#daydians

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.

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…

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.

Unfortunately, I’m not sure whether there is a concise summary of what happened in the DAYDverse community/cult. Parts III-IV of the timeline have a lot of information about it, but they’re pretty long. I would definitely recommend reading the transcript of Andy’s appearance on Potter Fic Weekly for a good look at how he was behaving and presenting himself at that time. This post of mine talks about the evolution of Andy’s cult-building, and between the two of us, I think Flikky and I put together a pretty good outline of how Andy created a hierarchy in the group and made so much of what he was doing seem “normal”.

Some former DAYDians have also spoken out: 

DAYDian Q&A at fail-fandomanon

Aja’s interview with the same DAYDian

Aja’s interview with another DAYDian

Another former DAYDian on FFA

And another!

Ijust asked you something about the deleted fics. just a follow up. I never wasin the community and all this abuse and stuff is awful, I was oblivious to allthat which is terrible. I’m only catching up now sadly. I didn’t mean to offendwith my question. 

That’s okay; I’m not offended. Ithink the vast majority of people who read DAYD didn’t know anything about whatwas going on with the DAYDians. And as much as I object to certain aspects ofAndy’s fic, I also understand that a lot of people enjoyed it. Even for thosewho didn’t, it’s helpful to have it available for reference and context. Iactually have all of Andy’s DAYDverse writings saved for that reason, but I’mnot going to post them because I don’t want to get TOSed. He has said that hedoesn’t mind people saving copies for themselves, though.

You can find the side stories, 20Random Facts, etc. that Andy wrote here, on theDAYDverse LJ community. Not all of them were posted directly on the comm (someonly have links to Andy’s old LJ or fanfiction.net), but I believe the majorityare there. Fics by other DAYDians are here. 

I don’t judge anyone for likingAndy’s fic. I mean, that was the point–it filled an important niche post-Deathly Hallows, itwas pretty good compared to a lot of other fanfiction, and it elicited extremeemotional responses from many readers. That’s why it got to people; that’s whyanyone who read it ever made contact Andy in the first place. 

But I do think it’s a good idea for casual fans of theDAYDverse to do at least a little reading about who Andy is and what he’s done,in part because there is so much of him in the fic. This is one instance inwhich the concept of “the death of the author” cannot be applied. I mean, thisguy deliberately made himself the center of “[his] own subfandom” andtried to control how everyone related to his work, even years after the fact.He wrote 90% of the DAYDverse meta himself. He outright told people how thingsought to be interpreted and understood. He claimed (falsely) that many elementsof Sluagh were drawn from his personal experience. He “channeled” thecharacters, claiming that they were all real in a parallel universe that he’dinadvertently tapped into somehow, and had them carry on conversations withpeople. He used the community and chat room to gather personal informationabout members and forcibly insert himself into some of their lives. Basically,Andy used his fic and art as tools in his manipulation and abuse of hisso-called friends, and I think it’s important to be aware of that, even if youstill enjoy his writing.

Thank you for pointing that out, Anon! Usually I log out before I look at the group on Facebook, but I don’t always remember to do that. I just checked around, though, and it seems that your name will only show up in the “seen by” list on a Facebook group post if you’re a member of the group. When I went back to the group to double-check, I couldn’t see my name listed on any of the last several posts I’d looked at while logged in, so I should be okay.

2011 April 2 Brittany posts to the Facebook group to say that she needs help getting gear and tickets together for the New Zealand hike. She asks DAYDians to brainstorm with her and specifically says, "I promised Andy I would make this happen and I am not going to go back on that promise."

[Context: One anon pointed out the line in Andy’s eulogy for Brittany that says, “We have lost our first.” Another anon asked, “does he expect there to be more than one horrific death?”]

The thing about DAYDverse is that Andy did his best to convince everyone that it wasn't just an LJ community or Facebook group. It wasn't just a group of friends doing something they enjoyed together. It wasn't even just "his own subfandom" (which is the way he still commonly refers to it).

At the same time that Andy insisted that it wasn't a cult, he was always open about telling people that he and DAYDverse were going to change their lives--and change the world. He harped on that constantly and was always passive-aggressively encouraging DAYDians to talk about how he'd already changed their lives for the better.

Just one example: Operation Phoenix. I'm not sure exactly when it started, but it was sometime before October 2010. The original post about it was "lost", but there's still a list of tasks on the LJ community. The tasks were divided and themed after the HP houses. Gryffindor had community service tasks; Hufflepuff's list was mostly about creating new DAYD content; Ravenclaw was about learning and applying knowledge; and Slytherin was self-improvement. I don't think that Andy came up with all of these by himself; CFC helped and they seem to have had input from other DAYDians. People were supposed to report on the community and their personal LJs about the progress they made. This went on for months.

At the same time, they had "Dumbledore's Bootcamp" going. There is really no information available at this point, but it appears to have been a physical fitness program and they used to have a Sparkpeople group for it.

None of this is a bad thing on its own. Far from it. But knowing Andy's history and current behavior, I find it extremely hard to believe that he was doing this for altruistic reasons. He wanted people to improve their lives and to connect that improvement directly with him and DAYDverse so that they'd feel like they owed him something. So they'd feel like they needed him and would be worse people without his influence in their lives. So that when people commented on the change in them, they would attribute it to Andy and DAYDverse and he'd have another potential target.

Andy also was always after the DAYDians to promote the community and his fic/art everywhere possible. He did plenty of aggressive promotion himself, well into his tumblr days--in one notable instance, he replied to someone's essay about racism in Harry Potter with some crap about how DAYD was superior and had more diversity and was endorsed by "PoC, people of size, people of faith, people of differing sexuality, etc." (I'll put the text and a link in the Pit.) He wanted DAYDverse to grow and grow and grow, to spread his influence and extend his reach. It didn't work very well, but he kept trying for years. He took credit for marriages and relationships between DAYDians, DAYDians having babies, and more.