Goodbye Horses
Well, folks. I guess you know what time it is. I’m wrapping it up. Closing up shop. Hittin’ the hay.
Officially, that is. Considering how sparse my activity has been here for well over a year, the blog was pretty much closed already. I’d hardly blame you if you thought I’d just gotten bored of the whole thing and left.
That wouldn’t be so, but as the years have gone on, my interests have definitely changed. I fell in and out and in and out of love with Homestuck, with tumblr, with RP, with the internet. The kind of free time I have now and the way I like to spend it is vastly different than it was six years ago.
Six years, can you believe that? I really can’t. I know only a few of you have been here with me that long. I know only a few of you really know me at all. I’ve stayed very private over the years; only some of my close IRL friends know I do this, and I’ve never really made my name or anything easily available.
Well, here’s some info about me: I started this blog in 2012, right as I was finishing high school, age 18 going on 19. I read all of Homestuck during the big pause before 11/11/11, and was so excited by its return that I made this.
I was a big dorky guy starting to realize that he didn’t fit in too good. Starting to think I was only surface deep because I was good at jokes but couldn’t much relate to anybody. Starting to worry that my solid life plans were really just fantasies.
In 2012 I was a lonely weirdo who couldn’t start conversations, could only keep his ridiculous temper in check by staying silent, could only work out the things he was feeling by tormenting this sweaty alien ghost. I had an undiagnosed mood disorder and a misanthropic streak and a feeling that if I could just find the one person who had wronged me, whoever he was, I could fix all my problems by knocking him the hell out.
Is it any wonder I liked Equius so much? This was the first fictional character I’d ever seen, ever, that felt 100% me. I loved him and his weird hang-ups. Where everyone saw a joke or a weirdo, I saw something tragic. The kid had fallen hard, and he was just begging for redemption. I tried not to let my weird hang-ups bleed through here, but sometimes they did, and it was ugly. I’m sorry for that.
Now I’m 24, four months from 25. In that six years I made a bunch of friends--my best, @meddlingfashionista who’s basically my sister--and in starting other RP blogs I met my girlfriend, @bad-jew-jew I got diagnosed. I got medicated. I got over myself.
Equius got better long before I did. I gave him all that compassion and stability and self-confidence and security that I’m still reaching for, and I’m getting close now. Equius helped me do it. You helped me do it. You and everybody who ever played along with my nonsense or plotted with me or had the decency not to ban me from the Skype chat when I started doing Smash Mouth puns (joke’s on you, can’t ban the admin!)
I was always weird about using the weird ‘roleplay’ to describe this. In my head I called it ‘collaborative storytelling,’ which is technically true but also painfully obnoxious. But it was collaborative; you, me, and that big sweaty troll really made something wonderful together. At least I think so.
I’m done here, but Equius will always stay with me. You will too.
(catch me on my personal at @stronglikeseamus, and don’t forget to drink your milk. I’m told it builds STRONG bones)