My Little Repeats 28: "The Return of Harmony, part 2"

Caption*

S2E02: "The Return of Harmony, part 2"
Written by M. A. Larson
24 Sep 2011

My original rating: N/A
IMDB score: 9.1

The one with Screwball.

Thoughts: Back in 2011, fans had to wait a week between the halves of this premiere – and it's taken me even longer! What can you say about this episode? It's widely considered (including by its writer) a triumph and is often cited as being one of the finest episodes of the series' entire run. Is it that good? Well... yes. After the "Previously on My Little Pony" and the opening theme, the action never lets up. The stakes get increasingly high as the five corrupted mares get even greyer and, eventually, even Twilight gives up. There's still comedy, though, not least in Spike's "New Rainbow Dash" sequence – as well, of course, as "Your Face!" from Fluttershy and various of Discord's chaotic creations. Indeed, the dialogue is generally excellent. 'Shy also plays a pivotal role late on, being spurred into Dash-catching speed when reminded of Discord's meanness. The ponies still have strongly horsey attributes, as seen when Twilight carries Tom on her back. Still, what I really like about this ep is the way it's resolved, using all those letters Twi sent to Celestia as a very effective and very Equestrian way to turn the tide. We get a full-on Elements/Rainbow of Light sequence to restone Discord, and then the icing on the cake is the brilliant Star Wars homage in the final scene (with, I think, the show's first changed end credits music). Part 1 scraped a five-star rating. Part 2 clears the bar with effortless ease.

Choice quote: Twilight: "This is my book and I'm gonna read it!"

New rating: ★★★★★

Next up is "Lesson Zero", an extremely popular episode with most of the fandom and one I've always loved. Will I still? Wait and see!

* I meant to do that... Liarjack face.

Sorry, no Ponyfic Roundup this week

Applejack Pie by Tsitra360
( CC by-nc-nd 3.0 )

More flooding in my area being the reason, and the river level is higher than it has been for almost 20 years. I don't live in a directly affected part of town, but it's causing considerable concern and various problems with transport etc even so. I expect to bring back PR next week, but it's not happening today, I'm afraid. Instead, you get a picture of Applejack.

Okay, so Applejack thoughts in brief...

I'm now worrying mostly about flooding again (it's higher than last week) but I thought I'd get this out of the way. Last week, someone posted a fanart picture of Applejack as an American slave owner, relaxing on an apple plantation porch, with all the slaves working in the background portrayed as zebras. (The picture was apparently closely based on a scene in Django Unchained, but I haven't seen that film and so I can't comment on that.) And naturally the resulting drama quickly spread to Twitter.

I did not like the picture at all, and I liked it even less once I read some of the comments defending it – which could be boiled down to "It's dark humour and if you don't get that then you're a woke SJW cuck pussy!" (Which is generally code for "I want total free speech but I don't want to face any consequences for what I say.") While I'm not myself especially sensitive, it seemed pretty clear that this pic was going to stir up trouble. I don't know the artist, so I can't say whether they realised this. But I'm damn sure that some of the commenters liked it because it upset people.

Even so, if that picture had been all it was, I would have grimaced a bit and moved on. I'm decidedly not a fan of the 4channy parts of the MLP fandom, and the fact that it largely began there does not mean we all have to venerate the place as some kind of eternal god. I don't and won't. As has been noted, 4chan itself is not the same place it was a decade ago, having noticeably shifted from old-fashioned shitposting to hard-right politics even on boards that used not to have much. But if it had just been that one picture, I'd have ignored it.

The thing is, that picture wasn't all it was. Over the next few days, we saw several examples (with screenshots and so on as evidence) of people in this fandom who were not simply guilty of giggling at a rather racist picture – but were guilty of being racists, plain and simple. One, for example, had been shown to use the n-word several hundred times in their Discord (I think) chats. There were others for whom the admittedly overused "Nazi" designation wasn't far off the mark.

Twitter being what it is, this quickly span out of control in various ways. We had people suggesting that the fandom was poisoned beyond repair and should be put out of its misery, and we also had people suggesting that this was just a case of a couple of bad apples and we were all great really. Anyone who felt like putting a more nuanced case, that there was a significant problem with tolerating racism but that it didn't mean the fandom was rotten to the core, didn't get much of a hearing.

And that's about where I stand. When people are saying, as one fairly prominent professional artist did, that they were planning on stepping back from fandom involvement; when people are feeling that out-and-out racism is being tolerated; and when show staffers are feeling personally insulted by what they've seen, then we have a problem. I do not think the fandom is lost, not by any means. I do not feel we might as well leave it to the jackals and have done with it. I'm damned if I'm going to do that. I've seen this fandom do extraordinary good and change lives – including mine.

But if wanting racism out of my fandom, and feeling that there is a line beyond which free speech is no longer a virtue, makes me a "woke SJW cuck pussy" then I shall wear that badge with pride.

EqD poll results for "How old are you?"

Equestria Daily likes its polls, and there's usually one running. The one that's just recently closed was simply asking how old visitors to the site were. Of course a poll like this isn't remotely scientific, so the results should be treated with caution. It's also worth noting that EqD is not necessarily representative of the bulk of the fandom in 2020 – it's probably declined in relative importance in the last half-decade.

All that said, the results are still interesting. Very nearly a quarter of respondents said they were over 30, and just over half were 25 or above. The days when the average brony (at least on EqD) was a teenager or young student are well and truly behind us. This doesn't surprise me, even allowing for the fact that those who do their fandoming wholly or mostly on social media probably skew a bit younger.

Doubtless any outside media profiles of our fandom will continue to be written as though we're all still 18. (Some of us were never 18 during the FiM era, of course...) But though that may never have been quite accurate, it's now entirely inaccurate. We're an older fandom than we used to be. I'd love to add "and a wiser one", but I'm not sure we can really say that. Ah well.

UK PonyCon 2020: dates and venue announced!

UK PonyCon 2020

NTU City Campus, Nottingham

Sat 10th and Sun 11th October

Let's talk about the choice of dates first. The convention has been in October for as long as I've been going to it (first attended 2014) and it seems to work out pretty nicely. It doesn't clash with the other British cons (Griffish Isles and BronyScot), nor with school holidays or exam season. The 10th will also be precisely one decade since Friendship is Magic premiered. I thoroughly support this choice of dates and – if the weather behaves for once! – I think they'll work very well indeed.

Now for the bit I do have slightly mixed feelings about: UKPC will be back at the same venue for the third year running, the first time it's ever done this. Read the committee's article and you'll see their reasons. Attendee feedback mentioned a desire for good transport links, local accommodation options, plenty of side rooms for panels etc and on-site refreshments. The article says the committee "found it difficult to find another venue that ticks these boxes as well as Nottingham while keeping ticket prices affordable."

It's extremely hard to argue with any of those points. There's more I could say regarding my feelings about this, and I may do so at a future date. But I don't want to do that kind of thing in today's post. Today, I simply want to say that if I can I expect to be going to UK PonyCon once again – which would mean my attending for the seventh straight year. I won't be staying in the same hotel, though, so that will be a change of scene, at least. It may still be seven and a half months away, but UKPC 2020 suddenly feels closer!

Ponyfic Roundup 284

Due to being distracted by real-world events, I haven't really been keeping up with fandom events recently. I'd gathered that a certain picture was making the rounds, but I hadn't realised until now that there was considerably more going on. I'll be writing about that here in due course. Don't expect me to be all sweetness and light. For now, though...

Read it Later story count: 222 (-4)

Slightly against my expectations, I've managed to get through three stories, which is just about enough for an edition of Ponyfic Roundup! I don't have a great deal to say about them beyond what I'll put in their reviews, so let's do a quick run-down of what's on the dissection table today:

Byte sized by Sir Hat
Ticklesprites by Holocron
Untwisting the Knot by Flashgen

★: 2 | ★★: 0 | ★★★: 0 | ★★★★: 1 | ★★★★★: 0

Unavoidable (but I hope short) delay

There's always something, isn't there? In this case, it's these floods. While I don't live by the river myself, I do live in an affected town (it's the worst flooding here for almost 20 years) and do know people who are at risk of being flooded. As such, I really haven't had the time to spend on Pony that I normally would. I hope I can get Ponyfic Roundup posted tomorrow or Friday, but things are moving fast around here and so I may have to scratch this edition entirely and wait until next week. Apologies for the inconvenience.