@Background Pony #74AA
…Discord is a complete gag character who didn’t actually do anything all that harmful.
I think you forgot how things were before Discord was reformed. Now he is a gag character, but before there were any possibility of reformation, he was the scariest mofo of them all. Sure he only wanted a laugh and chaos, but at expence of everyone and everything. Driving entire population of Equestria into madness. That looks pretty harmful to me. Season 2 opening two parter is actually kinda dark at parts.
Also people loved to hate Diamond Tiara before she was reformed. There were some sympathisers, but they were a minority. And many of the character you named (Blueblood, Garble, Gladmane, Neighsay, ect) never actually were reformed, they were just sort of “dealt with”.
I’m not sure if you are onto something here or just seeing things you expect to see. In my opinion it comes down to likability of the character, and females are generally cuter(just by the nature of their appearence), so they are by default more liked in this fandom that thrives on cute things.
@Background Pony #74AA
Ok, you’ve got a point but still Discord is a complete gag character who didn’t actually do anything all that harmful. And I was talking about how the comments on pictures especially punishment pictures always use excuses for the females behavior but never for the males.
They don’t seem to take a step back. On Diamond Tiara or Gilda or Trixie they excused their behaviour as well. Trixie initially also was condescending like Blueblood and also abused Rarity (making her ugly) but because of the way she was presented it was a lot more acceptable.
Blueblood falls more in our understanding of a bad male who is bad to women and therefor needs to be hated. And imagine a Neighsay that is charismatic like Trixie instead of a strawman for (male) bigots.
I think what it comes down to is that we like to link bad things more to males and good things more to females. The show itself is guilty of that to a degree as well.
I mean they don’t reform male characters except for gag characters (Discord) while also having lots of these potential male hate sinks (Garble, Gladmane etc.) for the ratio of male characters they actually have. So I guess I kind of agree with you?
Maybe, it has more to do with the way males and females can be portrayed in our modern media by the writers due to our expectation of how they will act and what they will do wrong?
And that will also cause our response to their behaviour.
@FlonnesIkramant
Not really. Neighsay and Blueblood where just petty and unpleasant. Before Season 5, Diamond Tiara was much the same and she’s just a filly. Chrysalis is a major antagonist. The sort of grandiose, dramatically evil things she does are accepted because they’re further removed from what we’re familiar with. If she didn’t do evil things, she wouldn’t be much of a villain.
By contrast, Bluebloods snobbery and Neighsay’s bigotry arouse a more visceral repulsion because there are people like them in reality. They’re the sort of character you could actually meet and be on the receiving end of. That’s why you don’t see the same vitriol against, for instance, Discord.
@mana the immortal
Ever notice how people only really say these things when the character is female. If it was Neighsay or Blueblood getting punished you would be all over it demanding more even tho they did less and you could apply the same excuse to them.
We are biologically hardwired to sympathize a lot more with females and be angry at the males independent of what they actually did. It really shows in peoples comments to pictures on this site.
