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[Bob Schroeck]

Say, what ever happened to Darien Steffler anyway?

I was doing some of my DB-level maintenance of the board (identifying and putting names to "Guest" posts) when I came across this question in a thread entitled "Seeking a fic" from almost ten years ago.  For our younger members, Darren Steffler was possibly better known as "Twister", and authored a highly influential self-insert fic series called Twisted Path back in the middle 1990s, and disappeared completely from the fanfic community around the turn of the century.  Drunkard's Walk was written because I read TP, as were more than a few other signficant works, like Bubblegum Zone, Oh! My Brother, Legion's Quest, and many many more.

Anyway I got curious and did a Google search, figuring that there might be a lot more information out there now than back then.  

There is.  Most of it has nothing to do with fanfiction, but there are more than a few real-world hits.

IIRC, Twister was Canadian and in his late teens in the middle 90s, so he'd be in his middle to late 30s, now... and that simple search brings up several hits which might all be him.  I kind of like the idea that he might be the head brewer at a brewery and a former IT person...  Given that he's fifteen or more years out from his writing, he like more than few other former fic authors probably doesn't want to be associated with his old work.  But it's still an interesting window into one of the early "names" of fanfiction.

[Dartz]

I find that sort of thing just a little bit creepy.

But I suppose that's the modern world. Once you're on the system....

When someone knows you're name, anyone can find youi.

[classicdrogn]

Eh, privacy is obsolete. Take comfort in the fact that practically everyone's everyday life is too boring to bother snooping on, or remembering if someone does get momentarily curious.

[Acyl]

I really hope he's the brewery guy, because searching "Twisted Path" into a clean incognito or not-logged-in Google gives you, well, a distillery. Not the one he works in, obviously, but I like to think somewhere out there, in the cosmos, there's a really impish genie or magic sky fairy that's cackling now...

[ECSNorway]

Yeah, I do hope he's doing well, wherever he is.

Anyone seen or heard anything at all from Don Granberry? He dropped out of the fanfiction scene a while back and hasn't been seen since...

Same with some others I could name. Eric Hallstrom, for example...

Hm. A search on Eric Hallstrom returns multiple possibilities... a professor at the American College of Law in Washington... a police officer deceased in 2009... A senior state official in Minnesota... not a clue, really.

[robkelk]

Can't speak to any of the folks listed above, but I got a Christmas card from Bert van Vliet (Skyknight) this year.

[Bob Schroeck]

As did we. (And we owe a lot of people apologies -- we completely bobbled holiday cards this past season. Not a one went out.)

[NifT]

Same with some others I could name. Eric Hallstrom, for example...

Hm. A search on Eric Hallstrom returns multiple possibilities... a professor at the American College of Law in Washington... a police officer deceased in 2009... A senior state official in Minnesota... not a clue, really.

Don't think he's the police officer. His FFForum account's last login is 2012, though tbf, the last post is august 2009, so it's possible?

[Bob Schroeck]

And I resurrect this thread...

Yesterday, I took it into my head to stub out an All The Tropes page (in a text file) for Tales of Ranma and Ranko by Jack Staik and Lady Tesser. Once again for our younger readers, this was an absolutely epic (and high-quality) Ranma story, started in 1999 and abandoned circa 2001/2002 when the authors just up and disappeared from the Net. While looking up links to the various installments to include in the stub file I decided to see if I couldn't do what I did with Twister at the start of this thread and find Jack and his wife Jillian (who was Lady Tesser). I knew they'd gotten married in the late 1990s -- it was trumpeted on the copies of their website -- I knew a couple of email addresses and I knew their real names.

I think maybe I found a clue to why they disappeared.

Jack's still around, he lives in Montana, and still uses the same email address as he did in his writing days. But those "personal info" sites that are a dime a dozen? None of them associate him with a Jillian Parks or Jillian Staik. In fact, outside of a photographer in Southern California who I think might be a bit too young to be the right Jillian, I can't find any sign of her at all. I can't help but wonder if something happened to her in 2001 or 2002, and he just shut down as a writer since so much of what he did was in collaboration with her.

I don't have the guts or the chutzpah to email him and ask.

[ckosacranoid]

Ig nothing else the worst would be you nothing back from him for an answer. Maybe it has been enough years to put any bad memories to the side to answer what happened to his wife. MAy she died, they went their own ways, who knows what could have happened,

[Labster]

It could be just a divorce.  And with a remarriage, another name change.  Or there's the whole trans thing that everyone is doing now.  Or she just lives and works outside the country.  While it could be the worst case, there's no reason to assume it.