My Little Pony
 | This article or section is about something oldschool - and awesome. Make sure your rose-tinted glasses are on nice and tight, and prepare for a lovely walk down nostalgia lane. |
My Little Pony (MLP for short) is a toy and cartoon series created by Hasbro with a long and tortured history. Originally noted for being a particularly shitty series back in the 1980s during the Dark Age of Cartoons, it was notable for having characters with no actually definable points, little in the way of conflict, and very little in the way of character development. Like Transformers, the show came into existence to support a line of toys. Unlike its counterpart, however, My Little Pony show was horrible, even by 1980s standards, and it died - as expected, and we were richer for having lost it.
...or so we thought.
Then, nearly 2 decades hence, it saw something of a revival - and of a most unusual sort. Done by a completely new team and with a (mostly) new cast, a new show, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic emerged, and managed to leave everyone who watched it in a state of stunned silence - it was actually reasonably VERY VERY SLIGHTLY good.
How the series went from complete shit to not-complete-shit is something many familiar with the series have wondered. In truth, it owes most of its revival to a combination of factors: extremely clever writing (it has the same writers as the Powerpuff Girls), much better animation than most other shows, and remarkably enjoyable characters. Which is hilarious when you consider that the show is directed at little girls. Whilst hardly the best show ever to grace television, the new series stands head and shoulders over 99.95% of the dreck that's on network TV, which is kind of unique.
The charm and appeal of the various characters has caused huge portions of the general populace to develop an affection for the show, seemingly in the face of any and all logic. Even /tg/ has not been immune to this, with the show inspiring works of concentrated hilarity and win such as Don't Rest Your Hooves, Ponyfinder, and joking setups with the cast of the new series playing D&D and Warhammer 40,000. It seems like almost no community can resist the combination of d'aaaaw and humor.
Wait, Seriously?
It's sort of incredible how a show that was widely regarding as being some of the worst fail ever to fail could be revamped into something worth watching, but there you have it. The pony-show has inspired many, both on /tg/ and off of it, so in spite of the series being so aimed-at-little-girls, it has achieved humorously high acceptance, even among fa/tg/uys and ca/tg/irls. Posting anything MLP-related will invariably produce biblical-level shitstorms on /tg/, as holdout haters of the series bitch and troll whilst a giant slice of of /tg/ rushes to defend the original posting. It's one of the few rare things outside of he who must never be mentioned to inspire this kind of rage and righteous indignation on /tg/. To the credit of the show's producers, they know that chan-goers are a sizable chunk of their audience, and make occasional (usually subtle) shout-outs. Several memes, including Chocolate Rain have already been referenced in episodes.
Yes, it's a show for little girls, but the bulk of the audience enjoys the show too much to care. Yes, things in it make no sense, such as the fact that they have somehow constructed a village without actually possessing hands or opposable thumbs - but the audience will put up with it, because it still makes more sense than Matt Ward's fluff and is hilarious to boot. Yes, it's childish and silly, but the audience doesn't give a shit.
Characters and Such
Blah blah blah original ponies: 1982, legs without feet like psuedopods, as many characters as the Chinese sweatshops could pump out. 24-minute Saturday-morning cartoons commercials. Second wave: 1997, poseable heads, Mary-Sue alicorns, sales were good in Europe but tanked in USA, so let's hear it for Boxcar Willie syndrome. Third wave: the start of writing actual fluff instead of shitting on a typewriter, and making ponies for manchildren womanchildren adult collectors.
Wave three-point-five, or "core 7", 2008, is what /co/ would recognize as MLP. The water-caste Tau working for Hasbro figured the cartoons were getting more dollars in than the normal 30-second commercials, so they cut the pony models down to just seven: Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, Star Song, Sweetie Belle, Toola Roola, Cheerilee, and Scootaloo. The toy molds were changed to make the toys more weeaboo: smaller bodies, larger heads, freakishly wide eyes.
Wave four is 2010, with the "Friendship is Magic" cartoon on teevee channel The Hub. This is where the MLP starts to infect /co/, /b/, /tg/, and even /v/ like a four-legged syphilis. All the reaction image shit you see tends to come from MLP:FiM. The new "core 7" are:
Twilight Sparkle, the nerdy main character. She's a unicorn wizard whose special talent is magic, who writes a letter to Princess Celestia every week to explain her findings on friendship. If she somehow fails to do this, she somehow turns into a goddamn pedophile. She has a smartass baby dragon as a familiar, which I think we can all agree is pretty cool. Overall she's an OCD bookish shut-in with a Richard Dawkins-esque approach to everything superstitious despite being a MAGIC FUCKING UNICORN! Voiced by the same woman who played Raven in Teen Titans and a whole lot of other stuff.
Rainbow Dash, an awesome pegasus who claims to be one of the best flyers in all of Equestria. She is also a lesbian, according to the internet (She's tomboyish, raspy-voiced and rainbow-colored. Do the math). She employs violence as a first, second, and final solution, and only the watchful eye of Hasbro has stopped her from TPK'ing the party every episode.
Fluttershy is also a pegasus, but unlike Rainbow Dash she has a timid and shy personality and likes to take care of little critters. That said, she is the pony version of the Hulk. She will wreck your shit and/or mind control you with The Stare should you insist on pissing her off. Seems to have a severe mother complex that may or may not be linked to this. The "KAWAII DESU!!" pony of the group who's the most likely to cause severe butthurt amongst fans when insulted.
Pinkie Pie, an earth pony (which have no skills like flying or da magicz) who is the super happy party pony of the group, and has a tendency for being random and irrational. She's the comic relief and is also prone to mental breakdowns that transform her into her alter ego Pinkamena Diane Pie who will fucking cut you. As well as being a borderline homicidal mane-iac (hurr hurr) with a penchant for hiding inside church bells and scaring the living shit out of her friends, she can also warp the fabric of reality to accommodate her zany antics. This leads to cases of unexplained flight, teleportation, 4th-wall-breaking and a pseudo-Spidey Sense that only seems to work when convenient for the plot.
Applejack, another earth pony. She's either a Southern stereotype or a Western stereotype, depending on who you ask. She co-owns an orchard with her brother and is generally level-headed dangerously obsessed with profit. Lieks tah tawk liek dis awl da tiem and even wears a wide-brim hat and carries a lasso wherever she goes. Enjoys "rustlin'", "rodeos", and any other stereotypical activity likely to offend someone from the state of Texas. Yeehaw, lil' doggy, leht's have ahrselves a barbecue!
Rarity is a fashion designer and owns her own store in Ponyville. She is simultaneously generous and too greedy for her own good and in the same episode she might give out her products like she doesn't know what capitalism is and endanger her life and the lives of others for the sake of some shiny loot. In other words, typical PC. Is hilariously bitchy at times and prone to melodrama. Likes to think of herself as a classy lady despite running a semi-known boutique in a no-name village located outside Canterlot, AKA actual civilization.
Princess Celestia, the god-empress of Equestria who raises the sun and, after banishing her sister to the moon for a 1000 years, the moon itself. She is also known for being Twilight's mentor and a massive troll often referred to by the fandom - well, the portion that isn't 7 years old - as Trollestia. Has a tendency to issue pointless, stress-inducing tasks to her "faithful student" Twilight and is responsible for several of the unicorn's many mental breakdowns. She doesn't seem to make a secret of it either. Often shows up in person when shit gets real... only to have her post-graduate protegé deal with all the dirty work. Has defeated a Chaos God, which is one more than certain other divine monarchs.
Princess Luna THE PRINCESS OF THE NIGHT AND SISTER TO CELESTIA! ALWAYS, ALWAYS SPEAKS IN CAPS LOCK! WAS LOCKED AWAY ON THE MOON FOR A THOUSAND YEARS BY HER SISTER ONLY TO RETURN AND START FUCKING SHIT UP FOR EVERYONE! HAS SINCE REFORMED AND IS SLOWLY ADJUSTING TO THE MODERN AGE! IS UNAWARE OF THE CONCEPT OF FUN (UNLESS IT INVOLVES MUTANTS TARANTULAS EATING OTHER PONIES ALIVE)! PRIMARY (and hideously incompetent) ANTAGONIST FOR THE PILOT EPISODES!
/tg/'s entire expeditionary force risked going into diabetic shock just from doing this research for you bastards.
It should be noted that Celestia is voiced by none other than Nicole Oliver, who voiced Farseer Macha, Farseer Caerys, and star of Love Can Bloom, Farseer Taldeer. Another character, Chief Thunderhooves, is voiced by the awesome Scott McNeil (A.K.A. Davian Cool, Sindri Myr, Neroth, Firaeveus "MEHTAWL BAWKSES!" Carron and Indrick "Spess Mehrens" Boreale). And John de Lancie (best known as "Q" from Star Trek) was hired for Season 2 to play the part of... well, "Q" from Star Trek. Discord, a villain that appears for the two-part opener of the second season, is the most awesome troll ever to grace a television program. Suffice to say, hilarity has resulted.
Of Course, Mods are a Thing
With fragile egos in hand, the mods on /tg/ do, as ever, decide what is and is not considered traditional gaming. As a result, depending on who might be online at the moment, MLP is liable to result in a ban even if the ponies are discussed in the context of gaming. It really comes down to the fact that just about anything can be traditional gaming in the right hands, since interactive story-telling is older than genital warts and can easily be applied to anything, but anything that's this much of a troll magnet is always at risk of exterminatus.
Gallery
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Even /tg/ has not been immune.
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Nor Paizo. Ponyfinder is your new RPG.
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In the grim darkness of the far future, there are only ponies.
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Ridiculous amount of ponies, that is.
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Venerate the God-Empress of Ponykind or else.
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and Celestia as the DMPC
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This as Hesperax ? Dark Eldar would find that sick... yet strangely erotic.
See Also
- Ponyfinder - the Pathfinder splatbook for MLP races and classes
- Don't Rest Your Hooves - the horror of Saturday-morning cartoons
- Ponibooru - Oh god, 81,000 images and growing
- ClopClop - (nsfw) there is no god. We are damned.