And now it's time for the Wednesday Whine! · 6:35am Oct 23rd, 2014
None of these whines are before their time. Trust me.
Stuff that annoys me:
(Here's the quick version: if you think this aesthetic isn't girly, I want to know what you're taking so I can have some of it, too.)
1. "Story ideas." Almost everybody I know has more story ideas than they know what to do with. I don't know anyone who is thinking, "gosh, I have so much time to write fanfic and no good ideas at all. I wish someone would send me a long prescriptive outline with half a dozen to a dozen characters and a couple of crossover 'verses." Look, it's not as though I don't ask for drabble prompts or anything (I am way behind on those! I'm sorry!), or that I don't get inspired by something someone says or by a piece of great fan art. That's how "Flash and Trend Steal All Your Waffles" happened: it's really Sweet Al Belle's prompt on one of Elric of Melnipony's blog posts. Ideas spring up naturally on people's blogs or in story comments all the time, and it is one of the cool things about being in a fan community. Sometimes people adopt those ideas, and sometimes they even become widely adopted. But I think if someone wants something that detailed that desperately and they can't or won't write it themselves, they should go to a collab group or prompt group, or maybe even commission the story.
2. Varying versions of "you're a girl?" I know, I know, it's genuine surprise/meant to be cute, and it's actually a plot point in Bronies: The Musical, where it's adorable. But being on the receiving end of it gets older than hearing, "wow, Harry, you look just like your dad, but you have your mother's eyes." Fun fact: the majority of fanfic is written by women (although of course, one nice thing about fanfic is that it blows up a lot of things, including conventional gender binaries.) Overall, it's something like 80%-20% female to male authors (my source is Anne Jamison's Fic: Why Fanfiction is Taking Over the World). And My Little Pony is, in its origins, a girly show, meant to appeal to the cupcake-eating, pony-pink-and-rainbow-loving, unicorn hearts of little girls. (Unicorns love girls back, too. Fact.)
So, put that way, why wouldn't I be here? What's more, I know lots of female writers on this site. They don't run around proclaiming "HEY I'M FEMALE" on every post or comment they make, because it's not news to them. I can hang around having XX chromosomes all day long and think nothing of it. But they're not hiding, either. It's there on their userpages ("I am female" or "I am a pegasister") or they have names that indicate such or they're just quietly doing things in the personal life like being lesbians or giving birth that are pretty good indicators that yes, they are female, and that shouldn't come as a shock.
3. The excitement over Pony Movie Announcement (yay!), followed by a lot of "well, that's the end of Equestria Girls!" and "maybe they'll stop making those terrible rainbow things and stupid dolls!" This got even worse when one of the Hasbro execs said something about "this is a good time to be a pony fan or a brony," and there was SO MUCH EXCITEMENT that there was a reference to bronies (that's nice), immediately leading to: "What's a pony fan?" "Must mean those little girls, I guess." There are a lot of guys who have liked MLP longer than I have, but for the rest of you, may I direct your attention to: My Little Obsession.
It's too bad that for all the excitement around brony documentaries, no one seems to know about this one, which is about Pony collectors. That's what they mean by "Pony fans": people who go to Pony meets and Pony fairs like this one. Or people who just don't call themselves bronies for whatever reason.
4. This is a biggie: don't call me a brony after I ask you to stop it, and don't insist that I MUST be a brony because I am over the age of twelve and like the show. I don't know why other people don't like being called bronies, and it's got nothing to do with that for me. I'm just not a bro, and I don't like being called one. I'm a lady with ladybits, and it bugs me to be told that in order to get into the Secret Pink and Purple Clubhouse of Unicorn Farts, I must be invested with an honorary penis. Huh? I've even heard people say that it is "objectively true" that every single person who likes My Little Pony is a brony. Even little girls. It's weird. What's next: I'll have to put on deer hunting gear and a beer cap in order to read the American Girl catalog?
5. Also: the show isn't gender-neutral. It's a girl's show that's meant to appeal to everyone. And lest someone play the "but Lauren Faust said!" card, let me give you some straight Lauren Faust:
Rainbows, unicorns, fairy tales, hearts, stars, cupcakes, and, of course, pretty pastel ponies. Many people look at these things and roll their eyes. They can't imagine there could be anything more to such things beyond what they appear to be. But not little girls. They know something that we do not. As adults, we observe that girls like these things. We absorb the information that this "frilly pink silliness" resonates with them, but we don't understand why. . . . We cannot belittle this. To a little girl . . . This. Stuff. Is. Serious. (From The Elements of Harmony)
As she points out: that's girly stuff. And there is nothing wrong in taking a second look at awesome girly stuff and stopping and saying "This stuff is awesome!" Because it is. But saying "oh, it's not girly! It's gender neutral!" feels wrong. It feels like going 360 degrees back to "well, this isn't for little girls. Obviously. Because this is good, and little girls like any old crap." That's the reverse of what Lauren Faust was trying to do.
Another nice moment in Bronies: The Musical: all the main characters who are about to become bronies turn on a screen, and we can see what they see on their laptop or their TV or their phone: a group of pastel pony puppets giggling in front of a tinsel curtain. The show punches the seemingly inane girliness there, with bouncing and very, very high-pitched giggles. And every guy has the same expression on his face: "WTF am I watching? And why can't I stop watching it?" It works because of the awareness that THIS IS GIRLY. And it's ok to like something "girly." I even think it's kind of alpha to say "I like a girly show, and I OWN that."
Hey, if Bulk Biceps isn't threatened by it, I don't see why anyone else should be.
Maybe this bothers me because my family is the kind where overt girliness was discouraged--unsuccessfully, in my case. Back in the day, my clothes dripped lace. I have worn little gloves and hats un-ironically. It was a pure thrill when I found that my little niece insists on pink sequined rainboots, and that she just wore my sister down until she let her wear them. Because honestly? There's nothing wrong with girly. Girly is great.
This Guy gets it--eventually. So hey, why not you?
6. Related to this: "Hey! Now they've acknowledged that bronies are a thing! Maybe now they'll make the show darker and edgier, with 200% more laser cannons!"
No. Because that's not the show. And they're also not going to stop making Equestria Girls dolls because they make some bronies sad. C'mon, don't you want to see what the writers and artists do with Rainbow Power? Re-making the show into your vision of what's cool is what fanfiction and fanart are for, and that is a GOOD thing. Obviously, I think it's a good thing, or I wouldn't do it. But "hold the pickle" entitled fans annoy me.
So that was your Wednesday Whine, and I could have spent it finishing the next chapter, but it'll happen. And that may not have made anyone else feel better, but I certainly do.
Four years, Scoots. Four years.
Can't upvote blogposts, but I can sure as hell bookmark them.
Not only is the Pinkie Pie picture aesthetically girly, I think it just increased my sugar levels! (reaches for insulin).
Story ideas, yes, are a dime a dozen. Imaginative story ideas are a bit rarer, and the hard part is fleshing them out and writing them. I have a whole folder in my "Stories" folder of my "MLP" folder called "Fragments" which is full of bits and pieces of stories, some of which actually get published.
The Fragment I was writing before I saw your blog post was essentially a 1930's-style pulp Weird Tales adventure taking place after the Battle of the Bands with (Human) Piercing Gaze, Cloud Kicker, and an increasingly-nervous Lavender and Fuschia trying to rescue an enthralled Trixie from the retreating Sirens, who have decided just from where they're going to get the power to regenerate. That wasn't very girly, though the male-to-female ratio of active good guy characters was 1:3 (Trixie was too busy being mind-controlled in that scene to be "active.") So that's the sort of thing that creeps into my head when I get sleepy!
The original version of MLP, of course, had a human girl as the main character. Though Megan wasn't exactly the girliest girl around, even when they gave her the frilly top for the episodes of the series, probably because someone in Standards and Practices pointed out "Hey! She's kicking ass! She's not a real girl!" For that matter, Firefly and Wind Whistler were girls too, though it was easy to miss if you didn't know that they all were except for the Big Brothers.
Hey, even Wind Whistler wore a tail-bow. Those deadly-calm reddish-pink eyes and that cute white tail-bow were among the last things many evil creatures saw before Wind Whistler sent them into permanent cancellation, too!
Yeah, Windy's my Best G1 Pony. In my fanon, she's Luna's too. Except maybe Mimic, and Mimic was her mom, so it's hardly a fair comparison.
It boggles my mind that people assume that almost all MLP fans are male. The show was originally aimed at young girls, and I always thought that my liking it was a sign of my slightly-feminine male nature (one might say I'm in touch with my anima). Though of the four MLP fans I know best in person, two are male (one a big brawny manly male, too), two are female (my wife and sister-in-law) and if we count me as a fifth, I'm also a big broadshouldered guy). So that's my tiny personal statistical universe there.
That scene with Bulk was one of the ones which convinced me that Fluttershy was falling for him, in part because he was willing to play with her in silly ways. Which is funny, because it's the exact same scene that cnvinced some other people that she couldn't be falling for him. I do not think that Fluttershy is much into standard masculinity -- of the other two beings with whom she's been romantically linked, one (Rainbow Dash) is female and the other (Discord) is not what I'd call "standard" anything. She's far too much of a weirdo her own sweet self, and more power to her for it!
1. Ergh, yeah, I've had a few requests for that, along with collab requests which are effectively "can you write this for me", to which I have pointed them in the direction of someone who does commissions.
2. It's actually something that kind of bugs me too. Not that I have the requisite lady bits to fully understand, but the general idea of "default male" pisses me off to no end. Of course, if I try to use gender neutral pronouns, I get called a tumblr crybaby (despite the fact I was using them before I even knew what tumblr was. Actually, I am old enough that I might have been using them before there was a tumblr. #hipstermoose
3. I actually don't like the brony docs I have seen so far, mostly because they seem to treat female fans as either an outlier, or not really worthy mentioning. Because men are 'more interesting'.
On the toys, and the EqG movies, and all that, I actually love most of those things. I liked EqG and I love love LOVED Rainbow Rocks. I love the EqG dolls, maybe because they are super kitschy. Hmm, maybe I should check out that documentary you suggested.
4. BLARGLE! I have to 100% agree with this one. Not that I didn't agree with any of your other points, but this one needs more emphasis. Maybe I agree with it 200%.
I actually prefer, and this is coming from a guy (there I go, making it about guys again!), to not being called a brony. Frankly, what does my having a penis have to do with my enjoyment of a show targeted at little girls? My wife has a vagina, and likes watching spongebob. Does that make her a Sispongy?
Actually, even calling myself a male fan of My Little Pony is kind of moronic. I'm just a fan, regardless of the configuration of the naughty parts between my legs!
5. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!
Did I mention thank you.
That's something that bugs the shit out of me too. The show isn't gender neutral. And what pisses me off by people trying to claim the show is gender neutral is that girly things are devalued by the very fact they are girly. What's wrong with frills and lace? Cupcakes and unicorns and rainbows?
There is nothing wrong with saying "I like a girly show."
Nothing.
If you are a guy, a girl, intersex, gay, straight, lesbian, bi, adult or child. Not one f*cking thing wrong with saying "I like this show, and f*ck people if they don't like my choice in entertainment!"
That needs to be engraved in a fifty foot high golden plate and launched into orbit with the space station.
6. Oh god the horror. I've had this conversation with so many 'bronies'. The kind who basically try and say the show is gender neutral, or out and out it isn't a show for kids (go f*ck yourself, yes it is and there is nothing wrong with that!)
I think most of it is actually them saying "make this show more something that matches traditional definitions of masculinity so I can justify this interest in a girls show I have".
We—collectively—came to this show because we love it for what it is. Don't try to change it. Don't say they should get better directors or writers or whatever, to target it more towards you.
That's something my wife and I have discussed ad infinitum. That's the cool part about fanfiction and fan art. We can explore things that the show could never do. Like say exploring death and grief through a world of colourful pastel ponies.
Kind of glad to know I am not the only who feels that way.
I honestly never really thought about the genderedness of the term brony, though I am disappointed that I can't call myself/other people pegasister because that is a much better portmanteau.
I actually had a thought, and then I figured out that within our... let's say, CheesePie circle, I'm probably one of the only males that I'm aware of. That could tie in with the 80-20 point you made, or it could just be a coincidence. Still, it made me stop and realise that.
I think there'll always be those who judge solely on what they've heard or haven't seen. I know plenty of cases when, basically, "You watch a show for little girls? Eww!" Yeah it happens, and it likely always will. While we'll have fans of the show, we'll have those who avoid it like the black plague. I guess you can't help in that department; we have our own opinions. Still, it's not nice to judge us and mock us when we do nothing to them. Though, apparently, even making some fan-video or animation or something might be seen as 'diseased', and yes, I did just use that word. That's how bad it gets sometimes.
For the last point, I can kind of see why some would want the show edgier: because that's how they want to show to be, and lose some of that 'kiddy' factor. But, it won't happen, simple as that. And, like you said, that's why we have fanfiction. Must I even point out these Dark/Adventure/Alternate Universe fics that explore these things? It's probably arguable that fanfics here have more damn exposition and interest than the show itself.
I do not get why some Bronies believe that PegaSisters should not like MLP. ¡Hello! Homosexualphobic jerks believe that Bronies should not like MLP. The sexist Bronies have no legs upon which to stand.
¿Can anypony guess whether I am a PegaSister or Brony? ¿Does it even matter? If it matters to you, ¿should it matter to you? Whether somepony is a mare or stallion does not matter to me.
1. When I mention story ideas in comments, they're the ones I want to get to eventually, the ones that I'm honestly kind of hoarding because of a very specific vision that I want to see realized in digital text.
That, or they're ideas that popped into my head while reading something. Either or.
2. I am surprised when people on the Internet aren't the gender I thought they were, but I try to keep it to myself.
3. Those who do not know history rarely have any interest in learning it. My sister still has her G1 dolls from way back in the day.
4. I was going to say something about seeing brony as a gender-neutral term, but after reading point 5... Yeah. Argument withdrawn before it was ever made.
5. No argument here. The target audience can't be denied, and it isn't us. I'm fine with that.
6. What you said. Laser cannons are the purview of fanworks, unless those cannons wear crowns.
In all, a well-deserved whine. I hope you feel better having vented.
1. Mmmmmmmhm. Everyone has ideas. Everyone. Ideas are a dime a decillion. Ideas don't mean anything unless you do something with them.
2. Okay, admittedly, I have made this mistake before (in the comments of another of your blog posts, no less, though not directly referring to you), and I once again apologize for that - I referred to another female poster as "he" because I wasn't paying attention and, unfortunately, male pronouns tend to be used as a default in the english language (this is not a good thing at all, hence why I am apologizing, but it is a thing).
However, while I can't speak for other people, my reaction when you informed me was not "OMG, you're a woman, how could this be?!?!?!
". It was more along the lines of "Oh, you're a woman. Didn't know that. Neat." Generally, unless there's something explicitly gender-representative in their name or avatar, I tend not to think of users and writers as having any particular gender... come to that, much identity beyond their works and, if I follow their blogs, opinions and given information. Prior to being informed, I didn't think of you as a man, a woman, a boy or a girl, I thought of you as "Scoots2, good writer and this site's Commander in Chief of all things CheesePie." 
Don't know if that's a common attitude, or even one anyone else has, nor what it says about me or them, just thought I'd give another perspective on the matter.
3. Well, it seems annoyingly common for fans of a modern incarnation of a franchise to either ignore or disparage its history, or at the very least, hold it in disdain. As a classic Doctor Who fan, I feel that pain.
4. Brony is an interesting term. I don't use such fan nicknames myself, as they always feel inherently demeaning to me (not saying they are, just how they feel to me), but... it seems like Brony has become, to many, an all-encompassing term for adult MLP fans without losing it's all-male meaning, both denotative and connotative. Even those who use the the term "pegasis/(ter)" tend to regard it as a subset of Bronies.
It seems likely that the reasons behind this are that, when the fandom was first starting, it was such a surprise that so many males liked it that it was felt they needed a name, whereas female fans where assumed to like it already, so it was felt they didn't need a name. No evidence for this, of course, nor any ideas about what it means, if anything, it just seems a likely etymology.
But, yeah, I can definitely sympathise. Not necessarily empathise, since I haven't experienced anything similar myself that I can recall, but sympathise.
5. Hurm. Well, I can certainly agree that there is absolutely nothing wrong with, shall we say, pinkness, nor with it being liked by either gender and any age.
That said, I feel there is something wrong with how it's frequently used, that is, to attempt to pander to little girls - the feeling of "Little girls like pinkness, so let's shove as much as we can into whatever we're doing and then girls will like it, no matter how much the product itself sucks". And bear in mind, that's far from exclusive to girl's things. Just as many, probably more, traditionally "boy's" things are just as guilty of using "Manly" things to pander, and are just as obnoxious for it. For me, what makes MLP's use of pinkness good is that it has it and let's it come out naturally, not trying to force it nor limit it and not getting so caught up with doing either that it forgets to make a quality show. It just... has sunshine and rainbows coming out of it. (Needs to be a "shrug" emoticon)
And... well, while I don't have a problem with "pinkness", I'd be lying if I said I was entirely okay with the fact that it's not called that or something similar, but that it's called "girliness" or "femininity". Now, obviously, nature vs nurture is an ancient debate, and one without an ostensibly obtainable answer - no one really knows how much of girls liking pink things is natural, and how much is because we give them pink things to like, so to speak. But calling it "girliness"... It just feels like it does a disservice both to the girls who don't like that stuff and to the boys who do, neither of which there's anything wrong with. Heck, the very fact that "sunshine and rainbows", traditional symbols of happiness, are regarded as primarily a girl's thing has some... unfortunate implications about what emotions both genders are traditionally "allowed" to have.
So, no, there's nothing wrong with girliness, but I'm not sure about calling it "girliness". Just my two cents, of course, but I'd be interested in your take on the matter.
6. Okay, that's just dumb. Of them, not of you. If nothing else, it'd take a pretty dimwitted CEO to say "Hmm... a lot of men like this extremely girly show. So, if we completely change it so it isn't girly anymore, they'll like it even more!
" Not saying it couldn't happen, but... I have my doubts, shall we say?
You bring up some awesome points, I'd be more eloquent but I'm too braindead for now. Just adding my voice to the group.
Concepts like "girly" and "manly" only exist because, from birth, adults only expose children to what they believe is "gender appropriate." They do this because the same thing was done to them.
As far as I'm concerned, everything is gender neutral. (except for basic terminology and products specifically made for curtain "parts" of course)
Totally. Then they should turn the cast of Game of Thrones into pacifists.
Yeah I don't get why people want this either. I mean, I wish the show would have more world building and othe simular things, but why would I want it to become the opposite of what it is. Reminds me of the people that want more character deaths in Kingdom Hearts simply for the sake of death.
+1 to all of this.
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I think you both might get this better if you looked up at Anonymoose's comment on #5. "It's gender neutral! And it's not for kids!" would carry a LOT more credibility if it didn't go along with an active scorn for little girls and what they like, their mothers ("soccer moms"), the fact that it's restricted ONLY to MLP, which they happen to like, and the knee-jerk recoil from the word "girly" as though it's an insult. That is insulting to girls, AND it's just playing out the same kind of bullshit that gets visited on bronies when someone says "eewww, you like a girly show! You're a girlllll!" (or something still more insulting.) I can understand the impulse to say "no no no! It isn't girly at all! Don't worry! I still think girls and girly things suck! Look at all the things I think still have cooties!" but saying that reinforces that 1. girly is bad and 2. girls are inferior humans. The proper response to "it's girly" that is not insulting to girls big and small is "Fuck yeah, I like it. You got a problem with that?" as girls big and small step out from behind you to whup the bully's sorry ass. This is what feminism is supposed to be about.
2551687 You misunderstand, I'm saying that defining anything, I reapeat ANYTHING by those terms is a sexist practice that needs to stop. I have felt this way foy 16 years.
2551749 On the other hand, because you don't put things into girl and boy piles, I don't think my complaint applies to you. I'm talking about people who DO think in terms of "girly" and "non-girly," and still define girly as inferior, and who want to pick out MLP as "non-girly" pretty much only because they happen to like it. On the rest of it, I think we can simply agree to disagree.
It's a double-edged sword, and I think the key is selection vs. force. My nephew thinks Pinkie Pie is Best Pony, and he didn't suddenly turn into a girl. My niece loves pink, sequins, and flowers, and I absolutely guarantee that there was NO ONE at home who encouraged this and that she was too young to have much outside the home contact at all. In both those cases, they picked what they like and (after some struggle because my sister doesn't like "girly" things,) simply are allowed to play with the things they enjoy. It's when "pink is for girls and blue is for boys" is FORCED on kids that it's really bad, and sometimes it's really subtle.
When I was in grade school, we were all allowed to pick an instrument we liked to study and play, and you would not believe the pressure I got to pick a flute or a clarinet, and I could not understand why--the trumpet seemed so cool! I stubbornly insisted that no, I would learn the trumpet, thank you. I did not understand for years that I had picked out a "male gendered" instrument, hence the pushback. It was very subtle, and utter bull. Kids' clothes are another really good example of this, and may be why my mom went to some trouble to make us clothes.
Most of the time, when I'm home, my nephew and niece and I play with plain wood blocks.
2551780 Erm... that's kind of what I was saying - that this sort of "girliness" is only a problem when it's forced, implicitly or explicitly, onto girls and away from boys.
My point was that the fact this sort of thing is called "girliness" is a part of that implicit force. The word "girly" pretty obviously implies "for girls", thus reinforcing it as the norm for girls and an outlier for boys, regardless of the truth of the matter. As far as I'm aware, there isn't even another word for it, hence why I usually refer to it as "Pinkness", despite that not really encompassing it.
MLP is, by the generally accepted meaning of the term, girly. It is openly and proudly girly. It doesn't try to force itself to be girly, nor does it restrain its girliness. It just lets the girliness come naturally and just lets itself be girly. Denying this is, as you said, likely just a pathetic attempt at retaining a macho facade.
I just think there should be another word for it other than "Girly", not because there's something wrong with enjoying the same things as girls, but because there is something wrong with the language telling us "This thing is enjoyed by all girls and only by girls."
Okay, looking back, I'm not sure how comprehensible the above post is, so, sorry about that.
Wait why are people surprised that fanfic writers are women? half of the books on my danged book shelf are written by women and every fanfic I've read in the past were written by women so what the hell bronies? Have they heard of yaoi fangirls? fanGIRLS yeah so people stop being surprised by the gender of the fanfic writer one its rude to assume someone is male or female without asking first. As for the brony thing I am not a brony I don't call myself one I prefer mlp fan. About the girly thing you made a good point and I hate using that label oh that's too girly blah blah shut up! stop labeling things that don't need to be labeled. I don't care about brony docs and I never will and the complaining about EG needs to die because this is a kid show it doesn't have to cater to you!
2552117 Hmm. I think I'd prefer to reclaim the word "girl" and "girly," as in "girl power" and "supergirl," rather than treating it as a dirty word. Whether it's pinkness or girliness, the bit I don't care for is the attitude of shame connected with it. At the same time, I think people are allowed to disagree on this. My whine is just mine, if that makes sense, so you don't have to worry about my being offended.
It is annoying when all these male fans cringe away from the very thing that makes the show what it is- girliness. First it was Twilight becoming a princess (which I loved from the start), then Equestria Girls (seriously, what do these humans have against humans?), then rainbow power (which I think is really pretty), and now Twilight's castle. I actually like Twilight's castle, sure it's gaudy but I like to imagine what all that clear crystal would look like when the sun hits it
. At least, I think it's crystal- looks that way to me.
AMEN.
Yeah, I've only been interacting on MLP sites for a few months, and I'm not getting the girl question, but just everyone assuming I'm a dude. I don't know where I went wrong picking the name "MintyJoy", but oh well...
Deep down, I was hoping you were a girl. I have met so many people and I have always thought they were girls too, but soon found out they were guys. There's nothing wrong with guys, but it still felt weird going "Oh, whoops. That's a guy." So when I read this, I silently fist pumped.
I dunno, I took on the name "Brony". I wanted a name, and pegasister sounded really dumb to me, so I chose Brony. I like what Tara Strong says in the "Let's Go Meet the Bronies" clip: "No we're not bros, but we're Bronies."
Girliness! Yay!
2550900 Four years as in "we have to wait for four more years?" or as in "we have to listen to speculation about how dark and edgy it's gonna be for four years?"
2550938 Yes--we seem to have had an influx of "story ideas" from a few individuals on different boards, and it is beginning to drive me crazy. It's so spammy. I haven't commented yet on your new EG Trixie fic yet, but I like where it's going. I had been wondering if you thought Cloud Kicker was in her band, and then I saw what was probably supposed to be Cloud Kicker in another scene, so I was wondering if CK would show up in any of your EG fics and how. The Background Human(oids) need some characterization, after all, and we might as well provide it.
I think maybe the idea is that all ADULT fans are male? Or might as well be? Or that if you're female, you get to ride along? I don't know. Maybe the problem is the perceived necessity to respond to "this is for girls," but one reason I don't identify with Bronies is that for me, it's about continuity, not rupture. I didn't START being interested in something that was "girly," to my own surprise; I found one more girly thing I like, along with the tea parties and the ball gowns and the rhinestones. It's like, "wait: I have to assume another identity in order to keep being interested in the kind of thing I was interested in anyway?" And that's probably aggravating for guys who were always interested in Pony or anything else, too. I know guys who are into going to Jane Austen events and tailoring their own clothes for them--it's very Rarity. I can imagine their consternation if one of the Jane Austen balls was suddenly inundated with guys insisting that this was super-manly, HOOROAR!--and incidentally, can we switch over to playing dubstep? We all prefer dubstep.
Bulk in that scene actually reminds me of a guy playing with his little sister or a dad playing with his daughter. I know I remember my Dad letting my sister put his hair into rubber bands (as his hair is very curly, the effect was ridiculous.) But however you look at it, he's having fun and not really worrying about how it looks.--
Scratch that. He does seem to think it looks awesome.
2550940 I can understand the "man bites dog" effect in the mainstream media, but they have no clue about any fandom of any kind whatsoever. We're still getting reports about how "those people write something called--get this--fan-fiction!11!!" Frankly, I think any reporter who is still surprised by this is an idiot. That, or they're faking their astonishment. Probably both.
I could only find My Little Obsession on DVD. I think you have to buy it from the filmmaker. I wish she could put it up online somehow, preferably in such a way that she could make money from it.
5. YOU'RE WELCOME YOU'RE WELCOME YOU'RE WELCOME
I know some people genuinely think that gender stuff is "learned," but I think that's been un-learned by a lot of women of my mom's or my generation who found that they could not stomp the love of princess-y pink out of their daughters. Or maybe not.
Basically what I think in a nutshell. And easily avoided if people could manage to think that they don't HAVE to justify their interests in something they like. Find other people who also like it. That's what the internet is for.
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I had already thought about this, but from what I can tell, CheesePie has an avid male readership. Everyone who reads it isn't female, for sure. Plus there are some other male writers. I'd argue that Mandatory Fun has a very strong CheesePie streak in it, plus it builds in a Dr. Horrible "I will impress her/'it's a stallion thing' " that I probably never would have thought of. I know Jordan's probably going to get around to CheesePie eventually, but he's got an enormous universe to keep track of. My impression that CheesePie writers are disproportionately female may very well be wrong.
The 80%-20% really only applies to fanfic writers overall. Here, in this fandom, there are so many more (visibly?) male people that there are going to be more male fic writers, too. And yet, from what I can tell, there are more women who like MLP and even who consider themselves Bronies/Pegasisters than either internal fandom or external media would have you believe. In short, I dunno.
I know I like writing the ship for a number of reasons, but probably mostly because here are two extremely odd characters--so much so that you would swear no one would ever understand them. And it seems that's not true. So if you say,"I'm too weird/too fat/too strange/too whatever for anyone to love me," that's just plain not true. Someone will love you exactly as you are. And that's something I think anyone might find appealing. BTW, it works just as well if you write Cheese as Pinkie's friend, only there maybe it has the additional twist of "and it doesn't need to be a romantic relationship in order to be important."
I would never say that guys don't become victims of the same kind of ikky thinking. And honestly, I would never say "oh, how tough can it be for a teenaged guy to like My Little Pony?" because I have never been a teenaged guy and I don't know what it's like. I do know that it can get horrible, and that some of the dads who threaten to beat their sons if they watch the show probably really would, and do.
2551095 I was mostly thinking of the big, widely broadcast "STORY IDEA!!" threads that have been popping up. Those are annoying.
I think people in general tend to assume that the people on the other end of the intertube--or, once upon a time, the correspondence--is more or less like them. I don't find that alarming in itself, only natural. I only become annoyed when it starts to sound like "when did they first start letting girls in here?" Trufax: I was at an all-girl's college at Cambridge when the last of the all male colleges went co-ed. From what I understood, a major reason was that Magdalene had been at the very bottom of the academic tables for year after year, not just because they only accepted men, but because they had become loaded with legacy admissions, whose blood ran bluer and thinner with every succeeding generation, and in many cases, no longer reached the brain. It's possible they could have achieved the same thing by opening up their admissions more generally. Anyway, when the decision was made, someone draped the founder's portrait in black and flew the flag at half-staff and the undergrads wore black armbands. I had also heard that someone burned something about "cunts" into the lawn in weed-killer, which is a terrible sacrilege if you know how Cantabridgians feel about their lawns. I sang in the chapel choir at the time. So I know that there are some people who fight like heck when previously all-male bastions start letting in women. The really funny thing is that I think there's a place for single sex social spaces. I went to a majority female college and followed it up with a totally female college at Cambridge. It wasn't that bad.
Alas. Some people are always going to take something nice, like Pony, and turn it into some kind of gendered King/Queen of the Hoard.
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Some people may genuinely think "brony" is gender-neutral, and I know some female fans prefer it. I don't think "brony=terrible person." At all. All I object to is "you're a brony, whether you like it or not." This bugs me.
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On the other hand, the people who say this may simply be a few extremely loud and annoying gasbags, and not representative of a larger group who merely shrug and say, "does that mean I get the last 'BRONY' T shirt on the table?" (Yes, it does: I'll stick to my Trixie T shirts and the one that says "My Patronus is a pony.")
Anyhoo, yes, I do feel much better, thank you
I went with the names Lavender Lace for the blonde and Fuschia Blush for the redhead in the Illusions. Both of the backup Illusions look kind of young -- not very well-developed and rather innocent -- so I decided that Lavender and Fuschia were around 15 to Trixie's 17-18. This let Trixie very believably dominate them with her strength of will and pure arrogance.
Lavender is one of Cloud Kicker's cousins, which is why she looks sort of like a younger Cloud Kicker. As the fragment I sent you (which is probably destined for a sequel rather than a later chapter) showed, Lavender is actually the tougher of the two Illusions, even though she's also the more childlike one. Fuschia is knowing but nowhere near as sophisticated as she imagines, and she is totally out of her depth when she finds herself confronting Lovecraftian horrors in a supposedly-abandoned warehouse in that fragment.
I found their dynamics with Trixie interesting in the part of the story I published. They both -- even Fuschia, who talks a good cynicism -- really admire Trixie's chutzpah. Lavender kind of worships her, while Fuschia secretly laughs at her, but they still both stick around. Lavender and Fuschia, themselves, are each others' best friends, even though they have rather different senses of life.
Trixie is telling herself that they are her minions, mostly because she's afraid to risk herself emotionally by considering them her "friends." Trixie doesn't really know how to deal with friendship -- Piercing is most definitely her friend, but that's easier because their relationship was at first purely professional, and it sort of became friendship over time. Plus, she really does have a huge crush on him.
Cloud Kicker is Lavender's older cousin (age 18) and Lavender finds her somewhere between "incredibly cool" and "horribly embarrassing." This Humanoid Cloud Kicker is not possessed by a demon, nor is she anywhere near as nasty as the Winningverse Cloud Kicker, but she is extremely promiscuous, and mostly shameless about it. Her great virtues are that she is loyal to her family and friends, and totally calm in a dangerous situation. Lavender, on the other hand, is both a romantic idealist and none too comfortable with sexuality, especially her own.
Cloud Kicker totally does not understand Trixie. Nor does Trixie understand Cloud Kicker. They have very little social contact, though that may change with Lavender hanging around Trixie a lot.
I have other Background Humanoids to introduce, which I will as A World of Illusions progresses.
Yeah okay, let's do this.
1. I don't know how to respond to this, tbh. I mostly rp so it's like writing stories?????? what is????
2. This. This gives me so much anger for exactly those reasons. Heaven forbid me being a female who roleplays a pink pony in her spare time!!!! Like, I'm not bothered so much by being casually mistaken for a guy because i go by Nick, for instance, but if people are assuming I'm a guy because I watch a TV show with pretty ponies?? Uhm what is wrong with this picture.
3. Pony movie announcement? What is that I live under a rock. I don't think I can offer much of an opinion of this????
4. Agreed. But for a different reason. I hate labels, specially fandom specific ones. I don't know why but saying "I like doctor who" sounds a lot less insulting to myself than saying "I'm a whovian". I feel like...I dunno a part of a cult or some shit if I claim to be a brony. also it sounds stupid to me.
It doesn't come off as a particularly masculine label to me though, to be honest! Saying " hey bros" to me is a lot like "hey guys" or "hey chums" or whatever??? Then again, I prefer Nick to Nicole and is referred to as a Prince in my Skype username so.
5. I don't know what to say on this one. If your concern is directed to those who say that as an excuse for watching mlp, as if there really is something wrong with girly? Yeah. No.
I prefer to think of it as gender neutral, because I dislike confining something as either girly or manly because of the content.
6. Agreed. I feel like there may be a chance of them pushing the rating a little bit, include in jokes or shout outs to "us", or include some world building or other stuff that would go over kid's ears. Come to think of it, that is p much what they've been doing.
But yeah, going overboard with the edginess ahhahahaha no. Dark and edgy ponies just seems a little silly at times.
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3. There is going to be an MLP movie in 2017, I think they said it was.
4. I don't have an issue with people calling themselves bronies. I don't have an issue with women who feel it's gender neutral. What I have an issue with is when I say "I am a pony fan," and someone says, "you are a brony," and I say, "No, I am not, and please do not call me one. I do not like the term and it feels weird," and THEN someone goes on a toot about how yes, I am a brony whether I like it or not, and all fans of MLP are bronies whether they like it or not. (It didn't help this guy's case that he insisted that all gay men were --derogatory term under spoiler tag-- faggots , whether they liked it or not.)
Dude, when you watch a show originally intended to sell toys to little girls that is up to its ass in hearts and unicorns, and insist it is gender-neutral just because you like it, and drag along female fans and say "fuck you, missy, you're a brony, like it or not, shut up and deal," something very ugly is going on. And that is why the laments about "oh, nooo, this or that new plot or design thing is so bad for little girls!" whether it's Equestria Girls or rainbow powers or whatever, ring very hollow for me.
6. They've always had adult gags and references that kids wouldn't get. So does Disney. So does Bullwinkle, especially Fractured Fairy Tales. Fractured Fairy Tales has a Sleeping Beauty with a wicked parody of Walt Disney that no child at the time would have understood. It's partly to keep parents entertained. If you've ever had to watch other children's programming, it can be downright painful, and of course, a responsible parent isn't going to let their kids watch TV unsupervised. I was once watching Wild Kratts with my nephew and I turned around to my Mom (he could not hear me) and muttered, "this is really terrible." The interesting bits of natural history are fine, but the cartoon associated with it is awful. My mom had no idea what I was talking about, and I said, "just listen to the writing. How many times can a character say 'Let's DO this!' in a row?" A parent or babysitter watching MLP is grateful for not being bored. And the plots of some of the episodes seem aimed at parents, to me, especially "Testing, Testing, 1, 2, 3," and "Flight to the Finish."
And it's just possible those bits that go over kids' heads are partly meant for them to enjoy later on, as they think, "oh, my gosh, I just got that joke."
2553820 I have two things to add. First bro is in fact against all logic and common sense now gender neutral. Language is stupid that way, so brony follows the logic of one of it's root words. However even if you tell someone not to call you your legal name, unless they are an official of some kind that has to call you that for legal reasons, they are being an ass if they don't listen to you.
the second thing is lots of guys seem to go, it's girl's show but it's awesome I swear. Some even suggest it's more manly in such and such a way. I just shrugged and went, I've watched girlier shows. The only reason I'm not giving the original G1 pony a fair shot is becasue it's 80s animation and that can be a bit traumatic. I think I may have even seen most of one of the pony movies because I know I remember the Smooze and the witches. So yea, at least one guy totally agrees with you on that.