"Utopia" versus "Realism" · 12:32pm Jul 5th, 2014
i.e "Is Equestria 'cute and cuddly' or 'just as flawed as our own world'?"
A recurring thing in "human in Equestria" fics, or any other fics that involve humanity encountering the ponies we all adore, is the point in the story where the human side tells the latter about their own world, and the ponies are forced to come to terms with the fact that "not all worlds out there are as peaceful and harmless as their own. We "crazy humans" have to deal with the hardships of war, disease, famine, cruelty, etc. while Equestria gets to enjoy the "magic of friendship" and stays clear of all that nonsense...
Though I'm not a fan of name dropping, I think Kurt Vonnegut Jr. had the best approach to this dilemma in his novel Slaughterhouse Five, in which an alien race from the planet named Tralfamadore (go read it, it will sound a lot less silly that way) is anything but shocked when a human starts talking to them about the "horrors" of his own world. They respond by explaining that their own world's history contains just as much violence and tragedy as that of humanity, in a way that it almost sounds like they're offended that the human believes his kind so "unique" among all other species.
That said, it always bugs me when stories that are otherwise superb manage to run into this gigantic pit of, in my opinion, faulty logic. As magical as Equestria may appear to be, I think the show couldn't make it any more obvious than it already has that the world it takes place in is far from perfect. And I'm not just talking about any potential evil forces lurking within or outside Equestria's borders (assuming the name doesn't refer to the entire planet). We've seen examples, or at the very least the mere potential, of things such as prejudice, superstition, segregation (these three present in both "Bridle Gossip" and "Over A Barrel"), deceit (the Flim Flam brothers' schemes, changelings), manipulation ("want it need it" spell in "Lesson Zero"), insanity ("Party for One"), distrust, poverty, famine, and even war.
Yes, even those last two. After all, if you step back for a moment and don't interpret the story of Hearth's Warming Eve quite as literally as the Mane Six presented it, you may assume that the conflict between the three tribes got a little more ugly than just "a very cold winter," although admittedly it's less traumatizing to tell children a story about windigos than ponies murdering each other. But even if the history of Equestria isn't quite as bloody as I've just imagined it to be, I think it isn't that much of a stretch to say that ponies are anything but unaccustomed to the negative aspects of life. They have a standing military, there do appear to be class differences ("Sweet and Elite"), and in general ponies tend to screw each other over from time to time.
Now, none of this is to say that Equestria is Earth's equal when it comes to these things. The former is still no doubt heaven when compared to what our society looks like sometimes. But at the same time, perhaps the very reason Twilight Sparkle was appointed to study and spread the magic of friendship is because it's the only thing that can prevent ponykind from descending to the same level of cruelty that we sometimes represent. In other words, while the other princesses deal with the sun and the moon and... love, I guess... Twilight's duty is to make sure the ponies themselves stay in harmony with each other.
"Duh!" you might say, but the point here is that ponykind is not inherently harmonious, and is probably just as flawed as humanity is. So whenever a human strolls into their world and brags about how "dark" and "cruel" and "scary" his world is, having everypony collectively gasp and/or faint from the shock of such a revelation is an insult to their intelligence, spirit, and awareness. It especially makes me cringe when the human actually starts mocking them for being so "naive" that they can't deal with certain species being prone to violence.
Bitch, the ponies sent Fluttershy in to deal with a freaking dragon. A unicorn among them enslaved an entire race, then got blown the fuck up. A freaking god of chaos got to go on a rampage at least three times now. This scene. Compared to all that, I don't think our stories of unmanned military drones hunting people in the desert are going to have a big impact. Twilight may get curious about the "unmanned drones" part, but otherwise we'll just look pathetic...
Anyway, what are your thoughts?
NOTE: That last example I gave was referring to "soldier in Equestria" stories. Also, have a picture of Rarity with a gun:
First of all, awesome picture.
Second of all, I agree. I doubt that ponies would be shocked by the concept of war, it's just the particulars that might interest them.
Humans are so silly, thinking they're the only ones with a long bloody history.
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Whenever I listen to "Desperate Cry" by Sepultura, and it gets to the line "a nation born of hate," I think of this scene:
(I couldn't find a better clip, but you get the idea...)
I agree with you. And in my stories, Equestria is far from the peaceful utopia that some wish it to be. I love this image as an example.
i.imgur.com/Du2T5.jpg
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Every bit of that image kinda dwells on the same exact events repeatedly, but yeah...
Just to clarify: this isn't me lacking enough grit when it comes to the canon MLP universe. I'm only saying that, based on the canon material, no human could rightfully say that our world is "so much edgier." Certain "dark" stories and fan speculations, however, tend to take ponies toward yet another ridiculous extreme. I didn't want to get into that, since then we could say just about anything...
2260101 I think only one two of my fics take anything to the extreme. Retribution was extremely brutal in what happened to Rarity in it, and Twilight's Rage... well, what happens when somepony already unstable receives a ton more power that makes her further unstable, and then her son is killed?
Yes, in my fics, Equestria is a nation where there is violence, tragedy, pain, and everything else you see here on Earth... but it has it's good points too.
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I think I read into the latter one before. While the "rage" part made sense, considering the circumstances, the excessive swearing and the abrupt pacing killed it for me...
Never approached it from that perspective, though (i.e "Twilight suddenly has insane amounts of energy, therefore goes insane...") I guess that's pretty clever...