GGB Glasgow: My Little Pony brunch

Have you ever asked yourself what friendship is all about? Do you ever wonder what friendship could be? Geek Girl Brunch is the perfect opportunity to show that geeky friendship is truly magic. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcBNxuKZyN4&w=560&h=315]

We chose My Little Pony as a brunch theme because we both grew up on the original series and toys, and because we both really love the reboot. Its themes of friendship, kindness, love, and support are definitely what Geek Girl Brunch is all about. We also tried a little experiment with this brunch – assigning homework to be completed before the brunch. Each brunchette was to create her own Equestria Girl using this tool. It was a great ice breaker as we compared our designs.

Our venue on this occasion was Mono , an extremely laid-back and friendly cafe, with its own record shop, Monorail, in-house. They were perfectly happy for us to decorate the table in all things My Little Pony, including confetti (a risky decision on their part, possibly, but a very welcome one!) ponies large and small, comics, books, and DVDs. Most excitingly, we had set up the My Little Pony RPG, Tails of Equestria , to play after we had eaten our fill.

While we waited for our food, the brunchettes opened the mysterious envelopes left at their places. Everyone got some My Little Pony trading cars, and their own miniature pony. They played very nicely with the standard-sized ponies, Snuzzle, Minty, and Blossom, and the large cuddly Rainbow Dash, who was the centrepiece of our table decoration. We all sat back and relaxed as we brushed the ponies’ manes and tails, and it was very laid back – exactly how a brunch should be.

All Mono’s food is vegan, so it was a great choice to cater for all the brunchettes’ dietary requirements and tastes. The Gado Gado chips were particularly intriguing, as none of us knew what they were; they turned out to be very good chips in an incredibly delicious peanut sauce which is part of the original Gado Gado dish – here’s a recipe you can try if you are as intrigued as we were. Other popular dishes on the table included macaroni cheese and seitan burgers. Some of us shared a bottle of red wine, while others opted for the rather delicious-sounding cocktails.

Having fortified ourself for the journey ahead with some delicious food, we stepped into Equestria to begin our game. Everyone took a character sheet and got to work on making their own My Little Pony. Ailsa went for a a pineapple theme, with her pony’s spiky mane and tail reflecting the spiky leaves of the pineapple in its’ cutie mark. Kathleen decided to make her pony a mad scientist, with a test tubes cutie mark. We all got our ponies’ stats filled in on our sheets, and got quite far designing the ponies themselves, but – alas! – never quite got to playing the game. We are planning to get together another time to actually play, but haven’t set the date yet.

We had hoped to have time for us all to design and paint on our own cutie marks, and we had brought along lots of face paint, make-up, gems, and glitter to that end. But there wasn’t any time in the end – we were having too much fun playing with the ponies on the table and creating our characters for the game. Our new plan is, when we meet up to play Tails of Equestria, we will all sport our characters respective cutie marks – the designing of same is, brilliantly, part of the character creation process.

 Talking about My Little Pony does, of course, bring to mind Samuel L. Jackson, a man brimming with whimsy and childlike joy. Or, possibly, it was just the mention of a My Little Pony unicorn character, Twilight Sparkle, which had one of the brunchettes mention the film Unicorn Store, directed by and starring Brie Larson and also starring Samuel Jackson. Its tagline – Everyone Needs a Little Magic. Even If They’re All Grown Up – seemed a perfect fit for the brunch. We came up with quite a list of film and TV recommendations by the end of the brunch – Us, Love, Death, and Robots, both of which are on Netflix, and, for reasons which now escape us, The Night Porter, described by one brunchette as a “horrible love story … a bit grim … ends badly”. As brunch drew to a close, we shared our favourite sinister cartoons. The original My Little Pony film topped the list, along with The Care Bears Movie (1985), The Black Cauldron (1985), and, more recently, Trolls, and Stanley’s Magic Garden (1994). As we said goodbye, there was just time enough for us all to declare the magnificence of Maleficent, in celebration of the coming sequel

We’re going back to the 1980s for our next brunch, at the end of June, when we’ll be celebrating all those beloved retro computer games – Donkey Kong, Granny’s Garden, Pacman, Repton, Space Invaders, and Zelda. Keep an eye on our social media to find out more about what we’ll be getting up to. We hope you can make it!