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10 Years. Dragoneer has Died; Become the Fur Affinity Uni...
a year ago
Who could have predicted Dragoneer was dying? The signs were all over his TwXtter account, which was deplatformed, much like Mark Nadal's.
Oh, hi, it's Filene. I mean, yes, this is my name--you can call me "Natalie" or Philene if you want. I'm here because Dragoneer's death shook me.
When I left ten years ago, I was in a hangover of grief. I had lived almost 30 years of my life as a shallow version of myself. I was still in a toxic relationship I was largely responsible for crafting, and which I was too unfit to realize its end. This was the second person I introduced to the furry community, much like Kee and Arcano had introduced me to 10 years prior. Yes, I was 20 when I went to my first FurFright in 2005. It was a few years later when I would meet Dragoneer at, I think, Anthrocon 2009. I had a larger chance to be his friend in 2010, the year after my first toxic relationship ended. Do I claim immunity or perfection? I've been gone ten years because of the opposite: I had my failings and my wounds accumulating, unaccounted for. After coming out as trans* in October 2014, I began seeing my first long-term therapist in 2015. I've been in therapy since.
I couldn't come back to FA because I had so many ideas about how I'd do it. I'd post a journal coming out, promoting my new FA username (FindingFilene, or Bedtricks), or my queer adult sex working lifestyle writing/streaming company, NotStung Entertainment (@NotStung for just the character.) I really took a left turn after I was laid off in May 2014, and I was determined to stop making the same mistakes in art, in community, in myself, in employment, in love, and beyond. It's for this reason I am alive because of three things: 1. My faith in God, and a religious experience I had in December 2012, leaving me to believe I would live and needed to live as an out trans person. 2. My spouse, best friend, partner, and muse, SassyUnicorn, who no longer goes online by that pseudonym. She housed me after my parents unhomed me in July 2015--I was homeless for an hour until she offered to home me and continue expanding our relationship. (Shout out to my sister who could offer me an occasional home.) 3. Everything my friend Ryn taught me, and including everything from my furry friends like imuhata (not going by this name), Lainenyah (not going by this name), Parlnock (no longer), and FullNekoAlchemist (not going by this name?). They had been the closest to me in the years leading up to the relationship that had threats upon my life and safety, and they were largely aware of the poor match I made for my ex-partner despite all else.
I'm posting here, on FA, under SoreThumb, when I had largely surrendered this pseudonym in 2014. That's because I joined FurAffinity before it was Dragoneer's. I joined FA before "social media" was coined. The features FA uses were all hand-coded by human beings, and all their interconnected parts, like help desks, art galleries, trouble tickets, administration, exporting, browsing, search aggregating, are *nowadays* never handled in one giant program like FA grew into. The fact FA continues is a testament to the furry community Dragoneer protected with his life and his body. I was familiar with Dragoneer/Preyfar outside FA due to our art and inflation interests. I can still hear his voice in my mind, and when I learned of his passing, I saw so many of his posts on TwXtter still shared the same values I do, such as being anti-facist, anti-Racist, anti-poverty, anti-apartheid, anti-revisionist Zionism (I think), anti-nationalism, anti-authoritarian, and on and on and on. I was aware he was going broke helping furries all over the world. He never had time to recover from the mantle of "owner" of FA, even during the brief time IMVU employed him. And it's because of his death I have returned to share information about me, and how you can help me, if not help FurAffinity as well.
I believe the answer for FurAffinity was something Dragoneer had possibly wondered about: a union. "Fur Affinity: United", the convention Dragoneer, FA staffers, and FA:U Organizers made a reality, could be more than just a short-term convention. It could be, like what an inspiration to me, Margaret Trauth (egypturnash), said which I'll paraphse: dress like the convention never ends. This convention I imagine could be for all furries: anti-ecocide. Pro human rights for non-humans, like animals, or robots, and if this means ethical communal organizational bodies like unions or B-Corps for example? So be it. And all we have to do on FA is send an email or a snail mail, voting for this union to be real.
With this union, and with a large international governing body of this union, we could finally demand universal healthcare for the grass, for the bugs and burrowers, for all life on Earth, and truly provide Nature's Rights as the Indigenous First Nations of "Turtle Rock" (the western hemisphere) have long sought. **Now, is the time, in the light of Dragoneer's martyrdom by a money-hungry and money-impoverished health care system.**
I don't dare let FA pass on. Now is the time for FA to become a greater institution. Now is the time for us to find our family and friends and ask them to donate to our cause, to keep our art alive. And our art is important *now*, more than ever. Just as I signed into FA, to see: 65,820S, 404W, 25C, 2,154F, and 15,923J, I checked the shouts and comments to find new commenters with art favorites I *had* to save and fave. (Yes, see, I have new faves after 10 years? XD) In the ten years I've had, being suffocated by fears about my art, my influence, my symbology, my ideologies, I have now understood none of those were problematic in begetting or wishing *real* harm to *real* beings. Instead, I can see how, with the closing of movie theaters that aired X-rated movies by smaller time artists, people like you and I are losing the chance to share our politics of pleasure. All art is political. Being in an audience of hundreds, or thousands, or more, and all of you celebrating trans people being loved and pleasured, melanated people being pleasured in public, cismen and ciswomen refusing to let their sexualities and gender conformity be defined by heteronormativity and being pleasured/pleasuring thanks to this; being in an audience with people celebrating this CHANGES THE POLITICS OF THE WORLD AND OUR VERY BODIES.
Make no mistake, FA is radical. The pamphlets I saw at FurFright (may it rest in peace), about furry being greater than a fandom are REAL. They are TRUE. The people you inspire by seeing your furry art, or your faves, or your comments, THEIR LIVES ARE IMPROVED. I didn't know this, and I didn't believe this, but I improved lives. I recall my first long-term partner asking me what I thought when other people mentioned my "weird furry art, like the Cheeseasaurus Rex comic," and I recall the shame I felt in the fandom for having dug my niche, and I dug it no longer. It's with gratitude and pride and humility I return to FA to see messages of shouts from folk like Critlocked, notes from long term friends like Karno, and comments on my old work by Modem_redpill. I remember you. **I remember you.** I will always remember Dragoneer, too.
If you really want to help me in the circumstances I'm in, cashapp me. I don't know when I'll work next. I don't know when I'll fit employment into my busy life. I just moved in with my spouse, and our two disabled children. My dad is failing to have his memory recover quickly after fighting Stage IV Pancreatic Cancer. My mom is struggling taking care of him. My family is ruined by the 2016 election and the distance we grew apart after the death of my grandfather. We're almost full on credit. But even if you don't help me, I have faith we *will* survive and endure. And I *will* post to Bedtricks or FindingFilene or some other name that you'll find from those so you can see the scribbles and sketches I worked so hard to do more than etch in 10 years.
We can have Rednef and Fender. We can bring all the furries and furry-adjacents like I formerly was, to the table. None of us want this world to be destroyed. None of us want the habitat of the animals we love to be destroyed. And in a large, open government we run on a system like Decidim, we can actually be a part of international social change. If you want to learn in more detail how Dragoneer's death hit me in the middle of my "Slumberer Sentinels" project, or my "VANtics" Project (formerly WackyWildTVAds.com ) , you can visit https://tumblr.filene.cloud . Yes, that's my new domain. I plan on possibly working with this because I don't want to change the work of the Filene family and foundations by continuing to go by this department store name (Filene's Basement, hee hee) that inspired me.
I'm not the old SoreThumb. I'm fuller, kinkier, more humble and faithful, and more determined to somehow survive another 40 years.
Thank you for being here to read this. Let me link to all sorts of journals by others who I saw in my Journals tab, and let yourself also be touched by the large network of people mourning my friend Sean. Perhaps he was a friend to all furries who'd allow it mutually.
Assalamu Alaikum, (Yes, I reverted to being an Islamic Muslim on Oct 29th, 2022. I said the Shahada aloud a few days later on November 2nd, 2022, I think.)
Filene "Natalie" Taylor Bedrick
tsey/tsem/tseir[s] or she/her/hers or any
https://dragon.style/@Filene
https://filene.cloud and https://tumblr.filene.cloud
PS: If I've wronged you in the past, I'm sorry. I've likely tried to reach out to you if you weren't either my former long-term partners. I won't stop being accountable for my errors and effecting positive change to be anti-annihilationist and anti-apartheid.
Journals from friends and those I followed:
https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/10926353/ from zumzumfoxy;
https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/10926369/ by ScottMale24;
https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/10926811/ by Eric W Schwartz (EWS)
https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/10927433/ by Farore Nightclaw
https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/10927830/ by Zai (Zai Redwinters)
(alas, my busy life calls me, and I can only post five before I go away. I hope to add more some day.
Filene, August 11th, 2024)
SHA-512 Hash of everything above
:
de4cdc999d3fca0ae6857684731de2d5d935c2dc292a5ec634a43206bd3a20b31dce6d497a3736b24275f5ba83dc9c2ce018e6ee362736a48ecd7d5aba4cd57c
SHA-512 Hash of everything above
, plus a salt after the last ):
0a85a35d7bae4e7adbbe47d2a544b5ace5f5bb7eba79aed5f5e11f22d98fcde9b2de9b8be3c5fa2db436553f59f393d62ea166b002ad130c51618828b82d8ef6
Oh, hi, it's Filene. I mean, yes, this is my name--you can call me "Natalie" or Philene if you want. I'm here because Dragoneer's death shook me.
When I left ten years ago, I was in a hangover of grief. I had lived almost 30 years of my life as a shallow version of myself. I was still in a toxic relationship I was largely responsible for crafting, and which I was too unfit to realize its end. This was the second person I introduced to the furry community, much like Kee and Arcano had introduced me to 10 years prior. Yes, I was 20 when I went to my first FurFright in 2005. It was a few years later when I would meet Dragoneer at, I think, Anthrocon 2009. I had a larger chance to be his friend in 2010, the year after my first toxic relationship ended. Do I claim immunity or perfection? I've been gone ten years because of the opposite: I had my failings and my wounds accumulating, unaccounted for. After coming out as trans* in October 2014, I began seeing my first long-term therapist in 2015. I've been in therapy since.
I couldn't come back to FA because I had so many ideas about how I'd do it. I'd post a journal coming out, promoting my new FA username (FindingFilene, or Bedtricks), or my queer adult sex working lifestyle writing/streaming company, NotStung Entertainment (@NotStung for just the character.) I really took a left turn after I was laid off in May 2014, and I was determined to stop making the same mistakes in art, in community, in myself, in employment, in love, and beyond. It's for this reason I am alive because of three things: 1. My faith in God, and a religious experience I had in December 2012, leaving me to believe I would live and needed to live as an out trans person. 2. My spouse, best friend, partner, and muse, SassyUnicorn, who no longer goes online by that pseudonym. She housed me after my parents unhomed me in July 2015--I was homeless for an hour until she offered to home me and continue expanding our relationship. (Shout out to my sister who could offer me an occasional home.) 3. Everything my friend Ryn taught me, and including everything from my furry friends like imuhata (not going by this name), Lainenyah (not going by this name), Parlnock (no longer), and FullNekoAlchemist (not going by this name?). They had been the closest to me in the years leading up to the relationship that had threats upon my life and safety, and they were largely aware of the poor match I made for my ex-partner despite all else.
I'm posting here, on FA, under SoreThumb, when I had largely surrendered this pseudonym in 2014. That's because I joined FurAffinity before it was Dragoneer's. I joined FA before "social media" was coined. The features FA uses were all hand-coded by human beings, and all their interconnected parts, like help desks, art galleries, trouble tickets, administration, exporting, browsing, search aggregating, are *nowadays* never handled in one giant program like FA grew into. The fact FA continues is a testament to the furry community Dragoneer protected with his life and his body. I was familiar with Dragoneer/Preyfar outside FA due to our art and inflation interests. I can still hear his voice in my mind, and when I learned of his passing, I saw so many of his posts on TwXtter still shared the same values I do, such as being anti-facist, anti-Racist, anti-poverty, anti-apartheid, anti-revisionist Zionism (I think), anti-nationalism, anti-authoritarian, and on and on and on. I was aware he was going broke helping furries all over the world. He never had time to recover from the mantle of "owner" of FA, even during the brief time IMVU employed him. And it's because of his death I have returned to share information about me, and how you can help me, if not help FurAffinity as well.
I believe the answer for FurAffinity was something Dragoneer had possibly wondered about: a union. "Fur Affinity: United", the convention Dragoneer, FA staffers, and FA:U Organizers made a reality, could be more than just a short-term convention. It could be, like what an inspiration to me, Margaret Trauth (egypturnash), said which I'll paraphse: dress like the convention never ends. This convention I imagine could be for all furries: anti-ecocide. Pro human rights for non-humans, like animals, or robots, and if this means ethical communal organizational bodies like unions or B-Corps for example? So be it. And all we have to do on FA is send an email or a snail mail, voting for this union to be real.
With this union, and with a large international governing body of this union, we could finally demand universal healthcare for the grass, for the bugs and burrowers, for all life on Earth, and truly provide Nature's Rights as the Indigenous First Nations of "Turtle Rock" (the western hemisphere) have long sought. **Now, is the time, in the light of Dragoneer's martyrdom by a money-hungry and money-impoverished health care system.**
I don't dare let FA pass on. Now is the time for FA to become a greater institution. Now is the time for us to find our family and friends and ask them to donate to our cause, to keep our art alive. And our art is important *now*, more than ever. Just as I signed into FA, to see: 65,820S, 404W, 25C, 2,154F, and 15,923J, I checked the shouts and comments to find new commenters with art favorites I *had* to save and fave. (Yes, see, I have new faves after 10 years? XD) In the ten years I've had, being suffocated by fears about my art, my influence, my symbology, my ideologies, I have now understood none of those were problematic in begetting or wishing *real* harm to *real* beings. Instead, I can see how, with the closing of movie theaters that aired X-rated movies by smaller time artists, people like you and I are losing the chance to share our politics of pleasure. All art is political. Being in an audience of hundreds, or thousands, or more, and all of you celebrating trans people being loved and pleasured, melanated people being pleasured in public, cismen and ciswomen refusing to let their sexualities and gender conformity be defined by heteronormativity and being pleasured/pleasuring thanks to this; being in an audience with people celebrating this CHANGES THE POLITICS OF THE WORLD AND OUR VERY BODIES.
Make no mistake, FA is radical. The pamphlets I saw at FurFright (may it rest in peace), about furry being greater than a fandom are REAL. They are TRUE. The people you inspire by seeing your furry art, or your faves, or your comments, THEIR LIVES ARE IMPROVED. I didn't know this, and I didn't believe this, but I improved lives. I recall my first long-term partner asking me what I thought when other people mentioned my "weird furry art, like the Cheeseasaurus Rex comic," and I recall the shame I felt in the fandom for having dug my niche, and I dug it no longer. It's with gratitude and pride and humility I return to FA to see messages of shouts from folk like Critlocked, notes from long term friends like Karno, and comments on my old work by Modem_redpill. I remember you. **I remember you.** I will always remember Dragoneer, too.
If you really want to help me in the circumstances I'm in, cashapp me. I don't know when I'll work next. I don't know when I'll fit employment into my busy life. I just moved in with my spouse, and our two disabled children. My dad is failing to have his memory recover quickly after fighting Stage IV Pancreatic Cancer. My mom is struggling taking care of him. My family is ruined by the 2016 election and the distance we grew apart after the death of my grandfather. We're almost full on credit. But even if you don't help me, I have faith we *will* survive and endure. And I *will* post to Bedtricks or FindingFilene or some other name that you'll find from those so you can see the scribbles and sketches I worked so hard to do more than etch in 10 years.
We can have Rednef and Fender. We can bring all the furries and furry-adjacents like I formerly was, to the table. None of us want this world to be destroyed. None of us want the habitat of the animals we love to be destroyed. And in a large, open government we run on a system like Decidim, we can actually be a part of international social change. If you want to learn in more detail how Dragoneer's death hit me in the middle of my "Slumberer Sentinels" project, or my "VANtics" Project (formerly WackyWildTVAds.com ) , you can visit https://tumblr.filene.cloud . Yes, that's my new domain. I plan on possibly working with this because I don't want to change the work of the Filene family and foundations by continuing to go by this department store name (Filene's Basement, hee hee) that inspired me.
I'm not the old SoreThumb. I'm fuller, kinkier, more humble and faithful, and more determined to somehow survive another 40 years.
Thank you for being here to read this. Let me link to all sorts of journals by others who I saw in my Journals tab, and let yourself also be touched by the large network of people mourning my friend Sean. Perhaps he was a friend to all furries who'd allow it mutually.
Assalamu Alaikum, (Yes, I reverted to being an Islamic Muslim on Oct 29th, 2022. I said the Shahada aloud a few days later on November 2nd, 2022, I think.)
Filene "Natalie" Taylor Bedrick
tsey/tsem/tseir[s] or she/her/hers or any
https://dragon.style/@Filene
https://filene.cloud and https://tumblr.filene.cloud
PS: If I've wronged you in the past, I'm sorry. I've likely tried to reach out to you if you weren't either my former long-term partners. I won't stop being accountable for my errors and effecting positive change to be anti-annihilationist and anti-apartheid.
Journals from friends and those I followed:
https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/10926353/ from zumzumfoxy;
https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/10926369/ by ScottMale24;
https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/10926811/ by Eric W Schwartz (EWS)
https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/10927433/ by Farore Nightclaw
https://www.furaffinity.net/journal/10927830/ by Zai (Zai Redwinters)
(alas, my busy life calls me, and I can only post five before I go away. I hope to add more some day.
Filene, August 11th, 2024)
SHA-512 Hash of everything above
:
de4cdc999d3fca0ae6857684731de2d5d935c2dc292a5ec634a43206bd3a20b31dce6d497a3736b24275f5ba83dc9c2ce018e6ee362736a48ecd7d5aba4cd57c
SHA-512 Hash of everything above
, plus a salt after the last ):
0a85a35d7bae4e7adbbe47d2a544b5ace5f5bb7eba79aed5f5e11f22d98fcde9b2de9b8be3c5fa2db436553f59f393d62ea166b002ad130c51618828b82d8ef6
"Being in an audience of hundreds, or thousands, or more, and all of you celebrating trans people being loved and pleasured, melanated people being pleasured in public, cismen and ciswomen refusing to let their sexualities and gender conformity be defined by heteronormativity and being pleasured/pleasuring thanks to this; being in an audience with people celebrating this CHANGES THE POLITICS OF THE WORLD AND OUR VERY BODIES."
I very much how you phrased all this, and I appreciate this attitude. Pleasure is a gift.
I also appreciate you appreciating that very long sentence. ^^; *bowing emoji* I can have the capacity for gratitude, and hopefully to find pleasure even when challenged.
I definitely remember your work, The pumpkin one for example I think was pretty great and may have inspired some similar work I've seen since. I'd be excited to see you post so more art if that's something you might do in the future!