Some Other Me · 9:59am Aug 1st, 2015
Through the great Trouser Legs of Time, there's an alternate universe where someone never tried to murder me with their fists.
Because I was never punched repeatedly in the head, a minor embuggerance to say the least, nothing set off the chain reaction of bad genetics and faulty wiring that would topple my brain chemistry completely.
I never got PTSD. I never got diagnosed with bipolar mania or narcolepsy. I never suffered a seizure or a psychotic episode.
My grades never dropped, as a result. I'd like to think they got better because I got over my latent narcissism a little bit, which would instead be reinforced in this universe by the isolation that having clinical depression would create.
In this reality, I am not happy, but I am content, and I'm a lot closer to the friends I made in highschool. I have a stable job and am working towards a more productive degree.
I live in constant envy of this hypothetical other me that exists in the multiverse.
However.
However, in this other reality, Friendship is Magic never had any appeal to me. I would have cared too much about appearing masculine. I would still care too much what my friends thought of me. I didn't have that pathological craving, that inexorable desire for something unabashedly and unashamedly happy.
Without My Little Pony, I never developed an interest in reading fanfiction.
Without that fascination in fanfiction, I would never have developed an interest in writing it.
Without an interest in writing fanfiction, I would be too paralyzed by the immensity, the insurmountably, the impracticality of pursuing literature as a career. Not when there was literally anything else available for me. There I have too little to read as voraciously as I do here. What with how poor as I am and how expensive books are in Australia. I never venture outside the small confines of my local libraries and niche genres. I continue to find individual trusted authors and devour them, branching out only when depleted of current reserves of 'safe' reads.
I still love reading, but I turn instead to the maths and sciences, which I always had a knack for.
I go on to become an electrical engineer major. I hate it. It doesn't grok with my brainpan. I love the electronics, and I gel with the maths, but I lash out against the rigidity and the format and the workload. I still have a part-time job in I.T which I can never tell if I love or hate, because customer service.
I have friends in a twenty kilometer radius, but few outside that.
I never meet Ariamaki, Aragon, Norm_De_Plume, GhostOfHeraclitus, KingOfBeggars, Magello. People who I now cannot imagine life without.
I never develop the interests that land me my current girlfriend, who's brought me such bubbling and effervescent joy this past while. Which is why I've been so terribly unproductive in spite of being out of uni for three weeks now. Sorry about that.
[Update] As of writing this, she's just told me that she loves me, and I her. So yeah, I am pretty obnoxiously happy about that.
I never win any awards for screenwriting, no matter how local. I never get published. My name is not on the cover of a book. I never put out a children's novella. I've never had a script of mine made into a commercial
I never know what it's like to have an audience of thousands.
I never know what it's like to realize I've made thousands of people laugh.
I never know what it's like to reveal my pseudonym to some random people in a Skype group and be met with stammering gibbers and demands to sign someone's face.
I don't have a story listed on TvTropes. I don't write introspective blog posts sitting on buses in top hats and tailcoats, like I'm doing now, because I take myself far too seriously in this other place.
In that reality I'm too scared to write.
Instead I sit in that other place and read the last Terry Pratchett book he'll ever write and I think...
In some other place, I'm a writer. In some other place I took the risk. In some other place and time and reality people look up to me. In some other place I'm a more interesting person with the confidence to share what I do with an audience. In some other place I fucking did it.
There I have a secure job. I have an income. I have security and freedom and better health. And yet...
In that place, I'm jealous of who I am in this one.
And that thought was so profound to me, I had to share it.
Here's to a thousand followers. I'm not dead, in spite of all those notifications I'm getting from people putting Demesne into a Deadfics folder. I'm still kicking, if not screaming. I was hoping the next blog post would be revealing three simultaneous story updates, amounting to about 32K words, but I'm only 16 or so into it, so instead I thought I'd be grateful for everything I have, and everything you all have given me.
The next update's going to be funny. And have three simultaneous updates. I promise.
Goddamn, I could just replace every other word here with "ANGST!" and it'd read about the same, huh?
Shoutout to the newly anointed MissNumbers and Aragon for giving this the green light. Blame them.
Congratulations...may your new found happiness continue forever.
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Good on you mate!
I admit, knowing that you've got depression, I've been a tad worried. I kept wondering if I should PM, then telling myself I shouldn't bug you...
Glad to hear you are in good shape! 
3286522
You'd think so from a superficial examination of the post but since your conclusion was "I'm better off this way", it would be misleading.
This is unquestionably the greatest opening to a blog post in the (rather brief, on the whole) history of FimFiction. Thanks for being this MrNumbers, MrNumbers.
I've never faced attempted fist-murder, but my own road to bronydom did involve going off an anti-anxiety medication, secluding myself in my dorm room, falling into a vicious cycle of not going to class because I felt guilty about not going to class, and saving bottles in a desk drawer because they might be useful. Presumably to store fairies and blue potions. I was not in a particularly rational state of mind.
Still, if that hadn't happened, I would've never gone to a very helpful therapist, never been introduced to her son, never joined in the Saturday gaming sessions I still attend to this day, and never been introduced to this one surprisingly good cartoon in the summer of 2011.
So yeah, I definitely understand where you're coming from. Funny to look back, isn't it?
This was good brainfood for the day. Thank you.
It's usually the case in life that how the story turns out depends on where you decide the end is. While I'm sorry to tell you there's probably no happily ever after from this point out, I hope your happily for now lasts a long time and overshadows everything else.
And congratulations to both you and Miss Numbers! I suggest you celebrate this by writing adorable shipping fics. But then, that's my reaction to everything.
But how much of you would 'the other me' be? It's not some abstract philosophical question, I think it's something everyone thinks about. I don't want to get into my story, (partially because I couldn't make it interesting if I wanted to,) but if I had been the person who could have all those things I wanted when the opportunities presented themselves, I wouldn't be really anything like myself. Hell, other me wouldn't be able to keep up in a conversation with me. And it's different for everyone.
3286522
(This joke brought to you by the Evil League of Evil Jokes.)
Just add some "IRONY!" and you could make it a comedy routine!
That really is a profound thought.
Excuse me while I go think about my life a little, and the hypotheticals that could be...
3286522
Nothing wrong with angst when it's as well articulated as this.
Does the magic that makes digital games expensive bleed over into ebooks as well? I hadn't had that awful thought previously.
3287050 near as I understand, all the things in Oz are expensive.
Somewhere in the multiverse, far upstream in the time-waters, a butterfly is folding her wings and smiling.
That's a really awesome thing, to look at those hypothetical yous and realize that you like where you ended up. Many many congratulations to you and the partner! We'll look forward to those stories when they arrive, but until then ... you're winning at life today. It would be petty of us not to cheer you for savoring that.
It's the challenges that make us better, more interesting, hungier, sexier. It sounds weird to say, but I'm mighty glad your life was as challenging as it was.
3287241
The old man took another drag on his clay pipe.
"Well, I mean they say—and I mean Arouet, obviously, the coffee-scoffing bastard—the best of all possible words, right? But you get me 'best' on my budget! Hah! 'Good enough' of all possible words. You know. Taking one thing with another."
"And you are," I asked, puzzled. This would be the last time I played with the multidimensional analytic engine drunk, I swear. I didn't even know what I did.
"Mm? Oh. Call me Götz. Everyone does. Well. Not Isaac, obviously. Anyway, what with the blasted butterflies, best you can hope is 'good enough.' And some days," he said, drawing closer with a conspiratorial air, "we are all damn proud if anything happens."
"Butterflies!?"
"Hate the bastards. Flapping their wings whenever they feel like it, the little sods, changing things cos' of quantum, and who gets to fix it? Muggins here, that's who. Just today, right, I went and arranged things so a kid would get punched in the face. A lot."
"What?!"
"Good enough, remember! Good enough! It all works out. Adds up. The Computational Ethics Department says it's the right thing to do, given the circumstances, resource limitations and all that rot, and Jeremy swears up and down that the math all checks out. He's better off with the punching. In the long run."
"Who... who are you?"
"Götz, remember. I mean if you want the full name it's really Gottfried Wilhelm von—I say. You are taking a long time with that drink."
"Drink?"
"This isn't The Tesseract Bar & Grill," the old man asked, for the first time seeming to take in his surroundings. He glanced at the bulk of the multidimensional analytic engine, the coils of the reality assertors, and the strange curly thing the students made and nobody knew the purpose of and blinked.
"Oh God. You are one of those imbeciles who fiddles around with the multiverse, aren't you? Don't you know how to leave things well enough alone? Do you have any idea how much work you are creating for us?"
He turned the control panel for a moment, fiddled with the touchscreen, muttered something impolite about computers in German, and disappeared in flash of purple light.
I quit drinking the next day.
3286801
's true. Bookplayer is like Pinkie in that respect. Whatever the situation is it only ever calls for one thing, viz. adorable shipping.
Out of everything here I am most curious as to why you are in a top hat and tailcoat.
Until told otherwise I have chosen to believe that you moonlight as a children's magician and are coming back from the hospital.
I'm glad things are going well for you, for a given but valid definition of "well". :)
Reread this again. It legitimately made me tear up.
3287322
Has anyone told you lately how awesome you also are?
3287525
Well, y'all spent a frightening sum of money to get a better-than-professional-audiobook version of a story of mine done.
That we are all the product of our experiences. It's something writing has expressed for centuries. In time, I hope you find yourself well with what you do.
In the words of a persistent kitten: hang in there!
First off: Happy you've got someone who cares for you. You deserve it mate.
Also...thank you.
This is kinda selfish, but reading that...well,I don't feel quite as dark or dead inside as I had before.
You...you're like a mirror, I suppose. Yeah, my own stuff is...a tunnel without a light inside. But sometimes, a little bit of the light from yours shines onto me. And I'm thankful for that. We've had different experiences, yes. But parts are similar enough that you give me hope.
So thank you. Thank you for being inspiring, supportive, funny, cheerful and an all around great guy.
I wish you the best of luck.
Take care.
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Glad to hear you're doing well! Looking forward to that triple update. :P (I'll happily take just one, though).
YAAAAY
