This isn't so much of a tribute as a response.  You see, famous people aren't supposed to die.  I spend so much of my life in fandom where the characters are immortal, if not on screen, then through fan fiction and the ever-present subtle whisper that they're not real anyway.

This is different.

My world has been rocked, it's been less than 24 hours, and I'm finally past the shocky-stage into...I guess you'd call it mourning.  Do I have the right to mourn?  I admired him for years, and when I did get to meet him he was one of the nicest people I'd ever met.  And his on-screen persona, Ares...I loved him.  Ares was supposed to be immortal.

My world has been rocked and up until yesterday, I was completely obsessed with both figure skating and Smallville.  Now I barely care that Channel 7 (the bastards) didn't show any Elvis Stojko footage.  As for SV - I just tried to read some fic.  But I couldn't.  It seemed plastic, trite and I couldn't stomach it.  

But more on this later.  First:   

Preface - or proving that I'm not a scary stalker, but a normal person touched by fannish tendencies:

Death happens.  It happens all the time.  Yet you can't  become desensitised to it, every time it happens, it surprises you, and you forget how awful it is to feel like this.

There hasn't been much death in my life, and the times I've been affected, it's always been someone so much older than me.  My grandparents' generation, something you can understand, and even though it hurts like hell to say goodbye, you accept it because that's the way of things.  There were a couple of times at school when kids we knew of died through horrific accidents, but I'd never known who they were until after the fact.  (And yes, these were awful times when a school shared its grief.)

I know that what I, and other fans are feeling now, is NOTHING compared to what his family and friends are going through.  My thoughts and prayers go out to them and my feelings are probably pale in comparison.

Nonetheless, I feel.

And so this page.

It was Saturday morning and I was kind of sad, because of the whole Stargate-Daniel thing and the fact that Elvis didn't win a medal.  That all changed when I checked my email.  One innocent subject title that sent - I don't know what - through me.  Disbelief.  But mostly, shock.  I clicked on it mechanically, went to the website with the awful news and it was like it wasn't real.  We'd known on the Xena lists that he'd been in an accident, had been told that his condition was "serious but stable".  In my world, once you're in the hospital, you're going to get better.

The only problem was the lack of information but that was blamed on China.  I never suspected it was as bad as it was.  

I couldn't type after reading the news.  I was stunned, one of those moments that shatters your personal world even as the truth is sinking in and I searched desperately for confirmation.  (You see, being in Australia, due to the time zones and being online only a few hours behind New Zealand which just found out, it was right at the start that I heard.  One report.  No lists were talking.  No one knew yet.  It was horrible.)

I posted the article URL to the Xena lists that I moderate/participate in.  Mostly Ares/Xena lists.  I guess what I posted was callous, looking back, but I'd been so shocked by the news and figured there was no way to ease someone into it.  How do you say, "He died"?  

It is a year since I met Kevin Smith.  You see, KS was (oh, the past tense hurts) the rare case: the one television icon I'd lusted after, actually met, and had my entire perspective changed.  It was a spur of the moment thing in February 2001 when I'd been contemplating visiting a good friend in New Zealand and then she mentioned a convention that we could go to.  When I found out that Kevin was going to be there, I booked my ticket.  I was excited for weeks about seeing him.

The convention was amazing and remains to this day one of the two friendliest Cons I've ever been to.  The guests wandered around.  We could spend time chatting to them - yes, everyone, not just the Con committee and the people who paid for the special privilege.  Kevin was the first 'star' that Donna and I met and I was blown away at how completely *normal* it was.  He seemed genuinely flattered that we wanted pictures of him.   He noticed my Aussie accent and remembered me later during his talk/presentation when a distinctively Australian reference came up ("You get it, right?")

He was such a normal guy.  No star-strutting here, he was just a man with a cool job that he enjoyed doing and didn't mind telling us about it. 

(And that's why I feel so badly for his family because I know he must have been a fantastic husband and father.)

He's the only actor I've met that felt reminded me of someone I'd meet in every day life, perhaps that's because of cultural similarities.  He was entertaining and fun.

And thus end's Nic's trip down the too-brief memory lane, a star-struck girl meeting the man of her fantasies and becoming un-star-struck as it metamorphosised into admiration and respect. 

So.

From looking around the rest of my site you probably know that I loved the show "Xena".   That I was a HUGE fan of the Xena/Ares relationship.  That I adored Ares the character and he was one of my all time favourites.  You know, I don't even want to look at those pages anymore because not only are they touched by character-tragedy, but by real-tragedy as well.

And that's the kicker, isn't it.  When you love a show that much you always live in hope that it will come back in some form, to fix it, or just give the fans one last fling.  "Xena" was a show I adored because the characters were immortal.  We had episodes set in the present, TODAY, where Ares and reincarnations of Xena, Gabrielle and Joxer were still running around and affecting each others' lives.  Heroes live forever.

Gods live forever.  And from my perspective it's impossible to completely separate Kevin and Ares because Ares is the gift that Kevin gave us. 

That's why we'll remember him, while knowing that he was so much more than that.  No one deserves to die young.  No one deserves to die horribly. 

What's the point of this web page?  Will I even put it online?  I don't know.   Writing this, to my imaginary or real audience, is cathartic.  Maybe Dana's right and I do need a LiveJournal. 

My memories of "Xena", which I loved, are forever saddened.  That's life.  It doesn't mean that I can't be upset and cry and look at the stars at three o'clock in the morning and dream and wonder and remember. 

-Nic, 17 February 2002.  Listening to "The Bitter Suite" and remembering.