Why I Like My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic

My new April 1st tradition is to write about topics that would normally be off-topic for this blog. This year, let's talk about... this.

Fan art does not comprise the bulk of my artistic output, but I've drawn a fair amount for My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (henceforth "MLP" for brevity, though I realize that that also refers to the entire franchise instead of just this particular iteration of it). It's even been the primary basis for one of the major storylines in the Raptormaniacs comic. Why do I keep drawing fan art of MLP?

This isn't a post that anyone asked me to write. Some might even think it's inane that I've spent time writing it. I suspect that most of my friends and followers would be satisfied if I answered that question with "because I like the show".

At the same time, I also suspect that few if any people who follow me did so for the fan art. It wouldn't surprise me if I have followers who are curious, perplexed, or even frustrated every time I drop a new piece of MLP fan art in their social media feeds. So I'm going to talk a little bit about what this show means to me.

Is the show really that great? I certainly think that it's good overall, and much better than a glorified toy commercial needs to be. However, it is not my favorite show, and though I would consider it a standout animated series for when it premiered in 2010, I feel that both the absence of a coherent vision in series direction (due to it changing hands between several different showrunners) and the surge of other high-quality cartoons in recent years has rendered it in some ways unexceptional.

Even so, there's a lot I like about MLP. The fact that the protagonists are six female characters with contrasting personalities and career choices who are all multifaceted beyond what first impressions might suggest is a big plus. The concept that there are many ways of being a girl is a great message for the target audience, and it also means that almost anyone watching the show can likely identify with one (or more) of the main characters. (I relate most to Twilight and Fluttershy, for the record.)

I suppose I should have at least one image here showing what the main characters actually look like in the cartoon.

I would be lying if I claimed that MLP hasn't made me more aware of common pitfalls in the portrayal and representation of female characters in popular media, including my own rare forays into fiction writing. It's had a real influence on my work for TetZoo Time (which, uh, probably won't ever be released) and Chile & Yi. And, boy, do I regret having only one female character on the main cast of Raptormaniacs.

Beyond the characters themselves, I find it refreshing to watch a show that revolves around adults making and maintaining friendships, instead of constantly putting each other down. Sure, a world in which "friendship conquers all" may come across as sickeningly sweet to jaded adult audiences, but the show doesn't shy away from the notion that one may need to fight (figuratively or literally) to maintain such a world. Friendship is powerful, but it's not always easy, and that is a lesson that can be just as applicable to adult lives as to those of children.

And frankly? Friendship may not manifest as villain-vanquishing lasers in real life, but a society built upon collaboration, acceptance, and compassion is one that I would like to live in, and it's one that we have the power to create. Especially in times like the ones we're living in right now, that seems like a worthy goal to strive for.

Sometimes friendship is zapping insectoid shapeshifters in the face.

Uh, right, I got sidetracked there for a bit. What else do I like about MLP? Well, the music is pretty great. I think just about anyone who has worked on a creative project can relate at least a little to "Art of the Dress", "Winter Wrap Up" is a nice piece of worldbuilding packaged into a catchy tune, and I find "A Kirin Tale" to be quite uplifting, just to name a few of my favorites.

That much explains the main reasons why I like the show. But why do I draw so much fan art of it? Partly it's because fan art adds a layer of novelty to otherwise unremarkable concepts. I could draw a Microraptor flying or an oviraptorosaur kicking a predator, but there's not much I could bring to those subjects that a better artist couldn't conceive of and execute. However, if I drew Rainbow Dash as a microraptorian in flight and Rarity as an oviraptorosaur kicking a changeling? That's much less likely to have already been done by someone else.

Yet there remains the question of why it's MLP that features so frequently in my fan art, as opposed to the handful of other fictional works I follow. I have tried my hand at "dinosaurifying" some other cartoons I enjoy, but so far they haven't inspired as many creative works from me as MLP has.

One reason is practical: MLP's art style is fairly easy to emulate. It's probably testament to the design and characterization in the series that it's relatively straightforward to adapt the characters into alternate forms. It's even been done in canon more than once (albeit to... varying results).

Another important factor is that the series setting presents a mixture of familiar and fantastical elements that readily provides a springboard for creativity. It may be simple enough to come up with alternate forms for the characters, but what might this change about how they interact with their world? How would a sapient paravian use a teacup? Would an event analogous to the Chicxulub impact be a major concern when your ruler can move the sun? In some ways, it's not dissimilar to a speculative biology project about dinosaurs that have evolved human-like intelligence (and magic, apparently).

Besides, how often does one get to draw a dinosaur having tea with a chaos spirit?

That about covers everything I wanted to say. I'll leave you with a record of my artistic evolution as documented by My Little Maniraptor. This was the first MLP fan art I ever drew, and I've redrawn it twice since then. Time will tell if I revisit it again.

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And we're done. This has been both the longest and most artistically complex Raptormaniacs storyline to date (neither of which is saying much, I realize), so it was fun for me to make if nothing else. Until next time!

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The explanation I had in my mind for how Remex can speak with a piece of paper in his mouth was that closed-mouth vocalizations are common in archosaurs, but it could equally be explained by the same cartoon logic that allows Skull to speak at all.

Rainbow Dash can canonically support at least four other similarly-sized ponies in flight. My Little Maniraptors are meant to be slightly smaller than the largest specimens of Velociraptor, so the combined weight of Ostrom and Skull is plausibly in or just above the ballpark of a four-fold increase in Rainbow's mass. She's a little winded afterward, though. I had Fluttershy assist her in early drafts of the story, but I couldn't find a good opportunity to have Fluttershy exit the mech without throwing off the timing of the narrative. Rainbow's grasping feet are artistic license, as I expound on here.

Additionally, goal achieved.

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Applejack had that rope under her hat the whole time. Obviously.

I had to have Rarity do something at least somewhat cool, as I felt she ended up drawing the short straw for this plot. That's a shame, as even though she's not my favorite MLP character, she's probably the most interesting main character as far as characterization goes, which is not at all apparent in this story. In my defense, there are thirteen major characters in this arc, give or take a few. That's comparable to the number of major players in Captain America: Civil War, and this is a comic with less than twenty pages rather than a two-hour movie. In any case, it has been noted by others that in the show, Rarity almost always resorts to physical means of combat on the rare occasion that fighting is called for, despite being a magical unicorn. That's pretty cool in itself, but have you seen her multitask? Her telekinesis would be quite potent were she ever inclined to use it violently.

Yes, I confess the "Twilight as a glorified battery" plot point was an excuse to keep her out of the main action. Twilight is my favorite character, but she gets enough heroic moments in the original show.

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In a Mesozoic world without electricity, dental batteries would likely be the more familiar kind of battery.

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It is convenient that MLP has done an analogous "fictional character turns out to be real all along" situation, even if I'm not the biggest fan of that episode. (Have I been talking more about things I don't like about the show rather than things I like? I enjoy the show, I swear.)

Funnily, Daring Do is already an expy of a different character from mainstream fiction (Indiana Jones), but Rainbow Dash doesn't need to know that.

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In which I demonstrate that I cannot draw elephants. Must be why those gomphotheres never showed up back in the day.

I would have liked to do more scenes like this, showing interactions between the Raptormaniacs and My Little Maniraptor characters, but I feel that it would have dragged the story on for too long, so I'll leave it up to imagination what happened with the other groups that split up on this page.

Last point of note, achievement unlocked: drawing Fluttershy in flight. Next goal: drawing Rainbow Dash not in flight.

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Look, an actual full-body view of Ebeff.

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Celestia is a woefully underused character on the original show. From a narrative perspective, it's entirely understandable that she needs to be written out regularly so the heroines can resolve problems on their own, but it feels like at least half the time she's sidelined in ways that seem undignified for such a reputedly powerful and wise character.

Fortunately, Raptormaniacs runs on absurdity, so I'm allowed to come up with silly reasons for why powerful characters aren't around to help when they're needed.

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Is this the closest we've had to a full-body view of Ebeff? Probably.

I am not at all a fan of the Equestria Girls spin-off film series of MLP. (The sequels were admittedly slight improvements over the first installment, but that's not a high bar to reach.) It is perhaps ironic that I had to reference it a fair bit for this storyline, considering that it is the closest we have to canon regarding interdimensional shenanigans in MLP-verse. Hence, Twilight's exposition in the third panel (and Savape's jab at it).

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Did you really think that this post was only a joke?

Besides Skull, Dinky probably would be the most unusual of the main cast from the perspective of sapient maniraptors from the Mesozoic. A euornithine whose size and spatial ecology are more typical of an enantiornithine? Sounds wrong. At least he's a granivore.

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There was meant to be a sign explaining the K-Pg extinction in the background of the panel in which Remex talks about it, but there ended up being no room for it. I had to cut it out reluctantly, as it was one of the few times the museum setting is actually prominently depicted in this comic. In other news, this page also provides an initial sense of scale among the characters of this arc. My Little Maniraptors are not too little compared to some other maniraptors, even though they would be considered small animals by a human.

An unintentional callback I now recognize in hindsight is that Remex appears to have learned from experience with Zahavi.

Bonus: Why the K-Pg extinction will never occur in My Little Maniraptor. (For those unaware, Celestia controls the sun.)

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There are the pastel-colored dinosaurs you've been waiting for! Discord was too fun a character to not use in this story, even if only as a plot device. I had intended him to serve in this role ever since the initial conception of the storyline, so I was glad to see canonical confirmation that he was capable of accessing other dimensions. By the way, he's right to advise small dinosaurs not to walk behind sauropods.

In general, any references here to past events in MLP are meant to contextualize the story for other people who have watched the show and are not plot-essential. This page should be the most reference-heavy in the entire storyline, but I'm happy to answer questions if anyone is feeling lost.

If any MLP fans stumbled across this without prior knowledge of My Little Maniraptor and are wondering why Applejack doesn't have a show-accurate cutie mark, I explain it all here.

Coming Soon: My Little Raptormaniacs

Surprisingly (considering that this comic has a relatively small number of readers), I've been asked more than once whether I intend to do a crossover between Raptormaniacs and My Little Maniraptor, my unbridled parody of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. After sitting on a potential plot outline for the past few years, I have at last finalized the script and can now say that the answer is yes.

Will this be canon to Raptormaniacs? Yep. Good arguments can be made that this should have remained a non-canon venture, but my plans from the start were to have it influence the main plot in a number of significant ways, so too late. I have tried my best to provide enough background information where needed for readers who are unfamiliar with My Little Pony. But if any objections to this are solely on the basis of hatred or prejudice against the show, well... haters gonna hate.