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A sad notice: As many of you may already know, Comicality has been fighting an illness that took him away from us repeatedly for the last year or so. That illness as it turns out was a failing liver. On Tuesday, April 16, 2024 Comicality lost his battle and quietly passed away with family near by; taking a piece of all of our hearts with him. He leaves many of us with the amazing work that he has shared throughout the decades that he has been “COMICALITY” to us and much like that work, I know my heart along with many others, is now forever incomplete. We will continue maintaining the Voy forums but will need to ask for forgiveness as we figure out how to do that agin. It's been a very long time for me at least. - Jeff
Thank You all for helping us give Comicality's mom a hand with the unexpected final expenses that she no longer had help with. It made a huge impact and was very much appreciated by her! The campaign is now closed at her request. You can view the campaign here: https://gofund.me/7dadd629
Comsie loved music, so why don't we send him off with a musical tribute? -- Pete, 18:01:00 04/28/24 Sun
Your tribute song can be somber, joyous, secular, religious or humorous.
Happy Birthday, Comicality, wherever you might be. -- Pete, 05:03:27 05/02/24 Thu
You've been a true and loyal friend over the years and I hope you're happy in your present life.
Not sure if anyone noticed. -- TurtleBoy, 10:02:01 05/06/24 Mon
In the last issue that Comsie released, the Christmas issue, #103, there was a piece about Trey Braine, a talented 10 year old dancer on TikTok. It probably didn't get as much attention as it deserved because Comsie didn't include any videos of him, which is literally what he's know for. :P
Words for Comicality -- Cirrus, 14:51:44 05/05/24 Sun
It feels like I’ve spent about a week writing this and re-writing this and adding to it and changing it. But eventually you just have to get it out there. You may see this cross-posted in a few different places. Just trying to reach out to different audiences.
WORDS FOR COMICALITY
It seems only a few weeks ago that I learned Comsie was going through such serious health issues. And now, just like that, he’s gone. It’s dreadfully unfair that he was taken from us with so much unfinished business. On NIfty, a site he contributed stories to for 26 years, his departure is marked by the message “Author Comicality passed away”. That’s it? That’s all after the hundreds of thousands of words he wrote? Comicality deserves more words remembering him. Hundreds of words. Thousands of words. All of the words. And I can’t write all the words he deserves, but I’m going to give my best effort at writing some of them.
I first stumbled across Comsie in 1997 or 1998? I can’t remember the exact date, but I started reading “New Kid in School” from the very first chapter. Then he started the website and got an email address and I reached out to him to say how much I liked the stories. The internet was a different place then. Everything seemed hand-made in Times New Roman, Facebook, Google and Amazon and their algorithms hadn’t taken over the internet, and communities were finding each other for the first time around topics like how hot teenage boys were.
I kept emailing him on and off ever since then. People you only know online tend to flitter in and out of your life - closest confidant one minute, vanished into the ether the next. But for over 25 years, Comsie was a constant. He’s the friend I’ve known the longest that I never ever met. Because I wrote to him so occasionally, I would write these long, rambling emails with many, many questions. And Comsie being Comsie, he would feel like he would owe me a decent reply, so sometimes it took weeks or even months for him to respond. They were always worth it though - my long emails sometimes got even longer replies.
Comsie was the exception to most of the authors you’d find on Nifty or Gay Authors or elsewhere. Through his forums and emails, he put so much of his own life out there, the good parts and the bad. Being so open brought on a lot of hate mail. I’m not sure how he put up with it year after year. He shared parts of his difficult childhood, the constant money worries of being a retail employee, his love for Chicago. I’m sad he never made it back there, but glad he was surrounded by family at the end.
You felt like you knew him, but maybe that’s the illusion on online-only friendships, where you only know the parts of someone’s life they share with you. Despite being so open about some parts of his life, he guarded his privacy zealously in others. In over 25 years of emails, he never shared a picture of himself with me. I visited Chicago a couple of times (he had numerous suggestions on where to visit, and was very amused by my attempt to eat a whole Chicago deep dish pizza by myself) but we never met up. Maybe it’s better that way: the Comsie in my head will probably be forever in his early 20s, the age at which we first started talking.
The Comicality writing process could be maddening as a reader. He never liked to focus on just one story at a time. I think he wrote chapters about whichever characters were interesting to him at the time. And he always had ideas for new stories. It seemed like for every story he brought to a final conclusion, he would start four more. And some of his series had epically long hiatuses between updates (“Taryn’s Song” had a SEVEN YEAR gap between chapters at one point). I used to joke that he never wanted to finish a series because he never wanted to say goodbye to the characters he created. Now my Comicality thoughts will be filled with questions that will never be answered.
* What was going to happen at the party and would Brandon and Billy ever get back together in “Billy Chase”?
* Would Artie and Scotty start talking to each other in “Jesse-101”?
* How was Eric and Dustin’s story going to end in “Untouchable”?
* Would Justin fulfil his vampire prophecy in “Gone From Daylight”? And how did Taryn and Alec get separated in “Taryn’s Song”?
I’m sure everyone has their favourite Comicality storyline that they wanted to see resolved. It seems somehow appropriate that Comsie’s legacy will be dozens of dangling plotlines. Even “New Kid in School”, the story that started it all, was still unfinished after 27 years.
If there’s one story I’m glad Comsie did finish, it was “My Only Escape”. It’s the most deeply personal story Comsie’s ever written, built on memories from a very dark part of his life. Being able to write from his real lived experience gave the story a reality and rawness I could never emulate on that subject. From the first chapter to the last, it took him 21 years to finish. It was sexy and heart-wrenching and moving. I’d urge everyone to read it again - even just the very last chapter. I was in literal tears during Zack’s conversation with Mr Raffe. It wasn’t just a conversation between Zack and his teacher - it was conversation between Comsie and all the people both real and in his head that told him his stories weren’t good enough. Out of all his stories, I’m glad his readers got to see that one in its full, final, finished form. Did you know at one point the early chapters were adapted for Australian radio? Wild to think about.
Comsie did soooo much in his online life. It wasn’t just the stories. It was the website, the forums, “Imagine Magazine”, the advice to other authors, the advice to people young and old going through tough times, the YouTube channel, the gallery. I have no idea where he found the time, and the volume of work probably didn’t get nearly the appreciation it deserved.
He motivated me to write my own stories and share them (although very carefully). My major interactions with him over the last year revolved around submitting the chapters of “Dear Ronan” to “Imagine Magazine”. I told him I was holding the story hostage, and wouldn’t let him see the finished complete product until he published chapter 450 of “Billy Chase”. He laughed at my threats and happily ignored them.
He deserved better. He deserved longer. He deserved the time to finish all of the stories he started. I think I’ll always have regrets that I didn’t write to him more, that I didn’t tell him everything I liked about his stories at every opportunity. I always wanted him to stretch himself, to challenge himself to be a better writer because he had that talent in him. I teased him about some of his tendencies as an author: like starting every new story with a three paragraph inner monologue from the protagonist, or his fondness for “wise sage” characters who dispense advice in long soliloquies. Like perhaps most authors, he remembered every negative thing I ever said about his stories. But I hope he remembered all the positive things I said too… like how much I like Ariel’s “voice”, or how hot the game of footsie on the couch in “Sneak Away” was, or how moving I found the conclusion to “My Only Escape”.
I’m not sure I believe in an afterlife, but I’d like to believe in one for Comsie…. Something like “The Good Place”, where he has all the time in the world to finish all the stories he started, preferably with a cute speedo-clad teenager (or three!) by his side. And then when he finally puts his pen down for the last time, he could return to the universe with a sense of mission accomplished.
May the 4th be with you! -- TurtleBoy, 15:15:25 05/04/24 Sat
Since it's Star Wars day, I'm not going to post about Star Wars :D Instead, I'm going to share Maddox Batson's latest release. I know Comsie would approve.
Today would of been Com's 49th Birthday .. -- Dom, 01:33:32 05/02/24 Thu
Happy birthday my friend! Hope you are having a massive rave with lots of scantily clad boys dancing with you up there!
Oh and lots of cake... you LOVED your cake!
Missing you loads buddy!
Just so everyone knows... -- bwctwriter, 12:34:24 04/20/24 Sat
I have no intention of shutting down the Shack Chat, as it's still a great way for us shackers to keep in touch on the daily...
So if you want/need to, feel free to come in and share your grief with those of us who loved him so dearly.
Creating an account is required, however instructions are listed on the server, for the uninitiated among us. It's a simple process. Just thought I'd throw that out there for those of us who might be struggling right now.
Feeling like me, mostly... -- Comicality, 10:12:26 03/02/24 Sat
Physical therapy has been exhausting, to say the least, but I've learned to walk just fine and my coordination is great. I want to start writing again soon. I'd love to pick up where I left off. Wish me luck! Sorry that it's taken so long to write back to so many of you. My hands didn't really work right
(Been catching up on a lot of old movies. Their so weird. Hehehe!)
I truly TRULY cannot thank a few of you enough for all of of the amazing help you've given me to help me start my way towards putting back online and getting things back online here. It took some hours of dedicated help, and thanks to you, I'm starting to get back in working order, and they are both making it possible thanks to their expertise.
Also, my health is picking up. I still have to go through a bit of physical therapy, but I'm able to walk again, and I can think straight again and I'm I'm thankful for as well. So I will be in contact again soon, and I'm happy to say that my email is up and working again as well! Cool? I'm catching up as quickly as possible. I'll be in touch soon, and I love you lots!
Even from the grave, Chester brings joy to us all... -- bwctwriter (), 20:48:51 02/25/24 Sun
From what I can tell, the song was more of a concept Chester, et al created, but was never finished before he died... They released this short song a couple days ago, and I honestly hope they do more with it. I don't even care if they AI the shit out of it, because Chester Bennington's voice was just.. Unique and gritty, full of lots of emotion... But who knows if the rest of LP would be willing to go that route.
At any rate, it's still pretty cool hearing something from Chester that we never heard before. :-)
Why? -- MeLoveYouLongTime, 13:56:49 01/28/24 Sun
Why Why Why can't or won't you ever finish a story?? You're so concerned with vampires and zombies and other weird things about boy celebrities that you've never satisfied the desires of your original fan base when you actually used to have a fan base. It's no mystery why you've got like 4 or 5 guys that still converse with you anymore on any of your formats. Finish something! Bring us to a resolution on something! Make Billy actually get a driver's license after he should actually have children! Make the new kid in school actually go to college for God's sake! He'd be like 28 by now! The reason your readership has waned is you've ignored your readership. You're extremely talented. But being talented isn't enough. Self indulgence is great if that's all you're looking for. But you could and should be so much more. A fan.
Feedback: 
bwctwriter, 12:34:24 04/20/24 Sat