Some happy places

I commented the other day something about "my little daily round of earlier-gen Ponyblog sites" (these are all Tumblr sites, actually - does one call a Tumblr a blog, a tumblr, or a tumblr blog?). These are things I look at because the world is a dark and scary place sometimes, and it's nice to have something sweet and simple and light and lacking in subtext (and yes, my love of Ponies is very much the love of Ponies I would have had if I had loved them as a seven year old: there's no subtext there, no ironic appreciation)

This is one of those things that is just simple and sweet and nice and that makes me happy. I've hung out looking at these sites even more during this inter-season break than I have before. And I now wonder at myself, going out at 12 or so and buying a Strawberry Shortcake doll, but thinking that the first-gen ponies were too babyish. But whatever. I can read these sites now and learn about the earlier generations and see people's adventures in restoring old ponies or rejoice with someone finding a replacement for a Pony they had as a child but lost....

And it's thanks to these sites that I now own a Gen 1 Bubbles and Posey, and have a Star Hopper on her way to me. 

So here are the sites. (I must note: all of these sites, as far as I can tell, are TOTALLY sfw. There may be one or two four-letter words - usually not the harshest ones - here or there, but most of the people doing the early-gen tumblrs seem to take a distinct anti-Rule-34 stance, which I also hold, which is another reason I like these sites and enjoy visiting them)

The first one I ever read was Heck Yeah, Pony Scans!. She was inactive for quite a while and I was afraid she'd given it up, but she's posting again. Her blog seems mainly to be earlier generations with a heavy focus on scanning the old Pony comics/magazines, which are different (they are much more of what I would call a "fairytale" world) than the modern comics.

From a link on that site, I found Flea Market Princess. This is a lot of focus on Gen 1 and Gen 2 ponies, someone who does a lot of flea market hunting and has LOTS of the older ponies posted. This is one that writes more about renovation of older ponies, too, which I find kind of fun to look at even if I've never tried it.

Pony Collectors Anonymous also does a LOT with the ideas of renovation and collecting older ponies and it's also a fun blog for me. There's also a little doll stuff on here, which I am also fine with. (It seems a lot of Pony collectors are also into Monster High, and of course I have my little gaggle of Monster High dolls. And I would like to have more but that whole keeping-to-a-budget thing so far has prevented it)

Ariana's Pony Collecting Adventures is another "mixed" blog with some early-gen ponies, some current ponies, some writing....about a week ago she listed some of her Pony headcanons and I like some of those. especially #7.

Actually, one of the things I like about most of these blogs is that they're not EXCLUSIVELY photos. They may be heavily photos, and there may be a fair amount of reblogged stuff (but they don't seem to cross-pollinate with each other too much, so it's not like you're seeing all the same stuff everywhere). And while pictures are nice, I like some words too - all pictures is going to lose my interest and when people do reno stuff, it's nice to have an explanation of what they did and how they did it.

A blog that's more picture-heavy (and more weighted to brand-new stuff, and has more dolls/care bears and fewer ponies), but that I still enjoy is Mande's Evil Kingdom (She also does a lot of MH dolls and Ever After High....)

Those are the MAIN ones I read.  I also sometimes look at Paradise-Estate but again it's a more picture-oriented blog and I tend to see the stuff reblogged on the other blogs first.

There are a few others I look at from time to time, but some of them get more into politics (sigh) or have some NSFW stuff on them that I'd rather avoid - as I said, the ones I've linked here are really all, as far as I can tell, kid-safe if you have a kid who's into ponies.