My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic - Page 550

(Oh hey, another one of THOSE long-winded posts. Well suck it up bitch.)

For a little while I've been thinking about the contributors to this fandom, one point specifically. Mainly I've been concerned with the connection between the creator and his or her audience. Ever since I've gotten started tracking artists (and even more so when I started following tumblr blogs) I've been curious about how to interact with the people who make the art or write the blog (and for others, fan fiction authors). I've always had that nagging question of whether I should even try and ask them questions, or talk to them on their streams, or send them messages of encouragement.

The 'evidence' has been mounting as of late, and I'm pretty confident in the verdict: talk to your content contributors! We all know and love our own artists and writers and we continually support them (don't stop, keep fawning over Saura, agony!), but it is equally important to communicate with those outside of our community.

For a long time I took an isolated approach to it, skimming through DA and picking what I deemed worthy without paying any real attention to the author. Sure, I could recognize styles and most of the more prestigious names, but it was all just pictures. Once I moved to using the Watcher method on DA (credit to motbob for economizing that) there was an almost unnoticeable change in how I dealt with them, but it was there. I would go on huge watching sprees, finding 20 or 30 artists at a time, and I would always get a few comments. Usually the people with 3000 watchers didn't respond of course. There were however, many who did. It was usually with a cute little 'thanks for the watch/fav!' or some automated response, but sometimes it had just the slightest hint of personality. Whether it was an odd emoticon or a specific detail being mentioned, it kind of made me reflect less on how I felt. It made me try and see how they felt about me. I find it much more interesting to understand why and what they feel about me than to wallow in warm self satisfaction.

So that went on for probably a month, I think at that time I was hovering in the mid 300's in terms of artists watched. It was still mostly mechanical: get a list of pics, inspect for pony relevance/quality, order in some homogenous mixture of quality, and then present them. Now as you all know, I love moonstuck, a lot. At that time I always had it open in a tab and I would refresh every so often when I was in between activities. After deciding to read multiple pony blogs it becamse increasingly difficult to manually check. Well, I had had enough of that. It was getting tiring, and seeing as I already automated my pony on DA it wasn't a big leap to doing it to my ask pony blogs. At this point I got my Tumblr, and the biggest change in my perspective happened. I began to see the artists.

At first I followed the mod blogs (the accounts of the people who created the ask blogs) out of convenience. They made art that wasn't relevant to their role-playing so they posted it their. And then I noticed some of them had streams, and posted off topic things, and talked to each other. The only difference between TLPonies and the pony tumblrverse is that all of them draw really well. We talk strategy/theory about starcraft and dota, they talk about expressions and cross overs (as well as other unmemorable topics). Ok so now their people, but they feel even more alien now! Instead of being giant machines that pump about D'aw they were a clique that my artistically uneducated mind could not relate to. I would go into their streams to watch them draw and their would always be a skype call going on that I knew was always going to be out of my reach. As saddening as it was, its to be expected, even someone with 50 fans can not realy have a connection to all of them.

That's what everyone thinks, though. We suffer from the same problems that voting in the US does. There is some sort of mystical apathy that we have towards the content creators when we see their 'giant followings'. It's easy to imagine that they go through buckets of fan mail and the deluge numbs their senses, but both of those points couldn't be further from the truth. Just to put it into perspective, Moonstuck has 10000 followers. That's it. That's a small town at best. Here we have an artist that I absolutely idolize and is practically the epitome of tumblr famous, but we get so caught up in these relatively small numbers that we brand them as pony super stars and never reach out. It seems so silly. You would be amazed at how silent people are when they are content with the blog. Hell, even when people get pissed of I'd be surprised if the amount of people who contact the artist reaches triple digits. Everytime I would listen in on a stream there would be an artist who gets a single piece of fanart (most of the time just a doodle) and it would absolutely make their day. Honestly, one of the reasons I'm making this posts is because of Rai's response to my spotlight on her. It isn't about saying 'hey look, she paid attention to me!' at all, it never has been. I was astonished when she wrote that no one has ever spotlighted her, or cared enough to really dissect her style. And I know they were silly little emotes, but I was kind of moved with the fact that this little idea I had could make someone feel even a bit happier about their art. Being able to make someone else happy makes me giddy.

The biggest reason that I came t this conclusion though, is from the few tumblr blogs who have opened their arms and actually shown some intimate emotion on their mod blogs. There are a lot of people with a lot of problems, and no one is an exception. There are a few blogs (whom I will not name) that have vented their frustration or depression over their blogs, and I've thought that they were either attention whoring, or that much more dedicated fans would console them. The sad fact is, almost no one did. Maybe 20 people gave them a pat on the back and even fewer put effort into it, but beyond that nothing. The fans were given an open invitation to show how much they cared and failed miserably. Now, some people did help, and that cheered them up. But could you imagine if those 5 people turned into 50? or 100? Your opinion matters so much, it helps so much to validate all of the hard work and sacrifices every person who contributes to this fandom makes. Never be intimidated by someones star power, if you love a piece you should comment. Maybe even email them. Hell, put as much effort into your thank you as that piece of art effected you. If I could find the person who altered alfalfa monster's dialogue you'd bet your ass I would write them a fucking essay.

If you didn't read any of that wall of boring text, then pick it up here.

I truly want everyone who is reading this to try and think of one person in this fandom, a fan fic author, a song writer, an artist, a blog mod, and write them something. Anything will do. Even a single follow matters, putting a concrete number in front of their eyes proving that you are interested in them matters. You could just give them a little nudge of support, but know that you control how big of an impact you can make. Writing a heart felt letter of admiration will not get tossed aside without recognition. Your opinion, specifically your opinion, matters to them so much. If you go onto a blog and see that they are depressed, make a tumblr, contact them. Tell them that you made this tumblr for the express purpose of cheering them up. Validate anyone you see who is unsure of themselves, because what they are doing is fantastic and you wouldn't be a fan otherwise.

This is all only from my experience, I can only give you what I think is right. You're not gonna become buddy-buddy with the authors (its not impossible though), but I feel the silent majority of the content pony consumer should try and reach out a bit more.

((This is what happened at 2 AM, I ignore my homework and write huge pony things...sigh))

EDIT: and congrats, we are halfway to 600!