"End of the brony golden age?" – interesting press article

A few days ago, this article in Canada's National Post newspaper was published. It's a fairly in-depth look at how our fandom is faring as the FiM era draws to a close. Maura Forrest's piece seems a decently researched article on the whole – for example, she acknowledges 4chan's place at the very beginning of the fandom's story. She also makes the fair point that, eight years in, it's hard for many/most fans to sustain the initial rush of excitement that being a brony brought.

It's nice that Forrest's article doesn't take the easy route of either assuming every brony is the stereotypical unemployed "neckbeard" or overplaying it the other way and making out we're all the CEOs of FTSE 100 companies. There's due regard paid to our tendency to buy custom merch (eg plushies) in preference to Hasbro's, too. There are a few little slips, such as the implication that there was a consensus among fans to hate Twilight's ascension, which wasn't true even in 2013. Not many, though.

Forrest touches on some of the modern grumbles, such as the ever-growing cast meaning less of a focus on the Mane Six, the quality of today's episode writing and those leaks from late 2017. There's also the fair comment that a fandom based around a single TV show, which was always going to end sometime, does have something of an "expiry date" built in. On the positive side, there's a bit about VanHoover being built in the wake of BronyCAN's expiry in 2017.

The subject of conventions is one that could fill articles by itself, and here in the UK the situation is somewhat complicated by the fact that our largest Pony con isn't just about one show but rather about the My Little Pony franchise as a whole. But I think that point I mentioned in my first paragraph plays a large role: it's been eight years and the shine was always going to wear off a bit for many people. Whatever your thoughts, I do recommend the National Post article to every fan with a reasonably open mind.

Thoughts on "Friendship was magic", Dubs Rewatcher's Polygon article

I read "Friendship was magic: How bronies are preparing for the end of My Little Pony" a few weeks ago, and I remember remarking at the time how favourably impressed I was by the article's approach, especially given it was published in a non-fandom source. (Okay, it was Polygon, a gaming and entertainment site, not a mainstream newspaper, but nevertheless.) We even got an interview with a ponyfic author in Bookplayer, a rare thing even in good articles about our fandom.

Being behind the curve as usual, I've only now discovered the reason for the article's author coming across as so well-informed: because he was. The writer used his real name on Polygon, but it was in fact long-time fandom member and ponyfic person Dubs Rewatcher. (One of whose old fics I'll be reviewing tomorrow, plug plug!) Given he's been on Fimfiction since August 2011, and given I don't think he was new to the fandom then, I think it's fair to say he's been around a bit. Since this is a fandom blog, I'll use his fandom name here.

As for the article itself: it's generally a very good one. It's fair and balanced, for one thing. (Yes, I know that phrase is loaded, but I mean it here.) It doesn't deny reality and pretend that the fandom is as big now as it was in 2013, but nor does it take an apocalyptic view and opine that the moment the show ends the fandom will too. It also has one of the more clear-eyed brief takes on clop I've seen, though understandably Dubs chooses not to mention that term.

There's a very interesting section later in the article in which Dubs points out the vast number of people who've used skills they've picked up in the MLP fandom to help them in later real-world endeavours. There's inevitably a slightly bittersweet tinge here, since most of us know favourite writers, musicians, artists or voice actors who have moved on and are no longer active. Some have severed all contact with the fandom, some still embrace their brony history.

My one disappointment with the article is its insularity: a reader unfamiliar with bronies could get the impression that BronyCon was the fandom and that there were no other MLP conventions worthy of the name, nor even fandom life outside the US. Perhaps the fact that Dubs is American and researched his piece at BronyCon makes this tricky to avoid, but it is something that irritated me as a British brony. The end of the show will be as huge a deal for us over here as it will be for American fans. The end of BronyCon, perhaps a little less so.

Despite that niggle, I would urge anyone who hasn't read "Friendship was Magic" to do so. It's a good read and, while it probably won't tell an active fan much they didn't already know, it's nice to find non-fandom platforms still taking some interest in us in 2018 – even if it is from a "waiting for the end" perspective. Still, I don't intend to mope, and while there's life there's hope. Besides, I have a Pony convention to prepare for!

UK PonyCon in the mainstream media

In this weekend when about every second tweet reminds me that BronyCon and GalaCon are on and I'm not at either of them, I need things to take my mind elsewhere – but still keep it on ponies. Fortunately, I have two! One is that later today I'll be off for the Worcester meetup group's annual all-you-can-eat buffet lunch. If there's any pudding there which features custard, you can be sure I'll be all over it. (Well, not literally. Probably.)

The other is that UK PonyCon (which I do hope to be at) has had some mainstream media coverage, something much rarer for British conventions than for the big American ones. Nottingham Live's headline – "Thousands of My Little Pony fans are coming to Nottingham - and here's why" – is perhaps a little over the top, but the article itself is reasonably straightforward and accurate, even mentioning correctly that only Sunday tickets remain.

Good article about the fandom

(Brief disclaimer: I know Andrew Crome slightly and have met him on a few occasions.)

I'm so glad I'm not employed as a headline writer, because as you can see I'm terrible at it. :P However, it is at least accurate: once you get past its mildly irritating headline, Andrew Crome's piece is a very solid summary of our weird and (usually) wonderful fandom, and one which goes a few steps beyond the cookie-cutter stuff you often get in such articles. You don't often get a piece about My Little Pony that brings in Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer!

I found the most interesting parts of the piece those which looked at the challenges the brony fandom presents. The article is timed to coincide with the movie's release, and we get a reminder of the fan backlash at Sia getting a top-line credit but not Tara Strong and co. There's also a brief mention of the very interesting question of whether the young girls who are supposed to be MLP's core audience are being sidelined somewhat by fan-targeted marketing.

Crome's article, published on theconversation.com, can be read for free here:

Meet the ‘Bronies’: adult fans giving My Little Pony a marketing headache

Writer slams poor research, but how much did he do himself?

Over on Gizmondo (and that's not a way I want to start too many posts here!) a guy named Rhett Jones has posted an article entitled "Researchers Are Sorry They Used 'Derpy' in a Research Paper". I tend to agree with Jones that it's generally a bad idea to use non-standard language in research papers. However, seeing a massive picture of our Derpy at the top of the article, I read on to see whether there was any My Little Pony content. And here's what I found:

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic reinforced the association between derpy and language mocking people with disabilities when it controversially renamed a character previously called “Derpy” that was clumsy and had crossed eyes. Fan boys petitioned to “save Derpy,” failed, and the term officially became part of the war on “politically correct” language.

So, Mr Jones has written an article complaining about poor research, yet has clearly done almost none himself, at least where the MLP fandom is concerned. Why does life have to be so ironic?

Note: having read Oilyvalves' comment below, I wonder whether I might have been unfair here. Feel free to tell me so if you think I have.

How the Telegraph covered the very first UK PonyCon. (Badly.)

Way way back many centuries ago in 2004, the inaugural UK PonyCon took place in Morecambe. There are still a few people around who've been to every one of the convention's iterations, but the fandom was inevitably a rather different place in those far-off pre-brony days.

Recently, I discovered that the Telegraph had written about the con, and that its own archive gave free access to this report by Rebecca Tyrrel. It's an interesting window into the past, but one that's sadly marred by the patronising tone with which many of us are all too familiar.

I'm not one of those people who thinks it would help for fans to snub the mainstream media entirely, and there have been good pieces – for example, the BBC's piece on bronies from 2013. It's just a shame to see that the sneery attitude was around even long before G4.

Horse News considers the last BUCK and UK con financing

Hat-tip to Idris for alerting me to this.

It's no secret that I rarely read Horse News, but from time to time it does come up with something really worthwhile. The article in question is titled Rolling Pone: An Interview on Pony Convention Finances and Doubtful Allegations, which makes it sound like it's just a scandal piece – but actually, it's a lot more interesting than that. As always with HN, don't go reading it anywhere that's going to make a big deal about NSFW language.

I'm not going to try to summarise the whole thing, since that would detract from the flavour, but writer Foal Duke's pseudonymous associate (who has extensive experience in event organisation) makes it pretty clear that brony cons have very weird finances when set against many other fandoms (yes, even furry) and that a super-high-cost environment like Britain shouldn't really have been able to support a con like BUCK at all. In other words, the BUCK team did the impossible.

One little nugget from the comments, although in true 4chan style it's from an anon: apparently a single hall at Birmingham's NEC costs £100,000 for just one day's hire. Even if an event managed to negotiate a discounted rate, you can see why there is absolutely no chance of something like BUCK ever happening at a place like that. Actually, the comments thread contains more interesting posts than memes and insults, including a fun one by knighty about his own experiences. (I was at that fanfic contest; he did indeed have to rush out to buy pens.)

Anyway, read the article for yourself. It's not that long, and it provides a perspective that I haven't seen before, at least not when applied specifically to the UK.

UK PonyCon makes the mainstream media (again)

This happened in 2013, with a decent Daily Mail article and an iffy Guardian one (yes, it really was that way round), and it's happened again this year. For some reason, the only place I can find the article right now is here on news.com.au, but it's not paywalled, so it's there if you want to have a look at it for yourself.

It's a reasonable article, though it calls the convention "UK Pony Con" and I can't help noticing that the title bar refers to "grown men" even though the headline says "grown ups". There's also heavy emphasis on bronies, even though UK PonyCon is an all-gens, all-fans convention rather than a brony event as such. No, I'm not in it – but several people I know are. :P

Decent article in the Metro

Although the same paper published a rather sneery article about bronies just a few days ago, the Metro freesheet has now printed (yes, apparently this was in the print edition) this considerably better story. It's to mark the fact that National Geographic's Outsiders documentary (largely filmed at BUCK 2013) will be getting its UK premiere soon. There's nothing particularly startling in it, but it's a fair and factual report. Also, some pictures of people I actually have some idea who they are, for a change! The one downside is that it does perpetuate the myth that all bronies are male.

The Brony Broadcasting Corporation?

Well, it had to happen sooner or later: the BBC has noticed our fandom! As part of their Real Time strand, they've put up the video above. (If you can't see it, this link should help.) The con parts of the film were made at BronyDays in France, which is why this doesn't quite merit a UK-specific tag, but it is nice to have actual British bronies interviewed. Oh, and MA Larson. And is that EileMonty I spy? I think it is! There's nothing in the video that's likely to come as a surprise to anyone reading this, but it's a fair-minded piece and refreshingly free of tabloid stupidity. Not bad, BBC. Not bad.

Channel 4 takes a look at bronies

I don't think I can embed the video, but here's a link to it. This isn't an in-depth piece, but for a three-minute introduction it's not bad at all, the rather out-of-place PFUDOR clip aside. The whole thing is based around Bronycon, so there's no coverage of the British fandom — rather oddly for a British broadcaster! — but maybe we'll get that at BUCK. I doubt there'll be anything new for anyone reading this, but I was impressed by the use of the extended theme in the background: that's not something you'd find without doing a bit of research. All in all, Channel 4, not bad!

No, I haven't disappeared!

There's nothing wrong, either, and I expect to get back to regular updates in the next couple of days. (No, this isn't one of those times when someone says that and then vanishes for months!) I'm just very tired at the moment, and there isn't a lot I have to write about anyway. However, in the nearish future there'll be at least a couple of reviews of new My Little Pony publications, as well as a classic episode review.

The Guardian's Stuart Heritage blogs about the EqG trailer

Construction Paper - Lyra Facehoof by MusicalWolfe, Dec 2012. CC by-nc-nd 3.0

Yes, folks: we really have been reduced to this in order to get some actual UK-centric coverage for MLP on this blog. The Guardian's intermittently amusing film/TV/music writer Stuart Heritage has written about Equestria Girls. Not the actual film, mark you: nobody in Britain has (officially, at least) seen that yet. Instead, the movie's release has been marked by Heritage with a blog post about the (second) trailer. And remember, this guy is a professional: he's getting paid for doing this. So it had better be good. Is it?

We-ell... I think "intermittently amusing" would also be a good description of his writing here. Nothing Heritage says is going to come as a shock to those of us who've seen the trailer, and I'll grant that some of his comments are actually quite funny. My favourite is his description of the interdimensional wormhole opened up by the magic mirror: "like a million children have vomited Haribo into a branch of Claire's Accessories, but with more weird photobombing pig things". Others, such as Sunset Shimmer's jaundiced look, are run-of-the-mill.

And does Heritage mention the fandom? Oh yes. Well, sort of. Like almost every other journalist in Britain (unlike, I have to say, some of our American cousins) he either hasn't done much research on the fandom's lack of noticeable screaming demand for EqG, or he has but doesn't care. As it's a humorous blog, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt there. And then take it away again for his exceptionally feeble and unfunny comment about how we "adult male brony fetishists" will love the scene with Twilight on her knees and Spike on her back. Sigh.

As I type this, the comments section beneath Heritage's piece is a mixed bag, with some Pony fans, some outsiders and some who think the whole thing is completely incomprehensible. I can live with that: I'd just prefer not to have The Guardian, of all papers, thinking it's fine and dandy for commenters to openly compare bronies with the likes of Jimmy Savile, as happened below the line of Rebecca Angel's article in the same newspaper last October. As for Heritage's own piece? Not all that offensive, but not all that funny either. Shrug.

Ponies in the press

Dictionary, Meet Newspaper by Flizzick, August 2012. CC by 3.0

Since My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic has not been a mainstream hit in the UK — partly on account of its near-invisibility on TV — it's perhaps unsurprising that the show and its fandom have largely been ignored by the British press. There have been a few exceptions, though, and in this post I'll round up those which I've come across. There's only one criterion, really: the piece must have been in an established mainstream UK publication. (Games blogs and so on don't count.)

The Guardian has published two pieces on bronies, though (perhaps surprisingly) neither of them are brilliant. On 1 October 2012, we were confronted with the cumbersomely-titled Adult male My Little Pony fans? Bronies are true rebels by Rebecca Angel. It starts off badly, with the first thing we see being a photo... of a G3 pony. After that, though, it's okay. Superficial to say the least, but you could see a lot worse. On the same page, in fact: look down to the comments. "Bronies are mainly probably idiots" is nothing like the most unpleasant.

Just four days later, the same paper followed this up with Men in tiaras join UK's biggest My Little Pony fans, in which Zoe Williams reported from UK PonyCon 2012. Now, I generally like Williams, and find her an entertaining writer. This article, however, was not one of her finest. Defining a plushy [sic] as "a blanket with a pony's head" will have left most of us scratching our own, human(ish) heads. And to read this, you'd think that most of us bronies went round in tiaras the whole time. Williams has the talent to write a better piece than this if she wants to.

As it happens, though, another national newspaper was reporting on the same convention, and Tamara Hardingham-Gill is responsible for (wait for it) 'Our friends think we're crazy!' Hundreds of grown-up My Little Pony fans flock to special convention in honour of animated series. Yes, it's in that home of absurdly long headlines, the Daily Mail. Run away! Run away! ...or rather, don't. Because, quite against most bronies' expectations, this is actually quite a good read, and there's clearly been some actual (*gasp*) research done. Some of the readers' comments are predictable, but well done the Mail. And that's not something I often say!

Since October, things have gone rather quiet, and all we've seen have been occasional mentions in diary pieces. For example, this one in The Yorker (yes, as in old York!) that seems to be the product of a reader's email and, somewhat bizarrely, this one in the Daily Telegraph by thoroughly right-wing blogger Damian Thompson. I'm not quite sure whether Thompson's comment about there being a "senior Anglican bishop" in our fandom is meant as a joke; I assume so, but it's so hard to tell. Anyway, that does seem to be our lot for the moment. Whether that's good or bad I'm not really sure.

Edit: Nicky Rowe, in the comments to this post, points out that Thompson has hinted at this bishop before. That said, dressing one's toy animals in academic dress does not one a brony make. Unless there's a specific link to FiM itself, I shall remain sceptical about this.