This may be an off limits thing to discuss even these many years later, but curiosity knows no bounds. I was wondering the other day what happened to Thyla.

For those too "young" to remember, Thyla was the longtime administrator/community-manager of sluggy.net before Wile E. She was married to rit, the IT guy who built the site and still maintains it.

Due to the suddenness of her departure and the hush-hush reaction on the boards, I always assumed she and rit had an ugly breakup. But I know nothing for sure.

I imagine those who do know are still sworn to secrecy, but if not, I'll put it out there.

Thyla was always a bit of a controversial figure, but I was fond of her --she never appeared anywhere without her trademark "Vartini" (vodka martini) in one hand, at least on the boards.

I started reading Sluggy just shortly before she left, but by the time I signed up for the boards she'd already departed. I've always wanted to know what happened, but those I ask about it don't talk about it. I've always found it a little odd, myself.

See this post on the topic.

Not very illuminating, I know. I wish I knew what happened to her, as well. My speculation was the same as yours. Now that more than five years have elapsed since that post, perhaps more could be said, but I personally wouldn't count on it.

This is all rampant speculation on my part but I remember thinking it may just be because she used her actual name here and she doesn't want this place coming up in google searches about her. I noticed a while back that her account was deleted.

Being the community manager of a place like this seems more like something to put on your resumé than something to purge from your history.

I had always thought the "vartini" was a varnish martini, from an episode when a poster shared some very explicit not-in-a-fun-way information and her response was, "Drink a can of varnish and pray for blindness."

Anyway, I haven't the foggiest idea what happened. We used to be extremely close, and then we started to lose touch, and then she left the boards, and that was that. I miss her terribly, but I respect her decision to close the door on this.

Now I'm thinking that it wasn't a bad break up with rit that caused all this, but a bad breakup with Pete. And I'm pretty sure Inspy is right about the whole "vartini" thing.

That's what I always understood a Vartini to be, too.

Ah. Live and learn. I must have simply missed the original incident.



That seems less likely to me, just because it was such a clean break. If she were still married to rit, you might expect her to maintain her connections with some of her friends on the boards, even if she wasn't part of the community any more. Also, if Thyla and Pete had a big falling out, it would probably have been hard for him and rit to maintain a good working relationship.

But that's nothing more than idle speculation. Since it doesn't seem like new info is forthcoming, I'll close the topic. Maybe I should start a new thread for reminiscing about Sluggites past. We have had one of those in several years --long enough for a whole new crop of people to come and go...

At the time, things happened. Even we mods who have come along since and were not party to the particulars have no insight to give. Even if we did we would not. Pete asked, long ago, to not discuss this. So, we're not. If his Glowingheadedness decides to make the particulars known, he will post about it.

In the meantime I'm going to close this topic and ask that the community respect both Pete and Thyla's privacy.