A retrospective from a retired fan.
Hello r/mylittlepony. Obviously I'm not a regular here, or anywhere in the pony community. I fell in love with the show in season 2 and I stopped watching in season 6. With the series drawing to a close, and Bronycon having its last hurrah next week, I just wanted to get some stuff off my chest and have a bit of a retrospective for a formative part of my youth. Hope that's okay.
I started watching My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic when I was 12 years old. I was an awkward kid, ill socialized after being in and out of public school for years because I was a frequent target of bullying. I was homeschooled by my grandmother, who was a sweet and intelligent woman but also a kindergarten teacher who wasn't really suited for my education. As such my education consisted of days on end alone at the house with my grandmother, reading books, playing video games, writing and sleeping.
My only forms of social interaction were the interactions I had online, and with my religious zeal in my youth I'd frequently say things to my more worldly friends that would cause them to reject me (rightly so, in my opinion) and even if I hadn't sabotaged myself not many people were willing to socialize with me online anyways due to my age.
I started seeing articles pop up online about MLP and how there was a community of older fans popping up around this kid show, and how they were saying it was actually good. I scoffed and said they had to be wrong. As was my habit at the time, I immersed myself in the content of My Little Pony like I had with religious texts, intent on picking the show part with cruel zeal.
Turns out I enjoyed the show quite a bit. After a month of denial I was perhaps not proud, but okay with calling myself a brony. I made an online persona and a fake Facebook account and started interacting with other bronies online, reading fanfiction and submitting my own (awful) work to Equestria Daily. Unlike the rest of the internet, here I had a welcome community that was happy to have me, because my mere presence was a sort of validation that we weren't all just crazy. At first I was still my usual asshole 'must be right' self but the pony community was incredibly forgiving of me.
Over time, the values espoused by the show and the social tolerance afforded me by my online brony friends started to rub off on me. I never would have thought it, and had you asked me I would have denied as much, but I sorely needed the 'obvious baby morality tales' that formed the underpinnings of My Little Pony, that basic shit on how not to be an asshole to other people that everyone thinks they know but don't truly understand. I stuck with the fandom until 2016 until I felt that I'd outgrown the community and the show, I didn't have time to watch or participate in the discussions and my identity wasn't wrapped up in ponies anymore.
I haven't watched the show since Season 6, but hearing that this season, Season 9 will be the final season, with the season nearing its end next month, as well as Bronycon holding its final convention next week, I can't help but feel a bit of sadness and nostalgia. My Little Pony may not be part of my identity in the sense that I am not an active fan, but it will forever hold a place in my heart as the one thing in my life I needed most, that taught me how to be good to others, and what made me the man I am, happily married and eager to do my job well and make others laugh.
While it does sadden me to know that the show and the convention that gave the fandom legitimacy in its fledgling days are both drawing to a close, I am glad to have experienced the show and I feel some comfort in knowing that although all good things come to an end, the show will live on in the hearts of those who enjoyed it and hopefully they'll be inspired as I have to make people smile and leave this world better than they found it.
EDIT:: Grammar and word clarity.
Submitted July 21, 2019 at 10:12PM by canon_w
via reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/mylittlepony/comments/cg8gmz/a_retrospective_from_a_retired_fan/?utm_source=ifttt
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