fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2177 ]

[ SECRET POST #2177 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2177 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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(Disclaimer: I'm talking about a part of the fandom, not every single fan of the show.)

Not op, but this reminds me of the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and the hardcore Bronies.

It's a show for little girls, so there are explicit moral lessons in every episode; most of them about getting along with others.

Some of the fans take this too far, and think that everyone must accept everyone, faults and all.

This isn't a bad idea on paper, but in practice, it extends to fans excusing or denying that there are fans who are blatantly sexist, racist, misogynist, statutory rapists, pedophiles, who share way too much information about their sexual habits while reading fanfiction, who draw porn of the underage characters, etc.

They distort the messages of the show into: YOU MUST ACCEPT PEOPLE AS THEY ARE. THEY MUST NEVER, EVER CHANGE, NO MATTER HOW GROSS, HURTFUL OR VIOLENT THEY ARE, AND YOU MUST ACCEPT THEM AND NOT EVER "ATTACK" THEM. (Because calling people out on their bad behavior is meaaan and will get you dogpiled. Yes, hypocrisy.)

So, in practice, they want for you to accept them, but they can be as intolerant as they want to be. Like a fucking cult, like OP said. (And adding to the cult behavior; they ponify EVERYTHING. They see their entire lives through the lenses of ponies.)

They see their entire lives through the lenses of ponies.)

That is the single stupidest thing I have ever read in my life.

Hmm. I'm trying to think of a good way to word this, so forgive me if it doesn't sound entirely coherent.

ETA: I missed your disclaimer, because I'm an idiot. So sorry if I sound really defensive. Still, good discussion fodder.

First off, I have not met anyone, brony or not, who actually believes that "YOU MUST ACCEPT PEOPLE AS THEY ARE. THEY MUST NEVER, EVER CHANGE, NO MATTER HOW GROSS, HURTFUL OR VIOLENT THEY ARE, AND YOU MUST ACCEPT THEM AND NOT EVER 'ATTACK' THEM". Maybe I'm just not looking in the ~~right~~ wrong places.

(spoilers for latest ep)

And actually, I was looking at a comic a little while ago that was trying to excuse Lightning Dust's actions and say that nothing she did was really that bad, that RD should have been able to brush off hitting her wing, that she was tossed out on one little mistake. The comments were full of people saying, But she endangered lives, she didn't listen to a subordinate's concerns, she didn't care about Rainbow's wellbeing, she couldn't have known that Dash's friends were about to float up in a balloon but as a leader, she should have been able to weigh the risk and decide whether this would endanger others and if the benefit was worth that. And she didn't.

I suppose what I'm trying to say with all that is that those people don't sound like people who want to excuse actions based on telling all sides of the story, or whatever words sound nice. Even when someone else was pressuring them to think that we should just ~accept~ Lightning Dust's actions, they said, no, what she did was not right, and called her out for that behavior.

(end spoilers)

The thing with accepting people as they are.... Rules like that generally need two sides to them, and this one's other side is that while, yes, you should accept people as they are, that tends to be only for things they can't change. Put more succinctly and more negatively:

It's okay to hate people for who they are, but not for what they are.

If it's something a person can change - choices they've made, like being uncooperative or committing a crime or deciding nobody who's [X] can be good for anything, then that's not okay to accept. That's something they should work on changing themselves, because it conflicts with the good of the rest of society. And if people like that don't change themselves, then society either forces them to change (rehab programs, etc.) or makes it so that they can't harm others (jail, etc.).

If it's something a person can't change - things that are inherent within them, like sexual orientation or skin color or what they find attractive (note that this doesn't include acting on that attraction), and you feel that any of this is wrong, then you probably need to take a long look at your own choices, because hating them for it will just cause a lot of stress and ickiness on both sides.

I'm sorry, this started out as a defense of being an adult fan who enjoys the messages of My Little Pony and ended up as an ethics essay. But I'm a brony, and I'd rather not be tarred and feathered with the same brush and pillowcase as those few vocal nutjobs that every fandom possesses.

As for ponifying everything... well, I could get into the reasons for it, but this is already getting long. Suffice to say that most of it is just for fun, like turning Jetblue into a pegasus and whatever else. It's like that running joke that [insert character here] is a Time Lord. Plus, personally, I like the character design, and it can be fun to see how traits are interpreted, especially in the way of cutie marks, because they're unique.

I really hope at least some of that got my point across, although the point itself may have been lost along the way.... Well, never mind the point, hopefully my collection of thoughts on the subject works just as well.

~~Now what are your thoughts on yaoi?~~

Edited (I'm an idiot.) 2012-12-19 01:27 (UTC)

ayrt

Nah, it's okay, I get you.

The problem here is that the fandom is huuuge, so the fans that go too far are still in the hundreds-thousands, even if they're the vocal minority.

RE: the episode: The thing is that they don't translate the lessons they learn from the show to their actual real lives.

They don't self-regulate, and even some of the nicer fans turn a blind eye to bad behavior in the name of tolerance. (Some communities do put their foot down, thankfully, but not all.)

Yeah, I was talking about the things that can be changed and should be reprimanded in order to give them the discipline they need as motivation to change.

I too love the show, and was excited when Bronies first popped up, but it seems that many of the sane fans have learned to keep the distance and not to mingle too much with them, so now it's a vicious cycle of a fringe part of it being terrible and in turn attracting terrible people because of the lack of self-regulation, while the fans that are pretty okay keep their distance and don't really stand out.

So, when someone does something terrible, it's to them and similar fans who the rest of the world turn to look, and thanks to that they judge the rest of the fandom all under the same measure. Weakest link of the chain, and all that jazz.

I definitely hear you on the vocal minority there. And part of the problem is that if you hear about, say, some James Bond fan who's made his/her car look like James Bond's and this and that and the other thing, then everyone goes, "Oh, wow, that's so cool, you're such an awesome and geeky guy!" But if some MLP fan, male or female, does something abnormal like that, the refrain becomes, "Oh, wow, that's so lame, you're such a lazy bum, stop being so girly etc etc etc."

/is bitter

But the point is that it's seen very different because of its actual demographic, and so to a lot of mainstream media it becomes, "Oh you're cool despite the fact that you're into this," rather than, "Oh you're cool and you're into this." The weakest link becomes weaker, if that makes any sense, which it very well might not.

RE: applying lessons: yeeeeah, I get what you mean. Like, it's all very well and good to say, "Don't give in to peer pressure, kids!" and then meekly agree to whatever unscrupulous thing your boss tells you. (Hopefully not that anyone's boss would, but as an example.)

I try to, honestly. I didn't have very many friends when I was younger and I've never been great at picking up social cues, so having all this actually explicitly told to me is the best thing ever. Especially whatever lessons Twilight learns, since I resemble her to the point when it really isn't funny.

Same here on the last paragraph. (Only, Twilight has way more social grace than I ever had.) Actually having things like that spelled out has given me a new perspective on many situations that I never thought of.

RE: everything else, I agree with you!

It's like that running joke that [insert character here] is a Time Lord.

Radagast the Brown is a Time Lord.

Porn of underage characters?
Like the ponies?
I don't think there's an age of consent for ponies.

what

so if one of the characters had sex with, say, applebloom, it doesn't count?

wtf is this response

the ponies are fictional animal characters, but they are stand-ins for humans for the purpose of the story; they are sentient and talk and behave like humans, in a society like the one of humans

wtf is wrong with you

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[ SECRET POST #2177 ]

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