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my little pony was the third special interest i ever had, coming in at the prime age of 6, and i don't think it will stop being one. i've come back into the fandom within the past two years and it's become so very obvious that i never should've left to begin with! i missed these silly ponies...

i watched the premiere of the show, recommended to me by my older sister because it was coming out 17 days before my 6th birthday, and was IMMEDIATELY hooked. it being something that was aimed at both adults and kids gave it the liberty to have higher quality plots and character development than most kids shows (hindered heavily by hasbro's preference for Making A Shitton Of Money Off Of Children) and that made it something that instantly clicked with my autistic little boy self. ever since i have been obsessed with cute ponies and the many ways that their character profiles can be played with via storytelling!

it's really cheesy, but i can with honesty say this show got me into a LOT of the things that make me who i am, and kickstarted several of my other long time special interests. i wouldn't be an artist, a whovian, a psychology nerd, or as caring of a person as i am now without having watched my little pony as a wee boy. serious about that last one, if you've ever asked me for advice or support and then compared what i said to literally any episode of my little pony, you'd see the subconscious resemblance, it ingrained a lot into me when i was younger!!! i also wouldn't be into gore or horror but that's the fandom's fault, and may have eventually come with being an avid goosebumps reader and/or from my repeated pre-kindergarten exposure to horror movies. or maybe even the psychosis. um

REGARDLESS. i love ponies. i really really love ponies.

MY FAVOURITE PONY... is debatable. it's a toss-up between fluttershy, ditzy doo and the doctor. maybe rainbow dash or twilight if i wanna lie to myself. if i wanna talk about characterization as a whole, it's princess celestia. characters i relate to the most, it's princess luna. and if we wanna talk overall ....... discord. discord's my favourite.

and on that note, i'm a fluttercord TRUTHER. have been since i was little. not in the sense i think it's the canon otp, but because it's my otp. couldn't care less whether it was canon or not. (even though it is). (git gud dislestia). something about a beautiful girl and her fucked up and boygirlthingfriend that gets on its knees for her, only for her, if it means he gets even a taste of her angelic kindness for the rest of his life. i'm a sucker for the obedient lion and the sickeningly sweet lion tamer dynamic in ANY context but the way it works in fluttercord is soooo much fun to play with in fanworks

and i like that discord betrays her, too. the way the villains in this show progress in regards to their reformation is top notch. when they heard fans get upset at the children's cartoon route on villain reformation they seem to have cranked up the characterization of good vs. evil a crazy fucking amount. discord's is especially intoxicating to me, the way he does everything to help in what he considers helpful. the way it happened twice. he's perfect to me, seriously. i love discord so fucking much. more reformed villains should fuck up as bad as discord did. and they should also do that twice. OHHHH AND THE WAY HE THOUGHT TO TRY AND TEACH FRIENDSHIP TO THE VILLAINS! THE WAY IT ALMOST WORKED! DISCORD BABY YOU TRIED SO HARD!!!!!! ahhhhhh!!!!!!!!!! i really wish the fandom had given him more slack for his fuck-ups...

there's a lot of things i wish the fandom did better (and to be fair, i have equal gripes with the show itself, and a million and one gripes against hasbro). leaving room in most fandoms for children is important, but especially in ones where for the entirety of its existence the audience has been children - fim being made to allow adults to enjoy it doesn't make it adult-only. far from it. as a kid i saw a lot of things i shouldn't have because a majority of the fandom said "fuck those kids!" and let people like me grow up having seen fuckin' horse porn and a bunch of cartoon organs. i was lucky to have only read cheerilee's garden now, at 19, and not as an elementary schooler, but i was not so lucky as to have witnessed youtube playthroughs of banned from equestria. do not look up either of those things if you don't know what they are. i may be able to appreciate misterdavey content as an adult, but i can at the same time say his idea of trolling including showing my child self content of cute ponies dying makes me appreciate hasbro stepping in, just this once.

appreciate that content i do. horror combined with cute things is sort of my favourite combination. it grew on me post-pony fanaticism when i was 11 and watched madoka magica for the first time. i'm not gonna blabber about that anime, but it let me realize that scary things happening to cute girls can be done for more than just shock value - it can have a reason to be done, it can be interesting, it can be good. that shock value can be combined with good storytelling to make something beautiful. that knowledge in mind made me look deeper into the creepycute that the internet has to offer, and while most of it is pure boring shock value, there exist gems.

i mentioned cheerilee's garden with distaste earlier. it does have its flaws (cough)(thesequel)(cough), but [thefirstchapter] is perhaps the best written piece of mlp fanfiction i have ever read. i genuinely think it does what it sought out to do in a masterful way. it puts a vivid picture in your mind the entire way through even in the mundane non-gore scenes. besides the glaring fact cheerilee's motivation isn't all that great, i can't believe it was written based off of injokes. and snails' death was my favourite. i'd literally do anything for a professionally written and published story that was even half as good as cheerilee's garden.