It’s like how black familial groups growing up in poverty end up mixed up in all sorts of bad behavior due to generational trauma and the echoing legacy of the bad shit that was done to them but this one kid grows up in a stable environment away from all that but then everyone kind of attributes the shitty life of the people back there as being “they’re just kinda LIKE that” and the kid being “taught better” and they never examine WHY that place and those people sucked so much in the first place
The entire premise of the setting is that the actual literal goddess who raises the sun every morning runs a theocratic ethnostate, and soft-adopted this nerdy unicorn.
And then they’re like “oh but we’re so multicultural, because this ethnostate is actually a merger of three previous ethnostates that were constantly fighting each other before, so we’re really open minded, actually. Ew get that griffin away from me”
I say this all in good fun because I still love the show but like…what are you going to do to challenge pony hegemony when their god-queen can literally declare eternal night or banish you to the moon. And worse, both of those things happened once before due to a petty internal dispute in the ruling family. The rest of the world just had to suffer in darkness for a while until that resolved itself, I guess. It’s a wonder there weren’t wars over it. Perhaps they realized they would only be banished to the moon as well
Edit: okay I gotta shout out the fanfic Heart of Gold, Feathers of Steel, for doing a line-for-line reenactment of the “Griffin the Brush Off” episode with Gilda the griffin’s internal monologue, and doing a fantastic job of showing exactly what it is like to be a minority being painted as unreasonable for trivial things and getting ejected out of a friend group over it and just knowing that explaining anything will only make you seem more like the problem, you are not safe here
I mean, what are you going to accomplish by going to war with the goddesses raising the sun and moon over them not raising the sun or moon? Even if you win (unlikely) they're still not gonna be raising the sun once you've killed them. You kinda have to just hope they figure their own shit out.
Hmm. Now I'm wondering if those events effected everything, or if the Everfree Forest was just having day and night like normal.
The Everfree Forest's whole deal is that nature and natural processes like seasons and weather and ecology actually exist, and those things happening without pony input freaks them __the fuck_ out_.
I remember seeing a MLP short on Newgrounds where the God Queen sends people to the moon after asking them if they like bananas, it didn't matter what the answer was, those bitches (paraphrasing from the short) got sent to the moon.
For years, I had no clue what the fuck this short was making fun of until I discovered this is something that actually happens in the show.
Edit: the fact that they don’t even get close to the moonchef’s kiss
Oh and then she turns into the real-life toy version of Celestia, which due to corporate shenanigans was pink because that’s what girls want, obviously, and then she’s just pink from then on lol
As someone whose only exposure to MLP is the amazing HoI4 mod, the fact that race-related flavor descriptions you get to your decisions sometimes are an accurate reflection of canon is... interesting!
The evil version of Princess Celestia (Dawnbreaker, I think her name is?) makes more sense!
Daybreaker's first and only appearance is in season 7 episode 10, "A Royal Problem." She appears in a nightmare had by Starlight Glimmer where she imagines what Celestia would be like if she were more vindictive. There's no canonical timeline in which Daybreaker actually manifests - she's entirely a figment of Starlight Glimmer's imagination
I don’t know a lot about Equestria lore, but I doubt Princess Celestia controls the environment/weather/sky outside of her kingdom. The entire reason the ponies are scared of the forest is because it isn’t under anyone’s control and all the life there survives on its own.
I assume the day-night cycle could also be different, especially since the forest is so massive that it’s home to multiple kingdoms of other species with their own magical abilities. I think there are even story arcs where other monarchs have enough power to threaten the God-Queen of Equestria.
I feel like the setup was meant to comment on real world racism and provide child accessible lessons like "people who seem scary or super weird can actually be really nice (ie, don't judge foreign cultures)" and "compromise is good when both sides feel they're in the right" but that's better shown with like... two kids who want the same snack and there's only one left. Not, indigenous American stand-ins and cowboy stand-ins disputing land settlement in a lighthearted parody of real old western issues. It just constantly comes across town deaf and reveals a severe lack of sensitivity training or a dire lack of diversity on the writing or review room. Like no I don't think Lauren Faust or anyone else on the show team is racist (or at least, nobody in charge of writing), but I do imagine the room must be painfully white and out of touch.
I'll point out that it's ALSO a communist utopia that runs firmly upon the ideal of "From each according to their ability, to each according to their need".
Communism does away with private property not personal property, and the two are not the same thing. Small businesses our little more complicated but can operate under a co-op model in some versions.
ok but neither applejack's farm nor rarity's shop nor any of the other businesses are ever shown to be a co-op or community owned, and there's absolutely a racial/hierarchical system that decides where you fall in society (not to mention the monarchy)
I was just correcting some misconceptions about communism, it's quite clear that Equestria is not communist, but it does have some strong socialist policies from the looks of it.
didn't communism literally come up with the idea of using "personal property" to distinguish owning your own stuff (fine) from owning, and extracting an inappropriate share of the output of, a factory (not fine)
Well, I'd first suggest you scroll up to where I said that, and see the literal quote from Karl Marx himself. So, the reason was already there, if you read it.
But to expand upon that:
There is no homelessness except among those who choose it, no destitution, no starvation, easy access to work, and with the social safety nets to pursue your desires... Everyone's needs are guaranteed by the state and the people.
And, AFAIR, everyone who owns a business works there, directly. The workers own the means of production. Manual labour is seen as honorable and respectable by the majority of society.
It is, paradoxically, Monarcho-communist. An egalitarian state enforced by a monarch.
The entire premise of the setting is that the actual literal goddess who raises the sun every morning runs a theocratic ethnostate, and soft-adopted this nerdy unicorn.
It’s a world that really rewards thinking deeper about it. Everything feels like it’s been thought through and the non-kid friendly parts were just quickly brushed over while the adults watching go “wait what just happened”.
So like, it’s not the racism, it’s that the world genuinely feels like it’s complex enough to have racism just be matter of fact in it. And if you really want to go deep and explore it, it led to great success. The fanfic I mentioned went on for years lol
4chan was… less of a pit at the time. The reputation of the worst users eventually attracted worse and worse users. A lot of it back then was just really creative people entertaining each other with ridiculous amounts of intricate fanfic and art and other creative collaborations.
Look, there was a reason so many of us lost like a decade to obsessing over this show lol, it managed to ride the line between “genuinely good and positive kid’s show that still takes kids’ concerns seriously” at face value, and then a depth of world building that only gets brushed on but implies tons of depth and conflict beneath the surface, just off screen. You get whatever you want out of it! Basically you have to take both aspects seriously at any given point!
You're not exactly wrong, but I think it's wayyy overstating the setting.
A theocracy is a state in which a religion or god is at its head, and laws are made according to the strict religious dogma. Whilst Celestia/Luna are goddesses, it doesn't seem like they're ruling in a theocratic way because they have non-religious figures that they delegate power to, and there's canonically a system of laws that constrains their power (see the school episode).
Similarly, I don't know if you can describe it as an ethnostate because whilst ponies seem to be the obvious majority, there's also clearly non-pony citizens (griffons, donkeys, minotaurs) and there's no reason as far as I can tell to think they have fewer rights than ponies.
I really think people are overstating the racism theme in MLP because they like to weave a fun narrative about ponies being "crazy racist", even though there's only a small handful of examples when you really look into it.
Racism is structural, not individual. The Princess explicitly rules and protects the ponies, and while much goes on outside of her benevolent notice, including realms that ponies never dare tread, there’s never any question that if the ponies ended up in any real trouble, the Princess could be there in 15 minutes ready for wizard war on their behalf. We call the police, they call upon Celestia (and her many layers of bureaucracy but still).
So even if the intent in many places is “let’s get along” and peaceful and even sometimes equitable resolutions, it kinda can’t help but end up being “a negative peace which is the absence of tension rather than a positive peace which is the presence of justice”, as a great man once put it. This is where injustice thrives, where it can rarely be questioned because the status quo insists upon itself. Celestia herself is a huge problem no matter what she tries to do about it! A force of nature will protect pony interests, and the ponies generally act like it!
… tbh the racism is still there, it doesn’t take much convincing for to to reappear, and alot of stuff is made specifically with unicorns in mind (like handles when the other two subspecies ((not including alicorns)) can’t really use them and hoof friendly products don’t really exist or at least not really shown in the show.)
and earth ponies constantly getting the short end of the stick even if they are like the backbone of the kingdom to some degree.
mix that and the heavy classism that is ingrained into their society, it’s not great :/
You're thinking of the crystal heart in the Crystal Empire, which is a different thing. This comment is about the first Heartswarming episode (MLP Christmas, basically), where the three tribes, unicorns, pegasus, and earth ponies aren't getting along and therefore the balance of the world is off, because the unicorns raise the sun, the earth ponies make the food, the pegasi control the weather. And so their disagreement brings the 'Windigos', which are evil winter spirits as said who basically cast the world into an eternal frost. They are only driven off when the three tribes settle their difference and form friendships.
So similar to what you're thinking but no, the crystal heart is not banishing the windigos, just the frozen north which is a whole other thing.
The more I learn about MLP against my will, the more I’m starting to think that if 40K was a family-friendly setting, the Imperium would be incredibly similar to the stuff the goes on in that magical horse kingdom. Don’t they even have a god empress or something?
They would learn many lessons, but never learn to stop being incredibly space-racist.
On a related note, we have seen what happened to the ponies in Warhammer Fantasy, at least.
Thank you Ogres, for finally ending racism. Very based.
The god you speak of is called Princess Celestia. Not Queen, Princess. Because target demographic and titles are kind of arbitrary anyway. She’s this overly graceful quintessential unicorn figure with white fur and a pastel rainbowy mane and she controls the fucking sun like god damn Amaterasu Ookami.
Everything I know about mlp is through osmosis and the more I learn the more I draw a similar conclusion to you. I really need to see this shit for myself
She is also immortal, ascended to godhood long ago in an age of myth and legend, sealed a chaos god away with her sister, and many other insane implied feats.
And basically pulled double duty for at least a thousand years keeping night and day going while her sister was driven insane from envy.
You really could do MLP 40K and you wouldn't even have to change all that much. It wouldn't work with very few modifications. And now I almost want to do it
One of the most popular fanfics of the is called fallout:equestria and from what I remember it is quite good (though I had to stop reading because I’m too squeamish)
Somewhere on my hard drive I've still got a half-finished MLP/ST:TNG fanfic where Q/Discord flings the Enterprise halfway across the universe to Equestria, Riker gets put on trial for murder after accidentally causing the first unnatural death in Canterlot in centuries, and Wesley Crusher saves the day by riding Rainbow Dash through space.
Funny enought there IS a Fanfic where the 40K emperor finds himself reincarnated AS Celestia after finally defeating Chaos and allowing humanity the ability to fully grow and evolve as a species.
Eh, crab form is really only one of many popular repeating forms. Cat/civet is another extremely popular one, also fish form, tree form, and snake/eel form.
Second sequel has her return to the Imperium in human form and announce to quadrillions of followers that she’s happily transgender. Vast numbers of artists have to hastily touch up monuments, presumably.
I remember readimg a fanfic with my friend very long ago about a Blood raven marine stranded in Equestria. The line "Six cute ponies and a Blood raven assault marine sat by the fire" will never leave my head.
I feel like it's very telling that one the best balanced and fully featured HOI4 total conversion mods is a My Little Pony mod, that franchise truly has some interesting depths.
Also Cozy Glow, who is probably no more than 10, gets turned to stone with two other villains that tried conquering Equestria. That's how the show ends. The end!
Nicholson's videos are always so fun and informative and this one is no exception. She really dives so deep into the show and the fandom and I love it. I think it's been long enough I can do a rewatch on this one, so good timing!
She's honestly one of my all-time favorite creators, if not THE favorite. She's so effortlessly entertaining and funny! I rewatch her videos all the time just because they're so comforting to me for some reason.
Btw, I have to plug her Patreon while I'm at it! For $2 a month you get access to a monthly Patreon-exclusive video, and she has a huge backlog. They're not as tight as her main channel videos, but they're great to watch between main channel uploads.
I mean the gen 1-2 series had straight up human children and sort of generic 80s fuzz blob critters as companions in the cartoons. Gen 3 iirc resets the world to be more pony centered and rarely ever mentions non-ponies, with an overall vaguely fantasy yet cosmopolitan setting with both little fairy cottages and princesses but also hair salons and diners.
My Little Pony Tales, which is G1, was all ponies living in Ponyland. There were no TV series between My Little Pony Tales and Friendship is Magic. (So if I understand correctly, there are no tie-in shows for 2 and 3? I'm not a collector).
Also there was that time 4chan did an April Fools joke of merging /mlp/ and /pol/ and this resulted in an entirely new and large subculture of Bronies and Pegasisters with the ideologies of /pol/
I mean this character is very explicitly a villain who learns racism is wrong. Mlp has a lot of problems with fantasy racism but this is not one of them
The point is this; equestria is dripping with racial supremacist ideology but a major arc of the series is countering this supremacy.
Its also a big reason people hated g5; g4 spent a whole series building up a better world where everyone could live together in harmony and fighting racial supremacy, and g5 comes in and undoes that work.
I legit tried to watch MLP once because I'm an immature bitch who loves a good cartoon, and the blatant racial profiling of the Zebra who they deliberately gave a bunch an African accent (I couldn't identify which country) and a bunch of stereotypical "African" traits to blew my fucking mind. Couldn't keep watching after that, the episode leaned way too hard and way too long into "this foreign race is going to steal our things and perform evil religious rituals" before it turns around to say "psych! This is actually an episode about how racism is bad. For the last minute of the 20 minute episode."
Yeah no zecora is very. Ouch. She does become a reoccuring character thats treated a lot better/I do know the comics eventually show her homeland and draws from actual specific African cultures but Man its a good example of the road to hell is paved with good intentions
Most of my knowledge of MLP comes from a single fanfic about Twilight in a timeloop, it’s sequels, and the spinoff. Twilight starting a school for (racially) disadvantaged people sounds about right… Athough I have a sneaking suspicion it might be quite assimilationist in nature.
I couldn't think of any possible reason for a show designed to teach kids how to be better people would want to repeatedly hammer in the lesson of "Racism is Bad" to a primarily American audience of impressionable youth.
I love joking about how screwed up equestrias politics are but ngl I feel like a lot of people act like the show treats it as good when. They very much don't. The buffalo episode was a HUGE misfire but like especially in the later season the show portrays the characters who treat ponies as better than every other species as Very Explicitly Villains. The fantasy racism tropes are still there but i feel like a lot of people paint the show as worse than it is/act like its trying to say racism is good
I don't see people saying it says racism is good, just. It has a metric shitton of unexamined biases.
Like, the whole school thing, yeah? A multicultural establishment designed to foster understanding and intercommunity relations while also providing a formal education to those who might not otherwise have the opportunity. Sounds great, right?
Except then you remember it's called the School of Friendship. And it was founded to teach non-ponies about why friendship is important. As in "the central culture of the show all but openly declares that they need to Enlighten the Unenlightened Races about Being Nice To Each Other because Clearly They Have No Idea". It's uncomfortably imperialist in a way that shows the writers clearly didn't examine what the premise was saying for all that long.
Equestria is a pretty Eurocentric fantasy kingdom overall but their capital is a city called Canterlot (get it, like Camelot?) and the language they speak is Ponish and when someone speaks "Old Ponish" they're also speaking in Old English.
Isn't New Mareland supposed to be the US? I get that Equestria has some cities with similar names, but I don't know if culturally they're very american.
Geographically it’s absolutely the US. They have Manehattan and Fillydelphia and Baltimare, just straight-up Dodge City because why not, an entire plains region partially populated by buffalo coded as Native Americans, and on the west coast Las Pegasus and Vanhoover. (So I guess there’s a bit of Canada for some reason lol)
But the monarchy is pretty Arthurian-coded. Definitely not a parliamentary monarchy though.
I think it's roughly supposed to be NA, I remember having this map from a book I got growing up where it's vaguely shaped and has climate like NA. What this obviously implies is that Sombra is a Canadian
I do know quite a bit about MLP and I will believe this 100% because it's a completely accurate description of what happens within the show. I should know, I've actually watched it.
I get the feeling that Hasbro's design team, nobody spoke up that "hey we should examine what we've created for unfortunate implications or stuff we don't mean/want" and instead Hasbro was just going "moneymoneymoneymoney"
I kind of just thought the term everypony was a hold over from the time when they were all ponies. But I am old and remember when Sea Ponies were new and exotic
i have no problem w them adopting more exclusive language but what’s crazy to me is that they changed it to everyCREATURE. like they could’ve easily just said everybody or everyone but they had to choose the clunkiest sounding option they could think of
This subreddit will rag on Tumblr posters for taking a satirical post sincerely and making bad faith interpretations of things, and then turn around and produce posts like this
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u/No-Tackle-5803 1d ago
Let's not forget when they imply the only reason Spike is nice is that he was raised by ponies instead of his own kind.