Happy St. Patrick’s Day! In honor of the Emerald Isle, today’s pony is green(ish)! She even has a harp cutie mark (Ok, it’s a lyre. Close enough). Yes, today’s pony is Lyra, a unicorn with a pleasant aqua-colored coat, white and mint green mane and tail, golden eyes, and lyre cutie mark. Lyra is a frequently occurring background pony who has never had a line but who shows up in nearly every episode. “Lyra” was a name given to her by the fans, since she was an unnnamed background pony. Later, Hasbro introduced a toy that looked like Lyra but was instead named “Heartstrings.” The brony community continued to refer to her as Lyra, since she was still unnamed on the show, in order to avoid confusion in fanfics and other fan art. Recently, however, Hasbro released a new toy that looks like Lyra but is now named “Lyra Heartstrings,” much to the excitement of the fandom.
The animators often place her standing next to another popular background pony, Bon Bon (also a fan-given name), which has sparked speculation among the fandom that they are lesbians. I think they’re just best friends. (Crazy bronies, always trying to make everypony a lesbian. Jeez). The animators maintain that the placement of the two ponies together is mostly coincidental & aesthetically-based. Their color combinations look good together, so they place them together often. But let’s get back to Lyra. Again, since she’s a background pony, we don’t know a great deal about her so the fandom has come up with all sorts of personality traits and quirks for her. In one of the earlier episodes, Lyra and Bon Bon are sitting together on a park bench. While Bon Bon is sitting with her hooves tucked underneath her like a regular pony, Lyra is sitting in a very distinctly human, upright-but-slouching position, as she is pictured below. The bronies took this strange positioning and ran with it, coming up with all sorts of stories about how Lyra is unhappy being a pony and that she really wants to be human. There are comics about her trying to learn to walk upright on two hooves, stories about her wanting to have hands instead of hooves, and pieces of fan art that give her other human characteristics. The running joke is that Lyra wants hands SO BAD, which is why I gave her nail polish in the outfit below. Surely if she had hands, she would want to show them off. Here’s Lyra’s outfit.
Miscellaneous Sheepery 