Fall of Equestria: Caribou Chantey · 7:58am Jul 16th, 2015
So, I recently watched this funny clip from Key and Peele.
I didn't really get the joke until the story about the doctor. That's one of the oldest riddles for illustrating gender stereotypes and it was so cliche as to be hilarious.
It got me to thinking about the Fall of Equestria series of stories. People either love it or hate it. It's a guilty pleasure for me. I still marvel that a universe of anthro characters who are subjected to all manner of misogyny, and sexual torture can be approved without incident, yet a story set in an anthro universe involving sex between two consenting teenagers isn't allowed to be published.
Underage sex is illegal in many places, but it's nowhere near as widely hated as rape. If clopfics involving underage human or anthro are banned, why not ban all rapefics? Why not ban all stories in which characters don't give expressed consent?
Don't get me wrong. I'm not seriously advocating for increased levels of censorship. I'm just trying to draw attention to the inconsistencies. Banning underage human and anthro stories are done to protect FIMfiction from being accused of posting something viewed as illegal in many countries. Well, rape is illegal, too. If we can tell the difference between fictional rape in a story and actual rape in the real world, why can't we use that same mentality regarding underage clopfics? But I digress.
There's hardly any middle ground regarding Fall of Equestria. Certain individuals go to impressive lengths to create anti Fall of Equestria stories in which the caribuo are crushed after a violent rebellion.
This ties back into the Key and Peele Pirate Chantey sketch because the caribou are the biggest pillagers and rapists in all of pony fiction. I think it would be hilarious to have a short comedy set in the Fall of Equestria universe were all the caribou get together and sing about how important it is to respect mares. Just like the pirate sketch; you take the perceived expectations and turn them on their ear.
Someone at some point is going to need to explain to me what is so objectionable about a setting written explicitly for pornography in which literally nobody in real life is exploited in any way. Is it the misogyny in the supposed message? Because if so, there's misogyny inherent in pretty much every piece of pornography. Am I missing something here?
3242451 I seriously doubt that misogyny has anything to do with it, and if it does it'd be a stupid reason. I guess what I don't get is this blog post.
Bronystories I've been following you for quite some time now and I love reading your blog posts. I've seen what you've been trying to do with campaigning against Fimfictions silly restrictions and distinctions about what they allow/don't allow when it comes to mature stories.
My problem however is that I see where Fimfiction is coming from. The reason they don't allow anthro/human underage character stories is because of how close too illegal it is in some places. It's a line that Fimfiction has decided to draw when it comes to the stories they allow on their site and I think I understand why they set it.
While I too am against censorship and I think if what someone's doing isn't harming anyone else they should be allowed to do it. I don't, however think that Fimfiction is ready to spearhead the movement into the fight you're talking about. It's a precarious position to be in for many reasons for fimfiction. The number one being that all it takes is for Hasbro to send one C&D letter and their done. I think that's the major reason why this policy was put in place. It's something that they just don't want to risk or bring to Hasbro's attention. Fimfiction toes the line day by day and Hasbro has so far been content to let them stay afloat (even with the huge amount of clop on the website). If there was content that someone could make a case for saying it was CP then I don't think it would take Hasbro much convincing to decide to shut it down or take legal action..
tl;dr At the end of the day I agree with what you say on the subject and the silly double standard but I see why Fimfiction set's the policies it does and I don't think we should press it.
3242451
Even in female-dominant porn?
3242488
Believe me, I don't predict that this site will go back to the way it was before. I'll try not to be a broken record on this subject. Too late.
I feel like an old cowboy on the cusp of the 20th century. I still remember the wild west in those early days of FIMfiction. Reading stories here for a year until I finally made an account three years ago. I traveled those vast expanses of desert; untamed and free. Now I find myself confronted with more modern sensibilities. My rough and tumble law of the west doesn't mesh with current understanding.
Don't worry. I'm not going to pack up my six shooter for good. I'm just pining for the past.
3242497
Maybe? I look at that kind of thing as less misogyny and more objectification. In femdom, it's not the woman performing, it's a character we want her to portray. Sure, they may become the mask to a degree, but a large portion of it is them putting on a show.
Because politicians are idiots.
3242551 Pretty much this. Bronystories, It's important to remember where this site is hosted and where the owner lives. There have already been successful convictions of people on the basis of completely fictional characters in both written and visual artwork. It's not that it's "close to something illegal in some countries", it's that it is actually illegal in the country where this website is hosted and where the owner lives. If you want to see the policy of this site changed back to what it once was you will first have to change the laws of the country in which it is hosted and where the owner lives. I disagree with that law and the censorship too, so if you attempt it I hope that you will be successful.
I don't like it because it's poorly written, I don't give a shit about the sex stuff.
3242523 I do so enjoy when the claim "Porn objectifies women" is made. The reality is that porn objectifies both women AND men. Just consider that in a majority of straight porn you will see FAR less of a man than you will a woman. In essence the man becomes nothing more than a mobile backdrop for his genitalia. However this is in truth NOT a problem, because such objectification is EXACTLY what porn is trying to be. Its a form of entertainment specifically made to inspire arousal. The entire point is that the cast are going to be made into sex objects.
Now, on to why, IMO, Fall of Equestria is bad. Honestly its NOT the rape, misogyny or corruption of innocent ponies. Its the fact that it's BORING. It never really tries to make you interested in either the villains or the tragic heroes/heroines. The Big Bad Caribou King doesn't win due to some brilliant plan or overwhelming numbers, he wins simply because the author said so. Hell even the Elements Of PlotDevice aren't that bad. They can at least back up their status as a WeWin button due to being the most powerful magical artifacts in the known world. So there is no draw from the villain, because even Sombra was better at being a villain. Sombra was an Eldritch Horror type villain. Something so powerful, so massive, that the heroes can't even dream of taking him on directly. They HAD to find the MacGuffin because nothing less would help in the slightest. You get the feeling of Sombra's overwhelming power and presence because he is literally EVERYWHERE outside that shield, and the moment it goes down everyone else knows that their doom is at hand.
The corruption aspect of the story is stupid levels of gimmicky. Somehow the very presence of the caribou in Equestria caused the Crystal Heart to become tainted and drive Cadence nuts, and she then somehow caused the corruption to spread to the rest of Equestria. Hell it would have been far simpler, and much more believable, if rather than their mere presence corrupting Cadence that it was the Caribou King who convinced her that the truest expression of love is to completely submit your will to another, IE "If you really loved your husband, you would become his completely slave. For what greater way can you show your devotion to the one you claim to care for above anything, including yourself." Then he could use similar logic to convince her that it is her duty, as Princess of Love, to spread this teaching to all of Equestria. You can even keep the magic manipulation bit by having the Caribou King be a master of Dark Magics, which he could use in tandem with his own charisma to corrupt Cadence.
Hell if you did have the Caribou King as a master of Dark Magic, it would make his complete curbstomp of two of the oldest and most powerful beings in the world even more believable. We already know Sombra, who was a mere unicorn at the time, was such a huge threat that it took BOTH Sisters to take him down, and he still got the last laugh by taking the Empire with him. A charismatic wielder of such power could easily be seen having isolated and taken the Sister's out one by one. Hell maybe he even pulls a major coup and somehow gets Luna to join him. Deceiving her both with promises of ruling at his side, and that he really loves her. Luna being isolated and lonely is a canon thing, and would have made for a far more interesting conquest.
As you can see, IMO Fall of Equestria is boring as fuck because its villain is absolutely terrible, and absolutely everything about the story requires one deus ex after another to justify, none of which are even remotely decent. Which is what really pisses me off about it. Because I LIKE such types of stories. Hell in PnP games if I'm not running the thing I'm playing the traitor/token evil teammate. I enjoy stories about the badguy because I believe it is the villain that really makes or breaks a story. And Fall of Equestria is supposed to be one of those stories where the badguy wins. You're supposed to either hate the bastard so much you cry when the heroes finally fall to the inevitable doom, or glory in the darkness and watch as all bow down before the Evil Overlord. Instead we get a villain that wins simply because the author says so and some low quality rape porn. And if I wanted some porn with a bad plot/no plot I could just download some.
3242894
I mean, isn't it a given that porn is all about one kind of objectification or another? Traditionally, the woman takes on a greater level of objectification, but it certainly applies to men as well.
It's not the perceived objectification, present or not, that confuses me. Porn has it to one degree or another, that's a given going in. And I realize that the plot is gimmicky beyond reasonable belief. This too is something I have come to accept as part and parcel of pornography. And gods knows I don't look for smut because I want to read strong characters or a real, driving plot that makes me think about the world in general, though that's always a plus.
But is the reason so many people dislike FoE because it's badly written smut? I think if that was it, we'd have simply downvoted the damn things and forgotten them as we have so many bad or even mediocre porn fics that have crossed the front page. Maybe it's a combination of the perceived shock value of the content plus the mediocre writing?
I'll admit, having a deep and serious conversation about porn was not how I anticipated this day going. Not that I'm complaining, just surprised.
3242959 I would say that men are the ones who are objectified more. Seriously check the screen time. You will see more of a woman's face than a man's, and you will see more of that guy's junk than anything else about him, regardless of how good he looks. Given that classic porn (ie the stuff old enough it was only in black and white) did NOT simply have men be little more than walking penises with bodies attached, I would say that as time has gone on men became more and more objectified by porn. However this makes sense, as the majority of porn is for a male target audience. If you only/mostly show just the man's genitals then it is easier for other men to imagine that it's their own dick that woman/those women are fawning over.
While I agree that the majority of people probably rage over the content of FoE rather than its quality, I'm not most people. Recall my first sentence of that paragraph included, in all caps "IMO", or In My Opinion. I'm 30 years old and I've seen too much to really be shocked by anything, so FoE's content doesn't bother me in and of itself. And for those stories that actually do contain things that bother me, IE foalcon, I just don't read them. My problem with FoE was that I did read it because the content was something I wanted. The title alone was the kind of story I was looking for, 'The Fall of Equestria'. I came to the story looking for a dark tale where an evil force twisted a land of sunshine and rainbows into one of collars and chains. As a Dom and a Card Carrying Villain, there is no part of that I didn't want to read. The problem with word porn compared to visual porn is that you NEED to have either a great story or well written sex scenes, neither of which FoE provides. The misconception is that you can't have a good story with porn, and the reality is that word porn is one of the best media to provide both a compelling tale and hot & heavy sex, due to its very nature as a descriptive medium.
So you've inspired me to write a story where two human teenagers build a transformative (turns them into ponies upon arrival) portal to Equestria just so they can have sex there, ignoring human age of consent laws.
This is a highly relevant topic for me. Images led me to Fimfiction, and I initially joined in order to write a large FoE story. FoE was one of the first things I looked up when I got here.
I've read some of the FoE stories, but the universe just barely misses the mark for me. This is why I went in a different direction, which I'll explain below. Disclaimer: I'm friends with one of the more well-known FoE authors (totally by chance), and the creator has asked me to write for FoE, but I'm not certain I can do it because of the mismatch between my point of view and how FoE's universe is presented (at least, in most of the canonical stories).
The main problem I have with FoE is the extreme lack of realism with respect to the severity of abuse. I love the internal D/s interplay between libido and self-suppression, and I suspect this is the main draw of the story for many readers. However, the FoE stories sit on an impossible fence where the abuse is extremely severe, but has no realistic consequences for victims. This lack of realism pulls me out of the story entirely. You don't get orgasms from being violently raped and stabbed and being smashed in the head by a rock and having your vagina ripped open. You don't enjoy yourself in a BDSM situation when you're actually a slave whose master has no interest in your well-being; the suffering appears almost immediately and causes permanent psychological scarring.
There are two ways you could change FoE to make it realistic. If the characters were even remotely suffering as they would be in the described situations, the stories would be much less erotic, but they would at least make sense. However, it would be a difficult set of stories to read because of the sheer amount of abuse; there would need to be some point to the narrative other than wallowing in misery and sadness.
The other approach would be to make the experiences less abusive and/or mitigate them with magic. Not surprisingly, most of the images out there of FoE appear to take this route. It's also the route I took with my novel Twilight's Secret Journal. There are mild nonconsensual elements, but the characters superficially appear to be doing what they think is in one another's best interest. This lets me paint characters as villains one moment, heroes the next, and lead into situations morally confusing enough that some readers have entirely different opinions on which characters are morally upright, and those opinions change over time. And, characters having sex (which happens less often than you'd think, as I lean more on suspense) are actually enjoying themselves, even though they often don't want to be (much like FoE). I'm currently up to 100k words and will probably hit 150k before the novel is finished, and the thumbs ratio is surprisingly high given the content. I'll probably write some other stories in the same universe once I finish this one.
Oh, and one more thing:
I don't think this is true at all. Underage sex is far more taboo than rape in English-native countries, which is one reason it gets called 'rape' by default. If Bill Cosby had been accused of having assentual sex with dozens of underage girls, I have a hard time believing it would have taken thirty years for the bubble to pop.
That said, there's an expression I like that sums up your general point: in American media it's okay to show two people eating a baby, but not making one.
Okay, fine, a third thing. Sue me.
I agree the underage ban here is ridiculous. Text is illegal in many countries, but not in the US where Fimfiction is hosted. Even with PROTECT in play.
That said, I've noticed how FoE (being anthro ponies) has to be careful even broaching the topic, even if there is no explicit sex, and that's pretty sad. I once joked that fillies in the FoE universe disappear for eighteen years after they're born. (The Gorean universe is likewise ridiculous. The very idea that a culture which treats women as objects would treat girls like people is ludicrous.)
Fortunately, I prefer my ponies as ponies, so the issue doesn't apply to what I write.
3242574
knighty is from England, but the IP I see when pinging the site is in San Francisco. (The site is hosted by CloudFlare, which has 7 data centers in the US, 2 in Canada, 5 around South America, 1 in South Africa, 2 in Australia, 1 in New Zealand, 1 in Singapore, 1 in China, 1 in South Korea, 2 in Japan, and 11 throughout Europe including 1 in England.)
We were moved from a single box to a (presumably load-balancing) cluster three weeks ago, but I believe that cluster is all in one physical location.
Write it and I will upvote it!
3242551
Actually, if you look around the worl- no, even if you just look at things in the United States, and the rest of the First World, it's pretty clear that people don't grasp the concept of rape. There are places where the punishment for sexual assault is lessened if the perpetrator knew the victim, as if that's somehow LESS damaging. I don't think FoE stuff should actually be influencing any adult (I would still consider FoE and any other kind of clop or erotica off limits to children) who has the right kind of head on their shoulders. But we have an ample supply of people in the world acting awful, so I understand how the average person who comes across something like this would be freaked the fucked out, and would be less inclined to believe it was created for the sake of a hypothetical scenario.
That said, I said average person, like my mom, dad, neighbors or teachers. When someone who writes/creams to erotica about anthro horses (who may futa, homosexual, polyamorous and/or underaged), and says that NOW the line for sexual deviancy has been drawn, I can't help but raise my eyebrow.
That would be hilarious.
Also are stories about sex between two consenting teenagers banned?
I was not aware of that.
~Leonzilla
3242523 That's ridiculous, that's simple ignorance to the possibility that there are women who actually enjoy dominating and among those women are the ones that enjoy doing it on camera. Controversial? perhaps, guaranteed misogyny? definitely not.
3242451 I don't believe that's the reason; while misogyny exist it is not necessarily in every mature content ever made.
People object about explicit content simply because they find it inappropriate, just because it is obscene is more than enough to make it offensive for people. But here is the catch anything and I do mean anything, can be viewed as offensive if one is determined to do so. There is something good and something bad in everything so it's just a matter of which part you wish to focus on more. Many people feel like objecting obscenity because obscenity is known to make people unconfortable so I find it's natural that the more controversial it is the more objectable it becomes.
The funny part is that the bottom line is not in whether these objections have a just ground-base(reasoning) that overrules freedom of speech. The bottom line is found wherever the majority feels most comfortable drawing it, and that's something that changes with the passing of time.
Perhaps some day, the place the majority feels most comfortable drawing the line will be the place there is actually an unobjectionably good reason to overrule freedom of speech.
Let's hope for that,
~Leonzilla
The simple reason is that there is just a double standard and it's completely accepted.
I think in someways too, our culture (and I mean western culture) does not view rape as that bad a thing. As much as I hate to bring this up, look at Bill Cosby. He should be in jail right now, but he's not. He should have his medal of honor (didn't know he had one) taken away, but he most likely won't.
Look at the on-going scandals on college/university campuses where sexual offense happens regularly. It's fairly common place.
Rape is not the worst thing in the world it seems, culturally. It's not at all right, but it's no worse than murder. There's plenty of fics on here that showcase brutal murder and snuff, all of which as you pointed out are rightly illegal in the real world, but totally fine to be depicted in forms of media.
I guess if a line has to be drawn somewhere, it would have to be at human/anthro loli/shota stuff. If Knighty ever says underage pony stuff is not allowed, I'll most likely go on a rampage. Again, it's an accepted double standard. And ultimately, it's a little pointless to worry about. The people who control this website will not change their views, and there is nothing any member on this site can do about it, accept start their own website that allows this stuff to give fimfiction some competition (fimfiction is a monopoly to some degree). I don't believe Hasbro can C/D fanfiction because if they could, I think they would have plenty of reasons to go ahead and do just that. There's a fairly disgusting corner of brony fandom called Equestria Crossed, and if that horrendous filth didn't earn a C/D, nothing drawn or written will. As someone who supports and even writes some FoE, that god awful thing offended me to no end.
I don't think writing human/anthro stuff like that, written or drawn, is a bad thing. No real person is being hurt or abused. Sure someone will be offended, but its really that person's responsibility to not engage or even stumble on that kind of material in the first place. No one is forcing anyone to click on a link. If you do, and you find something that offends you, close the window. Don't attack someone for having different views and believes than you.
/soapbox
3243247 it really depends on the age difference and how underage it is. I don't think people get super up in arms with a 15-year-old having sex with a 17-year-old. But if a 14-year-old is having sex with a 40-year-old, yeah people are going to freak out about that, and I would say rightly so.
3244994
But we're talking about media.
If you had an image of a woman being raped on your computer, you'd probably be fine. Reddit (until right about now) had subreddits with that stuff freely flowing for years, and nopony cared.
If you were caught with an image of a fifteen-year-old and seventeen-year-old having assentual sex, I suspect the entire remainder of your life would suck and you might decide to kill yourself for simplicity.
3243792 My mistake, for some reason I thought the main servers were hosted in Canada where convictions over this sort of thing have taken place.
3243247
Looking back at the Cosby Show, the signs were all there.
Here's a map of the world. The states and countries which establish 18-years-old as the age of consent are a small number indeed.
1.bp.blogspot.com/-gnJk6lj2q08/U3zWtnvBfEI/AAAAAAAACZo/O_iCpUMxdLc/s1600/Age_of_Consent.png
The current age of consent in England and Wales is 16, regardless of sexual orientation or gender, as specified by the Sexual Offences Act of 2003. The Act also raised the legal age for pornography and prostitution from 16 to 18.
Which means that you can have sex while 16 in England, but you can't be filmed doing it. That means all the fictional anthro and humanized 16-year-old ponies in Trottingham can still have sex; we just can't write any explicit clopfics about them.
3243055
You can try it, but I already received a pretty clear description from the MODs as to why that scenario won't fly.
3248223
so as long as They spend most their time in Equestria as ponies, it shouldn't be an issue.
3248214 I'd say I'm very sex-positive, but anywhere with an age of consent below 14 is unsettling to me.
You could play something like this quite seriously, and it would be more interesting than almost any modern fantasy novel.
How many authors can actually write characters with different value systems? How many even bother, when they can just go the easy route and stuff some foreign-looking shirts full of the same old Evil Straw? Why bother, when the audience is so used to TV aliens made by gluing pointy ears and forehead ridges onto people just like us, who speak comfortable, familiar ideas in made-up languages?
Imagine a modern reader being forced to confront an actual, fully-realized character from Roman or Greek history. Just think what he'd say if you asked him what it meant to "respect and cherish his wife".
Considering how problematic some people find movies from the last century, how triggered would they be by a traveler from an antique land? Would they even understand what he was saying?
Maybe that would be too alien. It would probably unsettle people, and we can't have that. Besides, we'd just interpret everything he said and did through our own worldview, making the exercise pointless. Although he might accidentally teach us a way to add whips to our orgy-porgies...