Thanfiction & The Cult Of DAYD 

Y'all imagine being a transman and deciding Onion was the flavor of man you want to be

The venn diagram of people who "have lived an extraordinary life," and the people who write 250k words of harry potter fanfiction in five weeks, is two circles on opposite sides of the earth

“They mostly relied on doctors-“ Wow, really? Well that’s good at least “- that Andy channeled-“ Oh for FUCKS sake

Blown away by the fact one of his tributes to a literal murdered woman he was friends with was ‘rip…. That ass was fat tho’

when real writers hear "i don't edit" we do not think that's impressive we think they are not a serious writer

I zoned out to do my job and zoned back in to “Now Andy is the sole survivor in a house with three corpses” and I straight up said out loud “wait whAT?”

Andy: "Ugh, i HATE porn and fluff! Its so girly! Men should act like men!" Also Andy: *has writen many pages of fluffy porn about 2 hobbits*

12:53 "only Fandom ever is Harry Potter" Did the hundred years of Merrys memories mean nothing to you

i asked my mom (any woman) if thanfiction was chivalrous. she looked at me, sighed, and said "this is another of your tumblr weirdos isnt it"

“Crushed, dissolved in acid, cut into pieces” I’m going to be honest that sounds less like a dark realistic depiction of war and it’s effects on child soldiers and more like a Tom and Jerry cartoon set to Marilyn Manson

I sometimes wake up in a cold sweat thinking about the fact that Andy Thanfiction is now FORTY. HE IS A FORTY-YEAR-OLD MAN, WHAT IS HE DOING NOW??

wait as an actual irish girl I'm truly desperate to know which side of the troubles he ultimately decided was the 'right' one

You just know that the fandom drama is extra messy when the original two hour video about the drama requires a 90 minute sequel.

Holy fucking shit, I was not ready for the murders. Rest in peace to all of the victims, the fact that Andy somehow managed to make their deaths all about him is fucking disgusting

Andy's only creative skill is that he somehow managed to be the survivor of a triple-murder-suicide and still managed to find a way to be unsympathetic.

Its kind of impressive how Jeanine consistently comes off as a terrible person even when contrasted with Andy. Like really we'd expect her to at least come off as "shitty but nothing compared to Andy" but she instead almost seems to be trying to compete with Andy for the Worst Person award.

« I retain no ill will for womankind » *goes on rants about fandom spaces having so many women in them*

Thanfiction wrote my immortal. " 5'8" skinny, messy black hair, lightning shaped scar. " Big ebony darkness energy

it's fascinating to me how despite all his stories about having this harrowing traumatic past and mountains of baggage, he seems almost impervious to actual trauma. motherfucker was the sole survivor of a murder-suicide and came very close to being killed. any normal person would probably be permanently altered by that experience, but aside from adding britney's death to his arsenal of tragic backstories to exploit, his behavior and general demeanor was completely unchanged. his capacity to just roll with every single punch and be completely unaffected by traumatic events while simultaneously portraying himself as some unfailingly strong perpetual victim to garner sympathy at every turn is fucking bananas.

“You’ve failed your saving throw. Your low charisma stat made this inevitable. Is there a paladin in your party?” is such a hilarious fucking line to come out of a Harry Potter fandom callout

Barely two minutes in and the knowledge that Andy contacted you to beg for mercy has SENT me.

"I have an evil twin sister" is actually such a fantastic way of using someone's transphobia against them. Andy is evil to the core, but he does have a good idea every once in a while... but to beat the BoE allegations, and then watch LotR at DAYD-con? Why? That's some Riddler-level telling on yourself.

I hate to think about what this guy could be doing on a private discord server right now 💀

I really respect that you don't stoop to transphobia while criticizing this crazy SOB. As a trans viewer it really makes me feel safe to know that your allyship isn't conditional on individual trans people being good people.

I love that Andy went from hobbit sex to scam cult leader that made no money to nightmare boyfriend from hell to ???? to the Andrew Tate of Harry Potter fic and back to cult leader

Wrote like a dark, fucked up version of Harry Potter haha. Just a glimpse into my dark reality. A full stare into my twisted perspective would make most simply go insane lmao.

There is NO WAY he’s reformed. If he actually felt bad about starting TWO CULTS he would just never go on the internet and make a digital presence again. Complete computer cut off

Love how Andy's fanfiction went from 'emotional Hobbit sex' to 'torturing teenagers'.

who says you have to be a cis man to be a grandiose narcissist and aspiring cult leader? #king

amazing that someone who talks about internet weirdos and niche internet culture of the 00s is more respectful of victims of violent crime than most true crime youtubers

My heart goes out to the unnamed roommate who died. May they never be forgotten

Andy talking about abuse is really something. "Abused women should be saved by me, an abuser" like yeah that tracks for these kinds of guys

Between this and hbomb’s video it’s a bad week for misogynists. We love to see it.

Not just did he write 250,000 words in 5 weeks - he says he only used the library computer for 1 hr a day. So that means he wrote 250,000 words in 35 hours.

linking himself to the IRA during BOE was incredibly insensitive but hearing his horrific irish accent brought me to tears, and when the americans started complimenting him on his even worse pronunciation of our words i started HOWLING. absolute comedy gold 😭😭

Between Jeanine using Brittany's murder to hurt Andy and Andy using Brittany's name for outright lies, that poor girl seriously couldn't catch a break even after death.

There's fandom drama, and then there's actually, literally forcing people to march the Trail of Tears. God the fuck damn.

When this video dropped, I (transmasc) had JUST made a post on tumblr talking about how transmascs need to remember that we are very much capable of misogyny and that some people need to get it together. Guess I was right because DAMN?????

lmao if he'd "fought on both sides of the Troubles" he'd have been fuckin kneecapped

I’m a trans guy, and it’s really refreshing to hear someone actually talk about the objectively creepy behavior towards women and calling it what it is, and not saying “it’s fine” because the man happens to be trans No man should be allowed to engage in gross behaviors. There’s a lot more Andy’s out there than you think. Be aware!

I built half a couch while listening to this and then just lay down on it, horrified, for the latter half of the story.

Jeanine trying to blame the murder on Andy is SO distasteful. Incidents like that the most common ways that women are murdered, by their own intimate partners/exes. Especially during divorce/separation proceedings or simply trying to get away from the abusive partner. Saying Andy engineered it or that Brittany's ex would've spared her if she was "nicer" is abuse apologia. That said Andy is still a manipulative shithead who disrespected her passing by LYING about it and using it for his own "story" and self aggrandizing.

He's telling on himself big time with the whole "it's about power" site. He's just outlined all of his reasons for exploiting and hurting women and acted like it was some noble observations about bad men that aren't him.

Jesus christ, what happened to brittany is unbearably awful, but also the fact that her last months on this earth were entirely taken up with andy-induced psychosis and stress is just too much. Good god, i wish she got to get through that and live a normal life

Andy writing a long passage about abuse and essentially describing the many ways he has abused and taken power away from others is making me Lose My Mind.

15 minutes in and if the claymore scar is his explanation for top surgery... 10/10 no notes on that

I.... I did not think this story would keep going after someone literally dying. The Trail of Tears hike is one of the most horrific things I've ever heard. I'm amazed none of these people died, human stamina and strength is incredible

"not presently overburdened with employment" is what i'm gonna say from now on instead of telling people i'm unemployed LMAO

The most gender conforming behaviour on Andy's part is that just like every cis male, his immediate response to every valid criticism of his actions is to simply go, "ah no way, these bitches be crazy" and refuse to elaborate

as an irish person his claims caused me psychological pain

Im irish and his accent killed me, he' cannot pronounce irish words, sounded closer to Icelandic 😭

can't believe this somehow ended with "he recently attempted to get close to the cast of Critical Role" LEAVE THEM ALONE GET A JOB

59:50 Jeanine and Andy making Brittany and the roommate’s deaths about Andy is disgusting like I expect nothing less from Andy, but this does show Jeanine’s vindictiveness and tunnel vision and just solidifies that while she was a victim she’s also The Worst™️

14:00 weird nitpick here, but as someone who is British kids and teens ARE allowed in pubs without an adult. This just makes that story sound even more fake because its literally not weird for 16 year olds to be in pubs, since they mainly serve food outside of alcohol and most people who go into one do so for food. Weird rant i know, but i hate when people assume pubs are just bars lol

Yknow it just occurred to me that he might have lied about the sword wound to explain top surgery scars, since he was so insistent that he's a Straight Cis Man™️ and that's so ridiculous to me lol

i looked at andy's wiki in the middle of this video for kicks and gigs and saw the line "May 2011: Thanfiftion/Andrew Blake is involved in a double murder-suicide" and just sat with my mouth agape for like 5 minutes.

There have been 2 snowstorms in these stories. The Gods themselves are trying to stop Andy's bullshit.

andy is like onision, hivliving, and sixpenceheals combined into one to destroy any fandom

Describing Andy's motivations to "always be weirder then that" feels like a massive understatement. That whole hike sounds like he was running a cult. Genuinely, the whole DIY medical treatment aspect of it all makes me think of the ant hill kids

"His accent fluctuates wildly between Irish, British, and some kind of maritime Canadian" SO glad you said this because I had been thinking the accent was more somewhere-in-atlantic-Canada than Irish lol

I remember when Andy tried to do the same bullshit in the Supernatural fandom -this time IIRC channeling Dean? Or Cas... one of the two. He was stalking a Cas cosplayer, that much I remember- and for ONCE the Supernatural fandom was the most sane in the room as we threw him out faster than you could say "Carry on my wayward son"

"My only regret in life was that I was five minutes late to my meeting with that Make-a-Wish kid, but in my defense, I was too busy rescuing puppies from a burning orphanage. 😔"

So I'm no longer into HP fandom for The Obvious Reason but I did spork Andy's DAYD fic back in the day for this HP community (it's what we used to call it when you went through someone's fic and made fun of it MST3K style.) Only did this because I knew Andy was a POS so I wasn't worried about hurting his feelings. Andy even emailed me telling me he didn't mind did I want to talk etc. and I emailed him back saying he needed to stop hurting people. No response. It's NOT a good fic, prose very purple, here are some highlights of the wild shit: -Managed to be possibly even worse on race than the actual HP books which is a feat. Suddenly every character of color was whatever their racial stereotype was- The Patil twins were really into yoga and had yoga and snake based magic! Li Su mentions that she totally gets their yoga and tea stuff because "the mountains between India and China are not so vast" (what??? WHAT??). This also extended to national stereotypes- with Scottish Ernie suddenly being a very violent angry person and Irish Seamus of course getting drunk all the time. -Extremely misogynistic which should surprise no one. Girls were constantly described as "fragile" and "dainty", and a lot of emphasis was put on how manly the guys were, all the girls suddenly had the same personality, mildly sassy but swooning over the boys and also literally cleaning up after them and making them shower. -There was a plotline where Lavender Brown got r**ed by Crabbe and Goyle, and of course it was entirely focused on the boys reaction to this and their hardcore vengance crusade, with no exploration of her feelings. They just ended up breaking their fingers and vaguely threatening them so it wasn't even cool revenge. Lavender is then graphically killed at the end of the fic (the movies later killed her off too but the books weren't clear either way). -Hannah, Neville's gf in the fic, is described as chubby in the actual books. Of course Thanfiction had it turn out that it was her robes that were making her (and no one else?) look fat and she had a supermodel's body. Nevile, also chubby, is now super jacked with chiseled abs and is so embarrassed he used to be fat. It's very funny that he scorns girls for their Mary Sues while using the exact same tropes, also that he was angling to live up to Rowling's fatphobia. -He had these two boys who were obsessed with each other and wore each other's clothes and had MATCHING TATTOOS and did everything together, clearly bait for the M/M shippers but he acted FURIOUS when those "empty headed" girls shipped them, forbade people from using "his" characters, and said they didn't understand how deep and special male friendship was and how it could never measure up to relationships stupid women have. -The gays did NOT kiss in actual DAYD, that is not true, maybe in the sequels or a side story though. What did happen was he decided Dean Thomas was gay and tragically in love with to his straight bff Seamus, he tells Seamus this and Seamus responds by calling him a bunch of homophobic slurs, and then Dean dies in the Battle of Hogwarts and Seamus gets to tragically angst about it. Recall that Dean is one of the few Black characters in HP too. -There was a plotline where they included Slytherins in the DA and just forgave them constantly calling everyone HP's made-up slurs, Neville literally tells someone to calm down when they get mad about it. This is pretty OOC because the HP books, for all their flaws, always had everyone go ballistic on Malfoy and beat the shit out of him for doing that, so. uh. i guess that was Thanfiction's addition. -Snape for some reason was constantly trying to murder Neville and other students despite the fact he was supposed to be secretly on their side, it made no sense. Snape sucks but the podcaster was right, his actions were inexplicable just because Thanfiction needed a Voldemort like antagonist. -For the record, there weren't a lot of traditional OCs, he just took minor characters who were only mentioned once or twice and made them his own. and by his own I mean bad. -In the sequel, Hermione is r**ed in front of Ron, then dies while having a demon baby. yeah.

"abuse isn't about the abuse itself, it's about the power you gain" yeah, wouldn't you know andy thanfiction

Learning "that one HP fanfic that I quite liked despite (and at times because of) its grimdark tone" was written by THIS DUDE really makes me feel like that trope of a custodian mopping the floor obliviously while a bunch of action goes down behind them. UTTERLY WILD!!!

I went into this completely blind and when you brought up the murder-suicide I was completely thrown through a loop. I remember a little bit before that you said she "couldn't tell her side of the story anymore," and I assumed that she had died, but WOW. That was so incredibly dark. Obv I'm not blaming Andy for what happened, but the fact he tried to paint himself as the hero after all that... seriously fuck him. How is he not in jail?

As an Irish person, I'm asking genuinely... is the Irish accent in the room with us?

I have a mutual friend with Andy's first boyfriend (from waaaay at the beginning of this when he very first started lying to people in fandom pre BOE and stuff), and he is so lucky that he dodged this gigantic missile of a person. He is a happily married dad these days. :) Edit: I see his name was mentioned in part 1. I have a mutual friend with Adrian, to be clear. And, can confirm, he IS Australian!

The Destiel part came to a punch in the stomach 💀 I knew he had tried his luck on spnblr and in the spn/destiel fandom, but from what I’ve heard, his crap didn’t fly there

I've known and worked with so many artists who describe the creative process as something akin to "channeling", but always ground it in the very real feeling of being caught up in the flow of creative energy when you're so focused and invested on a project that it's almost meditative. Andy thinking he's the Mozart of fanfiction is killing me.

You know who he really reminds me of? Charles Manson. The need to gather followers for the sake of having power over people, the incorporation of pop culture into his cult mythos, putting followers in extreme wilderness settings to break them down, the exploitation and abuse of vulnerable women, the interest in getting close to celebrities, it's all Manson. It's kind of a creepy mirror of how this kind of abuse plays out in two different cultural moments: the 60's counter culture vs the early years of online fandom culture.

going to further expound on the "do not engage" statement at the beginning: - harassment never leads to dangerous people being ousted, but it does sometimes lead to them hiding themselves better. "punishment" helps no one - there's a point where engaging with a person is putting yourself in actual danger, and unless he miraculously has changed (i dont buy it) andy is well past this point. do not allow him to speak to you personally. do not interact with serial abusers, and especially not cult leaders. - and yeah as strange said maybe hes not lying this time! probably, not? but hey.

"This WAR. Men are HARDCORE and DANGEROUS and VIOLENT, that's just how MEN ARE." -The Wholesome Hobbit Love Guy

I am kinda gutted that you won't get into the spn-era bullshit he pulled because he was absolutely trying to start another cult around him there (and was definitely succeeding to a slight extent). It might not be quite as well known because a lot of the people he effected just didn't want to go into it too much after the fact (me being one of them, sort-of). He definitely attempted to start talking about 'channelling' Castiel and leaned heavily into the spn angel lore. It meshed well with his own brand of crazy. He also then did try and put on a spn-themed LARP which got shut down almost as soon as it was mentioned because everyone went: oh hell no, you've done this sort of thing before and it's what ultimately got him chased out of the fandom. If you do ever want to talk about that era, feel free to hit me up. I can definitely tell you who to get in touch with outside of myself. So many of the things you mention here were echoed at later dates with the spn fandom.

I’m pretty sure that anyone who tried to fight on both sides of the troubles would’ve ended up in a ditch. It was a communal conflict in a tiny country where Everyone knew everyone.

how could someone who heart is always about to explode hike the trail of tears?

“…trying not to offend anyone when he doesn’t want Harry weeping into his chocolate ice-cream to Evanescence because Draco hasn’t bent him over the table in the Great Hall lately…” is just quite the sentence and I didn’t expect to hear it today 😂

Just to say, 'Hannah' is not an OC by Andy. Hannah Abbott is a Hufflepuff and Neville's canon 'post-war' wife, and they buy and run the Leakey Cauldron together. She was also a reasonably popular pairing for Neville in fics where he was a side character even before JK added a lot of the extra outside-the-books content. I spent too many of my teenage years in this fandom...

The way these people, even Jeanine, take what was a terrible tragedy and loss of life and make it about them or their petty splatfight is just,ugh. Brittany becoming a sort of saint for Andy to use was creepy to hear. Her existence became just another series of lies for Andy to spread and use.

1:01:17 “She’d do it over her own dead body if need be. And so I will.” I fucking GASPED.

A respectful request: is it possible to put up a list of sources and/or further reading with the video? The Andy Awareness blogs especially have been chronicalling this story for years now and they especially deserve recognition. And as someone who likes nothing more than to delve into ancient internet history and archives, I also think it is very important to preserve. With archives and search being as they are, that often means urls. I really enjoy these videos a lot and I think it would make them better. Thanks for considering!

I hadn’t actually connected the dots between Andy and the DAYD fic I read when I was deep in fandom as a kid (read part of the fic but never got into the fandom around it) and I gotta say, there’s so much to mad at about this guy and all the lives he’s harmed and ruined, but I gotta say, as someone who’s Choctaw native, l actually started shaking a little with how pissed I am that he picked the Trail as part of his pseudo charity. Not only did he make the loss of actual real human life about himself and his fandom drama, but he used a piece of an actual ongoing genocide against indigenous people for that purpose as well. The abuse and murder our mothers and sisters go through to this day is horrific, but he couldn’t even bother to mention that history as he used in his weird fake crusade for women. I feel like his whiteness is a weird unspoken through-line in his weird “power” speech, his glorification of abuse, and his self obsession at the expense of dignity for the real lives lost. Andy, may you find no peace in this life or the life beyond this.

9:19 harry "weeping into his chocolate ice cream because draco hasn't bent him over a table lately" unironically sounds like a great idea for a fic As a drarry shipper whose favorite band is evanescence with hurt/comfort being one of my fave tropes (also i love chocolate ice cream) yes i fully admit i'm biased

Not to be an armchair psychologist, but there is something kind of interesting in the way that Andy, a transman, attempts to mantle unto himself all of these stereotypical markers of toxic American masculinity. War, death, gore, darkness, violence, pain, scars, tattoos, misogyny, etc.

You saying "we will never hear Brittany's side of the story" in the first half made me worry. But fuck, the foreshadowing could not have prepared me for the literal murders. MAN.

"Crying into his ice cream- because [he] hasnt bent [him] over lately" is such a funny amalgamation of words

Nothing will ever top the "Oh, that was just my evil twin" lie.

I will say his monologue about how the fandom is infested with girls is an incredible copypasta

His habit of co opting the identities of fictional and primarily male characters is so interesting to me and like. brings me back to my days in the fictionkin community when i was like 13. like pretending to be the boys you want to be and making up some stuff (at least i was) about past lives to validate yourself and feel confident as a man. I guess andy is what happens when a young trans guy in that situation is also a manipulative sociopathic garbage weiner.

The thing that really gets me is that by how people describe his writing , he probably could have been an uncontroversial and successful fiction writer. Wouldn’t that have been a better timeline.

Omg i was almost part of this cult. As a young closered queer teenager who was really naive, into Harry Potter and angsty fanfiction i was the perfect audience for DAYD. My favorite character has always been Neville Longbottom. I loved the premise of DAYD but as the story progressed it became more and more violent and made less and less sense as time went on. I ended up leaving before getting too invested in the DAYD fandom, but the DAYD concepts have truly traumatized me and have been burned in my brain. Thank you so much for covering this, i thought I'd imagined the whole thing as it happened so long ago.

Born and raised in the great country of Ireland, my sweet god if you showed me that accent gun to my head I wouldn’t even be able to tell what accent he was trying

That Q&A portion for his bio sounds like he's writing his cis-sona 😭

Oh the jumpscare of seeing my first fandom home (PotterFicWeekly) here - I am happy to report that the hosts were not in any way...enamored with this guy. He actually was an absolute jerk to one of the hosts, another jumped off before the interview was done, and the editor could hardly finish going through this episode. Just had to speak up for my old fandom home. Thanks for the memories!

CFC is interesting to me. Imagine being 60 and still being utterly committed to this fandom cult leader you met through Harry Potter fan fiction 15 years later.

This is some next level shit like how's a story about a guy being weird in fanfiction spaces escalate to appropriating the history of the Trail of Tears in order to make himself the main character of a murder suicide like HUH???

Andy really just fell back into his bullshit once he found a fandom that wasn’t privy to his shenanigans. “Reformed Christian” my ass.

Man that was such a rollercoaster, like Andy going from being a survivor of a real domestic murder scene and using it for his own benefit, to then doing back alley surgery in a cold forest. Im amazed there are still supporters for him

I went to the guy's current Twitter account, and he is still telling and changing up the story of what happened to Brittney. This time, she was his partner (no "maybe in the future" like last time, now they were actually together), and her killer shot a bystander after she called the police on her ex-husband. That man will do anything except let her rest in peace

I had no familiarity with any of this prior to your coverage, so when I heard the words “we have not heard her story and never will” my cheeks clenched SO hard they become one mono-cheek.