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.

The Labour Story, Part II: In Which Mohammed Ali and Omar Sharif Make An Appearance

Tags

birth, childbirth, induction, labour, mucous plug, oxytocin, pregnancy, prostaglandin gel, water breaking

Sept 7th, 5:00 pm

When we got home, PH and my mother put me to bed and I slept -fitfully- for several hours. I had vomited once in the car and once when we arrived home, but did not end up needing the bowl next to my bed. I woke up for a contraction shortly before 5:00 pm, and thought “Oh good, it’s almost 5, we can call the hospital and ask if they have a room ready for me yet.”

I felt a warm wetness between my legs, almost as if I was leaking urine…

Painfully, I rolled myself out of bed and looked at the drips trickling down my legs. I hobbled to the door and opened it. I could hear the shower running, and the TV on downstairs.

“Mum…? Perfect Husband?” I called, like a little girl who has woken up from a nightmare.

“What is it, Love?” My husband called up the stairs.

“I… think my water is breaking.”

There was a couple of thumps on the stairs and Perfect Husband appeared in the doorway within seconds. I had shuffled over to his bedside, and was mopping at my legs with kleenex.

“See? I don’t THINK I’ve wet myself…” I said, showing him the wet kleenex. As I spoke, there was a moist, slithering feeling between my legs, and then something went SPLAT on the ground.

We looked down and saw a reddish-brown gelatinous blob wobbling on our carpet.

“Huh,” said Perfect Husband. “That’s a mucus plug.”

“Yup,” I said.

There was a jingling of a dog collar and a black and white flash of fur whisked towards us.

“NO… LEAVE IT!” we hollered in unison, diving for the dog.

Just in the nick of time.

I cleaned up the gelatinous blob while my husband called Admitting to tell them my water had broken. Now, don’t get me wrong. Of course my husband would have cleaned it up, rather than leaving it to his water-dripping, contracting, pregnant wife. In fact, he was  going to. But there are some things that I feel a husband should NEVER have to do even in the most dire of circumstances, like watch me on the toilet or sit through a knitting group, and cleaning up my bloody, blobby, gooby mucus plug is one of those things.

So I posted on Facebook and the blog while PH and my mother initiated the phone trees, and then we drove to the hospital. AGAIN. I was in more pain than ever, although the pain seemed more concentrated in my abdomen and less in my back than it had been before.

Turns out the hospital still didn’t have a room for me. They put me back in one of the curtained-off beds, attached the monitor, and left me to continue my vomit-drink juice-vomit cycle. The morphine had worn off so contractions were coming close together, sometimes on top of each other, again. The nurse hooked up nitrous oxide for me, which did NOT make me laugh or even really seem to do anything at all. When a doctor finally got around to checking me (2 cm, maybe, nothing else to report), I got another morphine shot which helped space the contractions back out again.

Time passed.

Every 20 minutes PH would make me get up and walk around for 20 minutes before he would let me rest again, in an attempt to get things moving a little. He and my mother brought me juice. I would throw it up and then beg for more, which they would only let me have in small, controlled sips. I would doze a bit when on the bed, between contractions. They continued to hurt.The sounds of women screaming, followed by babies wailing, continued as background noise.

Sept 7th, 11:00 pm

We were beginning to resign ourselves to the fact that our son would not be born today.

It was nearly 11 pm before they finally had a room free for me, and more time after that before a nurse was available to initiate and monitor my oxytocin drip. The room was nice – big, private, with its own bathroom with a shower and stool for labouring in warm water, and a big chair that folded out so my mother and husband could take turns lying down on it.

They hooked up the oxytocin on a low dose, telling me that they would steadily increase it until it had the desired effect. By this time my second morphine shot had worn off, and my contractions were back to being one on top of the other. I believe it was after I had the four and a half minute long contraction, which had at least three peaks, that the tears started to come into my eyes and they offered me the epidural.

I’ve never been good at handling pain, so I always expected to need an epidural in the end. I accepted without hesitation.

Sept 8th, 1:00 am

The epidural guy came in, and introduced himself as Dr. Mohammed Ali. This is not a pseudonym. That was actually the man’s last name. I shook his hand gravely and didn’t mention the name at all, because I’m sure he gets ribbed a lot about it. But after he left there was a lot of joking about how he “knocked me out” and “stung me like a bee, then I floated like a butterfly.”

The epidural didn’t take long and the needle itself didn’t hurt much, but sitting up and leaning forward so that I was pressing into my painful abdomen was almost unbearable. It didn’t take long, though, and soon I was lying on my back in a warm puddle of bliss. The pain was gone. I could feel my legs and move them, although they were heavy and I didn’t have proper control of them. I felt warm and cozy and very comfortable. The only downside was a kind of itchy feeling, which I would scratch idly, but a slight itch was really nothing to complain about, now that I was out of pain.

I remained that way for almost 12 hours.

Finally able to doze for more than a few minutes at a time, I conked out quickly. But it was still not a prolonged and restful sleep because of course the nurse was there monitoring me. Every hour she would run ice down both my sides, asking me to tell her where the cold feeling stopped so she could make sure my epidural was still doing its job. They also kept waking me and getting me to shift positions, because the monitor kept losing the baby’s heart beat, and they weren’t sure whether the problem was the baby’s actual heart beat, or the monitor/my position.

At one point, the night was shattered by the most ear-piercing shrieks which went on and on. A woman was clearly being vivisected by Jack the Ripper in the next room. Polite conversation between my mother and the nurse ground to an awkward halt. I half sat up in bed. “Did that woman have an epidural?” I asked nervously. Would the birth still hurt that much, even with the pain medication?

When the screams finally died away, a nurse came in to spell-off my oxytocin nurse. She told us that that woman had arrived 10 cm dilated, no time to for her doctor to arrive, definitely no time for an epidural. The nurses ended up catching the baby on their own. That poor woman. If I could have found Dr. Mohammed Ali and hugged him, I think I would have.

Sept 8th, 4:00 am

The problems monitoring the heart rate continued. Sometimes it would drop down low. I couldn’t see the monitor, though my mother and husband could, and I think this was to prevent me worrying. Finally they decided to attach a sensor to his skull so they could monitor him more accurately. They went up my gooch with a little plastic stick and somehow pinned a little monitor onto the baby’s head. They told me I was at 4 cm.

By morning the right side of my epidural had worn off a little, the icy feeling lasting almost to my waist, and I could feel slight aching in that side, which made me nervous. They talked about topping me up if necessary.

Sept 8th, 9:00 am

The Wednesday OB showed up at around 8:30 or 9 in the morning. I had never met this one before, but he seemed nice. He looked like a bearded Omar Sharif in his late thirties or early forties. He pronounced me at 9 cm, and left again. I remained at 9 cm for a very long time. The nurses kept checking me and saying that there was a “rim” still and therefore it wasn’t time to push.

Sept 8th, 11:45 am

Dr. Omar Sharif returned, probably just before starting his lunch break (he was running back and forth between me and the OB clinic, you see). Though the nurses had told me only a little while before that the “rim” was still there, he pronounced me ready to push!

Read Part III: A Son is Born

The Labour Story, Part the First: In Which Absolutely Nothing Happens.

Tags

childbirth, induction, labour, overdue, oxytocin, pregnancy, prostaglandin gel

Monday, Sept 6th, 8:00 AM

Induction day. Officially I was overdue by 7 days, according to the date of my last period. According to that early ultrasound we had at 12 weeks, the baby was overdue by 11 days. Either way, my OB clinic induces at one week, since they say that reduces the occurrence of stillborns. We went in to the hospital and they put me in a bed with a monitor strapped onto my belly,told me to push a button whenever the baby moved, and left us for a while.

PH got a big kick out of being able to tell ME when the baby was moving simply by watching the heart rate spike.

“He’s kicking again”, he’d say and I’d say “Yes, yes he is”.

Then they felt up my gooch and told me that I was not at all dilated (still) and Babby was floating at -3 station (still). The hospital induction OB, who looked like Jane Lynch, warned me that there was a good chance his head might not be able to pass into my pelvis, which felt narrow to her. I’ve always thought of myself as being wide-hipped, but I guess I’m not so wide where it counts. She wanted me to prepare myself for a probable C-section.

“But still, we want to give it the old college try,” she said, “obstetrics is full of surprises, and we won’t give you a C-section until we KNOW you won’t be able to achieve a vaginal birth.”

Then she shoved the gel up my gooch and left us for an hour to think about it. It kind of burned a bit, but I didn’t feel any of the cramping or contractions they had warned me about. Then they sent me home, and told me to come back at 2:45 pm for another dose unless I suddenly went into active labour in which case I should obviously come in sooner.

I had some mild menstrual-like cramping but that was it.

Monday, Sept 6th, 2:45pm

We returned to the hospital for my next dose. They were rushing around busy so they put me in a bed with a monitor and we waited and waited for them to get around to me. The women next to me was moaning and crying behind her curtain, which I didn’t find very encouraging whatsoever. PH read out loud to me from the Princess Bride for a while and then started wandering around the ward.

“I’ve found the Christmas decorations”, he announced at one point. “At this rate, we may need them.”

FINALLY Dr. Jane Lynch showed up and poked me in private areas, which was much less comfortable now, with the cramping and all that. I mean, it was not exactly a comforting massage at the best of times. Now it was like “Oh dear gawd, what did I ever do to you?”. She told me that I wasn’t dilated at all, but Babby had moved down to -2 or so. We found this encouraging. She shoved more gel up my gooch and left me for an hour. Babby’s heart rate remained fine and I didn’t burst into active labour, so they let us go. They gave us the option of either coming back that night for a third dose, and then getting pitocin in the morning if nothing had happened, or waiting til the next day for the third dose, and getting pitocin that afternoon or evening.

We wanted to get the show on the road. We were afraid that if we held off the third dose to the next day, the baby might not even be born on Tuesday at all, and my husband would have taken a day off work for nothing. By going in late on Monday, we thought we would actually be able to produce a baby by the end of Tuesday.

We were so naive.

Monday, Sept 6th, 10:30 pm

They were still incredibly busy. We waited and waited and waited, and now I was feeling QUITE crampy and out of sorts. Finally Dr. Jane Lynch showed up and told me that absolutely nothing had changed. Oh, no, I might be almost dilated one cm. Kind of.

Another dose of gel, an hour of waiting which resulted in much stronger and more painful cramping, and the promising encouragement of “come in when you wake up and we’ll give you oxytocin”.

Good to know they had faith in their third dose of gel doing the trick.

Tuesday, Sept 7th, 5:30 am. 5:32 am. 5:35 am…

I did not sleep at all. The cramping had been kicked into contractions by the gel, but they were apparently not real contractions that actually did anything, since they had sent me home with them at 1 in the morning. I suppose it was basically the first stage of labour with  very frequent contractions. The pains started in my lower abdomen and shot up my back, with an added stabbing pain between my legs which made me really sympathize with that poor pig in Lord of the Flies. They came every two to four minutes, so I would doze of for a minute only to be woken up by another pain. I watched the clock the whole night. 2:48 am. 2:51 am. 2:54 am. 2:56 am. 2:59 am…

I took a warm bath, but I needed PH to pull me out of the tub when it got cold. I breathed deeply. I remained quiet so as to not wake PH up, since there was no point in all of us losing sleep. I rolled onto my knees and arched my back. I got up and checked Facebook. 4:21 am. 4:23 am. 4:26 am…

PH woke up to find me desperately trying to get comfortable during another contraction at around 5 in the morning. We debated about whether or not to go in. On the one hand, contractions 3 minutes apart seem to scream “active labour” but since they had sent me home like that, clearly such measures didn’t count when you had pig prostaglandins on your cervix. Eventually he called Labour and Delivery and asked them, and they seemed unconcerned. They said I could come in if I wanted my progress checked or some pain meds, but that I was not likely to be in active labour. We held out until 6:30 or so and then PH and my mother helped me, walking as gingerly as an old lady and moaning, to the car. On the way, I opened the passenger door and vomited onto the road at a stop light.

I was eased back into the damn uncomfortable hospital bed and a monitor was strapped to me again. We waited for quite a while for a doctor, occasionally assured by sympathetic nurses that we weren’t forgotten about, but they were extremely busy. Apparently the entire population of Vancouver chose to be induced/have their c-sections on the 7th, because it’s a lucky number don’t you know.

The contractions kept coming. Most of them I could breathe through but every now and then I’d get several continuous waves with no break in between, and I’d begin to whimper with tears springing in my eyes. I am not known for my stoicism. The pain seemed aggravated too by the unabashed moaning and crying from the woman next to me. She was clearly in a lot of pain and very unhappy about it, but she kept turning down pain medication. I was really motivated to breathe deeply and not whine during contractions because I didn’t want to sound like her.

Tuesday, Sept 7th, sometime late morning

Finally my own OB (who works Tuesdays) came in and told me that I was 1 cm dilated and Babby had not moved any lower. She told me that I needed oxytocin but that they were far too busy to be able to give me a room and a nurse at the moment. She offered me a shot of morphine with gravol, which I accepted.

The shot was extremely mild, obviously, and it didn’t really do much for the pain, but it had the blessed benefit of spacing out the contractions to every 5-7 minutes, and giving me the ability to doze between each contraction. PH and my mother sat there for hours, holding my hand, talking softly to each other while I dozed, and timing my contractions. They brought me juice, which I would then vomit up. Someone brought me breakfast, but just looking at it made me throw up, so that was a wash.

After I don’t know how long (my sense of time was totally shot at this point) the doctor returned and told me that she was sorry but there were STILL no rooms available and likely wouldn’t be until at least 5 pm. Did we want to just go home and wait?

Yes, yes we did.

Read Part II: In Which Mohammed Ali and Omar Sharif Make An Appearance