_fluffy's meme

[rain_gryphon]

Answers to _fluffy's meme:

1. Who is your favorite My Little Pony, and why?
Of the G1 Ponies, I definitely liked Windwhistler the best. She was a pegasus, highly intelligent and socially awkward, so I saw myself in her to some degree.
Of the current FiM characters (who have so much more personality and backstory than the G1s ever had) my favourite is Gilda Griffin. She appears as an antagonist (not really a villain) in only one episode, but judging from the amount of fan art and stories, I'm not the only one with whom she clicked. Basically we have a lot of the same character faults, and I can see myself in her. Interesting, the author wrote another episode with a similar theme about conflict being caused by insecurity, so I'm guessing it's personal for her. I've got a fairly detailed explanation of why I like Gilda that I posted on a Pony board, but on reading it over you really need to have watched the episode to get much out of it.


2. What is the etymology/origin of "xolo?"
It's from 'Kolo', an old lioness RP character from Lion King MUCK. Her name came from a (Bantu?) phrase 'busa no kolo' (I make no guarantees whatsoever on the spelling) that you can hear in the Lion King soundtrack album. It possibly means 'rule with love', but I chose it because I like the sound of it. I changed it to 'x' from 'k' as it's not really a hard 'k' sound, but somewhere between an English 'k' and a German 'ch'. The reason I used 'X' for that is that I had a minor obsession with the Xhosa cattle killing at the time (the topic still fascinates me, honestly), and in 19th century accounts, the tribal name was often rendered 'Hausa' (used in modern times for another people altogether), while the modern spelling is 'Xhosa', with the 'Xh' standing for a super-hard 'k', almost a clicking sound. It made sense to me at the time. There's a certain degree of free association in my reasoning, and I often have trouble completely reconstructing it afterward.


3. What's your favorite dessert?
Not really a dessert eater, honestly. I always did like vanilla tapioca pudding, but I tend to have it as a snack instead of a dessert. I like vanilla, and I like the texture of tapioca, so that's always a winner for me.


4. When are you going to draw more stuff?
Do you want me to draw more? I'm flattered. I keep thinking that I will, and I don't.


5. And, repeating the repeated question from above, please share a personal victory. Okay, that technically isn't a question.
My most recent one was getting control of the Spindizzy website, I think. I'm convinced that the late mayor/webmaster was doing her level best to recruit newbies who had no set expectations for the MUCK, so that she might build a cadre supportive of the sort of 'dark' roleplay that she favoured. Wiping away the traces of the MUCK's history and culture from the website was an important element in this. I'm pleased to put all that stuff back.

Edit: This should be here too, it seems:

If you'd like, leave a comment and I'll leave five questions for you. Quoting from Aldersprig's journal:
"• I'll respond by asking you five questions so I can get to know you better.
• Update your journal with the answers to the questions.
• Include this explanation in the post and offer to ask other people questions. (<- let's make that optional"

Comments

[bunny-hugger.livejournal.com]

I used to play on TLK MUCK, though as a hyena (and later, briefly, a Cape hunting dog) so I didn't interact with the lions much. Except, that is, when a group of twinkie lions jumped out and killed me in a powergamey way and insisted "you died! You have to RP that you died!!" so I gave up, did so, and pretty much lost interest. Tried again for a while with the dog character but never got back into it; the dog pack wasn't as big as the hyena clan so there wasn't as much to do.

My hyena character (whom I quite liked and was sorry to see unfairly slain) was Mbongeni and my dog character was Mbwa. I don't think we ever crossed paths.

Oh, come to think of it, I later tried once more, again briefly, with a hyena character, but the hyena personnel had changed by then and the new group didn't seem that eager to admit me. That one was named Jumanne. If I ever tried again I'd probably reuse her name.

[xolo.livejournal.com]

I don't think we met. I was with the little pride that kept to itself, not the Pride Rock guys. We were all high and mighty, and seldom spoke with anyone who wasn't a big cat.

[aethwolf.livejournal.com]

I never got the fascination some people have with Gilda. I can't see her as anything but a raging jackass, and then she made Fluttershy cry, and yeah.

[xolo.livejournal.com]

Here's the long answer that I alluded to, since you've watched the episode:



I don't actually like how Gilda behaves in her episode, but I find her a sympathetic character anyway. She's honestly one of my favourites. I'm perhaps not seeing her the way the writer intended, but it looks to me like Gilda is insecure about her relationship with Rainbow Dash, and sees Pinkie Pie as trying to undermine it. All Gilda really wants at the beginning is to spend quality time with Rainbow Dash, but Pinkie Pie (who can see her every day) is being an oblivious prat about it. Gilda's a strong, assertive character (perhaps overmuch so), but something like this is going to be her fatally weak spot - she's not able to admit vulnerability or fear, anymore than Rainbow Dash is. Simply explaining her fears would probably have resulted in a very satisfactory resolution for everyone, but of course Gilda can't even imagine doing that - she's afraid that she's right. All she can really do is try to keep Dashie away from Pinkie, and failing that, try to be more attractive to Dashie than Pinkie is.

Things might have turned out alright anyway without the party. For someone like Gilda (for myself, too) a party with strangers is a tense, incredibly stressful event. There's nothing fun about it. I think Pinkie Pie had good intentions here, but had she been deliberately out to set Gilda up for self-destruction, that would have been an inspired strategy.

The whole practical jokes thing was RD's enthusiasm, remember. Gilda bought into that, I think, only because she wanted Dashie's attention. Gilda might be okay with being set up to look stupid among friends (she'd get even later), but not among a crowd of strangers, and especially not while Rainbow Dash is watching. RD ought to have known better than that, but she can be kind of callous and self-centered sometimes. That didn't have a chance of ending well.

The part with Fluttershy was painful to watch. The best I can say there is that sometimes people relieve stress and frustration by behaving aggressively toward someone lower in the pecking order. That's a pretty standard behaviour among horses and humans both, even if it's not usually quite so extreme.

The other interesting possibility (which I missed until someone pointed it out to me) is that Gilda and Fluttershy knew one another long before this episode. It's established here that Gilda and Dash went to summer camp together, and it's established in a future episode that Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash were in school together. It's possible that Gilda's attack didn't just come out of the blue.

In the end, I can sympathize with Gilda because I've got a lot of the same failings. This episode in particular resonated with me because I'd been through something very similar about a year before where I thought Chris' new boyfriend was trying to separate me from him. In the end, that worked out okay, primarily because both were able to see what was wrong, and actively reassure me. It could easily have turned out this way, though.

It interests me as well that "Owl's Well That Ends Well" is by the same writer, and deals with pretty much the same theme, except that here Spike's behaviour is understood to stem from insecurity, and dealt with by reassurance.

[aethwolf.livejournal.com]

The possibility I've considered with the whole Gilda/Fluttershy thing (headcanon, I suppose) is that Gilda was a sort of summer fling for Dashie and that she took it more seriously than Dashie did and felt scorned when she went back to Fluttershy once camp was over. Of course, that goes right out the window if you're not a FlutterDash supporter.

Anyway, the bit between Fluttershy and Gilda kills any chance I ever had of liking Gilda because I'm very much Fluttershy IRL. Stuff involving her tends to hit close to home, so I tend to have a more emotional reaction to scenes like that. That scene was the first time I'd ever wanted to actually punch a cartoon antagonist (well, the second time I watched it, anyway. My initial viewing was when I was still skeptical about the show and hadn't really got to know the characters yet).

[http://users.livejournal.com/_fluffy/]

re 4: I think everyone should draw more.

[xolo.livejournal.com]

Now I'm less flattered. I still keep thinking that I will...

[http://users.livejournal.com/_fluffy/]

You should.

[xolo.livejournal.com]

There. (http://mycroftb.livejournal.com/1110830.html#t2411054) Made some ass art for Mycroft's Personal Pony }:=]