on Love and Tolerance: Part I - Ponies and Relationships

This is something I've been thinking about for a while, but was, again, really sparked by things that the kids in "Teens React to..." video, so I suppose I will address my concerns in chronological order. (EDIT NOTE: The links that referred to several RageComics are now broken, and I can't find the originals again, so they have been replaced with descriptions of what was there, and text has been should have been edited accordingly.)

First, in the case that a brony really does love ponies more than his significant other, well, he must either not love his significant other all that much, or the fandom might be a little... obsessive. Your significant other, depending on the seriousness of your relationship, really should be the first and foremost in your thoughts and hearts (perhaps outside of family). But that's not to say you can't have things and people that you like (fandoms and friends) that are outside of the relationship.

The fact that there are cases where a girl (or guy) makes her/his significant other choose between his/her fandom or the relationship makes me a sad panda. Granted, there are varying levels of dedication to relationship and to fandoms, but you really shouldn't have to choose between your hobbies or fandoms and someone that [supposedly] loves you.

Let's take a look at why this kind of "it's me or ponies" ultimatum is not okay. This is basically the equivalent of saying "you have to choose between watching the football, and dating me" or "if you keep watching reality shows, we have to break up." While the latter is quite understandable in my book, it still brings me to a point of what makes a good relationship, and if these ultimatums are coming up, well then you have a problem other than a difference of interests.

Relationships are about understanding and compromise - as long as you understand (or even if you don't) and can tolerate your significant other's values, thoughts, and behaviors, then you might just have an absolutely wonderful relationship. You don't have to have the same interests, hobbies, or styles to get along.

Take, for example, my relationship with my boyfriend. He doesn't really like cute and "girly" (by socially normative standards, but we'll get to that) things. But when he spots something that fits that description, he loves me enough that he knows I would probably like it, and proceed forward it to my attention. The same goes for all things MLP:FIM. He is in no way a fan of the show, and is far from considering himself a Brony, but he knows the plot of every episode because he can tolerate being in the room with me while I watch, and will even let me show him scenes I think are funny (he TOTALLY laughed at FlutterGuy). It's the idea that you don't always have to have the same interests, but being able to accept them is what really matters.
Another couple friends of mine who are engaged to be married also had this kind of view. I showed the first couple episodes to the both of them to which her reaction was a playful enjoyment of the cute and silly, while his reaction was more a baffled amusement compared to her enjoyment. After the first two episodes, which was what we agreed we'd all watch just to introduce it, he patted her on the head and said, "Okay, well you have YouTube and can watch while I'm not around." None of this "I can't believe you like this it's so childish and silly and dumb" nonsense. It's okay to have differing interests.

So there's Love and Tolerance: where even if you think that something they do doesn't really make sense, or you don't agree with it, you can still be with the person because they have enough other qualities that you like/love about them - the two really go hand in hand, and it's hard to define either of them without the other (in this circumstance).


With the notion of Love and Tolerance aside, I now get to the "Teens React..." video and the answers of the girls when they were asked, "Would you date a boy who was brony?" (at 4:45 in the video) There was a resounding "NO" from the girls. Analyzing this from a "scientific" point of view, we will have to take into account the fact that the video did not show responses from all the girls, only 4 of the 6. Rumor, one of the girls who was not shown, did voice her support for bronies near the end of the video, so lets assume she would have said yes. Of the ones whose reactions were shown, everyone said "no" with a considerable amount of disgust in their voices. Even Jade, who knew of Bronies before being shown the opening and asked about it said, "Hell NO!" And then Madison, who was asked, "What if you said 'hey, you know take me out to the movies' and they were like, 'no, I'm sorry - tonight, My Little Pony's on'?" and that would be the point of breaking up with them - what's the difference, as I pointed out before, between that, and saying, "No, can't go on a date tonight, the football game is on" or "I'm hanging out with the guys tonight?"
Lia put it in terms that basically sums up the entire problem that girls and society in general, have with the basic idea of the "Brony" - the acceptability of breaking gender and age norms. As Lia said, "No, I don't want some boy that's watching My Little Pony, I want a boy who's like, 'I'm tough.'" Congratulations, girl - I sure hope you aren't a feminist otherwise you'd be another one to chalk up to the hypocrite list. We will discuss this in more depth in the next post: how Bronydom really stretches the gender-norm line, and really shows society's backwards expectations and the reverse sexism that occurs in our modern western society.

For now, I have a chili recipe to try out.

(Disclaimer: All screenshots used are property and copyright of Hasbro)

on Love and Tolerance: Prologue - Reaction to Teens' Reactions

Yo dawg, I heard you like reactions, so I decided to post my reactions to the reactions of teens watching the MLP:FIM Opening. All overused Xzbit memes aside, this video, along with several other happenings and stories from the Brony community have really sparked my interest over the idea of "Love and Tolerance" which is supposedly one of the key aspects of the show and Bronydom (sorry, if that's not a legit fanword - I'm not terribly in tune with the movement, I just mostly like the show). So first, for those who haven't seen it, here's the video:

So, In addition to my reactions to several of the kids featured in the video, specifically, I have my own reactions to the questions in general, and so I'll break this series of words down into a number of posts:
0 - Specific Comments/Children
I - Ponies and Relationships
II - Bronies and Sexism/Gender Norms (& Sexuality)
III - Sharing, Caring, and Copyrights
IV - Tolerating Dislike of Ponies

So with these individual kids, there are a number of different reactions from disgust to an enthusiastic love for Ponies and Bronies. I'm not going to talk about each of the kids in here, just the ones that I had specific comments towards, and will do so in order of their appearance in the video.

The Adam-Person:
His general opinion (by the end of the video): "Bronies are all trolls. They don't actually like the show, they're just using that as a guise to stir up controversy, and for that I support them."
How do I feel about this? Uh, well, from what I've seen, that doesn't seem to be the case. I'm not saying that Bronies and Trolls are mutually exclusive - there are certainly Bronies that are trolls and trolls that are Bronies, but certainly not all Bronies are trolls and those who are Bronies are more than likely actual fans of the show, not just trolling. I mean, I know trolls will go out of their way to troll, indeed. But organizing conferences, creating new games, art, toy-mods, etc? This is definitely not a troll movement. The sheer amount of creativity involved in the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic fan-base really shows that people care about and enjoy the show.

The Isaac-Person:
His general reaction: "The Brony phenomenon is weird, but I won't judge them."
This. This kid is awesome and I hope that attitude remains with him in all things. His words, "Do your thing - I'm not gonna judge you" is really what people need to think more about all things. Even if you do judge, just a little... as long as you can accept it, you can be the getalonginest pony person ever, and that's great.

The Jade-Person (well no, she's not actually a person made of Jade):
This particular person knew of Bronies before being told about the fan based, and said she had watched a bit, but the show was not really for her. This alone I think is a fine opinion. I might argue that you need to watch at least 3 episodes to really get a good sense of the show, but at least she tried, so, okay. I do have a small beef with what she and some of the other girls say, but I will address that in Part I.

The Jourdan-Person:
Okay, hold on - Fluttershy mode so I don't sound super hateful because I'm not hateful, just... irritated.

HOW DARE YOU?! Listen here, mister: Just because you think you're cool, doesn't mean you get to be a bully! You may have a silly emo haircut, and your hipster pink plaid-y shirt, but you do not, I repeat you do NOT have the right to judge ANYONE because they like a show with large amounts of rainbows, pink and purple. You got that?

And in fact, he can't even say anything like, "but the rainbowy ones kicked me" because nothing like that's ever happened. This was obviously his first exposure to My Little Pony and he's already hating on it. With statements like, "I'm a little concerned that you think that I should watch that... because you thought I'm on the other side of the road, and I'm not?" But, geeze, we'll address Bronies and sexuality/sexism later.

COME ON. You're wearing a shirt with pink in it, you ADMITTED IT (in the deleted scenes), and you're STILL raggin' on guys who like this BECAUSE THERE'S PINK IN IT. DON'T YOU, "BUT I-" me, mister. Now what do you have to say for yourself?

But really - in all seriousness, with the silly hairdo and pink shirt thing, he might argue that he's just trying to assert his individuality, and express himself. Well, so are Bronies - so how can he hate on them for just being who they are, just like he's doing? Imma slap this one with my HYPOCRITE stamp and move on.


The Devin-Person:
This is my favorite little person, not because he's an instant Brony convert (in fact, it scares me that just the opening is so appealing to him), but because his comments are right on the mark of Love and Tolerance and awesome. On being asked why guys would like this, he said, "Because there's, like, nothing wrong with it - it's just, like, fun" YES. EXAAAAAAACTLY. That's what people really need these days. I know from personal experience, and also from my studies (on friendship? lol) that in today's society, we all need a little bit of fun! While not everyone may find their enjoyment in Ponies, as long as people have their way of harmlessly finding joy, there should be no reason for anyone to deny them that, or to judge them for that. No one's going to say, "you shouldn't be rock climbing!" or "you're a disgrace to society for painting!" The only reason why these Bronies are so controversial is because they're breaking expected gender and age norms/expectations. And for that, I am thankful.

We'll talk more about those individual expectations momentarily, but really, I'm just happy that Bronies really bring to light how backwards, hypocritical, and just plain strange our gender norms really are.

(Disclaimer: All screenshots used are property and copyright of Hasbro)

on Making Shirts 20% Cooler

So this is also in line with the Dress-Mod Project in that the motivations for these projects is the fact that I know my wardrobe is super full and I just don't wear half of it because it either doesn't fit and I'm just keeping it like the hoarder that I am (anti-Rarity, lol) or that it just isn't exciting enough.

So recently I've WANTED to buy some My Little Pony themed shirts but with a surplus of unused clothes, I wasn't about to blow my Graduate School Tuition (YES, CAPITALIZED LIKE A TITLE BECAUSE IT TAKES OVER MY LIFE) on MLP:FIM gear at something like 25 bucks a piece. SO, I figured since I'm doing the crafty thing anyway I figured I'd take the poorman's way out and make it a DIY project.

I went to Walmart (Gasp) and bought a 6 pack of Tulip Bright Permanent Fabric Markers for about $10 (Amazon there is selling them for ~$13... just go to a Walmart, even if they are evil). So I have several plain-colored shirts that I wanted to use. The first of these was a bright yellow GAP shirt that I never wear (it blends in with my skin color, sadface) so even though it's a little brighter than her coat color, I thought I'd make it into a Fluttershy shirt. So our base materials are a plain shirt, these fabric markers, and a printed out cutie-mark stencil (just found some nice quality cutie mark art online and created an outline of each part in Photoshop).

The easiest way to cut out a stencil is with your handy-dandy emo-blade exact-o-knife. Of course, as always, make sure you're using a surface that won't get damaged or that you won't mind getting damaged. For this, because I don't have any fancy crafty cutting mats, I ripped apart an old shoebox and salvaged the cardboard for various uses in this project. And of course, for safety purposes, always make sure that a responsible adult is the one who will be doing the cutting for you. ... What are you talking about, of course I cut it out myself, why would you... HEeeeey. Sadface. Also, you may notice in the picture, I also cut out some wax paper (yeah, I know, what?) along with the normal paper just as a secondary stencil, just in case something went wrong with the paper stencil (good thing I did, because it turned out that the ink from the printer would bleed from the marker into to color, which created some icky color muddling on the edge but hardly noticeable, and I also managed to cover it, regardless I switched to mostly using the wax-paper as a stencil).

Here's where the cardboard was also really handy, I put in inside the shirt right under where I wanted to draw, so that I would have a hard surface, and just in case the markers bled, I didn't want ink going onto the back of the shirt. The latter wasn't so much of a problem, but with the fabric as soft and stretchy as it was, having the cardboard as a backing really helped.

The easiest way to use the stencil was just to trace the outline and then fill in from there. Which means, unfortunately, I had some problems with the butterfly antennae and messed those up in trying to free-hand them because I wasn't looking at the original *le dumb*. As for the markers in general, I really expected that they wouldn't color over the yellow fabric or that the colors would be muddled because of the cloth color, but after testing it on one of the hidden areas inside the shirt, I was surprised at how bright and clear the colors stayed even on a colored shirt, so there was no reason to bleach parts of the shirt, I just started drawing straight on the shirt. I like the brush tip, it makes it easy to add a fine line where you want it, but not hard to fill in solid areas.

So here are the three I was able to finish - Fluttershy, a Rainbow Dash Hood-tee, and a Rarity shirt.

But let's compare to the official merchandise:
Rarity - Okay, so I messed up on the detail-lines for the diamonds - if you look up close, you can tell, but from far away, it's barely noticeable. Any passing Brony or Pegasis will know what it's supposed to be. Also, the cloth in the shirt I used is a little higher quality and fancier. I was surprised that the marker actually worked on it, but it's definitely more Rarity than the other two.

Rainbow Dash - the cutie mark is a bit off center and a little too low. Also, Red wasn't included in the colors that I bought, so I had to fudge it a little, and there's also no white, so the cloud is just... transparent. And the rainbow-bolt isn't as exact and precise as I would've like, but oh well... It has a HOOD.

Fluttershy - Like I already mentioned, I messed up in trying to free-hand draw the antennae, and while the color is too BRIGHT, I think it looks much better than the pale-mud color that is being offered online.

Also, my Pegasus shirts both have a one-up on the official: I added wings to the back! AAAAaaaaaaaaaaaawwwwwwww, yeah.

Though as I mentioned, I do not have Red, so no Applejack shirts coming yet, I also do not have an appropriately Pinkie shirt to mod for that, and no White means no Twilight Sparkle, as of yet. But for now, I have shirts for half of the Mane 6 - I'm really needing to find myself something to Pinkie-ify. If not, I'll have to find out how to make a rainbow umbrella hat! But in general, the colors in the Bright pack are pretty great for Ponies, what with the Pink, Yellow, Purple, and Blue. I haven't really used the Orange or Green yet.

All in all, I'm pretty happy with these markers - I've made 3 shirts that would have otherwise cost me over $75, for just a little over $10, and I've saved some wardrobe space. My clothes are now 20% cooler.

on My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is undoubtedly a rather large and unexpected phenomenon and I am particularly late in writing about it... But IMMA DO IT ANYWAY CUZ I FEEL LIKE IT.

So.

I guess it starts as to why I started watching this AMAZING SHOW. Being an internet lurker, it was kind of impossible to avoid the memes and adorable pictures that flooded the internet and it was, of course, visually appealing, but I was still wary and didn't really think much of it. Not until season two started and references of the new (at the time) villain as Q really caught me. You have to understand - I was raised on Star Trek (and The Simpsons, but I digress). I had to watch Season Two... For Discord. Of course, starting on Season Two made no sense (yeah, I tried), so I went and watched the first two episodes to get the context... and then proceeded to watch the rest of Season One in the next two days... because Fluttershy.

I have to admit, even within the time I have been watching MLP:FIM, my opinions on the show has changed. Like, I used to hate Pinkie Pie and her songs, and now I've realized that I most like Pinkie Pie and love [most of] her songs. A less trivial change in my opinion, however, is my view of the show overall. I used to think it was a pretty awesome kids show. Now I feel like it's not-really-a-kid's-show disguised as a kid's show. For example this just about sums up my thoughts about the latest episode.

As for the social implications, if there are any, I might throw out my view on those later... For now, time to play SWTOR.