Well, in case you don’t know me yet: I’m Midnight Man or Midnight in short.
So when did all the craze start for me? I witnessed the German premiere of CDRR in January 1991. I was slightly out of the target audience back then, and maybe you shouldn’t really expose a 15-year-old to Gadget. At least we got re-runs on free TV every now and then.
My first contact with the fandom, however, was in late 2005. TaleSpin was on TV, I was recording it on my DVD/HDD recorder (those were a thing back then, and I still have it), and I was looking it up on the Web. While I was at it, I also started searching for CDRR and discovered the first traces of the fandom, especially the Golden Acorn Awards which showed the fandom’s creativity. While I was doing that, CDRR was announced to return after the turn of the year. That was a crazy time anyway for various reasons.
So the show came back almost exactly when I was twice as old as I was when it premiered. But this time I also had an eye on the fandom, finding fan art, lurking at the Acorn Café. It took me a while to finally admit I’m a Rangerphile myself and bookmark it, though. Don’t ask me why I couldn’t remember the URL at first. And finding it was difficult because it hides from Google.
Came late February, and after over two months of lurking, I discovered two threads to which I wanted to contribute something. Also, I knew one of the Cafégoers from another fan forum I had been a member of. (He also became a brony eventually, by the way.)
So I decided to finally take the step into the active fandom and join the Café. That was the night between February 28th and March 1st, midnight local time. This was actually planned: I needed a new online handle, a new online identity, and then I had that synthpop-inspired idea. I even already had a fursona along with the new name; I had created one because I had read one roleplay thread or mass-insert fic too many. I had chosen the name Midnight Man as well as to join at midnight.
I couldn’t post right away, Indy had to unlock my account, so I went to bed. (It was the Café where I was first exposed to the problem of timezones. Most of the action happened when I was asleep.)
When I came back online, I found a welcome thread for me with various people greeting me. @Scifire even commented on my arrival at midnight.
Of those who have posted here, I think it was @ThatGuyLight who had the greatest impact. Back then, he liked to greet newbies by suggesting they start writing fanfic. Preferably angst fic, but hey. My first thought was, “Hey, I’m German, I’m not even a native English speaker, what does he even expect from me?” Little did I know we already had fanfic writers whose native tongue wasn’t English. Second thought, “Then again, if he has got that much confidence in me, why not try?”
My first attempt was a tiny script-fic of only 160 words named The Joyride that came out on March 13th already. People liked it. So I dove head-first into writing. I wanted to limit myself to one fic at a time while ideas kept coming.
Story number two, the first one in the Expanded Midnightverse, was Midnight At The Café, a self-introduction and mass-insert because I liked that kind of story so much. But me being me, I had that story already go overboard somewhat length-wise. I don’t know of any other story of that kind that ended up five chapters long. March 19th saw the release of the first chapter, and I published each following one once it was written.
Another two days later, I posted the first of until now 49 song parodies.
Then came Too Huge To Be True. The start of the core Midnightverse. And I think the first crossover between CDRR and TaleSpin (hence RangerSpin as one of the working titles). On April 1st, Midnight At The Café was concluded, and I was free to start this story, not even knowing how long it’d grow. This time, however, I wanted to finish it and ideally give it some polish before publishing the preface or first chapter. I got impatient, though, and published the first chapter of THTBT on April 25th with another four chapters to be written. Now I had a deadline to meet. At least I didn’t start writing another story…
…yet. For THTBT was followed by a frenzy because I needed to get the ideas out of my head.
May 22nd: THTBT was concluded, I was free to start another story, and that was my second mass-insert, A Hero That’s None, inspired by RangerReady’s Acorn Cafe Adventures and the round-robin-style roleplays at the Café. The idea was how my fursona would fit into such a setting.
The next day already, I threw my discipline overboard and laid the keel for First Date (working title: First Rendez-vous), the second mainline Midnightverse story. I had to write it, and I had to write it right then. For something with “only” some 10,000 words, it’s still quite popular, I guess.
Another two days later, I started a third story. Lost And Found (working title: The Hackwrench Saga, but then Meat Loaf inspired the final title). This was to be my masterpiece. When I started writing the month before, I would never have thought I’d ever write something novel-sized (at least 40,000 words). Now I was more confident, and I knew this story would become long because I had loads of ideas.
For a while, I’d write on whatever I got into my hands. I had only one halfway modern computer at that point, so I wrote most of it on that one. But I also wrote bits and pieces that came to my mind on my old 386 at my parents’ home (took them home on a floppy disk) and even on my UNIX CAD workstation at work (transferred them to my Windows PC that was standing next to it and mailed them home; I think nobody ever noticed).
Nonetheless, with three stories in the making, I think it’s understandable how I didn’t publish anything for months except for quickly written song parodies. And still, I started Last Date (working title: Last Rendez-vous) on June 25th, now having four stories in the making.
I think I had joined CnD Online and reposted THTBT in the meantime. My intention was to publish my mainline fics and my parodies on both forums, but leave the mass-inserts to the Café because they were written around its community, and I had my doubts that such mass-inserts would be welcomed on CnD Online. Still, the mainline stories required me to be logged in on both boards so that I could publish new chapters nigh-simultaneously.
A Hero That’s None was completed in time for my semi-anniversary at the Café on September 1st. The occasion justified posting all ten chapters (yes, I’m crazy) at once for a change. I was down to three stories, two one week later when I started posting First Date, six chapters, six days.
As if to keep my audience entertained, Lost And Found followed suit on September 16th already, and like THTBT, that was before it was completed. I wrote and posted well into October until L&F ended up with precisely 44,000 words. Little did I know I’d top that in the near future.
Last Date got somewhat laggy, but I wanted it to be done before the end of the year so that it wouldn’t be eligible for the 2007 Golden Acorn Awards as well. I started posting the unfinished story on December 3rd, but I posted what I had, and it took me until December 22nd until the story was completed and fully out.
It didn’t really help that I had started a third mass-insert on December 2nd, fittingly named December. While still not done posting Last Date, the first chapter of December came out on December 9th, and the last one was rushed to the story boards on New Year’s Eve.
And when that was done, I had yet another idea, a script-fic outside the Midnightverse, based on BOC42’s Closer than a Brother and featuring only her two main original characters. Dinner For One Mouse would be an adaptation of the vaudeville theater sketch Dinner For One. I managed to have the idea, adapt the script, ask Boxy for permission and post that thing within just a few hours.
2006 was my most creative year by far, and I slowed down a lot afterwards. Still, I had new ideas. The newest one in 2007 was a “heist fic” inspired by things like Rififi, Topkapi, Aces Go Places, The Olsen Gang etc. and leaning more towards comedy than my previous fics. A lot of heist films ran on TV the next weeks and months. The first working title was Mouse Mission, and the envisioned length was somewhere between Last Date’s ca. 24,000 words and THTBT’s ca. 37,000 words. I started writing on February 5th.
Then I watched the first Mission: Impossible film for the first time, and I changed my plans for the story. The focus should be more on action, and the new working title was All That Glitters before the story was eventually named Diamonds In The Desert. To illustrate how much I had started lagging: I published the first chapter on November 23rd, and I still didn’t even know how long the story would grow. I barely managed to squeeze it into 2008, finishing it on December 29th. It had grown into a monstrosity a bit more than twice the size of Lost And Found by then.
I had actually dropped another self-/mass-insert in 2007, A Little Story Of Midnight And Dawn. And the same year, on May 11th, mainline story number six, A Matter Of Time, was started, so for a while, I had another three fics in the making. AMOT lagged even worse. The first chapter was out on May 10th, 2008 (the anniversary of Deborah Walley’s passing; the story was dedicated to her), the last one of the not even that long story didn’t see the light of day before New Year’s Eve 2009.
In 2008, I started another three stories. Two are still very incomplete today, the third one, started on October 22nd, was Little Bright Star, a three-chapter, Christmas-themed mainline story that came out “only” two months later.
After A Matter Of Time was finished, all that followed were a few more song parodies.
So, what else was there? One thing was the history of the fandom which I got very interested in, becoming a historian and archiver alongside Sir Salazar Ovid Spumoni and, without even knowing, helping him with his Rangerillion project. He kind of thanked me by making me the last character mentioned in it.
Before Lance officially introduced the Ranger Wiki, he asked me to fill it with some content. Unfortunately, the Ranger Wiki was somewhat ill-fated. First, registrations were closed due to impending troll attacks; Lance had to register new user accounts. Then Lance left the fandom without leaving a contact address; the only way to get into touch with him was via PM at the Café. Lastly, hardly anyone of those who were already registered remained active.
And then there were the EuroRangerCons. I’m one of only two Rangerphiles who attended all three, Antwerp 2007 (@Mayhem supplied a Gadget plushie), Saulheim 2008 (CrashBurn supplied a Gadget plushie) and Warsaw 2010 (Sinclair and I supplied Gadget plushies). @CD-R is the other one.
You know what I find funny? We’ve got the majority of 2008 EuroRangerCon back here. @Tamira, our host, is here, @Owlor is here, @Mayhem is here (he one-upped Crash’s Gadget plushie with the big Gadget figurine he had just eBay’d a while earlier), @CD-R is here (he mopped the floor with everyone else at the CDRR game on Crashy’s NES). Only Sinclair, Pixie, Squeak and CrashBurn are missing. We’ve also got three of the five attendees of the first leg of 2010 EuroRangerCon here with only Sinclair and AndY being absent.
Anyways, like so many others, I ended up with pony on the brain. The transition was smooth and took a while, but it started early. That is, I kind of poked fun at pony first, but my way. When bock’s car got himself a Ford Mustang (Geddit? Pony car) in a color reminiscent of Twilight Sparkle’s mane and tail, I shooped in the two streaks. And one of my last song parodies, based on a Red Hot Chili Peppers song which was unusual for me, was about everyone at the Café turning into ponies.
That was before I had even watched a single episode.
In May 2011, I decided that if there’s such a ruckus about this show, it can’t be that bad. Maybe I should watch it. So I started with the pilot. Afterwards, I decided to watch a few more episodes because they were actually entertaining. Of seven days in a row, I spent five binging MLP:FiM season 1. And I was hooked. I’ve pretty much been a brony ever since.
If you’ve ever heard of a Pulse Wave (@Owlor, you have), that’s me. I had assumed yet another new identity to not make it too obvious I was drifting away towards pony, and I actually switched to British English (which I speak anyway) in my writing, but now I feel like there’s no more need for keeping the two identities fully separate.
I just wish I had been more creative. While Midnight Man is mostly known as a fanfic writer and song parodist, Pulse Wave was meant to be a musician. I still have dozens of song ideas including covers and parodies. I’ve only made two songs so far, one original composition in 2019, one cover in 2020. Oh, and I’ve managed to give a number of background characters names on Derpibooru (I love background ponies).
But I’ve been to more conventions, real conventions, and other big meet-ups including all GalaCons (I hope to be able to go again this year) and all Hearth’s Warming Cons.
That said, CDRR has never fully been gone. In 2015, Racebest, now one of the most horse-famous pony YouTubers, was invited as a community guest to Brony Fair in Berlin. He was to hold a YouTubers panel with Saberspark, but Saberspark couldn’t come, so it became the ACRacebest panel.
Race and I at the same pony event, that’d be one Hack of an encounter. I PM’d Race at the Café. I announced my presence. I even cosplayed as myself (as Midnight, namely a trench coat along with a black button-down shirt and brand-new black jeans) so he’d recognize me. He did. I guess he was more amazed to see me in person than all the bronies were to see horse-famous him.
And then came his panel. I guess some of you remember Race. He never really shied away from taking threads off-topic. So what I did was wait for the Q&A part and then ask Race about the “AC” in his name. So he did what I expected him to do. He said it stood for “Acorn Café”, and that a CDRR fan forum, he asked if anyone remembered the show, at least two other people in the audience did. And Race and I managed to derail his panel for some ten minutes.
I remember how lots of bronies wanted to take a selfie with Race. After the closing ceremony, Race asked me for a selfie so that he could prove to his girlfriend Saraggle that he had met me. Seriously, it was hard not to smile, but had I smiled, she wouldn’t have believed him that this was me.
I’ve also been to Sajuuk’s twice, along with Sinclair. I plan to repeat this in the future, hopefully for two days rather than one.
So where am I now? I’m not terribly active in either fandom currently. While it isn’t much, I do occasionally contribute a bit to the Ranger side by editing a fandom history wiki.
