It’s really sad that they made a DSM-5/mental illness joke in the My Little Pony comics (Yeah, I can’t believe it either).
The context of this picture is that in issue 65 of the MLP: FIM comic, Princess Celestia disguised herself as a regular pony to listen to her subjects’ honest opinions of her and her work (with good intentions). She used an amulet that had a magical ability to disguise its wearer. Someone steals the amulet in the comic and she goes to Twilight Sparkle for help while still not looking like her normal self. Twilight doesn’t believe her at first and the comic makes a joke about her and Starlight Glimmer believing she’s neurodivergent. The book titled “DSM” is a reference to the DSM-5, which is used to diagnose mental disorders. Starlight asking about a “delusion of grandeur” is a reference to psychosis, particularly people who experience delusions.
So they made a joke out of mentally disabled people and a book of diagnostic criteria that has major problems with contributing to oppression and medicalization, and keep in mind that this is a comic based on a KID’S CARTOON about colorful, happy ponies. This is so messed up, and it’s disappointing to see mentally disabled people made into nothing but a disrespectful “joke” yet again.
Actually, I shouldn’t be surprised considering the actual cartoon had a mentally ill character named “Screwy” or “Screw Loose” (depending on which merchandise you look at) in an episode. And not only is that a fucked up, completely ableist name, but this is how the cartoon portrayed her:
The hospital security guard even chases her out of the scene. This is how she’s shown in the merchandise:
The only speaking role she ever had was barking like a dog. And it’s worth noting that the only times she is ever depicted with a shred of humanity and compassion is in background scenes of the show when she is either designed to be visibly physically disabled/injured or abled (after the scene in the linked video, she is only ever a background character, so the show’s crew didn’t care about consistency).
What’s even worse is that she wasn’t even in the script of the episode I linked. The storyboard artist WENT OUT OF THEIR WAY and CHOSE to add her to the scene. And then the rest of the people who worked on the show as well as Hasbro okayed it. They literally decided “You know what? Let’s throw some ableism in there!” when storyboarding the scene.
And of course, there are some infamously ableist portrayals of mentally ill people even with the main characters:
The way Pinkie Pie immediately snaps back into mentally abled mode makes it seem like mental illness is just something that can be gotten rid of at will.
So yeah, I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised about the ableist joke against neurodivergent people in the comics.
It’s really sad that they made a DSM-5/mental illness joke in the My Little Pony comics (Yeah, I can’t believe it either).
The context of this picture is that in issue 65 of the MLP: FIM comic, Princess Celestia disguised herself as a regular pony to listen to her subjects’ honest opinions of her and her work (with good intentions). She used an amulet that had a magical ability to disguise its wearer. Someone steals the amulet in the comic and she goes to Twilight Sparkle for help while still not looking like her normal self. Twilight doesn’t believe her at first and the comic makes a joke about her and Starlight Glimmer believing she’s neurodivergent. The book titled “DSM” is a reference to the DSM-5, which is used to diagnose mental disorders. Starlight asking about a “delusion of grandeur” is a reference to psychosis, particularly people who experience delusions.
So they made a joke out of mentally disabled people and a book of diagnostic criteria that has major problems with contributing to oppression and medicalization, and keep in mind that this is a comic based on a KID’S CARTOON about colorful, happy ponies. This is so messed up, and it’s disappointing to see mentally disabled people made into nothing but a disrespectful “joke” yet again.
One of the only times they ever had a fat pony design and it's a background character they gave a hamburger cutie mark and one of the main characters shoves candy in his mouth. And that's not to mention the most egregious fatphobia they had in the show:
This was an actual joke character in an episode that they used for comedic relief. The fatphobia in the episode was bad enough, but as you can see fans continued the fatphobia with "jokes" like this (the classism here too). Some fans named her "Diabetty" because diabetes is apparently just a joke and "the fat person disease." Someone made a human design of her, and somehow this design is even worse than if they had made her disproportionately fat
Just say out loud that you don't consider fat bodies to be human. You're already screaming it with this art.
I'm so fucking tired of the constant neverending fatphobia in this world. You can't even escape it when watching a show about happy colorful horses because society teaches the hatred of fat people from day one.
Fan artists: I shall allow ONE (1) of my redesigns/humanizations of the MLP mane six to be fat. Which one should I choose?
Fan artists: Should I choose the main character who becomes a princess and a powerful ruler?
Fan artists: Should I choose the strong character known for her work ethic?
Fan artists: Should I choose the generous character known for her fashion, beauty, and talent?
Fan artists: Should I choose the fast character known for being athletic, courageous, and fit?
Fan artists: Should I choose the shy character known for being dainty, feminine, innocent, and pure?
Fan artists: Or should I choose the character who's associated with baking, food, desserts, sugar, making a fool of herself for the sake of others, is the designated comedic relief of every episode, whose literal element of harmony is laughter, who has arguably the least developed personality of any of the other characters, and who some people think of as annoying?
Fan artists already picking the color pink in their digital art program: Hmmm...I wonder which one I'll decide...
(At this point I'm not even reblogging MLP redesigns/humanizations where the only fat character is Pinkie Pie anymore. Though honestly the most egregious offenders are the artists who purposefully draw their human designs with every single aspect of body diversity and every oppressed identity in the book EXCEPT fatness. Just save your time and simply tell us you hate fat people instead of spending 8 hours to accomplish the same goal.)
I was rewatching some clips of Steven Universe and My Little Pony generation 4, two shows that helped me survive my teenage years when I was suicidal from abuse and a broken family, and just...rewatching them made me break into tears as I remembered how monumental the representation was in these shows and how much they helped me. The queer people who complain about Steven Universe nowadays must have such a luxury of amazing queer representation because Steven Universe did more for queer people than any other show had done before it. And I especially hate all of the people in the queer community, in my community, who hate on the show when they have way more positive queer representation than myself as a fat person.
Steven Universe was the first time I was ever able to see a fat woman allowed to be feminine and beautiful and loved and wanted by others and in no way made into a stereotype. Not even her powers were based on her fatness. They were the complete opposite with how her powers even involved floating. It was the first show I had ever seen to have more than just one fat character, more than just one positive fat character, where the villain wasn’t the only fat representation, where there were dozens and dozens of fat characters in the show because so many unique bodies were represented. The main cast itself included multiple fat characters (Rose Quartz, Amethyst, Greg, Steven). The MAIN CHARACTER was fat! Even characters who weren’t fat had varied body types and weren’t all just stick thin. All of the thin queer people who hate the show years later, I envy you that you have more positive representation than I have ever had in my entire fucking life to the point that you can turn your back on Steven Universe.
The show represented different types of abuse and topics like codependence, loss, found family, disability (physical and mental), parental love, interracial love, sibling love, imperfect human beings, trauma, and a thousand other topics that deserve importance. It’s the only time I have ever seen a canon intersex character. There was a queer WEDDING in a CHILDREN’S CARTOON. There was so much queer representation that the show had to be censored in other countries. You have to be careful watching old clips of the show on YouTube because the clips uploaded by the UK branch of Cartoon Network are still censored. It’s documented how much Rebecca Sugar had to fight and fight and fight to be able to tell the story she wanted to tell in all of its inclusiveness. And she even kicked the censors in the face by purposefully having Ruby wear a wedding dress so that all of the countries who had made her a boy in order to keep Ruby and Sapphire straight now couldn’t deny their queerness. And seeing a character who has always been masculine and strong allowed to be feminine, for me who grew up never being allowed to be a “real woman” because my fatness meant I was masculine, that moment hit me hard. I had never seen that before in all of my years being misgendered and degendered by the world.
And with My Little Pony, it sadly didn’t have fat representation, but I completely forgot that the writers had fought tooth and nail to not only make one of the main characters’ guardians a queer couple (she had two aunts who looked after her since her parents were gone), but they had even taken a show with six female main characters and made two of them in a relationship in the finale. It wasn’t just side characters. Two of the main characters who were in hundreds of episodes and beloved by so many people, so many children, were married in the end. A kid’s show by HASBRO had queer couples in it because the staff of the show did whatever they had to do in order to include that representation. The show also had a disabled main character, a main character whose parents had died, strong female characters who exemplified countless positive traits that women are not always represented as, and so much more.
The shows had some flaws (especially MLP, I can 100% say there were times that the show was frustrating), but they made such monumental progress at the same time. And for me, they helped keep me alive during such dark years of my life. When I begged my mom for emotional support (saying those two words exactly) because I was mentally ill and wanted to die, and when she literally told me to stop trying to “change her personality” and find emotional support somewhere else, I had colorful, happy horses and loved characters who looked like me for once to help me smile for a little bit. I will always be thankful for these two shows, and especially for how much Steven Universe did for fat and queer kids during its run. You will never be able to take that away from me.
I had a tradition for a while where I would make jackolanterns with my uncle (I would design and draw on the pumpkin, and he would carve it). We haven't been able to make them in years though due to me moving, but these were the jackolanterns we did. The designs are the big bad wolf and the three little pigs, Pinkie Pie, and a demon. Carving tiny pumpkins is a challenge
Apparently even My Little Pony has to stereotype the single fat character in the show’s entire universe.
(Context: In one of the new episodes released today, they of course made the character most vocal about hating “healthy” food the single fat pony. They even made him the only character eating the “unhealthy” food. Gotta start the hatred of fat people at a young age!)
Am I the only one who thinks the two villains in the new MLP generation are very...off? I haven’t seen all of the episodes that just released today, but like...these two characters are the only characters I’ve seen that very undeniably have features of darkskinned people of color.
I can’t think of any other characters with hair like this. At all.
And this is the only character with a very dark coat color. Every other character’s coat is light. The only other character I can think of with a coat color that’s not very light is Sprout, but even then he is also a villain and his coat still isn’t this dark.
I hope I’m reading too much into this, but this was extremely obvious to me as soon as I saw the characters. Does anyone else see this too?
