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Nick told me he was a furry in late 2011. We’d been talking online for a while about games, otaku stuff, and whatnot, and I’d met him briefly to hang out while I was in Osaka. I didn't care about the furry stuff. After all, I had spent years at doujin events, seeing all kinds of wild creations. Someone's taste in fictional content -- weird though it might be -- is not a thing I want to use to judge someone's whole character. He knew this and felt safe telling me. At the time, I was glad to be a shoulder to lean on during a particularly rough time at work. What did concern me, though, was his depression. He would complain *constantly* about how miserable he was working at Platinum, how he wanted to get a couple game credits to his name and then come back to the states. Well, that happened sooner than expected. He was fired from Platinum for several reasons, including constantly going into work drunk and leaking NDA'ed info. Of course, this being Japan, they let him save face by "resigning." He was fucking miserable. I knew, deep down, it was his own damn fault. But I wanted to help him anyway. He came back to the states addicted to alcohol and codeine. As the months passed, he alienated more and more people. He went to rehab multiple times. I'd see him after he got back and find a trashbag full of pill and booze bottles. One time I asked him to help out with packing stuff for a move. When I met him at the train station (late) he was so completely gone that, while we were walking back to my place, he’d stumble into the road and smack his face on the front of a parked car. He also once got into a drunken brawl outside a Safeway with some teens that sent him to the ER. Dealing with Nick was a matter of constantly walking on eggshells. Sometimes he'd be chipper and want to talk about games and anime. But as time passed, more and more often he'd be completely wasted, either on booze or on some other drugs. He'd become impossible to hold conversations with. He'd neglect his work and promises. He'd go into screaming fits at his friends and family. Then he'd call folks up the next day and apologize profusely, saying things like "If it weren't for you all, I wouldn't be here!" He told me how important I was in his life, not-so-subtly implying that *my support was one of the few things keeping him alive.* Only once I kicked him aside did I fully see how manipulative that was. If I called him out for acting terribly or didn’t support him enough, he was *gonna die!* How fucked up is that? There were several occasions where myself and others were tasked with contacting Nick about important work assignments because *he was simply impossible to get ahold of any other way* and we were close enough where we could head to where he lived, bang on his door, and tell him he needed to fucking do something. He usually wouldn't. He'd promise he would, of course, but it almost never happened. It's no wonder he wasn't able to get any work. But somehow he always had time and money for merchandise, games, travel, and furry conventions—well, the ones he didn’t suddenly cancel going to at the last minute out of fear he might see someone there he’d screwed over. But when the stars aligned and he DID do something? Oh boy, he'd use that against you. "I did *other thing* for you, cut me some slack!" He lied. A lot. When I was in Japan for TGS he claimed he'd stopped smoking. He hadn't. He drunk dialed me once claiming his parents were disowning him. They weren't. He made all sorts of claims about his roommates in the place he was living being unreasonable shitheads. I talked to them and they told me he was full of it. One night he started posting online about suicide. I tried calling him, extremely worried. He screamed at me for roughly an hour on the phone, and then at his roommates. I forget exactly how they kicked him out, but they did, and then he started cross-country couch hopping with anyone (mostly other furries) foolish enough to give him some space. He tended to wear out his welcome really fast. But this also served another purpose: getting physically away from people, like me, who were trying to get him to sit down and fucking put his life together. At that point it was a sunk-cost fallacy: We'd invested so much effort into helping him, we had to see it through. But upon hearing he was trying to be contacted he'd send his current favorite people to fight for him by telling them how awful we were and letting them send angry DMs on his behalf. Eventually, one last screaming fit and session of pity-wailing in mid-2015 was enough. I was done. I never spoke to him (or of him) again. He did try to reach out again once or twice. I wasn't falling for it. I can still say that I never, ever expected this to happen. Weird furry stuff might be offputting to most, but it's all a fantasy. I do remember that he'd make "tasteless" jokes about various anime/game characters and their ages. But those were cartoons. Not real. Still, it makes me sick to think about knowing what I do now. This isn’t everything he did, only some of the things that stick out the most. I never talked about much before because, yeah, it’s fucking embarrassing. I feel heavy with hatred, for everything that was wasted on this miserable person. I thought he was open and honest with me, but he was a liar in every way imaginable. He has hurt people. And now he's being punished. I hope he rots.