About my story, I start to became a fan in 2017 (also half a year after became a Touhou fan), around when MLP Movie came out (but I didn’t watch it immediately, only later after watched many episodes, still, the movie influenced me to be even more curious about the show).
And I also download fan games, unfortunately only few good ones exist.
I know the show exists since 2011 but I wasn’t interested back then, was too busy with school/university stuffs, was neutral with the fandom, and never was the enemy to it.
I have a bit of a thing for things with main female cast, main female protagonists as small bonus points, even as a male myself, I really dislike conform to gender norms, because it’s sickening and mentally damaging. The fact that I have Aspergers further even pushes it, being a natural non-conformist. I still can enjoy things with male casts as long as interesting concept and the main male is not too OP, and not too sexist around it (which unfortunately often happens whenever main male casts).
If I have to choose between Transformers and MLP, MLP all the way by a huge margin.
I also tried a bit of Adventure Time and Regular Show around the time I started MLP as well, but they kinda sucked for me, cuz their male main casts there gotten old and boring for me and they just do usual boring typical male stuffs I saw to death when I was a little boy.
Things with male casts are alright as long as the shows’ concept is interesting, same goes for female casts.
So I would still choose Transformers over Littlest Pet Shop. Still #1 Hasbro trademark for me is MLP all the way.
However, most people around me in real life do not know I am into MLP, and my parents wouldn’t care anyway. Even to that extent, I remain a closet fan, thanks for me being an introvert, I am safe and never bullied from being a fan of it.
I managed to watched all the episodes eventually reached Season 9’s ending in 2019, the time I graduated as well. But after that and then 2020, the fandom shown more ill sides, I still remain a closet anonymous quiet fan. At least the mods here gotten better after that.
I start to do a bit of arts anonymously in here 2020 onwards.
G5 came out, only watched the first movie of it, the movie is good, but the series following it has mixed reviews making me hesitant to continue on, I ended up just enjoying fanarts of MLP and starts playing Ponytown game in late 2021, mostly to talk with other Touhou fans there (a huge sucker for the MLPxTouhou crossover tbh).
And back to “Smurfette Princicle”, that concept said there’s only one way to be a girl, while MLP and Touhou says otherwise : There are actually many ways to be a girl (MLP did it more explicitly, especially FiM/G4).
We have
Twilight –> Main Protagonist : The nerdy badass bookworm, the smart, the inventor
Pinkie –> The bard, the comic relief, the jester, the hyperactive
Dash –> The jock, the egotist, the athelete, the militarist, also the most badass
Applejack –> The straightforward, the industrious, the worker, the resouceful
These 4 ponies above have personalities common in other medias’ male casts, rare on females, but…
…then There’s Rarity and Fluttershy, both are the girliest of the 6, both of their personalities are often appears in other shows’ female casts :
Fluttershy –> The kind, the meek, the scardy, the innocent, the nature lover
(her personality when apply into males, often result in less masculine ones and rarer)
Rarity –> The diva, the fashionista, the drama queen, the love magnet
(rarest to be applied to males in other medias)
Yet, Faust managed to cleverly extract the personality archetype to fit in all the 6 females and made them appeal to many male fans.