The regular (non-problematic) fandom also never really went away. There are still plenty of MLP related fanfic sites, discord servers, forum sites, subreddits, YouTube creators, etc. out there. It definitely isn’t talked as much about outside of those spaces, but it’s still fairly active.

IIRC Fallout Equestria was by a queer woman, and was almost-endearingly-cringe edgy slop clumsily playing with themes of cycles of violence and also queer repression and alienation.

You're thinking of the later fanfic someone else wrote in the Fallout Equestria setting: Project Horizons. That was the weird edgelord coomer one.

The Brony fandom is a land of contrasts

Gender variant interests being related to pedophilia is a deeply reactionary take

Wasn't there a struggle session about this like two and a half years ago? Are there really still Hexbears who have these sorts of deeply weird brainworms around not letting people enjoy cartoons? Honestly this is straight up the weirdest form of the brainworm I've seen. It reads like "Successful BREEDERS will be rewarded with the right to play with legos. Please be good and BREED." wtf

What if I don't want to have kids but still want to play with legos and visit dinosaur museums?

Te reason people got creeped out by Michael Jackson was the pedophilia. The fact that the amusement park stuff was a way to lure in kids is the problem, not that he liked carousels.

I seriously doubt it is. Conservative Bronies are really like this, forever stuck in this liminal space between self discovery and self loathing

(This comment is completely improvised pulling-out-my-ass-ery)

So to understand bronies we first need to lay the groundwork of the cultural significance of the pony in Western culture circa 1980, when the first generation of MLP started. This cultural significance is rooted in the broad obsolescence of the horse as a working animal as a result of mechanization, specializing equestrianism more into a sport and a hobby. Several factors contributed to equestrianism becoming a comparatively feminine-perceived activity, related to the increasing accessibility of equestrianism to the petty bourgeoisie and increasing freedom of petty bourgeois women. It goes without saying that the gender aspect was always a major part of brony culture, offering for many a space to explore their genders. In this capacity FiM was "lightning in a bottle", arriving at precisely the right moment in history when advances in LGBT+ rights and recognition had left many people needing exactly such a space, and girls' cartoons had generally been neglected by networks for many years. The species of the "nazi brony" should be understood in the same manner as nazis who engage in any other feminine-perceived interest, e.g. nazi K-On fans or nazi crossdressers.

To understand bronies we also need a firm understanding of the contradictions of anthropocentrism: this will help us understand why fictional stories about talking animals, and cases of humans roleplaying as animals, has been such a common trope throughout much of human history, expressing the deep-seated anxieties and instabilities around humans' exploitation of animals. Brony culture in particular is in many regards a "fusion" of furry and anime otaku cultures, so understanding the roots of both these subcultures will help us understand the origins of bronies, too, as will understanding 4chan culture circa 2010 more broadly.

Escapism and capitalist alienation are also vital concepts here: Even if workers cannot express it consciously, they are often led to fixations on "childish" interests out of a desire to return to an age before they felt the boot of capitalist exploitation on their necks, out of a desire to "catch children in the rye" or even out of an envy of children. The Land of Equestria in particular offers a fixed and familiar, yet flexible, world for workers to escape into, with its own norms and rules. The cartoon itself, Friendship is Magic, has many episodes focused almost entirely on side characters, so we could refer to FiM as a "setting-focused work" as opposed to a "character-focused work": FiM's format is particularly welcoming to original characters and fan fiction. See also Harry Potter, Star Wars and Touhou Project among others for other examples of setting-focused works with large fandoms. Fan fiction oftentimes satisfies to some extent a proletarian desire for control over our own culture, free from the shackles of copyright; however Hasbro more than Team Shanghai Alice has certainly proven to be more antagonistic to fan labor.

The fall-off in bronies' popularity happened in two stages, the first stage occurring in 2013 (Twilicorn + Equestria Girls scandals) and the second occurring in 2019 (end of FiM). In the simplest terms, bronies were in many ways a "fad", no different from any other fad: people got into it because the fandom gave them opportunities for connection, if not people to market to. Alternatively, those who had a use for what bronydom offered them, in many cases simply found other ways to satisfy their needs, whether that be through their own worldbuilding, through furries and animanga, or through just taking some damn estradiol, etc.

…Also, I cannot overstate, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic actually just kicks ass for real. Like I think a pretty significant part of people's enjoyment of it is just that it's really good. I've nearly finished my first ever full rewatch of the series since it ended, and I'm kinda surprised to find that I like it almost as much as I liked it six years ago. It's got a lot of liberal brainworms but it genuinely holds up really well.

Edit: Oh and there's also the autism angle that might talk about the legibility of facial expressions, the color palette etc.

Ok, but also it has Socialist. Communist and Anarchist paths.

As I've said before: "Do recommend playing the Seapony Posada path, it was fun."

ⓘ This user is suspected of being a cat. Please report any suspicious behavior.

Equestria at War is funny as shit. I remember having Starlight Glimmer's Communist Party win the Equestria parliamentary elections, which makes Celestia abdicate in disgust and Luna start a reactionary counter-revolution leading to a civil war, in which the Crystal Empire joins the reactionary forces (naturally). Meanwhile the Fascist Changlings ate some random kingdom of deer before trying to invade Equestria, leading to a desperate trench warfare stalemate along a swampy river basin while I mopped up the domestic reactionaries. Naturally, the solution to this stalemate consisted of two things: nuclear war and lots of it, and a tank column flanking through the subjugated Crystal Empire to mop up the lightly defended north as my infantry marched through a now irradiated swamp, dying in greater numbers to radiation poisoning than to enemy fire.

Then it was just consolidation, more nukes, elaborate ocean crossing and beach landing plans against the Fascist Griffin empire that were obviated because I just covered literally everything in nukes over and over until they had no soldiers left and the war casualty ratio was something like 2,000,000 to some single digit thousands number (because one troop carrier sank). Then just more consolidation to finish painting the map.

Something about the juxtaposition of colorful magical creatures and the horrors of industrialized nuclear warfare waged between reactionaries and revolutionaries who just want a better world almost feels profound.

The most bizzare thing is that apparently gameplay wise its the best hoi4 mod.

Havent tried it but i like owb better cuz of smaller scale.