Seeing the end but for the beginning:

So a goodly number of years ago I joined FiMFic, early 2015 and I had been asked to read a few fics a friend of mine had written, mingled with an interest with the show/s that had somehow won me over despite my initial reluctance. It took a long time to grow from skeptical to accepting that there might be something to all this hype, to finally getting into watching all the seasons then-to-date and eventually the one or two EQG movies.

My point is: I was a late bloomer, by the time I really got into things the show was somewhere between season 4 and 5 and by the time I had tuned out again it was maybe season 6...

I've picked at 6 a little since then and finally finished and have gotten back to watching my way through season 7 and soon 8 and the Movie, and I hear news that season 9 will be our last. I am a little mixed about this. There is a lot of mixed emotions from far more strident fans than I, and my thoughts are... Thoughtful?

I am a self-confessed geek, and old enough to have been so for some time. I have seen fandoms and franchises grow and change as new materials come and go. Star Trek? Well I loved the original series first, but then came TNG, and VOY, and DS9 and ENT and STD... Star Wars? Well of course the three original movies were amazing, but again the franchise has grown and grown. Transformers? Which generation of the original run? Beast Wars? Beast Machines? One of the countless other series and reboots?
My point I guess is, I came to like FiM a lot. It is, and will be for me the first time that I liked a MLP franchise or generation in any form... It won me over. It sets a huge data point for the franchise to try to top, and that fills me with hope... I hope that the coming series' are as good or better, and maybe they will be.
If not, well, just as I can always enjoy my TOS Star Trek in it's own right, or watch Return of the Jedi and none of the others... I can always enjoy 9 seasons, a movie and or whatever of EQG I enjoy... There are plenty of toys, books, collectables out there still, and I don't see any reason to freak out... 9 years is a long, long time for a toy line, or a TV show. It is even a long time for most of us... I am certainly not who I was 10 years ago in SO many ways that it would be a blog post in and of itself just to recap all that, and again for a TV show any longer and it really degrades at what makes it special... I feel anyway. Like the stories we write, the best ones have a pretty strong beginning, middle, and end.

Anyway, just some thoughts I thought I might get out there. I am looking foreward to enjoying FiM for a long time, to savoring our last bit of 'new' and being sad when that ends.... I hope whatever comes next will be a worthy successor, but no mater what, I know I will cherish this generation for a long, long time.