Coco before Pommel

PinkieShyers! Forgive me for not celebrating our most ridiculously adorable pony pals lately, but I still love you all~ I kinda went on a deviantart faving spam lately, so hopefully this makes up for it

This is really gross - I wouldn't have a problem with tracing in itself, if it was just for fun and not for profit, then whatever. But the fact that this guy has made SO much money out of selling his stuff that is traced straight from the show is just...wow o_O It's not fair to the talented artists in this fandom who work so hard on creating their own unique style, and it's definitely not fair to the people who have paid extortionate amounts of money (more than official merch, which is basically all DP's stuff is, just with a better choice of vectors admittedly) for art from this guy. Maybe if it was just a few pieces he'd sold it wouldn't even be that big of a deal - but DP's made a straight up business out of stealing Hasbro's copyrighted property and selling it to fans under the false illusion that he, y'know, actually sold them something original. Most fan artists, while maybe profiting from it is technically illegal(? I don't know the legalities), at least try to have their own style, something different to what the show already gives us, and also I'm pretty sure most fanartists don't actually make a living off selling their art alone - I mean, when it gets to DP's level, is it even really "fanart" anymore if it's basically a business of people churning out traced artwork. I do think he deserves to be shut down, tbh - and I'm surprised Hasbro haven't, considering the things they've gone after before and the amount of money DP's making. I think he owes the community (and in the case of people who bought stuff, maybe even a refund) a serious apology, and to stop selling traced stuff altogether. If he wants to trace just for fun/non-profit works, then that's fine, I couldn't care less. I wouldn't say he deserves to be "driven out of the community" or whatever - if he's truly sorry, then he could be forgiven in time. But before that, he definitely needs to apologise, own up to what he's done and stop profiting of traced art.

EQG is canon, it takes place in the FiM universe (partly) and is consistent with the show's storyline, so I consider it canon. But I think it's okay if you don't like or just didn't watch it and don't want to consider it canon since it doesn't really affect what happens in FiM. The comics...idk, it's hard to tell because I haven't read them all, but I consider them more like optional extras? (Which basically means if something happens that I like I consider it canon/incorporate it into my idea of the MLP universe, but I just ignore the stuff I don't like or doesn't seem to make sense )

The internet is way ahead of you, my friend she was so cute in that part - and I don't blame her, it's a catchy song!

IIRC, Caramel was seen with a girlfriend in the Hearts & Hooves day ep? Sadly, it does seem unlikely MLP will ever go there, which is a real shame as other cartoons (Korra, Steven Universe etc) are including more non-straight characters lately. I think the closest thing we have is Lyra and Bon Bon in EQG Rainbow Rocks: but I'm pretty sure that's just fanservice and not likely to be confirmed or seen in FiM itself. We can dream though~

I think the closest thing to a sadistic character we've had so far is RoH-era Discord - he seemed to actively enjoy inflicting psychological if not physical harm on ponies, and tearing apart the M6's friendship. Hard to tell with Nightmare Moon or Sombra - we didn't really see enough of them to judge, but their primary motivation just seemed to be ruling/taking over Equestria (which would have caused harm to ponies, but I don't think that was their main motivation for doing so). I don't think Starlight Glimmer qualifies personally, although maybe we need to see more of her motivations, but she seems to genuinely believe she's helping/doing what's best for ponies with the whole crazy equalist schtick, not trying to hurt them (and I hope that's the case, because it makes her more interesting than if she doesn't really believe it and it's just a con to get power or whatever). Diamond Tiara, maybe? She definitely seems to enjoy making the CMC miserable...

I loved this ep spoilery thoughts c/ped from another site:

Although this by no means applies to the WHOLE fandom, there are two things that have been on my mind recently... - casually using "autistic", "sperg" and similar as insults. Idk if this happens more because bronies started on 4chan or whatever, but I've just had to leave an FB brony group of otherwise reasonable people because they said this all the time and seemed to think it was hilarious and anyone objecting was just a sensitive snowflake or ~SJW~. What I don't get is a lot of people using it are autistic themselves, but...yeah, it really sucks to see something I and many other people struggle with made into a punchline like that. (Also people who still use "gay" as insult but that's thankfully less common, whereas ~lol autism~ is still everywhere). - drama over OCs. I don't care about other people's OCs at all - awesome that people are having fun with them, but I'm personally here for the canon characters. but I get so angry when I see certain fans acting like The OC Police and attacking/bullying people because they dared to make their OC an alicorn/shipped with a canon character/red and black colour scheme(??). It's like...dude, who cares? People can do whatever they want with their OCs, they shouldn't have to conform to some sort of imaginary rules the fandom decides is acceptable - it's not like it affects the actual show in any way. I just think everyone should be allowed to have fun however they want to as long as they're not actually hurting anyone, and no one is forcing you to look at their OCs. If people actually ask for feedback/criticism that's one thing, but there's just so much ridiculous OTT bashing because someone...created their own character for fun the way THEY wanted to without thinking of what the fandom police might think?? It's just so depressing to see. ...so yeah, if we could just get rid of those two things the fandom/world would be a much nicer place, I think