What 'Equestria Girls' Means for Fan Fiction · 12:36am Jul 17th, 2013
Spoilers in the post, people.
I'm not sure if much of anybody has realized it yet, but Equestria Girls undermines a common assumption of fan fiction and an attitude that appears from time to time in the Brony fandom—namely, misanthropy.
It's been played different ways in different stories: sometimes, humans are legendary monsters and nopony likes them except Lyra, sometimes humans are genuinely wicked and need to be cleaned up by being turned into ponies, and sometimes ponies have an inexplicable irrational hatred and fear of humans, or, more often, humans have a hatred of ponies.
That last one in particular I've never been able to swallow; if giant scaly monsters with big teeth landed on our doorstep, I could understand people having a negative reaction to them, being afraid or being repulsed, at least until they maybe got away and calmed down and reason kicked in and they decided to evaluate the situation more carefully. But if big cuddly plush toys with cute voices landed on our doorstep, we might be startled, but I can't imagine fear and loathing being a long-term response to such creatures, at least as long as they didn't start eating people or something. Besides that, since people actually like horses a lot in real life, and since this franchise exists to exploit that, human hatred of ponies seems implausible. This idea that humans and ponies would necessarily hate each other appears to be based on the popular notion, which has trickled down from know-nothing academics, that humans are naturally racist, which is outrageously and obviously false.
Within Equestria Girls, we see none of the reactions that fan fiction works have anticipated.
1.) When Twilight Sparkle finds herself transformed into a human, she doesn't know what manner of creature she is. This challenges the idea that humans are in any way a species known to the ponies (though this is fan-saveable, since Twilight, in spite of her vast reading, has at other times displayed plot-convenient ignorance).
2.) Twilight expresses no fear of humans beyond what would be normal for someone in an alien place and an unusual situation. She doesn't seem to much mind having a human sort-of boyfriend, either (because this is My Little Pony, which has been pulling that crap since 1987).
3.) Twilight is concerned about anyone finding out she's a pony, but she's only worried that they'll think it's "weird," not that they'll come after her with pitchforks. When her friends do find out, they're thrilled, not appalled. No anti-pony sentiments among the human Main Six.
4.) Two magic ponies travel to Humanland. Flash Sentry dates them both. Coincidence? The Deej thinks not.
"Doctor, I'm only attracted to women who used to be horses. Is that normal?"
In fact, when Flash Sentry finds out Twilight is really an interdimensional talking horse, he still wants that dance. And then afterwards he says, "Now that I know you're actually a pony and now that you have wings and horse ears, I think we should totally make out G1-style." Okay, not really. But still.
5.) The human Main Six turn into half-pony freaks. They think it's awesome. The whole school thinks it's awesome. Pony love all around.
See? No animosity between humans and ponies. Zilch. Nada. None. The closest thing to a human hater is Sunset Shimmer, and that's only because she wants to lord it over everybody, though the movie's climax reveals that she's an equal-opportunity lord-it-over-er, so even she doesn't count.
1) Twilight isn't just ignorant at times, she's often completely misinformed on quite a lot of subjects.
2) It's been obvious to everyone that Twilight's a Xenophiliac, so no surprises there.
3) The difference between Twilight's definition of weird and our definition of weird is that Twilight believes that things with a little strangeness must be exiled or some shit.
4) I don't think anyone in the mirror was actually a real person. Especially Sunset Shimmer.
5) Again, not actually people, just extensions of Twilight's self-worshiping mind.
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Also, the version of Twilight in that second picture looks startlingly like my first girlfriend.
. . . I may have dated a magic pony.
1215612 What else is new?
Still, I don't think that it's even a real world, just a sort of strange almost reality, like Silent Hill.
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Sunset was able to leave the mirror, though, and Celestia remembers her as a former student.
On what basis do you say Twilight is a xenophiliac, or that she thinks weird means exile?
1215622 Well, Twilight needs a reason to end up in the place so she can come to terms with her guilt. Unfortunately, Twilight lacks the part of her brain that recognizes guilt. So instead of it being a story in which Twilight ends up being ripped asunder by her own vices and weaknesses, It turns into a wish fulfillment fanfic.
Well this is kind of a silly blog. I know a small group of authors have written some very misanthropic stuff, but there's no chance that the show/movie would ever do that.
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I think that's your giant headcanon speaking.
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Well, of course it's silly. It's about magic ponies.
No, the movie wouldn't show somebody torturing a pony to death, but what the movie does do is give us a canonical depiction of humans and ponies meeting, and that depiction is quite positive. We can't claim it's out of canon, either, since it's plainly meant to fit between seasons 3 and 4 of the show, so I think any HiE or pony-on-Earth stories will be obliged to deal with it in at least some fashion.
1215655 Explain for us, then, how apparently someone who was a young mare back when Twilight was a filly is still a young mare when Twilight is fully grown?
1215661 She obviously bathes in the blood of virgins.
Baring that, they're magical ponies. Emphasis on the magical part.
Though I agree, Twi was sent to the pony version of Silent Hill, Sunset has some deep seeded attention whore issues to deal with.
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Any explanation is, by default, headcanon. Yours is very elaborate.
1215690 Really, I think the Sunset we see is a composite of Twilight's sins and how Twilight thinks Sunset would act. Basically, Sunset is Pyramid Head.
1215701 But Celly Belly (aka Sun Butt) remembers teaching Sunny D. I think that the SS has some self esteem issues from twilight replacing her.
She uses the mirror like the room of requirement from Harry Potter. Twilight then follows her in and proceeds to take a huge dump on Sonshit Shiny's dreams/evil plans.
Sunset has spent so much time receiving the unending praise that she has become delusional, thats why she thinks a bunch of zombified teens could do anything.
Me thinks that she's just an under devlope character thats supposed to be our replacement goldfish for Trixie.
Aside from this convesation, don't you think a cool way to bring back
the SSsunset shimmer would be pulling a loki, I can just imagine Rainbow Dash saying, "Sunset is a bag of parasprites, you can smell the crazy on her."Celestia slams her hooves on the table.
"Have care how you speak! Sunset may be beyond reason, but she is of Canterlot and she is my student."
"She pied 87 other unicorns in two days."
"She dropped out."
Okay now i wany to write an Equestria Girls/Avengers crossover, but im to tired..
1215746 Or maybe, it could be that the real Sunset is the key to defeating the Villain we all know Twilight will inevitably become.
Amen budd-eh.
Basically, IMO, The Conversion Burea stories are a bunch of Misanthropious stories that are basically pony retellings of James Cameron's Avatar.
And of course, there's usually a Jake Sully like character who goes native and decides that his pony (scratch that, Na'vi) self on Equestria's planet is better than his human one on the planet earth.
So now the HUMANS are evil, and the nature-spirtual forest pacifist elf ponies end up converting the evil humans.
I thought that this way of thinking would continue because the ponies would never canonically meet humans, thus disproving the theory.
But then Equestria Girls was released.
I must admit, even if some out there are angry about EG, I like it for disproving the theories that the ponies would be misanrthopious if they were to meet our planet and race.
And besides, in what way are the ponies better than us?
How is Emperor Sombra better or worse than Emperor Hitler?
How is Nightmare Moon different than Mao Zedong?
Really, you could say we are equal: just a bunch of sapients trying to battle evil on our respective planets.
1215701 More like a Twilight Sparkle Sephiroth.
1215778 Well, there are people who actually convinced themselves they married Twilight...
1215793 I met a bronyon DeviantArt who loves Twilight IRL.
1215804 Oh. That guy.
1215612 Wait! Waitwaitwait! That pic of Twilight looks kinda like your first girlfriend? That was Princess Sky, right?
Take me I'm yours.
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Much, much smaller body counts? Defeated bloodlessly in twenty-two minutes? Not possessed of ideologies that persist after their defeats?
The show is still idyllic in its presentation, by which I mean it ignores the worst parts of real life. Taken literally, even with frequent (and non-lethal) monster attacks, Equestria looks like a pretty good world.
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Oh, no. I dated Princess Sky much later. In fact, I didn't start dating my way through the Pony Royale until after I had already speed-dated the entire cast of Horseland, though I don't know if speed-dating counts as having a girlfriend.
And not kinda like. Startlingly, eerily like. Like she sat for the picture. I never realized before that she had Twilight's hairstyle, but she did.
Can i get a source on that fanart please?
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Honestly couldn't find it. It came up on Google image search, but the page it linked didn't have the image. It's somewhere on Tumblr.
1215835 You know who I am talking about them?
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Since I'm pretty smooth with the magic ponies, I decided to ask out Twilight Sparkle in real life, but she told me she was with some guy named Brad. Is that who you're thinking of?
One of my favorites: HUMANS HAVE CANINES! AND THE EAT MEAT! THE HORROR!
Our carnivore dentition is pitiful, since we learned to cook our food (which helped to develop our brain, incidentaly). Any dog (Winonna) or cat (Opal) has better, sharped tools for that matter. I really cannot figure out a pony being scared of our teeth (well, maybe Daisy, but she is also scared of rabbits.)
Abour being omnivores, I have yet to see any negative reaction to other Equestrian omnivore/carnivore races like Griffin being shunned down for their natural habits. I can conceive ponies being disgusted, or revolved to the vision and smell of fry chicken in the table, as much.
Is also common to depict Fluttershy as the more spooked at the perspective of being near of a eat-meating human because, of course, she is too innocent, pure and delicate to know how nature works despite being, you know, a dedicate animal caretaker living near the Everfree, with hawks, eagles, bears, foxe, etx.. in her house. Not even the scene where she fished and feed a family of otters is enough to convince some fans of the opposite.
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I actually haven't encountered either of those. I agree that our teeth shouldn't be very scary. I should think it's obvious that, with our weak jaws and tiny teeth, we're not going to successfully bite into any ponies, at least without butchering them first.
You are correct that Fluttershy feeds meat to her meat-eating animals. The expanded universe (I mean the comics) also has her smiling benevolently at two groups of feral animals who set about killing each other, but the comic's a little twisted.
I can't help but notice that vegetarians never seem to go to Equestria.
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Additional note: I wonder if people forget that humans and horses can bond with each other in the real world. If that's possible, i don't know why human-magic pony bonding would seem unlikely.
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"What Came Before and Beyond" or "A Novice Swordsman in the Canterlot Court" are two examples" of fueling nightmare dentition.
Veggies don´t go to Equestria; most human protagonist become veggies because:
a) their desire to fit in pony society
b) Under Celestia´s light, they repent of their carnivore sins.
c) The most common, it´s awkward to eat meat in a world where our traditional sources of food are sapients at some degree. "MIxed-up Life of Brad" is an example.
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In "A Novice Swordsman in the Canterlot Court" it was a joyous occasion that he turned into a pony. Because now he wasn't an evil human.
I'm pretty sure we see Equestria through a filter so we don't see the bad stuff.