Category Archives: television

.musecast Episode 4: The Derpy Hooves Controversy

musecast, television Leave a comment

Even before I became a fan of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, I was aware of a controversy involving naming one of the ponies (in accordance with the fanbase) Derpy. This was something I was probably going to write about at some point were it not for the .musecast, but my own feelings on the issue are still evolving, and I thought talking about it would be a better strategy at this point. More photos from my recent shoot at the Toledo Botanical Garden accompany…

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On “Perverts” and the Brony/Pegasister Community

entertainment, glbt, internet, politics, rhetoric, sex, stompity, television, transgender, videogames Leave a comment

Michael J. Nelson: “BronyCon 2012 drew a crowd of 4000 chubby little pervs.” (twitter.com) When I first started writing here about getting into Dance Dance Revolution in late 2003, I got a lot of negative e-mails. Most of them were along the lines of, “You can’t go play video games where kids are present because you’re one of them queers and everyone will be right to assume that you’re just going there to try to ‘pick up’ or kidnap kids for whatever perverted things people like…

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So It’s More Acceptable to Bully Kids?

arts, cyberbullying, glbt, politics, rhetoric, teaching, television Leave a comment

Donations for bullied bus monitor soar past $500,000 (MSNBC.com) It’s difficult to figure out just how to phrase what this story has compelled me to say without sounding like I’m trying to play down what Karen Klein went through, and continues to go through as the video of her being bullied on the school bus she was monitoring gets played over and over again, on news broadcasts and millions of computer screens all over the world. Let me say at the start, then, that what…

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The Machine

internet, music, politics, sex, teaching, television Leave a comment

Joseph Campbell: “[The modern myth] has to do with machines …” (Interview with Publishers Weekly excerpted in Facebook post from the Joseph Campbell Foundation) Anything having to do with Star Wars is kind of timely with news of George Lucas preparing to step down at LucasFilm still fresh in our minds. As I read Campbell’s words I had to wonder what he would have made of the Borg from the Star Trek universe, which were more contemporary for people of my generation. With Darth Vader the threat of…

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You Can’t Stop Fan-Based Works

arts, commercials, kink, sex, television Leave a comment

Esurance Axes Erin After the Secret Agent Took on an X-Rated Life of Her Own (cbsnews.com) If you’ve never heard of Rule 34, it’s another of those Internet memes. The full text of rule 34 is, “If it exists, there is porn of it. No exceptions.” My friend Max C., who first made me aware of this story, pointed out that Erin Esurance may well be the first “casualty” of Rule 34, a character retired because its creators were sick of all the adult spinoffs…

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