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Author Topic: Hi Again!  (Read 1473 times)

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Offline Neon Sparkle

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Hi Again!
« on: May 14, 2021, 08:18:13 PM »
Hello all. It has been quite some time since I last posted here and every time I come back for a minute I say I'm gonna stick around then I end up posting a few times and disappear for a long time so I'm not making any promises but I am truly glad to be back on here again.

It's been a long long road for me over the last 5 years or so and a lot has changed in my life between the last time I was on here and now. Most of that change has been for the better but it took a few years of bad times, family problems, deaths, and toxic living situations before I got to where I am now. I am finally in a fairly stable position and have been able to live my life in peace mostly stress free aside from some dental issues which have started to crop up in the past few months and I am currently in the middle of having them taken care of.

To be honest, I haven't bought a My Little Pony thing in almost 3 years. I've been more into collecting Sci-Fi/Horror and Jurassic Park/Dinosaur related things as of late and I was seriously contemplating parting with my Pony collection or at least seriously downsizing what I have but as I've been unpacking and going through stuff that has been boxed up for the last 3 or 4 years I've started to realize just how much My Little Pony meant to me and I'm not so sure it's going to be as easy for me to part with a lot of this stuff as I thought it might be. I'm sure this might sound silly to some but as a 33 something Man as of this year, My Little Pony brought me the most joy and happiness I had in my life for the better part of a decade.

I am on the austism spectrum and 10 years ago I was barely out of my teens. I didn't have a particularly large pool of friends and I was going through a lot of anxiety/ stress related things and identity issues. I didn't really have any serious thoughts about what I wanted to do with my life at that point and I was heavily under the influence of my mother who had a large amount of control over my finances and how they were handled even though I was working and had 3 jobs by that point. It took years and years before I was finally able to gain complete control over my finances and I had a lot of bad experiences that ultimately pushed me to my breaking point when I decided that enough was enough. I now have total control over every aspect of my financial situation and am currently living on my own through an arrangement I have with my father and a friend of his who he has a renting agreement with.

I've always had a bit of a quirky taste when it comes to things that interest me and I've always had the mindset of a collector since I was a very small child. My interest in collecting MLP was mainly focused around G4 just because I was in the right place at the right time when it was coming out but my interest initially was sparked by G3 and MLP was exactly the sort of thing I would have eventually gotten into and liked regardless of whether the Brony thing ever happened or not. I love toys in general and all of the history behind them. It never mattered to me whether it was a line aimed at boys or girls. toys are toys to me. I also love bright, colorful things so Rainbow Brite, Care Bears, Strawberry Shortcake, all that kind of stuff appeals to me but I also have always liked shoot 'em up, smash and bash toys like G.I Joe, Ninja Turtles and Batman just as well.

I never really identified as a "Brony" during the height of the G4 era but I didn't mind being called one, I just didn't necessarily relate to a lot of what the community represented as far as being exclusively based around G4. I liked all gens, but since G4 was current at the time that is mostly what I collected. I also was very big into the show for at least the first few seasons because of it's unusually high quality for a show of it's target demographic, so much so that I bought every single DVD release that ever came out just so I could support the show and see it through to a complete series release which unfortunately didn't happen. I also didn't really participate in many Brony centric gatherings or attend any cons but I loved the atmosphere at the time and the whole idea that some random thing I liked had blown up into this huge phenomenon. I didn't really experience or hear about any of the negative stuff from the community like you sometimes hear about now, I just loved the fact that Pony was everywhere at the time. I love the show's messages, the animation style, the voice cast, the music, It was just an all around exceptional cartoon in my eyes and it helped me through a lot that was going on at the time. The only con I ever attended was MLP Fair 2012 which was right when the Brony thing was first blowing up so even though it was a general Pony con, there were a lot of Bronies there. One of my best friends was a vendor there and I bought a lot of really great stuff at that con.

Going through all of my Pony stuff recently has reminded me just how big of a part of my life this all was for a very long time. For like a 5 or 6 year span, the biggest joys in my life were going to Disney with my best friend who I used to work with and collecting My Little Pony. In the beginning when G4 had just started I got really deep into it really fast and started buying basically anything I could get a hold of. Eventually, I started to be more selective of what I really wanted but for the most part I got a lot of the new stuff that was coming out at the time until I ended up with a pretty sizeable collection that took up a good deal of my apartment. I lived in an efficiency type apartment building that was part of my parents property at the time. After my parents divorced I moved like 3 different times and most of my stuff has been packed away for the last 5 years. Going through it has been like a massive blast from the past for me just because I guess it's been long enough now for me to be nostalgic for the early days of G4 but also because I haven't actually looked at most of these toys since 2016. At one point the majority of my "fun money" would go to Ponies. Even though I was a 20 something year old guy at the time that was what made me the most happy, going to stores and looking for the latest Ponies. There was just something really euphoric to me about collecting colorful toy horses and I really miss that feeling a lot. I have a lot of really happy memories attached to these toys.

Anyway, sorry for my overlong reintroduction. I just really miss coming on this board and talking about Ponies. I do think I want to downsize a little but I don't think I could ever get rid of my collection entirely. Ideally if I ever have kids I would like to one day hand my stuff down to them.

Offline pinkkittywinks

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Re: Hi Again!
« Reply #1 on: May 15, 2021, 08:15:44 AM »
Welcome back :hug:

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Offline Artemesia's Garden

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Re: Hi Again!
« Reply #2 on: May 15, 2021, 08:19:25 AM »
Hello and welcome back! I didn't realise that there was never any full series release of FiM, wouldn't that be great? Actually if there was a box set of just the first two series I'd like that too because these are my favourites. I remember being so blown away by the vector and colours combined with those familiar motifs and loving it so much. I'm a G1 person mainly, and really hoping to unpack my collection when we finally move house in a month or two. I would find it really hard to part with any of my collection too! Look forward to seeing you around and sharing pony chat.
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Offline Loa

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Re: Hi Again!
« Reply #3 on: May 15, 2021, 02:13:48 PM »
Welcome home!
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Offline Neon Sparkle

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Re: Hi Again!
« Reply #4 on: May 15, 2021, 07:35:30 PM »
Hello and welcome back! I didn't realise that there was never any full series release of FiM, wouldn't that be great? Actually if there was a box set of just the first two series I'd like that too because these are my favourites. I remember being so blown away by the vector and colours combined with those familiar motifs and loving it so much. I'm a G1 person mainly, and really hoping to unpack my collection when we finally move house in a month or two. I would find it really hard to part with any of my collection too! Look forward to seeing you around and sharing pony chat.

Yeah I was really bummed. They made it to Season 7 on DVD and then abruptly stopped all FiM DVD releases all at once as soon as the G4 era was losing steam. They were so close to finishing the entire show! There used to be single disc compilations that were released every few months in between the season sets. As soon as the single discs stopped, I knew it was the end. I was hoping they would at least release seasons 8 and 9 some time after the show ended just to finish out the series at least.

Steven Universe and Gravity Falls even have complete box sets now which I never thought would happen before Pony because we were getting complete season releases fairly consistently for awhile where as the former 2 shows were only getting random piecemeal compilations for the longest time.
« Last Edit: May 15, 2021, 07:38:36 PM by Neon Sparkle »

Offline BlackCurtains

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Re: Hi Again!
« Reply #5 on: May 15, 2021, 08:54:07 PM »
I remember you :) Welcome back!
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Offline Griffin

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Re: Hi Again!
« Reply #6 on: May 16, 2021, 09:23:14 AM »
Welcome back! :happy:
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Offline Spinky69er

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Re: Hi Again!
« Reply #7 on: May 20, 2021, 10:46:13 PM »

Welcome back :party:

Offline Lilithdrff

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Re: Hi Again!
« Reply #8 on: May 22, 2021, 12:19:32 PM »
Welcome back!

 

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