the void

[domarzione]

I don't know how many of you go back with me to comicsfic and Outside the Lines, or go back to mailing-list-era comicsfic at all, but if you do in any capacity, then you knew Alicia McKenzie, the Grande Dame of everything to do with Cable. I met her in the mid-late 1990s when I sent her an email out of the blue asking if she could look at the first couple of chapters of my Cable-heavy story, and she was gracious enough to not only respond but also encourage and beta-read what turned out to be a 170k word epic. Over the subsequent twenty-five years we were co-authors and beta readers and universe-builders and most importantly friends and that lasted long after she faded from active fandom. We went from pondering what to do with certain characters in her Pantheon universe to pondering about jobs and life trajectories and never quite finishing our Ph.Ds and colonoscopies and plague. She'd found a passion in teaching and was brilliant at it, as she was in almost everything she did. She passed away this past weekend at the tender age of 46 and I am heartbroken. She was my first fandom friend and one of my most long-standing friends of any variety and she modeled generosity and compassion on a level I will never be able to match. She was a very proud Canadian, a lover of good cheese, and a worrywart and I adored her.

Comments

[alessandriana]

I'm so sorry for your loss. <3

[domarzione]

Thank you.

[mirabile]

I didn't know her, but she sounds amazing. I am so sorry for your loss.

[domarzione]

Thank you. She was a mensch and I am grateful beyond measure that our last texts were meaningful and not random stuff.

[musesfool]

I'm so sorry for your loss.

[domarzione]

Thank you.

[sian1359]

So sorry for your loss.

[domarzione]

Thank you.

[edenfalling]

Oh no. :(

All my sympathy.

[domarzione]

Thank you.

[writerlibrarian]

So sorry for your loss

[domarzione]

Thank you.

[ghoti]

♥

[domarzione]

Thanks. :)

[marcelo]

I'm really sorry. I only knew her through reading her stories, but they loom large in my memory. Even now I can remember almost by heart big parts of the "The Shi'ar Coffee Story," and whenever I think of epic writing and deep worldbuilding, in fandom or not, it's either shaped by her stories or direct memories of them.

It was only a small slice of everything she did and was, from what you said, and I'm sorry I missed so much.

[domarzione]

She was a fantastic writer. I was her beta reader for years and I used to make fun of her because in her effort to avoid the repetition of "[character] says" dialogue tags she'd invariably end up with things like "rasped" or "wheezed" or something else that had me pointing out that just because she was asthmatic didn't mean that all of her characters had to have respiratory issues as well. In return, she'd do word counts on my sentences and flag the ones over 100.

[em_kellesvig]

I'm so sorry for your loss. I'm glad she had you and you had her.

[domarzione]

Thank you. You're not supposed to say that you luck into good relationships, but I totally lucked into this good relationship even if it wasn't luck that sustained it. She added a lot to this world while she was in it.

[zero_pixel_count]

I'm sorry to hear of your loss.

[domarzione]

Thank you.