Happy Unofficial Official Human Vinyl Scratch Day · 1:15am Dec 6th, 2015
You know, when Music To My Ears happened, I expected EQG Vinyl's fandom to blow up. Which it kind of did.
And when it did, I also expected tons of fics to follow from that, especially given her role in Rainbow Rocks.
However, I guess being a backgrounder in a movie spotlighting three sexy villainesses and a fandom-waifu heel face turn means DJ WhatDoYouEvenCallHerSinceShesNotAPon-3 got lost in the shuffle. A year-plus on and still there's a clear dearth of anything about her on the site. 
No to worry, though! Today is where we change that. And I'm not alone! 
“I got a call from Flash earlier, and one from Sweetie Belle as well. They told me what happened at the concert tonight… about what you did.”
Vinyl cringed. She knew what was coming next.
“I just can’t believe you’d do something so… so… utterly reckless! You know how important it is that no one find out the truth, and yet you continue to toe the line so irresponsibly! I don’t care if everyone at the concert was hypnotized, or brainwashed, or whatever; you cannot risk exposing them like this. You know that.”
By now Vinyl was shaking her head, eyes rolling and her free hand making vague ‘yap yap yap’ motions as she heard Octavia sigh on the recording.
“Look, I understand that there were… extenuating circumstances, and honestly, given what appears to have been at stake I’m not even sure I could say that what you did was wrong, I just… I’m just worried about you, that’s all.”
Apparently I requested this? I don't know. I say lots of things. I was probably drunk at the time. On candy.
However it happened, this one's exactly what it says on the tin and all the better for it. Short, sweet, to the point, no lore required outside of what even the most casual of passerbys knows of a certain other series, and even fills in a question raised by Rainbow Rocks that no one seems to have wanted to address until now in a fun way. Go gobble it up!
And when you're done, follow me to the lighter, more tender side of the Scratch spectrum...
Lemon stared at the ceiling for a long time. Vinyl waited, hand still touching her. "You know what hurts the worst, though?" Lemon finally said.
Vinyl squeezed Lemon's shoulder. "What's that?"
Lemon exhaled, letting her legs straighten out. Slumping over, she looked at her hands. "I can't do anything about it. Not by myself. Sugar's the one who's good with words, Sour doesn't care what anyone thinks, Sunny can feel however she wants whenever she wants, and Indigo's not afraid of anything. Me? I'm just... me." She picked at the hem of her skirt and sniffled.
"Lemme guess," Vinyl said. "Just 'that music girl?'"
Lemon rolled her eyes. "Occasionally 'the ditz.' But yeah."
"Eugh. And people ask me why I don't listen to this world." She held up Lemon's headphones. "'Course, listening to this stuff doesn't help either. Mood you're in right now? All you're doing is causing a feedback loop. You gotta fight the murk, not drown in it."
A lot of you here are already familiar with my Vinyl treatment. For those of you are new: differently from everyone else on the site. 
It sure was fun to write her again after procrastinating so hard on Unison, to say nothing of being able to flesh out Lemon Zest! All of these Shadowbolts are so much fun you don't even know.
So, that's it! Y'alls've got reading to do, I have laundry to do, so I'll cut it here. Have fun. Break!
See you next crime!
~B
To be honest, the moment Vinyl showed up in the EqG promo short, I was smitten. How could you not love her after that?
If it helps you feel any better, I've got some Vinyl stuff on slow-burn with my works.
Happy Vinlymas! To celebrate, I'mma Wub so hard it's gonna bring half the neighborhood down!
**DRAMATIC RENACTMENT**
Pirate: What if Vinyl's car was a Robot in Disguise?
Bookish: DO IT,
Pirate: ... OK,
You know, everytime I see Lemon Zest...
She's cute okay?
Also, I remember in a recent fic I read, the idea Vinyl was related to transformers was actually brought up.
Soundwave, specifically. Though personally she makes me think Blaster more. And Jazz.
I'm only gonna say this once... booyah.
s6.postimg.org/qpfwp9g2p/BOOYAH.png
That's with the mature filter turned off, in case you couldn't tell... looking at you, Twilight,
I officially declare Unofficial Official Human Vinyl Scratch Day a success for the next three minutes until I get kicked out of the 'box,
3596688
You're actually in the Box of Scum and Villainy as well.
So yeah.
And on a Skirts+Abyss release day, no less. :P
Well, deadmau5 isn't a mouse, and umm...there are probably other examples that I can't think of right now.
And I am of the opinion that all Vinyl Scratches are awesome.
3596716
...good point. I never thought of it like that.
Horsey-worshipping stage name it is!
3596701
Oh snap! I didn't even realize The Things Tavi Says was right there too!
I think to celebrate I'll go watch Transformers,
3596721
Hmmm. Now I'm wondering why she chose that as her name. I guess it could just be that she thought it sounded cool, but I think that there could be a good story in there, somewhere.
For what it's worth, I did make human Vinyl's father the head of robotics at Cybertron Polytechnical University in Oversaturation.
In any case, I now have some Vinyl fics to read.
I imagine EG Vinyl doesn't get a lot of attention on account of her muteness being a defined part of her character from the word go (and mad props to MrAskAPirate for rolling with it so well).
3597227
Not quite defined anymore. In FG she sings along with the crowd in the beginning (Rainbow's song) and clearly verbally gets to known Lemon Zest as they swap headphones at the end.
She just needs a reason to speak.
We did require a year for this revelation, true, but that still doesn't excuse people from not doing the work.
3597635
She's not medically mute, no, but it's her thing, the bit that makes her stand out in the narrative tapestry, and while the fandom is usually perfectly content to write detailed characterizations based on the smallest defining traits, it gets a lot harder when you start talking about purely visual characters. If she does start talking, then the only sort of writer who's going to use the EG version over the pony is one who's interested in the setting on its own merits, and that's... a vanishingly short list.
1. Bookish 2. *crickets chirp on into the night*
3597840
Yes, we've established I'm insane ;___;
See, where I trip up on this is that, Vinyl had zero speaking lines from Season 1 onwards, but this didn't stop the fandom from adopting Nowacking as her voice, writing 10,000 permutations of Vinyl Scratch Tapes/University Days and saddling her with dubstep forever. I would say that the musicpony/DJ thing had her stand out in the narrative tapestry, especially amidst Equestria's magic-and-fantasy based world. She's been a purely visual character since Day 1--the fandom has no excuse.
The "mute?" thing only started happening when they started putting her in the spotlight for more than two seconds. So, Rainbow Rocks and Slice of Life. But again, the stuff above. Anything the fandom wanted to do with pony Vinyl, they can do with EG Vinyl. It's just that no one chose to.
tl;dr we're both right, just not b/c of the muteness thing.
3597855
There's a distinction to make between "all this character has is an appearance" and "this character has significant screen presence but the dialogue of Harpo Marx", though, isn't there? Having nothing but body language to go on is actually part of the authorial intent at that point, as opposed to an artifact of existing solely at the whims of the storyboarders, and that affects perception.
(This is all ignoring that she cameoed in EG1 and was just as much of a blank slate as pony Vinyl for a while and nobody did anything then either because EG, but I assume that we're more interested in her post-RR reception when she didn't ride the wave)
No, no, on that I agree with you.
It's just that I consider it a moot point in terms of your original assertion that EG Vinyl doesn't get love because she doesn't talk. Neither Vinyl speaks, but we still have the one getting fics every other day. Post Episode 100, even. Clearly no one cares about being sticklers for "canonicity" there--fandom's cavalier like that.
So why here? "Because EG" or "because latecomer" or "because Sunsetsirens" makes a lot more sense to me than the mute thing, is all.
3599387
Post-SoL Vinyl has an awful lot of inertia to overcome. It's only been in the past year or so that we've finally stopped seeing stories that intentionally ignore Twilight being a princess, and it took a lot of time and exposure to get to that point, which Vinyl is just never going to get.
Secret agent Bon Bon is an interesting point of comparison, I think. She's actually carved out some space for herself, and I'm not sure whether that's more because she never had a strongly defined fanon personality to begin with, or because it's just a compelling direction to take the character.
I'm starting to rethink the "because EG" bit, actually. It's never going to be all that popular, but search is turning up a significantly nonzero number of fics in the setting since FG aired, even after filtering out Sunset and all of the sirens and turning the mature filter back on. Vinyl's even tagged in about a page's worth of them, although I don't think I want to poke my head into most of those. Surprising results all the same.