Confessions of a Skeptic Turned Brony · 11:40pm Nov 5th, 2014
I'm not sure at what point I finally considered myself a Brony, but with two developing fanfics (and one complete fanfic) to my name and countless hours debating the show, denying it at this point is at best being childish. I admit it, I've turned, fallen in deep, and have no desire to get out. I've seen the show, watched the movies, and while I'm still really only a fringe participant in the fandom, I've enjoyed the feedback and encouragement I've gotten for my work.
I first heard about the show from one of my family members of all people who is about six years my senior and quite a fan himself. He gave me the entire first season...practically forced it onto my laptop...and it sat there for quite some time. I never held any disrespect for the fandom or the show, I just never thought it would be within my interests.
Then I actually got my first glimpse of the show in the most unlikely of places.
http://sfdebris.com/videos/animation/mlp01.php
For those of you who don't want to follow the link, that website is known as SF Debris, headed by a single man named Chuck Warnicke whose usual review fair deals with the Supernatural, Science Fiction, and Fantasy genres. Among his reviews are hundreds of episodes of Star Trek, almost every Star Trek movie, Godzilla, Mass Effect 2, Lord of the Rings...you get the idea. The point is, this was the last show I ever expected to show up on a site like his. And frankly, he was as surprised as I was, citing that he thought someone wanted him to be unsporting to a show aimed at a younger audience.
So I watched the review and the first thing that really stuck out to me was the animation on display. I only have a vague idea about what 'vectors' are and how they're used in animation, but it was something I'd never seen before. Most of the animation I watched at the time was far more jerky and stilted with a small number of frames per second, so I was blown away at just how smooth everything was.
The second thing that stuck out was the colors. When I looked at the My Little Pony Logo and its alarmingly high intensity of pink shades, I had a predisposition as to what type of pallet they'd use. Instead I found a vast array of bright and cheerful colors that, while admittedly seemed to be aimed more towards a feminine demographic, I really enjoyed watching, though that might have been thanks to years of having to look at the Unreal Engine color palette for so long.
About less than a minute in, I decided to stop watching the review and just load up the damn episode that was still sitting on my computer. And then...well there's really no other way to put it...Twilight Sparkle happened.
I honestly wasn't sure what I was expecting from the main character. Probably someone shy, innocent, well-meaning, slightly meek sometimes but commanding when it counted. Instead, Twilight was a studious bookworm with intellectual hobbies and was very vocal about her distaste for the things she found frivolous. She was obviously an introvert, which I could relate to, and when Princess Celestia sent her on the important task of 'making friends', she responded with exactly the attitude that I think anyone in her situation would have had. Exasperation and disbelief.
It became apparent quite quickly that she was most definitely not suited to the task, though the forward open-nature of the other Ponyville residents was definitely putting her far outside her comfort zone. Watching those awkward interactions with Applejack, Fluttershy, and Pinkie's infamous introduction were definitely some of the highlights. In particular the line about how 'every pony in this town is crazy' makes me smile even now because after four seasons I still think she's right. She just eventually joined in and never noticed.
Part two of the first episode was quickly loaded soon after and the show continued to surprise me, both with Twilight's continued snarky attitude, and with the casual insanity of Pinkie Pie that fits so seamlessly into the show that I couldn't help but go along with it. And of course, Twilight's reaction to her song Giggle at the Ghoulies made me laugh quite a bit.
And then...the song was good. It was upbeat, had a great tempo, a good voice behind it, and it didn't overstay its welcome by dragging on too long. It was at this point that a small whisper in the back of my mind told me, “You're enjoying this. Admit it.” By the time an actual FIGHT SCENE came around, I knew right then and there I wouldn't be getting any sleep that night since I had another twenty episodes to go.
I'll spare you the details, but essentially the Pilot of the series drew me in. I wouldn't say that this was my 'tipping point' just yet, but I was willing to give the series a chance and I wasn't disappointed. The real tipping point came right around the time of Winter Wrap Up. Or as I like to call the episode...The Importance of Middle Management.
Considering how popular (I believe) the episode is, I won't bother with a deconstruction of it. I will say that the song was catchy as hell, the episode was incredibly energetic, each of the main six got a small turn in the spotlight, and the montage at the end was amazing, showing Twilight stepping into a leader role in a brisk, well-paced, easy to understand sequence that didn't use a single line of dialogue, confident in the music and animation to tell the story.
At this point, I was hooked. No doubt about it. I burned through season one, and one of my friends who was a brony himself began bringing over a couple episodes every weekend for us to watch and soon we caught up with the fourth season. As a side note, I obviously loved John de Lancie as Discord but I'm going to skim over those bits (and Chrysalis and Sombra) for the sake of brevity.
Let's skip ahead to Tyrek.
Holy mother of Celestia. I felt like someone had just spliced a bit of DBZ into MLP, and from the standpoint of a fan? The destruction of Twilight's library may as well have been like the destruction of the original Enterprise. The fight, while brief, was absolutely amazing and served the story well. Considering the demographic that this show is targeted at, it was also incredibly ballsy and the resolution was a perfect way to end the season and you can be damn sure I'll be digging into Season Five the second it comes out.
So what does this have to do with my decent into Brony-dom? Well, my family member who had foisted the series onto my computer to begin with visited from a state away. Imagine my surprise when I found out that I was actually ahead of him in the episodes. As it turned out, he had been disenfranchised with the series. I won't go into specifics, but it did come around due to Season 3, and I'll say no more on the subject.
Well, in a complete about turn, as he once pushed the series onto me, I found myself pushing the series back onto him with another of my favorite episodes Filli Vanilli. When we parted ways, his computer was loaded up with episodes this time. In return, he dug into his library of fanfiction and introduced me to some stories that he really enjoyed.
Among them...was Hard Reset. I'm pretty sure I don't need to go over it considering that if you perform a search right now for the highest rated fanfics on Fimfiction, it's sitting there at number three. Needless to say, I didn't get any sleep that night and burned through all three stories in a single day.
It was then that the ideas started coming. Ideas I hadn't gotten for years since I left my old fanfiction stories to collect dust and slip into the forgotten archives. Hard Reset and its associated stories showed me something I'd been considering pretty much all along. This series could be taken much further than the show could ever reasonably reach for (considering its audience again). Serious and mature stories could be written that still retain the best aspects of said show, along with its positive and upbeat message. For the first time in what felt like ages, I was actually excited to start writing again, and I began to pitch ideas between my friends who (while not admitting they were bronies), enjoyed the show and enjoyed talking about it.
One week later I wrote my first chapter of Winds of Change.
My friend and editor, MisterGunpowder responded with this:
Needless to say I hit him with a friendship laser and turned him to stone.
You should really restore your editor to flesh. A good one is hard to find.
2576089 I know, it makes the work so much harder! Do you know how hard it is to type with stony arms? Really, really hard. And the noise, oh, the noise!
I didn't fall for the show until the later episodes. In fact; I actually watched the first five minutes if the first episode then stopped. Three days later I rewatched it until Applebuck Season and THEN started to like it. My opinion about the fandom can be read on my blog.