EFilly Friends Forever
MLP: FiM
Sad
Slice of Life
Scootaloo is about to lose the company of her dearest and closest friend, perhaps forever. It is something she is not going to allow and she is willing to bring a sacrifice to prevent it from happening.
Scootaloo
Dinky Hooves
Fluttercheer · 5.6k words · 27 6 · 1.2k views

Mistakes from the past that still affect today..... · 4:46pm Dec 23rd, 2023

Since she blocked me, so many thoughts are going through my head..... Almost seven years ago, an event happened that shattered me so much, that I turned into the worst friend possible for a while, because of the mental problems it brought me. Everything was wonderful at that time; my writing was growing fast, I had found the best friend I could wish for and I had my dream position as a quest writer of "Legends of Equestria". Then..... everything just came crashing down because of one stupid decision I made.
In a team project, you have to make compromises, they said. And I didn't understand this. Or, perhaps, I was not able to understand it at this time. I had been writing a few quests for the game, with slow progress, because I was still getting used to the position and because I was far less organized than I am today. Then I was writing a few NPCs for the game, for a quest of mine, which worked fine, at first. I did not just write their backstories and their personalities, I chose their colors too. Bubbly Greens and Sugar Lump:
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Sugar Lump is in the game now. Bubbly Greens is not. All because of one mistake I've made..... This mistake is dragging on until today, almost seven years later, and still creates ripples.....
All NPCs for LoE have to go through the lead of the 2D Department, who mainly checks their colors to see if they are okay, before they get approved to be included in the game. The department lead back then didn't approve Bubbly Green's colors and set new colors for her, deciding to change them. I was not consulted about this, the way it worked was that the change was simply done by them. It made me mad, so I went and deleted the card in Trello with the changed colors for Bubbly Greens and told them in a rather furious way that I don't appreciate this change and that I should be the only one who decides the colors of the NPCs I create for LoE.
An attempt to compromise was made, which were just different colors for Bubbly Greens I also didn't agree with and I insisted on it that her colors stay the same, the ones I chose for her. The compromise failed, I withdrew Bubbly Greens from the game and I was forbidden to play the game for a while (the dev team knew my account) and was put on probation.
Back then, I thought I was in the right. I felt violated because a character I created was touched and changed without my consent and I criticized the 2D Department Lead and the dev team heavily for what I thought was an outdated procedure and demanded that they let NPC creators decide the colors for their characters themselves. I did not agree with their procedure. I always thought I was in the right with this reaction and for years, I blamed the 2D Department Lead for the misery this has caused me and my friend, blamed them for everything that happened afterwards. Now everything is different, since she blocked me, I realize I could have acted better in that incident that was nothing but a conflict of interests between two team members of a game project.
Everything went bad from there. I thought I was being treated unfair, punished for it that I just stood up for my pony NPC that I created and that I demanded that my decisions for her as her creator are respected, with a probation period and getting forbidden to play the game for a while, and I felt that my dream position had turned into a nightmare, I couldn't even really enjoy playing LoE anymore, because it reminded me on what happened. And all of that made me completely unhinged. I developed mental problems, said stupid things to my friend that hurt her, felt guilty for that and, eventually, that guilt made me develop anger issues and aggressive outbursts that hurt her more and affected her own mental health, too. At first she understood what I was going through and tried to help me relax, to calm me, but in early 2019, after more than two years like that, it got too much for her to handle and she left me.
I managed to bring her back eight months later and, at first, everything was wonderful again between us, just as it was before, and she trusted me again. But then more things happened; mostly hardware issues on her end that always slowed down her progress with her pony art projects, but also some mistakes by me, like when I told her about a story idea that I should have known would mentally trigger her because of something from her past, but was too blind to see it, reacting unappreciative and ungrateful when she tried to motivate me to draw ponies more often (this hurt her confidence and cheer a lot and it's one of the things I regret the most) or putting my own mental baggage on her when she couldn't need it, just right after she showed me something very nice she had discovered in MLP: FiM, which affected her confidence more. These things started at a time when she was still weakened from my outbursts and had not yet fully recovered from them and they happened throughout 2020, 2021 and 2022. These problems became less eventually, but there were a lot of them at first and they gradually chipped away at her mental health when she was still vulnerable because of my aggressive outbursts and never let her fully recover from them.
Then at the end of last year, something happened that preceded her recent breaking of contact and was one of the things that made her make that decision. It was announced that Twitter would delete accounts that are inactive for six months or longer. I panicked when I heard about this. She had not used her Twitter account for a while, for longer than six months, and I did not want that she has to lose it. She had become disinterested in using Twitter and she said it's maybe for the best if her account there gets deleted, when I told her about it and that she needs to log into her account and use it for a bit to prevent its deletion. It has been like this once before, she even deleted her first Twitter account herself as a result of my outbursts and because of how hopeless they have made her feel. I remembered how she eventually regretted another decision she made, removing all of her pony art from Derpibooru, and how she was later worried that she couldn't bring it back anymore and so I knew she would regret the deletion of her new Twitter account as well eventually, when she feels better again, and I wanted to prevent her from experiencing that pain in the future. And since she was not open to the idea of preserving her account and I did not know how much time would pass before inactive Twitter accounts get deleted and neither how long it would take to discuss this with her and convince her of preserving her account, I decided to save her account myself. I used her Twitter password, that she had shared with me, to log into her account and to retweet a few tweets. This is something she mentioned in her goodbye mail as one of the reasons, that I used her Twitter account without her consent.

Until very recently, less than three weeks ago, I blamed the lead of the 2D Department of LoE's dev team for all this, for this horrible chain reaction that has been brought upon me and my friend and that put our friendship under such strong strains that we barely managed to hold it together. But only now, after she blocked me again and told me again that she wants to leave me, I see that I could have acted differently and that it was all my fault in the end..... I still don't agree with it that Bubbly Green's colors were changed over my head and still think that I should have been the only one deciding her colors. But in the end, it was a simple conflict of interest between two members of a creative team and it could have been resolved better than with my hasty, offended reaction.
And why did I simply use her Twitter account to save it from deletion? I had a good intention with that, but I was still doing something extreme with it. There was the choice between letting her Twitter account get deleted and allowing the regret that she would probably feel over it someday to happen or to use her account against her consent to save it and prevent her from having to experience that regret in the future. And I chose one of those extremes. But why didn't I choose a path in the middle? Why was I not more patient and took time to think of a better solution that lies between those two extremes? Not choosing an extreme, but a path in the middle, and to be patient are actually two core aspects of my personality, so why did I fail with that there? I betrayed my personality by using her account without asking her and I don't understand why.
It's also only now that I realize I have become a cynic in the last few years..... This is not something you ever see of me in public, but in the last two years, my thoughts were full of cynical remarks and jokes, both about myself and others, as well as circumstances, and I felt bitter..... I can't pinpoint exactly when that began, but I guess it was in 2021, when it was revealed that all of Generation 5 would be animated in full-CGI, not just the movie that started it. I always despised full-CGI animation and, for personal and very deep-seated reasons, I despise it even more with Generation 5. When the first infos about Generation 5 came out in early 2021 and it turned out that it's a sequel to Generation 4, I saw a new beginning for me and a new chance after the trouble and all the mental problems from 2017 - 2019. And I could live with it that only the Generation 5 Movie would be in full-CGI, it would only be a small part of Generation 5 and only the start of it, I was assuring myself. But then when it became announced that all of Generation 5 would be animated like that, after I had already successfully started to analyse it and was thinking of a bright future, it made me feel that this new beginning and new chance are being destroyed again. I think that's where my cynicism started, it was that, on top of the hard time from 2017 - 2019 and the new obstacles me and my friend had to go through in 2020. Then the next year, 2022, with the beginning of the Ukraine War and the real, increasing nuclear threat, it added to that and worsened my condition. It even made me have one, single outburst again last year, at the end of June, when I was kept up in my plans because of this and everything overwhelmed me. All of this made me cynical and bitter and only now that she said goodbye to me, this all falls of again suddenly and the cynicism and bitterness are suddenly extinguished. Losing her, even just the prospect of it, threw me out of this bitterness and cynicism and I dread the thought that it might be too late now.....
I saw a tweet by Lauren Faust a few days ago. It made me think "Yeah, I doubt she feels bad about that. She was definitely happy about Scrooge's gift and about being able to prepare that meal because, you know, her family is poor and usually doesn't get much too eat. Also, she got to eat something of that turkey, too.". The tweet made me feel weird and I criticized it in my head for the exaggerated feminist take and because Lauren Faust was missing the whole point about Scrooge's gift. And I thought about responding with that, but then decided against it, because I am not interested in that movie enough that I feel I want to defend it and neither want to participate in a discussion about the depiction of womens' rights in animated movies. And then I thought back to other moments when I saw tweets or posts that made me feel strongly and that I criticized for a bad take in them and did respond to, even though what was mentioned in them did not interest me much. It made me ask, why did I respond then, if that's nothing I care about and when I actually saw no need to defend it by criticizing the bad take? It was just because I wanted to be in the right. Because I wanted to show that I'm right, to demonstrate it. To be in the right, that's why I answered those many posts and takes I did not actually care about. I don't know if that is narcissism, but that's why I did that. Another thing I realized.

Four things that I realized about myself and that I didn't even know where there, in the last less than three weeks, because of my friend's blocks and her goodbye..... It makes me want to change things; to finally atone and mend the things with the LoE dev team (even with the former 2D Department lead, if they can still be reached somehow after they left the dev team themselves), work more on myself and not make such extreme decisions like what I did with my friend's Twitter account anymore, stop reacting so cynical and bitter on the things around me and not be such a showoff anymore by getting involved in debates about things that don't even concern me just so that I can feel right, but, I ask myself, why do I only realize all of this now, when it might be too late? Why didn't I realize all of that sooner?
Maybe it's really like she said to me earlier this year, that I'm a bull who won't stop until I reach an immovable object. Maybe I need a strong clap on the back of my head once in a while to make me see where the flaws in my personality are..... or maybe I have become someone who needs that in the last almost seven years.
I only realize this after she said she leaves me, but I don't want to think that it's too late, now that I did and learned those things about myself..... I should have listened to her more, because she did give me hints that some things are wrong, but I was too bull-headed to be able to see that myself. But now that I learned and realized those things and can work on them, I don't want that our friendship ends, not after I finally realized..... People who learn deserve a reward, not more punishment.
I would like to show her this blog entry and I secretly hope she reads it and that it moves something in her that makes her change the decision, but I also don't want to make her feel harassed and I'm scared that she could think that I'm only saying these things as a way to lure her back..... that she doesn't believe my regrets and that I learned. But I don't want to give our friendship up, not after more than seven years, not after all the things we went through together and not after I learned and can finally see clear again after the hardships and mental problems in those almost seven years..... I have to keep trying. I can't let our friendship end.
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