Prehistoric Pony: The Early Days of the Show

Nissl · Post by **Nissl** » Tue Feb 28, 2012 1:06 pm

This thread is to collect first instances of the show on major forums, early art, rage comics, image macros, and so on, all in one centralized location.

4chan.org/co/
4chan links contain 4chan content. You have been warned.
Hub thread two weeks before the pilot announces MLP.
Random pony discussion appears in the week leading up to the launch.
Actual premiere of the show, being watched live by an old-school fan.
First major pony thread, marking the start of the fandom.
Episode 1 aftermath threads 1, 2.

First screencap ever.

The two weeks after the pilot saw max threads almost every day on /co/. The pony virus spread to a half-dozen boards within a few days.
Two Cartoon Brew threads, 9-10 days *after* /co/ obsession starts.

Episode 2 discussion. Aftermath 1, 2 Some people were let down that the show wasn't going to be pony Sailor Moon.
Episode 3 discussion. Aftermath 1, 2. Board very excited. Fun read.
Episode 4 discussion. Aftermath 1, 2, and 3. A bit flat, although quite positive and people later loved it. Maybe the drinking game knocked some out.
Episode 5 discussion. Aftermath 1, 2. Lots of love, if a bit divisive. I have to say the creepy is noticeably ramping here.
Episode 6 discussion. Aftermath 1, 2, 3.
Episode 7 discussion. Aftermath 1, 2, 3.
Episode 8 split discussion, mostly here. Aftermath 1, 2. Trolls reported attempts at livestreaming. Applebuck Season is the reference "good" episode now.
Episode 9 discussion. Aftermath 1, 2. People loved this one.
Later episodes in archived MLP generals here.

Other events
Derpy is born, she started as "derp pony" but Derpy had a passionate advocate
Brony first usage (?)
Winter Wrap-Up leak
Lauren Faust on /co/
Lyra origin, her name was debated for a while
Equestria daily begins
Reaction to SA pony ban

MLP Arena
The largest old-school MLP collector site, and the only other one I'm aware of that caught the launch.
Missing - first G4 toy/art reaction thread - first instance of G4 on the web anywhere?
Video clip previews prior to show launch
Early picture reactions
G4 toy launch hype
International people sad about not being able to watch the show

Episode 1 - the main launch thread. They were very excited about the inclusion of an actual villain, and males.
Episode 2
Episode 3
Episode 4

Something Awful
Thread 1 Thanks for hosting Barton!
Thread 2

Later sites
Giant in the Playground Still looking for earlier forums outside of /co/.
NeoGAF
Penny Arcade
Front Row Crew Forum
Ars Technica (not until May, this is a fun one if you secretly enjoy image macros and trainwreck thread derails)

Lazy · Post by **Lazy** » Tue Feb 28, 2012 1:52 pm

Just read through those older /co/ threads a bit ago. 4chan nostalgia is pretty much the funniest thing. People in the MLPG's(My Little Pony Generals, (still made even though they have their own board now) specifically by and for people from /co/ to complain about how everything outside the MLPG sucks) on /mlp/ now are constantly complaining about how bad things are for them now that they have their own board, how things were so much better when they were just on /co/, etc.
And then you go and look at the old /co/ threads and it's the exact same shit as it is now, which is the same shit as it was midway through. Classy.

I wonder if there were any smaller groups of people separate from /co/ that also watched the show when it came out that had anything to say about it. If there were, it'd be kind of interesting to see if what they said mirrored /co/'s discussion, but I doubt there was another group seriously watching this in a vacuum isolated from /co/.
It'd be neat, though.

Nissl · Post by **Nissl** » Tue Feb 28, 2012 2:07 pm

Lazy wrote:I wonder if there were any smaller groups of people separate from /co/ that also watched the show when it came out that had anything to say about it. If there were, it'd be kind of interesting to see if what they said mirrored /co/'s discussion, but I doubt there was another group seriously watching this in a vacuum isolated from /co/.
It'd be neat, though.

This is the only other thing I've ever found. Old-school collectors on MLP Arena.
Video clip previews prior to show launch
Early picture reactions
G4 toy launch hype
International people sad about not being able to watch the show

Episode 1 - the main launch thread. They were very excited about the inclusion of an actual villain, and males.
Episode 2
Episode 3
Episode 4

The old version of this forum is torture to search because it has no time stamps on anything. I couldn't believe it when I saw it. I know there is another thread buried several months back that has first reactions to G4 art, which may be the first instance of the show appearing anywhere on the web, but I don't know that it's worth the time it would take to find it again.

(?) · Post by **Wayoshi** (?) » Tue Feb 28, 2012 2:11 pm

Bit too furry in some spots

, but I'll definitely have to browse through these some, I also like seeing the start of things I missed

blasmeister · Post by **blasmeister** (?) » Tue Feb 28, 2012 2:14 pm

This was an interesting, if somewhat horrifying, read. Thanks for compiling this, Nissl!

(?) · Post by **Wayoshi** (?) » Tue Feb 28, 2012 2:30 pm

After Episode 2:

No, they should have made the first two episodes drawn out over the whole season. There's so much cast that can be elaborated at least one episode each, adding mostly self-contained but plotty action episodes in between. Because face it, kids don't need that much preparation before ponies start wrecking shit up. Foreshadowing can be pretty obscure.

I hope this guy was thrilled when such episodes occurred, just in slice-of-life form. It's interesting to see people hope for some type of save-the-world epic series like Avatar: The Last Airbender early on

Nissl · Post by **Nissl** » Tue Feb 28, 2012 3:10 pm

I'm going to link this in a few places, because stuff does something and the internet must know. Also the admins seem to want more new people to sign up. Hope nobody minds. This stuff is like crack to me.

Artificer · Post by **Artificer** (?) » Tue Feb 28, 2012 3:14 pm

Nissl wrote:I'm going to link this in a few places, because stuff does something and the internet must know. Also the admins seem to want more new people to sign up. Hope nobody minds.

Not at all. The internet must know, after all.

Wulfolme · Post by **Wulfolme** » Tue Feb 28, 2012 4:00 pm

And so it was that Wulfolme did finally accidentally read a snippet of textual horse porn.

numsOic · Post by **numsOic** » Tue Feb 28, 2012 5:16 pm

The spoilered one? Yeah, that one's a blast.

This entire thing is of interest to the community in general, so I recommend passing this around if no one's found these yet.

Nissl · Post by **Nissl** » Tue Feb 28, 2012 5:25 pm

I posted it on Reddit, sent it in to EqD, and yes, posted it at KYM. Other people should feel free to post this stuff wherever, I just got hit with assignments by two bosses at once and I won't be able to do much for the next 4-5 hours or so. Edit: fuck it, posting to ponychan and /mlp. Didn't hear back from EqD as I do with other news submissions, so I would assume they're going to blow this off.

Wulfolme wrote:And so it was that Wulfolme did finally accidentally read a snippet of textual horse porn.

I think I skimmed past some of the spoilers. Even when bad stuff was posted (and yes, I found the first instance of that too in general thread #5

which is unlinked) it didn't have much effect on me so I didn't even consider it. I cut up postmortem human brain tissue as part of my job, I'm pretty good at distancing myself at this point. I added a warning, hopefully that will help. I figured the historical perspective justified the links.

Scuderia · Post by **Scuderia** (?) » Tue Feb 28, 2012 5:38 pm

Nissl wrote: Episode 1 - the main launch thread. They were very excited about the inclusion of an actual villain, and males.

yeah I suppose that IS a change, even if they're wanly smiling background ponies and are mostly earth tones. They flesh the world out. It's a lot less of a completely plastic fairyland.

AutumnWind on MLP arena wrote:
I suppose Hasbro has some sort of crippling fear of money and success or something.

anyway - count the G4 avatars and sigs on that board, though most of our avs tend to be animated.
It's a different crowd (you can kind of tell they're older and mostly female) I'd rather hang around MLP arena than 4chan though.

And of course, The Lady Derpy.
http://www.mlparena.com/Forums/viewtopi ... rt=75.html
http://www.mlparena.com/Forums/viewtopi ... rt=60.html

G4 Spike in love? ...with G4 Rarity?

Let'em have it!

http://www.mlparena.com/Forums/viewtopi ... rt=45.html
Ah! A bit from an animator/layout person about the celestia's tail layer error in episode 2.

Haha thats TOTALLY my scene from the first episode we worked on but i swear her tail wasnt like that when i did it. it might have been done in post production if they ended up messing around the layering. Looks like they went into the scene to tint the background darker. i'm suprized they didnt catch it before hand. cause in that clip i also did the last scene where all the ponies are standing around listening to pricess Celestia and her tail is fine (i just pretty much had to copy and paste her pose for that scene too hook it up.) Sorry folks it happens sometimes haha

: Oops! Something went wrong.jpg (89.53 KiB) Viewed 10834 times

The copyright infringements of yesteryear.

Wylie · Post by **Wylie** » Tue Feb 28, 2012 5:54 pm

This thread is great. I love that this happened maybe one and a half years ago and still we feel like Indiana Jones doing advanced archaeology to dig this stuff up.

I would love to see the first and second SA threads archived somewhere that isn't SA for posterity as well. It'd probably be harder, but if we could find some of the first mentions of pony on Reddit, that would be awesome too.

Daionus The 23rd · Post by **Daionus The 23rd** » Tue Feb 28, 2012 6:08 pm

I've got an archives upgrade, so if it ever comes down to it, I could help dig through for the FiM thread,

Bag of Magic Food · Post by **Bag of Magic Food** » Tue Feb 28, 2012 6:17 pm

Nissl wrote:The old version of this forum is torture to search because it has no time stamps on anything. I couldn't believe it when I saw it.

One time I did a search that took me so far back, I was seeing the initial hype for the early G3 movies.

I'm pretty sure nobody ever thought "Unicornia" was a good name.

Doctor Wheeze · Post by **Doctor Wheeze** (?) » Tue Feb 28, 2012 7:40 pm

Nissl wrote:
This is the only other thing I've ever found. Old-school collectors on MLP Arena.
Video clip previews prior to show launch
Early picture reactions
G4 toy launch hype
International people sad about not being able to watch the show

Episode 1 - the main launch thread. They were very excited about the inclusion of an actual villain, and males.
Episode 2
Episode 3
Episode 4

The old version of this forum is torture to search because it has no time stamps on anything. I couldn't believe it when I saw it. I know there is another thread buried several months back that has first reactions to G4 art, which may be the first instance of the show appearing anywhere on the web, but I don't know that it's worth the time it would take to find it again.

Is there a thread on that forum of those people first getting wind of the whole brony thing? That might be interesting.

Headless Horse · Post by **Headless Horse** (?) » Tue Feb 28, 2012 8:44 pm

Bag of Magic Food wrote: I'm pretty sure nobody ever thought "Unicornia" was a good name.

Bag of Magic Food · Post by **Bag of Magic Food** » Tue Feb 28, 2012 8:47 pm

Well yes, old-Rarity would be its sole supporter.

StarshineSprint · Post by **StarshineSprint** » Tue Feb 28, 2012 11:02 pm

http://arch.413chan.net/ is a good place to go for early pony threads.

Wylie · Post by **Wylie** » Tue Feb 28, 2012 11:33 pm

Some highlights of the first episode's /co/ thread, with more-terrible parts removed and more-relevant parts retained:

Anonymous Sun Oct 10 18:59:12 2010 No.20463544
suddenldy, there are more adult fat male neckbeards that will watch this show than little girls.

>> Anonymous Sun Oct 10 19:02:12 2010 No.20463605
>watch the show
>voice acting is great
>animation is fluid and enjoyable
>plot is cliche as fuck the pacing is fantastic
>even the cutesy dragon side character has a decent personality

ladies and gentlemen, My Little Pony is better than half the shows on CN and Nick right now, and I have to ask

seriously? what the fuck man?

>> Anonymous Sun Oct 10 19:03:12 2010 No.20463636
>>20463605
Dont forget that it has an actually good villain (based on what we've seen)

>> Anonymous Sun Oct 10 19:04:12 2010 No.20463646
This show was developed by Lauren Faust, you know, Craig McCracken's wife and inspiration for characters like Frankie. OF COURSE IT'S GOOD

From the Episode 1 Aftermath Thread, I give you Headless Horse's first post:

>> Anonymous Sun Oct 10 23:08:40 2010 No.20469112
>>20468183
oh man are we reading depth into cartoons again

that is my favorite game

IT BEGINS

Anonymous Mon Oct 11 00:12:40 2010 No.20470783
>>20470744
>Applejack before Rarity
What the heck? Applejack sucks.

GREETINGS, /CO/. WE ARE FROM THE FUTURE. YOUR WISH IS GRANTED.

>> Anonymous Mon Oct 11 01:42:40 2010 No.20472794
>>20472710
I agree. This strange phenomenon must be documented.

Nissl · Post by **Nissl** » Tue Feb 28, 2012 11:42 pm

StarshineSprint wrote:http://arch.413chan.net/ is a good place to go for early pony threads.

Ayup, although unless I'm doing it wrong it only picks up at 12/15/10 when mlp general got organized. If I get a little time before bed I'll start filling in episode/aftermath threads heading up towards that date.

Daionus the 23rd wrote:I've got an archives upgrade, so if it ever comes down to it, I could help dig through for the FiM thread

I'd love some help getting the Something Awful threads in a nice presentable form. Right now I can only find one of them, and in the gas chamber. Probably I'm just bad at searching. It's been noted before.

StarshineSprint · Post by **StarshineSprint** » Tue Feb 28, 2012 11:50 pm

Nissl wrote:
Ayup, although unless I'm doing it wrong it only picks up at 12/15/10 when mlp general got organized. If I get a little time before bed I'll start filling in episode/aftermath threads heading up towards that date.

Are you sure you're on arch.413chan.net and not arch.413chan.net/mlpgeneral? There is a difference. The one without mlpgeneral goes back further.

http://arch.413chan.net/co20744413.html

Frosthawk · Post by **Frosthawk** (?) » Wed Feb 29, 2012 12:01 am

I like how people started making best pony lists immediately. Such is the nature of this show, I guess!

Nissl · Post by **Nissl** » Wed Feb 29, 2012 12:46 am

Scuderia Ferrarity wrote:Anyway - count the G4 avatars and sigs on that board, though most of our avs tend to be animated

Yeah. Most of them are pretty solid G4 fans these days. It does seem like some of the slightly flawed metanarratives bother a lot of them even more than it does some of us here. This has led a contingent to stop watching. Also they complain about head/body color mismatches and other quality control issues a lot, which has led some of them to stop buying the toys.

Scuderia Ferrarity wrote:I'd rather hang around MLP arena than 4chan though.

I've lurked it from time to time to see how they are dealing with the new fanbase (kind of frustrated at this point, I'd say). They're mostly good sorts but what drives me nuts about that board is every 5th thread is a meta thread about the importance of not having any forum drama, that is simultaneously drama generating.

StarshineSpirit wrote:The one without mlpgeneral goes back further.

Yeah, although it looks like it gets spotty fairly quickly. In any event, I'll try to build on the first post tomorrow night if people want to see it continue. I'm thinking first threads at places like NeoGAF and Ars Technica would be nice additions.

BartonFink · Post by **BartonFink** (?) » Wed Feb 29, 2012 12:53 am

I had seen these posted in (I believe) the one-sentence thread but kept putting off perusing through them; thanks for doing my work for me!

The growth of the show is really interesting; I had done a history check on the Toon Zone forums (general animation board) but only got mild insight (the dynamics of that forum are way different since the show initially attracted, unsurprisingly, old My Little Pony fans).

I'll dig through some stuff later.

Nissl · Post by **Nissl** » Wed Feb 29, 2012 1:03 am

Doctor Wheeze wrote:Is there a thread on that forum of those people first getting wind of the whole brony thing? That might be interesting.

Well, it seems from the episode 4 stuff I'm about to put up that they were all using Pensive's (MLP Arena poster) videos. DMCA'd into the dustbin of history, I'm afraid. I wasn't sure quite what to look for in searching the arena, and as mentioned that forum is hell to search.

BartonFink · Post by **BartonFink** (?) » Wed Feb 29, 2012 1:53 am

If you search for "brony" and organize by date, this is the first post that shows up is from Oct 23, the day after the second episode premiere:
http://archive.no-ip.org/co/thread/20718238#p20722030 It seemed within 3 days people were using the term to refer to each other and it picked up steam from there. Whether or not this is the actual origin, I dunno
edit: actually it seems like the next 3 posts using the word "brony" are all from some guy named Sparkle Fizzlelove

Also, a tad offtopic, but this seems relevant, the initial reaction to the SA pony ban.
http://archive.no-ip.org/co/thread/23459020 (warning: various opinions within and it's 4chan, don't do drama)

edit: Oh, by the way, I was always suspicious about KYM including a note about Amid Amidi's post being important in the development of the show; it got more annoying because he posted a post about him "creating the fandom" (post was tongue in cheek) a month back or so. I never really bought it (and Amidi always struck me as needlessly polemical in general), interesting that it's not backed up much

Bag of Magic Food · Post by **Bag of Magic Food** » Wed Feb 29, 2012 2:09 am

The latest fear I've seen sweeping through MLP Arena is that if the toys become more like the show, they may become less colorful, i.e. no multicolored hair beyond Rainbow Dash, and only earth tones for the boy ponies. But I have enough faith that everyone understands the differing requirements for good color schemes in different media that it won't be a problem. (The "troll hair" seen on an upcoming brushable stallion figure has already become a point of contention, though...)

Wulfolme · Post by **Wulfolme** » Wed Feb 29, 2012 2:19 am

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showth ... id=3382186

heres the first one

Pocket · Post by **Pocket** (?) » Wed Feb 29, 2012 2:38 am

The biggest shocker to me is that there's a guy who has a spider archiving the entirety of 4chan. Not that there's someone out there with so little of a life that they'd want to; that doesn't surprise me in the slightest. I'm talking about the fact that he can afford a server big enough to pack it all in! I mean I guess it's small potatoes compared to something like the amount of data YouTube hosts for free or even nonprofit efforts like the Internet Archive, but still, wow.

Also, now that we have the threads, we can finally demand that Whitenoise Poster reveal where he supposedly fits into all of this.

Wulfolme wrote:http://forums.somethingawful.com/showth ... id=3382186

heres the first one

Well here's the second one, then. http://forums.somethingawful.com/showth ... id=3384107

Lord only knows how I came across it originally, but I read through it all (using Firebug to manually remove the ad column and green coloring, because I am too ghetto to learn Greasemonkey) back when I was on my "Read all the things!" kick.

Killing Vector · Post by **Killing Vector** » Wed Feb 29, 2012 4:32 am

Nissl wrote:Yeah, although it looks like it gets spotty fairly quickly. In any event, I'll try to build on the first post tomorrow night if people want to see it continue. I'm thinking first threads at places like NeoGAF and Ars Technica would be nice additions.

Here's the first thread on NeoGAF as far as I know (if there were any earlier threads they didn't take off, at any rate). Looks like it was a year old as of Monday, actually. All the info about the show was added to the OP when it turned into an official discussion thread; I'm pretty sure it was originally just the first two lines.

!saak · Post by **!saak** (?) » Wed Feb 29, 2012 5:20 am

This is awesome! Thanks everyone for the links and such, it's a goldmine.

Caldera · Post by **Caldera** » Wed Feb 29, 2012 5:20 am

Its pretty interesting to see the difference in responses of those 4chan people and people who were old timey collectors.

Thanks. I like seeing history lessons like this.

okan170 · Post by **okan170** » Wed Feb 29, 2012 7:11 am

Nissl wrote: This is the only other thing I've ever found. Old-school collectors on MLP Arena.
...
Episode 1 - the main launch thread. They were very excited about the inclusion of an actual villain, and males.
Episode 2
Episode 3
Episode 4

The old version of this forum is torture to search because it has no time stamps on anything. I couldn't believe it when I saw it. I know there is another thread buried several months back that has first reactions to G4 art, which may be the first instance of the show appearing anywhere on the web, but I don't know that it's worth the time it would take to find it again.

This is just the most adorable thing.

Most of the other threads are histories of discovering the show, and all the associated bits of "omg girl's show" angst. These guys were basically handed a big shiny gift and are just so damn happy about it. Its rather fun to see this show's discovery from the POV of people who knew it was coming and were already fans.

synthorange · Post by **synthorange** » Wed Feb 29, 2012 7:19 am

So much Rarity hate.

Understandable though, Suited for Success and Look Before You Sleep were a long way off!

Nissl · Post by **Nissl** » Wed Feb 29, 2012 8:56 am

Thanks for the links, everyone. In a horrible fit of insomnia I added them all to the first post. I also did a reformat removing most commentary to make the first post more of a readable resource, and attempted to order things chronologically. I'll keep adding stuff tomorrow. Very enthused that other people also share my sickness, er, enjoy reading this stuff.

synthorange wrote:So much Rarity hate.

I thought she came off as a straight fashionista stereotype that they were laughing at, not with, for the first batch of episodes. Then they had to actually develop her character and she became awesome.

Aramek · Post by **Aramek** (?) » Wed Feb 29, 2012 9:28 am

Awesome from the very start.

Headless Horse · Post by **Headless Horse** (?) » Wed Feb 29, 2012 9:33 am

Sacrificing her tail was her very first "Whoa

" moment.

It took a while for them to get back to doing things like that with her, and by the time they did it was much more down-to-earth human-personality kinds of development--"this is a grown-up making hard choices" rather than "this is a prissy fantasy pony doing something badass".

Coyote · Post by **Coyote** » Wed Feb 29, 2012 12:24 pm

Headless Horse wrote:Sacrificing her tail was her very first "Whoa " moment.

It took a while for them to get back to doing things like that with her, and by the time they did it was much more down-to-earth human-personality kinds of development--"this is a grown-up making hard choices" rather than "this is a prissy fantasy pony doing something badass".

this is a grown up prissy fantasy pony making hard choices doing something fabulous

BartonFink · Post by **BartonFink** (?) » Wed Feb 29, 2012 1:02 pm

I'm trying to think of 'events' or specific stuff to look up...

I think this one might be well documented already, but Derpy is born. Looks like Dr Foreigner spent some time or so pushing for that as a name, and by early/mid-November it had caught on generally.

Origin of Lyra? Looks like "Medley", "Melody" and "Harpo" were in the running for awhile. Little did they know they were all wrong.

Here's the initial Winter Wrap Up leak. People were really reading into the "without my magic" line; some were speculating Celestia had taken it away from Twilight.

Also funny in general to see terms like "butt symbol" being used since the cutie mark concept hadn't been introduced yet.