I wasn't very coherent yesterday talking about ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
valerie_z. It's still really fresh.
In case you don't know, Val passed away yesterday at the age of 35. Her sister (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
talula728) posted that she was about to enter a PhD program and was doing very well both professionally and personally.
If you didn't know her, you missed out on so much. Val was FUN. She was hysterically funny, and irreverent, and foulmouthed, and so so smart. She also struggled with certain things in her life and talked about them openly and honestly.
I never met her in person, but I knew her online for almost eleven years. She's the reason I'm in fandom to begin with.
Val was a role model to me. When I met her, I wanted to be as ballsy as she was. I read her blog and thought 'wow, this is how I want to be'. She was just so ... I can't event think of the words. Charismatic? She was a writer through and through, and even her everyday blog posts reflected this with their cleverness. She was so real, though.
I first met her through email, before the board (Band of Buggered) went up. She had a site that hosted fanfiction and she had said that she'd host other people's fics, too. So I sent her a short (OOC, horribly written) Spike/Angel fic I'd written and asked her to please host it. She did, and not only that, she encouraged me to keep writing. She had vids, too. This was my first experience with vidding and I was floored. I kept playing her vids over and over again (I can't remember which ones came first before the board) and marveling at them.
When the board opened, I joined right away. I think this was August or September of 2002. Val welcomed me and had others welcome me with celebratory sex. It was a thing, okay? Val's thing, and it became our thing. The board was very amorous! We had orgies for every occasion!
The thing is, I was going through a horrible mess at the time. I had left my husband, but then we were back together again and I was lost. I was almost painfully shy, but Val wouldn't let me be that way for long. Val introduced me to a new way of thinking. She would just be so strong and put herself out there so boldly, and I wanted to be like her. She was my role model in the beginning, the person I looked up to. I didn't have real confidence at first. I borrowed some of Val's.
Val never knew most of this. Yes, I thanked her several times for getting me into fandom and for introducing me to new people and ideas. But I never told her what SHE meant to me. How her force-of-nature personality gave me a "template" to work with. I don't know what else to call it. I copied her until I found my own feet, because she was the most awesome person I'd ever met up to that point.
Fannish-wise, Val was very active in Buffy fandom for awhile, and then I remember when she was all about the Brian/Justin, and how she fell in love with Bert of The Used. More recently, she was all over Tim Armstrong and loved the band Rancid.
She was also a pro-writer. Her last published story is here: String Theory, if you want to read. She was so talented.
She will be missed.
valerie_z. It's still really fresh.In case you don't know, Val passed away yesterday at the age of 35. Her sister (
talula728) posted that she was about to enter a PhD program and was doing very well both professionally and personally. If you didn't know her, you missed out on so much. Val was FUN. She was hysterically funny, and irreverent, and foulmouthed, and so so smart. She also struggled with certain things in her life and talked about them openly and honestly.
I never met her in person, but I knew her online for almost eleven years. She's the reason I'm in fandom to begin with.
Val was a role model to me. When I met her, I wanted to be as ballsy as she was. I read her blog and thought 'wow, this is how I want to be'. She was just so ... I can't event think of the words. Charismatic? She was a writer through and through, and even her everyday blog posts reflected this with their cleverness. She was so real, though.
I first met her through email, before the board (Band of Buggered) went up. She had a site that hosted fanfiction and she had said that she'd host other people's fics, too. So I sent her a short (OOC, horribly written) Spike/Angel fic I'd written and asked her to please host it. She did, and not only that, she encouraged me to keep writing. She had vids, too. This was my first experience with vidding and I was floored. I kept playing her vids over and over again (I can't remember which ones came first before the board) and marveling at them.
When the board opened, I joined right away. I think this was August or September of 2002. Val welcomed me and had others welcome me with celebratory sex. It was a thing, okay? Val's thing, and it became our thing. The board was very amorous! We had orgies for every occasion!
The thing is, I was going through a horrible mess at the time. I had left my husband, but then we were back together again and I was lost. I was almost painfully shy, but Val wouldn't let me be that way for long. Val introduced me to a new way of thinking. She would just be so strong and put herself out there so boldly, and I wanted to be like her. She was my role model in the beginning, the person I looked up to. I didn't have real confidence at first. I borrowed some of Val's.
Val never knew most of this. Yes, I thanked her several times for getting me into fandom and for introducing me to new people and ideas. But I never told her what SHE meant to me. How her force-of-nature personality gave me a "template" to work with. I don't know what else to call it. I copied her until I found my own feet, because she was the most awesome person I'd ever met up to that point.
Fannish-wise, Val was very active in Buffy fandom for awhile, and then I remember when she was all about the Brian/Justin, and how she fell in love with Bert of The Used. More recently, she was all over Tim Armstrong and loved the band Rancid.
She was also a pro-writer. Her last published story is here: String Theory, if you want to read. She was so talented.
She will be missed.
