• Member Since 10th Nov, 2014
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ShadwSonic


It's stories like the ones on this site that got me interested in the show itself!

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    A Look Back, At the End of the Road.

    Hello there, my name is ShadwSonic.

    I've... never done one of these blog posts before, not being that into reviewing things myself or talking about the day to day events, but now that I've finished the final episode, I felt I needed to share my experience with this show.

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Oct
16th
2019

A Look Back, At the End of the Road. · 2:51am Oct 16th, 2019

Hello there, my name is ShadwSonic.

I've... never done one of these blog posts before, not being that into reviewing things myself or talking about the day to day events, but now that I've finished the final episode, I felt I needed to share my experience with this show.

My first real awareness of this particular Generation of MLP came, as many great things have for me, from TvTropes. Oh, I'd seen a game sprite of Rainbow Dash here, a CYOA starring Trixie there, but nothing that would lend me any reason to think this was more than just another pathetic attempt at separating the parents of little girls from their money.

But then I was searching for tropes related to transformation, as I had recently (and still do) have a fascination with the concept when it's done really well. That particular sort of introspection is difficult-to-impossible to come by in other works, and I eat that sort of thing up! And eventually, I landed on the trope titled "Humanity Ensues!". Going there now, the trope image is of Twilight herself (pre- and post- Mirror Portal travel), and that's not without a good reason...

See, even though the page didn't have that image at the time, it DID describe several significant stories that have the trope involved, these being:
Anthropology
Diaries of a Madman
and
A Twilight Landing
The last of which quickly led me to finding another great transformation tale:
Project: Sunflower

I'd thought, from their descriptions on that trope page, that these stories might be kind of interesting, despite the pony source material.
I was NOT expecting stories that rivalled my favorite books, especially since they all reached their goals through wildly different tones from each other. In truth, due to Diaries not focusing quite as much on transformation as I'd expected, there was only one significant commonality I could glean from them all: the source material itself.

So, with this idea that maybe something in the show was drawing these wonderfully introspective writers to it actively (as opposed to just happening to have fans that were of that sort), I looked it up on Netflix. I'm sure I've laughed harder at things before and since, but that's still a rather short list, especially if you don't count things whose sole purpose is to make the audience laugh. What had started as a cursory glance was now becoming a binge watch of all four of the currently available seasons.

And it came at a time I could really use such a show: my passion for making Let's Plays was on the decline, I had my appendix removed (the only non-dental surgery I've ever had), and my family (and me along with them) were going to move from Alaska to Hawaii. And while that last one might've been mitigated a bit by having moved several times in my life, only ONCE had I moved away from friends that I could remember, and THAT place was so terrible on all counts we moved back after just one year. The other times were all in the same city!

But these stories, both the official show and the many great fan works on this site, helped me through that time. I finished that binge watch shortly before Season 5 started up, and since then I would always watch each new episode at some point during that week, even though it took a while to realize I had the channel it was airing on for TV viewing.

How fitting, then, that this final episode, The Last Problem tackled in the entire series, was this exact same issue: moving away from close friends. It turned my urge to write this post from something I "thought I should do while I had the chance" to something more along the lines of "I need to do this for closure". I'm sorry to say that, if one "moon" truly equals one month as we've commonly theorized, that Twilight has handled the whole "keeping in touch" thing better than I have. Heh, for most of the series, I saw her as the one whose friendship studies were following after my own, but in this final moment, the situation seems to be the reverse. Though, granted, being the ruler of Equestria does have some advantages in that department. Still, perhaps I should take this final lesson to heart, and make more of an effort to call my dear friend more often.

As for MLP itself though... just because all official work has ceased, does NOT mean my love of this fandom will fade! Even now, after all this time, there seems to be not a day going by without heavily enjoying SOME sort of pony words! And I'm still finding completely new ones to love as well! At this point, even after the wellspring of creativity has finally dried up, I'll have WAY more than enough fantastic stories from this site to circulate between them for the rest of my life!

It's meant so much to me, I've long wanted to contribute to this process, actually produce something rather than just consume and commentate. Back when I was somewhat new, I even thought up an idea for a crossover with a game that surprisingly STILL doesn't have more than a handful of total fanfictions for it PERIOD... and I still have all my notes from that time. It may take a while before I feel the motivation to complete it, but I swear that, eventually, I WILL. Though I should determine whether to account for the last episode or not, such a time skip may be best to be skipped itself.

Until then, I will continue to enjoy the many offerings from others on this site, and I hope you'll do the same.
Gen 4 is dead, Long Live Gen 4!

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