There’s something about the Internet. If you weren’t here for certain eras, you just weren’t there. It’s impossible to explain to you, what we were on about. But I think I can try.
Ask Pinkamina Diane Pie was a Tumblr Ask blog. It’s something that I think could’ve only existed on Tumblr: you have an inbox, where people can send questions, and you can respond to them. Publicly. Automagically. It was all set-up, in Tumblr’s software.
Mostly creatives used Tumblr. So, mostly, you got drawings as replies. Sometimes. (For the better blogs.) People would pretend to be fictional characters. So, if you were artistically-inclined, you might pretend to be Frisk from Undertale. Or, like Crooked Trees did: Pinkie Pie.
There was some sort of thing in the fandom where it was alleged, or at least joked about, that Pinkie Pie was a murderer. Cupcakes were involved. Scootaloo is a minor, in the show’s continuity. They’re friends.
I’m not interested in ponies. I also cannot draw. So, asking me what this was all about, it seems like an unlikely crossroads.
I fucking loved this Askblog.
Keep in mind, Ask Pinkamina Diane Pie took place— or, rather, was created— over something like a 2 week period, in August of 2011. August 6th to August 18th, if the Ask dates are actually reliable. Sadly, they are not, as, I remember this going on for months. But whatever; I remember Arcadium lasting until 1999. I’m sure my photographic memory is just faulty.
Why’s that date important?
Franken Fran ran from 2006 to 2012.
This period of history was particularly amazing for Human content creation. Or, should I say, art. Gore was heavily in style. 4chan pretty much had every kid’s ear when it came to art direction. So, what was in, was in. Mix My Little Pony with Franken Fran; you got dis.
Interestingly enough, Hannibal would not come out for another two years. The tone’s pretty much the same, even if the situation isn’t.
Now, looking back on this something like 11 years later, it’s easy to see it and go, oh, wow, so edgy. But it wasn’t. At the time, the humor involved was pretty much on the fringe of what we considered normal; but it was bleeding-edge. It hit a note, struck a chord, severed a vein. People liked it. They still do.
The limited palette; the characteristic square brush, that no one could really emulate; and the combination of the artist’s being, with the relatively-new PaintTool Sai, produced something no one had really seen before. And it was good.
For whatever reason, the juxtaposition of cute pony cartoons for children and horrible serial killer just clicked. And, as you can see, above, there’s some shit in it that just wouldn’t fly, these days.
Interestingly enough, all the murder, fictional as it might have been, wasn’t really what riled people up. Or, at least, as far as I heard, that wasn’t it.
It was that Pinkie Pie kissed Scootaloo in a comic.
Be it true or not, the story I heard was that the artist, or somebody who people thought was the artist, ended up getting plagued about this, in real life. Phone calls; that sort of thing. It was my first experience witnessing what happens to artists, online: they eventually kinda get driven away, if they get popular enough. And, for a time, that seemed to be what was happening, there, too.
Oh, why was it bad that Pinkie Pie kissed Scootaloo?
The idea people had was that Scootaloo was a child, while Pinkie Pie was probably, or definitely, an adult.
To be fair, the mention of rape, as far as I can remember, also received significant backlash. But they seemed to weather it, just fine.
Ask Pinkamina Diane Pie is an interesting part of Internet history. I feel like it was right at the cusp of the Internet becoming very, very reactionary towards unacceptable adult subjects.
Interestingly enough, the acceptability of unacceptable adult subjects, depicted fictitiously, is something that’s still argued about, today, on Twitter. (Tumblr’s audience has largely moved onto Twitter.) En generale I see it as a natural progression of the Human psyche: puzzling out what it wants to deal with, and what it won’t accept.
What do I think about its subjects?
They’re fuckin’ cartoon horses, kid.
I don’t give a shit. I didn’t draw ’em.
Addendum: I think the thing that burns my ass the most, is, if I just said, ‘sure, I’m them,’ my real-life identity would be forever protected.
But, you know what?
I’m not CrookedTrees.
Sorry, kids.