I don't write journals much, hell, I don't post as much as I would like to... but I can't sit quietly as someone so integral to my experiences in the fandom lays cold.

Dragoneer, and FurAffinity, were such a huge part of my early years in the fandom. I was a weird kid who grew up in the middle of nowhere and this is a place where I made connections, met some of the most wonderful people I've known, and was able to share my art with people who made me feel valued, supported, and encouraged to grow and keep perusing something I was passionate about.

Dragoneer wasn't perfect, FA had it's ups and downs, but he certainly gave the best of himself to make a place for furries to have their own community space. I know that years of back breaking work have gone into FA, from 'Neer and the rest of those who've come and gone over the years. It was thankless hours and hours of labor, unpaid, done from love and passion for the community. To see him pass with what was, most likely, a treatable health condition, due to the disgusting system of "healthcare" here in the USA, it's just awful. Imagine dedicating your life to building this community space and being unable to afford the outrageous costs of private insurance, and uninsured medical care, so you are pushed off to the back burners and left to perish by those who only see your life as what $$$ you can provide to them, and beyond that have no use or value in you.

The state of this country is beyond depressing and disgusting. We are nothing but a pay check for capitalist greed, and we loose so many lives, those of strangers and those who have touched our own lives, in this system. People who are forced to choose death over healthcare they can't afford, or those who don't get a choice, who's choice is made for them by the system that pushes them back and beats them down when they are already struggling.
I'll never forget my dad choosing to stop cancer treatments and die to prevent our family going into insurmountable debt for his treatments, and this was a man who WAS insured and had worked his life away for 36 years at one job.

Things need to change, they must change, how can we keep watching the poor and downtrodden suffer and die, unable to afford medications and doctors appointments, surgeries and treatments? We've lost too many, not just in our own community, but from one end of this country to the other. It's a sad day... a very sad day indeed, but I hope that this pushes all of us to think about what we can do to demand the changes that all of us deserve.

- Yours in Grief
Havoc