Clod

Ah, seems I missed my 10 year anniversary. So much has been going on that I forgot.

...10 years.

I wonder how the fandom is doing these days? Obviously it's not as big as it once was, but I'd like to see it stay strong.

It's quite likely to be around my 11th anniversary of actually starting to watch FiM. I never thought to mark the date of course, so it's hard to be sure, but I vaguely remember that I started in February of 2013. I spent months being only an observer of the fandom, watching fan videos and reading the occasional fanfic. I saw videos of conventions, mostly BronyCon, that I desperately wanted to go to. It's unfortunate that the conventions have become scarce and my desire to go scarcer by the time I had the means to do so. Sorry, teen me, you never got the BronyCon trip you wanted.

Eventually I had to find a place I could actually talk to people about it. I'd learned of the concept of being a "closet brony" and went looking to see how other people would approach the topic with their families, to hopefully gain the confidence to be able to start getting MLP merch. I found a topic on this site about it, and made my first post. I find it embarrassing now, but who doesn't find their internet posts from their early teens to be embarrassing? I never properly told them, by the way. It seems they passively found out? I ended up with a MLP cup. That's about it.

This place was essentially my internet home for a while. It was probably late 2015 where I started fading, but I could never truly let go. I hold onto those memories more fondly than any real home life I've had so far. Season 5 was still interesting to me, so I stuck around during that. By season 6 I had mostly lost interest in the show and started feeling like everyone I knew had left here. I struggled to find new friends and faded from the forums.

I can still never forget these forums, this fandom. I find myself constantly drawn back to the familiar songs and videos from my time here. I still get Winter Wrap-Up and Discord stuck in my head constantly. I still love coming back and seeing the familiar faces around the site.

I may not be around anymore really, but I will always quietly cheer on the fandom from the side.

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