Hello everypony! I thought I'd say a little bit about myself here so my profile page wouldn't be completely empty...

I'm a 16 year old girl living in the Northwestern US. I am a wholehearted Brony, though I wasn't really introduced to the show until around Christmastime of 2013. The story of how I got into it is actually a funny one, in my opinion, so I'll put it in here. If you don't care, don't read it.

So I have a fairly small friendship group, consisting of three girls and one guy, plus myself. Of these, both my closest friend and one of the others girls were already Bronies, and my best friend, especially, kept trying to get me into the show. At this point in my life, though, the words 'My Little Pony' still brought images of dumb little girl toys and the really bad old show, so I was quite adamant in my refusal. Eventually, though, she got me to watch the first two episodes. I still didn't like it.

Fast forward a few weeks, and both of my younger siblings, a 13-year old girl and an 8-year old boy, had heard her talk about the show and actually started watching it. Being the close-minded person I was back then, I kind of gave them a hard time about it, though in a teasing way. My mom did not appreciate this. She had never watched the show, either, but she did tell me in no uncertain terms that I wasn't allowed to make fun of my siblings for watching the show when I didn't even know anything about it. My sister took this to mean that I had to watch the show, and with Mom backing her up, I was forced to sit through an episode or two every few days.

Since I was going in with a negative attitude about the show, I still disliked it for the first several episodes, but gradually I found myself enjoying it, much to my horror. I wasn't eager to admit to anyone that I'd been wrong about the show, so I kind of became a closet almost-Brony. I started watching the show on my own when no one else was around and started practicing drawing the characters.

Of course, on one such day while I was drawing, my sister came into the room and I hurriedly stuffed my notebook out of sight- a movement which drew her attention and caused her to ask what I was drawing. Obviously, I didn't want to tell her, so I told her she wasn't allowed to see them until I was done.

A week later I'd finished a pretty decent-looking set of Mane 6 sketches, and I did a very dramatic reveal to my sister, who was thrilled to find out that not only was I drawing the ponies, but I was also a season and a half further along in the series than she'd thought I was.

I thought about telling my Brony friends, as well, but ended up putting it off until I'd seen all of the first three seasons. (Season 4 wasn't up on Netflix yet, at that point, and that was where I watched the show most of the time.) One day I showed up at school with a sketchbook full of ponies and hours worth of pony fangirling itching to burst out. To my friends, this was a very sudden change, and one they enjoyed immensely.

But the story doesn't end there.

The last of my female friends has never really showed an interest in the show, though the rest of us are working on fixing that, but the one male in our group came up to me one day and said, "I'm not very happy with you right now."

This surprised me, since I couldn't think of anything I'd done.

"You got me into My Little Pony," he said monotonously. After hearing the rest of us talk about it so much, he'd started watching it and enjoying it. And, better yet, he'd started watching some of the fan-made content on YouTube, something I hadn't been exposed to, yet, and gave me videos that I needed to watch. I've spent unhealthy amounts of time on YouTube ever since. (PS if anyone knows good fan-made songs or anything, let me know!)

With all three of her children getting really into the show, it was only natural that at some point my mother was forced to sit down and watch the whole show. Luckily, she's pretty cool, and while she's nowhere near as into it as my sister and I, or even my brother to a lesser degree, she does enjoy it, thought she hasn't reached YouTube level yet.

So, after all of that, I decided that I should start writing fanfiction for the show. I'd already written stories for some of the other shows I enjoyed, and I wanted to see what I could do with this whole new world I'd been given.

It's kind of ridiculous how much happier a person I am now that I've seen the show, and as any of my family or friends can tell you, I talk about it a lot. In fact, I'm hoping and planning to start a Brony Club at my school. Especially with how crazy my schedule is this upcoming year, I know that being surrounded with the Magic of Friendship will go a long way towards keeping me sane! (Imagine Lesson Zero. I would be Twilight.)

So, that's my story! I hope you all enjoy the results of my muses getting crazy sugar highs and spewing nonsense into my head!

I love you guys! Bro-hoofs all around! /)*(\

I also thought that maybe I should explain why I chose 'Original Usermane*' as my username, though I doubt you care... -_-'

So basically, I was sitting and thinking to myself 'I need an amazingly creative username for my MLP-centric FF account.' My muses, however, said, 'You're on your own', so I had no good ideas.

'But muses!' I protested. 'This name will become my identity as a Brony! I'm going to use it for all of my pony-related work! I need something cool! All I'm asking for is an original username!'

I don't know if this happens to anyone else, but sometimes I have tongue fumbles even when I'm just thinking inside my head, so when I tried thinking 'original username' it came out in my head as 'original usermane'. I laughed at the unitentional pony pun, and then decided to use that as my username.

I've now decided that I'm going to go by Riggy as a nickname, because it's shorter and cute and easier to type and I'm lazy.

That's all I've really got to say, so I'll leave it at that!