The MLP Arena
Pony Talk => Pony Corral => Topic started by: Mana Minori on October 10, 2020, 09:25:50 AM
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I know a lot of the past gen community doesn’t focus on the tv show of MLP, and that’s fine. This is a discussion to talk about the tv show about Friendship is Magic, but all that it encompasses- the toyline, the comics, the books, the fandom, their content. I want to know from you guys if the existence of FiM has impacted you in any way- small or large.
Personally, I wouldn’t have come into My Little Pony as a whole without FiM. I got into FiM through seeing clips and memes flooding YouTube shortly after the great migration from some other site, where artists and such were expanding to different social media platforms. It seemed to be everywhere at the time, and I got curious enough about it to start watching the show to see what it was all about. Time skip forward a few years and I had very quickly developed an attachment to the creative side of the fandom. The music, the animations, the fanfics. I was a creative type long before the discovery of MLP, as I had dived deep into anime and manga and my own comics, and made fanfics and my own oc’s and my own AU’s and original universes as far back as middle school. So the FIM creative community was a perfect fit for me. Somewhere along the line, I started looking into other past generations of pony to see what they offered, and continued falling in love. I explored them all, and while I held admiration for gens 1- 3, I felt I really fell into a death trap with a super niche and obscure part of the toyline of g1 branch called Takara ponies. They were unique. They were from Japan! Their roundness made them even cuter! Their gimmick of fashion also pushed me toward finding a creative side into another fandom (but that’s a story for another day). I also found myself starting with collecting g4 toys early on as I was getting into the show and the fandom- Starting with Rarity because she spoke to my long dead dream of wanting to be a fashion designer, and Pinkie Pie because she was just plain cute. Them my collection exploded from there and I was buying anything Pony I could get my hands on. Once I started discovering past gens, the collection then spilled into g3, with my first purchase being Toola Roola, then to finding them in the wild, followed by g1 and 2. I have tried to quit collecting for many years, but it has become an insatiable addiction that for some reason, I just can’t quit.
Long story long, I became a fan of everything My Little Pony through the existence of g4. Tell me how g4 has impacted you guys- positively or negatively.
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For reasons of balance I'll give a positive and a negative.
The positive is that it provided a bridge of communication between me and some of the students when I was working at the college, as we were pony fans from different generations. Which is honestly the nice side of G4, even if the show itself is not my personal taste.
The negative...it made me feel unwelcome in my own community, and I took a step back for some years while the unpleasantness happened. And now I feel like being a pony collector will always be linked somehow to G4, and I hate that the longer history of MLP, which is more than FIM and a TV show, is not always recognised. Especially since there are still news articles about bronies doing subversive things which really doesn't help.
I feel like in a way FIM sustained and perpetuated MLP's place in the world, while systematically eroding all the things that made it MLP prior to FIM at the same time. But I feel like if G5 were to completely let go of G4 and go it's own way, in time I would probably be more positive than negative about G4.
I never hated G2, but the stuff that went on around it I did hate and that also made me pull away from the community for a while. However now there isn't a problem. So that is my hope going forward - that the wider world forget FIM and it ends up the product of the fandom, rather than dictating how the fandom is seen.
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For reasons of balance I'll give a positive and a negative.
The positive is that it provided a bridge of communication between me and some of the students when I was working at the college, as we were pony fans from different generations. Which is honestly the nice side of G4, even if the show itself is not my personal taste.
The negative...it made me feel unwelcome in my own community, and I took a step back for some years while the unpleasantness happened. And now I feel like being a pony collector will always be linked somehow to G4, and I hate that the longer history of MLP, which is more than FIM and a TV show, is not always recognised. Especially since there are still news articles about bronies doing subversive things which really doesn't help.
I feel like in a way FIM sustained and perpetuated MLP's place in the world, while systematically eroding all the things that made it MLP prior to FIM at the same time. But I feel like if G5 were to completely let go of G4 and go it's own way, in time I would probably be more positive than negative about G4.
I never hated G2, but the stuff that went on around it I did hate and that also made me pull away from the community for a while. However now there isn't a problem. So that is my hope going forward - that the wider world forget FIM and it ends up the product of the fandom, rather than dictating how the fandom is seen.
Balance is good. I’ll take the good and the bad experiences because I DID ask for them.
I’m sorry that any g4 fans made not just you but anyone of the past gen communities feel that way. As a fan of all gens, it irks and annoys me that g4 fans show such disrespect to the earlier gens, and I personally try to educate them and defend the older gens on other boards. Someone can dislike something without dragging it through the mud and getting off on mocking it, but many (not all) g4 fans are guilty of that. Again, I am sorry and that is definitely NOT how it should be. We’re all fans of pony here and that behavior is truly unacceptable. Though admittedly, I have also seen some past gen fans and collectors tend to lump every g4 fan as these kinds of people. Definitely not as many people from the older communities, though.
I hope that whatever fandom that comes with g5 is one that accepts every gen of pony universally, without trashing, bashing, And mockery.
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Well, thus far there have been issues on the even number gens but there were none on the odd number gen 3...so 5 maybe ok? XD
I think the reason it seems like they're lumped together is that on this side of the fence "brony" is a synonym for the bad side, whereas over there there are probably bronies who are fine and not the kind of people we're thinking of. But that term has kind of absorbed all the negativity because it was so boldly shoved out there.
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While some people will probably hate me for saying that, to me FiM is what ruined MLP as a franchise and it's the reason why I prefer to completely ignore everything that happened after G3.
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While some people will probably hate me for saying that, to me FiM is what ruined MLP as a franchise and it's the reason why I prefer to completely ignore everything that happened after G3.
Do you always have to be so negative about G4? It's really getting tiring.
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While some people will probably hate me for saying that, to me FiM is what ruined MLP as a franchise and it's the reason why I prefer to completely ignore everything that happened after G3.
Do you always have to be so negative about G4? It's really getting tiring.
Tell me how g4 has impacted you guys- positively or negatively.
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While some people will probably hate me for saying that, to me FiM is what ruined MLP as a franchise and it's the reason why I prefer to completely ignore everything that happened after G3.
Do you always have to be so negative about G4? It's really getting tiring.
Glass houses. Stones.
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While some people will probably hate me for saying that, to me FiM is what ruined MLP as a franchise and it's the reason why I prefer to completely ignore everything that happened after G3.
Do you always have to be so negative about G4? It's really getting tiring.
to be fair, I did ask for positive and negative experiences how FiM impacted people, as I realize that FIM may not have struck a positive chord with many. So let’s not discourage sharing.
Post Merge: October 10, 2020, 04:37:27 PM
While some people will probably hate me for saying that, to me FiM is what ruined MLP as a franchise and it's the reason why I prefer to completely ignore everything that happened after G3.
i think anyone who feels the need to hate someone for their opinion and views needs to step back and away from the internet and evaluate themselves.
Also, I’m sure you might’ve explained in the past as to why the franchise is ruined, thanks to FiM, but could you jog my memory?
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FiM got me into ponies! Though I of course do have many issues with G4 (much more so on Hasbro's side with the toyline rather than FiM), it still is what got me into the franchise, which is awesome! Even if my favorites are G1 and G3 now. And it got me into toy collecting as a whole. I've liked toys my entire life, but I don't think I considered myself to be a "collector" until I began collecting MLP.
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FiM got me into ponies! Though I of course do have many issues with G4 (much more so on Hasbro's side with the toyline rather than FiM), it still is what got me into the franchise, which is awesome! Even if my favorites are G1 and G3 now. And it got me into toy collecting as a whole. I've liked toys my entire life, but I don't think I considered myself to be a "collector" until I began collecting MLP.
I think this is pretty much my experience as well! ^.^
FiM also very much interested me artistically. Perhaps a negative would be I can only draw equines...but I really only want to draw them anyway.
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FiM got me into ponies more than at any other time in the past. I never tried any pony art and fanfics until it came along, and really gave me an outlet for my creativity. Plus it introduced me to conventions where I could be myself without anyone judging me (only 2 family members and 1 close friend know I like ponies), and led to me traveling out of state alone for the first time. I'm glad I was a part of those 9 years.
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At first, when the FIM show came out, I thought, great, finally, Ponies having adventures & fighting baddies like in G1, but with a better script & deeper ponyalities.
When the toys came out I didn't like their smaller size but still bought because NEW PONIES!!!
Unfortunately, the show has deteriorated, while the toyline has repeated the Mane 6 ad nauseum, with more unique characters few & far between.
I won't talk of the community itself as many know that community better than me
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Positively, I guess? It’s what attracted me to MLP and lead me to learn how fascinating of a toy line it is. I jumped ship on the show when the episodes became routinely subpar, and late-G4 toyline is also pretty bad, but I like the early brushables.
In the end I think it was a fun ride and positive for MLP as a whole given how many new people it attracted to the collecting scene, even with its decline. I don’t really understand the absolute ire some people have for it.
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I discovered FIM in January/February 2014, when I was in 7th grade, and it actually had a huge influence on me. For one, I got back into ponies again, which I had stopped playing with years before, and got me into discovering the older generations. I also started drawing ponies and got into improving my art and taking it more seriously. The MLP fandom was the first fandom I was really part of, so it really got me into fandom culture online. Most importantly, FIM and ponies in general gave me something to be happy about and obsessed with during my middle and high school years, which were a difficult time for me, and helped me connect with other people who were also in the MLP fandom.
So while I agree that the toyline wasn't that great and the show overstayed a few seasons longer than it should have, I'm ultimately glad FIM happened.
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Hmm... Well, for me it mostly just felt like another MLP generation. I don’t know if I’d say it particularly impacted me positively or negatively.
It DID give me a chance to see a MLP movie in theaters for the first time in my lifetime, so that’s something. X3 I also enjoyed seeing MLP get to be a huge, popular phenomenon for the first time since G1. G3 certainly wasn’t UNpopular, but it never achieved the fad/mania status that FiM did at its peak.
I guess there are ways I feel like it’s positively and negatively impacted the franchise and fandom as a whole, but just not ME on any personal, meaningful level. I enjoyed the ride quite a bit, but it didn’t make or break anything for me, y’know?
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I’ve been a fan of ponies since G1. I enjoyed the first few seasons of FIM. But the cruder side of the fandom did eventually ruin it for me.
I do still love the tiny blind bag ponies. They’re just so colorful and cute when displayed together.
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Well, the most glaring thing that FIM has done for me is get me into pony as a whole. I never would have fallen in love with the pastel ponies from all gens if I never took that first step in late 2013/early 2014.
The most important thing FIM has impacted me was getting me into cartoons as a career. I’ve been told my whole life that I will do something with science. But I wasn’t too sure I wanted to follow on that plan. But if I didn’t become a scientist, what would I be? I had no other skills, and little confidence in whatever else I did have. But after being inspired by the show and the people who worked on it, my future dreams changed from vague ideas others had told me to dreams where I truly saw myself.
FIM was a gateway to who I am now. It ignited within me a spark that I hope to carry forwards once I start my career. A spark I can put in my own creation, and hopefully inspire some other 13 year old girl to follow her passions. Light the next torch. But my own would never have been lit if not for a group of six little ponies.
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You know, I remember the first ponycon when G4 was involved, and how excited everyone was about it. I remember they screened the pilot there but I can't remember...I think that it had already aired because a lot of the old gen fans seemed to have seen it and know all about it.
I hadn't, I actually watched it for the first time when someone outside of the pony community was talking about it and said that I should watch it.
I think back to that time quite a lot and how excited the existing fanbase was for G4 when it came out. A sense of "finally", I think - a feeling that it was going back to something we could recognise because the person behind it was a fan of G1 MLP.
...It didn't end up that way, for various reasons, but I think it's really important to say that as a generation it was welcomed with open arms by the existing ponypeople, as Ponybookworm also said.
I think if not for that enthusiasm, the negative hit that we all took would have been less pronounced. The community wanted G4 and embraced it fully. And a lot of older gen fans still do with one bit or another of it (for me, nonM6 brushables and EqG). But because of the backlash when the brony movement kicked off - not that the bronies existed, we welcomed that too, but the way that it was a complete rejection of everything pre G4 - I think probably left a lot of folk feeling MLP in general was tainted.
I am not going to speak for SpacePinto either, but I have seen a few older gen pony fans complain that especially the brony phenomenon has been rough on guys who are pony fans but not bronies. There is a general assumption that male fan = brony and I imagine that it's a different level of impact to those of us who identify as female. I've certainly seen a couple of other older gen male fans say it's made it harder for them to acknowledge their collecting to other people and that they are worried about being associated with some of the more negative brony behaviour.
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I've also got a balance of positives amd negatives from FiM's run.
On the positive side, it really brought out some of the best in me and my friendships and I learned a lot about myself in the process. I find it fascinating how stubborn I can be about something I value, like collecting and documenting the history of MLP and seeing the change in how we see and treat children and their necessities like toys in modern culture. Even though the objective quality of the toys are in an eternal nosedive amd fall apart in months rather than in decades, I'll just keep ramping up my collection maintenance habits because by G*d, i will preserve these things and keep them in presentable and orderly condition.
On the negative side, I am kinda legitimately traumatized by how inappropriate the g4 fandom was allowed to be. I went from freely surfing the internet to look at ponies at 7 years old, to a 15 year old terrified to go to the walmart toy aisle after school and whose mother caught wind of the particularly vocal bronies that acted like freaks and had to sit me town and tell me to avoid them because she was worried for me. It forever changed how I feel and interact with the MLP community because I was eternally walking on eggshells trying to avoid the explosively nsfw content because I was a minor and self aware of that. I spoke up about it many times and was brushed aside every time so I eventually gathered that the safety of children in a fandom for a childrens show/toy was simply not a priority and it messed my head up pretty bad considering I'd already been collecting for almost 10 years by the time of that boom in FiM viewership. I was a 14-15 year old kid who was essentially told "your safety as a child doesn't matter compared to adult's whims and fantasies about something that wasn't even made for them." and like, for real? I hate being around kids because of my migraines and I'd never want any of my own but they deserve so much better than this. Because I got screwed over when I was still a kid and bro it sucks living with that
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Also, I’m sure you might’ve explained in the past as to why the franchise is ruined, thanks to FiM, but could you jog my memory?
Mostly because of the kind of people it attracted to MLP that hadn't been there before and because of whom the franchise and the fandom will never really be the same.
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I will say my experience with FiM has been mostly positive. Some negative, but I can twist it into a positive!
The show came out when I was in the middle of high school and frankly having a rough time. I honestly didn’t even KNOW my little pony was back after G3.5, but my dad happened to see something my little pony was coming on tv and recorded it for me. I watched the first episode and was kinda hesitant on the art style at first...but as the story line played out and the characters started to develop, I was in love! I loved Twilights snarky attitude in the first season, I was happy the ponies got to go on more adventures, and I loved that the ponies seemed more “grown up” than the G3 cartoon. It felt like mlp had aged up with me. I remember coming back from school every Friday and being SO excited to watch the newest episode! It really gave me something to look forward to every week.
When the show initially started to gain traction and attention from “older” people in my age group I was really excited. I thought it was cool my weird little niche hobby was becoming mainstream. I went full in on the brony fandom. I never participated too much, but I followed its memes and development really closely. It was fun at the beginning. I thought the first few shoutouts the fandom got in the show and on the hub were like, the most exciting thing ever. I loved the art, the music, and creativity coming from the fandom. I knew there was a dark underbelly to it, but hey, what fandom DOESNT have those people, right? Slowly though I noticed the “few” were actually “many” of the fandom. It got harder and harder to ignore the adult content coming from the fandom. I felt more isolated being a woman in the brony fandom, because I didn’t see the characters as anything more than cute cartoon horses. I felt really uncomfortable seeing the characters from the show put in these overly sexual or overly violent situation. I realized many bronies did not care for the girl positivity message the show was trying to convey. They were somehow getting something totally different from the show than me.
I left the brony sites to come back here, at some point maybe around 2012? I saw that the fandom had spread over here too, and the bronies were causing a lot of heated debate. I still wasn’t super comfortable with all the pony drama, so I mostly laid low. I posted some FiM art here that I was SO proud of at the time. As always, I got lovely feedback from the folks here and I was feeling pretty good about my art! I had tried a lot of new techniques on these pieces and poured hours of work into detailing the backgrounds. I was still shaky on the FiM style, but with these I felt like I was getting there! Well, I was browsing a brony image board a few days later and saw my art had been reposted. Without my permission. But, I was still a teenager at that point. I was frankly kind of flattered. I had always wanted to be featured on a brony site for my art. Unfortunately, the commenters there weren’t so kind. There were only a couple comments, but they were making fun of how I drew Fluttershy. They said she looked like a goblin. I was so hurt that even my best work wasn’t enough for the fandom. At that point I lost interest in participating at all. I just watched the show and bought the toys.
Once I graduated high school and started working and going to college, I still watched the show, and occasionally bought the toys if there was a new character, but really didn’t visit any pony sites anymore. Ultimately, I’m grateful for the burnout though. It gave me a window to go out and explore others interests beyond pony and develop a more rounded personality. At work one day, a co-worker noticed my pony cup and asked if I “knew about...the you know....”. That’s when I refused to be identified as a brony anymore lol to this day I still correct people and say I’ve been into it way longer than that, and I don’t really associate with that side of the fans. Unless it seems like someone who only knows what a brony is from their kids....then I don’t let on that there is anything weird going on at all. :lol:
Obviously, I came back later. I’m here now and love pony as much as ever! I have....still very mixed feelings about G4. On one hand, I hate the division it created among the community. I hate the reputation bronies created. I hate the boring, cheap, repetitive toys we were left with at the end. But....early g4 still feels really nostalgic to me. I still love the characters, I appreciate the show for what it was, and I’m grateful I had something to look forward to nearly every week for almost 10 years. It’s weird to think that G4 is the last pony generation where I can say I was a kid when I watched it. I mean...teenager, but let’s be real, still a kid. :P
And....that turned into an essay. I’ve never tried to really critically think about my experience with G4, but it undeniably had a rather large impact on my life.
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It's complicated for me. G1 was my childhood and I started collecting ponies as an adult during G3, then I met my husband virtually right around the time that FiM debuted. The show was genuinely great in the beginning and it became something that we bonded over; we were 2000 miles apart and watching FiM was a perfect way to hang out and have something to be into together. There was a period of time before the fandom got visibly gross that it was just fun and almost kinda cool to be into it. I even bought him and a friend brony shirts.
I was so excited that FiM was bringing ponies back into the mainstream, in a way that people of all genders and ages were into, and it was so cool to share this love that I've had my whole life with my partner. When we got married in 2011, Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy were our wedding cake toppers. When we had to separate again, my husband would read FiM fanfic to me as bedtime stories.
9 years later and the brony shirt is relegated to the pajamas drawer, and the thing that we loved together is forever tarnished by 4channers and Hasbro's relentless pandering to white male money.
Tldr; Lauren Faust did an awesome thing that I connected with my husband over. And then certain fans ruined it for everyone. Really sad.
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I also laid pretty low with the brony invasion here and in the wider pony community.
There is a sense from that element of the community that it is the only valid pony fandom and it needs to conquer all other ponies through hate and mockery and negativity. Which when the show is called Friendship is Magic is a pretty big irony. I have not watched enough of G4 to know if that is an idea they could draw from the show or if it's one they invented and imposed on it, but I do know some of the G4 episodes do have a kind of pony > other communities angle that is probably accidental but still feels a bit wrong for a 21st century series.
...I had to remove explicit pony art spam from an anime forum I used to moderate once. I forget why they did it, except they thought it was funny - but I could've lived without seeing any of it.
I've always been of the opinion that the pony community should be for all generation fans and I still feel like that. But I don't see those people as pony fans, and the comments here kind of back up my impressions. I remember one year when the brony convention got cancelled and as a result the ponycon tickets sold out. Because they couldn't get tickets, one group of bronies threatened to storm the building and some were threatening to expose themselves there and stuff like that. Ponycon is age friendly and safe for children and there was some concern about it happening.
Fortunately it didn't. The thing is that the bronies/male fans/female G4 fans I have met irl at ponycon have been FINE. They have obviously been there for G4, but they have all been respectful of other gens and of other people, they've been human beings and I have no issue with them.
We all really wanted to embrace FIM when it came out, but our existence was somehow a threat to the brony mindset. Even though we weren't :/ I remember being really excited to see AJ and Rarity and co in Finland in 2011. It's that dominating part of FIM and the fandom I want to see vanish. I had hoped it had gone, until I saw the article about brony neonazis in July, and realised it hasn't, and MLP is still being dragged through the mud by these unpleasant people.
SpacePinto is probably right that it's tainted us all forever because people just call bronies MLP fans. I think that's why I like to use brony to term the unpleasant ones, because they're not MLP Fans. Other G4 fans are, so for me to call them bronies would IMO be an insult.
I hope when ponycon can go back to real life, we'll only have the respectful G4 fans showing up. This year the online con has basically been a glorified G4 convention with nothing but vendor stalls and occasional chat for older gen fans. This in spite of the fact ponycon predates G4. I really hope that G4 will take more of a balanced backseat in future conventions, but it worries me that it won't, and that the all-gen concept is basically going to suffer.
But on the other side, I graduated my MA with G4 Rainbow Dash in 2012. I graduated my undergrad in 2003 with G3 RD and I have a bracelet a friend bought for me which also has Dash on it, that I hope to be able to wear to my PhD graduation if it comes off next year. And of course there's Fluttsi, my little mascot pony that has been all over the place with me. I love those ponies. I just can't love the world they come from.
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@Taffeta:
Yeah, again, I am disgusted by that part of the fandom that thinks it’s their mission to defend g4 at all costs and burn the other gens to the ground like barbaric conquerors. Not cool. Especially for a fan base that made their beginnings in the slogan “love and tolerate”. It seems utterly hypocritical for fans of g4 to wave the L&T flag, then take shots at fans of the same pony community, but just from a different gen, and the ponies they love. And I realize that it might not be the same ones doing it, but there are too many of those who can those flames with no consequence or regard or respect. I’m sorry that these types of people who dare to call themselves fans and behave so intolerantly have ruined some of your (and anyone else’s) more precious moments in the past and made them feel like they have to lie low Or distance themselves in the pony community that they love.
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I think that if the G4 community had bothered to police itself and deal with its own extreme elements then the situation would have been contained sooner and there would be less bad feeling.
I get that G4 fans sometimes feel frustrated that it 'isn't them' who are doing the bad stuff and I know that's true. But there are a lot of fans who just sit back and let the status quo happen, and there's a lot of low key negative from the overall community even outside the worst offenders. And it's never been something that those of us outside can do anything about, because we have absolutely zero standing in that space.
I still hope we'll have a more integrated and balanced community eventually, but I am also glad to see the end of FIM. The problem for me is that if G5 is based on FIM, it might be harder to cut those negative elements and get rid of them once and for all. So long as they have something to feed off, the trash will remain.
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Yeah it has! When I started watching it as a teen, I was like, "oh yeah, I had some old pony toys as a kid! Wonder where those went...". After years of watch FIM and wondering about those lost toys, I rediscovered them hidden back in my closet. Finding those old toys is what kicked off my decision to become a vintage toy collector, and got me into going to flea markets with my dad, something he had already been doing for years. It really helped strengthen my bond with him over collecting cool toys, and not feeling as ashamed for wanting to collect toys as an adult. Deciding to collect G1 and vintage fakes is what encouraged me to join this forum too. :P
I never really got involved with the FIM fanbase/community or merch while watching the show, aside from listening to all of the cool fan music that was created! I guess you could say joining this toy forum ended being my first experience integrating with the pony community, and it's been a pretty positive place! I will say my 2016 BF was a fan of the show too, which surprised me but it was so much fun to talk about it with him, he was super nice.
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I experience with G4 was similar to a few others here. I had come into pony near the end of G3 because of the new LPS that was out at the same time caught my attention after growing up with the original Kenner LPS. It was an exciting time because all the fun high quality fan content. I might have even read a "questionable" comic or two because I thought it was funny. But then something changed. It was actually something bigger than ponies but unfortunately ponies got swept into it. People into "nerdy" things that weren't straight white males started wanting to be catered to as well. Which is good but the problem was straight white males took "I want things that appeal to me too" as "you don't deserve things that you like anymore". And a lot of "nerd" spaces became inhospitable including bronydom.
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For me it's been mostly positive at first since it got me back into MLP. I skipped G3 completely. Then ironically G4 got me into G3 because I became bored with FiM's only two poses real quick :lol:
As some others have said the crazy antics of the b-word soured it all for me and the final nail in the coffin was the show's writers humoring them in ways I had never seen before happening in a show for little girls. Even the hyper religious or helicopter parents didn't have such sway over kids content. Without trying to sound over the top, it honestly disturbed me and I wanted to distance myself from it.
I also had some run-ins with Bronies in the wild and those weren't pleasant meetings at all. I got accused of faking interest in MLP to get brony attention and had to see so much dumb crap that I can't talk about here as it is against the forum rules.
I took a long hiatus from FiM and whenever I wanted to have some pony in my life I turned to the older gens, not FiM. I think I bounced right before they had that Tirek episode, then came back three seasons later.
I sadly don't get the same vibe with G4 that I get with G1,2,3. G4 just became way too self-aware and some kind of groupsourced fanfic.
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Oof ... well, yes, but it's a complicated question. It would be easier to say, 'yes, more negative than positive', because of what I've dealt with, but I don't know if that would be 100% accurate.
The positives were really positive! The high of the first heydey of Brony fanaticism were unsurpassed. For a short time, I felt like I had a whole new, massive circle of friends, all who liked MLP! That was crazy, because before now, I'd largely felt like I was collecting in a vacuum. Yes, there's always people online who loved MLP, but it felt like a very much just-me thing in real life. I'd been to two pony Fairs, but those were years apart, and it was never like I went with a group of friends. I wrote pony fanfic, and people went NUTS for it. They couldn't get enough! Suddenly, I had an audience. I made all these new friends, shared art, talked about the show, eagerly hunted new brushables as each wave was released at TRU - it was incredible. I went to conventions! Suddenly, I had conventions in my area - multiple, even! I cosplayed for the first time in years, I even wore MLP cosplay to non-pony cons, and people recognized it - and LIKED it! It felt like this was what pony collecting should be, and maybe I had just missed out on it during G3 because I was too young. (I was just finishing college as FiM started, wow! Time flies!) I joined group chats on IRC for the very first time, and it was like a circle of friends immediately appeared. Sure, there were some creeps, but it felt like those were outliers. I stayed up hours every night talking, and I can only say how grateful I am that most of my college years were finished pre-FiM; I don't know how I'd have kept up! I even made some posts early on in the Arena, defending them - 'not every Brony is that bad, trust me, everyone is generally good and kind!' It's a unique kind of 'high' to be in a popular fandom.
And then things started souring.
I'm sure that, for some people (mostly men), the Brony fandom has only ever been good and kind to them. But for me, that was part of the problem; every time someone made a creepy joke, or posted ridiculously obscene/illegal content, or made disgusting implications at me, the rest of them would run over themselves to bellow "but he's an outlier! we're not all like that! not all Bronies! don't lump us together!" There were efforts to clean up the Google search results of NSFW, but it never expanded to their own backyards, their own chats, their own forums. The Bronies were more concerned with the group's image than the safety of the women in it. Because, in their minds, women were the outlier, and they needed to be quieted down, so as not to ruin their 'good time' in the fandom. So for me, the negatives of the fandom became all the more stark and dramatic, because I had flown so high in my infatuation with the fandom, I had even further to fall.
I made friends, and then lost them. I had friends who were more interested in pursuing Brony Fame than friendship, so as their Youtube numbers rose, I vanished from their attention. I had a G1 friend start running weekly 'casual Brony parties' at her house so she could pick a new boyfriend from the largely-teenage group who showed up. (She was in her 30s, and ended up marrying one.) I had to leave my IRC chat after someone came in and started making threats against me and others, and when I banned them, the other Bronies brayed about how "intolerant" I was.
What I lost the most, that makes me the most angry and why I will never willingly return to the fandom, is when I lost my sense of personal safety. I tend towards strong opinions; and in the past, I've posted some pretty 'hot takes' online that made people disagree with me, and even maybe dislike me. Disagreement happens, life goes on. But post-Brony, I would have arguments (usually talking about how unsafe the fandom made me feel, and how wrong it was that women should feel unsafe in a fandom *for female children*), and suddenly I had a former friend posting my personal information, telling her followers I deserved harassment for being 'mean'. Suddenly I had people contacting my family. I had a former friend tell mutual friends she fantasized about coming to my house and killing me. I have people who, even now, somehow justify stalking me across multiple platforms. It's sick, and they're sick. And pre-Brony, there were only a small cluster of people who would do this kind of stalking and harassment, and it was looked down on as a horrible and hateful thing by most of the fandom. Post-Brony, it seems like no big deal.
I will say this: it was only until a few months ago that anyone non-Brony ever crossed that boundary of contacting my family IRL to harass me, and it still felt like a disgusting boundary violation. It may just be that, to some evil people (or popular scammers, in the recent case), that doxxing and harassment is now fair game, if you get them mad enough. But never, in my entire life, did I ever feel as unsafe as I did after I became 'the enemy' in the eyes of the Brony fandom, and I know many other people (primarily young women) who had the exact same experience as I did, and even worse. Many notable women were run out of the fandom after having their workplaces and homes violated on the whim of an internet mob. That's nothing to speak of the younger women who were preyed upon by the multiple known predators who used the Brony fandom to find new victims, and *still* maintained defenders afterwards, because they were popular artists or musicians.
Where was I going with this? I guess, overall, I got a lot out of Friendship is Magic; but very little of the good survived all of the horrors and evil I witnessed in the fanbase itself. It may just be that I'd never interacted with a primarily-male online fanbase before, even though the fandom is overwhelmingly female in numbers. Perhaps all male-dominated fandoms are just that depraved and evil, and I'd been spoiled by spending my formative years online in a mostly-female fanbase for a children's toyline. It may also be that, for modern fandoms, harassment and stalking are the new norm, and I just never witnessed that until Bronies. Who knows? But I do think the Brony fandom has changed the 'fandom' game, quite noticeably for the worse, and we will be witnessing those ramifications for years to come.
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Some of these stories are pretty horrible >< Snapdragon, that really sucks. I'm sorry you had to deal with that.
I experienced stalking and threats from people in the G1 community back in around 2000, and it's pretty scary to have to deal with. Fortunately it never came to anything more than threats in my case, and it was only two people involved, but it was still something that lives with me and has made me much more wary of using things like social media or anything that could give away personal details.
On a more recent impact note - G4 just took over Ponycon to the point there was literally nothing for any G1-3 fan other than the vendors and a couple of channels. And it felt oppressive, unwelcoming and wrong.
I admit that this weekend I have wished quite a lot that FIM had never happened, because at least then Ponycon would still be Ponycon, rather than Bronycon. I think, unless there is clear change, this is going to continue to bother me. I have so many good memories of ponycon, but this genuinely left me feeling betrayed. At this rate, I would prefer it went back to the days of small pony meets, rather than seeing it get swept up in the G4 stuff like it's the only pony thing that matters any more.
Yes, Taffeta is angry and bitter tonight.
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All the negatives people have described so far.... I agree. That has been my experience too.
I actively do NOT tell people that I collect MLP anymore. I used to. But I don't want to be associated at all with that other stuff!
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Snapdragon, I’m so sorry you went through all that. :( Honestly, I feel like the types of things you experienced are the main reason I tend to not delve too deep into “fandom” cultures in general, even though being a huge nerd is basically my life. I’ve dealt with stalking and creepy individuals within the anime/gaming/cosplay community, and it was horrible. For these reasons, I refuse to participate in Facebook groups where I would be forced to use my real name and information.
Doxxing seems almost like a new fad—I see it happen so often within various fandoms and communities. These really atrocious acts of harassment are being treated as par for the course in many online communities, and it makes me sick. I don’t think these kinds of behaviors are confined to bronydom especially, but that’s become a prominent example because they took something so inherently innocent and managed to flood the web with NSFW content based around it. :( There’s... shock value in that.
I’d say I experienced that same initial “high” in the early days of G4-mania. My feelings back then match what you’re describing exactly... I was thrilled that something I’d always loved in relative obscurity was now this BIG THING with t-shirts in Hot Topic and a thriving community of fans. And then... it got ugly. Really ugly. I still miss those early days of G4, when “brony” was just a funny fandom term like Whovian or Potterhead.
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Geeze, reading all these posts, I'm glad I was never involved in any kind of FIM fandom. I actually didn't watch the series until last year when I binged watched it on Netflix. Still haven't seen the last season because it isn't up yet, hmph. Of course I was aware of FIM (duh!) and aware of Bronies, but didn't really know the extent of it, I guess.
But I really enjoyed watching FIM. Very cute and engaging show; I can see why its appealed to so many people. The theme song was pretty darn catchy too!
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Some of these stories are pretty horrible >< Snapdragon, that really sucks. I'm sorry you had to deal with that.
I experienced stalking and threats from people in the G1 community back in around 2000, and it's pretty scary to have to deal with. Fortunately it never came to anything more than threats in my case, and it was only two people involved, but it was still something that lives with me and has made me much more wary of using things like social media or anything that could give away personal details.
On a more recent impact note - G4 just took over Ponycon to the point there was literally nothing for any G1-3 fan other than the vendors and a couple of channels. And it felt oppressive, unwelcoming and wrong.
I admit that this weekend I have wished quite a lot that FIM had never happened, because at least then Ponycon would still be Ponycon, rather than Bronycon. I think, unless there is clear change, this is going to continue to bother me. I have so many good memories of ponycon, but this genuinely left me feeling betrayed. At this rate, I would prefer it went back to the days of small pony meets, rather than seeing it get swept up in the G4 stuff like it's the only pony thing that matters any more.
Yes, Taffeta is angry and bitter tonight.
what the heck happened to warrant the threats?!?!
It saddens me to hear that you and I’m sure some others with g4 never happened. Hundreds of friendships, weddings, hobbies, and even careers never would happened as a result of g4 coming into existence the way that it had. G4 has done a lot of good for a lot of people, and it’s easy to miss when you only look and focus on the negative aspects of the fandom that is a part of it.
Maybe take a break and have a Snickers, Taff.
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Taffeta, lovesbabysquirmy, Nemesis, thank you for your replies. I still hesitate to talk about it at times, because I hate to sound 'weak' or admit just how deeply these attacks affected me. (Plus, if you know bullies, you know they get off on scaring their victims.) I'm not walking around every day in fear, but there were days I did exactly that. I guess I was a little naive in a sense, because while I'd seen harassment and stalking behaviors in the G1 fandom before, it never got to a level where I felt afraid for my physical safety. I'm sure it was there; it just didn't seem quite as prevalent. But as Taffeta shows, it was clearly already here.
Some of these stories are pretty horrible >< Snapdragon, that really sucks. I'm sorry you had to deal with that.
I experienced stalking and threats from people in the G1 community back in around 2000, and it's pretty scary to have to deal with. Fortunately it never came to anything more than threats in my case, and it was only two people involved, but it was still something that lives with me and has made me much more wary of using things like social media or anything that could give away personal details.
On a more recent impact note - G4 just took over Ponycon to the point there was literally nothing for any G1-3 fan other than the vendors and a couple of channels. And it felt oppressive, unwelcoming and wrong.
I admit that this weekend I have wished quite a lot that FIM had never happened, because at least then Ponycon would still be Ponycon, rather than Bronycon. I think, unless there is clear change, this is going to continue to bother me. I have so many good memories of ponycon, but this genuinely left me feeling betrayed. At this rate, I would prefer it went back to the days of small pony meets, rather than seeing it get swept up in the G4 stuff like it's the only pony thing that matters any more.
Yes, Taffeta is angry and bitter tonight.
what the heck happened to warrant the threats?!?!
It saddens me to hear that you and I’m sure some others with g4 never happened. Hundreds of friendships, weddings, hobbies, and even careers never would happened as a result of g4 coming into existence the way that it had. G4 has done a lot of good for a lot of people, and it’s easy to miss when you only look and focus on the negative aspects of the fandom that is a part of it.
Maybe take a break and have a Snickers, Taff.
I saw your reply and had to wait a little while to respond, Mana Minori; because I'll be honest, your flippant response of 'just have a candy!' makes me think you aren't reading the replies seriously in this thread, and it's upsetting. You said earlier:
to be fair, I did ask for positive and negative experiences how FiM impacted people, as I realize that FIM may not have struck a positive chord with many. So let’s not discourage sharing.
Yes, good came out of the fandom. A lot of evil came out, too. I said in my reply that a lot of what hurt me was feeling like the average Brony would hand-wave any of the negative aspects away when they were brought up; that's exactly what you are doing here. 'Oh just have a candy/but some people got married!' are dismissive of the very real hurt that Taffeta is experiencing. I also hope you aren't trying to make it some kind of 'more good than bad' because some people got married and made new friends in the fandom. Children were harmed as a direct result of the Brony fandom. It's not a balancing game, you can't add points for marriages and remove points for crimes against children. Especially when this is a fandom for a show that is directly for and about children, and not marriage-age adults.
G4 has done a lot of good for people; G4 has done a lot of evil, too. You can't brush either one away with 'well no one was mean to ME' or flippant references to television advertisements.
Taffeta, I must say that I agree, and I am sad to hear that about Ponycon. I know that Ponycon was very intent on meshing the two fandoms of Brony and pre-Brony (which seemed like a bad idea to me at the time, in the midst of the DWM movement and all of that ugliness directed at female fans), and it seemed like up until this year they had done a fair job at that. I'm sorry to hear the online event didn't maintain that, but it makes me feel better about missing it.
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Taffeta, lovesbabysquirmy, Nemesis, thank you for your replies. I still hesitate to talk about it at times, because I hate to sound 'weak' or admit just how deeply these attacks affected me. (Plus, if you know bullies, you know they get off on scaring their victims.) I'm not walking around every day in fear, but there were days I did exactly that. I guess I was a little naive in a sense, because while I'd seen harassment and stalking behaviors in the G1 fandom before, it never got to a level where I felt afraid for my physical safety. I'm sure it was there; it just didn't seem quite as prevalent. But as Taffeta shows, it was clearly already here.
Some of these stories are pretty horrible >< Snapdragon, that really sucks. I'm sorry you had to deal with that.
I experienced stalking and threats from people in the G1 community back in around 2000, and it's pretty scary to have to deal with. Fortunately it never came to anything more than threats in my case, and it was only two people involved, but it was still something that lives with me and has made me much more wary of using things like social media or anything that could give away personal details.
On a more recent impact note - G4 just took over Ponycon to the point there was literally nothing for any G1-3 fan other than the vendors and a couple of channels. And it felt oppressive, unwelcoming and wrong.
I admit that this weekend I have wished quite a lot that FIM had never happened, because at least then Ponycon would still be Ponycon, rather than Bronycon. I think, unless there is clear change, this is going to continue to bother me. I have so many good memories of ponycon, but this genuinely left me feeling betrayed. At this rate, I would prefer it went back to the days of small pony meets, rather than seeing it get swept up in the G4 stuff like it's the only pony thing that matters any more.
Yes, Taffeta is angry and bitter tonight.
what the heck happened to warrant the threats?!?!
It saddens me to hear that you and I’m sure some others with g4 never happened. Hundreds of friendships, weddings, hobbies, and even careers never would happened as a result of g4 coming into existence the way that it had. G4 has done a lot of good for a lot of people, and it’s easy to miss when you only look and focus on the negative aspects of the fandom that is a part of it.
Maybe take a break and have a Snickers, Taff.
I saw your reply and had to wait a little while to respond, Mana Minori; because I'll be honest, your flippant response of 'just have a candy!' makes me think you aren't reading the replies seriously in this thread, and it's upsetting. You said earlier:
to be fair, I did ask for positive and negative experiences how FiM impacted people, as I realize that FIM may not have struck a positive chord with many. So let’s not discourage sharing.
Yes, good came out of the fandom. A lot of evil came out, too. I said in my reply that a lot of what hurt me was feeling like the average Brony would hand-wave any of the negative aspects away when they were brought up; that's exactly what you are doing here. 'Oh just have a candy/but some people got married!' are dismissive of the very real hurt that Taffeta is experiencing. I also hope you aren't trying to make it some kind of 'more good than bad' because some people got married and made new friends in the fandom. Children were harmed as a direct result of the Brony fandom. It's not a balancing game, you can't add points for marriages and remove points for crimes against children. Especially when this is a fandom for a show that is directly for and about children, and not marriage-age adults.
G4 has done a lot of good for people; G4 has done a lot of evil, too. You can't brush either one away with 'well no one was mean to ME' or flippant references to television advertisements.
Taffeta, I must say that I agree, and I am sad to hear that about Ponycon. I know that Ponycon was very intent on meshing the two fandoms of Brony and pre-Brony (which seemed like a bad idea to me at the time, in the midst of the DWM movement and all of that ugliness directed at female fans), and it seemed like up until this year they had done a fair job at that. I'm sorry to hear the online event didn't maintain that, but it makes me feel better about missing it.
i wasn’t trying to be flippant. I assure you, I am reading the replies and trying to take them seriously. And I 100% stand by my comment that I made to not discourage people from posting negative experiences. I realize that there are a lot of raw emotions and scars left by certain members of the g4 fandom opinion people here, and it is quite uncomfortable for me to read and to try to relate to. And the thing is- and yes, at times i realize that it might not be appropriate, but I use what I deem as humor to try to diffuse uncomfortable situations for myself, and what works for some doesn’t work with (and can be misinterpreted) be others. So I, again- was definitely not not attempting to be flippant in any way, and am sorry that you interpreted as such.
I was specifically addressing the response to someone wishing that g4 never existed with that post. I realize that it did a lot of harm to people, and I am sorry for that, I truly am. I am just not good at empathizing and say the wrong things at wrong times without meaning to. I make mistakes. But I AM trying.
I’m not hand waving the situation or saying that there’s more good in this fandom than bad. It just hurts me to see these bad experiences from a fandom and franchise that I love and just my really bad attempt to try and ease things and saying the wrong thing and having it misinterpreted. Yes, I fracked up in posting that Snickers comment to Taff, in saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, with good intent behind it, but I hope that you not they, not anyone else hold it against me.
So if it’s alright with you, I would like to try again and offer my deepest condolences, for what they are worth, and am sorry that you had to go through such a traumatic event in this fandom.
Everyone’s personal safety should be protected and I cannot convey how utterly disgusting it is to for safety violators, stalkers and harassers to come from those who claim themselves as fans of this pastel pony franchise. It’s abhorrent and I hope that they get what’s coming to them for doing such things. I know that can make it difficult to trust anyone after such an event, and what lasting effects it can have, but I am grateful that you opened up and shared that with everyone here.
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TBH I read it as flippant as well, though I don't think my experience really compares to some of the horribleness being discussed here - at the time I was 18 and I was frightened. While there have been impassioned exchanges of views over the years, it does feel like as we've all got older we've basically become cranky grumblies rather than hotheads. But even back then, when we had the scuffles over G2 and whatever, I'd like to think that those things were exceptional rather than normalised in the older gen community.
There are a lot of things in this thread that are uncomfortable reading, but sometimes the truth is uncomfortable. I agree with Snapdragon that you can't validate the bad things people experience because some people had good experiences.
The reason that bothers me most is that in my case, I was not believed by the community. I don't want to go into a lot of detail here because it's off topic for this thread, but the people in question were popular and had friends in mod teams. They closed ranks. Most dismissed it or acted like it wasn't really happening and I'd made it up. Even a few years ago someone posted something about the 'old days' which completely misrepresented the situation as a kind of humorous disagreement.
It wasn't funny to me then and it isn't now. I felt betrayed by the whole pony community to the point that I left it for almost 2 years - I couldn't even look at my ponies. Only two people were actively involved in the bullying. But by not believing me, trivialising what was happening, or just not doing anything, I felt the rest of the community were also party to what happened. And overcoming that breach of trust was very difficult.
Online bullying is a serious and damaging thing and it can't be trivialised by humour. And I'm sure G4 has done a lot for a lot of people. But I still want to know what those people were doing while others were being victimised. It sounds like a lot of nothing. And I can tell you, that nothing hurts sometimes more than the actual bullying itself.
ETA - Mana Minori, suggest you edit your language in that post before the mod hammer comes. ^.^
On the subject of wishing FIM had not happened, it was a frustration over them taking over and in my mind ruining Ponycon - something that I enjoy and which for me is special. Like an unspoken assumption that they can just fill the con with G4 stuff and everyone will be fine with that...like 'being inclusive' means making a half nod to older gens rather than understanding that this is an old gen convention that added G4 in 2011, not a G4 convention that doesn't mind a few older gen things.
I don't take back what I said, because in general the pony community was a better place before G4 happened. But it's not G4 itself that's the problem. It's the people it invited into pony, and the way it made pony mainstream. Mostly people who collected pony prior to G4 were not mainstream, and didn't want to be dragged into a major media circus. We didn't want memes or media attention or documentaries or articles or any of those things. We wanted to be left to collect ponies and share them in peace and quiet. Maybe FIM did give us, indirectly, the Basic Fun toys, on the back of the pony hype. And the G4 toys themselves? I quite like a lot of them. The early/non M6 ones anyway. But it's FIM that brought all the bad things into the community. Not G4, but FIM the series and its unhealthy fandom.
I went to pony meets before Ponycon and I went to Ponycon over several years. I have never before been made to feel like I don't belong in the convention that this community set up and created. It's hard to care a whole lot about the good experiences of the FIM people - because for the most part they seem to have had it at someone else's expense.
And if that is angry, bitter or biased, so be it. It's how I feel.
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Thank you for your reply, Mana Minori. I know it can be hard to tell tone online vs in person, so I appreciate that you were trying to defuse a tense conversation. I think a lot of people are uncomfortable with tough or upsetting situations, so it's definitely not just you! It's hard to know the right thing to say at times, and I know it's really hard to see people saying bad things about something you love, especially something that is very important to you. (I think that's why some Bronies are very defensive of the fandom; it's become a formative moment in their lives, and admitting it's not 100% perfect feels like a threat to their reality.) I know a lot of people have had positive, life-changing experiences with the G4 fandom, which is why it really stinks to compare my experience with theirs. I genuinely wish we could have stopped at those early euphoric months, where it was very much a 'woah, we all like glittery little ponies?!' and kept that sense of innocence and wonder. That's what I enjoy about the show, not the NSFW/look-how-edgy-I-can-be stuff.
Taffeta, I'm really sorry you had to endure that; I felt some of that, on a much smaller scale, when I had to leave my very first group chat for G4. I was even made mod in there, but when a creep came in and threatened random members and then myself, everyone stood by and muttered 'don't make drama' while I was being attacked. It was horrible. I can't imagine feeling that on a forum-wide or fandom-wide scale. I have seen some of what you mention, and that kind of behavior is absolutely horrendous and inexcusable. I suspect most people bully because they're unhappy in their lives, but it's hard to do much else but wish them further unhappiness when all they do online is make other people suffer.
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I understand that this is mlp toy collecting forum, so i see how a lot of people might resent g4 for all the attention it got, and not all of it positive, and how it very much reshaped how the "mlp fandom" operated and looked. It was also pretty clear that the g4 fandom was seperating itself from the g1-g3 community for better or for worse. After all the dust settled though, i think it gave many people the chance to not only say they enjoy mlp and not get weird looks, but also gave some them the chance to look back at the earlier gens and see the beauty in them. Mlp fim for me was what got me into ponies and helped me become much more comfortable with sharing my love of things like care bears, mlp, and stuffed animals with others. Before g4 i was terrified to tell people i liked stuffed animals and care bears, cause i was a straight Male high school student and i was VERY afraid of people making fun of me for liking "girly" things. But the existence of bronies and the fandom as a whole slowly helped me be more comfortable with sharing the things i loved with friends. If all these other guys could wear mlp shirts and merch in public and be happy then i probably could too! I never finished watching the show cause i didnt like the later seasons as much but mlp fim has become such an important part of my life.
A bit over a year ago, i stumbled upon an image of the g3 giant plushies and was ASTOUNDED at how much better they looked than any of the liscensed g4 plushies (except 4de, 4de had amazing liscensed plushies). Now much more comfortable with myself i was able to look back to the earlier gens and find something i loved about them. I love the g3 plushies and i found this forum while searching for places to buy some. This is a great place for mlp toy collectors, but is very obviously focused the older gens. Which is fine. But its not surprising that the people here would not care for g4 as much as someone like me or the rest of the g4 fandom. We all have had mlp affect us in various ways. Personally. I would not be as happy as i am right now, being able to show off my toy collections to friends ive made in WILDLY different communities, without g4. Whatever your opinion on g4 is, i hope yall can appreciate the positive impact it has had on many people's lives outside collecting the toys.
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I understand that this is mlp toy collecting forum, so i see how a lot of people might resent g4 for all the attention it got, and not all of it positive, and how it very much reshaped how the "mlp fandom" operated and looked.
I'm really glad that G4 empowered you, and I actually love hearing when G4 is a gateway into older gens as well. In real terms there shouldn't be a divide between G1-3 and G4, it doesn't make rational sense - but the divide wasn't created here, it was created there, so there's not much we can do about it.
To be honest I've always felt that the resentment came from the brony community, not from us to them. I mean, we collect toy ponies. It's not very globally earthshattering and I don't think anyone here wanted any kind of outside attention for it. Toy collectors don't like people knowing about the rarity of items, anyway. We want to get a second hand sale deal, so the less attention the better, honestly.
But the reason I've always assumed that the bronies resented us is because we existed before G4. They didn't 'create' the pony community, they didn't 'start' the pony fandom, G4 didn't 'invent' MLP.
Reality is that G4 is just number four in a sequence, and not the original, but that seems a problem with some people. I've seen a lot of videos on YT trying to present G4 as the perfect evolutionary result from G1 onwards, as though by doing that it somehow makes G4 win...or something? Not really sure. But G4 really is just another pony generation. The problem is not so much that but the fact the negative attention lumps all pony fans together, and the bad stuff means that people who in the past would talk about their collecting are now reticent to do so in case they are associated with some of these subversive things.
I don't really care if people like or dislike other gen ponies, but I do have problems with people going into other fandom spaces just to mock something. That kind of behaviour suggests massive insecurity tbh. I remember in the anime community, you'd get Naruto fans invading the Bleach forum simply to write spam about how Bleach sucked. No other reason, no other interest, just the desire to shout down something that other people enjoyed...for some reason that made them feel important.
The same thing happened with G4. It's fine to ignore the other generations, or to dislike them, but to actively seek out G1 videos, G3 videos, artwork, even fan spaces like this in order to belittle existing generations is a bit sad. To me that's a fandom crying out for more attention, or validation through trashing what went before. So for me the resentment has always been from bronies to us.
Although I admit that I do resent the G4ness of ponycon, and I said so, and I won't take it back. But that is because Ponycon is also an old-gen space and an all-gen con, and that is how it should always be - something for everyone. The need for G4 to take over and dominate every space online is very real, so preserving the few spaces like this one where it's ok to talk about older generations without feeling judged is important. For me Ponycon is included in those spaces.
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I genuinely wish we could have stopped at those early euphoric months, where it was very much a 'woah, we all like glittery little ponies?!' and kept that sense of innocence and wonder. That's what I enjoy about the show, not the NSFW/look-how-edgy-I-can-be stuff.
Again, you’ve managed to sum up my feelings better than I can myself.
But G4 really is just another pony generation. The problem is not so much that but the fact the negative attention lumps all pony fans together, and the bad stuff means that people who in the past would talk about their collecting are now reticent to do so in case they are associated with some of these subversive things.
Exactly this. I love G4 for the same reasons I love/d G1-3. Nothing has changed for me in the sense that I loved magical ponies then, and I still love them now.
But now there’s this fear that if I tell someone who doesn’t know me well that I love MLP, they’ll see that as a red flag. They might remember a weird article they read somewhere about bronies doing creepy things. I don’t know how much of that is real, and how much is me being paranoid, but it’s an uncomfortable feeling.
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Some of these stories are pretty horrible >< Snapdragon, that really sucks. I'm sorry you had to deal with that.
I experienced stalking and threats from people in the G1 community back in around 2000, and it's pretty scary to have to deal with. Fortunately it never came to anything more than threats in my case, and it was only two people involved, but it was still something that lives with me and has made me much more wary of using things like social media or anything that could give away personal details.
On a more recent impact note - G4 just took over Ponycon to the point there was literally nothing for any G1-3 fan other than the vendors and a couple of channels. And it felt oppressive, unwelcoming and wrong.
I admit that this weekend I have wished quite a lot that FIM had never happened, because at least then Ponycon would still be Ponycon, rather than Bronycon. I think, unless there is clear change, this is going to continue to bother me. I have so many good memories of ponycon, but this genuinely left me feeling betrayed. At this rate, I would prefer it went back to the days of small pony meets, rather than seeing it get swept up in the G4 stuff like it's the only pony thing that matters any more.
Yes, Taffeta is angry and bitter tonight.
what the heck happened to warrant the threats?!?!
It saddens me to hear that you and I’m sure some others with g4 never happened. Hundreds of friendships, weddings, hobbies, and even careers never would happened as a result of g4 coming into existence the way that it had. G4 has done a lot of good for a lot of people, and it’s easy to miss when you only look and focus on the negative aspects of the fandom that is a part of it.
Maybe take a break and have a Snickers, Taff.
Talk about unsympathetic! :mad:
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Although I admit that I do resent the G4ness of ponycon, and I said so, and I won't take it back. But that is because Ponycon is also an old-gen space and an all-gen con, and that is how it should always be - something for everyone. The need for G4 to take over and dominate every space online is very real, so preserving the few spaces like this one where it's ok to talk about older generations without feeling judged is important. For me Ponycon is included in those spaces.
Ponycon this year was online right? Maybe they just couldn't find much for earlier gens? Especially since it was on Discord.
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Although I admit that I do resent the G4ness of ponycon, and I said so, and I won't take it back. But that is because Ponycon is also an old-gen space and an all-gen con, and that is how it should always be - something for everyone. The need for G4 to take over and dominate every space online is very real, so preserving the few spaces like this one where it's ok to talk about older generations without feeling judged is important. For me Ponycon is included in those spaces.
Ponycon this year was online right? Maybe they just couldn't find much for earlier gens? Especially since it was on Discord.
Ponycon happened in June as well, online, and they managed to do it then.
If you don't mind I don't really want to have a 'rationalising' discussion about the ponycon thing, because it upset me and I will probably say something I'll regret if those buttons are pushed.
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I was horrified when Hasbro took an interest in "our" little private convention, of a niche collectible, and went mainstream with it. A lot of people were like, "but looooooooooook, sponsorship $$$$ AND access to insider knowledge!" but it set off a landslide of decisions that could not be undone.
Legally we can't even use the name of the convention anymore outside of a Hasbro-sanctioned event, and it was going on successfully for years before Hasbro started paying attention and searching up animators who did MLP fan art, and C&Ding artists who made products that they didn't approve of, or were competition to already existing licenses.
Yet the last time I went to a popular comic convention a few years back, and asked about G1, as they had advertised MLP on the booth, I was laughed out of the space by the men running it. Men who were eager to sell other bronies G4 merch. "Who would want that?" they snidely said, "Go to a yard sale and ask Grandma."
So clearly there is a discrepancy in the general collector populace between people who collect FiM and people who collect "those old baby toys". It's cool for all people to collect G4 Pinkie Pie, wear a Spiderman costume, and legally change your name to Sparkle Pegasus, yet there are death threats and doxxing for (primarily women) simply because they like to buy the toys they had as children.
That is a HUGE problem and I don't know if this rift will heal naturally on a corporate and legal level, or if it will take the fandom and collectors to create another independent sub-movement on their own initiative. Or if Hasbro would even allow that. But until Hasbro officially acknowledges that it has catered to the worldview of New Vs. Old fandom and actively resolves to change that, I don't think anything will change. We will all continue to have to "take sides", as it were.
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I was horrified when Hasbro took an interest in "our" little private convention, of a niche collectible, and went mainstream with it. A lot of people were like, "but looooooooooook, sponsorship $$$$ AND access to insider knowledge!" but it set off a landslide of decisions that could not be undone.
Yeah, it was a problem waiting to happen. Ponycon flirted with it, for a while we did get the exclusive the US did and I remember HAsbro being there once promoting whatever the new G3 line at the time was (breezies? I think it was 2006, there was also a giant G4 pony and I have photos somewhere...) but after that it kind of fell off their radar. There was much more involvement between the Ponycon and the Riding for the Disabled that it continues to fundraise for.
I actually haven't had that distinction here with second hand toy fair vendors for MLP. They tend to fit in 2 categories. "Clueless" and "dealer". But I have been able to negotiate on occasion. I picked up one pony from a stall where they were clueless about specifics. And another where I got a discount by pointing out pony was missing its float.
We also have - in normal times - a vendor that brings a lot of 80s toys, including all the gens of pony. They price reasonably, they do deals and they have all of them named. They're proper pony people vending at a toy fair, and I've bought from them a lot of times. And they do sell G4, but they have mostly G1 and G3.
At the carboots, they're all just 'ponies' and the price is basically the same irrespective. I've paid more for a MH doll at a carboot than I have for a pony, even last year (which was the last time I was able to carboot).
Everything else though, 100%. Hasbro have enabled the divide and the inequality by pandering...and now is in a tricky situation trying to get out of it.
I also remember Summer coming to Ponycon and talking about the event we are not supposed to name for copyright reasons. It was the year of the chicken suit Pinkie Pie, which demonstrates the distinction between what the Event that shall not be Named was about and what Hasbro thought was important. I don't know how prevalent G4 was at that event, but it's pretty much a guarantee that the bulk of the attendees would've rather had something retro back then.
...And then there was Hascon. Ooohboy.
So in that light, the UK got off lightly. Depending where it goes from here, though, because right now it's rather like the same thing.
The C&D orders also fly in the face of the idea that G4 opened up creativity. In fact it seems to have also shut it down.
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Makes me glad I don't go to Cons at all.
At least the MLP community rallied and created something new for itself after Hasbro endorsed, then dissolved what was originally fan sponsored events.
Forever may Hasblo keep its grubby grasping fingers off of that.
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I started off as a G4 fan. At some point in like 2013, I had just...stopped using a certain label for myself. But I will say that at first, it started out pretty good! Growing up, my first fandom was The Powerpuff Girls, so I was no stranger to being into stuff with female protagonists. I was 8 years old when FiM first came out, and I became an avid viewer about 3 months after it premiered. A few friends at school were talking about how the lady who's married to the guy who made Powerpuff Girls made a new show about My Little Pony and it was really good! As soon as I heard that I binged the show up to that point (on Comcast On Demand, anyone remember that? :lol:) and I was hooked. Everything about the show was my vibe! The characters, the world, the voice acting, I loved it! A week after I became a fan I begged my mom to drive me to Toys R Us so I could spend my gift card I got for my birthday and I walked out of the store with all 6 of the first wave of Mane 6 releases. I still have them to this day, displayed on my nightstand and I'm very proud of them. This was the beginning of my journey as a collector, and I still have really fond memories of acquiring ponies.
Eventually I discovered the you know who's and I'm not going to lie, I have a lot of fond memories of being apart of that community. I met my closest online friends through that fandom and some of the best years of my life were spent apart of that world. And I will admit, there are some things that came from them that I still really dig (I think the concept of the whole background pony craze back in the day was neat) and for the first 2 or 3 years it was nice! But at some point, things had changed.
I don't know when it happened, but it happened. All kids shows have weird violent fanfiction and inappropriate fanart, we know that. If something is innocent and wholesome people are gonna corrupt it. Personally, I thought that Cupcakes fanfiction was hilarious. But it was a rule in most kids show fandoms to keep that stuff away from the general public and have it be posted to communities of adults who are seeking that kind of thing. This fandom however? If you even so much as Google certain characters you are going to run into extremely inappropriate fan content. And that's not okay in the slightest, but it seems to that subset of fans that it doesn't matter because they genuinely believe MLP was made for them and them only. The show, as it went on, pretty much justified these kinds of fans by shoving in references to these communities! I cannot believe they put a body pillow in an episode!!! And no one did anything, so clearly there were children who saw this stuff! Myself included!!! I'll see memes come up on Instagram like "I was traumatized in the MLP fandom" and TikToks that are like "Does anyone remember Rainbow Factory?" and even though I'm supposed to laugh, I can't help but feel sympathy for myself and the thousands of kids who had to see these things, all because the bronies wanted the show to themselves.
The amount of gatekeeping that I've seen from them that made children, female fans, established female fans of the brand before FiM, fans of color and LGBTQ+ fans like myself feel unsafe really hurts my heart. I'll admit, the G1 and G3 animated content isn't really my thing as much as I love their toylines but I still appreciated the amount of fans they introduced into the franchise. But the way the bronies (and at some points FiM) made it out to be so low quality and awful and how you were bad if you as so much liked them just brings out their true colors. I will never wrap my head around how this group straight white cis men turned a little girl escapism haven into...that. It's something that I will forever be somewhat salty about. This is getting waaaay too long so I'm gonna wrap it up here but My Little Pony deserved much better. I weep for those with negative experiences such as myself. This really hurts man.
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Legally we can't even use the name of the convention anymore outside of a Hasbro-sanctioned event, and it was going on successfully for years before Hasbro started paying attention and searching up animators who did MLP fan art, and C&Ding artists who made products that they didn't approve of, or were competition to already existing licenses.
Yet the last time I went to a popular comic convention a few years back, and asked about G1, as they had advertised MLP on the booth, I was laughed out of the space by the men running it. Men who were eager to sell other bronies G4 merch. "Who would want that?" they snidely said, "Go to a yard sale and ask Grandma."
I think it's so telling how these douchebags will treat old crap from boy franchises like the holy grail but stuff women collect is "Grandma's yardsale". These manchildren drool after old Ghostbusters figures I wouldn't even toss to the dogs and screech like chimps if you can't acknowledge the genius of the Ninja Turtles noir comics.
That's the nasty stink FiM fandom now has. The man thing VS the woman thing.
I take solace in history repeating itself. Kids will soon tell them to go to a yardsale to get those dumb, old G4 ponies nobody wants anymore and they will cry "without G4 you wouldn't have G7!" :P
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Hasbro has always felt that trying to promote whatever was currently in stores was more important than used ponies they don't get a cut in. This was the case even in G3 when they made the "art ponies". That said it's sad that a fan run thing wasn't inclusive to all gens. I would have definitely at least demanded an explanation.
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The amount of gatekeeping that I've seen from them that made children, female fans, established female fans of the brand before FiM, fans of color and LGBTQ+ fans like myself feel unsafe really hurts my heart. I'll admit, the G1 and G3 animated content isn't really my thing as much as I love their toylines but I still appreciated the amount of fans they introduced into the franchise. But the way the bronies (and at some points FiM) made it out to be so low quality and awful and how you were bad if you as so much liked them just brings out their true colors. I will never wrap my head around how this group straight white cis men turned a little girl escapism haven into...that. It's something that I will forever be somewhat salty about. This is getting waaaay too long so I'm gonna wrap it up here but My Little Pony deserved much better. I weep for those with negative experiences such as myself. This really hurts man.
as a gay asian trans boy, i was unfortunately on the receiving end of all of those gatekeeping problems for the last years of my childhood (which were also largely spent closeted). it's really done irreversible damage to the way i feel about and feel i can interact with mlp and while i'm too stubborn to give up collecting, i think there will always be trauma and hurting from how the nasty side of the g4 fandom basically gutted the pony collecting community where i had always felt safe and cared for beforehand. i started lurking here and on mlptp at around 7 or 8 years old and of course every kid my age had the typical internet safety talk, my parents and i still felt safe and comfortable with mlp communities online since it was mainly people who grew up in the 80s and still loved ponies for the nostalgia, and often had children of their own. then suddenly one day when i was 15, pony internet had gotten so unsafe that my poor mother found out about the creepy bronies via a scrapbooking forum and had to sit me down for that conversation only to find out that i was already miserably familiar with it all. not only did the nasty g4 fandom ruin everything for kids, they also broke my mother's heart because she always fully supported my harmless hobby, ESPECIALLY when i entered public highschool because everyone knows how that can be. i feel like i can never fully forgive and move on from something as deep as being ripped away from a community that cared for me during such crucial developmental years as a child.
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The amount of gatekeeping that I've seen from them that made children, female fans, established female fans of the brand before FiM, fans of color and LGBTQ+ fans like myself feel unsafe really hurts my heart.
I thought I had posted this already, but disability is missing from that list. There is a fierce amount of discrimination against autism in the brony community, coupled with a lot of autistic people involved in pony. On the few occasions I have gone into that space to look up something G4 related, there's always someone making a slur or using the term offensively.
I actually experienced that in person at 'Ponycon' on Saturday and it still bothers me. Not because I think I'm a victim, but because someone thinks that it's okay to make such comments and that somehow disability discrimination is less relevant than other types of discrimination.
I could've sworn I posted this already, but I cannot think why pointing out the problems for disabled people would be removed by the mod team, so maybe I didn't. Perhaps I'm actually losing my mind...
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The amount of gatekeeping that I've seen from them that made children, female fans, established female fans of the brand before FiM, fans of color and LGBTQ+ fans like myself feel unsafe really hurts my heart.
I thought I had posted this already, but disability is missing from that list. There is a fierce amount of discrimination against autism in the brony community, coupled with a lot of autistic people involved in pony. On the few occasions I have gone into that space to look up something G4 related, there's always someone making a slur or using the term offensively.
I actually experienced that in person at 'Ponycon' on Saturday and it still bothers me. Not because I think I'm a victim, but because someone thinks that it's okay to make such comments and that somehow disability discrimination is less relevant than other types of discrimination.
I could've sworn I posted this already, but I cannot think why pointing out the problems for disabled people would be removed by the mod team, so maybe I didn't. Perhaps I'm actually losing my mind...
All we have to do on this front is see that Hasbro MADE the Muffins pony a character, gave her a name, put her in some episodes, AND uses her differences as a prop for a joke.
If there was a disabled pony in ponyland, you would think that the animators would have enough common decency to NOT stereotype and caricature her in a demeaning fashion! But no. No, instead it caused so much drama that speaking her very name on a COLLECTOR'S FORUM FOR ADULTS ended up being banned.
*so much face, not enough hoof*
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To be honest it's neither positive nor negative for me
I have collected ponies since 2000 and the nostalgia of G1 is what got me started. I was excited when I hear about FiM (it was when they had the first set of pony toys at McDonald's, I drove all over completing the set in a night, I brought Princess Celestia to Japan and took photos of her on the streets) and it was fairly fun. I got up every Saturday morning to watch it for the first few years and made sure to dig through the pony brushables to get every new character.
Luckily I don't have the horrific stories of harrasment, doxxing, bullying as I purposefully avoided anything brony. Perhaps being my age, mid 20s when it started, I wasn't on the ground level when fim fandom coalesced into bronydom so by the time I was fully aware of bronies they already had their aggressive perverted reputation out there.
The show really tapered off in quality with all the brony injokes, nonsense friendship morals, lack of narrative direction etc so I just kinda stopped caring. The toys were just repeats anyway. It was like 2015 and I remember my mom saying "oh should I turn on the ponies, do you want to watch it?" And I just said "no I don't really care". Ive tried to watch the last couple of seasons but I just find the writing and dialog so blah. Same thing happened to me with Steven Universe (another toxic fandom I had to avoid)
So overall it equals out to zero for me
Oh and to circle back to the point of friendships, marriages, jobs coming from FiM. I don't think that really is a big deal because if it wasn't this animated show it would've been another cartoon. The same thing can be said of Adventure Time but overall I think it has a much less toxic fandom?
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:grouphug: To all who were hurt.
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Yet the last time I went to a popular comic convention a few years back, and asked about G1, as they had advertised MLP on the booth, I was laughed out of the space by the men running it. Men who were eager to sell other bronies G4 merch. "Who would want that?" they snidely said, "Go to a yard sale and ask Grandma."
Can I just say how incredibly stupid this is from a business stand point. Like you refuse to sell a profitable item that is from a line you already carry because it's "not for cool dudes" :facepalm:
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To be honest it's neither positive nor negative for me
Oh and to circle back to the point of friendships, marriages, jobs coming from FiM. I don't think that really is a big deal because if it wasn't this animated show it would've been another cartoon. The same thing can be said of Adventure Time but overall I think it has a much less toxic fandom?
In my case if FiM hadn't been made, there was no other cartoon or fandom I would've got into. I was losing interest in the Ace Attorney fandom thanks to some toxic people I had to put up with on the main forum, and my interest in making custom MLP's was starting to wane because I was running out of ideas (and partially in thanks to G3.5 appearing) and if G4 had been released without a show, I doubt I would've got any of the toys because they didn't look like G1 or 3. And of course I wouldn't have gone to any conventions, meetups, etc and no internet friends (I had only 1 before FiM came along, and I haven't heard from her in over 8 years).
I think Adventure Time had it's share of toxic fans from what I remember seeing while in the Ace Attorney fandom , but I can't say for sure.
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I was horrified when Hasbro took an interest in "our" little private convention, of a niche collectible, and went mainstream with it. A lot of people were like, "but looooooooooook, sponsorship $$$$ AND access to insider knowledge!" but it set off a landslide of decisions that could not be undone.
Legally we can't even use the name of the convention anymore outside of a Hasbro-sanctioned event, and it was going on successfully for years before Hasbro started paying attention and searching up animators who did MLP fan art, and C&Ding artists who made products that they didn't approve of, or were competition to already existing licenses.
Yet the last time I went to a popular comic convention a few years back, and asked about G1, as they had advertised MLP on the booth, I was laughed out of the space by the men running it. Men who were eager to sell other bronies G4 merch. "Who would want that?" they snidely said, "Go to a yard sale and ask Grandma."
So clearly there is a discrepancy in the general collector populace between people who collect FiM and people who collect "those old baby toys". It's cool for all people to collect G4 Pinkie Pie, wear a Spiderman costume, and legally change your name to Sparkle Pegasus, yet there are death threats and doxxing for (primarily women) simply because they like to buy the toys they had as children.
That is a HUGE problem and I don't know if this rift will heal naturally on a corporate and legal level, or if it will take the fandom and collectors to create another independent sub-movement on their own initiative. Or if Hasbro would even allow that. But until Hasbro officially acknowledges that it has catered to the worldview of New Vs. Old fandom and actively resolves to change that, I don't think anything will change. We will all continue to have to "take sides", as it were.
Thank you for sharing this, because I never would have known that about the negatives of Hasbro involvement! I would have been one of the people cheering on more Hasbro involvement, because in my mind, Hasbro = exclusives = more toys. :/ But clearly, that is not the case.
That said, I only know of three C&Ds handed down in the fandom; one was to a prolific custom plush maker, Makeshiftwings I believe, which was truly sad. Her plush were incredible, and the concept of a crafter making a living on her art is still something I want to see more of. (The other was a pin-maker as I recall, Peanut Bucker I think?) But the other one was in answer to the DWM movement, which finally resulted in official action by Hasbro, and I was incredibly grateful for that. I only wish they could have C&D'd all of the creepy material in the fandom - but I suppose it doesn't work unless they're big or prolific enough. Instead, Hasbro seemed to veer on the side of 'adult men are our new demographic!' and let the cartoon put in creepy and inappropriate references, like body pillows. (I'm sure the studio didn't exactly run those decisions by Hasbro, but if Hasbro allowed it, then it's still on them IMO.) Funny enough, the guy who got well known for using sweatshop labor to mass-produce body pillows never got a Hasbro C&D.... hmm.
The amount of gatekeeping that I've seen from them that made children, female fans, established female fans of the brand before FiM, fans of color and LGBTQ+ fans like myself feel unsafe really hurts my heart.
I thought I had posted this already, but disability is missing from that list. There is a fierce amount of discrimination against autism in the brony community, coupled with a lot of autistic people involved in pony. On the few occasions I have gone into that space to look up something G4 related, there's always someone making a slur or using the term offensively.
I actually experienced that in person at 'Ponycon' on Saturday and it still bothers me. Not because I think I'm a victim, but because someone thinks that it's okay to make such comments and that somehow disability discrimination is less relevant than other types of discrimination.
I could've sworn I posted this already, but I cannot think why pointing out the problems for disabled people would be removed by the mod team, so maybe I didn't. Perhaps I'm actually losing my mind...
All we have to do on this front is see that Hasbro MADE the Muffins pony a character, gave her a name, put her in some episodes, AND uses her differences as a prop for a joke.
If there was a disabled pony in ponyland, you would think that the animators would have enough common decency to NOT stereotype and caricature her in a demeaning fashion! But no. No, instead it caused so much drama that speaking her very name on a COLLECTOR'S FORUM FOR ADULTS ended up being banned.
*so much face, not enough hoof*
Yes, this too! Ugh, that whole thing was such a mess, and so poorly handled. It was rot from the top down, from Hasbro letting it air, to the voice actress giving such blithe replies as 'I based it on a mentally disabled person in my youth, it's fine!' and telling people who wrote to her that 'you don't sound disabled!' That was so upsetting. I know they're just voice actors, but I wish someone could have just ... gently taken them aside and given them a quick 'here's what NOT to say' before they made any public statements about it.
That said, I genuinely think we started seeing a drop in quality of the show not when Faust left (because she let some real messes through, "Over A Barrel" I'm looking at you), but when they dropped the E/I label. The E/I censorship might have caught the ableism before it even aired, and it prevented the writers from leaning on cheap tropes like ableism in the first place.
I sort of wish Hasbro could have C&D'd the Brony Documentary, if we're on the topic of offensive material already - that thing was such a mess, but the prevalence of 'but I'm not GAY!' from every single interview was just disgusting. It didn't age well from before it was even released.
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Which is weird, because to my knowledge wall eye isn't a mental disability.
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Yes, this too! Ugh, that whole thing was such a mess, and so poorly handled. It was rot from the top down, from Hasbro letting it air, to the voice actress giving such blithe replies as 'I based it on a mentally disabled person in my youth, it's fine!' and telling people who wrote to her that 'you don't sound disabled!' That was so upsetting. I know they're just voice actors, but I wish someone could have just ... gently taken them aside and given them a quick 'here's what NOT to say' before they made any public statements about it.
But putting that into context, that is exactly how people talk about disability in normal life. It's an exact representation of how things are normally for a whole lot of people. If I had a pound for every time someone told me I didn't 'look' or 'sound' or 'act' autistic, I would probably be able to buy Baby Sugarcake at last. And how am I meant to take that? As a compliment? Congratulations, you don't seem that broken? You're almost normal? I really dunno. And as for not acting autistic, what that actually means is, "you aren't like the stereotype I read about on google." So yay. I'm getting a pat on the back because you have really lousy source material...
I mean, I've been told that I should just deal with it that 'autistic' is an insult word, and when the BBC made an article about the popularity of anime among autistic people, some guy made a video on youtube deriding autistic people and pointing out there were real anime fans too, and not just (the r word) type of fans. You tube did not take it down.
The problem is that mostly disabled people are not included in discussions on disability awareness. Apparently we don't understand disability well enough to comment on it. I was basically told that one time when I was working with disabled kids. But you see it in online discussions, comments, articles - there's a sense of writing about something 'other' but very rarely do they speak to the 'other' to get that perspective. At best it's 'mother of', 'friend of', 'sibling of', 'expert on'. And while those views are often valid, they're a different experience of the disability than the person living with it. There's also this problem that most folk don't realise disabled people are people reading stuff, watching stuff, thinking about stuff too. So you see a lot of conversations about disability as though the disabled person will never see it, let alone take damage from it. This is especially true with ableist jokes like the one with the Muffin pony.
It's normalised to the extent that frankly, Muffin doesn't even register on my scale of disability discrimination. The comments by the VA are normal ignorance. What also tends to happen if you object is that people turn it back on you. "It's just a joke" "You're taking it too seriously." Or "It's not that big a deal."
So I have no expectation that anyone in the franchise will be disability aware. Most of these companies do not include disabled people in their policies, let alone their disability policies, so it's just a vicious circle.
And autism isn't a mental disability either, but it is often lumped together as one because people don't understand what neurodevelopmental means and that it's a physical difference in the brain, not a mental health concern. So it's entirely plausible that they'd make those kinds of connections and assumptions for Muffin, that she must be somehow 'mentally disabled' because her eyes were different. (I put it in quotes, because it's not a particularly nice term).
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@Taffeta: What amuses me most about people who think of “autistic” as an insult word is that a very large percentage of the modern technology and conveniences they depend on would not exist without the contributions of autistic individuals. Silicon Valley is known for its high concentration of autistic people, to say nothing of historical figures like Einstein or Tesla who are now suspected of having been on the spectrum.
The world is very happy to use autistic individuals for their talents and abilities, all the while deriding and rejecting them on a personal level.
As to that anime thing... Satoshi Tajiri, creator of Pokemon is autistic. I wonder if he counts as a “real” fan, lol?
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@Taffeta: What amuses me most about people who think of “autistic” as an insult word is that a very large percentage of the modern technology and conveniences they depend on would not exist without the contributions of autistic individuals. Silicon Valley is known for its high concentration of autistic people, to say nothing of historical figures like Einstein or Tesla who are now suspected of having been on the spectrum.
The world is very happy to use autistic individuals for their talents and abilities, all the while deriding and rejecting them on a personal level.
As to that anime thing... Satoshi Tajiri, creator of Pokemon is autistic. I wonder if he counts as a “real” fan, lol?
Great points on all levels.
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That said, I only know of three C&Ds handed down in the fandom; one was to a prolific custom plush maker, Makeshiftwings I believe, which was truly sad. Her plush were incredible, and the concept of a crafter making a living on her art is still something I want to see more of.
Are you thinking of White Dove? She somewhat got one, but continued to make plushies afterwards. There was also C&D's for the Fighting is Magic game (which was redesigned with the help of Lauren and is now Them's Fightin' Herds), and the show accurate cartoons by Jan Animations.
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Which is weird, because to my knowledge wall eye isn't a mental disability.
Nope, it isn't. That fan interpretation of muffin pony being slow and mentally challenged was based on her lazy eye, tho. Probably because it looks "dumb" so she's gotta be dumb :rolleyes:
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Which is weird, because to my knowledge wall eye isn't a mental disability.
Nope, it isn't. That fan interpretation of muffin pony being slow and mentally challenged was based on her lazy eye, tho. Probably because it looks "dumb" so she's gotta be dumb :rolleyes:
*sighs*
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Which is weird, because to my knowledge wall eye isn't a mental disability.
Nope, it isn't. That fan interpretation of muffin pony being slow and mentally challenged was based on her lazy eye, tho. Probably because it looks "dumb" so she's gotta be dumb :rolleyes:
*sighs*
Feel the need to point out that having an intellectual impairment <---better way of wording it =/= being dumb.
I figure you guys know this, but still.
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Which is weird, because to my knowledge wall eye isn't a mental disability.
Nope, it isn't. That fan interpretation of muffin pony being slow and mentally challenged was based on her lazy eye, tho. Probably because it looks "dumb" so she's gotta be dumb :rolleyes:
*sighs*
Feel the need to point out that having an intellectual impairment <---better way of wording it =/= being dumb.
I figure you guys know this, but still.
"Dumb" is exactly what these people wanted to portray, tho. "She just has an intellectual impairment, if you are against this headcanon you are ableist" was a common excuse in fandom to everyone who said "wait, why is she stupid just because she has a lazy eye?". Also, if she was supposedly just portrayed with an "impairment" why was she always the butt of the jokes in-show? She always fumbled mail orders, crashed into objects, talked really slowly and ponies reacted to that in annoyance. She was barely able to do her job because she was so scatterbrained.
This character was never supposed to be actually disabled, she was an animation error turned viral fandom sensation and that is where she got all her characterization. Interestingly, the show writers went with the "dumb, naive klutz" narrative instead of the "loving single mom/caregiver" narrative that was also popular for a time.
PS: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IiyCIP7HR9c This is what I am talking about when I say "barely able to do her job". She can't tell the difference between a mailing adress and something that is written on the gift tag :lol:
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I am in no way defending any part of what the FIM animation did, or their attitude, and you should know me better than to think that I was.
Reread the statements you made and you'll see that it's ambiguous. I know you guys so I know what you meant, but it could easily have been taken a different way by someone else, and that's what I wanted to challenge.
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Taffeta, I didn't "jump or explode on you" at all (I saw that you deleted that entire paragraph while I was typing my reply).
I was just making clear that fandom never intended on this character to portray disability and therefore calling her dumb has nothing to do with calling actually impaired people dumb. I was always in favor of calling this pony Bubbles or even Ditzy Doo because there is nothjng wrong with being a ditz, but she is just too stupid to function and pointing that out is critique on the writers for making that part canon.
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You did, but you edited your post to make it less confrontational while I was typing mine, and since I am not interested in picking a fight, I edited mine to compensate.
In any case reflecting on this, I think the issue itself is a bit of a minefield.
I mean, I'd expect that to be the attitude of the G4 fanbase, because, as I said before, I've seen far more examples of that attitude in the brony community than here. But then on the flipside, maybe when they did that, the writer's mistakenly clocked onto the wrong element, and thought, hey, we're representing disability, that's awesome! Ratrher than thinking, hang on a minute, we're making jokes about disability. That sucks.
Sometimes that fine line of trying too hard to be inclusive backfires to being completely the wrong kind of inclusion. I am going to air this old laundry again but I still feel like the way MH attacked this idea was much less toxic, because it wasn't based on an error, or defined by the fandom. They did have a character in a wheelchair, but his being so didn't really stop him from doing anything as far as I remember. But I'll poke again at Ghoulia, who didn't communicate normally, and who didn't fit the stereotype for a zombie, but was a genius. To me that's a great character not becaise she's representing disability (although again it's a fan interpretation that she could be). But because she doesn't fit the mould. And with invisible disability, I think the best way you can sometimes feature that is to have characters that are simply different in some way from the expected.
I'll bring in Crunch the Rock Dog as well. That's absolutely not intended to depict Wind Whistler as autistic. It was the 1980s. But the whole message about judging her because she didn't throw all her emotions out there makes her super relatable to people on the spectrum. Again, not by trying to include disability, but by talking about the different ways in which people deal with stuff, it appears more inclusive.
In a less animated context, compare Bones to the Good Doctor. TGD is so offensive just in the trailers I cannot bear to watch more than about 5 minutes of it. Bones is never stated to be autisic, but she doesn't need to be. If people want to read her as that, they can, but don't have to. And that is way more important because at the end of the day, all these differences are normal and don't need to be singled out with a label in order to resonate to the people watching. An audience which includes disability. TGD suggests to me they don't know autistic people watch television. And that's kind of the sense with Muffin and the attitudes that come back over her. The VA telling people they didn't sound disabled is a prime example of this. It's a back-handed pseudo-compliment but also rationalising this idea - disabled people aren't like us, so wouldn't be watching this, unless they're really 'normal' like disabled people, in which case it doesn't matter.
What FIM failed to do (and my disclaimer is that I have seen maybe 3 seasons, 2 complete and random eps from the others) is explore difference in a positive way beyond a certain safe level. YES the M6 are all different, but they are also common personality cliches. So they are differently the same. As such everyone loves them and they make friends easily and the show pushes that motif that you can make friends with anyone if you try hard enough.
The characters that are different in FIM seem to be marginalised or singled out a lot more. I remember a lot of questions over Zecora, right back at the start, so this is a wider problem, not one associated with Muffin alone. This may be accidental, but where Muffin is concerned, she became a trope or a meme instead. The animation error may have been accidental, but they still had control over how that character was presented. I feel like they were too conscious of her 'difference' and thus they made her a joke, rather than a symbol of inclusivity. I have only seen a couple of episodes with Muffin in, and she doesn't have much of a role, so this may be not correct, but my feeling is that she is not included particularly in the 'friendship' model. She gets told off and her behaviour exasperates the others, but there's no kind of active sense of, Hey, Muffin, are you okay? How are you doing today? Let's hang out! It's more, hey, she's a klutz, she's gonna mess it up, sigh.
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Which is weird, because to my knowledge wall eye isn't a mental disability.
Nope, it isn't. That fan interpretation of muffin pony being slow and mentally challenged was based on her lazy eye, tho. Probably because it looks "dumb" so she's gotta be dumb :rolleyes:
*sighs*
Feel the need to point out that having an intellectual impairment <---better way of wording it =/= being dumb.
I figure you guys know this, but still.
Yeah I know. I was just sighing in frustration that they took a physical impairment and automatically lumped it in with what they perceive to be lower mental capacity. Sorry that came out wrong.
I used to volunteer at a riding stable that catered specifically to people with various disabilities as a teen. Some of them were physically disabled, some developmentally disabled, some suffered from other things. This ran the gamut of everything from MS, down syndrome, the severely abused, autism, epilepsy, deafness, blindness, adhd.
And I'm simply presenting facts here, there are people with developmental disabilities of all types. There are those who struggle with lower mental capacity, there are disabled who struggle with movements that many people take for granted, and there are those who struggle with being able to articulate their needs.
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And I'm simply presenting facts here, there are people with developmental disabilities that struggle with lower mental capacity, there are disabled who struggle with movements that many people take for granted, and there are those who struggle with being able to even articulate their needs.
This is true. I also worked for those 2 years in the college with various disabilities on and off the spectrum, both high functioning and foundation life skills level. But I don't equate intellectual impairment with the stereotypes, because intelligence is a subjective thing and far too often dictated by social expectations rather than reality. BUt I know you know that, I was just poking that the language was ambiguous. It's not that I thought either of you guys were suggesting intellectual impairment = stupidity.
There are a lot of problems with terms for different kinds of disability too. I am not comfortable with mental disability as a term because it's vague but also it doesn't really differentiate between mental health concerns, intellectual concerns, executive function concerns - all of which relate to the brain but in very different ways.
Also as you point out, physical impairment often doesn't mean intellectual impairment either. E.G cerebral palsy and such like. I also worked with some kids with duchennes, which was eye opening as well. And there's been some stuff here lately from the downs community fighting back against stereotypes as well. Which is a bit awesome tbh. But as you basically point out, disability is SO diverse that you just can't generalise into stereotypes. It's kind of why I said it's a minefield for the writers. But the voice artist kind of made that connection for them, which is unfortunate.
This is OT a bit but I had the chance to learn Makaton briefly at the college. I wish I could remember more of it now because it was so much fun as a way of communicating, and so useful.
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I'm assuming Makaton is what some learn to help people who can't form words be understood? I remember some of those people had their own interpreters. Mostly family members or specially trained workers.
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I'm assuming Makaton is what some learn to help people who can't form words be understood? I remember some of those people had their own interpreters. Mostly family members or specially trained workers.
It's a sign language but unlike BSL/ASL etc, it basically has a hand sign for each word. A lot of the kids at the college who were nonverbal used it, and it wasn't as complex to learn as sign language.
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I'm assuming Makaton is what some learn to help people who can't form words be understood? I remember some of those people had their own interpreters. Mostly family members or specially trained workers.
It's a sign language but unlike BSL/ASL etc, it basically has a hand sign for each word. A lot of the kids at the college who were nonverbal used it, and it wasn't as complex to learn as sign language.
Ah I see. Thanks for making that clear. I must be thinking of something different then because some of the people accompanying them could understand what they were saying verbally.
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I'm assuming Makaton is what some learn to help people who can't form words be understood? I remember some of those people had their own interpreters. Mostly family members or specially trained workers.
It's a sign language but unlike BSL/ASL etc, it basically has a hand sign for each word. A lot of the kids at the college who were nonverbal used it, and it wasn't as complex to learn as sign language.
Ah I see. Thanks for making that clear. I must be thinking of something different then because some of the people accompanying them could understand what they were saying verbally.
I hadn't heard of it till I was at the college, but it just seemed like so much fun to learn and to use. I wish I could remember more of it now but it's one of those things that if you don't use it you lose it.
..But this is now well off topic. Back to FIM XD.
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You did, but you edited your post to make it less confrontational while I was typing mine, and since I am not interested in picking a fight, I edited mine to compensate.
In any case reflecting on this, I think the issue itself is a bit of a minefield.
I mean, I'd expect that to be the attitude of the G4 fanbase, because, as I said before, I've seen far more examples of that attitude in the brony community than here. But then on the flipside, maybe when they did that, the writer's mistakenly clocked onto the wrong element, and thought, hey, we're representing disability, that's awesome! Ratrher than thinking, hang on a minute, we're making jokes about disability. That sucks.
Sometimes that fine line of trying too hard to be inclusive backfires to being completely the wrong kind of inclusion. I am going to air this old laundry again but I still feel like the way MH attacked this idea was much less toxic, because it wasn't based on an error, or defined by the fandom. They did have a character in a wheelchair, but his being so didn't really stop him from doing anything as far as I remember. But I'll poke again at Ghoulia, who didn't communicate normally, and who didn't fit the stereotype for a zombie, but was a genius. To me that's a great character not becaise she's representing disability (although again it's a fan interpretation that she could be). But because she doesn't fit the mould. And with invisible disability, I think the best way you can sometimes feature that is to have characters that are simply different in some way from the expected.
I'll bring in Crunch the Rock Dog as well. That's absolutely not intended to depict Wind Whistler as autistic. It was the 1980s. But the whole message about judging her because she didn't throw all her emotions out there makes her super relatable to people on the spectrum. Again, not by trying to include disability, but by talking about the different ways in which people deal with stuff, it appears more inclusive.
An example from the show that actually does it better is the one where Twilight is struggling to help Rainbow Dash study for some kind of test because she learns differently. And how Twilight ends up realizing that some people need to use different methods and that it's valid. As someone who is ND I related to that a lot.
The characters that are different in FIM seem to be marginalised or singled out a lot more. I remember a lot of questions over Zecora, right back at the start, so this is a wider problem, not one associated with Muffin alone. This may be accidental, but where Muffin is concerned, she became a trope or a meme instead. The animation error may have been accidental, but they still had control over how that character was presented. I feel like they were too conscious of her 'difference' and thus they made her a joke, rather than a symbol of inclusivity. I have only seen a couple of episodes with Muffin in, and she doesn't have much of a role, so this may be not correct, but my feeling is that she is not included particularly in the 'friendship' model. She gets told off and her behaviour exasperates the others, but there's no kind of active sense of, Hey, Muffin, are you okay? How are you doing today? Let's hang out! It's more, hey, she's a klutz, she's gonna mess it up, sigh.
As someone who suffered from exclusion by NT people for being "different" it was such a lost opportunity.
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@Wardah - I didn't know about that example, but that's exactly the kind of thing I mean that's more positive. And it's a shame that was only within the M6, but still important that it was included.
I guess what I want to see is normalising difference without needing to resort to awkward, obvious and often unpleasant 'signposting'. If you really want to be inclusive, it's better to just show lots of differences without drawing attention to them :)
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The positive was I let my niece Watch Rainbow Brite and began to delve into Nostalgia and came across FIM told my brother that it was like a slice of life anime and we watched it together. I bought blind bags and then started to recall my long lost 80's ponies and I basically dropped G4 like a hot patato. I still watched it with my brother and all but began to come onto the 80s community.
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Well here is the negative..
With the exception of both my brothers.
Most bronies hate G1. I was out casted in a group for likeing G1 and they treated me as they where embarrassed for me.
The show dropped the ball.
The toy line kept releasing the same core 6 and cheap chunky plastic with hardly any gimmick to them. As the years went my the toys got worse.
Some Bronies are overly sexual and inappropriate turned mlp into porn. People made comments on my G1 shirt saying they where so sexual and I had to explain that it hasn't anything to do with hasbro. And these where the 80s ponies..sigh...
Bronies treat mlp like inappropriate anime.
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I am happy to be in this community despite a few turns of events with things I don't wanna talk about. And this community has shown me the ugly side of collecting G1 ponies I almost quite this forum beacuse of it.
The fact is that people make things beautiful and things toxic it depends what one your concentrating on.
What you dwell in is what will bring to the table your self.
Positive vibes bring positive tribes.
And what it is to you is what it will be..so make it a good experience.