Entry 1; Into The Fandom · 7:42pm Mar 21st, 2013
I am Schrodinger’s Pony.
What follows is my Pony Journal; a record of what I love about the fanfiction community, what I love less, and what I tolerate. My thoughts on my favorite ponies, how I like them to be written, who I’d ship them with, and more. Interspersed will be story ideas I wish somebody would write, or ideas I have yet to work out how to write myself. Along with reviews and recommendations for the fics that I love the most. For this first entry, I will explain how I came to be in the position of writing this Pony Journal in the first place.
When I first heard that My Little Pony had an immense following of adult males, I was as incredulous as everybody else at the news. Wasn’t My Little Pony a girly show? Of course it was. It is sheer folly to believe otherwise.
I went a full two years after hearing to news, without action. I decided to ignore it. It would go away. It was just a fad.
Then, as my chaotic mind whirls, I just so happened to connect the dots, while explaining Westerns to a friend.
This friend had the same problem I did; hey grew up knowing only two Westerns; Wild Wild West, the steampunk abomination starring Will Smith, and the Spaghetti Westerns starring Clint Eastwood, who is a truly horrible actor.
I, however, had sought out other Westerns to view, and found myself intrigued by such productions as American Outlaw, and Rango. I was explaining to him how, no genre can be terrible in and of itself. They all have bad spots in their history, and they all have their masterpieces.
That was when it hit me –
What was My Little Pony, other than an unexplored genre?
So what if the main stars were brightly colored equines? It didn’t mean there wouldn’t be action. It could be a compelling fantasy.
After doing preliminary research on the show, I took the plunge. And I was amazed.
As had been my previous conceptions about the show, there were no good villains to speak of. Nightmare Moon was a laughable cliché, I sympathized with Gilda, and Trixie had no lasting impact on me (imagine my surprise when I later learned she was one of the most popular characters on the show!).
But I discovered that My Little Pony is not a Fantasy. It is a Sitcom! How else would you describe a show where the season finale entailed the main characters going to a party, and we the audience ROOT FOR THEM TO HAVE A GOOD TIME! The Fantasy was just the setting for the circumstantial hilarity and pratfalls that take place on other sitcoms! The only difference here being that the main characters are equines, and that the situations they encounter are given fantastical twists. And also music.
When I moved onto the second season, I discovered Discord. It was like falling in love again; the Fantasy setting balanced itself out with the Sitcom genre, as the characters waged an epic war against an eldritch spirit. The second season featured less villains, but what villains it did have were far better than Nightmare Moon or Gilda!
And then, the final stage in my pilgrimage to broniedom was achieved. As expected of any genre, Friendship Is Magic had its ups and its down. For every Return Of Harmony there was a Griffon the Brush-Off or Mare-Do-Well. There were better shows out there. There were shows that were extraordinary from beginning to end, without any scrappy episodes.
But then I discovered the fanfiction community that writes for Friendship.
This is easily the biggest fanfiction community I’ve ever seen, bigger even than Harry Potter. You absolutely cannot call yourself a fan of MLP if you do not contribute in some way or another. There’s minimal bashing; everybody is either in complete awe of you, or offering genuinely helpful critiques. Most of us double as Doctor Who fans, which is unsurprising given the morals and standards that both shows uphold. There are even subgenres of fiction, completely unique to our fandom, like Changeling fics.
Whether you think My Little Pony is a net gain in art or not, whether you think the good in it outweighs the bad; there will always be fanfiction. And that is the beautiful reality.
Lauren Faust didn't just give us a t.v. show. She case us a cast, a setting, and a laugh, more than enough to go on. She gave us a big sandbox in which to play, and FIMfiction is a place where we can show off our castles to each other.
Amazing entry, very entertaining.
First? Nuuu I'm not first.... ummm wait I think I can handle this...
1.bp.blogspot.com/-_TkbcIBMy1Y/T2Ioh3r-T_I/AAAAAAAABGA/BAJcgUhFm7c/s1600/firstpost.jpg
I comment on things and recommend stories (and occasionally music or pictures) I like to other people, and, well, that's about it. I'm still a fan of the show and a good bit of fan-produced content, though.
It's a sitcom? Huh.
That might explain a few things about adventure fics and the debate over deterioration.