Question about these MLP Fanon examples.

YMMV.My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic S 6 E 7 Newbie Dash

• Fanon Discontinuity: Everybody accepts Rainbow Dash finally becoming a Wonderbolt. The mean-spirited events of the episode, not so much.

• Fanon Discontinuity: The meh reception even from those who liked it, questionable characterizations and plot developments, seeming disregard for the show's continuity, and failing to do anything meaningful compared to the show has caused many fans to ignore the events of the movie. Despite Word of God that is was canon, fans were very surprised Season 8 of the show confirmed its canonicity by extensively referencing the movie's events. Since it glosses over the events proper, even seemingly at odds like Twilight Sparkle's Hundred Percent Adoration Rating by the hippogriffs despite her attempted theft of their pearl, and simply focuses on the end results like the hippogriffs returning to society, Tempest Shadow having pulled her Heel–Face Turn the occasional reference to Klugetown and the pirates, and the Storm King getting acknowledged in both "What Lies Beneath" and "Spring Breakdown", those inclined can pretend things happened differently. Not helping is that supplementary material relating to the movie seldom agree with each other.

I believe both are misuse as for the most part even those who don't like them don't pretend they didn't happen/happen differently. No one denies Rainbow became a Wonderbolt or did so some other way. The Movie entry was written by a troper with personal dislike and The Movie seems to have been widely accepted as canon once it heavily came up in season 8. Is this the case?

If I have a question for the collective MLP fandom is this the place to ask or is there somewhere else?

Edited by Ferot_Dreadnaught on Oct 22nd 2020 at 10:32:04 AM

You missed the point that the contested part of Newbie Dash was the hazing nickname given to her. That is more Broken Base than Fandom Discontinuity, though.

I also haven't seen any FD for the movie, though people were surprised that it was referenced, but that was more because Equestria Girls has been thoroughly ignored by the main show.

Yup. That strikes me as a pretty cut and dried case of something just getting filed under the wrong YMMV. There were plenty of people unhappy with that bit and plenty more willing to argue with them about it, but I don't recall much of anything in the way of denying that that episode actually happened.

I may be missing something myself, but I'm not entirely certain how that's relevant.

Edited by Theriocephalus on Oct 23rd 2020 at 8:32:15 AM

Fanon Discontinuity seems to get misused a lot to mean "People (I) didn't like this thing." But it's not just Thing Bad. It's a specific response among the fandom to collectively exile an element of the story from canon.

Fanon Discontinuity isn't "People didn't like that stupid Newbie Dash episode." It's things like the fans' collective rejection of Mute Vinyl Scratch.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Oct 23rd 2020 at 7:50:02 AM

Post of the Day #3041

Posted by kegisak on Tue, 16th Jul '13 5:35:28 PM - Post #383623 in the old thread

Is that fandom discontinuity? I didn't really mind the idea that Vinyl was mute, and I haven't heard anyone deny it before.

Yeah, I know a lot of people are attached to her old Nowacking fanvid voice, but I've seen mute Vinyl used a good deal too. (If anything, the real FD is the continuing reference to her as "Vinyl" when "DJ Pon-3" has more official usage.)

I know there was one poster here who was pretty upset about mute!Vinyl.

I guess it's hard to judge subjective tropes like this. How many people need to have a given reaction for it to qualify? I'm sure you can find some people who don't like anything.

Why were they upset about it?

I think they think they should have hired Nowhacking to voice Vinyl?

Realizing that was a landmine, just had Vinyl remain silent in the episode.

I know that at least part of the fandom is very vocal about their disdain for mute Vinyl. To the point that, back around the time I started watching, I saw full-fledged conspiracy theories claiming that "Hasbro knew they could never do a better voice than Nowhacking" and that "They didn't hire a voice actor out of cowardice to compete" and that "Mute Vinyl is a deliberate act of contempt for the brony fandom".

Some people were really upset about Mute Vinyl.

Of note: "Mute Vinyl" is a tag on Derpibooru. It hosts only 34 images as of today.

Why was that a landmine?

Of note: "Mute Vinyl" is a tag on Derpibooru. It hosts only 34 images as of today.

To be fair, there's not much reason to tag most art as "mute vinyl" even if people knew about the tag. It looks like it's mostly just comics.

Edited by storyyeller on Oct 23rd 2020 at 1:43:55 PM

I find it rather hilarious that they thought Hasbro wouldn't dare to replace a popular fan voice actor. Hasbro most certainly could have done that without facing any sort of consequence beyond a few miffed fans.

That they didn't give her a voice was, if anything, more of an homage to the fan community than fearfulness on stepping on any toes.

Yeah, there's no way they'd care about something like that. The death of fanon is inevitable and unremarkable, and a fan voice actor isn't even fanon. It's not like nowacking was even the only one making VS videos anyway.

It appears the "mute vinyl" tag is mostly used for art related to the fan theory that Vinyl is actually mute in-universe, as opposed to her just happening to not speak on camera.

I *was* upset about it. Nowadays I barely even care that Pony Life also made her mute too (IE Not a fan of that choice, but it's not a big deal in the long run either and I still like PL). The main reason why I was upset is because I felt the actual show had went far downhill, but at the time I could still look forward to fun Vinyl and Octavia fanfics. It was kind of the only source of positivity I had left for pone besides the occasional fan art. Then that episode came out and imo lead to the slow death of the fun Fanon Dynamic those two had in fan content, and my negative feelings also weren't helped by other people trashing Fanon Vinyl, even if I'll admit I wasn't exactly the most mature about it myself either. For something meant to be a tribute to fans it felt more like a middle finger to me back then.

Nowadays though I get that A: That decline in Scratchtavia stuff would've happened anyway as the fandom itself declined, and B: Show Writers can't look at fan works (though the exact rules for that seem very inconsistent from company to company), so that would've never happened in the show any way even if Vinyl did talk. I still think the choice to make her specifically a mute is a weird one though.

Edited by marston on Oct 23rd 2020 at 1:21:44 AM

You also can't really blame the show for a fan ship declining. Especially one that wasn't really in the show in the first place.

Edited by Redmess on Oct 23rd 2020 at 10:28:43 AM

Yes, I understand that *now* it was going to happen anyway. The stuff in the first paragraph after the PL mention is entirely how I felt back then, not how I feel nowadays. I'm still not a fan of Mute Vinyl and likely never will be, but it's not a big deal. As is nowadays I'm way more annoyed at what the show went on to do with it's *actual* characters, but that's a discussion for another time. Trust me when I say that I very much regret how I acted back then.

For instance, I'm more peeved that outside of Testing Testing 1 2 3, we never got a proper Twilight and RD episode, and that the only other episode about them was actually about some disposeable character we never saw again, than I am at Mute Vinyl. Disrespecting my OTP like that should be grounds for instant firing from the show. (That's a joke, in case Storyeller's Post of the Day decides to someday take this out of context)

Edited by marston on Oct 23rd 2020 at 1:49:41 AM

Aw, I really loved Top Bolt. XD

Has anyone seen Léon the alicorn◊? He has a cute design!

Celestia's non-canonical little cousin?

Post of the Day #3042

Posted by darkabomination on 6th Aug 2015 02:45:19 AM - Post #125283 in the new thread

A male alicorn? Blasphemy!

Now you mention it, there is a distinct lack of male alicorns. And it was never explained why.

Probably cause alicorn = princess, at least in G4. Would Leon be a prince then?