A reflection on the cycle of media fandom through the eyes of an old-time 'brony' turned 'anti-brony' turned 'pegasister'

- The blowup
- The bonding
- Growing out
- Rejecting
- Reclaiming
- Nostalgia
- The few remaining

If you know that feel, come join me here
If not, better luck next time

• This is another case where the album cover went through multiple conceptual overhauls over time, as demonstrated by these notes and unused variants:

— 12/23/2021 6:48 AM
brony album cover
me triumphant pose 1 hand fist up in ponyville rainboom in bg entire image seen displayed on tv in black void, maybe longing hand touching screen (or me laying on back dead blacked out hugging tv)

OR
WAY BETTER THING THAT JUST MATERIALIZED IN HEAD
me fully decked out in the rainbow dash costume (one sock being the derpy sock maybe) sitting/kneeling in middle of room surrounded by pony plushes and such watching, legs to side? head tilted looking up glowy angel wings // maybe some tv/photo frame border around everythiung

While we're at it, here's some unedited pictures from the photoshoot, most of which also went unused:

• This album marks the first instance of a 7-track Roxy LP, which would be cemented as one of my staple track counts going forward, alongside 10-track LPs and 16-track LPs. Each of these track counts embodies a distinct Album Archetype in my mind, like presets I can choose from to suit a given project's needs. A 7-track LP is generally focused on progressive song structures with ample room to breathe, having the least regard for conventionality. A 10-track LP generally acts as a 'best of both worlds' middle ground, with just enough distinct songs to feel like a complete package you'd find in stores, but not so many that I'm forced to cut any of them too short; for example, even a 10-track LP of exclusively 5-minute songs would still sit comfortably under an hour. Lastly, a 16-track LP is generally reserved for more scattershot projects, which cover so many distinct subjects that the previous presets could not adequately contain them. There are exceptions to everything, of course, but this is the overall thought process that led to these track counts becoming so common in my mainline discography. I'm highly neurotic about my tracklists!

• Section 1 of TRACK 1 is almost entirely built out of the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic theme song in various forms, because of course it is, silly!

• I myself was part of the Alicorn Outrage being referenced by TRACK 3, enough to make a silly YouTube video about it called "My Reaction To Twilight Becoming An Alicorn", which consisted of a dramatic zoom-in on Twilight's new form accompanied by an equally dramatic orchestral sting, followed by a still frame of The Angry Video Game Nerd looking shocked. My child self had no good reason for any of this, beyond a general aversion to Change and perhaps a desire to fit in with the fandom surrounding me. Very weird situation in hindsight.

• I am aware that the made-up word "returnal" seen in TRACK 5's title is also the name of a Oneohtrix Point Never album. That's exactly where I got it from, though I wouldn't call this an intentional "reference" per se, more just a Shared Language.

• The "folders" offhandedly mentioned in TRACK 6 are a very real thing I was obsessing over at the time. I had genuinely made it my mission to download and organize every single piece of footage from every golden-era (pre-2014) brony convention that could be found on YouTube, and release this as an archive.org collection as a noble act of fandom history preservation. I would still like for this to be fully realized, but I just do not have the time. I should probably still upload the unfinished collection though, and let that be a reference point for anyone who may be able to pick up the slack.

• The sparkly ambience in TRACK 7 is sampled from Tinnitus Works, the single greatest resource I've found to help me fall asleep despite my condition. I even created custom edits of these soundscapes for personal usage to have a greater variety in my playlist at night! I did eventually tire of these sounds, and now primarily fall asleep to rain noise, but I'm stil very grateful for what all those silly synths did for me over the years.