Gentle readers, two news items have come up which have made it clear to Dr. J. that an eccumenical rift has come to exist between the prototypic Gen-X nerd (Ret.) and the Millennial offshoot.

The first item comes to us via a tweet by David Burge (@iowahawkblog), aka Iowahawk. He linked on twitter to this Gawker piece regarding adult male My Little Pony fans who go by the name ‘Bronies.’ Apparently they are having their second convention the Winter BronyCon 2012 at the Hotel Pennsylvania in lower Manhattan. They get to meet voice actors, artists, Pony pundits (yes there is such a thing), buy and sell memorabilia. Kinda like an emo-Star Trek Convention. Even though it is a ‘Brony’ convention, female fans are there in a 1:4 ratio.

Now to be fair, My Little Pony has had its fair share of scholarship, with a careful analysis of the Ponyville economic structure being scrutinized by film maker Oscar Morales. Furthermore, the Lil Resident will tune into once in a while as well, given the irreverent humor in the show that makes it more palatable than most of the pablum available on TV. It was created by the creator of the Powerpuff Girls, which had its own adult following, but not to the level of conventioneering or ‘Bronying’ or such.

Dr. J. has to say, that while he tends to be a live and let live kinda guy, excepting in cases of human sacrifice or puppy kicking or infringing on his conscience rights (are you hearing me Mr. President), the degree infatuation with the Ponies by these ‘Bronies’ is bordering on fetishistic…it just gives Dr. J. the willies.

In the second news item, the NYT reports that Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro (see, it’s all a Hasbro-wing conspiracy to castrate the Millennial male), is going to have an open play development of its new 5th Edition of Dungeons and Dragons. Now Dr. J., and probably one or two of the other Gormogons have rolled a d20 in our day. A long time ago, Dr. J. played a hybrid of the first and second edition rules (that we called the 1 1/2 edition), but when the 3rd edition came out he found the whole thing was just a wee bit silly and lost the original vision of the creators. Apparently, a 4th edition has since been released which was even further away from Messrs. Gygax’s and Arneson’s creation. Furthermore, the tabletop has been abandoned by and large by the laptop.

Clan J. can attest to this in that, as a family, we probably play more board games on the Wii than we do at the tabletop. Folks are even meeting and marrying Words with Friends partners. For us, I suspect the lack of mess with little pieces and the skill element introduced by the minigames (Family Game Night 1&2s’ version of Life for example) make things a little less chance related. Also, Dr. J. could never figure out how to play Clue until the video version came as part of a Wii Family Game Night pack.

So how does this all come together. First of all, while the boys of Gen-X grew up with anime space opera like Star Blazer, and even rock-em, sock-em toy-toons such as GI-Joe and Transformers, the current generation who has been castrated by educational trends, participation trophies and a desire for them to be in touch with their feminine side have resulted in an abandoment of strong male hero role models such as Optimus Prime (the Michael Bay movies were created for Gen-X and their spawn, not necessarily the Millenials), and what we have left are a bunch of college aged Bronies.

In addition, the tabletop where we gathered to play games has been replaced by a virtual world were the laptop screen is a Siege Perilous into a virtual gaming world, and our tablet or Wiimote is a talisman granting us powers we previously did not have.  The upside, is that we are still participating together, and family conversation continues to flow, as we teach the little ones to be good winners and good losers. The downside to electronic gaming (i.e. electronic Risk, Monopoly, Clue) is that some of the game theory and mathematical analysis (being the banker, and min/maxing for example) goes to the wayside as we don’t have a quantitative understanding or feel of the engine underpining the electronic version of a beloved tabletop game. Fortunately, for us, the little ones have transformed their love of some of the electronic versions of boardgames into a desire to go back to the tabletop. The Lil Medstudent asked for, and received from Santa Claus both Battleship and Mouse Trap. So, there is hope for the spawn of Gen-X.

Dr. J.