• Member Since 31st Oct, 2011
  • offline last seen January 26th

Applejinx


Applejack will always love you 'cos that's jes' how she is, sugarcube <3

More Blog Posts246

  • 242 weeks
    Bronycon 2019: The Epic

    So, here I am. Nursing a nice warm herbal tea (dandelion burdock eluthero, my own blend) to soothe my Bronycon-wrecked voice, and preparing the final Bronycon con report. Beware, this is longer than most people's stories, but it also has a story arc and drama and the classic Applejinx happy ending.

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    18 comments · 715 views
  • 337 weeks
    Capstone

    Trixieverse is one million, three hundred and forty-six thousand and eight words. The eight words are "SORRY DOESN’T FROST THE CUPCAKES! screeched Pinkie Pie", and now it can be told: the millionth word of Trixieverse was Pinkie shrieking 'CUPCAKES' in a sincerely murderous mood. Because, if you're writing a million word clopfic series and you're aware of ponyfic traditions, how can you NOT have

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    2 comments · 669 views
  • 378 weeks
    Foreign Affairs

    I cannot launch 'Foreign Affairs' for Xmas. I've tried and I have a great deal of preparation and I'm excited about the story, but I have just over one day not counting traveling to visit family, dealing with that etc etc. and I've only got 700 or so words and I've had far too much to deal with and it ain't happening. :ajsleepy:

    But I can launch it for New Year's! :ajsmug:

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    6 comments · 500 views
  • 381 weeks
    The Bronycon Dialogue Panel

    People are beginning to post the panels they did at Bronycon, so I thought I might join in.

    Here's the panel Lunatone gave, with Applejinx-style preparation, rehearsal and presentation (I also brought some of my dialogue know-how to the table :raritywink: )

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    6 comments · 474 views
  • 384 weeks
    Bluebell

    Patron Saint Bluebell: Ursula Vernon Tumblr

    You might want to read that, it's good.

    It's also the reason that I'm going to write another full Trixieverse novel. It will be called 'Foreign Affairs', and take place in Neighpon.

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    2 comments · 496 views
Feb
13th
2013

Will You Jump Ship To A Humanized Series? · 2:01pm Feb 13th, 2013

I ain't goin' anywhere. Nope. Not switching over to a humanized series. NEIGH! *cough* scuse me. I'm a little hoarse ;)

I can see the logic of it, mind you, I just don't like it.

Ponies: effectively young adult equines, smart, independent and capable in an adventurous/community setting. They go around without clothes so (Disney-style) THE PLOT is much in evidence. They don't behave childishly so their behavior doesn't pander that hard to a supposed little-girl audience- by design they have more backbone than that, by storyline and setting they have grander purposes and agendas, among them individuality, community and loyalty.

Little humanized girls at a school: Less plot on several levels! There are two ways the characterization can go: one, Strawberry Shortcake. They get stupid and consumed with supposed little-girl notions (Faust nightmare #1) and become a mockery of their characters, abandoning the adventure side of things and becoming flirtatious and interested in boys. (interested in each other is probably off limits) The other way the characterization can go is as follows- darker and edgier, in an attempt to drag the brony audience AWAY from the poni ponies. This is not impossible- it's easy to see how much cloppy stuff is humanized, and it might seem like the brony audience is desperately looking for just this sort of thing to fetishize. It would be a swerve over to try and grab what I might call an anime audience- letting the characters and the produced show serve as bait, and counting on the fandom to do the dirty work.

Some interesting points about that: if it's the mane cast transformed into little girls, they're actually adult ponies mentally. On the other hand, the writers of the real show haven't always been flawless about maintaining the original tone, so I really doubt this is going to be convincingly like the ponies we care about- the characterization's gonna slip.

If they don't bring Lyra, they are complete bastards :D

I'm betting that this is not necessarily meant to draw little girls away from the show. It could be meant to draw bronies away from the show which would be refocussed on little girls. Strangely, that might not hurt: it all depends on whether the writers internalized Lauren Faust's intention of strong, independent female roles. A lot of the brony influence (like The Dude cameos, etc) didn't do a thing to support the real heart of the show. I'd be absolutely fine with the pandering-stuff being drawn off into a more 'ironic' show because MLP:FIM is not ironic, and attempts to make it 'cooler' completely and catastrophically miss the point.

Sure is gonna be interesting in poni fandom...

Report Applejinx · 540 views ·
Comments ( 22 )

Yeeahhh.... I just don't see that turning out well. Imma have to agree with 823573 here.

Edit: That's not to say that I'm entirely adverse to watching that series as well, though. I just wouldn't want to replace FiM with it.

If they made it separate i wouldn't care but i agree with every point Applejinx said :l

I won't jump ship, but I may watch an episode or two for laughs...
Also am I the only one who think their "human" designs look a lot like that of the Equestrian Girls tumblr, the one where they are in a band? They also look like they would fit in at Monster High.

i don't think i'd like it. I mean.. we're gonna lose everyone else in the world of MLP... just the mane 6, then on top of that, they're in high school. So it's gonna be another "high school drama" full of bullshit. I could easily see the girls ending up categorized into simple generalizations, and no longer being friends.

Rainbow would be in the jock group
Twilight with the nerds
Pinkie would be with the ones that just party and don't care about school
etc etc etc.

sure they're all their own "person" but being put into a human high school would screw the dynamic up.. they'd be pressured to split off...i'm sure most of us know high school isn't a very nice place to be..

this is not necessarily meant to draw little girls away from the show. It could be meant to draw bronies away from the show

Nah, this was made for the teenage-girl market. It's meant to compete with Bratz dolls and the Monster High IP. There's a lot of money in that particular market and Hasbro wanted in.

823640 Agreed; Monster High is really hot right now, especially since for the few older fans who discover it, the toys are basically poor-kid BJDs. They'll probably put out a bunch of similar BJD-style dolls, and if they give a bunch of different accessory/hair piece/body styles like with Monster High, people wanting humanized versions of their pony OCs will go apeshit. I mean, just look how well even blind bag repaints sell.

I'd be absolutely fine with the pandering-stuff being drawn off into a more 'ironic' show because MLP:FIM is not ironic, and attempts to make it 'cooler' completely and catastrophically miss the point.

Daria Morgendorffer x Twilight Sparkle is my new OTP.

Okay, maybe not. I'm actually side-eyeing the hell out of Equestria Girls, despite my pimping of a humanized story yesterday. My only big issue is that I'm concerned about romance, because I don't want to hear from a thousand triumphant fanboys about how Dash is straight, just because Hasbro wanted some romance and didn't have the balls to make a character gay.

That being said, it deserves a chance. 823611 's fears aside, if they keep characters IC what you could have is kind of an all-female, The Breakfast Club cartoon.

But seriously, the second Dash or AJ flirts with a boy, I'm outta there. I even think Dash is bi, but the double standard would be too much for me. :ajbemused:

I'm willing to give it a chance:

But then I'm willing to give just about anything a chance; I mean, I wrote a story shipping Prince Blueblood and Rainbow Dash that got featured at EqD and recommended on One Man's Pony Ramblings, so I'm apparently all about stretching stuff in odd directions. :pinkiecrazy:

Still, as a fan of talking animal stories, I've always seen humans in cartoons as more than a little unnatural. Humans already clutter up 99% of TV, too--which, now that I think about is, is prob'bly why I watch so little TV...

Mike

"It could be meant to draw bronies away from the show which would be refocussed on little girls." I... no brain! no!
Hey, if they got me to watch a show about cutesy cartoon ponies then I'll give the other a shot at least.(I can't believe I just said that)

:facehoof:

We'll just have to see...

COME BACK FAUST!!!!:fluttershbad:

I've gotta say, segregating humans off into a spinoff relieves my mind- and the idea that in ANY way Hasbro intend to serve other oldercoolerhipper audiences by the spinoff, is also a relief.

If they're bringing an ironic darker and edgier twist- OR a hipper and more current modern-day twist- or any damn twist, really, to the spinoff...

Well, then it could easily mean they are NOT going to try to bring such things to the actual show.

And as I've said, there is nothing ironic or cool about My Little Pony. That's why it worked. The characters are sharp and lively and independent, but that's not the same thing. There's no cynicism in them at all except for some of the villains, they're not a comment or reference on anything, they don't ever step back to highlight the basic silliness of it all because it's NOT silly. We love 'em because they are awesome. No irony necessary.

There's a reason most lame modern media is calculated, postmodern, self-aware: the idea is that coolness sells and is trendy. There's some truth to that but it created the dispassionate void that cried out for My Little Ponies :ajsmug:

I'm dead serious that having these elements try to get into MLP:FIM would be far more worrying than having Hasbro try to branch 'em off. It's funny, they should have better sense, but I think few non-writers would really get this concept: MLP is cool by not being cool. It's a huge hit with jaded young male adults by not being jaded or 'male' or trying to pander to them in any way. It started on 4chan, for heaven's sake. MLP:FIM is just itself, adorable and sincere and trying to bring role models with real integrity to little girls, the intended original audience.

I doubt they give a rat's ass about the integrity or the enlightened role models, but they got it because Lauren set it up that way. If they have to think of the show as 'only for little girls' to retain the spirit of that original intent, I hope they remain fat dumb and happy for decades :rainbowwild:

823732
:ajbemused:
If Lauren Faust had been hit by a bus, the show would have to carry on its spirit without her. I see no difference between that and being hit by the bus of corporate idiocy and committee-driven decisions. The show must go on and keep its spirit.

If you're here, odds are you're a poni writer, so you can and should try to retain the spirit as well, because it's bigger than Hasbro now.

Hell, if I can manage something like that, anypony can. My ponies carouse licentiously in the most non-Hasbro way imaginable. But they're smart and determined, with many interests outside of sex and romance, and they won't give up on each other no matter what. And it's not a joke to me- I admit it's ridiculous, but I don't care. I know these ponies by now, and I'm not writing 'em ironically.

If Hasbro makes a version of the mane cast where they turn into parodies of teen girls and begin to fawn over boys and turn on each other, my ponies who grow penises and angst over what to do with their wounded hearts while being turned on BY each other- will be closer to the heart of things than the shallow 'cool' trendy ditzes.

Assuming the humanized ones do turn out to be cool and trendy. It should be pretty quickly apparent what we have.

I really think it's all gonna be about what a big corporation thinks 'cool' is, and how they inflict that upon their intellectual properties. My Little Pony not being 'cool' was an ACCIDENT. If they'd intended to go for a broader audience, they would have included 'cool' and ruined everything. If they try to purge MLP-proper of brony influence and refocus on the core audience- it might preserve the Season One-ness we need indefinitely.

I'm willing to give a HiE spinoff a chance, but it's going to have a lot of uphill work to do to prove itself to me. I don't typically like HiE fics. I know previous generations actually had a human in the show to help make everything easier to swallow. Personally, I'd rather the spinoff keep the same art style as FiM. They could use other characters and another area even. I really like that art style.

Vis-a-vis the main question, I might look in if I start hearing good reports about it, but otherwise I'm not watching it, and I'm certainly not jumping ship for it. Season Four is a-comin', and I ain't missin' that for jack.

Not entirely sure what to make of your argument that it's to move the bronies aside. It seems to me more likely they'd be preparing the way for a new toyline or franchise expansion, and that's about it.

As for the popularity of the show, I still ain't sure what made the show so popular myself. I got ideas about why I like it, and I hear a lot about why other people like it, but does that explain its subculture status on the Internet, or how it gained ground in the early days? You seem to suggest that it's some kind of reaction to the heavily cynical and edgier content of other shows, but I confess I find it hard to think of examples off the top of my head of the sort of thing it could be compared with.

... Gaining more kid-friendliness might be worse than you think.

There are all kinds of jokes that are only there because of their current vision. Pinkie's theory about Donut Joe secretly being James Bond wouldn't happen in the new, girlier show. Neither would Iron Will's seminar, or Pinkie's burlesque show.

And they probably won't make any more episodes like Lesson Zero or FUN FUN FUN FUN. See, some of the best episodes are those that throw off the shackles of the MLP franchise and just try to be cartoons. Party of One is the typical example. Not to say that those are all of my favorites, of course--when asked, I always say that my favorite was Green Isn't Your Color.

Really, I'd be sad to see the show split into "pandering" vs. "what-we-like-G4-for-NOT-being". Worst of both worlds.

I really think it's all gonna be about what a big corporation thinks 'cool' is, and how they inflict that upon their intellectual properties. My Little Pony not being 'cool' was an ACCIDENT. If they'd intended to go for a broader audience, they would have included 'cool' and ruined everything.

I wouldn't be so sure. Corporations are more savvy than you give them credit for; I will be very surprised if Hasbro or the writers turn out to be stupid about gender relations... especially considering the context.

I'd expect exactly one of the main characters to be boy-crazy, and I would definitely expect Rainbow Dash to keep her non-ironic tomboyness. What I wonder about is whether they preserve what I like about Rainbow Dash so much--that the show never questions her tomboyness. She is feminine, and she is tough, and she beats all the boys, and nopony actually comments on it. It's not unusual as far as the ponies are concerned for a mare to be way faster and tougher than any stallion in a five mile radius--when a humanized show inevitably lets that slip, what will it be like?

823740

as I've said, there is nothing ironic or cool about My Little Pony. That's why it worked

I could not have said it any better. I could go start a long story about Thunderbirds, DuckTales, Looney Tunes and South Park, but for now, I won't. Okay a little then: South Park was overrated (at some point in high school, it seemed the only words some of the kids knew was "Goddammit!", to the point where it grew really, REALLY annoying), the new Looney Tunes Show takes itself way too seriously.
MLP tries to be none of that. It is just itself, like DuckTales: silly, highly-unlikely-to-ever-happen-irl, cartoon physics, all that stuff. And in a time where just about everything produced since 2000 had to be 'realistic' and all that bullshit, that's awesome. Suddenly, it doesn't matter the target audience are girls, or that's it about ponies. The combination of the two hold me off for a while, but eventually curiosity won. The show has just about the most ridiculous concept (guys, they're PONIES, come on!), and that is exactly the reason I like it.

To answer your question about the humanized series: probably I'll watch an episode or two, see what it's about, but no matter how good it gets, it will NEVER, EVER be better than ponies. Why? Simple: humans != ponies (or animals in general) and at least 90% of the cartoons I grew up with had (talking) animals as the main cast. In other words, I would stick with the ponies.

824102

I really think it's all gonna be about what a big corporation thinks 'cool' is, and how they inflict that upon their intellectual properties. My Little Pony not being 'cool' was an ACCIDENT. If they'd intended to go for a broader audience, they would have included 'cool' and ruined everything.

I wouldn't be so sure. Corporations are more savvy than you give them credit for; I will be very surprised if Hasbro or the writers turn out to be stupid about gender relations... especially considering the context.

I'm gonna side with Applejinx here. If they made MLP for teenagers as well, it would have to have at least three pop culture references every single sentence. Little children wouldn't understand them, they just want to watch le ponies and not stupid pop songs. Likewise, teenagers would say the ponies were 'lame' and it was too childish. In other words, by trying to make it cool, you make it bad.
Look at DuckTales. Look at Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers. And I can list a lot more, mostly from the 90's, because I grew up with that. Either I'm looking at all these shows the wrong way, but if you just want to get away from the real world and its pop culture, these all were (and still are) great shows. And MLP does exactly the same, only in a time were very few, if not none at all, cartoons aimed at anywhere above 5-year-olds have done so in the past decennium.
So what if it's essentially one big advertisement for toys, because the old Disney cartoons were essentially just a big commercial for Disneyland as well. And nobody cared about that.

That said, I am a bit disappointed with the whole Derpy thing. We've had characters like that for ages now, but suddenly because "current year > 2000", people start bitching about it? Although considering how the fandom (which I wasn't part of yet when I watched that episode) interpreted her, I can understand some of it.

I'm gonna stop typing now before this thing gets longer than the blogpost itself, and Applejinx, my advanced apologies for posting this wall of text:ajsmug:

Humanized repulses me beyond my capacity to describe. It is an abomination.

I... worry about it, but I do have some hope. I'm serious. Picture this:

Shining Armor: Captain of the Canterlot High Royal Guard football team. The Lunar Guard is the JV squad.
Chrysalis was snubbed for prom queen back when she, Celestia and Luna went to school together, and has held a grudge for years
Sombra was a genius who sold test answers and was expelled for it.
Discord was the dickball superintendent who was sacked by the school board.
Carrot Top teaches Agriculture
Derpy teaches Home Ec
Dash and Gilda hold track records
The CMC, Twist, Snips, Snails and Spike are all in middle school

It has some potential... some, mind you.

Frankly, I think that what ever they are planning, their smart enough to roll with the punches a little bit. Granted, the goal is to make good money, not specifically good ratings. Good ratings simply helps make good money so they might be making this just to see how things will play out as well as breaking into a new market. They may also be realizing that there are little girls growing up off this and those girls in the upper age brackets (8-10 years old) are now becoming young teenagers. This may be targeting them. You also have the current "pegasisters" who range from 5 to late 20s approximately (maybe more) that might like to see a mix of MLP and teen drama. MLP:FIM basically covers life in general for the moral spectrum, but teenage life tends to be twisted into something more complex and harrowing at times. Now, I could be wrong and that might just be a bunch of board room men trying to pander to the market, but I have a bit of faith in Hasbro studios that even if that is the case, they'll do a semi-decent job of trying to make it palatable whatever the higher-ups decide.

Agree with you on this one. I don't condemn the humanozoid show just yet, but for the very least I would see it as a completely different entity. MLP FIM created a whole new race of creatures with their own world and rules, moving away from "it needs to be human to be relatable". That's why it always be the only one for me. Also, uncanny valley. No MLP for me without uncanny valley. Making them full humans totally misses the point.

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