Last Month Online (December 2017)

I already used a lot of December's videos in a Christmas post, but there were quite a few more videos this month than JUST the holiday ones, so they will get their own post. Some may be tangentially related to Christmas, but unless they were directly about, or related to the holiday season, they got saved for this post.

We'll start this off with a Studio C video, because I actually have two to share, and I'll save the other one for later. If you've watched a lot of Studio C, then you probably know who "Aww Yeah!" is. If not, click HERE. Anyway, this weirdo is one of my favorite Studio C characters, and I was so glad that they brought her back.



Next up we have a video from Nick Pitera, in which he recreates his very first YouTube video, which I actually remember watching! I doubt it was right after he uploaded it, but I'm pretty sure it was still the first video of his that I ever watched. His voice is still just as impressive today.



Then we have an amazing video from Peter Hollens, where he does a medley of songs from one of my favorite groups, ABBA! I can't believe it took him this long to cover them, but it was worth the wait!



I wanted to hate this next video, I really did. Some memes can be funny or entertaining, but I get annoyed by a most of them. They always seem like a creative way to be as un-creative as possible. But I could just be an old man yelling at kids to get off my lawn. Either way, it's a testament to Joe Jeremiah that he could take so many memes and make them fresh and fun again, enough so that I actually really liked a 7+ minute video of them, and that I actually watched it multiple times, and am now sharing it on my blog.



Lindsey Stirling released a lot of videos in the last couple of months, but most of them were Christmas songs, so they ended up in my Christmas post. This one however, while it was a Christmas song, was not specifically a Christmas video, so I saved it for this post.



Likewise, this Studio C sketch, while based around 'The Holiday Season,' was not an outright 'Christmas video' so I saved it for this post too. And like the previous sketch in this post, the starring character was also from a previous sketch, which you can find HERE.



Poppy is back with another insane music video and I loved it! The weirder the better! Also it is now one of my life goals to be an elderly backup dancer in a Poppy video. I mean, she's basically an ageless robot, right? I'm sure that by the time I'm 87 she'll still look right around twenty... three?



Every year Kurt Hugo Schneider and Sam Tsui do a musical mashup of all the biggest musical hits of the year, and put them together it the most epic way possible. This year they did the whole thing backwards!



We'll end this with another amazing Melodysheep video. December was the one year anniversary of Carrie Fisher's death, as well as the premiere of her final film, Star Wars: The Last Jedi. This video was the perfect tribute.

Things I'd Never Say on Facebook

I dislike controversy. I dislike people voicing dissenting opinions simply because they want to cause an argument. It is for this reason that I don't really talk politics or religion anymore, ESPECIALLY on social media. But, this non-confrontational attitude extends to many different things, far beyond those two topics.

Every day on social media, mostly Facebook, I see tons of, well, just really, really stupid stuff. Just about all of them are completely irrelevant and not worth arguing over, so I ignore them, at least publicly. Inside, it's a completely different story. :p So I decided to blog about it. Hopefully this way, by not directing these opinions at anyone in particular, I will be less likely to offend anyone. I just really needed to say them. But be warned, the shade is about to get real. :p

First up, this monstrosity.

Who in their right mind would willingly ingest this radioactive pile of gelatinous goo?! It makes me physically ill to look at this picture, and yet all I see is people posting this recipe cooing over how awesome this idea is, and how they need to make it right away. No! NO! This is disgusting! I wish there were some way to wipe this hideous mutation from the human consciousness!

Next up, this meme.

It needs to die a slow and painful death. Whoever invented it should be publicly shamed. Maybe using cold honey and feathers. They don't deserve warm honey. Shame on anyone who thinks this worthless waste of time is funny.

And while I'm at it, I also feel the same way about this meme.

Stop being so completely, ignorantly self-righteous. Literally NO ONE is telling you these things, get over yourself!

Whew. That was a little harsh. Let's move on to something that I am a little less spiteful about. :p Apparently, Bass Pro Shops recently bought out Cabela's.

Or maybe it was the other way around. Honestly I couldn't be bothered to care any less. Those are literally two of the most soul crushingly boring stores on the planet. Literally the only stores more boring are sports equipment stores. At least these ones have fish tanks and some interesting taxidermy. Other than those things, I really don't understand why anyone cares at all. But it was all over Facebook recently, and I really wanted to write how little I cared, but in the interest of maintaining the peace. I said nothing. Until now. :p

Lastly, I just have one thing to say about this stupid meme.

Shut up, you obnoxious little infant!

I am so sick of seeing all the unwarranted hate that is thrown at oatmeal raisin cookies. What are you people? Pathetic little babies who can't stand to ingest something (moderately) healthy? Just because you're a whiny little crybaby, doesn't mean that everyone else feels the same way! I happen to love oatmeal raisin and will sometimes willingly choose that OVER chocolate chip! Also, if you're so dumb, or nearsighted, that you mistake an oatmeal raisin cookie for a chocolate chip cookie, than you either need glasses, or - I don't know - you should just ask whoever made them what they are! Good grief. I'm done.

Well, that was cathartic! I'm so glad to have gotten these petty little rants off my chest. Now to move on to something more important, like, pretty much anything else. :p

A Moment of Self Reflection

Today I watched a video that caused some self-reflection. I will link to it for you.



Why would something like this cause self-reflection? I really have no idea. It's just that after I watched it, I realized something about myself, that seems completely contradictory. What I enjoy in entertainment is often the polar opposite of who I am in real life.

In real life I am, or at least I try to be, an optimist. I always look for the good in people, I always try to have a good attitude, I try to be a very pleasant person. Someone that everyone wants to be around. (And if they don't, I probably don't want to be around them anyway.) Some people would probably say that I am TOO nice. This is pretty much the opposite of a lot of my favorite characters, in all sorts of media.

I seem drawn to the characters with bad attitudes. Characters who are pessimists, gloomy, people who get easily angry over things. I always find them a lot funnier than the nice ones. I am not against the nice characters, but when it comes to comedy at least, I seem to like the "Less-Than-Pleasant" people better. Oscar the Grouch, and Grumpy Cat, are two good examples. I just find surly characters to be a great source of humor. And not just surly ones, some people that are just downright unpleasant for all sorts of reasons are some of my favorite characters.

Take Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes. That kid is a nasty little menace! He terrorises Suzie, makes life miserable for his parents, and torments his teacher and babysitter constantly, but for some reason, I love him.

Another example is Hyacinth Bucket (It's pronounced Bouquet!) from Keeping Up Appearances. (A British Comedy) She's a nosy busybody, always trying to "Fix" everyone she deems to be below her standards, and she would be just an awful person to be around in real life. Yet, as a character on a TV show, I love her.

Many more examples can be found in almost any Disney Villain. The first two that immediately pop into my mind are Maleficent, from Sleeping Beauty, and Ursula, from The Little Mermaid. They are without a doubt, two of the most loathsome characters in the Disney canon, but they are two of my favorites. I just love a good villain. (As an aside, I am way too excited for the live action Maleficent movie coming next year!)

I have also found, that when I write my fictional stuff, I find that I have the most fun writing the bad characters, or the ones with attitude. The people that say and do things that in real life I would never even dream of doing.

Take Lorenzo Literate from my Facebook Friends series. I think that, in a way, he is me. He is what I want to say to people, but I never would. Sometimes I have found myself scaling back his reactions to people, and completely rewriting them because I think I finally went to far. I don't want to be mean, even to fictional characters. See what I mean? I'm too nice. :p

The other great example would be my REAL stories of various fairytale characters. I have the most fun writing the villains. By far my favorite character so far has been Goldilocks. I loved writing what a terror she was. And (Spoiler Alert!) I'm working on a sequel. :p

So, anyway. That was my moment of self-reflection for the day. I like the "Bad" characters, but at the same time, I'm glad that I'm not anything like them. Or am I...? Mwa ha ha ha ha....

My Little Brony

The internet is weird. It almost seems to have formed into a culture all on its own, with various subcultures sprouting off here and there, starting out on large sites like YouTube, or in chat-rooms, and then growing off by themselves into their own thing. Once in awhile I'll hear about something that makes me curious enough to look into it a little deeper. That's what today's post is about.

Have you heard of Bronies? They are adults, mostly guys, (Most of the girls prefer to be called Pegasisters), who like the show "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic."

I have considered writing about the "Brony" phenomenon for quite some time now, as it was something that intrigued me when I first heard about it. Recently Rhett and Link spent a whole episode of Good Mythical Morning talking about it, and I decided now would be the perfect time to do so.



After I watched the episode I started reading the comments. It was pretty pathetic. I know, I know, YouTube comments sections are a dangerous place to hang out. I am doing another "Snarky" blog post on pathetically bad misspellings though, and I consider reading the comments "Research." :p

For example:

it stupid these grone man hav nothin to do other than watch my little ponny lol

Despite the air of superiority with which the comment was written, the author lacked even the most basic spelling and grammar skills, leaving out all forms of punctuation, apparently had no concept of what a silent E was, or even capitalization for that matter. So I pose the question now, who has the bigger problem? An adult male who enjoys a children's show about rainbow colored horses, or a drooling idiot who can barely master a keyboard and uses their less than average skills to make fun of people?

I've heard about Bronies here and there, but I first REALLY heard about them on an episode of Teens React. Teens being teens, most of them acted like the idea of a guy liking My Little Pony was somehow a reflection on who that guy was as a person. A lot of teens are really shallow. I know, I used to be one, and I probably would have had a similar reaction at their age.



This episode got me to wondering about the true nature of My Little Pony. Why was it so popular? There had to be some reason that grown men would be drawn to a show about cartoon ponies. If it were just a few, they would just be considered anomalies, and wouldn't be talked about all over the internet. My Little Pony is an extremely popular show and has grown into its own internet meme, so there had to be a reason for it. I was very curious. I started looking around YouTube for more information and found an entire episode of "Know Your Meme" dedicated to the phenomenon.

As a slight warning to anyone easily offended, there is one unsavory word pictured in one of the image macros in the video, just a warning so no one get their knickers in a twist. :)



Later, I found this video shortly after that episode of Teens React was released. Someone got a whole bunch of guys who identify themselves as "Bronies" and had them watch the Teens React episode, and talk about why they liked the show.



After this I decided that I needed to see this show for myself. Eventually, I found access to all the episodes that had so far been released, and I started watching them.

I suppose at this point you are expecting me to reveal that I too am now a Brony. Well, you would be expecting wrong, though before I watched the first episode, I fully expected that I would become one. After all I'd heard about the show, I was expecting something really awesome, but I was actually rather disappointed in it.

The show is about 6 teenage ponies and a baby dragon who have adventures and learn what it means to be a good friend. It's your typical "Children's show with a moral." These 7 are all good characters, but sometimes there are these "little kid" ponies who are just beyond annoying. I don't think they're even in half the episodes, but when they are there, the show just seems to drag on and on, and I find myself wishing it would just end already.

Even though I didn't like any of the "Little Kid" characters, there were a couple older characters that I did like. The first was Pinky Pie. As you know, I love random humor, and Pinky Pie can be just off the wall weird sometimes. Rainbow Dash was another character I liked. She was as close as the show got to an "Action Hero" type character. If they made a spin off about her fighting evil, I'd totally watch it.

I do agree with all the reasons that Bronies give for liking the show. My Little Pony does have great animation, great voice acting, and great writing, but for all that it is, I still found it to be rather boring. The few episodes that I did really like were the ones where they had to fight some sort of mythical beast, or an evil pony. And that hardly ever happened.

Humor-wise the show can be pretty funny sometimes. Though not nearly up to the quality of one of my favorite childhood cartoons, Animaniacs, My Little Pony does have quite a few instances of adult humor. Not "Adult" as in "Filthy," but just stuff that kids wouldn't understand. It was subtle, but there was enough that I can see why a lot of adults like it.

I guess the reason I'm not a fan of the show is because there's not nearly enough action. If every episode was about fighting bad guys, I would totally be a Brony. But that's never going to happen. If they made it into a violent show, little girls' parents probably wouldn't let them watch it any more, and they'd lose their main audience.

If I want animated action, I guess I'll just have to stick to watching "Star Wars: Clone Wars" and "Young Justice." (I should totally write reviews of those shows, they are awesome!) Bronies can keep their My Little Pony, it's just not my thing. Maybe some day when I'm REALLY bored I'll go watch some later episodes and see if it has improved at all.

I may not be a fan of the show, but I am a fan of the art that has been made based on it. Since almost 100% of Bronies are geeks, most My Little Pony artwork consists of tributes to other areas of geek culture. Adult My Little Pony fans like to take the My Little Pony figures and repaint and re-sculpt them, sometimes even removing or replacing the hair, and creating a whole new figure out of them. Just as an example here are a few of my favorite ones.

I've never seen any of the Alien movies, but I still thought that this My Little Pony tribute to Alien was very cool.

Aragorn from Lord of the Rings? Awesome. How about Gandalf as well?

Love the beard. :p

Super Heroes are one of the most popular things for fans to make out of My Little Pony figures. Here is the Thing from the Fantastic Four.

And one of my favorites, Batman.

Also cool, but leaning toward disturbing, was "The Dark Knight" version of the Joker.

And since we're currently on a Batman theme, here's one of my favorite Batman villans, Harley Quinn.

Star Wars seems to be another favorite thing to make pony figures of. Here's Boba Fett, Princess Leia and Darth Vader. How awesome are these? :)

Another thing I have almost no knowledge of, since I've never played it, is Halo, but I still thought that this pony was awesome.

And for Avengers fans, Iron Man. Now someone needs to make pony figures of all the rest.

The level of detail that goes into these is what makes them so cool. Only a true geek would get these details so precise.

Before I close this post, I have a few more interesting things that I found on YouTube. And by interesting, I mean pretty hilarious, and kind of cool. If anyone still needed convincing that the male fans of My Little Pony were not girly-men, check out this prototype game that someone is working on. They are using the characters from the show in a fighting game.



This is being made solely as a fan creation. By Bronies, for Bronies, if you will. Though the creators of the show have nothing to do with it, they do know about it, and they aren't doing anything to put a stop to it. They have effectively given it an OK by keeping silent about it. I think that's pretty cool of them, since any other animation company would be up in arms trying to sue the pants off them for copy-write infringement.

There is a guy on YouTube who animates his own cartoons, and has done a whole bunch of movies, including Star Wars and The Avengers, as reenacted by My Little Pony characters. These are hilarious if you've seen the movies and the show, because the videos are a very even mix of references to both.





I'm not sure whether I found it disturbing or hilarious that he used Granny Smith as the Hulk. Maybe disturbingly hilarious.

Another big thing that My Little Pony Fans do is make trailer mash-ups. They take the soundtrack from a trailer, and put together actual animation from My Little Pony, to make it seem like that movie is about the My Little Pony characters. Here is The Avengers. If this were the actual show, I'd be a Brony for sure. :p



I think I need to figure out which episode had those zombie/bug pony things in it. That looked pretty awesome. Obviously I didn't watch enough episodes, because I never saw that one. :p

Even though I myself am not a fan of the show, I have no problem with guys who are. Sure it seems a little weird, but they have just as much right to like My Little Pony as a girl has to like Transformers. I say, embrace the weird. If everyone were "Normal" the world would be unbearably boring.

How I Wasted a Bunch of Time

Anybody who is anybody on the internet has heard of the Nyan Cat.



Well, I was inspired yesterday. Don't ask me why. I just was. So behold.

That's all. I just felt like sharing my brilliant artwork.

You can all go do something more important now.
And if you had never heard of the Nyan Cat and you watched that video in its entirety, I truly apologize. It could be worse, someone made a 10 hour version...