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Monday, June 3, 2013

Over the (Demographic) Rainbow

I spend much of last weekend watching my friends' children while the two of them were out of town.  One of the children I was babysitting was a third-grade girl; let's call her "Arya," because apparently that's what people name their daughters nowadays.  Although, I suppose naming your kid after a fictional character is nothing new: my dad lobbied to name me after a minor character from The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, but my mom said no.

Anyway, Arya knew that I watch MLP, and she loves the show, so the one thing she demanded we do while I was keeping order in the house was to indulge in some "pony time."  I've never watched the show, save alone.  What would it be like, to watch this children's show-cum-internet phenomenon with a member of the target demographic?

Also, we read a fanfic.

Click below the break to delve into the psyche of a nine year old girl... if you dare.



"Pony time" was originally planned to be watching a few episodes of MLP on Netflix.  Being the gracious sort of babysitter that I am, I told Arya we could watch whatever her favorite episodes were.

She chose "The Crystal Kingdom" and "Magical Mystery Cure."

Now, if you haven't read my comments on them, I was not really a fan of either of those episodes.  The words I used to describe my feelings about them were "underwhelmed" and "extremely disappointed," respectively.  But hey, if they're Arya's favorites, they're Arya's favorites, right?  So we watched the episodes, talked about them a little bit, and when all was said and done, here's what I'd learned:

-Arya's favorite thing about MLP is the songs.  I suppose that's not terribly surprising; lots of people really like the songs, after all.  She specifically said that what she loved about MMC was how many songs it had (all of which she sang along with, which was at times pretty amusing since she didn't know the words to most of them).  But, based on that, I suppose it's no surprise that she picked two multi-song episodes to watch.

-When I asked her who her favorite character was, she told me it was Cadence.  Why?  "Because she's a princess, and she's pink."  Arya's big into princesses*.  To be fair, her fantasies mostly involve wielding supreme executive power (which, I guess, is what princesses do nowadays) rather than marrying Prince Charming, but nevertheless she and the many little girls like her are the reason we have things like Cadence and alicornified Twilight.

-Since I was unhappy with (what I perceived as) the moral of MMC, I asked Arya what she thought the episode was trying to teach.  She rolled her eyes at me, which is probably what a question like that deserves.  But she did answer: "It's about how anyone who's smart and strong and knows a lot can become a princess."  Assuming that we take "become a princess" figuratively, that's not a bad moral--but I think it's the one she wanted to hear.  She also told me that the reason Sombra was evil was because he was married to Princess Luna, and "when Luna became evil then he became evil too and then he turned into shadow because there are shadows when the moon is out," all of which would be pretty nice if it wasn't completely at odds with what the episode had literally just told us, as we sat watching it together.  I think that, like a lot of young children, Arya doesn't care what the show says nearly as much as we adults do, and I don't mean in the "she'll swallow anything they say" way.  I mean that she, and lots of kids, will gleefully warp the show to suit their fancies.  Honestly, that makes me feel a lot better about some of the episodes which I thought had really disconcerting morals.  It doesn't make those morals any more palatable to me though; such are the perils of Chris and his ilk trying to watch a show written for Arya and hers.

-Not surprisingly, Twilight is her favorite main character, because she gets to be a princess and is the strongest.  She was less impressed with Applejack, who was "boring," and who didn't have any "cool powers," examples of which include Pinkie's canon, Dash's Rainbooming, and Fluttershy's "pet bear army."  No, I didn't know about that one, either.

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After those two (three, whatever) episodes, TV time was up.  I had thought that would be the only "pony time" we'd have, but that was not to be the case.  She asked me to read her a bedtime story later, and when I asked what she wanted to read, she asked if there were any stories about Twilight.  I don't think she knows about fanfiction yet (I, at least, wouldn't let my nine year old child into any of the parts of the internet which peddle in fanfiction--too easy to get to inappropriate content, intentionally or accidentally), but I did have a few fanfics on my e-reader.  So, we read The Eulogy of Mr. Acorn, by the Coward Twilight Sparkle together.

I'd read it a couple of days before, and thought it was good but not great.  I loved the light touch the author used in showing the ethics of dealing with death, and the use of a "mere" squirrel as the deceased (as opposed to something shown to be fully sapient in the show) kept the tone from getting too depressing for what was, ultimately, a slice-of-life fanfic.  I also found the language clear and vivid, if occasionally a bit dense for the material.  That said, the story gets off to a slow start, and has several obvious plot contrivances (like the fact that Twilight is expected to give this squirrel a eulogy in the first place).  Also, the story doesn't have particularly good tonal balance--it seems like it doesn't want to be a "sad" story, but it also doesn't want to be a comedy, despite including a lot of elements of each genre, and as a result it comes off a bit muddled.  Although it was a little advanced for Arya in terms of language, the story was perfectly appropriate content-wise, was Twilight-centric, and hey; kids learn words by seeing them used, right?  So we gave it a read.

Language was indeed an issue on some occasions (starting with "eulogy"), but Arya's got good context skills for her age, and I was reading it with her and could explain anything she didn't understand anyway.  Surprisingly, she picked up the nuances of the story's dilemma--that Fluttershy's upset that Twilight isn't respecting what Mr. Acorn would have wanted, and that by doing (what Fluttershy says) he would have wanted, Twilight is helping really helping Fluttershy--on her own.

I asked her what she thought of the story afterwards, and she told me that she thought it was "really good."  She liked that it had Twilight and Luna (two princesses!), but didn't have a lot of specifics past that.  To be fair, that was right before bed, and she was tired.  I noticed that she laughed whenever the animals started grumbling, though, and seemed to genuinely enjoy a lot of the jokes--even ones that I thought would go over her head.

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So, that was my weekend.  Sorry if this post didn't change the way you view ponies forever, but to be fair, it did do that for me.  Not much, admittedly, but sharing some of the show with someone of its target demographic was fun, and in some ways illuminating.  And sharing a little bit of fanfiction with someone outside its target demographic was enjoyable--for both of us.





*Yes, Game of Thrones fans, I know I should have called her Sansa instead.  Now quit being pedantic--pedanticism is my M.O.

24 comments:

  1. I don't know about changing the way that I view MLP, but it is interesting to see the flipside of what I consider to be soulless corporate decisions by Hasbro. It's a chicken and the egg argument. Does Hasbro (and Disney) push these stereotypes onto girls or are they responding to what girls really want? I tend to see it as the evil corporation a little too often, probably. Hearing that the little girl really responds to a lot of things that I dislike about the show at least make it seems like it has some validity in being there. I'm not sold that it NEEDS to be that way, but I understand what Hasbro is trying to do. I just think it's a tired, conservative approach that undoes what Faust and many others has proven to be unnecessary.

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    1. I think that the problem is that we forget that Lauren Faust's message of the show was that "there's more than one way to be a girl" and think of it as "being a girly girl is stupid; why don't you be more like one of the boys?" The way I see it, sure there are girls who want to be princesses, but there are also girls who want to be boxers or marines or artists. It's sort of like, back when the pink LEGOs came out, everyone complained about it being to girly, but the thing is that there were who girls already played with LEGOs and this was just what they had to do to get the ones who didn't already buy them.

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    2. The way I see it, Faust already had that covered in the show. We had Rarity on one end being super girly and Rainbow Dash on the other end being very tom-boyish. I think Hasbro's forced Princessifying of MLP drags the series toward girly homogenization. It remains to be seen if Twilight is made more into a little girl princess fantasy or not. Faust is saying that there is more than one way of being a girl, while the series is continuing to add more traditionally girly elements all the time.

      Now, I'm not an alarmist. I'll wait for things to play out before I get too down on Princess Twilight. I'm expecting her role-model to be Celestia, and Celestia isn't a bubble-headed idiot. There is no reason that Twilight shouldn't be the same ol' adorable character, but then again, there was no need for her to be a princess, either.

      I'm all for girls being the girls that they want to be. I knew lots of really girly girls when I was a kid and I knew girls that really preferred to play with the boys. This is one of the things I loved about MLP. It seemed to want to embrace all of these girls.

      I dunno. I don't really have enough information yet to make a good argument for or against. It's all heresay at this point. I just have the FEELING that Hasbro really would prefer to have a homogenous offering to girls, rather than a nuanced one. I would be thrilled to be wrong in this circumstance.

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    3. Not to rehash the argument (there has been enough of that these past months), but the series had been building up to Twilight becoming a princess since the pilot. Look at it in terms of the Monomyth.

      Also, there is nothing inherently "girly girl" in being a princess – both Celestia and Luna certainly don't fit into the stereotype – and I'd dispute the notion that the series has been working towards traditionally girly episodes – Season 1 had far more of those than seasons 2 and 3.

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    4. I agree, and I think that's part of the first season's "magic". It presented these girly concepts in such a way that we found them appealing, and for many of us it's difficult to explain exactly why - resulting in strenuous grabs for whatever more traditionally masculine aspects the show offers. Later seasons, in contrast, focus more on the masculine aspects (I have to wonder how much of that is due to Larson's influence), allowing them to reach a wider male audience. I think that makes the show feel less special, though, and it's partly why it can feel as though we're being catered to. Then a girly episode comes along and it's not handled nearly as well as one in the first season

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  2. TO be fair, this isn't too different from the wild head-canon theories Bronies make up. Like how Luna plays video games.

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  3. Its been quite some time since I've heard anyone mention "The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant". Now I'm curious, if you wouldn't mind which character did he want to name you after?

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    1. It was Terrel, one of the Bloodguard. As much as I liked the books, I'm glad that didn't win out--it looks too much like one of the pretentious misspellings that are so regrettably common in names these days.

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    2. Terrel? Yeah, it's a good thing moms always win. Especially since "Chris" is pretty much the best name ever (I'm totally not biased) :}

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  4. That bear is an army of one.

    I have four younger siblings, one of which is currently 7 years old, so I feel like my sense of the target demographic for MLP is better than a lot of bronies. Which is probably why I always roll my eyes at all the hang-wringing over "questionable" morals, because I know that it's usually stuff that is going to go right over the heads of most kids. Which isn't to say that kids are stupid or anything, but that they're generally not as aware of these sorts of nuances as adults are. The ability to "read between the lines" is a skill we develop as we grow older, and one that children generally do not yet possess.

    I'm not trying to suggest that morals don't matter - far from it, in fact. But I do think we adults sometimes show a hyper-awareness towards morals that children don't share.

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    1. Maybe kids are firm believers of WYSIWYG? Judging by the fandom, older audiences are more likely to include people who over-interpret things, especially if they involves ethics and social behaviour.

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  5. Considering that you mentioned her context skills, I kind of wonder how many of the jokes you expected to go over her head but which she still laughed at were ones she actually got; I distinctly remember that, in my childhood, I tended to laugh at anything I could tell was a joke, regardless of whether or not I comprehended what was funny about it. As a matter of fact, I was probably more likely to laugh at ones I didn't get than ones I did, because I wasn't able to tell when they were falling flat.

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    1. I didn't think of that, but it's certainly possible. I'm much more used to dealing with kids who feign indifference than with ones that feign enthusiasm, so it might have been lost on me!

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    2. I was the same. I remember watching Only Fools and Horses with my parents when I was a kid, (for those who don't know what that is, it's a British sitcom about two brothers who are market traders), and I often laughed at the referential humour, even if I didn't know who Des O'Connor was until my dad explained it.

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  6. I want to read this girl's fanfics. She has an amazing headcanon.

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    1. Chris could always do an "Axe Cop" style fanfic with her.

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    2. This needs to happen. Please, Chris, drop whatever expectation-breaking masterpiece you're working on and get to it!

      What's wrong with me? I just barely caught myself using a grocer's apostrophe in my last comment and the wrong "your" in this one

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  7. She also told me that the reason Sombra was evil was because he was married to Princess Luna, and "when Luna became evil then he became evil too and then he turned into shadow because there are shadows when the moon is out"

    Headcanon accepted.

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  8. That was actually a really sweet story.

    Even though there are many people who think the show has started to become further away from what Faust intended and not as good as a result, I haven't really noticed a decline in quality (true there are episodes from season 3 didn't like as much, but every season has had some episodes I didn't like including the first one, so I never thought it was a big deal really). Considering that, it is pretty heartwarming to see children enjoy it, even if they are episodes the adult fanbase meets with mixed reviews. I especially enjoyed seeing that considering I actually have a child on the way and I hope my child enjoys the show as much as Arya did.

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  9. This reminds me of some research on even younger kids that found that supposedly educational TV shows like "Arthur" made kids much more aggressive than violent TV shows did. The researchers concluded that the kids couldn't figure out the causal connections in the story. So if they watch Griffon the Brush Off or One Bad Apple, they later act out the kinds of things they saw Gilda or Babs Seed do, without realizing that the show's conclusion was supposed to show that those things were bad.

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    1. I've had enough experience with children to buy that

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    2. Do you have any links to this research? I'd like to see it with my own eyes and draw my own conclusions.

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  10. I really wish I had read this post when it first went up, because the latter half of it deals with something I've personally been wondering about for a while now.

    I have a niece and several of my friends have children who all fall into the target demographic for pony, and I know there are at least two or three that are into it at the moment. I've also had to watch them while their parents were away several times. The opportunity hasn't ever come up, but not long after I started actually reading pony fanfiction, I started wondering: what stories would be both good and have appropriate content for that age group?

    I found that I was having a really difficult time thinking of many, though in my case that's because I tend towards the much longer things--I've read a ton of oneshots, but I only actually remember some of them well enough to make any kind of content judgment. Not to say that there aren't longer ones that would fit the bill too, that is, just with that much length there's that much more opportunity to cross the line.

    Still, though, I'm curious about what stories others might think would fall into that category. My list so far ended up being Ditzy Doo and the Blustery Day (rather obviously), Sparkle's Law (though mostly since that I remember liking it a lot and couldn't recall anything specific from it that would've been inappropriate), and, as a bit of a stretch, It's A Dangerous Business, Going Out Your Door (for the upper range of the target demographic, at least--my mom read me Lord of the Rings when I was 8/9, after all). Possibly The Moonstone Cup too, but like Sparkle's Law, my memory is rather hazy on the details. I don't recall liking it THAT much either, to boot.

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    1. Maybe any of the stories written for the Hearth's Warming Care Package? Since they were written with kids in mind (though not all are of equal quality).

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