Hey guys, it's me!

For people who don't know me, my name's Andrew. I go by A-Log in most parts and I'm a (basically gone) smashladder mod and (previously) active member of the smashladder community for about 2 years, from its beginning. I'm here right now writing this because I wanted to write down some thoughts I had about something that happened a year ago tomorrow (August 9th, 2015).

This is a personal story but I'll try to keep it relevant to anybody reading it. There won't be a TL;DR but I hope you read it to the end.

First, a little background about myself and my place in the community. I joined the ancient Project M netplay IRC sometime around March 2014. I had no idea what I was doing and the first person I played was Emukiller. He kicked my ass but he was nice as hell and it set the tone for how the community felt to me. As I played more people on the IRC I met lots of different people from around the country all with unique personalities and experiences. I really enjoyed interacting with everybody else in the community and being a part of a group of friends, which is what we all were.

During this period of time I met a guy named Evan. His handle was ThatGOSHDARNFox, and he went by Gurdy. He came off as kinda rough, but not in a bad way. We hit it off pretty easily with some light banter about how bad we were at the game, and enjoyed hanging out and getting some smash on. Gurdy, and a buncha other guys I’d met, were a piece of the smash community that made me feel at home, like I belonged, even if I was a random white suburban nerd that wouldn’t have interacted with any of those people otherwise.

For a little over a year, I continued hanging out online with Gurdy and another close friend of mine, Joe (Xubble), playing different games like Super Mario Sunshine or Sonic 3 & Knuckles or generally anything we felt like playing that day. We were a tight trio, and although we’d met through playing super smash we became best buds doing anything but. Most of it was all random fun, like https://www.twitch.tv/xubble/v/41720639. It didn’t really matter what we did, ‘cause we all had fun together as friends.

On another side, I became a moderator on Smashladder. I’d already gotten pretty involved in the community and I liked hanging out with everybody and having fun, like with my friends I voice-chatted and played other games with. There was never a dull moment (and lots of drama) but for 2 years it was a pretty significant part of my life, as cheesy as that sounds. I won’t mention everybody I interacted with during those 2 years because the list is too long and my memory is too poor, but I met a lot of cool people through smash.

Looking back, the game is almost a side note compared to the community I was a part of. I try to remember that playing smash isn’t about being great at a video game, although that is part of it. For me, playing smash meant being a part of a group of people passionate about their hobby, motivated and determined to improve themselves, and most important of all fun to be around and learn more about.

Being with such a close-knit group of people at a center of the community where I had the ability to reach out to lots of people was fantastic, and I don’t regret any of it. I still hung out with Gurdy through the whole time, and we played games or just chatted online almost every day. Summer 2015 was pretty awesome and as it closed out I was looking forward to getting back to college and getting back to the community that was important to me.

A whole lot of other things happened over that year but I’ll keep it truncated here.

The day I moved in to my dorm, on August 22nd, my birthday, I found out that Gurdy had killed himself two weeks prior, on the 9th.

For most of that evening I felt a little numb but otherwise ok. But I remember being in the shower that night on my knees gasping for breath because of how hard I was crying. I’ve never felt such intense pain before and I pray I never have to again. I hope most of you haven’t had that kind of experience before.

I barely slept that night and it took me a long time to feel back to normal. The next few days I spent talking/arguing with people on smashladder about what had happened. Xubble and I, Gurdy’s closest friends in the community, were probably hit the hardest. He had a lot of other close friends but I’m pretty sure we’d spent the most time hanging out with him.

For a long time I went back and forth between blaming myself and trying to get over it. I don’t think anybody in my situation would have felt any different. The bright and friendly days I’d had with the community had been shattered in a single night with one person being ripped out of my, and everybody else’s, life.

I’ve never had any experience with death before, so this was something new and jarring to me. I don’t blame myself, or anybody else that knew Gurdy, for his death. I don’t think that’s fair to him or to anybody. Ultimately he made his own choice to do what he did, and nobody could have stopped what happened. All of this made me reflect on a lot of things, especially my role in the community.

As a community leader, I did my best to foster a healthy environment for people to get along together and have fun. Since we were a gaming community a lot of that had to do with game-related stuff such as leading discussions, solving disputes, and sometimes getting a little heated on the battlefield. But at the center of everything I tried to keep in mind that the most important part of the community was the people. People like me, and Gurdy, and my other friends, and everybody else on smashladder.

As the community grew, it became a lot harder to keep that close-knit feeling from the IRC days and beyond. Combined with the loss of a close friend and a lot of other factors, I started to get detached from the community that I’d spent so much time in. A few months later, in November, I left the community for good. I’m back here now to write this down to leave a reminder of the things I learned here.

Any community starts with the people in it. This is true in the workplace, at school, in your neighborhood, and even online. I’m sure most of you have experiences with lots of different communities, and I’m sure you all have different opinions about what a good community looks like.

I think that a community starts from one person reaching out to another person in friendship, rivalry, or anything else that brings them together. When more people join a community, this basic reality doesn’t change. True community is built on friendship and people coming together for a common purpose. Smashladder is a lot larger than it was when it started out but it’s just as much of a community as it used to be, and I hope each of you has the same kind of enriching friendly experience that I did.

Back on (off?) topic, suicide is a pretty big deal, and it affects a lot of people. I won’t speak too much about it in particular, because there’s too much content to talk about, but I’ll say what I think is relevant. Nobody leaves the world unattached from any other person, and I felt that really strongly a year ago. Despite everything that happened, I think it’s important not to grieve the loss of the person but to remember the time you spent with them, and to look forward to the future. Every person you meet is a chance to be an influence in their life and to make a bond that can last years and beyond.

The most important thing in life is to reach out to other people. It’s alright to have fun and do dumb stuff, but making connections with other people is a basic human need, and responsibility. I don’t want anybody to lose somebody they care about, so do your best to make close bonds with friends and people you meet, so that no person feels like they have nobody.

That’s what I learned from this community. Tomorrow just happens to be a pivotal point from my experience here.

For those of you who remember Gurdy, I hope you remember him as fondly as I do and keep his family in your thoughts and prayers this week. For those of you who didn’t know him, take my experience and become someone who’s important to somebody else. Never feel like you’re alone, and make an honest effort to let nobody else feel that way either. Remember that community is built on the bonds of its members, and try to remember that the game isn’t the most important thing here.

Thanks for sticking with me to the end. I hope you got something out of my aimless ramblings.

On that, I take my leave yet again. Sayounara.

~A-Log