Everything about this event was made to hit one person square in the heart and that would be Sean Astin. Between the indirect reference to his daughter, his character but also children's charities, these are all things he is very passionate about. So Victoria took her shot. In person. On September 11 2002. At a 9/11 memorial service. And Sean Astin agreed to help

The group had decided that the library they wanted to build this garden at would be in Oregon, where Abbey lived with her husband. Victoria lived in Virginia and the two had travelled back and forth to see each other and Victoria had decided she wanted to live in Oregon so she moved in with Abbey and her husband as their roommate in October 2002

This doesn't last long though as Abbey would find out that the house was being foreclosed on because her husband had decided to just not pay the bills. Her husband moves out and three other members of the Bit of Earth forums move in, they would begin to refer to the house as Bag-end and themselves as the Bag-Enders

The actual event for Project Elanor would be happening in Apr 2003 so they had 6 months to prepare. They had picked out a library in Portland called Rockwood where they would be building the garden and planning had kicked off with many forum members volunteering their time and effort.

But tragedy struck in Nov 3 2002, Victoria would announce that she's withdrawing from all fandom for good, leaving Bit of Earth in Abbey's care. No one could reach Victoria, but Abbey insisted the show must go on and plans for the garden continued in earnest. Around this time a new member named Jordan had joined the group and quickly stepped up to fill in the gap left in Victoria's absence.

Jordan Enters the Chat

On November 30th Jordan would put out his first post as Bit Of Earth's Public Relations Director. Jordan announced Bit of Earth's first event which would be line party at Regal Cinema in Portland in celebration of the release of the Two Towers. Line parties often occur when people know that they are going to be stuck in lines for a long time to keep things interesting and these things were definitely more common in the early 2000s when if you wanted to get in to see a big movie on opening night you couldn't reserve tickets online, you had to go stand outside the theater to get in.

I grew up in a tiny ass town and even we had a line to get in to go see Star Wars Episode II it was only for an hour but still. In bigger cities like Portland you could be stuck in lines for days to buy tickets.

By all accounts the line party was a success "There are games with prizes, a costume contest, a raffle with proceeds going to Reading Is Fundamental (RIF), karaoke, a viewing of the animated The Hobbit and LotR movies, and more"

Leaving everyone all the more amped up for the upcoming Project Elanor. By February 15 2003 Sean Astin would officially be confirmed as attending Project Elanor. There would even be screening the night before the event of the Two Towers which Astin would be hosting

Outwardly things seem to be going smoothly but suddenly on Mar 12th, two weeks before the event is supposed to happen, Abbey announces that the garden won't be happening at Rockwood Library but instead at the Riggs Institute Learning and Literacy Center in Beaverton, OR.

Internally things were a mess. Suddenly all their plans had to be adapted for an entirely different location, and even before that the team was hitting various road bumps. Around this time a woman named Jeanine would get involved

At the 11th hour Jordan called Jeanine and told her that the woman that had been in charge of acquiring the lumber had just quit. Jordan said that the woman had been negotiating with a lumbermill to get the wood, but then just stopped taking their calls and they got pretty mad and now want nothing to do with them and Jordan begged for her help

Jeanine had experience working as a volunteer in the past and had dealt with flakey volunteers so none of this particularly sounded suspicious to her so she agreed to do it. She had to find lumber for a 30x30 deck, how hard could that be? Jeanine began to ask around to find out that what she was looking for was around $3000 worth of wood for immediate delivery. She spent 3 days calling every person she could think of to see if someone could donate the wood and finally found a company, who while they couldn't just donate the wood outright, sold it at cost of $1800 and agreed to accept payment in 3 weeks after the project's donations were tallied

Jordan was thrilled with Jeanine's miraculous success and lavished her with praise, making her feel very valued and like an important part of the team

They were ready as they were going to get for a bunch of kids who had never ran something like this. The night before, the screening of the two towers went without a hitch, Astin giving a speech and answering questions from an audience of 600 people. Abbey also gave a speech and said that they had raised $3000 and that all proceeds would go to the organization "Reading is Fundamental"

Project Elanor

The next day volunteers and Sean Astin went to work landscaping the chosen site

The crew worked their butts off but they still had to return the next day to finish it, unfortunately Jordan had injured his finger and was unable to participate in work the next day. But they did it, and the garden ended up looking quite nice!

That summer the bagenders were faced with the reality of living in a house going into foreclosure as they now had until the end of July to GTFO, so they reached out the Bit of Earth community for help.

Musicfest and Filmfest

Jeanine felt sorry for them, she had had friends that got screwed over by vengeful exes in the past so she began to ask around with friends but none of them wanted to take on 4 smokers rent free for 2 months. The bag-enders would end up finding a small, cheap unit in a rough neighbourhood and Jeanine put down the deposit and paid the first two months rent for them as well as some utility hook-ups totaling $1635

Jeanine began to get closer to the group and in particular, Jordan, she also began to grow a little suspicious of him. He told her that Elijah Wood was his cousin and that he had descended from an IRA crime family that were looking for him because he chose not to get involved in the family business, but knew too much. Jeanine asked the obvious question of "well if Elijah is your cousin wouldn't they be hunting him too?". It was well known that Elijah Wood didn't have a good relationship with his dad and Jordan said that this is why

Bit of Earth would go on to attempt to put on a handful of other events none to the same level of success. The next event had been planned to be music festival was called the Hall of Fire and was set to take place from Jul 25-26th. One of bag-enders (re: roommates) had connections in the music industry and was able to arrange for some bands to come and perform and even was able to borrow some sound equipment for the event. Jordan was dreaming much bigger for this event and had announced intentions to get Elijah Wood, the actor for the main character of the Lord of the Rings to MC the event, though this didn't pan out

The first day of the festival as they were setting up a park ranger would arrive saying that there was no permit for a festival in the park that day. Jordan was baffled as he had given the task of getting a permit to someone that went by Miss-Tree and he was furious that she had failed them.

The ranger said the event could still happen the next day if they managed to secure a permit in time, which by some miracle they did. Unfortunately because of the chaos of the first day, many of the bands that were supposed to play chose not to show up. While Jordan couldn't get Elijah, he had managed to convince Sean Astin to call in and answer some questions for folks. Abbey took that call on stage prepared to do the interview when Astin said 

"I am actually calling today for someone else. Someone there loves you very much. He's a little shy so he wanted me to ask you this question, you don't have to say yes if you don't want to, but Jordan wants to know if you will marry him"

Abbey said yes. It seemed for some time that Jordan and Abbey had been dating, and while the festival didn't really go well, they had that to celebrate. Though a few days later Abbey would come to the Bit of Earth message board saying that they owed around $2500 for costs associated with the event and the permits they acquired and that the bag-enders simply didn't have the money to afford it. They managed to raise the money through old school word of mouth crowdfunding, friends and family, and promised that they would be more financially responsible in the future

The next event would be the Lost Palantir Filmfest on September 20th. Jordan had spread rumors that Billy Boyd, the actor for Pippin would be attending, but had to drop out, at which point Sean Astin, Dominic Monagan and Viggo Mortinensen would be attending instead as they were filming a documentary about celebrities and charities, but with the release of Return of the King suddenly they no longer had room in their schedules, so like Elijah and the music festival, none of the stars made it to the event. But Astin was kind enough to send a heartfelt video to kick things off

By this point the rent that Jeanine had paid for the bagenders was running out so the group decided to instead move to LA. The bagenders spent their last night in Oregon sleeping on Jeanine's floor and the next day she watched them leave, somewhat melancholic thinking of how she would miss those kids

Jordan's Real Identity/LA

Not long after, some time in mid October that year Jeanine would be contacted by a Detective Myers who was looking for information on a missing person by the name of Victoria Bitter, the original founder of the Bit of Earth site. Apparently Victoria's parents had received a really strange suicide note and desperately were trying to find out what happened to their child. The detective had reason to believe that Victoria Bitter was now living as Jordan Wood.

Jeanine was shocked by this, but after the detective left, she called Jordan to get his side of the story. Jordan explained that he had a vindictive ex girlfriend that had been spreading this rumour that he was the same person as Victoria Bitter. He swore Victoria had just been a former girlfriend of Abbey's that she kind of looked like him. Jordan tells Jeanine that this ex was so vengeful that she had once hacked Bit Of Earth's site to redirect it to a journal entry she made where she had all these photoshopped images of Jordan's head on the body of a girl to prove that he was secretly Victoria

Jeanine hadn't been around when Victoria Bitter was running things, she only ever knew Jordan and Jordan and was adamant that he was male, but Jeanine couldn't shake the fact that Jordan and Victoria looked awfully fucking similar.

Jeanine was perplexed, Jordan was her friend, he had many friends and did all these events and charity and openly gave out his address and all that so certainly didn't seem like someone in hiding

The story that Jeanine knew about Jordan, was that Victoria had been with Abbey first and when Jordan showed up Victoria became jealous of him as he seemed to get everything she ever wanted. Victoria's jealously only deepened to the point that she began to take on his identity and dress like a man but she made a mess of everything so she receded into the shadows letting people believe that she was dead

Jeanine decided that the easiest way to for Jordan to prove he was not Victoria, was to obviously, take off his pants. Which unsurprisingly, Jordan refused and reminded Jeanine that under no circumstances could he be taken into police custody, or else the IRA would find out and come for him

According to Jordan if the officials ever got their hands on him that would be it. But Jordan also owed her $1400 so to Jeanine that choice was either Jordan's death, or the loss of her money. With no clear course of action Jeanine sat on it, uncertain what to do and what to believe

Jordan determined that the simplest way clear up this whole mess was to email Victoria's parents and explain the situation, so he had Abbey, under the name of Bit of Earth, write the letter

This letter told Victoria's parents that the a now ex staff member, their head of security, Bob had been attempting to blackmail Bit of Earth, among this staff member's many threats was to reach out the Victoria's parents and tell them that their missing daughter, was actually their director of Celebrity Relations, Jordan Wood. The letter would say that this was untrue and would put Jordan in danger as he was escaping an extremely dangerous and abusive home situation and having him be exposed to the police early (as he's preparing a testimony against his family) would put him at great risk.

Jeanine didn't like that she had been marked down as a character reference without her approval, but what's done is done. This letter of course didn't give Victoria's parents any peace of mind and soon Sean Astin would be make a public statement about his involvement with Bit of Earth

"I was approached on Sept 11 2002 to ask me if I wanted to be a part of this thing. I was a little nervous about the level of intensity in their fandom, but I recognized in them a kind of leadership capacity. I wanted to support and nurture in a small limited way because there was a lot of emotional dysfunction in their group I didn't want to deny the energy that was being directed toward me. I wanted to help shape their imaginations for a moment and hopefully inspire them to use that passion in service " - Strange Aeons

By the end of October, Jordan would confess to Detective Myers, that yes, he really was Victoria Bitter

Jeanine was pissed after all the guilt and stress that Jordan had put on her for not believing him and all the things he'd asked of her in the name of protecting his very real identity he just came out and admitted her was lying? She was even more pissed when the detective told her that there would be no legal action against Jordan for what he'd done.

It turned out that Jordan had tried to change his name, by going into a social security office in Portland claiming that he had been born on a pagan commune that didn't believe in registering with the government so he had no official documentation, but he did have these handy hand written notes to prove who he said he was. They rejected him, but did allow him to add "Jordan Wood" to his legal name as middle names

So, Yes he had attempted to change his identity in a dubious manner, but the DA wasn't going to waste the time extraditing him from California, he had no criminal record and was involved in charity work, he just wasn't worth pursuing

Jeanine urged Jordan to make a public statement about this as she and others felt that the people deserved to know. Jordan sure wrote a statement. Jordan double downed, saying that he had confessed to Myers rather than get involved with the legal system and get tracked down by the IRA

Tentmoot

This was all happening as Bit of Earth was ramping up for their biggest event ever "Tentmoot" named after the meeting of the ents in LOTR "entmoot". It was a convention projected to have an attendance of 4000-10000 people at the Portland Convention Center for five days in December making it the largest Tolkien con to date.

But you don't plan a multi-thousand person con for free even if you're doing it for charity, booking convention centers is not free. Neither was flying out guests from New Zealand, but Jeanine didn't want to be involved so she let the bit of earthers figure it out until one day, two weeks before the event Jordan comes crying to her

He explains that they had made arrangements with Air New Zealand months ago, the airline having this program where every month they give away 20 tickets to charity, they first give them to people who need to fly for organ transplants and if there any left over they pass those out first come first serve. They had 14 left for December so they had given them to Bit of Earth, but after Return of the King premiered interest in travelling to New Zealand skyrocketed, so someone high up had decided they weren't going to give out free tickets anymore

Jordan says he had called them to make the final arrangements and suddenly these tickets they were promised were being taken away.

Jeanine overwhelmed with a sense of outrage that the airline would do such a thing took the task on. She needed to get 5 tickets, Jordan had only been able to wrangle in some lesser known stunt doubles and extras into coming to the convention, only the most hardcore of LotR film fans would have any idea who they were. But the airline had promised, according to Jordan

Jeanine called a friend who was a travel agent who said they could get the tickets for $18,000. The agent agreed to accept payment across multiple credit cards which meant the other bit of earther's could pool their resources, but there was still $15,000 outstanding

The travel agent told Jeanine they needed to make that decisions now or the tickets wouldn't be available for much longer, as by this time it was already dec 10 in New Zealand so the actors would need to get on the plane that day. Jeanine bit the bullet, then sent an email out to the staff informing them the international flights had been taken care of but here was still the matter of getting the actors from LA to Portland

Jeanine made sure that Jordan knew that she was not happy about the situation, but she was in fixer mode. She demanded the rest of the credit cards/billing addresses etc ASAP so she could book the domestic travel.

Somehow they wrangled enough cards for everything to be booked. Jeanine had done her part.

By this point another member of the team was getting quite suspicious of all the con's last minute crisises so she called air new zealand to check out Jordan's story. She would call Jeanine not long after to tell her that Air New Zealand hadn't heard of the con or the charity or anything (they even had someone specifically on their team to handle all LOTR related flights and they hadn't heard of it either). They also confirmed that they had no such program to give away tickets to charity and never had

That was it. Jeanine was livid, but willing to give Jordan one last chance to explain himself she called him and demanded he tell the truth and if he was going stick to his story he needed to produce receipts and she was giving him 30 minutes after which she expected him to call her back.

He didn't call back, so Jeanine did at which point one of the roommates known as Little Sam answered and told Jeanine that Jordan was locked in the bathroom throwing up

There were 2 hours before the actors would get on their flights, so Jeanine called the travel agent, telling them to cancel the tickets and that she had been conned. But she had no way of reaching the actors as Jordan had always kept that information to himself

Not long after though Jeanine received a call from Abbey telling her that Jordan had attempted to take his life and was now under 48 hour watch at the hospital. That was it, Tentmoot as canceled, the bag-enders began calling all the volunteers and bands to tell them that event was cancelled

Unfortunately four of the actors went to the airport, and air new Zealand somehow let 3/4 fly despite their reservations being canceled, and were now on their way to LA having no clue the event had been canceled. This was apparently due to the type of tickets that Jeanine had purchased, where they were like vouchers, which also meant that Jeanine did get charged for them

When Abbey got word the actors were at LAX she did the only thing she could think of, pick them up and take them out for dinner and offered them her floor to crash on until their flights next day as they couldn't afford to put them up in a hotel. Jeanine had begged them not to use the voucher tickets in her name, but they needed to get home and it wasn't their fault that the organization for everything had been such a mess, so they did

The bag-end household would fall apart quickly thereafter and soon Abbey and Jordan were the only ones left, desperately trying to make ends meet by being character actors on Hollywood boulevard, not even able to afford internet at home so they spent a lot of time at internet cafes.

Much of that time was spent reading, with horror, Jeanine's blog.

Jeanine had gone feral. She had never felt so used and she became determined to tear everything down to the studs to find every lie, every skeleton, every time they had made a turn without signaling. She was determined to burn everything Jordan had ever done to the ground

Sometime in 2004 Jeanine hunted down Abbey and Jordan while they were working on Hollywood Blvd to screaming at them while she waved a book in their faces. A book she had written. About them

Book of Days | Out of Context

While Jeanine's story does shine light on a bunch of the things that happened, often supported by quotes or actual documentation. There was also a lot of unnecessary things, inaccurate things based off rumors and salacious things. She also threw people under the bus, and was unnecessarily vicious and cruel.

The realty is, is that Jordan, who now goes by Andy, is a trans man. But to Jeanine him changing his gender identity was all a part of his elaborate grift, and for a long time she used his dead name and she/her pronouns to describe him in all her retellings, before eventually switching to gender neutral terms and writing his name with quotes.

Note that I used the name Victoria Bitter when talking about Andy pre-transition, Victoria Bitter was a handle that Andy had used at that time and not his real name. Andy is a douche bag but that doesn't mean he doesn't deserve to have his identity respected

Even if we give Jeanine's book a pass because it is warning about someone who is dangerous, the way she covered the story didn't just harm Andy. It harmed his victims, most particularly Abbey

In 2014 someone asked Abbey what she thought of Jeanine's book

Jeanine and I made peace, and I do forgive her for her actions. That doesn't mean I condone them.

She spread a lot of vicious lies. She created Andy's "transwank" defense, which is used to this day to derail. She put out false, exaggerated and melodramatic versions of real events, which muddied the waters.

And beyond that, she did it with both Andy's and my real names. I accepted long ago that my name would forever be tied to all of this - it is the reason that I started blogging. [Jeanine's] actions were only a threat to me leading a reasonably normal life if they were accepted as fact and hidden or ignored. It's only a dark secret when it's a secret. Furthermore, as I still plan on becoming a published author, I wanted the chance to tell my side of the story and, I hoped, clear my name.

This is also why I resolutely defend Andy's former victims' right to stay as anonymous as possible. I did not have a choice in having my name and the chronicle of my past out in the open. They do.

Furthermore, it is why I keep writing now - because Andy continues to rewrite his history - a history I am unfortunately and publicly a substantial part of. - Abbey

When speaking about how the book impacted her, she said

"between that and the online stalking, I've been terribly intimidated. I think I would have gotten out of that fucked up situation a lot sooner if she hadn't been so vengeful. At first, I stood by [Andy] we were both falsely accused. I later realized both that he had been lying when he said he was innocent, and that I was lying to myself about how much I was guilty of. Later, it didn't seem like I ever could leave, and even if I did the persecution would never stop" - Abbey

Abusers like Andy use an "us vs them" narrative to isolate their targets and make them feel like the world is a place that doesn't want them and that only they truly love and know them. When this narrative is reinforced by outsiders, like Jeanine in this case, it makes it all the harder for victims to imagine an alternative

By now I am sure that you have gathered that the version of events that I have presented here isn't the whole story. This is just what the story appeared to be from the outside. And I am sure you're wondering what was even true and what wasn't. Seven years after Jeanine published her book, Abbey would come forward and begin to tell her side of the tale and what had really happened from the inside

Note I will be referring to Victoria/Jordan as Andy going forward as that is current legal name and public identity

Full Source List:

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJU3AuF3AWs

• https://kumquatwriter.tumblr.com/post/92268521113/what-do-you-think-of-jeanine-rennes-book

• https://kumquatwriter.wordpress.com/2011/08/18/book-of-days/

• https://kumquatwriter.tumblr.com/post/92550156558/one-thing-i-see-mentioned-a-lot-in-blogs-by-andy