JustGaby

Finally, after a week of VERY heavy exams and their resulting sequels,  I decided to publish this, Why so far ?, Well, first I had planned to publish it on April 30, and in fact the month flew by, when I realized it was already May and I had not published this, my time was still consumed by the school, it was not until this week a couple of days ago that I had the opportunity to return, but I preferred to leave it until today, and it also has a reason , May 12 is a somewhat symbolic day, to start it seems a cool day, and as a series of reasons made this day I liked, but that's history for another day ... But regardless of how much I like this day, until just a few months ago, I believed that this was the day I finally turned brony! It seemed like a logical date, then I took a good look at the exact day and discovered that it had been a couple of months before.

Another thing, what follows is a fairly long text, if you are not someone who likes things so you are not forced to read it, but this is very important for me and I wanted to share it

No more detours here is.

Before starting, thanks to all those who were interested in reading my story, it really makes me happy that

How I became a brony (and my story since then).

Well, we will start at the beginning, since I have memory I have liked the Super Mario games, I can say that I consider myself a fan, but I continue, I do not know at what age I played my first videogame, but as I remember and I am almost 100% sure that it was in a Game Boy, that got a cousin, he gave it to another cousin, it was inherited by my sister and then it ended up in my hands, with a single game; "Donkey Kong", remake of the arcade game of 1980.

As for 2004 I get a SNES from the cousin who inherited the GB from my sister, It had several games, but the one that most excited me was the Super Mario World, what followed after was what was expected, it consolidated as my favorite game easily, and that's the way it was until years ago, but that's also another story.

2006, a PS2 and many games, it goes without saying that it was my favourite console, but one of the games It had was a SNES emulator, where ironically I played only Mario games even having the whole catalogue of this console xD

We jump to 2010, finally I get a PC and I know what the internet is, (or rather I start to get into this world) in itself occupied for school research, play flash games, watch videos on YouTube, or download images from things that I like, and so what has been the focus of this story to this point prevails, images of Yoshi that I discovered in the SMW and I really liked its design, funny videos of Mario that I found on YouTube, I loved them.

And at last, 2013, this is where the interesting thing begins, I was already following some YouTube channels, of several things, like vlogs, which was what I saw most at that time here in my country, and of course parodies, gameplays or videos in general they could not miss either, "Las estupideces de Mario" (if someone who speaks Spanish and English knows how to translate that without sounding very vulgar I would appreciate it) was a series of videos that made me laugh a lot for a couple of years, and that for January-February of 2013 it occurred to me to go back to look for ... nostalgia? Nostalgia is something that is more common in my life than I thought, but I'm going around the bush. In this couple of months, I found Mario 64 bloopers, basically funny videos but now of SM64 (the previous ones were from SMW) and obviously in Spanish, at that time knowing English was an impossible idea, that ironic.

Gameplays, plus the channels that I already knew, plus this one that I had just discovered "Spilight756" (I think you know where this is going), and finally on February 13th I created a Gmail account, but it was not until March 4 that I created a channel on YouTube, immediately subscribing to the channels I knew and others that I discovered over time. The channel mentioned above was something new for me, it was like seeing a renewed formula, I really enjoyed it.

March, 2013, I'm not sure if it was 15 or 18, it was an afternoon after school, I had just finished the homework and I decided to go to YouTube, one of the videos I liked about that channel appeared at my beginning, I decided to see it again, in the middle of this something happened, a "battle", obviously the video was comedy, the protagonist defeated his enemy by singing the lyrics of the opening of a series ... for little girls? I do not know what it was, but I was curious to find that letter about "that" series, "My Little Pony", of course on YouTube, and instead of putting something like "My Little Pony opening" or something similar in the search engine I just put the name of the series.

Let's pause at this point, my idea about My Little Pony was a series rather like the Care Bears, s specifically the series of the early 2000s / End of the 90s, a boring series, simple and flat characters, rainbows, colors and love oversaturating the screen everywhere, you know, that what is always thought about a series for little girls.

Continuing. With that search I entered the first video that was in Latin Spanish (that's the dubbing of, well, Latin America), back then there were still full chapters on YouTube, this was one of those. The video begins to load, there is a plane in the sky, from the distance a pony with wings approaches with great speed, keeps flying and meets an owl, another couple of things happen and it is discovered that it was a dream, I know for what I was going, I went ahead a few minutes more the video to see if I found that opening sequence, I saw a few minutes and again, and a few more times, I advanced almost at the end with the hope of finding the opening but nothing, without noticing I had seen almost the whole chapter, so I went back to the beginning to see it full expecting to find the opening, only to realize that it was right after where I had jumped the video for the first time.

To tell you the truth and as I mentioned above, the series was nothing like I expected, the episode really entertained me, and well, to see how a channel that I followed (that was of a person older than me) liked a series that It was not bad at all it was the last impulse. I looked for the first chapter, and the first one is linked to the second, and with those first impressions I set out to see one more chapter that day, the series caught me, its animation, its characters, that is always praised to the series, not It is worthwhile mentioning it, all of us here know why we like it and what made us love it and that we created so many things, including this space in which we are, dedicated to the series that we like so much and that in one way or another, many have marked a before and after in their life, including me.

Needless to say, during the following days I continued to see the chapters in my free time and looking over the series in wikis and forums (obviously in Spanish (again xD)) that's how I found out about the fandom, and the truth is that the time is relative, I do not know the exact date in which I finally admitted that I was a brony but it was at the end of March/beginning of April, it cost me something to admit, I never thought that a series that was for girls I would like, is that moral dilemma the one that many of us passed before we realized that the one we liked was not a bad thing or that it changed our way of being for the worse.

Brony, a fan of My Little Pony, I was sure of that, without hesitation, but it was a secret for me, even admitting that I was one, I did not have enough courage to externalize it, to avoid the obvious teasing and bullying in the school (I already suffered in a somewhat small way to say something) that there was enough in mine, or that they were going to think about me, what did they think was gay or something like that?

Months passed, I continued watching the series, trailer / teaser of Equestria Girls, Twilight alicorn, the fandom went crazy with this, and looking I realized that they had already gone through problems like the incident with Derpy or the very existence of the clop (which never called my attention and simply ignored, was not to my liking). Continue to see everything there is and to have the series for the rest of the year, including comics, videos and the wonderful music that is in the fandom.

2014, the fourth season arrives and also EG2, everything I said up there that I discovered thanks to the series was still something personal, and well, I wanted a quiet life, by the middle of that year I began to focus on other things unconsciously, just for the fear of being caught watching those ponies that I liked. I was distancing myself from the series, from something I liked, just to avoid problems in my life, to avoid taking care of myself, to keep that exhausted me, by April 2015 I had stopped seeing it and had also distanced myself from everything related to it.

December, 2015, I had been more than 4 months in my first semester of high school, I had not realized that people were much more tolerant, and the inevitable happened, I decided to watch the series from the beginning, the holidays were at around the corner so I took the opportunity to see everything again with a new approach, this time I was decided, I would make it public, not at that moment, not had a planned date, but it would be soon.

Start 2016 with everything, I started to enter groups with my Facebook (which I would never have dared to do in 2013), I follow pages, I see videos, and on May 12 (which I considered my third anniversary) I put a photo profile of Pinkie Pie on WhatsApp, many as expected, they realized, I felt very good after that, I could finally show my taste for this great series to others, it was not something I had to hide. I followed this path until now and I don’t regret, I'm better than ever and I've discovered good things and incredible people including those in these forums.

The how I discovered the MLP Forums is a simpler story, it was an early morning in October, 2017, I wanted to look for an image of Pinkie Pie to have it in good quality, Derpibooru has always been my ally in this aspect, but I didn’t know how to look for it, used the reliable Google, the first image that appeared seemed good, so I went to download, was a forum with the title "Pinkie Pie Fan Club", and I as a fan of this character (how I became a fan of Pinkie is also anooother history) had to join, I made my account at that moment, and the rest is history.

If you ask, the image was this, and at that time I didn't even know that there was a term in English for that, and all in one small word "shrug".