and I thought furry fandom got crazy!
Eeeek!
I’ve read over the stuff about Turimel, both pro and con. I don’t know the woman in real life; she could be a saint, or a shrill bitch, or, more likely, something inbetween, like most of us. Even if she IS a shrill bitch, that in itself is not a crime, while Amy Player is a con artist and a criminal. Turimel may have been suckered into enabling Amy’s schemes (and she was by no means the only one) but once again, that’s not a crime.
I’m gonna be perfectly honest. I’m not a ‘nice’ person, and if I’d been taken in by someone like Amy, and seen him abuse me and my friends, and THEN seen him go on to do the same to multiple other people, with very little punishment, I’d be mad as hell. Turimel is, if anything, much calmer than I would be. If Amy Player had come into my life and wrecked this sort of havoc, I fear I would’ve done something rash and violent.
I’m not going to excuse Mr. Eisenburg. Ultimately, he was the triggerman and responsible for the murders. I did see Turimel point out how everyone was focused on Eisenburg, Ms. Quinn (his ex-wife/victim) and Amy Player, but ignoring poor Mr. Chambers, who also died in the onslaught. Even Amy ignores Mr. Chambers’ sad fate (and notice how, in his own recounting of events, Amy all but implies he was the one who took down Eisenburg – despite the polices’ version of events showing that Amy cowered in the bathroom during Eisenburg’s rampage). Amy is a crazed narcissist willing to spin any tragedy, no matter how horrific, to his benefit.
Even IF Amy had nothing to do with making Eisenburg snap, his past behavior is so suspicious that people can’t help but speculate. He and OB blackmailed OB’s ex-husband and stole money from him; that right there makes it suspicious that once he moves onto this new girl, Brittany Quinn, all of a sudden he’s portraying her ex-husband as having locked her in storage sheds and forced her to work as a slave and the like. Almost identical to what Amy claimed OB’s ex-husband had done. When you’re a manipulative liar, con artist, and convicted criminal, you can’t be shocked when people suspect you of all sorts of things. I’m not sure Amy caused Eisenburg to snap, but I doubt he was a good influence on the situation, either.
How do we know Amy’s lover wasn’t a Jack Russell Terrier?
Turimel has left a bad taste in a lot of fan’s mouths with her behavior - certainly trying to post to fandom_wank when the murders occurred, crowing and bragging that this tragic event proved how right and wonderful she was, didn’t do much to endear her to a lot of folks. (The post got removed and she was banned from f_w permanently, and any mention of the murders is considered a ‘don’t go there’ issue on f_w. Their point is a wank community isn’t the place the place to gleefully gloat over the death of other human beings, no matter what. One of the mods is a fandom friend of very long standing.)
Again, Amy/Jordan/Andy is a psychopath and a despicable human being. However, Turimel’s reporting on and attitude about the whole issue has gotten very skeevy, especially the last year or two, and she’s lost supporters. Her gloating about the murders, as well as some of her statements about LGBT folks, have made a lot of her former supporters back away. She also got smacked hard by LJ for posting private information about A/J/A, including her SSN and scans of her driver’s license. Righteous anger over having been scammed is one thing; but the fandom is starting to sense that Turimel has slipped over a line and it might not be safe to be too close.
This is what geeks have instead of The Young and the Restless, right? Color me bored.
No, this is what geeks have instead of Real Housewives.
Is Turimel the one who wrote a book about this?
You lost me at “fen.” What’s wrong with “fans”?
That is a seriously crazy story. You’d think people would have stopped giving them money earlier, but I guess it’s easy for that stuff to get out of hand when people are ballsy enough to pretend they’re raising money for charity.
Ah, fen (and fen is important because the obscurity of fannish language is part of the secret handshake), by and large are two things - very trusting, and extraordinarily tolerant. Past tolerant into “we actually want to encourage those with alternate views on life.” They are also, again, generalizing, agog at celebrity, even that sort of “I went to school with Harlan Ellison’s third cousin” sort of celebrity.
This story is unusual in its scope and vision, but it isn’t actually that unusual. Amy really does seem to have tailor made his con for the community.
(Normally its just more in the fundraiser for someone who has cancer who leaves town and you hear they died, but years later you hear they didn’t - or the let someone move in with you who has fallen on hard times, and discover they’ve been stealing your stuff. Or the embezzeling convention funds. Or http://www.ajc.com/news/gwinnett/dragoncon-founder-kramer-arrested-1181076.html.)
God, I don’t miss that community at all. Still have LOTS of friends there, the sane ones who don’t let this sort of stuff into their lives.
Turimel was getting something out of it. I don’t know what, but it was something. You can’t con an honest man.
If I asked my own mother for $20,000 and the situation was anything less than “I’m kidnapped by Columbian drug lords and they need ransom” she would tell me no. Normal people never give that much money to anyone, and especially never to people outside of the family.
People who do that sort of thing are generally not acting rationally. Usually that’s because they are some variation on “in love.” Whether it’s sexual or not, something was going on there.
The scary thing is that site is just the tip of the iceberg on that particular case–I lived across an apartment complex courtyard from that entire thing in 2002.
Jeez…that’s the kind of thing (possible alternate dimensions where fictional worlds exist) that I half-believed/half-wished when I was TWELVE! And grew out of by the time I finished high school.
What can you tell us? Or are you in hiding from them too!
I don’t know the person well enough to know if it was a romantic thing, but I am wondering if the con artist preyed on people in fandom because there are people in that community who are very socially awkward and may not understand normal social boundaries the way that the rest of us do.
I certainly would never give someone $20,000 unless it was a member of my immediate family in a dire life-threatening situation, but I can picture someone who is very naive/socially awkward and desperate to be liked falling for this sort of con.
Well, the short version–the person who maintains the site isn’t innocent either–despite being mostly correct about how everything went down, she’s kinda borderline and has exhibited pedophilic/ephebephilic tendencies in the past.
Actually, I met “Hojo” from being associated with pagan society in college. As much as it pains me to think I put up with them now, I’m the “Cid” in the story (one of the articles even mentions me by this handle, IIRC). She and “Jenova” have straightened out since then, pretty much, although they all kinda go back and forth–I don’t stay in touch with them, but a friend does (“to keep an eye on them”, he says).
Also–the guy who is mentioned who they were living with (“Ghast”, I think the nickname was)? Yeah, he’s been in jail twice since then. Both times were sexual offenses.
And one of the other storytellers was involuntarily committed at some point in CA for trying to start a cult based on the Suikoden games a few years back–I think she’d threatened to kill the guy she was scamming free room and board with when he told her to stop having random groups of internet people over with no warning.
So yeah. Huge lump of crazy all around.
I’ve always been slightly confused with this story, maybe you have an idea. The demon-sushi.com link says at the top that they no longer own hojo.org and it is owned by unrelated non-crazy people. However, I knew someone named Kat (also known as EK and Hojo no Miko) who owned hojo.org at some point. There is also someone named Kat in the letters on demon-sushi. Is this a coincidence, or are they the same person?
For the life of me I can’t make heads or tails of anything in that link. Can somebody sum up the story in a paragraph please?
There were at least two Kats involved, neither of whom I knew personally. Sorry, can’t help you there.
Couple of FF7-obsessed folks (by which I mean, they believed that they were the reincarnations of characters from the game) with surprising amounts of charisma convince several other people at varying times to move in with them and pay their way, with at least some emotional and physical abuse involved. Hilarity ensues when one of their followers decides to create a gigantic internet warning page about them before going batshit insane herself.
Identity Politics is a wonderful thing, eh?