How did you get into the fandom? What's your brony story?

I'll start by sharing mine. When I was a little kid I was obsessed with horses, unicorns, etc. I watched the Midnight Castle movie every chance I got, along with The Magic Pony and Unico and anything else I could find with equines in it. I spent my own money to buy pony toys, I had a huge collection of them. (I still own a couple, but I had a tendency to "improve" them with nail polish and paint, or to have them be tortured during the vast epic quests I sent them on, that resulted in a lot of the toys being badly damaged.) So I've basically been into pony forever, but the second gen toys annoyed me, the teenage MLP show seemed really stupid (you guys used to save the world, why are you obsessing over such idiotic stuff now?) and I kind of drifted away from it as I got older.

I got back into pony before FiM, because I discovered the custom pony scene, and I got into doing stuff like this:

So since the customizers keep an eye on upcoming toys to see what would make interesting customs, my first exposure to FiM was that very first molded toy set, with the pink Celestia. I didn't know who she was, but I liked the sculpt. It was very elegant, and I had plans to make a Victorian character, possibly a vampire, from her, so I bought the set. It came with a little book that sort of had the story of the first two episodes in it, only with terrible art and kind of bad storytelling, so I thought it was completely lame. (Especially Pinkie Pie. I HATED Gen3 Pinkie Pie so much, and this Pinkie Pie looked just the same, a bubble-headed party idiot. Funnily enough Pinkie is probably my fav. pony now.)

Still, somebody told me the show was really good, so I finally watched the first two episodes, and it was much better than the stupid book. So I kept watching, until I got to Suited For Success. That was the one that hooked me. I sew for a living! I have heard every single one of the things Rarity's friends said about their dresses from customers. (And I still think it's hilarious that everyone remembers Rainbow Dash for the 20% cooler line, when that line was a complete and total dick move.) The episode was so completely true to my life that I just couldn't get over it. After that, there was no turning back!

What's your story?

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Mine originated also back when I was young. Me and my sister would play with the mlp toys and send them on quests to save the world and whatnot. So I was familiar with them, but I never even knew they were a tv show until 2012, when I was shopping at Spencer's and my girlfriend joked around asking me to buy her Rainbow Dash underwear.

I started watching the show in March of last year when my sister showed me the episode where Dash falls in love with reading. I thought it was pretty funny, so I jumped on it. My history with this sites, however, begins one year ago however, when I wanted to comment on a story, but realized I needed an account. So, I made one, gave my 2 cents on the story entitled Auntie Rarity (which I realize now is not of great quality, but it was my first on this site, so it's special ), and then dissapeared until September, when I decided to write a story, and I needed a place to upload it. It kinda sucks, and I've moved on to much more successful things now, but it helped me make some friends in the Spike community. Since then, I've become decently well known throughout the Spike groups, and I've gotten pretty deep into the fandom because of it.

Those are pretty much the events that got me into the fandom.

I watched "Teens react to" show on Youtube, since I'm subscribed to that, and one of the episodes was "Teens react to My Little Pony". They mentioned there are pre judgments against those that watch it. I have a phobia of having prejudgments and phobias (it's kind of the opposite of a phobia). So I really had no choice but to go and watch the show. I had to gain more information, before I would allow myself to form any kind of opinion toward the show. The rest is the same as with most bronies (got addicted to it after watching 1 episode).

I became a brony in July 2013. Talked on Omegle with brony and told him, that I wanted to do a comic about a nightmare that I had about ponies. I also mentioned my ‘small’ problem of sucking at drawing. He suggested that I write a story about it instead. I was like 'People write stories about a show? No way‽' And he linked me his story on this site (it was a clop story). Thinking in a concept of a story instead of a comic I scraped my nightmare idea and substituted it with something more adventures. A wave of inspiration hit me and I wrote all through the night until I finished a pilot chapter. I edited it for a week then published it. Got good reception for it. Decided to expand on it and write a novel.

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I had a student tell me about it and how there were a lot of people I knew of from Cartoon Network who were working on it. It was the middle of the second season, but I found the first two episodes of the series and watched them with my wife. I looked her dead in the eye after the first few seconds and said, "This is how your brain worked when you were five, wasn't it?" "Maybe..."

Anyway, that was a two-parter, so we had to watch the second part. I thought the whole thing was kinda slow-paced, which was weirdly refreshing for a kids' cartoon, and it didn't completely capture me like it did others. Growing up in the 80's and 90's, I still had bad memories of the theme song drilled into my head by society or whatever else you want to blame, so that was also going against it. At the end of the week, though, when we had caught up to the middle of season two, things had changed.

My wife and I love unpacking shows and FIM had some good morals and writing. Some of it better than a lot of so-called "adult" shows. Of course "Art of the Dress" was the one that really sunk it for me, being the artistic type. I couldn't believe they would write something so specific as a client not trusting your professional judgement and wanting something done differently. Just fantastic. Oh yeah, and things like "Winter Wrap-Up" and Flutterguy were some things that helped sell it.

Now, I was very anti-fanfic for over a decade, but that day I saw a link for Fallout: Equestria, I knew I had to read it. It was either going to be miraculously bad or at least good in a "I can't believe this is a thing" way. After five or six chapters of me laughing because of the absolutely ludicrous juxtaposition of source material, I not only got sucked in, but realized the genius in combining the two, considering subverting "white picket fence" Americana was a major theme in the Fallout games.

Even though it can occasionally get out of hand and suck time away from things that are truly important, I'm glad I got sucked in. Met a lot of good friends and experiencing the fandom started a change in me that shook a lot of my core beliefs. Good times.

Well, it all started at some point in 2011 in the gap between Season 1 and Season 2. My roommate made an offhanded comment once about how the show was popular with internet weirdos and he thought he might want to watch it. So I did what any good friend would do.

I mocked him and his masculinity.

(Edit: In retrospect it looks like it was only a couple weeks before Season 2 started. I found some early posts by me)

The next day, however, since I do like cartoons and I generally just give my roommate shit as a matter of course, I went and looked up some episodes on YouTube. I proceeded to marathon the entire first season. I love cartoons, and this was a good cartoon. After that my only real interaction with Pony fandom was on the Pony thread on the That Guy With the Glasses forums.

Later that year I found FIMfiction randomly, I don't remember how, but I do remember that it was this fic here. I followed this fic for a while 'til it stopped updating. Eventually, when I was suffering from World of Warcraft ennui in late December of 2012, I started dicking around on FIMfic some more, 'cuz I missed fanfic a bit and I was enjoying ponies. I read a couple stories and then in early January I got sick of not being able to save anything except by bookmarking, and I made myself an account.

And well, here I am. Now I'm in Skype chats and shit. And dicking around in a group dedicated to old, crotchety bastards semiobsessed with a little kids cartoon about horsies.

Neeeeeeerds!

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It started out with the Cheezburger network. On weekends, I work with developmentally disabled adults, and I was working with a particularly challenging individual. To take a break, I pulled up one of their sites (might have been Very Demotivational), and they had a link to the pony page.

Pastel pony pictures were a nice diversion, and I found myself going there more and more often. Eventually, i checked out the Friendship Express DVD from the library, watched that . . . and was totally hooked.

Got into fanfiction between seasons 2 and 3--I knew it was a thing, but I'd never read fanfiction of any type before. Googled various top-ten lists, sorted through them, and started reading. Eventually, found this website. By August, I realized that I could probably write my own fanfics, and so I started practicing. In November, I made an account and began publishing stories.

And that's how Equestria was made.

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I quit my factory job, ending up with far more time than I was used to. I ended up spending that time watching anime series with my twin brother/roomate in single sittings. This quickly became a favored past-time, and when a bunch of web-comic fanatics convinced him to watch it, I was pretty much dragged into it.

I was skeptical at first, very skeptical. It took a lot of coaxing, and when I finally gave in, I did so with the stipulation that I would be wasted while watching it. It helps that the first episode that saw, was an adventure-themed episode. It also helps that instead of being sickeningly cutsy/nice/generically girly, the characters actually have very unique and interesting personalities.

I think one of my first, short-lived reactions, was, "Well, at least they aren't singing."

When I talk to other fanfic writers about Twilight Sparkle, many picture, just by the name along, a sickenly happy, goody-goody fairy that's incapable of getting angry, or showing any sort of depth. People imagine a bunch of ponies having tea and complimenting each other's manes. With the sort of cartoons that have been historically aimed at the demographic, it's kind of hard to blame them. At the very least, I was expecting something that was about as intolerable as the most obnoxious, poorly-dubbed shonen anime. (sorry, Yu-Gi-Oh fans.)

This is a show that I never thought I'd be interested in, but I supposed that I've been shedding my 'overly-macho' tendencies since my teen years. I think the first step was admitting to my action-gamer friends that I was into Final Fantasy games. Somewhere along the line, I became interested in gooey romantic subplots, pixar movies, and Kingdom Hearts. Whereas I was once repulsed by the thought of a game with so many Disney characters, I feel that I've now come full circle with my childhood.

As for fanfiction, I was relatively new to that as well. I had been writing an anime fanfic and chatting with fanficers for a few months before I started watching MLP. In fact, I remember someone talking about the possibility between a battle between ponies and transformers, and jokingly writing a scenario where the pony corpses piled up . . . not realizing that some of the Mane Six were a little more bad-ass than Care Bears.

I never thought about writing or reading MLP fics, and I sure as hell never thought about shipping them, but it was inevitable. I was already hopelessly obsessed with anime rom-coms, and I have a habit of obsessing about, and over-analyzing anything that I'm currently into. This pretty much meant that I became intimately familiar with the character, and becoming an actual fan of the show, sort of snuck up on me.

All it took was for my brother to pitch a few Twilight/Pinkie ideas, and talk of Twilight stressing over the presence of a party cannon at their wedding. Opposites/unlikely pairs have always been my favorite.

I still prefer to watch the show drunk. I don't need to anymore, but the combination makes for a fun day off.