Victoria Bitter Wank

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Related terms: The Cassandra Claire Plagiarism Debacle, The MsScribe Story
See also: Thanfiction
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Victoria Bitter is one of many pseuds used by the fan, Thanfiction.

Other pseuds are: VB, Amy Player, Jordan Wood, Mr Frodo, Voyagerbabe, Padawan Sidious, PadawanS, Strwriter, Chris the Marine, Rennie Gade, Andrew Blake, Andy Blake, and andythanfiction [1]

Starting in 1998, Victoria Bitter has been involved in much wank related but not limited to: fraud, Münchausen by Internet, sockpuppets, small birds, evil twins, pseuicide, channeling, murder, brainwashing, cults, and created languages, often in the Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and more recently, Supernatural fandoms, as well as activities outside of fandom.

See Thanfiction for more.

Timeline

One Overview

From "The 10 Best Tales of Online Drama from 10 Years of Fandom_Wank" (March 11, 2013):

Andrew Blake is an accused scam artist and alleged cult-leader who's been unleashing his intense, often expensive spiritual guidance on unsuspecting fans for over a decade.

Andrew Blake was born Amy Player [2]. In the heyday of Lord of the Rings fandom, this charismatic fan was the center of a tiny group of friends who lived together as a dysfunctional mini-cult formed around Blake's belief that he could contact and connect with spirits from alternate realities. He was a multiple, or plural--someone who believes they can channel alternate fictional personas, a bit like the practice of recalling past lives.[3]

Sometimes the personas were fictional, like the female alter-ego known as "Victoria Bitter." Sometimes the personas were the imagined alter-egos of real people, such as "Jordan Wood," supposedly an alter-ego of the actual Hollywood actor Elijah Wood. As Jordan Wood, Blake claimed to be able to speak the language of Hobbits and communicate with characters from J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle Earth, which supposedly existed in an alternate dimension. Or so he compelled his rapt circle of friends and admirers to believe.

"Jordan Wood" was Blake's primary identity when he decided to organize a fan convention [4] and tell everyone that Viggo Mortensen and Elijah Wood would be attending to raise money for charity. In the disaster that followed,[5] Blake allegedly scammed his fellow fans out of thousands of dollars, and duped three Lord of the Rings actors into coming to California for a convention that never happened, where they wound up having to awkwardly couch-crash as "Jordan"'s friends realized that he'd defrauded them. An even greater shock came when online fans realized that "Jordan" and "Victoria" were the same person: Victoria had supposedly committed suicide on the fan forum months before.

One of the fraud victims wrote a hilarious and jaw-droppingly bizarre account of her experiences: When a Fan Hits the Shit.

Blake (as Amy Player) was subsequently fined for fraud in Oregon, [6] but returned to fandom a few years later as Andrew Blake, the LiveJournal user "thanfiction." Thanfiction grew—what else?—-a devoted cult of fan followers [7] around his popular fanfic Dumbledore's Army and the Year of Darkness. He held a fan meetup for himself,[8] and claimed various fictional identities, all while allegedly suffering from a strangely non-terminal terminal illness.

All of this is fun and games—like the part where he claimed to have lost "a son" in a fierce custody battle who turned out to be a bird — but it gets more disturbing when you learn that among the members of his early cultish household was a young teenage girl living unsupervised with Blake with the blessing of her blissfully ignorant parents. And in 2011, things took a horrific turn when Blake was involved [9] in events leading up to a double murder-suicide, [10] when the husband of a fan he had been rooming with shot and killed his wife and a fellow roommate before turning the gun on himself. Blake was shot in the ankle, and survived by hiding in the closet.

Last week, Blake once again made waves in fandom by arriving on Tumblr, [11] allegedly claiming to be "a vessel"[12] for the Supernatural character Castiel — exactly as he did ten years ago when he channeled the spirits of Elijah Wood, Orlando Bloom, and other Lord of the Rings actors and characters. [13]

External Links to Much Discussion

Undated, Multiple Dates, or General

2002

  • LJ Stuff, March 22, 2002, excerpts from VB's Livejournal, early history and the beginnings of a Lesbian Paladin ; WebCite
  • Westron 101, May 22, 2002, The LJ of Kalimac Brandagamba, or Meriadoc Brandybuck, VB's channeling journal and primer to Westron; WebCite

2003

2004

2005

2007

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

References

  1. ^ these pseuds are linked or confirmed in a number of places, some of which are: "tent moot crash - Had to share: I got my hush money, after all!". Archived from the original on 2015-03-17., "Spork Commentary on (Thanfiction) Amy Player's "Apology Letter"". Archived from the original on 2015-03-17., Andy Blake Timeline. Part 1; "Andy Blake Timeline. Part II". Archived from the original on 2015-03-16.; Archive; "Giving in at last". Archived from the original on 2015-03-17.
  2. ^ Amy Player is Andrew Blake, and an even bigger conning slimeball than Rob Granito UPDATED, by Colleen Doran on July 15th, 2011; WebCite
  3. ^ This is a misuse of "multiple" and "plural" which simply refer to having multiple personalities. Fan artist/writer L.B. Lee has been interviewed and written extensively about Blake's use of these experiences for manipulations and con games.
  4. ^ Bit of Earth: Tentmoot; WebCite
  5. ^ Hobbits Gone Wrong, by Zach Dundas, July 14, 2004; WebCite
  6. ^ turimel: Conviction vs. voluntary compliance, November 7, 2011; WebCite
  7. ^ turimel: Sigh... guess I better go into the Long Version, May 22, 2011; WebCite
  8. ^ Courtesy of wank_report.... The not quite so triumphant return of Victoria Bitter, December 11, 2009; WebCite
  9. ^ For The Fallen, by Andrew Blake on Monday, May 16, 2011; WebCite
  10. ^ Hate, extortion, lies underlie Fairfield murder-suicide, May 9, 2011; WebCite
  11. ^ Thanfiction, Archived version
  12. ^ Kuamquatwriter, February 26, 2013; WebCite
  13. ^ The 10 Best Tales of Online Drama from 10 Years of Fandom_Wank, by Aja Romano, posted to The Daily Dot, March 11, 2013; WebCite
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