>>183183>>183346We had a thread on this a couple of weeks ago, shuttled over to /sp/, the highlight post being
>>>/sp/9385 →. But I'll go ahead and throw my two shillings into the mix as well.
It's true that furries have a very long and storied rap sheet when it comes to degeneracy: in fact, the only reason the anthro ban was instituted onto /mlp/ in the first place was because it was seen as a few steps away from full-blown furry cancer. And true enough, anthro MLP art can broadly be considered furry art, and with enough cerebral trapeze artistry you could even consider standard MLP art to be 'feral', to borrow the furry's term for non-anthro art. However, there's a much more fundamental reason behind why MLP art and furry art are distinct, and why horsefuckers in particular turn their noses up at anthro.
This reason, simply put, is Friendship is Magic. The setting, the inhabitants, the world, everything about it practically drips exoticism and intrigue, and in the early seasons, had plenty of mystery backing it up as well. The people who worked on the first two seasons really hit it out of the park, and this capturing of the imagination provided ample enough spark to drive and direct the fandom going forward.
One major overarching theme you'll find in FiM fanworks, particularly way back in the 2011-2013 timeframe, is the sheer innocence and purity of it all. Even today, Derpibooru has 1¼
million images tagged as 'safe', 95,000 as 'suggestive', 90,000 as 'questionable', and 238,000 explicit images altogether. If e621 were coded better, I would show their rating numbers for comparison, but given my experience with furries, I can safely say that a much larger quotient of their content would be 'questionable' and 'explicit', and not merely 'safe'.
But raw metrics alone don't tell the whole story. Even early FiM pornography, particularly in the realm of fanfics/stories, were overwhelmingly heterosexual and intimate: 'vanilla af' to borrow the hentai descriptor. A lot of new content is still like that to this day. And this has to do with the foundational innocence of the show itself. After all, it
was written for little girls, but as C.S. Lewis once put it: "
A children's story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children's story in the slightest.".
Much of the early FiM fanworks, especially HiE, are based heavily on exploration, bonding, intimacy, mutualism, and of course, friendship. It's not very difficult to see why: just take a look at these characters. Listen to their vernacular. Look at the world they inhabit. These little ponies are
interesting. They're wide-eyed and innocent, yet intelligent and storied. Their usage of 'every
pony' in common parlance. Their cultural emphasis on friendship, on high trust. The two princesses moving the sun and moon. The entire fantasy setting. The pony aesthetic by itself. All of this and more combines into an overall experience of wonder, of pure fascination. You want to see what these delightfully familiar aliens will react to. And, naturally, you'd want to see how they would react to human beings. Thus follows the fanworks, the porn, and so on, following the aforementioned themes.
Furries, by contrast, are a different kind of fandom altogether: a
lifestyle is a more accurate term. A very degenerate kind of lifestyle, the details of which have been waxed poetic about in this thread, the one I've linked to, and countless other sources. Furry culture, art and stories are overwhelmingly impure and sexual, delving into the
taboo, pushing the envelope further and further. Hardly surprising, considering the fandom's origins. But it's this very race to push the boundaries, of celebrating the taboo, that puts furries at such fundamental odds with bronies/horsefuckers.
To the FiM crowd, furries represent corruption.A corruption of childlike innocence by utter debauchery.
A corruption of such a strong bond by sharing it to the point of meaninglessness.
A corruption of a unique setting with contemporary elements.
A corruption of the contrast between our forms and the forms of something so alien yet familiar, mashing the two forms together until the contrast that made the other form so appealing vanishes, leaving a meaningless mixture between the two.
Anthroifying FiM characters isn't just seen as the impending kiss of death from the furry fandom: it's seen as watering down the uniqueness of the little ponies, as utterly cheapening that which made them so special to begin with. In the furry fandom's case, that translates to remoulding them into something familiar to work with.
Furries are not interested in the contrast, the characters, and least of all the appreciation and preservation of the source material's innocence. They want it their way, or not at all. The ponies will adapt to service their ends. Their obscene, libidinous, corrupted ends.
That is the fundamental reason why furries and bronies/horsefuckers are so opposed, why anthro is looked down upon in the FiM realm. That fundamental clash between keeping the contrast and preserving that which makes it special, versus removing all contrast and dispensing with the extraordinary aspects.
Some anthro artists do it well, keeping at least some part of the uniqueness in one way or another, usually through a certain artistic style. But the rest of the time? Pure furry encroachment, one that horsefuckers in particular will gleefully bully out of their spheres as the Trojan horse that it is.
Hey, aren't furries overwhelmingly far left? And weren't bronies and horsefuckers pegged as leaning more rightward? Hmm, wonder if there's a connection there?
Well that was a disorganized mess and a half, and almost certainly missed half the points being talked about. I'm going to bed. Page Dr. Freud for me while I'm out.