AcceptablePariahdom

I have a question, but that's not the main thing of this post.

Since it's required: Given the opportunity, would you work on/write for the next Generation of MLP?

But like I said, that's not the crux of this post (which will be gigantic).

Mitch I mostly just want to say thank you.

MLP:FiM, and a lot of the people that it drew in, have quite literally saved my life. Twice.

I tried to kill myself in 2012, but I chickened out right at the last second. My friends knew something was up but I never really opened up to them. But a couple thought that a certain show might be right up my alley and I could certainly use some cheering up. They started me off with Season 2 because they (uncharitably imo) billed the pilot as "very meh." And I was hooked from Return of Harmony.

It was just such a.. not "kids show for girls" kind of thing, and John de Lancie freaking owned Discord. Like, the kind of meshing of actor and character on the level of RDJ and Iron Man owned. I'm sure writing for Q himself had to be a blast.

And I just devoured Season 2, and then Season 1 and... it was like the world had color again (I'm not pandering, you're pandering). I had something I could be unrestrainedly joyful about again, and it was enough to get the ball rolling. It sustained me through two long years of therapy.

But things got bad again a few years later. I lost all my grandparents and a young man who was like a little brother to me all in the span of 3 years. I had used myself up trying to hold my family together during that time. Eventually I had to build myself back up again. But everything was wrong. I had near constant anxiety for 2 years. I was getting to that place again.

When you are afraid to the point it almost feels like you're having a heart attack almost all of the time, eventually it starts to feel like there's only one way out.

I do a little fanfic writing and I think that was kind of my therapy, and it was all that kept me going for a long time. But I keep coming back to this show and how it makes me feel, and how the girls make me feel, and how I feel for them. And while I can't say it was the show, or FiMFic, or any one character that did it, there were a whole ton of factors, they definitely helped me with the realization that literally washed away my anxiety in one fell swoop.

I'm trans.

I don't just identify with Twilight because we're both giant book-nerds who desperately love their friends. I don't just identify with Rarity because I want to be perfect at my job and be generous with my friends. And on and on. But it really was Twilight that did it. Specifically early Twilight. Who is seriously so much like me it's actually terrifying sometimes (particularly the "books are my only friends" phase).

And I'm not being hyperbolic when I say I don't think I could have broken out of my decades long repression without these characters, without this show, and while it was a whole host of people (obviously) your hand in it was very important (think about Twilight in Luna Eclipsed).

I'm going to be corny, and I'm going to be pandering, and I don't care:

Thank you Mitch. I'm not there yet, but I hope one day to get my wings, thanks to people like you.