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| Now with 10% less teethmarks |
The FOB Newsletter is a newly developed section by our new Journalist Silvermane who will be covering weekly events within the Brony Fandom. Starting with a Hiku, and moving onto randomness, cultural eloquence, imaginary letters to the editor, and the consistent use of third person.
Cover Art:
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| Dig my awesome letterhead! (Fluttershy is best pony) |
A Fluttershy Haiku
Fluttershy looks bak
And sees, with fear leaping up
Hoofprints, following
BIOGRAPHY:
Hello,
everypony! This is Silvermane with the first of what he hopes will be many
weekly or “whenever-he-can-get-to-it”-ly newsletters. Since this is the first newsletter, and some
readers may not know who Silvermane is, allow him to introduce himself. He is a
journalist brought on board FOB Equestria as a staff writer, journalist,
content searcher, and all-around cool guy. It’s true what many ponies may have
heard, that when Silvermane joined the staff, it immediately got 20% cooler. It
took a little longer than “10 seconds flat” but Silvermane isn’t as awesome as
RD. Is anypony?) Silvermane joined the
military in 1977, and is still in the military. (Air Force now, but he was Army
for over 13 years.) Since his military job is a part-time Air National Guard
job, of course Silvermane has a full-time job too. He actually works during the
week as an electrician at the same base he does weekend drills at. Silvermane
has been writing in various formats for
quite a while now including monthly newsletters at the base, proposals, job
statements of work, and short fiction pieces (But no fan-fics). He even wrote
some training manuals for Google when they opened a server farm in Pryor
Oklahoma.
Silvermane became a brony just a few months
ago, due to his becoming aware of the work John De Lancie did with the show. When
he first heard Mr. De Lancie was doing VA for MLP, Silvermane thought;
“What, that lame show from the 80’s?”
(And 90’s and early 2000’s, but you get the point).
Curious, he did a little searching and
discovered Lauren Faust was involved in it. As a fan of QUALITY animation and
animated shows (Yes, Silvermane is aware MLP FIM is Flash-based and not cel animation), Silvermane knew her from her previous Powerpuff Girls and other shows. He also
knew of Rob Renzetti, Paul Rudish, and Martin Ansolobehere. Finally, he took a
deep breath and watched an episode on YouTube. (it was “Sonic Rainboom”) Everypony
knows what happens after you watch one. You gotta watch one more. Then one
more. Then a few more. Pretty soon “welcome to the herd” is echoing throughout
Equestria. It happened to Silvermane, and he’s glad, GLAD, he tells you!
Anyway, back to pony business!
As for the writing gig, Silvermane was told
initiative was not only desired, but a pre-requisite for the position. This
newsletter is one aspect of that initiative. He hopes to chronicle things
happening around the brony community as
well as his thoughts on different subjects. He is planning the format of this
Newsletter to be as follows; (except for this rather long 1st issue
introduction, or course)
- Part One "The Stable" will be an article discussing one aspect of the military brony community, or the brony movement in general, including the public perceptions of bronies, and media statements concerning bronies as Silvermane finds them or thinks them up.
- Part Two will be what he calls “Random Musings” and it will usually be whatever brony-related or MLP-related thoughts come into his mind.
- Part Three will be “Silvermane’s Culture Corner”
and will briefly describe a popular cultural reference in one of the shows.
- Part Four will be “Letters to the Editor” (me), and will post comments, praises, or
criticisms, as well as suggestions from Silvermane’s loyal readers.
That’s about it for the format, let’s get
started;
THE STABLE
Since the intro
in this first newsletter is so long, Silvermane is going to call it the Stable
Article this time around to avoid excess article length. So on to...
RANDOM MUSINGS
- Absolutely true “Silvermane-Swears-To-Celestia”
story…
Wednesday someone apparently found a few of
my posts while surfing the Internet and asked me;
<Clueless> “Dude, you watch a show made for little
GIRLS??”
<Silvermane>
“Yeh.”
<Clueless>
“WHY?”
<Silvermane>
“Watch an episode. It has great characters, great storylines, and great, well, everything!”
And
this is when he says, (And bear in mind this guy knows NOTHING about MLP, brony fandom, or popular brony memes.);
<Clueless>
“So you watch it for the PLOT??”
<Silvermane>
“NO!!!”
Silvermane
is rarely rendered speechless, but this was one of those times.
- In
an earlier post, Silvermane had a section called “Things That Should Be In The
Dictionary, But aren’t” and had “Phronie” (a cross between "brony" and "phony"). Now we have;
- Silvermane
was wondering which branch of service has the most bronies, percentage-wise. He’s
thinking “Air Force” but is open to opposing viewpoints. Comments, anypony? You
might get your opinion posted in the next newsletter.
- How many fans dread (like Silvermane does) that Seaponies are going to be introduced sometime in the show? Oh well, maybe they’ll be adorable.
SILVERMANE’S CULTURE CORNER
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| So much culture in this corner, that it'll put you in the hospital! |
OK, new episode came out featuring
everyone’s favorite CMC, Scoots. All in all it was a GREAT episode, especially
since we got to see Luna again. (So now we know it’s her job to enter dreams… Interesting future storyline possibilities there…) Anyway, during the first
nights’ campout, RD tells everyone a story called (I think) “Where’s my rusty
horseshoe?” In the story, a scary creature is looking for her missing horseshoe,
apparently stolen by one of the listeners. At the end RD jumps out at Scoots
and yells; “YOU got it!!” This is a reference to an essay Mark Twain once wrote
about how to tell a proper ghost story. His story was called “The Golden Arm”
and in the essay Mr. Twain tells the reader exactly how to pace the story to get the maximum effect. The “YOU GOT IT!!” that RD yells is exactly how the
Twain story ends. Mark Twain could tell
this story so effectively that his children were terrified of it and refused to
be in the room when he told it. Here’s a link if you want to read it yourself.
(Be warned, Mark twain wrote it in a slave dialect common at the time, as that
is how he heard it told. So it may be difficult to easily understand.)
(The
book RD is reading is titled “SNUFF” by the great Terry Pratchett. Silvermane
gives it 5
stars.)
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Well
obviously there are no letters to the editor YET, since this is the first
issue. So Silvermane will make some up.
Letter
#1
“Editor
Silvermane; why are you so awesome??”
Signed, “Clueless in Cloudsdale”
“Dear
Clueless; That information is classified.”
Letter
#2
“Editor
Silvermane; Aren’t you, like, old?” Signed, “Mystified in Manehattan”
“Dear
Mystified; No!”
Letter
#3
“Editor Silvermane; Yeah? Well I heard you
WERE! Are you SURE you aren’t?” Signed, “Stumped in Saddle Arabia”
“Dear
Stumped; “No!!”
- Silvermane
<Editor’s
note;> “Oh look, Silvermane’s email server just crashed! Must have been
those darn parasprites! I guess that’s all the letters this time, stay tuned
next week for an exciting new Hoofprints installment.
My name is Miche, and I approve of this message. /)^3^(\
Semper Filly!!
