Gates to Renascence: The Human-Centric Paradigm · 8:06am Dec 3rd, 2013
As was pointed out by a reader, it's clearly obvious that Gates to Renascence is greatly more human-centric than a plethora of other HiEs on the site. To generalize further, I've learned that practically all of my HiEs, both those released and in the works, follow this same premise. It's an interesting problem, to be sure: it seems that I'm taking the human part in "human in Equestria" too literally, maybe. But there is a reason for it: after seeing endless streams of mediocre HiE stories make it into the featured box, I eventually got fed up and decided I could do them better. I could make an HiE story where it truly was an HiE, and I would make it unique, interesting to read, and give the humans an attachment to the ponies that made sense (see: not bronies).
It's arguable whether or not that serves as a detriment to my stories. There's clearly a wide variety of HiEs on the site that do have a greater pony-centric setup in their stories, much greater than mine (as if that was a grand feat to achieve) and those will satisfy the tastes of those who want that. As it is for Gates to Renascence, though, the human focus probably isn't going to change, but there's ideas shouting and thoughts arguing with each other, and maybe when things begin to settle down (see: after the next chapter), I'll be able to begin weaving in the ponies as they learn more of the Empire and of the humans themselves. It's all been a mad rush, and they are about to hit rock bottom in a most spectacular fashion. I'd say that gives plenty more introspection and conversation time.
I won't lie, though. I like focusing on the humans in my HiE stories.
I haven't read past the first chapter of Gates, but I can definitely tell you that the overly human centric focus in Kreigor's Machine and Might really put me off
Kriegor spent a great deal of time exploring his human society, that my ache for ponies turned my opinion of the human characters sour to the point where I celebrated their deaths with an "awesome, can we see whats happening to the ponies, now?"
Of course, much of that was human politics and world-building. If by human-centric, you mean humans interacting with ponies, I personally have much less of a problem with that.
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It's more of the latter. Like hell I'm going to go into "Hey, ponies, let us tell you EVERYTHING ABOUT HUMANS IN THE HISTORY OF EVER!" Yeesh, even I find that boring.
I'm just focusing on the important stuff like who the First is and why the history of the Empire is so important to defeating the big bad. And in return the humans will be asking questions of the ponies because the two civilizations haven't exactly had the greatest communication for many years (which is something that flows more naturally because the humans are inherent to the Equestrian world, instead of being outsiders).
i like it!
Definitely not a detriment here.