AWKWARD ZOMBIE

I really hate it when heretics say dumb shit like Friendship is Magic is "sooo manly" and say things about how it's violent and deals with issues and isn't like any other mlp show because all other mlp shows were dumb and girly etc.

Which is a whole load of bullshit. I'd say Friendship is Magic is probably the most watered down gen and the "girlest" one next to gen 3.5.

Gen 1 had crazy shit going on like blind boners being forced to work in mines by some wizard and goatmen enslaving boners and turning them into dragons.

heretics always overlook stuff like that because it's convenient for them when they want to bash the other gens. FIM would never be able to pull that off.

Anyone who even begins to imply that MLP is manly has obviously got their head so far up their own booty that they now have a clear view of what they ate last.


Either that or they have somehow come to the conclusion that "enjoyable" = "manly".
Which is silly.

i think the heretics (or anybody for that matter) who need to constantly tell themselves and others about how manly they are are insecure at heart...

I agree with Snrub.

I like the way Mr. Snrub thinks!

I said the episode first featuring Zecora dealt with xenophobia... because it did.

I think people are probably joking or at least being ironic when they say the show is manly. Like this guy here - I'm fairly certain he's joking when he says the show is the manliest of manly shows and is so manly it would make a man like Chuck Norris doubt his own manliness.

Maybe you're reading their comments from a mistakenly serious standpoint and forgetting that some heretics might actually have a sense of humour and/or might not take themselves too seriously.

I think the issue with all this drama might be people are over-thinking a kids show. I understand IO's point, but a kid who watches the show will unlikely have that impression, they probably don't even really know what a species is. It's not teaching kids "hey other races are a different species", it's teaching them "hey look the boners treat other things which look and act differently as friends too".

I'm not talking about that guy.

The creator of Manly Guys Doing Manly Things is a fan of MLP and ended up touching on the buffalo/bison subject when asked, and I thought her responses were interesting and took on a different angle of racism towards Native Americans - that of Cowboys vs. Indians:

You can read the brief dialogue that brought up the post here (it's where the subject of Holocaust cartoons was brought up, so don't jump to conclusions thinking she's taking things in an extremist direction). I tried finding some more posts where the discussion was brought up and nicely debated, but they are buried in tumblr history. This is her general feeling towards the show as a whole, and I thought the last point she brought up was good:

All-in-all, on a personal level I like discussing these things. There is hardly a cartoon out there that doesn't fail to properly handle sensitive subjects from time to time, MLP just happens to be one of them and since it's incredibly popular, it's brought up a lot more than older shows that did the exact same thing.

I am not really arguing one way or another, just trying to bring to light an angle people may not have considered.

Ho-ho-hold on a second there. In that episode the main cast get split up into two parties and get to hear both the Cowboy ponies and Native American bison's dilemma from their differing perspectives - and through that split the main cast are able to experience both sides concerns.

I think people generally get too caught up in extraneous details like the racism thing and miss the actual lesson in a story like this - which is not to take sides and listen to both sides of the argument, i.e. be diplomatic.

The Cowboy/Native American thing is just a vehicle for that lesson - the lesson is not necessarily intended to be about racism - that is just a superficial observation.

The same goes for believing that the Zecora episodes are about 'racial appropriation' or 'white people patting themselves on the back for not being racist' - that's a misguided superficial observation that misses the actual motivation behind those storylines.

I think people forget that a lot of the people making analyses of these shows are adults - whom have things like racism and all that guff already deeply ingrained into their consciousness - so when adults watch a show like this they make those snap judgements about stories which involve Zecora and/or the bison.

The adults then mistakenly misappropriate the way that they understand the show onto their children - whom have yet to learn and get weighed down by all that stuff about racism.

I've been bashed over the head enough by people telling me this is a show for little girls and not adults to be able to now use that as a counter argument - the youngsters watching this show will not experience it the same way as adults. Yeah, they'll pick up on some of the themes like Cowboys and Indians - but they will not fully understand all of the undertones to do with that particular piece of American history. This cartoon uses that as an opportunity to demonstrate the importance of diplomacy in that situation - possibly hoping that will influence the way those children grow up to not make rash decisions in that kind of context.


And that thing about the German ponies and Jewish 'burros' is an unfair and naive comparison which is again analysing a story from the wrong standpoint - a story would almost certainly not be written to be a direct debate about racism - the story would be written from a more base concept to do with friendship or something which for the life of me I cannot think of in that particular context - which just further demonstrates how the writers would not be writing a story from that angle.

The Cowboy and Indian thing is just a vehicle used to demonstrate a story theme - such as diplomacy. The writers would have taken the theme and later brought in Cowboys and Indians as a way of communicating it. To think that the Cowboys and Indians thing was taken first and then the diplomacy thing was written in afterward would be a roundabout approach to writing a story.

no

just stop it

Incredible retort, surely you must be a grandmaster of debating.

I know how to write stories and I've read enough about story writing theory to know that you do not approach writing a story from that kind of angle. It's also how I know how to properly deconstruct somebody else's story all the way down to its core - and believe me - the core themes behind these stories are not - nor intended to be - racism.

But we are discussing about a children's show after all. So who cares?

some guy on tumblr said he wanted a heretic girlfriend to model some mlp children's underwear

jesus christ

he didn't even see what was wrong with it

I uh aimed that Nachalnik. Your post was still pretty good though.