Derpy Hooves vs The People
He’s a tale of internet and media drama that is currently unfolding. It involves rampant fandom, over-zealous parents, social networking, censorship and ponies.

Yes, Ponies.
Just to get things established, the ponies in question are the cartoony ones from the latest version of the My Little Pony television series. In case you’re new to the internet (in that case, welcome! Don’t trust anyone.) and you don’t know, a strange phenomenon has arisen around My Little Pony. Although the show is clearly marketed at young girls and their mothers a following has arisen among the 14-35 year old male demographic. This group of fans have taken to themselves as ‘Bronies’ and will vehemently defend their passion for every Pony related. Making this even more unusual is the base of this fandom – the infamous 4chan. This site is the home to ‘trolls’, internet bullies and hack group Anonymous, creating a greater juxtaposition between the show and the fans. What seems to have started as a joke on their site has become a genuine affection for the show. Somehow.
One day a member of 4chan noticed something and posted it to the site. Standing in the background of a scene was a grey pony whose eyes were curiously pointed in opposite directions. Bearing a resemblance to the recurring ‘derp’ character from the site, this nameless background character was thus dubbed ‘Derpy Hooves’.

Meet Derpy.
Derpy Hooves featured in fan art and fan fiction, being given a personality, backstory, a love of muffins and job (as mailpony) by the ‘Bronies’. Although the character was confirmed to be a mistake on the part of an animator, Derpy was a fan favourite. The show animators got wind of this insane level of dedication and started adding Derpy Hooves into the background of the show more often, retaining the odd eyes and turning it into running ‘Where’s Wally’ type game.

Derpy Fan Art
When Season 3 rolled around, the shows creator took things one step further and made Derpy Hooves a canon character on the show as a response the fans passion for her. The creator, Lauren Faust, toyed with the idea of renaming her ‘Ditzy Hooves’, but left the character intact with the exception of making her a professional mover instead of a mail deliverer. Derpy was clumsy, dim and spoke thickly, much to the delight of Derpy’s online fans.
Of course there was a large slice of the audience who weren’t in on the backstory – those little girls and their mothers. Some of those mothers took Derpy Hooves the wrong way. They, in fact, somehow took Derpy to be an insult directed at people suffering from mental disabilities. A petition was promptly started (via the mighty Facebook) demanding that Hasbro change Derpy’s name, eyes, voice, personality and issue a formal apology. Apart from the idiocy of demanding a character be stripped of everything that makes them unique instead of removing the character entirely, there’s plenty wrong with this logic.

Great, now I feel sorry for her.
Firstly, they didn’t take the time to find out what the expression ‘derp’ refers to (a clumsy action or stupid comment) and assumed that it was intended to be an insult. Secondly, and most importantly, looking at a character who is depicted as stupid and clumsy and automatically assuming that it’s intended to represent the disabled community is a whole new level of offensive. The hundreds of people who have signed the petition need to have a good, hard think about why they made the leap between this character and people who are mentally handicapped. Some people who are living with disabilities have come out in defense of Derpy Hooves, claiming that they’ve never seen the character as offensive, insulting or in any way referencing disabilities.
The whole thing smacks of the reactionary response to the game Resident Evil 5, during which many complaints were submitted to Capcom claiming that a white character shooting down zombies who happen to be black is racist. Not that anyone had a problem with Spanish people being used as target practice in the previous game, but black people need suburban white people to defend them, dammit!

To sum up: BAD

Perfectly fine.
More recently a Fox News anchor announced that The Muppet Show was trying to brainwash kids by depicting the evil bad guy as an oil baron. This was stupid on such a level that the official response from the film-makers was delivered by a pig puppet.
This isn’t the first time this kind of stupidity has been aimed at My Little Pony. The character Rainbow Dash came under fire from parenting groups two years earlier for promoting homosexuality.

Because obviously all tomboys are lesbians.
So to those who have come out on the attack against Derpy Hooves, stop looking for things are going to offend you or pretending that something is offensive just so you’ve got an excuse to get your pants in a bunch. Nobody likes you.
Good post but I saw a couple of mistakes.
-It was season 2 not season 3. Season 3 has not aired yet.
-Lauren Faust suggested her name might be “Ditzy Doo” not “Ditzy Hooves”.
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That can be chalked up to up to the fact that I’ve never watched the show in my life.
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Derpy is a girl.
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Um, cool story?
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Her name was originally Ditzy Doo. c: just it happened to change to Derpy Hooves due to bronies and other lovely ponies out there.
But really. The Parents or people that have seen Derpy, need to take the time to think about (and look up) the meaning of Derp. :c They have derped horribly.
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BZZZT! Ditzy Doo was a name mentioned in passing in one episode in reference to a character which was never even seen. When Lauren noticed the fan following for our favorite pegasus, she said she *might* create a character around the Ditzy name based on our fanon, adding that she didn’t want to step on any fan toes either though. That was the last mention of Ditzy. Derpy Hooves has been her name since the original thread on /co/, back when she was still just a part of the background scenery.
But that doesn’t stop some from continuing to ass|u|me.
And Websterpoet? When you learn to tolerate Derpy, I’ll think about tolerating you. Until then, nobody likes you.
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You know what I find the most annoying about this whole thing?
It’s that people like you have made a huge point of how there’s nothing to be offended by, to the point of directly insulting anyone who was offended, calling them stupid and saying that ‘nobody likes’ them.
The people who are offended by this aren’t out to try and ruin your fun, we’re part of the brony community too, we just happened to think that Derpy was an offensive character and a negative portrayal of someone who could be seen as having a disability.
We know all about the origins of the name and the character, and the reason we didn’t make anything of it before now is that Derpy wasn’t really a part of the show. When she became so, the combination of her name, her appearance and the way she is treated by the other characters of the show caused offense.
I’m sorry the fact that people were hurt by Derpy’s appearance has ruined your fun, but as we’re all fans of the show can you not try and engage and try to understand what peoples’ issues with the character are, rather than tell us there’s nothing to be offended by, that we don’t understand, and that nobody likes us?
Is a little tolerance, respect and understanding too much to ask? Aren’t those the very values that MLP celebrates?
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For an alternate viewpoint and explanation of why some bronies did find Derpy Hooves offensive, look here: http://websterpoet.wordpress.com/2012/03/02/dontsavederpy/
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