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Pony Tale
- 129 statements
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Back in the day, horses were for men. Gentry cavorted about the countryside on hunters, often in pursuit of some hapless fox; farmers in the pre-tractor days worked the soil with teams of draft horses; and The Wild West hero would be only half a man without his trusty hoss. While women did ride (and drive), this was taken to be a mark of how 'gentle' (read: tame) the horses were: only a Man could control a genuinely spirited and powerful beast. Around the 1930s and 1940s, however, something changed. The "horsey girl" was created, and the Pony Tale was born. Originally seen as a British genre — and more often than not featuring a rural English setting — the early horse stories reflected the values and culture of that time and place (e.g. fox-hunting being regarded as prestigious, rather than a blood sport). As time passed, other countries, particularly the USA, were used as a setting, with culture adjusted accordingly, but the characters still favoured English-style riding, with Western riding usually consigned to a one-off storyline involving a rodeo or ranch. The story is only nominally about the pony. The real plot is driven by the Character Development of the protagonist (almost Always Female) via equestrianism. The basic Pony Tale begins with a very specific type of heroine. Usually a misfit, or socially displaced in some way, she happens across a horse, or a riding school, or some experienced riders out for a gallop. Enchanted, she resolves to become a rider herself. After circumstances (however contrived) grant her a horse, the story follows her progress as an equestrian, with lovingly detailed descriptions of horse care, competitions and the technical aspects of riding along the way. Our heroine makes no attempt to be "feminine." She doesn't put on make-up. She hates having to wear a dress when Great Auntie Gladys comes to visit. School is an evil institution whose sole purpose is to keep her out of the stable; she never has a large social circle, and she's usually either Book Dumb or smart but unmotivated. Her lack of interest extends to the opposite sex; about the only time she'll notice a boy is when he's got a pony with him. Oddly enough, on the rare occasion the hero is a young man, he'll be depicted as too sensitive or "feminine" to fit in with the other boys — a daydreamer, for example, or a Non-Action Guy in a world of athletes. The Pony Tale doesn't strive for originality. This is an extremely formulaic genre, with stock plots, stock plot twists, stock characters (including stock horse characters, no pun intended), and a set of stock tropes. |
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Albion The Enchanted Stallion | |
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| Pony Tale / int_1361ce8c | type |
Pony Tale | |
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One of the most influential Pony Tales was Ruby Ferguson's Jill series, one of the first horse books to make riding appear accessible to the general public rather than the premise of the rich. Set in classic English countryside, nowadays it features a fair bit of Values Dissonance (one of Jill's mentors is a Master of Foxhunting, a sport now banned in the United Kingdom) and language that's the 1950s equivalent of Totally Radical: "That was jolly good fun!" "Oh, super!" and the occasional "old bean". | |
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| Pony Tale / int_1397a276 | type |
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The first Unicorns of Balinor book, aside from its title, starts out like a standard Pony Tale despite beginning after a horrific accident that broke both of Ari's legs as well as removing her memories. It's when her foster parents warn her away from the nearby caves and she starts to hear Chase's voice in her head that the REAL story begins. | |
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| Pony Tale / int_405e4d16 | type |
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Pony Pals: Dirk Strider Edition is a complex example, mostly a subversion. It's an MST of a children's book series, Pony Pals, an unambiguous example of the genre. The original series is about a group of girls who ride ponies and use overcome problems related to horses. The fic starts out that way too, though with a more adult and Black Humor filled take, but quickly goes off the rails and turns into an epic, metafictional tale of redemption filled with philosophical and supernatural elements. But in the end, the story is about the love between a girl and her pony, and the two of them overcoming obstacles to remain together. | |
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| Pony Tale / int_4257be9d | type |
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The Sleepover Club occasionally went into this territory with Lyndz, who was the resident animal lover. Books centred on her were generally about her wanting to win some horse-related prize. | |
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The Thoroughbred series, begun by Joanna Campbell, is a classic series that also involves tons of characters and is set in the high-stakes world of East Coast horse racing, although eventing is also included. It is also a Long Runner, having flown past fifty main-series titles with many spinoffs and Special Editions. | |
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| Pony Tale / int_468bebb0 | type |
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In the Discworld of A.A. Pessimal, the young witch Sophie Rawlinson grew up with ponies. In appearance a big, hearty, broad-shouldered girl of sixteen, one who has moved on to horses proper, she is every inch a Pony Girl still. She divides the world into two parts; (a), the part with horses, ponies and people who deal with them; and (b) everything else, the boring uninteresting part. | |
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| Pony Tale / int_4ad8ff86 | type |
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The Messenger Series is a series of YA novels about a supernatural horse that chooses a 13-year-old to become its rider ("the messenger") to help it fight the forces of evil. The story follows an ordinary girl called Rose as she comes to term with being chosen by the stallion and then grows into the role of a hero who travels through time to investigate the origins of evil that is happening in the present day. Instead of being a Pony Tale, it is a supernatural mystery tale that skirts the edges of the horror genre. | |
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| Pony Tale / int_5132212e | type |
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Black Beauty is a dramatic and cautionary tale of a horse from his own perspective: it's all about the abuse and misuse suffered by horses in a time when the horse was the means of transport and farm power. The book's purpose was to wake readers up to the very real problems with animal treatment, not entertain and educate young horse fans. | |
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| Pony Tale / int_5f6a7e80 | type |
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The Misty story "Winner Loses All" combines this with Deal with the Devil. | |
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The Saddle Club by Bonnie Bryant (although this series is known to have been written partly by ghostwriters) is an American example, and one of the most modern Pony Tales. Its one of the few pony books to combine the subculture of the stables with the wider world; its three heroines all have lives outside their stable, Pine Hollow. The Saddle Club was given a sequel series titled Pine Hollow, a Darker and Edgier version of its forerunner that took the "real world" aspects into drugs, romantic relationships and other teenage issues, and away from the Pony Tale format. This series had a real Downer Ending, beyond the usual "heroine gives up horses" type. The Saddle Club also had a spinoff for younger readers appropriately named Pony Tails. |
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The Black Stallion series — Very much A Boy and His X. Puts the focus on hero Alec Ramsey's rise to manhood through mastering a difficult and genuinely bad-tempered horse rather than the culture of the stableyard and affection between horse and rider. Alec and the stallion have a mutual respect, rather than more "sentimental" emotions like love. Further, Alec eventually moves full-time into the Thoroughbred industry as a jockey and farm manager. On the other hand, one title in the series (The Black Stallion and the Girl) is vaguely similar: the titular girl, Pam Athena, is a free spirit who wins the love of Alec and his horses, and her desire to ride as a jockey is genuinely scandalous in the 1960s-era Thoroughbred world in which the books are set. Pam is also directly contrasted to the domineering, aggressive Becky who rides because she wants to win, not because she loves the horses. Besides being an example of the story aging in real time (Alec starts out as a teenager in a time that appears to be pre-World War II) Pam is basically Alec's Manic Pixie Dream Girl and wounds up being Put on a Bus which, in the next book, suffers a Bus Crash. | |
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Caitlin's Way matches the trope perfectly. | |
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| Pony Tale / int_904b99b7 | type |
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Chrestomanci: Apart from the usual magic-politics plotline, The Pinhoe Egg is this for Eric (Cat) Chant and his horse. There's a bit of recursion in here, in that the horse initially came into the family when Eric's foster sisters began reading horse stories and begged Chrestomanci for a pony. When he acquired one for them, the girls discovered that they were terrified of horses/didn't actually like riding after all, respectively, and the horse came to Eric as the only one who was able to bond with it. They quickly became fast friends, and the horse ends up being Eric's ticket into the fairy world that this book's plot revolves around. | |
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American Girls Collection: Felicity's first book, Meet Felicity, is about her befriending a thoroughbred horse she names Penny and freeing her from her cruel owner, Jiggy Nye. It hits multiple beats: finding her dream horse with obstacles in the way of her having it (first dealing with the fact she's owned by Jiggy Nye, and then that she's considered "lost" after Felicity helps her escape); her parents disbeliving she tamed Penny and how, her being accused of horse theft by Nye (which is true, as a child she misinterpreted what he said about giving her away to anyone who could ride her for her own hopes), her mother's displeasure at her focusing more on horses than her at-home studies, Felicity's fretting over freeing her and thus losing her, etc. The arc ends happily by the time of Felicity Saves the Day, where the two are reunited. Lila's story has her befriending a quiet, pariah horse named Hollyhock at riding camp and learning through their connection more about herself and her gymnastic skills. |
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The Pullein-Thompson sisters, Josephine, Diana and Christine, were all highly successful Pony Tale writers. Particularly notable for giving equal page-time to boys and girls, especially Josephine Pullein-Thompson's Woodbury Pony Club series. Some of their pony stories crossed over with the children's adventure genre. | |
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The Silver Brumby series by Elyne Mitchell, perhaps unique in that they're written from the view of the horses and the humans are largely antagonistic, if not necessarily evil. Most of the books follow a particular brumby's struggle to survive against hunger, the elements, and frequent attacks by other stallions. | |
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The Horse and His Boy. Particularly worth noting because, while it's nothing at all like a Pony Tale, C. S. Lewis suggested in a letter to his publisher that the title "might allure the 'pony book' public". | |
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Played extremely straight with Spirit: Riding Free, with the added bonus of the horse in question being descended from a famously unbreakable horse. | |
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The Netflix series Free Rein is a classic interpretation of this trope. The central storyline involves main character Zoe moving from America to England, and never having ridden a horse before. She meets Raven the "untameable" horse, and promptly bonds with him. | |
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Played very straight with the "Stormy Arc" of The Little Mermaid animated series. Except the girl who loves horses is Ariel, and the horse in question is a Hippocampus. | |
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National Velvet, a 1935 book by Enid Bagnold (turned later into a movie with teenage Liz Taylor) is possibly the granddaddy of them all. | |
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The following is a list of statements referring to the current page from other pages.
| Pony Tale | processingCategory2 |
Equine and Equestrian Tropes | |
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Pet and Animal Companion Tropes | |
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Plots | |
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Pony Tale | |
| Misty (Comic Book) / int_7b48b5 | type |
Pony Tale | |
| Phoebe and Her Unicorn (Comic Strip) / int_7b48b5 | type |
Pony Tale | |
| American Girls Collection / int_7b48b5 | type |
Pony Tale | |
| The Horse and His Boy / int_7b48b5 | type |
Pony Tale | |
| WoodburyPonyClub | seeAlso |
Pony Tale | |
| My Horse Prince (Video Game) / int_7b48b5 | type |
Pony Tale | |
| Star Stable (Video Game) / int_7b48b5 | type |
Pony Tale | |
| Spirit: Riding Free / int_7b48b5 | type |
Pony Tale |
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