oh god blog titles

What show got cancelled?

Takuma Nuva

And are you saying it got cancelled because girls were drawn to it instead of young boys?

Young justice got pulled because of higher-up bias, assuming that women do not buy the same toys as men do.

[Please don't link to pages with swearing and stuff. -Bfa]

 

Seriously, just take five minutes and look up young justice cancelled because of female audience

You're talking about two independent networks, one of which is pretty terrible anyway. It isn't really a case of "all other things being equal".

I believe Danny Phantom had a huge college age female following despite being aimed at boys. It also lasted for three years.

1. Completely different networks. Comparing what two different networks do is apples and oranges to an absurd degree.

2. Young Justice got canceled because of low ratings, not because some corporate bigwigs went "Oh no girls like this that's not okay." It had about 1.9 million weekly viewers at time of cancellation, which sounds like a lot, but isn't even 1.75% of the TV households in the US. It's also worth noting that the number of viewers, after the hype of the first few episodes finishes, tends to either go nowhere but up or nowhere but down, so either after climbing for two seasons, it peaked and couldn't reach significant ratings, or it was on a downward spiral.

 

By comparison, Regular Show has over 3 million, Adventure Time also floats around the 3 million mark. Teen Titans Go!, in one year, is I believe only 100,000 behind where Young Justice got in three. The pony show in-question was well over 4 million by season 2 . Young Justice, by comparison, just didn't deliver the same bang-for-buck that other cartoon shows were, and in the business world, if you can put another product on the shelf that will sell better and give you a bigger profit, you pull the unsuccessful product and replace it with the one that gives you money.

 

If you honestly think that a hundred-million-dollar TV network cares about the gender of who is giving it money when it's getting a significant amount of money, you're out of your mind.

3. The brony documentary, while admittedly dumb, was crowd-funded by fans via Kickstarter, it's not like Time Warner bankrolled it and it was made by a major film studio. If people want to spend money on a documentary about themselves, then that's their decision. It's a stupid decision, but it's not like the show's creators decided to make it or something. You can't tell people they're not allowed to spend their money on something that doesn't tangibly harm anyone, and on top of that, comparing the decisions of members of a fanbase to make a documentary about themselves to the decisions made by a network to cancel a show makes about as much sense as blaming LA Clippers players for Donald Sterling being an old racist. The network doesn't have some sort of supreme control over their fans.

 

You know what also has a decently sized female fanbase, and even a female protagonist? Legend of Korra. You know what was popular enough to get renewed for a second season and third season? Legend of Korra. Guess how many viewers per episode it had? Around 3.76 million. It's a numbers game, and Young Justice, like a lot of genuinely good, well-made shows, just didn't make economic sense. It's not some sort of conspiracy, it's simple economics.

The notion that Young Justice got canceled because girls liked it, and not because it wasn't meeting economic expectations that another show could, makes about as much sense as the "Paul is dead" conspiracy.

but...paul is dead

 

-Tyler

but...paul is dead

 

-Tyler

No, THE WALRUS IS PAUL!

 

but...paul is dead

 

-Tyler

No, THE WALRUS IS PAUL!

 

 

Paul is dead man, miss him, miss him, miss him.

Somewhere, the Real Paul McCartney, the Real Michael Jackson and the Real Tupac Shakur are working.

 

They make fantastic music together.

 

Elvis doesn't do #####

Nah, Elvis does top secret work with Bigfoot, the founding fathers and Abraham Lincoln are just keeping it under wraps.

 

-

If you honestly think that a hundred-million-dollar TV network cares about the gender of who is giving it money when it's getting a significant amount of money, you're out of your mind.

If it weren't for the fact the producers of both Young Justice and Green Lantern TAS have both spoken out repeatedly about how they were told by CN that their shows would not be renewed because they were too popular with girls, and they refused to market to girls via toys or accessories, maybe the rest of your mansplaining comment would have a purpose.

 

If you honestly think that a hundred-million-dollar TV network cares about the gender of who is giving it money when it's getting a significant amount of money, you're out of your mind.

If it weren't for the fact the producers of both Young Justice and Green Lantern TAS have both spoken out repeatedly about how they were told by CN that their shows would not be renewed because they were too popular with girls, and they refused to market to girls via toys or accessories, maybe the rest of your mansplaining comment would have a purpose.

 

 

1. Would you be willing to provide a source for these quotes? Or...you know...the quotes themselves? All Google is giving me is some quotes from Paul Dini, who didn't work on Young Justice and never explicitly mentions it, saying that A. the executives want to go more for hyperactive, "lowest common denominator" humor for younger audiences instead of thought-out, mature writing, which is far from uncommon in any forms of media, and B. there is indeed sexism from executives, which I acknowledge now probably did play into the decision more than I originally assumed.

 

That said though, even if it did play into it, I still find it hard to believe that it would be a bigger factor than the bottom dollar, which, again, did not favor Young Justice compared to other animated shows. I'm more than happy to provide the source for my viewing numbers for Young Justice, Adventure Time, Legend of Korra's first season(I know that citing a Wikipedia page is laughable, but the Wikipedia page isn't as much the source in and of itself, as it is a gateway to the sources, which are linked at each viewing statistic.), My Little Pony, Teen Titans Go!, and the number of TV households in the US.

 

I would like to correct myself on one point; I botched my statistics when citing the viewing numbers for My Little Pony. The 4 million number I cited is from monthly views, not weekly. However it's also worth noting that I also had the date wrong on that statistic; I said it was from the start of the second season, when actually it was for the end of the first season. That may not sound like a big difference, but as someone that was part of the fandom at that time, I can tell you right now that it exploded in size between seasons, so the number from the end of season 1 is not at all indicative of the numbers for any of the later seasons. By all indications, that number has done nothing but increase dramatically, so it's fair to say that as of the current season, it's far beyond the 4 million a month mark.

 

I will give you that Beware The Batman, one of the two shows meant to replace Young Justice and The Green Lantern, has been a ratings flop so far. However that is not the case looking at the success of Teen Titans Go! since replacing, where it's almost equaled the numbers from Young Justice within one season. On top of that, the series averages for the other shows outpaced the series high for Young Justice. It's not like they canceled a wildly successful show purely out of bigoted motives.

 

2. Even if I am wrong about why Young Justice was canceled - which I very well may be. I think I'm right, but I've been wrong before - this does not change that the core point that the entry is making("Guys like my little pony and they get a documentary, girls like superheroes and they get canceled) is a completely broken comparison. One was an independently-funded decision by a group of fans, and the other was a decision from the network itself. They decided to make the documentary themselves, and paid for it themselves. In theory, there's nothing stopping fans of Young Justice from making a documentary of equal quality arguing why it should be brought back. It's not like the network itself made the documentary or something like that.

 

A decision by a group of individuals to pay for a Kickstarter is a completely invalid parallel to a decision made by the executives of a television network. It would be like holding sports team X in contempt because they fired player X, and citing the fact that the fans of sports team Y privately funded a statue of player Y as an example of why firing player X was wrong. The two have no correlation at all.

 

3. What the heck is "mansplaining"?

I agree that the correlation between the two events is shaky at the very best, since you're right that a privately-funded "documentary" has no reason to be compared to the decisions made by a giant corporation.

 

CN's action shows run largely on toy sales, not necessarily ratings. As both CN and DC are owned by WB, DC cartoons are cheap to produce and air since it is basically in-house (though not to the same degree as Adventure Time and Regular Show, and there are a lot of hints that CN hates the corporate tie between them and DC and has been purposefully torpedoing DC products, but that is neither here nor there). Green Lantern didn't get toys at all, because retailers weren't certain consumers could differentiate between the show and the movie flop. But Green Lantern TAS had a huge following amongst the female demographic, and CN didn't know how to harness that through product because their entire operations is geared at boys right at or right before the cusp of puberty. Paul Dini has been very vocal on this topic, and he's done numerous interviews on geek podcasts about it. He talked to Kevin Smith about it at length in one. He's been pretty willing to talk on behalf of the Young Justice guys too.

 

So the bottom dollar can be the reason the shows were not renewed, but the reason the bottom dollar was low was because CN refused to target toys and merchandise to a female fanbase that was outside their normal fanbase and marketing tactics. As such, neither shows' had production costs subsidized by product sales, so the bottom dollar was affected. The ratings were pretty on-target for where the shows had been projected by WB.

 

On your number three- look it up.

 

Regardless of how unequal of a comparison the two things are, there is a societal expectation here that no amount of "but these things are different" can explain away. When a large group of vocal men became interested in a little girl's show, they were catered to by the production company and became part of the target audience, and indeed the overall "brony" community sees themselves as more important than the under-represented group the show was conceived for. They have effectively appropriated it, which is my largest problem with the group. The men became part of the focus because regardless of "traditional masculinity movements", the truth is, if men want to like something non-masculine, society adapts and twists the definition of masculinity to accept it. "Oh, it's actually just men who are even more manly because they can accept pink and girly things without worrying, look at how secure they are. Much manly. Wow."

 

Whereas when girls become interested in something "traditionally masculine" (such as superheroes, video games, geek culture in general), they are told the do not belong, that they are not supposed to be there, that this isn't for them and to stop trying to make it "about them" (even when they are not). This has manifested itself in the "fake geek girl" and "fake girl videogamer" memes. Even though girls and women have been a huge part of most of these movements since they began, they are treated as outsiders, objectified, etc.

 

(So what a surprise that when men became interested in a little girl's show, the first thing a bunch of them did was sexualize and objectify the characters and rob them of so much of their female agency.)

 

That was the real point behind this entry, and while the comparison on its face is a poor one, the societal reasons behind them are very real and very important.

and while the comparison on its face is a poor one, the societal reasons behind them are very real and very important.

Yes.

 

Sexism is absolutely a thing and I don't doubt that it played a role in Cartoon Network's canning of a great show (I was late to the party, I watched it about a month ago). It also wouldn't be the first terrible decision they've made.

 

This comparison, however, is poor. It ignores the numerous other variables, turning it solely into a "men get everything, women get nothing" scenario. That is indeed how our society is biased, but using this as an example of that does not work. It's broken logic, and dismissing criticisms of its flaws as "mansplaining" strikes me as more reactionary than rational.

 

The cause behind the argument is good. The argument itself is not. And seeing someone argue for something I believe in with fallacious reasoning is disappointing.

This comparison, however, is poor. It ignores the numerous other variables, turning it solely into a "men get everything, women get nothing" scenario. That is indeed how our society is biased, but using this as an example of that does not work. It's broken logic, and dismissing criticisms of its flaws as "mansplaining" strikes me as more reactionary than rational.

Is it though? It may be a poor argument on its face, but I don't think this is a broken example or broken logic at all, really. Different networks, different properties, whatever. The core concept behind the entry is perfectly valid. When men liked a girls' show, they were able to fund a kickstarter campaign to pat themselves on the back about how they'd taken the show over and made it a different thing. When women liked a boys show, it was cancelled. The reasons behind both are nearly entirely societal. It seems fallacious at first on the surface, but I don't really think it's as poor as people are attempting to make it seem, and the desire to discredit it seems to be an attempt to protect the sexism behind some of these movements.

 

At least how it reads to me.

I agree that the correlation between the two events is shaky at the very best, since you're right that a privately-funded "documentary" has no reason to be compared to the decisions made by a giant corporation.

 

CN's action shows run largely on toy sales, not necessarily ratings. As both CN and DC are owned by WB, DC cartoons are cheap to produce and air since it is basically in-house (though not to the same degree as Adventure Time and Regular Show, and there are a lot of hints that CN hates the corporate tie between them and DC and has been purposefully torpedoing DC products, but that is neither here nor there). Green Lantern didn't get toys at all, because retailers weren't certain consumers could differentiate between the show and the movie flop. But Green Lantern TAS had a huge following amongst the female demographic, and CN didn't know how to harness that through product because their entire operations is geared at boys right at or right before the cusp of puberty. Paul Dini has been very vocal on this topic, and he's done numerous interviews on geek podcasts about it. He talked to Kevin Smith about it at length in one. He's been pretty willing to talk on behalf of the Young Justice guys too.

 

So the bottom dollar can be the reason the shows were not renewed, but the reason the bottom dollar was low was because CN refused to target toys and merchandise to a female fanbase that was outside their normal fanbase and marketing tactics. As such, neither shows' had production costs subsidized by product sales, so the bottom dollar was affected. The ratings were pretty on-target for where the shows had been projected by WB.

 

This is a legitimate point, however I question the claim that it had "a huge following amongst the female demographic", simply because, again, the numbers say otherwise. I don't doubt for a second that a larger proportion of its fanbase was female than is the norm for a superhero cartoon, or doubt for a second that the toys flopping had something to do with a failure on the part of manufacturers to develop toy lines that catered to their audience(Though from what I can find online, they were also put at a pretty expensive pricepoint for what they were, so that likely contributed as well), but again, the problem with the claim that it had a large following is that the only number that correlates to something like that suggests otherwise.

 

As for Paul Dini, while I value what he has to say on the industry as a whole - as well as the creator of some pretty awesome TV - you said that the quotes were both numerous, and from the producers of Young Justice. After five pages of google searching "young justice cancelled because of female audience", every quote I find is from Dini, not a one from Register, Weisman, or Vietti. Even if it's an industry veteran, there's a stark contrast between the experiences of the victim in-question, and the interpretation of a third-party on the subject. One is reliable testimony, and the other is correlation. If the reason that the creative vision of the producers and staff of Young Justice was quashed was primarily because of something like this, then I find it really hard to believe that they wouldn't have spoken out to back Dini when he's been so outspoken.

 

I also disagree with the notion that it's on-par with where shows with its target demographic are supposed to be, because again, Teen Titans Go!, one of the shows meant to replace it, has almost reached the same numbers in its average as Young Justice reached with its peak. Adventure Time, which is again, another show on the same network, with a lot of merchandising, and a target audience somewhere around 8-14, has clearly outpaced it as well.

 

Again, I think there is a legitimate point that CN's business plan with it failed to adapt, but that doesn't change that the ratings were lower than most other cartoons, even competing shows on CN like Adventure Time, which not only helps explain why it was canceled, but also casts a pretty large doubt on the idea that there was a huge following of Young Justice.

 

 

Regardless of how unequal of a comparison the two things are, there is a societal expectation here that no amount of "but these things are different" can explain away. When a large group of vocal men became interested in a little girl's show, they were catered to by the production company and became part of the target audience, and indeed the overall "brony" community sees themselves as more important than the under-represented group the show was conceived for. They have effectively appropriated it, which is my largest problem with the group. The men became part of the focus because regardless of "traditional masculinity movements", the truth is, if men want to like something non-masculine, society adapts and twists the definition of masculinity to accept it. "Oh, it's actually just men who are even more manly because they can accept pink and girly things without worrying, look at how secure they are. Much manly. Wow."

 

DeeVee, I am sorry, I respect you both as a staff member and as an intelligent, well-spoken person, but you have no idea what you are talking about on this subject. The fact that every brony convention I have read about/heard of/etc. consistently allows children attending to ask voiceactors, producers, what-have-you, questions at Q&A panels before any bronies, that an entire community-driven project specifically to tag and clean up search results so that kids don't see the inappropriate stuff(We're far from finished, but considering it's been done about a half-dozen times, the improvement to the search results is very encouraging), just to name two off the top of my head, the idea that the majority of the community sees the target audience as unimportant, while true for the first year or two, hasn't been true for at least a year or two now. Are there still people like that? There are, but there are unreasonable morons in every community, every fanbase, every anything.

 

As far as the show being catered to bronies, I'm sorry, but that's completely false. The "nods" to bronies or references are about as disruptive as a different color scheme for a character that just walks through the background of the scene, or three or so sentences of recorded dialog per season. It's about as destructive to the core of the show as Hey Arnold! having a joke about Woodstock, or Fairly Oddparents having President Clint Bushton almost nuking Russia(or for that matter a TRON-themed pilot), or The Powerpuff Girls having an entire episode loaded to the brim with Beatles references, or any other humor that is put in for the entertainment of either a periphery demographic or the parents of the target demographic. It's a concept that is hardly new, and in no way, shape, or form altering the show beyond changing the color pallette of a pony who only exists to give a startled reaction once, or changing "sure" to "eyup". The only real change in the way the show is structured or thought out was when there were changes in members of the staff occurred between seasons 1 and 2. When something like that happens, changes to the show are kind of inherent, the same way replacing a member of a band changes the sound of their music.

You're also assuming that all bronies are guys, which is an offensive erasure of the female members of the fandom; of the 23 members of the show's club/group/whatever term you want to use at my campus, 12 of them are women. The same goes for my favorite artist amongst the fandom, as well as the majority of bloggers in the fandom that I follow, and one of the top posters and moderators for the pony thread of another forum I'm on. Guys definitely do make up a majority of the fanbase, and early-on there was a pretty strong "boys club" mentality, but that mentality is all but dead and gone for a vast majority of the fanbase, tends to be met with harsh internal criticism when it's seen, and acting like women are either nonexistent or next-to-nonexistent in the fandom is daft and offensive.

 

I interact with these people on a daily basis. I read what they post, hear what they say, see how they act. I know who they are and what they're like, and while we certainly have our bad eggs just like any group, I can tell you right now that you're completely off-base with your characterization of the fanbase in-general.

 

 

Whereas when girls become interested in something "traditionally masculine" (such as superheroes, video games, geek culture in general), they are told the do not belong, that they are not supposed to be there, that this isn't for them and to stop trying to make it "about them" (even when they are not). This has manifested itself in the "fake geek girl" and "fake girl videogamer" memes. Even though girls and women have been a huge part of most of these movements since they began, they are treated as outsiders, objectified, etc.

 

This I do agree on. It has fortunately improved over the past few years - Call of Duty and its online community of frat dudes and foul-mouthed 12-year olds aside, I've seen acceptance of women in gaming go nowhere but up in the online games and gaming communities I'm part of - but it's still an issue that needs addressing. There are still activities and things that are considered hardline masculine or feminine, and that's flat-out silly in the 21st century.

 

 

(So what a surprise that when men became interested in a little girl's show, the first thing a bunch of them did was sexualize and objectify the characters and rob them of so much of their female agency.)

 

Again, you are completely off-base with this. The notion that the majority of fan content is sexual or misogynistic in nature is beyond false, and while I'd like to get more detailed into the specifics of it, that kind of starts talking about inappropriate content, which is a no-no on BZP. Much more of it exists than should, but the notion that it's a large percentage is completely inaccurate.

 

 

 

When men liked a girls' show, they were able to fund a kickstarter campaign to pat themselves on the back about how they'd taken the show over and made it a different thing. When women liked a boys show, it was cancelled. The reasons behind both are nearly entirely societal.

 

 

...Invalidity of the "different thing" argument aside, that doesn't make any sense. The idea that only male-oriented projects get posted or funded on Kickstarter is ridiculous considering Anita Sarkeesian received nearly 30 times here requested amount for her Kickstarter project. Like I said before, there is nothing stopping the fans of Young Justice from making a documentary about why it should be brought back and why the reasons for its cancellation were unjust.

 

I don't care even if a point is valid, you have to make a valid argument to back it up. If your conclusion is true but the framing of your argument is broken, then there's no reason you can't reframe it in a proper light, since again, the conclusion in this hypothetical is true, therefore there is proof of it, and the onus is on you to find it. The notion that a flawed argument is acceptable is ludicrous. Misinformation isn't acceptable just because it supports a noble truth.

I'm sorry, but the words of a "brony insider" who "interacts with them daily" is not a valid point of view from which to stand and nobly defend the movement. I have zero problems with bronies on an individual level- but you cannot stand here and claim that there is not a problem with sexualizing a young girls' show, with attempting to make mainstream the takeover and appropriation of something that was created for a often-ignored demographic, with the rampant misogyny promoted by the "herd". You can claim "not all bronies are like that" and, well, no duh. But the movement as a whole is often heralded the most loudly by those groups, and the onus is not on me to explain why that is problematic- it is on you and the community you are trying to represent to change that.

 

Bronies, as a movement, as a group, whatever, are deeply problematic. There are reasons they are spoken of so negatively, and it has nothing to do with the idea that guys can't like girl things. It has everything to do with a large segment of your community fetishizing a young girls' cartoon, being unable to keep said works in appropriately tagged, hidden, or otherwise safe environment. I do not care if there is a big project to hide that work- that it needs such a group project in the first place is entirely the problem. I applaud you for doing that kind of work- it is, after all, about time the brony community admitted they have a problem with this, but seriously, that this work even exists is... seriously, why does anyone have to explain this???

 

From there, you can hem and haw all you want about the goodness of the group because they allow kids to speak first at conventions. In another entry, you had bronies saying that kids shouldn't be at these conventions to begin with, and parents were foolish for allowing their children around such things. But here you talk about kids being welcome and invited and excited- pick one, you can't have both.

 

You talk about the erasure of female fans (the "pegasisters"), but the documentary (which I have seen, by the way) does that itself. Two women interviewed- and one only exists to basically pimp her fiance's involvement in the fandom.

 

And that doesn't even begin to touch on the big blowup over that one blog being shut down. You know which one.

 

As for the Young Justice and Green Lantern stuff, Paul Dini has worked on almost every DC show outside of Young Justice for almost two decades. He's won Emmys and numerous awards. He is as industry-insider as it gets when it comes to animation, especially when it comes to superhero shows. While I'll concede he didn't work on Young Justice, the show was clearly modeled after work he and Bruce Timm did on the mainstream DCAU, and his involvement with Green Lantern TAS, and with DC as a whole, speaks volumes to... everyone in every article on the subject except for you, apparently.

 

(Also, to say Young Justice's ratings were bad on their own ignores entirely the way CN handled the airing of the show itself. A year and a half in to the show's running, and they had not finished airing the original 26 episodes, after pausing to air their own in-house shows instead. That's not how you get ratings.)

 

...Invalidity of the "different thing" argument aside, that doesn't make any sense. The idea that only male-oriented projects get posted or funded on Kickstarter is ridiculous considering Anita Sarkeesian received nearly 30 times here requested amount for her Kickstarter project. Like I said before, there is nothing stopping the fans of Young Justice from making a documentary about why it should be brought back and why the reasons for its cancellation were unjust.

 

I don't care even if a point is valid, you have to make a valid argument to back it up. If your conclusion is true but the framing of your argument is broken, then there's no reason you can't reframe it in a proper light, since again, the conclusion in this hypothetical is true, therefore there is proof of it, and the onus is on you to find it. The notion that a flawed argument is acceptable is ludicrous. Misinformation isn't acceptable just because it supports a noble truth.

 

I never said "only male projects get funded on kickstarter" (that would be silly considering the handful of successful feminist and female-produced content projects I've contributed to myself). Narrow the argument back to the core: when men (bronies) became vocal supporters of something aimed at young girls, the show adapted and made them part of the demographic (I never said they became the core demographic, but as was said in another blog entry by another vocal brony, they are indeed a target demographic that gets catered to intensely). When a large vocal female fanbase developed for YJ and GL:TAS, CN execs rationalized that women don't buy product, so they refused to invite those persons into the fandom, and the lack of toy sales was enough to torpedo both shows, as merchandizing supplements the show costs. The bias really runs up to the executive level on both counts. One decided "hey, having dudes like this is good for business, let's run with it" the other decided "hey, having girls so into this is bad for our business, we don't want that."

 

(Also, the MLP documentary was partly produced by Tara Strong and Lauren Faust, and so the whole "entirely fan-produced and backed" thing isn't true enough to merit the push you're making.)

 

You're being disingenuous. The framing of this argument isn't broken- your intent is to protect the group you belong to at all costs. I will gladly admit that it is nice to see a brony who does indeed admit to the problematic areas of the community, but the "not all bronies" thing reads just like the "not all men" meme, and like those who proclaim "but not all men are like that!" it misses the point and just invalidates the feelings of those hurt by that group's actions, and the inactions of those affiliated with that group who won't stand up to it. So kudos to you for taking that stand. I really really mean that. But that doesn't go far enough in acknowledging the misogynistic, ableist, homophobic, etc problems with members of the community.

(Also, the MLP documentary was partly produced by Tara Strong and Lauren Faust, and so the whole "entirely fan-produced and backed" thing isn't true enough to merit the push you're making.)

 

Actually from what I gathered about the doc, Tara Strong and Lauren Faust only got involved after the kickstarter already made over $60,000. Plus I hear they're both usually active in their fanbases (I believe Tara Strong was a supporter of the bring back Symbionic Titan crowd a while back). Just a little FYI.

I'm sorry, but the words of a "brony insider" who "interacts with them daily" is not a valid point of view from which to stand and nobly defend the movement.

 

...Where did I use the term "brony insider"? Also how does being part of a group mean that I'm automatically unable to have an objective opinion of it? Just because I don't believe that it's a rampant issue doesn't mean I don't think it's an issue.

 

 

have zero problems with bronies on an individual level- but you cannot stand here and claim that there is not a problem with sexualizing a young girls' show, with attempting to make mainstream the takeover and appropriation of something that was created for a often-ignored demographic, with the rampant misogyny promoted by the "herd".

 

I never said that the sexualization of the show isn't a problem? I felt like the fact that I mentioned a fan-organized effort that I am a part of specifically to tag it and keep it out of the reach of the target audience made it more or less clear that I'm not okay with it. I'm not saying that the NSFW content isn't a problem, what I'm saying is the notions that A. it's a core part of it that the majority of bronies take part in, and B. the fandom is ambivalent about it, are completely false. The portion of the fanbase that partakes in it is a small minority, and again, the fact there's an entire movement to tag the stuff and keep searches clean, should make it pretty clear that a lot of us agree it's a problem.

 

As for rampant misogyny, I'm sorry, but everything I have seen does not suggest to me that it is as rampant an issue as you think it is. Again, a significant chunk of the bronies I know, both online and offline, are women, and I'm pretty sure they don't hate themselves. I've known maybe one person that was a brony and was misogynistic the entire time I've been part of the fandom, and not only did I make a point of calling him on it, he disappeared from the fandom as of a year or so ago. I'm not saying they don't exist, I'm saying that, again, they're a minority.

 

 

You can claim "not all bronies are like that" and, well, no duh. But the movement as a whole is often heralded the most loudly by those groups, and the onus is not on me to explain why that is problematic- it is on you and the community you are trying to represent to change that.

 

...And I feel like a broken record, but I am making a point of trying to change that. I actively tag inappropriate search results, I make a point of keeping it to myself unless people ask or are fans themselves - my avatar is a guitar-playing penguin, not a guitar-playing pony, and you can count on one hand how many times I've posted on my blog about it - I enjoy the show and the community but I don't let it define me, I call out misbehavior when I see it, I can go on for a while.

 

I am far from alone in any of this. Aside from two or three members, every bit of this applies to everyone in the campus group, as well as virtually everyone in the fandom that I have experience with. I'm not sure exactly what more any of us are supposed to do? We cannot control the problematic members any more than any other group can control their stupid people. We can call them out for it, we can make an effort to clean things up, but at the end of the day, if they aren't doing anything illegal, and if online, are abiding by the rules of the website, what are we supposed to do if they elect not to listen?

 

 

Bronies, as a movement, as a group, whatever, are deeply problematic. There are reasons they are spoken of so negatively, and it has nothing to do with the idea that guys can't like girl things. It has everything to do with a large segment of your community fetishizing a young girls' cartoon, being unable to keep said works in appropriately tagged, hidden, or otherwise safe environment. I do not care if there is a big project to hide that work- that it needs such a group project in the first place is entirely the problem. I applaud you for doing that kind of work- it is, after all, about time the brony community admitted they have a problem with this, but seriously, that this work even exists is... seriously, why does anyone have to explain this???

 

...I never said it was about boys not being allowed to like girly things, I have no idea why you felt the need to address that as if I did.

 

Just as well, it exists for everything. It exists for Pokémon, it exists for Adventure Time, it exists for Batman & Robin, it exists for The Avengers - especially Loki - it exists for Digimon, it exists for Harry Potter, it exists for Transformers, it exists for Frozen, it exists for other children's cartoons, it exists for every single fandom on the internet. That doesn't mean it should just be shrugged at and ignored, which is why, again, a lot of us are making an effort to change it, but acting like it's the cross to bear of a single fandom is flat-out ignorant.

 

I'm not here to defend the fact that people make it because I don't enjoy it and I don't like it, I'm here to say that my opinion is far from the minority in the community.

 

 

From there, you can hem and haw all you want about the goodness of the group because they allow kids to speak first at conventions. In another entry, you had bronies saying that kids shouldn't be at these conventions to begin with, and parents were foolish for allowing their children around such things. But here you talk about kids being welcome and invited and excited- pick one, you can't have both.

 

...Where in the name of all that is holy did I ever say something like that? I have never posted about brony conventions on my blog, I have eleven posts in the MLP thread, none of which are about conventions if I recall properly, I have never said anything remotely close to that. Provide a link if you're going to make a claim like that, because unless I blacked out and posted something crazy last night that I am no longer able to locate, I never said anything of the sort, and If you're going to put words that extreme in my mouth, I'm not interested in having this discussion any further.

 

 

You talk about the erasure of female fans (the "pegasisters"), but the documentary (which I have seen, by the way) does that itself. Two women interviewed- and one only exists to basically pimp her fiance's involvement in the fandom.

 

Things I have called the documentary in the past three days:

• Stupid
• A waste of money
• Dumb
• A poor decision
• Problematic
• Something a lot of us are more embarrassed about than proud of

I'm not sure how much clearer you want me to make it that A. I don't like or agree with the majority of people in the documentary, and B. I'm far from alone in this regard.

 

It's also worth noting that the documentary was made in 2011/12. Two or three years doesn't sound like much of a difference, but the show started in 2010. The documentary was shot early on in the fandom's existence, when most people were still insecure and felt like they had something to prove because of it. The fandom now compared to the fandom when the documentary was made is, aside from the original subject matter, almost completely different. As are most of the people that were in the fandom at the time; I can tell you now that I'm a very different person now about half a year from turning 21, than I was when I got into the show back in 2011 at 17. That goes for a lot of the members of the community; a lot of them started out in the 16-25 demographic, and especially in that age group, three or four years makes people dramatically more mature. It's matured both by a changing makeup of people and by, quite literally, the members of the fanbase maturing.

 

 

And that doesn't even begin to touch on the big blowup over that one blog being shut down. You know which one.

 

I'm well aware of it, and I never enjoyed it personally. If you really want my take on all of that, I'll send you a PM explaining my thoughts on it, but I think both of us are well-aware of why discussing it here isn't exactly an option.

 

 

As for the Young Justice and Green Lantern stuff, Paul Dini has worked on almost every DC show outside of Young Justice for almost two decades. He's won Emmys and numerous awards. He is as industry-insider as it gets when it comes to animation, especially when it comes to superhero shows. While I'll concede he didn't work on Young Justice, the show was clearly modeled after work he and Bruce Timm did on the mainstream DCAU, and his involvement with Green Lantern TAS, and with DC as a whole, speaks volumes to... everyone in every article on the subject except for you, apparently.

 

(Also, to say Young Justice's ratings were bad on their own ignores entirely the way CN handled the airing of the show itself. A year and a half in to the show's running, and they had not finished airing the original 26 episodes, after pausing to air their own in-house shows instead. That's not how you get ratings.)

 

I never said I don't value his words. I feel like the fact that I started my response specifically by saying I value what he has to say about the industry should make that pretty clear that I do. What I did say is that you said that there were numerous quotes from the staff of the show, which there were not. You told me that you were going to paint the fence blue, then painted it purple.

 

If the staff of the show say "We got shut down because they didn't like having girls as fans", that's much different from an industry insider who, as much as he was part of DC and as influential as he is, never touched Young Justice, saying "There's a lot of sexist people in the industry."

 

Considering I said "there is indeed sexism from executives, which I acknowledge now probably did play into the decision more than I originally assumed.", I don't think I'm denying that it played into it. I have also agreed that Cartoon Network mishandled the whole situation, and should have adapted their marketing and merchandising strategies to fit the audience. However to suggest that it was the sole reason, or the primary reason, the show was canceled, is something I think has no basis in facts.

 

Also, I don't know what Young Justice being modeled on Dini's work has to do with anything. I'm not disputing the quality of it, because as I have said before, it was a genuinely good show. The artistic inspiration of it has nothing whatsoever to do with what the producers did or didn't say.

 

 

I never said "only male projects get funded on kickstarter" (that would be silly considering the handful of successful feminist and female-produced content projects I've contributed to myself). Narrow the argument back to the core: when men (bronies) became vocal supporters of something aimed at young girls, the show adapted and made them part of the demographic (I never said they became the core demographic, but as was said in another blog entry by another vocal brony, they are indeed a target demographic that gets catered to intensely).

 

Then explain to me what you meant by saying "When men liked a girls' show, they were able to fund a kickstarter campaign to pat themselves on the back.", because the only meaning I can extrapolate from that is that sexism would make it difficult or impossible for women to do something similar, so if that's not what you were saying, then I'm not getting what you're saying with that.

 

Also, when you say that someone appropriated something and that it now caters to them instead of its original target, that pretty heavily implies that they've become the core demographic.

 

 

When a large vocal female fanbase developed for YJ and GL:TAS, CN execs rationalized that women don't buy product, so they refused to invite those persons into the fandom, and the lack of toy sales was enough to torpedo both shows, as merchandizing supplements the show costs. The bias really runs up to the executive level on both counts. One decided "hey, having dudes like this is good for business, let's run with it" the other decided "hey, having girls so into this is bad for our business, we don't want that."

 

And again, I am not denying that played into it, but I am denying that it was the central motive.

 

 

(Also, the MLP documentary was partly produced by Tara Strong and Lauren Faust, and so the whole "entirely fan-produced and backed" thing isn't true enough to merit the push you're making.)

 

A voice actor is not a member of the creative staff. They're a member of the talent that makes the product what it is, but they're not writing the script, they're not drawing the characters, they're not handling the creation of the ideas behind the show. Considering that's Tara's only career production credit, you can argue how much creative control she was given, simply because it's something she didn't have any prior experience with, when you have experienced producers elsewhere.

 

As for Lauren Faust, the documentary was made after she left the production staff, so at that point she was no longer working on the show. As well, as mentioned by Scanty, she came onto the project after it was fully funded, so it's not like she backed it from the beginning and was a driving force behind the original idea. The original idea for the documentary and the funding for the documentary was all done by members of the fanbase, you can hardly blame them for hiring a producer that was already familiar with the subject matter and was suddenly available.

 

 

You're being disingenuous. The framing of this argument isn't broken- your intent is to protect the group you belong to at all costs. I will gladly admit that it is nice to see a brony who does indeed admit to the problematic areas of the community, but the "not all bronies" thing reads just like the "not all men" meme, and like those who proclaim "but not all men are like that!" it misses the point and just invalidates the feelings of those hurt by that group's actions, and the inactions of those affiliated with that group who won't stand up to it. So kudos to you for taking that stand. I really really mean that. But that doesn't go far enough in acknowledging the misogynistic, ableist, homophobic, etc problems with members of the community.

 

How is an argument that relies on a fundamentally flawed comparison not using broken framing?

 

And do you want to know why I defend the community so vocally?

 

It's not just because, in my experience, the bad eggs are the minority. It's also because I have seen a disturbing amount of vitriol flung at people on a personal, individual level, over it. A friend of mine has been told multiple times on another website, alongside some very colorful language, that he should kill himself because he's a brony. It's worth noting that he has suffered from depression, so it goes without saying how much telling him something like that sets me off. Another friend of mine has been intentionally misgendered and called some very hateful, bigoted phrases over it. Another friend of mine actually had people track her IP and post her address online because she had the nerve to have the same opinions that I do on the subject matter. You can imagine how paranoid she is to express any opinion online now. Another friend that's in the on-campus group has been harassed and called a pedophile because he likes to wear shirts with the ponies on them. He served in Iraq and suffers from PTSD as a result of what happened over there, he watches the show because it helps him cope with the symptoms of it. The thing that helps keep him in control of himself and from reliving those nightmares gets him called a child predator.

 

None of them have ever been part of the problematic area of the fandom. These are innocent people that are ridiculed, harassed, threatened, and intentionally triggered for no reason other than the community they identify with, and they're far from the only ones, they're just the ones I know personally as good friends. I get so riled up about all of this because there are other people like them who are attacked on an individual level by people who think that it's okay to threaten to kill someone over liking a TV show, who think it's acceptable to leak someone's personal information because they disagreed with them. I don't care what anyone in the fandom has done, telling someone recovering from borderline suicidal depression - or anyone for that matter - to go kill themselves, illegally tracking and leaking someone's personal information, intentionally misgendering someone, telling someone that the thing that provides them comfort and quite literally helps keep them sane makes them a pedophile, none of those are acceptable, especially over something as ultimately insignificant as liking a TV show.

 

That's why I get so passionate about this, because I have seen the hurt, I have seen the way that it causes them true emotional distress, because they're genuinely good people who suddenly feel guilty because of the actions of others that they had no control over, and start to question something innocent that they love because of it.

 

Again, while I think it's a significant minority, I make no effort to deny that the bad part of the fandom exists, because it does. But I defend the good part because innocent people get thrown an absolutely disgusting amount of vitriol and bile, and not on an impersonal, general level either, on an individual, one-on-one basis. I see the way these people react and the way these people hurt, and it makes me sick to my stomach.

Little tiny twig floating around while the storm wages on overhead but I am confused on one of these points, the one that keeps bringing up Rule 34. While there certainly seems to be plenty of that in the MLP community, well, I guess the big point here is public availability, rather than its actual existence? Google searches and that. Personally I've never actively sought out such things so I don't know how much that applies, though I am aware of the semi-disturbing trend of anthropomorphic ponies, things that aren't really NSFW but also very clearly show a level of sexualization by the author. That is the sticking point I'd like to make; while I may not agree with DV's overall thesis (which, if I read it right, is "the brony community is flawed and the hate directed towards it is because of its negative parts) (which I'd be more inclined to agree with, incidentally, if I hadn't seen the sheer vitrol of what fundamentalist Kansans have towards that sort of thing) (but I do agree with the flawed part, to a degree), I do feel that the brony community isn't really doing as much for the non-graphic stuff. Enjoy what you want to enjoy in your own time and place, but that stuff is public on places like Tumblr, and can cause the younger children problems.

 

I can't speak much on the topic of homophobia or misogyny in the fanbase, mostly due to lack of knowledge, though I do have to say that the "coming out of the stable" stuff continues to annoy me. Yeah the folks around here might not like men watching little colorful ponies but they have a prioritized scale and to compare one to the other is laughable at best and downright offensive at worst. It is worth noting, though, that I also agree with bits of Necro's thesis, that being that it's a minority, a ten percent ruining it for the other ninety percent. Harder numbers are needed on the subject but I just have not seen the vast problem myself, not unless one goes to sites specifically dedicated for that sort of thing. Tumblr has a problem too, so I've heard, though honestly Tumblr sort of lends itself to the easy posting of such content. I'd like hard, empirical studies, to get proper numbers on this, and not just "I've seen it myself" or "I haven't seen it myself." Maybe some institution will get bored and do it one day.

 

One final note on the vitriol, and one that may get me labeled as "NOT ALL MEN!" but hey, such is life. Innocents do get caught in this crossfire. Go on a noble crusade to rid the community of its filth, I'll support you all the way. Sack a city or two along the way and I'm going get a bit queasy. I have seen, like Necro, people be lambasted for merely liking the show. As far as I'm aware, despite the fact that I occasionally watch it with my sister, I have yet to become some sexualized freak. If I am, it was probably from something before MLP, trust me. Judging a community is fine. Judging people based on the community is not. A topic* that immediately comes to mind, especially since I'm following a peep on Tumblr that does it all the time, is the bi/gay dichotomy. There is a strong sentiment in the gay and lesbian community, which has been documented and recorded, as well as been put out by popular members of the community like Dan Savage, that bisexuals either do not exist, are merely confused, or worse, traitors to the cause. This is disturbing as a bisexual, and I've had to deal with it in my own local community, one of the reasons I left the local LGBT group for the local GSA. At the same time, though, when I see a gay person my first thought isn't "oh god he's one of those people who don't believe bisexuality is a thing." But people do! One of the Tumblr blogs I follow has made "monosexual hate" a meme, and actively spouts it off, with a great deal of support.

 

Similarly (though not equivalently, mind), I have to raise an eyebrow at the antics I occasionally see on Tumblr, where individuals, not the community, are attacked, and not for their individual deeds. I have even seen it occasionally in the non-internet world. People can and have been driven to suicide by this. I cannot support any movement that will not acknowledge this fact, and maybe then decide for a more surgical approach, rather than just bulldozing everyone out of their way.

 

tl;dr I'm a nice guy and I don't like people yelling at each other, my family does that enough that I don't need any extra in my life. I think both sides could stand to to hear each other out a bit more, I support glorious crusades against internet filth, but I'd also like to avoid sacking any cities along the way.

 

_{*no this is not an equivalent topic in terms of severity, I rather care about this a lot more than the problems of bronies, but it's the best thing I could come up with at the time.}

Alright. Where do I start on this?

I’m just going to ignore the wider ideologies at play here in favor of explaining my own observations on the brony community, observations that tend to support DeeVee’s overall point. I’ve had the rather unique opportunity to observe the spread of the brony meme on not one but three websites, with intensive community discussion in at least one of the three, followed by my own research into parts of the brony community. I’ve interviewed one of the first bronies on one of these websites, I’ll be calling this brony Subject Zero. Because it sounds cool. Subject Zero provided me with insight into the first days of the fandom and it would appear that the initial fandom was notable for the near-complete lack of certain materials, but was in fact a reaction to the gritty, grimdark entertainment that had become prevalent during the period of the shows initial airing.

At worst, this is indicative of a tendency to hide away from the nature of reality and that, by itself, is only harmful to the one who is doing the hiding. Even then, that aspect probably wasn’t overly common or was merely one factor in why they enjoyed the show. Subject Zero noted that this viewpoint was more than a little harsh but didn’t seem overly offended, indicating that it was probably true for some aspects of the brony community. Then, as the meme spread, reached more people, the brony community began to degenerate, to the point where people like Subject Zero left the fandom in disgust. I’ve made my own inquiries as to the current status of the community…and I am inclined to agree with Subject Zero on its current nature.

The current makeup the community, based on observations of fan websites, general forum posts (BZP has, for clear reasons, mostly avoided the worst of it, other websites were less lucky) and common types of fanfiction indicate that the current brony community is ill, severely so. To a degree that certain types of fanfic aren’t just common, but a major selling point for many fan websites. Other websites that have similar policies to BZP weren’t immune, in part due to the lax approach taken to enforcing the rules. It got to the point where a moderator was given the sole job of purging the websites creative writing section of the culture that had taken hold of it. It was a mixed success at first, but I am given to understand their efforts eventually succeeded, if only by the noted decrease in the mention of certain materials, one can still find remnants however.

I’ve also noted a strong anti-human ideology in parts of the fandom, that pops almost wherever one finds bronies-it’s not uncommon to find fanfiction where humans are destroyed by the “morally righteous” ponies or otherwise proven inferior to them, indicating that the relatively innocent escapism that led some to the fandom has also mutated, into a virulent feeling that the world depicted within the show is innocent and superior, whereas Earth and one’s fellow man are, at best, seen as unwittingly evil. It has gotten to the point where one can easily find fanfiction depicting the destruction of humanity, popular flagship fanfictions, it should be noted.

Based on what I’ve seen, BZP’s brony community is innocuous and nonmalignant, as was the brony community at first. I won’t speak much on the gender breakdown of bronies, I’ve seen men and I’ve seen women, but the males did appear more common on most websites. I don’t think this effected the corruption of the fandom however, as the gender ratio changed very little on the websites I observed-I.E pre-corruption and post-corruption. I don’t think the current state of the brony community was inevitable-spreading to more people is often a positive thing for fandoms, it is not that the community spread to more people, but rather the areas in which it spread that led to its current state. I’m not going to be naming names here, for clear reasons, as the websites involved are in no sense BZP appropriate.

The only conclusion I’m comfortable in drawing beyond that, is that DeeVee is almost certainly right about the reasons the fandom is viewed with distaste-in its current state at least-speaking from my own observations and feelings on the matter, the reason I have distaste for the fandom isn’t that it’s men, predominately young men, expressing a love of multicolored equines, but rather that the fandom is, taken together, largely degenerate and such as. Perhaps there is a silent majority of bronies out there, just as disgusted as I am, but based on Subject Zero I’m inclined to believe most of them left.

*Note, the use of degenerate here is used in the sense of "degenerating from intial status of the fandom", not in the old-fashined moral degeneration sense, I prefer not to make value judgements on such things. The problem isn't that they exist-but rather that young children, both male and female can be exposed to them with relative ease, due to their virulent presence within the brony fandom.