Chapter 3 – Rob’s FANDOM HISTORY

Case 2:13-cv-45524-PAD Document 4 Filed 04/05/15 Page 52 of 285

UNITED STATES DISTRICT – EASTERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA

Annotation for Exhibit B: Please refer to the glossary at the end of this appendix for help understanding some of the internet terms used in this exhibit.

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Chapter 3 – Rob’s Fandom History

@gottiewrites 16/08/14

A reminder to the commenters that I am only going to include evidence from legal sources in this essay. Some of the stuff you’ve shared is interesting but I’m not using it. Sorry.¹

To address the concerns in the last chapter’s comments: this is not a sponsored promotion or guerilla marketing campaign for Loch & Ness. I have had absolutely no contact with Management. This essay is getting huge, so it’s very likely that at least some of the Powers that Be at RBC have read it.

However, I have not discussed it with them, and I have no plans to do so in the future. Listen guys, I’m just a high school student who wants to be a journalist. I’m not a professional spy or a professional anything, yet. It’s kind of flattering that you’re all making up conspiracy theories about me, but I’m not the one hiding something here. Sorry.

So, back to the case in point. First, a reminder of where we are to date: Remember I spotted Rob Hennings in a café the other week and saw him receive an email about a LiveJournal account called @silentwakes.

Well, this account was the focus of a great deal of controversy while active: plagiarism, harassment, and – wait for it – even some dodgy scammer cons. So there’s a lot of juicy goss associated with that account (beyond the fact that its owner made the ring that Nathan is wearing).

But, first, some of you need more evidence that Rob is @silentwakes. So here goes…

(By the end of this treatise, you will all be issued with an official Gottie’s School of Journalism™ diploma. Get your graduation caps ready.)

Proof #1 – Biographical Details

Here’s the @silentwakes profile bio:

28/m/LA. 1982 baby. Pisces moon. Future trophy husband to a NBA quarterback.

I’m here for the Fayden fics, so I’m probably not going to comment on your mom-posts about your husbands and kids.

Graphic design grad using my degree skills to make gay manips, just like my republican professor always wanted. Currently playing Donkey in the finest am-dram production of Shrek in the land. (‘Fine’ as in my mom said: “It was fine.”)

The birth date and location on the profile (1982, LA) matches Rob’s details on his IMDb page. Also, we know Rob has a graphic design degree from UCLA.

One of @silentwakes’ favourite tropes was ‘there’s only one bed at the inn’. He had seven fics saved in his bookmarks.²

@silentwakes joined the fandom quietly, at a point when there was already a significant community of Loch & Ness fans. His first few posts went wholly ignored, and even his comments³ on other people’s fics⁴ only garnered a friendly ‘thanks!’ in reply.

Those kind of posts were largely ignored. @silentwakes first achieved more prominence in fandom when he posted a very moody blog entry complaining about the inaccuracies of gay sex in fic.

Listen, I know you’re all middle-aged women, but at least try to do some research before you open a word doc. You might all learn from each other’s writing in some sort of weird circle-jerk, but as a gay man, it kind of takes me out of the moment when the characters don’t use lube or whatever. HERE’S WHAT YOU’RE DOING WRONG. PLEASE MAKE NOTES.⁵

There’s a lot more to the post, but I don’t feel the need to copy it here. I’ve seen the ages in some of your profiles. I’d rather not be accused of scarring the minds of minors, when all I’m trying to do is write a meticulously sourced and cited academic essay. You all get the point, anyway: Rob is a self-proclaimed gay man, who is super out.

@silentwakes’ post spread around the early Loch & Ness fandom. Surprisingly, a lot of people actually did take the criticism to heart, despite his venomous tone. He was friended by nearly fifty accounts in the next four days, all of whom he followed back.

When he posted his first fanart a few weeks later, his follower list jumped again by another few dozen. Within six months of opening the account, he was one of the most followed users in the Loch & Ness LiveJournal community.

Even more people friended him when that winter he started up a Christmas gift exchange, where people sent each other fics as presents over the holiday season community. He ran @LandN_Yuletide with another fan. @silentwakes was officially on his way to becoming a Big-Name Fan (BNF).

From 2007-2010, @silentwakes posted 300 entries, many containing fan art of the characters Jayden and Fang. He manipulated images of actors from other shows into the fictional detective and werewolf into various scenarios such as:

• Water-skiing!
• Having sex!
• Wearing tuxedos at the altar!
• Making out!
• Bottle-feeding a newborn baby, shirtless!
• Having sex X 2,000

That’s right. Rob Hennings made gay fanart for Loch & Ness when he was a youth. Honestly, I could end this right now and that would probably convince 90% of you that Rob and Nathan are a couple. Rob read the books and shipped Jayden and Fang? Then got cast as Jayden, and fell in love with the actor playing Fang? What a no-brainer. It’s so powerfully obvious to me, it might as well be written in towering flaming letters. But you guys need more than that.

Because I’m good to you, and have academic standards, I am going to flog this dead horse for every shred of information available.

Proof #2 – Photographic Comparisons

In this picture by @silentwakes, you can see a hand with the same distinctive burn on the right thumb as Rob. The dog he’s stroking? It’s owned by Rob’s parents.

And, most importantly, @silentwakes references a ring in a post in July 2010:

I’ve been taking a jewellery course in the evenings recently. I cast a silver wedding band with a design of ivy. On the inside, I engraved ‘HIM + HIM’. I wasn’t sure I would pull it off in a beginner-level class, but it actually came out really beautifully – look at the pretty!

Don’t get me wrong: I’m very single. But I really liked the idea of hand-making something special like that while I had access to the jewellery studio’s supplies. I was planning to tuck it away somewhere safe, until I meet The One and propose.

That’s when things get really interesting – and where Nathan O’Donnell comes into all of this. That silver handmade wedding ring that Rob made? Nathan has been wearing it on his right ring finger since November 2013 (around the same time that Rob and Nathan got matching moon/stars tattoos).

I imagine a lot of you are going to try to disprove my claim that it’s the same ring here. That’s obviously a huge swing for me. But seriously, hear me out. I promise I have the data to back this up. We have a lot of high-resolution photos of it from the @silentwakes blog post, and it’s incredibly distinctive and one-of-a-kind. With all love to Rob, it’s very ‘rustic’ in craftsmanship. I’ve marked up seven comparison photos here of the ring Nathan wears, pointing out markings that match the photos from the blog. I promise it’s a match. Fandom girlies, you can’t deny I’m right on this one. It’s the same ring.

So, Nathan is wearing a wedding band Rob made intentionally to give to his future husband, engraved with the lettering ‘HIM + HIM’ on the inner band. He’s also wearing it on his right ring finger – a common tradition for gay, monogamous couples.

I’d like to point out that Rob has also mentioned in a Reddit AMA that he and Nathan attended a ‘private mass at the Vatican’ on a recent trip to Italy for a Fan Convention. Anyone else hearing wedding bells? Or is that just my tinnitus playing up?

This all seems very strong evidence of a relationship to me, but don’t click away just yet – there is plenty more we can get out of Rob’s LiveJournal entries yet. Like I said, they also reveal some . . . let’s say sordid elements of Rob’s pre-fame history which I think he’d prefer stayed private. Unlucky for him, I have a secure private internet connection and nothing but time.

So starting tomorrow, I’ll be posting the TRUTH about Rob Hennings every day this week, as my investigations develop. In the meantime, if anyone has screenshots of @silentwakes’ deleted posts, please post screencaps in the comments or email them to me. Some deleted blog posts I’ve only found dead URLs for: ‘The Accusations Against Me’, ‘IP addresses and why you don’t understand them’, and ‘WHAT IS EVEN THE POINT?’.  

I think the last two chapters prove conclusively that Nathan and Rob are both LGBT+ men. For the rest of this treatise, I’m going to accept their sexualities as fact, and in the next chapter I’ll be focussing mainly on signs that they are not just attracted to each other, but in a serious and deeply committed relationship.

– gottie

P.S. Sorry this chapter was a bit late, by the way – it was my little sister’s birthday yesterday. She loves gerbils, so I got her a rare breed of gerbil that I had to drive an hour to pick up. She loves him. I sellotaped a quarter inside her card too, like all good sisters should.

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Footnotes