#ponyguru chat

[ponyguru]

I'm going through my phone, since the poor thing is absolutely overloaded with photos and is struggling to run, and I'm going through photos to make sure I posted everything ...

Tell me why there's a photo from 2021 I can't find on my blog?? Did I just give up?! Past-guru you are getting on my nerves!! And I'm sure as soon as I repost it I'll find it again! Ahhhh!! Maybe we can make it a fun game ... 'track down Ponyguru's old posts she can't find cuz she didn't tag them well'... XD

[ponyguru]

I do also wonder (at least from an American perspective) how much the death of Toys R Us fueled the 'if I don't get it at release I'll never get it' mania?

I know that from my own perspective that if I see something new and exciting at Target or Walmart, the odds are it won't be there the next time I go, so I have to make the split-second decision to buy or leave. Because at least in my area, it seems like we get new things for about five minutes, and then certain items shelf-sit for a hundred years. (Target has had the same three pony items for the last six months, it feels like.)

But Toys R Us, I remember, would have releases that were stocked for months and months. I remember finding new releases, and waiting on them to hope for them to go to clearance/sale, and they would usually be there when I went back, because they would stock more than three of an item. (One that I gambled on and lost was the Zecora Equestria Girl - ugh! Ditto for Chinese New Year Giant Pinkie Pie!)

Now Toys R Us is gone, and your options for toy stocking seems to be 'here for five minutes' or 'you will see this toy for six months and then it will follow you to Ross.' And you can't know which one it will be!

Add to that the pressure to find one without 'face wonk' so some people only want to buy in person, and it gets to feel like if you don't buy everything NOW NOW NOW it won't happen unless you can pay a reseller's huge markup. It can be kinda stressful!

I've also seen it happening in the MLP sphere, especially with the Basic Fun releases. The latest (very popular) Celestial release came out in some random places, but then finally on Amazon, immediately sold out several times, and then resellers put them up for double price. And some people bought them still, because it's like, where will we get them otherwise? Will Amazon restock? Right now, coming into Black Friday, only Polaris is available, and that's 1/4th of the wave. So if you didn't get them at launch ... good luck. And good luck to anyone who was hoping to buy them with Christmas money, or in Black Friday sales.

It is definitely hard to move away from the drive for consumerism in toy posting, and it's something I struggle with myself. The algorithm rewards the latest and greatest, it feels like, and it's hard not to want to lean into that. I just wonder (and hope) when the 'get it NOW NOW NOW' blitz from the companies will end, if ever; will it inevitably crash and people stop buying instantly at launch? Will they decide it's not worth it? Will Target ever stock more than three pony items!?

Absolutely loathe the fact that modern doll collecting has become about consumerism and getting the next new thing while the idea of curating and choosing dolls to add to collections shouldn't be bound to when they came out tbh

[ponyguru]

I posted this as an IG story, but I'm still thinking about it, so I'm gonna see what you guys have to add!

There's a trend going around on Instagram right now, the 'infection AU', and it's various people imagining a rampant illness taking place in the MLP:FiM universe. There's lots of horror, body horror, zombie type imagery, allusions to cordyceps, it's all very spooky fun.

And that got me thinking, you know what else was super spooky? That G1 UK comic about the Twinkle Eye ponies! Now THAT was body horror, and yet they worked it into the cute little gimmick of 'and now these ponies have sparkly eyes'! Like, we got canonical pony slavery, in a crystal mine, and it basically boils down to "look at our pretty sparkly eyes!" Like ???

And so I thought a little bit more, and I thought, gee... how would the infection AU get turned into a toyetic gimmick? What would that look like? How would they turn something horrifying into, 'tee hee, look at our sparkly eyes'? What do you think?!

I'll keep pondering... it's very intriguing as a concept! I'm not much of a horror artist though, so I'd definitely have to lean into the toyetic, cute gimmick, LOL!

[ponyguru]

Okay, I'm probably way behind everyone else, but I just watched Hilda Season 3 on Netflix, and I have Thoughts about the finale. (Behind a cut, since it's exclusively spoilers for the very last episode, ha! I'm not gonna tag this for the fandom or anything, I just feel like I have to vent this somewhere or else I'll explode!)

Okay, so I literally started this season thinking, okay, a guy wrote the original graphic novel, but it's not going anywhere with shitty takes on women, so that's great, right? I'm really happy with that, and relieved, because men generally seem to not be able to write women well.

And then we get to the last episode, and it's literally just "oh hey, your mom spends the entire series acting as the human Stick In The Mud who prevents her minor child from going on death-defying adventures, but it's okay! because it turns out she's actually a half fairy who lost her parents tragically when she's ten! Now she has them back!

Ohhhh wait, because we don't want to awkwardly fold these new fairy characters into the existing universe - erm I mean, for plot reasons, her parents who she tragically lost as a child can't ever come back to see her again! So being a mom is unending tragedy, with a deadbeat fuckboy ex husband, her only family being some bitchass aunt who spent her whole life lying to her, financial struggles, and completely cut off from the people she misses most, who she only got to see for a few hours before being ripped away from them again.

Happy ending for all, hooray! Fireworks!"

Like are you FUCKING KIDDING ME?

This ENTIRE SERIES is centered around the idea that "the established status quo is wrong, and Hilda is the one who can repair that balance even if it doesn't seem likely because she's just a little girl", but we get to the Fairy Realm, and suddenly it's "whelp, can't do anything, sorry mom! bye bye fairy family forever!"

The only saving grace for the series ending on a stupid-as-fuck note might be that, since it's the last season, they simply didn't have time to wrap things up in a better manner, and for all I know, the graphic novel has a completely different take on this whole situation. But seriously, I felt so bad for poor Johanna, whose entire character arc seems to be "get used to being miserable, honey, cuz you're not the main character."

Or, alternately, 'a mom's only meaning is in her child, and she has to sacrifice all happiness for herself for the sake of her child, because once women have children they cease to exist as individuals,' but maybe that's a whole other rage essay to type out. GRRRRR.

I'm sure the intended meaning was, 'ohhhh it's so woooonderful having a chiiiiild you'd sacrifice anything for them, including your own happiness', but that's bullshit because the entire series is about Hilda breaking down magical barriers/beings and making things work out for the better. But not when it comes to her mom, I guess???

[ponyguru]

OH ALSO I forgot to mention, but my second post was already infodumping enough so I'll just add it here -

I left behind the G4 ponies at Savers on purpose, but did make sure to take photos of them, because A) I have those ponies already, probably those exact ponies and almost certainly multiples of them considering how often Hasbro re-released the same toys with different accessories, and B) I like the idea of leaving ponies behind for the next generation, for kids who might not be able to get them new in store, but might find them at Savers.

If they're still there next time I go (weeks from now potentially LOL) then I'd probably pick them up, but as it stood I felt okay leaving them behind. There were also some bags with miscellaneous McD's pony toys in them, and I felt good leaving those too, since I have them by the pound at this point, LOL. Normally I'm more 'save all ponies' which was why the Basic Fun ponies came home with me, but I felt like Rarity and Pinkie would be okay, LOL.

My main concern now is what to do with the extra toys, since I don't really have a pressing need for a baby doll or a Belle with a gross-texture rubber dress, LOL. Probably redonate! I'm still very happy with my bags, since $3.50 for a repro pony is still excellent, with some bonus fakies to boot.

[ponyguru]

Me: I should post more of my older toys, it's important to me that this isn't a 'consumerist' blog where I feel like I have to be buying new things all of the time to keep making fresh posts about.

Also me: IF I DO NOT POST THIS IMMEDIATELY I WILL FORGET I OWN IT

[ponyguru]

Freakout of the night: KNOWING that I bought Wave 1 of the little flocked Animal Crossing figures (I even posted a picture of Flick!!), but not knowing where in my junkpile room I put them. I have Wave 2 and Wave 3 easily at hand, but Wave 1??? Where art thou???

Toy collector confession moment (at 4am), but I left them all in their boxes NOT because I’m a MIB collector, but because I wanted to get a cute little photo shoot of them exploring in my garden... and just never got to it. Years later, I have two more waves, and now I actually want to do it, and I can’t FIND them!! AAAAA

[ponyguru]

In all seriousness, I have several gallon ziplock bags filled up with extra McDonald’s ponies, and no clue what to do with them. I imagine many other collectors are like me, just endlessly amassing a tiny army we don’t know what to do with. Can’t throw out, because hello, ponies! But do I need 30 tiny Rainbow Dashes? I guess I do!

In my mind I think ‘oh, I’ll customize them someday!’ but there’s like. At least a hundred. Will I make a hundred tiny customs?

[ponyguru]

I’m debating ‘upgrading’ (LOL) to a “Creator Account” on Instagram, and the only changes to the account seem to be that you get to see more insights on how your posts are doing, how often they’re viewed, what content does best with your followers, what hashtags bring people to you, etc.

Like, on one hand I would love to be given free toys as a microinfluencer, LOL! But on the other hand, I know I’ll just make myself sad by reading too much into the dumb stats - like, this is just for fun! Just be chill!!!

Any insights? Does anyone have one? I don’t want to fall into the trap like back when we thought ‘if we set our blogs to Adult then Tumblr will keep kids off of it’ and then they started banning Adult accounts... :b

[ponyguru]

For a couple days now, I'm having problems on the app where it won't let me rearrange my photos ... so if you see weird layout issues, that's why, LOL. (I'm fond of having 'one big photo and then the others clustered together', and I haven't been able to get it to do that.) Is anyone else having issues, or maybe I need an app update?

[ponyguru]

Random notes-

I want to make more Reels (since I don’t trust TikTok so I don’t have one, LOL) but they don’t crosspost to Tumblr! Anyone have any handy go-tos on how to download IG reels? I’m googling, but I’m always hoping not to reinvent the wheel, you know?

I really need to get better at posting photos in a timely manner; I’ll take like 10 posts worth of photos, then post 6-8 of them, then find something new to photograph and never post the last few. Then I find photos on my phone from months before, which I never shared, and now have to repost months later, and which often don’t make much sense. Agh! I wish IG had a queue function like Tumblr!! (I know they have queue apps, but I’m distrusting like that, LOL!)

[ponyguru]

Tonight I watched all of He-Man: Revelations and most of Centaurworld (I watched the first three episodes like, a week ago?) and I have ... opinions. (And it’s 4:37am, might as well share them while they’re fresh!)

(Warning, this got very long and ranty, sorry for stretching out your dashboards if that’s even still a thing anymore?)

He-Man was entertaining, but it did feel like (as someone with like, less than a passing knowledge of the characters) someone’s super-angsty fanfiction more than like ... a continuing series. They killed off multiple well-known, beloved characters, to drive home the point of how SERIOUS and how HARDCORE this series is, and instead it felt like being a little kid in the 80s watching Optimus Prime get murdered to sell more toys. Like, WHY DID THEY DIE? Oh right, to show the viewer how SERIOUS the bad guys are! And to give the other characters things to angst over, to show you they’re no longer just shallow 80s muscle man stereotypes to sell toys! But then you gotta wonder, where will they go from here? Who’s even left to continue the storyline? Is it still He-Man if half the supporting cast is dead?

Like I said, I’m not a He-Man fan by trade, but aside from the pointless murder, it did seem like it delved into the backstories that a lot of people have probably wanted since the 80s, and it made some very interesting points. So, hey, maybe it’ll be beloved by its fans! And it was very entertaining, especially as someone who wasn’t a childhood fan so I didn’t have a lot of nostalgia that I had to watch die. It doesn’t end on a happy note, there’s definitely the ‘what if the villains WON’ theme going, so maybe my opinion will be less dour when the next part comes out. (I did like that it focused more on the female characters, which was a very unexpected change, and in that aspect I felt it was very well written; that could explain why I’ve heard other screechingly negative feedback elsewhere online, heh. He-Man fans probably don’t appreciate the heavy preference paid to Teela.)

Centaurworld was ... well, I watched the first episode with my mother, which was a Huge Fucking Mistake. I heard that it was a thrilling combination of something akin to Adventure Time and a more serious cartoon like Avatar, and instead I got 10 minutes of that, and then 16 minutes of continuous ass, fart, and poop jokes, combined with a couple of great tunes and a lot of tuneless recitative style “songs”.

If you follow this blog, you probably know toys; you know the Poopsie Surprise toys? The ones which were so obsessed with uncomfortably sexualized poop/fart/barf references that entire scholarly articles were written about the sexualization of children with scatology-themed toys? Yeah, that’s what Centaurworld felt like, almost the whole time. Like just ... an uncomfortable amount of poop/butt/fart “jokes”, to the point where it felt like it had to be one of the writer’s fetishes. Like, it was clearly not funny, and the main character is clearly uncomfortable with it ... and it just keeps going.

I say jokes in scare quotes because jokes are supposed to be funny, and a lot of Centaurworld just wasn’t funny. You could tell it was meant to have jokes, but it was very much dated early-2000s type humor, I want to guess? The kind where it’s not so much ‘setup-punchline’ but the more ‘awkward reference awkward reference awkward reference drawn out wooooord’ type of “jokes”. And most of those “jokes” were just - you guessed it - drawn out references to butts, or farts, or some combination of the two. I felt like an aged boomer watching it. I like to think I’m hip and with the times, but it felt like it should be aimed at a middle schooler - but like, an oversexualized middle schooler? It was uncomfortable to say the least. (One character talks to his farts, claims they talk back to him, and he addresses them as ‘Daddy,’ while another character expresses how uncomfortable that is, and implies he has “issues” to unpack. Because that’s hilarious, I guess?)

Centaurworld did, beneath the heavy layer of scatology, have an intriguing storyline. A warhorse from a LOTR-style world is thrown into a wacky Adventure Time-type land made up of silly centaurs, and has to try and find her way back home. It was thrilling at times, if you could slog through everything else that beleaguered it. There were some really good jokes! But I couldn’t quite muster up a laugh, because I was still wondering when the next butt reference would sneak in. After ten terrible jokes, the one good joke couldn’t manage to lift me from the depth of despair I’d sunken into. It really only felt like the show got ‘tolerable’ around episode 7 (out of ten!!!!), which was an episode heavily focused on cats. (Which, again; wasn’t the internet very much about LOLCats in the early 2000s?)

If six episodes of a ten-episode series is nigh-intolerable, is it a successful show? Should you bother watching something that is 60%+ garbage? (And DON’T FUCKING WORRY, the poop/butt/fart jokes continued UNTIL THE FUCKING FINAL EPISODE.)

I suspect that, if there was a “goal” for all of the fetish stuff (beyond fetish stuff for fetish sake), it would be to illustrate to the viewer how uncomfortable the main character feels in this strange new land, and for us to share in her discomfort. Which, fine, sure! Secondhand embarrassment is definitely a trope. But the sheer uncomfortable volume of the poop/butt/fart jokes clearly went way beyond mere discomfort, and veered into ‘why is this coming up so much, is someone getting off on this?’ territory, at least for me. A couple butt jokes an episode, fine, okay. Entire five minute bits devoted to farts and butts? Entire songs about butts? I start questioning why it’s such a beloved subject for you to write about.

Plus, and I may be reading into this too much, but several of the only Black-coded characters felt racist. I’m talking neck-snapping, tribal body paint type racism, although only one got the exaggerated “soul” type music to sing, which I guess is a relative win? (Waterbaby and Judge Jacket, if you’re wondering who I’m referencing. One of them is a literal hippo centaur, giving us shades of Madagascar.) It wasn’t obvious, but combined with everything else, it felt ... bad. (There are multiple other nonwhite voice actors who aren’t stereotypes, so maybe it was just a bad case of ‘trying to represent different culture while being clueless white people’, who knows?) There was also some classic fatphobia, with one of the villains being shown as a fat neckbeard collector/nerd. Wasn’t that relevant in - wait for it - the early 2000s? They redeem themselves very slightly by having maybe two other characters who are visibly fat, but one of them is also viewed as an antagonist.

Anyway, I was disappointed enough with the show to feel like I should say something, so - there it is. Centaurworld did have some good moments, some lovely songs, and there was some really heartwarming and tender character development that I liked, sandwiched between huge swaths of discomfort. There might be a season 2 (there shouldn’t be, LOL) and hell, I will probably suffer through it because I want to see what happens to them. But I can’t recommend that anyone else do the same, in all good conscience. It’s not good. It’s just not. But if you have 5 hours to kill, there’s worse stuff out there?

If you want to watch one episode to see the best of the series, I recommend episode seven, “Johnny Teatime's Be Best Competition: A Quest for the Sash.” It’s themed after the CATS musical, and the extended number at the end gave me shades of MLP or Fashion Star Fillies. (I found an official clip of the song posted here.) There’s also other lovely songs in the series, but you’d have to suffer through entire bad episodes to see them. The lovely “You’re Okay” shows up in the very first episode, so if you’re curious give that a watch... just be aware it never gets better, only worse.

This series genuinely upset me, because I wanted it to be something much better, and there were glimpses of it; you just had to try and close your eyes to the obsession with butts and farting to see pieces of what it might have been.

One notable fact that I thought was kind of like ‘wow, oof’ was that Meghan McCarthy, of MLP:FiM fame, was a story editor for Centaurworld. And considering how MLP went downhill in later seasons, I gotta say I’m wondering if there’s a commonality there. Maybe her fetish is bad writing? There’s worse fetishes to have, AS CENTAURWORLD CLEARLY DEMONSTRATES.

[ponyguru]

I doubt Breyer could ever hate their adult collector base as much as Mattel does, lmao. They couldn’t really sustain their $50-100 collector horse business without adult collectors, I would assume? Still, I feel bad for the technology-challenged older collectors who maybe don’t even have social media. (There’s active collectors who collected as adults in the 70s and 80s!) I consider myself pretty techy and I still refreshed a dead-end page for almost 20 minutes.

Also I’m amused that it was me searching for fellow collector anger that allowed me to find the SR sale in time, LMAO!

[ponyguru]

Definitely forgot it was Friday, so no Fakie Friday for me this week I guess, oops!

Last night I found out that I won something in one of the writing contests I entered!! I’ve joined a few, but in this one I won second place, a judge’s choice award, and two ‘top of category’ prizes!! (You could enter up to four entries in this specific contest, so three of my stories won something!) I’m so excited, and now I’m gonna get like $115 in prize money! To say I’m excited is an understatement!!

[ponyguru]

On one hand I feel a little cheesy @’ing a brand, but on the other hand Basic Fun needs to see there’s a market and interest in their pony products, especially if we’re ever going to get any more! They’re hinting that the next wave will be the Flower Fantasy ponies, of which I own 0 originals, but that only happens if the last wave sells well enough to retailers!

NGL, the fact that we have entire dedicated threads at the two main MLP hubs, with so many people struggling to find them, SHOULD mean that they’re popular enough. But who knows? I hope they keep making them!

[ponyguru]

I started getting some followers on IG that were pretty obviously DDLG/’Little’ accounts, and there were only a couple that were so obscene I had to block them. (I do have friends who have ‘littlespace’ type blogs that are strictly SFW, so I’m okay with that kind of blog as like, a source of comfort.) But I thought, gosh, is this becoming more prevalent, or something? They seem to be popping up a lot.

Then I realized.

I’m Ponyguru on here, but the Ponyguru account on IG is owned by a hairstylist. So my new name? Littleponyguru. Easy, right? Since I collect My Little Ponies and all, and I primarily own small horse toys, and Mylittleponyguru felt very clunky.  

But instead of reading it as Little-Pony Guru, like an expert of Little Ponies, I think some people are reading it as Little Pony-Guru, like I’m in that community. And it doesn’t help that I made my header say ‘80s baby’, which I meant to (gently) imply that I’m in my 30s, but ... yeah it was kind of a perfect storm!!

So I fixed my header,  and now I’m getting new followers that are actually children, and gosh I hope Instagram doesn’t become the next haven for creeps. Most of the accounts I see are locked (thank God) but gosh, way too many little kids posting their selfies all over the internet. I don’t mind minors following me, just be aware that A) I’m in my 30s and B) this blog is only 99% worksafe, because sometimes I curse and share questionable memes. Oh also C) my spending habits are not something anyone should emulate, especially myself LOL