by Reaperfan Sun May 06, 2012 8:54 pm
Serious_Much wrote:Pray do tell.
*clears throat*
Derpy started all the way back in episode 1 as a background pony. Nobody would have noticed if not for the animation error that skewed her eyes, but some brony caught it and thought up a very general fan personality for the character as a very clumsy pegasus, comparable to Ed from Ed, Edd, 'n' Eddy or Patrick from Spongebob. The brony community took a liking to this particular character and started making her a more and more detailed character. The creators of the show, being as conscious of the bronies as they are, also caught word of this fan character and as a slight homage to the bronies and Derpy's origins as a background character they decided to bring back Derpy continuously as a background character and put her in the episodes in of "Where's Waldo" sort of way. (about 1:14 into that video is the original animation error version).
After a while she got somewhat promoted to having actual characteristics of the fan created personality such as bringing back the skewed eyes and showcasing her as more than just a reoccuring face in the background (examples of this start at about 5:16 in the earlier video), showing that the creators had not only recognized the character, but were adopting the fan-made version of it as an actual character. This hit it's peak in season 2 when they upgraded Derpy further into a speaking role, much to the joy of the bronies. They had basically solidified a piece of brony fandom as a canon. However, this is where the problem began.
As a background character, Derpy never caught much attention outside those who were looking for her. Once she got some major screentime and a voice, people who didn't know the relatively innocent roots of the character thought Hasbro had put her in specifically as a mentally-challenged character and that she was offensive to mentally-challenged viewers of the show. Several iterations of the story exist, but the end result is that Derpy and her one canonizing scene got significantly edited by unskewing Derpy's eyes, making her voice much milder, and making Rainbow Dash get much less upset at her. This led to a big backlash from the bronies, since it seemed like it basically invalidated the most significant shout-out to them in the series so far, and alot of bronies are still unclear how they feel about Derpy's change. Some are still angry that Hasbro "caved to the helicopter parents" and censored something that was not truly offensive at all. Some have accepted the change for what it is, and are happy as long as Hasbro doesn't just scrap the character completely. Some don't care what happens to the character, because they feel that the one original shout-out was enough. There's alot of varying opinions on the matter, though it has settled down quite a bit as people come to accept what happened.
Hasbro has no intentions of scrapping the character, but it seems she will at best be reverted back into a purely non-speaking background role, and the edited version of her scene is what will be shown in the official versions of the episode. After having rewatched the edited scene a few times, I personally find myself in the second camp of people I described above. I don't want to see Derpy go away completely, but as long as she's there I'll know that they're still paying attention to us bronies
Now I can only imagine what would happen if they officially put in the Fausticorn...
i would have had many fun stories if forums counted a real life 
