Moonlight



Ironically, I never actually watched the vampire detective show Moonlight (although I considered it, given that I like Sophia Myles). I was, however, the poster of record on the first Fandom Wank entry dealing with Busgate 2008, a gigantic clusterfuck of deception, fraud, betrayal, and moon pies.

 

 

Round One

 

A message-board friend told an epic story of wank that I then relayed to the good people of FW:

 

In Moonlight fandom, their high priestess of campaigning is named Leeser. Leeser's status in the fandom grew and grew as she organized fan cons, did the leg work for their Variety ad, etc. She is absolutely beloved and a hero of their cause. Which is why another fan apparently felt secure enough to give her $11000 in order to pay for bus ads to run in L.A. This was all back in July. Since then, it's been one delay after another, and the fans were getting pretty pissy about not being given answers as to why ads that should've gone up in August, still weren't up in September.

 

So, finally the anonymous donor speaks up, with a tale of lost money, printers who were never contacted, and who then finally WERE paid, but only a fraction of what Leeser had told the donor it would cost, while thus far, the actual ad people haven't been paid at all...so basically, it all adds up to Leeser walking off with $10,075.

 

In the course of discussing the entry, we found out that something like $8000 in convention funds had also gone missing. Oh, and also some fanfic contest prizes. And some gift bags. And...

 

I jumped ship at this point and asked someone else to take over, because I spent half of 2008 on Lexicongate, nearly got sucked into a vortex of Twilight wank-posting, and wasn't going through that again.

 

 

Round Two

 

Mass hysteria! IP bannings! Mass deletions! Fleeing mods! Multiple scams from Leeser's past! Bingo cards! Messages lobbed board-to-board between Moonlighters and FWers, ending up with... everyone becoming friends? Huh.

My favorite part, however, had to be the Moon Pie Escapade:

 

Yet another "anonymous donor" volunteered at East Coast Con to donate money to have Leeser personally deliver 1,500 Moon Pies (http://www.moonpies.com for those too lazy to Google that shit) each to Joel Silver, the head of WB Home Entertainment and Nina Tassler (for reasons beyond my understanding). Leeser wanted media to come and document this delightfully annoying fan publicity stunt. Which was where I came in. I wrote her a press release about all the birthday events (the donation drive, the bus ads, and, yes, this garlic-esque campaign) and gave her some LA contacts (none of whom were going to show at a publicity stunt).

 

But there may have been a small wrinkle in her plan this morning. In the form of the captains of the security watch at WB and CBS.

 

So I'd love to know where 4,500 Moonpies are at this moment in time.

 

I don't know whether 1500 or 4500 is the correct number, by the way. All I know is that it is awesome.

 

 

Round Three

 

The saga continues:

 

Leeser is not just the Head Vampire, she's also the head of her own church. She also ran her own school, which suffered from some of the same problems others have complained about. Things like, never being able to actually contact her and providing substandard material. Oh, and let's not forget... disappearing with the money. She is also providing virtual life services (whatever that is). And she takes paypal, btw!

 

In total, she's been spotted with dozens of websites of varying schemes. From MLL forum admin to notary, to virtual life host, to online web host, to webpage designer, to pagan priestess (Reverend even!) to head of her own online school for homeschooling pagan children, to ... pardon, my head is spinning. She's used at least 4 aliases in all these dealings, to boot.

 

But then the contest prizes did arrive! And the bus ads did run! Well... two of them. Out of forty. That have been seen. We're pretty sure the pictures aren't photoshopped. Mostly.

 

And then we have my second favorite part, which is what you get when you go to the URL on the bus ad:

 

Since Comic Con and Joel Silver’s statement that “Moonlight has been shelved”, Operation: Renew Moonlight has been taking a break from campaigning until such a time as the collective might of Moonlighters is needed again.

 

 

See also