Crazy pony lady

I have a certain amount of "downtime" during labs, when I'm walking around the room but no one needs help so I can let my mind wander a little bit.

I was thinking about making more crocheted ponies. As I've said before, I have yarn on hand in the appropriate colors for Vinyl Scratch/DJ Pon-3. I also have enough soft pink left (from Fluttershy's mane and tail) to become the pelt of a Pinkie Pie, and I think I still have some pink boucle hanging around that would be about right for her mane. (Even more so, if I crocheted those tight spirals - like the "worm" bookmarks popular when I was a child - to make her curly mane). I admit that Vinyl Scratch poses a bit of a challenge - you can see her here if you don't watch the show - in that she is always shown with big glasses/goggles on. That means there are three options for doing her eyes: first, and simplest, just do felt goggles and sew them on where eyes would be (but that leaves my inner 7 year old stamping her foot and going, "You CAN'T make a pony without EYES. That's NOT RIGHT"). Or I could just do her with regular eyes, and leave off the goggles (which then raises the question: what color are her eyes? Some of the fanart show sort of magenta-colored irises, like the lenses on her goggles). Third, and I think best, would be to do the felt eyes, and then find some red (or better, if I could find it, magenta) clear plastic - like one of those report cover things - and cut the goggle lenses from that, and then sew or heavily glue felt onto the lenses to form the bridges. (I'd probably need some stiffener for the nosepiece). And then I could use black elastic to make a sort of band to hold them onto her head - but they'd be able to be pushed up onto her forehead to reveal her eyes. (And anyway, you'd be able to see her eyes through the clear plastic lenses. So that pleases my inner 7 year old the most.)

Of course, part of me resists this, because I don't want to wind up as a crazy pony lady. (Like the proverbial crazy cat lady, only with ponies). Though I have to admit I like having the ponies around, and as I said once before, after a particularly hard day, I find it oddly comforting to come home, tuck one or more up under my arm, and read while I have them held there. I think they're kind of a pet-substitute - I can't really have furry animals because of my allergies, and anyway, my experience with cats has taught me that many cats will avoid you just when you want them around the most.

One of the things I always feel the need to explain a bit is my fondness for the show. (And actually, it seems to be a wildly popular show, even well out of its demographic). I think there are really two reasons. One of them is probably shared by most so-called "bronies," the other may be more limited to me or people like me.

The first reason is that it's simply a well-done show. It's entertaining, and well-written. They use a lot of the old cartoon tropes that people of my generation (and older) are familiar with from the Bugs Bunny cartoons (I was pretty much cheering a couple weeks ago when Pinkie Pie used a variant of the old "Duck Season/Wabbit Season" switcheroo to accomplish something). I think part of the reason people like it is that it's so surprising - I admit, the first time I sat down to watch it, I thought, "Oh, this is probably going to be awful, one of those half-hour long toy commercials." But it wasn't....it was funny, and clever, and had good characters.

I think the characters are another reason for the popularity - they're very sharply-drawn, for a cartoon. Complex. And one of the things I like about them is they have both strengths and weaknesses, and that a strength can be a weakness at times (Applejack's stubborn attention to duty keeps her from asking for help when she could really use it) and weaknesses can be strengths (Rarity uses her ability to whine and complain - no, I'm serious - to get away from dogs that had kidnapped her and were making her search out gems for them. Heh. "Rarity used WHINE. It's super effective!"*)

(*Though I question the wisdom of showing little girls an instance of where whining and complaining - making yourself extremely annoying - gets you what you want)

The second reason may be more specific to people like me, but then again, from some of the commentary I've read online, perhaps I'm not so odd in liking the show for this reason.

I like the show because it's (mostly) sweet and gentle. It espouses kindness....it's something soft and friendly in a world that increasingly feels like it isn't. (Increasingly, because it's campaign season...) I like cartoons like this one because they offer an escape from the ugliness of the world. While it may not be realistic in some cases to try to solve all your problems by talking them out, and using love and tolerance, still, there's part of me that wants things to be that way. The other thing is, conflicts between the major characters are solved fairly gently...no one goes off to sulk for weeks, no one "unfriends" anyone else in a huff. There's more willingness for ponies to give ponies the benefit of the doubt than what I generally see from people around me...

I think there's a real hunger (and not just in me, at least not, as I said, of what I've read coming from at least some of the Brony community) for a greater level of kindness and of trying to understand where people are coming from before you choose what insult to hurl at them. (After all, one of the tenets of the Bronies is "We're gonna love and tolerate the [daylights] out of you" and while that may not ALWAYS be perfectly applied in practice - vide L'affaire Derpy - still, it exists as an ideal. And I like that idea.

And also, as I said: it's just fluffy and sweet, with lots of pastel colors and pretty things to look at. I think that's worth something, too. And the "morals" are generally kind of nice...a couple of the episodes essentially centered around, "How to cope with a jerk without becoming one yourself" (especially the Gilda episode) and I think that's a valuable lesson for people to know.

To me, the show is kind of like comfort food...maybe the nicest, sweetest kind of comfort food, like a pastel-colored macaron or a warm chocolate-chip muffin just out of the oven.

The shows I watch these days are fairly limited. I still watch NCIS, though I get the feeling it's running down (How many plotlines surrounding a Navy person being killed can be developed?). I don't really watch any sit coms (as I said, when I tried, I was a bit embarrassed at how crude some of the humor was). I like Dirty Jobs, though I think it's on hiatus right now (or maybe it just runs at times I'm not watching tv). I like "Bizarre Foods" a lot. I also enjoy "Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives." I think one thing those three shows have in common is friendly, genial hosts who seem to have an interest in and enthusiasm for the people they meet. By and large the hosts of each of those shows are very positive and encouraging, and I like that.

I watch other cartoons - actually, mainly what I watch now is cartoons. I like "Phineas and Ferb," there are enough sops thrown in there to the adults (little clever jokes that someone with more than 12 years of education will get). I like "Penguins of Madagascar" but again, it's hard to find when it's on. (I think 6 am on Sundays?) I also like "Regular Show," even though it borders on crudeness a lot of the time, and when Mordecai and Rigby do the right thing, it's usually by accident. And I like Adventure Time - though I don't have the same warm, fuzzy feelings about it like I do about the Ponies; the characters just aren't as lovable. (For the record, Marcelline is my favorite character on that show). Also, there's the weird, this-might-be-a-post-apocalyptic-world-where-humans-are-virtually-extinct sort of vibe about the show that gets to me a little at times. (Jake once refers to the "Great Mushroom War," which made me shudder a little - as I grew up during the tag-end of the Cold War and often worried a bit about mushroom clouds when I was a kid)