A message I received yesterday, published anonymously and with permission:
I just want to say that even though they're a decade old I just found your timeline parts for Andy that include DAYD and Brittany. As someone who was a freshman in college when I got in that chat and then was slowly sliding out when we lost Brittany, your posts meant a lot to me. I'd let myself forget how bad parts of it were. And few people talk about the people he caught up with the fic and chat so kindly. Most of us were extremely young, lonely, or both and he took advantage of us. We were isolated enough that most of us hadn't heard anything bad about him until the shaman stuff. Anyways. It just meant a lot to me ❤️
And an addendum:
I don't think people realize how many of us who weren't in the inner circle didn't know that people were trying to warn the group about Andy and his past.
I didn't know anything until everything went down with CFC and her kids. At that point anyone who left was getting questioned and harassed by Andy/whoever still was on his side or confused enough to listen to him. One person blocked every single one of us as soon as he heard because he didn't have it in him to sift through and tell if there was another Andy lurking among us.
And everyone who was crawling out pretty much fell back in to varying degrees after Brittany was killed.
That Skype chat was a huge source of community for a lot of people. People were willing to listen to his outlandish stories to a certain degree. I'll never forgive him for the fallout of insisting, once again, on making himself an Icarus.
Details of "the shaman stuff"/"everything...with CFC and her kids" from someone who left the DAYDians over the event. For reference, this happened on Dec 28, 2009, and Brittany was killed on May 7, 2011.
The Skype chat mentioned was also known as the Room of Requirement and was maintained literally 24/7, with DAYDians (and often Andy himself) always available to talk to each other. It's where Andy did much of his "channeling" of Harry Potter characters and told many of his wildest stories.
It's rare to hear from anyone from this era of Andy's history, and I greatly appreciate that this person reached out. The DAYDians were a tight-knit, international community of caring, creative, intelligent, young people, and Andy was very demanding of their time, energy, and emotions (and occasionally money). The many ways in which he took advantage of them are really unconscionable, and a few of the most vulnerable are still "friends" of his to this day.






