Quick explanation for n00bs: “Fandom” is a term used to refer to any collective group of fans of any work of media; there are fandoms for TV shows, movies, comic books, you name it. People who participate in fandom are called fans or collectively “fen”, and they often produce works inspired by their favorite characters, such as fanfiction, fanart, etc.
Fandom also produces drama and wankery. And in my years in fandom (10-ish to date) I have never encountered anything like the Amy Player ‘saga’.
Amy Player has gone under many names. I’m going to stick to the name Amy Player, which is his 1 legal, birth name, for simplicity’s sake. When Amy first popped up online in… was it Due Southfandom, I think? – she was a young girl who claimed to have been the longtime victim of an organized sex slavery ring, spinning extremely detailed accounts of sexual abuse, only to have escaped her evil masters and being adopted into a loving family. No basis in reality has been found for any of these statements.
A couple of years later, Amy Player got involved with Lord of the Rings fandom. Things took off from there. First, Amy Player discovered she was a lesbian. Then, no, she wasn’t a lesbian, he was the mind of a man trapped in the body of a woman. No, that wasn’t right, he was the soul of a Hobbit, trapped in the mind of a man, trapped in the body of a woman. Amy was claiming to have the dreams of the Hobbit, Merry, from the LOTR movies. At some point, Amy met a female fan, OrangeBlossom, online and moved across the country to live with her.
A lot of crazy fuckery ensued, which would merely have been sad had it not exploded into what it did. Amy and OrangeBlossom apparently ripped off OrangeBlossom’s (henceforth, OB) ex-husband for some money, trashed OB’s home, and abandoned a car in the streets of Salem, OR. They also got a lot of attention online by claiming to be friends with some of the LOTR actors, and claiming knowledge that actors Elijah Wood and Dominic Monaghan were in a secret relationship with each other. They even started a livejournal, supposedly belonging to Elijah Wood, but which was actually written by Amy Player – who claimed to be channeling Elijah Wood’s spirit.
When this fraud was found out, OB announced that Amy Player had committed suicide. OB moved on soon enough with a “new” lover, calling himself Jordan Wood, who was – surprise surprise – really Amy Player, alive and well, after all. Amy-as-Jordan had a bizarre backstory as an ex-child star/stuntman/Elijah Wood’s cousin. OB and Amy were helping run a large LOTR fansite called BitofEarth.com, and they put out a call to start a charity event. A screening of one of the LOTR movies raised several thousand dollars, ostensibly for the Reading is Fundamental group, but really used to line Amy and OB’s pockets. This ‘success’ caught the attention of another LOTR fan called Turimel. Turimel was an average suburban mom who was thrilled to help out with a charitible event, especially after LOTR actor Sean Astin signed on to help.
OB, Amy, Turimel, Sean Astin, and a pack of other volunteers showed up to help build a small garden. OB and Amy started planning more charity events, but things got a little derailed when OB’s home got foreclosed. Turimel ponied up the money for her newfound friends to move near her and shack up with a couple of other LOTR fans. Soon, they were joined by another sponsor, Sue, and at least two teenage minors who were living with them sporadically. According to one of these minors, Little Sam, Amy took her aside and confided that he could channel the spirit of not only Elijah Wood, but also the Hobbits and Elves from Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings Saga. Soon they were spending time in the woods, where Amy would “channel” various magical spirits. He claimed to have also had a mystical encounter while in college with a ‘Priestess’ being who revealed to Amy that he was a “rare lesbian paladin”. 2
After recruiting Sean Astin to help them build a garden for charity, OB and Amy moved onto bigger and better things. First up was a music festival, for which no bands were booked and all the money donated for it mysteriously disappeared. Then there was a fan convention called Tentmoot, for which Amy and OB recruited numerous “celebrity” guests, most of them bit actors from the LOTR movies. In order to fly these guests from New Zealand to the US, Amy approached Turimel, claiming that Air New Zealand had reneged on a promise to provide cheap airfare for the guests. In an effort to salvage the convention, Turimel charged $20,000 worth of airline tickets on her credit card.
But a subsequent phone call revealed there had never been any deal with Air New Zealand in the first place. Turimel desperately tried to cancel the tickets, but three of the bit player LOTR actors had already checked into the airport. These actors ended up sleeping on the floor of Amy and OB’s apartment, wondering what they’d signed onto. Only a handful of tickets to Tentmoot had actually been sold. With just days to go, Amy allegedly attempted suicide. Tentmoot fell apart, and an investigation by the state of Oregon revealed that the charity OB and Amy had set up had never made a single donation to anyone but themselves, and they had defrauded thousands of dollars from various venues.
Meanwhile, Amy’s dad contacts the police looking for his daughter, who turns out to have been going under the Jordan Wood persona all along. Amy had written his parents a melodramatic suicide letter, blaming Jordan Wood for stealing his girlfriend OB. Amy was also arrested for identity theft, and has been caught forging fake birth certificates and ID cards. He also stole Turimel’s SS number and used it on cell phone applications and rental applications.
BUT WAIT! There’s more! Amy Player and OB panhandled in L.A. for awhile before breaking up in awesomely douchey fashion – with Amy accusing OB of stealing his son from him (this ‘son’, by the way, was a sparrow they had found and rehabilitated together). Then Amy switched names and fandoms to Harry Potter. Now claiming to be Andrew Blake and sure to die of a lethal heart condition – for real-real, any moment now – Amy also claimed that all his woes were caused by his evil twin sister. With a newly acquired Irish accent, Amy claimed to be a soldier on the run from the IRA. He also sent fake Ceast & Desist letters to Turimel, the LOTR actors, and even Leonard Nimoy, trying to intimidate everyone into not talking about the cons he’d pulled off.
Amy’s most recent drama was being the only survivor of a triple homicide. Tragically, unlike all his other dramatic backstories, this one’s true. Amy’s response to seeing his friend murdered before his eyes was… to put out a call for donations so he could fly to New Zealand and hike across the country. Yes, really.
Sometimes I get a little ~TROLLFACE~ about awesome fandom drama, and the Amy Player saga has it all. Lies, obsession, con artists, identity theft, and Hobbit spirits. It’s also an excellent cautionary tale to remind us all to be careful who we associate ourselves with – online and offline.
- Amy Player identifies as a transman (FtM). The matter of what pronoun to use when referring to Amy has caused all manner of wank. Turimel, who documented Amy’s con-artistry, refuses to call Amy by a male pronoun, believing that Amy’s stated transgenderism is just another con. To be honest, I think Turimel’s theory is entirely plausible; that Amy was never transgendered, but it was just something he latched onto when he realized it would get him sympathy from his chosen pool of victims, in this case, fen. Be that as it may, I’m gonna use the male pronoun, to be on the safe side.
- Isn’t this how cults get started? A charismatic bugfuck nuts leader and some easily led, naive kids out in the woods? It’s a wonder no one drank the koolaid.