Well, here’s a latecomer to this thread.
I actually checked out MLP:FiM the night this thread was first posted. I’ll admit, I had a deeply ingrained aversion to doing so (I consider myselfóand strive to beóan open-minded person, but I had ancient memories of the original series filed away next to Barney in the “stuff I saw in my youth that I’d rather forget” section of my brain
), and in fact I’m not sure I would have bothered looking further into this show if I hadn’t seen this post by DarkHououmon:
One of my favorite characters is Rarity. She is obsessed with fashion and is a designer herself. But she isn't an airhead or self-centered. She is actually quite generous and does care about her friends. In the second episode, she cuts off her own tail and puts it on a sea serpent (whose mustache was hacked off) so he would feel better.
There was something about the prospect of seeing a unicorn giving a sea serpent a prosthetic mustache that I couldn’t resist.
My interest was further piqued by the various mythological creatures in the videos AvestheForumFox posted. Subsequently I tried to find out more about the episodes (namely, which ones those creatures appeared in), and sometime shortly after midnight on March 8, 2011, I watched the pilot on YouTube, followed by a few other episodes.
I can’t really remember my initial thoughts of the first episodes I saw; I think I considered it a well-made show, but, much like the first time I watched
The Land Before Time after years of ambivalence to the series, it took time for my fandom of MLP to develop. As with LBT, I don’t know when I realized that I was obsessed with the show. It might have been around the time I discovered Equestria Daily, and started collecting and viewing MLP fanart and fanfiction in earnest. One of the earliest fanart pieces I saw (which to this day remains one of my favorites) is
this comic featuring a ponies and MythBusters crossover.
I don’t have a favorite pony (or a favorite character, for that matter). I find that I identify with all of the mane six, and like the LBT gang, I honestly can’t choose one over the others. I suppose I do have an especially pronounced fondness for Pinkie Pie, and whenever she’s onscreen, you can count on me being happy.
(Still, I refuse to pick favorites! -_-) The humor of this show is one of the things I enjoy most about it; really, any of the characters can crack me up, but Pinkie is especially good at it.
And don’t get me started on Discord. He pretty much instantly became one of my all-time favorite antagonists.
Also, the show made me very happy last week with its portrayal of a bat in "May the Best Pet Win".
Not only was the bat treated as cute, non-scary to the characters, and desirable as a pet (even though batsóand, actually, most of the other animals in that episodeóare not recommended as real-life pets), but it actually made it to the final round of the competition (the only flyer that wasn’t a bird of prey), and had the adjective “awesome”
directly applied to it more than once.
Someone on the MLP team respects bats!
In closing, thank you, Aves and DarkHououmon, for introducing this show to me!
