Requiem for a Broom · 12:13am Nov 10th, 2012
The apartments in my buildings have balconies. My balcony is conjoined to my neighbor’s; the only thing dividing us is a white privacy barrier with a gap on the bottom.
One morning, I stepped onto my half of the balcony and saw part of a broom handle sticking under the barrier. Being the kind and considerate gentleman I am, I kicked it to their side. I've owned one broom and one mop in my entire time here, and they’re both still in my kitchen.
A couple months pass, and I step out again to see that same half of a handle on my side of the balcony again. Apparently, they noticed it and kicked it back. Well, as I am giving person, I gave my neighbors back their property by kicking it under the barrier again.
This time the handle ended up behind a potted plant, so they didn't see it. It sat there for months, and everyone forgot about it.
My neighbors moved out this month, and apparently didn't feel like throwing the handle away. Today, when the management staff went through to clean out their apartment, they noticed the handle laying on the balcony and, quite naturally, kicked it over to my side.
As my foot moved to kick the little piece of metal back to its “rightful” side, I had this image of the new neighbors moving in. They’re going to know the handle isn't theirs, so they’ll kick it back to my side. We’ll go back and forth like so, and eventually it will settle under a chair or behind a plant.
I’ll move out, and the person who follows me into this apartment will, someday, find a broom handle that he knows isn't his on the balcony.
It is impossible to know where this thing came from. How long it’s been here. What it’s story is. It is just a thing that fell out of someone’s life one day. Garbage, passed from one hand to another.
I like to explore old buildings, ghost towns, abandoned gas stations. I've traveled for hundreds of miles to stand in a grassy field that was once a town and wonder what lived here.
Online, I have a similar fascination. I nose through blogs, forums and websites that have been abandoned for years.
To make this post relate to FIMFiction, there are a few accounts I poke in on with a little “Last Activity 12 weeks ago” on them. Stories half-completed, like little orphan children. It makes me wonder, what happened? Where have they gone, and what are they doing now? They never left a Goodbye blog post, nor were they banned. They just ceased to be in my field of view.
Even in the real world, that is the way of things. I've lived on ships and had college roommates. For a period of time, we were crammed into a tight space with one another, and now, I probably wouldn't recognize them on the street. They've passed through me in the same way that their underwear passed through my hands when I moved it to the drier.
Supposedly sacred bonds, like those of a parent or lover, are lost. Replacements are made. All this Brony shit? 10 years from now it won’t have meant anything. Hell, tomorrow afternoon might be the beginning of the end, and FIMFiction will someday be unplugged and unforgotten.
Nothing lasts forever, we’re all just garbage passed from one balcony to the next. Who knows where I came from, and even if we’re going to the same place, you won’t know me when we get there.
But, I think I’m going to keep this one piece of garbage. Maybe make it into something useful again. That way, if you ever see me in person someday, years after FIMFiction has ceased to exist, you’ll be able to recognize me.
I’ll be the idiot carrying a torch made out of a broomhandle.
Also, thanks to everyone who contributed stupid ideas in my last blog post. I'm gonna be using a few of them in a fic coming later, but I didn't want to lock myself in on the "whats" and "wherefors" with specific responses.
You're quite genius when you want to be, you know. Even if this struck me as somber and a bit winsome, it speaks to you ability to manipulate the written word in a decidedly pleasing manner.
WHAT'S WRONG WIT CHOO!?
Very deep, I actually take joy in that fact.
I like to explore abandoned places like that also. Well, not hundreds of miles...
Online, there are quite a few unfinished fanfics that actually influenced my world view growing up, helped me develop an open mind and such. I read some odd things. I check on them every few months when I think to, even though it's been in some cases 8 years since they ditched it. I wonder if they gave up writing. And if there's one lasting effect this Brony phase will have, it'll be causing a significant portion of people like me to become writers. Who knows what we might go on to do with it?
I'm excited to see what you come up with. I think I was the only one who didn't suggest sex?
Intriguing. I as well occasionally explore some old random abandoned threads on the internet. It's kind of sad really, how something once so popular can simply and swiftly disappear almost overnight. That's obviously quite likely to happen to the fandom once the show is eventually cancelled. And though people will try not to let it go, it will eventually. Like you already kinda said, MLP will be nothing more than just a fun memory 10 years from now.
It's crippling, isn't it, to realize that we'll all be trash in the end. That's why you've got to hit it big somewhere, even if it is something as stupid as a simple fanfic site for cartoon ponies. Because you may not ever get a chance anywhere else. That's why I try so hard. Or so little, or so what. I can't remember anymore.
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Well, for one thing I've spent the past 20 minutes cleaning a fucking broom handle that some asshole left on my balcony.
Everything is romantic, until you start worrying about tetanus.
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Some of the people with multiple suggestions had one or two that weren't about sex. Part of why I'm holding off on starting it is I'm trying to figure out a storyline that could include everything. Even the ones that contradict one another.
If I pull it off, it will be the most random thing I've ever written.
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The life of this fandom is one of those things I wonder about.
There's always been an adult My Little Pony fandom, so some people will simply be absorbed into the fold of guys and gals who've been following this stuff since the 80's. If the show ends on a high note, FiM-fans might go the way of trekkies, many of them clinging to something that ended forever ago and gobbling up My Little Pony: Voyager, or whatever dumb shit comes out eventually.
Or, it could roll on past its welcome and the fandom could just fade out. Like I said, tomorrow might be the beginning of the end, we'll just have to wait and see.
EDIT: That last one sounded way more pessimistic than intended. I do actually expect the premiere to be good. I figure there's another year or two in this stuff, at least. I'm just walking a morbid direction at the moment.
Well that was a thoroughly enjoyable and thought provoking blog post.
I think we all like exploring abandoned places, three years back when I was 14 I traveled 5 miles to get to this abandoned factory, it had been derelict for years and was basically falling apart, but it was massive. 3 stories high and it had both a factory floor and a business section where i assume the bigwigs were.
Anyway I climbed all the way into the attic and walked around in the dark, why is this relevant? it isn't. When I came back down I wandered through the many decrepit rooms until I came across this one room on the third floor that was different, while all the other rooms had hole through the plasterboard, as if some kids had taken a sledgehammer too it. This room was tucked away furthest from the adjacent road, what really got me was that there was a few cushion and a blanket there, not a small cushion but one of those that come with sofa's:
cushioncomfort.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/Feather-Cushion-Sofa.jpg
Basically I started wondering what the story behind this was. if some old homeless lived there, but I came to the conclusion that if he did the place would likely look more lived in. I wondered maybe two young lovers used this as a place to have sex (it sounded), or maybe stoners came here to get high.
Basically I sat there for 20 minuets wondering what the story behind these things were.
I visited again a few weeks later, when I came back to the stairs, they were gone, someone had went and unbolted the stairs (A two story set that lead to an office), the banisters where still there, just the stairs were gone. I also noticed strips of copper had been pulled out of walls and ceilings, I take it they were looking for cheap scrap to sell. I Climbed up the banister and lo and behold when I reached that room the cushions where gone.
I know that feel.
Also the guy who wrote Equestria:total war is probably dead, he was releasing regular updates and suddenly stopped altogether. All activity and was never online again.
It's a rather strange feeling to smile in that sad way reading something so fundamentally human that it touches the soul more than the mind.
I swear, reading this aloud only makes it better.
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Rest in pieces fiddles, this blog seems like an appropriate memorial.
2178588 may he return to life one day