The “Collect Her” episode of The Powerpuff Girls essentially predicted Brony culture which is funny because My Little Pony:...
The “Collect Her” episode of The Powerpuff Girls essentially predicted Brony culture which is funny because My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic was created by Lauren Faust who was an artist/writer/director for The Powerpuff Girls
holy shit
Note that the fan was the villain of the episode but that Faust has gone out of her way to defend bronies even by the time they drew highly misogynist porn of her self-insert OC.
There’s a lesson in there. Somewhere. That may or may not have to do with Faust.
Like the villain of the episode, who trapped and kidnapped the girls to keep them all to himself, Bronies have to a large degree stolen the current generation of MLP from its original target audience by spamming the internet with child-unsafe mlp fan content, swamping appearances by creators and cast members with sketchy adults such that parents feel unsafe with their children there, and noisily attracting so much attention to themselves that it has distorted the nature of the show itself and especially its marketing. ie, the MLP comic book, that is very much ‘by bronies for bronies’, an adult minded parody of the show’s characters rather than an adaptation that remains true to the style, spirit, or all ages nature of the source material.
And as it has grown in influence, we’ve seen insensate brony screeching change from ‘its not just for little girls’ to ‘its not for little girls at all’. We’ve also seen vicious, ugly, herd-mindset attacks on anyone within the fandom who dares to question the way the brony herd behaves at all, up to and including death and rape threats directed at said critics. Far from being a ‘few bad apples’ situation, we’ve seen brony musicians making death and rape threats within their music go on to be invited to perform at brony conventions specifically because of how well received their hatred and bile proved to be within the community.
Maybe Faust shouldn’t have been so supporting of the Brony community to begin with, and maybe show creators shouldn’t have gone out of their way to include explicit nods to them in the show and the marketing. After all, bronies already liked the show and purchased the merchandise, pandering to them and encouraging them didn’t widen the show’s appeal. Rather it just seems to have driven them to heightened levels of obnoxiousness and entitled possessiveness, and if anything they’ve in turn narrowed the show’s appeal. They’ve certainly badly subverted its message, bringing a heavy dose of misogyny to the fandom of a show that was directed with all love and earnestness at young girls, and in doing so have brought down a cloud of ugliness and cynicism on what was so refreshing and engaging to begin with specifically for its openness and sincerity.
this got a lot more interesting since the last time I saw it
Like I said the other day, I liked what brony culture was, I’m not fond of what it’s become, and that as someone who one laughed indulgently at the “haha dude, what if we made porn of this?” idea, I share blame for the current “dude, porn of this” aesthetic.
That said let’s keep in mind that Hasbro has intentionally been trying to reboot its ‘80s nostalgia brands with an eye towards the teen boy/internet hikki demographic for a while now. There were the Transformers movies starring Michael Bay’s explosions and Megan Fox’s heaving bosom, there was the grimdark G.I. Joe. That they finally got a hit unintentionally with a show about neon pastel ponies celebrating the power of platonic love in a context of human imperfection is kind of fucked up in a really interesting and hilarious way, but let’s remember that the true purpose of the MLP memeplex was never to provide a pleasant experience for young girls - that was just a strategy, and apparently a suboptimal and thus partially discarded one, to accomplish the true purpose of building brand value for Hasbro IP.
MLP is American moe.
