I’ve managed to avoid the majority of fandom wank.
Before anyone thinks that I’m discussing private indulgences of the type better left either to the imagination or a Circlet Press anthology, well, not quite. “Fandom wank” is an idiom used by online science fiction, fantasy, and media fandom to describe the peculiar mixture of scandal, gossip, rivalry, debate, and just plain argument that permeates our little subculture like a ribbon of Minny’s famous chocolate pie filling contaminating a pint of otherwise excellent Lady Borden Fudge Ripple. Some of it is comparatively mild, but when you consider that the average fan is a voracious reader, often an autodidact in one or more subjects, and really, really stubborn, it should be no surprise that the results can be not just acrimonious but actively calamitous.
Here are just a few examples of wanks that I’ve heard about but managed to dodge, sometimes only by a whisker, sometimes by several years:
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The Invasion of the Femme Fen Trekkies – this wasn’t so much a wank as a backlash by bewildered traditional fen, many of whom had known each other since the heyday of the Futurians in the 1930’s, against the sudden appearance at conventions of Star Trek fen in the 1960’s. Most of these newcomers were young women, a large proportion lacked the deep knowledge of old pulps, comic books, and Victorian pulps considered necessary to be a trufan, and they had zero interest in hazing rituals like wearing propeller beanies or knowing the history of Claude Degler. Needless to say, matters got tense, at least until the femme fen (God, I feel ancient just thinking about that term, let alone typing it) either assimilated, began writing their own stories and winning awards, or split off to found their own conventions.
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Kirk and Spock Are Doing What? – I arrived in fandom just as this was heating up, but I heard an earful from slightly older fen. It seemed that a small, almost all-female contingent in Star Trek fandom was writing stories and creating art that assumed that Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock were considerably more than friends, which had a lot of Trek fen terrified that Paramount would sue the conventions and wreck everyone’s fun. Fanzines exploring Kirk and Spock’s epic romance were sold under the table at conventions, while longer stories were circulated in typewritten copies like erotic samizdat. Eventually Gene Roddenberry himself got involved when his novelization of the first motion picture script had Captain Kirk pooh-poohing the mere idea that he and his best friend were spending pon farr getting to know each other in very intimate ways. Irony of ironies, what was quickly known as “slash” soon became one of the most popular genres of fanfiction, with whole books devoted to exploring what MIT professor Henry Jenkins named “textual poaching.”
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Ms. Scribe – I had just gotten involved in Harry Potter fandom when this one came down the pike, and hoo boy what a saga it was. It is much, much too complicated to go into here and still make sense, but it involved, in no particular order, the following;
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- A fan writer known as Ms. Scribe who cleverly deployed sockpuppets to advance her popularity, tear down her enemies, and attack her own works in hopes of gaining other fen’s sympathies at how meeeeeean her critics were.
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- A fictional babysitter who was probably Ms. Scribe, who had a variety of allegedly real (but not) health and life issues.
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- An online battle between “Harmonians,” Potter fen who thought Harry should marry Hermione, and a website called “Gryffindor Tower” that insisted Harry should marry Ginny. This ended with what one observer called “The Fall of Gryffindor Tower,” which would make a hell of a fanfic if anyone has the nerve.
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- A group of fervent Severus Snape devotees who became known as “The Snapewives.”
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- Several very prominent fan writers and convention organizers who went on to organize early fan conferences like Nimbus 2003, The Witching Hour, and Lumos.
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- A very, very long and highly detailed takedown of everyone involved called “Bad Penny,” which has to be read to be believed.
What the point of it all was I’m not sure, but I do know that I and several other non-involved fan writers had a lot of fun trotting around at a convention in Las Vegas simultaneously claiming to be Ms. Scribe.
- Dashcon — this appalling mess started when some bright-eyed, energetic, and completely inexperienced fen decided to hold a convention in the bustling metropolis of Schaumburg, Illinois, aimed exclusively at users of the microblogging site Tumblr. Lack of funds, wildly overestimated attendance figures, and organization that is dignified by the phrase “stunningly bad” led to guests not getting paid, the hotel demanding an immediate cash payment of $17,000, a public appeal for funds to a crowd of attendees wearing flower crowns and giving the Mockingjay salute, and disappointed ticket holders being promised “an extra hour in the ball pit” rather than a live performance of Welcome to Night Vale. If this sounds remarkably like Fyre Festival, only in Schaumburg, Illinois, instead of on a tropical island, you're not wrong.
Tonight I bring you two legendary early 00’s wanks. One, which didn’t result in a book but should have, concerned a fan writer who turned pro and hit the best seller lists despite accusations that much of the fan fic that made her reputation being ripped off from others. The other, which was ultimately much worse in terms of overall damage, was turned into a self-published work that should be read by anyone interested in just how weird the outer reaches of Fandomistan can get, and just how far certain people are willing to go to attract and keep the attention of others:
Cassandra Claire’s Plagiarized Laptop Thingy — Cassandra Claire, true name Judith Rumelt (now Lewis), was a talented and very, very popular Potter fic writer best known for the Draco Trilogy. This wildly influential series of stories about Draco Malfoy humanized Harry’s chief antagonist, sometimes plausibly (he’s actually sensitive underneath it all), sometimes not (he wears leather pants). It became particularly known for exceptionally clever, witty dialogue, and Cassie Claire herself soon because friends with some of the same influential people who were caught up in the Ms. Scribe kerfuffle.
Then someone realized that the exceptionally clever, witty dialogue sounded familiar, did a bit of digging, and learned that a good chunk of it had not been written by Cassie Claire at all, but by Joss Whedon for Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Worse, it turned out that the Draco Trilogy included several long, unchanged passages from the works of fantasy author Pamela Dean, as well as borrowings from popular TV series like Babylon 5.
Needless to say, this did not go over well. Claims that the quotes were deliberate inserts that served as “spot the reference” brain teasers for fellow members of a popular mailing list were accepted by some and denounced as mere excuses by others. The first two books, Draco Dormiens and Draco Sinister, were deleted from FanFiction.net, leading to the creation of FictionAlley, a leading Potter fic site. Claire apologized, annotated all her fics to give the sources for her clever, witty dialogue, and continued to participate in fandom, albeit now with something of a cloud over her head. Her other works, such as The Very Secret Diaries, a suspiciously Bridget Joneseque parody of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films, were parsed for references and outright thefts, but all seemed to have calmed down as she worked to complete Draco Veritas and a draft of what became the first Mortal Instruments book...
Until someone broke into her apartment and stole laptops belonging to her, her roommate, and her boyfriend. Several of her friends offered to raise funds to replace the laptops, with any extra funds going toward a toy drive at a local hospital. This laudably generous effort quickly backfired, as another fan who had requested publicity for a fundraiser benefiting a sick relative accused the laptop fundraisers of playing favorites, especially since that nasty mean evil baaaaad Cassie Claire had oodles of fans and was on the verge of getting a book contract so didn’t deserve the money.
Attempted explanations went over about as well as a lead Hindenburg struggling to lift off sans hydrogen, accusations flew, and by the time the air had cleared the Draco Trilogy had been taken off the Internet, Claire had changed the spelling of her pseudonym to “Cassandra Clare,” and a lot of people who had formerly bonded over Hogwarts and its denizens no longer spoke to each other. The very few websites that archived the adventures of Draco Malfoy and his leather pants did so against the author’s wishes, and anyone desiring to read these lost classics should probably consult the Wayback Machine. The only one of her fics that is still up is The Very Secret Diaries, which spawned the phrase “pervy elf fancer,” and no, I am not going to explain that tonight. Google is your friend, my friends, so type those words into your search engine, hit “return,” and ye shall find.
Cassandra Clare without the “I” is now a bestselling author of teenage fantasy, most notably the Mortal Instruments series. Unfortunately, despite selling millions of books, teaching at Clarion West, and a feature film and TV series based on her works, she’s never quite been able to shake the allegations of plagiarism. Paranormal romance author Sherrilyn Kenyon recently sued her for appropriating several concepts and terms from her books, while diligent fans claimed to have traced echoes of other works in yet more of Clare’s published fiction. Whether this is laziness on Clare’s part or figments of her detractors’ collective imagination isn’t clear, but I can easily see doctoral candidates in about twenty or thirty years laboring mightily to figure out just what was going on.
As for Judith Lewis herself, I was shocked to learn that she lives about ten miles from the Last Homely Shack East of the Manhan. Evidently she moved to Amherst around the time her books started selling well enough that it was clear most of the world didn’t know or care about her old laptop or her textual poaching of Joss Whedon. Her first home, a “painted lady” Victorian she had done in blue, pink, purple, and similar vivid tones, became something of a local landmark, while her second features a steampunk writing studio that was profiled in the New York Times style section.
Alas for the neighborhood, this faux Victorian retreat is in a very quiet area of town near a local pond. The older residents were not at all happy when the contractor Lewis chose to transform a dilapidated barn into her steampunk heaven started blasting into bedrock, often early in the morning. This particular non-fandom wank made the local papers due to complaints to the zoning board about the noise, which may be why Judith/Cassandra doesn’t do many events in the Five College area, nor does she seem to be involved in local writers’ groups, conventions, and so on.
As for me, I haven’t actually read any of Cassandra Clare’s books so I have no idea if they belong in Badbookistan. Their author’s early career, though, is another matter entirely.
When A Fan Hits the Sh*t, by Jeanine “Turimel” Rennie — As amusing, and appalling, as these cherished controversies may be, they all pale before the long, bewildering swath of destruction left by an individual who has nearly as many names as Daenarys Targeryon. Born Amy Player, later known as Victoria Bitter, VB, Jordan Wood, Mr Frodo, Voyagerbabe, Padawan Sidious, PadawanS, Strwriter, Chris the Marine, Rennie Gade, andythanfiction, and Thanfiction, he now is legally Andrew Blake. He has become online fandom’s bad penny, cropping up every year or two with another pseudonym, another fandom, another LARP/convention/fan gathering of some sort, and another way to separate the innocent from their money. He’s even has attracted his own fan following for a very long, very involved Harry Potter series that he modestly claims has been called “the Wicked to [JK Rowling’s] Wizard of Oz,” and never mind that this is a metaphor so mixed it seems to have been spun through a Waring blender.
The then-Amy Player began modestly in the late 1990’s, writing and participating in the Horatio Hornblower, Sharpe, and Due South fandoms. She claimed to be a college student in her mid-teens who was also a professional entertainer with a touring company, and if anyone pointed out that this is just a wee bit implausible, I’ve yet to hear of it. She used multiple pseudonyms for her multiple works, and even after someone claiming to be her mother had put the kibosh on her ficwriting in one fandom, she continued to write (and draw, after allegedly learning how to do so overnight) in others.
As sketchy as this sounds, it’s not unheard of; there are plenty of fan writers who concoct fake backgrounds to protect their identity, including being either younger or older than their fannish personae. Most of us have day jobs, after all, and some of us have employers who would be less than pleased to learn about a hobby involving pervy hobbit/Vulcan/super soldier/mutant fancying. As long as no one gets hurt, it’s all harmless fun.
Such it was with Amy Player, who was soon going by Victoria Bitter, VB, Strwriter, and a couple of other names around the term of the century. Not long after that she was transitioning to male under the name of Jordan Wood, had set up a Lord of the Ringers website called Bit of Earth, and was attracting quite a bit of attention for cosplaying under the name of Mr. Frodo. Usually Jordan was partnered by a woman who called herself Orangeblossom Brambleburr thanks to a hobbit name generator, and no, I am not making that up.
Regardless of how they decided on their names/personae, Jordan and Orangeblossom made a striking couple, and when they announced that Bit of Earth would be building a children’s reading garden at a library near Portland, Oregon, with net proceeds donated to Reading is Fundamental, local LOTR fen eagerly pitched in. Interest spiked after Bit of Earth announced that Sean Astin, who played Sam Gamgee in the LOTR films, would be participating in the garden project, and soon volunteers were digging up soil, building a deck, and making statuary for the delight of local children.
That the event turned out to be poorly managed and marginally financed was attributed to inexperience, not incompetence or malice. The garden got built, after all, and as of 2014 was still delighting local children. If there was no money left over for RIF, well, such things happen. The next time Jordan and Orangeblossom did something fannish, surely they would have learned.
This is not what happened. Not even close.
When a Fan Hits the Sh*t details what did, and if it weren't for the copious transcripts of date-stamped phone calls, emails, and IM’s included in the second half of the book, no one would believe any of it for a single nanosecond. I’ve been bopping around fandom long enough that little surprises me, but let tell you, this book contained plenty of surprises:
- Jordan Wood claiming to be distantly related to Elijah Wood, only via the “Irish Mafia branch of the family.”
- Accusations that “Jordan Wood” was actually a nom de guerre for Victoria Bitter (see above), a genuinely crazycakes fan who was notorious for engaging in sockpuppetry, perpetrating a variation of Munchausen by proxy over the Internet, busting up friendships, and generally making everyone in the vicinity miserable. This was deflected by Jordan, or possibly Orangeblossom, claiming that Victoria had committed suicide (see below).
- That he was not simply role playing hobbits during long online RP sessions, but actually channeling the spirits of Merry, Pippin, and several others, all of whom were real people who had lived hundreds and hundreds of years ago, not the product of JRR Tolkien’s imagination.
- A music festival that fell apart due to Jordan’s inability to wangle a park permit.
- Thanks to fervent channeling, he was now sprouting the physical equipment that Amy Player lacked, and no, I do not mean the facial hair, deeper voice, or bigger muscles that hormone therapy would bring to a transman. I mean something completely different that usually requires difficult, painful, and expensive surgery, and yes, Jordan’s close friends actually thought this was going on due to magic, or Gandalf, or something.
- A film festival that fell apart due to Jordan’s inability to attract either filmmakers or the promised celebrities.
- Tentmoot, an actual convention, extensively advertised, that promised several celebrity guests and hundreds/thousands of attendees, only to collapse due to trivialities like a) an unbooked convention center, b) a couple dozen registrants instead of several hundred, c) an attempt to scam airfare for about half a dozen people out of Air New Zealand, d) several minor members of the LOTR cast being stuck in LAX due to the airfare problem, then forced to crash in Jordan and Orangeblossom’s grotty little apartment), and Jeanine “Turimel” Rennie having to max out her credit cards to get the LOTR cast home, flatlining her credit rating and nearly bankrupting an innocent travel agent.
- Jordan getting arrested for fraud, only under his birth name of Amy Player. This was complicated by the fact that most of LOTR fandom only knew him as Jordan, not Amy, and refused to believe that they were the same person.
- Victoria Bitter turning out not only to be alive, but to be Jordan, who had been living as male for several years but had never legally changed his name because he couldn’t produce any birth records beyond a blatantly fake “druid birth certificate” that supposedly all members of the Irish Mafia branch of Elijah Wood’s family were given by their local shaman.
Confused? Appalled? Convinced that surely anyone so desperate for attention would never dare show his face in fandom again?
You would be wrong, my friends. Oh so very, very wrong.
For it seems that after pleading guilty to a misdemeanor and agreeing to leave the Pacific Northwest after Tentmoot blew up in spectacular fashion, Jordan and Orangeblossom moved to Los Angeles. Their further adventures are not chronicled in When A Fan Hits the Sh*t, but according to various sources, these included the following:
- Several years annoying tourists in Los Angeles by dressing up as Shrek and Puss in Boots to pose for photographs.
- Jordan continuing to channel and ending up with a mini-cult centered about his channeling hobbits, denizens from other dimensions, etc. He also claimed to have gotten into a swordfight with another Irish Mafia member in a pub when he was sixteen, never mind that he was not only American when he was sixteen, but still living as a girl.
- Andrew/Jordan convincing Orangeblossom that the government was Out to Get Them for no apparent reason. This particular exercise in overblown paranoia nearly ended in tragedy when they attempted to escape to Canada by walking across the border near Niagara Falls during a snowstorm. Orangeblossom’s family then managed to stage a successful intervention, allowing her to escape with at least some (but not all) of her sanity intact.
- Andrew responded by a) attempting to claim custody of a dead bird that was their “spiritual son” (????, and no, I’m not even going to try to explain that), b) claiming to be a born-again Christian and posting a rambling apology online, and finally c) swearing off fandom forever and ever, really truly, cross his heart and hope to die.
- Needless to say, Andrew/Jordan/Victoria/whoever was back in fandom faster than you can say “propeller beanie,” and so much for being born-again/keep his nose clean. He also adopted a new pseudonym, Thanfiction (for “life is stranger than fiction, isn’t that clever, tee hee, ha ha ha, get it?”), which allowed him to quietly join Harry Potter fandom. It was during this time that he wrote Dumbledore’s Army and the Year of Darkness, the fic that he claims has been compared to Wicked. He was exposed only after he announced plans for — you guessed it! — a convention based on his own fic, ran a couple of writing workshops, and, my hand to God I am not making any of this up, starting another, somewhat milder version of his old channeling cult. He attempted to get around this by using a very bad Irish accent and claiming that Amy Player was his evil twin sister. Yes. Really.
At last report Orangeblossom had married, had a child, and was dealing with her past through extensive therapy and blogging about the horrors of living with Jordan/Andrew/ThanFiction. She’s managed to mend fences with a few other participants in the Tentmoot disaster, and by all accounts has done her best to put this extremely dubious chapter in her life behind her.
As for Andrew Blake/Jordan Wood/etc. ….he finally cleaned up his act, at least to a very minor extent, after two of his cult members/disciples/friends were murdered by an angry ex-boyfriend. Oh, he’s allegedly run the occasional minor scam, including an attempt to set up yet ANOTHER channeling cult based on the TV show Supernatural, but he hasn’t tried to run a convention in years. He also took down the Thanfiction account at Archive of Our Own, although a portion of Dumbledore’s Army and the Year of Darkness can be found at Fanfiction.net, nor does he seem to writing for Star Trek, Due South, Supernatural, Lord of the Rings, or anything else.
He did, however, spend some time cosplaying as the Winter Soldier, along with an unidentified beefy blond who did a relatively decent Captain America. He hadn’t written any Marvel fic as of this writing as far as I can tell, but it’s probably only a matter of time.
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Have you ever been in a fandom? Ever heard of Bit of Earth? Does your teenager read Cassandra Clare? Have you ever wondered where the idea of pervy elf fanciers came from? Did you watch the Jackson LOTR films? Did you ever hear of Dashcon? Would you like an extra hour in the ball pit? It’s Saturday night, so lay your burden down and share….
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