First traditional blog, yay! So why do I watch MLP:FiM? Click here for the tl;dr version
Long Story[]
After a modest amount of sitting around doing nothing, I decided to try and figure out what exactly compels me, and quite specifically me, to watch a show about candy colored abominations and friendship. It's not because I really cared to find an answer, I was just mildly bored and I figured that the mental exercise would be relatively interesting. I'm happy to say that it was. Or at least, to me it was. :P
While I really like how cute the characters are, the beautiful animation techniques synched with their audio cues, or the ingenious writing. Seeing as how my first 36 episodes of came in the form of reading material, I knew it probably wasn't the animation nor audio that had hooked me. And seeing as how the writing isn't that original...Don't hit me.
I figured the easiest way to figure out the answer would be to compare MLP:FiM to any shows I have watched recently and liked more than a certain degree, and then look for similarities. In short, I ended up comparing My Little Pony to Red vs Blue and Naruto Shippūden.
Luckily for me all three of those shows are pretty much completely different, so it didn't take me long to find what they all had in common. They all have extensive use of the "power of friendship" integrated deep into the story. One of the key points in Red vs Blue is how the two teams slowly become close friends over the course of the series. Whereas in Naruto, every episode involves one of the characters learning something about friendship.
And then I realized that I had carried this preference in my media for my entire life. And everything relating to my interaction with media up until this day makes sense to me now. Like why I can't find pleasure in watching shows like Happy Tree Friends (although that's a bit extreme). I never knew why before!
tl;dr[]
I'm a sucker for the The Power of Friendship trope, and I can't seem to enjoy any show that doesn't make use of it all that much. Whereas on the other hoof, when a show makes heavy use of it, I fangasm.