Pretty recently, I found Adam Buckley on YouTube, and I think most of his stuff is pretty funny or agreeable. Even in his less than funny rants, he tends to make a lot of good, intelligent points to certain things while not giving a fuck in the least. That’s what I like most about him. He just doesn’t care. Adam Buckley is about as apathetic as they come, and he makes it pretty clear in some of his videos.

So I became a kind of fan of his and I’ve been listening to a lot of his stuff because I haven’t got a whole lot better to do with my life anyway. I found out that he offered his two cents on bronies. Now, I was intrigued by this. I didn’t know what he was going to say, but, having seen some of his other stuff, I knew he either wouldn’t care or he would offer some valid points one way or another.

After listening to his rant on bronies, it’s pretty clear he isn’t a brony, he has no interest in it, and one might go as far as to say he’s against it. So I wanted to take a little bit to write my opinion on his opinion. And I know he’ll never see this, and if he does, he wouldn’t give a rat’s ass, but I’m going to throw this out there anyway in case others have heard it and they care to see what other people think about it.

Basically, he starts with the fact that different people like different things and he gets that and respects that, but he doesn’t understand why guys in their 20s like MLP because its premise is just so girly. Fair enough. He goes on to say that lots of people judge the show without ever watching a single episode with an open mind and the intent to try and wrap their minds around it. He says he picked S3 E12: Games Ponies Play and gives his version of it. He didn’t particularly enjoy it because the plot was obvious from the get go, the jokes were pony related puns, and Pinkie’s ADHD. He continues that he doesn’t understand the fandom because it doesn’t even have any redeeming qualities for young girls because they go to Shining Armor for help, comparing it to girls who run to men thinking that will solve all their problems. Then he compares us to beliebers and directioneers. Then he talks about cloppers and how that when we participate in a fandom, we’re “partially responsible for what goes on in it,” telling us to ban cloppers from forums and message boards.

So I wanted to pick this apart because there are some points with which I agree and some points that where I think he could be better educated.

On the first part, where he says, “It couldn’t get more fucking girly if each episode taught you how to braid your hair and do your friend’s nails,” I actually completely agree with this. This show is girly. It’s very girly. But look at what the show came from: a toy line designed to be cute to sell to little girls. When have cute ponies ever been considered masculine like Terminator? Never. At least, not in my memory. Maybe there was a time when ponies were the most badass beast on the planet, and they’d make the Arnold Schwarzenegger shit himself, but if there were ever such a time, I haven’t read about it and I don’t remember it.

Next, about people who judge the show prior to watching an episode and having watched an episode himself, I’d like to take a minute to say that even though he’s not a supporter, I have some respect for him for this. There are so many people out there who judge the show just because it’s girly. But I don’t know many people who have done this except my brother. And he watched an episode and he said it wasn’t exactly his thing. He didn’t hate me for it. I’m not any less his brother. His tastes are just different from mine like they always have been. Moving on.

This is what I feel ruined it for me: the episode he picked. Okay, Season 3 had some good ones, but it was mostly subpar in my opinion and I think there are a lot of people who will agree with me on this. As a whole, Season 3 felt rushed. It started off blandly. The openers just weren’t all that good. Out of the 13 episodes in Season 3, I think there are only four that I legitimately enjoyed: Too Many Pinkie Pies, Magic Duel, Sleepless in Ponyville, and Keep Calm and Flutter On. The openers were bland, I couldn’t ever bring myself to relate to Babs Seed, Spike episodes aren’t really all that good, and we never learned anything about Applejack’s parents, although baby Applejack was freaking adorable. Regardless, I’m getting off topic here. What I mean to get at is that Adam picked a pretty terrible episode off of which to judge the whole series. Did he know it wasn’t one of the more popular episodes? No. But he could have done some research instead of just reaching in a hat and pulling out any episode. Now, sure, if the production quality is high, then every episode should be great, right? Well, yeah, but you’re always going to have those that just don’t meet your expectations. In any case, he should have picked something a little better to go off of. My recommendation? The Season 2 openers.

Next: the plots in the episodes. A lot of bronies will argue that the plots are well thought, excellently executed, and very deep overall. I actually don’t agree with this so much. Actually, I had to side with Adam on this point. The plots are very predictable. They always have been. It doesn’t take a whole ton of foreshadowing to tell what’s going to happen in the show, but one must understand that the plots have to be good enough to keep adults into the show while staying simple enough to keep their target audience. And let’s face it. Even though we’re extra dollars going into Hasbro that they didn’t see coming from this show, the show’s target audience still is, and always has been, preteen girls. You guys, we’re just not getting away from that fact. So the plots have to stay simple. Especially given that the show has a 30 minute runtime and they’re not continuous story arcs like you see a lot in anime. So unless it’s a multi-part episode, the plot can’t really get extremely deep.

Concerning the jokes, Season 3, like I said earlier, was lackluster for me. Again, I only enjoyed 4 of the 13 episodes. That’s only 31%. Compared to the 17/26 I enjoyed in Season 2 (65%) and the 22/26 (85%) in Season 1, then yes, Season 3 really wasn’t all that good in my opinion. As for pony related puns, that’s just a long standing tradition the show has. Is it funny? Not like it used to be. But it’s not like they can just change it because there’d be a lot of people mad that these would be gone. I personally wouldn’t care. As for Pinkie Pie’s ADHD, that’s just how she is. Some people love her for it and others hate her for it.

Continuing, he talks about how Twilight goes to Shining Armor when she’s in over her head. He laughs at it because “they couldn’t have gone with a less subtle name unless they called him Man Pony That Saves Little Girls From Their Own Mistakes.” I just kinda shake this off as invalid since he doesn’t know about Shining Armor’s previous appearance or backstory. Arguing against this is pointless until he figures out that Shining Armor’s character isn’t what his name necessarily means in this episode. Sure, they turn to him for help, but his name comes from his position as an extremely high rank in the pony army. To Celestia, Shining Armor is one of her four-star generals.

As for beliebers and directioneers…I’m not even going to go here. Yes, it’s very easy to compare us to them. But I’m not one to go out wearing a pony shirt in public or ask everyone I see if they like ponies. I’d like to go to a convention, but I don’t think I’d cosplay. At least, not the first time I go.

Finally, I’m going to address cloppers. I can only bring myself to halfway agree with the statement that we’re responsible for what goes on in the fandom. Honestly, concerning the origins of clop, I like to think it was a bunch of trolls who wanted to destroy the innocence of the show so they made clop material. And it caught on with a few folks in the fandom. I think most forums actually do ban users who post R34 material. I know this one doesn’t tolerate it. Besides, if you want clop material, it doesn’t take long to find it on Derpiboo. You don’t even have to search for it. I’ve accidentally stumbled upon some clop stuff and I really didn’t like what I saw, but R34 leaves no exceptions. Except Dora…because that’d be illegal. I did an essay on child pornography for a computer forensics class I took last semester and drawings of child porno are just as illegal (and just as immoral) as photographs and videos. But I’m getting off topic again. Rule 34 leaves no exceptions. And a lot of people will justify clop by saying that the ponies are so much like humans in the fact that they have society and government, different personalities, facial expression, etcetera…whatever. Look, they’re anthromorphic ponies. They show a lot of human traits. But I just can’t use that to justify clopping and it keeps a lot of people from becoming fans because they don’t want to be associated with that. At the same time I just can’t agree that we’re responsible for the actions of other members of the fandom. This is the internet. It’s difficult to monitor and control the actions of others here. Remember this?

Anyway, I’ve ranted myself for long enough. Adam says not to be pissed when people make fun of us and judge us for the show because that’s how people react to things they don’t understand. I agree with this. It’s why things like homosexuality are considered taboo. A lot of people just don’t understand it. It’s so different to them that their very first reaction to it is to condemn it as weird and even hate it. Anyway I’m gonna shut up now. Hope you enjoyed reading my rant that was 2½ pages in Word. I'm gonna get off my soapbox now.