The morse at the end reads "This is the end."

Four weeks ago (1 week before the return of Ciderfest), I discovered ANTONYMPH by Vylet Pony. Then I find this baller SFM tribute video that fills me with the same kind of emotions. It’s retro nostalgia for something that I know is long past, but I’m not sad about it? I know what this thing is, where I was as a person when I found it, and even how it related to where technology and society was in history. So it probably won’t be repeated. But I’m not sad that it’s not popular like it was before, that the fans don’t put out many creations, and that it isn’t picking up a lot of new fans. Yet I still find works that are channeling that exact energy, being made as if the artist is still living in that decade. They don’t feel dated and meaningless like something that’s been sleeping under a rock. Nor does it feel cringe or tired, like someone striving to be popular only to fail. I just feel happy. Not from sheer force of nostalgia, but because I see the value of this era.

(Of course one is electro-pop by Vylet Pony, and the other is My Chemical Romance. So one is obviously more bittersweet, one is more unironically happy)

Is this what growing old is? Knowing that your favorite thing is set, and being okay with that? That I’ll keep going on and finding new things, but that I’ll routinely return to a subset and genre to recharge myself until the end of my days? Maybe it’s like getting a Cutie Mark. Or Rick-C137 becoming another "[Descriptor] Rick" when he discovers how fulfilled he is by two crows. Finding the thing or topic that will make you happy every time. When you’re young the concept of having something like that sounds scarily limiting. I suspect that's what helped fuel those earlier takes about Cutie Marks being part of a magic dystopia. But once your personality is fully formed, it’s more like having a base for your pillar-self. I’m 27-and-a-half, and I’ve read plenty that suggests I’m incapable of the same plasticity as when I first joined the herd, watched the beginning of YouTube, and first discovered the art of SFM and fanfiction. And I’m not scared of that.