This is a Rant About this Fandom · 7:38pm Sep 21st, 2012
You know, when bronies talk about their fanfom, it's almost always good things: Love and Tolerance, Finding new friends through it, even opening their eyes to new things to like via crossovers and fics. This is not one of those times.
Right now, I need to rant about something I honestly hate about the brony fandom: The way we treat Villains.
NOT EVERY VILLAIN IS A MISUNDERSTOOD, TRAGIC FIGURE WORTHY OF SYMPATHY AND BEING CUDDLED!!!
Yes, I'm referring to the tendency of writers and other fans to portray the likes of Discord, Nightmare Moon and Chrysalis as goodie-goodies when there's nothing in the canon to lend credence to, or even suggest that this is the case. I get that the whole 'theme' of the fandom is supposed to that Love and Tolerance crap, but I'm calling the bluff here; this is nothing more than the Trope 'Draco in Leather Pants'. For those of you who don't go to TV Tropes, I will summarize for you.
Draco in Leather Pants is the tendency of fans of a series to find the villain more appealing than the heroes; to the point that they either try to justify or ignore their evil qualities and paint them as this ball of cute and cuddly. Now, in some cases, this is justified; Trixie, Gilda and the other minor antagonists of the series are jerks at worst and are more than qualified for sympathy. However, when you start applying it to villains like those big three, you are going too far.
Nightmare Moon is Luna gone insane and in need of serious help; had she not been stopped by the Elements of Harmony, she would have doomed the entire world to a slow, cold and ungodly painful death! Even if there was something making her act this way, this changes nothing; it was, at best, a parasite that needed to be expunged from Luna for her own good and destroyed for the good of all pony kind. There is nothing sympathetic about an omnicidal parasite.
Discord is a god of chaos and disharmony; he exists to cause suffering and strife and only cares about himself and his needs. Any sort of order, logic and unity is completely anathema to him and is something he seeks to destroy. He hates the very concepts of friendship, love and harmony, actively seeks to destroy them and break the spirits of all who support them to make sure they stay destroyed. And for all those who want to make the claim that 'it's just his nature', that does not excuse a damn thing; even if he is naturally predisposed to act like he does, he clearly enjoys acting like he does and likely would not stop even if you gave him the choice. There is nothing sympathetic about a reality-warping sociopath.
The only one, and I do mean the only one that could possibly have even the smallest justification for this is Chrysalis. Yes, she wants to feed her changelings, and that is a noble goal, but that does not excuse her of all the wrong she does to meet it. She invades a country, traps the leader of said country in a prison that she can't escape from on her own, brainwashes the captain of the guard and imprisons another princess in a cave that she only escaped from after another prisoner broke her out. On top of that, she clearly enjoys the fact that others have to suffer for her to meet her goals. She openly mocked Twilight for not being able to stop her, possibly even with the intention that she would kill the real Cadence if she found her since the disguise was still present. She has an entire song dedicated to how she's fooled everyone and will basically get the entire country to bow down to her, and the reprise shows her smiling and laughing while ponies were screaming and running for their lives. There is nothing sympathetic about a sadist.
But, of course, none of you will listen to this; not a one. And why would you? You have your own villains to replace all these; your Tyrant Celestias, your Serial Killer Pinkie Pies, your Mind Raping Fluttershys; all to replace the actual villains to you can have your cuddle toys.
i bo get what your saying but some things discord did where funny you have to admit. As to the others yeah but i admit i have a oc that out right blames Celestia for the whole nightmare moon thing. but thats just how she sees things. but yeah is not so mach that ppl want find a reason not to hate the big 3 fim villeins its just they have sex appeal and that want to do good intresting storys with them and its hard to do that and not have them some what like able
373804No, it really isn't hard to do that. Hell, to use another trope, it's called 'Villain Protagonist'; you can have a total sociopath for a main character and people will still love it if you make them interesting. You don't have to make them sympathetic then, just fun to read.
373874
Well to be honest as AJ i dont no what a trop is othere then zoanthrop and lycanthrop witch are waracreatchers
373963It's Trope; from here: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HomePage
Dude. It's fanfiction.
The very definition of the word means that the writers take the canon of whatever they're writing about and add onto it.
We have nothing telling us that the villains aren't what you're saying they're not. The only thing we have on them is the present, and so people find it fun to try and explain their past, or the things that we don't see in the show.
Welcome to fanfiction.
445390 "We have nothing telling us that the villains aren't what you're saying they're not."
Uh, yeah we do; it's called: Canon! Watch the show, this is what they are in it.
447604 Take a look at a quarter for a moment, will you?
You either see Washington's head, or the bald eagle (or a state). The first side is what you see in the show.
Now flip it over. The other side is what they might be thinking through it all, told to us in fanfiction because the show never tells us.
Sure, it may imply, but it never downright tells us.
You can't look at a person in real life and immediately tell why they do what they do.