The True Death of the Fandom

The My Little Pony Fandom is, at once, one of the most morbid and least moribund fandoms I know. It's one of the only fandoms I consider myself a part of, in no small part because the vast quantities of content created all but guarantees a reasonable amount of very high quality content. I'm sure I could easily fill an entire page in Word (well, LibreOffice Writer, really) with hyperlinks to pieces of art from the MLP fandom I really enjoy, not even counting pictures or music, for which I could fill several pages each.
At the same time, the extent of such content is so considerable that people can easily immerse themselves in it, and do. It's very pleasurable to have some pony every day, especially for the lonely, the depressed, the perennially stressed individuals I know exist in the fandom. Once they begin to rely on it, they naturally begin to worry about update schedules, content quality, and so on. There's an immediate, significant decrease in perceived quality for someone who goes from looking at works which have persevered over a span of years to browsing the latest from FimFiction or derpibooru, so the worry of fandeath is reasonable, especially for those who are new to the fandom. On the other hand, I can count the number of Star vs. Evil fanpieces I've seen in the last year on one hand, while I would be hard-pressed to count the good-quality MLP pieces in the past few days on two (I'd probably adopt a binary counting system and be okay, until I displayed number 4, 128, or, worse, 132, in public). There's really little reason for concern on a quantity front, and I know that I enjoy many of the newer things being thrown at me far more than the trickle of stuff I used to get, even if it doesn't yet have that warm tinge of nostalgia.
Still, there's a fervent near-panic that pervades the fandom, a belief in the inevitability and nearness of demise that seems, objectively, silly, but is one of the fandom's greatest weaknesses, and could ironically be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Let’s take a break from broadly encompassing narrative to talk about the event that spurred me to write on this topic. You thought I was benevolently spouting comforting thoughts? Wrong. I’m just as self-interested and petty as anyone.
I have a brother, let’s call him Spuddington, since that’s his name on FimFiction. He’s ten years younger than me, but we’re closer than that bit of information implies, since I became disillusioned with life around the same time he became disillusioned with school, and we commiserated. In any case, three years or so ago, he asked me what was the big deal about the pony show I was watching anyway. I queued ‘Winter Wrap Up’ and showed him, and he’s been a fan ever since.
Recently he’s taken up writing, and is, in my obviously biased opinion, quite good. First, because he’s my brother, secondly, because his writing is similar to mine, but more dynamic. I feel it has something mine always lacks. In any case, besides little scraps here and there, most of the pieces he’s written so far have been MLP fanfiction. One, an epic that he started during Everfree Northwest this year, he’s been chugging away on ever since. The other, a short story.
In the past two weeks, he wrote this story. He did it in the way he does almost everything; swiftly, deliberately, and with a calculating eye toward the reactions of others. Then, he waited impatiently for it to be approved.
Only, it wasn’t approved.
The moderator said this was due to the letter-based format, even though this format is legitimized by the show itself, and used in several prominent fanfictions. My brother replied to the rejection letter to this effect. After a week of no response he resubmitted and got bot-bounced. There is no clear appeals process for story submission. I looked for one in vain and finally told him to submit it as a journal instead. He did so begrudgingly, his pride injured by the lack of acceptance.

A few weeks later, I came home to find a small pile of MLP-related material waiting for me in my room. It was mostly stuff I’d given to him recently. The fandom had failed him, and so he stepped back.

And this is where I think the true death of the fandom lies. Not in any grand stroke, cancellation of the show or a plague in the fanbase, but in the interminable friction between people, the jeering of the new by elders who no longer have fresh eyes for it; the piling of the small evils which humans do to others and themselves atop the backdrop of what we used to love. I used to think that I would die before leaving the fandom. Now, with my brother’s embarrassment at his denied submission, I realize more keenly that might not be the case. Each aspect of my character has limits. Already, in only four years, the bright optimism and pony fanaticism of my former self is dimmed, even if it shines more brightly than most other selves through the glaze of cynicism I’ve acquired in the recent past. I can imagine it fading away, even if that’s not something I want to contemplate.

Not that the situation is without hope. As always, everyone maintains the balance of their own actions, and there’s certainly enough very dedicated fans that I can’t help but believe that something of the fandom will survive in any post-apocalyptic future. My action is to publish this journal, and hope that it changes something. Please feel free to share it, in any form you wish. A small victory would be for my brother’s story to get approved, officially or not. This is the reason I wrote this post; so any of you reading this could have the chance to read his story and tell him if you like it. Human approval is really what he’s after, an officially published story is just a convincing promise of that. A bigger victory would be for the pony community to stop being so down on itself, realize the life and vitality it has, and work harder on maintaining it’s health than on self-sabotage. An enormous victory would be for the community to realize that art doesn’t have to be pony to be good, but that pony makes for good art, and use that self-confidence and perspective to share pony art with a broader audience, while also being more accepting of art that lacks pone. I definitely don’t expect to come anywhere close to the last, though I’m still anxiously awaiting the non-pony writing site Knighty announced a while back.

P.S. More 'Royal Duties' is on the way, I'm being a bit slow on the parts which are sort of depressing, but I'm starting to feel the cool breeze from the end of the story.