#anyways i also heard on the grapevines that people are mentioning it on tumblr and i wanna know WHERE this is so weird to me

[grifalinas]

All right, so while I wait for my pants to wash let’s get this written up. This is what I’ve been dealing with for the past week and a half, and why I haven’t been on Tumblr much lately + haven’t had much emotional energy for much of anything when I am. With apologies that this is going to get long and I don’t expect everyone to read it, but I need to write it up and put it out there. I’ll try to specify which things are my own personal account and what is second-hand information and what is mere speculation, to avoid sensationalizing.

Before going in, a couple things to know about how Shoe Dept (and Shoe Show in general) employees get paid: we work on commission; there’s a formula for working out the exact balance of wage and commission but it’s easier to think of it as wage or commission, with checks being paid in commission unless you would be making less than minimum wage, at which point they pay you minimum wage and make it subtly clear to you that they don’t feel you’ve earned that difference.

Commission rate is seven percent of total sales, but after ninety days in employment, you take a test to become “cfs certified”, which means you’ve supposedly been trained to use a brannock device and fit shoes as well as get them. Our training amounts to reading a pamphlet and taking a test, but once you have that certification you get nine percent commission on sales of children’s shoes on days you’re acting as cfs. 

This doesn’t sound like much but this adds up over time. It’s the difference between selling a hundred dollars worth of shoes and you get seven dollars of that vs nine dollars- sell a thousand dollars worth of shoes, you get seventy dollars vs ninety dollars; ten thousand in sales, and- well, you get the idea. That two percent makes a big difference if you’re good at what you do.

(If you’re doing the math, yes, this means that we have to average about a hundred and twenty dollars in sales an hour just to make minimum wage, which is easy if we’re busy but not so easy if the store is dead. I’ll get back to this in a minute, so let’s stick a pin in it for now.)

The other thing you need to know is that we were closed for about five weeks in March/April due to the pandemic, and received base wages during that time. After talking to my boss repeatedly about the situation, she finally referenced it as “when they were paying us to sit at home doing nothing”, though I don’t know if that was her words or our dm/rm’s. It does, however, reflect the attitude of the company toward its employees so the exact source feels irrelevant.

So here’s what happened:

In March, just before the shut down, cfs commissions were removed from our wages. We were eventually told this was “temporary” and a response to the pandemic, but even if it was fair to start cutting wages on the bottom where people make the least anyway, we were not informed of this. There was a change made to how the keyholders and store manager got their salaray; I don’t fully understand the change because I don’t fully understand how their pay works (which is different than ours).

Our DM has insisted that he told our store manager about the change, our store manager has said she heard only about the change made to management. I believe her, and even if she is lying, it’s on the dm to produce a paper trail to prove that he informed her. That’s the sort of thing that should be communicated directly from payroll to the employees but even if you must go through the chain of command, it should be sent in official documentation, not mentioned in a phone call that can be easily misunderstood. Therefore, even if the dm DID tell the boss and the boss forgot, it’s still on the DM.

Of course, during the shut down, we were getting “base pay”, which is to say they averaged out our weekly hours (between twenty and thirty-five; my weekly average is usually 29-34 depending on which shifts I work) and paid us minimum wage based on that. This, at least, is somewhat fair; they’re continuing to pay us, and if we’re not getting sales then we don’t get commission. Losing that extra money hurt a lot of us, but the arrangement was at least understandable from that perspective.

So when we came back after the shut down, we were not aware that we had ceased cfs commissions and would not be getting the full amount of our sales that we expected.

Fast forward to a week ago. One of our coworkers was checking on payroll the night before our checks were set to come in, and noticed a huge discrepancy in her expected pay and her received pay. Having brushed off past errors because they were relatively small amounts, she was not going to allow several hundred dollars to go missing from her check without asking some questions. (The amount I was told was four hundred; this was anecdotal, so I don’t know if she was estimating, and if so whether she was rounding up or down. Either way, keep this number in mind.)

Our coworker goes into work that day and raises sand at our boss, who raises sand at payroll, trying to find out what happened and where her money went. The rest of us had also been shorted a lot of money, which you can understand made us very unhappy.

There were about two days where all this was going down that I only know everything through scuttlebutt, as I did not work the same shift as my coworker and boss and had to hear everything second (and third and fourth) hand. What came down to us through the grapevine was that they were taking our hourly wage out of our commission and only paying us beyond that; this was misinformation based on none of us fully understanding the formula that determines how we get paid + one of our keyholders being the sort to sensationalize things to make them sound worse.

However, this was enough to get all of us riled up, and start speculating about leaving the company, if they didn’t want to pay us anymore. (For clarity, this would mean that any time we were working without getting sales would be for free.) I went to bed last Friday night thinking that this had to be a misunderstanding and that I would talk to my boss in the morning before open to find out what exactly was going on, and woke up the next morning knowing that it probably was a misunderstanding but that even so, unless the misunderstanding was “we were trying to pay you more and messed up big time”, I would not be continuing to work at Shoe Dept.

So I went in Saturday morning (my day off) before open to talk to my boss, and got the information straightened out. Essentially, the missing money was due to a payroll error; in all of my discussions with my now-ex boss over the past week I was never able to get a straight answer about what the error was or where it originated. This could very easily be due to my boss not being given that information and just as easily be part of her habit of misdirecting and obfuscating rather than give us straight answers. Either way, all of us were shorted our commission pay for the week, but at the time our coworker noticed the error and started raising sand, corporate insists they were already fixing it, and we did indeed get a second check that week.

We were not informed that this was going on and there was no attempt at communication at any point. Coworker also says that while Boss was on of the phone with Payroll, Payroll asked if Coworker was there and then declined speaking to her when Boss said “Yes she is, would you like to speak with her”. Coworker believes this was due to an intention of giving misinformation to Boss; this is merely speculation and in my case second-hand information, so I cannot say for sure, only that, again, this reflects corporate’s attitude toward its employees.

Now, I would be pretty willing to forgive an error that was fixed if there’d been any transparency. We’re human, even the people at corporate, and mistakes happen. If we’d received a notification through the company app, or even a message through the chain of command, that there was a payroll error but they caught it and were sorting it, just sit tight, we’ll still get our money, apologies for the issue, I would be pretty understanding. Like yeah, sometimes shit happens, thanks for getting it sorted out so promptly.

But there was no transparency. No attempt at communication. They just did it, and then along with not saying anything about it to us and hoping we didn’t notice, tried to obfuscate when our coworker started asking questions. Management insists that it was already being taken care of by the time Coworker noticed, so when Boss and Coworker called Payroll, Payroll should have said “this is what happened, this is the situation as we currently stand, this is what we’re doing to fix it” with no hemming and hawing at any point.

We did get our money though. Well, mostly. Remember that four hundred that Coworker was missing? She got about about two thirty of it. At least part of the discrepancy can be chalked up to the second check being taxed, but that’s almost half of the money gone- doing the math, it added up to less than three hundred that they sent her.

Well, do the math, where did the hundred some odd go?

This is how we found out we weren’t getting cfs commissions anymore.

So for the past few weeks while we’ve been open, we haven’t been getting cfs commissions despite still having a cfs on every shift. When you’re cfs, Boss ensures you’re the only one or at least the main one if we’re too busy that gets children’s sales. The discrepancy was almost accounted for with that in mind, once she and Boss sat down to do the math.

Almost.

Coworker is very insistent that the numbers still don’t add up and, again, I believe her. I can’t prove it, and she offered me nothing but her own accounting, but I still believe her. I worked at Shoe Dept, Encore for going on four years (four years in July) and corporate have always been shady and underhanded in how they deal with their employees. The only reason I stayed as long as I did was that any other retail position would be a lateral move where I got paid less, and I had plans to move to Oregon that involved staying where I was until I saved up enough. But I don’t fuck with people who fuck with my money, so I’ll figure something out.

Some additional information:

I mentioned “hours we work where we don’t get sales” a couple times up there. Part of this was simply hours when the store was dead, often late in the evening or early in the morning. Sales at the latter half of the morning shift and early half of the evening shift could usually be counted on to cover the slower hours so that we still averaged out a hundred twenty in sales per hour, so that part isn’t too much of a bother.

What messes us up are when we have to come in during hours we’re closed in order to run in stock. Policy at the store (I don’t know if this is company wide) is that on Sundays, if the truck (truck comes Tuesday) isn’t completely run into the wall, sales come in Sunday morning at nine (sometimes eight, if we’re very very busy or there’s a lot to do) and run the shoes in until it’s done. If you’re scheduled to be off that day, you still have to come in, and if it’s done by break time (eleven thirty, hour long break, back at twelve thirty, we open at one) you get to go home and enjoy the rest of your day off. If you work that day, you get to stay in the store and work a regular shift on top of the half-shift you just worked.

If the running doesn’t get done, you come back at twelve thirty and keep running until it is, even if that means staying until close (and often, keep running while the shift sales clean up the store, and leave when we do). 

During the shorter hours we worked just after the shut down, we came in Tuesday night at six, put out the entire truck, and started running, and left at eleven. If you were off that day, you worked a five hour shift. If you closed that day, you worked your usual shift plus another five hours. If you opened that day, you were still expected to come back in the evening. And then the next morning, if it wasn’t done, we came in at eight and worked until open. Regardless of our schedule.

This was done this way for two weeks, the third week it was “if you close, you stay till eleven, if you open, you come in at eight”, and by the fourth week we were back to normal hours. “Till eleven” and “eight until” is still in place for anyone on the schedule for that day as of this past Tuesday and Wednesday.

Are you furious yet? You should be, because if you’re paying attention you’ve realized that this was not scheduled into our workweek. We had to do this DURING OUR SCHEDULED TIME OFF. So a Sunday morning running shift was still counted toward your days off for the week, even if you’re working from eight am to seven in the evening with an hour break for lunch (which is usually the case during styling change).

And if you complain? “Get the running done during the week and you won’t have to be here Sunday :)”.

Easy enough, right? Maybe during the slow times when we have little business and the trucks average between a hundred to a hundred and fifty cases, sometimes dipping down as low as seventy or even sixty if we’ve been really slow. During the busy time of year, when we’re already pulling extra hours as is, and doing enough they can justify sending us upwards of two hundred cases, and we’re too busy taking care of customers to even keep the store clean on shift, putting us even later getting home? Even during styling change, when we needlessly flip our stock around to account for seasonal changes even though the store isn’t big enough for the science behind stock placement to have any effect whatsoever and it would make more sense to leave things where the customers and employees are used to looking for them?

Even if it’s a pretty much guarantee, no way out of it, that we’ll have to be there that Sunday, it’s still not planned into our shifts for the week, and during busy times, when we only get one day off a week more often than not, this can mean coming in for ten or eleven hours on your only day off.

:)

Another thing, as long as I’m complaining: sometime last fall I was put in a supervisory position for running in women’s section. This meant that, on top of my usual duties, I was expected to also make executive decisions about how the running was done, ensure that my crew did their work, and make sure any new crew members learned how to do the running properly, since training methods are honestly a joke at Shoe Dept. This was a lot of extra work to put on me, but to be honest I didn’t mind. It was stressful at times, but I actually enjoyed it! The logistic puzzle of getting the shoes in efficiently while asking as little of my crew as possible and making sure they got more Sundays off than they didn’t or at least got to go home at lunchtime if they had to come in, actually ended up helping me keep my brain more in order than before.

BUT. Much as I enjoyed the work, this was effectively a promotion that was not official in any written capacity and did not garner me extra money. It also put me in a position to have to tell my coworkers, my crew, what to do, and, because of the way I approached all of my extra work, it at times appeared to them that I was doing less, which caused a strain between myself and my coworkers at times.

I could go on and on about all the bullshit I’ve had to deal with from Shoe Dept, but honestly it’s going to start descending into pettiness after this and I have to go run errands soon, so I’m going to stop now. This is just a write up of what happened recently re: our payroll, an explanation of why I quit my job without lining up another one first, and hopefully an understandable reason I've elected to keep my blog space free of current events. (Your morality isn’t determined by whether you reblog a tumblr post, but hopefully you can at least understand why my blog space has just been the odd shitpost and reacting to Digimon instead of reblogging things relevant to the world being on fire. I may loosen this now that I have more energy to direct toward vetting posts before reblogging them, though. We’ll see.)

[g0dtier]

leftist tumblr/twitter really needs to chill with the outrage directed at other leftists and check facts and shit. like take leftist youtubers for example

hbomberguy got a callout posted about him that contained like 3 images of an incomplete chat log which accused him of being a rape apologist and over the years the story just turned into “hbomb is a rapist”

and like the whole story is convoluted as shit because i just went on like an hour long deep dive trying to find all the deleted pics and logs and posts and i did! and what i found was so underwhelming and weird but what it comes down to is this

this person accused a friend of hbomb without proof and conflicting messages of something heinous, 5 years after the fact apparently happened, was met with understanding but questions about clarification or proof which they could have easily given which they said so themselves but actively decided not to, said they “didnt want to blow this wide open” and then posted their callout to every single leftist and gaming subreddit they could find, raged about hbomb not linking to their callout in his apology, and then deleted their tumblr, the callout they wanted people to read so desperately and all the screenshots with it and now the facts (which were barely there) have become so convoluted that a bunch of people think hbomb is actually a rapist or smth

if u are into drama and wanna know other shit heres like, what i put together from all the shit i found

like it starts with skype chat logs in the middle of a conversation, u know a convo has been held about this before but the logs arent there for some reason, K didnt decide to post the first conversation about these accusations for some reason and this is kinda important cause later on K does something else weird with the chat logs

K accused Hbomb’s friend PL of being a rapist and sending them rapey messages 5 years before these call logs

K continued to work with Hbomb knowing PL and Hbomb were friends for 5 years before deciding to accuse out of the blue

without proof because their computer died, even though skype chat logs can easily be recovered even on a new computer and they said they had proof and logs they got from other people about PL’s behavior yet refused to show them to anyone or post them in the callout

chat logs start off with Hbomb asking about the situation but that they dont have to talk if K doesnt want to and K immediately going into a rant about how they rely on Hbomb to not become homeless and how their former rapist now has kids 

this is like a really weird thing to start off a convo with. if ur friend is like “hey if you want to, you can talk to me about this rape accusation” and u immediately reply with “lol yea anyway the person who abused me as a child has kids now and no one will believe me when i talk about him and also if you dont believe me and i get shit for this accusation i WILL be homeless” thats like. some heavy emotional manipulation to start off a convo with. anyway the accusation is this

K accuses PL of threatening to rape them 5 years ago, K and PL were wanting to meet up but PL made rapey comments and K, according to the callout post, didnt show for the meeting

Hbomb says he has some trouble with this because he absolutely wants to believe and support K and asks what he can do for them, but also mentions how theyve talked about PL for years and that there never was anything like this mentioned and that this accusation is sort of coming out of the blue. he also mentions, which is kinda important, that K told him after the original meetup was cancelled that they were afraid PL actually cancelled the meetup because he lost interest in K. Which doesnt correlate at all with what K claims and seems like something they should clear up right

anyway hbomb is like completely chill and supportive during this entire conversation and mentions how he feels like garbage over not being able to believe K out of the blue, which is 100% fucking reasonable considering the situation where K actually apparently felt sad about the meetup not continuing, everything being fine for 5 years, and then accusing PL out of the blue without any proof while also prefacing it with a “if u dont believe me i will be homeless”. like thats 100% just a fucking reasonable reaction lmfao. 

so u imagine there’s gonna be some clearup about everything being fine for 5 years and what hbomb said about K confiding in him all those years ago that they thought PL cancelled the meeting because they didnt like them, right?

wrong because the next logs are the only chat logs of that conversation where a bunch of K’s reply is completely cut off. Like K decided posting these logs was important but deliberately decided to cut out a bunch of their own reply after being asked in the most non-confrontational way fucking ever for some 100% reasonable clarification on their accusations. like they have multiple screenshots which show the chat continuing exactly from the last screenshot by including the last thing said on the former screenshot but they did decide that the last screenshot should start halfway through their last message to hbomb

K then decides to not go after PL at all but make a huge ass callout about hbomb instead for not believing them. like the callout isnt even “hey PL made rapey comments at me” the callout is “hbomb didnt believe me when i told him this”

after this a couple things happened

K spread the callout everywhere they could because they wanted everyone to know about this and they recieved tons of support

they posted some out of context screenshots of hbomb replying to unknown messages and his replies may or may not be about this incident, no one knows because theyre completely vague without earlier context which again wasnt included

they also posted stuff about his mods defending him when all the mod (singular) in question says is to take up comments about this with hbomb himself bc discussing public callouts and dragging people has been prohibited since way before this thing happened and it makes people uncomfortable to discuss new and vague situations like this in the public server instead of in PMs which is like. logical

then they claim that (again no proof) they heard through the grapevine from someone else that hbomb had been dragging K in voice chat and calling them a crazy bitch or something like that which makes zero fucking sense because boasting in a public voice chat on a server where people are already trying to drag you about how someone who made a callout post is a crazy bitch, with your own voice, which can easily be recorded and is way harder to accuse of being faked is actually a 0 brain cell move and while i dont know hbomb personally i dont think anyone would actually be that fucking stupid

Hbomb wrote an apology and K accused him of copying it from an ask they got about what an apology should be like which is like really fucking weird because nothing in the apology even remotely resembles what they asked for so its like aight

after hbomb was thoroughly dragged through the mud because K spread the callout everywhere they could and got mad at hbomb for not including a link to their callout in his original apology and then, right after the fucking apology and they got all the traction they really tried to get they just...deleted their tumblr and all the archives and screenshots lmfao

[kittieslovekaties]

Full Metal Alchemist: 2003 anime to Brotherhood Transition

We've all heard it: FMAbro is a better story but FMA2003 handles the beginning waaaay better and has more detail. Well, I found the best way to enjoy the best of both worlds.

Start with FMA2003 episode 1. Keep going through episode 6 (The Alchemy Exam). You can skip episode 4 (A Forger's Love), it's just meh filler. Anyways, episode 6. You're going to meet Nina and Shou Tucker as well as get a more in depth knowledge of how the state alchemy exam works and some fun Hughes scenes. DO NOT WATCH the next 2 episodes. They are covered better in brotherhood and we will get there. Episode 6 ends with Ed passing the state alchemist exam.

Now move on to FMA2003 episode 9 (Be Thou for the People). This is his first assignment as a state alchemist. Yoki becomes a semi-important character much later on so you shouldnt skip. Also, it's a plain good episode.

FMA2003 episode 10 (The Phantom Thief) is filler and entirely skippable but it's good filler. At the end of the episode she mentions a city for them to look into. There, they meet Marcoh. He is introduced better in Brotherhood. Skip the next 2 episodes.

FMA2003 episode 13 "Fullmetal vs Flame" is completely filler and will only confuse you BUT IT IS SUCH A GOOD EPISODE omfg and it'll help connect you to the next episode of brotherhood. Plus, more Hughes screen time. Hughes is best girl. Just ignore whenever they bring up Marcoh cuz Ed and Al havent met him yet. Just shhhhh your mind. Or you can headcannon that they just heard about Marcoh through the grapevine but didnt meet him. Also, ignore that secretary that kinda looks like Ed and Al's mom. She's a 2003 anime only character and is not important because now we're switching over to brotherhood.

Next is FMAbro episode 4 (An Alchemist's Anguish). This episode combines the Tucker parts of FMA2003 episodes 6 and 7. When they meet Tucker, just pretend in your mind that they are not "meeting" Shou and Nina, they are merely visiting the pair after 3 years of adventuring. We're on tumblr, people. We can do headcannons. I believe in you.

From then on it's straight FMA Brotherhood. There is nothing more from FMA2003 other than some fun filler and a (not as good) alternate ending for the entire series.

So go on, you funky little alchemists.

[theteablogger]

Bullshit

Two things:

First of all, I’ve heard through the grapevine that Andy is sharing screenshots that allegedly prove that mine are fake. For what it’s worth, I have never in my life faked a screenshot of anything, let alone a screenshot of one of Andy’s posts. The most editing that I’ve done to them is to crop out extraneous material that might identify the person who sent them to me, to join screenshots together when it takes more than one to capture an entire post, to censor other people’s names and pictures or Andy’s own contact info, and occasionally to highlight something. That’s it.

Second, I’ve recently received screenshots of a Facebook post that shows what Andy is telling his friends about what’s recently happened in LA, and how Andy awareness bloggers and tf-talk are entirely to blame for it. I’m going to share it here and respond point-by-point. I realize that Andy is talking about more people than just me, but a) there are very few of us (outside tf-talk) posting about him now, and b) I can only speak for myself anyway. This is going to be long. Sorry.

(If you’d like a quick preview of Andy’s post, he’s been saying almost exactly the same things since at least 2012, so here you go.)

One major problem with this is that the “30 second cocktail party bio” is often all that people get. His former host was very clear that he hadn’t told her about leading two cults, sexually abusing people, mentally and emotionally abusing and manipulating people, and more. What little he did tell her, he blamed entirely on mental illness and made it sound like a lot of stupid internet drama.

When he refers to “listing [his] birth name and literally every screen name [he’s] had or people have suspected was [him] since 1995,” that’s obviously about me. The reason that list is featured so prominently on my blog is that Andy has used so many aliases and screen names over the years that reading about his past can be very confusing for people. Many times, even recently, I’ve seen others express surprise that Thanfiction and Victoria Bitter (for example) are the same person, although they were familiar with most of the trouble that he’d caused under both of those names. I would never, ever mention Andy’s birth name if not for the fact that his earliest known online manipulation and lies were under that name. 

Now, here’s the really big issue, for me: I have never said that Andy is a sociopathic narcissist abuser. I have never tried to label him with any specific diagnosis or even a DSM category.

Once in 2014 (before I even had a blog) I submitted a post to 1-purp0se that included something about emotional vs. cognitive empathy, positing that Andy had the latter, but not the former. I’ve regretted that part of the post ever since because I am not a mental health professional and that was only my opinion. In the years since then, I have made sure that I could substantiate everything with screenshots and I have not made anything approaching a diagnostic claim.

I have always been very clear that I have never met or personally interacted with Andy. It’s there for all to see in my FAQ. Also, I have never, ever so much as implied that Andy has abused me in any way. Anyone who thinks that I have either has not actually read my blog, or has a serious reading comprehension problem. I have never even suggested that X was anything like Andy, and have only shared those stories on my blog in hopes of being helpful to other survivors. I am disgusted by the implication that everything that I post is merely a projection of my own experiences of abuse...and at the same time, darkly amused that this is the best Andy can do to refute anything that I’ve said about him.

I have never rejected, harassed, or attacked anyone who’s contacted me about Andy. I have been attacked and harassed by people attempting to defend Andy, and I had a bit of a meltdown in 2015 when I was attempting to defend one of Andy’s friends in tf-talk.

When Andy posts social justice things, he does so in a way that shows that he has little more than a surface-level understanding of the issues, and that he’s more concerned with appearing to espouse a currently popular cause than with actually supporting it. For example, while “raising awareness” about Ferguson, he repeatedly made analogies equating black people with dogs and wild animals. He told people affected by the late-2014 wave of fake suicides in SPN fandom how they were “allowed” to feel and respond. In 2016 he made a number of posts that included misleading and false election statistics, and was very dismissive of people’s concerns about a Trump presidency. That’s the tip of the iceberg, and all that was just on Tumblr. Andy whitesplains and mansplains all the damned time.

There’s “making new friends”, and then there’s forcibly inserting yourself into a pre-existing social circle, acting like you know them all extremely well, and putting intense pressure on them to introduce you to other friends of theirs who are either connected to or actually part of the cast of the webseries on which you are currently fixated. The latter is what he did in LA, according to people who were actually there and were involved.

When Andy says good things about his friends, or other people, they are often backhanded compliments (e.g., his incredibly condescending liveblog of a friend’s SPN fic) or blatant negging (such as making extremely hurtful and gross comments about a woman’s body and following them up with over-the-top assurances that he thinks she’s beautiful). Does he do this every time he makes a positive comment about someone? I have no idea. But it happens often enough to be cause for concern.

"If people say I don’t hurt them, it’s proof that they’re brainwashed or afraid of me, etc. If friends stand up for me, that’s proof that I have created a cultish, us-against-them mentality.”

That first sentence is part of what set off my 2015 meltdown, so I’m not even touching it. I have never said anything even close to that. I have often talked about the fact that Andy has led two actual cults, and that he fosters “us-vs-them” thinking in his friends because he did and he does. Many, many former friends of Andy’s have spoken about the us-vs-them thing, and it’s evident in many of his posts over the years. 

I have never said that Andy needs to tell everyone that he is “a sociopath who was intending to inflict pain.” What makes his “apology” posts fauxpologies is that he continually finds reasons to excuse or minimize acts of abuse he has committed, to explain things away as “misunderstandings”, and to deflect blame in a variety of ways. He also tends to make significant omissions and to bend the truth as far as he can unless/until he’s called out on it.

“We know the secret.” This is hilarious because that’s exactly what Andy used to tell the Bagenders and the DAYDians: “[XYZ everyday occurrence] seems insignificant to everyone else, but because we know the secret, we understand that it’s a message from Kali and Raz,” or what have you. I think there have been a handful of times that I’ve said that something Andy’s done would have sounded innocuous coming from anyone else, but takes on more sinister overtones when his history is taken into account. These things generally have to do with specific lies Andy has told, or with specific, documented ways that he has manipulated people in the past.

This is very misleading. No one has moved the goalposts; there never were any goalposts in the first place. Nobody said, “Andy, if you do these specific things, then we’ll believe that you’ve changed and we’ll never talk about you again.” I have said, and have seen other say, that maybe if he did this or that thing it might indicate that he was serious about changing, or that something that he was doing at the time was a reason to hope that he was honestly trying to change. I and many others have also said numerous times that part of the process of moving on for Andy would have to be leaving fandom for good. Andy is the one who decided that putting on a show of leaving fandom (but still sharing fanart and trying to get other fans’ and creators’ attention via mentions and fannish tweets) was the one and only thing he needed to do in order to convince everyone that he’s a different person. 

And this next bit is the real crux of the issue: even if he really had “ticked all [the] boxes” on an imaginary list of criteria that Turimel, or tf-talk, or the Andy awareness blogs, or whoever had given him...it wouldn’t matter because he is still engaging in many problematic and abusive behaviors. He is “actively, presently committing abuse”, and I believe that he is still dangerous. I refer you again to Molly’s post about his recent stay with her. On the other hand, I have never made any claim that he is abusing Meg or the cats, or about “dozens of other current victims”. (Past victims that we don’t know about? Sure. Although I’m not very fond of the word “victim”.)

I won’t claim that I stand behind everything that’s said on tf-talk, or every post that every other blogger has made. But by all means, try to claim that there’s bias and twisting in my timeline, when it’s full of substantiating evidence in Andy’s own words and in the words of people who have been hurt by him.

I’m not sure where he’s getting “a dozen” from. There are maybe five of us blogging about him sporadically on Tumblr now (very sporadically, in most cases), and an unknown number of anons in tf-talk and fail-fandomanon. Our blogs and tf-talk often go quiet for long periods of time, and he isn’t mentioned that frequently on FFA anymore...until something like this happens.

I love the implication that no one who’s decided to stay away from Andy based on the many warning posts about him, the contents of tf-talk, Abbey’s blog, my blog, etc. has actually read any of it. They’ve all just made blind assumptions. But Andy’s not saying anything bad about them! Oh, no, they’re still smart, reasonable, good, empathetic, woke, and the kind of people that he wants to be friends with and work with. See what I mean about saying shitty things about people and then following up with lavish praise? This is also exactly what this anon on FFA was talking about. Anyway, based on my Statcounter and the fact that Google Docs will show me how many people are currently reading the timeline whenever I open it, I’m going to say that far more than .0002% of people actually read this stuff.

And here it is: it is ALL OUR FAULT that Andy hasn’t changed, even though he’s trying so hard. Comparing himself to a snake that’s had its venom sacs (not poison, Andy) removed is very disingenuous as it implies that it is now impossible for him to do significant harm. That isn’t true of anyone, let alone someone with a 20-year history of lies, manipulation, and abuse. And he actually did “bite” someone recently--again, read Molly’s post, and realize that all happened just a few days ago.

The truth does speak for itself. Those people in LA already had serious concerns about Andy before they read about him online, but they had been cutting him a lot of slack. Molly was already aware that Andy was, for example, trying to dredge up her memories of extremely abusive past relationships in order to manipulate her. She and his friends had already realized that he was constantly lying to all of them about pretty much everything. They’d already pegged him as a performative ally. They’d noticed that he negged the hell out of trans and plus-size people, specifically playing on issues of gender/body dysmorphia, and that he was competitive and condescending toward other men. All of this was based on their own direct observations of his behavior, before they had any idea about his history. And the person who filled them in wasn’t a blogger or someone from tf-talk; it was a close friend of theirs who realized who he was and felt the need to warn them.

(Also? Even if none of the LA people would say that Andy had actually harmed them--I don’t know because I haven’t talked to them all--it is evident that he at least tried to harm them psychologically and emotionally. None of the above behaviors can be waved away as accidents, especially given that they were happening regularly and frequently.)

So what is Andy to do? Maybe stop doing the things listed above, for a start. If what his friends read online (again, after spending time with him in person for a couple weeks) really hadn’t matched what they knew of him personally, the outcome would have been very different. But they’d already been comparing notes on his shitty behavior, and when they read the links they’d been sent, everything that had been happening suddenly made sense. That’s why they kicked him out. If you’re a manipulative asshole, people may be willing to let things slide for a while--but when they find out that you’ve been doing the same shit and worse for 20 years, yes, everything might just be snatched away from you. And that’s your own fucking fault.

Here’s a further comment from Andy:

This is fucking disgusting.

Other than the occasional tf-talk anon, the only person who has regularly (as in, more than an off-hand comment) compared specific words and behaviors of Andy’s to a past abuser of their own was Delwynmarch. And that was several years ago; it’s been a long time since he posted anything at all. Del had his fair share of insightful, on-point analytical posts, too--like his breakdown of Andy’s attempt to explain away his admission of having committed rape and sexual abuse. It’s incredibly disingenuous and dismissive to suggest that the volumes of information and analysis that others have written amount to nothing more than projection, and that we’re just a bunch of poor, ignorant babies who don’t realize how misguided we are. He feels sorry for us. Give me a fucking break.

I have been open about being a survivor of abuse and having lost people in my life to cults. While that is part of what inspired me to start blogging about Andy, that doesn’t mean that it is the entire basis for all of my opinions and analysis. Andy is fond of analogies, so I’ll use one here: This is like saying that because I was once bitten by a dog, any time that I feel the need to correct my own dog’s behavior, I’m obviously just projecting my past experience onto him, so I should just back off and let him keep shitting on the rug.

Furthermore, as much as he likes to say that we don’t know him and therefore shouldn’t act like we understand him...I know Andy a hell of a lot better than he knows me. I’ve been reading others’ words about him since 2003, and I have probably millions of his own words about his life, his mental health, fandom, and a host of other topics, dating back to 1998. All he knows of me is what little he sees on this blog. 

Nice try, Andy, but I neither need nor want your sympathy. Nor do I accept any measure of blame for what happened last week. You did it to yourself.