Introductions

   My name is Moonlight Ballad.

   Getting right to the point. I am a Brony.
This blog shall serve as a mirror of my thoughts and feelings, on everything MLP:FiM related, since I created the account for its soul purpose in the first place.  I'm going to be doing a lot of backtracking, for a while, as I've been part of the show's fandom since about June of 2011 and a lot has happened before and since that time.

   Now, I don't exactly have the greatest talent for writing, or lots of things for that matter, but I'll try to keep this as coherent as I can.  Most of the time I plan to write these blogs as a perspective of my ponysona.  I don't know what the protocol is to separate two parts of the whole, but I suppose to keep it from getting too crazy, I will note (thoughts from the writer) usually when I am making points directly relating to Moonlight from my human point of view.  For purpose of this introduction, you may consider this entry to be in that format.  This has the potential to be greatly confusing, mostly to myself and I'm sure I will be amused by it at some point.

   I'll cover a brief history of my integration into the herd and my eventual "birth".   It's not some amazing epic tale of ponies and friendship.  I admit, I feel a bit envious at some other stories I've read of this kind.  My introduction to Friendship is Magic came from pure curiosity.  I'd been a random lurker on various image sites, KYM, Memebase, and such, and as the phenomenon was already in full swing, I began to encounter a ton of pony-related memes and images.  Naturally, I found them to both unusual and intriguing at the same time.  "What on earth is all this pony stuff??"  
   Now, mind you, I grew up in the '80s.  I was fully exposed to all the amazing animated classics that we now look back fondly to... those of us that were around then, I mean.  Transformers, GI Joe, Voltron, and a pile of other random few-year-lived animated series.  I even watched SheRa and Gem (I know, right...?)  I never really got into the (we'll call them) super girly cartoons, like Strawberry Shortcake or My Little Pony.  It just wasn't my thing.  I know this is cliché, but if somebody had told me then, that I'd fall head over heels for series about My Little Ponies, I'd think they were freaking crazy!  Yet, here I am.

   So, what exactly happened?!  How did a 35-year old man suddenly develop an extreme d'aww complex for these little pastel equines?  Lets see... what were the usual answers?  "It's great animation."  No, I don't think I ever judged how much I like a show by how well it was animated, and I watched some random stuff.  "It's made by Lauren Faust, that makes it awesome by default."  Well, nothing personal to Ms. Faust, but I've never really watched any of her stuff before this.  I saw a few episodes of PPG but again, I just didn't really get a feel for it.  Some of my friends loved it.  "It teaches great lessons. / It has content that even adults can enjoy."  OK these are really good things, but they still wouldn't be a reason for me to just completely fall for something like this.  So, what then?  Well, as I said earlier, pure curiosity.  Seeing this material constantly popping up on every corner of the web, I finally paused on the KYM article on Friendship is Magic.  They had episode links up, and to quote Rarity "Time to see what all the fuss is about."  So I clicked on a link, that fateful link... 

First episode:  "Bridle Gossip"

   I kicked back at my desk, half curious, half disbelieving what I was doing.  My wife was out of town on vacation so I had plenty of time to just soak it all in, unimpeded.  As I recall, I made a lot of odd faces (mostly at Pinkie Pie) I chuckled a lot to myself, and by the time it was over... I was smiling (that's not normal!!).  "That was pretty entertaining! Well... this is interesting, but I really don't know what's going on here, or much about these characters.  I guess I'll start back at the beginning."  4 or 5 episodes later, I was hooked!  "WAIT A MINUTE!  I'm hooked on MY LITTLE PONY!  WHAT???"  Ok there had to be some explanation for this.  What is it about this show that made it so appealing to me?  I spent a long time trying to come up with some reasonable answer to that question.  In the end, what I came up with, was a strange deviation from what normally should have entertained me.  Purity, innocence, and emotion, mixed with likable characters with fun personalities, and a sort of simple honesty in its presentation.  I think what gave (still gives) the show its appeal to me was its radical difference from what was normal out there anymore.  There was this refreshing sort of positive energy that it projected, and I liked it, a lot.

   This, of course is only the first piece of the whole.  Inevitably, I would come to find the fan base.

   Like I said earlier, by the time I started getting into FiM, the fandom was becoming explosive all across the web.  I'd watch two or three episodes a night and began to want even more from it.  I don't actually remember when it began, but eventually, I started randomly searching for blogs and image sites with Pony stuff in them.  It wasn't really hard to find them.  I bounced from site to site for a couple weeks, and eventually all my roads led me to Rome!... no wait.  All my searches invariably led me to Equestria Daily.  Here, I found home!  Everything I could want from FiM all in one unified location, was right at my fingertips.

   Now I know I'll be racked and bled by some of the older elitist fans for not being "original or oldschool or coming from forchan or whatever other places first started all of this", but I don't care.  This is where my story begins, not theirs.  I lurked for a few weeks, usually just going on the site once or twice a day for my daily fix.  Eventually, I started reading fanfic, something else I never thought I'd do, and collecting artwork.  This produced an interesting side effect.  I began to get a strong emotional attachment to all the things I was experiencing.  I would laugh and cry,  reading stories (WHAT??).  Something pony would slip into the occasional dream.  I would start running the music in my head, not just the songs, but the orchestral scores of whole chunks of episodes.  Now, I'm the kind of guy that can get really choked up by a powerful piece of music, so needless to say, the impact was starting to hit home.  I finally ponied up and made myself a posting account.  SingForTheMoon.  I love music, and I already had a huge thing for Princess Luna (again... WHAT???)  The naming process began.  I was already way behind on this front.  A lot of the names I had come up with, had already been created by older fans.  It had to be something with darkness and music involved.  After trial and error, I came up with something that I liked.

Moonlight Ballad, Bard of Equestria

   My ponysona was born.  It suited me well, I think.  Eventually when I designed my own cutie mark it marked a final piece of my transformation.  From that day forward, I had no hesitation telling people that I am proud to be part of this amazing community known as Bronies.  My friends and my brothers took it weirdly, but kindly.  My wife thought I was odd, but even she eventually started watching episodes with me.  It's strange that such a thing could make a person so open-minded and emotionally outreaching.  I am so overwhelmed by all the stories, art, music and genuinely loving sense of community instilled by these fans.  It is truly a phenomenon; a shining beacon in defiance of the sludge that encompasses so much of our entertainment and culture these days.  I still think that's why it is so endearing to me.  It has this purity, that has truly been lacking.  It makes me cry sometimes, it makes me feel compassion, it makes me laugh, it makes me imagine and revives a creative flame me I thought may have been extinguished, but mostly it makes me smile again.