Today is the 14th anniversary of Mass Effect 3. Yesterday I finished Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 3. My friend Tucker and I shared our love for them both, and he’s now been gone almost five years. His death was unexpected, shocking our online friend group to its core, and revealing in its aftermath how obvious some cries for help can be. As time continues on, my grief feels like it pulsates, going longer and longer now between waves. But on days like today, where our many shared interests have a confluence, it still hurts.
Tucker and I met on a gaming message board over 15 years ago. My friends and I, many of whom had shared that board for 10 years now, found him annoying and grating.. He was always confident and confrontational, ready for a battle of words over Babylon 5 or television resolution, and he knew what he was talking about and held strong to his opinions.
He began writing here in 2012, just a handful of articles, but he was always active and opinionated in our backend discussions. We would talk on the message boards, chat on AOL Instant Messenger, and eventually move to Discord when the public board began to die. His moods seemed to swing wildly at times, and he was quick to leave if he felt people were ganging up on him in chat, which happened quite often due to his aggressive posting style.
But when he was around, Tucker was a fount of knowledge and loved to dig into anything. In 2009 I had begun my quest to watch every single episode of Star Trek, at the time there were over 700! Tucker was there for me near the end as I struggled through Voyager and Enterprise, chatting like he had just watched some random episode alongside me, aware of its guest stars and plotlines better than me. Without him I don’t think I would have pushed through. He also had strong opinions on the newest series Discovery and Picard, watching new Star Trek with him was a joy even while the shows may have been kind of a bummer.
I finished my quest just three weeks after he was gone, having recently finished Enterprise and then knocking out the latest Lower Decks episode. The last time we chatted ever was about the Enterprise episode Congenitor, just some Borg nonsense hour that made us both smile. An aspect of my grief that I deal with now is that Tucker is gone but Star Trek continues on. It feels wrong.
He loved all of sci-fi: Farscape, Stargate, For All Mankind, and of course The Expanse, but on the gaming side he shared my love for Mass Effect. We both awarded Mass Effect 3 our 2012 Game of the Year, and he signed off on his with an ironically auspicious gesture towards Bioware: “may you never lose your way.” The Legendary Edition came out the year he passed and I spent my birthday attempting to buy it for him in Canada from the United States. I could tell he was having a rough time of it so I guess I thought buying him something would help lift his spirits. We eventually made it work, but by the end of the summer he was dead.
We never found an obituary, so we wrote our own. Everyone was honest, he was tough to be around sometimes, and basically everyone in our extended friend group had clashed with him at one point or another. He seemed to have thin skin for someone who had brandished their own claws so readily. Tucker also obviously had real mental health issues, there was only so much we could do from behind our keyboards, but I always think we could have, should have done more. He had just gone through a break-up and was going through hell at work, even if he kept pushing us away, shouldn't we have still done something? I will never get an answer.
I miss you, Tucker. Rest in peace. And to anyone reading this: live long and prosper.
