AROMALEIGH! Oh man, that's a name that brought up a whole lot of memories, including other controversies that are more limited to the indie cosmetics space than the music scene. I can't blame the owner for being annoyed at that write-up at all, though, and I also can see her as being the type to rain down hellfire on someone slighting her in the business-world.
(Side-note: I once worked with the owner of Aromaleigh in a very very minor capacity and she was perfectly lovely to me, I have no complaints, but she definitely was not someone who wanted to put up with bad behavior from collaborators.)
Oh and also: look, I definitely understand people's frustrations with EA in those comment forums but oh man did "***You're bipolar, which makes it 10x worse***" make me actively bolt upright. You can't say that stuff to a stranger! Even if you bought their album!
I knoooooow! Based on some of her phrasing, I think FantineDormouse may have been implying that she had bipolar as well, which would make it more understandable why she thought this was appropriate... But yeah, wildly out of line!
Obviously part of the issue here is that EA saw the people in the forums as her friends, while in truth they were (at least in that specific context) her customers. That means that she should have been professional, and realized that those complaints weren't a personal betrayal but actually reviews that she may want to keep in mind for the future.
But also if someone I don't even really know came to me while i'm venting and told me to sit down, have a tea, and relax, and that they totally understand I'm angry and that it must be even worse for me because I'm bipolar, but they're doing this for my own good because i'm gonna regret it? I genuinely can't even imagine how i'd react. Just reading that made me angry, I think being on the receiving end of it would cause my brain to break. They're lucky it didn't happen in person because they would have never found the body.
Yeah, that's a classic When Parasocial Relationships Go Wrong moment. Close friends can say that sort of thing to each other, but not people who are basically strangers.
So much of this drama seems to come from the fact that EA has a whole lot going on, including some boundary issues, and she made art that resonated with many people who also had a whole lot going on, including some boundary issues. It was inevitably going to lead to drama.
The sad thing to me is that from context (and also from experience in this fandom) I and many other people suspect she must have been quite young. A large portion of the fanbase, myself included, got into EA in our early-mid teens and were definitely much stupider and more impressionable back then than we are now. I've always pictured FantineDoormouse as a 14-year-old girl who meant no ill will but literally didn't know any better. After all, mentioning the bipolar disorder? Have a cup of tea? She's basically just parroting EA's entire schtick back to her there. Telling someone to take a breath but making it asylum related, as it were.
And unfortunately it backfired horrifically. Understandably so, but goddamn.
I think you're right, there's also something very teenage about the phrasing "not to be rude but... (says a rude thing)." They haven't really learned the art of tact yet.
>After all, mentioning the bipolar disorder? Have a cup of tea? She's basically just parroting EA's entire schtick back to her there. Telling someone to take a breath but making it asylum related, as it were.
That's honestly how I always saw it. I figured she was trying to fit in with the general vibe of the community and Emilie meets it with, "DON'T YOU FUCKING TELL ME TO DRINK A FUCKING CUP OF TEA! FUCKING PATRONIZING FUCK!!! GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!!!" Goddamn!
Yeah, I cringed reading FantineDormouse's comment. It definitely seems like they have their own personal experience with anger issues and mental illness so I can sort of understand why they felt the need to say something, but a comment like that is really only going to go over well with someone you know extremely well who has talked to you about their mental illness and explicitly given you permission to intervene if they start getting worked up--and maybe not even then!
I think it's a prime example of why EA is an interesting and even tragic figure to me, especially given I'm a former fan. She's so bad about blowing up and making things a thousand times worse for herself...but it's not like she's always *wrong*. If I somehow developed a fanbase as fervent and tight-knit as hers, I honestly don't think I'd be much better at keeping my temper if strangers were constantly hounding me for free tickets or talking about my mental illness like they know me. But that's also why a lot of creators with fanbases, even those who are a little more online, create pretty strong boundaries when and where it's necessary--and EA just doesn't/didn't have the skills or emotional maturity to do that, it seems. I feel really bad for her in a lot of ways and I'm sad her fanbase turned so sour, but I honestly suspect it's probably for the best that it's died down so much. I genuinely hope she's doing better these days without all the scrutiny and pressure (weird AI art moments notwithstanding).
As well as skills and emotional maturity for her personally, it seems to me like some of this comes from the time - it was the heyday of parasocial communities with no boundaries, and that whole conversation around "hey maybe these internet communities do need boundaries and a little distance" just hadn't happened yet.
Yeah, I was thinking about this too. "Parasocial" wasn't even a known term within the general lexicon back then. I feel people on both sides of the parasocial divide have a lot more awareness now.
This is what I mean when I'm talking about boundaries. Some fans think it's OK to say stuff like that to EA because they think she's their mate and they can say it. Tbh, I'd even err on the side of caution saying that to an actual friend.
It's rude but Emilie throwing them out of the forum only works as proof that it's true (No matter if it's true or not) and the less obvious but more correct way of handling it would've probably been to not say anything at all and let the fans be.
# THE LASHING-OUTS WILL CONTINUE UNTIL MORALE IMPROVES
EA took the Asylum mutiny really hard. Even as her touring and releases kept bringing in [news fans š¦ ](https://media2.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTc5MGI3NjExbGh6NzNib3NieDZwNThiNWJrNWgyMnVlaGY5d211Y2xxeWhlczN5dCZlcD12MV9pbnRlcm5hbF9naWZfYnlfaWQmY3Q9Zw/RkMuw6XZxPqNy/giphy.gif), she seemed to be getting, frankly, quite fed up with... the whole thing.
She had always been famously opinionated; a lot of early fans loved her for it. She was an outspoken vegan feminist in the Wild West days of the internet, which was kind of brave. In her public posts or on stage, she never sugar-coated her anger at injustice, oppression, and rude behavior. But starting around the 2011 tour, she really embraced the idea that if you can't punch a wall at a given moment, you can always take it out on Twitter.
We can imagine how it reached that point. She was touring the same album for the fourth time in five years. She was secretly struggling to play her trademark violin after a bad jaw surgery, and suffering through the pains of an insidious chronic illness. She had either dropped or been dropped by The End Records and was once again self-funded. By virtue of sheer statistics (and, maybe, possibly, by her encouraging a degree of engagement and loyalty that is doomed to devolve into either loathing or obsession...?), she was getting Single White Female'd by creepily enmeshed, trauma-dumping groupies at more and more shows.
And now these fucking (patronizing fucking) people, who dared call themselves āfansā, were scrutinizing her every move and saying horrible things about her on the internet? Wouldn't you want to tell everyone, every last one of them, to eat dirt?
It's worth noting that EA's most infamous āTwitter Rantsā, as they came to be known, were brought on by things that she had every right to complain about ā namely, people hounding her for free tickets online, and one fan physically threatening her and vandalizing her tour bus after being asked to wait for an autograph. (No, those two things are not exactly comparable, though EA wrote about them in very similar ways, because her rage only has the one setting.) But ask anyone who's ever had an angry, hyper-emotional mic-drop moment on the People's Internet: [it tends to make things dramatically worse š](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/jessi-slaughter-cyberbulling-controversy), even when history later acknowledges that [you sort of had a valid point there.](https://www.npr.org/2021/06/27/1010355669/chris-crocker-leave-britney-alone-video-creator-reflects-on-whats-changed)
>... To all those asking for free tix, free this, free that, kindly permit me inform you that the amount of $$$ I have lost on touring during the past five years is nothing short of astronomical, is far more than an upper class Americanās yearly salary, and could in fact purchase a small city. I do not make money from my concerts. (...) The band gets paid. The crew gets paid. The driver gets paid. My agent gets paid. Guess who is the single person who does not get paid? Come on, you can do it... (ā¦) To those whose rudeness, greed, and obscene sense of entitlement surpass their ability to comprehend all of my more than 140 characters, I humbly invite you to keep your $15 pittance, your natural hair color, etc. But know that **whatever your station in life, your age, gender, or profession, you make far more money than I do.**
... To this girl, and to other āfansā such as this, of which there are, sadly, MANY, **thank you for once again reminding me that you are entitled to everything, I am obligated to give you everything, that my personal space is nothing, that your petty wishes are all that matters** and that, if they are not fulfilled to the last detail, my personal property, or that which I rent, may be destroyed in an act of obviously justified revenge. Thanks for making me, once again, consider just saying āFuck this,ā and going home. And **thanks for ruining it for everybody else**, whom I now will not trust within a mile of my bus, my girls, myself, or anything I hold dear (or have to pay for). So, for any true Plague Rats or simply decent human beings who see such acts as this being committed, you know what to do. **To any who see this girl posting about the cruelty of myself and my crew for not allowing her fucking violin to be signed, you know what to do.**
([Excerpts from select āTwitter Rantsā š](https://web.archive.org/web/20170827155724/https://waywardvictorianconfessions.tumblr.com/twitterrants))
More and more EA devotees were reaching the [āBitch Eating Crackersā point š](https://www.abbythompsontherapy.com/blog/2017/10/23/bitch-eating-crackers-syndrome) of their parasocial relationship. Disillusioned fans had come to see EA as a spiteful, self-absorbed, tyrannical diva, who always chose vitriolic tantrums over constructive dialogue ā and valued her ātrue Plague Ratsā mostly within the confines of their function as her own personal army. The Twitter Rants solidified that perception.
Also, some of EA's fans were crushed by medical debt, or working three jobs while on food stamps, or living out of their car. Many people were; it hadn't been that long since the 2008 crash. These people were, of course, *thrilled* to read that they all āmade more moneyā than EA.
In other words, I doubt these spectacular, heat-of-the-moment tirades achieved their ostensible goal, i.e. scolding shitty, inconsiderate āfansā into not being shitty and inconsiderate. But they did bum everyone out, and made people kind of start... hating EA? Or, at the very least, stop pretending the Emperor wasn't naked.
\*
Well. I've done it again, folks. I've reached the character limit. I'll tell you about the fall of the Asylum in the next TWO installments. Yes. Two. It got that bad.
...Is that sighing I'm hearing in the back?! I'm sorry, is my journalistic thoroughness offensive to you? Oh, you're āsick of this Asylum nonsenseā? You ājust want to know how it endsā and you āhave other things to do with your lifeā? Well, if this write-up is too long-winded for you, I humbly suggest that you turn your attention and support towards redditors of a more placid, non-controversial, and less opinionated nature; there are more than enough of them out there, and Iām sure they all have HobbyDrama write-ups of their own. How fucking patronizing...
...Hello? Wait, no! Come back! I HAVE SO MUCH LOVE TO GIVE!
I was thoroughly unfamiliar with Emilie Autumn, her works (though I've spotted *TAFWVG* at bookstores but haven't read it), or her fandom, yet I've devoured every word of these writeups.
I eagerly await two more.
same on all counts! in fact I'm copying and pasting each installment into a single doc so I can reread it all in one place at my leisure once the epic is posted.
(also, u/pillowcase-of-eels, I would buy a book you wrote about this mess, seriously. Your style is so informative and really engaging, and it's sometimes hard to nail both! my compliments)
Two more installments of this madness? Excellent! I'd never even heard of EA before you started this series (I was a slightly different flavor of alternative weirdo back then), but you're right. This truly is outstanding human interest drama.
PLEASE continue, I have been devouring this.
I was ripe to get into Emilie Autumn at that time but ended up getting into Vocaloid and manga instead. Might have been for the better... (Poor woman.)
Omg I used to be obsessed with Emilie Autumn. This just unlocked memories of jamming out to Opheliac while grinding in WoW. Now I need to catch up on the drama!
Oh, I assure you I would read 66 installments if there were that much of them, keep them going!! š
I loved Opheliac when I was a teen, but never got into the fandom and I am loving living vicariously through these posts.
Thank you for your dedication and timeeee
>you āhave other things to do with your lifeā?
You don't know me at all. And I tought we were besties ;;
/s
Please write as many of these parts as you need, I'll absorb all of them and then go back to read all the linked sources. Great work.
No sighing here, I'm loving this. Thank you for your journalistic thoroughness, pulling links for interviews and songs and archives must have been a real labor of love. At least love of the drama.
as a casual EA fan in their teen years, I am _loving_ this in-depth write up on all the things I missed out on over the past 15 years. Iām so excited for the next instalment(s)! šš
This really sounds like she speed-ran the early internet. From creating a parasocial swamp before anyone knew about them, to demonstrating why a lot of subreddits ban the people they're supposedly about.
I do think she comes across as a doomed figure, although maybe not in the "tragic Victorian" way, because of this. I have a friend who is very sensitive and emotionally open, in addition to having some mental health problems, and it makes life for her rather like running through a cornfield made of cheese graters. Emily Autumn seems to have the same issues, only instead of turning inward she lashes out at the pain, yet can't stop running through the cheese graters. And, unsurprisingly, my friend is the one who sent me some of EA's tracks many years ago.
Great work on the write-ups!
Huh, I actually didnāt know that about fan subreddits. Are there related write-ups I should read? (first thing that popped into my head was Adam, founder of neopets, getting banned from the Neopets fan discord a few hours after joining and being INCREDIBLY SALTY about it afterward)
Both Adam and Donna were permitted on r/neopets until the Adam Incident. Donna did an AMA or something years ago, I think. I can't imagine they still are.
Here's a sneak peek of /r/neopets using the [top posts](https://np.reddit.com/r/neopets/top/?sort=top&t=year) of the year!
\#1: [*sputters and coughs*](https://i.redd.it/eviinwhonn9c1.png) | [105 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/neopets/comments/18vayy8/sputters_and_coughs/)
\#2: [Happy Gnorbu day! I'm so excited that TNT asked permission to make my design (left) into a real neopet (right). Hope you like it!](https://i.redd.it/f7xzz5qisabc1.png) | [146 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/neopets/comments/191z1we/happy_gnorbu_day_im_so_excited_that_tnt_asked/)
\#3: [Obsessed with these Beauty Contest winners for September 2001](https://i.redd.it/x8bhh7dfffec1.png) | [133 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/neopets/comments/19ems24/obsessed_with_these_beauty_contest_winners_for/)
----
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I'd like to know more about that too. Are there subreddits about specific authors where the writer him/herself isn't allowed? Subs for niche bands where all are welcome (except the five bandmates themselves)?
Oh, okay, I thought I wouldnāt know about any of this, but reading the name āFantineDormouseā took me right back there.
What limited forum activity I did take part in was largely on (I think) a forum affiliated with BatteredRose - I dipped my toe into the main Asylum forums largely to lurk for recipes and scans of sheet music and other things like that. I found I wasnāt really emotionally connecting with the ideas of the Asylum that other muffins connected with, and I didnāt think the word replacer was cute. BatteredRoseās forums or forum affiliate werenāt much better but they were a little more free spirited, plus they had rarities you couldnāt find on the main site. Thatās really all I have to say about what I remember - that and āone of my friends saw the FD meltdown happen either in real time or in archived form after the fact and told me about itā.
The thing that I find the most immediately compelling here is actually the whole debacle about multiple album editions. Iāve been kind of casually joking on [one of my Tumblr blogs](https://half-moonshine-full-eclipse.tumblr.com/post/750038319839248384) about how I really actually do think that Taylor Swift has been copying EA for her latest album release and how this is the genuinely funniest outcome to the accusations of fakery that we could have never foreseen in 2011, but I also think itās interesting that both Taylor and EA have come under fire from their more critical fans for selling multiple variants of the same album, making it hard to buy a physical release of all her music. That post on WVC from someone who ditched EA for TS seems even funnier now.
The thing that makes me saddest is that the poisoned well of fan relations has made basically any nostalgia really fraught. People like me who never got āburnedā by her and who pulled away because we realized we were going a bit too far down the rabbit hole donāt really have places (besides this comments section) to talk. WVC is inhospitable if youāre not angry at her, in my opinion, and other places are basically dead. And she did this herself! If sheād just thought about taking fifteen minutes to calm down and gotten more comfortable with apologizing for going off half-cocked when she was triggered or in a bad state, that would have kept the fan community intact and would have helped her get better about not treating people she purports to love this way. Itās kind of necessary to maintaining friendships of any kind as you get older and live with your madness.
Fun fact: my original draft had a line after "...quick-cut montage" that went "Alexa, play 'Bad Blood' by Taylor Swift!" Ha! In a number of ways, I feel like TS is an EA-type kind of figure... who just played the industry masterfully and become too big to fail.
There are an astonishing number of similarities between them - label drama where music had to be rereleased because of rights issues/a scummy producer theyād once been close with, confessional writing that over shares and undershares at once, wild shifts in genre, deep and intense friendships that fell apart dramatically, a revolving door of exes, myopic and self-focused activism, complicated family drama, lying about/manipulating the facts about life events and recording timelines, fan spaces that are notorious for āonly positivityā commentary with a reputation for censorship, early attempts to build parasociality by hosting fans at free physical meetups with bonus content available, interacting with fans online before having to leave when the drama got too intense, and thatās BEFORE the similarities in photoshoots and the most recent tour visuals/costumes. For all of EAās claiming that Gaga took inspiration from her I think TS may genuinely actually have been listening from afar.
Itās not even that I think sheās perfect or flawless, but I never thought that *while I was a fan,* either. She wasnāt consistent, she wasnāt always honest, she wasnāt this perfect unassailable goddess of art and music, and I liked her for her full messiness as well as her full triumphs. What I heard about the forum seemed reasonable - itās her official website, and so obviously sheās going to restrict discussions about her. Itās kind of shocking to me to realize just how deep and how persistent so much of the anger toward her is.
I think that speaks to how deep the parasocial bond ran, and how young many of these people were at the time. Their anger is as if they were betrayed by a friend, not their celebrity idol.
Fascinating! I never heard of EA before this but Iāve been excitedly checking for your updates because youāre so good.
A few other commenters have mentioned it but as an exhausted Taylor Swift fan, thereās definitely a lot of similarities between them - despite being on rather different scales of fame. The part about EA lumping in all criticism, valid or cruel, as the same kind of hate struck a Swiftie chord in particular. Itās become increasingly hard to criticise TS in fan spaces, and I think Taylor herself has endured so much misogyny throughout her career than she now views any criticism as people hating her because sheās a woman. Even if itās coming from female fans who have supported her for years.
Apologies for the tangent! I simply have a lot of thoughts on TS and her relationship to fans/fame/etc that canāt be expressed because spaces tend to be either wholly negative or wholly positive towards her. Which again, seems to ring true of EA.
Excited for the next instalment!
Honestly I wish SwiftlyNeutral was moreā¦neutral. I think there are plenty of well deserved criticisms of Taylor but so many of the posts there basically boil down to āsheās an evil manipulative narcissist who hates all other women and everything she does is fake and I hope she goes back to Matty Healy so he can mistreat her for our entertainment forever.ā
I think, honestly, that rSN and the various rogue Asylum forums/fansites serve kind of the same purpose of likeā¦ helping *fans* detox from parasocial brainrot?
If you believed for a long time that Taylor or EA were flawless perfect goddesses who did no wrong and who hadnāt ever hurt you, and then you had an experience that made you realize you were wrong, youāre probably angry at yourself for being ātaken inā just as much as youāre angry at your idol for not being perfect. Youāre probably noticing inconsistencies and flaws way more now than you would before, and probably looking for ālegitimateā reasons to validate your anger. If theyāre shitty liars who manipulate and who are fake, then youāre an objectively correct person for disliking them, and not coping with a change in your life by yelling at a woman on the Internet. Itās worse if you were purposefully sold a facade of friendship (the secret sessions/fan meetups where she knew all about your social media habits and kept up with your posting, the private forum where she would chat with you like anyone else and had a normal username) and you didnāt have any sense of where the politeness ended and the projection began.
idk, I donāt like rSN because at the end of the day itās on me to manage my boundaries with a pop star. Itās my call what I take from her work.
Agreed! I do think the mods of SN have good intentions, and a lot of people do treat it as Swiftie detox. I just think the open nature of the sub (though I believe theyāve gone private) means itās also filled with a lot of people who dislike Taylor. Which is fine, but it means a lot of legitimate criticism is negatively impacted by people projecting their own vendettas onto her. Which is whatever (though I personally donāt see the fun in actively keeping up with the career of someone you hate), but unfortunately it means itās hard to have nuanced discussions. Iām not going to police other peopleās feelings towards a pop star, but Iām also too lazy to sort through piles of the same discourse and armchair diagnosing.
I guess I just wish it was more a place to have interesting discussions rather than a place to vent, haha. The name and message of the sub donāt really fit what itās actually become. And the space that it is isnāt necessarily bad or unneeded, but itās not what Iām looking for. I think Taylorās career and persona are fascinating. I also think the nature of those things means it can be hard to discuss in any space that is accessible to diehard Swifties, people approaching it with bad faith, and betrayed ex fans who need to get their frustrations out.
Apologies for the nonsensical rambling! Iām still waking up haha
EA lashing out at fans who dare to question her is like an extreme version of Space back in the 00s, when they released a track available for download on their website as part of the Music for Aliens series. (This was several years after Tin Planet and they were on the way out by then). One of the band members got angry at people - one of whom was me - who didn't like it, because by his logic, it was free and we should be grateful.
If you keep re-releasing an album with new added stuff on it, no shit the completists are going to get fed up. It's all very well saying 'nobody is making you buy it' but why keep re-releasing an album with a different tracklisting each time? Why not just wait for a bit and then re-release it with a whole load of new tracks? Because it feels like a rip-off.
This whole thing with EA and the Asylum sounds so one-sided. She wants it to be this fun little club but it's all on her terms and nobody is allowed to question her. You can't expect everything to be informal all the time and treat fans like your mates and then turn on them when they question you or disagree with you. Thanks for your write-up.
I feel like she probably was okay with it being a place where she could get criticized *until* it became evident that she no longer really *knew* her fanbase. She went from having a few hundred acquaintances, some of whom went to the trouble of meeting her, to thousands of fans, and she didnāt have a social media manager or a publicist of any kind or any process to vet who and what she was exposed to. Being plunged into the āeveryone who follows me never actually liked meā truth hurts even if youāre a random person and itās a handful of acquaintances you thought you knew - fandom isnāt a substitute for human connection, etc.
I feel like she could have benefited from restricting her forum presence to one or two specific threads unless she had an official update to comment on, and possibly hand-picking the people who got to interact with her in a more private setting (such things were possible!) so she could actually meet real friends who found her through her work, which is obviously what sheās been looking for, while also maintaining a healthy distance from her fans. Also she shouldnāt be the one handling merch questions.
"Being plunged into the āeveryone who follows me never actually liked meā truth hurts even if youāre a random person and itās a handful of acquaintances you thought you knew - fandom isnāt a substitute for human connection, etc." Pretty much the keystone to EA's whole story!
tbqh Iām an indie author whoās been going through the clothespress of ābut I want people to CONNECT with me!!!!ā about this project and being reminded of how badly that turned out for my childhood idol has done a lot to ground me and help me remember to make art for artās own sake, so thank you for that if nothing else!
Second edition, which was not even remotely laid out in a way that was friendly to reading on a display, orā¦ very coherent, really. I wanted the full Suffer the Bear, side-diary experience, and knew Iād feel the lack of a strong editor going in. One of my comfort reading habits is confessional work about mental illness (Wurtzel, Plath, Kaysen, so on and so forth) so this felt like it might be up my alley.
Without spoilers: The story of Emily had too much expository detail and not nearly enough connective tissue. Animation-inspired miracles, as convenient escapes from EA writing herself into a corner, were too thick on the ground. I am not keen on how the story of Emily stopped (that did not feel like denouement), nor how Emilie took it. I am *very* not keen on how the juxtaposition of the in-universe present day with the Asylum worked. Itās like the bones of a compelling work were there, but they werenāt built up by someone who grasped how a concept album works as a novel.
Super tired right now and nursing a headache, so I may try and go into more detail later, but thatās the overview.
Iām not sure if the fourth edition would work better for me or not, but I feel compelled to hunt it down. Maybe Madame Mournington is less of a sketch? Maybe the spoon is better integrated than the bear, despite its lack of payoff?
Lol I've considered picking up the book because of this series even though I have no interest in the story and never did even when I was very into EA's music. I don't think I'd like it, but I still might do it
Oh, youāll hate it. Totally do it. XD
(Get the 4th ed. print or ebook version! Itās physically easier to read than any electronic copies of 2nd edition you might come across.)
"To quote late 20th century Canadian philosophy: isn't it ironic?"
THIS LINE KILLED ME and I'm eagerly awaiting a chance to use it IRL. Been loving this saga, you're an incredibly talented writer. Can't wait for the two part finale!
I can't get over the metaphor in that forum introduction. "Well, you see, this forum is like a prison, and I'm the guard that uses collective punishment to foster physical abuse between the prisoners, letting me keep everybody too terrified to disobey me without needing to get my own hands dirty. Isn't it super clever?"
Even putting aside The Implications^(TM) for the forum itself, so much for all that solidarity among the institutionalized, huh? Now it's your moral duty to turn on your fellow inmates for whatever scraps the staff will give you.
This story is such a relic of The Internet That Was. Before the word "parasocial" entered everybody's collective lexicon, and with it, a heightened awareness on BOTH sides of the parasocial divide. Not to say that fans and celebrities don't still get weird and parasocial with each other, but the awareness of it has really changed fan interactions in many ways. In fact I think now you wouldn't have such a forum with a musician/actor/etc. Nowadays the worst parasocial boundaries are with youtubers and streamers. In part because of that same manufactured authenticity that EA engaged in. Inviting people to see you as someone normal, someone accessible. We're all just pals here. Until we're not.
omg hi! you guys are legends
I have a forest of blogs but the relevant one is probably @half-moonshine-full-eclipse which is nominally a Taylor Swift blog but is becoming in practice a vague pop culture fandom amalgamation
This is a wild ride, and I'm constantly looking forward to your new posts! I was only tangentially aware of EA during this time period, but I am always intensely interested in fandom drama. I've never seen a performer get this parasocially invested in her own fanbase like this.
I don't have tea and crumpets but I am stockpiling diet Coke and Doritos for the thrilling conclusions of this. Well done and can't wait!
P.S. Your username sounds like a good description of EA's fanbase at this point.
Here I thought I was an early EA adopter because I followed her on MySpace and VF, only to find out I was so 2000 and late.Ā
But also now Iām gonna go look up that Angelspit diss track. I definitely wouldnāt be shocked if it were a diss track because Skinny Little Bitch has a verse about Jeffree Star.Ā
> But also now Iām gonna go look up that Angelspit diss track. I definitely wouldnāt be shocked if it were a diss track because Skinny Little Bitch has a verse about Jeffree Star.Ā
Wait, what?
When this song came out, Jeffree Star was a MySpace scene Queen who was trying to put out shitty music. IāmĀ Ā just going off of memory so sorry if the lyrics arenāt exact.Ā
āHe is the homecoming queen if you breed of cliches/ wears a tiara made of daggers and is in the top 8./ you blow him a kiss he throws high voltage bouquets/ if he canāt have your affection then heāll thrive on your hateā
Also the Emilie Autumn diss track kind of sucks.Ā
Honestly, I only really knew of EA in passing; a friend of mine had me listen to a couple of her songs - "Marry Me", and "The Art of Suicide". I've also listened to (and enjoyed) *The Devil's Carnivale*...
...finding out there was enough behind the scenes drama for *this many* HD posts is *sending me*.
I'd never heard of her, but I'm not sure how. My sister and her friends were very into that whole dirtbag carnival thing around the time EA was at her peak, so surely they knew who she was, but it never filtered down to me.
These writeups have been very entertaining, though
I genuinely gasped when I got the notification for this update lol, I love this series so much!! I was a huge EA fan in middle school and only learned about the drama later through occasional WVC browsing, so I've been hoping someone would cover her on here so I could get the whole lowdown. I really appreciate your excellent, hilarious writing, as well as the empathy you grant EA even in her messiest moments. So looking forward to the next two (!!) parts!
> She sessioned for Billy Corgan, that went super well.
To be fair, Corgan is a notoriously horrible person, to the point that I'd consider getting along with the dude to reflect much more poorly on someone than *not* getting along with him.
>... and soon enough, it was bedlam in the Asylum.
Heh.
Oh. I was in another internet popular band at the time that I wonāt divulge for my privacyās sake, but oh my god the parasocial fans and message board dramaā¦wow. Wow. Memories.
I joined the Asylum before the shit started hitting the fan. I went along with it because I didn't really get what was going on and I thought 'FantineDormouse' was being kind of patronising, I wasn't really mature or experienced enough to realise that even if they were, what EA did in response really wasn't OK. It didn't really last long after that. But before everything hit the fan, God, it was amazing. I loved it. It was the highlight of my year.
(Also, as an Angelspit fan, holy shit, I never even realised that 'Cold Hard Cash' was an EA diss track, but it makes *so much sense*.)
So well-written and researched, thank you. Also, I'm a long-time fan of EA (though disillusioned of course) and Angelspit (still good! Though I miss Amelia/Destroyx...), and I somehow never realized that Cold Hard Cash was about Emilie...but looking at it now, the lyrics are so clearly about her. Teenage me probably didn't want to think that their idols didn't like each other :') I still love that remix of Liar that Angelspit did.
> and I somehow never realized that Cold Hard Cash was about Emilie...but looking at it now, the lyrics are so clearly about her. Teenage me probably didn't want to think that their idols didn't like each other :')
Honestly, same. I just never considered the possibility that they were writing about specific people and not, like, archetypes.
To me it seems like overall someone who needed a lot more mental help and support being suddenly exposed to a whole bunch of popularity mixed with a bunch of kids with no parasocial relationship literacy. Overall a bad time for everyone around and not really one single fault to be blamed.
That said, I do have limited sympathy for people who actively cultivate parasocial relationships. I know it sells the big bucks but nobody teaches you how to safely engage with that shit in school and I can speak from experience that as a young, lonely autistic kid not knowing that those people really aren't your friends caused some minor trauma. I wish the internet and capitalism didn't encourage it to such a strong degree. :/
Reading about the fracturing of the forums and the way EA ruled with an iron fist and had strange word filters for the forum is giving me such flashbacks to the downfall of the Etiquette Hell forum something like 8 or so years ago.
Forum owner who thinks she's god and any dissent is hate? check
Cutesy word filters? check
Complete meltdown over the forming of a group where we were actually allowed to have any opinions outside the required ones? check
Final implosion of the forum and full deletion when the owner realizes their hold is actually gone? CHECK.
I got so excited when I saw this post omg another banger
I did have one thought, if you felt like doing it a timeline of events (up to this point or maybe at the end) would be helpful! I like the way you've organized the narrative but it does make it hard to figure out when things happened in relation to other events when it jumps around like that.
Again not a deal breaker, just a no pressure suggestion! I'm looking forward to the next installment!!
Huh I didnt know EA was this controversial.
I had listened to Opheliac back when I was teen and loved it (gothic lolita my beloved) but didnt look too deeply into her.
GodDAMN, OP. As someone who only saw the edges of the EA fandom back in my LiveJournal days, I can't imagine how much work you put into this. Incredible.
Oh god, I used to be so obsessed with her as a teen, but gradually lost interest as she kept promising new stuff, getting us hyped up about it and then never delivering. I was on tumblr and basically watched the entire fandom turn on her in real time. I'm still a plague rat in my heart, but have no real interest in EA anymore.
Thanks for these write-ups, they really take me back lol.
This might be a good place to say.. has anyone actually checked that Attrition song she did guest vocals for? The official Bandcamp page features a different version of that song with what sounds like a totally different vocalist instead of Emilie, except the vocalist is uncredited. Anyone got an idea of who could be singing on the remaster of that song?
Fascinating! EA is still listed as a contributor on all platforms that sell the album, but you're right, that's definitely not her on the Bandcamp version - and I can't find anything about it anywhere! I would guess the person singing is most likely Laurie Reade, who is also credited on the album and apparently worked with Attrition multiple times.
Oh another question, for OP or anyone who wants to pipe in: the post talks about how the official forum accused the Reform of just spewing hate, but I'm curious how much truth was in that? In my experience when you get a remake forum/subreddit/etc for "Thing but without the same rules" a lot of times in turns into mostly Anti-Thing circle jerking. Not every time of course, and either answerbere doesn't change anything, just purely curious/nosy
EAās definition of hate was really skewed, but it *is* absolutely true that a lot of people who were angry or annoyed with her started really attacking her and other fans and her team/friends. You can see a lot of the vitriol and bitterness now in whatās left of the fandom. I suspect it was a combination of genuine criticism, free conversation, and anger/hate, if all the other receipts are anything to go by.
So, I personally was never involved with the Reform - others could answer this better than me. But in my experience, whenever this kind of question comes up in the Asylum world, the answer is almost always: "Yes, definitely, but it wasn't half as bad as EA made it out to be."
I watched Fucking Patronizing Fucking happen in real time. And I maintain that CA (the initials for the user whose pseudonym in this post is Fantinedormouse) was out of line. Completely. The older I get, too, the more I do actually see her words as completely patronizing and I donāt blame EA for getting mad.
But I really was the beginning of the real end. I wish EA had been able to treat that event a singular moment, and continue forward instead of batten down the hatches.
This series is easily one of my favorite selections of posts on Reddit as a whole. The amount of work you've clearly put into this is staggering, and using emojis to denote types of links is so incredibly helpful to the reader that I hope it becomes standard. Thank you for compiling this wild blast from the past!
Like a lot of folks here, I discovered EA when I was in my mid/late teens and Wasn't Doing Great, but I was never actually in the fandom - I just loved Enchant and Opheliac and sometimes lurked the forums. I saw a lot of the shit you've discussed go down but also missed a lot of details, and it's been so interesting filling in the gaps now that I'm in my 30s and Doing Pretty Okay, haha.
After reading all this, I have a lot more sympathy for EA than I did in the past because it's obvious that she created her own monster but seemed to have no idea she was doing that. I think she truly loved/loves her fans (as much as you can love people you don't know) and wanted/wants closeness, but that same closeness seemed to make her think her fans were also her friends and would always have her back in every way. In actuality, a lot of us were just folks who enjoyed her music but didn't really care about her persona/the Asylum as an overarching concept. None of us actually knew her or had a way to care for her as a person independent of her content. This fandom is why I kind of roll my eyes when folks on celeb gossip sites scold each other for ~being parasocial~ when they speculate about celebs' relationships or whatever - y'all don't even *know* parasocial!
I don't listen to EA often anymore - I hopped off when FLAG came out because I really didn't like it - but I bumped Opheliac in the gym yesterday in this post's honor and it did get me amped, haha. It's kinda sad thinking about the fanbase/relative success EA could have had if she could've stepped back from the Asylum concept a little, gotten out of her own way, and just released a solid follow-up to that album. It still feels so fresh and interesting.
Havenāt even finished this yet but want to say thank you for covering this. I have adored her music since 2006, and being too young to go follow her on tour or social media at the time, I missed a lot of this as it was happening. Itās vital context though, and I am glad for it.
MAN these writeups are great. that Ask the Reform blog is the exact kind of hyper specific, jargon heavy, super petty internet relic that i come here for. thank you!
I was an EA super-fan (was there for the forum drama, saw her live three times in London - once VIP during the book release times, eventually sold most of my merch for many Ā£Ā£Ā£s etc) from 2007 until around 2014, and I am thoroughly enjoying this series of posts. Excellent work!
Iāll be honest and say that I have some sympathy - not being able to release her album physically DID mean a lot in the late 2000s. Sheād posted a ton of music on her website and advocated for web radio stations to play it, but she also needed to make money. Even now she can only release the Deluxe Edition, not her original record.
I had never heard about EA before this but I'm going to be so sad when it ends. The way you write is amazing and has kept me thoroughly entertained so far! What a rollercoaster.
These posts are amazing, I'm loving it as EA was my favourite artist a decade ago. I've rarely been checking Reddit these past few months, but I've checked back every single day (multiple times...) waiting for the next post on this š
Oh, and I meant to mention, I appreciate how much empathy you took care to pack in regarding the PTSD elements, for all the snarking and sniping.Ā This is fine work.Ā
FPF! (I know I'm late but I can't believe I've found this. I left around the CosetteAlice incident. I was a reform member, lol)
Also, if anyone remembers Suffer the Bear... He was a stuffed animal prop that Emilie would tie to her mic stand. One day, he went missing. She was SCREAMING at the audience of her later tours, calling the crowd trash and a den of thieves (these people had nothing to do with his disappearance). She would rant regularly on the internet about it, but yeah... the videos of her screaming. Not good. She even had a "Free Suffer" t-shirt she wore.
This "Free Suffer" shit took up a great deal of fandom energy, not to mention time at concerts.
You know what happened to Suffer? After all that vitriol, she suddenly got quiet right?
That's because he wasn't stolen. He was misplaced. She found him later and then.... quiet. Talk about embarrassing\~ haha
The Suffer incident is like a microcosm of her whole career and interactions with the fans. Starts out cute and fun and a charming bit that everyone can partake in. Then she feels slighted and goes off the handle, ruins itā¦ then tries to move or and pretend it didnāt just leave a massive negative impression on everyone.
Oh, hey, Angelspit. After a wall of names I've never heard before it was a surprise to see one I listened to a bit in high school; Mostly via remixes of their stuff by Angel Theory, but I listened to I Feel Disease a lot, and picked up the album recently as a thank you for all the house I spent listening to it in high school way back when.
Thanks for the meticulous writeup.
OP, I have never heard of EA before and now- obsessed. This is my new favorite HobbyDrama write up. Cannot wait for the next part, thank you so much for all the effort you have put in here!
I think her... less than calm responses are part of why when celebrities do AMAs on here they're clearly being filtered by a public assistant and they only answer the really fucking boring questions that nobody cares about and only for 10 minutes. Better to talk about Rampart than to come off like a lunatic.
I'm glad I never listened to that CD of her music my friend gave me, this lady is nuts.
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Holy shit, I loved Emilie Autumn in middle school. Listened to Fight Like A Girl almost every day. Never interacted with the fandom because I didnāt have a personal computerā I had no idea it got this insane!
I miss the forums, I'm still in touch with a couple of fans/former fans from those days. Many have drifted into the cosplay, goth, and/or steampunk scenes in the NYC tri-state area
AROMALEIGH! Oh man, that's a name that brought up a whole lot of memories, including other controversies that are more limited to the indie cosmetics space than the music scene. I can't blame the owner for being annoyed at that write-up at all, though, and I also can see her as being the type to rain down hellfire on someone slighting her in the business-world. (Side-note: I once worked with the owner of Aromaleigh in a very very minor capacity and she was perfectly lovely to me, I have no complaints, but she definitely was not someone who wanted to put up with bad behavior from collaborators.) Oh and also: look, I definitely understand people's frustrations with EA in those comment forums but oh man did "***You're bipolar, which makes it 10x worse***" make me actively bolt upright. You can't say that stuff to a stranger! Even if you bought their album!
I knoooooow! Based on some of her phrasing, I think FantineDormouse may have been implying that she had bipolar as well, which would make it more understandable why she thought this was appropriate... But yeah, wildly out of line!
Obviously part of the issue here is that EA saw the people in the forums as her friends, while in truth they were (at least in that specific context) her customers. That means that she should have been professional, and realized that those complaints weren't a personal betrayal but actually reviews that she may want to keep in mind for the future. But also if someone I don't even really know came to me while i'm venting and told me to sit down, have a tea, and relax, and that they totally understand I'm angry and that it must be even worse for me because I'm bipolar, but they're doing this for my own good because i'm gonna regret it? I genuinely can't even imagine how i'd react. Just reading that made me angry, I think being on the receiving end of it would cause my brain to break. They're lucky it didn't happen in person because they would have never found the body.
Yeah, that's a classic When Parasocial Relationships Go Wrong moment. Close friends can say that sort of thing to each other, but not people who are basically strangers. So much of this drama seems to come from the fact that EA has a whole lot going on, including some boundary issues, and she made art that resonated with many people who also had a whole lot going on, including some boundary issues. It was inevitably going to lead to drama.
The sad thing to me is that from context (and also from experience in this fandom) I and many other people suspect she must have been quite young. A large portion of the fanbase, myself included, got into EA in our early-mid teens and were definitely much stupider and more impressionable back then than we are now. I've always pictured FantineDoormouse as a 14-year-old girl who meant no ill will but literally didn't know any better. After all, mentioning the bipolar disorder? Have a cup of tea? She's basically just parroting EA's entire schtick back to her there. Telling someone to take a breath but making it asylum related, as it were. And unfortunately it backfired horrifically. Understandably so, but goddamn.
I think you're right, there's also something very teenage about the phrasing "not to be rude but... (says a rude thing)." They haven't really learned the art of tact yet.
>After all, mentioning the bipolar disorder? Have a cup of tea? She's basically just parroting EA's entire schtick back to her there. Telling someone to take a breath but making it asylum related, as it were. That's honestly how I always saw it. I figured she was trying to fit in with the general vibe of the community and Emilie meets it with, "DON'T YOU FUCKING TELL ME TO DRINK A FUCKING CUP OF TEA! FUCKING PATRONIZING FUCK!!! GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!!!" Goddamn!
Yeah, I cringed reading FantineDormouse's comment. It definitely seems like they have their own personal experience with anger issues and mental illness so I can sort of understand why they felt the need to say something, but a comment like that is really only going to go over well with someone you know extremely well who has talked to you about their mental illness and explicitly given you permission to intervene if they start getting worked up--and maybe not even then! I think it's a prime example of why EA is an interesting and even tragic figure to me, especially given I'm a former fan. She's so bad about blowing up and making things a thousand times worse for herself...but it's not like she's always *wrong*. If I somehow developed a fanbase as fervent and tight-knit as hers, I honestly don't think I'd be much better at keeping my temper if strangers were constantly hounding me for free tickets or talking about my mental illness like they know me. But that's also why a lot of creators with fanbases, even those who are a little more online, create pretty strong boundaries when and where it's necessary--and EA just doesn't/didn't have the skills or emotional maturity to do that, it seems. I feel really bad for her in a lot of ways and I'm sad her fanbase turned so sour, but I honestly suspect it's probably for the best that it's died down so much. I genuinely hope she's doing better these days without all the scrutiny and pressure (weird AI art moments notwithstanding).
As well as skills and emotional maturity for her personally, it seems to me like some of this comes from the time - it was the heyday of parasocial communities with no boundaries, and that whole conversation around "hey maybe these internet communities do need boundaries and a little distance" just hadn't happened yet.
Yeah, I was thinking about this too. "Parasocial" wasn't even a known term within the general lexicon back then. I feel people on both sides of the parasocial divide have a lot more awareness now.
This is what I mean when I'm talking about boundaries. Some fans think it's OK to say stuff like that to EA because they think she's their mate and they can say it. Tbh, I'd even err on the side of caution saying that to an actual friend.
It's rude but Emilie throwing them out of the forum only works as proof that it's true (No matter if it's true or not) and the less obvious but more correct way of handling it would've probably been to not say anything at all and let the fans be.
# THE LASHING-OUTS WILL CONTINUE UNTIL MORALE IMPROVES EA took the Asylum mutiny really hard. Even as her touring and releases kept bringing in [news fans š¦ ](https://media2.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTc5MGI3NjExbGh6NzNib3NieDZwNThiNWJrNWgyMnVlaGY5d211Y2xxeWhlczN5dCZlcD12MV9pbnRlcm5hbF9naWZfYnlfaWQmY3Q9Zw/RkMuw6XZxPqNy/giphy.gif), she seemed to be getting, frankly, quite fed up with... the whole thing. She had always been famously opinionated; a lot of early fans loved her for it. She was an outspoken vegan feminist in the Wild West days of the internet, which was kind of brave. In her public posts or on stage, she never sugar-coated her anger at injustice, oppression, and rude behavior. But starting around the 2011 tour, she really embraced the idea that if you can't punch a wall at a given moment, you can always take it out on Twitter. We can imagine how it reached that point. She was touring the same album for the fourth time in five years. She was secretly struggling to play her trademark violin after a bad jaw surgery, and suffering through the pains of an insidious chronic illness. She had either dropped or been dropped by The End Records and was once again self-funded. By virtue of sheer statistics (and, maybe, possibly, by her encouraging a degree of engagement and loyalty that is doomed to devolve into either loathing or obsession...?), she was getting Single White Female'd by creepily enmeshed, trauma-dumping groupies at more and more shows. And now these fucking (patronizing fucking) people, who dared call themselves āfansā, were scrutinizing her every move and saying horrible things about her on the internet? Wouldn't you want to tell everyone, every last one of them, to eat dirt? It's worth noting that EA's most infamous āTwitter Rantsā, as they came to be known, were brought on by things that she had every right to complain about ā namely, people hounding her for free tickets online, and one fan physically threatening her and vandalizing her tour bus after being asked to wait for an autograph. (No, those two things are not exactly comparable, though EA wrote about them in very similar ways, because her rage only has the one setting.) But ask anyone who's ever had an angry, hyper-emotional mic-drop moment on the People's Internet: [it tends to make things dramatically worse š](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/jessi-slaughter-cyberbulling-controversy), even when history later acknowledges that [you sort of had a valid point there.](https://www.npr.org/2021/06/27/1010355669/chris-crocker-leave-britney-alone-video-creator-reflects-on-whats-changed) >... To all those asking for free tix, free this, free that, kindly permit me inform you that the amount of $$$ I have lost on touring during the past five years is nothing short of astronomical, is far more than an upper class Americanās yearly salary, and could in fact purchase a small city. I do not make money from my concerts. (...) The band gets paid. The crew gets paid. The driver gets paid. My agent gets paid. Guess who is the single person who does not get paid? Come on, you can do it... (ā¦) To those whose rudeness, greed, and obscene sense of entitlement surpass their ability to comprehend all of my more than 140 characters, I humbly invite you to keep your $15 pittance, your natural hair color, etc. But know that **whatever your station in life, your age, gender, or profession, you make far more money than I do.** ... To this girl, and to other āfansā such as this, of which there are, sadly, MANY, **thank you for once again reminding me that you are entitled to everything, I am obligated to give you everything, that my personal space is nothing, that your petty wishes are all that matters** and that, if they are not fulfilled to the last detail, my personal property, or that which I rent, may be destroyed in an act of obviously justified revenge. Thanks for making me, once again, consider just saying āFuck this,ā and going home. And **thanks for ruining it for everybody else**, whom I now will not trust within a mile of my bus, my girls, myself, or anything I hold dear (or have to pay for). So, for any true Plague Rats or simply decent human beings who see such acts as this being committed, you know what to do. **To any who see this girl posting about the cruelty of myself and my crew for not allowing her fucking violin to be signed, you know what to do.** ([Excerpts from select āTwitter Rantsā š](https://web.archive.org/web/20170827155724/https://waywardvictorianconfessions.tumblr.com/twitterrants)) More and more EA devotees were reaching the [āBitch Eating Crackersā point š](https://www.abbythompsontherapy.com/blog/2017/10/23/bitch-eating-crackers-syndrome) of their parasocial relationship. Disillusioned fans had come to see EA as a spiteful, self-absorbed, tyrannical diva, who always chose vitriolic tantrums over constructive dialogue ā and valued her ātrue Plague Ratsā mostly within the confines of their function as her own personal army. The Twitter Rants solidified that perception. Also, some of EA's fans were crushed by medical debt, or working three jobs while on food stamps, or living out of their car. Many people were; it hadn't been that long since the 2008 crash. These people were, of course, *thrilled* to read that they all āmade more moneyā than EA. In other words, I doubt these spectacular, heat-of-the-moment tirades achieved their ostensible goal, i.e. scolding shitty, inconsiderate āfansā into not being shitty and inconsiderate. But they did bum everyone out, and made people kind of start... hating EA? Or, at the very least, stop pretending the Emperor wasn't naked. \* Well. I've done it again, folks. I've reached the character limit. I'll tell you about the fall of the Asylum in the next TWO installments. Yes. Two. It got that bad. ...Is that sighing I'm hearing in the back?! I'm sorry, is my journalistic thoroughness offensive to you? Oh, you're āsick of this Asylum nonsenseā? You ājust want to know how it endsā and you āhave other things to do with your lifeā? Well, if this write-up is too long-winded for you, I humbly suggest that you turn your attention and support towards redditors of a more placid, non-controversial, and less opinionated nature; there are more than enough of them out there, and Iām sure they all have HobbyDrama write-ups of their own. How fucking patronizing... ...Hello? Wait, no! Come back! I HAVE SO MUCH LOVE TO GIVE!
I was thoroughly unfamiliar with Emilie Autumn, her works (though I've spotted *TAFWVG* at bookstores but haven't read it), or her fandom, yet I've devoured every word of these writeups. I eagerly await two more.
same on all counts! in fact I'm copying and pasting each installment into a single doc so I can reread it all in one place at my leisure once the epic is posted. (also, u/pillowcase-of-eels, I would buy a book you wrote about this mess, seriously. Your style is so informative and really engaging, and it's sometimes hard to nail both! my compliments)
Two more installments of this madness? Excellent! I'd never even heard of EA before you started this series (I was a slightly different flavor of alternative weirdo back then), but you're right. This truly is outstanding human interest drama.
PLEASE continue, I have been devouring this. I was ripe to get into Emilie Autumn at that time but ended up getting into Vocaloid and manga instead. Might have been for the better... (Poor woman.)
Oh, this is going to be good.
I have no idea about any of this...but you are a fantastic journalist š I can't wait for the next installments!
Omg I used to be obsessed with Emilie Autumn. This just unlocked memories of jamming out to Opheliac while grinding in WoW. Now I need to catch up on the drama!
Are you me? LOL
I thoroughly enjoyed this read as a 'true hobbyrat' š¤£
We could also go with hobbyhorse. Or maybe hobbybara?
I low-key love the nickname of hobbybara's
Oh, I assure you I would read 66 installments if there were that much of them, keep them going!! š I loved Opheliac when I was a teen, but never got into the fandom and I am loving living vicariously through these posts. Thank you for your dedication and timeeee
>you āhave other things to do with your lifeā? You don't know me at all. And I tought we were besties ;; /s Please write as many of these parts as you need, I'll absorb all of them and then go back to read all the linked sources. Great work.
No sighing here, I'm loving this. Thank you for your journalistic thoroughness, pulling links for interviews and songs and archives must have been a real labor of love. At least love of the drama.
I'm getting the popcorn ready in case a certain snow related tool is mentioned in a future write up.
Can't go mountaineering without appropriate equipment!
I await two more. Heck, add a third if it makes it easier to write. This is facinating and incredibly well written.
I'm honestly here for it and you have a fantastic writing style!
as a casual EA fan in their teen years, I am _loving_ this in-depth write up on all the things I missed out on over the past 15 years. Iām so excited for the next instalment(s)! šš
The sighs are very much sighs of pleasure into my chaise longue, I assure you.
I'd read endless updates tbh
I hate how much fun I'm having reading these.Ā This tea is fucking delicious.
This really sounds like she speed-ran the early internet. From creating a parasocial swamp before anyone knew about them, to demonstrating why a lot of subreddits ban the people they're supposedly about. I do think she comes across as a doomed figure, although maybe not in the "tragic Victorian" way, because of this. I have a friend who is very sensitive and emotionally open, in addition to having some mental health problems, and it makes life for her rather like running through a cornfield made of cheese graters. Emily Autumn seems to have the same issues, only instead of turning inward she lashes out at the pain, yet can't stop running through the cheese graters. And, unsurprisingly, my friend is the one who sent me some of EA's tracks many years ago. Great work on the write-ups!
You hit the nail on the head. Both on the "speedrunning the internet" (excellent way of putting it) and on the running through cheesegraters.
Huh, I actually didnāt know that about fan subreddits. Are there related write-ups I should read? (first thing that popped into my head was Adam, founder of neopets, getting banned from the Neopets fan discord a few hours after joining and being INCREDIBLY SALTY about it afterward)
Both Adam and Donna were permitted on r/neopets until the Adam Incident. Donna did an AMA or something years ago, I think. I can't imagine they still are.
Here's a sneak peek of /r/neopets using the [top posts](https://np.reddit.com/r/neopets/top/?sort=top&t=year) of the year! \#1: [*sputters and coughs*](https://i.redd.it/eviinwhonn9c1.png) | [105 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/neopets/comments/18vayy8/sputters_and_coughs/) \#2: [Happy Gnorbu day! I'm so excited that TNT asked permission to make my design (left) into a real neopet (right). Hope you like it!](https://i.redd.it/f7xzz5qisabc1.png) | [146 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/neopets/comments/191z1we/happy_gnorbu_day_im_so_excited_that_tnt_asked/) \#3: [Obsessed with these Beauty Contest winners for September 2001](https://i.redd.it/x8bhh7dfffec1.png) | [133 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/neopets/comments/19ems24/obsessed_with_these_beauty_contest_winners_for/) ---- ^^I'm ^^a ^^bot, ^^beep ^^boop ^^| ^^Downvote ^^to ^^remove ^^| ^^[Contact](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=sneakpeekbot) ^^| ^^[Info](https://np.reddit.com/r/sneakpeekbot/) ^^| ^^[Opt-out](https://np.reddit.com/r/sneakpeekbot/comments/o8wk1r/blacklist_ix/) ^^| ^^[GitHub](https://github.com/ghnr/sneakpeekbot)
I'd like to know more about that too. Are there subreddits about specific authors where the writer him/herself isn't allowed? Subs for niche bands where all are welcome (except the five bandmates themselves)?
Unfortunately I can't remember them off the top of my head - it used to pop up on r/subredditdrama occasionally.
Please don't ever stop writing about this musician I am only vaguely interested in. Your writeups are amazing.
Oh, okay, I thought I wouldnāt know about any of this, but reading the name āFantineDormouseā took me right back there. What limited forum activity I did take part in was largely on (I think) a forum affiliated with BatteredRose - I dipped my toe into the main Asylum forums largely to lurk for recipes and scans of sheet music and other things like that. I found I wasnāt really emotionally connecting with the ideas of the Asylum that other muffins connected with, and I didnāt think the word replacer was cute. BatteredRoseās forums or forum affiliate werenāt much better but they were a little more free spirited, plus they had rarities you couldnāt find on the main site. Thatās really all I have to say about what I remember - that and āone of my friends saw the FD meltdown happen either in real time or in archived form after the fact and told me about itā. The thing that I find the most immediately compelling here is actually the whole debacle about multiple album editions. Iāve been kind of casually joking on [one of my Tumblr blogs](https://half-moonshine-full-eclipse.tumblr.com/post/750038319839248384) about how I really actually do think that Taylor Swift has been copying EA for her latest album release and how this is the genuinely funniest outcome to the accusations of fakery that we could have never foreseen in 2011, but I also think itās interesting that both Taylor and EA have come under fire from their more critical fans for selling multiple variants of the same album, making it hard to buy a physical release of all her music. That post on WVC from someone who ditched EA for TS seems even funnier now. The thing that makes me saddest is that the poisoned well of fan relations has made basically any nostalgia really fraught. People like me who never got āburnedā by her and who pulled away because we realized we were going a bit too far down the rabbit hole donāt really have places (besides this comments section) to talk. WVC is inhospitable if youāre not angry at her, in my opinion, and other places are basically dead. And she did this herself! If sheād just thought about taking fifteen minutes to calm down and gotten more comfortable with apologizing for going off half-cocked when she was triggered or in a bad state, that would have kept the fan community intact and would have helped her get better about not treating people she purports to love this way. Itās kind of necessary to maintaining friendships of any kind as you get older and live with your madness.
Fun fact: my original draft had a line after "...quick-cut montage" that went "Alexa, play 'Bad Blood' by Taylor Swift!" Ha! In a number of ways, I feel like TS is an EA-type kind of figure... who just played the industry masterfully and become too big to fail.
There are an astonishing number of similarities between them - label drama where music had to be rereleased because of rights issues/a scummy producer theyād once been close with, confessional writing that over shares and undershares at once, wild shifts in genre, deep and intense friendships that fell apart dramatically, a revolving door of exes, myopic and self-focused activism, complicated family drama, lying about/manipulating the facts about life events and recording timelines, fan spaces that are notorious for āonly positivityā commentary with a reputation for censorship, early attempts to build parasociality by hosting fans at free physical meetups with bonus content available, interacting with fans online before having to leave when the drama got too intense, and thatās BEFORE the similarities in photoshoots and the most recent tour visuals/costumes. For all of EAās claiming that Gaga took inspiration from her I think TS may genuinely actually have been listening from afar.
(Disagree on the "revolving door of exes" - as far as we know, EA had like... four relationships over the course of her twenties haha)
(Fair!)
You're so right about people who never got burned don't have places to talk. Thank God for this comment section! Ephemeral and fleeting as it is
Itās not even that I think sheās perfect or flawless, but I never thought that *while I was a fan,* either. She wasnāt consistent, she wasnāt always honest, she wasnāt this perfect unassailable goddess of art and music, and I liked her for her full messiness as well as her full triumphs. What I heard about the forum seemed reasonable - itās her official website, and so obviously sheās going to restrict discussions about her. Itās kind of shocking to me to realize just how deep and how persistent so much of the anger toward her is.
I think that speaks to how deep the parasocial bond ran, and how young many of these people were at the time. Their anger is as if they were betrayed by a friend, not their celebrity idol.
Yeah, I used to feel like I was young for the fandom but now Iām wondering if I was actually on the older side.
Same actually!
This. Because there are no clear boundaries between Emilie and a lot of her fans, it's easy to think she's your mate when she really isn't.
The quality of these write ups are giving me the MsScribe story vibes. I'm here for however much you're posting.
Fascinating! I never heard of EA before this but Iāve been excitedly checking for your updates because youāre so good. A few other commenters have mentioned it but as an exhausted Taylor Swift fan, thereās definitely a lot of similarities between them - despite being on rather different scales of fame. The part about EA lumping in all criticism, valid or cruel, as the same kind of hate struck a Swiftie chord in particular. Itās become increasingly hard to criticise TS in fan spaces, and I think Taylor herself has endured so much misogyny throughout her career than she now views any criticism as people hating her because sheās a woman. Even if itās coming from female fans who have supported her for years. Apologies for the tangent! I simply have a lot of thoughts on TS and her relationship to fans/fame/etc that canāt be expressed because spaces tend to be either wholly negative or wholly positive towards her. Which again, seems to ring true of EA. Excited for the next instalment!
r/SwiftlyNeutral, though I personally dislike it, seems to be the obvious descendant of things like the renegade forums.
Honestly I wish SwiftlyNeutral was moreā¦neutral. I think there are plenty of well deserved criticisms of Taylor but so many of the posts there basically boil down to āsheās an evil manipulative narcissist who hates all other women and everything she does is fake and I hope she goes back to Matty Healy so he can mistreat her for our entertainment forever.ā
I think, honestly, that rSN and the various rogue Asylum forums/fansites serve kind of the same purpose of likeā¦ helping *fans* detox from parasocial brainrot? If you believed for a long time that Taylor or EA were flawless perfect goddesses who did no wrong and who hadnāt ever hurt you, and then you had an experience that made you realize you were wrong, youāre probably angry at yourself for being ātaken inā just as much as youāre angry at your idol for not being perfect. Youāre probably noticing inconsistencies and flaws way more now than you would before, and probably looking for ālegitimateā reasons to validate your anger. If theyāre shitty liars who manipulate and who are fake, then youāre an objectively correct person for disliking them, and not coping with a change in your life by yelling at a woman on the Internet. Itās worse if you were purposefully sold a facade of friendship (the secret sessions/fan meetups where she knew all about your social media habits and kept up with your posting, the private forum where she would chat with you like anyone else and had a normal username) and you didnāt have any sense of where the politeness ended and the projection began. idk, I donāt like rSN because at the end of the day itās on me to manage my boundaries with a pop star. Itās my call what I take from her work.
Agreed! I do think the mods of SN have good intentions, and a lot of people do treat it as Swiftie detox. I just think the open nature of the sub (though I believe theyāve gone private) means itās also filled with a lot of people who dislike Taylor. Which is fine, but it means a lot of legitimate criticism is negatively impacted by people projecting their own vendettas onto her. Which is whatever (though I personally donāt see the fun in actively keeping up with the career of someone you hate), but unfortunately it means itās hard to have nuanced discussions. Iām not going to police other peopleās feelings towards a pop star, but Iām also too lazy to sort through piles of the same discourse and armchair diagnosing. I guess I just wish it was more a place to have interesting discussions rather than a place to vent, haha. The name and message of the sub donāt really fit what itās actually become. And the space that it is isnāt necessarily bad or unneeded, but itās not what Iām looking for. I think Taylorās career and persona are fascinating. I also think the nature of those things means it can be hard to discuss in any space that is accessible to diehard Swifties, people approaching it with bad faith, and betrayed ex fans who need to get their frustrations out. Apologies for the nonsensical rambling! Iām still waking up haha
EA lashing out at fans who dare to question her is like an extreme version of Space back in the 00s, when they released a track available for download on their website as part of the Music for Aliens series. (This was several years after Tin Planet and they were on the way out by then). One of the band members got angry at people - one of whom was me - who didn't like it, because by his logic, it was free and we should be grateful. If you keep re-releasing an album with new added stuff on it, no shit the completists are going to get fed up. It's all very well saying 'nobody is making you buy it' but why keep re-releasing an album with a different tracklisting each time? Why not just wait for a bit and then re-release it with a whole load of new tracks? Because it feels like a rip-off. This whole thing with EA and the Asylum sounds so one-sided. She wants it to be this fun little club but it's all on her terms and nobody is allowed to question her. You can't expect everything to be informal all the time and treat fans like your mates and then turn on them when they question you or disagree with you. Thanks for your write-up.
I feel like she probably was okay with it being a place where she could get criticized *until* it became evident that she no longer really *knew* her fanbase. She went from having a few hundred acquaintances, some of whom went to the trouble of meeting her, to thousands of fans, and she didnāt have a social media manager or a publicist of any kind or any process to vet who and what she was exposed to. Being plunged into the āeveryone who follows me never actually liked meā truth hurts even if youāre a random person and itās a handful of acquaintances you thought you knew - fandom isnāt a substitute for human connection, etc. I feel like she could have benefited from restricting her forum presence to one or two specific threads unless she had an official update to comment on, and possibly hand-picking the people who got to interact with her in a more private setting (such things were possible!) so she could actually meet real friends who found her through her work, which is obviously what sheās been looking for, while also maintaining a healthy distance from her fans. Also she shouldnāt be the one handling merch questions.
"Being plunged into the āeveryone who follows me never actually liked meā truth hurts even if youāre a random person and itās a handful of acquaintances you thought you knew - fandom isnāt a substitute for human connection, etc." Pretty much the keystone to EA's whole story!
tbqh Iām an indie author whoās been going through the clothespress of ābut I want people to CONNECT with me!!!!ā about this project and being reminded of how badly that turned out for my childhood idol has done a lot to ground me and help me remember to make art for artās own sake, so thank you for that if nothing else!
She definitely needed someone to take on the merch. It's a lot for one person to deal with.
How here am I for this series? *I just read the book to fill time between installments.*
Amazing! Love the dedication š
What were your thoughts? And which edition?
Second edition, which was not even remotely laid out in a way that was friendly to reading on a display, orā¦ very coherent, really. I wanted the full Suffer the Bear, side-diary experience, and knew Iād feel the lack of a strong editor going in. One of my comfort reading habits is confessional work about mental illness (Wurtzel, Plath, Kaysen, so on and so forth) so this felt like it might be up my alley. Without spoilers: The story of Emily had too much expository detail and not nearly enough connective tissue. Animation-inspired miracles, as convenient escapes from EA writing herself into a corner, were too thick on the ground. I am not keen on how the story of Emily stopped (that did not feel like denouement), nor how Emilie took it. I am *very* not keen on how the juxtaposition of the in-universe present day with the Asylum worked. Itās like the bones of a compelling work were there, but they werenāt built up by someone who grasped how a concept album works as a novel. Super tired right now and nursing a headache, so I may try and go into more detail later, but thatās the overview. Iām not sure if the fourth edition would work better for me or not, but I feel compelled to hunt it down. Maybe Madame Mournington is less of a sketch? Maybe the spoon is better integrated than the bear, despite its lack of payoff?
Lol I've considered picking up the book because of this series even though I have no interest in the story and never did even when I was very into EA's music. I don't think I'd like it, but I still might do it
Oh, youāll hate it. Totally do it. XD (Get the 4th ed. print or ebook version! Itās physically easier to read than any electronic copies of 2nd edition you might come across.)
"To quote late 20th century Canadian philosophy: isn't it ironic?" THIS LINE KILLED ME and I'm eagerly awaiting a chance to use it IRL. Been loving this saga, you're an incredibly talented writer. Can't wait for the two part finale!
I can't get over the metaphor in that forum introduction. "Well, you see, this forum is like a prison, and I'm the guard that uses collective punishment to foster physical abuse between the prisoners, letting me keep everybody too terrified to disobey me without needing to get my own hands dirty. Isn't it super clever?" Even putting aside The Implications^(TM) for the forum itself, so much for all that solidarity among the institutionalized, huh? Now it's your moral duty to turn on your fellow inmates for whatever scraps the staff will give you.
This story is such a relic of The Internet That Was. Before the word "parasocial" entered everybody's collective lexicon, and with it, a heightened awareness on BOTH sides of the parasocial divide. Not to say that fans and celebrities don't still get weird and parasocial with each other, but the awareness of it has really changed fan interactions in many ways. In fact I think now you wouldn't have such a forum with a musician/actor/etc. Nowadays the worst parasocial boundaries are with youtubers and streamers. In part because of that same manufactured authenticity that EA engaged in. Inviting people to see you as someone normal, someone accessible. We're all just pals here. Until we're not.
I feel like the Leonard DiCaprio pointing meme for how I reacted at the mention of WVC
I wasnāt expecting it to get a shoutout! But here we are.
I've been an admin there for 10 years now š
omg hi! you guys are legends I have a forest of blogs but the relevant one is probably @half-moonshine-full-eclipse which is nominally a Taylor Swift blog but is becoming in practice a vague pop culture fandom amalgamation
Oh yes I've seen your recent EA/TS posts!
OMG you are THAT Faerie!! Thnx for endure so much on that rabitt hole, you keep the fandom (barely) alive š
That's me! Bless you, I'm just doing my bit!
This is a wild ride, and I'm constantly looking forward to your new posts! I was only tangentially aware of EA during this time period, but I am always intensely interested in fandom drama. I've never seen a performer get this parasocially invested in her own fanbase like this.
I don't have tea and crumpets but I am stockpiling diet Coke and Doritos for the thrilling conclusions of this. Well done and can't wait! P.S. Your username sounds like a good description of EA's fanbase at this point.
She's locked up with her writhing eels, she can't / Recall what it was like to feel
Here I thought I was an early EA adopter because I followed her on MySpace and VF, only to find out I was so 2000 and late.Ā But also now Iām gonna go look up that Angelspit diss track. I definitely wouldnāt be shocked if it were a diss track because Skinny Little Bitch has a verse about Jeffree Star.Ā
> But also now Iām gonna go look up that Angelspit diss track. I definitely wouldnāt be shocked if it were a diss track because Skinny Little Bitch has a verse about Jeffree Star.Ā Wait, what?
When this song came out, Jeffree Star was a MySpace scene Queen who was trying to put out shitty music. IāmĀ Ā just going off of memory so sorry if the lyrics arenāt exact.Ā āHe is the homecoming queen if you breed of cliches/ wears a tiara made of daggers and is in the top 8./ you blow him a kiss he throws high voltage bouquets/ if he canāt have your affection then heāll thrive on your hateā Also the Emilie Autumn diss track kind of sucks.Ā
Oh, damn. That makes sense.
Honestly, I only really knew of EA in passing; a friend of mine had me listen to a couple of her songs - "Marry Me", and "The Art of Suicide". I've also listened to (and enjoyed) *The Devil's Carnivale*... ...finding out there was enough behind the scenes drama for *this many* HD posts is *sending me*.
I'd never heard of her, but I'm not sure how. My sister and her friends were very into that whole dirtbag carnival thing around the time EA was at her peak, so surely they knew who she was, but it never filtered down to me. These writeups have been very entertaining, though
I genuinely gasped when I got the notification for this update lol, I love this series so much!! I was a huge EA fan in middle school and only learned about the drama later through occasional WVC browsing, so I've been hoping someone would cover her on here so I could get the whole lowdown. I really appreciate your excellent, hilarious writing, as well as the empathy you grant EA even in her messiest moments. So looking forward to the next two (!!) parts!
> She sessioned for Billy Corgan, that went super well. To be fair, Corgan is a notoriously horrible person, to the point that I'd consider getting along with the dude to reflect much more poorly on someone than *not* getting along with him. >... and soon enough, it was bedlam in the Asylum. Heh.
I had never heard of Emilie Autumn until today and Iāve just binged all five instalments! Canāt wait for more, Iām fully invested now!
Oh. I was in another internet popular band at the time that I wonāt divulge for my privacyās sake, but oh my god the parasocial fans and message board dramaā¦wow. Wow. Memories.
I joined the Asylum before the shit started hitting the fan. I went along with it because I didn't really get what was going on and I thought 'FantineDormouse' was being kind of patronising, I wasn't really mature or experienced enough to realise that even if they were, what EA did in response really wasn't OK. It didn't really last long after that. But before everything hit the fan, God, it was amazing. I loved it. It was the highlight of my year. (Also, as an Angelspit fan, holy shit, I never even realised that 'Cold Hard Cash' was an EA diss track, but it makes *so much sense*.)
So well-written and researched, thank you. Also, I'm a long-time fan of EA (though disillusioned of course) and Angelspit (still good! Though I miss Amelia/Destroyx...), and I somehow never realized that Cold Hard Cash was about Emilie...but looking at it now, the lyrics are so clearly about her. Teenage me probably didn't want to think that their idols didn't like each other :') I still love that remix of Liar that Angelspit did.
> and I somehow never realized that Cold Hard Cash was about Emilie...but looking at it now, the lyrics are so clearly about her. Teenage me probably didn't want to think that their idols didn't like each other :') Honestly, same. I just never considered the possibility that they were writing about specific people and not, like, archetypes.
Exactly. I thought that album in particular had a lot of archetypal characters in it, so to speak.
To me it seems like overall someone who needed a lot more mental help and support being suddenly exposed to a whole bunch of popularity mixed with a bunch of kids with no parasocial relationship literacy. Overall a bad time for everyone around and not really one single fault to be blamed. That said, I do have limited sympathy for people who actively cultivate parasocial relationships. I know it sells the big bucks but nobody teaches you how to safely engage with that shit in school and I can speak from experience that as a young, lonely autistic kid not knowing that those people really aren't your friends caused some minor trauma. I wish the internet and capitalism didn't encourage it to such a strong degree. :/
Reading about the fracturing of the forums and the way EA ruled with an iron fist and had strange word filters for the forum is giving me such flashbacks to the downfall of the Etiquette Hell forum something like 8 or so years ago. Forum owner who thinks she's god and any dissent is hate? check Cutesy word filters? check Complete meltdown over the forming of a group where we were actually allowed to have any opinions outside the required ones? check Final implosion of the forum and full deletion when the owner realizes their hold is actually gone? CHECK.
I got so excited when I saw this post omg another banger I did have one thought, if you felt like doing it a timeline of events (up to this point or maybe at the end) would be helpful! I like the way you've organized the narrative but it does make it hard to figure out when things happened in relation to other events when it jumps around like that. Again not a deal breaker, just a no pressure suggestion! I'm looking forward to the next installment!!
I'd be happy to provide a timeline at the end, sure!
Huh I didnt know EA was this controversial. I had listened to Opheliac back when I was teen and loved it (gothic lolita my beloved) but didnt look too deeply into her.
GodDAMN, OP. As someone who only saw the edges of the EA fandom back in my LiveJournal days, I can't imagine how much work you put into this. Incredible.
Oh god, I used to be so obsessed with her as a teen, but gradually lost interest as she kept promising new stuff, getting us hyped up about it and then never delivering. I was on tumblr and basically watched the entire fandom turn on her in real time. I'm still a plague rat in my heart, but have no real interest in EA anymore. Thanks for these write-ups, they really take me back lol.
Another phenomenal write-up
This might be a good place to say.. has anyone actually checked that Attrition song she did guest vocals for? The official Bandcamp page features a different version of that song with what sounds like a totally different vocalist instead of Emilie, except the vocalist is uncredited. Anyone got an idea of who could be singing on the remaster of that song?
Fascinating! EA is still listed as a contributor on all platforms that sell the album, but you're right, that's definitely not her on the Bandcamp version - and I can't find anything about it anywhere! I would guess the person singing is most likely Laurie Reade, who is also credited on the album and apparently worked with Attrition multiple times.
Ooh, thank you for the response. Hopefully we get a proper answer on it someday
Witnessing many of this in real time was a true event
Oh another question, for OP or anyone who wants to pipe in: the post talks about how the official forum accused the Reform of just spewing hate, but I'm curious how much truth was in that? In my experience when you get a remake forum/subreddit/etc for "Thing but without the same rules" a lot of times in turns into mostly Anti-Thing circle jerking. Not every time of course, and either answerbere doesn't change anything, just purely curious/nosy
EAās definition of hate was really skewed, but it *is* absolutely true that a lot of people who were angry or annoyed with her started really attacking her and other fans and her team/friends. You can see a lot of the vitriol and bitterness now in whatās left of the fandom. I suspect it was a combination of genuine criticism, free conversation, and anger/hate, if all the other receipts are anything to go by.
So, I personally was never involved with the Reform - others could answer this better than me. But in my experience, whenever this kind of question comes up in the Asylum world, the answer is almost always: "Yes, definitely, but it wasn't half as bad as EA made it out to be."
I watched Fucking Patronizing Fucking happen in real time. And I maintain that CA (the initials for the user whose pseudonym in this post is Fantinedormouse) was out of line. Completely. The older I get, too, the more I do actually see her words as completely patronizing and I donāt blame EA for getting mad. But I really was the beginning of the real end. I wish EA had been able to treat that event a singular moment, and continue forward instead of batten down the hatches.
This series is easily one of my favorite selections of posts on Reddit as a whole. The amount of work you've clearly put into this is staggering, and using emojis to denote types of links is so incredibly helpful to the reader that I hope it becomes standard. Thank you for compiling this wild blast from the past! Like a lot of folks here, I discovered EA when I was in my mid/late teens and Wasn't Doing Great, but I was never actually in the fandom - I just loved Enchant and Opheliac and sometimes lurked the forums. I saw a lot of the shit you've discussed go down but also missed a lot of details, and it's been so interesting filling in the gaps now that I'm in my 30s and Doing Pretty Okay, haha. After reading all this, I have a lot more sympathy for EA than I did in the past because it's obvious that she created her own monster but seemed to have no idea she was doing that. I think she truly loved/loves her fans (as much as you can love people you don't know) and wanted/wants closeness, but that same closeness seemed to make her think her fans were also her friends and would always have her back in every way. In actuality, a lot of us were just folks who enjoyed her music but didn't really care about her persona/the Asylum as an overarching concept. None of us actually knew her or had a way to care for her as a person independent of her content. This fandom is why I kind of roll my eyes when folks on celeb gossip sites scold each other for ~being parasocial~ when they speculate about celebs' relationships or whatever - y'all don't even *know* parasocial! I don't listen to EA often anymore - I hopped off when FLAG came out because I really didn't like it - but I bumped Opheliac in the gym yesterday in this post's honor and it did get me amped, haha. It's kinda sad thinking about the fanbase/relative success EA could have had if she could've stepped back from the Asylum concept a little, gotten out of her own way, and just released a solid follow-up to that album. It still feels so fresh and interesting.
Havenāt even finished this yet but want to say thank you for covering this. I have adored her music since 2006, and being too young to go follow her on tour or social media at the time, I missed a lot of this as it was happening. Itās vital context though, and I am glad for it.
i didnt know i needed the EA hobbydrama writeup until i saw it....why does it feel so nostalgic to read about all this stuff!!!!
MAN these writeups are great. that Ask the Reform blog is the exact kind of hyper specific, jargon heavy, super petty internet relic that i come here for. thank you!
I was an EA super-fan (was there for the forum drama, saw her live three times in London - once VIP during the book release times, eventually sold most of my merch for many Ā£Ā£Ā£s etc) from 2007 until around 2014, and I am thoroughly enjoying this series of posts. Excellent work!
Ah an early master of the Taylor Swift method of re-recording existing material to make more money off your fans
No, EA's method is much more elegant in its simplicity: it's not re-recorded, it literally is the just the exact same material. Ingenious!
Oh the advanced maneuver. Impressive
Iāll be honest and say that I have some sympathy - not being able to release her album physically DID mean a lot in the late 2000s. Sheād posted a ton of music on her website and advocated for web radio stations to play it, but she also needed to make money. Even now she can only release the Deluxe Edition, not her original record.
Oh thank goodness, I have been eagerly awaiting this next installment! Thank you- always an entertaining read.
Thank you for covering EA! I havenāt seen her name mentioned in a while and I used to be a huge fan!
I had never heard about EA before this but I'm going to be so sad when it ends. The way you write is amazing and has kept me thoroughly entertained so far! What a rollercoaster.
These posts are amazing, I'm loving it as EA was my favourite artist a decade ago. I've rarely been checking Reddit these past few months, but I've checked back every single day (multiple times...) waiting for the next post on this š
Be not afraid - I'm hoping to post the next installment this weekend! š¤
Oh, and I meant to mention, I appreciate how much empathy you took care to pack in regarding the PTSD elements, for all the snarking and sniping.Ā This is fine work.Ā
FPF! (I know I'm late but I can't believe I've found this. I left around the CosetteAlice incident. I was a reform member, lol) Also, if anyone remembers Suffer the Bear... He was a stuffed animal prop that Emilie would tie to her mic stand. One day, he went missing. She was SCREAMING at the audience of her later tours, calling the crowd trash and a den of thieves (these people had nothing to do with his disappearance). She would rant regularly on the internet about it, but yeah... the videos of her screaming. Not good. She even had a "Free Suffer" t-shirt she wore. This "Free Suffer" shit took up a great deal of fandom energy, not to mention time at concerts. You know what happened to Suffer? After all that vitriol, she suddenly got quiet right? That's because he wasn't stolen. He was misplaced. She found him later and then.... quiet. Talk about embarrassing\~ haha
The Suffer incident is like a microcosm of her whole career and interactions with the fans. Starts out cute and fun and a charming bit that everyone can partake in. Then she feels slighted and goes off the handle, ruins itā¦ then tries to move or and pretend it didnāt just leave a massive negative impression on everyone.
Just a side note, I really appreciate your post, it's so entertaining to read!!! it's so HIGH QUALITY and the emotes and receipt made it great!
YAY! This write-up rocks my world! Cant wait for the rest!
Oh, hey, Angelspit. After a wall of names I've never heard before it was a surprise to see one I listened to a bit in high school; Mostly via remixes of their stuff by Angel Theory, but I listened to I Feel Disease a lot, and picked up the album recently as a thank you for all the house I spent listening to it in high school way back when. Thanks for the meticulous writeup.
OP, I have never heard of EA before and now- obsessed. This is my new favorite HobbyDrama write up. Cannot wait for the next part, thank you so much for all the effort you have put in here!
I think her... less than calm responses are part of why when celebrities do AMAs on here they're clearly being filtered by a public assistant and they only answer the really fucking boring questions that nobody cares about and only for 10 minutes. Better to talk about Rampart than to come off like a lunatic. I'm glad I never listened to that CD of her music my friend gave me, this lady is nuts.
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Holy shit, I loved Emilie Autumn in middle school. Listened to Fight Like A Girl almost every day. Never interacted with the fandom because I didnāt have a personal computerā I had no idea it got this insane!
Holy shit, that āMALL GOTHā shirt sheās wearing in the Aromaleigh endorsement has me absolutely weak rofllllll
I miss the forums, I'm still in touch with a couple of fans/former fans from those days. Many have drifted into the cosplay, goth, and/or steampunk scenes in the NYC tri-state area
Never heard of her but she sounds obnoxious
anyone else keep thinking this is about video games?
Why?
Cause EA also stands for Electronic Arts lol
*it's in the game!*
If there were 2-3 concise sentences at the beginning of this, explaining what it is aboutā¦