(no subject)
About four or so years ago, a friend introduced me to an internet radio station called Radio Paradise. It's fantastic, full of music I love and music I've never heard before and would never have found on my own. It's great. I highly recommend. But that's not the point. The point is to do with the layout of their site. Their site is split into four columns. The first is the playlist, so you can see what has been played. The second is all the information about the current song playing - album, artist, listener rating, lyrics etc - and the last one is a link to the artists Wikipedia page. The third column, however, is all the user comments relating to the song.
The point is this column.
Because I like reading the comments. Sometimes you learn something great from them. So I scroll through and look at the music trivia, putting up with the occasional weird gif and douchey comment and the hundreds of dancing banana icons that seem so prevalent on RP. And through doing this, I came across the comments of a user whose name - sadly - I cannot recall right now. But these comments were always so upbeat, so happy and joyful. They were full of dancing bananas and exclamations points and a clear love of music that shone through the screen. They were lovely to read.
And then, a few songs later, I saw a reply to one of these comments that implied tangentially that this user had passed away. So I googled their username and found that this woman had been in their late forties or so, and had died unexpectedly about 10 years prior to me reading these comments. There was an old LJ post from one of her old fandoms where someone broke the news. And I thought: how amazing, how wonderful, that this woman made such an impact on all these strangers that people, years later, would comment saying that she was missed, and that her comments still made people happy because of her clear enthusiasm and love for music just shone through the screen. Isn't that brilliant? It's that fantastic?
This morning I learned that![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
crazy4orcas had passed away from cancer earlier this month.
I am not going to pretend that I was close to her. I didn't know her real name or where she lived (honestly, I though she was One Of The Germans - but no). But she commented on so many of my stories, always with joy and capslock enthusiasm and many exclamation points. I'm sure if there were dancing banana icons available, she would have used those too. It was always so lovely to get a comment from her in my emails. They always made me smile.
And then, later today, I replied to another comment left on one of my fics by someone else. And, after replying I scrolled up the other comments and sure enough, there was Orcas, with her capslock enthusiasm and her exclamation points and her unabashed joy shining through the screen.
I will never get another comment from Orcas, and this makes me so sad. But how wonderful is it that this woman made such an impact on me that she CAN be missed? That her comments can still make me happy because of her clear enthusiasm and love for fandom just shines through the screen? That I could know her at all, despite being different ages and in different countries and on different continents? If it wasn't for the internet, I wouldn't have know she existed at all.
Every comment from Orcas on my fics - every one of her comments on any post on LJ or DW or AO3 - can now stand as a memorial to her. To her enthusiasm and joy and love of fandom (and orcas). And in years to come we will see them and miss her and be so thankful that we crossed paths with her at all. And isn't that wonderful?
The point is this column.
Because I like reading the comments. Sometimes you learn something great from them. So I scroll through and look at the music trivia, putting up with the occasional weird gif and douchey comment and the hundreds of dancing banana icons that seem so prevalent on RP. And through doing this, I came across the comments of a user whose name - sadly - I cannot recall right now. But these comments were always so upbeat, so happy and joyful. They were full of dancing bananas and exclamations points and a clear love of music that shone through the screen. They were lovely to read.
And then, a few songs later, I saw a reply to one of these comments that implied tangentially that this user had passed away. So I googled their username and found that this woman had been in their late forties or so, and had died unexpectedly about 10 years prior to me reading these comments. There was an old LJ post from one of her old fandoms where someone broke the news. And I thought: how amazing, how wonderful, that this woman made such an impact on all these strangers that people, years later, would comment saying that she was missed, and that her comments still made people happy because of her clear enthusiasm and love for music just shone through the screen. Isn't that brilliant? It's that fantastic?
This morning I learned that
crazy4orcas had passed away from cancer earlier this month.I am not going to pretend that I was close to her. I didn't know her real name or where she lived (honestly, I though she was One Of The Germans - but no). But she commented on so many of my stories, always with joy and capslock enthusiasm and many exclamation points. I'm sure if there were dancing banana icons available, she would have used those too. It was always so lovely to get a comment from her in my emails. They always made me smile.
And then, later today, I replied to another comment left on one of my fics by someone else. And, after replying I scrolled up the other comments and sure enough, there was Orcas, with her capslock enthusiasm and her exclamation points and her unabashed joy shining through the screen.
I will never get another comment from Orcas, and this makes me so sad. But how wonderful is it that this woman made such an impact on me that she CAN be missed? That her comments can still make me happy because of her clear enthusiasm and love for fandom just shines through the screen? That I could know her at all, despite being different ages and in different countries and on different continents? If it wasn't for the internet, I wouldn't have know she existed at all.
Every comment from Orcas on my fics - every one of her comments on any post on LJ or DW or AO3 - can now stand as a memorial to her. To her enthusiasm and joy and love of fandom (and orcas). And in years to come we will see them and miss her and be so thankful that we crossed paths with her at all. And isn't that wonderful?
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