A My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fan who says he was fired from his job over his affinity for the popular animated show has sparked significant discussion concerning the legality of his alleged termination.

The anonymous Brony took to Reddit yesterday using the burner account "FiredBrony" to recount the events leading up to his dismissal.

Though he considers himself to be a "fairly big fan," the late-30s father-of-one insists he is "not one of those people who walk around with a shirt of Rainbow Dash 24/7."

That being said, he does acknowledge setting a picture of Applejack as his desktop background at work, saying he "figured it was no big deal, nobody would see it anyway and it was certainly no different than the other guys in my office using pics of their favorite sports teams or their cheerleading squads."

But his boss apparently did see a distinction, and called the employee into his office for a chat about the latter's curious desktop pic of choice.

FiredBrony says his boss informed him that "it's weird and it makes people uncomfortable that I have a 'tv show for little girls as a background.'"

Relenting, FiredBrony agreed to reset his desktop to its pony-less default background picture.

The second warning took place a few months later, on Take Your Child to Work Day. FiredBrony sets the scene:

I bring my son in (he's more of a sports guy than me) and it's a good day. He talks with a couple of my co-workers (he's 10) about random sports stuff. My boss's daughter is 9 and she comes in wearing a Rainbow Dash shirt. As we were doing introductions, I told her I liked her shirt , something innocent the same way people go "those are some cool shoes" to a kid, nothing weird at all. After the day is done, my boss brings me into his office and confronts me about it, telling me again he thinks it's weird and to cut it out at work. I try to tell him it's no different than people pulling my son aside and talking about sports with him and stuff. But I oblige and for the next few months, didn't bring it up at all feeling now like my boss has it out for me.

Everything was seemingly swell until last week.

After being teased relentlessly by his coworkers about "Brony culture" for two straight days — "people started making little jabs in the hallway about liking shows for girls and stuff" — FiredBrony was once again called into his boss's office and told he was making other employees "uncomfortable" and would have to be let go.

"WTF? Can they even fire me for that?" wondered FiredBrony before contacting Human Resources to get some answers.

Thankfully, like most episodes of MLP, this story too has a fairly happy ending:

Anyway, it's not all bad. The job was shit, I have some other opportunities already coming up that pay better, have better hours and better benefits. So thanks. And a Fuck you Mr. Carter, you're the worst boss I've ever had in my years of working.

[photo unrelated via Twitter]