darf departs · 11:37pm Aug 31st, 2016
I'll be the first to admit that I'm not exactly an active user of this site. It's often enough that I wish I were. Unfortunately, real life tends to eclipse my pony writing projects, though I hope to get some more content up on FiMFiction before the end of the year, at least. In the last couple of months, I have been absent entirely from this site. When I came back, I found that the prominent writer darf had left again, and taken his stories with him this time. Perhaps it is presumption on my part to comment on this matter when I am so thoroughly uninvolved. Still, this perennial lurker shall comment, however unwelcome his commentary may be.
I mark my decision to join FiMFiction as the end of my pretending I didn't like My Little Pony, a period that lasted from 2011 to 2013. Many characters on this site inspired the decision, as well as many great stories, but I suspect none so much as darf, who particularly convinced me that for all for the first person HiE clopfics and overwrought lesbian adventure epics, there were not only worthwhile stories but also interesting people to be found here. The controversial Alectrona, and moreover his commentary on it, showed the kind of ambition that is rarely seen among fanfiction writers, and I am inclined to empathise with lit nerds struggling to convey the appeal of literary modernism to confused and disgruntled readers. The story itself, often overlooked in the shouting match that ensued after its publication, remains surprisingly ironic and lighthearted—hardly the turgid and self-serious sprawl that its most vocal critics were condemning. It is, after all, a story about a middlebrow book club, a bad date and a good cup of coffee. I would not call it darf's best work, but it might be his funniest.
Nonetheless, the criticism wore him down. His first departure coincided with my joining the site. It was, I believe, a loss for FiMFiction, but I could not be personally affected; he was less than a stranger to me in many ways. The very little I had ever pieced together of his life was that he was involved in the poetry world outside of FiMFiction, and had some success there. I was not compelled to comment on his decision. It was a clean break, and dignified.
Then, he returned, but this time, he crossed the streams of his virtual life with his real one. He was no longer 'darf', a character made up of lowercase blog posts, thoughtful short stories and a cavalcade of commissioned cartoon erotica. Behind 'darf' was a real man, with a whole life of his own, writing poetry at some faraway place in Canada. He even had a name, which to me now seems less like a fresh aspect of his person and more like the name a member of Project Mayhem earns in death. The knowledge troubled me. I've always had a firm policy never to allow crossover between my real life and my online persona(s?). Unlike darf, I feel no incoherence in doing this—quite the opposite. Maybe it is vanity, but I personally don't think so. If anything, I am firmer in my conviction than I was three years ago.
So once again, darf has buckled under intensifying criticism, and left, taking his best writing on the site with him and leaving a slew of bitter and contemptuous comments aimed at friends and strangers alike. His writing has been archived, but it misses the point to focus on the stories themselves without their context. I suppose that's why I'm writing this: the character of darf is now lost to me. Whatever I knew about darf didn't come from his name or his occupation but from those stories. I suppose it is insensitive to grieve their loss more than that of darf himself. But that is my feeling as a stranger to the man.
What made this second time different? What were the circumstances? The straw on the camel's back was 'thot', it would seem. Just as before, users took aim at his online persona as well as his distinctive idiolect. A Baneposter criticised darf's deliberate misspellings of 'thought', 'though', and 'through' (as 'thot', 'tho' and 'thru' respectively), which darf employed as a homage to postmodern poet bpNichols* as well as a subversion of linguistic prescriptivism, one of his bugbears. Said Baneposter argued that, detached from their context in postmodern poetry, they were jarring and unsuitable in cartoon erotica. He went on characterise darf's snippy responses to criticism as childish and petulant. So far, nothing unusual, except that darf proceeded to write several blog posts and comments in an escalating state of anger that raised concerns for his mental health until he finally left.
Of course, it was more than just one shitposter, and I don't mean to blame him for darf's erratic behaviour. With darf's real identity exposed, the comments he received over the past several months inevitably became more personal and sometimes concerned his real life troubles. On an earlier post from June, a user questioned darf's decision to self-diagnose mental problems and self-medicate. When challenged, darf responded with word games and evasion. 'every truth is true,' he insisted, explaining that his private reading was sufficient to self-diagnose. These attempts to alienate his critics with implicit or explicit appeals against truth recurred. In the later argument, the Baneposter quoted Cicero; darf undermined the intended meaning. This is a small digression, but these arguments disturbed me: it was like watching postmodernism in action. It seems that, to darf, subjectivity is so total that universals are impossible and all particulars are true. All potential epistemic pathways to shared meaning or truth are closed. There is no shared hermeneutic, no common ground, no synthesis. Everything is a word game. Everything is too fraught. Everything is true—or everyone is true, perhaps. I found these comments and their implications deeply demoralising.
But evidently darf does not share my views, and this is not really about his postmodernism. So be it. When I read the comments from other users on his last few blog posts, it struck me that almost all of them concern his personal and psychological problems—whether comfort or censure. In the past, his blog had been mostly limited to discussion about writing and stories. Retrospectively, given his previous vanishing act, the outcome was predictable—it would be a cliché to suggest that he invested too much in his online representation, that he failed to properly distinguish himself from his activity on FiMFiction, but the conclusion is unavoidable. If the nasty criticisms of Alectrona were personal enough to drive him off, what else could anyone expect when he unmasked himself and allowed hundreds of people to scrutinise him even more closely? His manic response saddened me but I was not surprised.
Am I suggesting that postmodernism killed darf? Not so fast. Nor do I profess to understand whatever mental or physical troubles afflict him. But there is something unhappy, although blameless, about the whole implosive public display. I was once familiar with a character, communicated textually, that I called 'darf', some masked avatar of a person I never knew. Now he has gone and taken that self with him, and left something different behind—something sadder and smaller, and assuredly no less false in its representation of the fully human personality that assumed the name darf. I could wish him well, but what would it mean? There is no way to become 'real' on the internet—if anything, the opposite effect is achieved and the once pure virtual instantiation becomes more fraught, more fractured, more confused. Nobody cared who he was after he took off the mask.
I have promised myself several times that I would write some more stories here. I may as well do so again publicly. There are at least two pieces I would like to see published in the coming months. In the meantime, here's a piece of music that puts me at peace, a privilege that it seems few people are lucky enough to enjoy.
*This affectation was meant to confound you, so you'd stop reading for a second and think about thought. Sadly, it instead made me think about roasties, whores, sluts, etc. I'm not a great fan of the premise, but given the slang meaning of 'thot', I would have gone with 'thawt' if I absolutely had to, bpNichols be damned. Now, if you'll allow me to organise my hoes…
Yeah, it was a tragedy through and through. It did inspire me to write a story though: Whatever Happened to Melody Maker?
A beautiful post which really made me think about personal presentation. Thank you. I should do well to revisit this later, and read it again. There is a reason i follow you, after all.
A beautiful post that solidly reminds me why I'm following you. Thankfully I can remedy this and I hope that you continue to write.
Even more tragic is darf was also the writer NTSTS and took those works as well.