How I became a brony

[Forewarning. I am ADHD so there will be a lot of tangents (like this one [ooh, shiny!])

Now, I'm sure someone may eventually want to hear this story (either that and my suspicions are correct and it really isn't that important), so whether or not you want to hear this I will be sharing my fairly normal tail.

My interaction with MLP started when I was a little kid during the year 2000. My mom was a single mother of four and had to work afternoons, so my little sister Caitlyn and I would spend our afternoons (for me after school) at my grandmother's friend's house whom we called Aunt Marie. She was around the same age as my grandmother and had two adult children.

So as it turns out, she had kept some of the children's movies from back when her children were still kids. Two of these movies happened to be cartoons that I would end up watching more often than not. The two VHS tapes happened to be episodes from My Little Pony Tales. Yes, I grew up on G1 MLP (and to my much, much later irritation, it wasn't even the big adventure episodes). So, 9/11 passed, I grew out of the girly show and set my sights to reading books in the library rather than dealing with all the kids who would tease me about my height (I was literally the size of tall kindergartners in 4th grade).

I ended up spending most of my elementary and all of my middle school career reading (though I did make three friends in middle school that are still friends with me today). When I got to high school I got a ton load of friends, and met my first pegasister. Her name was Lexi. I met her in math class of freshman year (I think). She had long black hair and an amazing singing voice. As I got to know her, I found out that she was a fan of My Little Pony and had several shirts proclaiming that fact. I was a bit put off by my early memories of G1, so I never really took her seriously on her saying that My Little Pony was a cool show. She eventually stopped trying to convert me but never gave up on the show. Quite the opposite. A year (or two) later she shaved one side of her head (military shave, not Buddhist shave) and the other half was dyed into a rainbow. I bet you can't guess who her favorite pony was. Sadly, she moved away (then came back for a year and moved away again and came back again) and that was the end of that link to MLP.

During high school I would end up watching the .MOV youtube videos. I was not impressed. Then, during junior year I took a trip with my family somewhere for Thanksgiving. My baby sister, Mia, was watching something on my mom's tablet (read: Ipad type thing). I normally don't watch TV, but if there is a TV on in the house that I can hear, I will gravitate towards it whether or not I hate the show currently playing. As it would end up, She was watching My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. I ended up watching Mmmystery on the Friendship Express and both episdoes of A Canterlot Wedding. I realized that the sho actually had some quality animation, characterization, and storyline to it during the former, and falling in love with changelings in the latter. Even so, I avoided MLP for the rest of my high school career. Now, back to my friends.

I had three other friends that were into MLP. One, Vannessa, didn't talk about it, but showed around a picture she had drawn of Twilight Sparkle and another of our awesome (and mind bending) English teacher, Mr. G, as a pony. I never actually caught on to the fact that she was a brony (she doesn't like the term pegasister) until about a month ago. Another friend, Micaela, I never even got any hints of her being a fan until I was talking to Vannessa about her OC. My last Brony friend is the one that converted me. Tyler, is weird. No other way to put it. He has a fetish for small anime Lolita girls. there are over 200 pics on his Ipod alone that show this, then a few thousand more on his computer. I never heard about him being a brony until senior year of high school, and even then it was just fleeting hints. When we got to college it was a different matter.

The small town I live in in the middle of the Mojave Desert (in between Mt. Whitney and Death Valley) has a community college to which both me and Tyler attend. Every Tuesday and Wednesday I find him on his computer in a small loft/hangout place thing hovering over the cafeteria. I would usually go over and sit by him as we talk and he shows me what he was doing on the computer. (Tell your ship senses to shut up because it's not going that way and neither will I) So, it turns out that most of the pictures he was going through for a few meetings were MLP memes and internet responses. After about the third meeting spent doing this I decided to give the show another try.

Huh, the first episode was well done and used a character I could easily relate to (read: anti-social bookworm), Nightmare Moon was kind of bad at what she was doing, woah a manticore, oh gosh a cheesy musical number, then I couldn't help but joke about the Element assignment bit as "x, digivolve toooo y!", then another joke when they all came together to finish her off as a Power Ranger zord-to-megazord type thing. . . . Y'know, that wasn't really that bad. Lets watch more. little did I know, I would be spending the next week and a half watching non-stop MLP until I finished season three and Equestria Girls. I was actually really irritated that the entirety of EqG and the season 3 finale was singing. yes the singers are good, but the only time I've gotten into a story done completely in song was Les Miserables. Even so, The show was good and I decided to go to youtube to clear my boredom. This is where I found the fandom.

Now I had another friend who had liked the show once. Then he found the fandom. He found a ton load of clop and never returned. He warned all of his friends about the horrors of the fandom, so I had never thought about looking it up while watching the show. Then I find myself bored on youtube with ponies on the mind and I somehow found dubbed videos of the Lovestruck Derpy tumblr blog (I had no idea it was more than just a video series), the Doctor and Assistant video series, and Fluffle Puff. I dove right in, looking for more videos. When I talked to Tyler about my ascension to the herd and my finds on youtube he sent me links to a few fanfics, which I quickly read through and loved even more than the show. He then directed me towards Equestria Daily and FimFiction. I have been reading almost nonstop since I found this site. When I'm not reading here, I'm looking through tumblr pony blogs, or youtube pony videos. When I finally came back in touch with Lexi two weeks ago I told her that I should have listened to her sooner.

And that, my friends, is how I became a brony.