Two captions (one a 3 panel set!) from Bren given to me way back when!
Wanted to post something made for me by one of my dearest friends on the Haven back in the day, Bren. I miss her dearly, and hope she's still alive. Like a few other people on Rachel's Haven (which would include Rachel herself) Bren was a GG, or genetic girl, and a lesbian. Like a few other friends on the Haven, we also interacted in real life, as she would send me wondrous things from her garden, and I'd help her with whatever tech issues she was having at the time.
We would debate politics, work on things for the Haven, proofread each others work, and irritate and/or tease Courtney the admin as much as we could. She was the stoner / biker chick sister that I never had. I was a huge Pink Floyd fan, and she was a super fan, so we'd talk about Syd Barrett and early demos, and she had almost every live concert they ever did. She was also big into astronomy, and she'd go camping to find great spots to star gaze. We'd talk about survival and government conspiracies and how to make sure my daughter would turn out to be a lesbian so I wouldn't have to worry about her getting pregnant.
I always looked forward to seeing her online, as was often the case, she'd have captions for me to proofread, and make sure the coloring didn't clash as she was color blind. Who wouldn't want to be the first to read the next thing she had crafted? She had joined when I did, and was the first one to really push me to make better captions. It was never malicious, but it definitely was a, "Top this, fuckface!" competition, but not without a copious amount of compliments when you did something well, and getting praise from her was always a highlight.
She had been quite sick over the years, and was getting worse from what I could tell. She had said that at some point, she'd just disappear ... and she did. Can't say I don't miss her, because I do.
It is funny how ephemeral things can be. At one point, she and I had the most captions posted to the Haven, and she was an essential read for so many of the lurkers there on the Haven. Fast forward five or six years later, and I bet she barely registers as a blip on most people's TG captioning radar, when she helped inspire many people to start making their own. I guess it doesn't help that the Haven, in one of its server burps, lost about 3 years worth of caption files, which included the pinnacle of her creations, right before she vanished.
Still, I hope she's out there still, perhaps dropping in here to check up on me. I'd love to get another box of produce from her wonderful garden.
If not, then she's got the best view of the stars she's ever had.