I’m tired and bored. Not of analysis, nor of video making, nor even really of creating My Little Pony videos. I’m tired of having the place in the fandom that I do, and ultimately of being involved in the fandom on the level that I’ve been.

Pony has never been the only love in my life, media-wise. As you know by now, I’ve been making big strides towards analyzing video games, anime, and other things, as much as I have ponies. The thing is, I’m way more invested in those mediums right now, yet my lifestyle doesn’t reflect this. I’d rather be talking about anime and games day in and out than ponies, and I’m totally worn out on having ponies everywhere I look.

I’ve unfollowed a significant number of pony channels and blogs, and I’ve ceased to hold responsibilities within the fandom. I don’t want to write for any pony sites or be a part of any more large-scale pony projects anymore. I’ll still be finishing the Brony Quiz shows and the Elements of Brony series, but I won’t be getting more involved in the fandom.

I’ve grown to hate the way my videos are interacted with and perceived in the fandom. I hate being the center of the analysis community and under scrutiny for my opinions. The moment it started mattering to people whether I liked an episode or not was the moment things went downhill, and when I realized that many people took my “0/10” joke from the Gibbontake collab seriously, I knew that something had to change.

In the beginning, the idea behind my videos was to simultaneously analyze episodes and fanboy over them in general. The reason I chose the video format was that I could show footage of moments that I loved from the show, or make the viewer understand how great the animation is. My videos were equally a place for meta-textual analysis, and for talking about why the episodes do or don’t work for me as a viewer. Hence, even when I started having episodes that I didn’t really have much to analyze textually, I could still talk about my opinions of them–but this ended up becoming the focus of peoples’ attention.

At this point, I think I’ve said all that I can or need to about what makes the show work or fail. Episodes have failed in enough ways that if another episode fails, my complaints are ones I’ve had before. The same is true for episodes doing things right. I think by now, I’ve given my viewers enough tools that they could reasonably deduce how I’m going to feel about an episode just going on my opinions of prior episodes. As such, I’ve decided that from now on, I want the viewer to come away with no idea how I felt about the episode whatsoever, so that the conversation can be completely focused on the actual analytical points of the video.

As a result of all this, my videos are going to be less accessible and more challenging for the viewer. I’m not going to spend as much time explaining what I see as happening in the episode, and instead focus mostly on how the episode relates to the world beyond the show. I’ve done videos like this in the past plenty of times, but I don’t think I’ve had any strong examples of this style in season four.

My speaking style and art style have changed as well, to represent the more tired, inaccessible atmosphere that I want to go for. The idea of my character as something anyone can watch and as a pillar of the community, is dissolving. This is going to be more raw, and only the people who really “get” me, personally, and don’t buy into the greater collective idea of what I am (the “icon” rather than the person) won’t be invited to understand where I’m going. That is to say, I’m happy to lose whoever I’m going to lose, because those who stick around will be the ones who “got it” the most to begin with.

And don’t mistake that for me being flippant or hipster-y. The best thing that happens from my videos is a sense of connecting to people and being able to talk with like-minded individuals, and I value that a lot. The rawer I can be in my expression and still have people connect with me, the more valuable I think those connection will be, so I’m actually rather excited by the prospect of these videos potentially reaching people on an even deeper level than before. We’ll just have to wait and see how it goes!