Rae's Sketchblog

eschergirls:

snailchimera:

It has come to my attention that a certain segment of the “brony” community has some complaints about their favorite show; not the entire brony population, which has many cool people in it, but enough of a portion to have a visible internet presence.

Namely, they are upset that My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is still written primarily to appeal to and be understood by preadolescent girls instead of post-adolescent guys. They seem especially upset about the lack of male characters, and the lack of focus on those male characters.

Dear Bronys. What you are experiencing is indeed an uncomfortable and sometimes saddening phenomenon!

It is called “not being the target audience”.

You may be familiar with this phrase from when you, your friends, or your creative heroes used it to justify making the entire female casts of entire comics franchises look like soft core porn stars with severe physical disabilities, and not giving them the same focus or character depth overall as their male counterparts.

Or you might be familiar with its use in the video games industry, where it serves much the same purpose.

Or you may know it better from within the sphere of tabletop roleplaying games.

Or you may not be a “geek”, and are merely used to being the “target audience” of almost every other show on TV that is remotely engaging.

I feel your pain. It can be pretty miserable to love a media work of some kind, and not see anyone to identify with or consider a role model! And it can be even worse to feel like examples of your gender are only there to prove to audiences that your gender does in fact EXIST in the universe of that media work, and with that token acknowledgement accomplished, no one will ever do anything notable with them.

I would advise you to take solace in the fact that you will never see Spike in a physically impossible thong, posing submissively and “sexily” for no apparent reason while writing the moral of the day or being menaced by the villain du jour. Unless, you know, you like that kind of thing, in which case I’m sure certain subsets of the fandom can oblige. You will also never see Big Macintosh reduced to absolute, pathetic helplessness and weakness simply to reassure audiences that Applejack is the strongest of the ponies and no male pony will ever be able to compete.

And please, do keep writing in to fandom secrets. The vengeful, bitter monster in my heart thinks your pain tastes like cupcakes.

This is something my super smart friend SnailChimera wrote that’s a little relevant.

I’ll also add that a difference between Brony complaints about MLP and the issues in comics, video games, etc is that the “meant for a certain subset of hetero guys” thing isn’t just for one comic, or one video game.  Superhero comics and often mainstream comics in general, are assumed to be for that subset of hetero guys.  It’s not just Superman, X-Men, Batman, it’s Wonder Woman, Supergirl, Ms. Marvel, Avengers, everything.  In video games, you’ll see Escher Girls in art and advertising for action games, fighting games, RPGs, strategy games (remember Evony? xD), etc etc etc…

A comparable complaint would be if the Bronies felt every children’s show was meant for pre-adolescent girls, or all mainstream television was meant for children.  It’s one thing to not be the target audience of one show you like, but it’s another when entire industries decide that only one tiny subset that isn’t you is their target audience.