No idea if you are here, but remember an old tumblr post you a while back called fandoms are intangible? If so do you still stand by it?
Here I come back from the dead because I’m too tired to write and it’s too early to go to bed...
The post being referenced: https://asknethesem.tumblr.com/search/intangible
Yea I absolutely stand by this, and actually reading it back I’m like “Man this guy seems to be talking a lot of sense...”
These days I’m not really involved in the fandom. I still love pony don’t get me wrong, but I’m not running events anymore and I’m not really chatting to many other bronies. Yet I still consider myself part of the fandom.
And if someone told me I was bad for being a brony because of some recent drama that happened I’m gonna be like “I don’t know wtf you’re talking about mate, I just think Fluttershy is the cutest.”
Hey, I'm curious... why bronies? Why did you coose it? What's the main idea of the fandom? What's apealing in it?
So the Brony fandom is the result of a lot of variables aligning at the same time- internet memes, the advent of a new generation of cartoons that were hugely accessible to all ages at once (along with the millennial generation growing up and still wanting to watch cartoons…) an explosion of internet communications using facebook, skype, and YouTube making content creation and delivery extremely easy.
I think what made it so appealing to a lot of people, including myself, was the chill nature of the show - yes it’s about adventure and now and then there’s cartoon peril and stuff - but ultimately it’s a group of girls with typical and endearing personalities who learn how to appreciate each other’s differences, and overcome their own shortcomings.
A lot of people have a secret ‘guilty pleasure’ for ‘girly shows’, or ‘kids shows’ - and I use the quote there because those are just words to categorise not define something - and so we all watched out of curiosity and then got involved.
But what keeps you in the fandom is the diversity of it. The big fandoms get big because of the amount of content they produce in music, art, crafts, writing, and video- there’s so much to see and do, and you’re never lost because it’s the characters you know and love.
And for me, something that keeps me in the brony fandom is how much it all varies. I was scrolling through art of Holo from Spice and Wolf (because waifu) yesterday and the main thing on my mind was "She looks the same in every picture…”The art was all great, but there was little variation on her character.
When I’m browsing pony art, I see the same characters in so many different ways, ponies, anthro, humans, other hybrids, big body types, little body types, alternate hair styles, sometimes total character redesigns that are still true to the original concepts. I love seeing everyone demonstrate their interpretations and head-canons.
I think that’s why I love the Brony fandom, I think the only other fandom that comes close is Furry Fandom- but then comparisons between Bronies and Furries is an entire discussion on its own.
Literally speaking, yes I’m alive and well- focusing on work projects at the moment.
Still got stuff I want to talk about now and then, but I never quite got this blog or the YouTube channel to self-sustaining, where I receive enough questions that mean I don’t have to fish for content- so it’s hard work looking for good topics.
I was leaning toward going very ‘general’ on topics, since there’s been plenty to talk about with politics, but quite frankly with the state of UK politics right now I’m reaching the point of “You know what I don’t even care anymore. My Dad was right all along when he told me young that all politicians will just do whatever they want anyway.”
Then I thought I might do a bit more tech related stuff, but that’ll all go on my main channel... so I’m still left uncertain as to exactly what I want to do here =/
Hey smug pos, delete your blog. You offer nothing funny to the brony tag. All you do is post cringey be good to people shit in the tag. It's taking up all the brony cringe stuff the tag's known and loved for.
Man, I resurface for a few posts and the haters congeal from the gutters… Sup fam, missed you babe!
Don’t worry I’m still very much rocking in the fandom, despite the fact that I haven’t put anything in the brony tag for months or a year or so, but if I’m still making a difference I’ll happily get back in the saddle, so to speak.
Here's a generalised overview of the situation in the UK right now... We've got a lot of homework to do and we're not quite sure why we bothered to impose this on ourselves.
The EU referendum has become such a toxic and bad time, with both sides leveraging what they can (celebrity, horrid tragic events) It makes neither side look good, nor does it buckle down to what route causes there are between the EU and Britain's relationship with the EU... And given my postal vote was done weeks (honestly I can't imagine what the 23rd is going to look like in super aligned locations) it's just been worrying noise and sickening to me!
Yea... it’s a fluster cluck to be sure.
This has turned into some kind of protest vote where people seem to think it’s a vote to change the system or leave it the way it is.
Many people in the Leave camp seek changes that I can understand, but are relating to problems that do not concern the EU.
It’s turning into a Vote Of No Confidence in the government, which isn’t what this is, and people shouldn’t expect it to be.
I’ve heard people say that David Cameron (Prime Minister) should resign if we leave, which is daft, since he was the one who promised the referendum in the first place. I wouldn’t be sorry to see him go, but this is not how it should happen, and the people who will replace him are likely to be even worse.
Okay so the hard part about writing a summary like this is that there’s so many aspects to this- and therein lies my first point. The EU does so many things people don’t even know… it’s more than just trade agreements and freedom of movement. It’s worker’s rights, it’s cooperation regulation, it’s health and safety. Most people don’t recognise a fraction of the things the EU does. The British public is hilariously misinformed about this referendum. Both the official Leave and Remain campaigns have been debating and arguing points that are either irrelevant, false, or misleading.
As such, there’s no way I can cover everything in this. I’ve spent the past month battling relentlessly on Facebook about this topic, and given that it’s hard to hold a threaded discussion on Tumblr without spamming your followers, I’m not going to engage in any real debate here, just state my conclusions. Putting this under the cut so as not to break people’s screens.
Why do we want to be in the EU? (Just some of the things it does…)
Peace. The EU brings europe together. Europe has a very bloody history, and the EU creates strong bonds between countries based on economic gain. There won’t be wars between countries that are profiting off of each other. It’s easy to think that war wouldn’t be a real thing anymore, but the last one actually wasn’t that long ago, and ideologically we haven’t advanced very much. More on this later.
Financial gain. The EU is a trade agreement. About half of the UK’s trade is to EU countries, and we get really good rates for being in the EU. It’s more than possible to trade with the EU without being a part of it, and we can trade with other countries, but that would be more expensive, and we’d have less power. Norway is in Europe, but not a member- they trade with the EU, but as a non-member they have very little bargaining power.
Health & Safety Regulation. This can sometimes be a lot of red tape, but for the most part it’s very much a good thing. You know how electronics from china have a nasty habit of exploding? Stuff made to EU spec doesn’t do that. Because you can’t sell unsafe stuff in the EU. It means we have furniture that doesn’t catch fire, and clothes that don't contain toxic materials. We also enjoy worker’s rights that prevent employers from being able to abuse staff through unfair working conditions.
Market protection. EU courts will punish anti-competitive behaviour, price fixing, and other forms market abuse from corporations. The size of the EU gives it enough weight to force companies to comply with regulation, instead of having to put up with what we’re given.
A check on local government. The need to comply with EU laws helps ensure that we can’t be totally screwed over by an overzealous government. We’ve spent some time with the Conservative (aka Tory) party in power now. First they were in coalition with the Liberal Democrats, who did their best to keep the Tories reigned in. But now we have a Tory Majority government, and things are still getting worse. The EU is the last thing we have stopping the Tories from re-writing most civil rights as they see fit.
Freedom of movement. We can go on holiday in the EU without needing a visa. This encourages tourism, which further brings money to the member states. It also makes international collaboration for science and research a great deal easier, making EU members more attractive for research investments.
Why would we want to leave? (Some of the headliners…)
The EU is undemocratic. This is sort of true, but not nearly as bad as it’s made out to be. Most of the public believe that the unelected EU commission calls the shots, but this isn’t true. The Commission proposes laws, but the EU parliament of elected MEPs debates and passes the law. Laws cannot be passed without Parliamentary approval. However, the Commission still needs an overhaul. Most of the member states all agree on this, and this is likely to change in the future. We can fix the EU and help reshape it by staying in.
It costs £350m a week. False. The UK has garnered itself significant loyalty discounts in the form of rebates, and as a member, the EU spends money on us as well. The true number is closer to half of this. To put this in perspective, the NHS costs about £330m EVERY DAY, so EU membership - for all it brings us - actually ain’t a bad deal.
Take back control of our country. We haven’t lost control of it. For starters, Britain is on the winning side of the overwhelming majority (~95%) of parliamentary votes. All that EU law and regulation helps our quality of life. You could argue that we should make those laws and regs ourselves… but that’ll cost a fortune, take years, and we need to trust the Tories (who we all agree are a bunch of bastards) to have the working man’s back. Which they don’t.
Control immigration and our borders. Disregarding the fact that immigration benefits our economy over all (immigrants spend more money than they get from the government) a brexit is not going to solve immigration. Most immigrants actually have work lined up, which makes them productive members of the economy, and half of them are from outside the EU, which means FoM laws don’t count anyway. And that’s before we consider refugees or illegal immigration, which can’t be solved by laws alone.
We’ll make our own FTAs, including ones with the EU. Our choices for this are actually pretty dire. A lot of countries, including America, and flat-stated “We’d rather trade with the EU.” which means we’re going to end up with very similar or diluted versions of EU agreements anyway. Norway runs this kind of thing, and they end up having to follow a huge amount of EU law and regulation while having no say in any of it. Leaving the EU will actually lose us power, because we’d be giving up one of the biggest player seats at the table. With regards to other countries… this means people like Saudi Arabia (crimes against humanity, extremist culture creates terrorism) or China (crimes against humanity, actively undermines western economy) and so on. The EU is one of the sanest blocs to trade with where we know we’re not doing deals with the devil, and that they’ll scratch our back for us.
So that’s the main headline points. What about national identity and that stuff? Well we haven’t lost that. Just because we subscribe to a bunch of EU laws instead of going through the hassle of making our own doesn’t take away from who we are. And the funny thing is that who we are is a multi-cultural country already. We have american computers made in china. Swedish furniture. Indian food. The glorious mix of cultures is what makes Britain awesome, because we like a bit of everything.
There’s a whole load of scaremongering about the Muslim population on the rise- and I can tell you straight up that Muslims will never amount to a significant portion of the UK population in at least this century. They’re at 5% at the moment, and exaggerated projections could get them to maybe 10% by 2050 at best. So don’t even think about that nonsense of Sharia Law in the UK. It won’t happen.
Now, if I trusted the government, I’d be inclined to roll the dice and say “Yea, the EU is a bit worse for wear right now, I think it’s served it’s purpose and now in the 21st century it’s time for us to part ways…” but right now that means placing all of my trust in the Tories, a party who is actively undermining our privacy rights, our civil rights, and our public services, all under the guise of austerity to save the economy. And it’s not working. We can see it’s not working- yet we’re still forced to drink that kool-aid. I’m buggered if I’m giving them any other laws and regulation to mess with.
The UK economy is delicate, and this is not the time to make big changes. We’ve already seen massive hits to our stock exchange and currency value just on the chance that we might leave.
As I said at the beginning, the population doesn’t understand this situation enough to make an informed decision. There’s a bunch of polls being conducted by the media that shows how the average brit is pretty much wrong on all the facts about the referendum. They think they know the score because they’re being spoon-fed half-truths and exaggerations by ultranationalist parties like UK Independence Party (UKIP) and Britain First. These parties seek to blame all of our problems on the EU, on foreign immigrants, and on other cultures, while offering no better solution. UKIP’s Nigel Farage is an MEP who seldom attends the sessions, seldom votes, and generally insults other countries in a manner that makes me ashamed to be from the same country as he is. Britain First have actually devolved into an extremist group who believe and preach that our christian populace is under threat from muslims and we must shun and be wary of all muslim nationals. I’m not exaggerating. There are videos of BF rallies where people in the audience shout, quote “Kill Them All”.
These views do not represent the entire Leave campaign, that point I must stress, but the problem we now have is that with those extremist voices louder than ever, a Brexit now would give them a huge surge of credibility and validation- a concept that genuinely frightens me. The british public are worried and disillusioned after the past decade of recession and austerity, and we’re vulnerable to being preyed on by extremist ideas. If alarm bells of a european country in a similar disposition in the 20th century aren’t ringing now, they should be.
We also need to consider that despite all of the rhetoric of how great it could be if we leave, there’s absolutely zero certainty. Right now we know how the EU works, we know the ins and outs, where it is, where it’s going, and where we could steer it. But outside, it’s all black. There’s no draft legislation. There’s no draft agreements. There’s no comparison on what rights we’d retain or lose. There’s no plan.
Now is the time for us to band together, not divide. Britain is already strong. We have one of the most powerful positions in the EU, as well other world unions. We are the ones who can put things right again.
I seriously hope you aren't shilling for remain. The EU has taken away the freedom of the british people, and has tried to replace the british people. A dog born in a stable is not a horse, by ballot or by bullet england will belong to the english.
I am very much campaigning to remain in the EU. I’ll be writing an article on it later today to explain my reasons, since I am making my blog about opinion pieces in general now.
I'm afraid we’re not going to see eye to eye on this topic though - the last line of your statement there fills me with both fear and sadness for what the right-wing ultra-nationalist parties like UKIP and Britain First are turning the public into.
The very notion that you would consider ‘bullets’ to ‘take back our country’ is quite frankly terrifying.
They want a cheap, easy, simple picture of the world that makes them the hero without actually requiring any kind of effort or character on their part. That’s at least one small part of a big stupid problem.
Also because nothing unites people like a common enemy. It’s a lot easier to gain supporters, fans, et al. when you can tell them that all their problems are because of X group, and they’re eager for an explanation to their misfortunes that lets them blame someone else. Plus if you say it enough and start to believe it yourself, you feel like you’re not spreading hate, but rather you’re spreading the truth, that it’s okay to hate them because they’re bad.
People are also desperate to have a cause to fight for.
We’ve grown up being taught about the heroism of people who fought in the war, and seeing movies of people fighting the forces of evil- yet, we have no such struggle of our own.
Most of the conflict we’ve seen in our lifetime is on the TV, fought by a handful of soldiers in a country far away.
Even the numbers involved in the “War On Terror” pale in comparison to the world wars. We don’t live in real fear of our towns getting bombed on a nightly basis.
People feel like they have no cause.
But really we do- our generation is poised to be the ones who can extend the hand of friendship. We have enough safety to risk going half-way with others. We are the ones on a balanced scale, and it’s our choice to tip that scale toward kindness and peace.
The message of the recent MLP episode was kinda weird, if you don't celebrate the mainstream holiday there's something wrong with you. It reminds me of the "Anti-Christmas" myth conservatives always talk about. What do you think?
They said it themselves that it isn't about the windegos or the material value of the presents - it's the value of people coming together in family and friendship.
The episode wasn't about forcing Starlight to participate in that, but to help her understand what she's potentially missing.
Hey man, tell us about your experience running last BUCK ever?
Sure! Gotta get this blog going again somewhere...
For those who don’t know, I was the Chairman for BUCK (UK-based brony convention) this year. This makes me a sort-of general manager come poster boy. I don’t do most of the work, but I’m a point of reference for other managers to ask stuff, and on the day I’m a figurehead people can identify with.
Planning was tough work. Good help is hard to find, so we had only a handful of managers doing the planning, resulting in a lot “Mostly planned but will probably wing it on the day” stuff.
But the people we do have, including myself, have done a few of these now, so we’re pretty good at winging it on the day- it’s just not ideal.
The weekend itself was a blur, as I do a lot of support roles on the day. Pretty much as soon as I’ve been idle for five or ten minutes, there’s a call on the staff radio that a workshop or the main stage need a hand with something - and then it’s my job to go and check that everything is alright.
I also end up being the go-to guy to present the main-show events like the Charity Auction, VIP panels, and so on. This is good fun, but being on stage drains me a lot. Sunday afternoon I was on stage for half of the day.
Combine all of this with brutally long days and I was wiped out by monday.My schedule went like this:
Did I enjoy it? Hell yea... It’s a massive rush to see everything you’ve been planning for months coming together, the event runners showing up and doing there thing, people constantly saying hello, everyone looking happy and having a great time.
I’m thankful that it’s over and I don’t need to spend 80% of my free time thinking about the next BUCK, but I don’t regret any of it.
Running BUCK has instilled the bug for event running deep inside now, and I’m already thinking of other meetups to plan, events to start, or other cons to volunteer for.
URL change. Making this a general blog. I’m still mainly focusing on the Brony fandom, but I’ve essentially opened the door to covering anything else I feel like now as well.
Gonna update blog-art and stuff soon when I get round to it.
If this blog someday goes up, do you have you're most important and memorable posts on brony etiquette and brony strawman archived somewhere? It'd be great to just refer back to your words on future fandom discourse and drama. Especially for those new to the fandom and they really have no idea what is okay and down right cringey.
I don’t actually... I normally scorn people who don’t save their creative works and just blindly trust their publishing platform - but I figured this blog wasn’t really that important. I can always say stuff again.
That being said though, last I checked there was a Download This Blog tool in tumblr settings, so I’ll probably make a backup for posterity’s sake.
I don’t plan on deleting the blog - I’d probably change the URL, tweak the blog theme, and carry on with an updated blog description.
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