Adult Men Love 'My Little Pony': Awesome or Awkward?

I don't believe that living in the 21st century automatically gives us the right to disregard the uniqueness of Masculinity and Femininity that comes naturally. It is part of what defines us as human, and men watching mlp is not really a natural coincidence. Entertainment has long been the cause of switching of gender-roles, which is not always a good thing, of course. Gender-roles should not be changing so that men are inclined to do things that little girls would find pleasurable, especially in something specifically meant for them. It would be utterly embarrassing if men were so-defined, and I wouldn't really feel the true joy of manhood. In fact, I would be ashamed to be in a society where men are acting like little girls, and vise-versa. We ARE what our gender is, and we should be gracious for a unique personallity that aligns with our gender. Everyone is different, but this is probably going a bit to the extreme side. I would be ashamed if I was a brony, quite honestly: Bronies are living human-beings and should be treated as such, and I have nothing against them as people, only their actions. Thus it is with all humans, and I certainly have my countless mistakes and am perhaps making one now, though I do not yet see it. I hope for the day when mlp fades from society, but there are far worse things I would rather see gone that I know will never leave until society develops self-control, than a little girls' show that doesn't have too much wrong with it except for its strange appeal to men. I feel it, I know it, but I choose to ignore the urges to watch it. The choice is yours, of course.

Cre­ativ­ity is a vital aspect of sto­ry­telling. Some­times the story you want to tell, on the out­side, isn’t the most orig­i­nal when you write it’s sum­mary. You really, really want to write that novel about a vam­pire guy who falls in love with the new girl at school, BUT – so been done before!

What choice do you have but to aban­don your writ­ing career and take up exces­sive drink­ing as a hobby?!

And in some gen­res, there’s not always a lot of room to make the absolutely orig­i­nal sto­ry­lines. You have a for­mula that you mostly need to stick to in order to pub­lish it.

But just because you’re pick­ing up a tired old con­cept, doesn’t mean you can’t make it some­thing brilliant.

As skep­ti­cal as the bril­liant Lau­ren Faust was to take on Hasbro’s tired old My Lit­tle Pony show, she def­i­nitely knew what she wanted to do with it. “Car­toons for girls don’t have to be a pud­dle of smooshy, cutesy-wootsy, goody-two-shoeness.”

With that vision in mind, she set about to cre­ate a show that has been phe­nom­e­nally suc­cess­ful – not just with girls but boys, and adults – both men and women. Bril­liant story-telling, a pas­sion for the char­ac­ters and great imag­i­na­tion has turned some­thing tired and true into some­thing fresh and com­pletely orig­i­nal in the mar­ket where, “ani­mated shows for girls don’t get ratings.”

In the young adult, new adult and romance gen­res par­tic­u­larly, romance at least plays a sig­nif­i­cant role in the story. But some­times it can be a lit­tle too easy to rely on angst and romance to drive the story and make it more inter­est­ing. Some­times get­ting wrapped up on the romance is nice but can get bor­ing and repet­i­tive. Sure, it’s nice but maybe tak­ing extra time to build a plot dri­ven by friend­ship, action, adven­ture, char­ac­ter flaws as well.

For a children’s car­toon aimed at girls, there is pre­cious lit­tle romance in My Lit­tle Pony – and yet it is still an insanely watch­able show. Some­times the story has a dragon or Ursa Minor or some other crea­ture to defeat. But these are merely tools used to for­ward the over­all story in which each char­ac­ter has their own path of self-growth.

Once you have a deeper under­stand­ing of your char­ac­ter and what dri­ves their moti­va­tions, there’s less need to rely on sexy scenes to for­ward the events of the novel. It lends depth and char­ac­ter to a story where the char­ac­ter grows in more than just their love life. The events that hap­pen in the novel no longer hap­pen to prove how much the main char­ac­ters love each other, but to help them grow together and deepen the reader’s under­stand­ing of who they are, not just indi­vid­u­ally but as a cou­ple as well.
Char­ac­ter­i­za­tion is almost every­thing in writ­ing a great novel. After read­ing so many Para­nor­mal Romances and Young Adult nov­els, as a reader, I have to say that there isn’t always a great vari­a­tion in the char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of female pro­tag­o­nists. Lau­ren Faust had this same problem.

“but the female char­ac­ters have been so homog­e­nized with old-fashioned “nice­ness” that they have no flaws and are unrelatable. They are so pretty, polite and per­fect; there is no legit­i­mate con­flict and noth­ing excit­ing ever happens.”

Many female pro­tag­o­nists share sim­i­lar issues across the gen­res. They don’t have mean­ing­ful female rela­tion­ships, they are gen­er­ally bor­ing, mild in tem­pera­ment, with few inter­ests hob­bies or pas­sions that drive them out­side of their great romance. But here’s where My lit­tle Pony excels. Each Pony has their own strong per­son­al­i­ties and inter­ests. And each of those per­son­al­i­ties have to inter­act with each other. So the prissy fash­ion designer, Rar­ity, has to learn how to love the coun­try bump­kin, Apple­jack. How does the painfully shy Flut­ter­shy learn to build a good rela­tion­ship with the fiesty, brave, cool Rain­bow Dash? And how does all six wildly diver­gent per­son­al­i­ties all nav­i­gate a six-way friendship?

This is what makes the show so watch­able. It adds depth and makes the char­ac­ters relat­able and lov­able. Branch­ing out and cre­at­ing char­ac­ters that exist out­side the tropes and archtypes. Mix your char­ac­ters up. Give them pas­sions, dreams, goals, per­son­al­ity. Most of all – give them a great range of deep char­ac­ters around them with their own per­son­al­i­ties, pas­sions, dreams and goals and weave into your story like a really rich tapestry.
So often, when cre­at­ing char­ac­ters and soci­eties, we fall back on com­fort­able gen­der roles. Noble king, wise her­mit, evil temptress, jeal­ous com­pe­ti­tion, wicked witch, mean step-mother, hot alpha male, pack-leader.

We all know these char­ac­ters so well because we see them again and again. But when you make the deci­sion to free your­self from these tried and true stereo­types, you have some­thing that looks different.

In My Lit­tle Pony, Princess Celes­tia is wise, kind and unlike most novel’s treat­ment of female mon­archs where their abil­ity to fill the role is tinged with ques­tion­ing her abil­ity to rule. Rain­bow Dash is a Ponyville hero, well respected for her ath­leti­cism. In a world where sports that involve women are well respected and held in high-esteem – with­out ever ques­tion­ing the fact that Rain­bow Dash is a total tomboy – it’s refreshing!

Where female coop­er­a­tion and accom­plish­ments are absolutely nor­mal and par of the course, you find richer sto­ry­telling. Instead of female char­ac­ters in YA or romances being pow­er­less and generic, every one of the main six has unique skills and dreams. Rar­ity owns her own fash­ion busi­ness – cre­at­ing cut­ting edge designs, Apple­jack runs her farm and is an entre­pre­neur, Twi­light Sparkle in the Princess’ favoured stu­dent who stud­ies heav­ily and works long hours, Rain­bow Dash is a pow­er­ful ath­lete and Flut­ter­shy cares for the ani­mals and looks after the wood­land crea­tures. Pinkie Pie is just ran­dom. There is no excuse for her. Thus why I love her.