- Iconic design: bright pastel palettes, stylized layouts, characters and animation
- Some second thing?
- The writing. Keeping each character true to her own characterization, without having the characters become flat in the process.
- Morals that people from any age group can apply to their lives.
- One specific focus for the fandom, and fans who are fans of fans, and the base that's fan of fans, allowing it to grow healthily.
Let's focus on point five now. It's basically a subset of the furry fandom, right? Only, with furries, it's more of a vague concept they're fans of. It becomes more of a community than an outright fandom, it's not so much of a "fandom" as... Well, I suppose you have the s.f. fandom, so maybe not. Fans of a genre. (Is "furry" a genre? Well, I suppose, but that's an entirely different can of worms.) Still, this type of "fandom" rallies around a community rather than a specific property. They're thus more likely to be "fans" of each other more than anything. Fans of fans, and so on.
Bronies not only have that sense of community, of fans of fans, but have also got that one specific focus to their fandom, that being the show itself (as well as of course the tie-in toys and other assorted properties, but we'll get to that in a moment.) A large (often maligned) group, check, whose fandom revolves solely around one property, check. This higher level of focus, Bronies to Friendship is Magic, is more like the Juggalos to Insane Clown Posse. ICP, MLP. Makes sense to me. (Haha, oh man. Juggalos and furries. Yeah, I'm putting bronies in terrific company, aren't I? Not that they don't do that themselves. But I'm alright with these things.)
Feeding back into the loop is the fact that the base itself is a fan of the fans, releasing official press releases through Equestria Daily and official shurts through We Love Fine. It becomes something of a metafandom. That's what the best of storytelling is. A give-and-tqke with the audience. I'm not sure if this has had precedent before in either form or execution (Hasbro's traditionally been cool with fansites,) but even if it does, bothering to look it up would be missing the point. It'd be unique, each and every time.
Bronies not only have that sense of community, of fans of fans, but have also got that one specific focus to their fandom, that being the show itself (as well as of course the tie-in toys and other assorted properties, but we'll get to that in a moment.) A large (often maligned) group, check, whose fandom revolves solely around one property, check. This higher level of focus, Bronies to Friendship is Magic, is more like the Juggalos to Insane Clown Posse. ICP, MLP. Makes sense to me. (Haha, oh man. Juggalos and furries. Yeah, I'm putting bronies in terrific company, aren't I? Not that they don't do that themselves. But I'm alright with these things.)
Feeding back into the loop is the fact that the base itself is a fan of the fans, releasing official press releases through Equestria Daily and official shurts through We Love Fine. It becomes something of a metafandom. That's what the best of storytelling is. A give-and-tqke with the audience. I'm not sure if this has had precedent before in either form or execution (Hasbro's traditionally been cool with fansites,) but even if it does, bothering to look it up would be missing the point. It'd be unique, each and every time.
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