Thank you Jilli. and many others.

Someone registered under the name 'kimi'. Here's the profile: [link]

Does it make her any more Asian than user #1800, 'kimoko,' who registered just before her: [link]?

Okay. This adds some degree of credence to the fact that kimi was a seperate person from Gus, since it looks like she had difficulties registering and had to do it twice.

Oddly enough, though, Kimiko is a Japanese name, not a Korean one. Considering the fact that there's not a lot of love between Korea and Japan, IMO, it would be odd for a Korean woman to be named Kimiko. (Of course, now someone will come back with an "Actually...")

This is not me saying "Her name is suspicious, therefor she must be a fake." For all we know, she is very real as well. I'm just adding more information to the table.

No one here is denying that someone named Guy Straley existed. It's pretty obvious he did, considering the paper trails and people working with him in the past. Unfortunately, because the information found goes against most of what Gus has told us about himself, it brings everything, including the report of his death, into suspicion.

As others have expressed, I find myself strongly divided emotionally. On one hand, I don't want the person I knew as Gus to be dead. On the other hand, I don't want it to all have been a big lie and manipulation either. Which is why I'm interested in finding out the truth, whatever it may be. I can't resolve it emotionally, so I need to resolve it intellectually. And I think that's at the core of what's going on here.

Gus posted for ages. He told interesting stories. At some point in those stories he got sick. His health was bad. It declined. As it declined he posted more infrequently and crankily. Have you ever seen a person get sick and degenerate? It's what they do.

Then we didn't hear from him for a while. Then someone, who matches the description of the girlfriend he'd referenced many times came and told us he had died.

In my brain, this is sort of how I see it going. And I can really feel sympathy toward it-- I can. I feel for the underdog and I can feel viscerally the desire to perhaps change one's life on-line as one can't in life. And I feel compassion for people who might do this.

But-- I also feel for my friends on this board, who I may or may not have met in real life who may be feeling betrayed by this, and who want answers and want to know so they can move on with their lives. And I think that this feeling should prevail, because right now I am more sure of them. I too, googled and was puzzled, and would probably have missed this convo if it took place backchannel because, really, I don't backchannel and there are many lurkers who probably don't either. And I am afraid that if this whole conversation took place backchannel, I (and others) might have felt that I was not a good and true member of this very egalitarian board-- that people were making decisions for me and presenting them. I hate hurting people and I hate it if I in some way cause people's feelings to get hurt because I come from an emotional place myself-- but I don't see a real alternative for everyone I know to feel good and right and to be fair and let people have their say.

I also want to remind people that reading conversations like this in big gulps tens to be more emotionally upsetting thatn if they are happening in real time. This type of posting is more like a log of AIM posts than a thread on Buffy.

That is all.

Okay. This adds some degree of credence to the fact that kimi was a seperate person from Gus, since it looks like she had difficulties registering and had to do it twice.

The first registration, under Kimiko, used the same email as Kimi, but with a typo in it. When the confirmation email wasn't received (because of the typo), Kimiko needed to reregister under a different name. It's a mistake that anyone could make.

I think it would be good for me personally if I took a 24 hour break from this thread, to get a little more emotional distance. But Buffistas are going to wander in from vacation and whatnot, and wonder what was goign on here, so there's still going to be some questionign on the Gus beat for a while yet.

I'm basically just checking periodically to see if there's any new news. I do appreciate that Tommyrot made phone calls, and the lack of news is not proof, but is informative, anyway.

Not to throw a wrench into the works, but I'm beginning to wonder if it's possible that Kimi gave us a fake name for Gus. In which case there's really no way for us to confirm any of this, one way or another.

(I don't understand why anyone would give a fake name for someone they claim is dead, but it's at least possible.)

Nutty's comment about Schroedinger's Buffista may in fact be right on the mark.

Several (at least) people had the name Guy Straley for Gus before this, so that part, at least, seems pretty verified.

Sorry to interrupt, but we are going to need a new Natter name fairly soon.

Any ideas?

nevermind