Years ago, I was but a budding member of the Touhou community. It was... and interesting exprience, to say the least, but overall, I played the games, immersed myself in the fanart, and generally was a good fanboy. Then, of course, as a year passed, I stopped playing the games as often, started to put more weight on fanon interpretations as opposed to canon, and became the more common type of fan. Why do I tell you this, though? Even more years ago, I was reading a certain book by Terry Pratchett. I forget the name, but the focus of the plot was on a diety whose church had entire nations under it's control, but as a god, he was one of the weakest in the halls of the gods. After all, a god's measure of power is how many followers he has, and this god had but one follower, a village idiot that was too much of a fool to worship the administration, and worshiped the god himself. The rest of his compatriots, however, belived in the Arch-Bishops, the Priests, the Inquisitors, and other people of the church, while the actual founding god behind it had faded almost entirely. The same happened to Touhou over time. A game a year is very little to base an entire complex world on, but it is there, with it's own memes, it's customs, it's music, and everything in between. The games are a source of new ideas, but most of the fandom is concentrated around something that sprung up because of the games, yet is not them in the least. The same, I believe, will happen to MLP. The structure of the culture is very similar to Touhou, with fan-artists of all varieties, although there are many more in the world of Touhou simply because of it's age. There are headcanons, fanons, interpretations galore, fanfics, music, and so much more. Long ago has bronydom stopped being a group of individuals who like ponies. Now it is many communities, each bound just as those within them are bound by friendship, rivalries, and the like, by a common goal, a common thread of interest. And because of this, bronydom will not die because MLP does. It will die because we all change back to individuals, and stop being a community, and THAT, my friends, is something that will not happen for a long time.
I will remain a fan to my grave. And i will keep in touch with all of the friends i've made on this site. Hell, i'd even stay on this forum for as long as it's up even after the show ends. ^^
I'm prepared for it. Things like this have already happened plenty of times in my life so I know precisely what to expect. I too love MLP and will remain a fan forever, but one day the fandom will die down a lot, but that doesn't mean there won't be something new that we love to watch, do, etc. I was a fan of DBZ for 7 years and then it finally ended. It was terribly heart-breaking for a time, but then I moved onto other things. The 6 years of playing Halo with my friends is also something I never wanted to end, but it did. In 2009 I discovered the show "Naruto" and fell in love with the story and have been keeping up with it since. Because of my lust for Naruto fandom, I managed to discover MLP:FiM completely by accident while filling out a request someone made on a Naruto forum. As one dies, another one begins. And through the fandom of everything I've explored, I've lost and gained so many friends. We will always have the heart-warming memories. I'll never forget any of that which I just discussed, and that's not all there is to it. In short, DBZ was the first anime I ever watched. If I hadn't watched that, I would have never found out about Naruto. If I never found out about Naruto, I would never have found MLP. I probably would have been on the haters' side instead of the Brony's. You have to admit, when you tell someone you love MLP, it does seem a bit strange, no matter how open-minded that person may be. That's why each person I tell, I explain it to them for 3 hours. I tried watching some of the older MLP shows and I couldn't last a minute. I was testing to see if there was somekind of little girlyness that was in me, and apparently there wasn't. MLP:FiM is different as I expected. It manages to touch the sensitivity in all of us....well...most of us.
I think there is no reason to despair, the fandom is still young, I see no reason the series would end in a while, not while it is still succesful. And when it does, hopefully after 10+ seasons, it will have changed MLP forever. I can't imagine the next generation of ponies going back to basics, it will probably be something in line with FIM, because g4 will be remembered as the generation that made ponies cool. Not to mention I highly doubt Hasbro will not make a MLP FIM movie, and possibly spinoff series. This is not even considering that the next project by Lauren Faust might be just as awesome as this one. After all, she is the one who made ponies awesome. Let's repeat this: she made My Little Pony cooler than Transformers in the eyes of adult males, that takes skill.
MLP:FiM will endure long after the last episode has been produced and airs as the last show of the last season. There will be another generation, and the phenomenal sea change that Lauren Faust brought to the 4th generation of the franchise will not soon be forgotten. Future generations of the show will be made and with an eye specifically toward duplicating or even exceeding the unexpectedly broad-based success of FiM. It will become like Star Trek, or Star Wars, with an extended universe that will sustain popularity for decades after the last episode has shown. Just as the original Star Trek series remains popular, and having started 44 years ago, FiM will still be seen, and popular, when it too is 44 years old, or older. What I do believe, though, is that the major cast of FiM, the Mane 6 and a few others, will play key roles in future generations of the show, but that does not mean that every generation to come will start the Mane 6. It seems quite natural that a future generation of the show would focus on the children of the Mane 6, and others. The Elements of Harmony will eventually have to be passed on to another generation. One thing I don't expect to see in FiM, though, is the death of any character. The show just doesn't seem like it would ever cover THAT subject directly. Perhaps a future generation might. After all, everypony has to go home to the great stable in the sky eventually. (Except for Luna and Celestia, who seem to have a handle on this eternal life and youth thing.)
