Brony documentary portrays Aspies in a positive light

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This is pretty huge, in my opinion. Not sure how many people here are familiar with the new online fan-based culture for the show "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic", but its a pretty huge movement that's been accelerating dramatically in the last year or so. The show itself teaches basic friendship and social principles by portraying a challenging situation and how the characters handle it and what they learned from it. The characters are extremely well written, ranging the full span of human personalities.

I started looking into this when looking for something to do with my 5 year old daughter. I downloaded all the shows and watched them with her. She really liked it but I was more surprised by the fact that I found the show compelling myself. I looked around online and found that there's quite a few people who are, well, "extreme" in their fandom of the show and of each other, and that's ok but I don't think I'd go that far myself. I did notice though, that a documentary was just created by John de Lancie (The actor who played Q from Star Trek) about the phenomenon. JdL was a guest voice actor for one of the villains in the show about a year ago. Its essentially exactly Q's character, with the same mannerisms and abilities and style.

So I watched this documentary yesterday and it talks about the Brony phenomenon and interviews a whole lot of people. One person who I want to talk about here, is a teenage boy with Asperger's. It documents his interest in the show, and the community, and then follows along as he travels by himself to a brony convention! During the show, he discusses his feelings as an Aspie and how he's a bit nervous about specific things such as asking for directions when he arrives at the city, about how to get to the convention. Also we get to see how he enters into this extremely accepting community, and essentially does VERY well socially in a crowded convention hall full of people!! The documentary spends a lot of time showing how healthy this community was for this guy and it never portrays AS negatively or as some kind of handicap. The entire portrayal was very uplifting. I recommend you all check it out when you get the chance.

The documentary isn't available for free yet, since they are currently recouping the costs for its production via the fans and their purchasing of the video. The video itself is DRM free, and will be available on Youtube at some point probably in the near future. So I might be saying this a bit too early for some of you to go check it out, unless you find a different way to acquire the video online. I just wanted to mention it now because of how impressed I am at including a guy with AS and showing how much MLP has helped him find a socially comfortable environment and make heaps of friends.

You can read the release announcement for this documentary here

Cool.

Always good for people interested in things who have a social disability to be able to fit in.

I found that when I was younger, I often fitted in to martial arts and whatnot as it was my interest; no one cared if I didn't talk about anything other than such, and they were always positive to the enthusiasm I showed (interest after all).

I'm glad to hear of this. Right now, we need as much positive representation we can get.

im so glad you enjoyed the documentary....daniel...the boy in the film is my son.....it took a lot for him to do this and im glad it has made people happy.xx

1. This was a really well done film.

2. All the characters are likeable

3. I'm an NT, who usually hates movies like this. Seriously, I only watched because my husband had it on Netflix. After 5 minutes, I was in for the duration.

4. Daniel inspired my husband, because it seemed way out of his comfort zone to go to Manchester, alone. Hope I have the city write.

Any info on the Dutch guy with the American accent? Wondering if this family are expats in Holland.

YOU MUST WATCH THIS!

I do not understand this fandom, so I will watch this documentary.

This is good news. I also want to see the documentary.

There are a lot of documentaries out there, not all of them useful. I'd be happy to hear what someone who's worked on the show has to say.

I got to get the DVD to this, the proper documentary itself; I have a Blu-Ray copy that features the interview section instead.

I saw this with my friends a couple weeks ago. Myself and one of them are bronies. I was actually surprised to see an aspie in the documentary.

I could totally relate when he was navigating an unfamiliar city. It was kinda weird seeing him socializing so much at the convention. I keep thinking my social problems are so mild that I sometimes doubt I have AS, but I have NEVER been able to socialize with a huge crowd of strangers like he did.

I really liked the documentary because it showed how accepting the brony community is and how it didn't try and show aspergers negatively at all.

the first time Daniel went to the 'buck' convention was very hard for him....he had never done anything like it before...and as you say the socializing was extremely hard for him....but he went again last year and will be going again this year....bronys are very excepting and there are a large number of people with aspergers that go to the convention because of that....give it a try ... if Daniel can do it....anyone can

Just a theory, but seems the most accepting environments are often the ones where others within the group are used to being looked down upon or treated badly for fill in the blank reason. I'd actually cite WP as an example of that. It makes sense to me that bronies would be the same way.

And very glad to hear your son had such a good experience.