solon_kitten | On the passing of a Furry icon, Dragoneer

(Disclaimer: I'm not adding links to this post. It's mostly a thoughtstream, and I just want my words out there.)

I've been thinking about this ever since the news dropped that Dragoneer passed away. I'd seen him mention getting a biopsy to find out what was growing in his lungs, but I wasn't expecting him to pass so suddenly. Knowing what was mentioned as the possibilities, it's terrifying to think of how long things might have been happening to him all that time.

I didn't originally join FurAffinity till 2008 (as ~teradyne), which means I would've been 22 at the time. I was on TransFur before that, and watched art coming in on places like VCL and AGNPH for the longest time. In fact, most of my time in the community was centered around personal sites of various artists, usually on tilde hosts like Tigress and FurNation, or through webrings and topsites that I followed. Hell, my first encounter with the fandom was Bernard Doove's "Chakat's Den".

It's hard to believe that, within the last year or so, the Furry fandom has lost a number of its more prominent members, including some of the people who were there from the beginning. But Neer was fairly close to my age, and that's unsettling.

So much of the internet has come and gone since I first logged in, but this one seemed to hurt a bit. Maybe it's because of how much has been taken over by social media, or how I'm just a bit jaded about the web in general as of late. But I know that Neer's contribution will never be forgotten, and he will be sorely missed for years to come.