S2E20.5: My Little Pony

Fun fact: The person who was THE fan voice actor for Viynal Scratch is trans now

The outrage that occurs Mia and November find out deeper setting lore is glorious.

If you're going to examine this? Please take a look at, "Mask of the Phantasm".

Nothing could possibly make me feel more chronically online than hearing someone express genuine shock at the existence of MLP bondage porn. It's like if you lived in the countryside and you'd have some guests from the city, and you heard one of them being like "WHAT IN THE LIVING FUCK IS THAT THING???" and you look, and it's, like, a perfectly normal cow

Being too old for both sincere fandom and brony fandom, I spent the first part feeling like words were sailing past me and occasionally bouncing off my head. Hearing the only cultural touchstone that I recognized, my first thought was “thank god for 9-11” Second thought was “that’s a drop.”

This funny podcast episode about the MLP movie has given me so much to think about and research about the machinations of corporate exploitation, the state's inhuman gaze, and horse bdsm. yay kjb!

Alice, Mia and Dev no-selling "Mohammed bit Salman" doesn't mean you skipped it past me gid damn it

Alice's defeated sigh at the mention of dragon puberty made my goddamn week

Coming back to relisten to this episode, because of recent events made Tara Strong - the voice of Twilight Sparkle - to tweet some bad shit that just makes Alice's joke read on Twilight's character more real

I recently saw an academic talk about the creation of tulpas in the My Little Pony community and now I am just what the fuck is this-ing.

I can't help but smile anytime Alice says "go kinetic" idk why

I love whenever you have Mia on - y'all vibe so well together and she's such a gem. Love to all four of you for your constant brilliance.

I'm a patreon subscriber and can't find the full episode — is it not out yet, or am I and/or patreon being an idiot?

You are SIX MINUTES into this thing and you're talking about bouncing hot air balloons off the twin towers in an attempt to recreate Pony 9/11 you all need to get your meds adjusted because HOLY FUCK. Ten out of ten, no notes.

If I hadn't wanted to join the Patreon before, this episode would have done it. As a fandom veteran, nothing gives me more joy than people talking about the insanity that is the MLP fandom.

But wait, have any of the hosts watched Friendship Is Witchcraft???

Alice discovering Pony Bondage Fanart is amazing and horrible, but Devon’s casual, “they didn’t even just use AO3” killed me. Bronies were maybe the last big counter-AO3 fandom and it always cracked me up. Ponies might have been an acceptable form of femininity, but an actual community of mostly women was a bridge too far.

So according to this I belong to the secret third category of trans woman. The one that played the My Little Pony Hearts of Iron IV Mod excessively.

It's funny you talk about like... "acceptable deviations from masculinity", of which the Brony subculture was one and weird alt-history ideological power fantasy nerd shit is another. I recently had the interesting experience of revisiting old comics I liked as a kid (I don't recommend it; the good ones only make you angrier at the bad ones and the dull dreck they get butchered by movies into) and realizing that at their best superhero comics have this quality of "soap opera for boys." Yes there's a lot of punching and masculine posing, but the most compelling ones really tended to lean into relationship drama, friendships and romances, all that sort of stuff. It's sort of nice and bittersweet to learn the lines aren't as rigid as some people want to be/one thought as a kid. Also, the Steven Universe reveal at the end was like a fucking dropkick. Now I look forward to/dread the inevitable episode on that one as someone who missed that craze entirely.

So I'd gotten used to just streaming these during the Winter of content but now that we're back to normal could they be made downloadable again? I'm a boomer and I can't make the link work.

The Storm King has no mouth and he must scream

God, Dev ducked out right before the series' ONE Dragonball-style fight, complete with Super Saiyan transformations we never see again (gotta sell those new toys)

the real friends were the rage alice experienced along the way

Hey Devon, same hat! I thought the first 3 1/2 seasons were fun and when Twilight became an Alicorn I kinda fell off. I was out as a dude by then and very much did not engage with bronies. I did see the fallout tho *cringe*

For me it was CK2 and EU4 mods, but I'm nonbinary so maybe that explains the slight difference? That being said my partner is too and says their path was Thunderbirds, so got no idea what's going on there.

Ooh Dev and Abi should do an MLP podcast!

alice out here like DISCOURSE I'M HOWLING AT THE MOON AN-

okay so the storm king's death(?) reminds me of one of the aspects of l. frank baum's oz books that is very much bait for the Here's Seven Fucked Up Things From Kid's Books, Number Four Will Rip Your Dick And Balls Clean Off, which is that it is impossible to die in the land of oz and there have been multiple occasions where characters have been literally shattered into thousands of pieces, remaining alive the whole time, and later been, like, glued together by the protagonists

I Enjoy (TM) that the Amogus drop is the one from Max0r's Incorrect Summary of Metal Gear Rising (part 2)

A sub goal should be for Alice to play Equestria at War on stream.

i understood the words used by two of the hosts in this podcast, good normal words like 'extraordinary rendition, 9/11, soft power' and so forth but the other two were speaking some form of ancient sumerian, that i did not understand, enjoyable episode though

15:30 YES ALICE GETS IT!!!! YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Equestria at war is still objectively the best Hearts of Iron 4 mod

Never wanted to judge other people's interests because even if it's not for me then whatever. But I was always baffled by the Brony subculture and Abby's explanation that it was an acceptable piece of femininity that everyone could enjoy makes it make more sense.

I do have to say I can't claim to be better than bronies because I was obsessed with Netflix she ra.

I have been a brony fanfic writer for a decade and I have waited so long for this day. Vinyl Scratch/DJ-PON3 is canonically mute but was prominently voiced in fanworks by Jesse Nowack, a trans man actor and all-round great dude. Starlight Glimmer does show up a couple of times alongside Trixie, standing in the background and speaking no lines. Both AppleDash *and* RariJack are canon in alternate universes. I am not joking, this is a real thing.

The most maliciously compliant jazz outro of all time.

This is such a blast of nostalgia and I love it.

tempest shadow is voice training goals. the rest of the movie is kinda meh. looking forward to listening to this one!

The gang earns their cutie Marx

:(

this is the episode I've lived for

Alice slowly coming to realize the horrific reality that is MlP rule 34 is both relatable and amusing.

Having finished, I want to make some comments. Because I am to Bronies as the Deserter is to communism: 1) Mia, Alice: you don't know how much the streams of "weird Hearts of Iron mods" and "My Little Pony" intersect. As [one of] the last surviving Bronies I also part time do development for Equestria at War which is like, of the top three HoI mods, or four, I honestly don't know because I only played the mod I work on for ten hours and mostly shitpost in dev chats while occasionally doing portraits. 2) The Storm King isn't the only villain who is obliterated in body and soul; Tirek, the Changeling Queen, and a small child are the season villains for the last season of the show and all three of them are PERMANENTLY encased in stone for being irredeemable. 3) Glimmer doesn't appear in this movie because Trixie is canonically serving cunt to her in her RV down by the river.

I love the balance of enthusiasm on the part of Abi and Dev and Mia against the thinly-sustained forbearance by Alice. Good sweet spot for podcasting.

Alice quite obviously wanting to die but gamely soldiering on makes her braver than the troops.

Para-social friendship is magic! or just delusions, same difference.

I was never a part of the brony fandom (I was a bit too young) but it was one of the small crumbs of femininity I had as a child before the social unacceptablity of that caught up with me (until recently lol) so I do relate to Abby's comment about that.

Literally the episode that got me over the one inch I needed to sign up for the Patreon

It’s here! It’s here! It’s here!!!

❤️💜