Tentmoot

Convention
Name:	Tentmoot
Dates:	December 2002
Frequency:	never
Location:	Oregon
Type:	fan-run, celebrity guests
Focus:	Lord of the Rings
Organization:	Bit of Earth
Founder:	Amy Player
Founding Date:
URL:
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Tentmoot is a Lord of the Rings con that never happened.

It was planned by the LOTR fan group Bit of Earth, led by Jordan Wood (aka Thanfiction aka Victoria Bitter aka Andy Blake). Those involved in the planning were the Bagenders, Blake's Oregon-based cult.

In 2002, a fan wrote: "I was backstage with Sean Astin at GenCon when he proposed over the phone for Jordan Wood to Abbey Stone during the failed TentMoot."

It was during this fiasco that it was revealed that Jordan Wood and Victoria Bitter were the same person. And, of course, not dead.

See When a Fan Hits the Shit and Thanfiction. This is also an extensive 2014 write-up: Fandom History, Epic Wankers Edition: Victoria Bitter/Jordan Wood/Andy Blake – the fanthropologist, ^{Archived version}

Overview

In April 2003, members of Bit of Earth had collaborated to create "Project Elanor", a children's reading center and garden as part of the Riggs Institute literacy center in Beaverton, Oregon. Sean Astin had participated and the project was a success. Sometime later, the group arranged a special showing of The Two Towers as a fundraiser for Reading Is Fundamental, and raised $3,000. Wood claimed to be planning a series of similar fundraisers for literacy and environmental groups. A 2004 investigation by the Justice Department revealed that Wood had never completed an application for nonprofit status or for the group becoming a legal charitable donor. None of the money raised had actually gone to the charities.

Bit of Earth planned to hold a large LotR fan convention, Tentmoot, in December 2003, and again falsely claimed to be a charity to do so. Jordan Wood solicited money from fans and lied to the staff and con guests, and there was ultimately no convention.

Wood faked a suicide attempt and left his group to deal with the fallout. Bit of Earth member Turimel reported Wood and the group to the authorities. Soon afterward, Wood was arrested for identity theft, but no charges were filed. He and Abbey Stone (Orangeblossom Brambleburr) signed an agreement to never do charity work in the state of Oregon again.

Fan Summaries

… in late 2003 they started planning something called Tentmoot, which was going to be a LOTR fan convention in Oregon. They booked actors from the movies including Manu Bennett (he played lots of the orc/other covered-in-complicated-makeup characters) and possibly Sean Astin again iirc and a bunch of others, and the band Black Seeds. Jordan and OB were to be in charge of booking a venue and making travel arrangements. In doing so, they claimed charity status for BoE in order to get discounts.

Just days before the con was supposed to happen, Jordan and OB told a BoE member who was helping them organize the con, Turimel, that Air New Zealand had backed out of an offer to fly con guests to the US for free. Turimel stepped forward to save the con and paid for tickets, but then found out that Jordan had never actually made any deals with Air New Zealand in the first place. Naturally alarmed by this obvious red flag, Turimel attempted to cancel bookings because it was clear that things were about to fall apart, but three actors arrived in LA before she could do so. The actors had been promised accommodations, but those were also unsurprisingly not booked. The entire con was cancelled when OB came forward and claimed that Jordan had been hospitalized due to, you guessed it, a suicide attempt.

Turimel was understandably furious at finding herself thousands of dollars in the hole and with actors she admired angry with her. She reported OB and Jordan to the Oregon Department of Justice, which investigated them for charity fraud and identity theft (which is I guess what Oregon charges you with if you operate under a false identity, because that’s what Amy/Jordan was doing; he had false papers with the name Jordan Wood on them), among other things. Eventually, they were put on probation and told to go forth and sin no more, by which I mean they were prohibited from ever soliciting money for BoE or any charity at all in the state of Oregon ever again.

So naturally, they moved to California. Turimel, meanwhile, wrote a book about the whole debacle called When a Fan Hits the Shit. So, that’s a thing that exists.

[Edit 7/8: Per same commenter as above, who has read Turimel’s book, she (Turimel) managed to stop the charges for the airline tickets, but the airline reported her to credit reporting agencies. If I recall correctly, it took several years of legal wrangling before that was all cleared up, and much of Turimel’s lingering animosity had to do with collections issues hanging over her head constantly. Also according to our intrepid and helpful commenter, the actors stranded in LA were Jed Brophy, Brian Sargent and Paul Randall. Lawrence Makaore was checked in for his flight, but the gate agents caught wind of the cancelled charges and kept him from boarding the plane.]

Plans

Guests:

Similar Disasters

While nothing is quite like "Tentmoot," these are some similar disasters.

• New York Star Trek '76 (1976)
• Con of Wrath (part of a series, but collapsed in 1982)
• Slanted Fedora (part of a series, but collapsed in 2003)
• Tentmoot (2003)
• Flanvention II (2006)
• JumpCon (2008)
• FedConUSA (2008)
• DashCon (2014)