The Secret Reason For Bronies

Tags

addiction, animation, art, baby schema, brains, bronies, brony, cute, cuteness, friendship is magic, my little pony, oxytocin, toys

Well, I began my research a while ago now, and I think I’m ready to present my findings.

The show is fine. Every episode has at least one line that is recognizably clever, and it occasionally makes me laugh out loud.

I didn’t find it to be brilliant, though.

Basically, it’s just a cute kid’s show that doesn’t suck.

Sure, people will argue that I need to watch more, and maybe I will, but honestly, I didn’t see anything to obviously explain an enormous fandom of adults, including adult males.

…Except for one thing.

The CUTENESS.

Because, I admit, it is very, very, very, cute.

Sickeningly cute.

Like, “I can’t believe how shamelessly adorable they have made this” levels of cute, from the character design to the little life lesson that comes with every episode.

Now, I have always found My Little Pony to be cute, even back in the days when the ponies actually looked somewhat like real ponies.

But the new anime-style ponies are DISGUSTINGLY cute.

They took something that was already pretty adorable and they ramped up the cuteness by about a zillion notches.

I don’t know if they consciously followed the baby schema, but it worked.

The baby schema is a sort of list of characteristics that scream “baby” to mammals, and which is proven to trigger our instincts for parental affection. It includes characteristics like big eyes, tiny noses, large heads, small bodies, big foreheads and so on.

So, this, basically.

Teddy bears over the years have evolved to fit this schema. They went from looking like this:

…to this:

Well, let’s go back and look at that 1980s My Little Pony again.

Big eyes, big head, short nose… pretty cute, right?

Now look at the modern version:

Next to the Friendship Is Magic version, the eighties one looks positively adult.

So, here’s what I think happened:

The most famous emergence of Bronies as we know them today came from 4chan, of all unlikely places.

A bunch of dudes from 4chan started watching My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic with the intention of mocking the show, after getting all riled up from a post about how children’s shows are made just to hock toys (as if that’s anything new…).

Except the guys got hooked.

They started posting pictures of ponies everywhere.

It started a whole 4chan flame war, largely one sided, where people mocked the Bronies, and the Bronies just responded with pictures of adorable ponies.

Someone has even graphed the emergence of pony presence of 4chan.

And after watching the show, I think I know what happened.

The cuteness messed with their brains.

I’m telling you, after watching a few consecutive episodes, I had serious Pony Brain.

All the next day, unbidden mental images of ponies flitted through my mind on adorable little wings.

And I’m not the only one to report this phenomenon.

Sites like My Little Brony seem to acknowledge it as known fact.

We’re all programmed to fall for cuteness. That’s how babies avoid getting hucked out the window after the third hour of consecutive midnight misery.

The excellent flash animation and the Baby Schema of the character design in MLP: FIM is like Cuteness Crack.

Our brains can’t help but get addicted the sheer adorableness.

Anyone who has fallen in love slowly with a newborn baby can understand this process. At first it’s like “yeah, ok, it’s cute,” and then you’re like, “let me take another look,” and pretty soon you’re like “my child is the cutest thing ever I can’t stop looking…”

And that’s what I found happened to me.

I started craving ponies.

And why did it happen to all of these 4chan males?

Well, honestly, how exposed is the average 30 year old man to cuteness?

Boy toys are much less cute.

GI Joe has adult features, so do Transformers. Most adult men don’t go to cute little baby movies. Most don’t even watch Disney flicks.

So imagine you take this population of people who are completely unexposed to cuteness on a daily basis and then expose them to multiple hours of this:

I think they get hooked.

It’s like exposing the Aztecs to the European diseases of the Conquistadores – they’d just fall in scads.

And I fell prey to it too. All I wanted to do was look at pictures of ponies, especially Rainbow Dash, who I like primarily because she is blue, but also because she’s not girly.

I wanted a little pet Dash to follow me around and live in my pocket. I wanted a little toy one that actually looks like the character instead of like the lifeless, personality-less plastic Hasbro crap.

In other words… I began to know what it is like to be a Brony, and to see why some of these Adorableness Addicts are willing to pay literally thousands of dollars for a toy pony.

And that explains, too, why Bronies have such a reputation for being positive and friendly, for responding to trolls with ponies instead of insults, and even for charitable donation.

Oxytocin (which is released in response to cuteness) makes us more trusting and kind to others.

So, they can justify it all they like by saying it’s the character development, or the voice acting, or the plot, or the humor. All of that is… fine. It’s not a BAD show. It’s cute. It’s occasionally funny.

But I think that the main reason that they like it is that Bronies are just addicted, just the way I am hooked on this face:

And I can tell you that I love Owl because he’s funny, and smart, and loving, and lots of other great things.

But really, I love him because of the oxytocin.

I’ve been off of My Little Pony for a week or two now, and my brain is returning to normal. The pony cravings have stopped.

But will I go back?

Yeah, probably. Even though I don’t think it’s that fantastic.

Just because it’s DARN CUTE.

Completely Unexciting Pregnancy Update

Tags

babies, first trimester, morning sickness, pregnancy

This is the worst part of pregnancy.

Worse than the third trimester, sweating, swollen, 8 pound bag of snakes under your ribs part of pregnancy.

This.

It is the worst.

Reasons:

1. Boring.

You don’t look pregnant, and you aren’t supposed to yammer about it to everyone you meet, but you walk around thinking “ARGHSDFHDUSI I’M PREGNANT.”

Meanwhile, your baby isn’t doing cute and interesting things like developing ears, sucking its thumb and peeing inside you.

Instead, it’s a tiny little non-cute seamonkey the size of a blueberry who doesn’t even have EYES yet. An EYELESS, non-cute seamonkey that is lucky if it even has a heartbeat yet.

And every time a pregnancy book compares my baby to a fruit I get an uncomfortable mental image of popping it in my mouth.

Anyway, it’s certainly far too early to get excited and start buying tiny pieces of clothing. It doesn’t even feel real yet.

2. Morning sickness.

I thought I might escape it this time, because for the first couple weeks I felt fine and I was like “HA, THEY WERE RIGHT, EVERY PREGNANCY IS DIFFERENT!” but now it’s starting, and that means the weight gain has started.

That’s right. Weight gain. Because when I have morning sickness, the only thing that staves it off is snacking on easy-to-digest, salty, starchy things like… pretzels. Which means I end up eating half a bag of pretzels and subsequently gain weight. I was totally NOT gaining weight until the nausea started and now I’ve already gained 2 pounds.

And then there’s the world of regret that I live in when I decide, to, say, eat fish and chips for lunch and then spend the next 12 hours feeling like I have the flu, having that restless sleep where you keep dozing off then waking up nauseous.

And then, you can’t call in sick because there’s no point because this “flu” is going to last for MONTHS AND MONTHS.

3. Gratitude.

And as boring and nauseating as the whole thing is, you feel like a jerk if you complain, because you’re in the could-end-in-a-miscarriage-any-second part of pregnancy, the part of pregnancy that is so iffy that people don’t even like to tell other people that they are pregnant in case they have to have the awkward “yeah, I’m not, any more, actually…” conversation with people.

I had a night of severe cramping and it scared the crap out of me. I kept checking my underwear for spotting. I wrapped a magic bag around my middle and hoped for the best, and it passed, and the morning sickness arrived.

And I was grateful. To be nauseous.

Seriously, the worst part of pregnancy.

Baby’s Breath

Tags

acetone, breath, infant health, parenting, toddler health

When Owl was born, I noticed that his breath smelled a little like nail polish remover.

That acetone type breath is usually a sign of diabetes in animals. In fact, since some people can smell it easier than others, I have even had vets ask me to come and sniff a cat’s breath to see if it “smelled diabetic”.

So I mentioned it to several doctors and nurses.

All of them seemed puzzled, and didn’t know what I meant.

My mother agreed about his breath – she smells it too – but since no one was concerned, we decided not to be concerned.

And I guess it wasn’t a concern, because he’s fine.

I mean, sure, he didn’t grow much for three months and he screamed non-stop for months and months and months, but overall… he’s fine.

But I still smell his breath.

Usually his breath smells great. Like honey. I love sniffing his honey breath. I thought it would go away when he started solids, but no, he always has very sweet breath.

But sometimes, the acetone smell returns.

When my mother was here for her brief visit in January, Owl got sick. My mother commented that his breath smelled like acetone, and sure enough, it did. Since he had been off his food slightly (VERY slightly), we figured that maybe the acetone breath was connected.

After all, someone on Atkins also gets that breath, because they’re burning fat and protein instead of sugar.

I noticed it again last week.

Once again, Owl was sick.

Now, “sick” for Owl just means a mild fever and only one helping of cereal instead of three, half an English muffin instead of one, and so on.

But the next day, sure enough, there was the breath!

So I googled it.

According to Dr Google, the only reason your child’s breath should smell like ketones is if your child is dying of diabetes. Like, you-should-rush-to-the-emergency-room kind of sick.

Clearly, Owl is not in a diabetic crisis.

He isn’t drinking constantly, he isn’t losing weight (he’s still only 28 pounds, but he isn’t shrinking), he’s happy. He does eat constantly, but that’s just Owl.

So what’s with the breath??

I’m Not A Good Person

Tags

comments, facebook, negativity, positivity, quotes, snark, trolling

But I think I should get bonus points for managing to resist hitting “enter” on this comment I felt greatly tempted to make on Facebook the other day…

Let’s All Speak Out For Someone Who Is Still Alive

Tags

amanda todd, blaming the victim, online bullying, pitt meadows, rape, rape culture, rehtaeh parsons, teenage girls

…And another one falls.

I had to think for a while about what I could say about Rehtaeh Parsons. After all, what could I say about her that I haven’t already said about Amanda Todd, or the Steubenville rape case? What could I say that my fellow bloggers already haven’t?

So I’ve decided not to talk about her at all.

Instead of rallying around and calling for justice once the poor victim has committed suicide, let’s do it while the person is STILL ALIVE!

Because Rehtaeh wasn’t alone.

A very similar incident happened in BC, right around the time Owl was born.

A 16 year old girl went to a rave. Tsk tsk, I know, but teenagers do dumb things, like go to raves. This girl went with friends, and only had one or two drinks. She tried to be safe.

But the girl was drugged, and then gang raped. The rapes were video taped and photographed by onlookers, and by the next morning, they were all over Facebook.

The videos going viral seemed to be the focus of most of the news stories – not the fact that the girl had been raped, but the fact that PEOPLE POSTED VIDEOS.

There was immediate police action to take down the videos and photos, and charges were laid, and everything looked just fine.

Two and a half years later…

Only one guy was charged with the actual rape, and those charges have been stayed due to insufficient evidence. Sound familiar, to those people who know Rehtaeh’s story?

A couple of guys were charged with distributing child pornography – again a step up from Rehtaeh’s case, but wait:

The punishment for one Dennis Warrington was 120 hours of community service and a written apology. What is this, grade school? Say you’re sorry, hug and make up? That’s it?  FOR WATCHING SOMEONE GET RAPED AND PHOTOGRAPHING IT?

Apparently the victim felt the same.

“Dennis can tell this courtroom, your family and your lawyer 100 times that you are sorry for what you did and you can apologize to me but I don’t believe you are sorry for one second,” said the girl, in a voice flush with rage.

“You are not sorry for what you did. You are just sorry you got caught.”

The other one just had to write an essay on the harmful impact of social media. WHAT? NOT ON RAPE? Is this really a “know the risks of Facebook” issue?

So… let’s recap.

• The rape happened while the girl was drugged. The police said from the outset that it had been medically confirmed (I remember the original news stories mentioning injuries and such, I’m pretty sure she even had a rape kit done). 
• Lots of people watched/were involved.
• No witnesses have come forward to testify on her behalf.
• The people who photographed and distributed video and photographic evidence got slaps on the wrist for being so indiscrete. 
• The Crown says there isn’t enough evidence to prosecute.

The girl has said that this rape ruined her life.

Surprise surprise – she is being bullied on Facebook and Twitter by the friends and family of those people who received those shockingly minor charges. And guess what? It’s making her miserable.

“Honestly, it’s like being tortured on a daily basis and I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy,” the girl said.

“People say that it will get better and that the pain will go away but it’s been two years and it still kills me.”

The bullying that followed caused the girl to drop out of high school. To this day, she suffers from panic attacks and anxiety. She even turned to drugs and thought about killing herself.

Does any of this sound familiar?

Look. I don’t have a photo of her. I can’t show you her face. I can’t give you a name.

But can we rally behind her anyway? Can you please share her story? Can you please demand justice?

Can we try to support this one, defend this one, SAVE this one… BEFORE the worst happens?

Please.

For Amanda Todd.

For Rehtaeh Parsons.

Let’s not wait until the girl kills herself before we share her story.

Let’s celebrate her for NOT killing herself. Let’s celebrate her survival. Let’s HELP her survive.

Let’s share now.

Let’s demand witnesses to come forward NOW.

Let’s fight now.

NOW!

The Best Little Find In The Library Discard Pile

Tags

bargains, books, can lit, canadian authors, Canadian Literature, children's books, Children's literature, first edition, great finds, jean little, kate, library, library discards, mine for keeps, signatures, signed books, signed first editions

So, we were at the library, and on our way out we stopped to browse the discard pile because we can’t help ourselves. It’s a sickness.

Anyway, I made a couple of good finds, including another Indian In The Cupboard book that I never knew existed: The Key to the Indian. I had always thought the story ended with The Mystery of the Cupboard in 1992!

We were also horrified to find a book on “Healing Homosexuality,” which we decided to buy just so that no one else would.

And then, just as we were about to go to the cash, I spotted a Jean Little book.

I love Jean Little.

Her books are a little dated, in that her characters go to church and don’t use computers (somewhat ironically since she has used advanced voice recognition software to write all of her books since 1985), but the warmth and the heart in them is timeless.

If you’ve read any of her books, you probably know Mine For Keeps, a book about a girl with Cerebral Palsy who gets a dog and gains some self confidence in learning how to train it.

She wrote it because she was tired of books like The Secret Garden and Heidi, where the disabled character miraculously gets cured for no obvious reason.

She wanted to write a book about a kid with a real disability, who overcomes it without being cured.

That’s the kind of person she is.

I grew up on her books, as well as her autobiography, Little By Little, in which she describes what it was like growing up during World War II with severe vision impairment and a passion for books.

She talks frankly about the teasing she received and speaks honestly about her own personal flaws – hesitancy, fear of new experiences, a compulsive love of books despite being legally blind, and even occasional flights of fancy verging on dishonesty.

Jean as a child was someone you could love and bond with – someone fallible, but also someone deeply special. I always thought of Jean Little as a friend, growing up. I would love to meet her some day, but considering that she lives in Ontario, that opportunity has never arisen.

Anyway, this book was called Kate, and was the sequel to a book I already own. I remember Jean talking about it in her second autobiography, The Stars Come Out Within, in which she documents the loss of her remaining sight and the joy of getting a guide dog.

So of course I glommed onto that book in two seconds or less and handed it to PH.

Jean Little books aren’t always easy to find. I’m still trying to get my hands on a copy of Willow and Twig, one of her newer ones and also one of my favourites. Book stores rarely have it in.

“Uh…” PH said, flipping through the book. “Look.”

He held it out, open to the frontispiece, and I saw that someone had scribbled on it with marker, making a happy face and some barely legible words.

“That’s okay, it’s not on any of the other pages,” I said.

“No, look at it.”

I looked.

Did the last two words say… Jean Little?

“I think this book is signed by the author,” said PH.

“I doubt it, that looks more like a kid’s scri… Oh. RIGHT.” I felt like an idiot. “She’s blind.”

We stared at the scribble and the happy face. Was this a kid scribbling about Jean Little and drawing a happy face?

Or was this signed by JEAN EFFING LITTLE, a woman who is now completely blind and can’t even see the paper she is writing on?

We bought the book and left clutching it possessively.

When we got home we did some googling.

We couldn’t find any pictures of recent signatures. I did find this picture:

That is a signed first edition of Mine For Keeps, clearly signed when she still had some sight.

But compare the two signatures. Sure, mine is a lot messier, but the J is the same, and the L, and the words are written in cursive, which I don’t think kids even know how to do these days.

PH also made the following discovery:

“Keep reading a little,” is one of her preset phrases that she writes.

I JUST BOUGHT A SIGNED JEAN LITTLE BOOK FOR A DOLLAR TWENTY FIVE.

I mean, it isn’t definite.

People forge signatures on books all the time, it’s a problem.

But as much as I adore Jean Little, she’s no JK Rowling. Her signed books aren’t worth hundreds of dollars. Thirty dollars, forty maybe. Nothing worth forging. And the “keep reading a little” is a known catch phrase of Jean’s.

It’s signed by the author.

AND THE LIBRARY DISCARDED IT.

Oh, and here’s the kicker:

That’s right. A FIRST EDITION book signed by the author.

…For a dollar twenty five.

Life makes me happy, sometimes.

In Which We Celebrate A Pagan Fertility Festival, With Good Reason. And Chocolate.

Tags

Easter, easter bunny, easter egg, fertility, pagan rituals, parenting, pregnancy, toddlers

This was the first Easter where Owl was old enough to sort of understand what was going on.

Previous Easters may have confused him some.

WHY AM I DRESSED LIKE A RABBIT?

Anyway, we skipped the whole “Jesus rising from the dead” part of Easter (since “Jesus” and “dead” and “nailed his hands to a piece of wood” are not things he can or should understand yet) so we stuck to the pagan fertility festival part of it.

He was quite excited about the Easter bunny part.

“Mister Bunny come… come to our home… bring me… CANDY!”

“Yes, Owl, the EASTER bunny will hide candy.”

“And eggs!”

“Yes, and eggs.”

“Yes. I like him!’

“So do we, honey.”

After an argument over how much toys/candy a two year old should get for Easter, PH and I settled on hiding ten plastic eggs, five filled with stickers and five filled with lollipops.

I put a toy ball, a colouring book, and a bubble blowing kit in his basket.

Easter was FUN. Even though we hid the eggs as openly as we could, Owl only found a couple without increasingly specific hints.

“How about over there, Owl? Are there any eggs over there? No? Are you sure? Did you look on the shelf? RIGHT THERE AT EYE LEVEL? No? ARE YOU SURE? WHAT ABOUT RIGHT THERE AT THE END OF MY FINGER?”

He was so proud of himself whenever he “found” the things, too. It was very cute, in an “oh my gosh, toddlers have mush for brains” kind of a way. (Owl did not improve his apparent IQ by biting into an Easter Egg, shell and all, and munching on it quietly until I noticed and snatched it away, explaining to him that you DON’T EAT THE SHELL). All in all, “Mister Bunny” was a hit, and he struck multiple times. One of our neighbours made a drop on his behalf on our doorstep, and he got a second hunt at his friend’s house that afternoon.

PH and I are forced to “help” eat his candy while he is sleeping.

You know. To save him from himself. And also because we’re emotional eaters. Pagan fertility festivals for the win.

In Which I Devise A Fitting Punishment, Involving Ponies.

Tags

bronies, brony, extrovert, friendship is magic, introvert, my little pony, why do people like my little pony

I have to apologize to all of you for PH’s ridiculous April Fool’s prank.

It is completely silly to suggest that I would devote my time and resources to Pinkie Pie, a raging extrovert and stupid to boot.

If I were a Brony (female bronies are apparently called Pegasisters, which sounds beyond stupid, so I vote for “Honies” instead) I would obviously revere a more introverted, book loving animated equine.

Or one with an affinity for animals.

*cough*

Seriously, though, what is it with the Brony movement?

It fascinates me. I’ve seen a couple of episodes of the show and was actually put off by the anime-style, over-the-top silliness.

At the same time, I sort of wish I was a… Hony.

I loved My Little Pony as a kid, although I was more about the toys than the saccharine tv show (I was more of a Rainbow Bright, He Man kind of kid). I distinctly remember getting a new My Little Pony when I was a kid, one with translucent fluttery wings and long legs, only to lose it on a trip to an audition down town. I was heartbroken. My mother bought me another with teeth you could brush to make up for it.

And the new generation are still very cute, even if I find their PowerPuff Girl style to be somewhat annoying.

Furthermore, as far as I can gather, the Brony movement appears to be sincere, which baffles me.

In a world that embraces irony, full of hipsters and Robot Chicken episodes, Bronies appear to be positive, non-defensive people who respond to criticism with pictures of cute, girly animated animals and… I approve.

Furthermore, the Brony movement reveals a whole section of men who aren’t afraid of celebrating the feminine, and I approve of that, too.

The sad thing is, I’m not sure I could.

I’m not sure I could enjoy something cute and oh-so-honest without irony. I don’t think I could ever say shittarded names like “Twilight Sparkle” and “Rainbow Dash” without a shudder.

I’m not sure I could enjoy something so very girly when I have always rejected all things girly.

But.

Wouldn’t it be hilarious if PH’s April Fools post ended up turning me onto My Little Pony? Wouldn’t he just, like, regret it FOREVER?

Because while PH has no problem with celebrating the feminine, his cynical, atheistic soul could probably never be able to enjoy something so disgustingly cute. Hell, I don’t even know if I could do it.

But just to punish him, I’m going to try.

I pulled it up on Netflix tonight. I watched the first episode. So far it seems to be about a studious introvert who is constantly attacked by extroverts trying to be friends with her/throw parties for her, thus preventing her from saving the world.

This is going to be a hard slog.