#bagenders

[theteablogger]

I just heard a fandom history podcast say that one of the bagend-ers wasn’t a real person. But that isn’t accurate, right?

No, that isn't accurate. Abbey (@kumquatwriter) and the other Bagenders were all real. Out of curiosity, what podcast was this?

[ajollyyarn]

Bound Copies of Fanfic? What?

Beginnings of a list of oldish/classic fanfics (written by other folks) that I plan to do printed bindings for:

Shoebox Project

Mellon Chronicles

Bagenders

?

Old-School Disclaimer: I obviously didn’t write any of these fics. The bound volumes, if I can pull them off, are going to be for my personal collection and not widely distributed either willy-nilly or for the moneys. If one of the creators of said fic were to want one, that would certainly be different and also I’d probably fall off my chair.  

At the beginning of the  year, I set 2017 aside to focus on learning new things about bookbinding. It’s been a wild odyssey full of new equipment, techniques, passions, instagram friends, and injuries. My binding has grown so much, and it only seems natural to combine it with some stories that helped me grow, and whose websites have crumbled. I actually read most of this fic in a printed form anyway, because I wanted to read them at school. Or offline in general. So these are notes for a new side project, as the year starts to wind down and I look forward.

That said.

If anyone has tips or suggestions re: formatting to print to bind, hit me up? Am I going to have to invest in InDesign for this? I am, aren’t I?

Okay.

The really good thing about each of these is they’re formatted very differently from each other, so they’re all going to be good lessons. Before I decide if I can do this for other peoples’ consumption. 

Another good thing is that they’ve each been backed up by at least one person, often including me. The original sites may or may not be gone, but there’s PDFs and Word docs floating around, if you know where to look, and the first two are also backed up on ao3.

Bagenders is chapters, with optional chapters between, and some iconic fanart that should be included somewhere. I have Word docs, a decent amount of the fanart saved, and it’s since been backed up to ao3 by one of the original authors. I have a lot of really fun formatting ideas for this one. Which might make me want to pull out my hair later, we’ll see.

Mellon Chronicles is a collection of chronologically ordered stories of varying lengths, each headed by a photomanip. It also has some story trailer vids that I’d like to save, if I can track them down. I have Word docs, pdf from someone else, and it’s on ao3 (including images!). Last I checked, some of the trailers were even still on youtube. So that part’s easy, at least. MC’s creators also at one point gave blanket permission for folks to repost and archive their fics, so I feel slightly less morally questionable about this one, which is nice.

Shoebox Project is very image-heavy and image-driven, and there’s also a classic fanmix I feel the need to properly preserve and include. Somehow, since I don’t know of any backups for it, specifically the cover art. I’m most concerned about this one, both because of the image formatting and because of the limited ways it’s available. I have a printed copy that an old roommate left behind, and it’s online in PDF form. This is going to make it exceptionally difficult to reformat for binding. Low-key goal: don’t end up rescanning the printed copy’s images and retyping the whole thing.

[theteablogger]

On part 5 of your timeline, in the 2012 section, you document Andy talking about how his sister is ruining Christmas for him. I'm unsure whether there actually is another child in the Player family, or if this is Andy still trying to maintain that Amy Player is a separate person. Can you please clarify? Thanks!

Andy really does have a sister, and in the past, he has told a variety of convoluted stories in order to pin his actions as Amy Player on her. As far as I know, however, he hasn’t done that since 2013 or 2014. At that time, he wasn’t just lying to people on the internet about it; he was telling his so-called best friends, who spent a great deal of time with him (and in some cases with his parents), that his sister was the Amy Player who’d done all those things in LotR fandom. He continued telling these lies even after one of his friends asked his mother about it and learned the truth.

Andy’s modus operandi at this point is to put on a show of “owning” what he did and working hard to get better one day at a time. Saying, “No, that was my sister,” wouldn’t fit with that image at all. Based on comments that his friends and former associates have made, I think what he does with new people now is to start by offering a very bare-bones account of his past that makes it sound like either meaningless wank, or a collection of entertaining anecdotes. It probably does not include much of what he did beyond the DAYDverse years. If people press for details, he twists what happened in such a way as to make him sound like a victim, while the people he hurt are vilified and/or made to sound stupid. Depending on current circumstances, he might talk about it in straightforward “humble penitent” fashion, or in a lighthearted and self-deprecating manner that leads people to believe that he doesn’t even realize what awful things happened to him. Either way, he’ll appear to be taking on more than his share of blame. 

He seems to rely heavily on the tendency of many people, when they hear about cults, to scoff and say that they couldn’t possibly have been taken in by such a ludicrous story because they’re smarter, more mentally healthy, more secure in themselves, etc. than the cult members. With that in mind, I think he puts a great deal of emphasis on the more out-there aspects of the narrative on which each of his cults was based, which makes his listeners predisposed to be unsympathetic to the Bagenders and the DAYDians. I also suspect (again, based on what I’ve read from friends of his) that he focuses heavily on shifting blame to Abbey for everything that happened with the Bagenders. Then, in his narrative of “mentally ill teenage genius exploited by dissatisfied housewife”, she becomes responsible by extension for what he put the DAYDians through–because of course he didn’t mean to be a cult leader in either instance, but she messed him up so badly that he didn’t know any other way to relate to people! Remember, he was just a teenager, and he’d been so sheltered before he went to live with her, and he had undiagnosed schizophrenia, and…

Again, this is speculation, but it fits with the way I’ve seen friends of Andy’s talk about his past over the last several years, and even more so recently.

[theteablogger]

Hi, I saw the incredibly long list of all the known names Andy has used online over the years in your blog bio and just wondered who never2late2hope was because that was the only name I couldn't place.

never2late2hope was the LJ username that went with Anne O’Nymous, the alias that Andy used when he contacted Turimel and Carlanime in November 2011. He pretended to be a “gender studies psych specialist” who saw Andy as a “brilliantly charismatic but seriously mentally ill youth” and wanted to facilitate a reconciliation between him and Turimel, Abbey, and Diamond (because the latter three had recently begun making amends among themselves). I wrote about these messages here.

Andy may also have commented on Fandom Wank as Anne O’Nymous, but if so, I haven’t been able to find it.

[humanfist]

“The government would never lie to us!”

“Aragorn, you’ve been the government, you’ve been several governments in fact. I’ve heard you lie. And not just little ‘no new taxation’ lies, but big, whopping great lies. Remember the drains in Minas Tirith?”

[humanfist]

Being labelled mentally ill has a great number of disadvantages, and a tiny number of advantages, so when a chance to use one of the advantages came along Frodo grabbed it with both hands, or in this case his teeth, which he sank into Celeborn's ankle

Bagenders

[humanfist]

“If being insane was what it took to avoid his in-laws, Aragorn was quite happy to put underwear on his head and pencils up his nose.” -Bagenders

[ajollyyarn]

Did I capture that 2004 Ringer aesthetic?