In which Logan rambles a lot

Have you ever read Jetfire2012's ponyfic It's a Dangerous Business, Going Out Your Door? Quite possibly you have, as it's long been considered one of the early classics. Indeed, I gave it a positive review years ago. If you go to the page I linked to now, though, you'll see that comments have been disabled. His profile has done the same thing. Why am I mentioning Jetfire2012 now? Because I'm semi-detached from the fandom as usual and didn't quite grasp that I should have talked about this earlier. Read on:

Here's a blog by Cynewulf, one of the fandom's outstanding authors. In it, she mentions that an image showing a person "chasing unarmed protestors with a bladed weapon before being forcibly disarmed" featured Jetfire2012. As the heroic disarmer? No. As the person with the weapon. Cynewulf's post is long and I don't want to do it injustice by summarising it glibly, but suffice to say here that she pinpoints 4chan's /pol/ board as a major root cause, especially the April Fool's Day joke where it was briefly merged with the /mlp/ board. Some in the comments and elsewhere consider this an oversimplification, I should note.

And here's a blog by MrNumbers, in which he talks about the Jetfire2012 incident, placing it in a wider context in the MLP fandom. In his words: "It's the hate and racism I saw emerge in support of him that's disgusted me." MrNumbers also mentions an incident where he contacted the Fimfiction staff over a PM and was told that he was trying to "shut down free speech". (For clarity, I'm not sure from context whether or not that was a direct quote from the staff member[s] in question.)

As an aside here, I have long had a problem with Fimfiction's tolerance of intolerable content. I've always tended to assume that my feelings at least in part have to do with the fact that I'm not from the US and so don't see free speech as the absolute good that many Americans do, some of those in a frankly creepy quasi-religious manner. Regular readers of this blog will know that foalcon is the thing I tend to get exercised about – I think it should be not only prohibited but a straight-up bannable offence – but that's not for this blog post.

So instead I'll move on to something relevant: here's FanOfMostEverything being absolutely furious. You don't see that every day, and when it happens you sit up and take notice of it. I'll hop back to MrNumbers now and note that he did make a follow-up post the following day in which he said (I paraphrase) that he felt heartened by how many people weren't ignoring that these problems existed, but rather that they did understand and so made active efforts to keep such things and such people out of their own personal communities.

Returning to Cynewulf's post, she makes the case that the "new normal" that seemed to be genuinely there to build in the early years of our fandom (perhaps up until about 2012) was not the normal that would reassert itself if we relaxed and did nothing, and that we as a fandom misunderstood that. To quote her again: "The 'normies' aren’t the SJWs you think are coming for your show and your fan art and your memes. The normies are the LARPers with Wehrmacht profile pics in your threads." And too many of us tolerated (if not loved) it. Too much and for too long. I am not innocent of this.

Is this fandom a good place? Well, of course there are plenty of places which are still true to the original, positive spirit of the fandom – stemming from the spirit of the show itself. Nobody is trying to say that there is not plenty of good to be found here. There certainly is. I wouldn't still be a part of it otherwise, and I don't intend to be leaving any time soon. But that's a different thing, and in any case "Is the fandom a good place?" is really not the correct question to be asking. The correct question is whether it's good enough. And the blunt answer to that question is no.

It doesn't take much in the way of guts to make a post on a small blog that few people read, but it's still been too much for me, apparently. Not good enough, Logan. Not good enough. So, long overdue though it is, let me say this very clearly: if you're a Nazi or a fascist or a sexist or a racist or a homophobe or a transphobe then get out of here. I want those people to be in no doubt: you are not welcome here. I do believe people can change. So go away and change. Change properly. Then we'll welcome you back with open arms. Then.

That is on you.

Cleaning up our fandom is on us.

Let's do this.

We just don't learn, do we?

The episode 17 review is being delayed by a day, since I'm in a poor frame of mind right now. As many of you will have guessed, that's because I'm angry and ashamed about the way Big Jim Miller has been treated recently. He shared a horribly abusive message he'd received (via his portfolio page, so he can't just shut down the email) and said that he felt driven to make his Twitter account private for a while, simply for the good of his mental health.

I believe that some of this abuse came his way from people who had seen the S9 finale (already released in the Netherlands!) and didn't like it. Yes, that's right: people didn't like the ending of a cartoon and decided that justified screaming abuse at a guy involved in making it.* A guy who, I'd be willing to bet, has done about a million times more with his creativity and vision to make people happy than any of the people sending the abuse ever have.

* I don't know what the ending is! Please do not mention it if you do!

We've been here before. After "Filli Vanilli" went out in 2014, certain people who disliked the way Pinkie Pie had been portrayed in that episode hurled abuse at Amy Keating Rogers, that ep's writer. Some of it went a thousand miles beyond any norms of civilised criticism – AKR mentioned that she had even received death threats. This was followed by the #ThankYouDHX Twitter campaign, which was seen by those who mattered, but of course that didn't change what had happened.

I'm so utterly, utterly sick of people saying that because this fandom grew out of 4chan, that somehow makes it okay to behave like this. Or that anyone who can't deal with deliberately insulting personal abuse is "a snowflake" who should get off the internet. This is My Little Pony, for Celestia's sake. It's not made for us in the first place. But quite apart from that, certain people seem unable and/or unwilling to take Friendship is Magic's messages of love and friendship and plain common decency to heart.

Generosity. Honesty. Kindness. Laughter. Loyalty. Magic. Friendship. These are the values the show teaches.

It's on us as a fandom to learn them.

Take them to heart.

And live them.

Movie out digitally for US... but not for us

This is going to suck. Right over the Christmas and New Year period, we're going to be told again and again all over the ponynet that My Little Pony: The Movie is out on digital platforms and that we should rush to buy it. Guess what, guys? It isn't and we can't.

Because, as ever, too many people online think the world consists of the US, or of North America at best.

Here's Amazon UK's page for the film. You'll note two things. One, that the UK price is ridiculous – £13.99 for HD, which is more than the physical Blu-ray. Two, that not only is it not available, but there isn't even a release date listed.

I'm trying to be supportive of Hasbro right now over the hacks stuff, but Celestia it's hard when they treat by far the film's most successful non-NA market like dirt. Going back to add the "rants" tag to this post now. :P

Logan and NSFW Pony stuff

If you happen to follow me on Twitter, you'll have seen a potted version of this post last night. But I want to make something very clear. There are certain things in this fandom that I don't want anything to do with. One of them is most definitely "Look how drunk I am, hur hur hur". If that's your bag, well that's your business, as long as you do it well away from me. But if you want me anywhere near your social event, don't make it dependent on the putting-away of stupid quantities of alcohol. (Or any drug stronger than caffeine.) The whole concept bores the hell out of me.

Secondly, I have very limited tolerance for NSFW. Yes, I read the occasional Mature-rated ponyfic – but that's about it. I won't even go to 18+ fandom events, as a matter of principle. For me, the social aspect of this fandom is absolutely bound up with its all-ages, family-friendly nature, and I'm not prepared to compromise on that. So I'm going to have very little patience with you if you start trying to tell me that All Lewd Butts Chat, All The Time or whatever is something I'd love. No. I wouldn't. I really, really wouldn't.

This fandom matters to me. I don't care how silly that sounds. I don't care how silly it is. It matters for a whole host of reasons, some minor and some very important to me indeed. I don't have a problem if your personal fandom is very different from mine. That's great. Go for your life, as the Aussies would say. But don't you bloody dare try to force my fandom to be like that too. I'm not going to appreciate it, and I'm going to tell you that in language a great deal blunter than I use on here.

For the avoidance of doubt, nothing I've said here is as a result of anything that's happened on this blog, and I very much doubt anyone reading this will be among the people it's really aimed at. I just needed to get it out. End of rant.

Misogynistic "humour" in the pony fandom

Let me get straight into this: I think that a small part of the fandom — a small but rather vocal part — has a serious problem with thinking misogynistic "humour" is okay. A few of the blind commentators suffer from this, but here's a more recent example: the excellent animator JanAnimations put out a short video called Button's Adventures. Nothing wrong with that at all: it's a cute little tale about a gaming-obsessed colt called Button Mash, and I may review it properly at some point. Suffice it to say for now that the animation is great and it's worth watching despite an uneven story.

As I say, there's nothing wrong with Button's Adventures at all. However, some other bright spark (not JanAnimations!) has taken it upon himself to make a highly NSFW 20-second video called Button Mash's Extra Adventures. Now changed to Mutton Bash's Adventures. You'll notice I'm not linking to it. This basically consists of Button (who's just a kid, remember) forcing his mother to give him oral sex. The video's maker says in the description that "I'm sorry, I had to." But you know what? You didn't have to. You didn't at all. You certainly didn't have to make the "joke" into a public YouTube animation of your own with the original VA's voice.

What depresses me even more is reading down the comments to that Extra Adventures Mutton Bash animation. In among all the one-liners (which, okay, is what you get on YouTube) there are a few brave commenters who call the creator out on this and say, "Actually, I don't think underage incest rape jokes are very funny." They don't threaten to call the police or anything, just say that they think there are red lines and that this crosses one. The brutal, vitriolic response that these people get in return is deeply, deeply depressing.

I hate to break it to you, guys, but if someone doesn't think this sort of thing is appropriate, it doesn't necessarily mean they're utterly devoid of a sense of humour. It's certainly possible for something to be simultaneously very funny and extremely tasteless: Chris Morris's Brass Eye special, which I thought was excellent, is a classic in that regard. And you can hate something without thinking it's hateful: for me, that'd be the .MOV series. But you don't get a free pass for stuff like Extra Adventures Mutton Bash simply by saying, "It's a joke. Lighten up!" Sorry, but no.