literature

My Little Essay

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Ladies and gentlemen, I do not like My Little Pony. I especially do not like its new show, which is the main subject. That said, I bear no ill will toward it beyond the fact that it is simply not my cup of tea. If I were to meet a person who told me they enjoyed the show, I would think of them as my equal whom merely likes something I do not. I have no right to say what they should like or dislike. I have no interest to see My Little Pony, I do not hate it, I do not hate people who enjoy it. But there is something I do hate. I hate that I practically can't go five minutes online anymore without running into this show.

I mean my goodness, what has happened here? My Little Pony got a cartoon series about, what, a year or two ago by this point? Well regardless of the short amount of time, it was certainly in no hurry to take over the internet and aim for every corner. Gone are the days where I can browse on DeviantART, safe in the knowledge that I would not run into a character from one of my favorite works drawn in the style of the characters on that show.

All I want is a little bit of moderation. Listen, it has way, way too many pages on TV Tropes in comparison to other shows. It is important to remember I have not seen the show, so I may be mistaken when I say that it probably does not deserve so many pages, and the page amount is due to overzealous fans. It practically exploded on the web, and that is hardly an exaggeration. I am pretty sure the new show is the only thing to come out of the post-2010 decade to get so much attention, acting as if it were alongside Star Trek, Transformers, and all the other longrunners of entertainment for all our lives. It is confusing and actually somewhat frightening. Male fans call themselves "bronies". I have not heard of any other fandom to come up with positive nicknames for the fans other than Star Trek. I find this presumptuous on the part of My Little Pony's male fans.

Why? Why does this happen? I have spoken to fans and the show allegedly has good writing, the creator of the series intended for it to be viewable for all audiences (I will return to the matters of the creator later). This is all well and good, and from the sounds of it, the new My Little Pony cartoon seems to be a good show. I have no desire to watch it, still. As I had previously stated, I do not hate the show. But I do hate how it is everywhere.

The show has male fans, but that is not significant at all. Because more or less every single fan of the show I have ever encountered is male. It is not special to say that one is a male and a fan of the show, because they have admitted to being in the majority. I can count on one hand how many female fans I have encountered. Props to the creator, Lauren Faust, for succeeding in her goal of making a show that can be watched by anyone. Especially with the fact that there are absolutely no masculine words in the title, premise, or design whatsoever. She has an account on this site, I have been tempted just ask her questions as to how she could let it get this far, but that is not be the best solution. I respect Lauren Faust and do not hate her, my only negative thought about her is that she created this growing mass.

I cannot ignore this like with many things, because when I turn away from My Little Pony, I find more of it on the other side. I am surrounded and sometimes feel punished just because I choose not to be a fan or watch it. If I ignore it, I ignore half of the internet, and that is a sign that some things are too big to ignore.

People have mentioned that liking or watching the show can make someone cooler by twenty percent. Through light research, I have found that the percentage comes from a line in the show. If I were to come out as a fan, I would be cooler for it? The internet is an alien culture to reality, all of a sudden liking a cartoon that is aimed (primarily, not entirely) at young girls can make a man cool? It sure would not be the case back before the show got popular. Okay I can see that it would take courage to overcome the stereotype and admit to liking something, and for that I can see why their "coolness" would exponentially increase. But I have a feeling that is not the case.

When I stated that I harbor no hatred to its fans, I stated it in truth. But if I have a reason to not like someone who enjoys the show, I will not like that person. There are "bronies" who take their appreciation of the show to absurd levels. I may have found the male counterparts to all of the girls who would fawn over the male characters in Twilight. But what have the obsessive fans done?

My vocabulary, regarding animals, is relatively simple. I do not concern myself with variations of animal names, because I rarely need to. If a creature is somewhat like a horse, has a long nose and ears, is gray, and its tail resembles a paintbrush, I call it a donkey. There are also mules, but I default to donkey. This defaultation carries over to my encounters with turtles (tortoises), alligators (crocodiles), and so on. Naturally, this would mean that I call a pony a horse. Why do I speak of such matters in this essay, though? Because fans of the show will not let me get away with calling the characters horses. A horse is a horse, of course of course. The main way to know the difference is to study horses or to be a fan of the show. I do not study the animal, nor am I fan of the show. Therefore I should not expected to keep track of the differences, just to appease the fans of the show.

In my experience, fans who feel threatened announce to the detractor that they will "love and tolerate them". How that is an effective strategy is lost on me. I can only assume that it refers to some sort of motto or credo within the cartoon about loving one's enemies even if they do not reciprocate such feelings. If anyone who makes such a declaration to detractors says that to me, know this: I am not a monster born of hatred. I am a human being with positive emotions as well as my negative ones. Since I do not hate the show (merely its omnipresence), loving and tolerating me will not destroy me or change my feelings in any way. This does not even begin to cover the hypocracy of saying one will love and tolerate, when clearly there is a spiteful air in the way they announce it.

Why is it that I can name most of the main horses on sight? I do not watch the show, I do not read about the show, I do not partake in anything involving the show beyond stating that I do not like it and seeking out likeminded people so that I know I am not alone. Yet somehow despite all of this, I can name most of the characters. This is to be expected if something gets big, but the entire main cast? Really? I could name maybe two Bleach characters, three of the Transformers, and I am involved in those fandoms as much as I am involved in the fandom of the new My Little Pony cartoon (not involved at all). I know all of the names because I have seen them everywhere. This is a sign that there needs to be better moderation.

Let me reiterate, the absolute only negative thing I have against the show from my nonexistent time watching it, would be its omnipresence. I respect that anyone can like it, I can respect that it's popular, catch me at the right time of day and I even think some of the horses look cute in the same way a puppy is cute. But I can overlook all of that because I am tired of seeing this show's creations everywhere on the internet. I hate Twilight while simply not liking this, but I do feel that I cannot say that I like horses now, much like how Twilight made me feel unable to state that I think vampires are cool.

This is where the essay gets a bit more personal. I will recount my first encounter with the new My Little Pony cartoon. Years ago, I had added a person to my watch list on this site, so I would be seeing his future works, journals and such. The user seemed all right, said things I could agree with, a bit emotional, but no one is perfect. This user came out and admitted to liking the show. I did not judge him, for I had no right. But after this, the man started posting nothing but My Little Pony crossovers and fan art. His journals would only discuss My Little Pony whenever he was not ranting as usual. It was as if the old deviant died and a new, pony-obsessed one was born.

One day I finally asked why it was that he was behaving as if he suddenly popped into existence once the show started, and he told me. He had good reasons and I could not fault him for it. But enough was enough, I could only take so much of something I did not care about. It became clear to me that he would never draw anything I was interested in again, only My Little Pony. He is no longer on my list. Not because he is a fan, but because it completely took him over.

It was too late, though. The pony art had spread, and soon I became haunted by these six (give or take) horses. Nowhere on DA was safe anymore, more and more people were liking a show I merely had no interest in. I was becoming an island, gradually sinking into the ocean. That is from where my attitude originated.

I do not like the show, and I do in fact have friends. To me, the rainbow horse is not the fastest. To me, Sonic the Hedgehog and The Flash will always be the fastest. Ponies are horses, I never even liked the word 'pony' to begin with. Crazier fans of the show should know that other people have other interests and do not wish to hear about the show nonstop. If someone like me were to voice exhaustion of My Little Pony, some fans will start pitching fits, as if My Little Pony were infallible. There is not always room for My Little Pony. It is not a fortune cookie, Jell-O, or Pumpkin Pie. Let me be at peace and you can just leave me to how "wrong" I am and how supposedly better you are than me, and we can both be happy.

But… for the love of glue, please tone it down. Please. I do not want to see Pony Jesus and Pony Buddha. Yes, they have been drawn as My Little Pony characters. Now a request to the sane "bronies" and female fans (I believe they do have a name, but I could not care less, do not tell me). Sane fans, please control your people. All fandoms have obsessed fans, but I have never seen obsessed fans who make it their mission to draw everyone ever in the style of the show they are a fan of. All I want is for the show to not take up ninety-nine percent of this site.

I do not hate My Little Pony, what I am is just tired of it. If I am out of patience at the moment or in a bad mood, I might say that I hate the show and want its characters to die. But that is not the case as things stand right now, I am simply just tired of the show. Apologies to fans of the show who were somehow offended, but I am artistically free to vent and speak my mind. I have become an island, and this is my lighthouse to other islands.
(c) My Little Pony

I was going to just do a rant about how tired I am of seeing fan art everywhere, but no. I decided to take the high road and do a (semi) professional, polite, and respectful essay instead. Let's see how much of my English 101 class stuck with me. This is largely just me venting.

To the crazy fans out there, this is proof that someone can be against the show and still be polite and respectful. Could it be that I "love and tolerate" more than the people who use those words as a threat?

But yes, this essay more or less sums up my feelings exactly at the moment. If you like the show, great, I don't, I am tired of seeing it everywhere, and crazier fans need to get a grip.


Proof that MLP's crazier fans are stupid:
[link]
© 2012 - 2024 PT-Piranha
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theguyintheworks's avatar
You are a good person.