It was a fun ride while it lasted · 11:07am Apr 17th, 2016
(Just skip to the last paragraph if you want to get the run down of this blog without reading through all the fluff)
MLP was a very surprising show, I don't think anyone involved in the making of it knew just how much it was going to explode at the time. I had managed to avoid hearing of its existence until the end of season 2, but I brushed it off as being no different from the MLP that was around when I was younger, and so it wasn't my thing. After a friend I more or less respected said it was good and that I might like it, I agreed to give it a go and watched the Crystal Empire two parter first (starting on season 3 was stupid in retrospect, but I didn't even know it was the kind of show that needed to be watched from the start). Crystal Empire wasn't the highest point of the show (but nor was it anywhere close to the lowest), but it caught my interest enough to go back to the beginning and watch from there...
A couple weeks later I was caught up, and completely hooked, I was absolutely obsessed with it (anyone can tell you I was really annoying at that time as there wasn't much else I would talk about) and was quite eager to carry on watching it into season 3. It wasn't until later that I learnt of the brony fandom, probably around the end of season 3, I had never had any qualms about liking a show outside my age range because I never gave a shit what other people thought (and to this day, I still don't), but it was nice to feel more justified in liking it to know that so many others did too. It wasn't long before I got into the fanfiction scene, which I had never done for any other fandom before. Looking back over my time here, I know it was valuable, I'm a much better writer than when I started out and now I'm working on something much bigger and better.
Anyway, back to the show. So I watched along with season 3, loved it (even Twilight's transformation). Dreaded Equestria Girls and hated it just as much as I expected, but it didn't dampen my love for the show any. Impatiently waited for season 4 and loved it too. Dreaded Rainbow Rocks and was pleasantly surprised to find it was pretty good. Same drill for season 5, and while it had probably the weakest starter out of all the seasons (including the weeds), I was still well enough disposed towards it that I kept watching. Season 5 was... rocky, there were ups (Luna and the CMC) and there were downs (resetting Discord's character arc and the Pie family)... and then there was the ending which was so down, it occupies the deepest bowels of hell. Oh lord did I hate that ending, while I had been starting to feel miffed with the show before that, that ending was what really tipped the scales for me. Suddenly I couldn't get excited for the upcoming season, I wasn't counting down the days, on the rare occasion I remembered it was supposed to be starting soon, I would get resentful. But I watched the season 6 opening, and I was recently made to binge watch the last 3 episodes with a friend after I had managed to avoid them, and I've reached a decisive conclusion...
I don't care any more. Like almost everything I've ever been a fan of (e.g. Kingdom Hearts, Supernatural, Assassins' Creed), it's gone on too long, the ideas have run dry, the beloved characters and concepts have been worn down. The makers just didn't know when to stop and let a good thing rest in peace... and now I don't like it. It's always sad when this happens, I just want to see it through to the end, but in this infuriating age where creators are terrified of endings and hungry for money, nothing ever does, so I'm left to just stop caring and having everything I loved retroactively tainted. So I don't like the show anymore, and there's nothing I can do about that...
Just like there's nothing I can do about not liking this site anymore. No matter how much I tell people their writing is shit, the overall quality of this place just diminishes more and more everyday. All the good authors vanish quietly, while the crap ones stick around and multiply and slowly make the atmosphere more toxic. People around here like to believe that everyone is capable of being a good writer and having great ideas, and once upon a time I would have agreed, but my time here has proven the opposite, some people are not writers. It's a sad fact that plenty of people refuse to accept, that it doesn't matter how much crap they churn out and call 'practice', they are never going to improve and a tapeworm will always have more imagination than them. My time on this site has exposed me to the absolute nadir of the brony fandom, human supremacists, fetishists, endless fucking remakes of popular stories, and god damn displaced fics. Remembering all that, I'm more than half glad to be leaving, but I do feel bad about all the good stories I was following that I may never see finished (although I doubt I would have seen many of them finished even if I had stuck around).
So in conclusion, I'm sick to death of this site, the only thing keeping me tethered here for so long was my love for he show, but as I've said, my love became my like, which became my disappointment, which has now become my dislike. Well now I'm free of both of them, I may occasionally watch episodes of the show with friends, but I certainly won't be coming back here if I can avoid it (I've even had a friend change my password, so that once I log off I won't accidentally come on purely out of habit). I've got plenty of real story ideas to work on, my partner and I are currently working on a joint project, when we're not busy studying. As the title says, it was a fun ride while it lasted, it had its high moments and its low moments, but now it's time to get off and move on. Thank you to anyone who read and enjoyed my stories, and an even bigger thank you to anyone who wrote stories that I liked.
I know that you probably won't see this, but still, thanks for what you've written, and I'll miss you! Best of luck!
You'll be missed Reeve.