My Little Ktlikitkak

"Seems that folks turn into things
That they never want
The only thing to live for is today"

 

The Ramones (or Tom Waits originally) - I Don't Want To Grow Up

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"After everything they've been through, they're still monsters!!"

Endtown 2013/08/20

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"Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so"

Bertrand Russell

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Before we start I simply must specify that I am not a brony. Got that? For added clarity: I. AM. NOT. A. BRONY.

Of course, pretty much nobody is, given the whole "brony" fad died down as nonsensically as it sprang up, with many finally realizing their idolatry centered on a show that never was and never would be anything but a half-hour toy commercial, with all the disdain for quality and coherence that implies. Still waiting for the same coin to drop into Transformers fans' brain-slot. But honestly, I never actually gave a shit about Friendship Is Magic itself. Never watched it, never cared. Ten year old girls exist. SOME programming will be tailored to their tastes. 'Kay, fine, whatever. It was brony-ism itself (adult male fandom) conspicuously coextant with the rise of anti-male snowflake / woke politics, that made me flatten my ears and bar my chompers, as for the life of me I could see no more in it than an abject, primitive auto da fe, waving an eminently girlish banner in performative devotion to female supremacy. Of course, I never took enough of an interest to actively oppose that nonsense either, aside from one blog post back in the early 2010s.

I do, however, miss Unicorn Jelly, an amateurishly drawn and soapboxy webcomic from the early 2000s which nonetheless featured some delightfully obsessive worldbuilding, to the point its plot diagram (spoilers!) rivals that of Dark. Unfortunately, after the first couple of sequels running to 2009, the author went into a dry spell, and broke it... by delving into My Little Pony fan fiction, specifically The Conversion Bureau, centered on the precept that humans are forced to become ponies by a dimensional collision of Earth with Equestria, and everyone lives happily ever after in a magical paradise, free of care, as painfully nice and adorable quadrupeds. As I don't even read fan fiction in general, of anything, I thought to check back when Jennifer Diane Reitz comes to her senses, wraps up that digression, and gets back to JDR originals. As a decade later that has not happened, I decided oh, what the hell, at least this particular fan fiction can't ruin the show for me, and dove in. After all the core material itself cannot be accused of overtaxing one's attention, leaving quality to skill of interpretation, and I happen to like the interpreter.

 

I won't bother with details. JDR, henceforth Chatoyance, obviously repurposed some multiversal ideas from Unicorn Jelly and plays up more direct violence than I'd guess appeals to the core following. Still, after a couple hundred thousand words, I can safely claim to grasp the precepts of dirt ponies, airhead ponies and horny horsies. Most of the collection's inspiration's concentrated in The Taste of Grass, with the previous 27 Ounces providing a bit of backstory and a similar theme in Teacup, Down on the Farm. The farther I get past those the more I find myself skimming instead of reading, but skin-changing's a topic dear to my own demilupine self and The Taste of Grass especially builds a bit of Robinsonesque charm on the idea of a village of freshly transmogrified humans learning to use their new pony bodies and build a community. "Little Stable on the Prairie" if you will.

It also stands out as the only Chatoyance story so far calling into question (minimally and tangentially, but still) this setting's central conceit, ponydom's supposed moral and existential superiority to the human condition. Because ponies are "nice" you see. Of course its flimsiness becomes rapidly apparent, for instance in the false distinction between natural and artificial, juxtaposing a resource-impoverished, polluted industrial hellscape on Earth with lush Equestrian greenery... which is more artificial (created and maintained by pony magic) than any factory. And, while I'd be fine with a transcended cosmic intellect destroying the Earth, I draw the line at lying, general dishonesty and falsification, and especially at brainwashing. See, the ponies are nice because they simply have no choice, being programmed as such, top down, by their deity. There is no room in Chatoyance's Equestria for digression, deviance or free thought. Patterns of thought which don't fit its bucolic charms simply get erased during conversion (i.e. you start talking like a G-rated cartoon) to the point the former humans deliberately erase their own culture.

 

"The pain, the suffering the despair, all of it was gone, and in but one generation, only one single generation, even the memory that it had ever existed would be forever gone.

All they had to do was to simply not speak of it to their foals; and why would they? Tales of a terrible world and a shameful past were best kept buried."

 

Revisionism. More than that, erasing ontology itself, because food for thought is unnecessary in a world where thought itself is unnecessary because mommy Celestia has everything planned out. The unending infernal oblivion of 1984, elevated to paradisiac promises of tasty apples. Well, at least I was right about the inherent infantilism of bronydom. These codependent cloppers stand out particularly in contrast to JDR's past comics, where characters' individuality drove the plot and a forgetfulness ray was presented as a horrific last resort. It's especially striking when you remember the author's been a transsexual for decades prior to writing these little pony yarns. The transition from Unicorn Jelly's vague mysticism and self-made fate to the pony stories' debased begging for addled, subservient happiness is one facet of feminization taken to its logical extreme. What we consider femininity is after all overwhelmingly neoteny, and wishing for a Celestial parental figure to feed you magic power, prevent harm and save you the burden of free thought progresses naturally from such regression. Tone policing aside, let no-one accuse Chatoyance of failing to think things through.

In other words, maybe it's no accident that Chatoyance the former transgressor eventually devolved to espouse the same view on brainwashing for peace as the infamously Mormon Orson Scott Card did in his Homecoming books.