Friendship is Witchcraft
| Fanwork | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Friendship is Witchcraft |
| Creator: | shercloppones, Jenny Nicholson, Griffin Lewis |
| Date(s): | 2011-2019 |
| Medium: | YouTube series |
| Fandom: | My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic |
| External Links: | Wiki page |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Friendship is Witchcraft is an abridged series and parody fandub of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic created in 2013 by Jenny Nicholson and Griffin Lewis vidding under the pseudonym Sherclop Pones. The episodes were cut together from footage from the show as it was coming out, with a few extra scenes animated specifically for the parody. The Mane Six, as well as many other ponies were voiced by Jenny Nicholson. Every episode contains an original song.
Characters
The series features parody version of the Mane Six from the original Friendship is Magic show (Twilight Sparkle, Rarity, Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash, Applejack, Pinkie Pie). They are all voiced by Jenny Nicholson, and their character voices are all styled after the canonical voice actors' performances. There are some notable supporting characters adapted for the parody as well, including Spike, Apple Bloom, Scootalo, Sweetie Belle/Sweetie Bot, Princess Celestia, Princess Luna (as Princess Molestia), Discord, Shining Armor (as Francis Sparkle), Ouija, and Smooze. Most of the characters behave more violently and erratically than their canon counterparts, and many of them are outright evil.
Content
The series seems to take place in what might be considered an alternate timeline with canon elements. The characters maintain their cheerful personalities and bubbly voices from canon, but express darker personalities and more adult humor. Each video is episodic, but there are overarching story beats and jokes that connect the episodes together.
The Cult of Smooze
One of the main recurring plot points of the show is the progression of Fluttershy's cult, the Cult of Smooze. The Cult of Smooze is a religious organization that worships Smooze (sometimes referred to as Lord Smooze), a supernatural omnipotent being who secretes ooze and is definitely larger than a bowl of toast.
Ponyville hosts a chapter of the cult and a conversion spa. The local cult leader is Fluttershy. There are at least 5 other members, including) Rarity and Twilight. Cult members greet each other with "Praise Smooze!" and sometimes exclaim "Thank Smooze!" as an expression of relief. Their primary plan of action, in terms of resurrecting him, is to build a shrine in his name and perform a ritual during an eclipse. Cult members are apparently required to donate at least 20% of their earnings to the cult.
Fluttershy operates a conversion spa in Ponyville. The chief purpose of conversion spas is to convert ponies to the cult through relaxing and addictive services. The conversion spa depicted in Friendship is Witchcraft does not seem to serve as a meeting place or house of worship. Services offered include saunas, Smooze Goo treatments, and elmers baths. It is said to be common to take part in all three during a visit. Another take on the matter may be that indulging in saunas and spa treatment is the cult's idea of divine intervention. The Smooze Goo is addictive and causes a pony to become anxious and uncontrollably shaky when in withdrawal.
Robots
Some ponies in this universe are actually pony-made robot creations, supposedly with no souls or true emotions. It is taught in Cheerilee’s class that if a robot were to learn its true identity, it would likely go on a destructive existential rampage. Sweetie Bell is a robot.
Sweetie Bot Project
The Sweetie Bot Project was a small group of Russian engineers and fans of both Friendship is Magic and Friendship is Witchcraft who worked on creating a physical, functional, Sweetie Bot.
“Our mission is to take advantage of high tech magic to bring ponies into life in the robot form. We believe that in future (sic) humans and pony robots will be able to be friends and live together in peace and harmony.”[1]
The Sweetie Bot prototype that they created was displayed at a few cons, including the CZequestria con (2017)[2], RuBronyCon’2016[3], and PoniRebrik’2017. The robot could walk around on a surface and talk in the same robotic voice as Sweetie Bot does in the show.
The organization has stated their intent to continue working on prototypes and creating an open-source community to continue sharing their designs, but their website hasn’t been updated since 2018.
Episodes
- The Perfect Swarm
- Read it and Sleep
- Dragon Baby Gone
- Cute from the Hip
- Neigh, Soul Sister
- Lunar Slander
- Cherry Bomb
- Star Waving Mad
- Foaly Matripony
- Seed No Evil
- Horse Women (Parts One and Two)
- You Smooze, You Lose
- Celestia's Standalone Adventure!
Songs
- Art of the Mattress, sung by Rarity
- The Orphanage Song, sung by Pinkie Pie
- Pinkie’s Brew, sung by Pinkie Pie
- Sweetie’s Big Race, sung by Sweetie Belle
- Princess of the Night, sung by Princesses Celestia and Molestia
- G*psy Bard, sung by Pinkie Pie
- It’ll Be Okay, sung by Twilight and Francis Sparkle
- How Applejack Won the War, sung by Applejack
- High School Great, sung by Twilight Sparkle
Controversies
Regarding Pinkie Pie
In reference to the use of a slur in most of the things surrounding Pinkie Pie, here is a quote from Jenny Nicholson in her video The Last BronyCon: Fandom Autopsy.
Worst of all, we had this whole meta joke, where we put in a bunch of references to The Hunchback of Notre Dame. We snuck entire Hunchback song lyrics into the songs, quotes from the dialogue, and one of the ponies was literally Frollo. I think our original reasoning was that there is a breed of horse called [points to wiki article], and The Hunchback of Notre Dame is all about social tensions with [refers to picture of Esmeralda from Hunchback]. So we had a character who was supposed to be like the Esmeralda character, and it was like, really present through the whole series, and like a big part of the character’s arc. It was in two of the best known songs, and even in the title of one of them. I don’t know, if you haven’t figured it out, the reason I’m not saying the word in question, is that this word [points to wiki article again] is actually considered a slur to the Romani population. We kinda thought it was a neutral word, and it turns out it's not. [...] Anyway, our dumb Disney nostalgia selves didn’t realize that we shouldn’t be saying this word until way too late in the game. We stopped having them [characters in FiW] say it in subsequent episodes, but all the previous stuff was still there.[4]
Copyright Issues
All the original videos have since been copyright claimed and taken down by YouTube, but between fan uploads and fair use disputes, all the main episodes are available again, albeit somewhat hard to find as of 2021. Sherclop Pones has a channel with most of the episodes, but since Sherclop Pones never made You Smooze, You Lose into a fully animated episode, the fan made edit of their live reading is on the channel Applejuice Pony. These struggles with copyright claims are joked about in the episodes themselves, with the creators saying that the word ‘apple’ was copyrighted, and sloppily dubbed over it every time it came up in one episode.
Tik Tok
In 2020, a few MLP fansongs including a couple from FiW, including “It’ll Be Okay” and The Living Tombstone’s remix of “G*psy Bard” gained some viral success on Tik Tok, especially in cosplay circles.[5] The high pitched, cheerful sounding voices singing about taboo subjects, especially set to Tombstone’s beats were well suited for cosplayers to pose and emote to. Tombstone’s remix especially gained incredible traction, bursting out of just the cosplay bubble to a larger audience. A lot of discourse started going around the app about the fact that there was a slur in the song and how people should not lip-sync slurs. The version of the song that many content creators used was censored.
Reception and Reflection
It was a well-received fan show at the time and seems to maintain some relevance in fandom and cosplay spaces, but along with the decline of the Brony fandom since the last BronyCon in 2019 it shows little signs of coming back into larger relevance.
In The Last Bronycon: A Fandom Autopsy, Nicholson reflects on the series saying, “I am not suggesting you go and watch this series. I don’t think it holds up. There are individual jokes that I like but mostly I find it really cringy to try to look at now. But if you are determined to watch an episode, watch the wedding episode, it’s the best one.”[4]