You see, it was only a small bit that I was helping with the new album.

He called it Forever Broken.

I took it a little too close to heart.

“Through diamond eyes” was the line that got to me.

Like, I knew a metric shit ton about Tarby before I even met him at BronyCon III.

I knew everything about Something Broke.

It was a ToastBeard track.

It wasn’t meant to be taken seriously.

It was twenty minutes and change long.

It mostly in E.

It opened with 15/8.

The motif was in 7/8.

I knew this song front to back.

I wrote a cover of the most hectic chapter.

The first words out of my mouth when I met him was:

“So, you think you can get away with writing something in 15/8?”

I stalked him (nicely).

We talked a lot.

We discussed music and meters and audio engineering and only on occasion did he inject me with dozens of changling eggs.

Anyway, he asked me about performing with him.

Happily obliged.

He asked for a little bit of help from me with the canonisation of his Nightmare Night track and The Wings You’ve Earned into an album called Forever Broken.

I was elated.

He had most of the story done already.

I just helped connect a few pieces.

He offered me a character role.

I knew the character, and mainly it was just joking about how I could do this character’s voice.

I helped develop that character’s role. He brought them to life.

He brought everything to life.

In order to know about my character, we had to go into the childhood of the main character.

Through Diamond Eyes.

That line got to me the most.

Considering the fanon already behind, the implications in canon, and the character that was woven together…

…I was my character.

I was the character that came before.

I was the vicious cycle.

I was the perfect circle.

…

It hurt.

Without giving you the wonderful and exciting details of my perfect little past, I related to her in a way that hit home hard.

And then and there, I was told the final pieces of that album.

I’m still patiently awaiting the day if I’m still asked to play that part, after all the shit that happened in reality.

…

Art like this needs to exist.

Stories like this need to exist.

Fuck your shaming because of money and your esteemed gilded pedestals of what art is and is not allowed to be.

Tarby didn’t realise how close he hit home with that album.

…

And I’ll still hold him up as my favourite musician to come out of this mess.

Because not everyone had a perfect upbringing.

Some of us are forever broken.