Web Crush Wednesdays: The Curiosity Landing Team!

Science is awesome. We don’t post a lot about hard science stuff here a lot, (which may be vaguely related to the fact that most if not all of our writers are or were liberal arts majors) but it nevertheless is really, really cool. And one of the coolest things that science has done lately is to put a new rover/laboratory (the Mars Science Laboratory, aka Curiosity) on Mars!

But obviously ‘Science’ isn’t a concrete entity, capable of building skycranes and calculating trajectories. This awesome sciencing didn’t happen without a metric crapton of human effort, and so that’s why today’s Web Crush is the Curiosity Landing Team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory!

These awesome sciencey ladies and gents have been working on this project for eight years, and in the last week following their tremendous success, they’ve become bona-fide internet celebrities. They get major props from me for several reasons (above and beyond the whole ‘bein really smart and good at science’ thing):

Skyrim: Ponies Special Edition

Skyrim is a little more satisfying, a lot more cute, and way more friendship-killing than ever with this Skyrim mod. Want to watch ponies torch the general public of Skyrim? Think of your delight as the ponies vomit fire and ice upon your dragonborn ass. The only thing this mod is missing is gigantic hunks of pony meat to loot from the corpses. I can only hope that this mod is expanded upon in the future, adding more ponies than just Fluttershy, gigantic hunks of pony meat, and friendship-is-forever armor (craftable from the adorable pony’s bones, of course).

Pony Fandom: How does it work?!

I’m a terrible horrible no good very bad updater, and for that I apologize. But I’m back with a vengeance. Get ready.

So I’ve spent a bunch of time telling you why ponies are awesome for a lot of reasons, and addressing where they have some issues as well.  Now for my final installment in my MLP series, I wanna touch on the brony fandom itself and some of its high points.

Goodwill

Bronies have banded together for various charitable/fundraising endeavors. They auction albums, art, and other creative works for charity.  They banded together to support the Humble Bundle indie video game charity (you pay whatever you want for the games, and the proceeds go to mostly children’s charities); and dropped hundreds of dollars on original Lauren Faust artwork whose proceeds benefitted post-earthquake Japan.  Bronies have big hearts.

Visibility/Personal Acceptance

Bronies, whether they want to or not, are becoming a more visible part of pop culture purely because of their novelty to the ‘normal’ people.  But from what I can tell, most bronies are owning their bronydom with pride.  This is a refreshing change because it means that somewhere out there is a generation of young people who won’t judge their children or each other for liking things society says their gender shouldn’t like.

Creative Output

Brony fandom has exploded with creative original and manipped works from remixes and original music to art in all mediums imaginable (from felt to plushies to fan-designed pony video games) to fanfiction. One of the most impressive creative works in my opinion are the fanmade video games, simply because of the unpaid effort of designing and coding and debugging an entire game.

Fanfiction

I gave this a separate category because it’s one of the most charged areas of brony fandom.  But just as with any fandom, there is everything from cute one-shots, adventure stories, romances, and yes, clopfic (the NC-17 of ponyfic).  Some stories, both ongoing and complete, have already become famous/infamous in fandom (See: My Little Dashie, Fallout: Equestria, and the terrifying Cupcakes).  All I’ll say about clopfic is this: your kink is not my kink, and I don’t want to know that much about horse genitals.  But as far as shipping itself is concerned (especially between the female characters), I think it’s important to separate the characters from the fact that they are nonhuman, and consider that here is a community that we associate with men, writing lesbian relationships that are focused on the romantic rather than the objectifying. If Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy can be together, why not other women? (I personally don’t ship anypony, but mostly because I don’t see the ships, not out of any squick…)

Inclusion and Community Acceptance

Finally, bronies in general tend to be sweethearts.  They take to heart the idea of love and tolerance that sits at the root of the show and run with it.  From small area meetups to conventions like BroNYCon and Everfree North, bronies make an effort to find other bronies and make them feel included.  Jump into fandom and try it out, non-bronies, and I guarantee you’ll be welcomed into the herd. 😉

This concludes my MLP series, everypony, but don’t doubt that I’ll keep posting about it as I’m inspired to, and check out ladybacula’s weekly episode reviews as well!