Well, I binged on the first five (six? I lost count after the Ursa Minor) episodes of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic via YouTube last night, while workin’ on various stuff. It was enjoyable and I can see why it’s popular, although it didn’t cause me to squee with the light of a thousand suns the way it has some others.

I can see the Powerpuff Girls influence in it, and that can be nothing but good. I also wholeheartedly applaud a Very Girly Show For Girls That Is Girly that has things like well-defined and likeable characters, plots with conflict, and themes of self-reliance and personal development, without actually being a show for boys where the characters all have long hair and squeaky voices (a pitfall PPG could occasionally fall prey to).

In the episodes I watched, it never quite reached the level of awesome, although it did have moments that approached it, such as “I cannot tolerate such a crime against fabulosity!” and “But … the rainbow one kicked me…” With a few nudges in the right direction, it could easily become awesome, but my gut feeling is that Hasbro wouldn’t tolerate it.

So what’s my analysis of the whole Brony thing? Well, some of it is the same “breath of fresh air” phenomenon that made the original Star Wars such a hit after a decade of sci-fi movies that made you want to kill yourself. My Little Pony is a well-written, enjoyable, decently-animated show, which means it blows the doors off of anything else happening right now. Since the collapse of TV animation in the late ’90s, there’s been painfully little that wasn’t outright crap, and since it’s not crap, MLP shines like gold. And while I don’t want to belittle the quality of the show, I do think the lack of competition has a lot to do with the sheer enthusiasm of the fandom that’s building up around it.

Fans are gonna glomp onto something, and if there’s only the one thing around worth glomping onto, it wins. Once upon a time, animation fans could geek out about Animaniacs, Chip and Dale’s Rescue Rangers, Powerfpuff Girls, Balto, Cardcaptor Sakura, Dexter’s Laboratory, The Lion King, even the good old-fashioned Looney Tunes, and all still be fairly current. But all those things are old now (sorry, but it’s true, people like the New Hotness), and even if they weren’t old, they’re not being broadcast. You have to already be a fan of those for them to still be relevant to you.

If MLP was going up against the WB at its height, or even Cartoon Network during the Space Ghost: Coast to Coast era, it would have had a harder time of it, true, but on the other hand, it is a show being made right now that could stand up to those and give them a run for their money, and in the current climate that’s an accomplishment in and of itself.

-The Gneech

Well, the revised Volume II proof arrived from primary printer, so the order went in. Unfortunately, the earliest they can get copies to me is the Tuesday after AnthroCon, and that would cost an extra hundred bucks as it is. As for Volume I, I’ll be lucky to see those by the end of July at this stage.

So yeah … they might not like their feedback survey too much this time around.

The good news is that Mammallamadevil’s back-up plan has made it so that there will be at least some copies of Vols I-II at the con. Thank you, Kerry! However, this also means that if you’re wanting to pick up copies of Vol I or II at AC, you’d better come grab ‘em early, because quantities will be very limited.

-The Gneech

The downside of self-publishing, of course, is that when things go all pear-shaped, you’re the one who has to scramble to fix it.

In this particular case, I’m referring to Volumes I and II of No Predation Allowed, which are currently floundering in the Hell of Printers Who Don’t Q.A. Ironically, Volume III, which is the one they received last, had no problems whatsoever and will be on my doorstep tomorrow, ready to take to AnthroCon on Thursday.

The sticking point in both cases is the text on the spine, which for some unspecified reason, keeps being mucked with by their tech department. First, Volume I came in with the text at the right size, but reading “No     Predation Allowed.” What the heck? So I poked ‘em and they said, “Oops, we’ll send you a fixed one.”

Then, Volume II came in with the spine all disproportionately crunched, so the letters were all wide and short. Why people who are presumably trained in at least the basics of typography would not see this as an unacceptable gaffe, I can’t imagine, but again, I poked ‘em and they said, “Oops, well send you a fixed one.”

On Friday, the “fixed” Volume I arrived (a day after it was supposed to): the giant empty space between “No” and “Predation” was gone — but the text was now scrunched like the initial Volume II proof.

Dude. Seriously?

So I called and beat ‘em up in my nice and non-antagonistic way; they said “Uh … it doesn’t look squooshed to us.” So I took a photo of the squooshed Vol I next to the correct Vol III and sent it to them, and they replied, “Oooh, you mean squooshed! We see that now. We’ll show the tech team. They are working on Saturday, you might hear then.”

Oh, and no sign of the corrected proof for Volume II yet.

So I call this morning, to be told, “The tech team doesn’t work on Saturday, they’ll get back to you as soon as they can.”

…

…

Okay. Time for Plan B.

So now my plan is, with the gracious help of Mammallamadevil, to get some “emergency copies” printed posthaste (and probably at very high cost, le sigh) so that I can have at least some on hand for AC, hand-carried by Bill Holbrook and John Lotshaw. If my current printer manages to get their heads out of whatever orifices they’re stuck in quick enough, I might be able to get them to ship copies to the hotel, but I would be very surprised at this stage to see that happen in time.

The part that drives me craziest is that these are the books they had first! So it’s not like they haven’t had time to get it right — they got Volume I fourteen days ago. They got Volume III last Sunday. Nuts.

The part that drives me next-craziest is that the people there can’t seem to see what’s wrong with these books they’re shipping out. How hard is it to figure out that “No     Predation Allowed” is wrong? What are you doing in the print business if you can’t see it when proportions are scrunched? Argh.

-The Gneech, now in scramble mode ’cause somebody else screwed up

The proof for Volume One is on the way and should be here Friday; the printer has the files for Volume Two and I expect the proof for that will also be ordered sometime today. Volume Three is going to be the sticking point now, as I still need to both write the bonus story, and do some extra art for it. Best case scenario: that gets done tonight and tomorrow. More likely scenario: that gets done by degrees between now and, say, Sunday. But I am now quite confident that the books will be ready to go for AnthroCon.

I love focusing on a project like this, but I can’t sustain it indefinitely. Having the hard deadline of AC is a blessing in that regard: by the end of June, it’ll be done one way or the other and I can breathe again.

Not that I won’t still have plenty to do then … I have taken on commissions for the first time in umpty-ump years and will need to be diligent on getting those out in a fairly timely fashion. Short Story Geeks is still trucking along at a good clip and I want to keep up the momentum there — and of course, I have both writing and art projects that I’ve committed to in the upcoming year, so I’ve got to stay on top of those.

But I like this — having discrete, “finish-able” projects is a nice change from the never-ending treadmill of “need another strip for tomorrow, need another strip for tomorrow” that characterizes doing a comic. It also allows me to spread my wings a bit, instead of being locked into doing the same thing all the time from now until forever.

I do miss the reliable, almost-instantaneous feedback and audience engagement of the comics, and if I could figure out some way to retain that part of it, I certainly would. But the two worlds seem to be more-or-less exclusive.

-The Gneech

SET CHEER = WOOHOO!

-The Gneech

Wow, you guys act fast! In just a hair over 24 hours, No Predation Allowed has been completely funded!

You people are way too good to me, you know that, right? I’m all verklempt now!

Kyyanno topped it off — but I also want to toss some big ol’ shout-outs here to Redkam, Jaded, “Jeff” (is that you, BJ?), Kagur, Stuart (is that you, Arakin?), Kenster, Huskyteer, Klepsie, LKCMSL, Canis Rufus, and Kindar. You all rock like Gibraltar! I am very grateful to you all!

The project will still be open for funding for another, what, 28 days now? So anybody and everybody who still wants in is welcome and desired. You can think of it as a pre-order if you like — the books are definitely coming by the end of June in any case.

Thanks again, everybody. You just made my year.

-The Gneech