A warning to you all... this post is going to get very long and rambly... but I feel like I need to say it, given what’s going to happen mere hours from now. So for my own emotional health I’m going through with this. Read it if you like, I’d certainly appreciate your company if you do... but I understand anyone who wants to skip over it. It likely won’t make much sense to most people why it’s such a big deal to me. I’m not exactly the most mentally or emotionally stable person in the world after all. These thoughts likely won’t resonate with most. But if you like, feel free to join me on my little ramble as I break down over something that’s truly, utterly trivial. I’ll certainly appreciate your company.
Also, preemptively? To those out there who will scoff at this and jeer at how much of a deal I’m making out of all of this? I’m very much aware of how pathetic and emotionally unhealthy I am. If it were easy as just ‘getting over myself,’ I’d have done it long ago. I’m already seeking therapy, but it’s a long process.
This post probably won’t mean much, and most of the people that it’s directed toward won’t ever see it. Many of the people I’d like to send it to are the creators/mods of long-dead blogs or people I’ve never spoken to before, but whose work I’ve followed. But I feel the need to say it nonetheless.
I joined tumblr sometime in early 2012, I think. I was a part of the then-exploding My Little Pony/Brony scene, joining in the wake of the pony ask-blog craze. At that time, everybody and their dog was making a new My Little Pony ask blog, and as deep into the fandom as I was at the time, I couldn’t help but follow.
For a time, I even tried to run an ask blog myself, alongside a friend of mine, @atomic-chinchilla. We ran the blog “ask female shining armor,” which was all about Shining Armor from MLP getting magically transformed/stuck as a girl. It... didn’t exactly go well. We had a short run of popularity before the original “Twilicorn” controversy rocked the fandom and we found ourselves on the ‘wrong side’ of it. Or, to be more precise, I found myself on the wrong side of it. My friend didn’t care as much, but I was legitimately angry at the turn the show had taken, and I made the mistake of expressing it on the blog, without consulting my friend.
There was backlash. And unfortunately, since my friend was the highly-visible artist and I was only the writer behind the scene, @atomic-chinchilla ended up taking most of the heat. I felt really guilty and tried to mitigate the damage, but it was already done. A lot of other fans had declared the both of us persona non grata. @atomic-chinchilla had already been losing steam on the blog anyway and we quietly decided to just stop.
In retrospect, it was probably a good thing we stopped anyway. This was tumblr, and we were making a silly blog about gender of all things. We just wanted to make a bunch of silly jokes and shenanigans, but on a site like tumblr with its massive transgender/nonbinary/et cetera scene? We were playing with fire, and it could have backfired on us much much worse than it did.
If anybody is morbidly curious, you can still actually see our dumpster fire... at least for the next few hours or so... over here at http://female-shining-armor-blog.tumblr.com/
Or you can see most of the posts at @atomic-chinchilla‘s DeviantArt page or on Derpibooru.
Anyway. Neither of us quite “left the fandom” over this or anything. Indeed, My friend still watches the show, though not as devotedly as he once did, and I’m actually still active (for a given definition of the word) in the fanfiction community over on fimfiction.net
I continued to follow the pony ask blogs for... well... to this day actually. There aren’t nearly as many as there used to be. A couple still update, but it’s few and far between these days. Ask blogs in general seem to have mostly gone out of style.
But back then, even after my own flubs, I was still so strongly into it. They were a big part of my daily routine. I’d log onto tumblr and catch up with whatever these dozens upon dozens of characters were ‘up to.’
In time, I’d even spread out a little. I’d look for ask blogs from other fandoms. Adventure Time, Transformers, Godzilla, and others. The pony ask blogs never quite got overtaken, simply due to the sheer number of them, but each and every one was important. They were meaningful to me.
It was truly a big part of my life for a while. I’ve never been the happiest person in the world, and anything that would help perk me up even a little and get me through the day was important to me.
And to a degree, they still are.
Sure, 98% of them haven’t updated in eons. Some of them I haven’t even thought about in perhaps even years. But they were a part of my life. They were a part of me. And they’re a part of my personal history.
And it saddens me deeply that they might be lost.
Even if they aren’t totally deleted, the fact that the tumblr flagging algorithm is completely out of control and will seemingly flag things at random for no discernible reason suggests that they might be butchered. That they might lose posts. Perhaps many posts, perhaps only one or two. Even those small losses, though, to me, are tragic.
Because what this is, to me anyway, is a loss of history and culture. A loss of history that some may not think matters, and a loss of low-brow, niche, internet subculture, perhaps... but history and culture nonetheless.
It’d be tragic if a museum filled with priceless art burned down, right? If the Louvre burned down tomorrow, people would weep at what a tragedy it was, the loss of all that art and culture and history. But at least there would probably be photos and records of everything that was inside.
In this case? All this history... history that’s at the very least important to me on my personal journey through this life... is going to be lost without a trace. Never to be spoken of or heard of again. And someday my memories will fade and my body will turn to dust, and then they won’t live on at all.
I have a hard time dealing with loss. Loss of history, loss of memory, loss of culture, loss of life, loss of anything really. I have a really really hard time letting go of much of anything, even if I know it’s the healthy thing to do. Even if I know it’s only natural; that all things must come to an end.
Because just consider all that work. Consider all that work that goes into creating a piece of art. Consider all the work that goes into forging a place in history. Consider all the work that goes into just living. And in the end, no matter what it is, all that work will eventually crumble to dust. Forgotten, and never spoken of again.
...You can imagine how poorly I handle things like deaths in the family or considering my own mortality. If the loss of a bunch of old, dead ask blogs
Don’t even get me started on topics like the apocalypse or entropy or the eventual heat death of the universe. Thinking about topics like that give me the literal shakes.
The worst part is that I’m only talking about a fraction of what there is on tumblr that’s going to vanish. I’m only talking about this from my own perspective - the perspective of a singular fan of a very small number of fandoms. I can only wonder how other people of other fandoms are feeling. And then, of course, there’s the obvious, most-impacted people; the content creators themselves. Especially the NSFW content creators.
And of course, all of this... ALL of this rambling up to this point... is just the tip of the iceberg.
I’m going to miss those people that still update. I’m not exactly a social butterfly. I’m not the type to make friends easily with strangers. But those who are still updating, or even those who only occasionally pop in... I’m going to miss all of them.
And I’m going to miss my followers. It’s funny... I’ve never quite been the one to interact with people who follow me. I don’t know why anyone WOULD follow me, if I’m being honest. 99% of what I do on this blog is just reblog goofy shit from other people. But to those of you who’ve followed me... thank you. I’m going to miss you too.
I don’t know who you 173 people are. You might all be bots, for all I know. But thank you nonetheless. Sorry I never really reached out and interacted with you in any meaningful capacity. And I’m sorry I never really made anything of my blog beyond just a dumping site for goofy shit.
Even if I never really knew any of you, I’m still going to miss you.
I’m going to miss this site and its sheer ease of use. Even if it could become a hellhole of toxicity and hatred at the drop of a hat, the format of the site ‘clicked’ so much better with me than any other social media site on the planet.
I’m going to miss it all.
I’m trying to keep a saying I heard once close to my heart right now. A quote from Abraham Lincoln... that perhaps ironically, I first heard through one of the most painfully obnoxious and frustrating games I’ve ever seen in my life; Getting Over It with Bennet Foddy
“In this sad world of ours sorrow comes to all and it often comes with bitter agony. Perfect relief is not possible except with time. You cannot now believe that you will ever feel better. But this is not true. You are sure to be happy again. Knowing this, truly believing it will make you less miserable now.“
Perhaps I’m cheapening the quote, associating it with the loss of a sub-par social media site. With the loss of a bunch of old, dead ask blogs and the loss of followers that I never interacted with. But I do, truly feel a sense of pain and sorrow at this loss. And I’m trying to take this quote to heart and muddle through.
Perhaps, if any of you out there are as fucked in the head as I am, of if anybody out there is going through hard times for other reasons right now... it’ll mean something to you too.
I don’t know what I’ll do with this blog. As I just said, I dislike loss. I don’t make a habit of deleting anything. Nothing on this blog will be deleted, at least by my hand. I’m going to participate in the December 17th mass-log off.
...whether or not I’ll ever log back on... I’m not really sure at the moment
Anyway, I suppose I’ve rambled on long enough. To everybody out there that I watch... to everybody out there I’ve EVER watched... to all those ask blogs that helped me through hard times and brought me joy... to all the people that follow me for whatever reason... I’m going to miss you.
I hope we can all find joy somewhere else. Hopefully not too far off in the future.
Maybe I’ll see you there.
kianamaiart
stormborns
dededos
tangentwithtanner
dailybridgerton
gummygunk
blakekathryn
theartofmadeline
pixelskylines
