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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   2550 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for August 2, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Vance had to choose his own identity when the institution of patriarchy broke down in his family and failed to give him one. I don’t think it’s cringe, given his life story as portrayed in Hillbilly Elegy.

I can think of two other circumstances treated somewhat seriously by society, beyond legal name changes and brides taking their husbands’ names.

A story trope I heard about, growing up as a GenX kid in America, was how generic Noble Savages would rename themselves following their Trial Of Manhood. I have never heard nor researched this tradition’s provenance in any particular tribe or people, but it was played straight in the Star Trek TOS novel Uhura’s Song.

Then I discovered the Internet and chose a handle or two. This one dates back to finding out My Little Pony had the answers for my autism-based lack of relational instincts.

I don't understand MLP stuff, it is my extreme outgroup, like furries. Is it just being weird for the sake of being weird? Especially strange given the sexualization of kids cartoon ponies.

It’s not for the sake of being weird, it’s in spite of.

Generations X and Y grew up watching quality fantasy adventure comedy ensemble cartoon shows, often from Disney with the exception of Sonic the Hedgehog: Adventures of the Gummi Bears, Duck Tales, Darkwing Duck, Chip and Dale’s Rescue Rangers, Tale Spin, Goof Troop, The Mighty Ducks, and more. The fandoms of these shows endure because of the care taken with the storytelling and the high production quality. (They also tended to be incubators of furries.)

In 2010, such shows had basically gone extinct. There was the oddball Adventure Time and the “combining robot” adventure show Sym-Bionic Titan, and little else. Then The Hub channel from Hasbro debuted with My Little Pony, and fans of shows like Tale Spin or Sonic the Hedgehog recognized a return to the classic form: a quality fantasy adventure comedy ensemble cartoon show. It was not just fun, it was meaty in how enjoyable it was. Storytelling was back. It was written so parents could watch with their kids and not be secretly wishing to turn it off.

The basic premise is that a top student (nerdy, autism-coded) in an elite prep school gets sent by her mentor to a small Midwestern town to make friends with the local small business women who are vendors for the mentor’s big event: a farmer, an animal caretaker/trainer, a party planner, a dressmaker, and a crop-duster/cloud-seeder who dreams of flying with the national airshow team. They rescue the mentor when her estranged sister kidnaps her. The mentor assigns the student to learn sociology there in the town with her new friends.

Except they’re all technicolor horses (unicorns, pegasi, and “earth ponies”) in a quasi-feudal fantasy realm, the mentor is the princess alicorn (winged unicorn) who raises the sun each day, and 1/3 of the population has reality-warping magic.

And both GenX and the Millennials adored it.

So are you saying you were watching MLP as a kid? Or are you one of the very weird people in that Wired article who is watching it as an adult? I watched the Disney afternoon lineup you mentioned, as a child home from school. I didn't turn it into a weird adult fandom with Baloo the bear fucking his sidekick Kit in Tailspin.

I’m your peer in age, approximately, but I never saw a reason to “grow out” of watching cartoons; I still enjoy them for their fun and fantasy. So do Lauren Faust, her husband Craig McCracken, their frequent collaborators Genndy Tartakovski and Rob Renzetti, and lots of other GenX and Millennial cartoon creators whose skill in the storytelling medium of 2D animation carry forward a century of tradition.

I found the MLP show when I was in deep depression, and because I still watched cartoons, I had the joy of watching the show and discussing it online to help me overcome some major difficulties in my life.

(As for “why furries,” I’ll wait for a less sneering phrasing with fewer bundled implications.)

I spent a fair bit of time in groups ostensibly proximal to the horse show, and never understood the appeal either. Despite absorbing large chunks of the fandom osmotically. Once I started directly interacting with people that had been into it (thanks, VRChat) did I start to see it as part of a broader constellation of "moe shit." If someone was into K-On!, Azumanga Daioh or Dragon Maid, there was a much higher than average chance they had also been into MLP at some point. I don't get moe either. The only useful observation I can provide is that it seems like you either get it, or you don't.

I am firmly in the don't get it camp. I also have sort of a visceral disgust reaction towards Japanimation and that fandom. The stories seem stupid and the dialog is terrible, I don't know if that is just lost in translation or something?

The secret is that most TV is terrible. Especially children’s cartoons!

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