I'm having a real hard time with this, not as hard as the people that new her personally I'm sure. But here's why Nova's passing is still so hard for me personally.
I grew up having my social life on the internet with strangers I don't meet. That is mostly it for me. I don't go to churches. I don't make close friends at work, generally. Nova is someone I knew through these same circles but didn't really interact with more than a handful of times. She made an outsized impact on me.
She was a pillar of the community. I feel strange mourning her as if I knew her personally. We never spoke outside of Twitch, Discord, chirp-box, Github. Not because I didn't want to know her, mainly because I am weird and didn't want to make things awkward, and I hope she appreciated not being bothered. I carried Hacking Capitalism with me all the way to Detroit to get it signed, and carried it around the conference hoping I'd get a chance to say Hi and it wouldn't be weird.
That chance never came and now I definitely have the regret.
But I do feel like I knew her better than I know most of y'all, who I call friends. Nova made an impact on me, as well as many other people, and she will be missed.
