Saturday 18 January 2014

On the demise of APM

Looks like Hasbro shut down APM at last. If you don't know what APM is (well, was now) then by all means skip this post. There's an episode review coming up in the next day or two, after all. But I can't write about this subject matter on UK of Equestria, it's too long for Twitter and nobody reads LiveJournal these days, so this is the best place.

My immediate reaction, quite frankly, is one of relief. I said back in August that I had a problem with misogyny in the pony fandom, and sorry guys but APM was guilty of casual misogyny at times. Much the same as I said in August applies to APM. I was decidedly not a fan – even of Gamer Luna, though I had no objection to her; I'm just not as huge a Luna-tic as many.

The idea that if you don't like to see NSFW humour in the fandom, you're somehow "immature" is just plain stupid. I was never one of those who tried to get APM shut down, and as long as it stayed within the law I felt that what it did was its business. But I didn't like its humour, and there's nothing immature about saying so plainly.

As for PinkiePony... does the word "Yamino" mean anything to you? Someone who had an unpopular opinion, stated it openly, and got treated  disgracefully for it? I didn't agree with plenty of what Y said, and I didn't agree of plenty of what PP had to say. But you can't defend the right of APM to make those jokes unless you also defend the right of PP to be vocal.

Okay, I'm done with this subject. Next up will be a review of "Rainbow Falls"!

2 comments:

  1. To be honest I didn't actually know what APM was, and Google didn't answer the question until I wandered over to Google Images. Then it became obvious. I remember seeing a few of those turning up before, when I was trying to find funny MLP pictures for UKoE, but obviously I wasn't after anything like that! I took the view of "well, I don't like the look of these APM cartoons, and I'm very surprised they've escaped Hasbro's attention, but I'll just ignore them." As you said quite rightly, that was their choice entirely, but it didn't appeal in the slightest. So the fact that Hasbro has shut it down is of no surprise and I'm certainly not going to miss it.

    It's hardly "immature" to say you don't think much of the humour, especially when APM goes against everything that Lauren Faust created Celestia for. The character isn't remotely meant to be like that and never was, so surely it's a lot more immature to turn a children's character into something like that "just for the lols" or some kind of strange turn-on.

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  2. APM? Based on the other comment here, was they responsible for that stupid "Molestia" bullscrew?

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