10-Year Anniversary Blogamadoodle · 3:56pm Oct 11th, 2020
Hey, guys!
So I'm a day late and a dollar short on this, but I figure it's still a milestone worth blogging about since, you know, this was probably the single most influential thing in my life. Whether that's true or not, this fandom's been quite the influence on me as a person and my general outlook on life. I have much to thank for the people I've met and the things that I've learned from my time in it.
To that end, I figure it's appropriate to get a little nostalgic and share the very first pony thing that set me down this pastel path:
This was the first, followed by others:
There were many more videos and whatnot that I stumbled upon, but for the sake of not spamming you guys, these were the "main three" first pony things I made me go, "These are too well made to be making fun of the source material. People made these because they wanted to make them," and proceed to seek out the show.
So, as part of this fandom milestone, what was either the first pony thing you ever saw or what was the pony thing that made you go, "okay, I'll give it a shot"?
Constant low exposure to the memes/macros over a long period of time with responses of general indifference (memers gonna meme over the weirdest things), then someone posting a youtube vid of all of season 1 in the community I was in.
Purple nerdhorse did a good job of hooking me in.
Glad this blog popped up in my feed! Reading Rainbow was one of the first fanfics I really connected with that inspired me to give writing a shot. To your question, I have to shout out the actual OG of fimfiction, SleeplessBrony, and his story Romance Reports. Skimming through the thousand plus comments, I would wager I'm not alone!
I followed a bunch of web comics back then, in early 2011 almost every single one of them started mentioning MLP:FiM in the comments (some even drawing ponies right into the comic). Then one web comic posted this video alongside their weekly page.
Pinkazoid! TV Intro by BronyMike
And with the line "Check out Pinkamena, farming boring rocks." I had to know more.
I remember a letter to the editor from game informer in 2010 or 2011 where a brony wrote a good two paragraphs in defense of the show. This was back when everyone who watched the show knew how silly it was and just had fun with it, so the column was absolutely hilarious. I had a friend at the time who tried to sell me on the show that I sent it to and then didn't think much of it. Then later another friend and I got talking about how we both have friends that watch this my little pony cartoon and jokingly we decided to give it a shot with the intent to just make fun of it. We did do that... But 5 episodes in we realized we weren't just watching it to make fun of it anymore.
Fun fact, Transcendence was one of the first mlp fan fics I read back in the day. So yeah thanks for that.
Weirdly enough, these were some of the first pony videos I stumbled across as well. The Elder Scrolls one in particular was featured on Game Informer, where I found my first brony group.
First horsewords I ever read was The Thessalonica Legacy, found while I was searching for decent BattleTech fanfiction to read. I read it, and thoroughly enjoyed the BT parts of it, but wasn't too thrilled by these weird little horses from My Little Pony. (At the time, I'd no idea of the reboot, and what came to mind was the 1980's version.)
After that, I went to Naruto fanfiction and eventually burned through my first batch of decent fics, so on a whim I tried searching for Naruto/MLP crossovers... and actually found some! They were decent, enough so that I was at least willing to look at purely pony stories for something to read. And, to my surprise, I rather liked what I was reading. So much so, in fact, that I finally decided to get the first season on DVD. And I loved it! The episodes were fun, the music was pretty good, and the characters were relatable (though I initially didn't like Pinkie Pie very much). Got season 2's DVD set when that released, and then settled back to wait with everyone else to see if there'd be a fourth season. Spent that hiatus watching ponies, listening to pony music, looking for cool desktop-worthy art, and reading many horsewords.
Man, I was dimly aware of the show and its following for a bit and thought the whole think sounded amusing, but I really wish I could remember what finally tipped me over into actually watching the thing. I remember it took me a bit to get in the groove of watching something I was so far outside the target audience for, but no later than Trixie showing up was I addicted.
I did think to make a shelf of the fanfics that brought me from "brony" to "fanfic-reading brony". However, I actually had sort of a false start with that -- before getting into fanfic I was kind of dismissive of it and thought it would be a bridge too far for my own level of nerdiness, but at one point I was so desperate for more Daring Do that I just started reading the first fic featuring her on Equestria Daily. I recently remembered that and searched for it and... it's on FiMFic now! So soon I'll have to reread it and see how far I got last time.
I started by going on Equestria Daily for foreign language MLP comic translations. I slowly began going on the site for everything until that site introduced me to MLPForums, which is my main pony site now.
For me it was Jetfire's "It's A Dangerous Business Going Out Your Door," and...
...This.