I was drawn to Fleur because of how unique she was when she first appeared in the show.  No one who wasn’t royalty had shown her body type up to that point.  Changelings stemmed off of Fleur and a magic anon that I had on my first real ask blog that spawned Papillon. 

As for the cowponies, you can blame the Raricow fad that started up last year, and my own desire to try out anthropomorphic designs.