@MidnightMan :
“although they dislike most of the official Hasbro toys for not being “show-accurate” enough”
I’m not even much into the toys, but IIRC I still found out that, amusingly enough – well, as background, a lot of toys have only had cutie marks on one side. In G5, ponies only have cutie marks on one side (seems to be consistently starboard). And some G5 toys? Still manage to put the cutie mark on the wrong side.
“The bronies are fully separate from that and basically a second fandom. They’re only interested in G4 and there only in the animated material, i.e. the show Friendship is Magic, the 2017 movie, more or less also the Equestria Girls films and animated specials.”
Ehh. Maybe that’s accurate for the majority, I’m not sure, but it’s not fully accurate. (I’m not trying to start an argument or something, to be clear, just trying to improve the accuracy of information in this thread.)
There are some bronies also interested in collecting toys, including older ones; I believe an author in that category is who I found out about the above from. Likewise, there are some interested in older generations, and certainly some interested in the G4 comics, etc. And now, of course, we’ve got G5, which I’d say has definitely been attracting interest.
Yep, I’m pretty sure Sy is a sock puppet account I created a long time ago and now I’m suffering from some sort of psychosis where I don’t remember signing in and posting under that account.
Maybe when Sy feels something pulling on the blankets at night, the “ghost visitor” is really just my personality taking back over.
The accusation of “you’re making X into your whole personality” invariably says more about the person making that accusation than the person it’s aimed at. If you can’t see past one of my attributes because it’s a little different from the norm, that’s your problem.
In general, I’m just so over this idea that the most despicable thing you can do is like something other than the “normal” ammount. I got my autism diagnosis in part because I happened to mention my fondness for TTRPGs to the doctor, and I don’t even like TTRPGs THAT much. I own a couple, I play occasionally when I can get a group together, which is not often. But the normal ammount of liking TTRPGs is zero… or at least, it was at the time, so I was immediately flagged as abnormal.
What really, truly grinds my goats is how a lot of the things that used to be “cringe”, such as marvel comics, are now mainstream and cool, and now everyone’s coming out of the woodworks. I’m glad people found their way to something they like, but honestly, they would have gotten there much sooner had they not been so preoccupied with not being “cringe”.
What tends to draw me to fandom is the way they become a home for people who don’t really fit anywhere else. Sometimes for a good reason, you meet all kinds, but mostly because they dared to be interesting, creative and passionate in a world that values none of those things.
Also, I’m probably not alone in the general cartoon fandom for using cartoons and the community around them as a way to cope with a propensity for depression. I’m not gonna feel ashamed about finding something that keeps me happy, because it’s abundantly clear that those that do want me to feel ashamed also want me to be miserable.
“I got my autism diagnosis in part because I happened to mention my fondness for TTRPGs to the doctor, and I don’t even like TTRPGs THAT much.”
…Yikes.
“You’ve ever played DnD? Must be autistic!”
Sorry about that.
And then there’s me, showing off my Magic the Gathering and Pokemon cards to my therapist and they never once thought to give me a diagnosis of being on the spectrum. Just a diagnosis of ADHD and prescriptions for Wellbutrin, Ritalin, and Zoloft all before I was 16.
…Did that go well?
From my perspective of limited information, that sounds excessive, but I also don’t actually know what maybe 2.5 out of those three do as it were, so…
Doctors have a tendency to basically stop looking once they’ve found either ADHD or autism. If I understand it correctly, it used to be common wisdom that they are mutually exclusive, but it looks like they actually have a lot of overlap. I got a fair number of ADHD traits too, but I don’t think I could get a diagnosis for it at this rate.
The medications had no noticeable effects on my mental state, I’m pretty sure Ritalin stunted my growth though, which is a common side effect. I was tiny and the shortest kid in my class up until maybe my junior year of high school. There was a period of about 3 years where I only grew an inch and then I grew 6 inches once they took me off Ritalin. I saw several therapists throughout my childhood and teen years for no apparent reason, I never understood why I was there. I was smarter than most kids in my class but I was terrible in school because I never wanted to do homework because it was a waste of time. I tested high in reading comprehension, so they put me in an advanced reading program. They wanted us to read one chapter and discuss it the next day but I would just read the whole book in a day and then get bored because the rest of the class was so far behind talking about the first chapter. Either that, it I didn’t even read the book because it didnt hold my interest past the first chapter.
Most of school was awful for me. I never did homework as I mentioned so I had to take senior English twice. I nearly didn’t graduate because of it. I was out in what they called “assisted study” which was basically where they put all the kids who struggled with doing homework, or had cognitive delays, or other such things. It was embarrassing because most kids thought of it as the “special education” classroom. So when I was sitting in there and saw my friends and classmates who were good at school walk by and look in and see me, it was mortifying. All of this was happening at a time and place when things like Asperger’s and the autism spectrum were basically unheard of, especially in the podunk rural town in the middle of nowhere Hicksville where I’m from.
Hah, reminds me of what I recall of learning to read myself. As I understand it, from what I recall directly and of what my parents have said, and from some guesswork to fill in gaps, I was actually a bit slow in officially learning to read… because the material I was provided with I mostly found very boring. And yet, there were a pair of stories I did find interesting that I still remember some details from (there was one about a scientist who invented a gold-detecting laser, and another about, IIRC, a mustard dispenser that somehow gained sapience and an unlimited supply of mustard, which it proceeded to use as remass for both atmospheric and space flight), despite probably having last encountered them back in first grade or something like that.
Ah, I’m sorry you had to deal with that.
I had my own bad experiences with homework, too.
I could never quite grasp the point of homework either. Especially written assignments. I was always given broad subjects to write an essay about but having no idea what they specifically wanted I just ended up paralysed and didn’t do them. Our schools gave us one half day a week with the other half for sports but as a result of my performance I was put into a kind of remedial english class in a institute outside of school on those days. My instructor realised one day that I actually didn’t belong there, my writing and reading skills were fine. She just determined I was too brief with the answers I gave when I was tested to see if I needed the course. It suited me fine either way as I never enjoyed sportsball and at least this way I was allowed to be in a air conditioned room.