I want to keep track of my own thoughts as I work on this project.  I won't be including this diary with the final report, but I think it helps keep me organized.

I've got several goals in writing the Psychology report.  The most important is to get a grade, of course.  My personal reasons are something different.

I am a firmly closeted brony.  I'm already hurting for manly credibility, and admitting that I like a cartoon for little girls would destroy whatever I have left.  I don't announce it to the public, but the internet allows anonymity.

Back in 2011, I kept seeing pony memes popping up everywhere.  I discovered that it's literally the biggest meme that has ever been.  Curious, I watched the first episode.  I think Lauren Faust broke it into two parts on purpose.  I clicked the "next" button before I could stop myself.

After that, there was no going back.  You can finish the whole first season if you've got about eight hours of free time.  Once it was over, I had to have more.

I registered to FIMFiction.net, a website devoted to fanfiction for My Little Pony.  The show just wasn't enough anymore, and I had to have all the ponies I could get.

At FIMFiction, I'm able to be who I want to be, albeit under an assumed name.  I was a member for more than a month before I first got the itch to write something of my own.

Human in Equestria (HiE) stories, where a person somehow ends up among the ponies, were always my favorites, and that's what I wanted to write.  I first set fingers to keyboard in early 2012.

I feel compelled to insert a quote here that I think is great.

Fanfiction is what literature might look like if it were reinvented from scratch after a nuclear apocalypse

by a band of brilliant pop-culture junkies trapped in a sealed bunker. They don't do it for money.

That's not what it's about. The writers write it and put it up online just for the satisfaction.

They're fans, but they're not silent, couchbound consumers of media.

The culture talks to them, and they talk back to the culture in its own language.

—Lev Grossman, TIME, July 18, 2011

Well, my first attempt at "talking back" ended disastrously.  My efforts in the world of fanfiction were met with less than favorable reviews.  At least everyone on FIMFiction has taken a lesson from the ponies and learned to be polite, even when telling someone what a terrible pile of crap they've written.

I've decided to explore what went wrong.  Based on some of the comments, my problem seems to be plausibility.  It didn't sound believable.

Well, it's a land of talking magical ponies, how believable do you want?  Still, I clearly need to think about this.  Luckily, my Psychology semester project came up.

If I can find out what a person who has never seen My Little Pony would do when faced with a sudden relocation to Equestria, I could use the information to write a better fanfic.  

With the excuse that I was conducting interviews for Psych, I can do basically whatever I want.  Most people don't know anything about my field of study, so I can pretty much get away with anything.

I set up a series of questions to test my friends and family with.  I decided to cover the usual facets of human-insert stories.  I'll pitch them a series of situations and actions to see how they react.

I really want to fit in on FIMFiction.  I know that you should never change just to get people to like you, and I don't feel that I am.  I'm just doing research to find out what they like.

I can't tell anyone about this, though.  Norah, Pat, and Joe are the only people I trust to even mention ponies to, much less admit what I'm trying to do.  I'm very surprised to find out Professor Harding is a brony, but I'm not going to tell him about it, either.  Nobody outside FIMFiction can know.  

I'll have to clean off my freaking desk ASAP.  I can barely reach the keyboard through the pile of  electronics and trash.  I'm going to need extra room when I get started on the paperwork for this project.  I can tell that there's going to be a lot of it.