Ponies

Ponies are pretty nifty little creatures. They're pint-sized horses, lovable and scruffy all at once, achondroplastic dwarf equines which have been enslaved and bred over generations for humanity's labor and amusement. The internet has a queer fixation in using pony-like creatures in various image-based memes, brought about by a bizarre subculture of adults who adore the new iteration of one particular show which originated in the glorious 1980s, when men were men and cartoons were full of more corn than the lowest-grade dry cat food.

These ancestral ponies were chubby and stocky creatures, as I recall. I never really watched the show, of course; I'd been more the type to sit down in front of He-Man or Dungeons & Dragons because what are expected gender norms, especially to a five year old, but I recall the original show rather vividly despite this, all thanks to the product tie-ins, those girly toys with brushes and stickers which bedecked the shelves of the toy aisle opposite awesome action figures (so dolls, except for boys. What are expected gender norms?). They resembled actual ponies, come to think of it. Not that I have anything against the art direction in the new cartoon, mind; Lauren Faust does simply marvelous work in her own style. But her creations are hip and lithe creatures, more like horses than fat bumbling ponies. Horses are cool too, but this is about ponies.

Bill the Pony from The Fellowship of the Ring, could you imagine if he'd been streamlined and sleek and athletic and charming, the cool alpha male of the equine pack (er...herd)? It just wouldn't work. Ponies are meant to be the ungulate world's jesters, much like pigs are the misunderstood and somewhat creepy ice cream truck drivers and alpacas are the curvy bikini models everyone wants, nay needs, to hug.

While we're on the subject of ungulates, tapirs are woefully underrepresented as anthropomorphized creatures. Llamas, giraffes, rhinos, deer...those all exist in the worlds of animation and video games, but tapirs are limited to, what, the Pokèmon Drowzee (which isn't even meant to be a tapir, but rather a baku!)? I hereby propose this as the new cutting edge in animated entertainment:

Imagine a world, grim and dark and dystopian, ruled by a ruthless and authoritarian syndicate, a committee made up of representatives from the major mammalian orders. Fighting against this machine of oppression, a band of guerrilla warriors (not gorilla warriors; no, the token gorilla would be like a pole dancer or something) who have had enough with their shitty lot in life. A tapir, a fossa, a hyrax, a nutria, and a slow loris, with a binturong injected for comic relief. They blow up things and piss off the Powers That Be until shit gets serious enough that the Council of Hate puts itself at great risk and by retaining the mercenary services of the most perfect and amoral killing machine imaginable: Man.

Anyway, by the series finale every one of the main characters has died, except for the human, who just lights up a cigarette, enjoys it, and stubs it out on a skull trophy collected from his first victim, that brave tapir.

Hollywood, call me.