Simon

It's been 6 months since I posted a blog. It's kind of strange looking back at my old blog post from April - it was all about how much BABSCon meant to me - about the new friendships I had formed there and realizing that my life was changing. Needless to say thinking my life was changing because of BABSCon was the understatement of the century. A few months back I moved in with the delightful Nervous Stitch and SFyr. It's honestly kind of hard to describe what the last 6 months of my life have been like. We've been friends for about a year but I connected so well with Stitch at BABSCon and the trip to Las Vegas our group took aftewards that I knew right away she was someone important to me. Not long after BABSCon I took a 4 day trip out to Texas to visit with her and SFyr - I never left. I extended it once because I wasn't feeling well - then again, and again. Not long into my stay we had a chat and I decided to move in. We all moved to a larger place together, and not long after we began dating. Everything moved so fast - I'm not one to jump into relationships like that, but something was different with Stitch. We connected in a way I never had connected with another human being. It was an incredible feeling - I was living in a new state with the love of my life and only a few months earlier I didn't even know what she looked like. And things have never stopped moving fast... About 2 weeks ago we got engaged. After BABSCon I felt that my life was changing for the better, but I had no idea how true that was. It's an incredible feeling really - a few years back I joined this forum and this fandom as an escape from a relationship that had turned sour, and because of my love for something as silly as a cartoon about colorful equines my entire future has changed for the better. It's hard to imagine what my life would be like if none of the silliness of the past few years had happened. From the bottom of my heart - thank you to this site, to its members, its staff - everybody. You all have had such a positive impact on my life - not just my close friends but every person on this site, every post, everything that's happened has shaped my life and brought me to where I am, and all I can do is give my eternal gratitude to the thousands of people on MLPF who have contributed to me being the happiest I ever have been. This place will always hold an important place in my heart. Now I just need to plan a wedding, what could go wrong?

Like others pointed out, the finale wasn't leaked. And really we haven't seen genuine episode "leaks" as that requires an extraordinary amount of backhanded work in Hasbro for an entire episode to be leaked early. Episodes that get released prior to their US showing have consistently been because Hasbro / the HUB / Discovery Family and the other corporations involved in release have had extremely poor planning and protection over their IP. We've seen issues with foreign release dates, episodes being programmed to release on the wrong day on sites like iTunes... that's not anybody's fault but Hasbro's. Now I totally agree I'd love to see Hasbro and the corporations behind MLP's release put in the care and effort to not have that happen, but the fandom unilaterally agreeing to close our eyes and pretend content released early doesn't exist is silly and infeasible. Few people are actively hoping or looking for episodes to get leaked, particularly a finale, for all the reasons you cited, but it's hard to say that the fandom's individual participants shouldn't participate in watching an episode that's released early for whatever reason. If they don't, they risk having the entire episode spoiled for them. Now I actually did wait for the US release date to watch it due to the quality (sure enough there were upload issues and I was with a group so we ended up watching the UK version anyway, but that's besides the point.) But while I would love for these types of things to not happen, I don't expect anybody to not watch an episode early - but ultimately making sure releases happen in a logical manner is on Hasbro, DHX, Discovery Family, and all the other networks and corporations shoulders, and the fandom will never have control over that aspect of our community.

Chipmunks art, must comment Adorable art, the forums need a little more Jeanette <3

Warnings must be acknowledged before users are able to post to make sure the user has actually read and has been made aware of the issue they were warned for. This isn't you admitting you were wrong, just you acknowledging that you read and received a warning. You are still able to file a dispute after acknowledging through the ticket system or at disputes@mlpforums.com..