#probably ​following some MLP:FIM fan blogs?

[macbow333]

It's my 11 year anniversary on Tumblr 🥳

[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.

[aboutthemponies]

The End is Neigh

I first started watching My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic in the middle of the season 4 to season 5 hiatus. At the time, there was no announced fifth season; the end of season 4 was simply the end of the show as far as I knew. I remember feeling so content after watching that final battle between Twilight and Tirek that as I fell asleep that night, I thought “That was so good! It cannot possibly get better than this. I’m so happy I could die in my sleep tonight.” Woah, that’s a grim thought. I wasn’t even 18 years old and I was already content enough with my short life to be fine with dying right then? What strange drugs I must have been on!

Needless to say, my life continued on, and I’m so glad I did. Only after watching the entire show would I attend BronyCon, create my own MLP club at college, join the amazing DC Bronies for the semester I was away, and discover all the amazing art, music, animation, parodies, PMVs, and so much more that this fandom has made in its nine years of existence! In that time, there’s also been disappointments: never again has a season’s finale topped my experience of seasons 4’s (or season 2’s), and neither did the MLP movie. This isn’t to say that I do not enjoy episodes from the newer seasons (there’s several that I enjoy from every single season), but rather the magic, the obsession, has long since faded.

Indeed, when I first watched the show, I fell under a magic spell that would cause me to think about ponies non-stop, would make me go crazy anytime I saw a piece of pony merchandise while out and about, would make me rewatch seasons 1 through 4 four times within the course of a single year, would make me identify as a brony first before any other identity. It was a complete and total obsession that I can only compare to falling in love, and oh boy, I fell so hard! I can go on and on with clichés about how the show filled me with endless joy and changed my life forever, but I don’t need to because if you understand that I “loved” MLP:FiM, all my strange behavior will make sense.

When I first fell in love with FiM, I couldn’t watch other shows because I felt I had to reserve my entire heart for this one show. Eventually, I moved past that thinking when my obsession lessened, and I found my heart was big enough to also love other shows like the Powerpuff Girls, Star vs. The Forces of Evil, and Gravity Falls. Finally, the lunacy declined enough to reach normal levels, and I still watch the show, but through jaded eyes which only see the past. This of course, is the lifecycle of love; it starts out as all-consuming, but with enough time, the intensity goes away and the relationship changes.

So when I think about the final season of FiM and what that means to me, I first have to recognize that my experience of the show, from discovering it, obsessing over it, plunging into the fandom, and finally taking a step back away from it all, is largely over even before season 9. The obsession phase started in July 2014 for me, and I remained completely obsessed up until I started college in August 2015. There on out, I entered my fanatic stage: still very dedicated and engaged with the show, but not obsessed like I once was. That lasted at least until the end of season 6, and arguably through January 2017 since I was still regularly writing this blog regularly up until that “Leaving the Fandom” post in February. Then on out, I’ve been in this “casual fan” stage; I’m still following the show, going to meetups, and having the time of my life at conventions, but the effort to participate in the fandom by writing blogs, making music, producing videos, is pretty much gone. The great love I once felt is now my nostalgia.

In that time, the show has also changed significantly (which I analyze in this video). I think we all agree that the show needed to change in order to survive this long, but I also find some of the changes essentially removed core aspects of the early show. In any case, it is what it is and the changes are here for good (I personally like the addition of the friendship school but could live without the map and reformed Starlight Glimmer).

And season, we’ll have season 9, almost 10 more hours of new pony! The question is, what expectations do we have of it, if any?

For me, we’re so far away from the original stories which began in season 1 and ended in season 3/4/5 (depends on which story and who you ask) that the show could honestly do whatever it wants as long as it completes a story. 26 episodes that are entirely serial? Why not? Follow only the student 6 in some kind of new adventure? Sure, I’d be down. Let the megaspells hit and unleash the armageddon? The show’s still for kids, so turning it into Fallout: Equestria’s probably not going to happen.

More broadly, what I really want is for the final season to invoke some of the same emotions that I felt during earlier seasons: the awe of when Rainbow Dash performed the sonic rainboom in season 1, the joy of Pinkie Pie singing the smile song, the tears of happiness when Twilight got her wings in “Magical Mystery Cure” and the CMC their cutie marks in “Crusaders of the Lost Mark”, and the feeling of togetherness when the mane 6 collapsed in exhaustion after making all the apple cider in “Super Easy Cider Squeezy 6000.” There’s so many emotions in those earlier seasons that I don’t think it’s possible for the writers to produce them all in one season, but even if they only succeed in one episode, that episode will be something to treasure.

But even if that doesn’t happen, and all my fondest show moments remain in those earlier seasons, it’s still been such a lovely ride. My love for the show might be a thing of the past, but it’s better to have been in love and then out of love than to never experience that love at all. Over the years, so many fans from so many places have loved My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, and I’m glad I got to take part in it. Once a brony, always a brony.

Have a great season 9 everypony!

[harmonic-psyche]

I am officially posting The Finalysis of CogDis characters!

Hi again!

Last October, I shared my plan to post a grand finale officially ending my MBTI analysis project. Hopefully a fair amount of y'all are still here since then, because it appears that the time has come.

I realized that I probably would not finish a full 100 CogDis-related MBTI character analyses, so I decided to post what I have. This is partially due to schoolwork, and partially due to my interests shifting from CogDis (back) to MLP:FiM. After this I will probably drop back in to the CogDis Tumblr community on occasion, but I think this will be my last fan-content contribution. I might post a feelsy 'farewell' post later. I also may post some meta-comments about the project, namely about the information I collected and my favorite parts of examining so many CogDis-related characters’ stories.

In the upcoming posts, I give the personality types of roughly 75 CogDis-related characters. For most of them, though, I am not entirely sure which type is correct. I gave each my best guess, explaining the reasons for each type and for my confidence in each. Unfortunately, I could not even give a guess for some of the characters because I could not find enough information about them.

Note that, for practical purposes, I try to analyze each character in the context of their own continuity — be it canon, fanon, AU, or something else entirely. To analyze any character, I assume that their continuity is legitimate. As another note, there were many characters that I fully planned on analyzing but never got around to it — including characters that I really like and had wanted to analyze.

I planned to include all of the characters I analyzed from each blog in this post. However, apparently Tumblr has a maximum of 100 text blocks per post. So, I decided to make one post for each blog. Once I have finished them, I might go back and edit this post to include links to each.

My first Finalysis post analyzes the characters from @askgiegueandcrew / @bunchofaliens. I am not sure which blog I will post next. The good news is that I have a pretty good start and am probably almost finished analyzing at least a few characters from each of the following blogs:

@ambrosiosanswers​,

@apollocaelum​ / @astros-adventures​,

@askgoopi​ / @askthewaywardaliens​ (Done!),

@asktheapplechasers​ and CogDis canon in general, 

@askthedreadnoughtcrew​ (Done!),

@asktheorbitcafe-blog​,

@psionicsiblinghood / Marie’s blog (formerly @commandermarie but I forgot the new URL whoops),

@extranuts​‘s OCs (formerly @askgilliga),

@mercenaryaliens​,

@only-our-regrets​ / @ruler-of-scientists​ and the Complete Dissonance continuity in general (Done!), and

@take-a-melody​.

Likewise for the single characters from their eponymous blogs @sparkle-fly and @askzannie​. I hope y’all don’t mind the mass-tagging, but I do want to make sure that I cover all blogs with CogDis characters. Please let me know if I forgot any!