All Things Fade Into The Storied Past... · 4:15am Jun 27th, 2019
"... and in a little while are shrouded in oblivion.” - Marcus Aurelius
So, I noticed something weird tonight.
I was looking over my userpage and considering doing some spring cleaning and I noticed my "Needs More Love" bar was missing a story. Specifically, it had 4 instead of 5, and then I realized why.
"You Can’t Be Missed If You Never Left" by Staeg Masque was gone. I did some digging and realized... everything was gone. His user page, all his stories, just... gone. Even search for blog posts that mentioned his name and all links back to any of his fimfic stuff just leads to 404s.
And that... bites.
I don't know what happened or why he's gone, but...
Ah, we've been at this for, what, eight years and some change now? I listen to a lot of Brony music, and if you're into that scene at all you know sometimes things just disappear. Artists try to go professional and hide their shameful pony past, decide to leave the fandom and delete everything to make sure they won't be tempted back, or just vanish entirely. So, this isn't my first rodeo, but this story in particular meant something special to me.
It was one of the first ponyfics I ever read. It was one of the first shipping stories I ever read. It was one of the stories that sold me on shipping and on TwiDash as a ship in particular, and may have been the reason I have such an infatuation with really sad Twidash.
((Read all those stories, btw. They're good.))
So, yeah, one of my oldest touchstones in the fandom has just up and vanished from the website and that blows. It's still on EQD in GDoc form, but who actually goes through the EQD archive anymore?
This fandom has meant a lot to me, and I rarely expressed that and I wish I did more and in better ways, so seeing little chunks of it just drift into oblivion hurts me. Seeing a bit of it that, no matter how small and private, was a personal part of my journey go sucks even more. I guess what's done is done though, no matter how much it may suck.
So, I'm going to do three things. First, I'm gonna drop a link to the EQD version of "You Can’t Be Missed If You Never Left" right here, so at least some record of it exists on this website. Plus, hey, if it strikes your fancy, give it a read. It's probably all really old hat right now, but it meant something to me and maybe it will mean something to you. Then, I'm gonna go find the nicest booze I own and take a shot for Staeg Masque and what his work meant to me. Then, I'm gonna take a shot for everyone else who meant something to this community and then disappeared.
As for all of you, my advice is remember your old favorites, find them, and hold them tight. Nothing lasts forever, and all things past into storied history and then oblivion. If I can make one request, though?
Stick around, or at the very least, leave what you gave us behind if you go, if only for your old pal Nyronus.
Salud!
My condolences to the ascended, and my sympathies to those who remain fallen.
You might want to try a search on the FIMFetch archive site, both with story title AND the author's name, as a LOT of stories that have disappeared from here eventually seem to end up archived there.
You could probably find in on the wayback machine or something similar
I said it on knighty's page before:
That "nuke everything" button was a bad idea. I hate not being able to reread an old favorite story just because the author had a change of heart.
~Skeeter The Lurker
Oh gosh, one of those looks familiar!
Man, he's completely gone though, isn't he? D: That's never cool.
Unfortunately, as fimfiction.net is run by people, you are going to get politics. I already have several favorite fim authors who left/were kicked out of fimfiction due to internal/external politics/political views. There are plenty of other sites that host fim stories, and lost authors often (but not always) will put their stories up elsewhere.
It’s not fun or even good, but petty BS happens.
Yeah, this is one of the several reasons for why I didn't (and won't) delete any of my stuff on here.
I'm pretty much gone from the site, but the potential impact of my stories still exists and deserves a shot at affecting someone.
I owe it to those people who may still read them at least, if not out of respect for my own past self's work.