S2E20.5: My Little Pony

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

Delwyn Gee

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

Wolfman Jack

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

Krystyna Sajdek

Come for the funny, stay for the theory

Candy H

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.”

Sublight Monster

Mental image: thousands of robed MLPs doing tawaf around an ornate horse-box

heffa

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!

Nico Farías

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

Clarp Blarpkiss

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

Jan

i looked it up...oh no...

LSD

bad shit?

LSD

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

AaronMk91

I was there. I saw them. They were such fucking creepos it was insane.

Curatrix Ribston

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.

Cate Kneale

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

Ciarán

B

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.

Knights Who Say Sledge

This is the post for the full episode, so it's probably a technical glitch

LSD

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?

Helen W.

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.

Corporal Burpfart

Abi I caught that Ken Ashcorp reference, I'm fucking ded.

Saengchaen

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.

Haselwoelfchen

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

Catherine Clare Page-Vanore

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.

Cat Meier

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.

Clarafication

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.

Geckonator

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.

Kirsty McGuire

The Storm King has no mouth and he must scream

-Kris-

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)

-Kris-

the real friends were the rage alice experienced along the way

Mulloy

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*

Meonlights

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.

ACK

Ooh Dev and Abi should do an MLP podcast!

sg

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

Amy

tangentially related but there's an excellent short film based on one of the L. Frank Baum stories, the film is called Death To The Tin Man, made as a student project by Ray Tintori. 12 mins long, easy to find on youtube, strong recommend imo

Karl Childers

Yes. The writers have said that in the Rollercoaster of Friendship special they wrote Rarity and Applejack as a couple. (Also Sunset Shimmer is canonically bi and the series director sells art prints of her and Twilight kissing.)

Ember Aegle

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

God's Eepiest Soldier

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

Twi

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

Jose Jaimes-Ramos

looked it up; is rarijack canon in the equestria girls universe?

LSD

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A John

Alice strikes me as the type of person with hyper specific interests when it comes to the internet, as the show pretty much exemplifies, so it’s not surprising that she was insulated from that part of the internet.

Mr. Venom

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

Christine Pizan

cave wall rations for trans kids is a really apt way to put it lmao

Ezra Curry

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

LSD

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

Not Name

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.

Zeroisanumber

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

Hedrigal

They kept mentioning 'furry bait' characters and I was just thinking... You fools. They're ALL furry bait characters.

Sammi

Yeah I did mean ponybooru, didn't realise it had died

Kill James Bond!

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.

Ember Aegle

The most maliciously compliant jazz outro of all time.

Alice Somethingorother

Very surprised that she didn't know about that whole deal already tbh, that was the most infamous thing about the fandom, that at least half of the people involved wanted to fuck the ponies and were happy to furnish the community with huge amounts of porn of them

Nah

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

Lukas Schmidt

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

LSD

The great and historical griffonlet.

AaronMk91

The mod is good.

Sirloinofice

Beakolini

Sirloinofice

The gang earns their cutie Marx

Noblesse Oblahaj

Also it's Derpibooru, Ponybooru died and is missed. Unless Devon is referring to Ponibooru which was one of a dozen attempts by the 4chan and 8chan pony board(s) to create an Anti-Woke Derpibooru that failed spectacularly (but at least you can discuss race science with five other weirdos spread across 7 different altboorus there)

AaronMk91

:(

thecrazysquid

this is the episode I've lived for

scara b

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

Mr. Venom

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.

AaronMk91

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.

Catherine Clare Page-Vanore

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

Zeroisanumber

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

Alex

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.

Rosemary Roach

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

AaronMk91

It’s here! It’s here! It’s here!!!

Forever Bulking

❤️💜

Jon W