On being adrift, and not mourning dead trees. · 6:38pm Jun 10th, 2019
The following blog contains a slightly melancholy ramble with little real purpose behind it. Reader discretion is advised.
I'll lead with a stinger of sorts: I don't care about Golden Oaks library. Someone losing their home? I did that many times. I feel for Twilight going through it... but when I recently read a story that expanded her sadness to years later... I felt nothing. Immortality blues stories also get pretty heavy shrugs from me. I get it: if the immortal actually moves on it might be like the dead friends they no longer weep over mattered less. But it’s nonsense. ...My grandfather died over twenty years ago. I don't cry about it; haven't in... well about twenty years. But don't tell me he didn't matter to me. Loss does not work that way.
...What the Hell do I know, though? Seriously... I may just be messed up and unable to feel these things the way most people do. And... that's what I'm going to talk about here.
Oh, as a sidenote, those wondering where the Hell the next chapter of Fellowship is... I'm working on it. I've been uninspired lately and it's a pain in the ass chapter to write (those two factors are not unrelated). Doesn't help much that a writer whose work I used to look up to more basically said HiE is bad because it's just too self insert/wish fulfillment based. ...So, HiE writers can't write characters who are: 'human but not me'? ...Really? I tell myself I write for me rather than some kind of recognition or validation, and honestly most of the comments I get are positive anyway. The negative ones I can either understand (and thus not be too bothered by, nature of criticism) or disregard because I disagree. But it's still a bit discouraging when even amongst the friends I have here (and I fight the urge to put friends in quotes), there are still cliques and I'm still on the outside looking in, really. I'm not a proper writer like some of them, I guess. The upside is none of them will read this... huzzah for a blog where I can vent.
Funny thing is... the closest I've written to a self insert wasn't an HiE... it's a story about a pony who's basically given up and is just going through the motions, with his imagination barely helping him get through the day to day. It's the most recent story I've written and, much like my own life, didn't garner much attention. I don't mind that... much like my own life I did nothing to promote it (though what the Hell, I'll tag it here). That's in no small part due to my lack of any relationship with attachments.... like Twi's with Golden Oaks (heh, you thought I was just rambling? I had a point in there... sorta).
As a kid, I moved a lot. Every year or two... new house, new neighborhood, new school. New friends... ish. You'd think with practice I'd have gotten better at that, but not so much. Kids are kids... and the new kid is the new kid. Forget talking ponies flying around, sleeping on clouds, and teleporting... how quickly Ponyville accepts pretty much everyone (yes, including Zecora, it took twenty more minutes it's fine) is the real fantasy of the show. But I was told by my parents that that was just how it was (the moving thing). 'We have to, and sorry it's not fair but the world's not fair and can take from you whenever it wants for no real reason. Get used to it.' ~Okay they didn't quite word it like extras from Dickens, but that was the gist.
And I mean... they weren't wrong. Of course, learning many years later that a lot of that was due to being evicted because my father drank too much and didn't work enough... well, that's another story really.
As I've gotten older, I've been coming to realize the long term effects this has. I never really set goals for myself because on a deep, philosophical level I believed something would happen that would ruin those goals. I wasn't even wrong: my first stint in college ended when having a bad social security number messed with my financial aide. In case you're wondering how that happens... well, apparently a number assigned to me at birth was actually still in use and had been re-assigned to me thanks to someone filing for fraudulent death benefits. ...Something like that, naturally the government office handling this mess didn't fully disclose since that part of the investigation didn't involve my family.
The second time I dropped out of college was several years later after working in a factory for awhile to pay back what I owed (the aide couldn't be retroactively applied, so... yay...). I'd just broken up... or rather been broken up with by the girl I thought I was marrying. She was actually just using me as a science experiment to study what having a boyfriend would be like. Naturally she couldn't inform me; that'd skew the results. So, you know. I’d also built up a bunch of parking tickets and had a hold on my academic record. In the mental state I was in at that point, it was too much to get taken care of in time to schedule more classes that I didn’t care about.
By the time I made it back the third time it was more 'let's just get this done, I at least want a bachelor's and maybe some direction.' But I was just going through the motions because it beat working for a living. I'd also been living under a miserable, bullying landlord that I really needed to get away from, in an area where I knew no one. ...That's another thing. At some point along the way I stopped making friends completely. Just gave up on it. They'd leave or I would... why bother? I have one, leftover from high school, a couple from college that I made purely by accident, and the good people I’ve met through this fandom (and my mmo hobby for that matter), so I'm not saying I'm alone in the world completely. Just mostly. It's fine.
That third college stint was a little truncated by meeting a girl again. For those wondering, the ‘friends first’ approach can work if you're sincere about it. We didn’t start talking with any relationship expectations. ...Then again she left too, so maybe not. Getting ahead of myself. I did get that degree, but because I wanted to be with her I went for a simple English degree rather than the (marginally) more marketable English Education degree. To be fair I still ended up teaching and found it to be not for me so it's just as well. She didn't live nearby (met online) so I moved again. By this point I'd lived in five different states and on both coasts of the continental U.S. I will say, that does give one a certain perspective that those who've lived one place their whole lives just don't have. I've had a few conversations where I was surprised at how I could hold attention with just the places I’ve lived or traveled to. To me… it’s the opposite. When I hear people talking about living all their lives in one house, having friends they knew from the cradle, having the same group they’ve known their whole lives? Fantasy world craziness… Being attached to a home, even the notion of being homesick… they’re completely foreign to me. Attachment to a library? Okay yeah she loves books; I get it. I’m a fan myself, whole closet full of literally hundreds but… burn them all and I’m fine. I’ve read them anyway.
I dunno… I guess I want to feel something about this, but the trouble with wanting to and not is that not only does the former not solve the latter, it makes you feel awkward about the latter. Am I just… damaged? Maybe? Should that bother me? It’s a bit late to fix it really.
Lately, by which I mean the last couple years now, I’ve been going to a few pony conventions, notably Bronycon and EFNW (though Ciderfest was also fun and I’m considering Trotcon this year). I sort of hover around the edges of a couple larger groups centered around certain writers here, and it’s nice. But it’ll vanish sooner or later and I’ll be alone again. And I’ve already made my peace with that. Golden Oaks library? It’s… just a tree… well, and a library and a house. Neat, but uh… just grow another one? Or you know, do what Twilight actually did and live in that big ole palace tree. That’s fine too.
This may come off as whining about my life, but I don’t intend it that way. It hasn’t been so bad. I was bullied when I was younger, but nothing like what some have experienced. My health is alright; I have a decent job. I’m alone, but not completely so in terms of friends and such. I’m not close to my family but we’re not estranged or at odds. I will remain alone, I suspect, romantically speaking… but that was actually something I predicted as a teenager. The two long term relationships I had didn’t end up working out, but it was still two more than I expected. Romance, having a significant other… those also felt like fantasies. And I knew I was suited for it, being alone. I wouldn’t be driven to suicide or violence by it, as some tragically are. I had a ton of practice growing up. Mom didn’t really have time, ‘use your imagination’ she’d say. I suppose I did. I’ve been talking to myself for something like thirty five years now. Look, I’m doing it right now. I’m suited to it.
But I’m sorry to say… it’s had an impact on how strongly things impact me. Aloof… distant… on the outside looking in. I can still feel empathy and sympathy, or I think I do, but… it can be difficult not to expect others to react as I’ve learned to. Seriously, no one even died… just grow another tree.
Why did I write this? Well if you made it this far through this ramble you have every right to ask that. The answer… I don’t really know. I rarely talk about myself… and I never seek help for much of anything. There was never anyone there, not really. So… I decided I’d talk about myself for a bit. It’s a blog with no specific purpose… other than trying to pick at why some folks see Golden Oaks and feel what they say are genuine twinges of sadness… and I feel nothing.
It’s also a commentary on the fact that my page quote (which is just a me quote, by the way, I didn’t take it from anywhere) isn’t just a turn of phrase. It really is an outlook I’ve come to adopt, for better or worse.
I will say this: set goals and see them through. The world may take it all away unfairly, but it may not. You may lose… but if you don’t try you can’t win. And I did gamble a few times, hoping I could make something like a life for myself both in college and in love. They just didn’t work out.
Everyone needs to vent sometimes, nothing wrong with that. This was you venting.
And all HiE being inherently crap? Pfweh, some of the best works on this website are HiE. It's all just a matter of the writing quality. Are the characters fun? Is the plot engaging? Are there bad HiE fics? Sure, plenty of them, but then there are many bad stories that have no humans in them at all.
As someone who's read a lot of HiE fics, I can and will tell you that this one falls in the good category, even if it is criminally underappreciated.