Help! My Heart is Full of Pony! - Bridle Gossip · 1:01am Apr 22nd, 2020
We've all marveled at how far these ponies have come as characters since the beginning - how far the show has come. I know that, for the first couple weeks after the finale, when I first started working on this rewatching/reviewing project, so many of my posts were simple expressions of awe. "How far these characters have come. What a long, strange trip it's been."
Bridle Gossip stands out in hindsight because it illustrates that Ponyville itself has come a long way. They went from a town that shut down in terror at the appearance of a zebra to a multicultural haven.
Think about that. The town's reaction to Zecora in Bridle Gossip is extreme. Blind xenophobia. Blind zebraphobia. By Season 8 however, they've got creatures from faraway lands living there. By The Last Problem, Ponyville is a giant melting pot - a quaint small town version of Queens, NY where changelings and yaks and ponies sit side-by-side and nocreature thinks anything of it.
Discuss.
-Sprocket
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It was neither "Zebraphobia" nor even technically 'Xenophobia" as nopony in town even knew Zecora was a Zebra till Twilight told them. They all thought she was a pony, they just were all so scared of her due to her acting kind of odd and living in what to the ponies was a death forest of utter creepiness that nothing but scary things lived in.
While yes, ponies have learned not to be quite so panicky, part of that is due to them just getting so used to random monsters coming in to wreck the town, it's treated more like an annoyance then a real threat.
But, I do get what you are going for and yeah, they really have come a long way.
...Once again, I had not, as I recall, thought about that until you pointed it out, so once again, thank you. :)