My Brony Vocabulary Lesson… I’ve Been Schooled!

(image by j-brony)

I consider myself well versed in My Little Pony. Show me a pony and in most cases I can tell you their name, country of origin, known variations, year of release, and rough current market value. Show me some of the prattle on the Brony message boards and occasionally I get stumped and have to resort to a Google search (which more often than not leads to some questionable material.)

I’ve been a My Little Pony collector for ages and over the years, we collectors have developed our own language when it involves ponies. We use SS when we are talking about So Soft Ponies, TAF to abbreviate Twice As Fancy, TE to describe Twinkle Eyed Ponies and so on (For a complete list of My Little Pony acronyms and definitions check out this helpful post on the old Arena.)

I’ve taken for granted how confusing it must be for someone new to collecting who reads a sales listing like this one:

 “Deflocked SS Truly has rubs to NDS symbol. This is not the Nirvana NSS version of this MLP. “

I think the above statements are very easy to read and understand, but to a collecting newbie I may as well be speaking in another language.

 Now that the shoe is on the other foot and I find myself muddling through the newly established Brony subculture and terminology, I find myself frequently scratching my head as I try to decode their secret Brony language.

So far I’ve learned the following terms:

PMVs- Pony Music Videos made by fans

Fimfic- Friendship is Magic fan fiction

Pony shipping (and I don’t mean the kind that involves bubble wrap and a mailer… I’m quite familiar with that kind)- derived from the word "relationship", is a general term for fans' emotional and/or intellectual involvement with the ongoing development of romance in a work of fiction (This is totally copy and pasted from Wikipedia!)

Clop- I’m just gonna say I would have been better off not knowing about this one… at all…ever.

Is my life somehow richer with this new found knowledge? Probably not, but at least I know what Bronys are chatting about so I can either check it out or avoid it like the plague. Sure, I could stick to my own Pony corner of the web that I’ve happily inhabited for the past decade, but then I’d miss out on the interesting new perspective that Bronys bring to the table.  They are rabid fans and I don’t blame them. My Little Pony is amazingly mind-blowingly awesome. I’ve just had twenty years to let it sink in.