A Salute to Joshua Burner · 12:02am Nov 4th, 2019
A Salute to Joshua Burner
In which son_of_heaven176 gushes about his favorite brony analyst.
Sunday, November 3, 2019: A Long Ways After the Final BronyCon
As you may know, yesterday was the wedding of Joshua Burner (otherwise known by his many nicknames: The Fiery Joker (countdowns), joshscorcher (online accounts), and Commander Firebrand (ponysona)) and Kelsey Burner (née Gaines) (better known as Aramau the Fiery Secretary, formerly LucasGirl101 on YouTube). Any fan of Josh has been greatly interested in their relationship from the very beginning: the two have been a real-life made-for-each-other couple. And on the Sunday after their momentous marriage, I just want to take this time to give my own story about our favorite flaming funny man.
The first time I ran across anything of Josh's was a LONG time ago, around the time I was in law school. Years before that, during my freshman year in college, I had been working on a musical analysis of a local performance. Fast-forward to 2009 or 2010, and I decided to look online to see if anyone had made a musical analysis of "One Winged Angel". My Google search turned up no such analysis, but it DID turn up something else: an analysis of a piece of music called "Dancing Mad", from Final Fantasy VI. Later on, I ran across a YouTube video and its companion blog piece by one “joshscorcher” about how one could remake Dancing Mad. His analysis was quite well-thought-out, and all in all, they were quite interesting.
However, it would be quite some time before he’d come across my radar screen again. The year after I graduated from law school, I ran across Turnabout Storm. From there, I watched episode reviews by Tommy Oliver (then known as bronycurious) and in time, I ran across DRWolf001 and … joshscorcher. I eventually found out that he was the same person whose music analysis I read all those years ago. Moreover, I saw that he did video game countdown as well as MLP reviews. I don't subscribe to YouTubers lightly (time is a limited resource, after all!), but I did end up subscribing to him.
And then came the kicker. During his review of Feeling Pinkie Keen, he came out as Christian. I was cautiously optimistic. Being African-American, I'm no stranger to people who say they're Christian but don't think or act like it! But as I kept looking, it was clear that Joshua was the real deal.
And over the years, he's only cemented his status as, if not my favorite YouTuber, definitely my favorite among the brony analysts (even though he may not be the most prolific). I could go on about his good qualities, but I'll use this Bible verse instead. Even though the context applies to the qualifications of church staff, the qualifications are such that any Christian should aspire to them, and this definitely describes Josh: “[H]e must be well thought of by outsiders [i.e., non-Christians], so that he may not fall into disgrace” (I Timothy 3:7 ESV). And if you ask basically anyone who knows him, Christian or not, it is a near certainty that they’ll have something good to say about him.
Long story short, he is a bright spot on YouTube, a light of the brony community, and I am pretty sure that he’ll be a good husband, a good father, and a pillar of the community wherever he settles down.
Joshua Burner, the world needs more people like you.
That said, I would be remiss if I didn't say anything about the new Mrs. Burner.
It wasn't too long after Firebrand announced that the FireRose ship was dead that I found this interesting picture on DeviantArt. And not too long afterwards, it was confirmed that this new mare Aramau was Firebrand's secretary and girlfriend. But Aramau did not coast on her famous boyfriend's coattails. She was a force to be reckoned with in her own right as an able reviewer. And over the months, we saw that she is also a good writer AND a highly versatile voice actress. And given the backstory behind their relationship, it is clear that Ari is a loving, caring soul who will clearly be the honorable wife that any man seeks in a woman.
To Mr. and Mrs. Burner, I wish the best for the both of you and for your marriage. May you never stop being each other's closest friends, and may the magic of your love never die down.
To restate the wish I wrote in your wedding gift:
May your communications with each other be such that neither of you needs to Sense Motive.
May Diplomacy abound and Intimidation be rare.
And may you never run afoul of the Dungeon Master (you should know Whom I mean).
May God bless the both of you, and wherever the future takes you — even if that future eventually takes you away from YouTube (may such an eventuality never happen!) — may you always face everything together.
Love the truth; tolerate no darkness.
--son_of_heaven176
