Ok, look. · 10:38pm Mar 12th, 2015
Ponies? They know what hands are.
They deal with dragons, griffons, and minotaurs. Sure, not everypony is going to be personally acquainted with one of those, but the latter two are obviously common enough that nobody sees their presence as very remarkable.
THEY KNOW WHAT HANDS ARE.
They are not "paws with wiggly things on the end." They are not "soft talons." They are fucking hands.
While we're on the subject of humans and what ponies would notice about them, human teeth? They're not obviously carnivorous.
See this picture?
If you saw this mouth on an animal, would you immediately think? "OMGSHARPTEETHITSGONNAEATME"? No! You'd probably think it looks creepy because that's a human mouth on an animal, dude, but you have to take a good long look just to tell that the canines are, in fact, canines. I can see an animal expert like Fluttershy knowing how to tell what humans eat by looking at our teeth, if she got the chance to actually inspect someone's mouth, but Applejack, Rainbow Dash, and Rarity? No!
You're preaching to the choir, man.
Also,
equinedentalservices.co.uk/images/faq_pics/after.jpg
The canines aren't the only teeth that mark us as predators/omnivores though. Incisors are also different.
If we were herbivores we'd have nothing but molars. I'm sure ponies would think our teeth look weird -- even if they don't know what that represents - 'cuz they don't look like pony or minotaur teeth and they don't look like diamond dog teeth.
This is true, though I could still see ponies being mildly freaked out by hands in the same way that some folks are mildly freaked out by a squid's tentacles. But, yeah, ponies are pretty likely to know what they are, even if they haven't seen one in person. And everypony in Ponyville would definitely know, since they'd have seen Spike running around.
Actually, that raises a question for me... how come the human-and-hands obsessed version of Lyra never seems to go after Spike in order to admire his hands? Or minotaurs, for that matter?
2871041
No; most if not all herbivores have incisors.
mainedentalclinic.com/wp-content/uploads/beaver-teeth-banner.jpg
Those can cut down trees, you know.
Fnerf.
I've always thought of Dragon hands on terms of claws, and Griffon hands as talons, as defined by their own respective species. Minotaurs would call them hands. And you're correct. Ponies should have no abnormal fascination with hands.
On the subject of teeth, I have always thought of ponies as being herbavores due to cultural beliefs/moors. As 2871036 has shown us, they do have canine teeth as well, so, biologically, they seem to be omnivorous.
2871057 On the subject of Lyra, humans and hands, that is all fandom creations. I can see Lyra having an obsession with humans, but where she has never gone ga-ga over Spike, Gilda or Iron Will, I can only conclude she is NOT hand obsessed, or, if she does, it would be a fetish for thenthem, due to the ease of finding the g-spot with them, and therefor, definitely not kids show material.
2871015 On the subject of Equestrians speaking English... it's in the script! dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/31471793/FiMFiction/emoticons/misc_Rainbow_dealwithit.png Seriously though, I agree with you on this. In my fic, When Worlds Collide, in order for the HiE to be able to converse, Luna has to enter his unconscious mind via her Dreamwalking abilities, while bring in Twilight, so that she can not only map out his language portion of his brain, but crash course learn English, and then use that to directly imprint Equestrian into his language section. As for the ponies who ended up trapped on Earth, the government used the Rosetta Stone language program to teach them English.
Indeed, which was why I was legitimately pissed off by Rainbow Dash's "What are hands?" question at the end of Equestria girls. She was best friends with GILDA for a long time. Gilda has hands. Is the Element of Loyalty really so uncaring about her longtime friends that she can't be bothered to learn what her appendages are called?
Not that the rest of the movie helped to put me in a good mood either.
2871181
Technically, talons. I'll grant you that they're pretty much the same (especially given cartoon physics), though.
Dragons and griffons have what are best termed "claws" i.imgur.com/PVYM64M.png i.imgur.com/ll5XH9r.png , and we've only seen one minotaur in the show, I wouldn't be surprised if your average Equestrian doesn't know the name of one of the appendages of some random creature
All three of those are noted as being pretty rare in Ponyville - a lot of people thought Gilda was unusual, Spike is pretty much the only dragon who hangs out with ponies, and Fluttershy spent pretty much the whole episode where Iron Will was introduced correcting people when they called him a monster.
Moreover, depending on your definition of hands, Iron Will is the only one of them who unequivocally has such - neither Gilda nor Spike are primates, and according to the primary definition of hand, that means they don't have hands - they have claws or paws or talons.
Someone not knowing the name "hand" is not unbelievable, though anyone who had seen a griffin, minotaur, or Spike would not have a hard time explaining one, nor would it seem particularly strange to them - while those particular creatures might be a bit exotic, they've seen squirrels and mice, which are much more common examples of things with grasping appendages on their front paws.
I think this is less "humans are not obviously carnivorous" and more "most ponies would not recognize the signs of obvious carnivory in humans", which is a bit different. The serration on many humans' incisors and canines are a sign of their carnivorous nature, and many humans actually do have fairly prominent canines:
cache2.asset-cache.net/gc/184969842-female-healthy-white-toothy-smile-gettyimages.jpg?v=1&c=IWSAsset&k=2&d=wQ2%2B%2F5JA23S46i3J0vKGab0zF9MRYdgtQpWWnN0n1t1OpDiKPly5tSTu0kc9H2wH
However, if you weren't looking for it, or simply weren't thinking about it, it would be easy to overlook. If Twilight or Fluttershy were paying attention, though, they'd probably at least have a good hint that humans ate meat.
On the other hand, so do ponies:
derpicdn.net/img/2013/3/26/279802/large.png
What did you think they kept those pigs for?
2871273
That is clearly a tomato, lettuce, and cherry meringue sandwich.
2871529
Just keep telling yourself that.
2871273
I was just going to point out that eagle talons and dragon claws aren't precisely hands, but then I saw you beat me to it.
Still, I think it's true that the first thing ponies would think on seeing a human is "It's like a minotaur-ape", not "its features are incomprehensibly alien". It helps that minotaurs not only have hands, they're naturally bipedal unlike most Equestrian races.
2871651
Yeah. Iron Will kind of ruined that idea.
Though I'm still sad that they didn't make a joke in Equestria Girls about Twilight not being able to tell boys and girls apart because their noses all look the same.
2871064 Horses don't. They're homodontic.
About time someone blogged about this.
If ponies ever saw a human, they'd probably freak out, but not because of our hands.
To someone that has seen pretty much every other animal on the planet, including some fantasy ones, we would look like a cross between a pig and a monkey. I wonder, whether one of Twilight's experiments would get blamed, if a human turned up around Ponyville...
2871726
Right. It was still somewhat viable before his appearance. Still, all the good human in equestria stories I've seen take this into account. I remember at least one had Twilight calling the human she'd seen a "Stride-taur" before making contact. Something to do with it being like a minotaur but having better legs for walking upright.
Admittedly, I could probably count the good human in Equestria fics I've seen written after Iron Will appeared on one hand.
2872023
Ah yes, Arrow 18. Quite strong, that one.
Yeah, HIE is a kind of... bad genre. I mean, there's potential there, but most of the stories are just bad because they're blatant wish fulfillment and don't really appeal outside of a very narrow demographic.
Then again, maybe Arrow 18 appeals to me because I find first contact stories interesting.
2872083
Right, the Girl Genius crossover by Samarkand had her work out that the creature who had written a song Agatha sings when drunk must have been built like a minotaur, too. Though Agatha was actually turned into a Pony in that one, so I don't know if it really counts as Human In Equestria.
Human character inserts do tend to be bottom of the barrel, even though they don't have to be. I think the weirdest experience I ever had was reading a fanfic once and realizing I was enjoying a story that involved the human main character adventuring with ponies and becoming romantically involved with Rarity. Because just writing that description makes me cringe, much less thinking of reading a story that can be summed up like that. It helped that the main focus was on the adventures most of the time (it was My(stara's) Little Ponies by the way, which I recommend to anyone who has ever played any kind of dungeon crawl game, D&D in particular but anything inspired by it as well). It was more of a fusion, though, with D&D's horrible deathworld fused with Equestria's horrible deathworld elements.
2871817
No they aren't.
2872008 I'm pretty sure Ponyville has a "When in doubt, blame either Twilight or Pinkie" policy in place by now.
Bonus effect: Twilight feels responsible and tries to solve the problem as quickly as possible.
Overall, I find the fandom version of Lyra to be generally deficient: her obsession makes no sense unless the writer finds a way to incorporate it [1], and I also don't like how people interpret her cutie mark literally. Very few cutie marks are literal; Fluttershy isn't a lepidopterist, Twilight isn't an astronomer, Rarity isn't a gemcutter, and Pinkie does not specialize in balloons. (Applejack, admittedly, does have a literal cutie mark. Dash's skirts the line.)
I prefer to think of Lyra as a lyricist or poet, myself.
[1] So for stories about Lyra and her obsession, it can work, but when she's a side character or it's a trait not related to the plot, it's just stupid and weird.
2871181 One thing to remember is Dash talks/ acts first and thinks latter. Even if she knows the word if she doesn't remember right that second, she's going to comment on it like she never did. Speed is way more important than thought after all, right?
2872997 Actually Fluttershy's isn't that bad, yes it's only one animal, but it gets the idea across. Twilight's sort of is literal once you realize the stars aren't stars but the elements of harmony, and the double star in the middle represents friendship/magic. Pinkie's again sort of is in that here talent is being uplifting (like a balloon, get it?) and though that's a stretch for it being literal. Rarity's is entirely symbolic as her talent is design, especially adding flare and pizaz, and the gem is representative of the later which resulted in getting her mark, her talent is for more general than just that.
2873349 Sort of represents =/= literal, though. Symbols are only literal if they're pictograms. Ideograms don't count.
2871540
TWAJS