Nathan Barley was a documentary
"Bronies, being American men who are fans of "My Little Pony" and who write fan fiction about it. Normally I would put this in the category "of course this did not happen", but if it's a hoax it's a bloody elaborate one all over Youtube. There appears to be some degree of self-irony but even so.
site curator Shaun (he asked that his last name be withheld)
I'll bet he did. Via the Awl.
Update Apparently "bronies" exist, non-ironically, including some people who give a reasonable impression of being sane. My tiny square mind is duly blown. I suppose you'll all be telling me that this is a thing too.
Why did you doubt? Rule 34 is in effect. In fact, I'd bet cash money that there is porno slash My Little Pony fiction out there.
ReplyDeleteBelle Waring would be turning in her grave if she was dead.
ReplyDeletechris y
The current My Little Ponies series is made by the woman who made the Powerpuff Girls, so she brought along fans of the old series.
ReplyDeletewhat, adult male fans? Good grief.
ReplyDeletePossibly related: The physics of My Little Pony. Looks to me like the presenter is a teenage boy in his senior year of high school, admitting he likes "My Little Pony"(!) as the setup to the talk.
ReplyDeletewhat, adult male fans? Good grief.
ReplyDeleteI think John Holbo once had a post about them that was rather fannish, beyond just fatherfood.
And time goes fast. There are enough adult men for whom the powerpuff girls are youth sentiment.
Ehh. You old grumblies clearly don't hang out in the fannish blogs too much, as My Little Pony fandom even for men is pretty mainstream.
ReplyDeleteCf.
Given that 4chan has been so full of bronies that Moot has added a filter for the word, I'd at the very least discount the apparent popularity of the thing a bazillionfold or so.
ReplyDeleteThe current My Little Ponies series is made by the woman who made the Powerpuff Girls, so she brought along fans of the old series.
ReplyDeleteAccording to Wikipedia more the wife of the creator, who also worked on storyboards for Power Puff girls. So probably not going to account for very many fans.
I legitimately did not expect to find a post here about My Little Pony.
ReplyDeleteTo paraphrase Michael Caine in The Swarm, I knew we'd been fighting a losing battle against the internet for years, but I never thought I'd see the final battle. And I never dreamed it would be the ponies! They've always been our friends!
Anyway, it's not just Lauren Faust but a significant chunk of the My Little Pony crew that came from Powerpuff Girls, and Powerpuff Girls pretty much started out as a show aimed at 20-something stoners. They only started writing it for kids after kids got into it.
But I think the real explanation here is that sometimes completely insane things just get ludicrously popular for no apparent reason; just look at the Ninja Turtles.
Powerpuff Girls arrived -- if memory serves -- towards the end of a fairly awesome cycle of US animation for TV, which was designed to appeal to two audiences simultaneously: little kids, who enjoyed funny animals running around bashing one another, making silly noises and sometimes saying "poopoo" and etc; and their parents -- who enjoyed the leaven of in-jokes, adult jokes and innuendo layered into same in such a way that it didn't at all spoil the kids' pleasure, yet successfully staved off the boredom attendant on sitting through much of the actual real "innocent" kids fare of yore.
ReplyDeleteI expect there's a crit-theory way of describing this -- essentially quite cleverly and effectively solving a basic split-audience conundrum -- to make it seem more like than a symptom than an achievement. Certainly it wasn't sustainable long-term, at least as the delivery technologies of the entertainment industry have evolved.
I expect there's a crit-theory way of describing this -- essentially quite cleverly and effectively solving a basic split-audience conundrum -- to make it seem more like than a symptom than an achievement.
ReplyDeleteKoji Aihara and Kentaro Takekuma's book Even a Monkey Can Draw Manga has a chapter addressing exactly this problem.
Certainly it wasn't sustainable long-term, at least as the delivery technologies of the entertainment industry have evolved.
How so? The whole issue of how American animation writing works is something I'm really interested in so I'd appreciate if you have time to expand on that.
FWIW, the adult male security guard at my bank today was sketching My Little Ponies in his sketchbook at his little desk. He's at least 30, possibly 40. Definitely not ironic. Almost certainly a big dork. But still.
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