Hello, dear reader,

My name is Tio or Truekry. I'm a German brony in my mid-twenties who apparently has too much free time. I discovered My Little Pony by accident when I had checked what TV shows the next generation were being raised on for my YouTube channel (I can proudly say I had around 50,000 subscribers at the time). I think you can guess what happened: watched a few episodes, got hooked, and here I am. However, it wasn't the show alone what convinced me to stay. It was the fandom—the huge amount of art, music, and you guessed it: fanfictions.

The first fanfiction I ever read was "My Little Fantasy" by a fellow German brony and author. It was a story of how humans found Equestria, enslaved all of ponykind, and started to breed them in their favour. The protagonist of the story, who was rather antagonistic to be purely labelled as such, was a man whose company bred ponies and sold them. One day, coming out of a strip club, he ran over a pony with his car. It was a fancy one, most likely very expensive, with a shiny blue coat, rainbow mane, and seemed to be very strong. Yeah, he ran over Rainbow Dash, one of the last free ponies of the world. Fearing that he would be sued, he first wanted to put the hurt pegasus on the railway tracks and let nature take its course. However, he could not bring himself to do it, and ended up taking her home. He cared for her and learned a lot about Equestria in the process. I don't want to bore you with every detail, but in the end, the man was executed after a resistance movement stormed his company building to free the ponies. In his last moments, he said that he saw what he did was wrong, what humanity did was wrong, but nobody believed he had changed except Rainbow Dash. The man later woke up in the hospital. A scientist and friend of his utilized the technology they used to breed ponies in labs to make a new body for him and copied his conscious into it. The man who had seen ponies as nothing more than livestock and slaves became one himself and was fine with it.

I know it doesn't sound like the epitome of fiction writing, but it was the first one I had ever read and was most likely the reason I picked up writing myself. It was well-written and emotional. I would compare it to 'My Little Dashie', which was the second fanfic I read.

For half a year I was content with just reading stories, mostly the ‘Human in Equestria’ genre. After a while though, I began to note the flaws the stories had. It somehow always was the same. Le human jumped out of the Everfree, got the welcome party by Pinkie Pie, became friends with the other Mane Six, and so on. When my girlfriend at the time broke up with me, it was the moment when I said: "I want to make something different."

I started making notes for my first story: The Precious Life - Nightmare. I know the start is not that different from most stories, but I can guarantee the rest of the story was something that didn't exist at the time. And it was a huge hit, at least in the German version. I had so much fun writing it that sometimes I published three chapters a day. I just couldn't stop. In the end, Nightmare was eighty chapters strong and one of the most read fanfics in the German fandom. I remember the moment when I pressed the save button for the last time and the story was finished. I was exhausted. I was tired and was near tears. At the same, I was happy, so damn happy...

After that, I sat on my bum for a few months, doing nothing. I thought at the time I would never write such a long story ever again. I mean, eighty chapters had been a lot of work, with most of them around five thousand words strong. That was about one and a half Harry Potter books, and I wrote that in little more than a year. Alas, my muse was a bitch. She struck me full force again and this story, My Little Pony - Journey, started to form in my head. Again I took notes, one hundred and fifty pages full of them. Only a month after did I then started to write again. The first Act I finished in less than a week. I was back in business.

I knew that Journey would be big. I knew that I wanted it to be my masterpiece. So, I did the math. I compared my notes with the progress in each Act and came to the conclusion that Journey will be around one hundred and eighty chapters long. It will be a lot of work, but I think it will be worth it. So I picked up my laptop and jumped down the rabbit hole.

Darth Keks & Beks - The two people who are helping me with the translation. Writing and translating at the same time would be nearly impossible and without these two it would take much longer to bring any chapters to you guys here.

Gron - It's somewhat difficult to translate and write at the same time? Who you gonna call? No, not Bill Murray. He started to help at act 5.2 and just didn't stop. Not that I will tell him to do so.

faktopus - My faithful proofreader. He takes care of any leftover mistakes and other little things. Without him you wouldn't have the reading experience you have now.

JBL - Who took up the task as my proofreader after faktopus miraculously vanished. He not only takes care of any leftover mistakes, he also adds things to improve your reading pleasure.

Tango Sierra - The guy who drew the cover and the other artworks you will find in the chapters. Up to today only the first few acts have artworks, but the others will follow.

Bronies.de - The biggest german message board for bronies. I published my first stories there and without the massive feedback from nearly 600 readers this story would not exist. If you want to read the original german version of this story, you find it here.