiming to have 'living experience' with 18th-century history. However, as the alternative explanation makes more sense in light of Thanfiction's attempt to claim here that all the other-lives stories stemmed from psychosis, it is probably correct.)
The formation of BitofEarth the mailing list and website went exactly as it appeared...honestly, the best records of that are to be found on the list itself. All the shenannigans with me were happening on chats, my livejournal, and emails having nothing to do with BoE yet, and everything to do with what they always had: PLEASE VALIDATE ME!
Add “Tumblr” to that list, and it fits pretty well to his present antics.
And sweet gad, here we turn back to reality, and here the manipulation starts up again…
“ALAS! PITY ME!”: 15
Spring of 2002, I had what I now consider the beginning of my legal separation from reality. It's okay, we've had counseling now, and the relationship has been repaired, but 2002-03 were really close to the brink of divorce, and it began in March.
A rather glib description of a psychotic break…
I had been recently informed by my Priestess that a halfling spirit from the past would soon contact me, that he was trapped in a terrible darkness, and that only I could save him.
I suspect this should be read as “I decided to come up with a story where I played Link to Merry Brandybuck’s Princess Zelda, and went fishing around for patsies.”
I was already close friends with Orangeblossom, (though I am going to leave her out of this statement as much as possible, as I AM doing this alone and am not going to speak for her)
*snork* Possibly because, if I recall correctly, he was on the edge of a break-up with her. Yeah, would be kind of inconvenient if she turned evidence against him upon hearing how he’d spun their relationship…
and what happened next is already a matter of public record, and, fairly perhaps, ridicule. Yes, I did believe that I was channeling Merry, and then others. I believed it completely, and letting my desperate ego hide my low self-esteem, I believed it all the more because I didn't think I was good enough to make up anything as compelling as it became.
…Wow, he has to stroke his ego even when he’s trying to tell us all how insecure he was.
“UNUSUALLY INTELLIGENT”: 5
June of 2002, I went to meet Orangeblossom in person in Oregon. It was a deeply profound experience, getting to "channel freely' with someone else in person,
(Thanfiction) REAL-LIFE PATSY! 8D
and there it wound up taking a still-further turn into the bizarre. Focusing on trying to 'reach' Frodo, I found myself 'bringing' Elijah Wood by accident. I since understand that what I was really doing was an uncontrolled mix of free-association and role-playing, but at the time, I thought it was all very real.
In other words, he’s covering his ass for the story he told, while admitting that it was bullshit. But not HIS fault, mind! ACCIDENTAL bullshit!
“ What I am doing here is not a plea for sympathy, nor an excuse, nor any attempt to weasel my way out of anything. ”
What were you saying about the latter two, Thanfiction?
“ALAS! PITY ME!”: 16
Though even I was reluctant at first to believe it could be possible to have channeled a living human being, my doubts were shattered when things I had "channeled" were proven to be true in the DVD release and in interviews that hadn't occurred yet. What had actually happened, of course, is that I already knew a near-fanatical amount about that young man from being a fan to the level I was, and any good profiler can tell you that someone with a gift for getting into the heads of others (like a writer) and enough information can often predict other people's actions to a creepy extent.
Yes, yes, you’re so very gifted.
“UNUSUALLY INTELLIGENT”: 6
Yet from my point of view, it was irrefutable evidence, and this one felt more right than anything previous (no surprise, as I was for the first time role-playing a human male, near my own age, struggling with sexual identity issues
Funny, I thought your version of Elijah Wood was gay, not trans. Kind of two very different things there… -_____-
and trying to juggle what people expected of him with his true self).
(Thanfiction) Mainly people expecting me not to be a sociopath.
But yes, this is “irrefutable evidence” that he’s trying to glom onto all the tragedy and angst of a Generic Gay Narrative for his own tale.
Notice that at this point he’s segued entirely into the “ desperately angsty and troubled young man straight out of cliché fanfiction ” that I described? Where’d all that naïveté go? Ah, right – because a male can’t play the ~LIKE A VIRGIN~ shtick, because that corresponds to stereotypical feminity, and Thanfiction just loves stereotypes.
Thankfully, the angst is covered by “ALAS! PITY ME!”, so I don’t need a new count. I just need you to remember that line I keep repeating…
I believed heart and soul that I was channeling the spirit of Elijah Wood. I have tried to explain this away as just "role playing that got out of hand" before, or as "poking the tinhats", but that's just excuse-making to try and hide how phenomenally fucked up I was.
“ What I am doing here is not a plea for sympathy, nor an excuse, nor any attempt to weasel my way out of anything. ”
“ALAS! PITY ME!”: 17
Being Elijah gave me the ability to be a boy, and I clung to it with a fervor I didn't know I was capable of, nor was willing to admit to. I believed that something had clearly gone wrong with the Paladin powers, because "Amy" was less and less willing to return (given the option, I was loathe to be a lesbian girl again)
Yes, why be a girl when you can be a man and so hook lost young women looking for a wise mentor figure/daddy-substitute?
*twiddles thumbs* Not that I’m suggesting that he had anything but honest motivations for coming out as trans, of course. Not at all. …Gee, Mr. Transwank, what big teeth you have! *runs*
and Elijah was slowly splitting off a second consciousness from himself and taking over my body. This is about as far from reality as it ever got, and lasted through all of 2003. Yes, I thought I was the split-off duplicate channeled soul of Elijah Wood the entire time I was planning and attempting to execute Project Elanor and all the other BitofEarth events.
Yes, that is crazy.
Yes, that is fucked up.
No, I don't think that absolves me.
Except he so obviously thinks it does. But thanks for the new quote, Thanfiction.
As Elijah, I tried to deal with the 'terrible situation' of being split off from myself and trapped in a girl's body (the closest I had yet come to confronting being transgender, as the only other exposure I had to the concept was MsAllegro, who sets off every NO alarm in ANYONE'S book)
Nice divide-and-conquer against one of your former friends, pal. And yes, I know MsAllegro’s background, but he is in NO place to preach about setting off “ every NO alarm in ANYONE’S book ”. Honor amongst thieves, anyone?
as best I could, even taking some people 'into my confidence' to 'tell them the truth.' Which was spinning farther and farther away from what anyone else on this planet knew as reality.
I also got BitofEarth into HUGE trouble from a fire triangle of three different major problems, all of which I am owning up to freely.
(Thanfiction) Welcome to my nonexistent sense of shame!
1: I was relying on a lot of "knowledge" which I wasn't aware I was making up.
Uh-huh. What was that about owning up to it, these things not absolving you, and about this not being an excuses-excuses session?
“ALAS! PITY ME!”: 18
This was primarily about the movie industry, publicity, and my "friends" on the cast and crew. Again, using the profiling principle, I was right enough of the time that I got an amazingly long way
“UNUSUALLY INTELLIGENT”: 7
before it began crumbling around my ears, but in the end, the house (or the real world) always wins.
Funny that you should use a gambling metaphor for something you claim was not intentionally seeing how far you could go before it crashed.
2. I was at this point completely unraveled from what was and was not true about my own life, and what I believed about myself and my past could change from moment to moment. This did not engender what you would exactly call a spirit of trust, which is something very important when you are working on a project of that magnitude.
He admits he was a youthful pathological liar, that he knew how to feed different stories to different people, and that he was an expert in mixing truth with lies, and now he insists that noooo, this time it was unintentional changing from moment-to-moment?
You really think we’re stupid, don’t you, Thanfiction?
“ALAS! PITY ME!”: 18
3. Aware that I had lost everyone in my previous life - whether that was as Amy OR Elijah - I hung a crazed amount of importance on BitofEarth, the people in it, and them all continuing to like me at all costs. Especially Orangeblossom, whom I had fallen in love with by then.
(Thanfiction) It’s your fault! It’s all your fault for making me like you!
In order to try and maintain this, I took on ridiculously more than I could handle.
“ What I am doing here is not a plea for sympathy… ”
“ALAS! PITY ME!”: 19
If someone wanted it, I promised it. If I could find a way to do it - lie, cheat, hook, or crook - I did it, or if I couldn't, I came up with an excuse that made it not my fault.
And you still are!
I delegated my hugely overloaded plate to others, but when they weren't happy with the work, or if something went wrong, I took it back onto myself rather than confront them or drive them, even if I already had more than I could handle.
*plays a tune on the smallest violin in the world, then smashes it to pieces*
“ALAS! PITY ME!”: 20
I considered the success of Orangeblossom's and everyone else's whims at BitofEarth to be the stuff of life or dearth,
*snerk* Dear me, misspellings are not good for drama…
and had completely lost all perspective. And if you're fighting for your life, not a convention or organization, you'll do anything, say anything, promise anything, and prop yourself up on a house of cards hoping you can find glue before the wind blows.
May I summarize the above three points? All the lies involved were purely accidental, and his screwing things up was because people put way too much pressure on poor little Thanfiction, who only wanted to be liked. It wasn’t his fault. He was just a martyr.
Manipulating bastard.
And yes, he explicitly turned it into a matter of life or death. Oh sweet gad. Here you see part of Later Thanfiction starting to appear – once he adopted the Andrew Blake identity, he made EVERYTHING into a matter of life and death. Did he tell you about that time he fought for the IRA, and that time that he rescued a woman from a hurricane (apparently a scene out of the Millennium Trilogy), and that time he got into a claymore battle, and –
Yeeeeeeeah…
Well, as everyone knows, the wind blew big time and I didn't have any glue. Seeing the sure destruction of TentMoot and the exposure of the lies I had told to try and pull it off, I tried to kill myself.
*twiddles thumbs* Funny, Orangeblossom herself has a different take.
TL;DR? When TentMoot fell through, he faked a suicide attempt to get into a 48-hour lockup so that all the blame would fall on the heads of his “friends”.
“ [H]e had mostly taken NyQuil Liquicaps, Advil and multivitamins.”
And his claims about being so desperate to please people?
“ When we visited him in the hospital, he said he’d “panicked and snapped” because he was so hurt and devastated. He maintained that he had gotten a donation that really did fall through, all the way up until after the next core switch. At that point, it became my fault, because I had “pushed Jordan so far” and he had been so terribly desperate to please me.”
Yep. Excuses and manipulation.
Scumbag.
I am actually very thankful for this, as the mandatory rest in the mental hospital was my first step towards re-connecting with reality.
No, BitofEarth was not a scam. I was never trying to get anything out of anyone, and I have never profited so much as a dime from any cast or crewmember, nor anyone associated with New Line Cinema.
What’s that name of that “charity” of yours, Thanfiction? “It’s About Power”?
As a matter of fact, Orangeblossom and myself spent ourselves into destitution and still OWE about $1,200 to Jeanine in money she spent on us because we were pumping every dime into BoE, and about $100 to the Kiwi's for money they spent on themselves because we had abjectly nothing. I was never trying to con anyone, or to get anything out of it, even attention, as anyone who was in that inner circle can recall that I ducked the spotlight as though it were poison.
Yes, but I hear that was because you were trying to avoid the whole ‘Hobbit Cult’ thing coming to light.
All I wanted was to make a lot of people happy,
“ What I am doing here is not a plea for sympathy, nor an excuse, nor any attempt to weasel my way out of anything. ”
“ALAS! PITY ME!”: 21
but I did it in a way that was maladjusted to say the least, and with the facts as truly beyond the bizarre as they are, I can certainly understand and hold no malice against those who could see no possibility but a deliberate scam.
Do I really need to point out the manipulation here?
After the fall of BitofEarth, I tried a home-based business selling credit-card readers with a guy who I'd met at the mental home, but he WAS a scam artist,
Karma, vot ist zat?
and I was soon standing on the sidewalk in San Dimas with Diamond, Orangeblossom, an eviction notice, and not a red cent to my name. Begging at gas stations for money and gas to get us there, we made it into Hollywood, where we crashed on a friend's couch for a few days until we could scrape together the money taking pictures as costumed characters on the Boulevard to get a cheap motel room.
We lived hand to mouth that way for all of 2004 and the first half of 2005, trying to repair our lives. The maelstrom that destroyed BitofEarth, horrifying and painful as it was, was, in the end, I believe, the work of God.
You mean that maelstrom which YOU caused.
Unless you’re calling yourself God.
“ What I am doing here is not a plea for sympathy, nor an excuse, nor any attempt to weasel my way out of anything . ”
You REALLY think the readers are BLIND, don’t you.
“ALAS! PITY ME!”: 22
It also destroyed the 'duplicate Elijah' and I had to start over looking myself hard in the face. It was about this time that we separated from Diamond, who had begun having fits of temper where she would bite and attack us and herself, as well as stealing alcohol. We have heard several stories about her going through quite the litany of roommates with several different horror stories of lies and dozens of identities on her part, but I don't trust gossip, and it's not my business anyway. I haven't seen her in over 3 years, and I hope that she is well and has gotten the help she so clearly needed.
BULL. FUCKING BULL.
Here’s a quote from the comments:
“ Di was a innocent and beautiful young woman who bought EVERYTHING you BOTH said. YOU had her moved to LA and used her until you didn't need her anymore. She would have NEVER been in that situation if it wasn't for BOTH of your lies. ”
Diamond also comments on Abbey Stone’s blog. She was a VICTIM, did NONE of the things of which he accuses her here – and the only benefit of this section is that you can see here how Thanfiction treats those who are no longer useful to him.
The only thing that is making me not go into a blind rage is how fucking TRANSPARENT it is. It is so bad that it’s a JOKE. ‘ I heard from several different sources that she worships the Devil, devours baby kittens at high noon, and had carnal knowledge of a sperm whale, a chicken, and an Arkansas governor – but I don't trust gossip, and it's not my business anyway. ’ For the love of GAD. I’m not exaggerating by much.
Oh, and –
“ with several different horror stories of lies and dozens of identities on her part ”
How interesting to see you describe yourself, Thanfiction!
Terribly afraid at being pinned as a con artist when I hadn't stolen from anyone,
Oh really.
and seized with panic attacks at the thought of being made to live as Amy Player, a girl, I tried to adopt a new identity so that I could sort myself out while still living as a male.
What’s that? Yet more excuses?
“ What I am doing here is not a plea for sympathy, nor an excuse, nor any attempt to weasel my way out of anything. ”
“ALAS! PITY ME!”: 23
No movie stars this time, no big deal, just a drifting 'actor, writer, jack-of-all-trades' with a mysterious past he wouldn't talk about.
*rolls eyes* And did you get that identity out of a romance novel? Was the studly Viking, the decadent rake, or the hard-hearted nobleman next on your agenda? Oh, right – you choose “Highland warrior”. *HEADDESK*
I got a lot of therapy,
(Thanfiction) *scribbling furiously* So WHAT do I say to the vulnerable young women searching for father figures, again?
(Therapist) Er… is it too late for me to refund your money and flee?
found out about transgender, saved up money, got an apartment, and started looking at building up a long-term life again.
In October, an opportunity presented us to move to Toronto to help manage a small cafe and live in an attached apartment as roommates with the owners. We felt that this was a perfect opportunity, as not only could we fully move back into the 'normal' workforce, but we could get a fresh start and be really honest with people, as we didn't have pre-existent relationships there created under a need to hide my insanity or my gender situation.
(Thanfiction) It’s yoooooour fault for making me dishonest! You! You! You!
We told people that we were moving out East, flying to New York (this was true, flying to Buffalo and meeting our employers there saved over half on tickets) so that we could leave that far behind and live like normal people.
God, however, does not allow Jonah to flee Ninevah. The Toronto opportunity was a scam, and we were stranded in Buffalo. In early February. Of this year. Nothing makes you look at your life like twenty degrees below freezing windchill.
(Thanfiction) Next time, I have to scam someone out of a fur coat…
(Orangeblossom) Um, forget NEXT time. We’re FREEZING TO DEATH! IN REAL TIME!!!
(Thanfiction) Silence, wench, I’m trying to scheme!
See Abbey Stone’s actual account here. In fact, she mentions this “apology” during the second part of this post.
I had already become a Christian again over the course of my therapy, once I knew that I was just another example of God's infinite diversity and not some terrible creature,
I am not kidding when I say people like Thanfiction are why I cannot take the “God’s unconditional love” line seriously. I believe in a JUST God. I cannot simultaneously believe in a just God and an unconditionally loving God.
Apologies to any people who believe in an unconditionally loving God.
but at the border, it seemed like He was speaking to me.
****You can't run. You can change, and you have changed, you can grow up, and you have grown up, you can mature, and you have matured, and you can go on to live a normal life, but you must deal with what you have done in the past. I may be able to wipe your sins clean as though they never happened, but that does not absolve you of needing to face those you sinned against.*****
…
…
…
*sourly* All evidence is against something like this actually occurring in this story. It’s probably more along the lines of something he copied off a therapist.
Nonetheless. He’s expecting us to believe this, and so I suppose some people think this is morally plausible.
At this time, it was known that Thanfiction was a thief, a liar, and a cheat. Shall I clarify that the wank would NOT be this massive if he had merely “channeled” everyone and their giraffe, caused shitloads of fandom drama, or, hypothetically, run in circles writing grimdark badfic. In fact, he did write rather epic grimdark badfics in his later incarnations, so we know that he just annoyed people when he did that – and that even his enemies didn’t really go back on the warpath until the reports of the cultish activities amongst the DAYD fans came out.
He hurt people. Badly. How much money did Turimel lose, again? $10,000? Sounds about right. And I think he got Sean Astin and several other LOTR stars stuck in the middle of nowhere… And so on and so forth.
So for him to smugly go on about how he needs to just give them an “explanation” (a BULLSHIT explanation) and so on to have all debts cleared - *flips him the middle finger* Sorry. Forget it.
So we called Orangeblossom's mother, and my parents, and we have reconnected with our families. I am home now, as I write this, patching things up with my parents, and at the end of this month will be moving on to a regular job and apartment with Orangeblossom and our little pet bird.
HIS SON, THE SPARROW!
Our relationship has grown from two severely screwed up people clinging to each other to something amazingly precious and tried by fire, and we hope to spend the rest of our lives together.
Funny epilogue to that line – Orangeblossom ran like hell after her next reunion with him. I think their relationship ended with him literally screaming incoherently with rage as her mother drove away with her in tow… Don’t believe me? Just check the links.
I do not expect forgiveness or absolution from any of you, but I do ask of you one thing. Please do not try to destroy me any further unless I warrant it.
And he soon warranted it.
If I am caught with so much as a toe out of place in a charity,
“It’s About Power” sound familiar, Thanfiction?
organization, business, or online,
(Thanfiction) If I’m caught with an entire leg and a tractor out of place online, however – HOW DARE YOU BRING UP MY OLD LIFE!11!!
feel free to light the pitchforks,
So good at manipulation, so incompetent at basic metaphors.
but as for the past...I beg you. I was little more than a child, and a profoundly messed up one.
“ALAS! PITY ME!”: 24
There was a police investigation, charges were never filed, civil fines were paid. I am currently trying to set aside as much as I can per month of my paycheck (as soon as I have one) to pay off the last of my financial obligations to Jeanine,
I believe this took the form of trying to bribe her to shut up for $100 seven years late. …Yep, here’s the post.
but I am really and truly trying to be a healthy and law-abiding grown man, no matter how disastrously crazy I was as a young girl. Please, please...you have my social security number, my date of birth, my other vital stats, many of you.
(Lit-Pitchfork Mob) How about your immortal soul?
(Thanfiction) Funny about that – the Devil also asked. Turns out I don’t have one.
I live in fear every day that I will find things done in my name for spite,
(Thanfiction) I mean, come on, people! Don’t you trust me to ruin my life and reputation MYSELF?!
that I will get a job only to find people parked outside my office yelling for my head,
(Thanfiction) Instead, I just ended up getting my girlfriend killed in a murder-suicide by her ex-husband. But it’s totally the online people I fear.
that years from now I will adopt a baby and have people organizing an internet campaign to call Social Services and get it taken...that my life will be ruined because in 2003, I tried to organize a fan convention when I should have spent that year in a mental hospital.
No, it’s all the batshit insanity that CONTINUED – Oh, never mind.
“ What I am doing here is not a plea for sympathy, nor an excuse, nor any attempt to weasel my way out of anything. ”
You went back on all of the above multiple times. You really think no readers can connect point A to point B. You…
See, there’s a funny thing about text – you can go back and reread. It’s not like your fast-talking in real life. If you write something, you can’t say “Never happened! You’re a liar!” later in the post.
Idiot.
“ALAS! PITY ME!”: 25
I don't want your forgiveness. I'm willing to accept your anger, your hate. I don't think this will just go away.
As a note – again, it would have if he HADN’T STARTED IT RIGHT BACK UP AGAIN!
I know that the written word endures, that the things I wrote can never be taken off of the internet thanks to Google Cache and the Wayback Machine,
Oh, you nearly escaped due to robots.txt. But some people had scree-ee-een-caaaaaaaps… (And ScrapBook copies, in my case. *coughs*)
and that there will always be a book out there commemorating what I have done, and what people thought of me because of that. My lowest and darkest moments will always be public sport and satire, because I lied, and that is a sin, and to sin is both to hurt others and to bring their retribution upon you.
“ALAS! PITY ME!”: 26
Actually, you know something? I’m going to do something I highly dislike and double-count that because of how low a blow it is and how thoroughly it’s aimed at getting the soft-hearted of the world to turn over their emotional wallets. I’m showing self-restraint. I really want to triple-count that.
“ALAS! PITY ME!”: 27
Scum, scum, scum, scum.
I am not trying to escape, indeed, I am confronting it all head-on and with what I hope you can see is soul-baring honesty.
Well, there you can see that he’s coaching you on what to think and feel. Oh, whatever. It's almost over.
Comments are not locked. I will even answer your questions on specific matters, and answer them in full honesty, as I know that however lengthy, this has just been an overview.
I have stopped running. I have confessed my sins. I await the consequences. I deserve no forgiveness.
In context, this is blatant coaching for people to cry out “No! No! We forgive!” I suspect that, for those who came from strongly religious backgrounds, this combined with the entire speech-from-God above is supposed to be the cue for the cries of “Everyone deserves forgiveness!” – I don’t know, since I didn’t grow up with such a background. But he did, so…
I honestly don’t know. I despise this guy, because I see just how well his story’s cued to take the naïve, soft-hearted, and/or insecure to the cleaners. And my family has dealt with people like him in real life… and, unfortunately, has more than a few people who have been taken in by people like him. Minus the cult activity, but plus a whole lot more of financial fraud. Lives WERE ruined.
Most importantly, he’s demonstrated that he’ll never change. He made DAYD cult-like and is supposedly running a similar gambit involving Castiel in SPN fandom. I'm sure he'll move on to the next big magic-based fandom when he tires of those.
Sorry. Forgiveness would require even the slightest sign that he had any interest in reformation. There's none.
“ALAS! PITY ME!”: 28
not at your lives.
God Bless You
I don’t want a blessing from your God. He stinks a bit too much of brimstone.
(In all seriousness, I just felt briefly nauseated. One of said people like him used to write glurgey twaddle about God’s blessings and love in letters – said person also has the nastiest eyes I’ve ever looked into at close quarters and a constantly-hateful expression on her face whenever she’s not putting on the charm. I got… a slight flashback to the sheer dishonesty in those notes at that line…)
Sincerely
Just Me
FINAL COUNTS:
“ALAS! PITY ME!”: 28
“UNUSUALLY INTELLIGENT”: 7
~LIKE A VIRGIN~: 16
And we’re done.
no subject
Already having serious problems with the truth (never easy for someone who is lied to every day by their own body, as I've found out)
Yeah, because trans* people are totally destined to become pathological liars. NOT.
An aside, but:
MALE characters don’t have to be NURTURING and FEELING and SENSITIVE
I totally love male characters like that. <3 (Also, I disbelieve you are cold and unfeeling -- far from it -- but I DEFINITELY agree that it's irritating when female characters aren't judged as morally responsible individuals capable of both good and bad.)
no subject
Remember what I said about hiding behind trans* status (as he does here)? He also hides behind claimed mental illness (as he does here), grossly libeling everyone who could testify as to his true nature (as he does here), and pleading that he was a poor misguided soul and he's not like that any more (as he does here). It's a perfect microcosm of all his public manipulations, really.
He's also a decent artist (I would say 'good', but he's also been caught out in tracing photos, so I don't know how much is his actual skill and how much is diligent copying) and a talented writer, which is how he gathers fans in the first place. And I will admit that he is a very good writer possessed of a particular gift for evoking sensory details... the only problem, which made so much more sense when I learned that he was the infamous Victoria Bitter/Jordan Wood/et cetera, was that he described emotions well, but... always slightly off. It was like his characters were made of beautifully crafted blocks, but the blocks were always assembled into larger structures in a disconcertingly mismatched manner, with the edges of adjacent blocks never properly aligned and the keystone of every arch always subtly misshapen.
At the time that I read a few chapters of DAYD, I put it down to my not being the target audience. Now, even that memory creeps me out... :S
Yeah. I mean, look, I've known two FTM guys online who strongly identified with certain male characters, to the point where the boundaries kind of blurred... but NEITHER of them actually claimed to ***be*** those characters, neither of them were pathological liars, and neither of them freaking tried to run cults. So, no matter HOW much you narrow the options, Thanfiction is an aberrant outlier.
--
They're nice! I was just saying that they don't ***have*** to be that way, whereas female characters seem contractually obligated to show their ~true femininity~ at some point.
Thank you! Very nice of you to say that...
I've fooled you all! *cackles* More seriously, I admit that there may be a gap between how I perceive myself and how others actually perceive me. *shrug* I need to work on that.*nodnodnod* DEFINITELY.
no subject
Two minor points:
-In the time period he's referencing, FFN didn't exist. [Just assuming for the sake of argument that he really did get into fandom when he was 14 and oh so very innocent lol.] I think he was born in 1983, so I think he would have been 15 when the Pit was founded, and like all old-internet things, it was small and very unreliable for the first two or three years, so I think it's not implausible that he bypassed FFN in his early years and was hanging out in places with different content rules (spoken or unspoken) - I first got into fanfic on a phBB board, and the terms of service for such sites forbid porn. (Total aside, but the 'M' category didn't exist until sometime in the mid-noughties; previously the Pit used the MPAA ratings system, and under that system they originally allowed NC-17 fics, but that entire category was mass-deleted in the fall of 2002. They even enforced a no-porn rule for a while afterwards - I got an upload ban for it once myself. The Porn gradually repopulated the new M category after the rating system was changed. /historylessons)
-by 'living history' I think he's referring not to made-up past lives but to his tween summer job doing historical re-enactment in Colonial Williamsburg. Isn't Living History the buzzword term for that stuff?
no subject
"but to his tween summer job doing historical re-enactment in Colonial Williamsburg. Isn't Living History the buzzword term for that stuff?"
Ah, I didn't know about that part of his past. I just assumed he was going on about his reincarnation gimmick again. That explains where he got the infatuation with Being A Soldier...
(He did go on about a past life as a soldier at one point on the VB account, as I recall. Someone uploaded a text file on fandom-wank showing a post about that, I think... Ah, here we go.
http://www.angelfire.com/ex/seether128/LJStuff.txt
So I interpreted the "my experience with 18th century living history" as a reference to those "past-life" memories. What you said makes more sense, though.
Incidentally, one particular bit of that post is rather worrisome given his current interests on Tumblr...
)
Anyway, thank you for the information!
EDIT: The information has been added. Thanks again!
no subject
That text file is special. BLOOD ON THE PALMS OF HIS HANDS.
Seriously, this post is great. I love how you've drawn out all the narcissistic triangulation. It is kinda sad how much he reeks of gender-essentialist misogyny.
no subject
"That text file is special. BLOOD ON THE PALMS OF HIS HANDS."
And the MORTAL WOUND of... an irregular period without cramping! *GASP*
"Seriously, this post is great. I love how you've drawn out all the narcissistic triangulation. It is kinda sad how much he reeks of gender-essentialist misogyny. "
Thank you! Glad you thought it was good.
(I'd feel sadder for him if he didn't wield said misogyny as a weapon... :\)
no subject
(Anonymous) 2013-11-08 06:48 pm (UTC)(link)1) Notice that he never addressed that whole faking his death thing? I'd love to see your take on that.
2) The "calling forth a vision of the finding" meant seeing Tolkien finding the red book. I posted a section of unpublished fic (supposedly written by Frodo, er, Maura) about how Amy chose victims (http://kqcrazytrain.wordpress.com/2013/06/03/horses-mouth-and-horses-ass/ and my apologies that my phone won't format the link). Another section of that story was the overwritten account of "the finding." Would you like to read it?
3) He never did channel Gollum directly, but "Jordan" went through a brief phase of "becoming like Gollum" that was disturbing enough that I wrote a fix about it at the time. I did a quick search and found a copy (http://m.fanfiction.net/s/1116527/1/Ban-Gyrurau-Half-RingBeast). Rereading it today made me feel sick. 90% of that story was acted out, with thanfiction hissing and rocking and biting. I was the horrified Sam. Fun fact: thanfiction was ALSO the stubborn healer. I've mentioned that character: Imrodyr, the elf-doctor.
4) Are you going to write more like this?
-- KumquatWriter, aka Orangeblossom, best known as just Abbey
no subject
(And this is Lliira, obvs., I'm just in a different browser than the one I normally use for DW so it posted as this never-used journal and I didn't notice until posting.)
no subject
(Anonymous) 2014-03-21 11:55 am (UTC)(link)I'm also a young woman struck with schizophrenia at an early age (16 is when I was diagnosed). And 'unusually intelligent'. (Which really he's not as smart as he thinks he is, he's articulate but not genius level.)
Mental illness is not a get out of jail free card. I've done things I'm not proud of while in thrall to auditory hallucinations and paranoid thinking, but this is never the fault of the person I harmed. Instead of asking for pity, he should be apologizing sincerely (not this fauxpology bullshit), and doing what he can to minimize impacting others in the future.
no subject
My guess was going to be that the theatre teacher he mentions was the same person as the Priestess from whence the "Rare Lesbian Paladin" (capitals necessary, lol!), but it looks like he's saying they're two different people. Though who the fuck knows.
Thanks for doing this.