Duskrunner

I totally forgot about this. The Last Chancers Omnibus intro had a mention about how the Tau race debuted and people thought of them as, well, <i> nice </i> . The authors couldn't have that, and the rulesmakers couldn't have that. It was contrary to the design to have a single good race in the sea of Imperium, Tyranids, Orks, Eldar and (at that time terminator-esque) Necrons. So they added the water caste to the novel, made them insidious, implied racial supremacy a bit toned down compared to the Imperium and in some cases mind control and coercion. Apparently people were satisfied because there was little outcry about the change. The manga-aliens were as bad as the rest of the universe, or would be, and that was that. No change. And just when things returned to the way they were supposed to be (by their standards. new content for MLP takes a few days or weeks. New content for 40k takes months or years) the pony crossovers began. Bronies technically exploiting the bias GW shows to Space Marines, the bias that results in a million chapters of astartes each with a different color scheme, to create Marines with the Mane6 colors - and that upset the 40k fanbase because GW made itself an easy target for that kind of spoof (assuming the interpreted the color schemes negatively). Then fans began to 'mess with' more than the color schemes, they added ponies in power armor to crossed the worlds and they ponified entire worlds and races (eg. replacing all humans with ponies in the Dawn of War trailer). Ponifying didn't meet as much resistence as crossing over. With the cross there was now a genuinely benevolent faction that didn't need to be alien and could integrate into practically every faction. They became the Baneblade of allies (for any brony that doesn't know, the Baneblade is a super-heavy tank for apocalypse that can be converted to be used by almost every factions. Loyalists have inducted Imperial guard, Chaos have traitor guard, Tyranids have genestealer cults and they can function like traitor guard, Tau have human auxiliaries that are also traitor guard, Orks cannibalize tech and have looted Baneblades or build tanks based on it - almost every faction has a fluff excuse and rules to build a straight or slightly converted Baneblade for their army). Ponies have been converted to match the art style of every 40k faction since (eldeer, hogz., etc) So the purist community now had to deal with a sub-culture of 'good guys' in 40k again. A sub-culture that, coincidentally, produces artwork, fan fiction, videos, game mods and homebrew rules at an incredible rate. So, by design the only artwork that distanced itself from joining the bandwagon of 'Ponyhammer' was artwork that showed ponies being butchered by Space Marines or destroyed in Exterminatus. To even show the two in a vs setting pre-fight (like in a fighting game load screen) was to elevate pony to equal footing with 40k. Something the anti-brony's couldn't stand. One bit of unfortunate sadness: Hasbro's treatment of MLP has been very community inclusive. With the exception of a few online games everything is tolerated or at least allowed to slide. There are probably over one hundred fan comic series and dozens of videos and other sort of user-generated content and many are still going. In contrast Games Workshop keeps a very tight lid on its IP. 40k webcomics number in the dozen, maybe 20 with perhaps 4 to 10 still ongoing. And at least one of these operates under a 'parody spelling' setting insisting it is an amalgam of other content (including Starcraft, LOTR and Starship Troopers in space) because GW has and will shut down a webcomic with a C&D. Not for making a profit, but for referencing GW's past mistakes or representing the IP in a way they disagree with. The final nail in the coffin of positive co-existence, ironically, is that the 40k fandom risks GW's litigiation at any moment if presented in its pure form but <i> international parody </i> is protected by law. Meaning canon fan-content can be litigated but parody can't or is less likely to be. So in theory (or practice) Ponyhammer has more staying power on the web than their faithful-to-canon works. That has to be frustrating. The combination of these two factors, possibly, explains why there are similarly hundreds of 'positive' crossover images and animatics to the relative dozen of 'negative' crossovers (pony brutalization). And finally, there's the one big heartbreak. For MLP it was 'Fighting is Magic (2011-2013)', the two year labor-of-love that was C&D'ed a month before it was finished. The 40k community suffered the same loss with the german fan-film 'Damnatus: the Enemy Within (2005-2007)'. Both projects were meant to be a community rallying point, a sort of 'thank-you' to the fandoms that inspired them and a 'you rock!' to the universes they were praising. They were also meant to be free and distributed through community to community members. The sting to the community wasn't quite the same, technically, as the Mane6 team was/is at this point a collection of no more than 10 highly skilled individual programmers, musicians and artists. Idk if they were all or in part professionals or graduates in their fields who joined together for a fan project. At the very least however, they spent time on a project that unfortunately died but grew throughout the course of the project. And (biased) if I read on a resume for a programmer or artist that he was part of the team that produced the cancelled Fighing Is Magic project I would consider that a plus. On the other hand Damnatus was a fan-film project, one that made use of a crew of 80 fans. The cost of the project was approx. 10,000 euros (13,000 USD). It is unclear whether the cost included each crewmember's costume. It is worth noting that the average expense to make Space Marine armor from scratch is 2,000 - 3,000 USD not including labor. The debate about which group lost more and gained less will probably favor the Damnatus crew vs the Main6 team in the end. The argument over which fandom lost more in the end from the project's cancelation is, imo, up in the air. As expected, there are a lot of similarities between the two fandoms in both content, artistic ability, history, and raw talent. And depending on the size of the minority that takes umbrage at the comparison, there's the explanation for the hate-art. And I'm standing on a soap-box. I'll get off this now...

I wanted to say that the only thing that makes the brony a brony is the brony. Perhaps what truly makes the brony, are the contents of his heart.

I didn't find it funny, probably because it's the same old joke and criticisms that I've heard from Howard Stern, FOX news, the first video and the internet in general. They had to make the toys and that wasn't bad, and the little girl actresses are really good: I think a lot of brony parents are gonna close doors wondering if their kids might do the same toy playing about them. College humor are spoofers and satirists and typically I'm ok with that but the subject matter has to be fresh or a clever re-imagining. Making bronies toys wasn't enough of a breath of new life imo. They said all they needed to in the first video, which I did appreciate because the animation was pretty cool. My response to the original as a social criticism is pretty much exact from http://mlpforums.com/topic/58200-how-did-warhammer-40000-become-the-symbol-of-pony-brutalization/page-2#entry1837858 My response to this as humor is that it was just too little.

'A Friend for Life' is my favorite. I think i listened to 10 different theater recordings of it and was finally satisfied when someone shared the full song. It's very cheerful, really picks me up when I got a soured mood and just elicits pleasant memories. I liked the opening remix almost as much and I'm dying to think someone who has the skill and instruments might copy the style and form for the remix and perform the leaked full 2 minute song in that style. 'This is Our Big Night' would be improved imo if someone could fuse the song and its reprise into a longer one.

Oh I agree entirely. 99 times out of 100 the order given would be 'purge'. My point is that there are enough exceptions that a small contingent would be accepted with no more thought than 'Huh, fething argalamites and their multicolored cavalry. Wait, did that pony just backtalk at me??" The main situation under which ponies would be brought into the Imperium would require a) an existing loyalist human population that embraced them. Like all mutant and abhuman societies within the Imperium, their existence is tolerated IF there's an established human society that dark-vouches for them, saying they need the little freaks to keep the mines/ factories/ wells/ foundries/ whatever running. Note this does not deminish the 'pure' Imperial city propaganda and the occasional Ecclesiarchy fueled incident leading to a hate murder or lynch riot. the protected status from an unquestionable authority. The Imperial bureaucracy is top heavy and many positions such as this exist within the planetary government, planetary nobility, Ecclesiarchy officials, and of course the mechanicum and legion astartes. c) sanctioned biological status. The most likely result of Mechanicum intervention. All that's needed is a techpriest authority declaring ponies a sacred genetic evolution produced before the age of strife that has endured to the present age or similar and it's grandfathered in under the cult's monopoloy of beliefs and untouchability to the Imperium at large. yes this defies rationality, but then so does making a prayer before flipping on a light switch. In the face of floating skulls, stillborn infant cyborgs with mechanical wings, mechanic orangutans, and all sort of slap-dash augmentics and surgical alterations that result in men with horse faces, silverback forklifts, flesh golems and other fresh horrors (reference Eisenhorn and Ravenor omnibuses) and thinking the cogs made ponies with huge eyes that were intelligent, could fly, or power technologies via a horn isn't off. Of course those little buckers better recognize that they're inferior. Equality talk will lead to a purge no different than beastmen endured. My next post will be more on topic to the original discussion

Death Corp love horses. It doesn't surprise me too much to think they'd adopt them into their ranks. There's an underlying hypocrisy in 40k, and it's aware of itself and uses it to add a layer of depth understandably enough. They hate things they can't survive without. It makes me think some units would actually accept ponies depending on circumstance. Consider the grox. It's the most common thing in the universe, agri worlds grow them by the billions and as far as I know they aren't cows and oviously they aren't terran so they must be xenos in origin. And they're grandfathered in. The Gaunt's Ghosts book Straight Silver had the local cavalry riding 'struthids', essentially gray Chocobos. And then of course there's the Grey Knights, most crusader of crusaders, and their psyber-orangutan Jokaero weaponsmiths. They can handle intelligent animals, they can handle semi-xenos animals, and they can handle multicolored animals (especially from night worlds and cavern / tunnel worlds where the lack of light means their coloring is completely irrelevant). As usual in 40k, it all depends on which unit, Inquisitor, or Commisar, makes first contact.

They inspire me. My current ambition is to finish my MLP Warhammer 40k crossover. A genuine tries-to-fit-into-the-canon crossover, I had it happen as a consequence of the S3 finale. Then Equestria Girls happened and one of the lessons I wanted to bring in from the fanfic was addressed in the movie, so I had to tweak it a bit to make it fit and altered the end so it'd lead into EG. By now the fanfic incorporates all the stuff I originally envisioned and doesn't contradict any of the previous canon and accounts for one pony's personality traits with a few theories I haven't seen before. Will it pan out? Will season 4 wreck it and i end up hating myself because I didn't get it finished before the premier? Maybe, but I'm a big boy and i can handle it It's the fandom interpretations that kill me more than show canon. I have a version of Derpy and Sparkler that works. Fliter and Cloudchaser aren't too big a problem. But writing up Golden Harvest / Carrot Top from scratch? Interpreting the Lyra Bon dynamics? Messing with Scratch and Tavi? Now that's scary for a fic writer. -Dusk

my thoughts; Flash is sadly two people, and as a full romance Flash is set up to be a tragic character. When you think about it, we all want someone to fall in love with us because of who we are. Twilight falling for Flash -and she didn't fall for him by the way: this wasn't a romance or first love or first kiss even, it was a healthy attraction that didn't go much beyond constantly bumping into each other and even there Flash comes off as a pretty good guy because his 3 main interactions are backing up an impromptu cafeteria performance with the musicians, proving a girl was Photoshopped into a bad situation, and getting down on all fours to dance in a frankly embarrassing way but that's another argument- Twilight falling for Flash would be tragic because she fell in love with the human, not the pony. So if she pursued a relationship in Equestria it'd be colored by trying to kindle a spark someone else ignited, someone who might be different. Or if he tried to pursue her he'd be competing with the memory of someone else. Addressing a Twilight infatuation with Flash would be deeper than your typical hearts-in-the-eyes attraction precisely because the Cinderella's Ball atmosphere of her first dance (if you argue the attraction didn't happen at first bump) means a real pony has to compete with the idealized man on the dream adventure date. Nothing about this relationship speaks about puppy love, schoolgirl crush or casual fling if it's allowed to progress keeping its nuances firmly in mind. I think the world of Flash because as a character he could have opened the door to trope but didn't. Instead, he allows opportunity to maturely resolve a very real complication about love that too often in our world devolves to cowardice, heartache or drama.

I'm new to the forum so late to this topic, but if anyone minds me adding to it (if it's closed or all talked out) I don't mind deleting. Some of you are familiar with the brony jokes from the youtube movie College humor made. By now I think they've made 2, maybe 3. I refer to the animated one obviously. The other day I daydreamed pretty much the exact same cartoon played out with my collection. Pinkie's 'What does he want with us? We're meant for little girls!' scenario turned meta Toy Story spin off with my Shining Armor interrupting and a conversation going a bit like this SA "What's that got to do with anything?" TS "BBBFF! We have to get outta here. This guy's creepy and we're not supposed to be here." PP "Yeah! We're supposed to get our mane brushed and have tea parties and sleepovers and stuff." SA "First, you're from the 2 inch blindbag line. Nobody's gonna be able to brush your mane. Second aren't you jumping to conclusions a bit? he's not a bad guy." TS "He's 30!" "This place is a mess." "He'll get food dust on us" PP "Can pony toys be violated?" SA "Whoa whoa whoa! First, I don't think I've seen him do anything more than the kissykissy bit-" Cadance "Shining..." SA "Ok, He did it to me and Cadance but I think he was just getting it outta his system since he saw some-pony do it in episode." PP "oh yeah, I did hee hee." SA "And you all aren't here for wierd stuff or gross stuff. You've been volunteered. (sigh) you explain it Twily." TS "A second me?!" TS2 "heh, Afraid so." TS "Why are you here?" TS2 "I came with Shining and Cadance in the wedding 3 pack obviously." TS "Why would he want one of me, let alone two?" Twilight Sparkle 2 steps out, her hooves and chest covered in Super Sculpey. TS2 "Well we are the same person and this stuff isn't easy to make and remove. Obviously he wants me armored and unarmored." TS "Why are you armored?!" Space Marine Rarity, RD and AJ enter. RD "Because we're the most awesome guys ever!" Rarity "We are suited to the variety and it is such a fresh new avenue to explore. At first I didn't think power armor would suit me but this tabard truly makes the look come together." AJ "Technically, we're replacing a bunch of Space Marines in a board game called Space Hulk. He likes us a lot more than a bunch of anonymouse Blood Angels. But he reckons if he gets and makes enough of us he might as well have fun, maybe even pen his own version of Codex: Equestria or something." RD "These Lightning Claws are. So. Awesome! I'm gonna tear those daemons and genestealers apart!" TS "Demons?!" AJ "He's homeruling them for different models. Just tyranids gets borin' he thinks. Lookit these fancy galoshes. Power Hooves, reckon ah could buck through an apple tree with a tap; not that I ever would mind you, poor things." TS "Rarity you're ok with this?" Rarity: "Well i admit I was nervous at first but then he got inspired by these pictures someone drew of me with a sniper rifle and one as a archer and the next thing I knew he was modeling a lascannon to me and of course by then I understood I need only practice patience guarding the far end of a long corridor and that appealed to me. Of course that's another homerule he's testing so it may be, how did he put it? in need of 'nerfing' down the line. But as you see..." TS "Pinkie, back me up." PP "You got it partner." RD "All the SFM team fortress videos he's seen convinced him to start modelng a combi-flamer for ya..." PP "I'm not convinced." RD "And he ordered a mortar from a bits site to make you a party cannon." PP "I'm sold. So where's 2nd me?" AJ "Not here yet. He'll get regular or armored 'you' once the Cakes Family set is out." PP "And then the two of us will merge into one consciousness depending on whether we're armored or normal or enacting a dream sequence or crossover fictioning!" AJ "... you do realize that knowing all your strange talk for the fancy 4th-wall breaking that it is, on account of the fact that we're aware we're all toys, does nothing to make it easier to listen to as it's happening, right sugarcube?" PP "It's a gift. Batman and Iron Man action figures do it all the time. So when're 'the Twilight's' gonna become 'the Twilight'? ooh, and is there gonna be a third or is someone getting cannibalized for wings?" AJ "He prefers the term 'modded' for our sensitivities, even if he does use 'cannibalized' more often like when he got all them shoulderpads." PP "Sounds complicated. How will he decide which of us he want to keep 'normal'? Is it the quality of our painting? Does the process take long?" AJ "Longer for some than others. I need mah hat and he's giving me a power whip but those are separate issues. Lyra needs hair replacement but he doesn't have a 2nd yet so she's just 'normal for a while'. Big MacIntosh is undergoing the process but he's carrying storm shields and those have gotta be sculpted from scratch so he's gonna be stuck up on the shelf for a while." Big Mac "Eeyup." TS "Will everypony BE QUIET!?!" TS "We're not that kind of toy. We're not supposed to fight nightcrawlers or demons or whatever. We're just supposed to do little girl stuff!" SA "Twily... you're not." SA "First episode, Rarity mule-kicked a Manticore and you charged Nightmare Moon like a warhorse. You guys have put up your hooves against timberwolves, dragons and changelings. Heck, you've brawled with each other now and then too. You're some of the deepest, most complex and best-written believable girls on television today. Maybe ever. And people of all ages and both genders love you for it." TS "But... Toy. Girls." SA "Twily... you're either a soulless piece of plastic made in China and it doesn't matter how anyone plays with you, or you're Twilight Sparkle, the bravest of unicorns and the bestest little sister in the whole world, who'd stand up to anything, including monster bugs, demons, mutants, madmen, racists and heretics, for the sake of her friends." He scooted over a pair of finished Grey Knight shoulderpads. Each had an integrated book on the shoulder. The one she guessed was the 'left' had a little sketch that somewhat resembled a pony with an aura. The other open book simply held lines of squiggles meant to represent script. SA "He's redone them a couple of times now, trying to make them perfect. He doesn't want you girls forced with guns. He's trying to make you girls as you, in this world. I could use the word 'care' or 'effort', but honestly, he's put a lot of 'love' into making these for you guys. Do you really think that's so different from what a little girl could?" Twilight's smiled and her eyes glowed with magic as she fused with Space Marine Librarian Twilight. One pony, one thought, two bodies. Months later the board was set up and the power armored versions of the Main 6 were setting up. It had taken that long to get a proper-haired Fluttershy, never-mind two. TS "Ok girls, Suicide run. You know what that means: he's testing new home rules. Rainbow Dash you're the fastest so you're on point to open doors and reveal the hallways. Fluttershy you're backup to keep that first corridor clear. Pinkie you're just behind me. My librarian powers are OP for this scenario but it's balanced by the fact that you're the required flamer and combi rules mean you only have one shot. AJ you're covering as needed. Rarity, you're camping to keep the main corridor clear. All right, let's squish some bugs. For the twin Princesses!" all "In the name of Faust, the God-Empress!" of course, no way I'm animating that to make it a response to College humor's vid