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[kaijyuu]

Wahaha!

I knew about twentypercentcooler, but I haven't heard anything about it since it first started so I didn't think to check. Found it there.

Thanks

[TheBronzePickle]

Glad I could help.

[Jacob/Lee]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I hate pony crossovers.
EeNOPE

[TheBronzePickle]

The crossovers are better than some of the other stuff... <.< >.>

[Dsarker]

Reminds me. I gotta finish my own before the 30th.

[Dwarf_Fever]

I see what you did there.

At least someone did, most people just focus on the superficial and miss underlying points. It's still amusing to get a fallacious ad hominem attack from someone in a pony thread of all places. 

On a semi-quasi-vaguely related note, there's an interesting double standard developing in media regarding gender. Men portrayed as dumb pigs? Hilarious. Women are dumb pigs? Taboo. Woman touched against her will? Atrocious. Man takes baseball bat to the genitals? America's Funniest Videos. Etc...

Regarding horses appeal to girls, there have even been papers written on the topic, as ridiculous as that seems. It's not just some notion. One of my exes gave riding lessons, according to her about 90% of her students were female, though I suppose she was exaggerating. My female cousins virtually all had (regular) pony posters. And so forth.

Right, because in history soldiers riding into battle on what were basically freight trains of the time are not threatening.

By your logic, MLP must be a very threatening cartoon. Horses are domestic.

[Zangi]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I hate pony crossovers.
EeNOPE

BillTwilight Sparkle: "What the hell are you doing FrancisPinkie?"

Fallout Equestria, pony crossover of win, I can recommend no other.

[Bohandas]

Never been a huge fan of horses myself.

And they're very "manly," historically. Riding into battle and whatnot.

But a pony is like, the opposite of a warhorse; They're bred to be small...

[Bauglir]

Spoiler: Largely Pointless (click to show/hide)

On a semi-quasi-vaguely related note, there's an interesting double standard developing in media regarding gender. Men portrayed as dumb pigs? Hilarious. Women are dumb pigs? Taboo. Woman touched against her will? Atrocious. Man takes baseball bat to the genitals? America's Funniest Videos. Etc...

I don't understand the relevance.

Regarding your argument about horses appealing to girls... I guess? Considering the extent of their association with military culture and the extent to which that is, in turn, bound up with masculinity in most cultures (if you want to tell Genghis Khan that his was a highly feminine culture, be my guest, once you have a time machine), I'd be likelier to say that horses appeal to people in general, and I'd wager the gender disparity in horseriding classes is due, at least in part, to the disparity between socially "acceptable" sports for women compared to men. It seems pretty plausible that there are fewer outlets for girls who're interested in sports in the first place, though obviously I have no empirical data for this.

Really, the degree to which they're threatening is entirely dependent on the context (let me tell you, though, a pissed off horse, even a domestic one, is fucking terrifying when you have no experience with them and no backup).

All that said, it's probably pretty irrelevant to the thread, isn't it? Unless you were actually aiming to turn this into a discussion of gender stereotypes.

Zangi: Thank you for that post, I was trying to figure out what that crossover was with because I suck. You saved the the trouble of asking.

[kaijyuu]

Spoiler: Regarding the Jayson Thiessen Q&A, and the spoilers he revealed (click to show/hide)

Link if you haven't seen it on ED yet.

Things I'm happy about:
- Strong characterization staying the focus. We already knew this but further confirmation is nice.
- Whee new villain and more 2 parters.
- Lauren Faust's departure wasn't due to meddling or creative differences. If she left on good terms, that means she could come back (though probably just for movies or something). Ultimately this is her creative vision, and I want to someday see the pony's "destinies" she hinted at back during the ED interview she did a week or so ago.

Things I'm not so happy about:
- CMC still aren't getting their cutie marks. I just hope there will be no more episodes focusing on their chasing after them. Let them have different adventures, please.
- Jayson Thiessen not knowing too much about the earlier MLP generations. I'm not a fan of them, and some people will say that forgetting about them is a good thing, but honestly: if there's anyone in this fandom that deserves references and callbacks, it's the fans of the originals. I know if I was a fan of the old stuff, I wouldn't want a reboot to completely forget about the things I originally loved, even if the new show is better. I just hope some of the writers besides Lauren Faust are well acquainted with the old stuff.

[LordBucket]

Regarding horses appeal to girls

Brief psychoanalysis:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I would guess that it's probably a combination of maternal and sexual phenomenon. In my experience, horses tend to be very needy creatures. Not only do they need to be fed/watered/cleaned up/etc regularly, they're emotionally needy. They need attention and affection. They get scared easily and need comforting. At least, the horses that I've known. I would think they'd be prime candidates to stand in for a girl's natural maternal instincts.

Similarly, how often have you known girls who brush each others hair as a form of female bonding? That's probably an instinctive phenomenon. Cats lick each other. Birds preen each other. Girls brush each others hair. Same thing. And horses have lots of hair to brush.

As to the sexual side of it, just think about it: a girl spreads her legs and rides a half ton animal who bounces her up and down on her genitals. I had a girlfriend once who could be brought to climax by sitting her on the back of my motorcycle and revving the engine to certain rpm ranges. A horse has to be far more sexually stimulating than that. Not to say that all the women, or young girls for that matter, are seeing horses are replacement vibrators, but it's still very likely to feel nice even if there's no deliberate intent to have it be sexual. Imagine, as a guy, if some woman casually bent over while standing in front of you to pick up something. No sexual intent, no physical contact, you might or might not even get an erection from it...but odds are good you'd smile and feel pretty good about it.

Riding a horse is a very emotionally "safe" thing. A girl can think about spreading her legs and mounting one without any conscious sexual connotation, but the subconscious and instinctive parts of the mind can nevertheless make all the metaphorical connections they want. Similar comparisons could be made for guys who love cars: it's not an overtly sexual thing. They probably don't get sexually excited about driving, but nevertheless they are riding the insides of something that responds instantly to their every touch, and the engine screams with delight as they do.

The human mind is very good at making connections between things, and this is not always done at a conscious level. Between cleaning, feeding, brushing and riding, a horse can stand in to the female subconscious mind as baby, friend and lover, all with no more need for fear or social stigma than playing with a doll.

[Dwarf_Fever]

Regarding your argument about horses appealing to girls... I guess? Considering the extent of their association with military culture and the extent to which that is, in turn, bound up with masculinity in most cultures (if you want to tell Genghis Khan that his was a highly feminine culture, be my guest, once you have a time machine), I'd be likelier to say that horses appeal to people in general

"Horses appeal to people." How can I argue with that? Also, there might be a tiny difference between using horses as part of your military machine to crush, conquer and rape the world, and putting up soft- focus posters of horses all over your room, enjoying brushing their hair, writing poems about them, and so on... but I could be wrong. Do you think Genghis did both?

I'd wager the gender disparity in horseriding classes is due, at least in part, to the disparity between socially "acceptable" sports for women compared to men.

Or maybe things which girls like become (if I may borrow your quotes briefly) less socially "acceptable" to boys, and vice versa. There's this assumption that society just pulled gender roles out of it's butt, so to speak. I don't think that's the case.

All that said, it's probably pretty irrelevant to the thread, isn't it? Unless you were actually aiming to turn this into a discussion of gender stereotypes.

It's interesting to me because of a few observations, personal opinions and such. (And FWIW the MLP discussions tend to have gender stuff come up sooner or later more than most other cartoons...) For any familiar with the term "Smurfette Principle," that should ring a bell... coined by an interesting feminist writer a while back, it referred to the tendency of shows to have one single, stereo-typed female role. This was judged to be a gender issue. Half of people are female (or male) so why this discrepancy? It was deemed to be sexist.

Now we have the exact reverse of the Smurfette Principle in MLP but also a large (or maybe just vocal?) male audience for the show, which seems at odds. This brought me back to my observations about the double standards developing in regards to gender; what appears to be a developing emasculation of men's values, pride, interests and so on also seems to somehow tie in to this phenomenon.

For instance, even though feminists once vocally criticized this sort of one-sided gender portrayal, anyone speaking up about the opposite regarding women would probably hardly even be heard before being derided as either misogynist (ironically by feminists) or overly sensitive (ironically by feminist-supporting men) etc, even if this case is clearly the mirror opposite of something feminists complained about years ago.

Likewise, Tom Martin's case in England will undoubtedly fail, despite that he likely has plenty of evidence (given the laws there)... and then there's the supreme court ruling repeatedly against father's rights, for instance to know if their own wife aborts their unborn son, and so on... More recently a (female) lawyer proposed a law stating that if a woman has a right to choose to abort or carry, independently of the male, the male should therefore also be able to dissolve himself from financial obligation during the first trimester if he has no desire to see the child raised... but again, that was not passed. Eh, getting more off track now, but I foresee some interesting developments in the US and the west in general, and things are not all moving towards equality.

So yeah, probably more than you wanted in your cartoon thread, but that's why it seemed relevant.

Incidentally, interesting analysis there, LordBucket.

[Bauglir]

Spoiler: This is easily the worst post I have ever written, ever, and I am immediately ashamed of having written it. But somebody on the Internet is wrong! (click to show/hide)

A horse has to be far more sexually stimulating than that.

I don't know where to begin with everything else in your post. I've not had many behavior or psychology classes. So maybe you're right, even, but I doubt it (protip: if you reference Freud, you're not getting any points; I can PM you why sometime tomorrow, if it's actually relevant to your arguments).

That said, the part I've retained in the quote is wrong, because horses simply don't vibrate at anything resembling that frequency. The closest thing you'd find is a heartbeat, and that's still only 180 bpm even at the highest rates during exercise - my research into typical vibrator frequencies has, thus far, been unproductive however. Maybe I overestimate them, but I would be surprised if the range overlaps. But that's assuming you could somehow sense it (you're almost certain not to unless you're bareback riding, naked, and have a very sensitive sense of pressure). Even if it were fast enough, and a rider could feel it, I'm still doubtful that the force would be applied in the right way; it'd be entirely perpendicular to the surface, which I am pretty sure is not helpful for a vibrator (somebody who's actually used one can enlighten me).

Realistically, the only shocks the rider is going to feel are from the actual movement of the horse, which will not even approach the kind of stimulation you're talking about. It could more accurately be compared to sitting down repeatedly on an oddly-shaped chair, unless I grossly misunderstand the mechanics.

EDIT: Oh, and just to put the spoiler title in perspective, the first thread I ever started on these boards was entitled "Dwarven Sex: Or, the Making of Gimli", so you should know I do not think highly of this one.

Spoiler: Serious Business (click to show/hide)

@Dwarf_Fever
I doubt he did both, but it's irrelevant. Your comment was about the appeal of horses and ponies, not about the activities one might engage in to display that interest.

I'm not making that assumption, though, as far as I can tell. I agree with you! That assumption is often made. It's also entirely and completely beside the point of what you quoted - which was that, regardless of origin, the current cultural norm is that girls interested in sports are "quirky" or otherwise unusual, and there's often (but not always) a negative connotation associated with it. Horseback riding is one of the few exceptions, though it does require wealth.

I'm familiar with the Smurfette Principle, and I follow your reasoning right up until "the exact reverse". Which is to say, not very far; there's no character whose defining characterstic is "masculinity" in the show. The closest is Spike, and he doesn't seem to be adequately described by being labeled "dudely". I further don't get where this "emasculation" stuff is coming from, you'll really have to explain that to me; if a key part of the following involved insisting that "masculine" stuff is bad, that'd be another thing. But judging from the popularity of Pony/Warhammer crossovers (and if you can think of a more stereotypically manly setting than Warhammer 40k, holy shit), that's just not the case.

From some research, I can say with confidence that I lack the knowledge necessary to comment on the Tom Martin case competently - it's plausible that he's correct, but it's far from certain. I'd need to actually read the material for those courses in order to determine whether I think there's institutionalized sexism there, and to be honest, I wouldn't care enough if the material even existed for me to read because it would be hours upon hours of reading just so I could nitpick somebody else's argument over the internet.

I feel dirty now for typing all this out. I'm... just going to stop posting in this thread for the night. Even provided rational responses, I'm too tired to research and respond properly, and I feel bad for the derail.

In other news, I am incredibly happy that Discord's resemblance to Q was deliberate.

EDIT: In fact, to commemorate just how awful I feel about this conversation, I'm changing my avatar to better describe my feelings toward both myself, and the people I'm arguing with.

[kaijyuu]

What's the point to this argument, again? Sure I can see the interest in statistical correlations regarding interest in horses and gender if you're, say, a marketer selling toys. I don't see a valid point to be made to anyone here, though.

[LordBucket]

the part I've retained in the quote is wrong, because horses
simply don't vibrate at anything resembling that frequency.

You didn't think that through very carefully.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Are you serious? Penises don't vibrate at 3000 rpms either. Nevertheless, they are obviously capable of sexual stimulation.

I feel dirty now for typing all this out.

Aww...don't feel that way. This is supposed to be a nice thread. So here's a happy, bouncing Pinkie Pie to make you feel all better.