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Speak Ill Of The Dead
a year ago
One of the oldest phrases in our lexicon, attributed to Chilon of Sparta, who was one of the Seven Sages of Greece. "Of the dead do not speak ill." It holds that it is socially inappropriate for the living to speak ill of the dead who cannot defend or justify themselves.
In reading this journal title, sandwiched between the hundreds to thousands of journals commemorating the passing of a key figure in the furry subculture, you may be feeling a confluence of emotion.
The passing of a high-profile person
The companionship lost to so many
The violation of social taboo
The fear of an uncertain future
The dread of mortality
The wrath you hold in waiting until you find what the title of this journal has promised you.
Dragoneer. A name that rose to prominence in furry as the key figurehead in front of this massive website, community, hub of life and art and livelihoods for hundreds of thousands of people. All of this you already know. So too do you already know of his passing.
Dragoneer gave too much to FurAffinity. He chose to give to it more than he should have - he sacrificed his health insurance, his life insurance, he sacrificed his medications to fund and finance this place. That is not to say FA needed any of that, or needed him to make those sacrifices, or that if he had not then it would have been catastrophe. It is more a story of a series of decisions that could have been made differently, could have followed advice of experts pleading to make better decisions, and could have led to the outcomes Dragoneer himself said he wanted for himself and for FA.
Dragoneer was a figure of controversy since the beginning of FurAffinity. Furries were and are a community of intense emotions, wild personalities, deeply complex relationships, and where reality and fantasy fight it out daily with fantasy often the victor. Dragoneer's role was self-appointed and public, with his every thought and move scrutinized and criticized, and his own fantasy often the victor over his own reality. The fantasy of who he was now allies with the reality of what he meant to the hundreds of thousands of people whose lives he impacted. The controversies of the past fall away in this mournful present because regardless of the pure reality, we all now correctly mingle and merge reality and fantasy to honor his passing, discard those controversies, collectively fear for our own futures on this platform, and self-reflect on everything we know and knew about a public figure in Furry.
In the months to come we can revisit the decisions Dragoneer made that were good, that were disastrous, and the decisions that led to stagnation and loss of FurAffinity's centrality to furries to platforms like Twitter. We can argue now about what it means to honor a man who has passed and to rage against the hospital and health system in the United States that would let a man die undiagnosed while fretting about costs and payments. We can see who's narratives are remembered, be they Dragoneer's narratives about his sacrifices for the survival of this platform, be they his critic's narratives about his narcissistic need to associate positive perception of FA with positive perception about himself and how this need prevented features from ever being implemented, or be they a subculture's distanced simplifications of collective memory.
Speak Ill Of The Dead, Lest Their Fiction Become Truth
In reading this journal title, sandwiched between the hundreds to thousands of journals commemorating the passing of a key figure in the furry subculture, you may be feeling a confluence of emotion.
The passing of a high-profile person
The companionship lost to so many
The violation of social taboo
The fear of an uncertain future
The dread of mortality
The wrath you hold in waiting until you find what the title of this journal has promised you.
Dragoneer. A name that rose to prominence in furry as the key figurehead in front of this massive website, community, hub of life and art and livelihoods for hundreds of thousands of people. All of this you already know. So too do you already know of his passing.
Dragoneer gave too much to FurAffinity. He chose to give to it more than he should have - he sacrificed his health insurance, his life insurance, he sacrificed his medications to fund and finance this place. That is not to say FA needed any of that, or needed him to make those sacrifices, or that if he had not then it would have been catastrophe. It is more a story of a series of decisions that could have been made differently, could have followed advice of experts pleading to make better decisions, and could have led to the outcomes Dragoneer himself said he wanted for himself and for FA.
Dragoneer was a figure of controversy since the beginning of FurAffinity. Furries were and are a community of intense emotions, wild personalities, deeply complex relationships, and where reality and fantasy fight it out daily with fantasy often the victor. Dragoneer's role was self-appointed and public, with his every thought and move scrutinized and criticized, and his own fantasy often the victor over his own reality. The fantasy of who he was now allies with the reality of what he meant to the hundreds of thousands of people whose lives he impacted. The controversies of the past fall away in this mournful present because regardless of the pure reality, we all now correctly mingle and merge reality and fantasy to honor his passing, discard those controversies, collectively fear for our own futures on this platform, and self-reflect on everything we know and knew about a public figure in Furry.
In the months to come we can revisit the decisions Dragoneer made that were good, that were disastrous, and the decisions that led to stagnation and loss of FurAffinity's centrality to furries to platforms like Twitter. We can argue now about what it means to honor a man who has passed and to rage against the hospital and health system in the United States that would let a man die undiagnosed while fretting about costs and payments. We can see who's narratives are remembered, be they Dragoneer's narratives about his sacrifices for the survival of this platform, be they his critic's narratives about his narcissistic need to associate positive perception of FA with positive perception about himself and how this need prevented features from ever being implemented, or be they a subculture's distanced simplifications of collective memory.
Speak Ill Of The Dead, Lest Their Fiction Become Truth
Thank you, Geemo.
As I had gotten older and grew out of the edgelord phase, and started communicating with other furs, I realized that the community is diverse and connected in the most unusual ways.
Even though I may have joined too late, I hope that he can forgive my past perception of himself.
You have such an elegant and eloquent way with words Echoen. I hope that you can continue your work here.
What does that mean? The most famous example of that is "if you want something done right, do it yourself." A nice sentiment, but it leads to frequently overextending yourself because you don't always have trust that someone else would do the job the way you would want it to be done. Combine that with the frequent optimistic underestimation of how long it would take for you to do something, and you can see how that would end up getting you into trouble because you have too much on your plate. You take a lot of responsibility, but it often seems like things don't progress because you spend a lot of time keeping plates spinning. You have grand ideas of how things will advance in the future, but you never actually get there because you don't have the time to implement them, and you don't trust that others share your vision.
I think we saw this often over the years -- Dragoneer not trusting others to design and maintain FA. Sometimes that mistrust was justified, but I doubt that it always was. I don't actually think this was done out of narcissistic need to be the face of the glory of FA. I think it was more done because he didn't find someone that he was truly on the same page with, and every word on that page had to be correct.
and people will shun you for pointing out the myriad of suspicious and downright evil stuff he's been connected with. Such as defending the zoosadists, just because people were harassing them... a group who were proudly talking about killing real-world animals for sexual pleasure. All beacuse of "name and shame".
It's not even the worst thing he's been involved in.
What i will say is it is hilarious people would get enraged over talking ill of him. For everyone saying he was a perfect individual, it takes no time at all to check his twitter, to see him laughing, mocking, and cheering on the deaths of people he disagreed with, just for the crime of having different opinions. Most never even interacting with him prior, but he still cheered on their deaths.
Yeah Eternus, i'm not to argue with anyone here but just look at the name of the burner account i made for christs sake. It wasn’t everyone and this post seemed like a good insight. But there’s been a lot of.. “weariness” / “worry about fakeness” in 2024(??)
I don't blame people on official accounts for not wanting to get involved in the drama on the account with all their arts and stuff. And this was a good post. Just like, not here, but in general. In the arts people can say whatever they want, have any persona they want, and we’re no better having our sonas.
Just, some people kinda felt like, you can’t tell what’s genuine, whats a stage mask, if someone’s stage mask is their genuine desire for who they want to be, or what stage mask gets them the most money. Call it paranoid and im on a burner account for a reason, anyone with art probably should stay out of it before rushing into drama.
People can have different aspects to them or treat others very differently in their life, Dragoneer sounded very kind, trusting and human human to his friends. Maybe like a MTG player who made sure the shop was always open. I’m still hearing his story secondhand.
But like yeah, im a animal lover and also a fur but like. People can have different facets or side to them. Someone could love blueberry pie, love their mother, love their dog, but have like some huge things in the basement.
And for Dragoneer, that’s what I seemed to have heard from the drama videos too. He seemed a nice guy who tried to chill with people. But maybe his flaw wasn’t traditional ‘MWUHAHAHA, I will make porn to take over the world’.
It sounded like he ‘overlooked things’ wanting to “believe the best in people” (especially his friends or the cordial). Which isn’t a flaw in a way, it’s very human. It just sounds like he might have gotten buttered up at worst or best by people who just. Happened to not be as good as advertised.
Like he’s gone now and the us healthcare system, side or not, screwed him over, people are mourning the good and also just noting the bad. He’s gone now. But it seems like human vs pr account though. These are just some of the tweets you can see live on his account from 2 weeks back
_____ (Dragoneer’s tweets (2 weeks) _________
I always envisioned Rhett as like a big ass lion, and Link as like this scrawny, hyperactive coyot-type... which makes his face here all more perf.
Dragoneer ·Jul 26
i really want a steam deck, but i also don't travel as much as i used to, and if I'm honest with myself... i'd never really use it
Dragoneer ·Jul 26
ATTENTION ALL ARTISTS
Twitter is using your posts and content to train A/I, and the setting is turned on by default!!
Dragoneer ·Jul 26
Replying to Esqueer_
This guy whines constantly like a karkin' child.
Dragoneer ·Jul 25
This person is notorious for harassing artists who he feels doesn't draw sharks the "right" way. He's been doing this to people for at least ten years
Dragoneer ·Jul 25
Someone else
“My fellow furries
After over a decade of being in the fandom, I've decided to let the cat out of the bag and come out as a bottom uwu”
Dragoneer ·Jul 25
Bitch, we've always known you're such a bottom we call you "the floor" behind your back.
He does seem human, and it’s a game of telephone about a dead man who by all accounts sounds pretty human vs a npc. He gave all he could to the furry fandom, potentially exhausted himself to the point he ran out of funds or had no health insurance or way to pay for his healthcare.
And he also tried so hard to keep every friend that he may or may not have also helped cover up for… Yeah.
For what it’s worth im still hearing second hand gossip and stories can easily be warped, word of 1 vs word of 100. 1 person’s word could be anything but multiple independent stories of the person acting a certain way around multiple encounters.. Though I think In that story, Dragoneer was overlooking… Uh.. not animals but uh, people looking for comfort from site bans after..the.. 14 yr old crowd.
I guess no good to smear the dead, and Dragoneer didn’t seem to be the person doing it. I didn’t see records that Dragoneer DID the acts.. Just that most of the controversy around Dragoneer wasn’t that he WAS the person.
He just overlooked actions of friends who just so happened to be in odd positions as long as they were chummy first or if he wanted to overlook them. Which tbh, is less demonizing than just.
It's less a flaw of cartoon villainy, just two facets could be true at once. Maybe he wanted to believe the best in people or full on knew, but preferred to look the other way to keep friends or avoid personal conflict.
He sounds like a very active con furry and helped build up the community and most of the gist seemed like he wanted to keep negatives furry news out of mainstream media vs intending to cover up for covering up sakes.. (maybe?).
Oh well. I guess everyone has a public position and a private position. This is burner acc after all and the name it got speaks for itself about the “Stability” of 2024.
=== Gist ===
I guess the gist is, whether we speak ill or not.
US healthcare fucked over the man.
He got 27000$ in debt and a lot of stuff before his passing, although we're all mourning now. WAS piling up.
Artists were talking about futures later, while others talking about "Don't suggest 200-1000$ is overpriced, can't afford it, shut up, don't buy it".
Furaffinity was a welcoming place and for what it's worth, focusing on curating a healthy and thriving community and keeping negative news out of the "Furry does a dog" kinda jokes.
I didn't go to cons But tbh, i was surprised too. I thought it was like a fandom of like lots of engineers and stem who liked the anonymous seeming friendship and community it offered online.
But people can have two sides to them. And a person trying to be friends with everyone, and a person alleged for being a friend to EVERYONE.. that kinda sounds like two povs of the same story.
It sounds like Dragoneer didn't do awful things himself, he just overlooked friends who did.
Especially since the defense given was "harassment isn't allowed under our guidelines" even though even places like IB were willing to ban the people, due to the egregious nature of the things.
There is a reason whenever someone needs to shit on the furry community they always look at FA. It's because most other furry sites have rules and ostricise individuals that clearly damage the overall situation. FA on the other hand always seems to look the other way until it's too late, until the damage is done, and then pretend like nothing ever happened.
The ones that ended up in federal prison ended up in federal prison, and thus didn't matter if they were banned, but the others are still around even though the only reason they didn't end up in prison was due to the fact they couldn't prove they were involved in the child rape parts, even though evidence to the animal rape still existed.
And why i lay this on dragoneer, is on the zoosadist thing in particular, people in the community asked him repeatedly WHY he would allow it, and HIS PERSONAL response was to tell people 'the rules' said not to harass the child-raping, animal-raping, animal-murdering psychopaths, but instead to simply report them and let the mods deal with it... and the ones that didn't end up in federal prison are still on this site, despite the evidence they raped animals existing.
This is definitely getting heated so i might avoid the topic for here though i am listening on a burner acc. And i probably encourage anyone on a art owned account, probably it's wisest to stay out of it on official accounts just with the you know, controversy and all that.
But i mean the more i hear about the guy, he sounded like human in a pretty.. both + and - kinda way. Nice and charitable to the furry artist community and seemingly always nice to the con furry and a lot of online furry community.
Two things could be true at once, he could have been someone very supportive of the furry arts, but also someone who overlooked, as Furaffinity's admin, people who met him first, and then "forgot to mention" if the allegations denied turned out to be true or not after he had years of establishment.
Kinda sounds like a potential trojan horse / Road to hell paved with good intentions. Kinda like the unclarity of like the moral standing of a getaway driver. I guess im not for much beef even if im raking the coals knowingly, but when i was on twitter, even though probably the hotter person here. I was seeing the anti furry crowd just have almost berserk like rage for the FANDOM as a whole for that 0.1%.
As they went.
"REST IN HELL, ZOO/S/P DEFENDERS!" to Dragoneer's mourning pages.
"He always had time to censor or hide everyone who spoke out, sure he defended his friends, but he always looked away, and even real artists got banned unfairly for months just for uncredible ai witchhunts or foggy 'invented retroactively rules'. " Like it sounded wishy washy.
I don't have a dog in the race but it sounded like two things could be true at once, though maybe that is wishy washy. I heard that Inkbunny and some of the diaper/cub crowd or snuff crowd gets.. concerning at times. Everything is a word vs word story and everyone can both be true about their own or have ommissions a third party would never know about. But when multiple independent stories agree with a common theme.
It sounds like a common denominator was that if Dragoneer considered you a friend, he seemed to try to do a lot to keep people, even maybe 'overlooking' too much. Or like the "complicitness of a getaway driver", "they don't cause the robbery, they just make sure their pals can always get away."
And it does make me think for a moment because while i had no personal beef with the guy and from what i heard, i might have been on a side that most of our friends seemed friends with him, the people who weren't seem to have seen him seemingly complicit in a lot. Like apparently he'd take the time to cover things up, wanting Furaffinity to be a place "all were welcome", and maybe the guy got uninvited to con parties if he didn't or uninvited from groups(?).
I don't know the story but i've heard stories of people modding, and yeah, the moment you mod someone, lots of bad blood. So a lot of places keep their mod accounts separate from a face, because good judgement or not, No one exactly wants to 'party hard' around a 'offduty police officer'. So maybe the complictness was trying to go 'nice cop vs harsh cop'.. Like when you're nice, people are your friend but they walk over you, when you're harsh cop, people listen to what you say, but hate your guts and stay away from you.
Guess on a burner account i'm just trying to make sense of it all. I don't encourage anyone with a art account to pick it up, not out of rabidity or all that. Just anyone who knows how fracturing politics can be. Two things can be true at once. This guy sounded like he had two faces or at least masks or public appearances.
1. A Furaffinity site admin who wanted to be a friend to everyone.
And 2. A furafinity site admin who would be "a friend".. TO ANYONE.
I'm not a first hand viewer with a personal stake in it, but just hearing secondhand reports. Like i hear Inkbunny is pretty bad and i guess like, he was a human who went to con parties and got uninvited across the street if he enforced rules. Maybe rather pick virtual 'wins' for people who might get confrontational, he was trying to build up his own club, and i guess naturally, he included people he knew, more over people he didn't. Like i've seen favoritism before, i guess he wasn't running a government building, he seemed to be kinda running. The furry fandom, kinda like a pseudo party club(??), for lack of a better "word".
He might have wanted people to have fun and not 'ruin the fun', but idk. Con furry life sounds different than online furry life. Apparently rampant drugs, orgies, potential "Std screening is discrimination against the fandom(????!!??), lots of suits, etc. I don't know.
Like i say, im more of a distanced third party trying to make sense of what the guy was like secondhand. I don't have a dog in the race but, sounds like he was definitely like a potentially problematic guy with 2 repeating sides in his story.
1. A guy who'd do anything for his friends. Helping them join the community, getting computers, encouraging artists, getting art, commissioning, drawing, who ran his wallet until he died
2. A guy who'd overlook and cover up anything for "his friends", including allegedly covering things up, censoring people who spoke against it, con events, pushing things "under the rug" for appearances vs stopping them, "potential complictness" / 'getaway driver likeness'(???)
I mean, the stuff he's alleged to have done isn't like eating lollipops with a dog or something. Like i admit, things were a spectrum and i thought that the anti furries were just making that shit up as pure lies to slander the community. And i guess i see how if that news got out, it's not exactly good looks at all, because anti furs won't see it as "1 bad apple, but all".
But it is kinda concerning that by allowing it to be covered up instead of weeding out.. It does kinda sound like a lot of "legal compliance" but.. I guess dude is passed now. He spent all he did on the fandom and passed away. I don't know if it makes him a saint, i don't consider him a martyr or a monster. Maybe like a party host who seemingly 'ignored' and 'looked the other way', a bit 'too often', to make sure people kept coming and didn't infight.
But yeah i mean, not stuff to discuss on a main account. Stuff you keep away from a 20 mile pole.
It's not like every person is like that, but overlooking? That severity, Yikes.
I thought slippery slope was some bs but that sounds like "give a inch, take a mile" shit right over there.
His death was avoidable, both in the sense that the medical system is fucked, and also in the sense that... Someone could have mentioned it on FA. They're gathering donations now that the guy is dead, when he or some moderator could have pulled that fire alarm before it got to this.
The fandom footing a $25k is a hell of a lot more reasonable than the $75k they're asking now, and a man would still be alive.
I don't feel qualified to speak about the man on a personal level. There's a lot to criticize, but I've already done so in other places, during the events that were taking place. But I am angry, both for and at this stranger, and at other strangers who didn't take care of this stranger. None of my friends would let me go run a website at the cost of my fucking health. My friends tell me no, and when something isn't healthy for me, and when I need to hit up a therapist instead of seek public approval. My friends aren't just yes-men, because we care about each other.
I feel sad that anyone would be surrounded by people who wouldn't pull them back from that kind of ledge. Constant agreeableness is the worst of furry's toxic behaviors.
But those were the sweet, nostalgia covered goggle days.
I think it makes sense to avoid politics on a main arts/income/character so i don't know what's proper or not, but i saw someone else doing it and with the passing i figured might as well.
A good community you feel safe to speak your honest thoughts and opinions, you don't feel like there's potentially harmful 'wrongthink', and like Dragoneer built a site many loved and used.
But i was over in the furaffinity official discord and someone, seemingly speaking both good and tepid but gash poking bad, just got banned from the spot for 7d without a single warning just for raising concerns and "drama" that the community Dragoneer gave his whole life for, was counting the 1k he spent on a funeral urn and not the 75k-219k/220k debt it was in.
Say it's a normie thought just like you say, but yeah i was talking with a friend and they said that it sounded just like the frog in a boiling pot of water. A frog will jump out of a boiling pot if you start it hot, we all sense. But slowly warm it up, hypothethically gaslight, guilt trip. idk. things could go wrong. But he did get milked to death and nobody set up a conspiracy theory to use us healthcare to kill the guy.
But just like you say, he gave all he got and he was the founder, of all people he had the most roots, and maybe he passed away instead of calling, from the sounds of it he was 25k-100k(??)+++(???) in debt, worked at IMVU, and the running costs for FA might have been 3x his earnings(?) with no health insurance.
He definitely was a passion project in debt and artists were starving and even commissioners and former buyers were starting to get into some strained / exterior drama relationships / trust falls onto the ground issues.
Taking care of another human being is hard, most people want a fantasy prince but the whole fundraiser is half the price of 1 house and most people are sparing what they can, 5-10$s vs the 1000-2499$s some arts go for, minus the 10k bad dragon donation.
People gotta take care of their own needs but it just kinda rubs my normie touched eyebrows wrong, like a "You wonder if you are in a pot of boiling water, YOU ARE!!!!" kinda vibe.
Dragoneer gave up his whole life to running the fandom, both good and bad, and let people influence him, wanting a crowd to desperately fit into allegedly so bad that he "said yes to everyone", but he kinda had doubts around his staff. Idk. Stuff was going on and people talk about reassurances.
Everyone raised stuff for dragoneer after his death, but it's off putting nobody raised it before. But was it running out clock, did he choose to pass vs live in debt and obligaiton? nobody knows.
But idk yeah, regardless how it pans out, it's still a frog in a pot eyebrow raise that people talk about people with 1-10 family members out of fandom taking a 10k of 400k savings thing as not a eyebrow raise.
Dragoneer missed out on all the potential even normie life stuff. So people, could use his death as a moment to pick on how the 1k urn or cardboard box and 8k funeral service could take funds away from artists. I'm not saying sane job preservation or the chain effect if fa goes down if artists could go down too.
But as a normie, it's super frog in a pot eye opening and concerning for me that someone could give their whole life potentially to a fandom. Just to end up tsk tsked about their cardboard coffin "siphoning funds from their income",.
IDK, probably best to stay out of the drama on a public account. I don't wish it gone worse, i just wish it went better. But this stuff is like frog in a pot shit to all the normies out there.. Though of course the anti furs while we talk ethics are fortnite grave dancing and posting his head onto tasteless even for me 'intel' memes. :/