Just days before My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic returns for its third season, a group of bronies – perhaps the most unlikely group of fans ever – has created a surprising commercial that puts a new face on the subculture.

Make that a few new faces – including a 28-year-old female scientist, two male members of the U.S. military and several other individuals who don't fit the familiar mold of bronies, the adult males who have helped turn a cartoon for young girls into a surprise crossover hit.

Aside from showing appreciation to the Hub and Hasbro for the show's continued existence, relaying the growing size of the brony herd was part of the agenda of the Brony Thank You Fund, which raised funds for the commercial. But while the message might seem humble, making the ad caused some rumblings within the brony community.

"When we first did the call for people [to be in the TV spot], people said, 'Oh my god it's going be a bunch of neckbeards cuddling their plushies and talking about their inner needs being fulfilled' and things like that," said James Turner, president of the Brony Thank You Fund, in a phone interview with Wired. "Then when we got the people and we said, We've got to have two people from the armed forces and professional people,' then it was, 'Oh, you're not going to have a representative group of the fandom.' It's like, which do you want, guys?"

In the two years since My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic premiered, brony fandom has evolved in ways that are hard to imagine – and offer a peek into the "ultra-cult era," where fans dig deeper and deeper in their quest for unique obsessions. Connected by the internet and fueled by a desire to stand out from the crowd, bronies and others seek out increasingly obscure corners of pop culture in which to stake a claim.

For bronies, the change has been as quick as it has been surprising. Originally a group of males in roughly their teens, 20s and 30s (perceived to be, well, neckbeards and this guy), the group has grown to include many people not fitting that description. Young women (often called "pegasisters") and military bronies, amongst many others, have joined the herd, with brony conventions attracting the likes of party rocker Andrew W.K. and bronies exhibiting a growing presence at nerd gatherings like New York Comic Con.

The commercial from the Brony Thank You Fund is designed to convey the changing brony landscape.

"It's my hope that the professionalism of the video and the fact that military members are willing to put themselves, in uniform, in front of a camera and tell the world that we are bronies will at least cause people to reconsider any of their preconceived notions," said Jeremy Sevey, the 30-year-old Navy lieutenant in the ad, in an e-mail to Wired. "Just because I happen to enjoy My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic and try to live by the tenets of friendship and respect towards all people does not mean I don't still possess the ability and willpower to fire or, if necessary, step in front of a bullet."

>"This is a level of fan devotion I've not seen before." — Roberta Pearson

In other words, bronies – often the target of online ridicule – are standing their ground. It's now a full-fledged fandom, as involved as those for anything from Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Star Trek (even if they haven't been around as long). While Trekkies once mounted a letter-writing campaign to save their show, Friendship Is Magic doesn't need help, so bronies are just showing gratitude in the run-up to Season 3, which begins Saturday on the Hub TV network.

It's an unusual and unprecedented move, according to Roberta Pearson, a professor of film and television studies at the University of Notthingham who has written about cult television fandom, who said she'd never heard of fans raising money to thank a network for a show.

"This is really rather remarkable," Pearson said in an e-mail to Wired. "This is a level of fan devotion I've not seen before."

The bronies' devotion isn't without just a little bit of strife. When the Brony Thank You Fund announced its initiative in May, the effort faced an immediate backlash. Internet commenters fretted that putting a bunch of bronies in a commercial would only draw the wrong kind of attention to the growing subculture, while confusing parents of children who watch the show. One reddit thread, titled "The Brony Thank you project – I don't want this, this will cause way to (sic) much controversy," collected statements to the effect of, "I'm as much of a basement-dwelling internet neckbeard as anybody, but at least I have the good sense to stay far away from a TV camera."

The negative reaction from places like 4chan, Ponychan and reddit was unfortunate, said Turner.

"I got a lot of comments from that particular sector, which were literally the words 'nothing good can come of this,'" he said. "I consider that to be such hubris to believe that you know that only the worst possible outcomes can come from something with such good intentions."

Others came to the project's defense but the debate continued. Eventually, the fund raised more than $16,500 through an Indiegogo campaign. Most of the controversy has since subsided, particularly after it was announced the project would donate leftover funds to Toys for Tots (so far $7,000 has been donated, Turner said, and the ad calls for more).

Now that the commercial is out, and getting positive responses from the brony community, the Brony Thank You Fund is also working on a scholarship for an aspiring animator who wants to attend CalArts (cheekily named the Derpy Hooves Animation Scholarship, after the fan-named pony with the crossed eyes).

A New Era of 'Ultra-Cult' Fandom ——————————–

How did bronies come so far, and the brony herd grow so large, in so little time?

The internet, for one, has provided a way for disparate kinds of fans to find each other. The web wasn't around in the early days of Star Trek, but it did help fuel Buffy fandom. Still, the fact that a cute female vampire slayer found a cult following – net or no net – seems far more believable than a bunch of cartoon ponies finding an audience of young men and then spreading even further.

But maybe that's where fandom is headed in our increasingly fragmented society. Charles Soukup, associate professor of communication studies at the University of Northern Colorado, said that in today's cultural landscape – where heretofore "cult" topics like science fiction and comic books have become mainstream entertainment – brony-ing up might be the best option for creating a unique identity and nerding out.

>"We are moving toward the ultra-cult era in which media consumers discover extremely unexpected and obscure media texts to cultivate uniqueness." — Charles Soukup

"It appears we are moving toward the ultra-cult era in which media consumers discover extremely unexpected and obscure media texts to cultivate uniqueness and distinctiveness for their mediated identities," Soukup said in an email to Wired. "Bronies are a kind of perfect storm of this new ultra-cult media consumption as they combine an intense unexpectedness (adult male fans of television programs designed for little girls) with the status afforded arbiters discovering undiscovered or under-the-radar media products."

But My Little Pony fans likely won't stay under the radar much longer, and twenty-something female scientists might be the beginning.

For Amanda Hitchcock, a 28-year-old scientist who appears in the commercial, coming out of the closet as a brony isn't embarrassing, although she said she expects she'll get a lot of ribbing when her co-workers see the TV spot.

For her, it's all about giving back to the community where she – and so many others of various stripes – have found a home.

"The brony community has given me a lot," Hitchcock said in an e-mail to Wired, "and I wouldn't have that it weren't for the show."