My (Nearly) Two Years As MLP Fan · 4:20pm Jan 1st, 2015
I saw someone else doing something like that and thought that it would be nice to do it myself.
It was around Spring 2013 that I became a fan of MLP:FiM. I saw a bit of the show and fanwork before in '11 and '12, but didn't really became a fan. At least, it was nothing until 2013.
Was it a good time to become a member of the fandom? Hell, no. That was the time when the show underwent a change in status quo, which pissed a lot of people off. And it was the time before a movie was released, that not only had human versions of the ponies, but also a highschool setting and a plot that was quite reminiscent of shallow high school movies and shows. People were even more pissed.
My relationship with the fandom was tending to be positive but was also rather bipolar. The sheer volume of the drama really grated me and made me quite negative sometimes. It also made me reluctant to accept the label "brony" for myself (I still don't call myself that, but that's due to my attitude to labels in general, not to segregate myself from others). Over time things got better and even my brief stint as SJW couldn't make me leave the fandom (more the other way round).
I visited a convention, which was pretty nice. I also visited some local meet-ups, but never got warm with the others. Some downright irked me. At some point at the beginning of 2014, I concluded that those aren't the right people for me.
I also checked out some fanwork, not just pictures, but also stuff like music, videos and games and began to follow some "horsefamous" people.
Then there is the clop. Now that's and odd thing. Since I was a young teenager, I liked hentai and checking out porn of series I liked was a normal thing for me. However, most things outside of Japanese stuff didn't interest me and I never cared for "furry" and it's "yiff". Furthermore, many western cartoons seemed "innocent" to me, so porn of them was quite weird. Especially with things that are made for young girls. That was pretty hypocritical, considering all that Card Captor Sakura hentai that I looked that.
Well, things obviously changed. At first, I only looked at humanized stuff. Then I began to like anthro. At some point, I noticed that I'm kinda fond of "feral" clop. Like, a lot. That extents to horse anatomy too. At first I didn't like equine dicks and crotchboobs were just weird. Now I like both very much. A slippery slop, indeed.
2014 was the year when things were more moderate. And in some ways more negative.
The end of S4 made a change of status quo again and the second human movie was released. The big drama failed to appear. Sure, some people hate that castle in Ponyville (to be fair, it looks pretty stupid) and some hate Rainbow Rocks just as much as Equestria Girls, but overall, these things were much better received.
Drama-wise, it was pretty quite in general. There were some big, but short-lived things at the beginning of the year and some smaller stuff throughout, but nothing that compares to 2013. Only towards the end did something happen that stirred the drama soup a lot. I refer of course to the Ted Anderson incident. Although personally, I think his god-awful comic, that is supposedly anti-bullying but kills its own message, is much worse than the SJW cameo.
My own relationship with the fandom is now pretty neutral. Not overly positive, but not overly negative either. And I think that's good and the way things should be.
The "horsefamous" ones though... Well, "horsefamous people" for me are people who are assholes who pretend to be decent people. A lot of well-known people I thought were good, or at least okay, really showed their negative sides. They seem to barely hide a dislike for the fandom they are a part of, without outright saying it. They are a circlejerk that believe themselves to be above criticism. There is no better example than Andrew Stein's DMCA abuse to take down a song that wasn't very nice to him. And his horsefamous buddies thought that was awesome and that anybody who criticizes his actions should just shut up. Are these the kind of people that should get so much positive attention from so many people?
Generally, the high focus on "fandom celebrities" is weird. And considering how these people are, a pretty bad thing.
There is more I could say to them, but I don't want to dwell too much on that. Could be a blog post on its own.
After in 2013 my interests shifted towards pony, burying anime, of which I was a huge fan of, nearly completely under it, my interests shifted in 2014 again. Now I was big on anime again, while I barely cared about MLP. But it only stayed that way for a few months and now MLP is my main interest again, while anime is neglected. Although I still care more about anime than I did after I became a MLP fan. But that shows how much and fast interests can change. Who knows, by the end of 2015, I might not care at all about pony anymore (but that's highly unlikely).
While I still look at fanart a lot, I barely listen to any pony music, no matter if official, fan-made, remixed or whatever ("Until The Sun" is still awesome, though). I also barely watch any fan videos, nor do I play many fan games. Except for "The Underworld Cello" (which might shape up as the best MLP game in existence) and "Legacy of the Pony" (which I only started recently).
I do, however, read much more fanfiction and write more myself. That's certainly a good thing.
Well, that's basically a small overview of me and pony in 2013 and 2014. What will 2015? Well, I can't look into the future, so I have no bloody idea. But we will see. I just hope that there won't be so much drama (or that the drama is at least amusing).
I always quietly hope for amusing drama. I sometimes create it myself. In 2014, for instance, I left a long-standing brony community after they banned me for taking a harsh stance against suicide. I probably wasn't banned permanently, but I felt no need to return and check. The whole relationship with that community was weird, and I'm glad it's over, but ah, drama... so amusing.
Can you explain what the "SJW" thing is? I'm pretty sure I've seen those letters before.
I've also never been much into furry porn with a few exceptions for well loved characters like Merle (from Escaflowne), now ponies as well, or the occasional decently made feral porn. Most anthro stuff just rubs me the wrong way.
2693490
SJW means "Social Justice Warriors" which is a sarcastic term for people whose activism against social issues turns into madness. Typical symptoms are the inflation of petty or harmless things into big issues (like people claiming that using "female" as a noun), claiming that certain people are oppressed in the first world when they aren't, while ignoring other countries where these people are oppressed, hypocrisy (like a certain person who bitched about Molestia, while she herself drew Naruto rape porn), talking down to people they supposedly support (like claiming that any women, who has a different opinion than them, has "internalized misogyny") and generally being a shitty person.
This post pretty much hits the nail on the head.
Thanks (?) to clop, I started to like furry porn in general. Although I don't like any of them as much as clop.
I don't like drama in general but lightened up in that regard and can even find something amusing about it at times. I even started to read Horse News, which I detested a while ago.
2693523 Thanks for clearing that up. I thought I'd seen it around. Yeah, SJW stuff starts to concern me when it actually takes steps to hinder freedom of speech.
This is overall the same thing that was happening to me. Even "Card Captor Sakura" part.
Almost the same story, except I started from ponies right away, after reading clopfics I got curious how it would look visually.
The results are the same. I'm into ponies with more eralisic horse-like anatomy.
(Actually it made sense for me eventually, since it's difficult for me to connect personalities of characters with anything but their original bodies that were presented in the show's universe originally. And it had its effect, considering I find characters attractive more personality-wise in the first place and also not so long ago found out I'm one of those who are called "pansexual").
Not sure, how many different stuff and fetishes you became into though.
Because, as for myself... my range of acceptances became huge, and just during one last year...