My Little Story: Journey to the Fandom · 10:11am Jul 3rd, 2019
So . . . How I became a fan of this show . . . how I finally got around to watching it. . . it’s a long, weird story, I assure you.
It all kinda started with Five Nights At Freddy’s, oddly, a game series which I’m not even that interested in, anymore. I had heard of MLP long before that, of course. Back, I suppose right after FiM started, I had some friends who were telling me about it, and that I should give it a try, but I was seventeen at the time and felt that I was far too old for such things. If it didn’t have explosions, death, gore and wanton acts of violence perpetrated by a dark, edgy anti-hero, I wasn’t interested.
Or furries. If it had furries I was interested. And that was, I suppose, what planted the seeds. I’ve been a furry since . . . Well, I guess I’ve been interested in Anthropomorphic animals, and anthro characters, all my life, even before I knew what a “Furry” was, and once I discovered that there was an entire community out there that loved them, too, I was all over that. I joined my first forum site when I was fourteen, and have been actively participating in that community ever since.
Now, technically speaking, “Anthropomorphic” means something that isn’t human, but has been given human characteristics, i.e. verbal speech, bipedal motion, wearing clothes, etc. In other words, the ponies are already “Anthro”, without being made bipedal. So, therefore, there was a little . . . spark of interest buried somewhere inside, beneath the layers of “Too Cool For That” edge I had going on at the time.
Fast forward a few years, and I discover a YouTuber named PewDiePie, who had just released his own game and was all over talk shows as being the most popular YouTuber, with the most subscribers, etc., etc., and through watching his videos, I discovered Markiplier. I faffed about a bit on Mark’s channel, watching some of his videos, and then saw that he had done a Let’s Play of a rather simplistic looking horror game that I had seen bits and bobs of, called Five Nights At Freddy’s. Curious, I proceeded to watch him scream, panic and die his way through to becoming the undisputed KING of FIVE NIGHT’S AT FREDDY’S.
Along the way, I started picking up the story behind the games, or at least the fan’s favorite theory of the story behind the games, and then I ran into something I did not even know was a thing at that time.
Fan music.
I spotted a video in my recommended, a fan song based off of FNAF4. Sweet Dreams, by a channel which, at the time, I thought was an actual band, called Aviators. Now, as some of you may know, before being taken over by FNAF, and then moving into more original stuff, Avi got his start doing Brony music. As such, after listening to Sweet Dreams and a few other FNAF songs he did, I started getting other songs of his in my recommended. I think the first one I ever clicked on that was Brony related, and so the first of “our” songs I ever listened to, was his Open Your Eyes, which I really liked, but I didn’t really understand. Sometime after that, or in the midst of it all, I also ran across another guy doing FNAF fan music, MandoPony. I loved his stuff as well, and soon ran in to some of his brony songs. And then, because I had listened to a few brony songs, I started getting more in my recommended. . . .
I know I ran into 4EverfreeBrony somewhere in there, because I know I listened to My Only Friends, which quite possibly is partly responsible for my love of Luna even now, pretty early on. But through all of this, I didn’t really know who any of the characters were, or what any of the songs were about. They had cool beats, and were surprisingly well made for fan products, in my mind, but I was unable to get emotionally invested in them.
Then I went through a little bit of a period where I was pretending I hadn’t been listening to those songs, and was trying to ignore all the MLP related recommendations I was getting on YouTube. In spite of this, I kept seeing a video pop up in my recommended, that was starting to pique my curiosity, in spite of my attempts to ignore it. This was because this video said it was an animation, and a song, but the “GIrly”, to my mind at the time, still clinging to the last shreds of my “Edgy Cool Guy” attitude from my teenage years, title of the video kept me turning away, and turning away and turning away. . . .
I must’ve ignored that video for nearly a month, and then one night, for no reason that I could fathom, I caved in to my curiosity, and clicked on it. The animation was . . . amazing. There was no other word for it. And the song . . . the song took my breath away. So well written, and with such beautiful singing. And because of the animation, I now had context for the lyrics. I had a visual demonstration of what the song was talking about, and as such I became emotionally involved. As I watched this video that swung from tragedy to action and back again, the drama that unfolded wrapped me up and whispered into my ear.
And that is why, to this day, Lullaby For A Princess, by Ponyphonic, with the animation by WarpOut, is still my number one favorite Brony song and animation.
After that, I felt my curiosity burning brighter than ever. If a show could inspire that level of awesome in a fan video, it had to be even MORE awesome, right?! So, I went on YouTube and looked up the series. At that time, you could still find free episodes of the show on there, and I found Season 1, episodes 1 & 2, Friendship is Magic. And I watched them. The animation was . . . off putting, to me. It wasn’t as good as I thought it would be, (for some reason I thought the animation by WarpOut was faithful to the show’s style), and so it kind of put me off, and afterwards I convinced myself that it wasn’t my thing and turned my back on it. Much to my shame.
However, it should be pointed out, I have always been the sort who, if I dislike something, I’ll just stop doing it and never look back. I sat and watched BOTH episodes from start to finish without moving away from the computer once. And even though I’ve never actually rewatched them, I can still remember exactly what happened, now. That should probably have told me something, then and there. But, it didn’t.
And so, I went for another couple of years, saying “Oh, I don’t have anything against it, but it’s not my thing”, even as new friends and old kept telling me “It’s really, really good!” But I would just shake my head and keep on going, my life getting steadily duller, grayer and more depressing with each passing month.
I found a girlfriend, a lovely trans girl from England who, though we aren’t together in person, I love more than anything, and SHE was telling me “This is great, you need to watch it!” And I was still like “Ehhh . . . Naaahh . . . “ I even had a guy at work bring it up, one night, when we were talking about “kid’s” shows that pushed their ratings and made references just for adults, telling me about the Big Lebowski ponies and the Doctor Who references, and I felt my curiosity pique again. . . .
And then I realized one day, walking past the electronics department at work. A big cardboard display was up, advertizing a new movie coming out, and there were toys and merch everywhere. It was late 2017, and the MLP Movie was about the come out. I felt my brain go “Uhh . . . Yeah, you need to see this.” And, after some internal debate, I realized my brain was right. I DID need to see this. But, there was one . . . small, teeny, tiny problem . . . .
It was late 2017, and the show had just finished up it’s seventh season, and I was POSITIVE the movie would spoil everything from the show up to that point, and if I wound up liking the movie, I KNEW I’d want to watch the show, and that meant only one thing.
And so, for the next two months, and binged the hell out of MLP on Netflix, all seven seasons, just so I could watch a movie that it turned out didn’t spoil anything past season three. But you know what? I have zero regrets. I was getting in to the show by the time Winter Wrap Up hit, and once I started tearing up when it became clear that Rarity knew how much Spike cared for her in “The Secret Of My Excess”, I was hooked, and it only got deeper from there.
From the Smile Song, I knew Pinkie was my favorite, and from Flawless, in Fame and Misfortune, the show had my loyalty, and from the Perfect Pear I’ve not stopped crying at even though I’ve watched it eight freakin’ times now. . . .
I don’t know exactly when I stopped being a curious furry on the outskirts, and crossed over to being a full-blown brony, but I love this show, love it’s world, and though it may be ending soon, I will never stop loving it, and will never give up hope for the future generations to come.
Until next time, to all my bronies and pegasisters, Harmonia Invictus! 
Heh, the roundabout journeys are always the best. Good for you my friend.