#daydverse

[kumquatwriter]

Is the book still in the works?

Oh yes. There's a ton of writing done, but it's a slow process. I have a very full life and I'm not in a hurry; I'd rather it be just right than rush it.

[psychedelic-charm]

On this particular day in the world of YouTube, @strange-aeons has once again uploaded a video where she talks about Andy Blake and his DAYD era. If you haven't watched it yet, I highly recommend!

[theteablogger]

I feel like I'm suffering from a Mandela effect or something and I can't find answers anywhere. I few years ago I came across DAYD, I loved it. I year or so later I went back to reread it, but it was gone, except for the epilogue. Everyone was trying to figure out what had happened in comments. It was soon discovered that the author had taken the story down because they had been mentally ill while writing it and had since gotten help; the rest i will put in another Ask

Part Two:

Hi again, continued question. They took the story down because it reminded them of a darker time in their life or whatever. I’ve done some research on Andrew Blake, so I realized this could be a lie, but I wasn’t sure because the most recent thing was him moving onto the supernatural fandom in like 2013. And this was more recent(like past three years). But I can’t find any of those posts or links anymore. Hope you can answer my question.

This is sort of a complicated question. I’ll address the mental health angle first.

While Andy was writing most of his DAYDverse stories, he was pretending to channel many of the characters (as well as his own OCs) and interacting with fans of his work as those characters. Some people initially tried to interpret this as roleplaying, but Andy was very clear about what was “really” happening. For example, when one reader asked “Luna” a question, Andy pretended not to understand roleplaying terms like IC/OOC (in character/out of character) and said, “…you’re not talking to Andy at all here.” (Conversation part 1 | part 2 | part 3) Via e-mail, in chat, and even in person, he convinced some of his readers that they were actually speaking with the characters and he was just the conduit. This went on for more than three years, while Andy abused his friends/followers in various ways, in what amounted to a fandom cult. 

Later, Andy claimed that this was all because of mental illness. One major problem with this is that (with the caveat that I don’t know whether he has any or all of ADD, PTSD, and depression) his alleged diagnoses don’t make any sense based on the symptoms he’s claimed, and most are nonsensical in and of themselves. The other problem is that he’d also used the channeling shtick to start his first cult in Lord of the Rings fandom, and had used mental illness to excuse that, too. He’d already claimed in 2007 that he was getting help and wouldn’t hurt anyone again, so it was suspicious, to say the least, when he said essentially the same thing in the wake of the DAYD cult.

Andy did move on to Supernatural fandom in late 2012, when the DAYD cult had pretty much wound down, but a lot more has happened since then. My “important posts” page covers a lot of it and there’s more in my Critical Role tag. The last couple of points on my one-page summary of Andy’s history include other people’s accounts of events that took place just this summer.

As for taking his fic down, Andy has removed some or all of the DAYDverse fics a couple of times. In April 2015, he pulled all of the side stories from AO3 and most of his art from DeviantArt, and deleted his LiveJournal. This was supposedly because a reliable source had told him that fanworks could be a liability when trying to establish himself as a professional artist. He also said it was because many people’s works from AO3, including his own, had been pirated by a paid ebooks website. He left everything on FanFiction.net at that time. 

In December 2017, Andy announced that he was removing all of his fanworks from the internet and would not be participating in fandom anymore. This was after warning posts about him had begun circulating in the Critical Role fandom and bloggers and anons had started to discuss how he was repeating some of his old, harmful behavior patterns. Andy claimed that he recognized that he’d “screwed [his] reputation in fandom permanently” and wasn’t going to be able to move forward and do things right in any fandom space, so everything had to go. As indicated above, the lesson didn’t stick.

Although he did delete his FanFiction.net and AO3 accounts in December 2017, at no time did Andy delete the DAYD LiveJournal community. Most or all of his DAYDverse writings are still available there, and the wiki remains online. The DAYDverse Facebook group also still exists, but he’s made it a “secret” group so that non-members can’t see it.

So yes, Andy did remove the DAYD fics from everywhere except the LJ community, but his claims regarding what mental illness(es) he has and what kind of help he’s getting are dubious at best. He didn’t delete things because they reminded him of a bad time in his life, but because he hoped it would convince people that he’d really, finally changed.

[kumquatwriter]

hey I'm sure this is a dime a dozen message at this point, but hearing about your story really resonated with me as a survivor of abuse. I'm glad to read through your blog and see things going so well for you now, gives me hope for my own future

Thank you! And I wouldn't call these messages dime a dozen - to me they are of great value. I am deeply grateful when someone tells me that I helped or inspired them. ❤️

[theteablogger]

Diversity and character death in DAYD

(Or, “DAYD’s diversity iz pastede on yay”.)

This long-as-fuck post has been sitting in my drafts since sometime in 2015. I decided to finish and publish it because an ex-DAYDian suggested that it might still be useful. The initial idea was to examine how Andy's portrayal of various characters’ gender and sexuality had changed over time. Later, I expanded it to look at a number of different “diversity labels” that Andy applied to his characters, and how they related to who lived or died. When counting casualties, I have excluded those who were resurrected after Druim Cett.

On gender and sexuality:

First, here is each instance that I am aware of in which Andy listed his LGBTQIA characters. Unfortunately, I don’t have links for everything: most of the “20 Random Facts” lists are no longer online, I don’t want to link to chats that include DAYDians’ real names, and I only have some of the Tumblr posts in the form of .docs compiled by DAYDians on the Facebook group.

Undated: In “20 Random Facts About Luna Lovegood”, Luna is described as bisexual, but “she never [got] around to acting on it”. (A DAYDian wrote that list with Andy’s approval and with information provided by him. Later, Andy seemingly forgot about that and wrote another one that didn’t mention her sexuality.) In Susan, Colin, and Icarus’s “20 Random Facts”, Andy says that they are also bisexual. Derek’s says that he is gay, and Rowan’s implies that she is only attracted to girls. Stephen and Gwen’s “20 Random Facts” were each written by other DAYDians with Andy’s approval. Stephen’s says that he’s gay, and Gwen’s seems to imply that she dates both boys and girls, but prefers boys. Much later, in a Tumblr list of his LGBTQIA characters, Andy said that Gwen is a lesbian.

Sometime between April 2008 and July 2009: In his FAQ, Andy said, “I have no problem with slash or homosexuality. Rowan Glynnis and Malcolm Braddock both 'stir their cauldrons in their own direction.' IMHO, both Colin and Luna are bisexual.”

July 14, 2009: In the comments to his “Slash Goggles” post, Andy said, “Luna sees herself as pansexual. Gender is entirely irrelevant when she is looking for a partner of any kind, especially as she doesn't see it as a binary construct, or even a continuum, but as a physical detail as irrelevant to personhood as the color of one's hair. Colin honestly died too young to really know...certainly, he was bicurious, and he certainly liked girls, but where his sexuality would have developed can't be known when it never finished developing.” He also said that Colin, Luna, Stephen, Derek, Victoria, Rowan, Dean, and Gertie are the only characters that “fall under some form of ‘queer’” and that it would be “tokenism” to include a trans person in a group the size of Dumbledore’s Army.

July 17, 2010: Andy said that Derek, Dean, Susan, Stephen, Rowan, Vicky, Colin, and Icarus are “not strictly heteronormative”.

May 26, 2011: In the midst of a post about a lot of other things, including the Trail of Tears hike, Andy listed his "LGBTQ-spectrum characters” as follows: “Derek, Stephen, and Dean were gay, Susan, Icarus, and Colin bisexual, Michael and Terry bicurious, and Victoria and Rowan lesbians, and several of the characters have challenged the socially dictated gender roles, like Ricky fighting to keep his daughter as a single father and Susan heading up the farm and fund after Ernie’s death.”

June 5, 2011: In a chat with several DAYDians, Andy said that his LGBTQIA characters were Derek, Stephen, Dean, Icarus, Colin, Susan, Rowan, and Vicky. He further stated that Derek and Dean are gay; Icarus and Susan are bisexual; Colin is bicurious; Rowan is a “baby bull dyke”*; and Victoria could be either a lesbian or bisexual, but we’ll never know for sure because she died in the Battle of Hogwarts. He didn’t state Stephen’s specific orientation in the chat. In the comments to the LJ post in which the chat was shared, Andy acknowledged that he’d previously said that Luna is bisexual. He also mentioned for the first time that Terry is asexual. 

June 15, 2011: In another chat, Andy clarified that Stephen was gay, as was Derek. He also said that Colin was bicurious, but considered himself bisexual.

September 22, 2012: In a Tumblr post listing DAYD characters and their labels, Andy said that Derek, Stephen, and Dean are gay; Malcolm is genderqueer; Terry is homoromantic/asexual; Michael is homoromantic/heterosexual; Colin, Icarus, and Victoria are bisexual; Rowan is a lesbian; and Luna is “pansexually identified”.

Later that month: In response to a Tumblr ask, Andy confirmed that Terry is homoromantic/asexual. In another response around the same time, he listed his LGBTQIA characters as follows: “Dean, Derek, Stephen, Colin, Susan, Icarus, Vicky, and Rowan out, Gwen deeply closeted maybe-lesbian-maybe-bi, Malcolm heterosexual but genderqueer, and Luna panfashionable…she likes to think of herself as pansexual but has never actually gotten the warm tinglies for anything that wasn’t cismale.” Shortly thereafter, he referred to Susan as “openly bi”.

March 5, 2013: Andy repeated that Malcolm is genderqueer/heterosexual and mentioned for the first time that they’d changed their name to Morgan.

January - February 2014: Over the course of several Tumblr asks, Andy repeated two or three times that Michael is homoromantic/heterosexual and Terry is homoromantic/asexual (but they “could be fairly called ‘a queer couple’”). He also referred to Malcolm as genderfluid.

Here’s a breakdown by character.

Colin: Bisexual according to the 2008 - early 2009 FAQ and his “20 Random Facts”, but bicurious in July 2009. Bisexual in May 2011. Bicurious in June 2011. Bicurious, but self-identifying as bisexual, later that month. Bisexual in September 2012. He is also included on the nonspecific July 2009 and July 2010 lists. Colin dies during the Battle of Hogwarts. He is very prominent in DAYD and a number of side stories, and appears as a ghost in A Peccatis.

Dean, Derek, and Stephen: Derek and Stephen are both described as gay in their “20 Random Facts” lists (Dean doesn’t have one). They are not mentioned in the FAQ post. All three are “some form of ‘queer’” in July 2009 and “not strictly heteronormative” in July 2010. Starting in May 2011, they were consistently described as gay whenever Andy was specific about their sexuality. They all die during the Battle of Hogwarts. Derek and Stephen barely appear in DAYD, although they’re both in “Reasons”. Derek also has his own “Rank and File” story and appears in “Boys Will Be”. Stephen briefly shows up in a couple of Mike-and-Terry fics and appears in a flashback at the beginning of A Peccatis. Dean only comes into DAYD for the battle and is not present in any of Andy’s other fic. 

Gertie: First referred to as “some form of ‘queer’” in July 2009 and never mentioned as LGBTQIA before or after that. Her gender identification and sexuality are unspecified. She dies during the Battle of Hogwarts. Gertie doesn’t appear in DAYD at all, but has three whole lines in a side story (”Turning the Tide”). 

Gwen: Dates both boys and girls, but prefers boys, according to her “20 Random Facts”. She is a lesbian, according to an undated Tumblr post. Andy describes her as “deeply closeted maybe-lesbian-maybe-bi” as of September 2012, but her sexuality is not mentioned on his “labels” list that month. She is also absent from the FAQ post and the July 2009, July 2010, May 2011, and June 2011 lists. Gwen dies during the Battle of Hogwarts. She is only mentioned once in DAYD. Her sole significant appearance in any of Andy’s fic is in “Wanted”, which portrays a sexual encounter between her and Jack Sloper. 

Icarus: Bisexual according to his “20 Random Facts”. He is absent from the FAQ post and from the list of “queer” characters in July 2009, but is described as “not strictly heteronormative” in July 2010. Icarus is consistently referred to as bisexual starting in May 2011. He is murdered in Sluagh (before Druim Cett, so he isn’t resurrected). He is only mentioned once in DAYD, but is fairly important in Sluagh and features in a couple of side stories.

Luna: Bisexual in the 2008 - early 2009 FAQ post and her “20 Random Facts”, pansexual in July 2009, “pansexually identified” in September 2012, and “panfashionable” later that month. She is absent from the July 2010 and May 2011 lists of non-heteronormative and/or LGBTQIA characters, and Andy explicitly stated that she never actually feels sexual attraction for anyone other than cisgender men. luna survives DAYD, in which she is very much present, and is out of the country during Sluagh. She also appears in A Peccatis and some side stories.

Malcolm/Morgan: Implied to be gay in the 2008 - early 2009 FAQ post. First mentioned as genderqueer and heterosexual in September 2012 and consistently described as genderqueer (or genderfluid) and heterosexual thereafter. Absent from the July 2009, July 2010, May 2011, and June 2011 lists. Their gender identification is never mentioned in fic; it only appears in three responses to Tumblr asks and an infodump on the Facebook group. Morgan is also one of only two Slytherins to join Dumbledore’s Army: Andy portrayed them as an effeminate stereotype alongside Terrence Runcorn’s hypermasculinity. They live, perhaps only because they become too frightened to remain in the DA following the murder of their housemate. Morgan is barely in DAYD, and their only other appearances are in a snippet with Renny and in a short fic recounting their departure from the DA. 

Michael and Terry: See this post. They both die in the Battle of Hogwarts. They are very prominent in DAYD and Andy’s other fic, and they also appear in a flashback at the beginning of A Peccatis. Andy had planned to write another fic, called Oubliette, in which the two of them would turn out to have been in limbo since the Battle of Hogwarts, and a “voodoo queen” named Mama Nola (yes, really) would offer to resurrect them ~for a price~.

Rowan: Her “20 Random Facts” heavily implies that she is attracted to girls. She’s implied to be a lesbian in the 2008 - early 2009 FAQ post, first specifically called a lesbian in May 2011, and consistently described as such after that. She is also included on the nonspecific July 2009 and July 2010 lists. Rowan dies during the Battle of Hogwarts. She has an important role in DAYD, but is not very prominent in spite of that. Rowan appears in a few side stories and shows up in A Peccatis as a horribly mutilated ghost.

Susan: Bisexual according to her “20 Random Facts”. She is absent from the July 2009 list, but is described as “not strictly heteronormative” in July 2010 and as bisexual in May 2011 and thereafter--except that Andy didn’t mention it in the September 2012 “labels” list. Susan never feels or expresses attraction to anyone but cisgender men in fic: although her “20 Random Facts” does say that she sleeps with women after Ernie dies, that is the only time it’s ever mentioned. Later, Andy did some Supernatural crossover Susan/Ruby fanart that may or may not be considered DAYD canon. Susan survives DAYD and Sluagh and is extremely important throughout the entire trilogy. She also appears in quite a few side stories.

Victoria: “Some form of ‘queer’ in July 2009 and “not strictly heteronormative” in July 2010. She is called a lesbian in May 2011, but described as either a lesbian or bisexual in June 2011, and bisexual in September 2012. She dies during the Battle of Hogwarts. Her only actual appearance in DAYD is when she faints on the Hogwarts Express, and she’s only in one side story and a snippet with Rowan.

The three most prominent LGBTQIA characters not involved with Dumbledore’s Army are Robin (Icarus’s Sluagh-era fuckbuddy, always referred to as gay), Brian (Irish auror who is revealed to be gay during A Peccatis), and Emerson (Malcolm’s partner, always described as genderqueer or genderfluid). Neither Robin nor Emerson appears in Andy’s fic, although Robin is in a very brief snippet written in response to a Tumblr ask. Brian died at Druim Cett, but was apparently resurrected along with everyone else.

As a side note, the “defying gender roles” business mentioned in the May 2011 LJ post is only noteworthy because Andy and all of his DAYDverse stories are so very, very gender essentialist. The examples that he gave are especially amusing to me because they both represent extremely common tropes in romance novels. For years, Harlequin and similar publishing houses have been churning out single dad romances by the dozen because they’re so popular. There are entire publishing lines dedicated to them! Also ubiquitous is the tragic young widow who “defiantly” chooses to run her late husband’s farm and raise their child single-handedly until a big, strapping, manly man (with optional Dark Past) comes along to help her. My own mother has several of those books on her shelf, most of the historical and/or Christian romance subgenres. 

That was as far as I got in 2015. More recently, I looked back at Andy’s LJ post from July 17, 2010, in which he broke down the cast list by which labels fit them: people of color, non-Protestants, people with disabilities, etc. I cross-referenced those lists with casualty lists from DAYD and Sluagh. I have to admit that I haven’t read A Peccatis very closely, so if any of these characters died in that fic, I missed it.

* No, it is not okay for Andy to say things like this. Yes, he still uses this kind of language a lot.

On diversity and death:

Andy’s DA has 78 members, of which 36 are female and 42 are male (although one of the guys later identifies as genderqueer). 12 members of the canonical DA who have already graduated return for the Battle of Hogwarts. 5 of those are female; 7 are male. Of the 90 total DA members, 56 (62%) die in DAYD and Sluagh. 

I’ve already noted that of the 14 LGBTQIA members of Dumbledore’s Army, 11 die. One of the three survivors (Morgan) isn’t in any fic other than DAYD, in which they exist only to make Renny look more manly, and a couple of short side stories. Susan and Luna’s sexuality is informed-only, and Andy waffled about Luna a lot.

Of 15 characters of color--Andy omitted Cho Chang--seven (Stephen, Dean, Tommy, Padma, Parvati, Romilda, and Cho) die in DAYD. Two more of these characters are maimed: Tony Goldstein loses both legs and Li Su (called Su Li in canon) loses her entire body below the waist. They later get married. Emma sustains a traumatic brain injury and her back is severely scarred. Salome is so badly injured that it takes her a year to recover.  

Of the 21 non-Protestant characters on this list, 13 (Stewart, Terry, Michael, Stephen, Leslie, Wayne, Oisin, Tommy, Camellia, Padma, Parvati, Romilda, and Icarus) die and two more (Tony and Li again) are severely maimed. Salome is injured as mentioned above. Neville is scarred to the point that he develops severe, chronic back problems as a result.

Of eight characters who are themselves immigrants to the UK, or are first-generation children of immigrants, five (Ritchie, Stephen, Tommy, Padma, and Parvati) die. Li and Salome survive with severe injuries, as described above. Fritz Bagman (an OC) survives, but loses both hands.

Of four characters born with physical disabilities, two (Jack and Ernie) die. Emma is injured and scarred as previously mentioned.

Every single one of the six characters that Andy says had psychological conditions prior to DAYD (Anna, Terry, Gwen, Gertie, Jack, and Perseus) dies during the Battle of Hogwarts.

Andy also lists ten characters who are extremely rich or poor in his fic, and five of those (Ernie, Michael, Katie, Orla, and Hal) die. He indicates that six characters have criminal pasts, and two of them (Rose and Icarus) die in Sluagh. Of five characters who have substance abuse problems in DAYDverse, only one (Terry) dies. 

Finally, Andy names all of the characters who are “their own definition of feminist”, i.e., every female character in Andy’s version of Dumbledore’s Army except Anna, but apparently none of the women from the canonical DA who’d already graduated, and no men at all. Again, Andy’s DA has 36 female members (of 78 total). 23 of them (too many to list) die in the Battle of Hogwarts and two more (Rose and Rachel) at Druim Cett. Another female member of Andy’s DA (Laura) dies four years after the Battle of Hogwarts from injuries sustained therein. In addition, five of the 12 original DA members who return to Hogwarts for the battle are female, and three of them (Katie, Alicia, and Cho) die. 

The only student deaths in DAYD that also occur in canon are Colin Creevey’s and Fred Weasley’s. (Lavender Brown dies in part two of the film version of DH, but the book is unclear as to whether she survives being mauled by Fenrir Greyback.) Rowling does indicate that besides Fred, Colin, Tonks, and Lupin, the death toll on the side fighting against Voldemort is about fifty; however, none of the others is named. It is very unlikely that all or even most of the remaining dead are students. There were the Order of the Phoenix, staff members, Hogsmeade villagers, Aurors, house elves, centaurs, and others fighting at Hogwarts as well. Oh, and the only students below year seven who were actually present were Colin and Ginny. It was entirely Andy’s choice to have fifty-plus Hogwarts students, many as young as 14, die between the Battle of Hogwarts and Druim Cett. It was also his choice to kill them in a variety of horrible, disgusting, often degrading ways, all described in graphic detail.  The text on this promotional image may as well end with, “...but they probably die horrifically.” 

Most of these characters’ backgrounds are entirely of Andy’s own making, as well. Other than a handful of POC characters and one who Rowling specifically said was Jewish (Tony), the Harry Potter series is pretty terrible with regard to representation. On the surface, that seems to make Andy look pretty good. It’s important to note, though, that most of the above information about these characters is not actually included in DAYD, Sluagh, A Peccatis, or even Andy’s side stories. It mostly came up after the fact on Andy’s LJ or tumblr, in chat, in Q&As, or in “20 Random Facts” lists about the characters. Later, one of his readers might use that information in a fic of their own. When a mention of someone’s ethnicity, etc. does show up in the main trilogy, it is often presented in a problematic way, with stereotyping and fetishization of people from “exotic” races or cultures. The Patil twins are the most obvious examples of this, but someone also recently pointed out to me that the DA members constantly refer to Romilda using an ethnic slur. So while Andy’s fanfiction does have greater representation across the board than Rowling’s novels do, he handles it very poorly and it’s obvious that much of it is an afterthought. Given that he was building a cult around his fanfiction, I believe his motives were most likely to widen the DAYDverse’s demographic appeal and to get people as emotionally invested in the characters and the ‘verse as possible--and ultimately in him, because he literally called himself God in the fandom.

TL;DR: I don’t think Andy deserves much credit for “great representation” when a) it was actually hugely problematic, and b) he killed or severely injured most of his diverse cast in such gratuitously terrible ways that large chunks of both DAYD and Sluagh can only be described as torture porn.

A few other items of note:

Others have written about how despite his alleged commitment to diversity, Andy’s art and writing make it abundantly clear that everyone in his version of the DA is gorgeous and athletic. The only DA member who gains weight (Icarus) does so after the events of DAYD and as a deliberate choice for armchair-psychology reasons. Only the villains are unattractive. 

Andy does casually kill off a lot of characters off-screen or with a quick one-line reference, despite criticizing Rowling for doing exactly that.

I learned from this post by ladyloveandjustice that one of the characters that Andy killed off-screen was based on a real child who had a terminal illness, wrote to JKR, and died before receiving a reply. JKR gave her a cameo in one of the novels as a tribute, and Andy added her name to a list of “the fallen” without a second thought. (Ladyloveandjustice’s sporking of all of DAYD is worth a read, actually. Or just see the wrap-up post, which nicely summarizes some of the major issues with DAYD.)

[theteablogger]

Ive been reading the DAYD sporking and I just got to the part where the DA temporarily ousts Neville as leader bc he's gone off the rails, and knowing what I do now about the writer, the next chapter where he's got a massive persecution complex over it are so disturbing. He ignores his gf for 10 days, and then when she's mad he goes "wah im insecure" and SHE apologizes to HIM. He's treated as the victim from then on, and he decides to FORGIVE them when he was violent and awful. Self insert much?

Summary of that part for those who haven’t read DAYD: after Renny Runcorn was killed, Luna Lovegood was kidnapped, and Kevin Whitby was taken by Dementors, Neville went off the deep end and started pushing himself farther than was safe or healthy. He was training too hard, not sleeping, and generally not taking care of himself. One day, Draco informed him that he’d overheard the other DA officers voting to relieve him of command. Neville responded to this by charging into the Gryffindor common room in a violent rage, threatening Ginny, so that Parvati had to hold him at wandpoint just to get him to talk. 

They tried to explain that they were just worried about him because he was overworking himself and was more focused on revenge than on any constructive goal–and while he was such a fantastic leader that they would do literally anything for him, they weren’t willing to die for vengeance. Neville tuned them out and whined about how he’d done so much for the DA, it meant everything to him, and no one understood his manpain. 

As they continued to explain how afraid they were that he was going to collapse, he spiraled further, going on about how he was a terrible leader and was going to ruin everything, but if they took away the DA, he’d have nothing left. He seemed to think they were kicking him out entirely, rather than temporarily relieving him of command, although they could not have been more clear about that.

Neville stomped off to his room and refused to speak to anyone for the next ten days. His friends tried to approach him many times, but were rebuffed. Hannah, his girlfriend, wrote him letters that he refused to open, preferring to wallow in self-pity. Finally, Seamus confronted him and chastised him for not allowing anyone to take care of him (while reminding him what an incredible leader he was), and then Neville saw the light.

He went and found Hannah, made a half-assed apology, and admitted that he’d read none of her letters until that night because he thought she was just feeling sorry for him. Hannah said that he was too strong for his own good–and again, such a great leader. At that point, Neville explained that he’d been deeply hurt to be relieved of command because he felt like everyone was saying he’d fucked everything up and nothing he’d done for the DA mattered. Instead of asking why the hell he hadn’t listened when Ginny and Parvati told him why they were doing it, or any of the previous times that people had tried to tell him to take it easy, Hannah fell all over herself apologizing for making him sad and promising to “make it right”. Neville nobly forgave her.

In August 2009, Andy made the self-insert even more obvious when he announced to the DAYDians that life was about to imitate that chapter of the fic. I never figured out exactly what that was about because his personal LJ is long gone and only a few entries were preserved, but he was most likely indicating that he was stressed and over-committed. I haven’t found any sign that Andy actually had a breakdown at this point, that the DAYDians “relieved him of command”, or anything else along those lines. It was probably another instance of Andy’s saying that he was going to back off from DAYDverse (perhaps in hopes that they’d beg him not to go) and then not following through.

[theteablogger]

Do you think DAYD is worth reading on any level? Have you read the entire thing? I'm kind of curious as to what insights it might offer into someone like Andy.

I’ve read the whole trilogy and all of the side stories written by Andy. They do reveal quite a bit about him, but I don’t think there’s anything there that we don’t already know. For example:

his prose is very purple

he ascribes far less importance to characterization and canon compliance than to the emotional effects he wants to achieve

he is fixated on violence, sexual violence, child abuse, and gore because all of these tend to short-circuit logic and elicit purely emotional responses

he is hugely gender essentialist 

he doesn’t hesitate to twist established facts to suit his purpose

he uses representation as a form of virtue signaling

he is very big on “us vs them” situations 

he only acknowledges moral shades of grey when they’re convenient for him

he deliberately muddies the waters of sexuality, sexual attraction, and physical expressions of same (as if these aren’t complex enough already)as a means of manipulating people 

he thinks he is extremely fucking clever and assumes that you will agree

Despite Andy’s insistence that the first book is 100% canon compliant, it’s very much an AU from the beginning. Everyone knows about Voldemort’s Muggle ancestry? Neville is adept at brewing potions and making inspirational speeches? Hannah is prone to fits of rage and violence? It isn’t good Harry Potter fanfiction, in my opinion, nor do I think it’s particularly well written. Andy is too in love with his own voice as a writer, and his choices in narrative and storycraft are very heavy-handed. The most celebrated aspects of the fic, such as magic from other cultures, have been done (sometimes better) by other writers. 

Having said all that, a lot of Harry Potter fans obviously have found it entertaining over the years. Whether it’s worth reading or not is something that people have to decide for themselves. I wouldn’t try to dissuade anyone from reading DAYD, but I wouldn’t recommend it, either.

[theteablogger]

What is the significance of focusing on the Michael/Terry relationship in Andy's writing? Is it because it mimics the will-they-won't-they type relationship-baiting he has done with so many women in real life or is it another example of how over time he altered various aspects of the characters to appeal to whoever was his audience at the time? (Making Terry asexual for SJW points to compensate for all DAYDs rampant -isms for example.)

While I feel that there are some parallels between Andy’s handling of Michael/Terry and the ways in which he’s tried to justify his treatment of some of the women in his life, I’m not prepared to deal with the drama that would inevitably erupt if I tried to write about that. Also, while I’ve seen pictures and read things on various people’s blogs, a) I’m not comfortable reposting or quoting much of it because it would violate their privacy, and b) I’ve never met Andy or any of his friends in real life, so it’s true that I don’t have a 100% complete picture of their relationships and interactions. One of the things that I’ve learned over the last several years is that if I can’t support my opinion with some kind of evidence, I’m better off keeping it to myself.

My focus is more on the second half of what you said: Andy’s repeatedly changing the way that he labeled Mike and Terry as his audience evolved. It’s blatantly manipulative and is the most obvious indicator that his repeated claims of not making conscious decisions about DAYDverse plotlines and characters were lies. I also decided that it was important to write about them because I have rarely seen a more obvious example of queerbaiting than Andy’s depiction of their relationship. I’m pretty sure that’s the entire reason that he eventually decided to call them both homoromantic after he’d begun presenting himself as an enlightened member of Tumblr’s social justice community.

There are plenty of male and female characters that have the kind of extremely close and loving but nonsexual relationship that Andy says Mike and Terry have: for example, Sam and Frodo, Iron Man and Captain America (in some comics continuities), Anne Shirley and Diana Barry. But these characters’ depictions in canon don’t involve the kind of bait and switch that Andy constantly pulled with Mike and Terry. Tolkien didn’t write about Sam and Frodo frotting in the foothills of Mount Doom, murmuring, “No homo,” between gasps. Nowhere in the comics do Steve Rogers and Tony Stark take a moment before heading into battle to frantically make out and assure each other that while their bromance means more than any other relationship they’ve ever had, they’re totally not gay. Anne and Diana become “bosom friends” at the same age that Mike and Terry do, and are just as passionate about each other as they are--but nothing erotic ever happens between them. 

Yes, people do see subtext and do write slashfic and meta about all of those pairs, but the key word there is “subtext”. The Mike/Terry slashiness appeared directly and blatantly in the text as Andy wrote it. He went so far as to depict Mike and Terry actually having sex, then denied that there was any eroticism in their relationship and acted alternately angry and incredulous that people saw “slash potential” between them. He pretended that he had no idea what that even was or how it came about between characters, in spite of his having been a prolific slash writer in LotR fandom! In later years, he tried to excuse his behavior by saying that he just hadn’t understood the way that fan-creator interactions work, but the truth has more to do with homophobia, erotophobia, misogyny, and just plain manipulativeness.