Wednesday Whine: How to Break My OTP · 9:30pm Nov 7th, 2014
Yes, I know it’s Friday, but I can’t resist the alliteration, and besides, I was thinking of this on Wednesday. I just didn’t have the time or energy to post it. I could also have titled this “why anti-shipping is completely unnecessary and counterproductive and why you shouldn’t do it,” but I’ll settle for dismantling my own OTP and providing a flexible tool set for how you can do it, too, which will work for the anti-ship/NOTP of your choice. And I warn you in advance: this one’s long, and it’s got a lot of images. All the art’s been credited, and all of it is intended with respect to the artists.
I don’t think Cheese would particularly like being anti-shipped from Pinkie:
Source.
Tough taffy, Cheese. This is the only OTP dismantle on which I’ve got any credibility, and I’ll be making up for it really soon, as in really, really soon.
A very popular kind of thread on FiMFiction is the “which ship do you hate with a fiery passion?” kind of thread. Am I saying people can’t have opinions or express them? Of course not, although I question the utility of threads like those, but I don’t think a simple, “I really don’t like X ship, and here is why,” rises to the level of anti-shipping, although if it’s long enough and frequent enough, it’s getting there.
The line between anti-shipping and shipping is really thin. Sometimes people create new ships so that their OTP isn’t “threatened” (more on this later.) Sometimes people are so vocal about their OTP in threads dedicated to something else that it can be read as anti-shipping, e.g. popping into someone else’s shipfic and talking about how your countership is better.
I think it’s safe to say that if you’re creating an anti-shipping group on FiMFiction or DeviantArt, or making a picture in which half of the ship literally slices up the other half, or writing a fic primarily for the purpose of busting up the ship, or writing a blog post about how much you can’t stand it, you’re anti-shipping.
I’m not sure what those are trying to accomplish.
EDIT: You know how unsuccessful anti-ship pics are? Both of my examples were deleted. That's how unsuccessful they are.
And CheesePie has attracted a lot of anti-fans. Behold Team Anti-CheesePie. The really sad part about this group is that it adds a lot of cute pro-ship pictures that I’m sure the artists didn’t intend to be used this way.
Or comments like this incisive one:
Anti CheesePie (READ THIS OR YOUR DEAD MEAT)
this dumbass ship is ruining my life,okay that i actually know that cheese and pinkie has the same personality,look,ect.
people think,about this "couple" thingy
didnt you guys ever noticed that cheese sandwich seems to be pinkie pie's secretly brother? because their look,hair,personality,are the same,like brothers and sisters personality,ect are the same.
yeah thats it
. . .
AND IF YOU COMMENT WTF IR RONG WIT U U UR BRAIN ASAP WTFF WILL BE HIDDEN HATE COMMENT WILL BE
BLOCKED
I DONT CARE WHOEVER ARE YOU!! ALSO SAYING BAWW HOW DARE U BASTRD H8 CHESEPIEH!!111oneone will be blocked and hidden.
AND I DONT WANT ANY COMMENTS SAYING "CHEESE PIE" OK?
NO THANK YOU
NO NEED TO TEACH ME.
EDIT IN BUTTHURT MODE = actually,they both got 1 thing in common,that are party planers,and real ships atleast need to have a lot of common not just a fricking one,it makes completely no sense,that is not a real ship.not a best ship ever.not even a FEDEX,got it?
idgaf.
In fact, someone on DeviantArt actually has a CheesePie enemies list! A list of CheesePie shippers the person finds unacceptable and—I don’t know, maybe should be expunged from the planet? I’m really disappointed that I’m not on it. Yet.
I’m not exactly sure what created this level of vitriol, but I know that there are ships that get the same thing: mostly Mane Six ships that are deeply hated by other Mane Six shippers. What’s the point here?
Before you anti-ship, think about the consequences:
1. You will piss people off. You will piss people off you don’t even know yet. If you do it a lot, and especially if you add unpleasant behavior elsewhere, you have now got some people who will think, “Well, what a jerk! I’m certainly not going to read her fic/respond to her posts,” and some may even go so far as to follow you for the exclusive purpose of annoying you and downrating everything you write. Of course, that can happen anyway, and there’s not a lot you can do about it. I’m pretty sure I’ve got a few anti-fans myself.
2. You will make more of the thing you hate. People who don’t ship it yet will think, “Gosh, I wonder what’s got her in such an uproar? Maybe I should check it out.” You’ve actually provided a sort of negative recommendation. Meanwhile, the heavy-duty shippers will spring into action and create more shipfics and shipping art, which in turn will attract more shippers. It’s the kind of publicity you can’t buy. Remind me how the Brony phenomenon started again? Oh, yeah. That’s right.
Anti-shipping is like providing oxygen to a fire. Open the door and let air in, and you have fed it. It’s just going to grow. I have one or two NOTPs myself, and mostly, my strategy is to ignore them altogether.
But you didn’t come here to listen to my advice on why you shouldn’t anti-ship CheesePie! You wanted instructions on how to do it effectively.
1. Ignore it completely.
This is canon:
I know that I and some other swell CheesePie writers and artistes have got you convinced that this is canon:
(and thank you so much, Cyclone Dusk, for the fan art!)
EDIT: Sadly, this, too, is gone. I've got a copy, but I don't want to put it up if Cyclone has seen fit to take it down, and I'm still grateful he drew it.
but it does not happen in canon. In other words, you can safely ignore CheesePie for the purposes of most fics. That’s especially true if the reason you want to break up CheesePie is to make your Pinkie ship “safe.” Cheese is a loner. The idea that he remains alone requires no imagination at all. Please remember, too, that being alone is not a punishment.
“Ignoring it” as a strategy applies to about 90-95% of MLP ships. If you’re going to break up a canon couple, like Cadance and Shining Armor, then yes, you’re probably going to have to provide some kind of justification for why the alicorn in charge of love magic has a marriage in which meh, they just grew apart. Otherwise, no worries.
“But the Shipping Fuel for CheesePie/my NOTP is so very strong! My ship can’t compete!”
Nonsense. Are you sure you’re not a closet CheesePie shipper? You seem to be convinced that it’s inevitable! Look, people have happily gone on shipping total crack ships and churning out art and fics and developing a huge following. Just because there’s a new ship that’s extremely popular and has serious ship fuel doesn’t mean you have to abandon yours, although I’m sure watching people jump ship to ship the new one must be annoying. Whatever you shipped before is pretty well safe now. Just write your fic or draw your picture. If you build it—you know how it goes.
However, “just ignore it” is probably too similar to “don’t bother anti-shipping,” so let’s move on.
2. Give Cheese a violent or otherwise sudden death. Have the rival you like beat him up.
This elides into character hate, which is something I don’t understand at all. I don’t understand it directed at any character, even the baddies. I don’t like Diamond Tiara—she’s an awful piece of work, in my opinion, and I don’t understand fics in which she’s shipped with a member of the CMC—but murdering a filly? Gack.
And besides, everyone knows that Cheese and Discord are pals:
For some reason, there was a vogue for the CheesePie funeral fic some time back, which seems to have faded now, but that was supposed to be a positive. Go figure.
3. Make Cheese a double-dyed villain.
Source, our own Sketcha-Holic.
Oh, dear. They’re both terrifyingly awful, and that will never do. How’s this?
Honestly, I question the wisdom of doing this with good characters. Write your Fluttercord fic, by all means, but don’t turn Big Mac into a murdering rapist pedophile. Big Mac is a big sweetie, and I ain’t buying it. Ship him with Caramel or something.
4. “Quick! Make him gay!”
OK—despite this one:
and some other stuff that looks like flirting, we really don’t know much, if anything, about Cheese’s sexual orientation, and I think most characters on the show can be written as bi, at the very least. But because you’re anti-shipping, you don’t want him to be bi. You need for him to be as gay as Paree, so that he’s automatically disqualified from being with Pinkie. And that’s where I have a problem with it.
I don’t like homosexuality being presented as a negative thing, and by using it for a negative purpose, you’ve just made it feel like that. I don’t know; it always leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Besides, I could more easily believe that Cheese has some strange paraphilia, but never mind.
However, see the “touché ships,” below.
5.“Quick! Make him already married!”
Eh, could be. This works better for some characters than others. Since Cheese seems to be on the road a whole lot, pretty much permanently, I think it’s more probable that he isn’t, and besides, you have to introduce a totally unknown OC character. (Pairing Cheese off with your OC because he is your husband-o doesn’t count.) “Oh yes he’s married to this mare named Smiley Cheeks and they have four adorable foals! Back to our main story!” As a rule, people don’t like stealth or surprise ships, and they don’t like unnecessary OCs. And I’m assuming you want your story to be popular.
6. “Quick! Find him a significant other!”
Hmm. Here’s the problem. The more negative you’ve been about CheesePie and the more pictures you’ve commissioned of Cheese being hit with a train, the less believable it’s going to be. What’s worse, if you punch that sucker too hard, you’re going to make the people you pissed off pissed at that ship, too, and now you’ve mixed in some people who just quietly want to ship what they like because they like it. I know some people who have seriously been put off some other ships that way, because they’ve been used as a deflection too often, and that's too bad.
Readers can tell if your writing has no love in it. They can taste the difference between a pro ship and an anti ship. You will run out of fuel on the fic, and people won’t like it.
In a gray zone: you really like the character(s) and want them to be happy, just not with each other. It really is possible to be happily single. I know some of you don’t believe that, but it’s true.
7. “They’re just really good friends who like throwing parties together.”
Source (Poor Berry Punch, though. I think.)
And just because I can:
Absolutely! The show’s called Friendship is Magic, not Friendship is Magic But Romance is Magic-er. This works with almost every theoretical pairing in the show. In fact, it’s probably what those pairings really are. Just make sure if you do this with any pair that you do it with love. Their friendship is a positive thing. You don’t secretly consider friendship an inferior category. Like the anti-ship ships, your real attitude will show.
8. “She doesn’t think about me that way.”
Source
BINGBINGBINGBINGBINGBING!
This one works big time! Honestly, this isn’t even one you have to explain. It’s beautifully simple, and it works both ways. Derpator used it very nicely in The Calling Night. I don’t understand why more people don’t use it. It’s very realistic.
Actually, I think that’s why people don’t use it. It’s too easy to believe. Everyone over the age of twelve has felt this one: you feel that way, and the other person doesn’t. This is why people snottily talk about friendzoning, too, because it gets around the pain of didn’t love me back. Remember the last time that happened to you? Sucked, didn’t it? Didn’t help that everyone else brushed it off with “only a crush” and “get the heck over it already.” Operas are written about that sucky one-way love feeling. I wish it would get more respect. Anyway, it really stung, and your eyes burned, and your chest felt like it was on fire and the rest of you went cold, and the more you pretended you were ok, the more you felt like you weren’t, and this is why you don’t want to write this one, isn’t it? Because you don’t like being reminded, and you don’t want to feel sympathy for one half of your NOTP.
When this is used right—when you can tell the author sincerely likes both characters—it can be gorgeous. An example of it being done well is Popping Her Balloons, by Finn Pony. It’s a PokeyPie fic, and Cheese throws the wedding, and there’s some mild melancholy on his part about it. There’s no question that Pinkie is only interested in Pokey. Everyone is a class act. If you do like both characters, and only if you do, and you can pull this off, you can do something amazing.
Now let’s talk about some distraction ships. You’re still kinda paranoid, so you really, really, REALLY want to make both parties nailed down in another relationship. You probably don’t need a Pinkie ship, because that’s probably the one you want to “defend,” but there are many of those to choose from. Here’s some Cheese ships that really work. I call them the “touché” ships, because if you pull them out, I have to admit, “Touché. That would work. You’ve got me on this one.”
1. Cheese and Trixie. Mind you, I think it’s a disaster waiting to happen, but it can be a hilarious disaster. You don’t have to explain how they met, you don’t have to explain what the attraction is, and you can have fun with the inevitable quarrels for days. There’s a whole Tumblr for CheeseWiz, and I’m happy to say that I’m a fan.
It’s not clear if it’s a romantic thing or what, but it certainly leaves room for it.
2. Cheese and Braeburn. No, it’s not because everybody’s really happy for Braeburn. I’ve written them as a bromance, and these guys have chemistry for days. There’s something about Cheese’s fake and Braeburn’s real Western-ness, Cheese’s actual introversion mixed with Braeburn’s honest to golly extroversion, and Cheese’s peripatetic lifestyle vs. Braeburn’s “I couldn’t leave Appleloosa” that really works. It is not hard to imagine them as a couple. Not for me, anyhow. I wish there was more art of them.
EDIT: At long last Foudoubulb draws CheeseBurn.
3. This is more of a cracky thing, but here goes:
Source
Pokey: Who’s supposed to lead and who’s supposed to follow?
Cheese: I have no idea. What’s Pinkie doing here?
Pokey: Seriously, Pinkie, can’t you let two guys on a date alone for five minutes?
One of the classic complaints about CheesePie is that Cheese is just Bubble Berry/r63 Pinkie. And he gets in the way of their Pinkie ship. And therefore, because he is exactly like a character they love, they hate him. 
Well, if Cheese really IS Pinkie, then he’s equally compatible with anyone Pinkie’s compatible with, right? Rrrrrrright?
The original link seems to be busted. However, the image is called “Yellow or Blue,” and it’s by Carranzis, who is one of my favorite CheesePie artists, and she meant it as a nice tribute. I’ve never seen a Cheese/Pokey pairing, but I would probably laugh for days and days.
Just take your Pinkie ship, replace Pinkie with Cheese, and see what happens! You're not going to do that, are you? Which makes me sad, but I'll live with it.
Anyway, I hope I’ve now given you the tools to take my OTP and burn it right to the ground, but I hope you won’t, because remember, kids: anti-shipping is counterproductive.
Why on earth is everyone so intent on needlessly hating ships that don't apply to them? Granted, I used to do the same thing, but as long people don't shove it in my face or try to force it on me, then yeah, ship what ya wanna ship. I ship SombraPie, but I don't expect EVERYONE to ship it, so it's understandable when someone says to me, "I don't get this ship, why do you ship it?" I offer insight on why, and if they don't wanna be a part of it, then that's fine. However, there is a difference between not shipping something and anti-shipping.
Not shipping:
1. I don't see the chemistry between these two/three.
2. What made you start shipping this?
3. I don't understand this ship... Could you explain it?
This is not necessarily anti-shipping. This is just someone saying that they don't see the appeal of a ship and just don't want to be a part of it.
However, this is anti-shipping:
1. OH MY GOSH, THIS SHIP IS SOOOOOOOOOOO STUPID. WHY DOES ANYONE SHIP THIS? IT"S SOOOOO WEIRD.
2. THIS IS SO DUMB, THIS SHIP MAKES NO SENSE, BLARGH
3. Incessant, repetitive ranting about how one ship is better than another ship(this has happened so many times, you don't know)
So, yeah, anti-shipping doesn't make you cool or better than someone else; just like having a different skin color than someone else doesn't make you better than them. PEOPLE ARE ALLOWED TO LIKE WHATEVER SHIPS THEY WANT.
2580171 At least SombraPie doesn't have its own hate comm! Maybe people feel CheesePie is forced on them, but I think it's just popular, and even then, it's a popular het ship. It's never going to have the sheer popularity of TwiPie, for example. I think it's telling that the anti-CheesePie group is also dead set against yaoi and yuri. I dunno.
With an unusual ship like SombraPie, I can definitely understand why someone might ask where it came from, without meaning any disrespect. And then there's a simple answer: "here's the fic which kicked it off, and it went from there," to which the proper response is,"oh." And sometimes it's more an entire type of ships someone isn't into: if someone doesn't like background pony ships, and X ship is one of those, then chances are, they aren't going to like X ship. But then there's no reason to waste the firepower on just one ship. Truth is that I hardly ship anything at all, so the nice thing with nearly everything is that either I can appreciate it or don't really care one way or another. I'm a total agnostic on Discord ships, for example, so while some combos make me scratch my head more than others, I don't have any preferences between Dislestia and Fluttercord. I like AU Sombra/Celestia, but it's so rare and so unpopular, and confined to the comics, that I just can't get myself into a knot over it.
And honestly, sometimes it's not the ship, but the execution. There was a FlutterCheese fic on the site some time ago--it's since been taken down--and I read it. There were some real issues with it, like Fluttershy being OOC. She actually baked a cake, licked the batter off her hooves, went off doing some random thing, and went "oops, duh, I left it in the oven!" I thought, "Hold the phone. Pinkie?"
And Cheese was a huge extrovert, and the author spent more time on how one was an introvert and one was an extrovert and explaining what those things were than she spent on their interaction. So it really wasn't that the ship wouldn't work: it was that the writer couldn't pull it off.
In Looking Glass World, I found that Cheese and Fluttershy can be written with tons of chemistry. I adored writing for them. The trick would be to get Cheese into a spot where Fluts wasn't afraid of him and to have them spend enough time together. I even played with the idea that everyone assumed that Fluttershy and Cheese were dating because they spent a lot of time together and they were lab partners (and everyone knows all high school lab partners are dating).
What flustered my jimbobs was someone insisting, basically, that it was impossible to write a good CheesePie shipfic without writing one or both of them out of character, because there wouldn't be any conflict. Maybe I was wrong, but I took that as an insult to every single writer of that ship. It's like saying preemptively, "all of your CheesePie fics suck." The enemies lists and the beating up things are disturbing, but I think it's fair to say that those are probably just disturbed people.
I can't stand this. I've never been able to stand this. Yet as I brush against a bunch of shippers in this fandom, I see it all the time. All the time. The notion of preferring one ship to the point of outright hatred of another (provided all examples are well-presented in a story, of course) in MLP fandom with all its likable characters is actually inconceivable to me, to the point where I actually don't know if the people I see arguing over ships are actually being serious -- but I have this sinking feeling that they are.
I say this as someone who shipped in various fandoms for over ten years, gave it up for five and is now backsliding into it again slowly but surely. These are all characters to have fun playing with. It's not like they're you. No, not even the ones you "identify with."
The only reason I don't read CheesePie, scoots, is because I consider it too easy (this is why I also don't write it -- no challenge in making it work! It's given to you on a silver platter!) and I thus have my own ideas for how it would work. When I enjoy a ship I subconsciously tend not to read other interpretations. Since I enjoy the idea so many ships in this fandom... yeah, I don't read a lot of fic.
This is the worst "reason" one can ever give for why a pairing "wouldn't work," and if you see someone give it, the correct response will always be to laugh at them. I have before and I will continue to.
Wait, YOU'RE not on that list? But you've done the best CheesePie stuff I've ever seen! You totally need to be on this list! I think that Cheese and Pinkie should bother them until you're on the list!
(btw, there should be a Cheese Sandwich emoticon!)
Yep. So far the only thing we've seen in canon is that they now like each other. As in, would be friendly and polite if they met again. The rest is extrapolation and maybe even wishful thinking.
Now, as you know I ship them myself. But that's mostly because they're clear Kindred Spirits. Not all Kindred Spirits wind up falling in love, though.
Hey, for all we know Cheese could be gay (you cover this later, I see). Probably not, but it's possible. Or he could already be in love with somepony else (more probable). Or they might just not like each other that much, that way (even more probable).
Heh, you may perhaps not like the fate of a certain character in the (yet unfinished) Chapter 2 of The Fall of Hive Hunger-Prime, then ... though I am building it up logically ...
It does seem a bit extreme a consequence for mere social bitchery, eh?
Ah, that picture is basically Divine Jealousy in one of the worlds where Discord falls madly in love with Pinkie ...
I actually agree with that -- Discord would like Cheese Sandwich. Cheese makes everything interesting and fun wherever he goes; consequently, Discord would be unlikely to intentionally and seriously harm him. Especially unlikely to kill him. Discord is irresponsibly and selfishly chaotic; he's a "disrupt everything" sort of villain when he's in a villainous mood. He's not an Omnicidal Maniac, nor does he hate Ponies as a species. He likes them. (Which, with Discord, is sometimes almost as bad as being hated by him).
Yeah, that's basically shipping, um "Rotten" Cheese Sandwich with Pinkamena "Cupcakes" Diane Pie. They'd live evilly ever after!
Basically, the problem is that one is violating the character concept, to the point where the character becomes the Character in Name Only. The exception is if part of the story concept is that some event or force has casued general corruption or reversal, as with the synchronization and character reversal in the Reflections world.
Cheese's normal approach to everypony is so darn friendly when he switches into Party Pony Persona that one could easily write him as promiscuous and pansexual. This is exactly why many writers write Pinkie that way, because she has the same All Loving Heroine super-friendliness.
I find this especially dubious in MLP:FIM because it is set in a xenofictional society which extolls Love and Friendship, and hence encourages super-friendly behavior. And Cheese and Pinkie are friendly even by the standards of their friendly culture. One might as well assume that everypony is bisexual and promiscuous, interpreting all the friendly nuzzles and hugs seen in the series. Some writers do interpret it that way.
(continued)
2580524
Sigh. Nothing is "too easy." Neither writing nor relationships, in my jaded experience. Have you seen The Muppet Movie? They pick up The Great Gonzo and he says his dream is to go to Bombay and become a movie star.
Fozzy Bear: You don't go to Bombay to be a movie star! You go where we're going! To Hollywood!
Gonzo: Pshht, yeah, if you want to do it the easy way.
Anyhoo, I hope you'll consider reading Looking Glass World anyway, even if you don't normally read CheesePie, since it's Equestria Girls and since I worked so damned hard on it and got so much flak. Towards the end, it was really discouraging. I think the reason I kept going was because I knew exactly where I was going and I'd grown to really love those characters in a way I couldn't even love them as ponies. EG versions are more human and in a way, they feel more real. That, and I'm stubborn. So I really hope you'll make an exception for that one.
There's always conflict between people, and maybe even more between people who share the same passions. I had them get into the beginnings of a bitter argument over punch ingredients once. Averted, but just barely.
Those people are childish god i hate using that word but its true making an anti ship group is immature. What part of dont like dont look do they not understand? *sighs* i need a drink. I wish we can upvote blogs because you ma'am have hit the nail right on the head here and you deserve a thousand thumps up for it.
2580600
By "too easy" I mean there are far fewer hoops to jump through than even most Mane Six shippings. Again, I've been doing this for years so figuring out ways characters can connect comes faster to me than for most people. I was done before the episode was. XD
Cheese and Pinkie? Yeah, you'd have to make up ways the two can conflict. But this isn't a negative (unless you're some kind of romance-angst addict I guess). Making those ways up can be fun and lead to some hilarious or heart-tugging circumstances.
With EQG you also have the alternate universe concept -- EQG Pinkie is different from Pony Pinkie in her own way, and EQG Cheese is Tabula Rasa. There's your extra challenge if you really need it.
Yep. Because if he's bisexual, he might just notice that Pinkie's one of the sexes he finds attractive.
Plus she's all pink and round and cuddly and fluffy and ... what was I talking about? 
I actually have no problem with introducing the unknown OC. Though if she exists, why wasn't she mentioned before, in canon? (OTOH, Iron Will apparently has a wife and child, which we didn't know about until the recent IDW comic book, she just never came up in-story before this). There are lots of Ponies in Equestria, most of whom we don't know.
Another problem is the question of just what sort of mare would be compatible with the rather eccentric Cheese Sandwich? The image I keep coming up with is of a sort of Pinkie Lite, which is of course possible. A third problem, as you mentioned, is that she has to be okay with his rather strange career. A fourth problem is that Cheese is kind of young to be married, though in a culture like Equestria's it's more probable than it is in ours.
As for being in love with somepony else? Sure! Why not? It shares problems 1-3 with his being married, but not "4," and "3" is less relevant because she hasn't made the ultimate commitment of marriage. And Cheese is certainly charismatic -- I could see somepony other than Pinkie going for him. As Pinkie points out in my little "Bestest Best Friends" essay, that's something she would have to reasonably worry about if they were romantically-involved but not exclusively committed to one another.
I completely agree that it's possible that one of them likes the other that way but it's not returned. It's even possible that Pinkie likes him that way and it's not returned. (Guys can reject gals, too, after all). Heck, it's possible that Cheese Sandwich doesn't want to get seriously involved with anypony -- he is, after all, a wanderer. If he felt that way, then his great esteem for Pinkie would make him especially unwilling to fall in love with her, since he would want to hurt her least of anypony in Equestria.
As I think I mentioned to you before in connection with LGW, I find this perfectly plausible. Though really painful and unpleasant for both of them, the more so because they each have attributes that the other would find really attractive so they might try to make this work, and torture each other and themselves with it.
The essential problem is that Cheese Sandwich is too nice to set his boundaries in a way which the arrogant and insensitive Trixie would respect, and so Cheese's resentment would build. He'd try to avoid her until he calmed down, which would feed into her fears of abandonment and betrayal, until the resultant explosion was epic. Breakups and reconciliations would be likely, extending the mutual suffering possibly over years, even decades.
Seriously, I wouldn't wish this fate on either of them. This would be more Trixie's fault than his, but as you know I have a soft spot for the little blue egotist, so I'd feel sorry for her as well.
Cheese and Braeburn ... Well, I like the way you write them as friends, so maybe if Cheese is bi or gay as well ...
I don't actually see the logic behind Pokey Pierce and Pinkie Pie to begin with, other than the alliteration, so I don't see the logic behind Pokey and Cheese.
Needless to say, I still think Cheese/Pie makes more sense!
2580616 Well, he is on the road all the time--seemingly compulsively so. It looks as though he gets yanked wherever Cheesy Sense sends him to throw a party, and since Ponyville already has the best party pony in Equestria, that's pretty much the only place he'll never have to go. Long distance relationship is built in, as is one of them putting the other on a pedestal. I added a dash or two of my own, of course.
I've noticed that the EG characters seem to be closer to their Season 1 or Season 2 selves: a bit less mature and not having learned some of the lessons they've learned in Equestria **coughRainbowDashcough**. That adds the extra touch of "this is where they're going to go." EG Cheese needs a backstory. So does Regular Cheese, and making that up has been fun. But I don't feel as though I've had to create conflict, no.
I looked around on that group and I couldnt find that list you talked about. I really dont get the cheesepie hate i mean its one thing to dislike it but to hate it to the point you are a raging and throwing a temper tantrum and making anti shipping groups says that you have huge anger issues. a year ago a younger me would have trolled a group like this hard but you cant reason with anger because no matter how much you scream and yell at them about how wrong they will just stick their fingers in their ears more and yell la la i cant hear you. People like this sadly cant be reasoned with and shame on them for making a wasted effort to make an equally cruddy group to match their attitude.
I'm not on the CheesePie shipper list either. I've checked. I think the only way to get on that list is to talk to that guy and express that you're a CheesePie shipper.
I also love how that guy keeps claiming that he's so mature compared to "CheesePie fanbrats", but has atrocious grammar, spelling, and has the most ANNOYING whines about a ship he just can't let go. Yeah, sure buddy, you're mature, all right. Everyone knows the immature people ignore their nOTPs.
Psht. I despise Soarindash, but I don't whine about it all the time. I just ignore it, simple as that.
But that's no fun!
You know what I really hate? When anti-shippers pull the "they're obviously related, so it's incest" card. And use their hair as proof. Despite Pinkie's hair being naturally straight.
I can buy them being distantly related, but to call them twins separated at birth is really stretching it.
2580678
Not to mention the color schemes being totally different, too. Pinkie's pink, her family is grey and purple, Cheese is yellow and brown.
But I had so much fun with that in Looking Glass World, where Cheese used that as an excuse to talk his way into the emergency room.
2580698
I like to smack anyone who says they are related. Sure then why did pinkie not know who he was? Cheese is a city boy and she is a daughter of a rock farmer and the pies dont have a son.
2580698 Ha! I remember that scene, I thought it was hilarious how you utilized that idiotic theory.
Also, I love your shout-out to me with that pic of Mad Scientist Party Ponies!
Why would anyone be an "anti-shipper"? Why would someone try to pick apart someone's ship? I mean, I may not agree with every ship I see and some don't make sense to me, but the whole point of fan fiction is the right to ship whoever you want. After I discovered the Sombra-Pie ship as done by Harmony Charmer, I learned that any ship can be a good ship if written by a good author.
Must say, an impressively even-handed summary, and, as someone with a pretty meh attitude towards CheesexPinkie, I'd say you did a good job theoretically deconstructing your OTP.
Mind you, there is another option you sort of aluded to, bt didn't explicitly list, understandable, since it's one that may overlap with others and is not necessarily a good idea, but can work if you're not too unpleasent about it: make a joke or a subplot out of it.
Maybe have it as a running gag that everyone assumes Pinkie and Cheese are an item, and she has to correct them that no, he's a friend, but she loves Braeburn/Pokey/Bingry McCribbledin or whatever. Or possibly have those jokes start to affect and worry Braeburn/Pokey/Bingry.
You can't be too mean-spirited about about it, mind you - people will notice if you're just being nasty. But it's important to remember that a lack of romance can be just as much of a story-(and-joke-)telling engine as a romance.
For example, in Arkensaw Pinkerton's Fixing Up Miss Smartypants, the popularity of Fluttermac was used both comedically - with a lot of people, particularly Applejack, assuming they'll get together and doing what they can to expedite that, despite the fact they're not interested - and dramatically, particular when Applejack realizes why she's so eager for Fluttershy to be a part of the family (Here's a hint: Toot toot!)
Or, a bit of a sillier example, the running gag in Darth Link 22's Families about Pinkie's delusions of Twidash.
Just because you don't ship it yourself doesn't mean that either you or your characters have to be unaware of the ship. Just because it's not true doesn't mean some people don't think it.
As I said, the trouble with that is not being too mean-spirited about it, but it could work. Kinda-sorta-maybe.
I don't know, I'm just thinking out loud.
2580635
There's no logic at all behind it. Heck, when you think about it, there literally cannot be, because, as a background pony, he's a complete blank slate, essentially an OC with an established body.
But when you think about it, there's not really any logic behind Pinkie and Cheese being together either. As Scoots2 said, all that is shown in canon is that they're good friends with a big shared interest. And let's not forget that Pinkie (and arugably Cheese) is good friends with everyone. That is a relationship, a romance is another relationship, but there is absolutely nothing that says one has to or even is likely to lead to the other.
There are no rules to love, nothing that says you have to love this sort of person and can't love this other sort of person. I've seen pairs of incredibly similar people get into a relationship, other such pairs just be friends... heck, some such pairs wind up as bitter enemies (unlikely with these two, admittedly, but the point still stands). The same with complete opposites. Love just sort of... does it's own thing. Frankly, I think any relationship from best friends to total strangers to bitterest enemies has just as much potential to end up in romance as any other (though, I cannot stress enough, this is the case given enough time - enemies aren't going to start making out immediately, but they can reconcile and grow closer. It's seldom done right [I'm looking at you, Twixie], but there's no reason for it not to happen)
Unless there has been defintive and explicit statements or demonstrations of romance in the show (Which, as far I can recall, consists of Cadance and Shining Armour, Cranky and Matilda, the Cakes and Celestia and Other Sombra if you count the comics), then the characters, as they are, are shown as friends. This can change - for ships to work, it has to - but that change is your story, and you made that change. Logic doesn't enter into it, it's all about what you see and what you want. We see, say, Cheese and Pinkie hug, but it's your perception and desires that ascribe a romantic rather than platonic meaning to it, assuming they do. It's no more or less farfetched than the idea Pinkie would talk to Pokey or Noteworthy or Princess Erroria or whoever offscreen and, whatever personality you ascribe them, hit it off with that personality.
Shipping isn't about what logically would happen, because there is no one thing that would logically happen. It's about what you want to happen and think should happen.
Really, I get the distinct impression that the only logic behind the vast majority of shipping can be boiled to "I think they're cute/funny/interesting/exciting/whatever together." And there's nothing wrong with that; the "logic" behind a ship is merely a baseline for whatever stories, antics or emotions you come up with for the ship.
That's what I think, anyway. Then again, some of the ships I enjoy are a touch odd (put it this way - there's a reason I tend to refer to it as CheesexPinkie rather than Cheesepie
) so what the hoohah do I know?
2580793
Someone with no life obviously. really why is it so hard for someone to simply ignore it if they dont like?
2580859 The only problem I can see with the running gag thing--well, two--is that it couldn't be mean-spirited. So it would have to be done by someone with no particular strong feelings about it. Also, in most rom-coms, this is the setup for that couple to fall in love, so that would be hard to pull off. Also, Stephen Moffat has been pulling exactly this in Sherlock, and the only result has been that he's pissed a lot of people off.
As for me-- people have shipped me--as in me, Scoots2--with at least two people I have had disagreements with, and IMO, there is not a bucket big enough for my nausea. I am not fictional, and I don't like it. Creepy creepy creepy. Mind you, I've written some ( I think) pretty good Foe Yay, but I have no interest in "I hate you, let's kiss."
2580600
That's very true -- such a couple has more points of contact, and thus potential conflict. And for that matter potential cooperation, which can be beautiful when depicted well -- though of course creation is harder to describe than destruction. But then creation works through catallactic cooperation -- which is a form of competition and hence conflict (out if its economic context, this works by a competition of ideas in free mutual exchange).
2580678
Heh, obviously all Ponies with poofy hair must be first cousins!
Sorry, but Pokey's one true love is tennis pony (seriously, though, jokes aside, this is one of my faves on the site!)
But in all seriousness, this is a thing?
I remember a certain vitriolic user screaming anti-TwiLuna in one of my old cancelled fics, as his OTP was TwiFlash. Actually, I think the same guy was bitching on one of LDSocrates' fics that LunaMac was canon so fuck TwiLuna as well. But that was the only time I'd ever really seen any instance of that, and I just kind of assumed that one guy was a dickbag. Maybe I am lucky in that I just miss the bulk of these people.
That kind of reaction is crazy. If you don't like it, don't read it. It's pretty simple (ala, point 1: Ignore it completely.) The only canon/semi-canon ships we'd have to worry about explaining away would be TwiFlash and Mirror-Sombra/Celestia. And even those are pretty easy to sweep under the rug (both of those are gents from alternate universes, ergo come with some problems)
2580859
Indeed, but that's often the first step toward love. People tend to fall in love with people with whom they have at least one big shared interest, and the demonstration that they can be good friends is important for the love to go anywhere beyond infatuation.
Okay -- that's not actually true. She's friendly with almost all Ponies she knows, she winds up being friends with most of them, but that's not the same thing as being good friends. Pinkie's friendliness doesn't mean that she likes everyone the exact same amount, or in the exact same way. That would be emotionally impossible, even for Pinkie.
My fanon reason for why she's able to have meaningfully-friendly relations with an entire town of two thousand plus Ponies is that she's super-intelligent (intelligence is relevant here because to be meaningfully-friendly with anypony one needs to remember key facts about them as individuals, and care about them). But there's no way that she's in love with all these Ponies, though she loves most of them to some extent.
She's much more likely to be in love with somepony who shares her hopes and dreams, her sense of life -- understands her. That is why the Cheese / Pie pairing suggests itself as one obvious possibility -- because he is far more similar to her than are most Ponies. This would be far more likely than her falling for somepony who is nothing like her and has no understanding of her.
I'm not saying it's the only pairing possible. There's also some canon indications that she especially likes Big Mac. And Rainbow Dash. And Twilight Sparkle (her reaction to meeting her for the first time was extreme even for Pinkie Pie, which given that she's a PRECOGNITIVE implies that she knew Twilight was important to her destiny. And she might fall in love with somepony we're not even considering here.
Well, of course there are "rules" -- personalities operate according to internal logics. The internal logics are not the same from person to person, though.
One general rule is that people are attracted to people who share some important similarity with them. However, the "important similarity" may not be one obvious looking at the person from the outside.
Good example of this: Pinkie Pie x Big Mac. Now, one may correctly point out that they don't seem that similar -- Pinkie is a hyperactive, extroverted party pony and Big Mac a phlegmatic, introverted, serious-minded farmer. However, Big Mac is very similar to Pinkie the way she USED TO BE back on the Pie Rock Farm, and he's also similar in many ways to Igneous Rock -- Pinkie's father (except that he's more fun-loving than was Igneous).
There are other similarities between the two. They are both basically country ponies (Pinkie's acclimated to town life, but she spent the first half of her life on a farm), they're both honorable, intelligent and kind. What's more, the ways in which they are different represent qualities in each the other admires, rather than ones they despise.
You want a "rule" of love? Here's one: an emotionally healthy person falls in love with someone else because that person sees qualities in the other they admire. Despite kills love.
I disagree, for one obvious reason. Friends are more likely to spend time around one another than are total strangers or bitter enemies. What's more, friendship and enmity aren't randomly assigned between characters, they grow for reasons. One befriends persons whose company one enjoys, and enjoying another's company is necessary for love to flourish. One bitterly hates persons who have done something to earn this hatred, which probably means that they don't share similar senses of life to oneself (unless one is freaking evil).
What you're probably thinking about is the situation where rivals fall in love (or become good friends). Ah, but rivalry is very different from enmity. A "rival" by definition excels at something one cares about -- but that means that oneself and one's rival do share a passion! That's why the Twilight / Trixie dynamic works (as lovers if they are both attracted to mares, as friends otherwise) -- they have rather a lot in common. But, then, Trixie's not normally Twilight's enemy.
Logic does enter into it, because if the characters aren't following their own internal logics, then any dramatic situation will seem contrived.
2580600
You got serious flak for Looking Glass World? But that story was really good!
2581005 OH GOD THAT FIC WAS CUTE. I am way busy and have no excuse for bolting off reading fics like that, but it was so cute!
The only thing the Big Mac comic proved was that his Big Mac-liness brings all the mares to the yard, except for his sister and Rainbow Dash. I liked it that even in Fleetfoot's head injury induced pipe dreams, the only reaction she can come up with from Dash is "?" Oh, yes, and that he's capable of being totally oblivious to all of it while he's intent on Fixing Stuff.
I absolutely adore Mirror-Sombra and Celestia together, but not to the point of making people cranky about it or getting cranky myself. I know everyone doesn't read the comics. I do like it as part of some character-building, along with the Celestia micro and the Celestia/Spike Friends Forever comic: she's a good teacher, cares about her students, capable of falling in love, of making mistakes, and of looking like a doofus when a good looking stallion makes her nervous. And she is a giant nerd. It's much more character development than we're ever likely to get in the show. But yes. That's in the handful of ships I really like. The fact that it's canon-ish probably helps.
I can't usually say this without getting people mad. I'm a canon-shipper, and this is partly why I like CheesePie. And this is where people lose their tempers. I don't mean "and this is why CheesePie is canon." I just mean, "after a few decades of studying literature and knowing it probably better than real life, I am extremely responsive to cues." And I am a tidy little Twilight-esque thing and tend to ship what I'm told to. This was me during the Harry Potter years:
Ron/Hermione: Aha! This is like Beatrice and Benedick and all those Jane Austen novels! Clearly they are supposed to be together! Accordingly, I shall like them.
Harry/Ginny: Well--not as convincingly put together as I'd like, but--okay, I can see the foreshadowing, and he wants a big family, and it's about what Harry wants, not me, and he marries a redhead like his mom and his best friend. *Earnestly tries not to think about Harry/Ron.*
Remus/Tonks:
Siriuslyseriously? Ooookay. That's what the lady said, so I will like it. Somehow.Neville/Luna: WHO THE HELL IS ROLF?
--(Rowling writes the World Cup fic this summer.)
--okay, he's Luna's husband. Sigh.
It doesn't help, or maybe it does, that the movies went with Neville/Luna, thus confusing the hell out of me. I thought I was having some kind of late night hallucination brought on by one too many midnight showings.
So the CheesePie thing for me was made out of following cues AND it's adorable (to me.)
2580567
My friend Yildun was working on a fic she was brainstorming with me, and essentially, Discord plays with Cheese until he breaks him. I think it was my idea to have Discord bombard him with CheesePie funeral fics until they start to seem real.
I'm not crazy about Sleeps With Anything Pinkie Pie. I was trying to figure out why, and then I realized it's because it feeds into a whole thing where "she's friendly and nice to me = she wants to sleep with me."
2580635 I think it's mostly a problem when the OC or the alternative ship is brought in exclusively to get rid of Cheese. It's like, "why bother?" With an OC, too, you've got the problem of no personality, and someone who is that threatened by a ship probably does not have the chops to build an interesting character from scratch.
Pretty much what Derpator did. I think he'd considered going the more-involved "married or gay" route, and settled for "he didn't like me." Devastating. -- And then Pinkie hooked up with Rarity. But anyway, it was a great way to get there, and that was from someone who likes CheesePie as a ship.
I think--and of course, this is not coming from a PokeyPie shipper--that it comes from his cutie mark of the safety pin mixed with her balloons and the "pink is for girls, blue is for boys" color scheme, plus the fact that interesting stallion possibilities were thin on the ground in Season One. I felt no need for them, myself, least of all for Pinkie, but if that's what you HAD to do, and it HAD to be a stallion, Pokey made as much sense as anypony else. I simply can't work myself up to feel any consistent emotion for any background pony, positive or negative, so I only raise an eyebrow when I hear things like, "Pokey is better for her than Cheese! He's more level-headed!" or "I hate Pokey! He's such a mean jerk!" The last one really confused me, because I thought, "whoa, whoa, whoa--all he did was pop some balloons! He was having a nice time, and Pinkie's got lots, and she didn't seem upset at all!" It turns out that "he's a jerk" comes from his portrayal in Dash Academy, and I never would have known that if I hadn't done some digging around. How can I hate Pokey? There's nothing to hate!
2580755 Because that was a brilliant picture. Also, I've been following your fics and blogs and stuff for more than half a year, and I had no idea you didn't like SoarinDash, so you're pretty quiet about that stuff.
2580793 I don't know if I'd go THAT far, but essentially, yes. Maybe it's that I prefer things that look plausibe? --but that isn't necessarily true. Because my investment on about 95% of ships is low, I'll read a lot of different things. And if it's something I know I won't like, like Shining Armor/Chrysalis, I'll just give it a miss.
2581137 Probably only because it was EG.
¡Reading this reminds me about something terrible!:
Scribbler read a story on YouTube. Some flankhole did not like the ’Ship and complained to YouTube. YouTube just casually gave to her a strike (3 and she looses her account)! If one does not like the ’Ship, ¡do not reading the bucking story!
2581302
Big Mac wasn't totally oblivious. He was glad to see Cheerilee. But then Cheerilee knew him well enough that she knew that it was pointless to get in his way when he had A Job To Do, so she greeted him affectionately and then let him go about his business. Which is part of compatibility -- knowing when not to bug one's Love Interest.
That, coupled with all the ship-teasing between Humanoid Mac and Cheerilee, makes me think tha the writers of both the show and the comic are pairing them.
Which of course doesn't mean that other pairings aren't possible for Mac. Mares generally admire him (I can see many good reasons why), and he's shown some positive affect toward a few others, including Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy and Princess Luna herself. But it does make me think that Cheerilee's the odds-on favorite in this race.
All of which are also true of Twilight Sparkle herself. Which is not surprising: Twilight is one of Celestia's favorites, and was trained by her personally, so Twilight would have have modeled herself in part on Celestia. We've seen this more and more in Season Four, and of course in the Reflections arc (doesn't Luna actually say something to this effect? )
Yes, I saw what looked a lot like foreshadowing in "Pinkie Pride," especially when you consider how Pinkie was reacting before and after Cheese essentially challenged her by upstaging her. She seemed incredibly happy at first to have met somepony who was similar to herself, and if you think about it from a fictional POV, why would they emphasize it unless he was destined to either become her best friend / love interest, or her most dangerous rival / enemy? The show then teases you a bit with the idea that they're going to become enemies, until you learn that he's acting like this because he wanted to IMPRESS HER because she has been his inspiration.
In fictional terms this is exactly the same motivation that made the knights in courtly romances go out and do great deeds for their Ladies (who in some late versions of courtly romances might also be amazonian warriors themselves). This is the kind of motivation which means at least great friendship, and very possibly really serious romantic love.
In non-fictional terms, wouldn't you be enthralled if you met a beautiful / handsome member of the opposite sex who inspired you to greatness and/or shared one of your most important interests? When I met someone like that in real life, I married her, so it's highly-believable to me that Cheese and Pinkie could fall in love.
But of course it doesn't have to happen. So far, all we've seen was that one, brief, but rather loving look that Cheese and Pinkie seemed to be sharing. In canon, they haven't yet met again, or even necessarily corresponded, though I think it's improbable that they will never meet again given all that foreshadowing and the fact that Cheese gave her one of the Rainbow Keys.
They've also foreshadowed something developing between Pinkie and Big Mac, starting implicitly from "Magical Mystery Cure" and explicitly from "Pinkie Apple Pie." But not as much, and with more of a "just friends" undertone. And, notably, Big Mac lives right in town, yet the only time they've shown them interacting since then was when Pinkie tricked him into losing his voice as part of a scheme directed to get Fluttershy to become more comfortable with public appearances.
Ron/Hermione: Well, we knew it was likely going to be either Ron/Hermione or Harry/Hermione from the first book on, and the Decoy Romance never really convinced me as being anything more than Hermione getting annoyed that Ron wasn't getting her signals and hanging out with a charismatic and likeable exotic foreigner for a while.
Ginny is the first girl to be attracted to Harry in the first book, and he saves her from a giant serpent (more or less) in the second book. With a freaking magic sword, like a classic fantasy hero. So ... yeah.
Remus/Tonks: -- the thing is, almost all of that happened off-camera, so we never really understand why they fell in love (other than they're both nice but in their own ways slightly-damaged people). And then more stuff happens off-camera, and then they die heroically together. So, yeah. If
A. K. YearlingJ. K. Rowling would write their actual story, I would have a more complex opininon of the romance.Luna/Neville/Rolf: Yeah, I thought they were going to have Luna and Neville wind up together too. I think J. K. Rowling was undecided on the issue for a while. I suspect that one reason why she did this is that she wanted to have at least one reasonably close Good Guy couple not work out -- after all, one doesn't always marry one's high school sweetheart, even in a society as relatively small as the British Wizarding World. Incidentally, this is another good example of someone falling in love with someone who shares one's passion -- in this case crypto-zoology.
LOL!!!
I'm not sure that one could PERMANENTLY break Cheese by this sort of tactic (unless he was being spelled to think that they were true), but then I don't think that Discord would want to permanently break Cheese at all, because Cheese is too much fun being Cheese.
Yes -- which demeans the concepts of friendliness and niceness, really. Among the reasons I think Pinkie wouldn't be like this: (1) she has self-respect, (2) she is in canon quite capable of being firm when she has to be, and (3) she is aware that she would harm both herself and others if she behaved in this fashion. And Pinkie is about spreading happiness, not laying the ground for tragedies.
I'm not saying that there are no Promiscuous Pies in among all the parallel Pinkies, and there are certainly many more who have already taken lovers without being promiscuous, but one thing about Pinkie is that she was raised by what looks like a conservative farm family. And just because she's a party pony while they're not doesn't mean that she's rejected all their values.
I allude to Pinkie's general code of honor, and its linkage to her upbringing, in Dragonshyness, Chapter 8, when I have her tell the Paradise Entity:
This is not specifically about sexual morality; but rather about integrity and self-respect in general. However, it does illustrate that my Pinkie has not rejected the code of her family, and that a lot of her self-respect comes from a sense of honor. This is part of the reason in my fanon why the Apples like her so much: in that respect, Pinkie is a kindred spirit.
Oh yes. If I were going to have Cheese be in love with an OC, I wouldn't do it because I hate Cheese / Pie, I'd do it because that universe provided a reason why Cheese Sandwich would have met and fallen for somepony other than Pinkie Pie.
I have an Alternate Universe fic I've written a bit of called A Cart of Air (title in homage to Fritz Leiber's "A Pail of Air" (1950), where Nightmare Moon won, brought Eternal Night and some years later the Earth is cooling toward the background temperature of the Universe. And the (now teenaged) Cutie Mark Crusaders (plus Silver Spoon) led by Apple Bloom are going out in life support suits to harvest some atmosphere for the life support system of the shelter complex that some who remained in Ponyville built under Sweet Apple Acres. As far as they know, all six of the mares who left on the quest to stop Nightmare Moon died; Big Mac (to whom the NIghtmare was unusually kind) actually showed him their perfectly-preserved corpses (he'd come to ask to be allowed to bury Applejack's remains).
And then they run into a party from South-Dunnich, whose members include Maud Pie, Cheese Sandwich, the Great and Powerful Trixie and Spike the Dragon, who are on a quest to ...
... but anyway, the point is that Cheese isn't in love with Pinkie Pie, who he only saw once and has presumed dead for several years now. He's paired with somepony else.
But that makes sense. This has been a very different alternate universe.
In the context of the main universe, making a pairing just to break up a canon or semi-canon couple is just silly.
Oh yeah -- in that one he was practically a villain. This IS the one in which he seduces Derpy and is the sire of Dinky, right?
2581302
Ahh, see for me, I am an explicit-canon shipper. Well, not entirely: I will ship everything and anything if it is super-cute, but as far as reading into the canonicity of certain ships, well, I tend to only say "yeah, that is canon" if it is explicitly stated. Such as the Mirror Sombra and EqG World Flash Sentry.
Most of the time I have seen the "hate" for ships, or the argument that something else is supported in canon is explicitly to decry a homosexual relationship of some kind. I actually remember now the other one I had seen, someone had tried to say that because Braeburn was polite to the mane six he was straight, thus SoarBurn was impossible (which, if I am going to be 100% honest, is my OTP!)
So I thought it was a homophobic thing… not a crazy person thing.
I remember the arguments going around recently around the LyraBon scene from EqG:RR, that it was proof positive that they were totally in lesbians with each other. While I would love to see some canon love for LGBTQ+ characters, I personally did not take it as canon, as I have seen how teen girls act around each other (that mooshing cheeks together, I've seen my nieces do that when they are singing karaoke at christmas, and I can tell you now that they are 100% not in lesbians, and certainly not with each other)
So yeah, I am kind of weary of assigning canonicity to certain relationships, but hell, I will read the shit out of fics that speculate. Your fics have actually really made me fall in love with CheesyPie. So much so that I keep forgetting that Ponyacci is not dead in canon. My mind had taken Swear on Camembert so much that it trumps canon, and I have to remember, when I see a mention of Ponyacci in a story, that no he isn't dead, that was just scoots2's story
2581302
I want to see that story written so bad now. I would like some cheesie angst we don't get enough of it.
That stereotype is just as annoying as writers portraying pinkie as childish and ignorant about stuff.
2581396
Wait, what? That makes no sense whatsoever.
Hee, hee! I actually had the reverse as Trixie's reasoning for the idea that Cheese was Pinkie's Sassy Gay Best Friend! He was so polite and nice to ALL of them, see, and he wasn't obviously dating any of them. In fact, given the effectiveness of the rumor mill in high school, it was obvious that he wasn't. So good friends with a group of girls + nice to all of them + not dating any of them = gay.
Braeburn is nice to them because they are his cousin's friends and because he is thrilled to show ANYPONY Aaaaaappleloosa. My theory is that his Village People style brown leather vest is stuffed with business cards from the AAGA (Appleloosa Apple Growers Association). I don't have any strong feelings about Braeburn's sexuality one way or the other, although since so many people assume he has to be gay, it's kind of fun to have him be straight and really cool about it. I'm not even sure if my EG Braeburn is straight, gay, bi, or what. I don't feel that just because my FiM Braeburn is straight that his EG counterpart has to be. My EG Braeburn isn't sure if he's straight, gay, bi, or what. He's clear on several things, though: there is noplace like Aaaappleloosa, Cheese is a great friend for a boy to have, chocolate cereal sure does hit the spot, and he loves them singing ponies. And I absolutely stick by Cheese/Braeburn as my favorite MLP platonic bromance. "Psst! Cheese! You awake, buddy? You awake?"
I just assumed that the LyraBon thing was a nice thing to do for the fans, and that it's also nice to have a couple onscreen who might be gay or lesbian because gosh knows there aren't very many of them. Background ponies/humanoids--I can't work up a whole lot of personal enthusiasm about them, but I'm glad other people are glad, if that makes sense. Kinda like when I saw a guy cosplaying as (regular) Sombra at Comikaze with a Sombra plushie. I'm sort of "eh" on regular Sombra, but I also thought, "oh, man, Harmony Charmer would wig out completely!"
Also, YAY on liking CheesyPie. I know what you mean about Ponyacci, though. When I saw him in line in the Granny Smith/Flim-Flam Bros. micro, I thought "Hey! You're supposed to be dead!" Yeah. I'm proud of Swear on Camembert, especially since when I wrote it, I had no idea that I was going to write all that OTHER CheesePie, but even just because I managed to write a CheesePie funeral fic without killing either of them.
2581452
That would be swear on camembert right? Because its the only cheesepie funeral fic i can think of.
2581505 Mine is Swear On Camembert, yes, but if you go back through some of the very earliest CheesePie fics in the folders, you'll find several. Coincidence, I think--you know how people love killing poor Pinkie with diabetes and things, and this was a new twist on them. I think the vogue for them died out after a while.
2581513
Oh right the infamous diabetic pinkie trope. oh man I renumber how it all started with bittersweet. I personally stay far away as possible from those pinkie death fics they seem to try way too hard and they did it for a while with cheese planning her funeral. One terrible story I remember was reviewed on "rage reviewers" I think the fad has finally died down since then like you said. Its pretty cliche the thing about your fic is you tried something different and it was the first CheesePie fic I've read and now I am a hardcore shipper.
2581513
As an actual diabetic, let me point out that adult onset diabetes (type 2), the kind you get from overconsumption of sweets and fats, is not swiftly fatal, and is rather easily-treatable given a supply either of insulin or of glucophagic medications. This is probably within Equestria's medical or magical technology, especially for somepony as important as an Element Bearer.
It's childhood onset diabetes (type 1) which is the more serious kind, and which probably would have killed Pinkie before Luna's Return if she'd been born with it. Equestria is just below the likely level of technology of being able to treat it in most cases.
2581400
They're variants on the same idea -- that Pinkie Pie is just a bit of fluff, not to be taken seriously. In the first case, she's effectively unable to control her libido; in the second case, she's stupid. The two can and have been combined, most notably to me in the Winningverse version of Pinkie Pie.
2581541
That is true. The winningverse had such an interesting take on pinkie so it can be done right pinkie is probably one of the most complex characters to write so i can see how easy it is for things to go wrong.
2581557
Actually, the Winningverse portrayed as Pinkie Pie as a bit stupid and very promiscuous -- she basically has random sex at her parties, until she falls in love with Rainbow Dash. This is referenced in my stories, because one of the Pinkie Pies of whom my main worldline Pinkie is aware is the one from the "Degradingverse" (the Shadow Wars version of the Winningverse).
By contrast, the Winningverse Rainbow Dash is very stupid, and not at all promiscuous, in part by virtue of a demisexuality verging on asexuality. This is a consequence of her near-fatal fillyhood fight with Cloud Kicker.
2581560
Wow that is insulting to pinkie's character. I only got through the dense mind of rainbow dash I never got around to reading the rest the thing is pinkie seemed silly in it so I didnt see how the author actually portrays her. I am very nit picky about how pinkie is written if she is written as the stupid comic relief with no perosnalty then i will stay away from the story. Pinkie is not stupid and writers need to know that. Yeah i see what you mean about rainbow dash. So what was your headcanon sexually for pinkie?
2581579
My main worldline Pinkie Pie is at Luna's Return (YOH 1500) only 19 years old, heterosexual, virginal and sexually-immature -- her developmental path is slower than that of most Ponies (because of what she is, a Major Daughter of Paradise) and she doesn't yet have much in the way of sexual desire yet. This changes over the next five years; she completes her maturation and becomes interested in stallions, especially Cheese Sandwich and (to a lesser extent) Big Mac. Though she's hedonistic, her sexual morality is fairly conservative, because of her upbringing.
There are, however, numerous Pinkies from other worldlines, who vary from this model in one or another particular. And Pinkie Pie receives some information from her alternate selves, so her personality and consciousness are not entirely straightforward. She perceives the world in a not entirely temporally linear or singular fashion.
I don't think I'll ever understand the amount of energy some people voluntarily expend over things they don't like. A miserable job that they need to pay the bills? That I understand. But spending time and creativity to keep two fictional characters from having an even more fictional relationship? It boggles the mind.
That said, I think the most effective form of anti-shipping is genuine, enthusiastic pro-shipping for a different pairing. Not just a distraction or justification to eliminate the hated possibility, but showcasing a pairing that the author genuinely likes. Praising a pairing can draw just as much attention to it as denouncing it. Rather than vandalize the shop down the road, why not fix yours up?
Sadly, positivity can be hard to come by in some circles, because those double-fictional relationships are serious business.
In any case, thanks for the blog.
2581837
Exactly what I've always thought. All that energy would be enough to fuel so many drawings or fics. If the person couldn't do it yet, this might be the impetus to learn. And there's always reading others' work, too, although some really good work comes out of there not being enough of something. I know The Rock Farmer's Daughter happened partly because Sketcha-Holic wanted to read it, and the same applies to Looking Glass World.
2580909
True, true, but then again, if you hate the ship... I don't think you should talk about it at all - when you write with hate, no matter how subtly or quickly you try to do it, chances are people will see it, and it'll turn a lot of them off your writing. I like to think writing is about creation, not destruction.
Besides, I did say it wasn't necessarily a good option. But I think it is an interesting one.
2581039
True, and, like I said, that can form a very good basis for the change from platonic to romantic you want to tell. However, saying a shared interest makes it more likely for them to fall in love, while not an unjustified assertion, still smacks of a false syllogism - saying "most romances evolve from shared interests" is not the same as saying "most shared interests evolve into romances." Else every high school club in the world would quickly descend into either a love dodecahedron or an orgy.
(Note: Okay, looking at that again, I want to make it clear the Pinkie grin was at the joke, not the prospect of an orgy. I don't characterise Pinkie like that. Rainbow Dash, on the other hand
)
(Secondary note: that was also a joke, I'm not a pervert. Honest!)
Okay, fair point, poor choice of words on my part, but at the same time, is Pinkie's friendliness with Cheese really that much more than her general friendliness?
Quite possibly, yes. But does that imply romantic interest? A desire to work together for a common goal? Just finding him a lot of fun? Who knows? Could be any one of them or something else entirely!
Er... no, sorry, I don't think that follows at all. Yes, a degree of mutual understanding is vital to any relationship, but beyond that, sharing qualities isn't.
See, the important thing to remember is that who you get into a relationship with isn't about what you are, it's about what you want. What qualities you find attractive. And it's not even remotely true that those qualities will necessarily be the same as those you have yourself.
Being attracted purely to the same qualities you possess... well, it's not necessarily a sign of narcissism, but...
Maybe Pinkie is attracted to a pony who's so like her. Or maybe she'd like someone a bit calmer, who laughs quietly, but genuinely. Or maybe she likes the serious type, someone she has to work to bring a smile to, but it's worth it when it happens. Or maybe all or none of the above, that's for the viewer to decide. Sure, Cheese is definitely an option, but being similar to her doesn't necessarily make him more attractive to her.
(I say "necessarily" a lot, don't I?)
Also, you don't have to be like someone to understand them. I think the mane six have grown to understand each other pretty well (even if some wouldn't want to admit it
) despite being so diverse. Sure, you'll never know exactly what it's like to be them, but that's the case no matter how similar you are. Cheese would still have to get to know her over time in order to understand her in any meaningful way, it's not like they have some sort of party-based telepathy.
Okay, so, actually... they kind of do, but not in that way.
Anyway, the point is that being similar or different to the person someone is doesn't make you more or less likely to get in a relationship with them. Being similar or different to the person they want does
Again, that's a fair point, although... logic is a bit of an ambiguous term - pure logic as opposed to emotional logic, that sort of thing. However, you are quite right in that characters still have to be in character.
Touché.
The enemies example was hyberbolic and looked at in the absence of little things like "how life tends to happen".
In fact, a major problem I have with most villain/hero ships (neither the only one, nor necessarily the main one, but one nonetheless) is how quickly and contrivedly the two reconcile, and how many seem to thin neither has to change at all. But I digress.
My main point was that any ship not explicitly put together on the show is a matter of conjecture, and said conjecture is usually defined, at the very least partially, by what the shipper wants to see and likes. So, the logic behind many a ship (from a Doylist perspective, which is what I think you were talking about when you first mentioned it) is simply "I think they're cute together" or some such, and if they make a good story or ship out of it, that's all the logic they need.
2582011 I think one reason I like CheesePie is probably a little personal. I've noticed that even her best friends tend to blow her off or treat her as though she's weird. "Oh, that's just Pinkie Pie being Pinkie Pie." "Oh, Pinkie." *eyeroll* And directed at a character who wants affection as much as Pinkie does, that's gotta sting. Acceptance of that kind feels like condescension. "Sure! We accept that you're borderline crazy weird! It doesn't bother us at all!" This is why I didn't ship any characters, but I really didn't ship Pinkie. Too childish, too strange, too out there. Forget it.
Bookplayer had a blog a few weeks ago about Unfortunate Shipping Implications, and she wasn't just thinking of Pinkie ships, but anything in which the ship is supposed to fix something presumably "wrong" with the characters. "She'll balance her out. He'll anchor her down. She'll make her loosen up. He'll bring her out of her shell." Whatever happened to "I like you exactly the way you are. I accept the whole package?" It's like the song "The Warthog." Don't try to hide or stop being a warthog; just find another warthog.
So to me, CheesePie says, "There is nothing so wrong with you that you can't be understood and loved. Someone will appreciate you for what and who you are." It's a hopeful message.
And Imma drop it right there before I depress myself.
2582011
No. A shared interest does make it more likely for two people to fall in love than they would without the shared interest. And most romances do evolve from some sort of shared interest -- though sometimes this is nothing more sublime than a shared interest in sexual pleasure. Or, to put it another way, very few romances contain no shared interests; indeed, the essence of "dating" is that the couple does something together that they BOTH consider "fun" (implying that they share an interest).
And this is not the same as saying that most shared interests evolve into romances. That's inverting the set memberships. One tends to fall in love with someone who has shared interests and OTHER qualities attractive to oneself.
Think about the problem with "being in love " with someone with whom one had no significant shared interests. What would one and one's beloved do? Yes, I hear the adolescent snickers, but trust me -- cuddling and even making love are boring as one's sole shared activity. What would one and one's beloved do after cuddling and making love and then cuddling some more?
Shared interests mean that a couple has things to talk about. It means that their romantic relationship can also be an intellectual one. And by "intellectual" I mean not merely traditionally-academic, but whatever are their shared interests -- if a biker guy and a biker gal are into motorcycle customization, that is something they can talk about, even if you won't find it on most college curricula. It is a basis for long-term love between them.
Another attractive quality is a shared sense of life, which is to say shared values. To take a popular fan pairing (though it's not one in my main fanon verse), the reason why Twilight and Applejack would work together as a couple (if they could find one another sexually-attractive) is that they have similar senses of honor and overall virtue. They would both tend to approve of and disapprove of similar behaviors.
Why is this important? Well, suppose that they didn't. Suppose that Twilight had no moral inhibitions against lying, for instance. How long could Applejack stand her company, regardless of how "adorkable" she was? Or suppose that Applejack thought that knowledge was corrupting and that everypony was better off being ignorant? How long could Twilight stand her?
A shared sense of life can work if two members of a couple admire each other's virtues, even virtues that they do not possess to a high degree themselves. The reason why Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash kind of work together is that they do admire each other's virtues -- Fluttershy admires Dashie's athleticism and physical courage, even though Fluttershy is neither an athlete nor reliably brave in combat, because these are traits which the culture in which Fluttershy was raised have primed her to admire. Dashie admires Fluttershy's beauty, class and gentleness, even though Dashie is herself at most "cute" rather than beautiful, acts common, and is not particularly gentle on the surface, because they appeal to Rainbow Dash's more affectionate core personality. Each one of them is thinking "If only I could be more like her in these ways." (I emphasized this in Dragonshyness because I wanted to show that it was plausible for them to have deep affection for one another).
The odd thing is that a lot of writers don't get this even though they do get one of its most superficial manifestations -- being attracted to somepony the character finds beautiful. When we appreciate another's physical beauty, we are appreciating an appearance that we do not have (even if we are beautiful ourselves, we (hopefully) all look different -- if a character loved another character because "he looks just like me," we would consider her astonishingly narcissistic by implication).
Well, this applies (and more seriously) to moral beauty as well. When Rarity has that prolonged reverie over Spike in Divine Jealousy and the Voice of Reason, she is thinking about the things she admires about him -- and one of them is his physical beauty (she really likes the way sunlight plays off dragon-scales, and in general finds Dragons a beautiful group, as she showed in Dragonshyness). But many of the qualities she admires about Spike are intellectual, emotional and moral: she particularly appreciates his intelligence and ability to understand and contribute to her ideas (intellectual); his capacity for caring and protectiveness toward those he loves (emotional) and his loyalty and work ethic (moral).
Imagine if you generally despised the qualities of another person. Would you fall in love with such a person? Someone who would fall in love with someone he or she despised would be an emotional sadist or masochist of the highest order -- think of James Taggart of Atlas Shrugged, who deliberately married someone he despised so that he could dominate her; or think of the self-loathing woman who marries an abusive man whom she fundamentally despises, because she wants to be "punished."
It is safe to say that anyone who is emotionally-healthy will love people whom they admire, rather than despise -- this is why one term for a suitor is an "admirer," rather than a "despiser." This is not to say that characters can't love people whom they despise -- but be aware that by drawing such a character, you are implying some fairly serious bad things about their psychology.
Lest you assume that such a person is necessarily a likeable Woobie, consider that emotional masochism and sadism are strongly linked; the key element of emotional sadomasochism is an inability to accept equal social relationships. The emotional sadomasochist is "at your feet or at your throat" -- if you are nice to her, she will often take that as proof that you are weak and desire to be her victim (or at best distressed dude in need of rescue); you have to be at least firm with her to get respect.
Among my Trixie's worst characteristics are her tendencies in that direction -- these tendencies are only moderate in my Trixie, because I have a sympathetic take on the character, but I'm always aware of them when I write her. Normally, Trixie looks for Ponies who wish to slavishly admire her while she at best rescues them from danger or entertains them; we've seen her sadistic side in her treatment of hecklers; and of course as Nightmare Delusion she shows her most violently cruel tendencies.
Is the relationship between Piercing and Trixie a healthy one? Not entirely -- Piercing is a natural womanizer who makes romantic conquests in part to cover up fears of sexual inadequacy owing to his sterility, and is obsessed with building and running theatres to compensate for the instability of his early life; while Trixie has a monstrous Inferiority Superiority Complex (she behaves in a grandiose fashion to cover up her sense of worthlessness), has socially sadomasochistic tendencies, and can be quite hypocritical in her scorn of immorality and stupidity in others while accepting what is at least somewhat unethical and poorly-planned behavior on her own part.
But it's the healthiest those two are likely to find, and this brings up another point. A pairing doesn't have to be perfect -- love never is perfect, because Humans (and Ponies) Aren't Perfect. It just has to be good enough to mostly make the couple happy and enable their love to survive the rough patches. And "good enough" can be pretty good indeed.
Evaluating Pinkie and Cheese Sandwich by these standards: they share common interests and a sense of life: they are both party ponies with strongly benevolent moralities. They are well-matched, in that though Pinkie is more powerful than Cheese, Cheese has more common sense than Pinkie. Their virtues are both similar and complementary. They admire one another. And all of this is either stated explicitly or strongly implied in canon.
That's the case for shipping them -- Scoots2 rather eloquently demonstrated how one could choose not to ship them. Everything positive I've said about their relationship could also create a strong friendship WITHOUT romantic love, especially if there's some reason for either or both of them to not want to be romantic toward the other. And Scoots went down a whole list of possible reasons.
These are among the reasons to ship them.
2581383 One thing that was very sweet about The Journal of The Two Sisters is how much Celestia was like Twilight when she was young. She seems to have picked a future colleague/successor who is very much like her.
Also, now you know where the courtly love thread comes from in my CheesePie fics. I sat for the Special Topics: Medieval Romance exam for my second bachelor's, and I've read my Tasso and Ariosto and even teach Spenser. The model (well, one of them) for Cheese is Dante or a young St. Francis. A lot of people just think of St. Francis as the Birdbath Saint and don't know about the ways in which he reworked courtly love tropes into a love of Lady Poverty, not to mention his passionate platonic love affair with St. Clare (and of course his radical detachment from material things). So this has entered into the way I imagine Cheese, and I'm very aware that it's 90-95% my imagination!-- and that it is also unique. It's not "this is actualfax Pinkie and Cheese" at all. It's what I bring to the table and probably no one else would.
Harry and Ginny were foreshadowed by the way he saves her in book 2, and then reworked as she disappeared, only to reappear as "Huh. My buddy's little sister really kicks butt at Quidditch."
Here's where I'm getting into Pottermore. I don't think it's especially helpful, except as it underlines Rowling's intent. On Remus/Tonks, she explains that Remus refused to listen to Tonks when she said she loved him, but she "was wiser than he was" and kept pressing. I wish I hadn't known that, because in general, if a guy says "I am no good for you," you should believe him! She actually succeeded in making me think worse of that relationship, not better. As for Luna and Neville: she was adamant that this would not happen and could not happen and that Neville would be too afraid of Luna, and then she admitted that as she wrote books six and seven, she began to feel a "little pull." Usually that's your characters announcing that they have different plans from yours, and usually it's a good idea to let them off the hook and go for it, but she is a very schematic writer and stuck to the plan. I think this is why the movies allowed Neville to announce that he was going to tell Luna he loved her since they were probably all about to die anyway; they wouldn't have put that in without her explicit blessing.
Oh, yes--Yildun really planned for Discord to convince Cheese that it was all really happening, and while he wasn't going to break him permanently, he was going to come out of it very damaged indeed.
As for Dash Academy: yes, he's a villain in exactly the way that you described. But this is, of course, a fan interpretation. There's no reason to think of Pokey as anything but a unicorn stallion with a pleasing and unusual design, with whom you can choose to do any number of things.
We don't know yet. Canon has so far only shown one ambigious episode ("Pinkie Pride") which demonstrated first her positive affect toward him and then (after the quarrel was resolved) his toward her, with a briefly-shared mutual look which may have been a Longing Look, or may have been merely a mutual recognition of and respect for each other's Party Ponyness. We also briefly see Cheese responding to the Rainbow at the end of Twilight's Kingdom (did Tirek get around to draining him at all?).
It could be all or some of them combined, also. Again, we won't know for sure until we see more of their interactions.
I did notice the foreshadowing to which Scoots2 referred, though.
The problem is that this is a purely external perspective, along the lines of "Wouldn't it be cool if Celestia and Megatron fought each other in the town of Bedrock?" Well, maybe it would be cool, especially when Bam-Bam used his super-strength and the Great Gazoo warped reality to aid the combatants, but it doesn't make sense from the viewpoint of the universes involved. To make sense you'd need a framing story to explain just why Celestia and Megatron were fighting one another, and how both wound up in Bedrock.
Or, to put it from a shipping point of view, Celestia and Tirek fall in love. Aww, Beauty and the Beast, isn't that cute? Maybe (I personally think that particular pairing is repulsive) but Celestia and Tirek are so poorly matched along every axis other than being super-powerful, that it is difficult to grasp how either could have any respect or liking for another, let alone "fall in love."
If a love does not spring organically from the natures of the characters involved, then it is and will feel contrived.
2581534
2581518 Oh, yes--I keep adding to this, don't I?--on the "Pinkie gets diabetes" thing:
One of my guilty pleasures is the Rainbow Dash Presents version of Pinkie Pie. Maybe it's because they make fun of fanon portrayals of the characters or tweak them a lot. And the one I've found most fun by far is their parody of the infamous Pinkie-Gets-Diabetes fic Bittersweet.
Some of this is because I've had some severe gut things that are really very painful, and definitely make you feel very sorry for yourself while they're going on, so my life has looked a lot like the scene in which Pinkie eats a lot of ice cream up to where Rainbow Dash rolls her off the bridge. (It's from roughly 1:50 to 4 minutes in.) That part makes me laugh, which makes me feel a lot better. Anyway, in the commentary, Greg Hoffman mentions that he actually did a bit of research on the way Pinkie dies in the original fic: diabetic ketoacidosis brought on by OD'ing on cookies. Every medical professional he talked to about it was horrified. It's a terrible way to go! they said. Why would anyone choose to die that way? Furthermore, it takes a couple of miserable days to die, so Dash could easily have gotten Pinkie to the hospital and she might have been saved. It's a crowning example of Didn't Do The Research.
2581584
Once again that is a really interesting headcanon right there.
2582131
Writers not doing any research is so common and annoying as heck. Its like oh I want to write a fanfic where pinkie dies from eating too much sweets so let's kill her with diabetes even though diabetes has a more painful death but i wont look that up. I like RDP I love how it picks apart fanon while satirizing it.
2582131
Oh, indeed. I've -- obviously -- never had my blood sugar that severely out of balance, but there was a time once when I was depressed and ate most of a big package of sugar (at least a pound) at one sitting.
I was sick for the next couple of days, and felt almost as crappy as I did the time I nearly died of pneumonia. It's a different kind of sick, though -- feels like nothing else on Earth, and it totally cured me of ever wanting to do this again. There's neuropathy (tingling in the nerves of the extremities which if it goes unchecked will lead to the slow death of the extremities), and a sort of weird something's-wrong-with-my-whole-body feeling which I think comes from acids forming in the blood stream due to the excess sugar load, and my heart wasn't exactly feeling its best. Oh, and of course I had to go to the bathroom every half-hour or so (body dumping the excess sugars out through the kidneys). Nasty sensation.
But unless you die of a heart attack fairly early in this process (possible but improbable) you won't die quickly. It will usually take months, during which you must keep eating too much sweets to keep your blood sugar levels at injurious levels. If I did this every week, I might succeed in killing myself within half a year. Every day, and I might be able to do it in a couple weeks. (This is because my heart is fairly strong).
My Daughters of Paradise can will themselves to death if necessary -- I can't imagine why Pinkie would choose such a relatively slow and torturous way to die. Even without the power I described, she could surely just buy too many opiates and down them with a massive amount of alcohol -- that would do for her, and much less painfully.
Oh, one more thing. Unless the cookies are close to pure sugar, Pinkie would probably throw up before she managed to eat enough to really endanger her health. Even if she were diabetic to begin with.
2582286 My biological father came down with juvenile onset diabetes when he was still only nineteen and couldn't accept it, so he kept eating tons of sugary stuff. My mom tells stories about hearing him rattle around in the bathroom, bouncing off the walls from having seizures, and I think at one point he went into a sugar induced coma. Needless to say, he was not good husband or father material at that point and my mom took me and left. ( I was pretty much a baby at the time and don't remember him at all.) I think the author of the fic just thought it was a heartrending and ironic way for Pinkie to go, but lots of fans with diabetes are not amused.
2582315
That's a sad story, and frightening for me because of a "There but for the grace of God go I" aspect. My diabetes is fortunately not as severe, but I do love sweets and constantly have to fight (and sometimes lose to) the temptation to eat a lot of sweets. I've never been as bad off physically as was your father, but this is more due to the fact that I have the less severe version of diabetes than due to my great strength of character.
Did he die of it in the end? My biological mother, whom I never met, died of a heart attack resulting in part from adult onsent diabetes (the kind I have); she was in her 50's. I missed meeting her by only a few years -- I found out her full name and internet address shortly after her death. I was told she was a naturally cheerful and silly, but highly-intelligent woman, which is probably from where I get my tendency to be happy save under the worst existential circumstances, as my biological father is notably more dour, with anger issues -- more like me in an angry or depressed mood.