#oh my god i saw someone else in the tags mention the buffalo episode and if i elaborated on that i’d have to add like 5 more paragraphs

[kittydeathcult]

ok i was gonna put my thoughts in the tags but i realized i had too much to say and now i’ve spent at least 45 minutes on an essay about pony racism.

i will never get over the friendship missionary plot bc in its attempts to be anti-racist it kind of just ends up reinforcing racism. the ponies import friendship lessons to other nations that are not culturally sensitive and in some cases literally change the races.

the most egregious example of this is the changelings. their base appearance goes from being dark to colorful after they are “turned good”.

the ponies make the changelings restructure their entire society, going so far as to help stage a political coup and usurp their leader. the changelings had been a communal hivemind species run by a dictator intent on invading equestria. their territory is a desert wasteland. if you are familiar with american involvement in the middle east and what mainstream american rhetoric around this looks like, that should sound familiar. i feel like mlp:fim was only a step or two removed from having pony 9/11.

prior to the ponies’ involvement, the changelings have no culture. the ponies give them art and even make them go to group therapy. the ponies give the changelings pony holidays. in one episode the ponies “teach” the changelings how to celebrate hearth’s warming eve (christmas), a holiday that “celebrates pony history”. the ponies don��t clearly explain their holidays to the changelings so the changelings just kind of butcher the celebratory traditions. this is made out to be humorous and the changelings’ ignorance becomes the butt of the joke. the audience goes “aw, how endearing of those silly guys who don’t know how to celebrate christmas correctly.” so, the changelings are now incorrectly celebrating a holiday that has nothing to do with their own history or culture and this is played for laughs.

in fact, basically all of the other species are essentially completely incapable of understanding friendship without the ponies’ help. the griffons are cranky and don’t know how to help each other, the dragons only know how to be competitive… they are completely reliant on the ponies to learn how to be friendly and it is the ponies who decide what the important facets of friendship are.

some of the other species are allowed to keep their own cultural traditions or blend them with the ponies’ but only if they are not one of the “evil” races. for example the yaks get to keep some of their traditions but the changelings must completely rebuild from scratch.

someone else brought up the zebras. the zebras were introduced very early in mlp:fim and fans rightly criticized how racist they were. or, rather, she was, bc there has only ever been a single zebra character. (they’re not racist to other ponies, but more how the zebras are stereotypically Black coded). just to illustrate this, the zebra character is a witch doctor who only speaks in rhymes and has a vague “African” accent and an exotic name, Zecora. there are no other Black coded ponies, at least not in this way.

and mlp NEVER undid this!!! they never introduced more zebra characters, which they could’ve done to portray a wider variety of personalities and looks that weren’t so stereotypical. they never fix the one racist zebra to make her less offensive. so the mlp team wrote in several seasons of an “anti racist” plot but never actually addressed the racism that was present in the show from the beginning…

i find the introduction of new species for their anti-racist thing to be so confusing because they could have easily explored those themes with the pre-existing pony races. around s4 or 5 fans started to criticize Hasbro for just trying to commercialize the show at the expense of its quality — essentially, they created all these other species and new characters and settings to sell new toys. they wrote out two critical characters who were loved by fans, whose storylines never got resolved: Silver Spoon and Diamond Tiara. Silver Spoon and Diamond Tiara were wealthy bullies who looked down on those they deemed to be lesser. fans were expecting them to eventually get a redemption arc. they were definitely the kind of ponies you would expect to be racist and they would’ve been great candidates for an (unaccredited, experimental) friendship school, without the ponies having to resort to missions. so, mlp:fim never actually solved or even explored racism and bigotry within pony society to a meaningful degree because the writers were forced by executives to create new problems instead of resolve old ones.

watching the last few seasons of g4 actually made me lose my mind a little bit. i actually still haven’t finished the last one.

i'm gonna be honest i don't get why they say everypony instead of everybody in mlp. it's not like the word everybody is human-specific. the ponies have bodies. the word everypony, however, is pony-specific in a world where ponies are not the only people in their society, which means it would be more accurate and inclusive to use everybody instead of everypony. it all makes no sense to me