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You have all been asked it at least once. It's something that plagues pretty much every non-pony media resource on the internet. Why ponies, and why is the internet being taken over by them? This article does an excellent job of explaining it. So if someone from the media bugs you, and you are sick and tired of answering the same Celestia damn question in every interview, you can finally just paste a link and be done with it! (Yah...I've answered this at least 20 times now.)
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49 comments:
Cheers. Going through it now.
ReplyDeleteNice.
ReplyDeleteconcise and effective.
ReplyDeleteNot bad. Story is still the same as usual though. It's getting pretty hard to find something original lately, but thanks for the article.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteEvery word that he said was pure, unadulterated truth.
ReplyDeleteSeriously, nothing there was not fact. Up to and including "Rainbow Dash is best pony".
Wow, thanks! Now I know where to redirect people whenever they ask that question. XD
ReplyDeleteIt still only scratched the surface :P
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteEither the writer of that article is a guy called UPSLynx on Icrontic, or he copied some words for his article from a very thread he linked us to, since I found this: (it's a reply to another post)
ReplyDelete"That's the thing, really. When people hear MLP, they think of the franchise born out of the '80s that was aimed at little girls strictly to drive sales of merchandise. That's all My Little Pony was all the way through the 90's.
Lauren Faust directs and writes MLP:FiM. You know Faust from awesome Cartoon Network shows like The Powerpuff Girls and Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends. Both shows were surprisingly gender-neutral, and remarkably fun to watch regardless of your age.
When Faust was given the rights to make a new MLP show on the new Hub Network, she had a fully clean slate. It was her personal mission to totally reinvent My Little Pony as a franchise and make it something much less 'light and fluffy'.
What resulted is My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. It's a character driven cartoon that focuses more on minor slapstick and absurdity than brushing hair and dress-up time. The show is akin to Dexter's Lab, Hey Arnold, or Johnny Bravo.
You have to forget EVERYTHING you've ever known about MLP. This isn't for girls, it's for everyone to enjoy. And if you can manage to not think about what MLP was and watch a few episodes, I guarantee you will at least get slight enjoyment out of it."
If he isn't UPSLynx, then it seems a lot of his article is just copypasta from Icrontic thread. Tut tut.
Probably one of the better articles explaining the fandom. I myself was of the "This is for little girls!" bandwagon for quite a while, until I decided to watch an episode to see what all the fuss was about. Now, I love it.
ReplyDeleteI loved this one. It was a only a scratch to the surface, but it was a perfect gateway article. Really the only way to get deeper into the community is to experience it yourself. Nopony can be told about the inner workings of our community.
ReplyDeleteBravo to the writer, and thank you, Seth, for posting this.
I think it's a form male empowerment. Men get tired of being stuck in gender roles as much as women.
ReplyDeleteWhenever I read the YouTube comments of bronies joking around and being supportive of each other in regards to the "grown men watching ponies thing" I always get the sense that underneath the jokes there's a real happiness of being able to say they like something that's stereotypically girly and knowing they won't be insulted or made to feel weird by the group.
It's the sense of camaraderie bronies have.
Very well put article, especially the part, "Forget everything you know about My Little Pony"
ReplyDeleteI too don't like the lie they posted in the article.
Rainbow Dash is best pony? That's not how you spell Luna.
I needed this yesterday, now it's too late.
ReplyDeleteI can't explain shit
Bronies have their own elements of harmony:
ReplyDeleteArtists
Writers
Musicians
Youtube remixers and dubbers
Game designers
Plushie makers
Cute little bunnies
Also, there's the show itself!
hehe, people are starting to realize the magic of friendship, and ponies!
ReplyDeleteThe iron giant !! My god... its all clear now I understand !! :D
ReplyDelete@Flutterfan
ReplyDelete"I think it's a form male empowerment. Men get tired of being stuck in gender roles as much as women."
Agreed. That's been my hypothesis for awhile now though I can't back that up with something more empirical. I grew up in the 1980s when gender roles were more proscribed and while I never came out and said it, "girls" and presence of girls in even "masculine" comics made me uneasy because of the cultural environment I grew up in. (There was an old Marvel comic part of the New Universe line called Codename: Spitfire which had a woman in a robotic suit doing heroic stuff...and I tried to pretend it was just a robot because that fact was so unnerving to me.)
Flash forward several years later. I made a good female friend in high school who shared my interests in high fantasy and comic books. (She was also Tomboyish.) I made more female friends through her, and as an adult most of my friends are women who often share my interests and values. Most of them don't seem particularly masculine to me, but it's not something I think about often. And so it makes sense that I can comfortable enjoy MLP: FiM. (Then again the high school friend was the one who got me into the show.)
Though I wouldn't say the show is entirely gender neutral based on Emily Manuel's feminist appraisal of the show. And that's even allowing for gender being a socially constructed concept.
I will say though that it approaches a feminine perspective in such a meaningful fashion (within the parameters of a children's cartoon) that people stop caring, particularly a generation of young males enjoying less proscribed gender norms than I did growing up in the 1980s. (But I spend most of my social life these days playing with girls. :p )
Why does everypony use my name as a curse word?
ReplyDeleteLuna damn them.
@Celestia
ReplyDeleteSoooo...you're saying that you want the ponies to cry out Luna's name and not yours when engaged in the physical act of love? :p
By Celestia's beard, what a magnificent article!
ReplyDeleteHaha Fat Pony! :D Love that, I'll have to check this article out later.
ReplyDeleteVery well articulated and completely accurate (as far as I'm concerned).
ReplyDeleteThough if anyone ever asks me why I like it the only answer I really have is "It makes me smile."
There is a much more complex answer and this article covers it nicely but I feel like it shouldn't have to be more complicated than just making me smile.
This article hits the nail on the head.
ReplyDeleteAnd I do agree with the whole "male empowerment" thing. I think regardless of whether you are a man or woman, you should be able to do what you want and watch what you want without worrying about what others will think about you.
The community also helps a lot.
Favorite line in the article was "forget everything you know about MLP". So true.
@Cain.Is.Blogging.Stuff
ReplyDeleteHeyo, UPSLynx here. I did author that article, and actually, I also authored the bit you quoted.
We have a thread on Icrontic called "Images with overloads of ponies" (http://icrontic.com/forum/showthread.php?t=92605) and that bit you quoted is actually from my post at the bottom of that first page.
I used to direct people to that short bit that I wrote to explain the MLP phenomenon. It wasn't until yesterday that someone asked the question on a different thread that I decided to delve deeper and write a more complex and detailed response. I actually re-used one of the paragraphs from my original post because I liked it so much.
So, technically you're right, I copy pasta'd myself :D
Thanks for the positive feedback everyone!
That was a pretty good article. One of my favorites so far I think. I may not be a male, but I can certainly understand -anyone- liking the show. It's got that fun humor and edginess to it that simply makes it awesome to watch. :D
ReplyDelete@UPSLynx
ReplyDelete*salutes*
It's a good article, but not being a user of Icrontic I wouldn't know you personally so I wasn't sure if it was pasta-plagiarism or not ^_^
Who made that picture? Did it come from DA or Ponibooru?
ReplyDeleteThe article is close, but it leaves out a key point. While the community is great, it's not the entire reason the show is as popular as it is. To quote a bit from the Jayson Theissen interview from Bronycon: "it gave us an excuse to ditch all the poisonous, self-perpetuating cynicism and bile that we'd become used to throwing around at the world and each other, and to just appreciate something sweet and beautiful because it was objectively good enough that we didn't have to feel weird about it if we didn't choose to."
ReplyDeleteThe key point is that it's not such a good show in *spite* of the fact that it's about cute ponies, it's a good show *because* it's about cute ponies. The show is so great and fun to watch that people were able to ignore their initial misgivings about it being "girly" and just give it a shot. Being able to enjoy something that has more feminine qualities is such a foreign concept to the male audience that most are just getting used to it. It's a fresh experience that doesn't retread the same stereotypes that are so overused in trying and appeal to the "target demographic."
It's something worth celebrating and worth defending from any prejudice that comes against it, and I think that's where the strong community comes from. It's a community that's asked "why do grown-ass men like My Little Pony" and answers "why not?"
IG-64 up here reminded me about the key thing. as the dude behind the link stated, they're overreacting because it's MLP. MLP is connected instantly to the toys hasbro created, and toys are instantly connected to the lil' girls playing with 'em. this is summed up and the result is always "girly show". well, as we all can say, it is and is not a girly show. (formula below. why? cuz i felt like it)
ReplyDeleteit's like (not literally) a joker card, a mix-up of all kinds of things. ofc that's a little aggravated example, but with my tired mind i can't think any clearer.
formula of MLP:FiM to not-fans:
MLP:FiM= My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
->My Little Pony<-
MLP= those pony toys made for girls
=girly stuff
result: show is girly stuff
that's how i saw it 8 months ago, seriously. i regret my prejudices now.
I love in the comments how someone threatened to hurt another for denying fluttershy
ReplyDelete@Louis You mean the image at the top with Celestia and the logo? I made it for the article.
ReplyDelete@IG-64 That's a very good point, and totally true. I would argue that it's the community that keeps fans coming back for more, though. Especially with the time between seasons - if it were just the show, then during that time the people in it for only watching episodes had nothing new, nothing to talk about. It was the fan created content and gatherings that kept people going and kept people talking about it.
ReplyDeleteThe show ditches the ugly stuff and gives us something simple, fun and beautiful to enjoy. Now that I think about it, those very feeling flood out to the community and help shape it. They really go hand in hand.
@UPSLynx
ReplyDeleteTo be honest, a strong community can allow certain facets of a show that are omitted to become popular, such as Grimdark fanfictions and deeper explorations into the minds of the characters that we would never see on the show itself.
I love how in certain fanfictions and pictures we see a more grown up look into how the Mane 6 work, like how there have been interpretations that Pinkie Pie is deeply insecure and worried about being alone so overcomes it with compensation in her mannerisms and overbearing friendliness, or how Rainbow Dash is terrified of failure so she is arrogant and competitive to the point where she will stop at nothing to win, and we can make up stories as to why that may have come about.
But I agree, the community is what makes a show last longer than the 30 minutes per episode every 7 days.
@UPSLynx
ReplyDeleteNo, I mean the one with Rarity and that, thing.
Gratz Lynx :D
ReplyDeletePeople bring up some good additions, such as the freedom to buck gender roles and especially the appeal of something non-cynical when the rest of the internet is overwhelmingly drenched in it.
ReplyDeleteAnd the article probably does oversell the "throw out everything you know about My Little Pony" aspect. I don't know that the show did... I mean, you can fairly say that it is quite often a show about pastel colored ponies worrying about going to the grand ball and singing about parties. It's just that, in addition to that kind of thing, they shatter the sound barrier, bring down mad gods, face monsters, take anvils to the head and regularly suffer borderline psychotic breakdowns.
Personally, I think the wacky combination of the unrepentantly girly stuff with the rest is all part of the charm.
How many times must this be talked about before people realize that we, the bronies, are here to stay?
ReplyDeleteGreat article, it has enough pointers to help even the thickest of heads understand
ReplyDeleteI like reading articles like this to better understand why I love ponies
ReplyDelete@IG-64
ReplyDeleteI think that's a really good point, because there's no way you can argue it's not a girly show. It's girly as hell. The point is that it's girly and awesome.
I was thinking today about how, even though we always bitch about the E/L restrictions, it's actually good for the soul to watch and enjoy a show where calling someone an egghead pushes the limits of acceptability, given how saturated in snark most of the stuff we watch is.
@ Louis: I drew it.
ReplyDeletePerfect. As soon as my Rainbow Dash shirt comes in the mail, I'm coming out of the stable to my entire school. This article, combined with the shirt and the recently posted My Chemical Romance - Na Na Na PMV should be enough to prove to people that it's actually a good show and maybe even convert a few of my friends.
ReplyDeleteI loved that article! I finally have a way to explain my brony wristband! Also, and I'm surprised no one else has said this.
ReplyDelete"Horse, you are freaking me the math out!"
@Shadow
ReplyDelete...Jared?
I LOVE THIS FANDOM :D
ReplyDelete@blindredquine
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, there is a pretty strong idea in our culture that feminine things are silly, childish, and bad.
Male-targeted series are assumed to be acceptable for all, while female-targeted series are assumed to be only acceptable for females... And if you are a female who likes female targeted series, you can usually expect to be made fun of for being too girly (think of how a character like Rarity is USUALLY portrayed).
The fact that such an obviously feminine show (I'd hardly call it gender-neutral) has broad appeal is certainly worthy of feminist appraisal.
This is a goodthing. I agree with him on many points. Butsince most of the people who think im gay or retarded for liking this show are to lazy to go read this I will just use my usual response to them.
ReplyDelete*slips on sunglasses*
Deal with it.