Answers for the Q&A! (Part 1) · 11:47pm Dec 2nd, 2018
Art by Seriff Pilcrow
Wowzers.
Eighteen questions from all you guys. A lot more than I thought I'd ever get. Thank you for your support! 
And the answers have reached five pages in Google Docs—and counting. 
Looks like I'm going to have to split the answer collection into several pieces to make things easier to read.
Now, these answers are arranged in no particular order. If you don't see your question answered here, rest assured that I'll get to it tomorrow or in the next few days! 
FourShadow asks: “How’d ya get into the fandom?”
Summer of 2013—I had just graduated high school and was sitting in my house, bored out of my skull. I’ve known about the brony fandom since 2011, but didn’t give it much thought back then because of my studies. Without the distraction of school, however, I had more time to wonder why older people, especially men, liked it so much.
I watched a few episodes of the show, but what really catapulted me into bronydom was the creativity of the fandom itself. Seeing how much quality content it produced at the time was astounding. I never thought I’d see fans be inspired enough to create music and animation dedicated to ponies. And this wasn’t just a bunch of losers making crappy art. This was top-notch stuff that could almost stand toe-to-toe with professional work. Heck, for the first two years of being a brony, I didn’t even watch the show regularly. I only started catching up on episodes on 2015—my brony-ness before then was almost completely sustained by the fandom.
When I entered college about a month later, I was a full-fledged brony. I never really tried to hide the fandom from anyone, however…not that I needed to since in real life, I tend to be a difficult person to Sherlock Scan. But my friends and family eventually found out. They were weirded out at first, but they adjusted fairly quickly, never showing hostility all the while. I even converted two of my friends into bronies—and one of them is now the co-author of Spectrum of Lightning.
spoonlol asks: “How long do you expect this story to be/do you have a plan for how long its gunna be?”
I expected Spectrum to be 60,000–100,000 words…
…at first.
But then as my editor and my pre-readers gave their feedback, the fanfic seems like it’s going to metastasize beyond that. New estimate is 125,000–150,000 words. Hopefully Spectrum doesn’t go beyond that. Got to make sure the future stories in the Daring-Velvet series don't come close to that level.... 
FourShadow asks: “Have any interests other than MLP?” and “Fav cartoon other than MLP?”
I don’t watch many cartoons these days, but I do love me some Cells at Work, and not just because of the adorable platelets.
As a medical student, I’m really impressed with the accuracy in Cells at Work, and the fact that it’s able to maintain that accuracy without sacrificing quality when it comes to characters. It’s probably the only franchise other than MLP where I have fanfic ideas.
Yeah, most of those terms aren’t recognizable to people who aren’t in medical school, but hey, I’d like to give a shot at simplifying medicine for the common layperson.
In other news, I also like Tomb Raider (the new one only; don’t judge me) and Uncharted. More on the latter later, because it's particularly important to Spectrum.
JackRipper asks: “How much longer before medical school finally does you in?”
I feel like medical school already did me in a year ago, and I’m just a zombie injecting zombie juice into patients…
That's probably all the questions I can answer for now. If your question didn't get answered today, no worries. I'll be posting Part 2 of the Q&A answers tomorrow!
Cheers!
– Seriff Pilcrow
That silly moment when you cannot remember if you asked a question or not!