Bookish Delight on Horse Drama and the implied stupidity of it all (Is it any wonder I love her for her sanity?)

Okay, I recently ran across this wonderful blog post by the ever delightful Bookish Delight, and I think it needs repeating.

Cold in Gardez, one of the few people on this site with a user number lower/earlier than mine, has had this line as their bio for forever:

Stories about ponies are stories about people.

It was true seven years ago, and it's true now.

Ponies are people. Except for the rare moments when ponies are plot devices, ponies are freaking people. And they're written by people.

And people dostupid stuff.

They're gonna do irrational stuff. They're gonna do illogical stuff. They're gonna do stuff that doesn't make sense. They're gonna do idiotic stuff, and they're gonna do stuff that you don't like seeing on the screen, or that you wish weren't part of the canon, or whatever.

And yes. Often, there's an underlying "reason" behind it. Every once in a while, that reason is indeed "because then there would be no movie" and you just gotta throw your hands in the air and move on. Sometimes that reason really is "they're just a shit" and you still gotta move on.

But those two instances are way less often than we think. Usuallythere's a reason.

But you know how youdon'tfind those underlying reasons?

By approaching people like they're logic problems to be solved.

I mean, that approach is cute to see on a dorky anime girl (ohheavensis it) but the arcs given to those characters tend to end with them learning togive into emotion and the fact that people are messy including themselves and look now Lucca's been crying for years inside because her mother's a cripple.

You don't need some kind of theory that "ponies (mares specifically? great generalization there, buddy) lose their brain cells if they don't feel loved enough" I mean fdsdosajfsanf;lonfadomci,hTHAT'S ALREADY PEOPLE AND THAT'S LIKE HALFWAY TOWARDS THE MOST BASIC FORM OF EMPATHY 101 AND YET THAT'S LIKE STILL SO MISSING THE POINT I DON'T EVEN

Like why would you try toboil people down and make them so uninteresting to explore

Ponies are people. Roly poly balls of experiences and loves and hate and vices and traumas and happiness and internalization. You can't apply some blanket plot rule and expect it to explainpeople. You can't use if-then statements on organics. All people, all ponies are different.

And that's what made them popular.

Anecdotal, sure, but back in 2012, the first Everfree Northwest, a bunch of us con-goers were gathered in a big room and we all decided to just raise our hands and talk about why we loved ponies. And the main and biggest reason cited in the room was that they wereflawed peoplewho did kinda dumb stuff a lot and the roomfreaking cheered.

Because ponies acted like people. Ponies were people.

This wasrefreshing. Especially if you grew up in the age of kids TV where "everyone must be a shining role model" and anything mildly heavy lesson-wise was a "very special episode". It limited the sorts of lessons that could be taught.

We didn't expect the ponies to have to not learn to pretty much be not racist about that zebra who lived in the forest and didn't never hurt no one. We didn't expect allegories to be handled both that deftly and that hilariously. It never was before on kids' tv. We didn't expect a season finale to beentirely about disappointment. We didn't expect ponies to be completely stupid and forget to mention having a family member. But it was consistent and it fit and it led to just this massive expansion of stores you could tell and lessons that could be taught to kids big and little alike. It limited the sorts of characters that could be seen and explored.

Characters eerily like the viewers.

Ponies are people.

And no matter what complaints we as omniscient viewers who totally know how to solve all characters' problems like to lob at the screen?

Ponies areus.

Enjoy the show.

And if you don't, it's okay.

There's always next week.

Point made, I think. Seriously, people, this is all just a cartoon about little ponies in the end, cool your jets okay?

Comments

[badninja]

This is very true. In one story Rarity is very deeply flawed, so much you actually wonder if she is still worthy of her element generosity.