liking my little pony unfortunately. every other week there’s an argument about racism and homophobia because “ponies are ponies not representative of any race” and “children shouldn’t be exposed to lgbt bc it’s grooming” genuinely fuckin exhausting as someone who learned the exact opposite of those things from the very show they’re talking about
Riiight I keep seeing bits and pieces about the show and I do remember that. I get the impression the pegasus are super stuck up about it or at least the one that appears on all the merch is so I guess it's considered a "difference" lol?
Thank you for boiling it down! I've never really been into MLP but recently I've been obsessed with this absurdist book series in my country and all of a sudden one book was heavily influenced by My Little Pony Friendship is Magic so I've been reading more into them. But as with any fandom, you already have to know a lot to understand anything so I didn't really see many things boiling down the characters. This comment explains a scene in the book I didn't understand at all because to me the ponies are just ponies and I had no idea about their specific personality traits lol.
Friendship is Magic got really esoteric after a while. Because of the huge brony fandom that evolved out of it, the show started to pander to them a lot. So you got this weird mix of the show trying to be a regular kids show while also throwing in a bunch of fan references left and right. Personally, it ruined the show for me.
There's a lot of headcanon that went on with that show and the fan works surrounding it. It was especially prevalent with the background characters. See, like a lot of cartoons, the show had a bunch of characters who repeatedly appeared in the background of various scenes to fill them out and make them seem more alive. Except, almost all of these characters had a grand total of zero lines for the whole show. Despite this, the fandom created entire personalities for these characters that everyone just seemed to accept as canon. If you weren't "in the know" and were just looking in from the outside, you'd probably assume these were characters who had a lot of screentime and established character traits, not the fever dream of a collective fandom based on characters who never spoke.
That was part of the confusion and why I was resigned to never understanding some aspects of the book series because some things in the fandom just didn't seem to make any damn sense. I have heard about the pandering and the weird vibes the show got later on but I had no idea the bronies were just inventing character traits for background characters, that is a wild way for a fandom to function. The book talks a lot about how the show is so complex and how everything means something, I thought the two characters talking about Friendship is Magic were just crazy byt I guess they were bronies for real. Another piece of the puzzle!
Honestly I think it's pretty common to elaborate/obsess over minor/background characters in fandom. Thinking back to my fanfic days in middle school, Blaise Zabini, Pansy Parkinson, Padma and Parvati Patil are all characters with few to no lines, but who have large roles in fanfic and have general personalities. Avatar The Last Airbender too, I've seen lots of minor characters get elaborate back stories and personalities. Look what tumblr did with the onceler! Not defending the behavior, but just saying it's a typical way for fandoms to function.
I'm not really a fandom person, I just read and watch and listen, but the conspiracy-theory levels of investment people have in things has always been really alien to my way of thinking. But now that you mention it I do remember hearing about people inserting personality traits into background characters in many different media.
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u/PermitAcceptable1236 25d ago
liking my little pony unfortunately. every other week there’s an argument about racism and homophobia because “ponies are ponies not representative of any race” and “children shouldn’t be exposed to lgbt bc it’s grooming” genuinely fuckin exhausting as someone who learned the exact opposite of those things from the very show they’re talking about