Don't worry, NSFW stuff is not allowed on /oat/.
As for your questions:
- Is the fandom still alive? Probably, but not so much here. The majority of this site are people who used to be really into the fandom but since the show has ended most of us have moved on, we just stay here because we formed friendships and we still like to talk to each other. The only discussion about the show itself happens on /pony/ but most people from /oat/ and /ef/ don't really go there much that I know of.
- Why this cartoon ? To be honest, it's because it was actually really well made. The animation was good, the dialog was good, the characters had depth. Overall it was a very quality show with an overall good message. Most people will claim it was for the memes, but I've been here since basically the beginning and I can tell you that a majority of the fandom actually genuinely liked the show. Mostly it was the fact that despite being a children's show it wasn't dumbed down. The dialog was clever and enjoyable and the characters weren't just vapid stereotypes. There was a lot of heart here during it's peak.
- Arent ponies furries? No. Furries are a completely different genre, though there is some overlap since ponies are technically animals. But overall no. Being part of the fandom didn't automatically make people furries. There were some furries in the fandom, obviously, but it wasn't a requirement and they weren't even the majority. People just genuinely enjoyed the show for what it was.
- Is the fandom as bad at it seems? On the whole no. There are obviously outliers and people that took things to an extreme, or got really cringy. You're going to get that in every fandom though, really. Overall though, the fandom wasn't like that. They were just people who really appreciated the effort and quality the show had, and were really able to relate to the characters due to them being well written.
- Is it really for grow-ups and young teens? Technically no. The show's core demographic was meant to be kids. The thing is that Lauren Faust, the person who was in charge of making the new show, wanted to make a show that didn't treat it's audience like idiots. She wanted to have characters that had real personalities and dealt with things in a somewhat mature (for a kid's show) manner, and they pulled it off surprisingly well. Obviously there are a lot of cheesy stereotypical kids show elements in the show itself, but that is primarily because Hasbro was still trying to sell toys at the end of the day, so they had to work with what corporate gave them. What they did with it was impressive though.
I'll share my personal experience when I first watched it. I found out about it on /co/ on 4chan. At first I thought it was a meme as well, so I decided to watch the first episode. When it was over I was sitting there thinking to myself, "Wait, this was actually enjoyable. I liked this. Was I supposed to like this? Did I miss something?" and I was very confused. I soon realized though that it wasn't really just a meme. The following came about simply because it was just a very well made show. The animation was very fluid and well done, the dialog wasn't cringy or childish, the characters had depth. Obviously it wasn't some masterpiece of the ages, but for what it was, it was pretty good.
- Whats whit all the varieties? Well, the show had a huge following, and with that you're going to get a lot of fan works. That's just the nature of the way fandoms work overall. Also when the show was in it's prime people started to fear that it would just suddenly get canceled, as is the nature of these types of kids shows, so there was a big push for fan-made content to try to keep the show alive in the event it was canceled. It no longer runs now, and a good chunk of the fandom has moved on, but there's still a lot of people that still are into it.
Overall though this site is more a relic of when the show was in it's prime. We're not super active in the fandom anymore as a whole. If you want any discussion about the show at all you more or less need to stick to /pony/ because you're not going to find any discussion of it here in /oat/ or /ef/. In fact we have discussed rebranding the site to remove the affiliation with the show since we barely do anything related to it anymore, but that's not something we've fully made a decision on yet.
Overall though, the rumors about the fandom being full of pedos and furries was highly exaggerated by those who didn't really 'get' the appeal. There were a few weirdos here and there, obviously because that's just the nature of fandoms, but the majority of the people that got involved in it did it purely because they genuinely just liked the show and the characters.
This post was edited by its author on .
