Alan Moore and The Conversion Bureau · 6:21pm Nov 11th, 2013
I just started to read some TCB fics (a lot of people is telling me to stay away from Chatoyance's ones for some reason I would like to ask here by the way) and after reading some one-shots and seeing some familiarities I started to think: Where have I read this before? But I couldn't put my finger on it until reading TCB: Not Alone (Awesome fic, go and read it) when I finally realized that TCB's main plot (humanity being replaced by a new species with a different scale of values) has actually a lot in common with the ending of Alan Moore's Miracleman.
For those who haven't read it (go an dot it), Moore's Miracleman run ends with (SPOILER ALERT. Seriously, if you haven't read it stop reaing this.) a civilization of super-beings replacing the ineffective old governments and taking over the world after destroying every weapon in the world and instituting new reforms (abolishing money and the concept of country, listen Imagine by John Lenon and you will have a close idea of what happened to the world), healing and eradicating diseases, building new super-cities and ultimately giving the option of becoming a super-man/woman to the common people. Finally the world embraces the new ideals except for a minimal group of old religious leaders refusing to accept the changes.
But the moment that really makes the connection with The Conversion Bureau genre is the following lines:
Miracleman: When you become like us, you will understand. There is a waiting list for conversions, but I can skip it and put you at first...
Liz: Get out.
Miracleman: Liz? Come on. You don't understand what you are rejecting...
Liz: ...And you have forgotten that what you are asking me to resign.
The comic ends with Miracleman still wondering why Liz didn't want to become a super-woman, why she wanted to keep her humanity, why she didn't want to be perfect. And he's finally disconnected from humanity and loosing the point of "being human".
So after all of that (and giving Watchmen a second reading too) I realized that the idea of a super-race that can make thing beyond human capacity that replaces the aforementioned humanity and even transform it in a closer thing tho them is older than we tough with Miracleman being one of the firsts of Alan Moore's works (1982) so, after thinking about it.
Is Alan Moore's Miracleman the precursor of The Conversion Bureau?
The Conversion Bureau has a long, sad, and weird history. I should know: I was there. If you've ever read Blaze's original, you'd be astounded at how the themes have transformed. Originally, Blaze was noticing the emergence of Human in Equestria fics and had the thought that human civilization was incompatible with the pony civilization on the show. He approached his HiE fic with this in mind, and then as it went on, it descended into cliches, and then was abandoned without comment. He wasn't writing a transhumanist apocalypse fic, or a war fic, which is what the TCB has become for the conventional TCB writer and anti-TCB (now alternate TCB) writer respectively.
That's the footnote version of the whole thing. As for the conflict between the two camps, it's down to which trope you like more (or which you dislike more): do you feel that humans are the real monsters, or do you believe that humans are special? Of course that's a simplification, and every author is carrying their own life experiences to their perspective, young and old. Note that this debate is somewhat absurd because the ponies are by design essentially human. MLP is not supposed to be xenofiction, and in addition the FiM ponies are designed to be the perfect setting for the themes of the show, which are all about the value and challenges of interpersonal relationships. They were never made to interact with humans, and such interactions would be pointless from a writing perspective. (And now you know why nobody asks me my opinion.)
Full disclosure for this next part: Chatoyance is an acquaintance of mine. We go back for a decade and a half now. Where did the time go? Anyway, by the end of season 1, and mind you this was before FIMF came into the spotlight so we were all passing around google docs then, we were trading spin-offs of the original TCB. I think it was the third thread when she finally said something. I was surprised to see her there, but I thought she would have liked the show, so I wasn't crazy shocked. As it turned out, she became the most prolific of the conventional TCB authors, which gave her a high profile. A lot of her ideas are now taken for granted by everyone now, but then it's not like she's enforcing them, she just gets the views. She's eccentric, unreserved, and demographically speaking quite different than your average FIMFiction user. Conflict is inevitable, but the scale of it has been truly staggering. I'm not exaggerating when I say that several changes to FIMF have been because of things that have happened to or because of her presence. To be fair those changes were likely inevitable, anyhow, but a constant source of sparks are the most likely source of a fire, even if the tinder was dry.
To the point of her fics, they are controversial. She writes the 'Humans are the Real Monsters' line hard in her TCB fics, but the main focus is on issues affecting the future of modern civilization, like over-industrialization, corporate-flavoured autocracy, overpopulation, and genetically modification of crops. She approaches the TCB with a theme of the collision of two universes, in which the main characters of the drama are the Royal Pony Sisters as she understand them and the human corporate elite families, the super-wealthy owners of the planet and the masses of humanity. She approaches it as a work of science fiction, particularly older science fiction, and her style is very heavily influenced by Robert Heinlein. (Who also eccentric, unreserved, and pissed a lot of people off, too!)
Because of these attributes, her TCB fics are extremely polarizing. For those that don't find the themes or her handling of them poison, then she has chops. They are generally well-paced and engaging, featuring well-portrayed characters and innovative plots. That being said, every writer is hit-or-miss even then. I think the best TCB fic she's done was The Taste of Grass -- even a surprising number of ACB members have grumbled that it was readable. I'm not giving you a recommendation here, just saying that they are not uniform, which shouldn't need to be said anyhow. And now I'm talking in circles.
I believe I've not really explained anything, and maybe I've further confused matters for you, but remember that you're on this site to read things for your entertainment. Ignoring all of this nonsense, don't forget that! You should chase your bliss, don't be lead by what causes you anguish -- you don't get XP for fighting on here.
1511858
I was actually surprised after reading the first chapters of the original TCB, and you're right; It's not about war or apocalypse or any of the most common themes on the most well know TCB fics out there.
I would like to think that humans are special after all that happened around the world in all of these years we are the culmination of generations of evolution, natural selection, social, cultural and technological progress. Yes we're far from flawless but we really earned our right to live. (yes, I totally ripped off that phrase from The War of the Worlds).
Your opinion is as valuable as any other else if not better, it's clear that you have an individual perspective, and that's what makes humanity progress, never hush your or others ideas even if nobody asked for them, in fact sometimes is when nobody ask for an opinion is when an opinion is most needed..
There are events that are simply inevitable, just like the Religious Reform or the Globalization, so nobody can actually blame Chat for what happened around her. Even when personally I don't agree with most of her ideas, I respect her for all the hard work that she obviously put on her fictions, and yes some of those have that taste of old Sci-fi mixed with a little of cosmic fiction. Even more, was that quote:
"In my stories superior beings - truly superior beings - can do things that if a lesser being, like a human, were to do, it would indeed be evil."
That's what put me to think: What if a being superior to Celestia decided to actually judge her? What if Celestia it's not on the top? What if Celestia and all of ponykind are wrong?
And now you can see the result in TCB: Judgement Day.
Sometime confrontation is exactly the right path to experience, but evidently is not the only way.
Thanks for the comment (oh my God, this is the greatest comment I've ever seen in my life!).
1514361
That trope in particular is more referring to humans in the presence of other types of sapient species. Unless the fictional species is an artificially created one, like a type of golem or homunculus in fantasy and a robot or genetically engineered creature in science fiction, then the hypothetical Other would also have experiences that would match the human one, more or less. The trope comes about when the narrative states, implies, or takes for granted that human civilization has some special something over every other type of sentient being the narrative cosmos. That thing usually places them in the center of that cosmos. When you see an old alien commander waxing poetic about how his human allies were able to stand against the psychic evil alien bug-demon hivemind horde, he usually says something like "it must be the thing that you call 'the human spirit'" or "a unique determination" or "you were most like the ancient wise race that seeded life throughout the cosmos" or... you get the idea. The reason that this trope exists is because the writers are human, and particularly humans that can only conjecture about the existence of an alien perspective that equals the human one in depth and sophistication.
Have you ever noticed that in science fiction and fantasy, non-human people tend to have mono-cultures? Like, the elves live in forests and have long history, the dwarves carve rock and are rowdy, the cat people are proud and curious, the ant people can only think about supporting and expanding the hive, and so on? Doesn't that ever strike you as suspicious? Like, wouldn't a group of dwarves from another part of the world have their own way of talking and slightly different way of life? Yes, yes, I'm aware of Campbell's ideas about monomyth and there is such a thing as symbolism and the idea of a race being a symbol, but occasionally that approach to writing -- and reading!-- can be intellectually suffocating and even self-deceptive.
Again, most of this is born out of innocence. It's not like any of us can turn to our centaur friends and ask, "How would you define my species as to how we fit into the universe?" Even then you'd only have the perspective of one friendly centaur, and I'd assume if you asked nine more centaurs you'd end up with ten perspectives, so maybe even if we're surrounded by non-human people, we'd still all be at a loss for any definitive answers about what we are. I suppose we would end up thinking things like, "Even though we're slower runners and unable to carry as much, my species need less food because of our smaller bodies, and we're easier to accommodate."
Fiction is actually a great way to explore these kinds of things, but because fiction is also a product of culture as well as a literal product to be consumed, it's been slow to do so. Well, slower than it could be. Xenofiction is becoming more common, and it's been shown that people find it legitimately interesting, even though it goes against the common wisdom that people don't want to read about some unrelatable, alien thing that doesn't even have the decency to be human. I hope that time proves that curiosity and playfulness eventually tramples that sort of so-called common wisdom.
Ha ha yeah, you actually went and checked it out! It seems like everybody is shocked and more than a little confused when they read the original, but you can see how we ended up here. The funny part is where in one of the last available chapters has Celestia saying, pretty much, "It's evident that humans are not bad. Look at these two protagonists here, they're 'aight. I just got a really bad first impression." That pretty much indicates where the story was going to go. If Blaze had finished it, just imagine...
1514544
Okay let me answer point by point:
I'm fully aware of the concept as a trope but I wanted to use some a real example to sustain it. In fiction I like when they come to the part that "humans are the only who can do this" and my favorite example would be Green Lantern; in a universe where there is a lantern on every sector the only planet that produced more than one lantern per generation was earth with actually five Lanterns (six if you count the original one who wasn't member of the corps).
With all that said I also like when it's showed that other species are equally capable of saving the existence too, my favorite example here would be the Transformers series where is the cybertronian the only ones capable of stopping Unicron.
Yeah, I've noted that too and you are right, sometimes it can be suffocating. But there are some pretty good examples of the opposite idea like in Transformers (again) and especially in the IDW comics where it showed all the cultural differences between and inside the different factions giving a wider spectrum of characters.
Remember me to thank you for those paragraphs, (the centaurs one and the next one) because is one of the things I wanted to approach int further chapters of TCB: Judgement Day. How other being would see humanity? Would they condemn us? Would they even capable of understand us? Do WE understand us? And so.
Imagine. I really love that word. And for the record I more curious than reasonable so my first reaction after reading some TCB fics was to go to check the original one. Yeah, I would like to see what Blaze had to say about humanity and ponykind but it up to us to think what could have been.
If you don't mind the self promotion let me tell you that the Celestia in TCB: JD. will be more close to this Celestia but without the realization (after reading about history she was scared of all the evil that humans were capable of) so she don't understand why there is a pantheon of gods that want to judge her for her actions.
1515482 After some reflection, I've realized why reducing the level of personhood of non-human characters bothers me. It's not really about humans and hypothetical alien species, it's about the culture of the writers themselves. When most people say "humanity", they really are thinking of their immediate culture as they understand it. They are rarely thinking of people in cultures that aren't theirs. And how frequently do the mono-culture aliens' mono-cultures very closely resemble, superficially, a human culture that's foreign to the writer? So, when "humans" are 'special', the main guys at the center of the universe, then what the writers are really saying is that they and their cultural kin are that. That sort of conceited-ness has been at the center of so much suffering and oppression in our history. Kindness, respect and understanding is not the default position we take with the Other, and it shouldn't be that way.
I'm willing to assume that most people would say that I'm overthinking it, but I think most people underthink this kind of thing.
1518118
I guess that you are right, when the writer is obviously a patriot for his country (USA most of the times) they represent humankind like a bunch of mary sues that usually fit with the writer's vision of "good" and the alien civilization is a textbook version of a foreign culture (for some the medieval culture is the most common).
But also the concept of a whole planet having a joined culture and giving the explanation that it's because said planet is older than ours is the writer's way to express their hope that in the future maybe we could forget our differences too and start to work together (remember that most of the modern scy-fi and fantasy have a lot of influences from the World and Cold War era).
If you don't mind reading comics, then I think that you would like titles like Green Lantern or Legion of Super-Heroes (specially the modern versions) where the writers usually avoid those conventions and build some very solid and complex civilizations for their stories.
And there is no such think like "overthinking" you can't put a limit to that.