What even was it about cartoon ponies that attracted such autists? For as much as I saw FiM everywhere back in the day, I've never felt like I've found the answer to that question.
I had definitely considered the possibility of it appealing to anime fans. Especially given how FiM actually introduced a "proper story" to keep people hooked. I can at least respect Faust and co. for trying to make something of quality in spite of the toy license. It's just that adding that extra "spice" would have long-term repercussions. If I were around during that meeting, I would've just taken Faust's original pitch instead.
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Looking at it now, Milky Way and the Galaxy Girls definitely looks like a middle ground between PowerPuff Girls and what would become Friendship is Magic. I imagine it would've found an audience if it got the green light. Whether it would've led to the same levels of autism MLP would eventually spawn is up for debate.
Ahh, the age-old question. How did it all begin. Time for a little horsefucker history lesson.
First off, functionally speaking, MLP:FiM’s fandom is little different from any other magical girl anime fandom. Last I checked, Sailor Moon, Nanoha, and Madoka still have highly obsessive fans years and years after they stopped airing. There’s a great deal of overlap between them, too. Some of the earliest bronies were Nanoha autists in withdrawal who just couldn’t get enough of magical girls “befriending” people by blasting them with giant lasers. There was something for Black Lagoon fans, too. Namely, that FiM shared a portion of the same cast as the English dub of that show (Tabitha St. German, Cathy Weseluck, Maryke Hendrikse, etc.).
The works of the Craig McCracken/Lauren Faust/Genndy Tartakovsky trio were pretty much what defined the whole look and feel of late 90s/early-to-mid 00s Cartoon Network. Dexter’s Lab, Samurai Jack, Powerpuff Girls, Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, et cetera. The art style of MLP:FiM obviously descended from that. That’s yet another group of potential fans, right there; millennials who grew up watching CN.
MLP:FiM’s initial wave of popularity was because 4chan /co/ picked it up and started watching it after Cartoon Brew’s Amid Amidi wrote an article slamming it as nothing but a toy advertisement about a week after it aired:
Watching names like Rob Renzetti and Lauren Faust pop up in the credits of a toy-based animated series like My Little Pony is an admission of defeat for the entire movement, a white flag-waving moment for the TV animation industry. The signs have been there for a long time, however, and the Hub is but one indicator in the precipitous decline of creator-driven content, whose demise was hurried along by Cartoon Network and its decision to relaunch with large amounts of live-action programming. The erosion of support for creator-driven animation happened gradually but surely, and today networks clearly prefer established properties over original ideas, and dislike dealing with individual artists who have a clear creative vision.
/co/‘s attitude was basically, “Wait a minute, faggot, let’s watch a few episodes before passing judgment.”
And you know the rest.
MLP:FiM did a lot of things differently compared to prior generations of MLP. For one thing, it had a set of protagonists with actual character archetypes, like “the bookworm”, “the fashionista”, and “the redneck”. Before MLP G4, ponies were more like Teletubbies. They hardly had any personalities at all and were very difficult to tell apart.
Ponies in MLP G4 had a society. They had jobs. They paid money for things. They weren’t just critters living in a stateless and classless utopia like Smurfs. They were presented as people, inhabiting a story with actual narrative arcs. They were capable of interpersonal conflict, and even the occasional wild-ass nervous breakdown complete with Kricfalusi faces. In short, the show was interesting enough, story-wise, to hold /co/‘s attention. This quickly turned into an obsession, and ponies basically swept the internet around 2010 through 2012.
FiM was reasonably well-written, at least at the outset, though later seasons dragged on and the quality dropped off considerably, in part due to executive meddling, but generally speaking, because it had run its course and the writers couldn't come up with any more material for it. It had sly pop culture references to The Big Lebowski, Fargo, and Evangelion in it, of all things; eagle-eyed viewers will spy things like Walter Sobchak and Marge Gunderson ponies in the background.
Lauren Faust stated that her goal with MLP:FiM was to make a cartoon with all-ages appeal that parents could watch with their kids without feeling like gouging out their eyes with a spoon. Lauren Faust was sick of pitching shows to networks and being turned down because “shows for girls don’t get ratings”. She felt that most girls' shows were unfairly patronizing and infantilizing their audiences and wanted to put out something that wasn't completely fucking braindead.
To quote Lauren Faust:
I started developing cartoons and series for girls. I would pitch shows to executives at different studios, and people would really like the stories and really like the characters, but then tell me, ‘We don’t want shows for girls.’ They were attributing the poor performance of these shows to the gender of the target audience instead of to the quality of the shows. It was like banging my head against the wall; I just couldn’t get through.
I was extremely skeptical at first about taking the job. Shows based on girls’ toys always left a bad taste in my mouth, even when I was a child. They did not reflect the way I played with my toys. I assigned my ponies and my Strawberry Shortcake dolls distinctive personalities and sent them on epic adventures to save the world. On TV, though, I couldn’t tell one girl character from another and they just had endless tea parties, giggled over nothing and defeated villains by either sharing with them or crying–which miraculously inspired the villain to turn nice. Even to my 7-year-old self, these shows made no sense and couldn’t keep my interest. No wonder the boys at school laughed at my Rainbow Unicorn Trapper Keeper.
...
The messages I’m
really trying to get across with the show are these:
- There are lots of different ways to be a girl. You can be sweet and shy, or bold and physical. You can be silly and friendly, or reserved and studious. You can be strong and hard working, or artistic and beautiful. This show is wonderfully free of “token girl” syndrome, so there is no pressure to shove all the ideals of what we want our daughters to be into one package. There is a diversity of personalities, ambitions, talents, strengths and even flaws in our characters–it’s not an army of cookie-cutter nice-girls or cookie-cutter beauty queens like you see in most shows for girls.
- Find out what makes you you. Follow your passions and ambitions, not what others expect of you. For instance, if you like sports don’t let someone’s suggestion that that is unfeminine stop you from doing what you love. Be considerate of others’ feelings, but not at the expense of your own goals and dreams.
- You can be friends with people who are vastly different from you. And even though all friendships have their share of disagreements and moments when you don’t get along, that does not mean that your friendship has to end.
- Cartoons for girls don’t have to be a puddle of smooshy, cutesy-wootsy, goody-two-shoeness. Girls like stories with real conflict; girls are smart enough to understand complex plots; girls aren’t as easily frightened as everyone seems to think. Girls are complex human beings, and they can be brave, strong, kind and independent–but they can also be uncertain, awkward, silly, arrogant or stubborn. They shouldn’t have to succumb to pressure to be perfect.
So, yes, in a way, even though MLP wasn't her first choice and she wanted to pitch something more original, MLP:FiM was
explicitly Lauren Faust's pet project to show that "see, girls' shows can be interesting and have complex plotting, too".
The trouble is, when you make a show that
isn't 100% retarded cotton candy and sprinkle brain, it will inevitably develop a following from a wider demographic. That wider demographic, in this case, was a teeming swarm of 4chan neckbeard otaku who wanted PVC figurines, dakis, and fuckable plush toys with fleshlight pockets.
Notably also involving Lauren Faust.
They shared a lot more cast and crew than that. Tara Strong as Bubbles and Twilight Sparkle, obviously, but also, Rob Renzetti, Meghan McCarthy, Cindy Morrow, Chris Savino, Amy Keating Rogers, and so on. It's like half of the writing crew from PPG.
