The neighbor boy who plays with my daughter doesn’t much care for the MLP ponies. Except for Rainbow Dash.
This seems to be a really common thing for young kids. Applejack and Dash are both tomboys and voiced by the same person. AJ has a deeper register, though maybe her long blonde hair gives it away? Dash’s voice never struck me as overly masculine, just cracky. Like she needs some cough syrup.
Bit of a stretch. Rarity wants to climb the social ladder, but only in her field of expertise. She knows she isn’t good at leading a band of heroes to go on a quest. Not really her style. Maybe in more of a day to day sorta thing she could try to be bossy. Like if you tried to plan out a day she’d only want to do her stuff.
Rainbow Dash I could see being the rebel and trying to wrest control away from Twilight. Stereotypical jock vs. nerd dynamic, Dash could get tired of Twilight being too analytical or not tough enough, and Dash has a galactic sized ego. I’m honestly kinda surprised they never explored that in the show.
Even before that, she was the best at magic and knew her legends and general lore and problem solving. Plus she was hand picked by Celestia to be her special student, which gives her a huge bump in status. This is another reason Rarity wouldn’t challenge Twilight too much. She’s obsessed with Canterlot and royalty. When they first meet and she learns Twilight grew up there she flips out. There’s an episode where she thanks Celestia and literally falls on the ground and kisses her feet.
Not really. Spike is the only regular reoccurring male protagonist that isn’t a cardboard cutout. Discord is pretty awesome, but he’s been in what, six episodes out of 90 or whatever. There are some fun male characters, but they tend to be one shots.
Sure it is, the Cake babies were named right away. Pumpkin and Pound.
The best example for the weird name thing is Twilight. Oh, her coat is a twilight color, fair enough. Oh wait, Twilight united the moon and sun sisters again. Day, night, twilight…can’t escape that fantasy destiny.
I guess, but they’re not much of a race numbers wise. Most of the nobles in Canterlot seem to be unicorns looking down their noses on the rest of Equestria.
I always knew Rainboy was a girl. (Because her name is rainbow.) wasn’t so sure about Applejack.
We had the toys before we watched the show.
I haven’t seen enough episodes to know how often Spike appears. I assume, as Twilight’s sidekick, he gets quite a bit of screen time. He seems like a bit of a slapstick/punchline character though. When he’s around he’s usually getting squished, exploded or forgotten.
There’s absolutely nothing sexist in and of itself about a mono-gendered (or predominately mono-gendered) show. The argument is that shows overwhelmingly only revolve around boys or men (and often white ones).
It’s not sexist that the Transformers, in specific, are basically all guys, it is sexist that almost every major show with attention and a budget, including Transformers, predominately revolved around guys.
Well… okay, I’m sure if you try you can find plenty of feminists that argue that a show with only boys is sexist in and of itself, regardless of cultural context, but I strongly disagree with them and I think a lot of feminists do.
The Transformers was a 1980s show, wasn’t it?
I grew up on Scooby Doo and The Brady Bunch, so The Transformers was after my time, but so far as I know, there are no just about boys anymore.
I’d argue that Big McIntosh stands out as distinctive.
While he gets to be the butt of the joke pretty often, that’s true of the other main characters as well. Their characters are far from perfect–among them and at various times, they’re brash, stubborn, fussy, melodramatic, workaholic, and experience nearly crippling anxieties and deep insecurities. Which, of course, leads to enough hijinks that most of the main characters get a turn at being the Butt Monkey. Spike gets the role most often, it’s true–but Twilight got it for a particularly brutal episode full of Coyote/Roadrunner-esque slapstick.
Conversely, Spike is rather lazy, has a goofy crush, and tends to get dragged along by Twilight’s enthusiasms (or panic), but in many ways, he’s the Only Sane Dragon. He often manages to keep his head when the others are acting wackier than usual, so he gets chances to call them on it and/or mock them. (Among other things, he’s the one who gets to temporarily nickname Applejack after another alcoholic beverage.)
I wonder how hard the writers of the show thought about this premise. Consider one shot characters like Berry Punch and Silver Shill. Diamond Tiara is supposed to be the bully, but I can’t help feeling sorry for her. With a name like that she’s doomed to be a snob her entire life.
I love this show, but I find it’s easier not to think too hard about such things.
Cute as a criticism it is, it’s really just a fiction thing. Poor Remus Lupin was doomed to be a werewolf the moment his birth certificate was signed.
Sorry, I should have been clearer and actually explained what I was talking about. I’ve heard fan theories that attempt to explain the Cutie Mark/Name thing by suggesting that the names ponies go by when young are different to the names they go by when they get their Cutie Marks.
It can make a lot of sense if you don’t think about it too much but, as I said, it’s directly contradicted in one episode.
Well, she may not be bossy or stuck-up, but she’s certainly worstponi.
Seriously, am I the only one who remembers that “stubborn as a mule” joke and immediately had to think “that’s a racist joke”? Like, not just racist against mules, but as in the mule is supposed to be a surrogate for blacks? Not that the writers were racist, but that that was the parody they were going for?
Pretty sure it’s her cutie mark…
Wouldn’t surprise me. That pony breaks the fourth wall more often than Bugs Bunny. Plus, you know, super saiyan (warning: NSFW, kind of horrible, very fun :D).
Well, there are three things I see that get in the way of this: she’s the element of loyalty, she’s not the brightest, and she’s too cool. Most of her stories have been about her abandoning her friends, rather than taking over them. She’s never interested in taking over, more just leaving because she’s “too cool”. It wouldn’t fit her character well.
OT: I’m with JRagon. It’s a show targeted at girls to market toys, so obviously most of the main cast is going to be girls. However, they don’t pull the “reverse smurfs” and just throw in one or two token male characters; there are a large variety of male characters playing various roles. Not really any major roles, but you still get a lot of different personalities, from Hoity Toity to Big Mac to Mr. Cake to Discord to Iron Will to whatshisname from the Wonderbolts - nothing token or necessarily stereotypical (except Bulk Biceps, who gets a pass because awesome). It handles sexism incredibly well, in my eyes. If a predominately male-targeted show did the reverse, I’d be really, really impressed by that as well.
Just boys… I’m not sure, I can’t think of one. But all boys and a single girl? Based just on what my girls have watched, (and especially in what they watch with their friends who are boys),“The Smurfette” is alive and well.
Transfomers: Rescue Bots
PAW Patrol
Lego Ninjago
…
From what little I’ve seen of those shows, there seems to be a team with “The Smart One”, “The Strong One”, “The ___ One”, “The ___ One”, and… The Girl. As if being a girl is the only character trait she needs. That’s arguably worse than having no girls at all.
Now, granted, my girls watch a lot more “girls’ shows,” and for the most part (previously mentioned Strawberry Shortcake aside) they do a pretty decent job of focusing on girls while having multiple male characters that aren’t just “The Boy”. (I’m thinking about Sofia the First, the Tinkerbell movie series, Angelina Ballerina, Barbie: Life in the Dreamhouse, etc.) And even the shows they watch with more male characters than female tend to have at least 2 different girls nowadays (Backyardigans, Octocnauts, etc.). And the one they watch with only 1 girl in the main cast (Jake and the Neverland Pirates) has multiple recurring female side characters. (Besides, in a team of 3 people and a parrot, 1 girl /3 boys is within a standard deviation of average)
So based purely on what my kids watch, and my memories of what I watched, things have come decently far since the 80’s in terms of gender balance on kids’ shows, but it seems that at least some of the “boys’ shows” are still likely to assume their viewers can’t handle more than one girl in the cast.
Does “Regular Show” have any regular female characters?
Ay’up…
I know nothing of the other two, but Paw Patrol has two main characters who are girls: Sky, and Zooma. (Pay Patrol was Daughter’s fav before MLP.)
I haven’t paid that close attention to that show, but I’m pretty sure Zuma’s a boy, and Wikipedia agrees:
IIRC, SpongeBob Squarepants has a main cast that’s almost entirely male, with the exception of the squirrel Sandy.
There is a King, but he was a King of another nation and was deposed before the time period of the show, so it’s not exactly the same, but still you can point to a king.
It is interesting how there don’t seem to be many parents around the show, but there are ponies who are siblings and there is also pony dating and marriage, so it seems to be implied that parents do exist. Maybe pony culture is different and children leave home at an early age, maybe there was a war and most of the previous generation was killed, be creative.
Ey-yup!
Big Macintosh is one of the most commonly recurring male ponies, but there are others in the show, including Shining Armor and Hoity Toity.
Also, there’s one episode where Apple Bloom and her Cutie Mark Crusader friends actually try to administer a love potion to Big Macintosh (Apple Bloom’s big brother) in order to ship him with Cheerilee, who is administered her own dose.
She’s a tomboy, a girl who has some stereotypical masculine mannerisms or interests. But she’s definitely a girl. Some shippers (well, most shippers, lol) treat her as a lesbian.
[sub]The following shouldn’t be taken for actual outright hostility towards LinusK, but it IS something that made me raise my eyebrows a bit and feel :dubious: [/sub]
I find this quite interesting. You think Rarity is bossy and stuck up because that’s just how she looks to you, despite your kid correcting you. And then you figure out a way to have your way and keep playing her as the “bad” pony, even though the element of harmony (aka a characteristic of being a good person and good friend; each of the main ponies embodies a different element) that Rarity embodies is generosity.
Sounds to me like you could benefit from watching the show a bit, since you haven’t learned not to judge someone based on how they “look”, yet. 