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It’s not always the loudest voices that have the most important things to say.
If you ever encountered Kenneth “Youngblood” Nilsson, you probably never heard him raise his voice at all. But, then you might not have known much about him, or the fact that he’s been a pillar of the vanilla initiative since the beginning. And you probably wouldn’t know of his prolonged battle against cancer, one he finally lost this past week.
There’s not much to go on. Even for us, serving by his side for years, Kenneth was never one to blab on about his life or struggles, aside from the practical consequence of his illness. But, despite the limitations of an online connection, something feels monumental about it all. The way he behaved during those rare occurences of ethical questions or injustice we’ve endured. It’s been in those instances, he’s made his voice be heard, with a seemingly incorruptible moral compass. Living with death at a young age, one can only suspect he knew more about life than most of us.
We would like to thank his family for letting us shed some light on what we, even with our limited acquaintance, would describe as a man of respect, loyalty and integrity. A man of dignity.
Kenneth, it’s been an honour.
After the jump, Shox, shares some thoughts on his former team mate.
- Torden
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Shox — I won’t beat around the bush. Today I’m upset and along with many others I’m mourning the death of YoungBlood who has recently lost his long and heroic battle with cancer.
I’d known about Kenneth’s illness for a couple of years from our days playing in Knights together, it’s a testament to his character that he was so fiercely secretive about his condition. He didn’t see himself as any different to anyone else and frankly, even with his all too frequent and energy-sapping chemotherapy sessions he was still easily the most reliable and level headed person I’ve ever forged an eRelationship with.
Never was so much owed by so many to so few – Winston Churchill
Kenneth fell into that category of quiet genius; he went about his business of helping to develop the TF2 community with no fuss. He had no real ambition to be a name, didn’t lord himself about or bring any unnecessary attention to himself nor did he seek any praise or recognition for the significant amount of work and effort he put in. When you consider that a good portion of that effort was delivered under the influence of chemotherapy it certainly removes the lustre from my own efforts.
Youngblood was heavily involved in VanillaTF2 and remained an active, respected and hugely influential member of the team throughout. His ability to look objectively at the dramas of TF2 that crossed the VanillaTF2 doorstep and respond without prejudice was strangely inspiring and it’s right to say that he played a huge part in setting the overall tone for Vanilla.
It’s a sad fact that despite all of the incredible things that he did for the community that a good quantity of people who read this post probably won’t even know his name.
Community work aside, I’ll remember youngblood as a fearsome scout, the luckiest spy I’ve ever seen and a formidable sniper. He was one of the rare players who could be relied on to mechanically execute a push as well as produce creative, random and frequently successful plays out of thin air.
He helped to lead the Danish national team to some respectable results and there was barely a day that went by when his ingrained Danish love of Butter and Bacon didn’t surface in some form or another on IRC.
So, here’s to you buddy. You’ll be sorely missed.
- Rob
Originally published on VanillaTV (vanillatf2.org) on 2012-06-01 by ShoX.
Recovered from the Internet Archive (archived copy) as part of tf2esports.com's preservation of VanillaTV's TF2 coverage. The original site is no longer online. All rights remain with the original author; reposted for historical reference.