Chapter Three - Msscribe Conquers All
The Ms.Scribe Story
An Unauthorized Fandom Biography
Msscribe Conquers All
April 2003 - Msscribe and Killiganhashope
Msscribe had only four days of peace before she was attacked again. On April 1, 2003, another Nutty Christian, killiganhashope, appeared, created an LJ, and (of course) commented on Msscribe's LJ. She had made the following April Fool's Day post:
A Message From Thy Goddess.
I have decided to take over the fandom, but be at peace concerning thy call. Thou simply must be that which I ordain thou to be. Thou job is to worship me, praise Me, to draw near to Me, to be my love slave. Thou are to bring honor and glory to Me. Thou job, thou delight is to come to Me daily and sing my praises. Although only I am the supreme Goddess, and thy worship only Me with unconditional adoration, thou may acknowledge that there are other authors and still believe them to be divine, united in will and purpose.
Lavish praise and worship upon thy Goddess.
Behold, the following commandments!
1.Thou shall have no authors before Me.
2.Thou shall read Under The Silver Moon over and over again until the sight of a canoe brings thou to orgasm.
3.Thou shall stick thy fingers in thy ears while singing My praises if someone criticizes Me.
4.Thou shall print out all My stories and roll around in them naked.
5.Thou shall not go sneaking off to Cassandra Claire’s LiveJournal, only thy Goddess is allowed to do that.
6.Thou shall not speak of the first two fanfictions thy Goddess wrote, and erase them from thy memory.
7.Thou may speak the name "Ms.Scribe" only if it is followed by "Gawd, I love her".
8.Thou shall be a kind and considerate member of the fanboy/fangirl harem and lick thy Goddess' feet upon request.
9.Thou shall bow before infinitus, for she is beloved, and dear to thy Goddess. If thou does not bow before Her, thou willst be cast out of the harem.
10.Thou shall send much E-Mail to msscribe@comcast.net and praise thy Goddess at least once a day.
If thou does not submit to My will, I will smite thee with madness. Leave praise, and I will Bless thee.
Have a nice day,
Thy Goddess
First she received an anonymous flaming comment...
OMG
I can't believe anyone would be cocky enough to try to do this! And I fucking HATE Cassie Claire anyway. Now I HATE you because your nothing but a self righteous bitch. No one is going to worship you so GET OVER YOURSELF!
...and then, a few hours after Msscribe made the post, killiganhashope showed up and said this (bold mine):
I will pray for you. I know this is supposed to be a joke but there are many people out there like myself who take their faith seriously. I am insulted and disgusted by this post and I hope God's love reaches you in time. Know that you will be in my prayers and I hope that you and your "so called friends" (all through true friends would guide you towards the light and not away from it)find God's love. I am familiar with the incident involving you and someone I used to counsel and I thought perhaps he had exagerated about this group but I was sadly mistaken. I'm sorry for the way in which he responded to you, no good person of faith should condemn the way he did, but I agree with him condemning your actions. God loves you and if you ever want to know the peace I have found, please feel free to email me.
In other words, Killiganhashope is claiming to be Fermatojam's spiritual counselor. He claims to be from Arkansas, and sports this icon:
taken from killiganhashope, created by ?
Killiganhashope then spent the next ten hours or so bandying words with Msscribe and her friends, making nineteen separate comments on her post. Several anonymous comments were also left by those purporting to be Christians in support of Killiganhashope. In the course of arguing with Killiganhashope, Msscribe and her friend Clarabella revealed many more details of her stalking by Fermatojam. From here (bold mine):
Killiganhashope:
I believe there is an underlying anger being directed at my faith in this post. It is understandable. I have communicated with the young man by email and he is truly sorry. He will most likely be kicked out of school pending a hearing and although I am saddened that he went the direction he did, I am still inclined to defend his views.
Msscribe:
1.) This is a joke shared among friends and yes, I was mocking the "holier than thou" tone of your "friend" who by the way not only hacked into 13 computers, also had been "cyber stalking" me for two months.
And this exchange:
Queerasjohn:
Of course, I could just laugh, since your journal was only created today. Art thou an April Fool, O killingallhope?
Killiganhashope:
This is my first time here on this LJ and I think it will be my last.
In this thread, even more information is revealed (bold mine):
Killiganhashope:
I'm aware of the fact you feel as though you were stalked. I also wanted to say I'm glad you are recovering from your head injury, God has gifted you with life.
...I know that what he did was wrong and I'm not defending his actions, as I said before, he will be punished both on earth and he must answer to God. He loved this fandom and defending the Harry Potter Books often in out online discussions.
Clarabella21:
1.- He has been sending Ms.Scribe flames for months, some that were very threatening!
2.- She didn't press charges on the agreement he would go to counseling and I hope it wasn't with people like you.
3. - This is a private LJ and she has a right to play a joke on all of us (her friends). She has the right to post what she wants.
4. - It was this so-called Christian who threatened and harrassed everyone on her favorite authors list after she turned away a package of faith books he sent her in the mail.
So, you tell me who has moral problems? So what if we like smut and a good laugh now and then. At least we aren't stalking people and threatening them. No one has called the cops on any of US so far!
This is a particularly interesting thread:
Anonymous:
I'm With You Killigan!
Killigan is being respectful to everyone despite your blatant harrassment.
This post also offends me.
Anyone who writes smut and child porn DESERVES to be stalked in my opinion.
Msscribe:
I have your IP
So don't even think about it.
Killiganhashope:
I appreciate your support
But I disagree, no one deserves to be stalked and harrassed and I am truly sorry that this happened at all. It gives our faith a bad name.
Clarabella21:
How gracious of you.
Maybe you should go over to epicyclical and apologize to her too.
Anonymous:
FUCKING QUEER
SOMEONE CAN'T EVEN VOICE ANYTHING DIFFERENT THAN YOU BEFORE YOU ALL START TELLING THEM TO SUCK YOUR DICKS. I WOULD POST MY LJ BUT I DON'T HAVE ONE AND I WASN'T GOING TO SAY ANTHIN BUT I COULDNT WATCH THIS HAPPEN ANYMORE WITHOUT SAYIN IT. FUCKING MAN FUCKER THAT YOU ARE.
JOSHUAJAMESON@YAHOO.COM IF YOU WANT TO KNOW ASSHOLE
Msscribe:
Amazing
How many idiots don't know IP's are being traced. 130.94.112.247 Leave another post like that and I'll kick your ass.
(this IP appears to be from Anonymizer, a service that Msscribe later used)
And the fun went on and on and on. Killiganhashope went to debate the next day to continue the discussion. He also went to the trouble of joining a Christian forum to whine about Msscribe:
Posted - 02 Apr 2003 : 1:10:23 PM I was browsing Livejournal and I found this post:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/msscribe/10257.html
I found it hurtful so I told the author so in a polite way. Now it seems like I'm involved in a never ending debate about the Bible and I'm questioning was it better for me not to have said anything at all?
I feel sad because I do not hate anyone, yet people have mocked me, my faith, etc. I didn't condemn this user, I simply voiced my opinion and only one or two people have spoken up along with me.
Have I failed? Was I wrong? Am I judging?
I could use advice.
It looks like his intention was to get real Christians to join the fight, and it seems he did manage to hook one, although you can see that most of the people responding counseled him to cool it and stop talking to Msscribe. At any rate, on Msscribe's next post, which she made to draw attention to her Nutty Christian troll for anyone who might have missed him, a real, non-sockpuppet, non-Harry-Potter-fan Christian named danjanboe commented:
fact
God... There is No Other.. There is only one true God
and
God is amazing aint He?
Even though danjanboe left only two very short, fairly innocuous comments on her LJ, Msscribe -- no doubt delighted to have hooked a real Christian -- made as much of her as possible. Besides having fun with her in the comment thread, she made another post encouraging people to play with her new Christian friend:
FYI
Just in case anyone has anything they need to ask, danjanboe seems to have God's cell phone number. Shouldn't we all get a chance to ask those really important questions like will there ever be peace in the Middle East or how will the 7th book end?
In the comments of this post, four different people -- queerasjohn, ari_o, nmalfoy, and til_midnight -- seem to have a realization that something a bit odd is going on with Msscribe's amazing ability to attract Nutty Christians:
Queerasjohn:
You know, I really want to know how these people find us. There has to be some central Nutty Christian Launch Bay or something somewhere on LiveJournal, or possibly elsewhere. I might go looking for it this afternoon...
Msscribe:
Le me know if you find something. I have to admit though, I'm torn between being pissed off and amused.
Ari_O:
And how do they find you?? Maybe they sell them (lunatics) on eBay?
NMalfoy:
Where are these people coming from?? I think John's got the most plausible theory, actually.
Msscribe:
I am inclined to agree. *looks around for crazy people repellent, wait...that only works on crazy people I DON'T like right?*
Til_midnight:
*How* do these people find you? Have you hoisted a "Big Name Sinner, Right Here" beacon above you LJ?
Msscribe:
It appears that way
I guess you piss one of them off and the whole swarm comes after you.
Or something.
Nearly two months later, Msscribe and Clarabella would both post in their LJ's...
killiganhashope, we know who you are.
...and Msscribe would publish a screencap of one of killiganhashope's comments on her LJ with a screencap of a comment from a person from Gryffindor Tower who had made himself unpopular in the fandom named RunechildUK (now davidjoates), showing that they both had the same IP. This was not a success, however, because the IP Msscribe posted traced as some sort of internal error IP. Her friends commented to tell her this, and she quickly hid the post. But for now, killiganhashope, like his friend Fermatojam before him, deleted his LJ and disappeared forever.
May 2003 - Msscribe and Pottersginny
After the excitement of Fermatojam and Killiganhashope, April was a slow month for Msscribe and sockpuppets friends. On April 3, she made this post (now public again, but downloaded version also available here), a literary, semi-fictionalized account of having her old best friend as her waitress at a ritzy restaurant, somewhat in the style of a women's magazine.
...
"I'm sorry miss, " Lashonda says to me again, "but did you say you wanted some wine?"
I smile up at her. She's aged. So have I. There is a scar on her face that wasn't there before and no wedding band. Tyrell's in jail, the paper said it was for drugs. Jon's been dead for five years, shot to death in a robbery gone wrong. My tattoo still hasn't faded. I've been to Barbados.
"Lashonda, don't you recognize me?" I ask her.
She looks at me for a moment. My husband and Tim are talking about going to "Winithur", the horse show in May. Priscilla is asking if we'd be interested in a weekend trip to their beach house, they have just had a sauna installed. I smell like Roses. Lashonda looks away, filling my husband's glass.
"No, " she answers, "red or white?"
Again, a very affecting story, whether true or not. And also another chance for Msscribe to describe in loving detail the affluence of her current lifestyle, in contrast to her humbler roots. Msscribe's husband actually is a real-life attorney (as Google will easily show if you know Msscribe's real last name), and they do seem to have plenty of money. She also indulged herself with a short flame war and reconciliation with a (real) fic writer on Portkey named ryoko_blue, made the post about sexual assault mentioned earlier that was promoted by SarahKJames, and, sadly, was plagiarized for the fourth time, this time at adultfanfiction.net.
In between, Msscribe cemented her new online friendships with comment exchanges and lighthearted, entertaining posts like this one (downloaded version here):
Dilemma
When I walked into our living room this morning, my husband had already left for work. On our coffee table were the following items:
A spatula
1 pair of his underwear (red boxers, they look clean)
A small box of Godiva chocolates with a note attached saying "I bought these for you, Dionne - love Evan"
A leather belt
Baby oil
A 3 foot piece of nylon rope
Any detectives out there want to fill me in on what my sweetheart could have been doing this morning? I'm not sure whether to be afraid, or extremely turned on.
Here is the solution to the "mystery," if you're interested. clarabella21 started and participated in the flame war with ryoko_blue in April and also decided to try to join Msscribe's historically black sorority.
At this time, Msscribe had achieved all her goals. She was friended by everyone she had wanted to be friended by and she could easily have reached any pinnacle of fandom popularity she wanted to reach just by her own considerable talents. Okay, she was only a mediocre fic-writer (in my opinion), but she was a fantastic live journalist -- witty, iconoclastic, eloquent, imaginative, and unfettered by any niggling insistence on factual accuracy. She wrote the kind of posts that get recced and linked not just in the fandom but all over the internet (if you Google "msscribe" you will find several links to her "To Gays and Lesbians On Why They Need To Get Black" post). She was also talented with graphics -- in fact, if you Google her real name, you can see that she now presents herself as a professional photographic artist, particularly skilled in digital graphic manipulation. No wonder her LJs and her icons were so striking! In addition to all that, she had a warm, outgoing personality -- generous, charming, and often screamingly funny. She was not the kind of person who would find it hard to make friends.
So why did she continue to the next step? I suspect she was simply addicted to the excitement, the attention, the adrenaline rush of pulling strings and manipulating people and dancing on the edge of exposure. Or maybe she wanted to be a BNF before Nimbus. For whatever reason, she went on.
Now, this is where bad luck or bad karma hit Gryffindor Tower. Let me remind you of the situation in the fandom then. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was coming out in a month and the Nimbus convention was in two months. Most people were even more excited about the convention (the fandom's first ever) than they were about the book. Fandom members were going on diets, making posts about what they planned to wear, lining up roommates, scrambling to polish their presentations, arranging special meet-ups, and worrying that nobody would like them in person. Over at Gryffindor Tower, the admins still hated Cassandra Claire and Heidi with a smoldering loathing and they were implacably hostile to the convention, which they perceived as Heidi's baby. They were SICK and TIRED of hearing about it on TLC (The Leaky Cauldron news site), which had been one of the event's organizers along with HP4GU and FictionAlley. They half-jokingly, half-seriously sniffed at the traitors and sell-outs they knew who were going to it (but demanded that they dish all the gossip, of course). And, by bad luck or malicious fate, they made Fandom_Wank a few times.
One of these was about a GT member (I'm afraid I've lost track of which one) who made an LJ post about how Nimbus was a total ripoff, way more expensive than comic cons and sci fi cons, and you got a lot less. That was actually true (not that anybody cared), but the poster made some factual mistakes and Heidi was furious. So was melissa_tlc.
Next, the Harry/Ginny ficcer irinaauthor had one of those author/archive fall-outs with GT that seem to occur so frequently in our fandom. Irina was an FA mod, and had many friends who generally did not like H/G. GT admins were incensed at Irina's public post and the charges she made. I believe they spent much of the day (May 8th) talking and emailing, investigating Irina's complaints, commenting angrily on Irina's post defending themselves, and otherwise being all stirred up. I know this was discussed on Fandom_Wank, though I can't find it.
It was in this environment that (according to my belief) Msscribe invented pottersginny -- her masterpiece. Here is the sequence of events:
On May 4, 2003, Msscribe announced that she would take some time off from the fandom, due to the death of a friend:
Time Away
I lost a close friend yesterday, so I'm taking some time away from LJ, the Fandom, and life in general. He passed away after a six year struggle with HIV which later turned into AIDS. He was taken from us by an unforgiving bout of Pneumonia.
I think I need a week or so to just "be". I'll still be checking email, but if it isn't urgent, don't expect an immediate reply.
However, she did post about an hour later, to weigh in on a slash kerfluffle that was going on at FictionAlleyPark.
On May 6, she posted to discuss some Harry Potter news, and mentioned that she was "in a weird state of depression." A couple of hours later, she posted again, reporting that she was still depressed -- and sick, with a fever of 102.5. Interestingly, Msscribe also had a virus (whether the physical or the computer type isn't clear) and was unable to post, according to her friend Infinitus, when the troll Fermatojam was taking on all comers.
On May 7, 2003, Pottersginny created her LJ , declaring herself a committed Christian from Texas by the name of Darlene Hartsford and a friend of "Louis" (fermatojam), concerned about the breakdown of morality in the Harry Potter fandom. Unlike her two fellow "Nutty Christians," Pottersginny did not make her fandom debut by flaming Msscribe. Instead, she was discovered by SarahKJames. One wonders how Sarah could "keep an eye on" an LJ that was only created that day, but let's not quibble:
Troll Alert
http://www.livejournal.com/users/pottersginny/1878.html
I'm so glad I kept an eye on this one. Although I would avoid looking directly into the LJ avatar, could turn you to stone.
The avatar? Yes, the avatar. For the true brilliance of pottersginny was the two pictures of herself that she used as avatars. Both were glamour-shot pics of a somewhat overweight, not particularly attractive woman in seductive poses. I'm afraid I can't find a copy of the first one anywhere on the 'net, but here is the second one, called "model me," that she switched to when people began mocking her first icon:
And here is a less attractive picture of "herself" (the same woman?) that pottersginny soon posted:
I AM NO RABBIT!
The caption is something that Pottersginny said during the wank. She also defended her much-derided appearance by proclaiming herself a "successful plus-size model."
Possibly because of the small size of her friends list, sarahkjames's discovery didn't generate much interest. Yet.
The next thing Pottersginny did was to try to make trouble with this post on a Harry/Ginny LJ community called harry_and_ginny:
Steamed
Is anyone else surprised by this? Cassie Claire hates H/G.(I will warn you that the name she uses to describe our proud ship isn't very nice. I found it to be very hurtful.) I'm relatively new to the fandom but if the most popular Harry Potter author can openly hate H/G then maybe I'll stay nice and happy up at GT from now on.
This is my first post here, sorry it's such a negative one. I'm happy to have found my fellow ship mates. :D
She got a response from both Cassandra Claire and Msscribe, among others. Msscribe made the following explanation of her presence there:
So glad I browsed on over from your friend's page. You really must learn to lighten up. *points to avatar*
The same day, May 7, Msscribe's friend infinitus made a post about how much she liked to give blow jobs, following up on this comment she had made on debate. Unfortunately, this classic post is lost, but here is one of its echoes from Google:
The Sluts Of Livejournal
Livejournal user, infinitus, is telling people on the Debate community that “giving good head is quite empowering.” Later in the thread, yonderdreams says the same thing - “it is empowering,” followed by yakkette’s, “giving a great BJ is totally empowering.” Let’s not forget clairedelune and vaderstg who both quoted this “empowering” bullshit and each giving their vote of approval.
...
I do admire these sluts women who publicly admit to enjoying the art of giving blowjobs. We want to give them the recognition they deserve so based on the statements they made on Debate, the following is like a Who’s Who list of LJ’s most prominent head givers:
1) Infinitus - quite possibly the leading expert on Fellatio on Livejournal, with her whacky “Empowerment” and “resentful blowjob” theories. Oh, and there’s more where that came from - in her journal, where she even admits to being a slut.
I should remind you that Infinitus was beautiful -- or, to limit myself strictly to known facts, she posted pictures of this lovely woman all over her LJ:
I think her LJ background was a huge picture of her boobs in a lace camisole. (You know, I'm more and more wondering if infinitus really was just the best of Msscribe's puppets... but no, I still think she was probably real.)
[Later edit: I now have no doubt that Babygrrl/Infinitus/Nanea is a real person. She can be found in many places on the internet, and she is once again in contact with Msscribe. Msscribe credits this account for that. :) ]
Anyway, the next thing I know of that Pottersginny did was to show up on Infinitus's LJ and tell her that she was a slut who needed to come to Jesus. Infinitus proudly admitted to being a slut, and they indulged in a spirited exchange of views, with the icons amusingly going back and forth from Infinitus's beautiful face to Pottersginny's much less attractive one. Msscribe immediately posted on her own LJ, congratulating Infinitus on her troll:
Troll Alert
*sniffles* infinitus has her first Troll! I'm so proud of her. *sniffles* She also Defends fermatojam
Warning: Her avatar pic, it ain't pretty. Don't click before dinner.
Apparently Pottersginny had lost no time in declaring herself a friend of Fermatojam's. Pottersginny then showed up on Msscribe's post and exchanged insults with Msscribe and her friends there.
But Msscribe also reported for duty on Infinitus's LJ to defend her friend and insult Pottersginny's appearance, proudly sporting an icon with a picture of her own face, presumably the same one that had led to her earlier poem. Pottersginny must have read that post, because she seemed to know something that wasn't readily evident from the icon -- that Msscribe was a person of mixed white and black heritage.
Pottersginny called Msscribe a "zebra."
I'm giving that its own paragraph because the echoes of this blatantly racist remark reverberated around the fandom. Pottersginny followed it up with a whole lot of anti-miscegenation tripe copied-and-pasted from (please don't click on this link unless you really want to verify what I'm saying -- I'd prefer to give "Stormfront" as few hits as possible) neo-Nazi websites on the internet, as you could easily discover by Googling sentences from them. She said the most vile racist things imaginable, all interspersed with her love for Jesus and Gryffindor Tower. Msscribe immediately made another post informing her friendslist of the insult she had received:
Jaw Drops
How would YOU take this remark? O_o
http://www.livejournal.com/users/pottersginny/2162.html?thread=8818#t8818
I know I was mocking her appearance because she called infinitus a slut but, damn.
Not just Msscribe's friends, but the entire fandom was outraged by this behavior. Here is the first Fandom_Wank report, by folk/queerasjohn:
Potter Christian Wank: It's What's For Dinner.
So. Remember fermatojam, of previous wank fame?
His lovely friend, the very scary pottersginny, loudly proclaiming (and I quote), I am NO RABBIT (...), crusades against Infinitus' post discussing blowjobs.
Yeah, good times in the Potter fandom. Where do we find these people?
EDIT: HOLY MOTHER OF GOD.
Dysgenics: (or down-breeding): The process of increased negative genetic changes (retrogression) in a species. An example being an intelligent high l.Q. White woman giving birth to a low I.Q. mulatto baby. Looks like in your case, it's true.
Quite frankly, the Bible demands Segregation of the different races.
The Apostle Paul: Acts 17:24-28 says that God made man "and hath determined the bounds of their habitation." Genesis 28:1, says that the Canaanites (blacks) were the "servants of servants" and Isaac called Jacob and said unto him, "Thou shalt not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan."
Jeremiah 13:23 stresses the fact that we can not make white people out of the Negroes in these words: "Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots."
I'm not ashamed that I follow my Bible.
*speechless*
But he -- and the fandom -- did not remain speechless for long. Look at the live journal of almost anyone who was around the HP fandom on May 7 or May 8, 2003, and you will find references to "Pottersginny," "Msscribe," and "zebra". It was HUGE. Here is an example. It was wanked again immediately:
Our dear *gag* friend pottersginny is at it again, trying to defend her horrendous comments of yesterday.
Anti-Christs will continue to promote racially mixed-marriages as they attempt to destroy all the races that God created. The races that God called good. The wicked want to void God's Genesis command to reproduce "after his kind". They blaspheme God by saying that what he created was "not good enough" and that they have a better way, "one world with one hybrid race"
At least the comments are enlightening about what the scripture that she butchers really means.
Edit: It appears that should couldn't take the heat and set her journal to friends only. She says that calling that one poster a "zebra" was justified because the other woman said that they were filming "Gorrillas in the Mist" in her shower (ignoring the fact that she cast the first stone by calling her a slut in someone else's journal).
She hasn't learned. She never will. She made baby jesus cry.
I weep.
If you are curious, ivyblossom's comment on that page originally included the picture of Pottersginny side-by-side with one of Halle Berry:
In the excitement, Msscribe was friended by dozens more people. She was at well over a hundred now, with real people now definitely outnumbering her sock puppets.
I remember that Msscribe was one of the most enthusiastic people at insulting Pottersginny's appearance (including the "Gorillas in the Mist" remark). In the midst of all the supportive posts, there were some people who expressed discomfort with the "ugly" jibes, and Msscribe tried to soften that in her next post, explaining that where she came from, such insults were considered all in good fun, and proposing a game of "Snaps" and "your mama" jokes. This proposed game attracted only a moderate amount of interest -- Pottersginny was one who showed up to play -- but Msscribe received plenty of attention and sympathy for being the target of Pottersginny's disgusting racist abuse.
For a while, the GTers were blissfully ignorant of the way their reputation was being slimed. Unlike Fermatojam, who had only glancingly mentioned his affiliation with GT, Pottersginny dwelt lovingly on the subject. She kept saying that she wanted to return to the nice, safe tower, contrasting the sinful behavior of Msscribe's friends with the virtuousness of her beloved GT, and implying that she was friendly with the GT admins. To my astonishment, no one in Msscribe's circle seems to have found this particularly shocking or unbelievable. They seemed to think that it was perfectly conceivable that a frothing racist religious nut of Pottersginny's ilk might fit in perfectly well in a Harry Potter fanfiction community. Apparently the GTers had isolated themselves from the fandom so well that people would believe anything of them.
And, besides that, they were so isolated that for a while they had no idea what was going on. I believe Pottersginny posted on the Gryffindor Tower LJ community on May 7 and the admins, immediately recognizing her as a troll, deleted her post, but didn't discover her other fandom activities. GT admin carissa_lynn posted the following on the community the evening of May 7:
Politics, Religion and Posting
Hi Everyone,
I just deleted a potentially volatile entry. Please remember that while we are more lenient here in terms of what you are able to post than on the message boards, there are some things that are still off limits because they tend to get peronal very quickly. Do not post here about politics or religion. If you want to discuss these things, feel free to do so on your own journal. Any entries posted here will be deleted.
Thank You,
Carissa
On the next day, May 8th, the GT admins were occupied with Irina's resignation from the archive, and the person they often depended on to deal with outside fandom issues -- magoo42 -- was busy moving from college back to her home that day. I believe it wasn't until the early hours of May 9th that they discovered the full story and made posts both on their website and on their LJ community denying all knowledge of Pottersginny, and saying that sentiments like hers were not welcome at their site. Here is the text of the statement, also posted by carissa_lynn:
Official Statement
The admins at GT would like to publicly state that we are in no way affiliated with Pottersginny or her LJ. She is not a member of our boards and as such, has never made even a single post there. In fact, we've never even heard of her until yesterday. We neither condone or agree with her statements and are as shocked by them as anyone.
If there is someone out there who has some information regarding this person, then email one of us. If not, put down your torches and pitch forks and just chalk up her ramblings to yet another mentally disturbed person who needs help other than what having a copy of Book Five can provide.
The GT Admins
This wasn't enough for angiej/Ebony. As a friend of Msscribe's, a person of color, an FA mod who was a close friend of Cassandra Claire's and had disliked GT since the stalking incident, and a longtime H/Hr shipper and debater, she had every possible reason to be upset, and no inclination whatsoever to give GT the benefit of the doubt. She made an impassioned post declaring that the people of GT "can't touch pitch without being defiled" and stating that they owed both Msscribe and Infinitus a personal apology and assurance that they had nothing to do with Pottersginny. Here is part of her post (then public, now locked) that I copied from the Fandom_Wank report:
When individuals who work for corporations are proven to have behaved in a sexist, racist, and/or heterosexist manner, said corporation almost always attempts to make gestures of conciliation not only towards those on the inside, but outward to the offended parties/community. These gestures should occur almost immediately. If you have mud on your blouse, who cares if you were rolling around with the pigs, or if you were splattered by chance as you passed by?
... This does not only apply to the corporate world. It ought to apply to the fandom's most popular sites.
Ebony also alluded to GT's "previous actions" that made her deeply suspicious of their good intentions, and hoped that J.K. Rowling wouldn't fulfill Pottersginny's racist wishes and pair Harry with the pureblood Ginny:
And after this, if JKR does write H/G, I say we feather her hair or something. Gah, gah, and gah.
A few people -- mostly SQers -- commented in defence of GT and linked Ebony to the public disavowels of Pottersginny and her beliefs that they had made. One of them, an SQ mod named angua9 who knew Ebony from ship debates at FA, also wrote her a personal email (quoted with Angua9's permission):
I don't know, of course, what people are saying privately, but you are actually the *only* person I've seen say that "Pottersginny" is reflective of GT or H/G. She isn't. She no more represents the H/G ship or the GT site than she represents the Harry Potter fandom, or Christians, or white people, or Americans, or whatever group she may choose to claim affiliation with.
To these defenders, Ebony reiterated that what GT had done wasn't enough -- that it was their responsibility to make conciliatory gestures to Pottersginny's victims, and that their failure to do so only reinforced the poor opinion she'd had of them ever since they'd similarly failed to apologize or make any amends after the stalking incident.
The GTers, furious at the troll, furious that people would think such things about them, and just generally feeling mistreated and imposed upon, posted angrily in various forums and summarily banned Pottersginny from the gryffindortower LJ community. I believe that by this time they had already found Fermatojam in their member list at the GT website and banned him.
SarahKJames tried to stir things up a little more by joining gryffindortower and arguing passionately that banning Pottersginny was an injustice and encroachment of her right to free speech (a ridiculous idea to the GT mods, who felt perfectly free to ban people for being persistently annoying, much less for vile racist speech that made their community look terrible). SarahKJames conveniently had quotes of everything that Pottersginny had ever said about GT, and she posted them in the thread. This kerfluffle was briefly discussed here on Fandom_Wank (screen cap), and also on SarahKJames's journal. An anon calling herself "Kellie" also posted in defense of Pottersginny on the LJ community, claiming to be a GT member herself and claiming that Pottersginny was a GT member, under a different "writing name":
Pottersginny is a friend of mine, and she isn't a racist, and she has been a member at GT for a year, never ONCE violating any of your rules. NOT ONCE. She has never posted anything inflamatory anywhere except her own personal LJ. She isn't known as pottersginny, but I won't divulge her writing name because SOME OF US still love having her around. Is this how you choose to treat members who don't violate any rules? If so, than I might choose to leave myself.
Another person joined the community with a "Nutty Christian-type" bio on her userinfo and was immediately banned. Meanwhile, the GTers were also kept busy dealing with hundreds of people suddenly trying to register for their site (someone -- I believe it was someone commenting on one of Aja's posts (vanityfair at that time) -- called for everyone to go register there). GT turned off automatic registration, and then found themselves accused of being discriminatory and exclusionist for not letting people join freely, as well as simultaneously facing criticism for not doing enough to disassociate themselves from Pottersginny and for banning her unfairly.
Late May 2003 - Msscribe and RunechildUK
Pottersginny did not disappear as quickly as her fellow Nutty Christians had. She kept her live journal open and continued to represent herself as a Harry/Ginny enthusiast and a Gryffindor Tower insider. And then something happened that was a real stroke of luck for Msscribe -- and disastrously bad luck for GT. A GT admin named RunechildUK (now davidjoates) made a diplomatic error in relation to the upcoming Nimbus convention. This is what happened:
On May 14, an FA mod named cygnusfap (now malachan) made a post about a fun game called Fandomopoly he was planning to make for Nimbus -- like Monopoly but with fandom communities on the squares. As Cygnus put it:
So here’s how you can help! We need 22 fanfiction archives. We have the following:
FictionAlley, Diagon Alley, Sugarquill, Restricted Section, Veelas inc., SnitchFiction,
Potter Slash Archive, Gryffindor Tower, FanFiction.Net, Bit Of Imagination, Nox et Lumos, Family Affair, The Hidden Tower, Raspberry Swirl, Adult fanfiction.net, Snape Slash Fleet, Pumpkin Pie, Werewolf Registery, Guns’n’Handcuffs.
That’s only 19! We need 3 more! And any other suggestions will be taken into account. (Or fan art archives, perhaps, if anyone knows of any?) The precise order of the archives on the game board will be determined later.
He also asked for donations to cover his costs in making the board. Something he hadn't done yet (though I'm sure he would have before actually making the game board) was to ask any of these communities for permission to use their names. Well, GT didn't want to be associated with FA or Nimbus in any way, shape, or form, and on May 22, RunechildUK, one of the admins of GT, commented coldly:
As a representative of the Gryffindor Tower administration team, I would ask that all references to Gryffindor Tower be removed from this project. The administration of Gryffindor Tower is not prepared to be included in the same project as open NC-17 archives, incest fiction, and certain other websites. To allow our website to be associated with those that we morally distance ourselves from would be to violate every principle we stand for. The administration of Gryffindor Tower is not prepared to be included in something such as this, especially when money is involved.
Yours Sincerely,
Runechild.
Gryffindor Tower Administration Team
As I understand it, RunechildUK had not been authorized to make suicidal remarks about GT "morally distancing themselves" from the rest of the fandom, and he got scolded by the other admins. But the damage was done. Because of this colossal PR blunder, SQ hastened to disassociate themselves from GT's holier-than-thou attitude:
Just because people have now been asking us about this right and left, I think I'll just say here that, yes, the SQ admin are well aware of this game, and we think it's a really fun idea. Have a great time playing it, everyone!
Michelle Ravel, SQ Mod
The wank flowed freely on that one.
Msscribe pounced on the incident with enthusiasm. She made four separate posts about RunechildUK on May 23rd. The first one was a link to his comment on Cygnus's LJ:
WTF?
Have all of you seen THIS shit? WTF? I guess there is no doubt now where all the trolls are spewing from.
She used this icon to represent the "Kentucky Fried Christians" who were persecuting the HP fandom:
taken from Msscribe, created by ?
Msscribe must have read RunechildUK's LJ and found the angry post he had made in response to Ebony's post about GT and Pottersginny, because three hours later her second post linked to it:
Pissy, Pissy
Oh and apparantly angiej was really trying to be a complete bitch when she suggested "one unified fandom". Anyone able to form an eloquent response to THIS? It seems I can't write anything but "Fuck All Of You Snotty Ass MotherFuckers" and that's just so uncreative.
Edited to include link to Rune's Archived journal, since he chickened out and deleted it.
Msscribe and several of her friends went to RunechildUK's post and told him what they thought of him and of GT. In the comments of her own post, Msscribe received some angry anonymous comments, and Queerasjohn put forward the hypothesis that RunechildUK and Pottersginny might be the same person. RunechildUK deleted his LJ -- I understand this was something of a habit of his whenever he got involved in a brouhaha -- and Msscribe rushed to report this development with a new post:
O-o
NewsFLash: runechilduk's journal has been deleted O-o. We must be some scary ass Weasleycest slash lovin' pervs. Did anyone archive the post?
chickadilly had saved the post, Msscribe uploaded and linked to it, dianora downloaded it on June 6, and that is the version I have now.
Pottersginny then chose this particular time to delete her LJ, and (within an hour, according to muffinbutt in the comments) Msscribe rushed to report this as well:
Uh Oh.
EDIT: runechilduk LJ is gone, then pottersginny is also gone. Hmmm.
chickadilly rocks. Thanks to her we have managed to save this! Whee. Does anyone have Rudeboy's IP?
(Sorry for the spammage today folks.)
No doubt thanks to Msscribe's tireless reporting, Ebony's now-two-weeks-old post and RunechildUK's two-weeks-old response were now discussed at Fandom Wank. The wank report firmly tied Pottersginny to GT:
Potterwank ... it's the wank that keeps on wanking
Remember the pottersginny wank?
Pottersginny likes to hang out at Gryffindor Tower, also recently wanked.
Ebony publically challenges GT on what she feels was their lack of action regarding pottersginny with such gems as: "When individuals who work for corporations are proven to have behaved in a sexist, racist, and/or heterosexist manner, said corporation almost always attempts to make gestures of conciliation not only towards those on the inside, but outward to the offended parties/community. These gestures should occur almost immediately. If you have mud on your blouse, who cares if you were rolling around with the pigs, or if you were splattered by chance as you passed by? ... This does not only apply to the corporate world. It ought to apply to the fandom's most popular sites."
RunechildUK responds to this by utilizing the time honored technique of pointing fingers back at the accuser: "I have come to the conclusion that the only thing that would satisfy her conditions is for a representative of the Gryffindor Tower administration to make a grovelling apology on Fiction Alley Park. I have news for you dear; it’s never going to happen. If it were the case throughout the fandom that the administrative staff had to make a public apology and disassociate themselves from the individual in question on the boards of the affected site, the Fiction Alley administrators would spend more time on our boards than they do on their own."
Naturally, there is more fun to be had in comments.
{ETA: RunechildUK deleted their journal within less than two minutes of this post appearing on f_w. That may be a new f_w record. But more wank can be found here regarding said post.}
The link to "more wank" is, of course, to Msscribe's live journal.
Msscribe was not about to let the GT people get away with disapproving of Weasleycest and being rude to her friends Cygnus, Irina, and Ebony. On the very next day, she opened a new front in the war against GT.
Still May 2003 - Msscribe and GT_Hidden_Room
On May 24, 2003, Msscribe created a "parody site" to make fun of Gryffindor Tower (and spur the GTers to ever greater fury and ever greater folly): gt_hidden_room. Msscribe later admitted to creating this (here, for instance), so no guesswork is required here. This was not gentle mockery. The maintainer of the site was a sockpuppet hgempress, a parody of the Fat Lady who guarded the entry page to the GT website. Here are her icons:
The userinfo has this:
Gryffindor Tower's Hidden Room
The nastiest little corner of Gryffindor Tower
Up in the Tower, they're all locked away,
For all of us heathens, they claim that they pray,
But I think their Harry and Ginny are wrong!
Do they have to keep humpin' to that same old song?
You won't find socks here,
Just Ginny split wide,
As Harry holds her down, and then slides right inside!
The Empress of Evil, my friends, is now here,
To save you from bad smut, so never you fear.
Msscribe -- who must have had access to an incredible photo library -- also made a parody sockpuppet for each of the better-known GT admins, using sexual or insulting versions of their names and even creating parodies of their LJ usericons. stolensocks (Imogen) became stolencocks, ladymaidmarian became getlaidmarian, carissa_lynn became carpissa_lynn, caitlyn_mc became hatelyn_mc, magoo42 became magoo69, tartanboxers became tartinboxers, kvader became klaider, etc. A lot of work went into these -- each one had an LJ with icons, userinfo, and in some cases posts. Here are some of their icons:
The thing I found most offensive was that someone with a great deal of artistic ability took Imogen's fluffy H/G icon -- a kind of pastel drawing of Ginny standing behind Harry with her hand on his shoulder and copied it with Ginny butt-fucking Harry with a strap-on, while he screamed in apparent pain with blood and shit spattering everywhere. Pretty impressive to be able to convey all that on a 100x100 icon, but not nice at all. Msscribe created the community with about seven maintainers -- hgempress, msscribe, angiej, cygnusfap, irinaauthor and a couple of other FA mods who had been involved with GT wanks or Msscribe just wanted to involve (it appears that all the maintainers except Msscribe/HGempress were probably made maintainers without their knowledge). A large number of FA mods were made members of the community, as were all the GT admin parodies and all the real GT admins (at that time communities could make people members without asking them -- I don't think you can still do that), and quite a few other people as well. For some reason, an underage SQ mod named ashavah was one of them. She was removed after it was pointed out that she was under eighteen.
The posts were whatever could be depended on to most enrage and infuriate GT people; Here is a typical example:
hanacandi:
Ways to Torture Ginny.
Come on then, what are the ways you can all think of to torture the lovely Ginny Weasley?
Personally, I think that drowning her in the lake sounds fun.
sincelastjuly:
*writes Ginny/Giant Squid smut*
muffinbutt:
Erotic torture anyone, with a side of sadism?
How about pulling out her pubic hairs one by one with white-hot tweezers?
XD
katrionaa:
I prefer her pining for Tom, remembering all they shared and slowly becoming very jumpy and irrational. She'd also spend lots of time in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom trying to get back to the Chamber of Secrets so she'd be damp most of the time and eventually expire from consumption.
queerasjohn:
I suggest making her watch as Ron fucks Draco up the ass.
And this one:
hgempress: Smutty Goodness
Welcome friends. I hope you enjoy your stay. Please remember that anything other than pervy goodness will be immediately flamed and destroyed. How about some H/G sodomy fics! Are there any out there? Would the little redhead squeal much?
oooh. painispleasureispain.
slytherincess:
May I just oogle your icon, please? *Reowr*
And, uh, yeah, she'd squeal. But not in the good way.
And the GT admins were enraged. They went to LJ Abuse, trying to get the community suspended, but without success. The only thing they got was that stolencocks, with the icon I described, was suspended, but Msscribe quickly created swolencocks to replace it. Quite a few fandom members (real ones, I mean) joined the community and gleefully joined in the taunting.
A bit later, some of the GT admins publicly questioned whether it was a good idea for representatives of the non-profit educational corporation of FictionAlley to be associating themselves with the GT_Hidden_Room. As a result, Ebony would remove herself from the community (though not as a maintainer, but I'm pretty sure that was an accident), clarifying that she had been added without her knowledge. I seem to remember that cygnusfap got rather upset and asked that his name be removed. But most people -- including the other FA mods -- stayed and played. In fact, nearly a year later in March 2004, Angua9 would write in an email to Heidi (quoted with Angua9's permission):
ALL the maintainers of GT_Hidden_Room except Purebloodgryff (http://www.livejournal.com/community/join.bml?comm=gt_hidden_room ) are currently mods at Fiction Alley.
At some point after that, all the maintainers were removed except for the sockpuppet hgempress. FA mods who posted at the gt_hidden_room community included nmalfoy, muffinbutt, queerasjohn, littletort/longtimegone, sincelastjuly (Erin Miran), epicyclical (Cassandra Claire), irinaauthor, slytherincess, and msscribe/light_music (msscribe).
In response to this barrage of provocations, the GT people fumed but mostly kept silence. But not for long! They were about to have a breakthrough.
CHAPTER FOUR - MSSCRIBE SUFFERS A SETBACK