Yay! Woo!
I guess I'll stick around after all. When Green Gandalf said he'd read two random pages from our old thread to get an unbiased opinion I went to those pages too and got hit by a big wave of good ol' nostalgia.
After all, THIS was my first real interaction with likeminded pony-fans. I had become part of the herd mere weeks before that, had watched all episodes up to that date (and probably lost lots of sleep over that), had started watching the new eps in livestreams when they aired (it was around the time "hearth warming's eve" aired around christmas 2011. I remember I actually sort of teared up a little towards the end of that one, if I'm totally honest (and I shall be just that). I dunno, it just got to me at the time.
I delved head-first into fan-made content, totally overwhelmed by the tons and tons of amazing fanart, music/remixes by the fans and fan-fics. Such an inspiring, encouraging environment. I'm sure other fandoms are like this too, but it felt pretty darn special. I mean, really, before that, who'd 've thought this would exist?! And that we are a part of this? I surely didn't.
Then, while reading a certain awesome fanfic I thought "Hey, I know that author's nickname from somewhere..." and thus returned to this forum, to find the now locked thread. The rest is history. I met CoffeeGrunt, TheComet, swissolo, Cormorant5, Quik, PAGAN, Mr. handy, Happy Cheesecake, Zachadoodle aaaaand I probably forgot someone important. Anyways. Here I started drawing terrible things, I think later they got a little less terrible

but yeah...
And I think at the time I really desperately needed that, just a little bit of escape from my at-the-time not-so-great life (let's just say a few things had gone very wrong >.< ) and just a place outside of everything one would ever consider normal. Adolescent/Adult guys talking/fangirling about a TV show about magical colorful ponies for little girls? And from America, Britain, Sweden, Russia, Switzerland and Germany no less? Yeah, not what I'd consider
normal, or
sane for that matter. Doesn't matter though! We don't harass or hurt anyone, we shall promise to stay inside the AUP and noone needs to read this if they don't want to.
Also, I haven't drawn much of anything since half a year. I really wanna get back into that. I also haven't watched a lot of pony lately. Started over with the two pilot episodes of season one and will go on from there; Season four starts on Nov. 23rd. I look forward to that.
Sooooo... I love all of the guys I mentioned above, really I do. <3
You rock.
It hurt to see the old thread die like that. But we should not discuss that here. You guys are just sorta special to me because I know you nearly as long as I happen to like MLP:FiM.
I have found a lot of local friends through the german forum (which is currently being DDoS'd, incidentally

) but I joined there a few month after I came here.
(Also, for what it's worth (probably not much) my first post in the old thread is
here.)
And here we are! We have a fresh start! Let's make this thread 20% cooler, everypony!
(And also make everyone else shake their heads in disbelief :3)