You all have heard it by now. You have seen the journals here on Fur Affinity. You saw the tweets, the posts on Telegram, Bluesky and other places.

  Dragoneer , the creator of this website here, Fur Affinity, in its shape and form as we know it today...he...he has gone onwards to another world.

I don't wanna debate the hows or whys or whatever about how this all came to be. I instead want to ask you to tell me, no, us, the fandom, what good memories you have about this lovely purple digimon.

To me, I did not really interact with him on a personal level. I think I might have had a conversation with him via FA notes, but that's about it. I did not know him personally, did not meet him, and yet, I feel a truly deep gut-wrenching sadness in my mind, body and soul.

To me, Dragoneer has helped me in the way that he created Fur Affinity in the first place. I recall how scared I was back then.

I found the website by link-hopping from website to website. It was at the time where I was doing my first cautious steps online. I did this stil on a family computer, even though it was on my own account, I was so afraid my family would be able to see what I was surfing and looking at.

I cannot recall why, but I was looking at these various websites that sold these latex prothetic face masks. It somehow triggered an interest in me and I started to look for animal people on google, not really sure what I was looking for.

And I then found photomorph / photoshop art showing a naked tiger-man, a very happy one. And in that gallery there were also more male tigermen being happy with one another. I was really confused by that, yet I remained intrigued. I kept going back to that website whose name I forgot since then. But I hopped around to other websites that also did show photomanipulated art, some of them by   Gryf , I think. And then I aldo found lots of drawn art.

I moved over to pages like Transfur, the personal website of Foxxy (I think was the name?), Yiffstar, that later would evolve into Sofurry, and then Fur Affinity.

There I would remain a lurker for quite some time. I did not even allow myself to fave stuff. Because I only made the account to watch, I told myself. See, I did not feel like what I was doing was right. I was mentally stil under the impression I had to ask somebody for permission to be on that website even. May have been my ADD, my aspergers, or just me being a scared teenager in the big big internet.

I looked around, was scared and fascinated at the same time. So much to see and do, yet I did not dare to do stuff. Until I got my fingers on TES Morrowind, and I found some mods here on FA that were made by   dragon-the-argonian , and I sooo wanted to make them work ... so I sent them a note, asking how I could do it. Pretty much the first note I sent here.

And it broke a barrier for me. I slowly started to fave. Then write a comment here and there. And my silly mind realized, I was allowed to do that. I did not have to ask permission to do such stuff. I became mentally more free. I started writing myself. I wondered about my own sona. I did my first monetary transactions via paypal to pay for commissions. So many firsts back then.

And this kept continueing. I explored myself, I explored the fandom, I encountered people, kinks, ideas, just so much. It was a place I could have never imagined. Yes, I was stil scared, but I kept on going. I kept on navigating through this gigantic mess, and I am so happy that this mess existed in the first place.

So yes, we shall mourn now   Dragoneer , but also let us remember the things he did for the fandom as a whole, for us all. What he enabled us to achieve and do, together or alone. But we were able to do so because he created and maintained this place.

So let's now maintain it for him. This wild circus, this gigantic disfunctional family, this...Furry Fandom.

*can barely hold back tears while writing this, sobbing quietly in the night while writing these words...*