A Triumph and A Tragedy

As of today, I have now spent officially ten years in the fandom. My admission into this little cultural movement started on November 15, 2011, and I've enjoyed myself for the most part ever since. Even when things didn't always go right (looking at you, BronyCon 2019), I more often than not found the fandom adding a degree of excitement and interest into my own life. So to all of you out there, thank you for making the world a little more interesting.

Now, on to the tragedy mentioned in the title. My beloved dog of fourteen years became incontinent and largely paralyzed in her back legs on Friday, which led my family and I to put her to sleep the same day. She was 15 years old and still had her eager spirit in her final moments. The decision was very difficult and there were a lot of wet eyes in those final moments, but she'd been on the decline for several months and it was deemed more humane to have her go out while she was still herself. My family still hasn't gotten over us having to do the same to our family cat 8 years ago, who progressed so far in his death throes that there was virtually none of his personality left by the time he went under. For better or worse, our dog was still herself despite everything, and I think she is waiting for us in the afterlife with a wagging tail and eager dance she always used to give us.

I bring this up because our dog was largely my companion during my dance in this fandom. My parents got her for me in middle school, thinking that I needed a friend during the difficult days of middle school, and that decision was extremely wise. She followed me through my high school days and my initial years in the fandom, often being the one sitting beside me in the living room while we watched the latest MLP:FiM episode. Even the four years in college I spent away from home, she always happily greeted me when I returned home. In a sense, her passing is the TRUE ending of the MLP:FiM years for me personally, as she was the one other consistent element in my life along with the show. In that way, I am blessed to have had her present throughout the whole of my MLP:FiM experience and her consistent warmth throughout the whole of the 2010s.

I'm going to end this blog post with a memory. Back in 2015, just a few months after I first logged into FimFiction, I wanted to read every single story on the website. Fan Fiction for MLP was a relatively novel concept for me at the time, and I wanted to see the heights the genre could take me. A constant website-wide update back then came from Present Perfect and his Royal Canterlot Library posts, and I went down the rabbit hole of the RCL to find a bunch of interesting new stories. One day (March 21st, 2015, to be exact), I came across Horse Voice's Biblical Monsters, a story that's entered the pantheon of MLP grimdarks, but was still only two years old at the time. The story deeply affected me, especially as a Methodist-raised lad and starting to really grasp ideas of faith. For the first time I could recall ever since I started reading as a young boy, I realized I had to actually think about the story. Sitting in my parents' empty house that afternoon wasn't conducive for pontification, so I whistled for the dog and took her for a walk around our local lake. For a half hour, it was only us and the last vestiges of winter, walking in tandem and enjoying the final bit of cool weather before the hot Florida spring and summer took hold. I was lost in my own thoughts about Biblical Monsters and its implications about first contact, and I knew that I wanted to write something one day that provoked the same reaction this story had provoked in me.

And the whole time, the dog trotted along, panting slower than usual because the air was cool and we were both still young and knew there was exciting adventures to be had in the near-future.