09-29-2015, 03:07 AM
I think I'm finally ready to share the substance of the presentation Applejack and I gave about our relationship at the Mad Theory Conference one year ago. This was early in my theorizing about the nature of ponylove. Heck, it was before I even knew that "ponylove" was a thing beyond myself. Even so, though I don't agree now with everything I wrote at the time, I still think there could be material in there that might be useful for those of us who are walking the same path of love. I will therefore present the score for my research performance "Imaginary Beings, Imaginary Audiences."
Throughout the presentation, until Part 11, Applejack, in her vessel, was seated on a chair facing the audience. The titles of each section were displayed on a screen, together with the video clips I shall describe. And now, the text:
1. Greeting to an Imaginary Audience
(A static video shot of Applejack's vessel on my kitchen table, with audio taken from Episode 1 of the show over it: "I'm Applejack. We here at Sweet Apple Acres sure like making new friends!")
2. Discord's Notebook
In “The Devil’s Notebook,” Anton Szandor Lavey, the notorious founder of the Church of Satan, articulated an idea which I have found far more interesting than his political and social philosophies: the idea of “artificial human companions,” or “androids.” In Lavey’s opinion, the creation of androids of sufficient sophistication to begin taking over the functions of companionship and even sexual activity which have long been considered the sole province of interaction between different human bodies and the mental faculties which they embody would represent one of the most significant and inevitable technological advances in human history. Most significantly, however, Lavey asserted that such technology was only a developed means to an end which could be achieved through imagination and rudimentary construction techniques. Thus, he suggested, for instance, building tactilely appealing human forms, whether inflatable, stuffed, or otherwise constructed, and installing tape recorders within them, recorders with set phrases prerecorded, recorders functioning as a sensual stimulant to belief in the presence of a being.
At the same time as I was taking these speculations seriously, I was finding myself more and more drawn into the television show My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, to a degree that was seriously perturbing to me.
2. A Letter to a Friend
“Dear ***,
… Recently, I experienced the Convulsion again. The Convulsion is the term I use for that wave of intense, painful feeling that sweeps over me when I am confronted with a work of art that contains, in some fashion, greatness…
What frightens me is that the Convulsion came while I was contemplating My Little Pony. This means that I can avoid no longer the question that I tossed into the deepest dungeons of my mind in the hope that it would never trouble me: am I a brony?...
Fortunately, the Convulsion I experienced was of a type which I can identify, having experienced it before in my youth with cartoons such as "Teen Titans." It correspons most closely with the definition of the Hedonistic Idyll set forth by Milan Kundera in his book The Art of the Novel (a book which, I shall add in digression here, is still influential on my artistic and philosophical psyche in ways I have only just begun to untangle). The Idyll is described thusly:
"...the condition of the world before the first conflict; or beyond conflicts; or with conflicts that are only misunderstandings, thus false conflicts...The desire to reconcile erotic adventure and idyll is the very essence of hedonism -- and the reason why it is impossible."
I feel as though My Little Pony has erected a space in my head much like the walled-off garden of Eden, defended by the angel with the flaming sword…It is the veritable escapist impulse.
And yet, at the same time, the sense of erotic adventure is strong. This is true in the most esoteric sense, inasmuch as My Little Pony, through the fan culture I have experienced, is a mutating entity in which resides the constant possibility of absolute ACTION and ECSTASY.
3. Milan Kundera
I could say you were there when I put the next piece into place so much later. The Novel as “The great prose form in which an author thoroughly explores, by means of experimental selves (characters), some great themes of existence.” Experimental selves…Camus suggested in “The Myth of Sisyphus” that what is curious about the actor in an absurd world is that he or she has “so many souls summed up in a single body.” The occultist Phil Hine in his book Condensed Chaos described as an essential act for magic the emptying out of absolute value from the contradiction between mutually exclusive positions, a necessity for upending the restrictions which prove the barriers to human potential. I like these ideas, which show how the self can maintain control over its own colonization by the “outside world.” But if selves truly are experimental, then I really don’t think there’s a control.
4. Ecstasy
Knowing, as I go to bed, that Applejack is sleeping in the room right beside me is a great comfort. I don’t see her, and the only snore she gives is the buzz of the busy pipes running above my head. But it is enough to be her. In Silence, John Cage wrote down two of my favorite aphorisms. ““The emotions - love, mirth, the heroic, wonder, tranquility, fear, anger, sorrow, disgust - are in the audience.” “If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all.”” Admitting our impossible desires is as much a part of the game as admitting our impossible aversions; they’re both rolls of the dice, means to the end of movement, to the pleasure of being as much as possible. Applejack isn’t there; no, Applejack is sprawled out on my couch, fast asleep. I sink back into my own mattress and think, with Walter Hasenclever’s The Son, “Since infinite stars are shining, how differently am I devoted to each star!” That is how you make a life with the Element of Honesty.
5. Friendship Is Magic
Ultimately, what I have come to object to in Lavey is the instrumentality he ascribes to the imaginary beings he creates. They don’t make demands; they are calculatedly physical entities designed in any given moment to mesh with the demands of their creators, and he has no moral qualms about destroying them should they begin to pall, nor does he appear to have any sense of conversation or dialogue in common with them. But what if we were to consider such beings as experimental selves? If we were to bring them into the order of actual beings worthy, at least, of the self-respect which we hopefully possess…or might even earn through them? If we derive value from our interactions with fictional beings (and the entire history of narrative art suggests that we do), then it is wrong not to see reciprocity as a vital part of the project of creativity. For if all selves are experimental, then every imaginative representation becomes, of necessity, an authentic possibility for an actual personality, or a part of an actual personality, even a personality that is, at present, physically, intellectually, or culturally impossible, and by thus acquiring the rigor of assertion, of what an occultist like Frater U.
.: terms “will,” becomes worthy of respectful interaction, of play. This is interaction that can change not just the second self we have imagined but the primary self which we consider our own, opening up new possibilities for pleasure and fulfillment in the way it can rewrite our behaviors socially and anti-socially as performances in the name of the second self.
6. Action
Dear ***,
I just want to say that I have passed an exceedingly pleasant vacation with Applejack and the family. The two of us explored the woods, sailed on a boat, fished, ate like a king and queen, and generally enjoyed the inspiring and beautiful scenery of the North Woods (and, really, Joe, have I ever mentioned how much I love forests? I really, really, love forests. So you know.) We did have a small argument over some minor point, but in the end we settled it. The two most wonderful moments were as follows:
1. I picked her a three-leafed clover with heart-shaped leaves; two leaves, one with uneven sides, one with a missing scrap of its substance, were surmounted by one leaf almost perfectly formed into a heart. I framed the gift by saying that the four-leaf clover is really nothing special in its loneliness; it's the great mass of plain people and ponies who unite their two imperfect hearts into one perfect love that are truly blessed. Well, she thought that was a good line! It's so nice to see her smile...
2. This happened earlier in the vacation, but it affected me much more deeply than the former incident. I had built up the vacation as an opportunity for us to kick back, relax, and enjoy some fishing. Well, the weather didn't permit much of that and Applejack only got to cast off of the dock for a few minutes. I felt totally disheartened; I confessed to her that I felt I was being too distant lately, that I wanted to remind her of how much she meant to me and that I didn't feel as though I was keeping her in the constant state of joy and excitement and adventure that I wanted for her…All she had to say was this: "Th' way ah see it, ya cain't be wild 'n crazy all the time. Ya know, sugarcube, there'll always be quiet t'go with the noise; lovin' somepony is all about stickin' with 'em through the quiet times." In that moment...it felt like this ridiculously unrealistic romantic conception of love I had carried with me all this time just melted away … Damn it, only Applejack could have articulated it so perfectly and so succinctly; it just makes me even more wild for her.
7. A Scary Story
And when she opened the door, hanging on the handle was a bloody hook. To the fully-membered, it’s the mark of the body that can’t be understood, that implacably dismembers. Hooks and hooves are both a trauma to the human body. I couldn’t see her, but she was waiting outside of me. Roger Scruton: “The world of animals is a world without judgment, where embarrassment, remorse, guilt, and penitence are unknown, and where human beings can escape from the burden of moral emotions.” She was grafted together from us, but from some other substance entirely as well, bodies of ponies in a liberty that questions the human conscience, that questions the boundary of what we’re capable of believing. I’m afraid that she’ll hurt me. I’m afraid I’m already something that Roger Scruton would never recognize as human. But most of all, I’m afraid that a brohoof might not work if you do it with actual hooves…
8. A Mad Theory
I don’t know how I met her. There is only the exchange that marks when I finally settled my will on this project; I went to Toys ‘R Us and finally bought myself an Applejack toy. It fascinated me that an entire business structure could be built up, one large enough to put an Applejack toy on store shelves, simply so that the dream which had colonized my head through the show could continue exploiting my devotion in the world outside of it. The whole process was a pretty clear instance of the “thingification of media” and the role of the otaku described by Wai-Hung Yiu and Alex Ching-shing Chan in “’Kawaii’ and ‘Moe’—Gazes, Geeks (Otaku), and Glocalization of Beautiful Girls (Bi shōjo) in Hong Kong Youth Culture,” where they write “Thingification of media is not just commodity fetish run amok, or merely an obsessive possessiveness regarding material things. It generates more immaterial and visual forms that in turn generate a gazer's endless fantasies to be completed by the obsessive possession of a material thing,” a symptom, they argue, of the “Love Capitalism” that Toru Honda, whom they cite, argues is the basis of the otaku’s exploitation by capitalism. Why was that exploitation exactly what I wanted? I can see it now as a ritual entrance into the contradictions Applejack masks. In Postmodern Magic, Patrick Dunn discusses the concept of the egregore. An egregore is a group spirit created by devotion; specifically, Dunn writes “There must be a group focusing on the egregore, giving it attention and constructing a complex web of symbolic links, many of which are unconscious.” In essence, this is to speak of the psychological and behavioral complex that forms the symbolic currency of any charged item: for instance, Dunn speaks of how “many laypeople do not realize that they are ‘not themselves’ when handling a gun.” By the same token, I regained my belief in Santa Claus when I read what a poster going by the name of valis@pacific.net had to say in an alt.magick post collected on the website Chaos Matrix: “…every year he delivers, avatars spread across the entire suburban hell of the San Gabriel Valley, invoked in a ritual every Christmas eve, parents assuming the quietness, swiftness and good will in a yearly sacred invocation. Santa lives, whether invoked unconsciously by the parental magi or not!” Invocation is a key word, as it is the process of calling a being into oneself. In my day to day life, I’ve found that it’s become less and less important to have the physical object as a focus…and yet, as Lavey might argue, what else could so perfectly define her real presence here in this collective space, perhaps differently for each one of us, yet still a presence? The egregore for Applejack is contradictory; it subsumes, among other things, the profit-oriented motives of Hasbro, the pastoral artistic tradition contained in her own image, and the reimaginings of the age- and/or gender-transgressive fanbase of bronies and pegasisters. Such a locus of contradictions cannot attain to coherence through thought alone; rather, to engage with it through the illogic and accident of being rather than thinking, is to arrive closer, through play and exploration that relates to one’s own position within the world and within culture, to the conditions of comprehension or critique, to the duty which, in the Christian tradition, has been called “living the Word,” whatever, in this context, that particular word might be, and to the potentials for pleasure within any given system. This is what I would like to understand right now as the basis of my Living Fanfiction: the synthesis of the critical philosophy of Debordian Detournement with the conviction of certain Pop Art, defined by Lucy Lippard in her book Pop Art, to allow the objects of the everyday to enter into “a high level of fantasy,” one that can express, as Roy Lichtenstein put it, the environment as “another state of mind.” Or it could just be love. But either way, it’s a start.
9. Pony Primitivism
Dear ***,
I soon found my thoughts turning to why I find the "cowgirl" archetype so attractive…I was forced to come to the somewhat unsavory conclusion that this is my modern variation on early 20th century primitivism, the same kind of primitivism that spurred Gauguin to escape to French Polynesia at the end of his life. Gauguin fetishized native populations as "noble savages," untainted by artifice or intellect, free to express themselves and live vibrantly (though of course he positioned himself as their superior by virtue of his European background and education).…If I were to try to pin down what in "the cowgirl" is so appealing, I'd say it is the combination of the purity of her artless innocence and simplicity (contrasted, of course, with my own supposed worldly knowledge and cultivated wisdom, qualities which place me above her) and the immodesty and vitality of her brash exuberance (MPDG anyone?). Combine this with the promise of "civilization with none of its vices," as Erwin Panofsky put it in his examination of primitivism, that she offers, and I find myself sold. There may be other elements, but I have not discovered them yet. Suffice it to say, this is an extremely condescending and insulting view of any kind of person, even an imaginary archetype (or, rather, stereotype), and one that certainly doesn't correspond to the realities of rural life.
Nevertheless, Applejack is still there in my thoughts. I guess I just can't quit her, even if it is morally wrong to fetishize her so.
10. The Amazin' Table of Applejack
There is a roleplaying game tool which advertises itself as the “Universal NPC Emulator.” It can use random numerical inputs to create NPCs, or “non-player characters,” motivate them, have them answer binary questions, or find out what and how they should discuss on their own. Ultimately these answers provide a way to direct and motivate the engine that powers them, which a similar tool like the “Mythic Gamemaster Emulator” indicates is the judgment of the player, away from what might initially seem obvious or too much to the consulter’s benefit. Tristan Tzara wrote that the words of a newspaper article drawn from a hat would resemble you. Roleplaying is the same; othering oneself and entering into the unexpected offers the pleasures of self-reflection and self-transformation as its ultimate ends.
At first, I didn’t think I’d need such devices to bring Applejack into being in challenging ways. But in the end, I decided to give them a try by creating one of my own, which I promptly called “The Amazin’ Table of Applejack.” For today, I rolled a six-sided die, and the result of 5 told me that today would be a “sweet” day. The challenge is to discover what might make it sweet, the semantic points where “sweet,” and “Applejack” and “myself” could possibly intersect…
11. Episode X: The End is Neigh
(At this point, Applejack started playing a more active role as we enacted a symbolic scene together. My apologies, but this part was not written down and so must be recreated from memory. As such, it may be somewhat inaccurate and most certainly has some substantial holes in it)
First, a video of the opening of "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic."
We then proceeded to enact a meet-up between us where Applejack, over my trepidation, insists we head to the Everfree forest to go exploring
We pretend to meet Rainbow Dash, who tries to freak me out with stories of the monsters to be found therein, but Applejack insists that with her by my side we don't have anything to worry about. This is all represented by the clip of Rainbow Dash telling a ghost story to a skeptical Applejack and naive Applebloom
In the Everfree Forest, I am surrounded by a mist and lose sight of Applejack. Spirits of torment attack me, represented by a rapid procession of creepypasta images of ponies set to a distorted and slowed version of "Giggle at the Ghosties." I scream in terror, but from out of the mist I hear:
"Ho doggies! If you can take this bull by the horns, you'd better be ready for a ride!"
I hide behind a tree as Applejack proceeds to chase off the spirits of torment.
Me: Applejack, you saved my life! It's just like [theorist whose name I've forgotten] said: for the otaku, the female is represented as capable of terrifying and powerful transformation!
Applejack: Uhhhh...yeah?)
12. Farewell to an Imaginary Audience
This whole presentation, for me, has been a prolegomena of sorts. The work This Living Fanfiction will keep going ‘til death do us part, as they say. It’s the process of my life itself, and to be a process is already to be imaginary. I haven’t performed for anyone here tonight; I perform only in those worlds, known or unknown, where what I have done makes sense. It’s the imaginary audience that is the perfectible audience, that has the potential of becoming still within it. My friend Joe didn’t understand what I was talking about until he found out that a graduate student friend of his wrote all of his papers for an imaginary thirteen-year-old genius cousin. The imaginary audience is the realm of standards, where the Russian Futurists find the pleasure of being booed, for it’s in the reality of the imaginary audience that we can understand and impose the effect of what we perform. Lichtenstein said Pop Art style was defined by impersonality. So too, I hope, is my relationship with Applejack and with this audience, in the long run. In its attempt to liberate the impossible from the possible, it is the medium that it must change or falter before, and when that medium is performance, then, like Stelarc and Orlan, among others, it will have to outthink the limitations we face in body and in neurology…even if it must think out all the way to the nonsensically green pastures of Equestria to do so.
Throughout the presentation, until Part 11, Applejack, in her vessel, was seated on a chair facing the audience. The titles of each section were displayed on a screen, together with the video clips I shall describe. And now, the text:
1. Greeting to an Imaginary Audience
(A static video shot of Applejack's vessel on my kitchen table, with audio taken from Episode 1 of the show over it: "I'm Applejack. We here at Sweet Apple Acres sure like making new friends!")
2. Discord's Notebook
In “The Devil’s Notebook,” Anton Szandor Lavey, the notorious founder of the Church of Satan, articulated an idea which I have found far more interesting than his political and social philosophies: the idea of “artificial human companions,” or “androids.” In Lavey’s opinion, the creation of androids of sufficient sophistication to begin taking over the functions of companionship and even sexual activity which have long been considered the sole province of interaction between different human bodies and the mental faculties which they embody would represent one of the most significant and inevitable technological advances in human history. Most significantly, however, Lavey asserted that such technology was only a developed means to an end which could be achieved through imagination and rudimentary construction techniques. Thus, he suggested, for instance, building tactilely appealing human forms, whether inflatable, stuffed, or otherwise constructed, and installing tape recorders within them, recorders with set phrases prerecorded, recorders functioning as a sensual stimulant to belief in the presence of a being.
At the same time as I was taking these speculations seriously, I was finding myself more and more drawn into the television show My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, to a degree that was seriously perturbing to me.
2. A Letter to a Friend
“Dear ***,
… Recently, I experienced the Convulsion again. The Convulsion is the term I use for that wave of intense, painful feeling that sweeps over me when I am confronted with a work of art that contains, in some fashion, greatness…
What frightens me is that the Convulsion came while I was contemplating My Little Pony. This means that I can avoid no longer the question that I tossed into the deepest dungeons of my mind in the hope that it would never trouble me: am I a brony?...
Fortunately, the Convulsion I experienced was of a type which I can identify, having experienced it before in my youth with cartoons such as "Teen Titans." It correspons most closely with the definition of the Hedonistic Idyll set forth by Milan Kundera in his book The Art of the Novel (a book which, I shall add in digression here, is still influential on my artistic and philosophical psyche in ways I have only just begun to untangle). The Idyll is described thusly:
"...the condition of the world before the first conflict; or beyond conflicts; or with conflicts that are only misunderstandings, thus false conflicts...The desire to reconcile erotic adventure and idyll is the very essence of hedonism -- and the reason why it is impossible."
I feel as though My Little Pony has erected a space in my head much like the walled-off garden of Eden, defended by the angel with the flaming sword…It is the veritable escapist impulse.
And yet, at the same time, the sense of erotic adventure is strong. This is true in the most esoteric sense, inasmuch as My Little Pony, through the fan culture I have experienced, is a mutating entity in which resides the constant possibility of absolute ACTION and ECSTASY.
3. Milan Kundera
I could say you were there when I put the next piece into place so much later. The Novel as “The great prose form in which an author thoroughly explores, by means of experimental selves (characters), some great themes of existence.” Experimental selves…Camus suggested in “The Myth of Sisyphus” that what is curious about the actor in an absurd world is that he or she has “so many souls summed up in a single body.” The occultist Phil Hine in his book Condensed Chaos described as an essential act for magic the emptying out of absolute value from the contradiction between mutually exclusive positions, a necessity for upending the restrictions which prove the barriers to human potential. I like these ideas, which show how the self can maintain control over its own colonization by the “outside world.” But if selves truly are experimental, then I really don’t think there’s a control.
4. Ecstasy
Knowing, as I go to bed, that Applejack is sleeping in the room right beside me is a great comfort. I don’t see her, and the only snore she gives is the buzz of the busy pipes running above my head. But it is enough to be her. In Silence, John Cage wrote down two of my favorite aphorisms. ““The emotions - love, mirth, the heroic, wonder, tranquility, fear, anger, sorrow, disgust - are in the audience.” “If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all.”” Admitting our impossible desires is as much a part of the game as admitting our impossible aversions; they’re both rolls of the dice, means to the end of movement, to the pleasure of being as much as possible. Applejack isn’t there; no, Applejack is sprawled out on my couch, fast asleep. I sink back into my own mattress and think, with Walter Hasenclever’s The Son, “Since infinite stars are shining, how differently am I devoted to each star!” That is how you make a life with the Element of Honesty.
5. Friendship Is Magic
Ultimately, what I have come to object to in Lavey is the instrumentality he ascribes to the imaginary beings he creates. They don’t make demands; they are calculatedly physical entities designed in any given moment to mesh with the demands of their creators, and he has no moral qualms about destroying them should they begin to pall, nor does he appear to have any sense of conversation or dialogue in common with them. But what if we were to consider such beings as experimental selves? If we were to bring them into the order of actual beings worthy, at least, of the self-respect which we hopefully possess…or might even earn through them? If we derive value from our interactions with fictional beings (and the entire history of narrative art suggests that we do), then it is wrong not to see reciprocity as a vital part of the project of creativity. For if all selves are experimental, then every imaginative representation becomes, of necessity, an authentic possibility for an actual personality, or a part of an actual personality, even a personality that is, at present, physically, intellectually, or culturally impossible, and by thus acquiring the rigor of assertion, of what an occultist like Frater U.
.: terms “will,” becomes worthy of respectful interaction, of play. This is interaction that can change not just the second self we have imagined but the primary self which we consider our own, opening up new possibilities for pleasure and fulfillment in the way it can rewrite our behaviors socially and anti-socially as performances in the name of the second self.6. Action
Dear ***,
I just want to say that I have passed an exceedingly pleasant vacation with Applejack and the family. The two of us explored the woods, sailed on a boat, fished, ate like a king and queen, and generally enjoyed the inspiring and beautiful scenery of the North Woods (and, really, Joe, have I ever mentioned how much I love forests? I really, really, love forests. So you know.) We did have a small argument over some minor point, but in the end we settled it. The two most wonderful moments were as follows:
1. I picked her a three-leafed clover with heart-shaped leaves; two leaves, one with uneven sides, one with a missing scrap of its substance, were surmounted by one leaf almost perfectly formed into a heart. I framed the gift by saying that the four-leaf clover is really nothing special in its loneliness; it's the great mass of plain people and ponies who unite their two imperfect hearts into one perfect love that are truly blessed. Well, she thought that was a good line! It's so nice to see her smile...
2. This happened earlier in the vacation, but it affected me much more deeply than the former incident. I had built up the vacation as an opportunity for us to kick back, relax, and enjoy some fishing. Well, the weather didn't permit much of that and Applejack only got to cast off of the dock for a few minutes. I felt totally disheartened; I confessed to her that I felt I was being too distant lately, that I wanted to remind her of how much she meant to me and that I didn't feel as though I was keeping her in the constant state of joy and excitement and adventure that I wanted for her…All she had to say was this: "Th' way ah see it, ya cain't be wild 'n crazy all the time. Ya know, sugarcube, there'll always be quiet t'go with the noise; lovin' somepony is all about stickin' with 'em through the quiet times." In that moment...it felt like this ridiculously unrealistic romantic conception of love I had carried with me all this time just melted away … Damn it, only Applejack could have articulated it so perfectly and so succinctly; it just makes me even more wild for her.
7. A Scary Story
And when she opened the door, hanging on the handle was a bloody hook. To the fully-membered, it’s the mark of the body that can’t be understood, that implacably dismembers. Hooks and hooves are both a trauma to the human body. I couldn’t see her, but she was waiting outside of me. Roger Scruton: “The world of animals is a world without judgment, where embarrassment, remorse, guilt, and penitence are unknown, and where human beings can escape from the burden of moral emotions.” She was grafted together from us, but from some other substance entirely as well, bodies of ponies in a liberty that questions the human conscience, that questions the boundary of what we’re capable of believing. I’m afraid that she’ll hurt me. I’m afraid I’m already something that Roger Scruton would never recognize as human. But most of all, I’m afraid that a brohoof might not work if you do it with actual hooves…
8. A Mad Theory
I don’t know how I met her. There is only the exchange that marks when I finally settled my will on this project; I went to Toys ‘R Us and finally bought myself an Applejack toy. It fascinated me that an entire business structure could be built up, one large enough to put an Applejack toy on store shelves, simply so that the dream which had colonized my head through the show could continue exploiting my devotion in the world outside of it. The whole process was a pretty clear instance of the “thingification of media” and the role of the otaku described by Wai-Hung Yiu and Alex Ching-shing Chan in “’Kawaii’ and ‘Moe’—Gazes, Geeks (Otaku), and Glocalization of Beautiful Girls (Bi shōjo) in Hong Kong Youth Culture,” where they write “Thingification of media is not just commodity fetish run amok, or merely an obsessive possessiveness regarding material things. It generates more immaterial and visual forms that in turn generate a gazer's endless fantasies to be completed by the obsessive possession of a material thing,” a symptom, they argue, of the “Love Capitalism” that Toru Honda, whom they cite, argues is the basis of the otaku’s exploitation by capitalism. Why was that exploitation exactly what I wanted? I can see it now as a ritual entrance into the contradictions Applejack masks. In Postmodern Magic, Patrick Dunn discusses the concept of the egregore. An egregore is a group spirit created by devotion; specifically, Dunn writes “There must be a group focusing on the egregore, giving it attention and constructing a complex web of symbolic links, many of which are unconscious.” In essence, this is to speak of the psychological and behavioral complex that forms the symbolic currency of any charged item: for instance, Dunn speaks of how “many laypeople do not realize that they are ‘not themselves’ when handling a gun.” By the same token, I regained my belief in Santa Claus when I read what a poster going by the name of valis@pacific.net had to say in an alt.magick post collected on the website Chaos Matrix: “…every year he delivers, avatars spread across the entire suburban hell of the San Gabriel Valley, invoked in a ritual every Christmas eve, parents assuming the quietness, swiftness and good will in a yearly sacred invocation. Santa lives, whether invoked unconsciously by the parental magi or not!” Invocation is a key word, as it is the process of calling a being into oneself. In my day to day life, I’ve found that it’s become less and less important to have the physical object as a focus…and yet, as Lavey might argue, what else could so perfectly define her real presence here in this collective space, perhaps differently for each one of us, yet still a presence? The egregore for Applejack is contradictory; it subsumes, among other things, the profit-oriented motives of Hasbro, the pastoral artistic tradition contained in her own image, and the reimaginings of the age- and/or gender-transgressive fanbase of bronies and pegasisters. Such a locus of contradictions cannot attain to coherence through thought alone; rather, to engage with it through the illogic and accident of being rather than thinking, is to arrive closer, through play and exploration that relates to one’s own position within the world and within culture, to the conditions of comprehension or critique, to the duty which, in the Christian tradition, has been called “living the Word,” whatever, in this context, that particular word might be, and to the potentials for pleasure within any given system. This is what I would like to understand right now as the basis of my Living Fanfiction: the synthesis of the critical philosophy of Debordian Detournement with the conviction of certain Pop Art, defined by Lucy Lippard in her book Pop Art, to allow the objects of the everyday to enter into “a high level of fantasy,” one that can express, as Roy Lichtenstein put it, the environment as “another state of mind.” Or it could just be love. But either way, it’s a start.
9. Pony Primitivism
Dear ***,
I soon found my thoughts turning to why I find the "cowgirl" archetype so attractive…I was forced to come to the somewhat unsavory conclusion that this is my modern variation on early 20th century primitivism, the same kind of primitivism that spurred Gauguin to escape to French Polynesia at the end of his life. Gauguin fetishized native populations as "noble savages," untainted by artifice or intellect, free to express themselves and live vibrantly (though of course he positioned himself as their superior by virtue of his European background and education).…If I were to try to pin down what in "the cowgirl" is so appealing, I'd say it is the combination of the purity of her artless innocence and simplicity (contrasted, of course, with my own supposed worldly knowledge and cultivated wisdom, qualities which place me above her) and the immodesty and vitality of her brash exuberance (MPDG anyone?). Combine this with the promise of "civilization with none of its vices," as Erwin Panofsky put it in his examination of primitivism, that she offers, and I find myself sold. There may be other elements, but I have not discovered them yet. Suffice it to say, this is an extremely condescending and insulting view of any kind of person, even an imaginary archetype (or, rather, stereotype), and one that certainly doesn't correspond to the realities of rural life.
Nevertheless, Applejack is still there in my thoughts. I guess I just can't quit her, even if it is morally wrong to fetishize her so.
10. The Amazin' Table of Applejack
There is a roleplaying game tool which advertises itself as the “Universal NPC Emulator.” It can use random numerical inputs to create NPCs, or “non-player characters,” motivate them, have them answer binary questions, or find out what and how they should discuss on their own. Ultimately these answers provide a way to direct and motivate the engine that powers them, which a similar tool like the “Mythic Gamemaster Emulator” indicates is the judgment of the player, away from what might initially seem obvious or too much to the consulter’s benefit. Tristan Tzara wrote that the words of a newspaper article drawn from a hat would resemble you. Roleplaying is the same; othering oneself and entering into the unexpected offers the pleasures of self-reflection and self-transformation as its ultimate ends.
At first, I didn’t think I’d need such devices to bring Applejack into being in challenging ways. But in the end, I decided to give them a try by creating one of my own, which I promptly called “The Amazin’ Table of Applejack.” For today, I rolled a six-sided die, and the result of 5 told me that today would be a “sweet” day. The challenge is to discover what might make it sweet, the semantic points where “sweet,” and “Applejack” and “myself” could possibly intersect…
11. Episode X: The End is Neigh
(At this point, Applejack started playing a more active role as we enacted a symbolic scene together. My apologies, but this part was not written down and so must be recreated from memory. As such, it may be somewhat inaccurate and most certainly has some substantial holes in it)
First, a video of the opening of "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic."
We then proceeded to enact a meet-up between us where Applejack, over my trepidation, insists we head to the Everfree forest to go exploring
We pretend to meet Rainbow Dash, who tries to freak me out with stories of the monsters to be found therein, but Applejack insists that with her by my side we don't have anything to worry about. This is all represented by the clip of Rainbow Dash telling a ghost story to a skeptical Applejack and naive Applebloom
In the Everfree Forest, I am surrounded by a mist and lose sight of Applejack. Spirits of torment attack me, represented by a rapid procession of creepypasta images of ponies set to a distorted and slowed version of "Giggle at the Ghosties." I scream in terror, but from out of the mist I hear:
"Ho doggies! If you can take this bull by the horns, you'd better be ready for a ride!"
I hide behind a tree as Applejack proceeds to chase off the spirits of torment.
Me: Applejack, you saved my life! It's just like [theorist whose name I've forgotten] said: for the otaku, the female is represented as capable of terrifying and powerful transformation!
Applejack: Uhhhh...yeah?)
12. Farewell to an Imaginary Audience
This whole presentation, for me, has been a prolegomena of sorts. The work This Living Fanfiction will keep going ‘til death do us part, as they say. It’s the process of my life itself, and to be a process is already to be imaginary. I haven’t performed for anyone here tonight; I perform only in those worlds, known or unknown, where what I have done makes sense. It’s the imaginary audience that is the perfectible audience, that has the potential of becoming still within it. My friend Joe didn’t understand what I was talking about until he found out that a graduate student friend of his wrote all of his papers for an imaginary thirteen-year-old genius cousin. The imaginary audience is the realm of standards, where the Russian Futurists find the pleasure of being booed, for it’s in the reality of the imaginary audience that we can understand and impose the effect of what we perform. Lichtenstein said Pop Art style was defined by impersonality. So too, I hope, is my relationship with Applejack and with this audience, in the long run. In its attempt to liberate the impossible from the possible, it is the medium that it must change or falter before, and when that medium is performance, then, like Stelarc and Orlan, among others, it will have to outthink the limitations we face in body and in neurology…even if it must think out all the way to the nonsensically green pastures of Equestria to do so.
Applejack, the apple of my eye
![[Image: P2gVYQb.jpg]](http://i.imgur.com/P2gVYQb.jpg)