AWKWARD ZOMBIE

there's still wild horses here though

Yes. Wild horses that came from the descendants of the horses that were brought over from Europe.
There is such a thing as domestic animals breaking loose and propagating in the wild, becoming feral once again.

ok and

that

doesnt

change

anything

Ah, oh. See, I've went on another of my educational tangents again.

But what doesn't it change? The fact that MLP is suddenly "racist" because of a few new character types from different regions?

I like how it's okay to talk overly in-depth about supposed racial/racist elements in an 'innocent children's cartoon' but start talking about where baby ponies come from - from an entirely objective standpoint - also bearing in mind this is brought into question by a few episodes - and people's eyebrows start to raise.

There's something of an imbalance there.

it doesnt change that you cant racially code characters that are a different species than the main characters and still expect the main characters' species to include that racial background. and it doesnt change that the depiction of other real-world races needing to be entirely different species from the "normal"(and the message THERE is that only the non-racial aka the non black and non native race is "normal") characters is very othering and just plain wrong, especially when as i have said before that saying that other races are a different species from "normal" humans has been used to dehumanize and oppress other races(such as native americans and black people) before.


@DND i tried to talk about that with you but i was ignored after burnt admittedly changed the subject on purpose for some reason

The show has a number of characters who aren't stereotyped though - that griffon character who was a friend of Rainbow Dash - though admittedly an booty - she carried no racial undertones whatsoever.

okay, but that changes nothing about the obviously black-coded zecora and obviously native-american-coded buffalos?

Ah, now I can see where you're getting at.
I'm not so sure that's what the creators were aiming for, though. They might have accidentally implied some type of racism/inequality between races, but it definitely wasn't done outright and blatantly. I certainly don't think any of this was done with malice in mind.

It all comes down to interpretation, really. What one person sees as a problem can be completely fine in another's viewpoint. (Take Jynx from Pokemon. In Japan having a black face was totally fine, but when it came to America it was seen as a problem and fixed to purple.)

I think it's better that this level of show uses (in this instance) buffalo or zebra to gently introduce and/or discuss issues of race, racial inequality and/or racism rather than not go down that route altogether for concerns of offending anybody.

I know I'm late to the baby boners discussion, but the show's creator DID say they produce like normal mammals, i.e. they have sex. There isn't even anything to discuss.

As for pony racism, what does it matter that she's a different species, they're all the same genus, they can still breed and everything just fine. And is it even said in the show that My Little boners are a different Species than My Little Zebras? This isn't the real world we're talking about, maybe Zebra's are just a different race of pony in-universe. And what kid knows they're a different species irl anyway? What kid isn't delusional about species and just thinks zebras are normal horses that slammed into a freshly painted fence?

i was mostly talking about the buffalos you realize that right


right

I think the different races were used to show the kids that they WERE different.

Otherwise, what could have made Ponyville suspicious at first glance if Zecora was a green Yoonicorn? Or why would pegasi have "sacred, irreplacible ground"? If they didnt choose those races, the lesson would just be "don't be a dick" instead of "Don't be afraid of different people".

Just my two bits.

just like there are different humans it would have been sooooo easy to make different boners that had different cultural backgrounds instead of going the lazy and othering route of "hey kids, other races are entirely different species from Normal People"

I think what he's trying to say is that ponies are already multicoloured by nature and the relationships between the earth ponies, pegasi and unicorn have long since been settled (apparently), so there weren't a whole lot of options in regard to using (for example) brown or dark ponies to represent a different race.

The episode featuring Zecora wasn't about race - it was about xenophobia (being afraid of something/someone that is different) and I thought it was handled maturely enough. It's actually one of my favourite episodes because it deals with xenophobia.


However, on pony races: I'm wondering if they'll bring the hippocampus (seahorse) ponies into the story at some point (I may have missed this if it's already happened).