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

I also did want to add, fairly late, that it is precisely my own googleability as a staff member of a university that led me, personally, to have doubts as to the veracity of some of Gus's life. And, that we all are probably at differant stages of the Kubler-Ross stages of grief, so we can expect continued posting.

And to keep this Buffy related, from my personal favorite Buffy "Espensode"

Anya: Okay, that's denial. That usually comes before anger.

Buffy: (angrily) I am not having sex with Spike!

Anya: Anger.

Went back and reread. I totally missed this from Topic!Cindy:

He was quite ill, and would never recover from whatever it was the monkey gave him. He was able to post despite whatever it was the monkey gave him, because he used voice recognition software. He had a hard time posting with it, but he wrote a book.

Is this true (about him having to use voice recognition software)?

Has anyone here corresponded with someone on a board or mailing list who uses voice recognition software because they are unable to use the keyboard? There tends to be tons of typos - extra or missing words, but especially lots of homonyms. And to edit the resulting text using voice recog is a huge PITA - you gotta sit there and command the cursor where to go, and then you have to tell it to edit the word and then you spell out the word for the software.

I knew a guy on another board who couldn't type and who had to use voice recog software - it was very obvious from his emails that something was off (as it just wasn't worth his trouble to edit). If someone had told me years ago that Gus used voice recog it would have immediately pinged me.

(Or are we done poking holes through Gus's backstory?)