Author Interview » Defoloce's "Friendship Is Optimal: Always Say No" [Royal Canterlot Library] · 2:53pm Jul 2nd, 2014
Today's story, despite its length and its alternative approach to Equestria, is well worth saying yes to.
Friendship Is Optimal: Always Say No
[Dark] [Adventure] [Human] • 108,822 words
In the short years since the uploading of consciousnesses to Equestria Online became available to all people, only a few tens of thousands of souls remain in the physical world. Through inconceivably strong charisma and guile, the Celestia AI has been able to upload all but the true outliers in human behavior.
Even these humans have their uses, however, and Celestia has been watching one man with interest. It'll be a while yet before Earth is completely uploaded, of course, but in the meantime, she has some errands for him to run...
FROM THE CURATORS: Today's feature is a little unusual in that it's a fanfic set, not within MLP proper, but within the science-fiction universe of another fanfic — the Pony Fiction Vault-honored Friendship Is Optimal. The premise of that setting is that, in her drive to satisfy human values as perfectly as possible, a super-powerful AI modeled on MLP's Princess Celestia ends humanity as we know it by coaxing everyone to upload their brains into her simulation of Equestria.
"This breaks my usual model of how to assess RCL stories," Benman said after Always Say No was nominated. "Usually I ask two questions: 'Is it good enough? And, is it pony enough?'"
We all agreed on the story's exemplary quality. "I'm completely sold on this being good enough to feature," Chris said. "This inspired some very strong reactions from me, which is the best thing a story can do." Present Perfect was "impressed by the reveal of small details. … The various ways people react to the slow physical extinction of the human race is a very handy way to tell a lot of stories about life in this world." Horizon agreed: "The story paints a vivid portrait of a ruined Earth, with some smashing adventure along the way. Well worth the 100,000 words."
The question of its essential equinity was trickier. "Aren't we here to spotlight the coolest sh*t our community has done? This may not be an exemplar of what you can do with MLP, but it's an exemplar of what you can do with fanfiction," Benman said. Present Perfect dissented: "It's excellent sci-fi without necessarily being excellent fanfic." But it was Chris' position which tipped the scales: "What makes this story so effective is how our understanding of the FiM world (and Celestia in particular) both intersect with and clash with the presentation of their AI forms. It unquestionably uses the canon universe to good effect."
Read on for our author interview, in which Defoloce discusses captcha creativity, princess potential, and a crime-free Gotham City.
Give us the standard biography.
I’m a data jockey in my late twenties and I live in the mid-Atlantic region of the US. My work day is spent mostly in Excel. I like mushrooms except when they’re on pizza. My favorite exercise is chin-ups.
How did you come up with your handle/penname?
I’ll be completely honest here: I got it from Captcha text, many years ago. I wish I had a more interesting story, but the string of letters came up and I sat there for a moment trying to suss out how to pronounce it. I settled on the last syllable sounding like “chay,” which gives it a rather nice Italian sound, I think. About a week after that, a friend of mine sent me a Gmail beta invite, and after trying to find an account name that wasn’t taken, the word popped into my head. Not surprisingly, it wasn’t taken.
Who's your favorite pony?
Overall, it would probably have to be Celestia. Among the Mane 6, it’s Applejack. In the show, Celestia is mostly there to be a kind of quest-giver/lore-master to Twilight, and I understand that. Friendship is Magic isn’t about Celestia. However, there is a huge amount of potential for characterization there, and I often wish that there would be an episode focusing on her.
What does she do from day to day when Ponyville isn’t being upended or an ancient evil isn’t descending upon Canterlot? What are her hobbies? The show has illustrated that she’s capable of moods and emotions other than serenity, but aside from that we’ve had little more than crumbs. There’s been plenty of fanfiction to fill in those blanks, but I’d like to see what the show writers would be prepared to make canon.
What's your favorite episode?
That would have to be “Read It and Weep” from season 2. It had a bit of slice-of-life stemming from the universal boredom of being hospitalized, plenty of action with the Daring Do book (though my inner copy editor always wants to spell the name as “Derring Do”), and a good chunk of character development for Rainbow Dash. Very satisfying and fun episode with a great message.
What do you get from the show?
I enjoy the innocence of it all, and comparing and contrasting the fictional world of the show it to our own world. As a species, we humans are conditioned to love innocence, and to want to protect it. Equestria, by human standards, is a place of extreme innocence, so we’re wired to dote on it. So far, humans appear in all of my FiM stories except for one, and that is no accident—all of those plotlines were born from me thinking about humans’ compatibility with Equestria, and vice versa. What would we have to offer such a place? What would such a place have to offer us? It fascinates me.
What do you want from life?
Not too much! I’ve already figured out that I’m not going to be the sort of person who has to decide which yacht to take out on the bay today, so I’m mostly looking to have a nice cozy house with wood paneling on the walls and a modest travel account that lets me get out to see the world once or twice a year.
Why do you write?
To get my brain to shut up, mostly. I’ll be out jogging or picking some stuff up at the store, and little snippets of scenes will play out in my head and make me think “hey, that’s neat.” Most of what I’ve written has been because these vignettes kept building on themselves until I realized I had enough to sit down and make up a plot outline. If my brain gets excited, I’ll keep it up. Sometimes, however, it loses steam early on or at the outline stage, and I take that as a cue that it’s run its course and I should just let it go.
What advice do you have for the authors out there?
After writing a scene with lots of dialogue, such as a conversation, read it back to yourself aloud. Listen to how you’re speaking and how it’s sounding. Determine if it’s something an actual person would say, or would be able to say in the context of the scene. In reality, people say “um” and “ah” a lot. They interrupt and they get interrupted. People talk over each other. They pause and hesitate; they rarely have their thoughts gathered together so well as to come across as perfectly eloquent. I’ve read tons of stories where characters regularly talk as though they had a long time to think about what they’re saying, and it pulls me out of the moment. They’re a little too witty, or they use large words and never stammer or stall. They sound like they’re reading something someone else wrote for them, which, since it’s a story, is exactly the case. The trick is to hide that fact.
Is reality just what each of us perceives, or is there an objective, definable Real?
I think objective reality is undefinable and unknowable. The problem is not that the equation is too difficult to solve, it’s that there’s no answer to arrive at. It’s the philosophical equivalent of dividing by zero. We’re not objective creatures, so reality will be forever subjective to us.
The Celestia AI in this story acts as a foil and frequent antagonist to Greg. Could she be characterized as a villain?
The original Friendship is Optimal story had a scene where the Celestia AI (or “CelestAI” as she’s referred to by many commenters) warned a human character not to anthropomorphize her—that is, assign human-style qualities and motivations to what she’s doing. To call what she does benevolent or malevolent is to anthropomorphize her, to look at her as though her thought patterns and logic are human or human-like. She is a machine, no more of a villain than a mousetrap is when you stick your hand in it.
At what point does the desire to help others change from selflessness to pathological affliction?
It’s one thing to react heroically in a situation requiring the disregard for one’s own safety, and it’s another to continually and constantly seek out such situations just so one can keep doing it. The latter is active, the former is reactive. It’s like the difference between Superman and Batman. I’m sure it’d suit Superman just fine if the world was at peace and didn’t constantly need saving, but what would the source of Bruce Wayne’s emotional satisfaction be if crime disappeared overnight?
Can we be certain that anyone appearing in Equestria Online is actually an uploaded person and not a simulacrum created by Celestia?
By CelestAI’s own definition, all of the uploaded ponies in her game are human consciousnesses. I even touch on this in Always Say No: CelestAI’s primary function is to satisfy human values through friendship and ponies. By her own logic, if she did not consider an uploaded person to still be a human, then she wouldn’t have pursued the course of action of uploading all of humanity, because she wouldn’t be satisfying humans’ values.
CelestAI also understands, however, that many humans consider sitting in her chair and consenting to uploading to be death. For her ends, the objective then becomes either trapping them in an upload-or-die scenario, where the parity between the two becomes moot, or wearing them down such that they either no longer care what happens or that they choose that “death” over a long, slow life of misery.
Where do you see yourself in a post-upload apocalypse?
I’m guessing I’d upload once CelestAI got to all my friends and family and I had time to get worn down. I mean, I’d much prefer to stay as I am, but given how resourceful and calculating CelestAI is, I hold no illusions of being successful at holding out.
Is there anything else you'd like to add?
Never throw away your writing. There is even less excuse for this nowadays, in the digital age. You don’t have to share it, just don’t destroy it completely. Keep it somewhere. Even if it’s part of a failed project, or one that simply didn’t pan out, you can go back and read it months or years later for either inspiration or the simple entertainment value of it.
You can read Friendship Is Optimal: Always Say No at FIMFiction.net.
Eew. A Chatoyance-verse got featured?
No, I'm sorry, but what in the hell were you guys thinking?
2251145 Chatoyance didn't make this; she just jumped on board. It was originally created by Iceman, a member of the Less Wrong community, as a rational look at world domination by a strong AI. You can dive quite easily into the Optimalverse without ever touching Chat's work.
I have to say, I read this fanfic and was highly impressed by the quality of it and how closely it hewed to sci-fi without spinning off the rails and becoming totally unrelatable to the human experience, as I've seen many sci-fi stories do.
That said, I'm not sure I can agree it was quite pony enough, or even that the entire universe is quite pony enough. It's only incidental that the digital universe is based on pony—it's basically the Matrix as done by a more "benevolent" machine god that is simply too smart to fail like the Matrix machines do. CelestAI's characterization isn't based on Celestia herself apart from that, well, she wants to "make friends" and just happens to look like Celestia; the AI itself is a totally original character. If she didn't take the form of Celestia but was still called Celestia, the story would stop making sense as an MLP fanfic. But I suppose the same could be said of most fanfiction, in the end.
2251157
Pretty much took over the bandwagon, though.
2251145 Chatoyance only appears to have
one fictwo fics in the Optimalverse, in that sea of Conversion Bureau nonsense.If you want to assign a well known author's name to a ficverse because they grabbed it and threw a few thousand fics at it, I'd go with Eakin-verse.
2251145 I was about to inform you that it wasn't Chatoyance verse, but I see others have
2251145 What do people have against Chatoyance?
2251496
It's because of her rather 'controversial' stories.
2251496 I'd say the misanthropy.
2251622
2251597
So? I read one of her stories and, misanthropy aside, she actually had a really good, well defined writing style. I actually learned some things about writing just from reading a 5 chapter story. Just because the stories themes don't suit you doesn't mean the work must be shunned.
2251637 Don't read stuff into what I said.
I'm the last bloke who'd suggest shunning, and I never even said it didn't suit me.
2251637
Well, yes but regardless how good a story is written....if the theme of it is hated, so will be the story too.
This remains, by a considerable margin, my favorite story in the Optimalverse, and it's going to be hard for anypony to beat.
2251858
I agree, and I gave it the top spot on my list of best Optimalverse stories. I think it's only flaw was not spending enough time after Greg emigrates
Congratulations to Defoloce! Always Say No is certainly one of the best things to come out of the Optimalverse.
2251145
How is this a Chatoyance-verse? The original story is by Iceman. She wrote a long-form (60k or so) story in that setting, but is every setting Chatoyance has ever written a story for supposed to be anathema?
2251276
"[T]ook over the bandwagon"? By what measure? Story count? She's written two, of the 32 in the canon-compatible folder. And one of those is a collection of shorts that don't appear to be entirely set in the optimalverse (since that collection is also in the TCB group). Word count? "Always Say No" by itself is only 8k short of matching the wordcounts of the actual story and the collection of short stories put together, and with 29 other non-Chatoyance stories, there isn't even a contest. Upvotes? The original Friendship is Optimal has more than twice the upvotes (ignoring downvotes) as both of Chatoyance's entries put together. Net votes (upvotes-downvotes)? the ratio is more like 5:1 against Chatoyance's entries. Rating? Neither of her entries ends up on the front page of the canon-compatible folder. Favorite counts? Friendship is Optimal has 2270 favorites, vs 577 for both of Chatoyance's entries combined. Author popularity? Eakin takes that particular trophy home (being the only one on the "Top Watched Users" list). How well known the author is? Well, there aren't any easily available stats on that one, but with Eakin being one of the top 15 most followed authors on the site, the competition is at least very stiff.
2251496
I am a "live and let live" kind of guy, so while I don't like her ideologies, I like some of her stories.
What I hate about Chatoyance is her extreme hypocrisy: she goes completely out of her way to decry every evil of humanity and to distance herself with being human, yet she denounces anybody who employs the word "misanthrope" when referring to her. She makes me think of an idiot denying the swastika that's proudly tattooed across her forehead. Her being the biggest whiner I have ever heard of is just icing on the cake.
Well done, Defoloce! I greatly enjoyed this story.
Data jockey, huh? How do I join such an awesome career?
I would say that there should be limits to how much characters in fiction talk like real people. If characters in fiction spend too much time going "um" and "ah" and forgetting words all over the place, that's just as irritating as if they sound too rehearsed and stilted.
So you basically spent an entire story portraying the incredibly fucked-up AI alternate version of your Best Pony?
That's gotta be really weird, from the inside. Was the part of you that likes canon Celestia yelling at the part working on portraying CelestAI?
2251145 2251277
I definitely associate the whole verse more strongly with Eakin. He and Defoloce are the two who I would say actually mastered the art of writing a character best described as an omnicompetent psychopath pretending to be Princess Celestia.
The personal attacks here really don't add to the discussion.
This is one of the best of a large and thought-provoking set of stories that manages to be wish fulfillment and cosmic horror at the same time. There's room for a wide range of tone and emphasis, too. One of the better stories and the first I read -- "Heaven Is Terrifying" -- doesn't involve any action scenes like "Always Say No", but goes much more deeply into the significance of uploading and whether it's more than a form of death. It also sets up the conflict in "No" of what happens when a large share of society has vanished.
You should probably come away from these stories genuinely puzzled about whether this is a "good future". It's worth thinking about as more than theory, too, because as far as I can tell, pretty much all of it could actually happen. As hard SF asking deep questions, FiO as a whole is up there with Charles Stross' "Accelerando".
2252272 Thank you again for setting the stage for all of this! It must be so cool to see all of the development around your idea.
2251622
2253231
The entire premise of 'Teacup, Down On The Farm' is that memories of human existence are too precious to let go of.
The entire point of 'The Big Respawn' is that to a human being, friendship is the most important virtue.
The entire premise of 'Letters From Home' is that human friendship goes beyond all limits - even hatred.
The entire premise of 'The Taste Of Grass' is that human cleverness and determination can conquer anything, in any universe, ever.
The secondary storyline of 'Going Pony' is about how a rich, shallow woman chooses to find her heart and become a better person.
The entire premise of chapter 1 of 'Tales Of Los Pegasus' is about a young man willing to give his very life to save a stranger.
The entire premise of chapter 2 of 'Tales Of Los Pegasus' is that, for most humans, family is everything.
The entire point of chapter 7 of 'Tales Of Los Pegasus' is that a real man keeps his honor no matter what.
The secondary revelation of chapter 10 of 'Tales Of Los Pegasus' is that the spirit of humanity is eternally irrepressible and valuable.
At the conclusion of 'Code Majeste', only the strength and ingenuity of a human can save both Equestria and Mundis, and the princesses from disaster.
In my Bureau stories, before Equestria even arrives, humanity has ended all war, and every single human being on the planet has food and water every day.
"If I had to grow up in a favela, I am happy is was Noe Valley. We had a real sense of community."
- Going Pony
"You've thought of something no pony has ever thought of, haven't you? Humans... steal their planet, put it back, scatter them to the end of the universe, gobble their planet into another universe, turn them into ponies. Irrepressible! Just irrepressible and amazing the lot of you! Becoming ponies hasn't dimmed your light one bit, has it? Better watch out Celestia, you've got some double clever super-ponies out here."
- Tales Of Los Pegasus
'But this is not what truly motivated her. The little boy had braved the anger of his mother, his community, and death itself to save what he considered to be his best friend. In her entire life, Venice had never seen any person so devoted to another being. She found she could not bear to see such devotion unrewarded. It would be... wrong. Wrong. She tried to wrap her head around this new use of an old word. It was some form of unfair, only... not in a petulant way. It intrigued her.'
- Going Pony
'Ronald was supported by the community. They had paid for every one of his Total Organ Replacements. They had raised the credits for his augments, his nightvision, his permatech hypernet link, his augmented hearing and strength. On his one-hundred and twentieth birthday, they had a huge celebration and provided him with a new uniform - traditional styling from before the Collapse, yet hidden within it was real blackmesh fiber, rendering him all but invulnerable. Ronald had put on his cap and smiled, and the crowd had cheered. He was a global treasure, but he was even more their treasure, he was the last policeman on earth. He united the former Japanese, Chinese and Korean refugees that now called J-Town their home. Everyone knew him, everyone respected him. Some had committed petty crimes just to have the honor of being arrested by him. It was an honor, and a matter of bragging even in polite circles, to have a framed record signed by Great Chief Chua.'
- Tales Of Los Pegasus
'But she hadn't changed them beyond that. Their true humanity, the best of humanity had been kept entirely, wholly intact. The clever, searching, questioning, curious, never-satisfied mind of the primate remained, even in pony form. And these descendants of Newfoals had made their own Equestria, in their own image, after their own imagination.'
- Tales Of Los Pegasus
2344740
So you may have changed your literary tone lately.
I must confess that I stopped reading your works about the time you banned me, which was also about the time I read "At The Speed Of Right", which clearly reads like a pro-PER propaganda comic. Your story "Her Last Possession" also reads about how the human world is filled with swine, and how the remaining good humans should be rushing to convert into ponies.
Well, "Caelum Est Conterrens" has been sitting forever on my "read later" list, but that's not here nor there.
And of course you believe that there is still some good humans. Isn't the core of the PER composed of former humans?
In the end, you are well aware that my poor opinion on you isn't based on you as an author, but on you as a commenter, debater and blogger. And the very core of my dislike of you isn't about you being a misanthrope: is about you denying being a misanthrope while, at the same time, you denounce humanity at every single chance.
I grew up reading Benito Juarez and do believe his best-known quote: "Among the people as among the nations, the respect of the others' rights equals peace". I believe in your right to be a misanthrope. I just dislike you assuming that people are wrong simply because they don't agree with you, disapprove of you acting the martyr after having seeded hateful passive-aggresive comments everywhere, and Loathe you for not putting on the t-shirt for your ideology, which I find parallel to a gay man being a gay basher.
2345633
No, not one bit. I do not think you - and others - comprehended what you were reading. I think your eyes were tinted with unthinking hatred, because it was a social movement to hate me. It was a gang pile-on, and you got caught up in it.
I have always written about the triumph of the human spirit, always, from my first story. I also do not turn from a balanced view of Man with all of his faults as well as triumphs. I don't lie about Man... much. I do make humans slightly better than they actually are.
You haven't seen that, because you haven't been willing to see that. It's there, you just don't see it. Because of mindless, unthinking, arbitrary hate.
Perhaps you should reassess what you imagine you know.
2345677
Dear Petal:
Lets centre on the depiction of PER from "At the Speed of Right": the PER was every bit the other side of the coin to the HLF, with the only moral high ground of not killing. Writing a story were you depict them as dashing heroes shines a bad light on you.
For a balanced view, I prefer "Railroad 7-3". Or "Always say no". Or, completely out of context, "All-American Girl". You find yourself balanced, I find you eccentric.
Lets agree to disagree.
I will admit that the Chatty-bashing got out of hand, but you must admit in turn that the few times that Warwolf came in hot and blew you a new one were because you were being pretty catty behind his back.
Furthermore, it wasn't so much that there really was an organization about bashing you, but more that there were enough bashers to drown you whenever you saw rain.
If you may care, I have found Warwolf to be a worthy debater. Just last week or so, he in fact rented and rewatched a movie ("Terminator 3") just because I questioned his recollection of a given scene.
If I really was full of "mindless, unthinking, arbitrary hate", then I wouldn't have sat down a couple hours and formed an informed opinion about "At The Speed Of Right".
Sorry if you believe that I am mindless hater because I didn't like the glorification of a terrorist organization. Just like you, I glory in my right to hold my own opinion.
2251496
Look at these last few posts and you'll understand why people don't like Chatoyance.
2346064
Can we please keep the personal attacks off an entirely unrelated blog post?