Dear friends and all those who may pass by,

Three days from now, less if we count by hours, I will be leaving the Ozarks for Canada. Specifically, to Quebec, where I will engage in a five-week French language immersion program at the prestigious University of Laval. I hope that while I am there I will not only to improve my proficiency and fluency in the French language, but to experience Quebecois culture by participating in a great number of social activities, and most of all, to demonstrate to my parents that I can, in fact, live independently of them by be able to commit to and take seriously such an intensive program while taking care of myself and looking after my priorities.

It is for this reason that I will be taking a hiatus from MLPForums for the next five weeks, starting on July 5^th.

In fact, as much as I love being on the forums, I must take a break from it in order to preserve whatever sanity I still have left and to build up whatever I have lost ever since I became a brony. Trying to immerse myself in a different culture and language seems to be one of the best ways to do it.

As I continue to mature (currently I’m 23 years old and still an undergraduate), I realize that in many ways, my participation in the brony culture has been more destructive than I was, at times, much less willing to admit. Much of this stems from both a simple, naïve fascination with the show and its fandom and an almost Hegelian desire for recognition within the fandom. In several ways, these two are intimately related.

Had people not touted the merits of the show with an almost evangelical zeal, I likely would not have given the show a second thought. Of course, this statement is true of many a brony around here, and might as well be true of any cultural meme—nothing becomes popular solely on its own merits. Nor is its popularity necessarily proportional to its own merits—an example often told by economists to illustrate this point often note that an opera star like Renee Fleming is really only slightly better objectively than many a lyric soprano out there, which somehow gives her so many more fans and so much more money. Someone, perhaps a critic, perhaps just a casual opera fan, somehow picks up on some subtle difference, and suddenly the whole opera world goes wild so long as she maintains even that marginal difference of competence. Such it is with television shows too.

What differentiates me from the critics and the more astute cartoon fans out there is that I have virtually no experience with children’s cartoon shows than this. And yet I tout myself as a critic who actually believes that this show actually is considerably better than most of its competition when I really have no justified basis of doing so. Nor do I even have much experience with television in general; as the only shows I watched with any sort of frequency are the Pokemon anime series, The Simpsons and The Bullwinkle Show reruns. The latter two, of course, have their popularity for many of the same reasons that MLP:FiM does, but of course each are quite removed from MLPF:FiM in numerous respects—though the Bullwinkle Show was created as a children’s show, it might as well have been for the adults given its constant stream of Cold War satire and stuff children would never be able to understand. The Simpsons, of course, was never intended for children, even if it today (and even back in its inception when there was more of a focus on Bart than Homer) it remains one of the more family-friendly “adult” cartoons out there. (Curiously enough, Kyorena has compared MLP:FiM’s character sensitivity to that of The Simpsons, one of the most laudatory praises I have yet seen.) As far as the Pokemon anime series goes, I watched it at too young an age, not being mature enough to have contempt for it whenever it engaged in bad writing like the other two. Indeed, all I can say is that it is mediocre at best, certainly that its character development pales that of MLP:FiM, but without any specific examples. (And even for the latter two I did not criticize on a regular basis even when it was deserved.) Meanwhile, many of our most respected MLP:FiM critics have extensive pedigrees in other fandoms, both past and present, giving them not only a wider variety of entertainment to draw from, but, in many cases, more appropriate ones.

In short, as much as I like to believe otherwise, I am barely qualified to be a serious critic, having never engaged much in television to extend my credibility and inform my judgments.

What I do have, though, that perhaps gives me the façade of credibility, is my philosophy major. Thus I have instilled in me a variety of ideas on what is ethical behavior and principles and what is aesthetically pleasing[1], but most of all how to reason on these sorts of issues, with an emphasis on intellectual integrity and not only a respect of alternative viewpoints, but a sincere consideration of them without any privilege to one’s own. These, of course, are integral to being a responsible critic of any show. I, in fact, have failed more in this regard than I have passed. While I have absorbed particular criticisms of an episode and its aesthetic and ethical implications and in many cases, have accepted them as valid and even superior to my own at least by their own logic, I never make much of an effort to instill in myself a systematic aesthetic philosophy to the point which what I like is logically “correct”. This results in a haphazard and capricious application of such principles that merely justify a raw, irrational impression of an episode that might as well depend on what I ate (or didn’t eat) for breakfast.

Why else, then, would I criticize “Pinkie Pride” and call the Remane 5’s abandonment of Pinkie Pie morally equivalent of what happened in “Mare-Do-Well” when I knew full well of the differing circumstances? Although I still hold on to Twilight’s complacency in allowing the Goof-Off to go on as problematic, much of my dislike still hides a mere hatred of the hype that surrounded Weird Al’s appearance. Why else would I still put “Maud Pie” in my “Near Love” pile because I am somewhat sympathetic to the Maud hype and I liked the unconventional humor when I increasingly believe that it portrayed the conflict incorrectly and dishonestly (that is, by putting too much blame on the Remane 5 and not enough on Maud and Pinkie Pie themselves)?

All this is further exacerbated by my near total identity of myself not only by my bronyhood, but also by a desire to be a reputed and distinct critic within the fandom. This is where my previous assertion of “an almost Hegelian desire for recognition” comes into play. I refer to the idea that in order for one’s consciousness to be satisfied, in the early stages of its development, it must see itself as the sole source of truth (or at least philosophically superior) and expect others to do so. For those of you who have studied Hegel, you’d immediately recognize this as the beginning of the master-slave dialectic. I, of course, have never gone so far as kill other critics in order to support my own (and of course, I might be killed myself) or even enslaved another so that his criticisms would necessarily flow from my own, but in my own mind, I have already won the death struggle, engaging in a perceived battle where I just declare myself the victor and thus assert my own superiority just for my sake[2]. I have believed that just by asserting my own against theirs and not even caring to come to honest terms with them I have demonstrated myself as superior. I have thus negated them on a philosophical level, and now I realize the contradiction that Hegel said I would. Although I politely adjusted my criticisms when critics actually confronted me, it still took a lot of soul-searching to come to terms with myself.

Even today, I still keep awake at night worrying about defending myself from criticisms. In one particular instance, where I was trying to defend my assertion that Fluttershy’s stage fright in “Filli Vanilli” was not necessarily discontinuous from past precedent, I kept on worrying that my reputation was at stake. I pained myself over possible rebuttals and my rebuttals to them. My innate, immature fears still linger, though without the blatant arrogance.

This is perhaps understandable given my desire to go into law, as a lawyer necessarily has to do this all the time if he or she wishes to win a case. That goes into another reason why I feel I must at least go into hiatus for a while: why should I care when I can direct my talents into more productive realms? Why am I not honing my skills arguing how Burwell v. Hobby Lobby was decided so wrongly at every level? Why am I not investigating the latest developments in theoretical chemistry? (And above all, why am I not doing it in French?) My other asserted passions have been lost to Twilight Sparkle et. al. and their creators.

I need to save myself from this obsession. Perhaps in time I will figure out how to make my views coherent and how they can coexist with more productive realms. Perhaps I will meet people interested in law, philosophy, chemistry, and yes, MLP:FiM while in Quebec. Of the latter I will not make it the single-minded interest that creates my identity while I am there.

I need rehabilitation.

Au revoir. Je regrette de devoir y quitter pour un temps.

tl;dr:

1. I'm off to Quebec and I will take a five-week hiatus from this site.

2. I feel that I've failed to live up to critical standards in my writings and qualifications.

3. I realize that failing to live up to these standards, as well as my obsession and near total identification with it, has caused me a good deal of pain.

Footnotes:

[1] In fact, I liken the common criticism of some character being “out-of-character” as an analogous implication of one of Kant’s forms of the Categorical Imperative, namely that one should treat another person (or cartoon pony) always as an end in itself and never merely as a means (in the show's case, a mere plot device). This, of course, is an imperfect analogy, as Kant grounded this in free will and autonomy, and we can't necessarily say that a cartoon pony whose existence is completely dependent on another actually has this. However, we recognize that ponies have been created with a certain personality in mind, made in our image as rational as we are, and that we think of them as autonomous beings once this personality is put in place.

[2] In reality, I considered myself inferior, but hid it out of arrogance.