#he truly is a HONSE

[master-of-shenanigans]

Tell me about your honse! 🐴

THE BOY?! YOU WISH TO HAVE KNOWLEDGE OF MY BOYYY????

We’ve known each other since I was 10 year old horse girlie and he was a scrawny rescue. When I met him at my riding lessons I thought he was ugly but the instructor kept pairing me with him for every lesson - turns out I was the only kid he listened to and he hated everyone else. We pack bonded over both being ugly weirdos and less than a year later my family bought him, because otherwise the lesson barn would’ve had to sell him, since I was the only person he wasn’t an asshole to. We both had huge glow-ups and now he is a senior citizen who is beautiful and roughly the size of a moose and we’ve known each other other for the majority of both of our lives.

Cursed Lore of The Boy:

when he arrived at the barn where he’s boarded now he was cranky from being in the horse trailer, and the owner of the place took one look at him and said “you didn’t tell me he was a maneater” in the same tone of voice people talk about lions or crocodiles in

when the whole barn got a respiratory disease he was the only one who didn’t get it

he unties knots for fun

our birthdays are two days apart (not the same year, just the same month)

he kicks with his front legs not his back legs

nobody at the barn knows who the hell I am but when I say which horse is mine they go “oh. HIM.”

he once somehow pooped in his grain bucket which was higher up than his ass. I'm still mystified over how he managed that

he���ll go over a jump perfectly one (1) time and then knock the bar over on purpose the second time

he’s terrified a farrier into refusing to work with him unless I hold him, and he’s destroyed the egos of at least three horse trainers in single combat

he likes girly pop music

he has scared himself with his own farts

he looks exactly like one of his ancestors who was a racehorse with a reputation for needing jockeys with “ice water in their veins” and boy howdy did he get THOSE genetics

I earned the nickname "Velcro" from my riding instructor after I managed to stay on him while he bucked like mad then reared vertically and bucked some more because something scared him

Thank you for asking about my extremely normal horse, I love him

[hy2ka]

also just started arknights. that runs ridiculously well on this emulator holy cow

BIGGEST LULU WIN EVER

ahem. i hope ure enjoying ^-^

[stoportotouch]

rewatched 1776 for the first time in years and. observations:

bold choice casting only two people who could particularly sing (ron holgate and john cullum) in your movie musical

bolder still choice making them bit parts but by god they both grab the audience by the throat for completely different reasons

1776 struggles to justify itself as a staged musical but for the same reasons it really uses the film format amazingly. why, completely rhetorically, don’t movie musicals do that any more?

for example: of course they aren’t literally SINGING/doing ballet exercises/etc. in the congressional chamber. just making the staging a BIT absurd/removed from reality works really well to show that.

horse. honse. horf. loved that horse.

donald madden as dickinson really has... something very unsettling behind his eyes. it’s also not necessarily UNREALISTIC for a character who is justifiably terrified of a war getting Way Way Worse but it’s still like... you wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of him.

he pulls off the musical irony of the building tension of cool cool considerate men coupled with the constant return to “we are cool” absolutely beautifully by creating a character who presumbly disappears off every so often and hyperventilates into a paper bag for a few minutes. or takes a truly worrysome volume of laudanum, whichever.

i know james wilson didn’t actually... do that but also it’s a WAY more interesting character motivation to have the guy actively WANT not to be remembered than what he was actually doing.

(sidenote: he was actually doing much the same as lyman hall and hedging his bets.)

1776 could be subtitled eve kosofsky sedgwick’s field day*

truly remarkable how much compliments Got To Me. a dramatic declaration of “SALTPETRE!!!!!! JOHN!!!!!!” is a new one.

*sedgwick was an academic who wrote about male-male relationships and male-male animosity, mostly in works of english literature of the 19th century. And. Well. You Know.

[cheesecakethesnail]

Oooh, you’re really giving me something to bite into here. I actually don’t mind long posts as long as they’re something I’m interested in. And don’t worry, because at the time I’m writing this I’m about halfway through this post and it’s already just as long as yours. (: 

But, I will start off by saying that the comment in question was in response to somebody going “the way you characterized Discord makes him seem a lot like a Nice Guy” and her going “that was intentional. Discord is the kind of guy who would grumble about how you can’t make racist jokes anymore” sooo it definitely feels more like a “Discord is chill with racism” kind of statement, sadly.

THAT BEING SAID, on the topic of Discord and slurs, I can definitely see where the idea of Discord not necessarily being morally opposed to them come from, he is a spirit of chaos who seems very...disconnected from society, and if I came across the idea of “Discord doesn’t really like, morally care about slurs but he definitely hates them creatively” in a fic I would accept that.

 Buuuuut I’m going to argue here that Discord would, in fact, morally care about slurs (at least, enough where he personally wouldn’t use them. There’s a good chance he’s so old he’s been desensitized though, which I would accept.) Discord has been shown to have like, some form of morals throughout the show, albeit they’re very fucked up and we don’t know the exact details but they’re still like...there.

One of the most brought up examples would obviously be in his premiere when he goes “I don’t turn ponies into stone,” BUT another notable example would be when he’s about to send Tree Hugger to another dimension and he explicitly goes “I’m not going to HURT you,” Smaller but still notable examples would be in Best Gift Ever when he destroys the ugly consumerism doll, and in Break Up Break Down when he does a mini rant about greedy greeting card companies. This means that while it’s still fairly fucked up, Discord definitely still has...some sense of morality (and he seems to be fairly read up on pony society for some reason?) and the actions I’ve described are certainly more in line with somebody who wouldn’t be particularly fond of the bigoted language in question.

Also, I would argue that even his opposition to slurs on the basis of creativity still counts as moral stance. This sounds a little out there, I know, but hear me out. Discord, while citing solely uniqueness creativity, would be opposed to slurs on the basis of not wanting to use language that is basically just “taking something that is different and portraying it as bad.” And, well, I mean...that’s literally a large reason why people don’t use slurs in the first place. Because they take a trait not considered the norm, or the majority, and call it bad because it exists. That’s a moral stance! Discord going “why would I want to insult you by just stating what you are in a derogatory way,” even on the basis of him being able to think of much more creative things, but ESPECIALLY on the basis of Discord being opposed to insulting somebody for being different is effectively Discord being...moral.

--------------------------

SO, Pony Racism, huh?

Handling the topic of Equestria’s racism is...difficult, to say the least. MLP being a lighthearted comedy for little girls means that we’re literally just not going anything truly serious. Any instances of racism in the show will be a watered down, cartoony version of real world racism because it is...honse cartoon.

It’s also especially tough to talk about since there’s two different forms of racism in the show:

1) The intentional: Chancellor Neighsayor, the hatred Thorax got (I think? that part’s fuzzy) and just...some plotlines from the latter half of the show.

2) The UNintentional: Things like Rainbow Dash saying mule in a derogatory manner, the way everybody reacts to Zecora, the weird imperialism vibes the map gave, the REALLY WEIRD racism vibes the way the ponies talked about dragon culture gave....etc

All of this, through sheer writing error, paints the picture that...ponies are racist. Like, extremely racist. BUT it’s all very cartoony in nature. Which means the chances of ever seeing like, targeted violence, or an equivalent to an actual slur in the show are ridiculously low. (Although we HAVE seen slavery. It was technically just with Sombra, yes, but that means that the concept of slavery does in fact exist in pony world.)

As for the Rainbow Dash instance specifically...I wouldn’t really call it the same as a slur. I find it more similar to when people go “haha that’s GAY.” Like...still very bad but not really the same as a slur, perse, because it is the dictionary definition word in use, not...a different word formed for the purpose of shittiness.

There’s also the fact that because everything is so pony centric, we don’t actually really know what would and wouldn’t be considered slurs? We....don’t really get an idea of what would be considered the Bad Language to non ponies because we just...don’t even get their opinions on a lot of things. This kind of makes Ponyville seem like it does indeed have a very deep and long running history with racism. 

But on the flipside, if a term has been so completely watered down that nobody in society even blinks an eye at the mention of it? Then it’s...not really a slur anymore. Slurs can lose their slur status, because they lose the charge that once made them a slur. That’s often the purpose of reclamation movements, so it’s not too far off from the pony society that it could also happen.

BUT AGAIN, the fact that we really only typically see the viewpoint of ponies means that. we really have no idea what non ponies actually consider slurs! This sort of means less that MLP verse doesn’t have as bad a history with slurs or racism, but more that because we are viewing the race that holds the position of power, any racially charged thing they do won’t be commented on because of this. 

A;so...I would like to argue that targeted acts against other creatures do exist. Well, about as targeted and direct as you can get for my little pony, really. Again, violence is pretty much a no go here. But not every targeted racist act is violent. It can be something like...treating an employee more shittily on the basis of their skin color. There’s no actual violence, but it’s still an action targeting somebody for their race. When every pony hid from Zecora because...reasons, it definitely felt very targeted. And while thankfully there was no violence, the ponies being that ridiculously afraid of Zecora was basically them being one step away Doing Something about it. They can’t hide in their houses forever. (I think it especially does not help that Zecora, and I guess by extension Zebras? are black coded. It is not a good look even if there was no violence involved.) 

Basically what I am saying is that you are indeed correct in the statement that Ponyville is ridiculously racist. And because of that insane amount of racism we are not really given an actual like...scale we can measure for how bad the racism may be becausse we’re supposed to like, root for Ponyville. And again, a lot of the racism is there, but unintentionally there, so it’s not treated like a big deal in show because of that. (well, at least until later seasons. those kind of tried to fix the unintentional racism of the earlier show)

Also...the fact that creatures seem to be so segregated in Equestria DOES seem to imply that there is some...very blatant and heavy racist history but,,,we don’t know much about it. It’s still very...sketchy at the very least.

Other isms though, it’s hard to say. There is almost zero lgbt rep, and what we got was positive, so I guess from what we have to go on there’s no homophobia? 

There’s no religion either from what we’ve seen, so that’s also a moot point.

Spike has made comments about things being too girly so? I guess that means there’s misogyny in the mlpverse? We don’t see it a lot tho, so its...also something hard to truly comment on. 

...sidenote that I didn’t want to mention before since it’s the comics: they had a plotline revolving around racism against a community of dragons living in manehattan. So comicsverse definitely has more focus on this issue and it’s definitely shown more blatantly than in the show.

Oh my god alarajrogers was the fic writer with the take that Discord would like racist jokes

alara nooooooooo

....although I can kind of see how that's in line with her Bojack-esque takes and deconstructions on the character in her canon compliant fics, I just snsjkssi