Plaidophile

Now that the news is public, I'd just like to spend some time reflecting on the good times with Chris (Findra).

(I apologize for my use of pronouns; while Chris' online/roleplay persona was female most of the time, I knew him primarily as my boyfriend and his OOC self, which was quite comfortably male.)

A bit over two years ago I was idling on a MUCK when he contacted me. He had seen my comics because Bug had pointed them out, and he liked them a lot. At the time I was going through another one of my phases where I wasn't motivated to work on them, and even though Unity was close to its end I just couldn't bring myself to work on it anymore. But we got to talking and he liked them a lot and wanted me to keep working on them.

He didn't connect to any of the MUCKs I was on very often, but I found out that he was on SpinDizzy, and so I created a character there just so I could talk to him more. We spent way too much time talking to each other about all sorts of things.

Eventually, Findra and I met in person for the first time. He was a bit older than I expected - 11 years my senior - but he had such a youthful exuberance about everything. He loved to talk at great length about his work, but especially about his past as a dolphin trainer. He really loved cetaceans of all sorts, but he was especially fond of dolphins. He described in great detail the various personalities of the dozens of dolphins he had an attachment with, and how he would occasionally check up on them and see how they were doing long after he left that life behind to be a software engineer. His formal degree wasn't in anything software-related, either; he had a PhD in underwater electro-acoustics (I think; someone please correct me if I'm wrong) which was related to his research in how dolphins communicate.

We had high and low times, as with every relationship. He was pretty openly polyamorous; most of the time this reflected as him having a lot of online relationships, but for about a year one of his other love interests was living with him. At the time it generated a lot of friction between me and him, but eventually he moved out and everything went back to normal, and we all got along fairly well. I later learned that this other partner had been recovering from a major debilitating disease and was trying to get his life back together, and Findra had offered his home to him to help him get back on his feet. He made that same offer to everyone he knew; that was part of his great generosity and compassion that he had for everyone around him.

We never had a fight. Sometimes we would disagree on something, but he would always do his best to make sure that I was happy, and if I was doing something to make him unhappy he gently nudged me away from it. We definitely had our share of philosophical differences (especially in whether public activity on SpinDizzy should be IC, OOC, or a mix of both, and what actually constituted OOC) but they were such minor things and easy to compromise on.

We did so many things together. Before I met him I never had any reason to really explore my neighborhood, but when we were dating we made a point of going to a different restaurant every time. Nearly every restaurant I've gone to I've gone to with him. I will also never be able to take a hike up Bernal Heights hill without thinking of him.

He was one of the kindest, sweetest, gentlest people I've ever known, and I miss him so much.

Here's a couple of unfinished comics with Chris in them. The first one was when we were going on a mushroom hunting trip (with Rob and a few others); Chris is just in the background of this one:

The next one was a couple of weeks later, when I "accidentally" let my mom know about my relationship with Chris:

And to remember more good times, here's three more comics with him in them: December 27, 2009 March 20, 2010 September 25, 2011