Discussion UnfortunateImplications / WesternAnimation

I know it's controversial, but there was a lot of Internet Backdraft from Mako's behavior in The Legend Of Korra. When the people who made the show were asked about why he got away with cheating and ignoring his girlfriend for another girl, they replied that he was just a normal teenage guy. This would imply that the average teenage guy would cheat on his girlfriend without remorse and then deny it. I don't want to start a flame war or an edit war over this, I just want to bring this up. Does anyone else support this?

How is Mr. Krabs a Jewish Stereotype exactly? If no one can give me a good example, i'm going to remove it.

Can someone tear down this unholy pile of Thread Mode, please?

• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic examples:
  • Rarity apparently doesn't like Mules, or at least believes they're ugly and "old". To some that comes off as Fantastic Racism, though in context it is clearly simply another piece of Insane Troll Logic Rarity uses to annoy the Diamond Dogs.
  • On the subject of Fantastic Racism, plenty of other animals are shown to possess the same level of sapience as ponies, and yet are distinctly lower in the social order. Cows and pigs are kept in barns, and sheep are herded and corralled just like "real" sheep. ("You could have just asked" says one of the sheep immediately before the gate of what is effectively their cage is slammed in their face.) It comes away as a mixture of Fantastic Racism and Happiness in Slavery.
  • Pinkie Pie's family, as seen in "The Cutie Mark Chronicles", is apparently based on Amish communities and paints a rather unflattering stereotype of them being drab, joyless, and humorless. That Pinkie Pie is almost certainly an Unreliable Narrator (she ends her story with "And that's how Equestria was made!", and later says "Maybe next time I'll tell you about how I got my cutie mark.") partially negates the issue, however.
  • The episode "Over a Barrel" had plenty of unfortunate implications:
    • The Fantasy Native Americans are a different species from our pony protagonists. That might just be because there are no equines native to the Americas, none that were extant at the time of European settlers at least.
    • The buffalos' complaints can seem very minor and silly. They insist they wanted the land cleared primarily so they could stampede upon it, as it is tradition. While the settlers are clearly trespassing, they need the land to grow food so that they can survive. Needless to say, in the realistic counterpart to this conflict, the natives had a much more dire plight.
    • The episode depicts one of the nastier conflicts in human history as a pie-throwing fight, which ends when the chief buffalo decides that his opponents' weapons are quite tasty, and he doesn't mind sharing some of his people's land with the settlers in exchange for more pie. To be fair, there was a good deal of Executive Meddling with the show and the creators had trouble even getting minor conflict in; the pie fight was possibly the most they could do.
    • The simple fact that the episode ends happily with the buffalo and the settler ponies living in harmony. The real life version of that story ended somewhat differently. However, this can be chalked up to the idealistic tone of the series allowing the two sides to compromise with only small difficulty.
  • The lesson at the end of "Feeling Pinkie Keen" was basically "Don't try and understand how things work", which was even worse given that it's spoken by the resident bookworm. That there could have been far better lessons which fit the events of the episode (such as "Just because you don't understand something doesn't mean it isn't real", or "You should have faith in you friends") doesn't help matters either.
  • Spike's relative age, lack of formal schooling and status as Twilight's "research assistant" (as well as whatever else she might need) has some people bringing up child labor issues.
  • Sapphire Shores's voice actress essentially makes her the pony equivalent of a Sassy Black Woman. For those who don't know, "Sapphire" is a pejorative term for... a Sassy Black Woman.
  • While still beloved by many, Derpy Hooves' characterization in "The Last Roundup" comes across as rather ableist to some - starting with the fact that "derp" is uncommonly used as an ableist slur and going on to depict Derpy as extremely klutzy and air-headed to the point of beindg destructive (though she always means well).
    • Some of these accusations were based on Derpy's voice, saying it was "slurred" and similarly stereotypical; however, it was revealed later that the voice actress had mistakenly thought Derpy was male.
    • Ironically, the Orwellian Retcon of the iTunes version, which removes the deep voice and uncrosses her eyes in most scenes, is arguably more offensive, as to some viewers it gives off the Accidental Aesop that mentally-challenged people are abnormal and must be "fixed".
    • In the same episode, Applejack ran away to work for a pony with a classic "Old West madam" character design and who owned a cherry farm.
  • Especially in the show's early days, some criticised Rainbow Dash for the fact that the rainbow pony is the tomboyish one, which, given that rainbows are associated with the Gay Pride movement, make her look like a Butch Lesbian stereotype. Lauren Faust was quick to clarify her true intentions with the character, and also pointed out that there are masculine straight girls and feminine lesbians, so to assume she is lesbian is itself offensive.
  • The episode "Dragon Quest" has Spike adopt a baby Phoenix named "Peewee" towards the end. The episode tries to imply that it's a parallel between how Spike was Happily Adopted as an egg and how he plans to care for Peewee as well. The problem? Unlike Spike, whose parents are unknown, Spike is well-aware of who Peewee's parents are and could simply find them and return him to them. This makes the implication that "kidnapping is OK as long as you plan to raise the child yourself." Um...
    • Likewise, one of the main conflicts of the episode is Spike wanting to learn more about his dragon heritage. Fair enough. The problem is that the only dragons Spike interacts with are a bunch of teenage bullies and the episode implies that all dragons (apart from Spike) act like this. Considering the Real Life tensions regarding cultural differences and the stereotyping of various cultures as "evil", this isn't exactly a good way to teach kids about how "What you are doesn't determine who you are".
    • The episode also implies that the only reason why Spike is "good" compared to other dragons is that he was adopted and raised by ponies. Much like the above, this is unsettlingly reminiscent of Real Life ideologies that that one will only be "good" if raised by the "right people" (or ponies in this case).
  • The episode "Secret Of My Excess" has Spike growing larger and more powerful due to being greedy, and Zecora reveals that this is a normal part of a dragon's growth. The awkwardness comes from when the episode treats this as if it were a bad thing. Several members of the fandom were quick to point out similarities between this and how people who (try) to keep wild animals as pets often attempt to hinder said animal's natural instincts to make them "tame".

Wow. This page REALLY needs to be cleaned up. A lot of "This troper" this and "I don't like" that.

There have been multiple attempts to add an example from My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic. One episode involves the cast reacting with suspicion towards a zebra (who has an African accent, speaks psuedo-Swahili, and uses tribal customs), which looks like Fantastic Racism. However, people have argued against it, as the entire point of her episode is to address racism, and the cast learns that their behavior was wrong. Personally, I'm for not keeping it: context kind of means everything in this case.

Thanks for the Avatar movie clean up.

Doktor von Eurotrash: Funny as the picture is, it's not really appropriate for this section as it hits against the movie adaptation rather than the cartoon.

EDIT: OK, changed now.