My Little Pony: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 13:01, 8 August 2019

This article is about something that is considered by the overpowering majority of /tg/ to be fail.
Expect huge amounts of derp and rage, punctuated by /tg/ extracting humor from it.

I think this is triggering my epilepssdffshaghahtaj

"When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things."

– I Corinthians xiii, 11

The My Little Pony franchise consists of a series of toys and cartoons created and owned by Hasbro (yes, that Hasbro). As anyone ~~with even a passing familiarity with the subject~~ hearing the name will know, the target demographic is small girls, and Hasbro generally regards the animated component as an advertisement for the line of toys (just like Transformers and ~~Black Library books~~*BLAM**BLAM**BLAM*). The "brony" (an oh-so-clever portmanteau of "bro" and, well, yeah) is a recent(ish) term for, in the strict sense, a male fan of the show. These fans, who originated on and have since gathered considerable infamy on the Internet, are also called or refer to themselves as ponyfags, horsefuckers, and a variety of other monikers, and while every enthusiastic fanbase on the Internet tends to sow drama everywhere they go, the bronies have had their notoriety given a leg up by moderator temper tantrums and mass banning across 4chan, not to mention the occasional mention in the mainstream media.

Accurate depiction of the reaction of much of the Internets when encountering ponyfags. Why it had to be an ultrasmurf though God only knows. I'd dispatch the Deathwatch. Just to be safe. They are technically Xenos, after all...

The MLP franchise as such has been around since the eighties and was beginning to lose traction with the economic downturn, but the most recent revision, begun in 2010, has seen an explosion of popularity on the internet (although there was at least one very famous early adopter), amassing a cult following not only among ironic hipster young women but of "adult" (or at least putatively adult) men.

A Legacy Typical to 4chan

When the fourth generation of the My Little Pony Show, led by Lauren Faust (who had a hand in the creation of works like Foster's Home For Imaginary Friends and The PowerPuff Girls), first aired on television, it found itself being discussed on /co/. Whether the first people to talk about the show were male or female is a mystery, but the fact remains that the show itself was vibrant, colorful, and contained some essential elements that have been present in a lot of big cultural phenomena since jobs and money have become more scarce. Namely escapist and romantic themes, including a society where everyone has a role in life thanks to their most prolific talent being stamped on every pony's butts - they almost always wind up working in the right jobs, with unemployment being all but unheard of.

However, the show also featured some (possibly unintentional) dark undertones starting off. There were hints of political dissent, infidelity, ponies who couldn't find their talents doomed to a life of carting manure, and an episode that strongly hinted one of the ponies was a lesbian with an inter-species girlfriend. Most of these undercurrents have been all but lost as of the third season, but at the time, these niggling strings proved hilarious for adults to grab hold of to unravel the sweater of the show. An animation error even led fans to invent a cross-eyed character, who was later formally adopted into show canon and then subsequently banned by Hasbro corporate - until Hot Topic pointed out tons of money could be made by lifting the character idea from the fans.

Growing interest in the show, coupled with a range of expressive screen caps, caused My Little Pony to spill out of /co/. People began using MLP for reaction images, and naturally, this raised a few eyebrows. Threads wound up being derailed as people demanded to know what in the hell they were looking at, and board regulars got tired of seeing it explained all the time. It interrupted discussion because it was confusing and new - some began to get angry for this reason, and others got mad because they simply didn't like seeing a cute girls' cartoon becoming a popular cultural thing on a site known as a den of racism and hatred. It kind of screwed up the rep.

Had the regulars of /mlp/ actually been cheery-eyed schoolgirls, the clusterfuck that has engulfed the entire Internet would never have come to pass.

Ultimately, MLP probably would have come and gone in the natural order of things, rising up then waning again between seasons. However, 4chan has, for years now, tolerated increased moderator activity, including overhauls to mod power which allows them to ban larger crowds for smaller infractions; this wouldn't have been a problem if the moderators weren't so bad at using their increased power. 4chan's mods are dumbasses - it is not a secret - and sadly, they felt it was their sacred, sworn duty to make an ultimate decision on whether or not My Little Pony should be discussed on the website. They arbitrarily decided the answer was "no."

Thus began the show's meteoric rise, with the conflict between mods and the show's growing fanbase attracting all the more attention and sparking up debates across multiple boards. Posting Pony-related content of any type became a bannable offense everywhere and users began to take sides; ponies quickly became a tool for trolling mods and those in the opposing camps, and needless to say, it all became a complete clusterfuck. It was essentially 4chan moderation at its finest, and the final result is a lingering, yet slowly passing aftertaste where many remember a time that they could not get away from My Little Pony if they visited 4chan at all.

Eventually the moderators had to cede some ground because, as they still have yet to learn, crowds are governed by consent, and the mods didn't have the resources to ban enough dissenters to gain consent by the majority remaining. In a rare moment of Pyrrhic victory, 4chan had actually defeated the site's largest moderator rampage to date. However, although ponies were once again permitted on /co/, a terse stand-off remained, as the mods do not like to lose and they weren't willing to call it quits on the fight.

My Little Pony was allowed a single thread on /co/. It was not the first time that a general thread was used to contain something the moderators did not like to see, but it is a notable landmark in 4chan history, since the use of general threads for the mods' benefit has expanded greatly as a practice afterward. Users went along with it, since it was better than a universal ban; a script was created that directed people to the general threads, which were very active and populated by numerous artists, including /tg/'s own Weaver, the man responsible for Ruby Quest, then going by the name "Glitter Glue".

This cartoon is about furries, but pretty much describes Bronydom just as well, which is sort of a sister or subsidiary fandom, but one that's a rung or three even lower in the spergy social hierarchy than the Kirk-as-an-Erotic-ocelot crowd

Unfortunately, the mods were still idiots. Occasionally, 4chan staff would pop in and delete the general thread, which caused chaos. The only possible result was that countless new threads would pop up and almost the entire front page of /co/ would be attempts to recreate "MLP General". 4chan staff would go on banning the new threads ad nauseum, and users would find it impossible to establish a proper, organized thread that followed the rules. This caused various forms of rebellion - sometimes the general thread would be completely relocated to a different 4chan board where mods didn't seem to be as active. There the new general would stay, irritating the locals, until the mods left and the people were allowed to reorganize again.

This ongoing strife of argumentation, kicking the fandom hive, and the growing size of the fandom itself eventually forced the mods to come up with a plan so that they could have things their way while still resolving the problem. Unwilling to admit that their actions were at odds with 4chan itself due to the numerous effects of the abuse, Moot and the moderators once again established a global ban on My Little Pony. But this time, Moot offered an apology which proved empty over time, and he created a new board where the show was to be discussed exclusively. The board was called /mlp/.

So surprisingly, the pony fandom has had a huge impact on 4chan in general and can be inferred to have caused Moot to rethink the way he runs the site in some degrees. Not in a positive direction, sadly - he merely works on ways to slow 4chan down to make it easier for his staff to control everything so that he'll never have to admit a tactical loss to his userbase again.

From Meme to Subculture

Where to even begin with this... I simply have no words. ***BLAM***

In terms of "mainstream" reception, the MLP fandom and bronydom in particular have been... somewhat mixed. Naturally, like most fandoms involving children's media, it inevitably contains a wretched hive of scum and villany full of shit ranging from innocuous-but-eyebrow-raising works, to outright pornography, to not-infrequently-blatant pedophilia... though how many such fandoms have articles, a documentary, and an off-Broadway play as WELL as sites dedicated to exposing the worst of them is another matter entirely. Somewhat in contrast to the way furries were received when they (initially) came to the public's attention, people generally viewed them in an odd-at-best sexual sort of way, while bronies are generally regarded as a harmless, even endearing phenomenon. As should be obvious by now, online it's a different story, and no matter how you spin it, a lot of similar fandoms haven't had the impact on shit the way MLP's has - having their own convention certainly counts for something, your guess as to what.

Oh for fuck's sake, of course... you know the two fandoms would overlap *somewhere*...

Like many things on 4chan (parts of /tg/ by no means excluded), what began as a wildly unserious community with little claim to relevancy has expanded to encompass some undeniably talented people, not unlike the furries. Also like the furfags, some of the Brony artists actually generate a fair bit of income out of their manchild fellows; and of course, there are those non-Brony and non-furry artists are willing to sell their souls and take commissions of fur and hoof for coin. All in all, it's basically like in that classic cartoon about furries. (In fact, a lot of online artists taking commissions state right front and center 'no anthro' or 'no ponies' or the converse, or even 'ponies OK but nothing NSFW', etc.) The tide of momentum it once possessed has long begun fading, of course, but for better or worse it's hard to forget a big first impression.

As far as conventions go, attendance is down, which means casuals are departing, which usually means only the most hardcore fans (usually including the degenerates) are left. These days, the possibility of photographing Christian Weston Chandler, arguably brony patient zero c. 2007, may in fact be the biggest draw to said conventions.

A subject of skub among the fandom is if the show got better or worse after Lauren Froast left. However one can look foward to laughing at both the rage and butthurt that will come when the show is replaced by a full season of 30 minute episodes of the Equestria Girls spin off after Season 9.

On /tg/

Fa/tg/uys have a historical record of wishing to be the little girl, but the days when /tg/ stood for /totally gay/ and/or /touhou games/ have long since passed and are merely a happy memory now, so our beloved board responded to the Pony plague in much the same way that /tg/ responds to everything it doesn't know how to feel about: violent anger.

For serious, it's just another iteration of the same thing. We saw it before with Touhou, we'll see it again some other time and wish that Ponies were the least of our problems. Regardless, /tg/'s mods never learn from their past mistakes, and fired up the Commissariat - discussion of My Little Pony on /tg/ is now Extra Heresy and will be responded to with bans. Because much like with chakats before them, /tg/ has a built-in excuse literally as old as /tg/ itself; suffer not the furry to live.

Ponies are still common-as-hell on /b/, /f/, and /co/, but they're infrequently brought up on the other boards anymore, /tg/ included. The addition of the /mlp/ board gave bronies a general board to post their content. The mods make it too much trouble to fight for it anywhere else, as the global ban is still in effect and the chances of it being lifted before the fandom dies out is slim.

The general reaction to any mention of ponies on /tg/ varies between simple exuberance, to indifference and apathy, to Khorne-pausing RAGE depending on how well you roll, though the second scenario is more prevalent overall. Even with the bans in place, fans on /tg/ have proven their time-honored ability to get shit done and produced a veritable arsenal of Pony-flavoured RPGs, including titles like Don't Rest Your Hooves, Ponyfinder, Poor Unfortunate Foals and other things that can be found on the internet and had their genesis in /tg/. It just goes to show that even when something's completely ridiculous, /tg/ won't be prevented from dicking around with it and trying to make some win in the process, or at least prying some laughs and mockery out of it. If you go looking around the seven Internets, you can even find fanfiction about the main cast playing D&D, which is like product-placement Inception when you remember it's all owned by Hasbro now. Just as planned. While 40K has "fallen" to the filthy plague of pastel-coloured horse loving man-children, regular Warhammer has not, owing to the fact that WHFB has largely launguished in obscurity outside the tabletop scene in comparison to its futuristic, grimdark counterpart.

Overlapping fanbases have resulted in large amounts of crossover fiction and fanart - including the somewhat bizarre meeting of MLP and Warhammer 40,000, amongst others - and they are guaranteed to incense at least a few people every time they rear their mutated heads. Including you, once you reach this page's gallery section. Look out, here it comes!

Oh yeah, most of the Dawn of War cast also did VA work on FIM, most notably Farseer Taldeer's VA (Princess Celestia) and Firaeveus Carron (Chief Thunder-nuts, done in the exact same voice even). Meanwhile, Shas'O Kais is done by the same guy who does a gay sea serpent and an annoying little kid on the show.

/mlp/

/mlp/ is one of 4chan's more active boards. It's also probably the most tragic.

During seasons one and two of My Little Pony, the board was populated with a huge number of fans discussing the show. A few of /tg/'s old artists, who haven't been seen around /tg/ proper since the great content purge of 2009, were there on a regular basis producing hilarious comics, stories, and drawings for the young fandom. The extreme proliferation of materials led to the creation of a website called Equestria Daily, as well as numerous others, and thousands of Youtube parodies and song remixes which range from very good to inconceivably terrible.

However, in the time between seasons, /mlp/ finds itself struggling to discuss new content. The board was made mainly to satisfy 4chan's moderators, not because the fourth generation of My Little Pony had so much going on that an entire board to itself was really necessary. During these times, the site discusses or sometimes destroys fandom artists, official show staff, or Hasbro's corporate politics. In time, the fandom had also developed a number of ongoing sub-cultures that were entirely sustained by fan artists. Notable examples include or included fluffy ponies, Milky Way, Flutterrape, Anon in Equestria, Ponies on Earth, Satyr Abomination, ass worship, bat ponies, and whatever else can be made into a series during the hiatus. In other words, the board is active, but somewhat starving for material related to the actual show.

The board also had a terrible janitor who was so bad at his job that he became a joke around the site. He was often apathetic, deleted threads inexplicably, and didn't seem to have a purpose beyond wasting everyone's time. Eventually, the board named him "Scruffy", after the janitor from Futurama who seems to have no purpose or positive influence on anything. After that, he was always depicted as the character, and Scruffy's face was sometimes plastered over questionable or NSFW content as a kind of jab at the guy. He wasn't exactly liked, but he wasn't a scourge. Yet.

Eventually, that changed. For unknown reasons, possibly a visit by Lauren Faust, Scruffy began a crackdown and /mlp/ got to re-live the days of bans and fighting for the right to post content on their own board. He arbitrarily chose a number of the generals to die, some because of racy content and others just because he didn't like them and Global Rule #6 allows a mod to delete anything he feels falls outside of "positive contributions". He rapidly went from a character teasingly thought of as someone who couldn't do a job to someone who was actively doing his job very badly. Further outrage ensued when screen caps from the hidden janitor board, /j/, revealed Scruffy to be a total dick hole who obviously kind of hated the board - maybe all of 4chan while we're at it, but that's our moderators for you.

Around this same time, Hasbro realized they were sitting on a money printing machine, and instead of standing back and leaving it alone to just print money, they began hitting it with a sledgehammer in the hopes that the machine would produce some kind of totally new money with a more enticing scent that would be more valuable.

It didn't.

Lauren Faust left the show by the middle of season two. The exact reasons have been left to speculation, but it probably a variety of causes. MLP has been noted for dealing with constant executive interference, and its writers have complained that there are frequently "too many chefs" in the kitchen. But there's also evidence of some events in Faust's personal life which may have led to her resignation.

Anyway, by the end of season two and all of season three, Hasbro was actively injecting lame ideas into new episodes, culminating with the release of a brilliant plan: clutter the main character up with a pair of goose wings and call her a princess. Disney is making tons of dosh on princesses! How could this go wrong?

Then they took their next step. They introduced a spin-off called Equestria Girls. It was a novel concept in the way that it took a bunch of young adult characters with clear future prospects, an open world full of magic, and a friendly, colorful atmosphere, and then completely obliterated all of that by making the ponies into human, teenage girls trapped in motherfucking high school. It was a movie, and the entire plot revolved around how much the high school basically sucked compared to the pony universe. To the total, utter, unparalleled shock of Hasbro's astounding marketing teams, somehow, a show about pastel girls in the shackles of a tired, stressful cliche of a system did not capture quite the same audience.

Season 4, 5, and 7 were heralded as Awesome by the show's fans, while Season 6 was much more skubby, as many felt that the creator's OC was taking up too much screentime and wrecking the lore. Season 4 gave us a huge fight between Tirek and Twilight, which you can watch here. 5 introduced a cult of equality dedicated to erasing cutie marks, the Cutie Mark Crusaders get their cutie marks, and time travel. Twilight gets a student of her own who is obscenely powerful and might be the creators' pet. Season 6 had several sweeping changes to the Equestria, the biggest being the overthrow of Queen Chrysalis. Season 7 has the return of six legendary heroes from pony history, including a wizard named Starswirl.

Equestria Girls 2 3 4 were near-universally despised. The pony movie was very much Skub. Some loved it, some hated it.

Setting

Spoilers, obviously.

History

In the ultra-distant past, King Grogar invented countless monsters who took whatever they wanted and destroyed the rest. He's called the Father of Monsters, and it's implied he created dragons, manticores, windigos, and other horrors.

In the distant but not quite as distant past, the three tribes of ponies (earth ponies, pegasi, and unicorns) live in their own nations. They aren't quite at war, but they all hate each other. A terrible winter storm blows in, freezing and starving them and worsening relations. So all three tribes set out to find a new home. Turns out the winter storm was caused by creatures called windigos (not to be confused with Wendigos), who feed on hatred and are repelled by friendship. So the three tribes become friends and drive the windigos away, and found a new country called Equestria.

Two immortal god-princesses are crowned rulers of this new nation: Princess Celestia, who rules the sun, and Princess Luna, who rules the moon. Shortly thereafter, Equestria is menaced by a variety of threats: the Sirens and the Pony of Shadows are two of the biggest threats, though it's a dangerous world and there's the occasional pissed off dragon or cruel sphinx. The banishment of the Pony of Shadows leads to the creation of Equestria's most powerful magical artifacts: The Elements of Harmony. These are the win button in Equestria; not even the most powerful reality warpers are immune to these things.

Several more threats menace Equestria, and the princesses fight them all off with the Elements of Harmony: Discord, Tirek, and King Sombra most notably, but it seems likely there were more. This culminates in MLP's own version of the Horus Heresy: the corruption of Princess Luna into Nightmare Moon, and her subsequent banishment to the moon (which is clearly stolen from the TRUE AND HONEST story of the fate of Sylvana in the classic webcomic Sonichu, just like the unicorn sacrifices totes are stolen from the psyker sacrifices in 40K.)

The show starts a thousand years after Nightmare Moon's banishment. An upper-class shut-in nerd named Twilight Sparkle is sent to a rural backwater town to make friends. Despite initial misgivings, she makes them, and six ponies reactivate the Elements of Harmony and become their new bearers.

Most of the show is about these six ponies' everyday problems and how they're resolved, but season premieres and finales often are heavier on the lore and adventure.

Races

Ponies, obviously. Unicorns, earth ponies, and pegasi make up the vast majority of pony races. Earth ponies are natural farmers, and provide almost all of Equestria's food and lumber. Pegasi can move clouds around, and are in charge of the weather. Unicorns once raised and lowered the sun, but that required 10 of the tribe's young men and women to give up their magic for life, every day (sounds ~~awfully familiar~~totally ~~stolen~~it's not stolen it's all Hasbro from 40K) Since Celestia and Luna took on the burden of raising and lowering the sun, the unicorns' niche hasn't been as clear. One might say their role is to advance the study of magic and technology, though a lot of them don't have magic beyond telekinesis.

A few of the notable other races are described below:

Griffons - Greedy, selfish creatures. Were once a proud warrior race, now they live in straw shacks and grab every bit they can.
Buffalo - Pretty much the setting's Native American equivalent.
Crystal Ponies - A kind of pony that lives in the Crystal Empire. Have translucent skin and polygonal pupils.
Dragons - Pretty close to D&D's dragons, but not as evil. One of them falling asleep near Equestria is a major threat, as their snores produce unbreathable smog.
Changelings - Love-eating shapeshifters. Think succubi and dopplegangers rolled into one. Went through a civil war, most of them mutated to be non-parasitic.
Yaks - Rugged, Tibetan culture based around smashing things that aren't perfect. Allied with ponies.

Other Setting Tidbits

The show's tech level is very weird. Guards carry spears while videogames and LED screens exist. The simplest explanation is that as Equestria has never fought a real war, there hasn't been a necessity to innovate better weaponry, and thanks to a reasonable prevalence of magic, it's often easier to rely on the fact that 1/3 of the population can use their forehead as a gun. Though they do apparently know what tanks are, so make of that what you will. (It could be referring to a water tank, or it could just be the creators not fully thinking through the implications of everything.)

Magic is an everyday thing at a low level, with roughly 1/3 of the population being basic casters and the other 2/3 having passive magic. Powerful spellcasters are very rare, with Twilight Sparkle and Starlight Glimmer the two most notable ones.

Being attacked by monsters has become an everyday thing for the town of Ponyville, as they border the Everfree Forest. Everfree is a very strange place to the ponies, where nothing works as it should: the clouds move on their own, for example.

Around puberty, every pony figures out their special talent, which is represented as a mark on their butt. There was a cult of equality that removed ponies' cutie marks.

Gallery

My Grimdark Pony
Comrade Curt Sibling Provides.
I don't even know what is happening anymore.
A SPEHSS MARE-EEN mini.
".....We stood at the end of discord and would have fallen, if it were not for the God-Princess and her Ponies of Friendship. Forged in love, tempered in tolerance, we are the living weapons of friendship: The Space Mare-eens."
Hereseh my Batul brothars, hereseh!
Yep. Celestia just got claimed by the Ultrasfmurfs. Probably to get ~~purged~~ a better spiritual liege.
Heresy unending within heresy.
Even /tg/ has not been immune.
In the grim darkness of the far future, there are only ponies.
Ridiculous amount of ponies, that is. Somehow Slaanesh, responsible for the whole thing, isn't present. (S)he/it's probably watching, lying in wait.
Nothing must be spared.
Typical constituent of the 'expanded demographic'. Note the eerie resemblance to fa/tg/uys.
Chaos Space Mare-eens of Khorne, Slaanesh, and Tzeentch.
Papa Nurgle's version.
A tech-filly of the Ponyius Mechanicus.
Venerate the God-Empress of Ponykind or else.
The Empress Protects.
Rarity as Hesperax? Dark Eldar would find that sick... yet strangely erotic.
Dark Eldar + Rarity = WHY BONER?! WHY?
The Tau'va is now 20% cooler.
Through the tolerance of our enemies do we earn our salvation.
If you will not serve in combat, then you will serve on the bucking line.
Lo', though the time is dark, my face shines.
I LOVE NO EVIL FOR I AM LOVE INCARNATE!
Initiating party protocol 23.
Consolidating friendship on the objective!
Eat powerhooves!
The Emperor's Ponies of Death.
*Plot Twist*
C-C-C-COMBO CANCER
Suffer not the pony to live.
The Imperium has judged these mutants and found them.... wanting......
The Imperium has ju.....FAITH IS A LIE, TRUTH IS A LIE.
Praise the Emperor and strike down his foes.
EXTRA HERESY!
Heretical and terrifying.
Impersonating the Emperor's Commissars is extra heresy and punishable by BLAM.
$This picture is heresy within heresy. A work of infinite fractal heresy without beginning or end.$

This picture is heresy within heresy. A work of infinite fractal heresy without beginning or end.
He walked me through the ruins of Victory Bay, celebrating the slaughter I had carried out there! If you had been there, you too would see what a rotten veil of lies our chapter has become!" - Avitus
Nor Paizo. Ponyfinder is your new RPG.
Ponyfinder Pegasus datasheet
Ponyfinder Unicorn datasheet
Ponyfinder Rainbow Dash datashe...wait.
-4 Str
Have to give 'em credit. Foul as the underlying concept might be, its presentation was carried out well.
what is this I don't even
tl;dr "bronies do it for the lulz".
~~Anyone still not convinced the faggots have gone too far?~~ There are worse abominations.
I'm... uncertain.