waterlilyfilly - Tumblr blog

[waterlilyfilly]

Introduction

Hi! This Tumblr is called waterlilyfilly, but you can call me Waterlily for short, or Lily for shorter. Any pronouns are alright.

If you're reading this, you have found the Water Lily Filly Blog! A bit deceptively named, I guess, because it has little to do with water lilies, and I am not a filly. In truth, I am fully grown, and also not a horse, and also not particularly female. It's just that I wanted a catchy name, and lily rhymes with filly and one of my other internet aliases also involves water lilies, so here we are.

On this blog, I intend to go through My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic episode by episode and write my thoughts down. Before I begin, however, I think I have some explaining to do.

My Little Pony and Me

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic shaped my childhood in a weird way. The idea of the brony was baffling to me at first. I feigned outrage because, of course, what else is a person in their early teens supposed to do when they hear about middle-aged men enjoying a show with a target demographic of girls aged four to twelve? But there was something fascinating about it too. In my head I went through a dramatic, vivid character arc, in which I tried to resist the ways of the Pony, yet ultimately failed. Another soul lost in the great battle against the forces of cringe. Retrospectively, I think that I ultimately got into MLP because I wanted to feel special. The idea of breaking societal rules by watching something someone of my demographic wasn't supposed to was very exciting. I enjoyed the show itself to some extent, but I don't think I ever would have watched it at all if it hadn't felt taboo.

This was very silly of me, of course. First off, I was probably 13 or 14 at this time. Sure, I didn't believe myself to be of the appropriate gender, but I don't think it was unusual for someone of that age to watch Friendship is Magic, brony stuff aside. Second, I was watching the show because of the cultural landscape surrounding it, and not the show itself. I was, to put it bluntly, a fake fan. Oh, the horror. I was a child, and was therefore bad at being alive and making decisions, so I am willing to forgive myself. And I don't think that I gained nothing from the experience, even if it really was just a phase. I suspect that the completely insignificant act of perceived defiance that was me watching My Little Pony as a kid may have fueled many more coherent, meaningful thoughts and opinions I have now, such as a dislike of cringe culture, a distrust of gender roles, and the general belief that one should do what makes one happy, regardless of what others think.

All of this leaves me with an odd relationship with the show. The mane six are mythological figures to me, and their personas are permanently inscribed in my mind, but I can barely remember anything that actually happened. I think Twilight went to Ponyville because she was put in charge of a festival by Celestia to test her princessing abilities? I vaguely remember them having to clean up winter?? There were evil bug ponies at some point??? Honestly, the plots of the retrospectively hilarious creepypastas like Rainbow Factory and Cupcakes probably exist in a more coherent state in my brain than those of the actual show do. I also didn't watch even close to the whole show. Looking at episode synopses, I think I watched seasons 1-4 and started season 5. I know I must have started season 5 because I remember the Cutie Map episodes, but my comprehension of the show must have been awful because some of the earlier episode synopses don't even look familiar.

So why come back to it? Well, for one, I have the obvious nostalgic connection to it. My limbic system is all aflutter at the prospect of a rewatch. However fake of a fan I claim to be, I still think fondly of the characters and of the experience of watching the show. But nostalgia is not the only thing bringing me back. I'd like to think of this less as revisiting something old, as much as renovating something old. Rather than reminiscing about how weird I was as a child or ruminating on the golden age of the MLP fandom, I intend to wipe away the past and give myself my definitive viewing of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. In the process, I'll also be creating a repository for all of my pony-related opinions. 30 years from now, when someone inevitably asks me about my thoughts on My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Season 5 Episode 12, I'll be able to save a great deal of time by simply pointing them to this blog.

(Jokes aside, I basically just like writing about things and I think this will be a fun thing to write about. If anyone reads it, that's just a bonus!)

Looking Forward

It's sort of funny how we think of some intellectual properties as being dead. Though I am loathe to admit it, I am a member of the Homestuck fandom. This is another piece of media which spiked in popularity in the early 2010s and has since slowly faded away from the mainstream. Within the Homestuck fandom, there is a lot of bitterness about the current state of things. People dwell on controversies and mistakes and the diminishment of the fanbase. I mention this because I see signs of the same thing happening in the MLP fandom and it makes me nervous. Friendship is Magic is over, and generation five is garnering a lot of criticism. I have no idea whether this criticism is justified, but that's not really the point. No matter what is happening with the franchise, nothing will ever be able to kill the magic of the previous installments. With that in mind, I want to make this blog a place of positivity. Not that I'm really expecting anyone to read this blog, but if they do, my goal is to give a refreshing new perspective on what is now a legendary piece of internet history. This doesn't mean I won't criticize things I don't like, but I'm not planning on performing a Cinema-Sins-style dissection of each episode with the express purpose of finding mistakes. It's gonna be more casual than that. At the end of the day, I'm going into this expecting to have fun.

Other than that, I think I'm ready to just jump in. I don't have a specific plan for format, or a timeline, or anything. I'll see what I have to write about S1E1 and let it evolve from there. I'll try to put in pictures once I actually start watching episodes, though, because this ~1200 word wall of text is probably not very fun to look at. Hopefully this post will be the most rambly and long-winded of them all. I just thought it would be a good idea to establish my baseline thoughts on the show before I jump in. I am looking forward to this, and if you are reading this, I hope you are too!