My Little Journey · 1:52am Aug 28th, 2020
Back in 2011 I had like 13 or 12. I can’t remember the details but a friend of mine from messenger recommended me to watch a relatedly new show: my little pony friendship is magic.
Like you can guess I had my prejudices, but trusted that he wasn’t joking and he told me to have a open mind, so i decided to watch it.
It wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows.
For starters in that time I only had a laptop instead of a computer and for some reason had problem processing long videos.
Aside from a single episode every single episode was en English and I’m not a native English speaker (my native language is spanish) and in that time I still had a lot of trouble understanding English.
Fortunately he was a good friend and gave me the link to a youtube channel that had all of the episodes of the first season, with Spanish subtitles.
I was still not used to watching shows with subtitles, reason why I could not enjoy anime unless had a dub. But I take it as an opportunity to get used to it and open some doors.
… The show was good, it wasn’t perfect, but it was truly engaging and the writers truly care to make each of the cast have their own characterization and objectives, heck rarity could had been the more boring of the cast but she had extremely funny scenes and the episode of her making dresses (Suited For Success) was one extremely good.
Like I said my computer had problems processing long videos, the episodes where divided with 2 videos each BUT I still had problems loading the videos… I could have rage quit because of that, but the show was engaging and it was worth it.
By the moment I knew I just finished the first season. Like I said it was good, the impression I had for its demographic was of some silly romance show totally plain and that I would forget by the end of the week.
What I saw was a show with well written characters and some mixture between slice of life and adventure. Having a cast with interest so diverse mean that even those slice of life would had a diverse set of situations, and it did.
Finally I got to see season 2, or at least the first 2 episodes that were already… man those episodes were good, it were far better than the first 2 episodes of the show.
A moment that I loved (and if i did a top of best moments of the show it might be number 1 in the list) would be when twilight came back to her home, totally defeated and having lost faith on her friends who were corrupted by discord. Spike was sick burping some scrolls, twilight decided to read one of them… and then other, and other. What where those scrolls? Each lesson she learned in the show.
Many children cartoons that give lesson have the detail to repeat to you the lesson of the episode, a lesson for the audience if they dint catch the lesson from the episode if they were too distracted. I can understand if people dislike this, can be condescending… and yet we see finally those lessons giving a result.
Twilight read each scroll and regain her faith in her friends and with that she started to uncorrupt her friends one by one and then they defeated discord.
In that moment I knew I was watching something special.
Thanks to my friend who introduce me to the show I became aware of the brony community, how engaged they were and well… it was weird, I saw that in the United States it was BIG. But in Latino America was a small niche, really outside of that my friend was showing me I find nothing about the show or its fandom in Latino American circles.
But there was a fanbase, he show me the Spanish equivalent to equestrian daily (like I said, I still could not understanf English so equestrian daily was out of my reach) called equestrian net. There it was posted fan comics and some fanfics.
Still seen how big the community was in the US I should not be surprised that eventually a lot of youtbers I follow (who were spanish speaking) started to either talk about the show, make references to the show or include its characters.
Could be said that while season 2 continued the fandom keep growing and growing and by the end of the season the fandom dominated internet.
Season 2 was truly superior to season 1. And to me that was the golden years of the fandom (at least in my experience) I made some friends and those where good days.
But even then I knew that all good things must come to an end.
And well there it came season 3. It started strong with king sombra but the episodes that came after that… weren’t that good, the quality dipped slightly, not to the point of jumping the shark but considering how good season 2 was there was now high expectations.
And well… all closed with the coronation of twilight, a musical that might had good songs… but the rest was rushed, look like the writers had a good concept but they focused too much on the songs, I think it should had been 2 part episode and it would had been more memorable. And lets not get into the whole rabit hole of twilight becoming a alicorn.
And well by that point the show was regular at most, the fandom might give good content… but also a lot of drama, a LOT of drama. It was annoying and make the experience of being in the fandom less enjoyable.
Then it came equestrian girls, I was not expecting nothing and well… I got nothing (for what I know sequels greatly improve so I might check them out in the future)
Between the constant fights in the fandom, the drama and the show was becoming less and less special… well I didn’t’ feel anything with season 4 premier, and I started to miss new episodes, the last one that I watched was the one of the super heroes (Power Ponies) and I was not impressed.
Heck even my friend that introduce me to the fandom already left the fandom and wanted to do anything to do with it.
Friends that I made in the fandom were also leaving it and youtubers that I follow stop talking about the show. The only ones that remain in the fandom that I knew were still in fights… yeah. There were a lot of fights in the fandom, brony vs anti-brony and and disagreements on how the show was going.
One of my friends I knew before the show became an anti-brony but we never fought, I might had spammed him with ponies and he spammed me with back creepy videos, we made snide coments about each other but we never ended up hating each other. But other people were in this situation and ended up fighting and separating (very ironic coming from a show all about friendship)
And well… in my point of view remaining in the fandom was no longer a good idea. Maybe for other people there was still positivity but in my case don’t.
So I left, I dropped anything related with the show, by that time I was starting to watch anime and play RPG games (I was more of sandbox and shooters) and with that mlp and the brony fandom became an afterthought.
I had one friend (than sadly I lost contact with him a long time ago) that was still watching the show, by 2016 I think he told me that the show got better and even share some memes of some communist pony (you can guess that is starlight glimmer) and a video of… derpy talking? It was weird, in season 2 she talked and there was a small backlash. It was double weird seen her talking with doctor hooves considering that their interactions were limited to fandom material, I thought it was fanmade but nope, this was official and part of the show.
But it was not enough to make me come back. The last thing I heard was that spike befriended a changeling (and I misremember what I heard of the episode, until I watched the episode recently I thought he adopted a baby changeling) and from there silence.
From there the only thing I heard it was than the show got a movie (and that was it, I didn’t even bother to check what the movie was about) and after some years the show finally ended… and I could care less.
This could have been the ending. But I became used to lurk tv tropes articles, some of my favorite videogames and anime but also to see advices on writing and storytelling.
There by mere chance I saw an article called dark fic I laugh because I knew what was about.
Then I saw the list of example in media… and there was an entire article about dark fics of… my little pony friendship is magic. I laught again, mostly because I knew it should had its own article. The fandom was known to make pretty f****d s**t. you know things like cupcakes or rocket to insanity.
I started reading the article… and I recognize many of the fanfics and blogs, some of them I follow them. Heck there was even listed pony.mov who was dubbed in Spanish by a youtuber I followed back then.
And there I saw something that caught my eye… Motherly Scootaloo? Was weird so I read what I was about, pretty tumblr blog about the life of scootaloo after getting pregnant (while still a minor) and latter trying to raise her son.
I followed some tumblr blogs before, mostly in Spanish (the majority of them are closed and lost sadly) and some in English that help me to get better at English (but where few) but now i can understand english perfectly.
And well… considering that I had not much to do thanks to this pandemic I decided to read the entire blog of pregnant scotaloo… and was something. It could get too sad sometimes, but it was a good read that keep my engaged, I congratulate the creator for giving it a proper ending instead of ditching it suddenly or deleting the blog after getting bored.
That blog remind me of the good content that the fandom produced, I decided to check derpibooru to see if there was new fanarts or comics… and there was, the fandom was still alive and producing, maybe the people I used to follow were no longer there but the fandom was still alive.
And well for some reason I spoke with an old friend about the ¨old days¨ you know, years like 2012 or 2013. And then I told him that I had a nostalgia trip and decided to revisit mlp. He too used to be part of the brony fandom like me. Neither of us where that close but we were friends and participated in a lot of livestreams together.
He told me that the past year (2019) he also had a sort of nostalgia trip like me, and decided to re watch the show. He left it in 2015 and like me refuse to look back… until he decided to do it.
He told me that the show keep pumping good episodes, that season 5 was excellent and season 9 almost at the same level than season 2… that motivated me to watch the show again.
I lost track of the guys that subtitled the episodes but that no longer represented a problem, I now dominate English well to be fair in writing it I still need to practice, but that’s why I’m writing fanfictions here don’t you think? so watching the show without subtitles was no longer a problem. By this point the entire show is dubbed in Spanish but I prefer the English voices.
So I ended up watching again the show…. What I could say?
It feels good to be back.
And well, I was not used to read fanfictions. The only ones I read where of mlp. Those where translated versions of my little dashie, rocket to insanity, cupcakes and a crossover where deadpool and pinkie pie chased doctor doom across the multiverse (it was originally in Spanish and I can’t remember the name sorry). I was not used to read fanfictions.
But shortly before watching the mlp again I started reading fanfics of skyrim. So it was natural than once I watched the show I would be reading mlp fanfics.
Seen that a lot of these fanfics are here is not difficult to see why I made an account in this site. Yeah, I still found weird seen many accounts dating from the old days of the fandom and seen my account as recent, even thou I was in the fandom in those old days. Not that I’m complaining.
Before joining the MLP fandom I used to see a genre of videos know as ¨videos loquendo¨ basically videos made with the voice sensitizer from that company (I you never heard of those videos I don’t blame you, it was something popular on Latino America and Spain not the US) I enjoy them and eventually I made a youtube channel and started to make videos… you could said that the same is happing now, I watched a good couple of fanfictions and I decided to see if I can write some.
And now you have yours truly.
I remain in contact with some friends from those days, aside from the one that motivated me to watch the show again no one show interest in the show, still i remain friends with them. Even the anti-brony I mentioned airliner.
To be honest i wish I could go back to those days, back to the days of season 2. Part of me wish I continued in the fandom instead of leaving, but fortunately the good memories are not going away.
I thank the fandom and show for the good times, I thank TV tropes and Motherly Scootaloofor making me came back. And I hope to get some good memories to years to come.
This might be dark days thanks to the current pandemic but if we survive this is going to be a mere memory, so better to make the best of it so once we see it in retro perspective we can remember good things about this year and not only bad things, we can’t make our lives all about misery, I leave the fandom initially because of that principle, and now I came back because of it.
And if you took time to read this I can tell you one thing, thank you too.
