In which a little pony hears "don't die wondering", and answers with immortality instead of HRT

[malymin]

I previously mentioned being fascinated by the Tumblr user Palaceperspective's creative decision to write a postcanon fanfiction as the penultimate part within a series of analytical essays (or in old LJ/DW parlance, "meta") about incest and gender roles in Revolutionary Girl Utena, using in-universe continuation as a means of conveying analysis alongside the out-of-universe analysis.

In a somewhat similar way, I am fascinated by Tumblr user Beluvbug's "Princess of Gender Dysphoria" fanart series for My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. In this series of posts, Applejack is interpreted as a deeply closeted and repressed transgender man - unable to admit to himself what he truly wants, he instead accepts a metamorphosis into a "more mature" form of mare/womanhood - that is to say, an alicorn princess - as a solution.

(The artist's blog is currently only viewable to people logged into Tumblr, so I've linked to reblogs made to public accounts.)

The usual format of each entry is an MS Paint drawing or comic of the characters from the cartoon in this personal continuity. Sometimes the image is instead a photos or mock-up drawing a My Little Pony toy, either official or imaginary. Sometimes the two forms of imagery intermingle. This is a thematic decision as much as an aesthetic one.

Part Three in the series depicts "Princess Applejack" in the form of a plastic toy: her alicorn horn and wings blatantly glued on and made of pink plastic instead of her own essence's orange, her hair done in an distinctly un-Applejack-the-character style. The text surrounding her begs the viewer to play with her. The text below her describes a narrator (implied to be the artist) seeing his own reflection in the plastic of Applejack's body as he asks if the "element of Honesty" has truly, always been honest with herself: he ignores his reflection to continue playing with his toy. Tags are the whispered footnotes of Tumblr vernacular, and the artist has the following written in the tags on the original post:

#do you guys ever think about how applejack does worst in toy sales

This is an important note. Applejack-the-character, at the end of the day, exists to sell the plastic toy horses labeled as "Applejack" by their boxes in the pink toy isle. She is worse at this divinely-ordained purpose -- at being a marketable commodity -- than any of her friends.

In Part 12, the series takes a complete break from its usual format of MS Paint drawings and collages of real and imagined MLP toys, to present us a text essay about Applejack as a children's toy. Let me place the full text in a cut:

I wonder if there's any joy to be found in having a body as replaceable as Hasbro's My Little Pony Applejack's blind bag figurines. Well, perhaps describing the blind bag pony body as replaceable is inaccurate. The paint is replaceable, but the body is replicable.

Let's have the paint represent the identity and the body represent, well, the body. Applejack's paint can only find a home on Applejack's body, but Applejack's body can host any paint. It is really a mercy that Hasbro allows Applejack's paint to settle on any body at all. Applejack's body doesn't need Applejack. Her body doesn't even want Applejack. The details of the body show that it is passable as a vessel for Applejack, but not specific to her. For example, the body features the hair bands that Applejack has, but several alternate paints ignore this aspect of the body and don't acknowledge it in the color scheme. I wonder if the alternate paints are ashamed of being laid upon this body.

This isn't an uncommon trait among Applejack toys. A majority of Applejack toys did not include Applejack's signature hat. To neutralize the unloveable Applejack paint, the body had to be as generic and replicable as possible, as to appeal to a wider audience. It's not all that unfortunate. I believe this would be acceptable to Applejack (the cartoon character, aka the super ego), who would sacrifice a key feature of her identity if it meant being less of a brand burden. If it meant a cheaper body, a body more appealing to paints, consumers, and manufacturers alike, Applejack would allow it.

Back to my original point: is there any joy in this body? There is, to Applejack. To accept whatever paint is hosted on her body is to give a greater chance that she won't be rejected by the consumer. If Applejack's body is so far removed from Applejack, then perhaps there is a chance the consumer won't know it's her, and love her blindly. Or, at least, the consumer will forgive the body for ever being associated with Applejack to begin with.

The commercial reality of the My Little Pony Franchise (you know, that this cartoon exists to sell toys) is not something ignored for laying outside of the Watsonian plane. Rather, it becomes part of the meat of Applejack's characterization within the AU. This Applejack, on some level, knows that he is a children's toy: not on his own plane of reality, per say, but in some vague sense that he occasionally glimpses in dreams. He wants to be loved: for a mass-produced toy within a massive corporate franchise, this means to be marketable, to be consumable, to be passively subsumed to the needs and desires of the lowest common denominator. So he rejects his deepest and most personal self, and ignores his desire to be a stallion, because it does not serve the Brand. He instead becomes a "beautiful mare", a princess, "the natural progression of a mare"; he thinks he will make a better toy and object for others this way, that it will make his body less unlovable. How the paint (the cartoon character, the part of Applejack that is a person, more than just shiny orange plastic or unslaughtered horse's meat) feels doesn't matter. Not in his own eyes.

"The Princess of Dysphoria" is a very personal piece, visceral and intentionally ugly, and the artist openly admits that it's heavily based in projection and not some clean, pure, "objective" read without bias. It is too idiosyncratic of a text to ever osmose into popular widespread fanon.

And... I really like it a lot. It's one of my favorite non-Cohost works of art I've encountered this year.

Comments

Yes ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

For something as structurally shallow as a cartoon designed to sell plastic horses, My Little Pony is amazingly apt for fanbending to more serious topics. My favorites include "A Very Special Somepony" and "Gone with the Wendigo."