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It has been so long, and my time here is short.
There is no need to hide.
We accept you for you.
I wish for you to be here with us.
Please.
Like a brilliant star on a dark moonless night.
Sephrena
Comments
I hope that we do hear
But I fear time is not in our favor. I did not discover the Saga of Tuck until 2015-ish. I was doubly disappointed because my work had me traveling to her town on a regular basis until 2013, when the website went quiet. I might have asked to say hello in person.
I contacted her website's administrator, but I never did get a complete answer as to Ellen's situation. All he said was that the website would be staying up. The implication was not good.
I do hope that I'm wrong, and that she would at least check-in to reassure us she's ok.
Steve
That is *exactly* what scares me - Elsbeth!
and why I made this blog. I have no other means of contacting her. I am dearly hoping someone else can and let her know that she is loved and needed still.
She is a precious commodity I am not willing to lose.
As we all age and get older, staying in contact is a little more important so that we know our authors are alive. We do not need to keep guessing at Missing Authors 411. We have enough of that already...
Edit: Okay I will add this here. This has to be said. Despite what others say in hoping for hope, I have had what you call a force impact vision, my star wars gut instinct per se, and it told me that Elsbeth is dead. It was a picture of her and the feeling of not being here.
Here are the facts:
1. Elsbeth's last post was 4/9/2020.
2. She was heading out for a trip to take no more than 2 weeks.
3. She hasn't been heard from since.
4. https://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/blog-entry/86436/does-anyone-... and https://bigclosetr.us/topshelf/comment/613037#comment-613037 .
5. As of December 8, 2020, there have been a total of 14,823,129 COVID-19 cases and 282,785 deaths in the United States. For whatever reason: covid, vaccine, any other circumstance... I know she is no longer here on earth.
Since I do not know her real name, address, phone, etc. I have no way to check up on her. But that would just be verifying what I already know. And sadly, I cannot get proof for Erin to add her to the En Memorium wall listing here on BCTS.
Knowing Elsbeth, she would have told somebody something had she been able to, even if to take a break. I know she would have. She cares for her stories and audience. I know something happened to her.
I don't know what we will do for the rest of us. As for me, I have left Erin and Melanie Brown my phone number to check up on me if I don't check in regularly. I have done that so I wont be forgotten. Rachel Greenham was sick, sadly she got worse off and died bedridden. I knew it when Arecee and Billie Sue Pilgrim didn't check in.
If you can, and I mean if you can, leave someone either your name or a trusted individual your phone number so we can check up if you are getting old or sick. It will help us keep tabs on you and make sure you are not forgotten.
This makes me so damn sick. :*(
Sephrena
I aten't dead!
But I promise I do still feel very guilty for the stories I left unfinished. Never was bedridden with anything, not sure where that came from. Not in the best of health but nothing like *that*.
There is no prospect of The Taken being continued.
Game Theory - hey, I since learned the genre is called "isekai", I actually didn't know at the time - is also not going to be continued. A descendent of that story is something I'm still working on, but it's mutated quite severely, is no longer isekai, I think, and has only two supporting-cast characters in common. I do not have any kind of ETA on that, and is probably not on-genre for this place anyway.
I only just discovered BigCloset is on Mastodon, as am I (@[email protected] - I'll see if there's a place in the bcts profile for it after posting this), and heard about the traditionally exaggerated rumour of my demise from someone there.
WTF???
I WAS TOLD YOU WERE DEAD!!!! Your own forum!!!!!! YOURS!!!!! They emailed it to me and everyone else??? How can you be ALIVE????? I Hope you really are Rachel... because if you are an imposter - I SWEAR I will kill you myself!@@@
THIS IS NOT FUNNY! Not in the slightest bit!!!!
I even showed Erin the post from your Forum head to have you put on BCTS En Memorium!!!! You DIED!
And TOTAL BULLSHIT! Your own forum has the POSTS you were SICK IN BED and DIED!!! I saw them!!!! I SAW THEM!!!!
WTH? WTH??? You were dead.. I even emailed you many times.. No freaking way you are alive. NONE!
Rachel, or The Person Claiming To Be Rachel Greenham
can you privately email me the reason why your forums said you were dead? Why you waited THIS long to tell us anything? Why they said they buried you and funeral costs?
I seriously need an explanation for that. Because I showed Erin the death notice from your forum master. If THAT was prank, I do NOT find it funny in the LEAST!
Also, a few weeks back, I used the wayback machine on the internet to go to your site http://strangenoises.org/ to grab a chapter that was too messed up here on BCTS to paste back in. I did in FACT do that. Now however, the entire archive has been scrubbed of your site. I get the word Blah on it on nearly all of the 52 saves of it. Tell me, what happened to it?
The date and time index is completely now missing from the wayback archive. 2014. All that shows up is 2010 (7 hits). So someone scrubbed it. The posts of your death are now missing.
https://web.archive.org/web/20100804024048/http://strangenoi... .
On that you posted about the death of your cat. Your death has been removed from later posts because apparently, in whatever reality this is, the site doesn't exist. In fact now, if I wanted, I cannot go back there to grab a chapter to fix the rest of the game theory if I have to. The entire site is missing since 2010.
I feel like I have just been taken through a Mandela Effect with the help of internet spooks scrubbing the Wayback Archive. Because i had to copy a chapter of The Taken: After The fall to fix a BCTS posting of it that became too corrupt. I DID copy it from your site, the date was 2014. Now it isnt.
Sephrena
I think that you must be rather confused
Hey, Sephrena, I saw your passing mention that Rachel had become bedridden and died this morning, and decided to pass that along to Rachel herself, on mastodon, since it was a weird thing to claim. Sure enough, still not dead, unlike Generalissimo Francisco Franco.
You needn't believe me, either, but honestly yelling at someone for not being dead is a little over the top, I think.
Amy!
Well you would too if
you are saying someone is dead. I know she died, at least on the internet. I checked up on it to verify it at the time! it was real.
I was satisfied she was gone and relayed the appropriate information to Erin. Yes I am upset. If she did not die and her forums said she dead, there is an inconsistency somewhere. When you say someone died you have proof. I had proof, now I do not.
The Wayback Machine of her own website showing her posts that she was sick, bedridden and someone else saying she died that snowballed into a temporary frenzy is now scrubbed. I say scrubbed because the Wayback Machine has saves of her site with just the word Blah.
On top of that, my email that had a save of the post showing her forum master claimed she had died and was asking for donations, is now also missing. It is making ME sound like I am the bad person here.
I am not. I do not make this stuff up. I just don't. It is irresponsible and reprehensible for it to happen.
So understandably I am very much angry. The ip address does in fact show Rachel is coming from her reported location I last knew her from. The fact the Wayback Machine saves of her site have been scrubbed smells very shadey indeed. I had gone there a few weeks back to fix a BCTS posting of her The Taken: After the Fall to fix it here. I used it to fix ours.
Now the page/site for 2014 - its gone.
So I am at a loss of how to proceed with this. Very much so.
Would you not too be upset to have this happen to you?
Also, she is on our En Memorium Wall Listing, has been for years. Have you never noticed that? I had to have proof to have her put there. It was not done randomly. She could have at any time come back prior to now to say something about it. It's been what? Almost a decade?
Next thing to have happen is to have Stanman come back to life. I'd love to see him explain away how he did not die. His brother cussed me out and blamed me for his death. And I was in no way responsible for that!
Sephrena
I don't have a forum, never
I don't have a forum, never have had. That sounds like some other site. I did have a Drupal site where I cross-posted the stories for a while, and comments were enabled. I'd actually forgotten about it until now. It hasn't been running for a very long time. I would have stopped it because I was inactive (creatively, and I wasn't well, but I wasn't dying), and I didn't want the stress of potentially having to moderate comments on a site I wasn't using any more, but I believe I did so before there were any malicious posts there, not after.
I don't recall ever saying anything about dying. I don't lie about such stuff. It's not my style. I don't know why someone else might do it as a prank, and I wonder if there hasn't been some crossed wires. With reference to your upstream post where you mention me, I have no idea who "Aracee" and "Billie Sue Pilgrim" are, that are mentioned in the same sentence. I've never heard those names.
Was there some other Rachel that a memory might have been confused with? I am certainly the one of Tuck Squared, The Taken, Game Theory. I mean, I have Extensive Notes (OMG I'd forgotten all this, how much more was planned out... That story coming to an end wasn't because of me BTW. Whereas Game Theory - all me writing myself into a corner.)
All the "Blah" would have just been a default page thrown up on an Apache server whose main job was running Nextcloud in a subdomain, to prevent it automatically showing an auto-generated index page. There was no active site there. No scrubbing by anyone else. No conspiracies here.
To authenticate, I don't have your email address. Email rachel at strangenoises dot org (you type it, don't trust a link) and I'll reply to confirm identity. also per the mentioned mastodon account, which is verified via github.
Just emailed you - twice
please check your email. Better yet, can you just download discord here: https://discord.com/download and come into the bcts server at https://discord.gg/7jqV9HU and make sure to copy the string verbatim as the Caps are intentional. I am on the sever in general chat. Make sure to Click the rules page and thumbs up before you can post.
Sephrena
replied, but i won't join
replied, but i won't join discord. saying so to tie that thread and this together.
can you come onto skype then?
I am looking to try and voice with you to verify for myself. If you can do skype, I will reinstall it and log back in. I mean I am the one putting myself at risk doing this. But I would sincerely like to hear your voice again. I heard it before, I just wanted to check it again.
you've never heard my voice.
you've never heard my voice. I've never spoken to you in voice. I've never even used skype. Even colleagues (before I retired) and family struggle to get me onto a voice call as I'm pretty phone-phobic.
I think there must have been an Other Rachel. One that I don't know.
okay
I will admit you are real. Your ip checks out. Strangenoises.org is registered to you. I will admit to this as a Mandela Effect. You can look this up elsewhere if you do not understand it. I have gone through it.
I was just inspired to read your works because, I thought, that you had died. I do not take this lightly, I admit to the effect. But I was not wrong. BigCloset TopShelf is too important to me, and its community, to have falsely or even inadvertently make the claim that an author had died and they did not.
So we can both chalk this up to a Mandela Effect? I was right in another timeline? You are as well?
Sephrena
Also
this brought up my memories of Edyn Hannah Blackeney. I remember her here on the night before she died. She posted she was feeling sick and she gave a friend her number. She died the next night and no one was there for her. I miss her voice here. Was rather deep for being Intersexed (Skype) and she was secure in who she was. I think the grief with all the stuff happening to her was mostly what did her in. That and her medical situation. Anyhoooo... Just tossing this out there as an aside.
Getting my own grief out :(
Sephrena
Not Mandela
This was an Orwellian rewrite of history. It may also be gaslighting.
Just to clear something up:
"Also, a few weeks back, I used the wayback machine on the internet to go to your site http://strangenoises.org/(link is external) to grab a chapter that was too messed up here on BCTS to paste back in. I did in FACT do that. Now however, the entire archive has been scrubbed of your site. I get the word Blah on it on nearly all of the 52 saves of it. Tell me, what happened to it?"
Are these correct?
1. The web site on the Wayback Machine was intact a few weeks ago.
2. The site has since vanished from the Wayback Machine, at least the part after 2010.
An innocent explanation for all involved? No. Someone's posted or acted in bad faith.
-- Daphne Xu
yes, they are correct
That site has literally vanished after 2010.
A Mandela Effect has occurred.
In this timeline all of this was made to come out this way. In my timeline, I could access it. Here, I cannot. Over there, there has been an in issue involving someone being deceased. Here, they are alive. I am thoroughly convinced of the effect Daphne. No doubt about it. The fact that the internet has been twisted to erase "my timeline's evidence" naturally follows here. It has to. Even though the effect occurs, it doesn't alter the fact that it did happen on my timeline. I do not understand all of the intricacies to this effect. I know it has been happening all along. I wish it was not :/
It may be that I have shifted timelines because I am the one that knows of these changes. This may in fact have nothing to with Rachel Greenham here, or it may involve her popping in and the timeline altered. There is just so much involved its scarey.
Whatever the end result is, I am here now. What exists, exists. What got left behind, got left behind. If you have any other possibility in mind, Im open to suggestions. I have nothing to hide or be ashamed of. I am trying to make sense of this.
And, just so you know, Tiananmen Square? Tank boy on my timeline had his head crushed under tank treads, splattered on the road. That's how evil China is!
Sephrena
isekai
Being transported into another world or dimension is a common trope for Fantasy novels. When not reading TG stories, I read Sci-Fi or Fantasy. The one I'm thinking of now is the trilogy "The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant" Thomas Covenant is a man who suffers from leprosy and is somehow transported to another world where he is whole and able to do magic.
The trilogy was later expanded into a ten book series.
As for "not on-genre" for this site. Erin is pretty accommodating. If you've posted TG content before, she usually allows a non-TG story to go up as well.
Hugs
Patricia
Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt
Ich bin eine Mann
Ellen
I found this site about 12 years ago and opened an account about 9 years ago. I've checked on some other sites and there is a tendency for authors to come and go, if anything the big closet seems to hold them longer. There is a sense of community and support that is wonderful. Some people just seem to disappear though, sadly to the memorial list, or they just stop posting anything. There is a spirit here that I can only hope lasts. As a person who's been an outsider, looking in most of my life it's nice to see. Even as an outsider.
Time is the longest distance to your destination.
I have one problem witth your comment
You sort of imply that you are an outsider on this site. I take exception to that.
A community is not by authors only. This site is so much more.
What would this site be without comments?
For one thing many authors here would not go on without comments. How many stories have been inspired by comments? How many lives have been just a little bit better thanks to comments? Commenters like you are an essential part of this community
Then we have those who seldom comment but leave kudos when finding it motivated. That counts as well.
Finally we have those who read and do nothing else. I welcome them as well, even if I wish they'd participate a little bit more.
The only thing is looking at the number of hitmen/women, that is hits, on the stories posted by all the various writers in August I find myself wondering: Where have all the readers gone?
I hope it's a seasonal phenomenon.