Extrapolating from Equestria Girls, where they were high school seniors in 2013, the girls would be around 2 years out of college right now, perfect timing for them to resolve their childhood lessons of empowerment-thru-personal-agency with the adult reality of our fallen world by developing these of-the-moment paraphilias!
Twilight Sparkle: bimbofication
Rainbow Dash: bondage
Pinkie Pie: DD/lg
Applejack: creampie risk/impreg
Rarity: consensual nonconsent
Fluttershy: breathplay
I’m sorry, I just drove through the Central Valley for 3 hours with this stuck in my head and I need to inflict it on someone else Ringu-style
“Country girl and sports lesbian are equally valid tomboy types” was such a specifically 2010 lesson from kids’ animation, perched between the NASCAR ‘00s and the woke ‘10s
So I was reading through this noting that these corporate social media people have an average of seventeen years’ experience before joining the social media team, the “social media intern” stereotype is obsolete, and I was going to come back here and post to that effect, and then I saw the following (not quoted in full, even, I have limits):
Sometimes, the customer-support people develop friendly relationships with customers or even whole communities. “We’ve had people send us cookies, personalized M&Ms, even a custom-designed My Little Pony,” Johnston said.
“What?” I asked.
“Somewhere along the way, we befriended the entire brony community,” he explained, as much as something like a community of adults who are (un)ironically into the children’s show My Little Pony can be explained. Apparently, a JetBlue customer sent the main account a “brohoof” emoji, a sort of fist bump of the male fan community. And JetBlue sent one back.
… with my own two eyes and realized they’d uh buried the lede.
The Kingdom of Equestria is inhabited by thousands of colorful, magical ponies, whose life cycle, socioeconomics, and biomechanics are best not investigated too closely. Their names are usually something like “Rainbow Dash” or “Diamond Tiara” or (my favorite because she’s totally a grad student pony): ‘Twilight Sparkle”.
Often the plot calls for crowd scenes (usually involving ponies in great peril), and I worry that some day the creators of My Little Pony will run out of names. In the spirit of being helpful, I decided to put a computer to the task of generating lots of new ponies.
It did come up with some pretty plausible-sounding ponies, certainly not as weird as some of the ponies that have already appeared on the show (such as Groucho Mark and Button Mash and Buzzard Hooffield).
Star Blueberry Sprinkle Cherry Bolt Berry Spy Sweet Glints Cheer Belle Sunferry Sunshine Star Sweet Bolt Cherry Curls Mint Flower Bright Seas Flight Star Plum Flower Sweet Suns Brash Clouds Cheery Breath Cloudy Daze Big Blue Brass Flare Blue Chile Coco Mane Neon Brush Strawberry Sun Sugar Top Cinnamon Mark Glowberry Amethyst Mist
The neural network also came up with some seriously tough-sounding ponies, ones that you would definitely want on your side when fighting giant killer cupcakes, or whatever the peril is this week.
Cold Sting Scarline Shoot Bolt Sunder Bright Dark Role Sob Dancer Sunsrot Masked Rock Roar Starlich Command Pony Deader Pony Flint Sting Steel Roller Dark Candy Scarphore Creep Well Prince Still Stare Rust Crack Colder Sanderlash Bitter Star
But the neural network’s results weren’t all successful. It also came up with some ponies that probably wouldn’t be on the A-team.
Dunder Dort Tardy Pony Flunderlane Flueberry Sherry Marina Doof Want Cone Starf Dad Star Star Flurtershy Starly Star Mr. Atple Pony Pony Packy Pack Pinky Swoll Apple Apple Dim McColt Free Sing Fail Poney Hoof Tasting Spar Dirky Flithers Arple Robbler Chest Star Barp Moon Mr. Wander
It also invented some ponies that are just plain weird.
Lilie Lice Billy Boon Wootson Mice Full Fish Crest Suns Sun Ramen Breek Smarky Hondsarors Blither Bon Persy Belly Pony String Heart Swinkleshine Flint Cream Star Sandlime Rocky Scooppony Piemonk String Punch Apple Stork Bunny Maze Lilac Ruster Winker-Moon Charmy Vine Swan Break Wags Pine Pearlicket Nandy Quark Firey Up Tracklewock Packin Flustershovel Aoetel Pakeecuand Tapshine Sugar Cloudsdalou Sandy Apple Mitten Splash Silvermice Butter Flash Agar Swirl Cheese Breeze
And a list of ponies you might want to avoid:
Clotter Raspberry Turd Blueberry Pants Benny Sweat Parpy Stink Blue Cuss Groan Rear Pony Lace Crunk Rade Slime Derdy Star Swill Brick Colona Pocky Mire Hoofed Snarch Apple Ronch Trowel Pony Smanky Hank Princess Sweat
The neural network also generated some ponies that would definitely not appear in a kid’s TV show - I’m not sure where it learned some of those words. If you want the unfit-to-print ponies, fill in your email here and I’ll send them to you.
The “Collect Her” episode of The Powerpuff Girls essentially predicted Brony culture which is funny because My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic was created by Lauren Faust who was an artist/writer/director for The Powerpuff Girls
holy shit
Note that the fan was the villain of the episode but that Faust has gone out of her way to defend bronies even by the time they drew highly misogynist porn of her self-insert OC.
There’s a lesson in there. Somewhere. That may or may not have to do with Faust.
Like the villain of the episode, who trapped and kidnapped the girls to keep them all to himself, Bronies have to a large degree stolen the current generation of MLP from its original target audience by spamming the internet with child-unsafe mlp fan content, swamping appearances by creators and cast members with sketchy adults such that parents feel unsafe with their children there, and noisily attracting so much attention to themselves that it has distorted the nature of the show itself and especially its marketing. ie, the MLP comic book, that is very much ‘by bronies for bronies’, an adult minded parody of the show’s characters rather than an adaptation that remains true to the style, spirit, or all ages nature of the source material.
And as it has grown in influence, we’ve seen insensate brony screeching change from ‘its not just for little girls’ to ‘its not for little girls at all’. We’ve also seen vicious, ugly, herd-mindset attacks on anyone within the fandom who dares to question the way the brony herd behaves at all, up to and including death and rape threats directed at said critics. Far from being a ‘few bad apples’ situation, we’ve seen brony musicians making death and rape threats within their music go on to be invited to perform at brony conventions specifically because of how well received their hatred and bile proved to be within the community.
Maybe Faust shouldn’t have been so supporting of the Brony community to begin with, and maybe show creators shouldn’t have gone out of their way to include explicit nods to them in the show and the marketing. After all, bronies already liked the show and purchased the merchandise, pandering to them and encouraging them didn’t widen the show’s appeal. Rather it just seems to have driven them to heightened levels of obnoxiousness and entitled possessiveness, and if anything they’ve in turn narrowed the show’s appeal. They’ve certainly badly subverted its message, bringing a heavy dose of misogyny to the fandom of a show that was directed with all love and earnestness at young girls, and in doing so have brought down a cloud of ugliness and cynicism on what was so refreshing and engaging to begin with specifically for its openness and sincerity.
this got a lot more interesting since the last time I saw it
Like I said the other day, I liked what brony culture was, I’m not fond of what it’s become, and that as someone who one laughed indulgently at the “haha dude, what if we made porn of this?” idea, I share blame for the current “dude, porn of this” aesthetic.
That said let’s keep in mind that Hasbro has intentionally been trying to reboot its ‘80s nostalgia brands with an eye towards the teen boy/internet hikki demographic for a while now. There were the Transformers movies starring Michael Bay’s explosions and Megan Fox’s heaving bosom, there was the grimdark G.I. Joe. That they finally got a hit unintentionally with a show about neon pastel ponies celebrating the power of platonic love in a context of human imperfection is kind of fucked up in a really interesting and hilarious way, but let’s remember that the true purpose of the MLP memeplex was never to provide a pleasant experience for young girls - that was just a strategy, and apparently a suboptimal and thus partially discarded one, to accomplish the true purpose of building brand value for Hasbro IP.
Confession, I kind of really liked the online adult mlp:fim fandom, getting into it at the end of season 1. Back then it was kind of a lot of really jaded, cynical, bitter people encountering a vision of optimism and goodness that WASN’T wrapped in a cynical and condescending and pandering vision of childhood, and being inspired towards a genuinely impressive, if self-consciously ridiculous, outpouring of creativity in response.
But what a lot of it’s become, jeeeeeeeeesus christ.
And I appreciate that some of the things some of that first crowd (you know, “we”) did, or at least smirked at, probably accelerated that shift. Like, you could half-analogize, half-summarize the shift as going from “Haha dude, what if we made porn of this?” to “Dude. Porn of this.”
