Hold It Together - A Year Gone · 8:01am January 11th
Yesterday marks one full year since the author of one of my favorite stories, Hold It Together, was last online. Their story is unfinished. I joined the fandom late, so it's... rare for me to follow stories that get abandoned. Well, not nearly as rare as I'd like, but this one in particular was singularly unique– not just because of its superb quality, but the abruptness of it.
As far as I can tell, Overundercookened made a profile pretty much to post their story, just a month before they published the first chapter. Increasingly in the A/N and in blogs, they shared more and more of their progress, their ideas, the scenes that were brought up to the chopping block. Until they logged off for, as of this blog, the last time on Jan 10th, 2023, just three days after their last chapter. I... don't believe they abandoned their story account to go back to lurking. They were becoming too active, too involved. I am of the opinion that Overundercooked would have at least expressed doubts if they were considering abandoning their story.
I believe the Fates cut their thread short. It feels grim to say something, much less write a blog post about it, but I really cannot stress how much I enjoy Hold It Together. It felt real. It felt like an actual person talking with ponies, who were definitely not human and had so much depth to their personalities that not a word I read felt out of place. When I write my story, I feel like I can capture that for only a few characters– yet Overundercookened consistently hit the bullseye for every character. At the risk of putting their work on a pedestal, I really have to say I miss one of my favorite books and author on this site, as it was one of the most well-written I've read.
If you haven't given Hold It Together a read yet, go do it. Even in its unfinished state, it is a piece of literature that brought so much joy to me and the members of my discord server. I hope one day to be proven wrong, that my worst fears that I am now voicing are nothing more than overly dramatic dribble.
But life can be so cruel.
If that was the end of their candle, then I am thankful for the bright and brief light it brought into this world. If not, I'm gonna sucker punch them in the stomach for making me feel this sad.
WE'RE SO BACK BABY
It's been on my radar for a while, now I'll definitely check it out.
I, of course, hope they're okay, but life is fragile and something can always happen.
If something has happend, this is a good way to honour their memory.
And if not... well, I still hope they're okay, and thank you for finally convincing me to start reading this story.
I read their story and I can tell they the author did an amazing job, the characters' writing are lovable and their actions most of the time make sense while also capturing their show elements and characteristics, all the scene have the perfectly timed without did making you have a burn out, neither does it make it feel underwhelmed. And obviously, the MC ie also nicely done without him feeling like a Mary Sue. Hope he is doing well and see him come back.
This is also a favorite story of mine. The ambiance of the story makes the setting and characters quite lifelike within the bounds of the canon. I definitely love to find stories like that.
Not gonna lie, the title of this blog in my notifications initially made me think maybe they came back to post about it.
It's a fantastic story, and I still find myself hoping that maybe they'll return, if only to say "I'm okay, life got busy" or something even if they can't return to writing. They're one of the few authors who could actually make me laugh instead of just breathe out a bit or grin.
I can't believe it's been a whole year. I've considered that maybe something happened to them myself. I hope they're okay.
It is indeed very sad… man I love that story
Don get me started on this so many I have read that just stop half way through. Author promises more but it never happens.
Its such a phenomenal story. Part of me has been dreading hearing they lived in a conflict zone or somewhere suffering a tragedy. It's not fair. Art of this quality deserves to be preserved, the artists protected. The world is darker for their absence.
I honestly was just thinking about this story. An outstanding piece of work, a beautiful mastery of the characters in question. And unfortunately I believe you are right, the abruptness of their disappearance lends credence to something rather permanent taking them away.
Yeah it was a great story and the humor was on point too.
I really hope the author is doing fine.
for a second I thought you were going to continue the story
I remember reading and really enjoying it! I've seen people completely cut themselves off from the internet in order to focus on life stuff, so perhaps they did so to focus on university, or maybe they just burnt out and decided to stop logging in. We can only hope it's not something worse anyway, but it's always a thought in the back of my mind whenever any author stops logging on.
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I've been approached to continue a story I love, but not this one. I have some concerns about my release pace suffering even more if I take over the other story, though.
Very true, it always seems that when I find a great story it's always been left incomplete by the author.
(Do not take that as your qué Mr KKSlider)
I've seen this story pop up in my sidebar every now and then, and I have to say, a story with nearly 2k likes that started in 2022 is a rarity. Guess it's going into the e-reader sync pile.
Authors going AWOL like this is sadly nothing new for me. The guy who inspired me to start typing horse words dropped off the face of /mlp/ around about 2019, without finishing his ongoing stories either. I never did read his latest story, nor did I keep up with the thread it was updated in, and I won't lie: I'm kinda sad that I didn't. One of these days, I'll have to give my senpai's last work a proper read-through, maybe peruse the thread archives to see what was up.
I feel I joined the Fandom too late...
My favorite series FreePort had BOTH of it's authors step away. Those stories were the main reason I created an account.
Now... the diffeence is FreePort at least had plenty to read and had a confirmed ending, and the authors are still around now and then, so it's not like something bad happened... they were just here for a really long time.
This... this is a tragedy... but sadly, unless someone who knows them in real life can say, we won't know what happened. I've see this happen a few times and only one of the times that I can recall someone came out and said their friend's time on our beautiful ball of rock and water was cut far too short. I have friends saying they know someone who's passed recently. I know two people who lost their little brother... one to a simple bump on the head...
Sorry, I didn't mean to make this about me, but I just had to say it.
I hope whoever this is, they just are busy and hey forgot their password or something like that.
i just started this story and i can say it is amazing.
it is sad that for some reason the author has left the site.
but as you say this happens way to often.
The uncertainty makes it worse. At least we know eg. MythrilMoth isn't coming back, as sad as it is.
After reading this, I have to read Hold It Together. The author may be gone, and the story may never be completed, but I can still enjoy what they created, and maybe even be inspired by it or learn ways to improve my own writing
So totally back!!