Derpygate 2012 – The Mega Article

My Little Pony 32 comments

Good Morning Poniverse,

There is no news to report on Derpy, at least on the official side. On the fandom side, the campaign is in full force with multiple sites and petitions running. Here is what has been handed to me so far, and I say sign them all.

And I’m sure there are more out there. Lots of things being talked about, lots of finger pointing and theories. Cold fact is right now we dont’ even know who to blame, of course Hasbro is an easy target and it is true that in the end, they have final word on everything. But mainly we do not know the source of this whole ordeal, it is only assumed it was the people who went beyond expressing an opinion and a dislike for how Derpy was portrayed, those who actually claimed to start petitions against her and such. There is one rumor which is blaming iTunes/Apple, making claims that they have done this to other shows before (but I have not researched into this, thus I have no proof if they have done it before). As I’ve brought up in a few places, there’s a chance the FCC got involved (most people think I’m crazy). But we are talking about a group which regulates television and is very political in nature, all it takes is one angry group that gives them money and things change. I won’t go into my own theory on this, but again without any official knowledge, we are doing nothing but flailing in the dark.
I declare this a megapost mainly because I’m going to go over the facts and chain of events that leads up to where we are now. This is how it breaks down:

And as I’ve said, until someone, somewhere, gives an official notice, we don’t know what is going on. I know several individuals who are trying to talk to contacts within Hasbro and the Hub, but so far nothing has been turned up. When we do find something out, of course we will let you know.

The one thing I do see is that people are acting like Derpy is dead, when she is not. Hasbro is not going to take the time to purge her from past episodes; that’s just a waste of money. If they were going to spend that kind of money, they would have changed her in The Last Roundup since they already basically went back and edited it, but she still remains. Personally (and I know I’m not alone) the voice was good, yes I had fallen in love with the way the original sounded, but this was more female sounding. But then again what people are taking offense to is the fact, it was edited, they removed her name, and they fixed her eyes.

For now all I can say is we got about business as usual, make sure to spread the word of Derpy to everyone in the community, and make sure that it is known that we want our Derpy. It has been confirmed by the Studio B staff that no other scene planned with her for Season 2, so this was her only spotlight (not counting all the minor spotlights in the previous episodes). Before Feeling Pinkie Keen, that is all she was, a background character. And we still loved her as much before that. So I say do not despair, lets just make sure she doesn’t vanish from Season 3 altogether.

So for now and outside of signing petitions, there is little we can do except move forward. (Pictures and a video comparison behind the page break).

Sent in by InfinityDash, a voice comparison video between TLR:version 1 and version 2. As ID says, its kind of interesting that they recorded the entire scene’s audio, the only line that needed to be edited outside of Derpy’s was just Rainbow Dash saying Derpy, yet they recorded the entire thing.

 

 

[03/02/2012] : Comment Section is now closed. There is a central page for DerpyGate located here.

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  • Ditzydont

    Nice editorial.

  • Anonymous

    And making a lot of noise is going to make things any better?
    As plaster said, the community once enjoyed a good relationship with the creators seldom seen in other fandoms. By creators I mean both the people at DHX Media and Hasbro.
    The fandom’s overreaction is going to sour this relationship even more.

    • Anon 2. This will not sour anything, this is fandom stating its opinion and what they want to Hasbro, it is mere customer politics and you are crazy to think otherwise.

      How would Hasbro know what we want if we just sat on our asses and hoped silently for things to get better?

      This is what Bronies have always done, communicated with the production team and Hasbro, it gave us Derpy, it gave more freedom for the series in season 2, it gave us Welovefine shirts, and now it will give us Derpy back, and let Hasbro know we love this pony.

    • Supertide

      Derpy was censored because a few people made a lot of noise you know.

      • Derpy was canonized because a few people made a lot of noise also. Not the target demographic, but people out of the target demographic. That’s gotta mean something more than “Oh a few idiots wanted this stupid pony in…fine she got a scene you happy?”

        And personaly…I like the new voice better. It has a more MLP feel to it.

        • Daniel G.

          The voice itself isn’t so bad (though the audio quality is strangely poor), it’s changing the voice change that’s troublesome. If it had been that voice from the beginning, there wouldn’t be an issue.

          Underping her eyes and removing her name is also vexing. Not the end of the world, as many have said, but definitely annoying.

  • filledwithsolutions

    Possibly worth noting, is that it is and has been airing unmolested via ondemand for atleast a week. Atleast on Insight for sure and Comcast I believe

  • Anonymous

    I find myself having a hard time caring about this anymore. I was really sad when the news broke, but now I’m just sort of acting like nothing’s changed.

    My only real comment is directed towards all the people going, “Don’t attack Hasbro,” “We’re bronies and shouldn’t be giving threads,” etc. What do you expect from a fandom that’s statistically mostly teenagers from a generation of self-entitlement?

  • Green45

    Frankly I think if Hasbro had just done the mature thing and told people they were making the change, instead of trying to sneak it by without anyone noticing, this shitfest would not be going down. If they had A) said they were making an alternate version and B) not tried to bury the original(leave it up to people which they wanted to buy or download, but maybe only show the altered version on TV), then I think there would not have been an issue.

    The issue here is that the fandom might be overreacting in places, but frankly they’re kind of right to be at least a little bit aggrieved. Especially since the studio did something nice for them, and then, as far as anyone can tell, Hasbro yanked it away aggressively.

    The fandom is not to blame if their relationship with the creators “sours,”(and in this case, it would only be our relationship with Hasbro, not with the studio, who are likely 100% not to blame) Hasbro is to blame for their hostile behavior.

    • Anonymous

      Yes, I agree. If only we would have been told exactly what was going on, yes people would have been upset still, but it wouldn’t feel like a slap to the face. People would have been a lot more calm about it I think.

    • Supertide

      I agree. This was handled horribly.
      We don’t know whats going on, everyone is speculating and the fandom is once again in full drama mode.
      Hasbro should have put up a bulletin or a poll or something asking people whether they find Derpy offensive or not instead of listening to complaint letters written by soccer moms and sensitive manchildren.
      We were told Hasbro has lawyers who check episodes before they air, if those guys greenlit Derpy then they should have expected complaints about her.

      • Hasbro has fucking lawyers that check episodes???????

        …
        …
        …

        …well, damn. *Gives Derpy a muffin for a job well done for escaping the lawyers*

        • Supertide

          If I recall correctly staff members mentioned in interviews that a lawyer team reviews every episode to make sure there are no copyright infringing materials in them and Lauren said a lot of things had to be toned down to be less scary. So there is some kind of supervision from Hasbro’s part.
          That’s why I don’t think Derpy just managed to slip through, she was allowed to be on the show but some people got seriously butthurt and now Hasbro or Apple or whoever is backpedaling.

          • The people who are “butthurt” are a group of people who are first and foremost upset that guys (“bronies”) are not only in the MLP fandom, but that they are getting all the attention. That is quickly followed with complaints that bronies are misogynist neckbeards, that “love and tolerance” is a sham, and that bronies are ableists making fun of the disabled (Derpy). So, what you have is a bunch of the old guard that are pissed that a flood of exuberant newcomers who are not from their demographic are taking over their clubhouse and not holding their old collections and memorabilia in the highest esteem.

            The butthurt bunch made a new community with a “bronies keep out” sign on the gate. They wrapped themselves in social justice wank, attracted people ready to believe that bronies are bacement dwelling neckbeards, attracting people that had a bad experience with trolls posing as bronies (or just socially inept twats), and attracting people looking for drama.

            They’re probably only about 500, the anti-derpy poll I saw linked to had less than 200 signatures when I looked last week. They’ve written to anyone they can think of, including the VA’s. They were not to pleased when the VA’s gave them the brush-off. I believe the repeated phrase was the the VA ‘shat all over the letter writer’ or something in that vein.

            But you are wasting your time worrying about those trolls. Their opinions are set in stone (believe me, I’ve tried), and even if you could convince them that you are Buddha incarnate, that doesn’t change iTunes. Don’t feed the trolls (they love it). Convince iTunes.

  • Your target is off. Hasbro’s customers are the retailers and the distributers, and “the customer is always right”. In this case the customer is iTunes. iTunes got pressured by PC social justice wankers, decided the episode was not PC, and told Hasbro to edit the episode. Hasbro complied.

    Now Hasbro is not going to tell us this because that would be tantamount to sending 40,000 angry fans to harass their client, iTunes. We had to figure it out for ourselves.

    Hasbro has heard our opinion and Hasbro appreciates us. But Hasbro sells directly to retailers, and it’s the retailers that sell to us, the general public. When the retailers tell Hasbro, “make Celestia pink or we’re not buying”, Hasbro complies (the prototype at the 2010 Toy Fair was white). When TreeHouse in Canada cuts out “offensive” words like “loser” from aired episodes, Hasbro does not stop them. The customer is always right and Hasbro’s customers are the retailers and distributers.

    If you want Derpy restored in the iTunes version, you have to convince iTunes that the original Derpy was the better Derpy. You need to tell iTunes that she, through her role as a full member of pony society and as a character well loved by fans, she helps many fans, that see in her a kindred spirit, feel good about themselves and the community.

    Write to iTunes.

    • PresentPerfect

      Wise words.

      To your above comment (I can’t reply to it for some reason), there are MLP fans who aren’t bronies, and hate bronies for some reason? Who the hell are these people and what do they hope to accomplish, seriously?

      • These people are a mix of social justice wankers (or SJW) and people who are pissed because they truely believe that the only reason anyone is paying attention to MLP:FIM is because _men_ have made it relevant by liking the show. These people have been feeding off each other’s hate and building up a head of steam for months. They hope to remove the symbol of our connection with DHX and Hasbro, to make it easier to pretend we don’t exist. By claiming this symbol is a slur on the disabled, they attempt to legitimize their cause.

        But really, forget them. Addressing them is not a solution. They already get backlash from anon communities discussing wank, from the disabled tearing into them for pretending to speak on behalf of the disabled, and from members leaving after realizing all they talk about is the “brony problem”. Eventually they will realise that the fandom has become pluralized, that it is no longer gendered, and that the new series is the engine that pulls the train now. Or they’ll retire to nostalgia island and ignore the world going by.

        • PresentPerfect

          Some part deep in the recesses of my brain thinks they may have something to do with the star-bombing of shipping fics on Equestria Daily. <.< But that's probably just me being paranoid. You're right, it's best if we ignore them, though knowing about them is useful.

        • DWraith23

          It’s the PC Police. The people who get a high from taking offense to everything they possibly can.

          It’s impossible to reason with them, because they feel they permanently have the moral high ground; it’s like trying to convince religious extremists that they’re religion is wrong.

          And the worst part about them is that that they’re vocal and are often the type of people that companies feel they have to pander to.

    • Firth…

      +10 internets and +50 ponies.

      Go complain to iTunes. Not Hasbro.

      • Thanks. ^_^ You can never have too many ponies. I only wish I could find the smoking gun to support my hunch that someone or some people wrote to iTunes to complain. All I can find are suggestions to write to VA’s, people at DHX, Lauren Faust and Hasbro. And a small petition with 137 signatures, addressed to Hasbro.

    • The first rating I see is a dislike.

      I want to laugh but I won’t.

  • Bluflare

    this saddens me the new voice is not really good extremely childish I mean really why complain about the original voice when in fact their is a certain sonic character who has a voice like original derpy, but no one ask to change that its just stupid I mean Hasbro was actually good enough to give her a voice it may have been a mistake on tabitha’s part, but I loved the voice I had no problems with it. The new voice sounds so eerie, and stupid. everyone is pretty much mainly happy about the voice change. Hell they want her to change pretty much when one change comes to another. You guys can’t be happy with the stuff they give you the first time, and it saddens me that most on eqd, here, and all of everything wants this to mainly happen.

    Yeah you may not want them to make a big change on her yet you welcome just one thing, and that’s good for all of you.

  • Adam

    I have heard the original Derpy scene is going to be on DVD anyway.

  • Ho Minh

    Instead of simply voicing displeasure with the change to Derpy, why not say something along the lines of;

    instead of censoring “Derpy Hooves”, why not turn this “offensive material” into an episode about what happens when you make fun of somepony for being different?

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  • Ponyfan

    Wow. I don’t like the new voice AT ALL.And I don’t see how anyone can.

    The original Derpy voice was unique and different as well as Tabitha having a good inspiration for it, but the new voice is extremely generic, yet still really annoying in the way that it sounds like one of Alvin and The Chipmunks.

    The new voice is extremely annoying. The original voice has some actual character to it. Even the re-recorded Rainbow Dash lines sound forced phoned in.

    Why do people really like the new voice? I hate everything about this new scene.

    • Ponyfan

      Especially what it represents. And it’s completely unnecessary and harmful censorship.

      • WVBrony

        Even Tabitha said she didn’t like the old voice though. I like that they made her sound more like a girl but they could have refined it.

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  • Anonymous

    i just get back from 10 hours of my manager yelling at me and having my meatball sandwich stolen from the fridge, tune in to one of my new favorite episodes to find that they changed it with no warning and totally ruined my week!
    i mean seriously what next! take the traditional head dress and feathers from the buffalo? Remove the big Lebowski bowling reference?! If we just let this go “they” (whoever “they” are) will keep making changes,that though small at first that could eventually ruin the charm and overall enjoyableness of the series, it’s happened before to other shows such as Pokémon(Gen 5 am I right!) we need to stop this kind thing before they destroy the show by turning it into a boring, uncomfortably sappy show full of colorless characters and bland story line!
    and im sorry but im un able to feel any love and Tolerance
    for those pulling the the strings.