Pony Thought of the Day: BESM Weather Control

Here's another new BESM attribute for my pony game. The ability to use weather to attack hasn't shown up much in the show, but seems logical, is crucial to Turnabout Storm, and made possible one of Rainbow Dash's best moments in the big crossover game I ran at Anime USA (specifically, it's how she beat LadyDevimon). So I tossed it in.

Weather Control (3/level): You have the ability to physically manipulate clouds and winds. Unlike Environmental Control, which is supernatural or technological, this requires you to physically move air and clouds, and therefore requires your full attention. However, again unlike Environmental Control, it can be used to attack with wind, rain, snow, or lightning. (Treat the attack as a Weapon Attack of one level lower than the pony's level of Weather Control).

• Level 1: You can stand and walk on clouds as if they are ground.
• Level 2: You can move individual clouds to create precipitation, lightning, or sunshine over a small area (5-meter radius). You can only create temperature-appropriate effects (that is, you cannot make it snow on a hot day). You can also create gentle breezes.
• Level 3: You can move multiple clouds in a round to control the weather in a larger area (30-meter radius). You can still only create temperature-appropriate effects, and create stronger gusts of wind.
• Level 4: You can control weather in a 100-meter radius, create temperature inappropriate effects (such as snow in summer), and create gale-force winds.
• Level 5: You can control weather in a 200-meter radius, including temperature-inappropriate effects, and create winds strong enough to knock ponies over (Body check to prevent).
• Level 6: You can clear the sky over an entire town in ten seconds flat, or otherwise control the weather for a town-sized area, and create tornado-strength winds.

Pony Thought of the Day: More Thoughts on Toys

Still looking at my Lyra fig, and thinking about how little it looks like an actual Friendship Is Magic character from the front, it occurs to me: Are the characters even physically possible? I don't mean as living things or anything like that; I mean as three-dimensional shapes. I'm not an artist, and I'm kind of awful at spatial reasoning, but it seems to me like the face-on views in the show are not compatible with the profile views--there's no possible head shape for a toy that would accurately capture both angles.

Pony Thought of the Day: Toys and Idols

I'm sitting staring at my Lyra, trying to figure out today's Pony Thought of the Day, and so I find myself thinking about why the toy is where it is.

Lyra lives on my desk, between my monitors, and it is under her watchful, judgmental gaze that I do my work. Having her watch me makes me less distractable, or at least I think it does, and that amounts to the same thing in the end.

In this sense she functions very much like one use of an idol or household god. I think sometimes part of the price we pay for having monotheistic religions dominate in our culture is that we've lost this notion of making your own watchers, rituals, and superstitions, but play can sometimes restore this loss.

Which isn't to say that I think Lyra is somehow real or that some sort of divine energy inhabits the little lump of green plastic on my desk or anything like that. It's entirely something I've constructed; Lyra's "watchful gaze" exists only in my imagination. Her effect on my productivity is pure placebo.

But so what?

Pony Thought of the Day: Pigs

If ponies don't eat meat, why do the Apples have pigs?

Pony Thought of the Day: Inauspicious Beginnings

Man, the first episode of Friendship Is Witchcraft really wasn't that great. It's a good thing it got better as it went.

Pony Thought of the Day: Repeat Cutie Marks

There's a few cutie marks that show up repeatedly on background ponies, and sometimes I like to speculate on what they might mean about the pony who has them. Here's a few.

• Carrot: Excellent eyesight, proficiency at bad prop comedy.
• Fleur de Lis: Snooty superiority, bad spelling, and frankly overrated cooking abilities, but a real knack for breakfast pastries.
• Compass Rose: Unerring sense of direction, tendency to declare anywhere they don't feel like going to be full of dragons.
• Hourglass: Time Lord, natch.

Pony Thought of the Day: Poison Joke and the CMC

Was reading through the Friendship Is Dragons archive for dark and terrible reasons that will become clear Sunday, and one of the commenters asked an interesting question: What would happen to the CMC if they stumbled on poison joke?

Here's my guesses:

Scootaloo's legs vanish/stop working, and she has to fly everywhere.

Sweetie Bell becomes invisible and inaudible to everyone except Rarity.

Apple Bloom gets Niven's "Keller eyes" power, a.k.a. the ability of Doctor Who's Silence: Anypony not currently looking at her forgets she ever existed.

...Wow, poison joke is horrifying.

Anyway, what do you think?

Pony Thought of the Day: BESM Blank Flanks

Since I posted the BESM Cutie Mark attribute I made, here's the Blank Flank attribute.

Blank Flank (4/level): You have not yet discovered your special talent. All ponies with this attribute must take Marked -1 (Blank Flank) and Ageism -1 to represent that ponies regard acquiring a cutie mark as a rite of passage. At some point during the game, the GM identifies your special talent, but does not tell the player (it is recommended for the GM to wait at least a couple of sessions, in order to get to know the character and identify an appropriate talent). At this point, the GM begins applying the talent to rolls as appropriate (see the Cutie Mark attribute), again without telling the player. If the player guesses the talent (or something suitably close to have received the same bonuses), then after a successful roll that receives the Blank Flank bonus, the attribute is removed and replaced by the Cutie Mark attribute. For each level of Blank Flank the character possesses, the player receives 4 points; the first two must be spent to remove the Marked (Blank Flank) and Ageism defects, and all others must be spent on the Cutie Mark attribute. Any leftover points can be combined with future character advancement points, but only for purposes of increasing the level of the Cutie Mark attribute.

Example: Sweetie Bell possesses Blank Flank at level 1, along with Marked (Blank Flank) -1 and Ageism -1. After a couple of sessions, the GM identifies singing as her special talent. A few sessions later, after succeeding with a bad roll on a difficult Performing Arts (Singing) skill check, the player correctly identifies Sweetie's special talent as singing. She gains a cutie mark (the player chooses a microphone, and the GM agrees) and 4 character points. The first two must be spent to remove her Marked and Ageism defects, and the remaining two on the Cutie Mark attribute. Since Cutie Mark (Singing) has only narrow, non-combat applications, it is only 1 point per level, so Sweetie Bell's player replaces Blank Flank 1 with Cutie Mark (Singing) 2.

Pony Thought of the Day: Sutiven Magunetto

Finally saw the second episode of Tomodachi wa Mahou, and wow. I thought the voice casting on the Mane Six was good, but Steven Magnet? One-hundred percent absolutely perfect. The voice director is clearly not only paying close attention to the English voices, but actually playing them for the Japanese actors. There's no other explanation for how closely he matches the tone.

Pony Thought of the Day: Japanese MLP Evaporating

Is it just me, or is Hasbro being MUCH more aggressive about getting Japanese MLP episodes pulled off YouTube than English episodes?

Pony Thought of the Day: Cutie Marks in BESM

At the request of some folks in the DC Brony Society, I've been working on an MLP campaign in the out-of-print anime RPG Big Eyes, Small Mouths (Second Edition, a.k.a. "the good one"). I've worked up a few new attributes, and here's the first and most obvious, Cutie Mark.

Cutie Mark (1-5 CP/level): You possess a special talent in which you excel. On taking the Cutie Mark, identify both the talent and the mark which symbolizes it (both subject to GM approval). Add your level of Cutie Mark to any rolls involving your special talent.

Example: Sweetie Bell acquires Cutie Mark (Singing) level 2, in addition to Soul 5 and Performing Arts (Singing) 3. The next time she makes a Performing Arts (Singing) check, her target number is her Soul stat (5), plus her level of Performing Arts (3), plus 1 for having the appropriate specialization, plus her level of Cutie Mark (2), for a total of 5+3+1+2=11. Assuming no difficulty modifiers, she must roll an 11 or lower to succeed.

The cost per level of Cutie Mark varies depending on how widely applicable the special talent is:

• 1/level: The special talent is usually only applicable to a few non-combat rolls which only rarely come up in normal play, such as apple farming.
• 2/level: The special talent is applicable to a variety of non-combat rolls, none of which occur frequently, or applicable to a narrow selection of rolls which come up frequently, such as carpentry.
• 3/level: The special talent is applicable to a variety of non-combat rolls, some or all of which come up frequently, such as parties.
• 4/level: The special talent is applicable to a variety of non-combat rolls and/or a narrow selection of combat rolls, such as stunts.
• 5/level: The special talent is applicable to a wide variety of combat and non-combat rolls, and/or is deemed very powerful by the GM, such as speed or magic.

Note that the specific cost of a talent may vary according to the type of game. In a game focused on competing in agricultural fairs, Cutie Mark (Apple Farming) might be 5 points per level!

Pony Thought of the Day: Mocking the Fans

Since the beginning of the month, I've noticed that Meghan McCarthy has taken what could be called a "gently mocking" tone toward fans that are unhappy about Twilight becoming an alicorn.

I have to say, I'm relieved. Not because I particularly care whether or not Twilight has wings, but because it shows clearly that the people in charge of the show are not listening to the fans. That's a good thing! As I argued in my "Double Rainboom" review and as I will likely continue to discuss, especially in fanworks month but also throughout the project, fandoms (as opposed to individual fans) tend to not actually be very good at identifying what makes their shows good. A Friendship Is Magic driven by the opinions of the most vocal fans would be an utter mess, consisting of nothing but Fan-Favorite Character of the Week Returns, an endless stream of references, and characters reduced to their ask-whichever Tumblr caricatures.

Pony Thought of the Day: Fillies for Feminism

I have an article on MLP up at the Slacktiverse! It's called "Fillies for Feminism," and discusses why MLP is important and valuable from a feminist perspective.

Pony Thought of the Day: Exploding "Girliness"

There's a video by Digibrony called "Embracing Girliness" going around, and I think it does a good job highlighting how MLP criticizes one of the fundamental injustices of our society, that "feminine" traits are devalued relative to "masculine" traits.

However, I think he still implicitly assumes that there are such things as objectively masculine and feminine traits, and as such misses one of the other things the show does well, which is exploding the masculinity/femininity binary to begin with.

While male and female humans differ physically, the notion that certain psychological traits or interests are "masculine" and certain "feminine"--a belief known as gender essentialism--has no basis in reality. This is not (just) my typically liberal, feminist opinion; it's a matter of scientific fact. (For the less statistics-minded among you: If people fall into two distinct groups, then there should be two spikes on the graph, one for each group, as in the strength graph behind the link. If there aren't two spikes, it means that people don't fall into two distinct groups, as in the assertiveness graph. In the latter case, it possible that the "average" man is more assertive than the "average" woman or vice versa; however, there's so much overlap between the two groups that the average is basically meaningless.)

Society has arbitrarily decided that men should have certain traits and women should have certain other traits, and it punishes people who do not possess their gender's assigned traits or, worse still, possess the other gender's assigned traits. However, that's something we collectively decided to do; we can just as easily collectively decide not to do it. The "just like a boy" scene Digibrony shows is a rare misstep in a show that otherwise does an excellent job of avoiding gender essentialism by giving every main character, Spike included, both stereotypically masculine and stereotypically feminine traits.

Pony Thought of the Day: She Of the Crossed Eyes

I'll get more into this when I get to "The Last Round-Up," most likely, but my least favorite fanon character is Derpy Hooves. I don't like the exploitative, mawkish nature of the way she's used (the Save Derpy YouTube video is the worst offender), the ableist assumptions that went into her genesis, the slur in her name... she represents a side of bronies I'm always troubled to encounter.

That said, I've seen two interpretations of her I really like. The first is in the Lunaverse, where she's always and only Ditzy Doo (which is marginally better as far as naming people after ableist slurs is concerned), the Element of Kindness, a hardworking single mother who's had a very rough life and is of perfectly normal intelligence, although her education is a little spotty due to aforementioned rough life.

The second is this comic. It's a great interpretation, and I want to see more like this.

Pony Thought of the Day: Slenderpony

Much as I hate "darker and edgier" versions of ponies and grimdark fics, I have to say, I have a soft spot for Slenderpony. Maybe it's just because I love Slenderman, but something about him just *fits* with ponies. I think maybe it's the fact that supposedly he targets children, yet in pretty much every Slenderblog and video series he's going after young adults.

Pony Thought of the Day: Farewell, Mr. Ebert

The single greatest thing about Roger Ebert, in my opinion, is that he was one of the very few professional critics, and to my knowledge the first big-name critic, to take children's media and animation seriously. He understood that they are art, just as much as any Serious Drama is art, and that they are a significant cultural artifact that should be respected, studied, and understood.

In recent years I found myself disagreeing with him a lot, sometimes strenuously. However, I never lost my respect for him. He will be missed.

Welcome to Ponyville, Mr. Ebert.

Pony Thought of the Day: Fanon and the Twilicorn Sparkopalypse

A few days ago, I mentioned a tendency of fandoms to forget that fanon is something they arbitrarily made up, not ironclad fact. I think this tendency is a big part of why some people are butthurt by the whole Twilicorn thing. They have convinced themselves that alicorns are living gods, or that Equestrian princesses have well-defined powers and duties that will isolate Twilight from her friends, or that becoming a princess/alicorn was the end-goal of Twilight's development--all ideas common in fanon, but with no basis in the show--and concluded that her acquisition of wings is an irrevocable and extreme change to the character and to the show.

To this I say: meh. As near as I can tell, the only changes are that Twilight can now fly (which she could have done at any time since at least "Sonic Rainboom") and she'll maybe be occasionally called in to assist the Princesses in an advisory capacity (at least that's how I'm interpreting "We're all your students now.") It's really far less extreme of a change than the one "Winter Wrap-Up" triggers; the difference between pre-"Winter Wrap-Up" Twilight and "Call of the Cutie" Twilight is bigger than the difference between "Crystal Empire" Twilight and post-"Magical Mystery Cure" Twilight.

Pony Thought of the Day: KAWAII!

Wow, I think the Japanese dub is even cuter. Spike's voice makes him immediately more likable (it helps that he's not really a jerk at all in the first episode, of course), Rainbow Dash and Rarity have absolutely perfect voices, Applejack's now genki, which is sort of like almost having a personality... it's really good!

Also I love the opening credits and hate the closing credits.

Pony Thought of the Day: The Downside of Fanworks Month

If I keep doing Fanworks Months between seasons, sooner or later I'm probably going to have to read Cupcakes, won't I?