Friendship is Magic and the 2010s: Reflections on an Era of Self-Expression
I don't think it's an accident that our beautiful little technicolor ponies blew up in popularity the way they did. Some of it was a sheer skill of the storytelling and animation, of course - let not anything I say here speak against the effort and heart the staff put into making this show what it is. Yet, with the concluding episode of Friendship is Magic - Episode Two Hundred and Twenty One of our magical little ponies - I would draw attention to another aspect of the era they were born into:
The world of self-expression.
The seed of this essay/rant came from /u/psychomotorboat, who I must thank again for a mind-blowingly comprehensive response to a thread I posted about a month ago. They mentioned that 4chan and Tumblr's problems represented "two sides of the same coin ... a lack of willingness to compromise on fantasy desires when faced with reality". More recently, /u/Exploding_Antelope mentioned that they thought the 2010s would be 'the decade of cartoons'.
That got me thinking about timeframes and locations. I started crafting this as a journey back through the environment that nurtured this fandom.
Beginnings:
The year is 2010. Tumblr is in ascendance as a blogging platform. Rage comics allow people to distill experiences down and share them using a handful of easily-comprehended faces. Minecraft presents worlds to reshape as players see fit, from castles to functioning logic-processors. Facebook - opened 4 years earlier - continues its meteoric rise as a place for people to present their lives. Even 4chan caters to an environment where users may feel free to express themselves without shame, curtained by the mask of anonymity.
And on 4chan's /co/ board, someone - an anonymous hero, lost to the site's nature and the mists of time - posts a link to an article decrying 'the death of creator-driven animation'. The article expresses disgust with a new cartoon captained by animation veteran Lauren Faust for the next generation of the venerable My Little Pony brand; anger, that such a proud figure would 'sell out' to the corporate monolith. Although the new show had been periodically discussed on /co/ before, for the first time it receives significant attention. Yet when so many experimentally viewed the resulting cartoon - perhaps expecting something cringy and pablum-sweet - they instead find a rich world populated by vibrant characters and intelligent writing. Overnight, Friendship is Magic erupts onto the internet.
I argue this is no accident.
As I mentioned, 2010 was also a year already fertile in themes of self-expression. Into this environment, Friendship is Magic was a catalyst. An ignition point. The fuel was already laid; was it any surprise than an explosion of creativity would ensue?
But what made FiM so catalytic? I would say that the show, in many ways, reflected this culture of self-expression. I cannot say if Lauren Faust, Rob Renzetti, and all the others recognized societal trends or if they merely coincided at a fortuitous time. But I can say that Equestria we saw tapped the currents of self-expression in just the right places:
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While the central character is an 'elite' - the chosen student of the nation's goddess-ruler - those who end up accompanying her are "nobodies": Everyday townsfolk. They were archetypes, yes, but archetypes we could recognize. And, by implication, possibly be ourselves.
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If Faust's imagination inspired the more fantastic elements of the series, the more mundane 'lessons' didn't hurt either. They tapped viewers' familiarity with things they understood in their own lives - touching the sense that let them say "hey, I recognize that. That's me. THAT'S ME!"
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Even the world and lore was steeped in themes of self-expression: The concept of cutie marks as portraying something deeply relevant or personal to the ponies who bore them, whether absolutely literal (Applejack) or more metaphorical (Rarity).
The Fire Rises:
The fuel was rich, the match was struck, and now an explosion of self-creativity was ignited. The internet convulsed in a paroxysm of fan-hype. The age of the pony was begun.
Amid this, the element of self-expression remained strong: A thunderous roar of fan songs. A blinding storm of fan-art. A tsunami of horse-words, telling the stories that their writers wished to tell. The (in)famous pony creator let everyone have their own custom pony - an easy way to self-present while declaring your love for the fandom. I've spoken before about how this fandom was uniquely accepting of fan-work: The spotlight was on the community and its works as often as the official content, and this was no different.
This, again, was not a coincidence. 2010-2012 was also, I think, the peak of a wave in what I think of as optimist self-expression - the idea that not only was it okay to put yourself out there, but that presenting yourself was a worthy end in and of itself. It is no mistake that 4chan, tumblr, and Cheezburger were among the first websites strongly 'colonized' by the fandom, shortly thereafter joined by this subreddit and assorted Facebook groups. These were all websites that have a strongly self-expressive strain to them.
That's not to say that the fandom was totally accepting of self-expression. Original Characters were one point where the fandom was originally remarkably intolerant of self-expression. Transitioning from the common perspective being "oh no, the dreaded OC" to "Hey, that's cool. As long as they're not a horribly-written self-insert." took time. I have to admit, on a personal note, that this is one manner in which I think the fandom aged well.
Yet in direct (and somewhat strange) contrast, reinterpretations of characters (even background ones) were not only acceptable but lauded. Amid my old notes, I have indication that in late 2011 I was counting no less than fourteen separate active blogs featuring varying versions of Octavia Melody (now, sadly, most lost to time and/or the Tumblr purge). It's easy to argue that these were eaten up simply because of the "more pony!" factor, but I think they were begun because the emotional tides of the moment strongly favored sucking it up and putting your thoughts - your ideas - out there.
Sadly, all good things must come to an end.
The Fall:
In retrospect, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. The internet has gone through moments of hyper-self expression before (anyone remember the old Tripod and Angelfire sites?), and temporary immunity does not grant permanent resistance to the rest of the world. Friendship is Magic gave us a temporary away - a brief sheltered cove within which we were all welcome among each other.
But fantasies do not last.
Ponydom did not exist in a vacuum, and as our fandom headed for more troubled times things were changing outside as well. Tumblr and 4chan - two pillars of the fandom - were sliding in mutually opposed, but parallel directions. Both embraced a kind of self-expression exaggerated into delusion, a sense that not only were you entitled to your voice but that if someone disagreed with you then your they were at best mistaken, at worst part of some grand and overarching malevolent force.
In a million other places, the fantasy broke as well: Electronic surveillance controversies put a dark twist on the idea of putting yourself freely out there, while the first rumbles of discontent over big-data harvesting began to rise. Socially, it became widely acceptable to categorize those you disagreed with into negative categories - "hater", "misogynist", "SJW" - as a form of attack. Even utterly benign terms - "gamer" - took on an epithet meaning. At the same time we also gained a burgeoning awareness that unrestrained self-expression could be, well... a little cringy.
Not all of these factors were directly tied to Friendship is Magic or its fandom. Some were, of course - we received many brutal reminds that the show was in the end a toy commercial, and in a roundabout way the original article's prediction of "the end of creator-driven animation" came true for ponies at least. We saw our self-expressive idols fall.
But I do think the fandom - even aside from those portions on 4chan or tumblr - were influenced by the overall changing mood. The unambiguous spirit of wholehearted expression which the fandom thrived on faltered. Rather than distance itself, however, the fandom did something interesting: We continued to embrace self-expression, albeit in a more circumscribed manner. Derpibooru and Fimfiction, tumblr, 4chan, and Reddit continued to host places for people to express themselves. In some ways we even became more expressive - see my comments on OCs above.
Conclusion:
I do not think that it was an accident that Friendship is Magic exploded the way it did... nor do I think it is an accident that none of the 'successor cartoons' - Gumball, Korra, Gravity Falls, Steven Universe - had the same influence. Though I haven't viewed any of those but Korra, I would say it's at least in good part not their fault. Friendship is Magic simply landed at the right time, tapped the enthusiasm for self-expression in just the right way.
As we now turn towards the end of G4 and the first official signs of G5 on the horizon, I must admit that I do not think another generation of pony will manage the same degree of tapping those emotional currents. It will not induce the same paroxysm of frantic fan work. Even our fandom now more directly resembles a 'conventional' fandom.
Much like the other successor cartoons, it isn't necessarily the fault of the show itself. It may be a perfectly good cartoon, and appeal deeply to us fans. Also as like with G4 above, let these points I'm making not speak against the skill of the staff who did their hard work on the show.
The simple fact is, the world is changed. The internet now regards self-expression with a kind of guarded reserve. Even pressing the same emotional buttons that Friendship is Magic did will not have the same effect. By skill at reading emotional tides or simple fortuitous timing, FiM landed at just the perfect moment.
And in the end, all I can do is look back and smile in fondness at the days when we were so innocent.
Submitted February 21, 2019 at 09:13AM by Logarithmicon
via reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/mylittlepony/comments/at4wn7/friendship_is_magic_and_the_2010s_reflections_on/?utm_source=ifttt
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