Sometimes I love my life

[lunabee34]

Last night, Emma and I got curious about My Little Pony fanfic, so I went to AO3 and pulled up the Friendship is Magic fandom. As of last night there were just a little over 2000 fics which was a lot more than I was expecting.

When sorted by kudos, the first few pages are a mixture of gen that seems pretty true to the show from the summaries, fusions where the characters of another show are ponies (SPN, Star Trek: AO3, Sherlock, etc), and Fluttershy/Discord. We haven't reached the season where Discord is introduced, but I looked the character up and he's voiced by John De Lancie (which explains the fic I saw where Q ends up in Ponyville). I was kinda surprised that in a show that (so far at least) is almost entirely about girl ponies, that a het pairing is so popular, but I cannot fault anyone for being swept away by John De Lancie's voice.

But the best part is that Josh did a dramatic reading of the least kudosed MLP fanfic for us, complete with voices for the characters and a faithful rendering of each lovingly misspelled word.

[In the interest of full disclosure, let me reassure you that I have no interest in reading or writing MLP fanfic; I was just curious about what's out there.]

Comments

[sholio]

I have a friend who is in MLP fandom (she started watching it with her daughter and ended up writing for it). Apparently the fandom is HUGE but most of the fic and other fanworks are hosted on dedicated message boards/archives. I asked her awhile back if she was considering cross-posting to AO3 and she said there just isn't really enough of an MLP audience on AO3 to make it worth it.

[lunabee34]

Oooh, this is interesting. I suspect that what I saw on AO3 then is not a very accurate representation of the fandom.

Do you happen to know what the big pairings are in the fandom?

[sholio]

Uh, no clue, although I get the impression from talking to her that at least where she hangs out, there is a ton of low-rated friendshippy gen fluff (as one would expect). It seems like a fandom in which there is a lot of, hmm, "zoning" I guess, with the kid-friendly hangouts staying separate from the ones with adult-rated stuff (which might be why AO3 hasn't really caught on as a fandom hub, since they allow everything)

[lunabee34]

That makes a lot of sense re: zoning. A lot of what I was seeing on AO3 was crossovers and fusions of various sorts, so it makes sense that if the fandom lives elsewhere, those would be the fics that would be crossposted to AO3 to catch all the audience.

I did read one cute, fluffy gen fic, and I can definitely see the appeal of that; it was very much like canon--levels of humor and silliness, dialogue spot on, etc.

I did not read any porny pony fic, for I remain to be sold upon that premise. LOL

[china_shop]

Hee! This makes me really want to send you a short two-person radio play by John Finnemore, which alas doesn't appear to be on youtube. *pouts*

ETA: I've put it here, if you're interested: English for Pony Lovers

[lunabee34]

Thank you!!

:)