Betty (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} brown_betty) wrote,@ 2007-11-15 12:30:00 |
|
Gather 'round children, it's story-time
Disclaimer: You will notice that I have some of the people mentioned below in my f-list: that is because I like them. I am certainly their partisan, and although I have attempted to be even-handed, it is quite likely that I am biased toward them.
You may also be aware I have worked as webmaster for Girl-Wonder.org, a site which appears in the tale to follow. I also moderate on their forums, and perform various administrative tasks.
Once upon a time there was a nasty, small-minded little man. He liked various things: comics, porn, comic-porn... but what he liked most of all was attention. We'll call himteh_no. Happily, he was on livejournal, where it's not too hard to get an audience, so he set about doing just that: he posted, occasionally, to ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif)
scans_daily, (and this was when it was small but growing, mind) and got comments! This was gratifying, so he posted more. In fact, he began to post so much that some people begin to feel that he was kind of monopolizing the community. Here is a randomly selected month which gives some idea of his posting pattern. (I swear, random, but if someone wants to go through and compile real statistics, I feel confident they will not disprove my point.)mike_smith discussed in October of 2006 creating a community where, among other things "teh_no would be shot on sight." At teh_no's request, he details his reasons here.
teh_no wrote fanfic, as well; although it was not to my taste, that's not a reflection on its quality. (I have musings on the quality, but they're not really relevant, so I will forbear.) Here's a representative sample: Swapping: Steph/Cass, Dinah/Shiva (Steph/Shiva, Dinah/Cass). As he got more feedback, he wrote more fanfic. While I don't think he's unusual in wanting feedback for his writing, I intend to argue and demonstrate that he will go to any lengths to get feedback, and when he does not get the feedback, no revenge is too petty and/or ridiculous for him to attempt.
teh_no has his own tag on fanficrants and although obviously I cannot know his motivations, I allege that he posts there because of its large and vocal community of commenters, who can be guaranteed to respond on certain topics; it's abusive, but it's attention. See above. For a period, he regularly courted metafandom, with topics such as how to write men, how to write sex, men in fandom, and what I can only term his thoughts on yaoi. Again, although I construe his posts as a bid for attention, (and although one of them contains the text "And, now that you've read my essay, you realize it was all a cynical ploy to pimp a bunch of fics and get mentioned on metafandom") nothing says our hero was not merely speaking up because he was interested in the subject and felt he had expertise.
What is widely known:
On January 06, Mary posts in her lj about Chuck Dixon and his publicly stated stance on homosexuality. Teh_no disagrees with her, and states that her offer of her "firstborn child [... doubtless] born out of wedlock" to anyone who writes a fic based on the prompt of "Bruce taking young Dick to a Purity Ball" is "uncool." Because, quote, "sharpest_rose posted similar prompts a while back and I wrote stories based on those prompts, then she never read them. Just seems a little... uncouth to me (like, what, she had time to do Yuletide recs but not... I'm not upset)."
The first ofteh_no's run-ins with the moderators on scans_daily begin on January 19 when teh_no makes makes a negative comment (in the comments to a post he made) regarding Grant Morrison's run on Animal Man. In response, stolismancer posts scans from an Animal Man comic which involve Grant Morrison's self-insertion and a discussion of animal rights. teh_no takes offense to this, and comments. There is some back and forth, after which the moderators make a post asking members to abide by the golden rule. teh_no appears to defend himself and discussion ensues. Later that day (January 21) teh_no begins posting a series of Far Side strips that could be viewed as taunting his opponents. In one, comics writer Warren Ellis comments, "It's waaaaay past time for you to back the fuck away from the computer." The next day teh_no posts a parody of Warren Ellis's work to his LJ.
On the 26th of January, teh_no posts scans on scans_daily of Ramba, an Italian pornographic comic. It features a woman who, among other things, castrates a man, and then has sex with her cat. NSFW link. At the end of this post, he says, "Final Analysis: Everything girl-wonder.org is asking for in a female hero." (It is worth noting that at this point, Mary was still very much behind G-W; she was quite vocal about both her hopes for it and her activism in it) Several people comment (still NSFW) in that post to say that they found his reference to girl-wonder objectionable. Others defend teh_no and say it was obviously a joke. The moderator tells them to take their personal differences elsewhere.
On February 6,teh_no challenges girl-wonder's involvement with Mary Borsellino, seeing as Mary has not been ashamed to publish her stories, some of them porn, some of it centering on dysfunctional or morally horrifying relationships, on the internet. On March 11, he makes a post to scans daily which includes the phrase: "Despite the, eh, humorlessness of some of her fans, Stephanie's still a cool character." This is widely interpreted as a dig at Mary Borsellino, and possibly Livia Penn. A moderator tells him that this is the third instance where he has brought up out-of-community drama and been warned, and he is subsequently banned.
Short form
He waxes vocal on about girl-wonder in his livejournal for a while, but these posts aren't of interest to me; he is certainly welcome to criticize Girl-Wonder's actions and philosophy if he so chooses. Of much greater interest to me is a seemingly unconnected fact: On March 29,iameddiebrock is created. He lists, among his interests, "devo" which was a running (some might say beaten into the ground) joke of our protagonist's on scans_daily. He posts with the same frequency as teh_no to scans_daily, often with the same taste in images.
It is my allegation that withiameddiebrock teh_no takes his first stab at recasting himself/his sock as the populist feminist hero. Following the MJ statue controversy, iameddiebrock writes an entirely out-of-character essay that conveniently makes most of the prevailing feminist critiques on the statue, which he then links to on scans_daily (only the LJSeek cache of this post remains). In a further attempt at distancing himself from the teh_no identity and aligning himself with many prominent comic feminists, iameddiebrock posts a slash drabble to the batfic community; teh_no was well-known for his general distaste toward slash. arionhunter became suspicious of him after a post including a Photoshop (teh_no was notorious for his photoshops which he posted to scans_daily to some controversy) of the Sideshow MJ statue in the Robin memorial case. arionhunter alerted the moderators, and he was banned (link NSFW) from scans_daily on May 24, and all his posts are deleted.
Fear not, for our hero is not long dismayed!
On June 12,mst3kfan is created. He joins scans_daily, and his first post is June 19. He posts seven more times before the end of the month. On the 25th of July he posts an entry about Girl-Wonder.org which he has apparently since thought better of, because it is deleted. Happily, I have a screencap, which I am happy to share with all of you. Here is ljseek's version of it. In the entry, he presents himself as someone who feels that sexualization going on in comics is wrong, and who is sympathetic to girl-wonder's cause, but who, as a victim of childhood sexual abuse, is incredibly skeeved. Obviously, that sort of experience could make exposure to many kinds of pornography painful and triggering, but I'm most interested in several, it seems to me, extremely disingenuous phrases:
Never mind. Perhapsmst3kfan is merely unfamiliar with WFA, and in confusion, believes them to be a fic community held on blogspot. He continues (I excerpt):
If only he could remember the guy's name! He's so dashing and handsome, right Ms. Lane?
I admit, this is not conclusive evidence. The typos are not characteristic ofteh_no, but neither are they, to my mind, characteristic of naturally occurring typos. teh_no could not have invented a better supporter, and I allege that he did not invent a better supporter: he invented this one. I feel it is compelling. You may not.
I first suspectedmst3kfan of being a sockpuppet on August 2, but credit goes to arionhunter who took my brain spasm seriously enough to investigate.
On September 28,stylish_handbag creates a journal. He has no friends, and belongs to scans_daily. He has only one post in his lj, and it's not public. His first post on scans_daily appears on September 28. It purports to be a spoiler showing the death of Scott Free, but (spoiler!) it's actually from Jack Kirby's Fourth World #14, if redorion, and various others in the comments in the comments are to be believed. (I see no reason not to.) The sense of humour on display in this post reminds me of teh_no, others must judge for themselves.
This next part of my narrative is a little bit spotty due to copious comment deletion, and lack of screen-caps. ETA: Nov 19: No, never mind, I found my screen caps!
An anonymous commenter appears instylish_handbag's post, and gives some offense. The comments have since been deleted, by stylish_handbag, leaving only the reactions, which give some context. Here is a screencap of his original comments. When challenged on his identity, the anonymous person claims to be rubynye, a claim which is met with some hilarity, not only by your humble scribe. rubynye appears in the comments and says that the anonymous person certainly is not her, and she's not worried that anyone will believe it is her, because the moderators will be able to see that her IP address is not the same as the anonymous person's.
However, just when it seems like everything may be simply cleared up by waiting for a mod,stylish_handbag deletes all comments by the anonymous person, and posts this screencap, (stylish_handbag's original cap) which rather unbelievably reveals that rubynye and the anonymous person have exactly the same IP adress. And when I say 'unbelievable' I mean it. Supposing for a moment that Ny (a friend, so I will not pretend to be unbiased) were going to post anonymous comments, why would she first claim them, then disclaim them? Why would she post comments which would reveal her IP address in a setting she could not control (she could not, for example, delete them later, as the poster of the post in which the comments appeared could.) But utmost, to me, is the fact that Ny is the sort of person who will apologize if you step on her foot. I would sooner believe that pigs could fly than that Ny was trolling anonymously for fun. However, if you do not know Ny, this may not persuade you, and I hope my earlier points will have some influence. (This screencap is also missing from the post, because some idiot told stylish_handbag to delete his comment because she was uncomfortable with having her IP address publicly displayed.) However, the use of internet explorer should persuade at least those familiar with me that it was not taken by yours truly.
A further point, merely circumstantial: if, as I believe and hopefully have managed to imply to you, bothstylish_handbag and the anonymous person are in fact teh_no, why would they/he (I apologize, my pronouns are becoming confused) choose to target rubynye? She is on sharpest_rose's friendlist, and she did, at one point, tell teh_no that she felt he was treating Mary badly, but so did a number of people, including myself, and he never impersonated me, ineptly or otherwise. (ETA: Ha! This is no longer precisely true.) However, he wrote her prompt for the femslash_today porn battle. If you follow the link to the story (please be aware of warnings on the story, management does not assume responsibility for injuries) you'll note that among the people who responded, one of them is-- not rubynye. Now, who do we know who goes off the rails when the person he writes a prompt for doesn't thank him?
Also circumstantial: I believeteh_no particularly dislikes "BNFs" or "Big Name Fans." (He will refer later to the size of Mary's f-list as a reason why she should have treated him with more respect.) I believe he resents their popularity, and what he perceives as undeserved recognition they get for their fic. Here teh_no seems pleased that 150 people are watching his journal. Here he mentions that he now has 160 watchers. In the community he started, recced_em, rule No. 8 is "8. Don't rec BNFs. They get enough love as is and this comm is about giving love to underfriended fic writers. That means anyone with under two hundreds friends, which is a completely arbitrary (but round) number." When asked "are you a BNF?" he says: "I don't think I count. There's no real litmus test for it, but for the purposes of this discussion it's someone who is believably obscure and doesn't get the exposure he or she deserves. Like I said, two hundred is an arbitrary number. For instance, likeadeuce, who I would consider a BNF, has less friends than me. I think part of it is that whole clique thing." As I write this, rubynye is friended by 251 people.
Obviously, it is central to my theory that the screencap posted is a manipulation: who do I know who prides themselves on their photoshop ability?
Back to thrilling tales of sockpuppets created for what is apparentlyteh_no's chief purpose in life: posting to scans_daily. Our next candidate: hithereyouberk, created on October 12, belongs to precisely one community (scans_daily), has never posted a comment, and his only livejournal entry is not public. He has precisely one friend, ultralad, created October 4, who also belongs to precisely two communities, (one of them is scans_daily) and who seems more fleshed out: he made four entries to his journal, two of which are public. ultralad is also more popular than hitheryouberk, as he has two friends: hithereyouberk, and jaysunshine. jaysunshine created their account on October 4, belongs to no communities and has one entry in his journal, which is not public. Isn't it nice when kindred spirits can find each other in this crazy world?
ultralad posts on scans_daily on October 3, technically before his account is actually created (due to differing times on different lj clusters, this is not actually time-travel, it just means he posted pretty soon after the account was created.) He posts ten more times before the end of that month. Some of it is freaky porn, (NSFW) which I mention because it's an interest he has in common with teh_no. Co-incidentally, mst3kfan posts 19 times that month. Some of it is freaky porn.(NSFW)
mst3kfan, never precisely a blushing flower, becomes part of my narrative again when he declares "Big Barda & Scott Free Week" for the first time on November 9. However, this post is mysteriously deleted and replaced three days later with one which has exact same declaration, only now it takes a stereotypically feminist attitude toward Barda's death. Many of the socks I accuse often take a 'feminist' stance on high profile issues. I do not by this mean to imply that teh_no is or isn't a feminist. Let us say that he is-- I don't really care about his ideology. I care that he has stalked, harrassed, and defamed my friends.
You may notice thatmst3kfan has reversed his earlier position of being "not really into comics. I know about Batman and Superman and Captain America, kinda, but I'm much more about comics that are... it's hard to say this without sounding pretentious, but ARTISTIC." Or perhaps by "not really into comics" like "Captain America" which he knows about "kinda" he means: "except for comics created by Jack Kirby" (non-comics people, I am being sarcastic. Captain America is a Jack Kirby creation.)
ETA: Nov 16
kijikjun points out: On October 10, mst3kfan posts from webcomic Wonderella. (I would just like to mention that Wonderella is awesome, and you should check it out.) After the comic, he says: "Now up on the agenda... did I miss something? Why aren't we allowing anonymous comments anymore? Because I have friends who were banned from El Jay and they deserve to share in the snark, the gay, and the snarking at Iron Man's dickery (while being gay for Steve)." I obviously believe that his friend has not been been banned from lj, but merely from scans_daily. In the comments, the topic of teh_no comes up quickly, and mst3kfan quickly leaps in to defend him.
link "And to be fair to Teh_no, from everything I've read monkeycrackmary was being a bitch with a capital C, if you get my drift."
link: "I read his entry on Fandom_Wank and they were just merciless to him. is he Jewish or something?"
link: "Well, Rabican does have a link to Girl-wonder.org on her LJ... just saying, that's all..."
link, link. (Opion on whether teh_no was a contribution to the community appears to be divided, in the comments.)
Please note: mst3kfan seems extremely familiar with teh_no's history. (Possibly he has remembered the name of 'that guy.') He is obviously very much teh_no's partisan. And yet, oddly enough, he hasn't friended teh_no. Perhaps he's simply shy.
On October 11, mst3kfan posts again, and says
</ETA>
On November 13, the subtly namedteh_sock_puppet creates his account. He belongs to one community, scans_daily, and has no friends. (Don't feel bad, guys, I'm sure he'll make some friends.) He has only one entry on his lj, which is not public. He too posts on scans_daily so quickly that he beats his journal to its creation. teh_sock_puppet is clearly a big fan of Big Barda, as evidenced by his icon, and first post. (Ultralad comments in this post. He would not be at any risk doing so, since mst3kfan is one of the few on scans_daily who will not make a note of his IP and use it against him)
The astute reader will have noticed thatteh_sock_puppet, mst3kfan, stylish_handbag and teh_no share an interest in the Fourth World, a semi-obscure corner of DC canon. Again. Merely suggestive.
I know I have omitted some points, but I grow weary, and must draw my story to a close. Throughout this time, Mary continued to receive spiteful anonymous comments to her livejournal. In a now deleted comment made in May, which I regret I am unable to demonstrate any evidence of, save that it once resided at this url and would have been delivered to Mary,teh_no indicated his willingness to receive an apology from Mary. For what, precisely, I am not sure, but in this thread, Mary, after six months of becoming increasingly circumscribed in her fandom participation, offers teh_no a rather broad apology: "Im sincerely sorry for the things that I've done and said which have caused you hurt or anger, and I wish you all the best." teh_no proceeds to interpret that apology rather broadly. Among other things, he says "Instead, [of approaching him privately] she aired her dirty laundry with me in public in a matter that she had to know would make people choose sides. And when she's got 750+ friends, well, that's a lotta people gunning for me. I was scapegoated. And for what?" In addition to raising questions about teh_no's understanding of the term 'scapegoat,' this post of teh's is remarkable for its lack of links. I'm not sure what post by Mary he's referring to. Maybe this one in which his name is never mentioned? I believe my airing of dirty laundry above makes any attempt to label Mary's as such laughable. Mary has a great dislike of causing offense. I am not so constrained.
After which, dear children, the dragon was defeated, and the princess ran away with the scullery maid.
Finally, and once again: I do not pretend to be a neutral party. I like Mary. I thinkteh_no is a pathetic, snivelling pissant, for whom my feelings have moved from pity to despite. I have attempted to present the facts as neutrally as possible, drawing distinctions between the facts, and what I theorize. Certain facts which informed my theorizing were imparted to me in confidence and I am not able to divulge them; I hope I have made my case compellingly with the facts which were available to me. Certain parts of my theory were omitted for want of access to the evidence needed to make them compelling. glossing and arionhunter helped me compile links and suggested connections and avenues for research. Arionhunter in particular is a goddamn ninja. They alone of any of the people mentioned in this post were aware of this post as I was composing it, and I alone bear responsibility for any errors. If I have falsely accused any real person of being teh_no, I regret it immensely, and apologize for the slur on their character.
Additionally, I hope no person will believe my allegations merely on my say-so, but will instead investigate for themselves the links I have compiled, and decide where to lend credence. Thank you, everyone who has read this far.
Disclaimer: You will notice that I have some of the people mentioned below in my f-list: that is because I like them. I am certainly their partisan, and although I have attempted to be even-handed, it is quite likely that I am biased toward them.
You may also be aware I have worked as webmaster for Girl-Wonder.org, a site which appears in the tale to follow. I also moderate on their forums, and perform various administrative tasks.
Once upon a time there was a nasty, small-minded little man. He liked various things: comics, porn, comic-porn... but what he liked most of all was attention. We'll call him
teh_no. Happily, he was on livejournal, where it's not too hard to get an audience, so he set about doing just that: he posted, occasionally, to scans_daily, (and this was when it was small but growing, mind) and got comments! This was gratifying, so he posted more. In fact, he began to post so much that some people begin to feel that he was kind of monopolizing the community. Here is a randomly selected month which gives some idea of his posting pattern. (I swear, random, but if someone wants to go through and compile real statistics, I feel confident they will not disprove my point.)mike_smith discussed in October of 2006 creating a community where, among other things "teh_no would be shot on sight." At teh_no's request, he details his reasons here.teh_no wrote fanfic, as well; although it was not to my taste, that's not a reflection on its quality. (I have musings on the quality, but they're not really relevant, so I will forbear.) Here's a representative sample: Swapping: Steph/Cass, Dinah/Shiva (Steph/Shiva, Dinah/Cass). As he got more feedback, he wrote more fanfic. While I don't think he's unusual in wanting feedback for his writing, I intend to argue and demonstrate that he will go to any lengths to get feedback, and when he does not get the feedback, no revenge is too petty and/or ridiculous for him to attempt.teh_no has his own tag on fanficrants and although obviously I cannot know his motivations, I allege that he posts there because of its large and vocal community of commenters, who can be guaranteed to respond on certain topics; it's abusive, but it's attention. See above. For a period, he regularly courted metafandom, with topics such as how to write men, how to write sex, men in fandom, and what I can only term his thoughts on yaoi. Again, although I construe his posts as a bid for attention, (and although one of them contains the text "And, now that you've read my essay, you realize it was all a cynical ploy to pimp a bunch of fics and get mentioned on metafandom") nothing says our hero was not merely speaking up because he was interested in the subject and felt he had expertise.What is widely known:
On January 06, Mary posts in her lj about Chuck Dixon and his publicly stated stance on homosexuality. Teh_no disagrees with her, and states that her offer of her "firstborn child [... doubtless] born out of wedlock" to anyone who writes a fic based on the prompt of "Bruce taking young Dick to a Purity Ball" is "uncool." Because, quote, "
sharpest_rose posted similar prompts a while back and I wrote stories based on those prompts, then she never read them. Just seems a little... uncouth to me (like, what, she had time to do Yuletide recs but not... I'm not upset)." The first of
teh_no's run-ins with the moderators on scans_daily begin on January 19 when teh_no makes makes a negative comment (in the comments to a post he made) regarding Grant Morrison's run on Animal Man. In response, stolismancer posts scans from an Animal Man comic which involve Grant Morrison's self-insertion and a discussion of animal rights. teh_no takes offense to this, and comments. There is some back and forth, after which the moderators make a post asking members to abide by the golden rule. teh_no appears to defend himself and discussion ensues. Later that day (January 21) teh_no begins posting a series of Far Side strips that could be viewed as taunting his opponents. In one, comics writer Warren Ellis comments, "It's waaaaay past time for you to back the fuck away from the computer." The next day teh_no posts a parody of Warren Ellis's work to his LJ.On the 26th of January, teh_no posts scans on scans_daily of Ramba, an Italian pornographic comic. It features a woman who, among other things, castrates a man, and then has sex with her cat. NSFW link. At the end of this post, he says, "Final Analysis: Everything girl-wonder.org is asking for in a female hero." (It is worth noting that at this point, Mary was still very much behind G-W; she was quite vocal about both her hopes for it and her activism in it) Several people comment (still NSFW) in that post to say that they found his reference to girl-wonder objectionable. Others defend teh_no and say it was obviously a joke. The moderator tells them to take their personal differences elsewhere.
On February 6,
teh_no challenges girl-wonder's involvement with Mary Borsellino, seeing as Mary has not been ashamed to publish her stories, some of them porn, some of it centering on dysfunctional or morally horrifying relationships, on the internet. On March 11, he makes a post to scans daily which includes the phrase: "Despite the, eh, humorlessness of some of her fans, Stephanie's still a cool character." This is widely interpreted as a dig at Mary Borsellino, and possibly Livia Penn. A moderator tells him that this is the third instance where he has brought up out-of-community drama and been warned, and he is subsequently banned.Short form
He waxes vocal on about girl-wonder in his livejournal for a while, but these posts aren't of interest to me; he is certainly welcome to criticize Girl-Wonder's actions and philosophy if he so chooses. Of much greater interest to me is a seemingly unconnected fact: On March 29,
iameddiebrock is created. He lists, among his interests, "devo" which was a running (some might say beaten into the ground) joke of our protagonist's on scans_daily. He posts with the same frequency as teh_no to scans_daily, often with the same taste in images.It is my allegation that with
iameddiebrock teh_no takes his first stab at recasting himself/his sock as the populist feminist hero. Following the MJ statue controversy, iameddiebrock writes an entirely out-of-character essay that conveniently makes most of the prevailing feminist critiques on the statue, which he then links to on scans_daily (only the LJSeek cache of this post remains). In a further attempt at distancing himself from the teh_no identity and aligning himself with many prominent comic feminists, iameddiebrock posts a slash drabble to the batfic community; teh_no was well-known for his general distaste toward slash. arionhunter became suspicious of him after a post including a Photoshop (teh_no was notorious for his photoshops which he posted to scans_daily to some controversy) of the Sideshow MJ statue in the Robin memorial case. arionhunter alerted the moderators, and he was banned (link NSFW) from scans_daily on May 24, and all his posts are deleted.Fear not, for our hero is not long dismayed!
On June 12,
mst3kfan is created. He joins scans_daily, and his first post is June 19. He posts seven more times before the end of the month. On the 25th of July he posts an entry about Girl-Wonder.org which he has apparently since thought better of, because it is deleted. Happily, I have a screencap, which I am happy to share with all of you. Here is ljseek's version of it. In the entry, he presents himself as someone who feels that sexualization going on in comics is wrong, and who is sympathetic to girl-wonder's cause, but who, as a victim of childhood sexual abuse, is incredibly skeeved. Obviously, that sort of experience could make exposure to many kinds of pornography painful and triggering, but I'm most interested in several, it seems to me, extremely disingenuous phrases:"So, I'm not really into comics. I know about Batman and Superman and Captain America, kinda, but I'm much more about comics that are... it's hard to say this without sounding pretentious, but ARTISTIC. Obviously, there's some really weird stuff there and any given post of mine atFirst off, does this explanation ring as slightly unnecessary to anyone? No one has asked him to justify reading WFA, so why the long explanation? Secondly, does this really seem plausible to anyone? If you're not familiar with WFA, it's a linkblog of comics commentary relating to women in comics fandom, but I do not recall having ever seen them link to fanfiction, except, perhaps, indirectly. Please note the careful refusal to refer to teh_no by name, although he does get the gender right.
Never mind. Perhaps
mst3kfan is merely unfamiliar with WFA, and in confusion, believes them to be a fic community held on blogspot. He continues (I excerpt):"the point the guy was making was that Girl Wonder's CEO, Mary Burstyn or something like that, liked to write stories about a TWELVE YEAR ODL having sex with a forty-year-old man. So I went to her LJ, looked them up... good writing, I'll admit, nothing I could MiST. But, uhhh, that sex isn't being presented as a bad thing. And like the guy said (I wish I could remember his name so I could give him a link, at least I assume it's a guy), how can you really criticize a sixteen-year-old for running around flashing her thighs when you writ eporn about a twelve-year-old running aruond flashing his thights for a forty-year-old man." [italics mine, all typos original]
If only he could remember the guy's name! He's so dashing and handsome, right Ms. Lane?
I admit, this is not conclusive evidence. The typos are not characteristic of
teh_no, but neither are they, to my mind, characteristic of naturally occurring typos. teh_no could not have invented a better supporter, and I allege that he did not invent a better supporter: he invented this one. I feel it is compelling. You may not.I first suspected
mst3kfan of being a sockpuppet on August 2, but credit goes to arionhunter who took my brain spasm seriously enough to investigate.daily/3830090.html?format=light#cutid1
He fucks a panther.
Betty: And it's not even posted by
Oh my god
No WAY
Betty: what?
Betty: ...
Ariohunter: I am NOT SHITTING YOU
On September 28,
stylish_handbag creates a journal. He has no friends, and belongs to scans_daily. He has only one post in his lj, and it's not public. His first post on scans_daily appears on September 28. It purports to be a spoiler showing the death of Scott Free, but (spoiler!) it's actually from Jack Kirby's Fourth World #14, if redorion, and various others in the comments in the comments are to be believed. (I see no reason not to.) The sense of humour on display in this post reminds me of teh_no, others must judge for themselves.This next part of my narrative is a little bit spotty due to copious comment deletion, and lack of screen-caps. ETA: Nov 19: No, never mind, I found my screen caps!
An anonymous commenter appears in
stylish_handbag's post, and gives some offense. The comments have since been deleted, by stylish_handbag, leaving only the reactions, which give some context. Here is a screencap of his original comments. When challenged on his identity, the anonymous person claims to be rubynye, a claim which is met with some hilarity, not only by your humble scribe. rubynye appears in the comments and says that the anonymous person certainly is not her, and she's not worried that anyone will believe it is her, because the moderators will be able to see that her IP address is not the same as the anonymous person's.However, just when it seems like everything may be simply cleared up by waiting for a mod,
stylish_handbag deletes all comments by the anonymous person, and posts this screencap, (stylish_handbag's original cap) which rather unbelievably reveals that rubynye and the anonymous person have exactly the same IP adress. And when I say 'unbelievable' I mean it. Supposing for a moment that Ny (a friend, so I will not pretend to be unbiased) were going to post anonymous comments, why would she first claim them, then disclaim them? Why would she post comments which would reveal her IP address in a setting she could not control (she could not, for example, delete them later, as the poster of the post in which the comments appeared could.) But utmost, to me, is the fact that Ny is the sort of person who will apologize if you step on her foot. I would sooner believe that pigs could fly than that Ny was trolling anonymously for fun. However, if you do not know Ny, this may not persuade you, and I hope my earlier points will have some influence. (This screencap is also missing from the post, because some idiot told stylish_handbag to delete his comment because she was uncomfortable with having her IP address publicly displayed.) However, the use of internet explorer should persuade at least those familiar with me that it was not taken by yours truly.A further point, merely circumstantial: if, as I believe and hopefully have managed to imply to you, both
stylish_handbag and the anonymous person are in fact teh_no, why would they/he (I apologize, my pronouns are becoming confused) choose to target rubynye? She is on sharpest_rose's friendlist, and she did, at one point, tell teh_no that she felt he was treating Mary badly, but so did a number of people, including myself, and he never impersonated me, ineptly or otherwise. (ETA: Ha! This is no longer precisely true.) However, he wrote her prompt for the femslash_today porn battle. If you follow the link to the story (please be aware of warnings on the story, management does not assume responsibility for injuries) you'll note that among the people who responded, one of them is-- not rubynye. Now, who do we know who goes off the rails when the person he writes a prompt for doesn't thank him?Also circumstantial: I believe
teh_no particularly dislikes "BNFs" or "Big Name Fans." (He will refer later to the size of Mary's f-list as a reason why she should have treated him with more respect.) I believe he resents their popularity, and what he perceives as undeserved recognition they get for their fic. Here teh_no seems pleased that 150 people are watching his journal. Here he mentions that he now has 160 watchers. In the community he started, recced_em, rule No. 8 is "8. Don't rec BNFs. They get enough love as is and this comm is about giving love to underfriended fic writers. That means anyone with under two hundreds friends, which is a completely arbitrary (but round) number." When asked "are you a BNF?" he says: "I don't think I count. There's no real litmus test for it, but for the purposes of this discussion it's someone who is believably obscure and doesn't get the exposure he or she deserves. Like I said, two hundred is an arbitrary number. For instance, likeadeuce, who I would consider a BNF, has less friends than me. I think part of it is that whole clique thing." As I write this, rubynye is friended by 251 people.Obviously, it is central to my theory that the screencap posted is a manipulation: who do I know who prides themselves on their photoshop ability?
Back to thrilling tales of sockpuppets created for what is apparently
teh_no's chief purpose in life: posting to scans_daily. Our next candidate: hithereyouberk, created on October 12, belongs to precisely one community (scans_daily), has never posted a comment, and his only livejournal entry is not public. He has precisely one friend, ultralad, created October 4, who also belongs to precisely two communities, (one of them is scans_daily) and who seems more fleshed out: he made four entries to his journal, two of which are public. ultralad is also more popular than hitheryouberk, as he has two friends: hithereyouberk, and jaysunshine. jaysunshine created their account on October 4, belongs to no communities and has one entry in his journal, which is not public. Isn't it nice when kindred spirits can find each other in this crazy world?ultralad posts on scans_daily on October 3, technically before his account is actually created (due to differing times on different lj clusters, this is not actually time-travel, it just means he posted pretty soon after the account was created.) He posts ten more times before the end of that month. Some of it is freaky porn, (NSFW) which I mention because it's an interest he has in common with teh_no. Co-incidentally, mst3kfan posts 19 times that month. Some of it is freaky porn.(NSFW)mst3kfan, never precisely a blushing flower, becomes part of my narrative again when he declares "Big Barda & Scott Free Week" for the first time on November 9. However, this post is mysteriously deleted and replaced three days later with one which has exact same declaration, only now it takes a stereotypically feminist attitude toward Barda's death. Many of the socks I accuse often take a 'feminist' stance on high profile issues. I do not by this mean to imply that teh_no is or isn't a feminist. Let us say that he is-- I don't really care about his ideology. I care that he has stalked, harrassed, and defamed my friends. You may notice that
mst3kfan has reversed his earlier position of being "not really into comics. I know about Batman and Superman and Captain America, kinda, but I'm much more about comics that are... it's hard to say this without sounding pretentious, but ARTISTIC." Or perhaps by "not really into comics" like "Captain America" which he knows about "kinda" he means: "except for comics created by Jack Kirby" (non-comics people, I am being sarcastic. Captain America is a Jack Kirby creation.)ETA: Nov 16
kijikjun points out: On October 10, mst3kfan posts from webcomic Wonderella. (I would just like to mention that Wonderella is awesome, and you should check it out.) After the comic, he says: "Now up on the agenda... did I miss something? Why aren't we allowing anonymous comments anymore? Because I have friends who were banned from El Jay and they deserve to share in the snark, the gay, and the snarking at Iron Man's dickery (while being gay for Steve)." I obviously believe that his friend has not been been banned from lj, but merely from scans_daily. In the comments, the topic of teh_no comes up quickly, and mst3kfan quickly leaps in to defend him. link "And to be fair to Teh_no, from everything I've read monkeycrackmary was being a bitch with a capital C, if you get my drift."
link: "I read his entry on Fandom_Wank and they were just merciless to him. is he Jewish or something?"
link: "Well, Rabican does have a link to Girl-wonder.org on her LJ... just saying, that's all..."
link, link. (Opion on whether teh_no was a contribution to the community appears to be divided, in the comments.)
Please note: mst3kfan seems extremely familiar with teh_no's history. (Possibly he has remembered the name of 'that guy.') He is obviously very much teh_no's partisan. And yet, oddly enough, he hasn't friended teh_no. Perhaps he's simply shy.
On October 11, mst3kfan posts again, and says
"Sorry to bring this up again, but I never really got an answer last time due to the post turning into a "Bring Back Teh_No" movement. Why are we not allowing anonymous comments anymore? And along the same lines, what's with all the friend-locked posts lately? I'll take a look at the comm while I'm at another computer, not logged in... then when I come back home, I'll have missed out on some great posts? It's like everyone's afraid of being banned, but if they were to be banned, then they couldn't comment on or even see the scans! Madness!"I do not think the previous post could be characterized as a 'bring back teh_no movement, and I think that it is interesting he tries to frame the lockdown (most likely attributable to outside factors) to fears of being banned. I believe he's attempting to bring scans_daily members into sympathy with teh_no. (In addition to attempting to revoke the lock-down which is inconveniencing teh_no's habit of commenting anonymously, and signing his name)
</ETA>
On November 13, the subtly named
teh_sock_puppet creates his account. He belongs to one community, scans_daily, and has no friends. (Don't feel bad, guys, I'm sure he'll make some friends.) He has only one entry on his lj, which is not public. He too posts on scans_daily so quickly that he beats his journal to its creation. teh_sock_puppet is clearly a big fan of Big Barda, as evidenced by his icon, and first post. (Ultralad comments in this post. He would not be at any risk doing so, since mst3kfan is one of the few on scans_daily who will not make a note of his IP and use it against him)The astute reader will have noticed that
teh_sock_puppet, mst3kfan, stylish_handbag and teh_no share an interest in the Fourth World, a semi-obscure corner of DC canon. Again. Merely suggestive.I know I have omitted some points, but I grow weary, and must draw my story to a close. Throughout this time, Mary continued to receive spiteful anonymous comments to her livejournal. In a now deleted comment made in May, which I regret I am unable to demonstrate any evidence of, save that it once resided at this url and would have been delivered to Mary,
teh_no indicated his willingness to receive an apology from Mary. For what, precisely, I am not sure, but in this thread, Mary, after six months of becoming increasingly circumscribed in her fandom participation, offers teh_no a rather broad apology: "Im sincerely sorry for the things that I've done and said which have caused you hurt or anger, and I wish you all the best." teh_no proceeds to interpret that apology rather broadly. Among other things, he says "Instead, [of approaching him privately] she aired her dirty laundry with me in public in a matter that she had to know would make people choose sides. And when she's got 750+ friends, well, that's a lotta people gunning for me. I was scapegoated. And for what?" In addition to raising questions about teh_no's understanding of the term 'scapegoat,' this post of teh's is remarkable for its lack of links. I'm not sure what post by Mary he's referring to. Maybe this one in which his name is never mentioned? I believe my airing of dirty laundry above makes any attempt to label Mary's as such laughable. Mary has a great dislike of causing offense. I am not so constrained.After which, dear children, the dragon was defeated, and the princess ran away with the scullery maid.
Finally, and once again: I do not pretend to be a neutral party. I like Mary. I think
teh_no is a pathetic, snivelling pissant, for whom my feelings have moved from pity to despite. I have attempted to present the facts as neutrally as possible, drawing distinctions between the facts, and what I theorize. Certain facts which informed my theorizing were imparted to me in confidence and I am not able to divulge them; I hope I have made my case compellingly with the facts which were available to me. Certain parts of my theory were omitted for want of access to the evidence needed to make them compelling. glossing and arionhunter helped me compile links and suggested connections and avenues for research. Arionhunter in particular is a goddamn ninja. They alone of any of the people mentioned in this post were aware of this post as I was composing it, and I alone bear responsibility for any errors. If I have falsely accused any real person of being teh_no, I regret it immensely, and apologize for the slur on their character.Additionally, I hope no person will believe my allegations merely on my say-so, but will instead investigate for themselves the links I have compiled, and decide where to lend credence. Thank you, everyone who has read this far.
