It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah.....

Kelly kielle O'Guinn
10-22-72 - 9-22-05

People with far more elegance that I have already explained why half of LJ is crying tonight. When I first gained access to the internet (remember WebTV, anyone? Mmmhm.), I went searching for X-Men fic, and the first hit on Yahoo!search (this was life before Google) was CFAN. Comics fandom, for all its clashing personalities and arguments, is still my measuring stick for new fandoms, and Kielle was a huge part of that. She was the first I friended on LJ; in fact, I doubt I'd be on LJ at all if not for her, because I initially only came here to read her journal anyway. She was unfailingly passionate, funny, and endlessly creative. Those who only discovered her through MESPT or "Three Men and a Little Lady" were only finding out what those of us in the comics fandom had known for years: there was a reason we called her the Scribe. If I ever write a novel half as gripping as No Way Up or that carries close to the punch of "Ghost," I will have truly created art.

And that's not even counting SubReality, or the TCP project (carried over in at least one other fandom, GW), Bad Writer!, the Mary Sue Report, the Fandom Glossary, White City, or half a dozen other projects. There's a hole in the world.

When you create something, you put a piece of yourself inside it. I believe we're all created by God; we all carry a piece of God inside us, shining out like jewels lit from within. Sometimes, those jewels get tarnished, and it's hard to see the light. With other people, though, they shine so brightly they make everyone around them brighter just from their presence. Kielle was one of those; her light shone to all corners of the world, and all of us are in tears tonight.

Hitchhiker's Guide is now bittersweet to me, and it's going to be a while before I rewatch LOTR. Kielle, I hope Douglas Adams and J.R.R. Tolkien were there to great you, and that they took you on a tour of Middle Earth by way of the Heart of Gold. It's the very least you deserve.

Damn it. Now I'm crying again.