Chapter Four - Msscribe Suffers a Setback
The Ms.Scribe Story
An Unauthorized Fandom Biography
Msscribe Suffers A Setback
End of May 2003 - Msscribe and the Nanny
May was drawing to a close. Msscribe had now been friended by more than 150 people (and rising). gt_hidden_room was flourishing, and the GT admins were as mad as hornets.
If you followed this link in Chapter Three to the Fandom_Wank discussion of SarahKJames posting at gryffindortower to protest Pottersginny's banning, you might have seen the following bit of foreshadowing:
jerry_ds_girl 2003-05-12 10:26:
Didja notice about 3/4 of the way down in the comments, carissa lynn says, We have reason to believe pottersginny is not who she says she is? Damn, now I want to know who she really is.
Jerry_ds_girl would have to wait more than two weeks to satisfy her curiosity. In the meantime, several other things were happening.
At this time, GT mod and quasi-admin magoo42 contacted SQer angua9, a friend of hers whom she knew was familiar with the Fermatojam situation. Magoo told Angua that one of the GT admins had found something funny about IPs and she wanted to ask her advice. Was it possible, she asked, that Fermatojam was actually Msscribe? Angua responded that nothing could be more likely. She had never believed that Fermatojam was a real person -- and if he was a sockpuppet, he had to be Msscribe's sockpuppet, because she claimed to know his real-life identity.
Her curiousity now aroused, Angua shared her suspicions with her fandom friend dianora and the two of them began investigating Msscribe. Having less of an emotional stake in the issue than the GTers, they jumped happily into the role of Plucky Girl Detectives. They spent practically all their time for the next week or two reading every post Msscribe and the other players had ever made, having enormously long IM conversations in which they excitedly discussed their findings and gleefully pointed out contradictions in Msscribe's story, and making the huge collection of links that was the starting point of my research for this story.
Angua and Dianora noticed that all the "Nutty Christians" were very careful where they posted. As far as they could tell, Fermatojam never posted on any LJs except Msscribe's and his own (he also posted on Cassandra Claire's, but they didn't notice that). Killiganhashope posted only on his own LJ and Msscribe's. [Late edit: It just clicked for me that he also posted on the LJ Debate community, as did Msscribe, Infinitus, and Clarabella. That community and post still exist and a mod can still harvest IP information from it.] Pottersginny posted only on her own, Infinitus's, Msscribe's, and SarahKJames's (plus two H/G communities). They found this quite suspicious. They also found this post Fermatojam made:
All of you are SHOWING YOUR TRUE COLORS
Thats right, you are all showing yourselves, climbing out from under your rocks. I won't disable posting. I want the world to see the evil I see every day.
And I got an email saying someone was tracing my IP. Well, I took care of that. You may be interested to know you'll find your OWN IP. Or one of your fellow Purveryor's IP, whichever one I choose to bounce off of or project that day. Today I think I will use angiej's IP address, only because I thought I would like her story before it turned pornographic. Tomorrow, who knows.
Aren't I brilliant?
Lastly, I do NOT threaten anyone. I wish none of you any harm, only salvation.
Angua and Dianora speculated that Fermatojam had posted that to provide an excuse for Msscribe, when she failed to be able to track him from his IP, but I now think it was mostly meant for Cassandra Claire, in case she tracked the IP from that one comment back to Msscribe. Ebony (angiej) was an ideal person to hide behind, being a close friend of Cassandra Claire's and well-known throughout the fandom as the kind of person who would never create a sock like Fermatojam. I'm not sure if it is actually possible to appear to have any IP you want like that. I suspect it's NOT, because otherwise Msscribe (and many subsequent trolls and sockpuppeteers) would have done it. And she didn't.
Angua and Dianora concluded that the series of thrilling events that had happened to Msscribe in her first few months in the fandom -- the two flame wars and many insulting reviews, the constant stream of abusive emails and anonymous LJ comments, the near-death hospital experience, the four separate plagiarism incidents, the Baby Dyke encounter, the comment from the abused Pakistani woman, and finally the spectacular stalking and persecution by Fermatojam and his two fellow Nutty Christians -- was simply not credible. The most likely explanation, they felt, was that most or all of them were self-inflicted to attract attention and sympathy. They tagged it "Virtual Munchausen's Syndrome." They also noted that Clarabella and SarahKJames had all the telltale signs of sockpuppets -- with the obvious purpose of fangirling Msscribe, so that she could pimp herself without appearing immodest. Angua9 relayed their observations and conclusions through magoo42 to the GT admins, who were very interested and grateful -- for they had come to the same conclusion using very different methods, as you will see below.
But while Angua, Dianora, and the GTers were busy investigating, Msscribe was not idle. Besides continuing with her parody and Ginny-torture efforts at gt_hidden_room, she launched an IP investigation of her own. You may have noticed her comments asking if anyone had RunechildUK's IP. Four days later, on May 27, she and clarabella21 both put up their teaser posts saying:
killiganhashope, we know who you are.
The next day, May 28th, Msscribe made a post that was frankly bizarre:
So what to do with you...
killiganhashope, I was all prepared to out you last night. I gave sarahkjames the password to my LJ so she could verify the IP and then was typing up an email to send to my source requesting she save her LJ as an HTML so the world could see the matching IP. Plus you signed your name the same. Silly, killiganhashope.
But here's the problem. IP's are funny little things. Some people are roomates, some use public computers. clarabella21 babysits my daughter occassionally, and so she's posted from my computer a time or two.
It would basically be your word against mine.
Also, dear killiganhashope, I know you're still around. You posted to my LJ anonomously just the other day when you replied to a post epicyclical had made . You told her you "weren't surprised to see her there."
I think I'll tell the story though, just so people aren't in the dark. Some months ago I began a fic called Requital, which is hosted at FA.org, FF.net, and Portkey.org. It was my first real attempt at writing fanfic. Someone started reading it, liked it until they realized it wasn't H/G (I had accidentally posted it at ff.net as that ship, it was an honest mistake) and it contained some steamy scenes, and sexual tension between two female characters. This person flamed me, and sent me email after email. He found out my full name, then my home address. I got a package of religious themed books from him. I sent them back. More email. Some apologetic, some nasty. They are all printed out and sitting in a little file at the campus police department where he goes (or went) to school. Why campus police? Because he hacked into my PC, along with about a dozen others from a school computer. Left me about fifty *.txt files, all bible verses on my desktop. I had him arrested, and my husband (who is an attorney) later dropped the charges on the condition he never contact me again.
He hasn't.
This email is only indirectly about him. It's about you killiganhashope, and how you defended him. It's about how you and your friends didn't come forward with information when you had it, and no one else did. It's about how you knew what he was doing, and still protected him because he was in your inner circle.
It's about people who meet and discuss how morally corrupt we all are, yet watch us constantly. No, you never stalked me. In fact, everything you said was always very polite. Annoying, but not abusive. This isn't an LJ abuse issue.
Here's the deal killiganhashope, we're on to you now. As you've seen on people's LJ's, we know who you are. We used to only suspect that you and your friends were watching us, snarking on our LJ's, trolling. Now we know.
We also know the website where you meet, and have these little discussions. How? Well, interesting enough my stalker friend had a website, and upon further investigation, I was able to link it to your hideout. (I viewed the source code and discovered where some of the lovely pics he had up were hotlinked to).
We like watching too. Is that newbie in your group just a super person? Will she give you all sorts of rave reviews, and will you let her inside? Will you get close to her, give her passwords and access to your secrets?
Will she be one of us? Is she one of us?
The game has changed.
...
Interestingly, in view of what would happen only a few hours later, Msscribe had seemingly changed her mind about the usefulness of IP evidence. She noted that she sometimes shared her computer with Clarabella and her password with SarahKJames and said:
IP's are funny little things.
...
It would basically be your word against mine.
She also told the story of her stalking by Fermatojam in fuller detail than ever before (not neglecting to mention her fanfic):
Some months ago I began a fic called Requital, which is hosted at FA.org, FF.net, and Portkey.org. It was my first real attempt at writing fanfic. Someone started reading it, liked it until they realized it wasn't H/G (I had accidentally posted it at ff.net as that ship, it was an honest mistake) and it contained some steamy scenes, and sexual tension between two female characters. This person flamed me, and sent me email after email.
In her earliest versions of the story (as here and here, and also at Portkey), Msscribe's abusive flamer was a Harry/Hermione fan who became incensed that she (and Cassandra Claire) wrote slash, incest, etc. instead of sticking to Pumpkin Pie. Either she was now changing the story to make it fit better with GT, or her fanfic "Requital" disappointed two psychotic male fans in her first month in the fandom -- one who liked H/Hr and one who liked H/G -- and they both persecuted her with persistent flames.
He found out my full name, then my home address. I got a package of religious themed books from him. I sent them back. More email. Some apologetic, some nasty. They are all printed out and sitting in a little file at the campus police department where he goes (or went) to school. Why campus police? Because he hacked into my PC, along with about a dozen others from a school computer. Left me about fifty *.txt files, all bible verses on my desktop.
Msscribe has never revealed who Fermatojam's other twelve victims might be.
I had him arrested, and my husband (who is an attorney) later dropped the charges on the condition he never contact me again.
Two days after Msscribe wrote this, Clarabella would tell the GT admins in a private email that, far from dropping the charges, Msscribe pressed charges against Fermatojam and "took him to court." Eight days after she wrote this, on June 5, Msscribe would affirm the story Clarabella told -- that she pressed charges against Fermatojam and he received "probation." But, for the moment, she was saying that she dropped charges, just like Cassandra Claire did against Jeff.
Next, she alleges internet conspiracies, possibly pointing to GT:
It's about how you and your friends didn't come forward with information when you had it, and no one else did. It's about how you knew what he was doing, and still protected him because he was in your inner circle.
It's about people who meet and discuss how morally corrupt we all are, yet watch us constantly.
...
We also know the website where you meet, and have these little discussions. How? Well, interesting enough my stalker friend had a website, and upon further investigation, I was able to link it to your hideout. (I viewed the source code and discovered where some of the lovely pics he had up were hotlinked to).
Msscribe has never revealed where Fermatojam's website was, nor Killiganhashope's "hideout," and I have certainly been able to find no trace of them. Most of Msscribe's friends seem to have taken all this as a reference to Gryffindor Tower, but as you can see, she didn't explicitly say so. She also doesn't make clear what was supposedly done to "protect" Fermatojam. And then she makes the infiltration threat, which is just... weird:
We like watching too. Is that newbie in your group just a super person? Will she give you all sorts of rave reviews, and will you let her inside? Will you get close to her, give her passwords and access to your secrets?
Will she be one of us? Is she one of us?
The game has changed.
This post did not stay public for long; I believe it was hidden in June of 2003.
Msscribe pursued other avenues of attack as well. She found an LJ entry from a young girl who was a GT member, speaking negatively about adoption. On May 28, SarahKJames made this post:
A Request
I don't really know aome but can one of you link her to this post.
It's horrible. A GT'er...not shocked. I was contemplating not fanning the already abundant flames, but this is insulting. I was adopted and am very bonded to my mother, thank you very much. And she truly IS my mother. I'm currently typing a response.
aome (an FA mod and generally well-liked fandom member who is an adoptive mother) responded:
msscribe linked me - thanks for pointing it out. I've gone and left my 2 cents. :)
It was also on this day, May 28, that Msscribe's friend Infinitus suddenly and finally left the fandom. She made a post citing real life issues, deleted her LJ, and disappeared for good. Here is Msscribe's post announcing the event:
Just to keep mouths from yapping...
infinitus just needs some time to de-stress, chill, deal with RL shit. It's all good though. She'll be back before we know it. She better be. I'll cry like a damn baby if she doesn't.
Later that evening, Msscribe made a second post, disallowing comments:
infinitus is gone. She needed to leave the fandom to take care of RL stuff. I love her like a sister. We started out in this fandom together at portkey.org, became sort of the portkey "grownups". Always together, her and I.
I will miss her more than she'll ever know. Don't really feel like saying much more.
I still wonder if Infinitus was a real-life person, either an innocent dupe or an accomplice of Msscribe's, who couldn't face the music. If she was an innocent dupe, she might have done a little IP checking herself, discovered Msscribe's behavior, and decided that she was too far implicated. If she was an accomplice, she could have simply bailed. Of course, if she was a sockpuppet, her departure was just Msscribe tidying things up. I don't suppose I'll ever know. Infinitus's decision to leave the fandom might also have something to do with the nearness of Nimbus, which she had been planning to attend (I wonder if she actually registered?). If she was a sockpuppet, the reason she couldn't attend is obvious. Or perhaps she wasn't really the lovely woman whose picture she used so generously on her journal and icons. Or, of course, she could have been exactly as she represented herself and left fandom for personal reasons unrelated to Msscribe, exactly as she said. At any rate, she disappeared and, as far as I know, has never been heard from since.
[Edit: Infinitus emailed me (charlottelennox) after this account was published (see Afterword Three). I have since become completely convinced that she is a real person with a significant online presence and many selfies that match her photos as Infinitus.]
Next, GT made their move. Just after midnight that same night, on May 29, 2003, carissa_lynn, one of the admins at GT, published this on her own LJ:
Time to Say Goodnight
There is an old saying, "Keep your friends close and your enemies closer." I'm not fond of it in general because I am not a suspicious person by nature. However, in the past few months, it is a saying that has been at the front of my consciousness. Some things have happened that have made me realize that myself and my friends are more disliked by a certain group of people than I could ever have imagined. Why, I don't know, but it seems that some people can't forget things that happened nearly two years ago. Either that, or they are just highly offended that we don't want to be part of their group. Either way, it makes them seem really petty.
Anyway, back to my point, it seems that someone has gone to great lengths to embarrass us and indirectly blame us for things that she, in fact, is responsible for. I'm not sure why she did it, perhaps it started out as a ploy for attention and when people started connecting her actions, things she did while disguised as another person (several in fact, on both sides of the "fence"), with GT she went with it. However, I know it's her. I have been collecting and checking IP's for a while now and have noticed a pattern. I didn't say anything for a long time because I wasn't positive, but now I'm almost 100% sure. All I have right now is circumstantial, but when every IP you have traced back to the same place, then you can be pretty sure that all the posts are being made by one person. Then when someone seemingly forgets to log out of their account and makes a post which also traces back to that place, well, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure that one out. The charade is over. This game has become tiresome.
(Note: I have turned off the comment feature because I don't want eveyone involved in this. If you have a real comment, feel free to email me. Don't email me asking who and what I am talking about. If you don't know, I am not telling you. I'm sure that while this is vague, the person in question, if she sees this, will know I am refering to her.)
carissa_lynn deliberately made this post as a bait, hoping to flush out Msscribe (whom she knew was snooping around their LJs while working on the parody sockpuppets for gt_hidden_room), and it worked. The next day, she received a response -- an email from "Clarabella."
I'll let Carissa tell in her own words -- from the post she made two days later -- what happened next:
Carissa Explains It All
I hate to post this, I really do. If it were up to me alone, I would just let this die and hopefully never hear from the people involved again. However, some horrible things have been said and done and they affect others besides myself and they want the truth to be known. I don't blame them, actually, but this is a post I really wish I didn't have to write. I wish none of this had ever happened. clarabella21 and sarahkjames have made some bad decisions and done some really stupid things thinking they wouldn't get caught.
They did.
For those of you who don't know the story, you can go here to read an account. Basically someone named fermatojam was stalking msscribe and everyone thought it was someone from GT. It wasn't. I don't know who it was. I'm really sorry this happened to her, it must be a horrible thing to have to experience, but it was not anyone the admins of GT would have ever heard of were it not for the million mentions on various LJ's.
Anyway, it's what happened after this that is the point of this post. Ms Scribe took him to court and got him banned from using a computer. His yahoo name and password were in the court documents which Clara got a hold of. Clara and Sarah then went around posing as him and started more trouble. They posted on our LJ pretending to be one of pottersginny's friends. They went looking through the LJ's of various posters at GT looking for things to flame them about. They started at least one other LJ melodyannsings with the intent to stir up more trouble and had her post in the GT LJ in order to link her to us. To their credit, they deleted this LJ soon after they were caught.
The worst part of it is that through it all they let people believe that all of these "nutty Christians", as they like to call them, were affiliated with GT when they had already concluded themselves that there was no connection. In fact the only connections that existed were ones that were fabricated by them. Other than the fact that these people visited GT and didn't post, there was nothing to connect them with us. We'd never even heard of them until after the event with Ms Scribe.
Then was the gt_hidden_room. It seemed at first to be an attempt to make it look like GT was behind that as well, but apparently, the person responsible was so proud of herself that she dropped that pretense and instead turned to the old standby of making fun of us. A comment on a freind's LJ by hgempress, who seems to be in charge there, traces back to Ms Scribe's IP, so it's either her or Clara.
Next came the "Killiganhashope we know who you are posts." It seems that someone traced his IP to one of our admins. I am 100% confident that this information was fabricated by someone to make it look like he was Rune. He's not. Rune lives in the UK and his IP could not possibly be the same as Killigan's since Killigan lives in the US. Not a chance.
Honestly, since all this mess started, both sides have reacted terribly. We have all let it effect our enjoyment of the fandom. Things were said that were better left unsaid. Tempers have been running high and everyone is on edge. Understandable, but not an excuse. Not for us or them.
Truth be told, we think we are owed an apology. A big one. And not just from Clara and Sarah. From all the people who publicly blamed us and bashed us for supporting such "radicals." I doubt that's coming though...I'm not holding my breath.
Now, because I know you all want it,
Fermatojam's IP on GT matches Sarah's IP in her comments on the GT LJ. (167.21.1.228)
Clara's IP (while she was apparently on Ms Scribe's computer) match that of somone posting as a friend of pottersginny (168.123.113.142) Also hg_empress's IP traces the same place as Ms Scribe's. Not sure who made those posts...it doesn't matter.
I traced a few other IP's to MsScribe's IP which were made by Clara from her computer.
Up to this point, all the evicence was circumstantial and I had nothing solid, which I posted about in my LJ the other day. However, it was enough to scare Clara, who emailed me confessing. I am also linking to all of the screencaps I made.
The May 9th GT LJ
The May 23rd GT LJ
The first email I got from Clara
[Note from charlottelennox: these links originally went to the GT website server, which no longer exists. I have replaced them with links to my own uploaded screencaps of the same items.]
****
I only linked to the first email from Clara. I will paste the others here to omit any personal information about myself, her or Miss Scribe.
Clara Mortensen wrote:
I read your LJ. If you're planning on telling the world, please just give me notice so I can tell Dionne. She is my only source of income, and I love her daughter like my own. Her family is my only family.
I'll never bother you again.
****
Carissa wrote:
Just tell me one thing, why would she do this? Honestly, we know you all don't like us, but this is horrible. Unless you give me a good reason why you all are doing this, and promise me it will stop, and I mean everything, even the gt_hidden_room, then I am outing you all tonight.
I'm sorry, but Melodysings, aka, Sarah K James, aka fermatojam seems poised to start another controversey and I want all of this to stop! Right now!
However, even if I don't post on my LJ/and or GT doesn't make a public statement, we will have to let the admins at FictionAlley and any ohter websites you are affliated with know. This was when I still thought Ms Scribe was the culprit.
Carissa
****
Clara Mortensen wrote:
It isn't her. It's me. But I don't control gt_hidden_room. Several people have access to hgempress, including me.
It all started when Dionne began getting threatening emails from someone we though was in your group. I'm also not the "original" fermatojam. To make a long story short, we freaked out. Got overzealous. Sarahkjames is real enough, but I have the password to her account. She knows everything.
I babysit Dionne's daughter three times a week..[edit]. She's all I have. I got so angry, I just lashed out at you all and I was wrong. I know that. Killiganhashope just made me so upset, and when littletort said it was David, well we genuinely thought you all were behind the person who originally stalked her, and even when we figured out you weren't we got angry because we felt you knew more information than you gave.
I'm asking you not to say anything because she trusts me. I love Elise so much, and Dionne needs me. [edit]
I agree, I've been so depressed about all of this. I don't even hate H/G. It's all so stupid and it went spiraling out of control. I'm not dangerous though. I swear it.
I'll email people and ask them to stop gt_hidden_room, but I don't own that so I have no real control.
I don't even understand myself. What I was saying was before you tell Dionne, please let me tell her first.
****
Carissa wrote:
You better tell her now then because when I get home from work, I am emailing the admins at FA. They need to know, especially since they all think it is us as well. Perhaps if you post a public entry saying you are wrong and that you know that GT is not behind all of this, instead of letting everyone think we are. I'm assuming that all the "Killiganhashppe, we know who you are" posts were intended to make people think it was Rune from GT. I assure you, it's not, and you better make sure no one one else thinks that.
This is obviosly a game for you. It's not a game for me.
[edit] I understand how you feel, but we don't know anything more about those "nutty Christians" as you all like to call them. In fact, we never would have heard of them if you all hadn't made such a fuss about it in your LJ's. Actually, I'm not really sure you are not really fermatojam. Because you'd need access to his email to activate the account on the boards and the emails are the same in both places. Unless you started the LJ account too. Honestly, we just want all of this over. It can end quietly or it can end in a big mess for you. Please be aware that I not only have IPs I also have screen caps of the places where I got the IP's from. Yes, I have been paranoid, I am glad of that now.
I'm sorry I am being such a bitch about this, but considering the circumastances, I really feel as if I have a right to be.
Carissa
****
Clara Mortensen wrote:
Dionne and her husband filed charges against Louis [edit] after he found her address and sent her a package containing religious books and a very threatening letter, and after the LJ incident - the police report had his email and password on file from the people at yahoo. Dionne's husband is an attorney so he got a copy of these records. Louis was forbidden access to a computer. I swear I only used that account to try and find out who he knew at GT. I didn't feel like the police were doing enough. I never stalked any of your authors or did anything bad at GT. I did discover that he belonged to a group of people online. This was after the LJ mess. That wasn't me. I'm afraid to say the nutty christians are real. If you want, I can give you Pottersginny's writing name. I think it was a good idea banning her, btw.
I know the nutty christians aren't you guys. I figured that out fairly quickly. I'm only sorry I didn't speak up sooner, but I will email my friends right before I leave. Thank you for giving me some time. I don't think Dionne will hate me, but I know it's going to hurt her that I never told her what I was doing. Her best friend Infinitus just left the fandom so it will hurt even worse. If you can believe this, my original intentions were good. This scared her more than anyone knows because she always comes off so calm, but I know her in RL so I witnessed it. I just wanted to protect her.
About David, someone emailed us screencaps of his IP. But you know him and I don't so I'll believe you. It isn't important since even if he was, he was always very civil.
I'd like to add that I don't hate anyone for this. I am annoyed and upest that this happened at all, but mostly, I feel sorry for Clara because her actions will have long lasting consequences which make me disliking her pale in comparison.
Carissa posted this on May 31, 2003. I'm sure you can all see what I believe happened. "Clarabella" was a throw-down sock, sacrificed to protect Msscribe. She played on the sympathies of the GT admins, begging them not to make anything public, and gave them a devilishly clever story to explain how Clarabella, SarahKJames, Fermatojam, HGEmpress, MelodyAnnSings, and the anonymous "Kellie" could all have posted from Msscribe's computer, and Msscribe still be as innocent as a daisy (if you accept that Clarabella could have somehow "hacked into" Fermatojam's email account and also accept that she made and ran the Kellie and MelodyAnnSings puppets without Msscribe's knowledge and posted using her friend SarahKJames's account for some reason). Clarabella admitted to making posts and emails from Msscribe's computer as herself, as SarahKJames, as Fermatojam, as "Kellie", as HGEmpress, and as MelodyAnnSings -- for the purpose of "investigating" suspected associates of the original, real Fermatojam -- while Msscribe also posted from the same computer as herself and as HGEmpress. This story also allowed for Fermatojam (the original one), Killiganhashope, and Pottersginny to be real people, as well as Clarabella and SarahKJames! As you can see, carissa_lynn believed (or pretended to believe) the story. She wouldn't do that for long.
Another thing to note is Clarabella's claim that it was Littletort who said that David/RunechildUK was Killiganhashope. Apparently littletort/longtimegone denied this, because clarabella21 posted on her own LJ as follows on May 31st:
Apology
Some of you are probably wondering why I deleted my journal yesterday.
I did it because I've done something I'm very sorry for. I was trying to help a friend, and I logged into GT under another user's ID. I realize I shouldn't have done this, now. And I'm very, very sorry I did.
I was trying to help a friend, because the police weren't doing enough. I was trying to help a friend, because she's really helped me. I never harrassed or threatened anyone over there, but I decieved them and for that, I apologize.
I apologoze to littletort, I was wrong. Dionne never told me who the source was and I made the assumption it was you and I was wrong.
Clarabella made a post on her LJ early on May 30, saying "sarahkjames, we need to chat online TODAY so please email me. Thanks." She then deleted her LJ, preparing to make the supreme sacrifice of leaving the fandom, and Msscribe (who naturally knew nothing about what her fangirl/nanny was up to) posted:
I come back from a meeting to check LJ's and clarabella21's journal is gone. Can someone please tell me WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON? Did anyone see her LJ before she deleted it? She's supposed to sit for us tomorrow night, so I guess I'll know then.
Several people responded, quoting Clarabella's last post:
Well...er if I remember rightly...she said something like she'll call you and explain why she has to leave fandom for a while and she's screwed something up.
Me thinks, sarahkjames knows what is happening. She said she thinks that you won't want her to sit for Elise.
I'm sorry. I have a really bad memory.
Oh yes and that she loves you and Elise muchly.
Later, Clarabella restored her LJ and made a tearful post (later hidden), telling the same story she'd told to Carissa. Msscribe made a beautiful post (also soon hidden), magnanimously forgiving her. Throughout the fandom, people commented indulgently, saying that it had been wrong for Clarabella to impersonate Fermatojam and make sockpuppets like "Kellie", but that it was perfectly understandable in the circumstances (boo, stalkers!), and everybody makes mistakes, and Clara was sorry now, so group hug, everybody's happy! Msscribe was more beloved and admired than ever, and twenty more people friended her. :)
To the GTers, Msscribe was not so magnanimous. On May 31, Carissa_Lynn emailed her (full text of the email quoted by Carissa here) and she wrote several emails to Carissa, with copies to FA and Nimbus attorney praetorianguard, angling for GT to keep quiet and drop the matter. If they didn't, she warned, it would be war. She threatened to publish the screencaps she had showing that GT admin RunechildUK and Killiganhashope were the same person, and also to publish the email Imogen had written to "Fermatojam" (or rather, according to the version of the story Msscribe was telling then, the email Imogen had written to Clarabella posing as Fermatojam to investigate his connections to GT -- or, according to my own belief, the email that Imogen had written to Msscribe herself, posing as Fermatojam in order to establish his connection with GT).
Carissa and her fellow GT admins did not agree to drop the subject, and Msscribe -- using the excuse that Carissa had felt free to post her friend Clarabella's private emails -- posted the text of Imogen's polite email to "Fermatojam." She also claimed that there was earlier, very damaging correspondence from Imogen in Fermatojam's email account (hacked into by Clarabella) that she might also post, a claim the GTers scornfully denied. If I remember correctly, the GTers then posted the text of Clarabella/Fermatojam's email to Imogen, making it clear that "he" was introducing himself to a stranger, and also posted the text of Imogen's second email to Fermatojam after she had been informed who he was, telling him that he wasn't welcome at GT.
Msscribe also posted the two screencaps I mentioned earlier -- one of a comment from Killiganhashope and one of a comment from RunechildUK, both closely trimmed so you couldn't see which LJ they were from, and both having a matching IP. The GTers screamed in outrage, pointing out that the IP she was showing was NOT their friend RunechildUK's IP, which they had all logged many times, and that RunechildUK was from England and always had a British IP. More damagingly to Msscribe's claim, several of her friends commented on her entry that the IP she was showing traced to an internal IP error, and -- if I remember correctly -- cygnusfap volunteered that the IP RunechildUK had left on his LJ did not match that one, and did trace to England.
After receiving these comments, Msscribe quickly took the post down, either filtering it or taking it private. She never revealed who her source was for the RunechildUK screencap. The post quoting Imogen's email disappeared fairly soon as well.
And the GT admins did not stop their investigations. carissa_lynn continued to collect and examine IP evidence, and found a smoking gun: the IP captured when Fermatojam (the "real" Fermatojam, according to Clarabella) originally joined GT in April matched an IP for Pottersginny, and all of Pottersginny's other posts had IPs that exactly or nearly matched one of the IPs already admitted to be from Msscribe's computer. Here is the screencap Carissa took to document the IP Fermatojam had joined GT with -- it was 68.82.67.208, tracing to c-68-82-67-208.hsd1.de.comcast.net (Comcast Cable Communications in Delaware).
The GT admins had asked for help from people in the fandom they thought might have IP information on Msscribe and her suspected sockpuppets. They got some good stuff from bohemianvixen, maintainer of the harry_and_ginny community, which Pottersginny had joined and posted in on May 7th, the same day she made her LJ, to establish herself as an H/G shipper (and to start trouble). Msscribe commented on that post (all her comments show up as delawarean now), so bohemianvixen had an IP for her as well. Sometime between May 24 and May 27, a suspended user (probably stolencocks) also posted there, probably to draw attention to the gt_hidden_room community started on May 24th.
This information from bohemianvixen was important in giving GT credibility, because she and the GT admins were not friends, even though they shared the same ship. bohemianvixen actively posted at FictionAlley, maintained good relations with that portion of the fandom (as can be seen in the comments to Pottersginny's post), and was widely known and liked. Her community mainly served H/Gers who did not share GT's isolationist, FictionAlley-detesting stance. But BohemianVixen (known as Queen_of_Slytherin at FA) stood firmly with the GTers. She spoke up in support of GT in her own community, and also at the now-deleted gryffindortower community and I seem to remember on her own LJ, though I don't see the post now.
Here is the page from Pottersginny's post of May 7th downloaded by bohemianvixen and sent to the GT admins. Note the IPs for Pottersginny and Msscribe, and the times:
pottersginny 2003-05-07 11:06 (from 209.234.157.104)
pottersginny 2003-05-07 13:23 (from 68.82.67.208)
pottersginny 2003-05-07 14:25 (from 130.94.107.137)
pottersginny 2003-05-07 15:25 (from 209.234.157.106)
pottersginny 2003-05-07 16:49 (from 209.234.157.44)
pottersginny 2003-05-07 17:15 (from 168.143.123.83)
msscribe 2003-05-07 17:23 (from 130.94.107.137)
In a six-hour period, Pottersginny used six different IPs, from three completely different sources. One of those IPs was used by Msscribe only three hours after it was used by the racist troll who called her a "zebra" that same day, and another one of them had been used by Msscribe's stalker Fermatojam to join GT.
The GT admins also appealed to the Sugar Quill for any IP evidence they might have, and the SQ admins, tired of drama and reluctant to be pulled into this conflict as they had been pulled into the stalking incident, refused to search their database. I don't know if the GTers asked anyone else for help, but I believe that all the IPs they eventually published came from either their website, their own LJ community, e-mails sent to them, or BohemianVixen. Studying all the evidence, they became convinced that Msscribe and/or Clarabella (they were unable to establish whether Clarabella was real or a sockpuppet) were responsible for Fermatojam, Killiganhashope, and Pottersginny. With great anticipation of being triumphantly cleared of all charges and exposing Msscribe to the fandom-wide censure she rightfully deserved, they made their move.
CHAPTER FIVE - MSSCRIBE BATTLES GRYFFINDOR TOWER