Moonshine, and Why I Like Humanized Fics (Sometimes.) · 7:45pm Sep 23rd, 2015
Moonshine is out, at least the first chapter. It is complete at 21k words, but I’m posting a chapter a day because I’ve found that 15k words is about the limit people will read at one time, and anything more tends to get shoved to “Read it Later.” So if you want to read it all at once, you don’t have to wait long, and I’ll toss up a blog post when it’s complete.
Merc the Jerk co-wrote this with me, and I could not and would not have gotten this written without him. The fic owes a lot to him (including the formatting-- if you don’t like the indents without breaks, blame him,) and if you did enjoy the fic you should check out The Laughing Shadow, which is his magnum opus, or Fool’s Gold, a collab he did with Peregrine Caged and JakeTheGinger (and one of my favorite fics of all time.) Or any of his other stories, really, he’s a great writer.
Now, I have some general thoughts on "why humanized?" and I will share them with you as a make-up for my Monday blog post, because that's what I do.
Moonshine is humanized, which I’ve never written before. This is actually an idea I’ve had since my first few months in fandom, and I always knew it would be humanized if I ever wrote it.
I remember a while ago there was some discussion about why people would write humanized. Personally, I like humanized for certain fics. From my point of view, not every fic should be humanized (despite what Merc might think) but not every fic should be pony either. There are certain things Equestria is a good setting for, and there are certain things it’s not.
Because “humanized” is primarily a discussion about setting. As far as I know, most people who dislike humanized are perfectly happy with other AUs that twist the characters, their places in the world, and their abilities, not to mention different character interpretations between authors, as long as they’re still shaped like ponies. If the characters are that flexible, it seems to me that in a text medium absolutly nothing of substance could be lost by describing them as human.
So, these are some aspect of the setting that, when added up, take me away from ponies and Equestria, and make me feel a fic would be better served by being humanized (whether in the real world or a sci-fi/fantasy setting.) None is these are individually hard to do in Equestria with ponies, and even combined they aren’t impossible, and other people might feel differently than I do.
Gray morality: Equestria is by no means a paradise, it has everything from evil to not nice characters. But what stands out in Equestria to me is that those things are evident to most characters. Characters have a conscious; they don’t always follow it, but when they don’t it doesn’t take much to point them in the right direction, and/or other ponies can easily see that they aren’t being “good.” There’s nothing wrong with a story idea that involves much fuzzier morality where there’s no clear right or wrong and no functional compromise. But the more that becomes part of a story, the farther from canon the story feels.
Social issues: Along the same lines, or possibly as part of the above, social issues don’t translate well into Equestria. Lots of fics try to cover them, but the morality, history, and social structure of Equestria are so different from ours that it takes a good writer with a solid headcanon to make it feel like the story is starting with a problem that exists in Equestria, let alone properly placing where characters would fall in their opinions of it.
Reinterpretation of the characters: Obviously placing the characters in new roles or places in life is going to make something an AU, but in a lot of cases it’s going to pull it out of Equestria as a setting as well. There are some reinterpretations that do fit well in Equestria; what if the mane six were an airship crew? Well, Equestria has airships. But if you want to reimagine them as a starship crew, well… even if the planet or country they left from was called Equestria, it was probably a very different Equestria from the one we know on the show (besides the different lives, goals, and ambitions the characters would need to have had to all make sense as a starship crew.)
The story requires access to clearly human things: Okay, I can’t really imagine a story where the characters need hands directly (though many people seem to imagine “stories” where they feel the characters need breasts…) but there are some human things that it’s difficult to imagine being common in Equestria: guns, cars, and the internet being the three big ones I can think of off the top of my head. These are some damn important things in the human world, that link to a lot of important ideas that people might want to explore , but in order to make them as prevalent in your story as they are in the real world you’re already drastically changing the setting.
The story requires ignoring specifically pony things: There are many cool setting specific details in Equestria, but sometimes they can get in the way of a story. Cutie Marks can limit how far you can change a character, not to mention the feeling of ennui that characters in Equestria can normally feel. The fact that magic is needed to raise the sun means that attempts to overthrow the government need to get around that pesky story point. Writers are free to downplay or ignore these things, but in doing so they’re making the specific setting of Equestria less unique.
Like I said, I don’t think that any of this is impossible to do with ponies. But the more of these things you pile on, the less you’re actually dealing with ponies we see on the show, even if there are still pony related words describing them. If you’re still dealing with the canon characters you’re still in the realm of fanfic, but you’re edging away.
This is why, in a humanized fic, the characters being in character is such a huge deal, and OOC can make it not just unenjoyable fanfic, but not fanfic at all. You’re admitting that you’ve transformed the foundation of the show, so even with the changes you made, the characters need to feel rock solid.
Moonshine touches on all of these things: It would be hard to tell a story about good characters in a setting with black and white morality (and a good government in power) participating in illegal smuggling.I find it interesting to explore different ways some of the characters would react to pre-1970s female gender roles, and the 1920s was a time when those were starting to stretch and bend, so with a lack of cutie marks it makes it an exciting and confusing time for some characters to be stretching their wings. Cars are an iconic part of the time period and situation, and it was a time where commercial and recreational aviation was more popular than it's ever been before or since.
And one of the most exciting things for me is getting to reimagine the characters in different roles. Some of them pop up in this fic, others Merc and I have plans for in potential future fics (and we’re hoping to get some other writers to join in. I’ve already bugged my husband, who’s written Mythos stories before, to write us something about a character we didn’t work into this fic, a certain bright-eyed lady Research Assistant from Miskatonic U.) If nothing else, I hope some people will read to see who we’ve cast in roles both obvious, surprising, and thinly-veiled.
That’s what I like to see in humanized fics: stories that make good use of the characters from the show in a world that is clearly not Equestria, with the new avenues that opens and new directions to explore. If other people aren’t into that, that’s fine, but I hope some of you guys will give it a shot.
Since this is a make-up for a Monday Blog Post, a big thank you to: bats, nemopemba, diremane, First_Down, sopchoppy, Bradel, stormgnome, jlm123hi, Ultiville, Singularity Dream, JetstreamGW, Noble Thought, horizon, Sharp Spark, Applejinx, Mermerus, Super Trampoline, Quill Scratch, Peregrine Caged, blagdaross,BlazzingInferno, and Not Worthy.
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Good points. ( I don't really have anything constructive to add, I just want to acknowledge that I read and considered this blog. )
What's interesting to note is that the reasons you've listed here are reasons I tend to avoid human or humanized stories.
I like the promise inherent in a lot of ponyfic that there will be an inherent goodness to this, at the end of the day. That the natural order of this place is balanced towards righteousness.
There's a comfort in that, for me.
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Oh, I agree! That's the reason I mostly write pony fics, and it's also the reason I like humanize fics to be their own thing. I personally find it annoying when a lot of these things, especially gray morality, get thrown into pony.
But I do love the characters, and I read stories of all kinds, so when I do want to read something morally ambigious I'd rather it wasn't shoehorned into Equestria. Just admit you're writing about the real world already.
Wait. You mean... it's formatted properly? I'm in.
You can get a decent amount of this working with the Equestria Girls world too, depending on how you want to play things.
Speaking of, working with humans gives you the benefits of working with stories set in highschool and/or college as well, with a bunch of tropes that won't necessarily translate over to the pony education system.
I also tend to make my human's swear more than their pony counterparts. :3
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I agree with all of these things. Especially the swearing.
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I'd argue that there's an inherent goodness to most of mankind, and so unless there's a dark tag on site, even the humanized tag tends to have that sort of righteousness ending up victorious. I mean, the mane cast are depicted as good people in almost every story, so I don't know how changing hooves to hands would make that any different.
@book
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Well, of course, Book. What kind of story would it be without at least one character having a set of peaks so large and expansive dozens of men died on the expedition to scale them?
A not-fun story, that's what.
Book writing a humanized fic?! Oh Lordy, next thing you know she'll be writing Pinkie ship fics.
Right?
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One of the biggest problem with such reinterpretations lies in the fact that you're fundamentally changing two of the characters: Rainbow Dash and Twilight Sparkle. Both of them are heavily invested in the magical nature of Equestria to a far greater extent than the other four (though Pinkie's own magical weirdness falls into this category as well), which results in pretty fundamental changes in many ways. Thus, it kind of feels a bit weird at times.
The main reason I see is this one:
Basically, if you want the characters to be human to interact with some real-world thing - if you want to put them on Earth, or an Earth-like world - it makes sense to humanize them. This is sort of reinterpretation blended with the reinterpretation being Earth (or an Earth-like world, or other world inhabited by humans, like a crossover story).
The rest? Eh.
I find making other things into ponies an amusing artistic endeavor, but not really a great, well, literary one, so it is a two-way street.
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But they're, well, not. I mean, assuming you feel that EqG Rainbow Dash (and potentially SciTwi) are accurate interpretations of the characters, this sort of thing is canon. Rainbow Dash's personality doesn't require her to actually fly, and Twilight's personality doesn't require her to study magic, specifically. Those are important aspects of their character in Equestria, but not their personalities, and those things can be replaced with other characteristics that also fit their personalities.
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Rainbow Dash's ambitions in Equestria Girls is studiously avoided. I would say that ambition is a pretty fundamental part of a person's personality, and the choices that they make often drive them in various deep ways.
Or at least, that's the case with me. My personality is in part a result of my personal ambitions, and I would say that the same is true of Rainbow Dash and Twilight Sparkle as well. Having an ambition or some major part of your life defined by something like that has large ramifications for the rest of your personality, and in part defines who you are.
I mean, maybe outwardly, the world doesn't see this so much, but inwardly, powerful drive can have an immense impact on your psyche, the reason you do the things you do, the way you think about the world.
To me, then, changing these characters in this way feels a bit strange - you might take the surface veneer of the character and put them somewhere else, but it feels a bit strange to me.
I dunno. When someone grows up with the idea that they can fundamentally alter the world around them with magic, or fly faster than the speed of sound, that changes the way you look at the world, I think. So for me, it feels strange to simply transplant them into another world and substitute science for magic and sports for what Rainbow Dash does.
Maybe it is just my own take on how people think, because of how I think.
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I do agree that in theory those things should have a deep impact on the characters, but I also think one of the things that makes MLP good is that they really don't. We can relate to the characters because they're designed like people we might know, not aliens with powers we'll never have. Rainbow Dash's flying is treated like a cool trick she can do, the same way you might regard a friend who's a skateboarder or a gymnast, and Twilight's magic is treated like an academic subject she studied and got good at (with a bit of natural talent on both counts.) We all know people who can do things like that.
In the same way, I agree EqG Rainbow Dash's ambitions are a blind spot in that 'Verse, and that is an important part of her character, but once again she's never acted differently about the Wonderbolts than people act about various comparable ambitions, because the episodes about that are meant to stand in for those. So it would be easy enough to give EqG Rainbow Dash a sports team she wants to be on, or Olympic dreams, or a desire to fly fighter jets or what have you. It's the ambition and the difficulty of achieving it that's important to how she acts, not what it is specifically.
Simply for the fact of adding another data-point I tend to draw my "Read it now" line around 5-6000 words unless I have a couple of hours to set aside for reading or am going to be pecking away at a chapter in small chunks over the course of the day at work on my breaks.
Now how I feel about the points you've brought up.
I think this one stems mostly from the fact it's a show for small children so of course your core cast of characters are going to have a strong moral foundation and the out come of the majority of confrontations are going to go to the one with the higher moral ground.
Having said that I think the land of Equestria itself does have a stronger "moral core" than our world. Having said that I think things are not as black and white as some people make them out to be.
I like to think about how Trixe was just able to get her hooves on something like the Alicorn Amulet. This is an Obviously Evil Artifact with a Corrupting Influence. Just why is something like that out where any stage magician can buy it? And the merchant is also a good example of "if the money is good" ideology. He wasn't going to sell it to her at first, but she then drops the huge bag of bits on the counter and like that all his concerns are gone. It was played as a joke but it's also a sign of bribes trumping morals.
Also time period plays an important part here. If you set something in the "modern" Equestria there should be less shady dealing and grey morals, more people willing to do the right thing simply because it is the right thing and not because they might get rewarded for it. But if you go back in time a bit more, especially if you go back before Founding, it should be more grey or maybe even grey and black.
Then you have stories set outside of Equestria, under the assumption that "Equestria" is the pony nation and not the name of the world, griffons have a whole different society and hierarchical structure. What they consider to be acceptable actions on a moral scale could differ from ponies. This is, how ever, a mostly different issue since it doesn't deal with ponies directly, but could be a key part in why a story deals with grey morals.
I agree with you on this one. Social issues are shaped by a nation's history and Equestria's history, while not totally unlike our own, is very different from our own.
There are a lot of "homosexual [1] marriage/rights/acceptance" stories on this site, also a lot of "coming out" stories. I understand why people want to write them, and why people want to read them, but at the same time to really, fully, get the most out of such a story you have to have the mindset of "The ponies would see this as something wrong." which I just can't really fully get into.
Also, associating being homosexual with rainbows, and thus Dash, is an "Earth culture thing" so every single "Dash is homo" or "Her friends think she's homo" story just makes me roll my eyes a little. I'll still read them, if the synopsis or secondary base idea catches my attention but for me it's a tired premise we need to stop beating with a stick.
[1] I refuse to use the word "gay" in this definition, for me it means "happy".
Gender equality is also a popular topic for stories around here. While I think the female-to-male ratio is often a bit more skewed in stories than in the show [2], sometimes being four-to-one or higher, I can understand why. It's the sorts of stories that make a big deal about a mare being something like a cooperative executive that make me roll my eyes. So the stories that hit on how stallions are probably in the boat women are in our world are a better fit for me.
[2] Most people forget to count the Royal Guard, which so far is all male. But that's an easy mistake to make, they hardly do anything after all. Don't even have their own tag.
As you said, depending on how far the reinterpretations go you're looking at a clear AU and also as you said many reinterpretations can still be used in the base setting without having to change much else.
There is a wonderful reinterpretation of the main six, and their close family, over here on Tumblr. The basic idea is "Swap two of the main six's core drives and personalities." It started with AJ and Rarity, moved to Pinkie and Fluttershy and then RD and Twi. They are anthro but I think it could work just as well in a non-anthro setting.
For me this one isn't so much a marker for needing to go human, or even anthro, but is a clear marker you need an AU tag. Mostly here it comes down to if the reinterpretation you are going for can only work with something humans have, which leads me into your next point.
I don't ever see ponys having guns. It's come up in a few fics and it always makes me pause. The shear mechanics of a firearm just don't work with hooves, and retooling them to do so is something I can't ever see them having needed to do when each race has an as good or better equivalent;
Unicorns of course have magic, what can't it do! Turn the threat into an orange! Lift up a large rock and drop it on them! Zap them into ash with pure arcane might! Or, if you're feeling like being a dullard, levitate a crossbow [3] and put a bolt into your problem.
Pegasi have weather based magic. Zap the threat with a thunder bolt! Drown them in rain! Need cover? Fog bank! Army on a flat field? Tornado! So many battles are swung one way or the other based on the weather and if you can control it then you can control the flow of battle.
Earth ponies are a bit tougher but AJ showed us what they can do [4]; powerful rear kicks that launch projectiles like a slingshot!
Guns were invented because we humans needed a better way of killing that person over there from over here before they got to here. Maybe in the past the ponies would be that ruthless but I don't ever see them inventing the firearm.
However I could see either the minotaurs, which we have very little canon to go on, or the griffons inventing them. Maybe. I like to image that minotaur society is very steam-punkish with labyrinthine sets of pipes and cogs everywhere and firearms fit right into that, alongside death-rays and shear unfiltered hamminess.
[3] We know they have bows, ala Equestria Games, and a crossbow isn't too much of a step away from that. I see both bows and crossbows as primarily a griffon weapons, then being adopted second by the unicorns. Both weapons can be easily changed a bit for use by the other two pony races though
[4] In Dragon shy.
I could maybe see cars being a thing, Flim and Flam had one after-all, but not really for a modern Equestria. Though I'm sure you can get it to work just fine without too much trouble.
The internet was born from our need to find better methods of communicating with each other over great distances. Any society that doesn't have a hive mind or long range telepathy are also going to have this trouble so I can see the internet becoming a thing in pony society.
It might not be like our internet mind you, what with the memes and what not, but I could see e-mail and chatrooms and forums as a thing. Though they probably would come up with their own memes that we'd have no hope of understanding. Can you ever understand a meme?
Television is another human thing, but I can see that being a pony thing as well. They have news papers after all. Both television and radio are just more extensions on getting information of some kind from here to waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay over there in the least troublesome and quickest way possible.
As for breasts, well, the ponies are mammals so the females should [5] have mammaries. They are just located in a different spot.
[5] We will not go into such things like the monotremes.
The cutie-mark is the big thing here for me. Without it you might as well not be a FiM pony. And putting the marks on humans just feels odd, even if it is a totally mundane tattoo they had done.
Also the marks can be somewhat restrictive at times. I like the idea that a single mark can have many interpretations and that it doesn't limit the holder into a single lot in life.
There have been more than a couple of stories about how Celestia isn't needed to raise the sun, that it does it on its own and always has, that the unicorns of old lied about it so they had a niche and weren't wiped out or enslaved by the other two races. But just because she doesn't need to raise the sun every morning doesn't mean she can't control it. Nightmare Moon made the night last longer than it should have, proving that both sisters can indeed control the celestial bodies to some extent. The question is if they are required or if it'll just happen on its own.
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We know very little about the full extent of the pony education system. They have a single room school house in Ponyville for the young foals, but do the older kids also go there, like was the case in our world not too long ago, or do they go "into the work force" in the old Apprentice style of things?
We also know there are "private" schools or at least "invite only/prestige" type schools because of Celestia's School For Gifted Unicorns. That seems to be an "all ages" sort of thing, since Twilight was accepted as a young foal and was still attending well into her young marehood.
So I'll give you the fact it is unlikely that they have the equivalent of high-school and colleges, just not impossible.
But why would anyone ever want to write about them anyways?
So, long response is long. I'm going to go do something not-pony related for a while.
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I actually wrote one of those stories (it's in my minific collection,) but the whole idea was jossed by Twilight's Kingdom: Twiight has all the magic, the sun doesn't come up until Spike reminds her.
I like humanized because tiddies? :B (So, mostly art...)
Also guns and swords work better. :B
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You and Merc are soul mates.
Our story might have tiddies in chapter three. You should read it.
I don't believe I've read a humanized fic yet. I've never objected to their existence, though. We're all photoshoppers editing the same picture. Sure, you could make arguments against humanized, but in the end all they mostly amount to is trying to justify cropping the picture over changing it's color palette. How much editing can occur before the source material is no longer present, even in spirit? I don't know. But we've all opened the image file to edit it, we've all sprayed some paint on the side of the building, so we're in the same boat in my mind. Saying you can edit this way but someone else can't edit that way, when you're both editing, is kinda hypocritical.
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I'm, uhh, still working my way though Season Four. It just didn't really nab my attention and sure I kept up with the eps as they came out by reading reviews and synopsis but I forget little things about them that would stick better if I actually watched them.
Though the sun not rising until Twilight does it (and I'm now remembering the sun acted a bit drunk that day) could be explained as a sort of "lock" that Celestia put on it before giving her power over to Twilight. But, eigh, that's stretching.
3415339 Well, to be fair my one-year-old loves ponies, so I watch about 3/4th a season per day. For the past six months. I almost certain I have seen every episode more times than anyone here.
Except Bats!. Screw that episode.
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I read your blogs (you glorious bookplayer). I hope baby Trixie is doing well.
Yeah, I saw Bats! and it was very lack-luster, though I do like Flutterbat. The base premise of that episode kinda sucks and sends the wrong message. Sometimes a pest is a pest is a pest and the best solution is extermination and not cohabitation.
I have read this blog. This is my comment verifying I have read this blog.
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well gosh, how can I pass that up? :V
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...and that's the model the feature box is built on.
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You. I like you. Guns and swords work better in everything I write thanks to humanized, fuck those guys that try to reinvent the wheel just so ponies can fire pistols.
And, well, the tig ol' biddies is an added bonus. The rule of thumb is that you need at least one good rack for every 15k words. Pretty sure I heard that in a writing class, so it's, like, a canon, objective rule set in stone so hard it makes the commandments Moses got from God look like sharpie on paper.