• Member Since 12th Dec, 2011
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Jake The Army Guy


Be excellent to each other, and PARTY ON, DUDES! ~ Abraham Lincoln

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Aug
6th
2020

Impermanence · 5:16am Aug 6th, 2020

Hey, guys. Adorable Applejack, because I guess why not?

Now, let me tell you about a guy named Guesswork.



Some of you may remember him. He was an author form the very early days of the fandom. He actually wrote one of the first stories I ever loved from when I first joined the fandom. Like, I read Silent Ponyville and then his masterpiece Daylight Burning. It was an amazing story, with great original lore, fantastic fights, and two of my favorite old school OC's, Cinnamon Oatmeal and The Agent. Those names might sound familiar, because they were both mentioned in Under A Luminous Sky, and Agent even appeared, being the floating head Bentgrass spoke to in Chapter 11.

There is a reason I used his characters. Very shortly after I posted the first version of UALS on GDocs—because I didn't think this whole "FIMFiction" thing was gonna last—I began leaving comments on DB just slobbing Guesswork's knob about how much I loved it. And apparently out of a sense of tit-for-tat, he read UALS... and he fucking loved it, for some strange reason. He sent me a PM here praising the hell out of it, basically demanded I post it here, and then graciously offered to help me develop and edit it moving forward.

Now, multiple people had a finger in the "Luminous pie," as it were, but none of them had the editorial and story influence that Guesswork did. To put a very fine point on it, if it weren't for Guesswork, Under A Luminous Sky simply wouldn't exist. Or at least in the way it does now. Man, we chatted for hours in GDocs, teasing out plot lines, formulating scenes, and fleshing out the relationships. He was the one who pointed out that the "Bonus Chapter 6.5" with Shining and Top Notch was pointless and should be scrubbed. It was also him who made the infamous comment that Twi and Benty were, "perfect for each other," which led me to add the possible yet failed romance angle. Beyond any story help, he was just a good guy. A teacher, if I recall properly, very smart and funny, and patient with someone like me who was so new at writing fiction. He was a good friend.

And then he vanished.

He stopped returning my PM's, he wouldn't respond to comments. I even sent countless emails to the email address he used in GDocs, just begging him to let me know if he was alive or not. Nothing. He just... poofed.

SO, why am I bringing this up? Well, I just read a blargh by The Fantastic Mr. Lemur in which he mentioned the tragic passing of Mythril Moth, a slightly controversial figure on this site, but still a well known author. Skirts linked to a blog someone did which spoke on his passing, eulogizing him, and celebrating the impact he had on people. This all reminded me of something I had learned months ago, but could never truly find a way to focus it in any meaningful way.

If you go to my user page and look at the "Stories you need to read or you fail at life" section, you'll note that the first story is Earth & Sky by one Warren Hutch. Now, back in my Favorite things blog, I said that Earth & Sky is, hands down, one of the best pieces of fiction that I have ever read, fan fiction or otherwise. I stand by that assessment. But Warren wrote a whole bunch of other great stories, as well! A screwball comedy about authors accidentally unleashing Ktulu. An AU retelling of the series premiere with Fluttershy as the main protagonist. An absolute balls-to-the-wall insanity story about Rainbow Dash piloting a giant mech. The dude was incredibly talented. And while I never interacted with him beyond the comments section, he always came across as just a... wholesome guy, like The Descendant or Georg. And like them, a very talented author who I wish I could pick the brain of.

Barclay John Johnson, the man we knew as Warren Hutch, died on January 18th, 2020. He was 47.

It sucks, you know? This is the internet, man. A borderline miraculous system that lets people on opposite sides of the fucking planet form deep, personal relationships. I have friends on this site from Mexico, Canada, Scotland, and Norway. Hell, a man who I deeply respect as an author, and who constantly shit talks me, is from the Philippines. But the internet has allowed us to forged at least some form of friendship. And yet, people can just... fall off the face of the earth. For God's sake, the very first friend I made in this fandom, the man who literally taught me everything I know about writing, decided one day he no longer wanted to be associated with the fandom and just... vanished. Granted we talk all the time, so even as he was pulling his "Ninja Vanish," I knew what was up and was not worried. But other people may have been. As an aside, if you know who I'm talking about, please don't mention his name. He wishes to remain forgotten.

So I think about Guesswork. Is he dead? Did he get hit by a car and is now in a coma? Or did he just stop caring about ponies... and everyone he knew in the pony sphere? I just don't know, and I probably never will know. And the sad fact is... that's just the nature of the internet, man. Internet friendships are just as real, valid, and meaningful as IRL ones, but the trade off for having access to such a wide pool of potential friends is the chance that they may just fall of the edge of the world. One random day, they may stop responding to your messages, and you will never know if they went to jail, died, or just lost interest in the fandom and you.

And that's the worst part, man. I go look at my page of users I follow, and I see so many fallen titans, people who were juggernauts of this site, or at least had a dedicated following, and now they're just... gone. The Descendant, Obsolescence, Ponydora Prancypants, Midnightshadow, DustTraveller, Sharaloth, Bad_Seed_72, Eakin, alexmagnet. Every one of these awesome guys and gals were either good friends, or simply authors I deeply respect. And now... they're gone. Some haven't logged on in years, and with that lies the disturbing truth... are they even still alive?

Look, y'all know that I'm a man of faith. I believe that death is not the end of existence. That the people I know and care for who passed are either in Heaven, or will get there eventually—that's a fucking conversation, PM me if you wanna discuss it—and yet despite this firm, deeply held belief... I don't want to die. I don't want my friends to die. But more than anything... I don't want to have to live my life not knowing if they did or not.

I'm rambling a bit, as I've had a bit to drink. I guess the point I;m trying to make here is... you never know. So, that guy or gal that you speak to every day? Your dearest internet friend who you feel closer to than anyone who lives around you? Get a phone number, an email address, an emergency contact or family member's contact info. Get something that will let you get in touch with them beyond this site's methods, or even Discord's or Skype's. Just be able to check on your battle buddy... because you never know.

To reiterate: I love you guys. Hold tight to that love, and nothing can stop you. Stay awesome.

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Comments ( 35 )

I feel ya, dude. There are SO MANY authors that seem to have just vanished. A bunch were writing stories that I really liked, but after they left, I created a "Most Likely Dead" bookshelf for their stuff (the stories, not the authors :twilightoops:). But peeps like RainbowBob, Pen Mightier, Draconian Soul... they just kinda bounced. I was absolutely amazed and incredibly thankful when Connor Cogwork (On a Cross and Arrow) signed on again after I-don't-even-know-how-long (and he was just on again about 2 weeks ago). Some of those others, I have no clue...

I've made a bunch of friends over my time here, too, some I've gotten a chance to meet in person, some I haven't. I've got peeps in Australia, England, Mexico, Columbia, the Philippines... some are still around, others not so much. Heck, even my editor kinda bounced from the site, but is awesome enough to still be editing A Daughter and her Dragon for me.

But like you, I don't want to lose anyone. Whether I know they're still kicking or not. Fuck, every now and then I hope that I'm not the one that's gonna kick the bucket. I'm sure you've at least heard of my history (if you haven't there's actually a link at the top of my bio box because someone asked me once).

But yeah. Keep on truckin', dude. As long as it's under my control, I ain't goin' anywhere.

Sharaloth is still alive. I text him every once and awhile to make sure he's okay. Especially when I hear of disasters and whatnot in his area.
Dust Traveller had a stroke but is still alive. He posted a blog on it and everything.

But I know what you mean. People you looked up to and respected in this fandom, people who in some cases became your friends just fading out or dropping off the face of the earth. It's a life lesson that we should take to heart, nothing lasts forever and we need to cherish the time we have with our friends.

Dang, I loved Warren Hutch's fics, especially when he paid homage to movies you just don't hear about that often like The Great Race and The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension. Even though he hasn't been around in a while, I'm still gonna miss him.

I talked to The Descendant back in April, he's been busy with a lot of family and work stuff so he doesn't get online that often, but he's still kicking.

Keep on loving those you know, I'll be here for as long as the Good Lord gives me Jake, God love you.

Nothing lasts forever, but it's hard to accept that emotionally. They were on yesterday and the day before. Yes, they weren't on today, but surely tomorrow... And the next thing you know, it's been a few hundred tomorrows with no sign of them.

I do appreciate you and every other person I've gotten to know here. Moth's passing drove home how much I should, and Warren's underscores it. (I'm only just hearing about the latter. :ajsleepy:) Thanks for the poke. I'll try to diversify my contact list beyond the site.

I feel you on this and thank you for your words, good sir.

PresentPerfect
Author Interviewer

Aw man. :(

This is why I have a document on my computer wherein, if I die suddenly, (hopefully) various persons will be notified so no one has to wonder.

I've often thought about what would happen to my various accounts across the internet if I were to one day take off but not land. I thought about some kind of deadman's switch, but I guess me logging into this place just about every day to check notifications counts. But I've also known folks who've just dropped off the face of the earth. Uncertainty is a real bummer. Forgive the cliche, but it seems like yesterday I was making my first friends in the early iterations of this site where stories were rated 1-5 stars. What a ride it has been.

I've been struggling to write a story on this topic for a couple of years now, as I've watched FIMFiction dwindle from its peak. Seeing people leave a community, until one day when it's your turn. After being on this website for eight years, it's inevitable to see abandoned profiles of people who have lost interest, gone to prison, or died. Internet anonymity applies to disappearance, too. There's no closure to know what happened to a user. Are they dead, or simply not on this site anymore? In the absence of an obituary or a final blog, I have to choose to believe that they're in a better place now. That can mean mean spiritually, or simply living their best life in another community.

I had termed it "creative suicide." By leaving this site, which is ostensibly about writing, a user is giving up an outlet of creativity. Being creative is about expressing one's self, and hopefully touching others. The view count on a story came from real people. And now some of them are gone. And it hurts staring into the void of not knowing. The creative mind can't help but to wonder what if. The view count is made of real people, who have acknowledged that you exist, and losing them and losing that sense of recognition starts a person wondering when they will fade away, too. Who will turn out the lights when the last person leaves?

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I know this is a bit cliche or silly, but the next time y'all talk to them, would you mind mentioning that I miss them and I'm thinking about them?

Sure, I'll reach out to Shar on Monday.

I actually lost someone I knew on here recently, and I’m just relieved for the closure of knowing that, even if what I was told didn’t really go beyond ‘accident’ it wasn’t not hearing anything.

I only spoke with WH a few times via comments/PMs. He said that he was going to dip into unfinished stories, hence canceling them. Hearing this is just another thing on the stack of how bad 2020 is. From all my limited interactions with him, he was an incredibly friendly person.

EDIT: Looking at the link, I’m a little perplexed as how his surviving brother is listed as being named ‘Lisa’ since I’ve never heard about that being used as a male name ever. If I’m reading this address right, WH lived not incredibly far from where I am too.

True, all too true.

And you know, almost since the beginning, people have been talking about the day when the fandom succumbs to gradual deterioration. However, there are two things I think should be mentioned.

First: This fandom is very good at archiving its stuff. Very rarely is a brony's creation utterly lost to time. Thus, even if bronies all stopped creating, there would still be a lifetime supply of pony content out there, if one took the time to look for it.

Second: Sometimes, art movements make comebacks following a period of decline. We both know that Heavy Metal was officially pronounced dead twice, in the late '70s and early '90s. It seems to follow a cycle of death and rebirth, like the seasons.

Might this fandom go through a renaissance when the target audience is old enough to get nostalgic for a cartoon they loved as kids? Or, suppose the G5 cartoon is also artistically inspirational?

So, let's keep the archives up and keep hope alive.

RBDash47
Site Blogger

Wow, Earth & Sky has been on my list of novels to read for a long time. That is so sad to hear.

I also hope Guesswork is well, wherever he is.

I can only agree. The internet is a weird mesh of ephemeral and permanent, and when someone disappears or cuts off contact, you're often still left with daily, highly visible reminders of their presence in a way that isn't usually found in the real world. Our communities here are intimate and remote all at once. It hurts when people disappear without warning, but at the same time it's difficult to process that hurt, because while there is that heightened intimacy, it sits alongside the dissonance of distance and emotional disconnection that comes with experiencing everything at the narrow end of an internet pipe.

I wonder if there's going to be a generational split on this experience. If, below a certain age, the ephemeral nature of relationships across the web is seen as just normal, while long-term, adaptive friendships are the weird exception.

You've also made me realise how much I miss alexmagnet, even though we weren't that close.

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Nearly two years ago, I learned InsertAuthorHere (Keeping Your Hooves On The Ground, My Little Alicorn, Bringing Up Blueblood, several Lunaverse works) had died. But only as part of a shared eulogy post in the Lunaverse group. (RIP to GreyGuardPony, though I didn't know her well at all). I didn't understand how I missed it, I followed both him, and some of his friends. No one ever told me how IAH died, or how people found out. I strongly suspect they committed suicide. Their blog posts about the show just became so sardonic, and the personal updates were so self-deprecating, it felt like some misguided therapy. If there was any post, and it wasn't one of their silent streaks.

When I took a break from the site for a couple of week, I left a blog explaining why, and emphasized that it was temporary.
Because of this very reason. People just... disappear. And not knowing is worse than knowing they died. Because then you can at least have some closure and move on instead of clinging to some vain hope.

So I will say it here, and also reiterate it in a blog of my own:
- If I go on a camping trip in the mountains away from the internet for a couple weeks, I will make a blog post saying so.
- If I ever take an extended break from the site, I will make a blog post saying so.
- If I ever quit the fandom (perish the thought) I will definitely make a blog post saying so.

So if I'm ever absent from the site and discord for more than a week without any word saying why beforehand... it's going to be because I'm dead.

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Damn bro, I didn't even know about IAH's passing. :fluttercry:

Eakin still comments every once and a while and the Descendant tapered off. I specifically dmed him on DA to make sure and he responded like 6 months later. Bad_Seed_72 specifically left and said goodbye, but had very original ideas no one else has come close to. Midnightshadow and DustTraveller are still alive dude! Dust is on right now. If you want hope, I have a bookshelf for resurrected stories. Some with multiple 2+ year gaps between story, and one that was started in 2011 and just finished a few months ago.

I was never a fan of RainbowBob but he was such an institution it was really disturbing to see him go idle suddenly. He clearly gave and received a lot of love here. Likewise for Ponydora Prancypants, that loved interacting with the readers so much, although at least they logged in in 2018.

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I'm sorry to bear that news to you. If I'm wrong about the suicide, I'd very much like to be told so by anyone who knows. But even if I'm correct, just getting confirmation is better than me speculating.

I confess I pray almost every night asking that Bad_Seed_72 show up again.

I like to think she just went off one day and decided to live as a nomad. It was a recurring theme in many of her stories and she brought up her fascination with it in her blogs a couple of times.

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Wait when did Bad_Seed_72 say goodbye?

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That was a really moving goodbye! Too bad I never knew who Bad_Seed was. What's also a shame is the dead links in their sendoff blog. Hopefully the original state has been archived somehow. The Wayback machine didn't help with it.

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I forget the name of the service but there's a site where you can have them send email/s in the event that you go a predetermined length of time without logging in.

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I'm glad to have known you, FOME.

Not gonna lie, the deterioration of the fandom (especially here on FimFiction, a site that has oddly enough had an impact on my life second only to things like my wife, my family, God, etc...) has always left a pit in my stomach. The thought terrifies me that it'll all be over someday. I remember the glory days of the site. A ton of big personalities and fun people writing crazy pony stories in the name of love and tolerance with a little heap of drama to make things interesting. I used to publish a story and it had thousands of thumbs up in a day. Now it's amazing if I have even 200 in weeks. I still have dedicated followers, but... it's not the same. It hurts seeing "last online September 2018" from somebody who really liked my stuff and often vice versa. At its peak in 2011-2013, you could see 3500-4000 users online. Now it's amazing if it hits 1700. It hurts. This site changed me. Mostly for the better, I think. I have published books with a few more on the way! Without this and the support of the amazing people on here I never would have known otherwise, I wouldn't have that.

I agree with a lot of what you said. I will never know what happened to the vast majority of people who are off the site. Probably almost zero. Usually when I hear why someone is off the site, it's for stuff like this, which sucks. The day will come when I'm one of the names you've mentioned. I have been on this site literally almost every day for the last eight years. The days I missed probably wouldn't amount to a week. The day will come when I think "yeah, what does the site look like right now?" and I'll pop on for old time's sake to see one comment and five users online, or something like that.

Or maybe not. Maybe G5 will be some kind of savior for the fandom. It happened with Star Trek. It happened with Dr. Who. No reason it can't happen here if the creators of the new generation put as much love, care and thought into G5 as Faust and the others put into G4. Maybe things will go back to the way that they were. I really hope so. That was one of the happiest times in my life. But the raging fire for FimFiction, both with the fandom and me personally, has largely gone out.

But who knows? As long as there is even one fan, the fandom will never truly die out, and given that the last BronyCon had over 10,000 attendees, it may not be quite as dead as we thought. I know I'll always be a fan of our favorite cartoon horses, so the fandom can never truly die, right?

At the end of the day, though, we'll always have Paris our memories of what the site was, and in many was what it still is. The glory days are long over, but there are still a lot of talented people putting out great stories. It's dying, but it's not over yet.

But yeah, it hurts remembering the golden era and realizing it's over.

But in terms of Eakin, I've been working with him on a print copy of Taste of the Good Life. We're pretty much done. I'm doing what I can to bring a lot of stories to print so that even if for whatever reason something like FimFetch goes down, the stories won't be gone forever.

And I also love having print copies of my favorite pony books.

In any case... yeah. We had good times. It's not over yet, but it hurts remembering.

PresentPerfect
Author Interviewer

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I would definitely end up forgetting to log in and set off a panic though. XD

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That's great for those freaks that can remember to log in to battlenet every three months to keep their diablo 2 character alive for a decade.

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From TD:

It's nice to know that I'm remembered. I hope that they are all doing okay as well.

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You might consider posting this on TD’s profile page.

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