A friend of mine died a few days ago. His name was Tor. He was better known as Tugrik, a big friendly blue unicorn with his horn on his nose, like a rhinoceros.
I’ve known him for more than thirty years. Met him on a MUD, got to know him in real life, followed him through highs and lows of both our lives. I think he always slightly resented me because I got lucky with Internet startup stock options where he was never able to strike it big like that. But we shared a lot of the same interests and a lot of the same friends, and we went on various adventures together (his, more often than mine). We eventually fell out of touch. I feel like that was because my friendships are few and deep, and his were vast and – no, they weren’t shallow; every time I came near his orbit I saw that he was surrounded by people who loved him. Everyone loved him. He was larger than life. I’m seeing his obituaries pop up everywhere, and heartfelt stories of how he touched people’s lives, and even artwork honoring his existence. Nothing about that is shallow.
(Edit: Logs of his memorial service on FurryMUCK on August 8-9, 2025, because I don’t want to lose them: Pyat’s, coyohti’s. And, the remembrance on flayrah.)
I don’t know how I feel right now. I don’t feel right talking about his passing, because this isn’t about me; but on the other hand this is my blog so it kind of is about me? But I’m still processing it.
I’ve also noticed that I’m seeing news of friends passing, and friends’ parents passing, more often as I get older. I don’t like that.
I’m going to share a story I’ve never shared before.
I was not a popular kid in high school. I got beat up a lot, and that shoved my life in directions that have taken me a long time to recover from. That’s not this story, though.
I forget what grade I was in, but we were learning matrices in math class. And I took to them rather well, somehow, so much so that my classmates noticed and – because being smart was a cardinal sin in high school – they started calling me ‘Matrix,’ as a cruel tease.
Young me, though, did what maybe was a smart thing and decided to own it. It felt a little bit like a superhero name. When I was in my Transformers phase in junior year of high school, I was accepted for a week-long computer science class at Stanford and I picked the username ‘Matricus Prime.’ When I got into MUDding in college, an online multiplayer game like Zork, I decided to alter it slightly and I became ‘Scotrix.’ I carried around a brass lantern, a glowing Elvish sword, and a sack lunch.
At some point after that I ventured into another online world named Islandia where all the people were animals. My human form would no longer do. So I stepped into a phonebooth, changed two letters, and came out as “Scotfox” – just a fox, ma’am. I’ve used that handle, off and on, ever since.
Last night I reached out to another old friend whom I’ve known since those days to let him know of Tugrik’s passing. Talking about him helped us both, I think.
He knows I’m hard on myself. He gave me a few ideas to write about, and one of them stuck with me: “Who have you been kind to who might still remember that kindness?”
I remember my freshman year of college. I was absolutely clueless, I was socially maladjusted, and I felt like the world’s biggest impostor for being there. But I remember one night when I came back to my dorm and found a classmate sitting on the hallway steps, crying. She was from Mexico. She probably felt even more alone than I did. But somehow I found it in myself to say all the things that I knew I would have wanted someone to say to me: the college admissions did not make a mistake, what she knows and what she loves all give her perspectives and experiences and strengths that no one else has, nobody has all the answers right now but no matter how dark things seem she’ll always be able to find someone to help. I remember that she stopped crying and caught her breath. I remember feeling a weight lift inside me, too.
I remember having a private chat with someone on a MUD: she was a centaur named Desenia, she was transgender (in the days long before ‘transgender’ was a common word), and she was going to take her life. We talked all night long; I don’t even remember what classes I had the next day, but I remember those hours. I think she was serious. I think I talked her down from that. Later, I heard that she went through with her transition and was living a happy life. I’m proud of her.
I remember a knock on the door of my apartment complex late at night in Sunnyvale, California. Outside were two young women (late teens? early twenties?) from Holland. Speaking halting English, they explained that had come to the States to visit their friend who lived with her boyfriend who was a friend of mine; but their friend turned out to be violent and argumentative and got into a huge fight with her boyfriend (my friend), and somehow the young women were able to find out that he knew me and I was a few doors away so they risked a lot to see if I could help them. I think I took them to the grocery store for some supplies, and helped them find a hotel room so they’d be safe until they got home. They gave me a souvenir, a little porcelain pair of Dutch shoes. I still have that.
I may have failed my assignment for tonight; I’d be surprised if any of these people still remember me, But I remember them and how I felt like I made a difference to them, and whenever I start to feel shallow, I remind myself of that.