Not the blog entry that I expected to make, but it's related to someone who had (indirectly) been a big part of my online life in the past decade. I'll keep it short and sweet.
He ran a big furry art site where I made my start in the fandom (since 2012). Like Sy Sable, he played a big part in bringing together a community of furries, or enjoyers of anthropomorphic animal characters with human personalities. He enjoyed what he did, and made other people happy with what he did. FurAffinity especially became the hub for everything furry, so much that it spun off its own convention in 2007, FA: United. Due to the pressures of the COVID-19 pandemic, it was forced to close its doors. But point being, he touched a lot of people's lives with his own work, even in his personal life outside of his work.
His situation prior to his passing also really stuck out to me... Dragoneer's posts prior to his passing suggested that he had either a bacterial infection or cancer in the lungs that went untreated for some time, most likely due to the delays in the healthcare system. It goes to show how the healthcare system and its complex pathways often fail the least fortunate to satisfy the profit margins of its stakeholders. No one deserves to go through this.
Sure, there are some opinions I have about him as a person and how the site was being ran, but this is not what this entry is about. This is to honor the memory of a person who has been a big part of a lot of people's lives, including mine. Without your hard work I wouldn't have even learned about being a furry and have made as many friends as I do now. May you rest in peace, Dragoneer.
