Story time! Story time!
Once long ago, a young girl went to school in quiet York County, Virginia. Her strong daddy worked to save the lives of others. She lived in a nice house.
She dreamed of being an artist or performer. She went to York High School, and worked summers at the Busch Gardens amusement park in Williamsburg, VA. She then went on to Christopher Newport University and became heavily involved in SF/Fantasy fandom. She was a big fan of The Lord of the Rings! She liked to get involved in fan events and to help run and sponsor conventions that raise money for charitable organizations.
Sound just like me, doesn’t it?
Same county, same high school, same summer job, same fan group, same college, same everything.
Except for this part: the girl we are talking about is not me. Her name is Amy Player.
She is about a decade younger than me, and instead of growing up to become a happy cartoonist who gets to go to conventions and sign autographs and hang out with hobbit actors, Amy Player decided she didn’t just want to go to a convention and meet Elijah Wood, she wanted to be Elijah Wood.
In a gender bending tour de force the like of which has not been seen since Victor/Victoria, she cropped off her hair, ran away from home, and adopted the identity of Jordan Wood, Elijah Wood’s male cousin, who, inexplicably (even if you read the explanation in the book), was on the run from the Irish Republican Army. She also made extraordinary claims about being sold into child prostitution by her very-shocked-to-hear-about-it family, has psychic visions, and generally made a wahoo of herself all over the place.
This means that in some fannish circles, she was very popular.
Amy/Jordan was so convincing as Jordan Wood, she managed to dupe hundreds of devoted Lord of the Rings fans into believing that she was the very person she claimed to be. As if that wasn’t enough, she even managed to convince some of the actors in the cast of Lord of the Rings, and she set up bogus charity events and conventions that bilked fan and pro alike out of thousands of dollars. She managed to bamboozle cast members, stranding a bunch of them in an airport with no plane tickets, no money, and no hotels, after they had flown to the USA all the way from New Zealand to attend a non-existent convention.
If you think that’s weird, just wait until you get to the chapter where Amy and her friends have a nice, long, online chat about how they are channeling the hobbits – and even a ringwraith – in a psychic menage a trois. It is not to be missed.
Jeanine Renne has written a very amusing account of the saga, and as someone who got squeezed for thousands of dollars by these weirdos, her account is not only personal, it is the perfect cautionary tale for anyone in or around fandom.
After all these years, I find myself also getting snookered more than I care to admit by folks like Amy Player. I even donated a bit of money to the Bit of Earth charity she dreamed up before she took off with the donated funds. I have only met Amy once when she was in Frodo garb. She was quite off-putting. I did not know who she was supposed to be. I did not find out all of this until later, either. Much later. Oh well, she got my money.
Amy has a new identity now and spends her days dressing up as various movie characters while begging money from tourists on Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, CA. She has not returned the vast sums she managed to snooker out of people and continues to run scams to this day. A recent attempt to weasel her way back into fandom – with many apologies, claims of mental illness, and promises to pay back money – turned out to be yet another big fat fake-o-rama.
Jeanine Renne has her own website where she not only sells her book of the saga, When A Fan Hits The Shit, but she also sells her handsome pottery. You can get a copy of her book autographed by Sean Astin (Sam Gamgee) directly from her.
Please buy Jeanine’s book. She lost many thousands of dollar on this mess, and has yet to make a profit on the sale of her tome. Here’s a look from Amazon’s site:
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Let me second that: When a Fan Hits the Shit is a marvelous, extremely readable book about some extraordinary events. Really, if I didn’t know it was true, I’d swear it was made up!
I am glad Jeanine wrote this book. There are some incredibly bizarre tales around fandom, and I’ll be moving a few other legendary bits from the old blog to this one in the coming weeks.
A lot of weird gets chronicled at Fandomwank (see sidebar links), but it’s good that a classic account has been preserved for posterity in book form.
On the one hand, I feel bad that talking about people like this makes fandom look bad.
On the other hand, folks need to know that there are scammers out there.
Regardless of whether or not you think people like Amy Player should be pitied because they aren’t playing with a full deck, the fact is, people like Amy Player do a lot of harm.
And crazy and whack job evil aren’t mutually exclusive states.
Every once in awhile, I pick up this tome, and shake my head in wonder. It’s hard to believe it all happened, but I saw some of it. I can’t deny the weird.
Slight nag point- the Amazon referral widget doesn’t show up in the RSS feed. I know you don’t want art to show up there, but the things that are to make you micromoney should show up, shouldn’t they?
The Amazon widget not showing up in my RSS feed is not something I can control.
I changed the settings days ago to allow art AND full posts.
Art shows up in Safari, but not in Firefox. Comic pages show in Firefox, but not in Safari. Full posts show in Safari, but not in Firefox.
Just double checked with some other sites. Yep, it’s the browser. I get truncated RSS in Firefox for other websites, but full images in Safari.
No ads seem to be showing up. I’d love it if they did. I’d make everyone buy my books. All this free content is expensive…to me. I hope people actually visit the site! Since going to Comic Press, my bandwidth usage has gone sky high.
BTW, also enlarged the lettering on the posts. If you want me to enlarge the lettering on the comments, I can do that, too. You may need to clear your cache to see the change.
I was going blind trying to read my own blog.
I’ve added that book to my Amazon Wish List, so that one of my friends or family can perhaps get it for me as a gift in the future. It looks like a great read!
I use Firefox, and I haven’t had any trouble seeing any of the content of this blog. Comic Pages, Art, advertisements, etc- all are no problem for me. Although, I really have very little knowledge on the complications of various web browsers…
I’m not having any trouble seeing anything except on the RSS feed.
oh holy crap. You hear these kinda stories on the internet all the fucking time.
Housemate_Horror has something similar with a souldbonder
Don’t keep us in suspense…send the link!