Coco Pommel · 1:37pm Jan 9th, 2014
I've had this conversation at least twice now, perhaps more times than that forgotten about. It is really several conversations. Several questions, some answers, opinions, sharing of joy, bitching about sorrow, yadda yadda yadda.
What brought you to ponies? What do you like about ponies? What is your OTP? Do you want to cum in Rainbow Dash? These and many more like them are what this blog is about. That and closing the chapter that has an unhappy rant sprawled across my userpage due to my dislike of an episode. Out with that, in with this.
Very much this.
What brought me to ponies? I probably would have rattled off a sequence of rather dull and boring events. About how I used to know little to nothing about ponies, heard about them, checked them out through art and music, and eventually decided to watch the show. I could give the tedious details of those steps, but they aren't really important. It wasn't until I watched the show that I really -got- what "Ponies" really meant. The art and music I'd listened to and only slightly enjoyed at best took on meaning. I used to look at depictions of ponies (many of them cluttering some of my usual eyecandy/inkporn sites) and considered them weird or even ugly (this coming from a gal who enjoyed furry art at the time, go fig). I listened to some random "pony" dubstep junk and found it only mildly good occasionally, forgettable easily most of the time. I'm sure if I'd listened to some of the official music back then, I probably would have turned my nose up at it.
But again, what brought me to ponies? Watching the show. The name "Sonic Rainboom" caught my eye, and I was hooked. It was ridiculous. I know all bout what a sonic boom is, and all that goes on with breaking the sound barrier. I can get a pegasus in a land of obviously magical ponies being able to fly that fast. But to create an explosion of rainbow color just sort of sparked my imagination.
So I started from S1E1 and watched til the end of S2. At around the time I finished doing that, S3 was complete and I watched all of that too. An episode or two a day over the course of weeks. In this somewhat mad thirst to see more of these ponies, I of course ran across episodes I didn't especially care for, but still I had this need for the next episode, and with them all on my harddrive it was no problem to just move on to the next episode.
With Rainbow Dash it was love at first sight. I saw things in her I admired. Things I wanted to be. Things I'd want in a partner. Self-confidence, drive, a love of flight, being awesome. I never really saw her as a dumb jock.
I wanted to dislike Twilight Sparkle for being the generic main character/leader. But she too found her way into my heart with only token resistance. Again I saw things I wanted to be and wanted to be with. Intelligence, a love of science and figuring things out, reading, and magic. She's awesome, in totally different ways than Rainbow is. And she isn't the leader just because the show says she is. She isn't the leader because of some arbitrary character trait like being Celestia's student. She's a leader because of how she is and who she is. Because she is an amazing friend.
The other main six characters I found likeable enough, but they didn't make me fall in love with them. I liked the general idea that each of them were flawed and still generally good characters. In particular I remember disliking Rarity the most. Her S1 personality was really grating, and her shows of generosity tended to fall flat on me. I also ended up disliking Pinkie a lot due to Feeling Pinkie Keen and it's pro-faith message which I find abhorrant. AJ rounds out the bottom of the barrel for me back then as being bland and uninteresting. That sort of pushed Fluttershy to the middle between liked and disliked characters, mostly due to cuteness.
I also disliked the CMC as annoying brats, especially Apple Bloom and Scootaloo due to their behavior in Call of the Cutie, Cutie Pox, and 'Chronicles.
With little to no shifting, this set of preferences stuck with me through the end of S3. I had a pretty strong like for Luna and Trixie.
The next chapter in my pony story begins with fanfiction. See, up til this point my enjoyment of the show consisted entirely of watching the episodes, listening to a few songs on youtube (I discovered Rainbow Factory PMV at this point), and collecting pony pictures. I'd been slightly familiar with fanfiction from some other fandoms I'd browsed or joined and had hit or miss enjoyment from the written word of fandom, mostly a lot of miss. So it wasn't even on my mind to check into this medium until I ran into some art by Inuhoshi to Darkpen that was apparently the cover art to some fanfiction story. There was a convenient link to the story on the picture's DA page, so I indulged in some curiosity and ended up reading The Incredibly Dense Mind of Rainbow Dash, followed shortly by The Life and Times of a Winning Pony and Study of a Winning Pony. Add one Cloud Kicker to the ponies I loved, and my first fanfiction pony love interest.
What follows in this chapter is a blur of reading. I was inspired to try my hand at writing a story set in the Winningverse, starring Luna. So I started doing research. First I watched a lot more ponies, with a goal of taking notes for story timeline, events, and trying to mesh it with the Winningverse fanon events. I read tons of fanfiction with depictions of Luna to try to build up my own "headcanon" for her, since canon has so little. I also read a lot of things that had nothing to do with Luna, just because I plain enjoy reading and had that relatively dormant hobby of mine rekindled by pony fanfiction.
Needless to say, running into countless fanon shadows of characters I love, some good and some bad, gave even more depth to them. TwiDash stories drew me like honey, promising me tales focused on bestpony and bestpony. Sometimes with cute awkward confessions, sometimes with kissyfaces, sometimes with detailed sex scenes. 
Several characters grew for me due to fanon representation. Celestia on occasion surprises me by showing up well written and engaging in a story. Luna unexpectedly waned a bit in interest for me. Trixie became even more interesting. But what surprised me the most were the foals. The CMC and Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon were often written in adorable, cute, occasionally disturbing erotic stories. I was inspired to go back and watch several episodes that I had grown accustomed to skipping over when watching Ponies, just to see what it was that I'd apparently overlooked. Seeing them less as annoying preteens and more as teens made more overall sense, and awkward young almost-adult romances possible with them became much more entertaining.
Chapter three of this blog is hard to define a start to. At some point I had read a lot, researched pony episodes a lot, written down tons of notes for several story projects, published the start of my first story, Hungry, and discussed various topics in detail on the forums and in chat with other members of this site. I didn't know it at the time, but I'd forgotten the magic. I was Twilight, too buried in my "books" and ignoring the friendship/magic of things. I was still enjoying myself, so it was not obvious what was going on. Again, the Twilight analogy is pretty apt.
The prospect of S4 intrigued me. This would mark the first chance I'd get to watch episode while they were new. While my initial watching of all the ponies was new to me, this time I was armed with all my knowledge and research, my plans for stories, and overall vested interest in the contents of these new episodes. New ship teases, new characterizations, new dynamics, new plot elements, more timeline. Somewhere inside all that, I recognized that I wanted something out of these episodes like I had originally gotten though, as I was avoiding spoilers so I could watch each episode fresh.
So as the weeks went by, I had various degrees of enjoyment or lack thereof for each new episode. Princess Twilight Sparkle had me watching with a bit of a smile on my face. Castle Maneia had me a bit bored, and finding the AppleDash tedious. Daring Don't had me happy to see Twi and Dash nerding it up together, but going "wtf" as the m6 stand around and do nothing while Daring and bads duke it out. Flight to the Finish I enjoyed due to ulterior motives of wanting more material to work with for my story, in particular any snippets of characterization I could use for DT and SS. Then Power Ponies happened, and I found myself debating whether it tied with or was only marginally better than FPK. Then Bats! happened the very next week.
While Flutterbat is certainly adorable and inspires a lot of fanart, the episode itself is still pretty poor. I was feeling pretty let down about season 4. I kept wanting to like things, but even the better episodes had a bunch of glaring flaws in them. I participated in some conversations where people put the S4 episodes in order of best to worst, and I found myself having a hard time ordering them honestly. Obviously Power Ponies and Bats would be the worst two. I would be tempted to put Daring Don't in first until I remember the wtf. I'd be tempted to put Flight to the Finish first... but only really due to lack of major competition. Princess Twilight Sparkle (both eps combined as one entry) might make a solid second place, but it feels odd to put Daring Don't in the middle with Castle Maneia. And even though I didn't really like the AppleDash stuff in Castle Maneia, it would probably rate higher than Daring Don't just from overall lack of major flaws... which strangely puts Daring Don't as third worst episode of the season for me.
The fourth and current chapter (yes this means this lengthy blog is nearing it's end!) came out of nowhere. I'd heard we were going to have a Rarity episode (despite my general efforts to avoid spoilers). I wasn't really expecting much because, well, Rarity. 
Sure enough, the episode starts, and we're presented with a generally dull setting of Rarity doing some fashion thing, her friends are helping, and she has tickets for some show. At least she learned the lesson way back from S1 and has enough for everyone to attend. Annoying Pinkie Pie. Mildly amusing Spike abuse.
So they're wandering through the City, and Rarity is kind of on fire with the whole Generosity thing I start to notice. Huh.
Rainbow is rather cutely still embracing her fangirl side of things. She's only really trying to play it cool when someone calls her on it, which is... wait. She's making fun of musicals when MLP is a musical often. That's a pretty funny jo-
Is that the start of music I hear? They're panning out to Rarity. Oh no. They wouldn't. That's too obvious and too cheesy...
They did. They are. Well played, MLP. Well played. You caught me off guard with that somehow, and I can't stop laughing.
From this point on, I'm watching the rest of the episode with a stupid grin on my face. So much of it is obvious. I could see Suri's deception coming a mile away. I could understand Rarity working and asking her friends for help and being stressed. I could see that not being a big issue and lots of forgiveness going around. I could even see the whole getting to watch Hinny of the Hills anyway, due to Rarity pulling some favor.
What I didn't expect, especially since I was already enjoying myself and grinning like a fool while doing so, was to fall head over heels in love with yet another character. Coco Pommel is fucking adorable. Holy shit. At the end when she tells Rarity that she quit, and gives her a present as well as the Trophy Rarity earned... I was open-mouthed dumbfounded. This little mare has lit a fire in my imagination.
I've been spending the last few days somewhat reeling. This episode was so many things for me. It was a wakeup call/epiphany for what it is I enjoy about MLP. It is a new-found appreciation for an old character I didn't care much for: Rarity. It is a new face that I adore and who inspires me.
What is my OTP? I don't have one. The term is a stupid one. Ship all the ponies.
That said, I still love Rainbow Dash and Twilight first and foremost. Rarity has secured a very close second place though. The other three are still enjoyable characters that I don't hate, but they just don't really interest me a whole lot. Fluttershy has a slight nod going for her due to Flutterbat art and general cuteness, but in terms of stories and exploring their characters, I'd generally prefer to look outside the Maine 6. Coco, Luna, Celestia, Trixie, and surprisingly Spitfire all capture my imagination more than any of these three main characters do. Even exploring the personalities and hijinjx of the five foals rates higher on my interest list. Oddly enough I guess that means I like Apple Bloom more than her big sister. Huh.
Ships I especially like are: TwiDash (of course, flagship of my fleet), Twixie, TwiLestia, TwiLuna, TrixDash, DashLestia, DashLuna, DashFire, and the newest addition to the fleet, RariCo. Triads are too often done poorly to really include in the fleet, but generally anything using any of those ships within the poly is likely to catch my interest.
Thank you for reading. I've been wanting to put down a lengthy torrent of words into this space and hopefully have them be positive. Thank you to "Rarity Takes Mahatten" for inspiring me to do so.
Do I want to cum in Rainbow Dash?
For me, Rarity has been one of my favorites ever since Look Before You Sleep, which was the episode that hooked me on the show. But I'll admit that it certainly wasn't because she had the Element of Generosity. Nice to see that you're a fan of hers now.
My personal fleet, in no particular order:
FlutterDash, OctaScratch, SunLight, RainbowPie, ScootaBelle, and rounding it out, SpikeCo.
I wuv all Shipping though
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Twilestia still tops my favorites.
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