Wake · 8:54am Feb 12th, 2023
Instead of the usual monthly update, there is this. Much of my time in December was spent writing my Jinglemas fic for DrakeyC, and then much of my writing time in January and up to now has been crafting "A Hush Reigns Over the Universe, But a Final Blaze Shouts."
Regular programming on these updates will resume next month. For now, what follows is my postscriptum for that latter story.
I admit, I haven't been as close to Ninjadeadbeard as several others have, but what I can at least hold is that I knew him early on in his Fimfiction days through comments on "Magical Curiosity": he joined the site in the middle of August 2019, and less than a month later, he commented on the story a few times and said it was a great read.
At the time, I didn't pay too much attention to it. It's no secret that comments are nice to have, but I was (and to an extent, still am) wary about that story. Though it is my highest rated if you look at the numbers, it was also, on a technical level, inconsistent and meandering. It was one of the last stories I'd written without an outline; by the time Ninja commented, I'd abandoned that writing style already, moving towards outlines. Blog posts from the time showed that I didn't exactly have the sweetest afterthoughts on "Curiosity," even though it was still nice to read comments from people who still liked it after the fact. Writing-wise, in the immediate wake of the story's ending, I was in a bad place, because I felt I had bombed the ending of a story that so many people were watching and that I had disappointed them all when the (self-inflicted) pressure was put on me to keep on going and get their interactions for every new chapter. Thus, though a year had passed by then, a sour feeling still lingered over it.
Which leads us to a week after those comments. Middle of September, I got a private message from him, asking if he could use three OC's I put in from "Curiosity" for a story he was writing. Those characters are the Apple family horses that got "uplifted" into sapient ponies midway through the fic: Cookie the Earth pony, Oakley the pegasus, and Cinnamon the unicorn. It was the first time anyone asked to use my OCs, and it was astonishing; I'd thought that that privilege was preserved for very famous creations like Nyx or Littlepip from the early days. Still, I gave him permission, and then weeks later, early October, he sent me the link to the chapter they appeared in: Chapter Five of "Home Again." I'd say you should take a look there, at the least second-to-last scene of the chapter which is where they appear, because it was then that I really started to know him. It felt faithful yet also wonderfully different.
So, I managed to read the section. Before that, I skimmed the preceding parts of the chapter in question. From what I can tell, it's pretty good!
Then I got to Applejack's section with her horses.
... it was beautiful. Heartwarming too, definitely. It made me stop and think... I don't know, it was like reliving those days again when I was writing that part down myself back in Curiosity, when I was a lot more bright-eyed.
This one, however—I'd say it's better than my portrayal. Honestly, I believe those characters deserve better, especially since they were in stories that weren't particularly well thought-out or planned... and you gave them that something better. I don't know how they'll end up in this story, but know this: you're good.
Thank you for this. Reading that made my day.
Thank you so much for your kind words. It means a lot coming from you, because I truly loved those stories you wrote, regardless of what you think of them now.
I hope you’re having a good day, and have a wonderful weekend! !
Half a year later, at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, I remembered him. I forget all the fine details of why I did—perhaps I was checking up on a few others I knew on Fimfiction at the time—but seeing his name and remembering his request regarding my OCs either preceded or followed my ruminations about my writing. Thus, I asked him in a somewhat confession about writing advice, citing his love for "Curiosity" which I wrote but didn't like as much as he did. The long and short of it was I told him about me losing that innocent spark for writing I had before and during the writing of "Curiosity": while the quality wasn't as good as the fics I'd been making afterwards, they were fun explorations, something I enjoyed a lot.
He replied, and we had a very fruitful exchange.
And for those of you who like having answers to little mysteries years after they started, that was the catalyst for Ninja's "You Are Not Alone" blog post just later down the month. Yes, Mr. Anonymous was me.
I started getting into his stories later that year. "Anarchy: Pony of Chaos" especially was a great treat, but I also felt something... right with it, for lack of a better term. There was a particular whimsy to Ninja's writing that carried the spirit of the show. I'd been very focused on getting characters from plot point A to plot point B, but Ninja didn't seem to obsess over that... the journey itself was fun, and all of these sidelining sideplots never felt like a distraction. Sure, they weren't part of the main storyline, but I also felt like removing them to streamline it would feel wrong, like part of its soul would be missing.
And by October of 2020, we got in touch on Discord and the rest was history. We DM'd each other, played two games on Lichess, shared our writing experiences... it'd be difficult for me to summarize it all, but it was good. Things were good.
I started getting notifications about his cancer in May 2022. Already, though, the messages had started to lessen. Early December, I got messages regarding further levels of treatment being required. Before then, he assured me that he'd gotten the cancer covered before: there was experience, he survived it once; surely, he can do it a second time. I put my faith in that.
It's harrowing to note that I sent him two messages asking how he was on the 23rd and then on Christmas Day.
I got the message on the midnight of the 28th. Bluntly and metaphorically put, it caught me in my pajamas as I was up late at night in a voice chat on the Equestria at War Discord server, watching a couple of people play Minecraft while I was booting up a video game. I suddenly got pinged from Ninjadeadbeard, but the message wasn't from him but a family member.
When I recovered from the initial shock, I quit the voice chat without warning and turned off the game.
It was a hollow feeling. It is still a hollow feeling. I had underestimated how fast cancer can get to a person. Part of that was Ninja's attitude: he was never a defeatist, either in public or in private. Even when it got to stage four, he worded it as it were simply a major inconvenience, expecting to bounce back.
Again, I didn't know him too well. Not as much as the others here who've known him more in-depth, and that's without mentioning his in-real-life friends and family. Having met him here and known him primarily as a fellow fan fic writer, I can only speak of him primarily as a writer.
So what I do know of him... well, he's a good man. Genuinely positive, an encourager. He doesn't take himself too seriously and in a good way, which shows in his stories... a fantastical, self-aware whimsy permeates his fiction. Not to mention that he had a solid plan for his world, especially with the herculean task of making sure the whole MLP G4 timeline could be accounted for in his canon.
But beyond being a writer, he's a good man. I... don't know what else to say. It still feels hollow, with someone missing. At the very least, with those that are still here, I still have time with them but I can't presume to know how long...
So I'll leave here.
