The Conversion Bureau
HUMAN
in Equestria
By Chatoyance
7. Sticks And Stones
Asher's father was yelling at him again. His face was red with anger, his eyes wide and bloodshot with rage.
"Bambi? You're watching fucking Bambi?" Asher felt himself roughly seized by the collar and dragged. The massive arm lifted him by his shirt and threw him at the wall. He impacted with a thud and thumped to the floor, his breath knocked out of him.
"You can't live on fantasy, you little faggot!" Asher's father was on him now, having dragged him away from the wall. His father's breath, rancid with stomach acid and adrenaline, was a hot wind on the boy's face. "Shows for little girls? This is what you do with your spare time? You want I should cut it off? You want to be a girl, is that it you little shit?"
Asher didn't even feel the hit that knocked his vision askew. The ragged hole in his feelings hurt worse than anything his dad's fists could do. "I didn't raise you to be a fucking piece of shit cocksucker! You should be out there, with a job, leading an empire, not sitting in here with your Golden books and girly toys and watching mincing bunnies!"
Asher tried to complain that he was only ten, that he was only a kid.
"You're nearly an adult you little piece of shit! Grow up or I'll fucking kill you, do you understand? Do you? DO YOU?" Asher's father dripped sweat and hatred as he loomed over the boy.
"...yes..."
"WHAT? TALK LIKE A MAN YOU LITTLE SHIT!"
"...Yes... yes sir. I'm sorry, I won't do it again, I'm sorry, I'm sorry..."
"No, you won't do it again." Asher's dad was suddenly cold as ice. He began methodically stuffing Asher's entire romball collection, and all of his toys into the waste bin. He picked up Lilly, Asher's stuffed leopard doll from when he was a baby. "Men don't need shit like this." Lilly's arms followed her head as Sergey Brendalthorpe Brin's strong hands ripped Asher's best friend into stuffing spewing bits. All went into the bin.
Asher couldn't help crying. Lilly was his only friend.
The hand that had tried to erase his tears with violence sent him smacking into the edge of the closet. Asher heard a dripping sound. His head was bleeding, where his scalp had been split by the edge of the door. He lay there, watching a small red pool spread across the floor. His dad would be angry about that. He would get yelled at for staining the floor and making a mess.
Suddenly, Asher was pulled back from the closet door. He found himself being dragged across leaves and sticks, pulled by several hands. His dad would be really mad now, with the floor covered in filth like that.
"Asher! Oh, Asher!" Seraphina's face was wet. That was odd. Good Family girls never cried. It wasn't proper.
"Put this over it. Just do it!" It sounded like Petra, that stuck-up Bettencourt. "Press the cloth in, tight. Just press. Keep pressing!"
"So much blood!" Isla. Isla was weird.
"Pressing will stop the blood. Use the shirt to soak it up! Press hard!" Petra, always giving orders. She was a little bitch, just like dad said.
The top of Asher's head felt cold. He wanted to tell everyone to leave him alone, but his body didn't want to obey. He flopped his arms and legs, but it felt like remote control, like some kind of faulty telepresence with a bad connection.
"I found his... hair." Isla stood over a ragged mass of blond and crimson laying sticky on the forest floor. "I don't have to touch it do I?"
"Forget about that!" Petra stood up. Seraphina was tending Asher. "Everybody! Grab sticks. Long ones!"
The children cautiously darted out from the center of the clearing where they had all gathered together. Milo had managed to grab a long branch that had fallen down. He began tearing leaves and twigs off of it to make something vaguely spear-like.
Oliver snagged a whispy branch, then discarded it. It was obviously useless for anything except sweeping. Looking furtively about, he grabbed a pair of large stones to throw. "I couldn't find a stick. I got some rocks instead!"
"Whatever! Just get something, anything! It's still out there!" Petra's point was proven by the thin whiplike swish of shimmer and black that threw leaves into the air. A large, dark, insubstantial shadow padded swiftly through the green just beyond the circle of Dog Wood trees. For the briefest of moments, Petra saw golden, slitted eyes.
Isla took hold of a stick that would have made a decent pencil or wand, but not much else. She sat down next to Seraphina and Asher, and started to cry, softly.
"What is it? I can't even see it clearly!" Milo, crouching low, jerked his head from one edge of the clearing to the next, trying to see where the shadow thing was. The Dog Wood trees had stopped growling long ago, now they howled continuously, enraged to the loudest of anger-strangled barks.
"It's there!" Petra pointed to a part of the woods where she had been sure she had seen motion. "No... THERE!" The massive shape moved with such lithe precision - it slipped in and out of the ocean of dark leaves in the way that dolphins had once been described.
"Petra." Plantain had been convincing the pigs and chickens not to bolt. Hamton and Cutler were working together with Tourt Pière to keep Penderloin and the chickens in place. Their natural instinct was to flee, but that would merely have made hors d'oeuvres of them. The creature would not pass the barking, yowling Dog Wood trees.
"What?" Petra had managed to take hold of a long, solid length of branch, mostly straight. She was busy both watching the perimeter and breaking off any leaves or twigs from her makeshift weapon.
"I think I know what it is." Plantain swallowed. "It isn't good."
"I can tell it isn't good, Plantain, it took the top off of Asher's head!" The sight of the boy's scalp being torn from him and landing in a ragged heap had been one of the more shocking things that Petra had seen in her life. Somehow it was worse than the time in Antarctica where her guardians had gunned down a man who tried to approach her in the wrong situation. She hadn't known the man, she knew Asher.
"We can't fight it. We can't even hope to fight it." Petra did not want to hear this from the pony.
"So what are we supposed to do then?" Petra briefly flirted with using a rock to try to sharpen the end of her branch, but found that wood was a great deal harder than she had imagined. "Hide, and hope it goes away?"
"I'm hoping the Dog Woods will annoy it enough it will leave. Displacer's don't like dogs, even wood ones." Plantain turned her body so that her tail faced away from the center of the group. She took a defensive posture, ready to buck with every last ounce of her earthpony strength.
"Dis-what?" It was ridiculous, really, but somehow having a name for what was stalking them felt like having some power, however small, over the situation. A named thing seemed more conquerable than an anonymous creature.
"It's a Coeurl. A Displacer Beast. They're like a really big panther. With razor tentacles." Plantain felt a wind whip her tail, so she struck out instinctively with her hind legs. She felt her hooves briefly tap the sweeping snake before it returned to the trees and the dark mass that owned it. It was entirely an accident that she had so much as tapped the horror - Displacer's were never quite where they seemed to be. That was their special, terrible power.
Petra saw the dark shape move against the darker forest, then shimmer and submerge into the sea of leaves. There was a terrible, cat-like hiss that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. "The Dog Wood trees - can they attack it? Can they kill it?"
Plantain scanned the edge of the clearing, her long neck twisting this way and that. Crème Bûnnée clung to Plantain's mane, her little paws wrapped tight in coils of yellow hair.
"No. They just bark. They're trees! They can't move!" Plantain heard, rather than saw, another sweep of a toothed tentacle skim over the floor of the clearing. The creature was fishing for them.
"The Bush Baby could move!" Now was not the time to get into an argument about Equestrian botany, but the mere act of talking - about anything - seemed preferable to cowering in silence. Silence seemed like having lost already.
"Bush Babies aren't trees!" Milo and Plantain both lashed out with weaponized branch and bucking hoof as another dark, shimmery whip slashed near. Neither hit anything, even though Milo was certain he had smashed his branch down on the long tentacle perfectly.
"Then what can they do?" As Petra watched, the dark shape seemed to be becoming more brazen and confident. For a full three seconds, as if taunting her, the creature stood still, no longer shimmering, in a patch of sunlight outside the clearing. Petra felt as if the monster was deliberately letting her see it.
The beast was black, dark as midnight, and enormous. It was, without any question, a cat, a big cat. Fluid, sinuous curves defined the feline shape. The creature was supported by six powerful, horribly beclawed legs, rippling with muscles. The two impossibly long, black-furred tentacles swept forward like deadly vipers. Under the flat, spade-shaped tips, rows of jagged daggers made it clear what had playfully scalped poor Asher. The small, narrow head, low and mostly jaw, grinned swords at Petra while the glowing, golden eyes narrowed with evil, and hungry, glee.
The Displacer shimmered, fading like a dream and left trails in the air as it slipped back into the enfolding verdure.
"They bark." Plantain's answer was far less than enough after the vision that Petra had witnessed. Petra sat on the ground, and let her wooden pole roll from her fingers. Dimly, she realized why the awful cat had let her see it. She felt as if the last of her will to live had simply melted into the ground.
The whipping swishes had stopped. There was no sign of the beast now. The children and pigs looked about in fright, jerking at every little sound, every little breeze. Had the monster left? Was it waiting out there? Just like that, there was no sign of it anymore.
"How... how do you know such things?" Petra did not for an instant think the creature had left. It was out there. Waiting. She was certain of it. She could almost feel it calculating, planning, as if that brief glimpse had linked them somehow. For all she knew that was factually true - this was Equestria, and this forest was the strangest and most chaotic part of the magical land. Anything could happen here.
"What... what do you mean?" Plantain kept darting her head. An attack might come from any direction.
"Bush Babies, Dog Woods and Timber Wolves. You're just a filly, you said. An entertainer. You perform in cities. How do you know things like that?" It had been nagging at Petra. Plantain seemed to know an awful lot of very strange things that had nothing to do with ponies and cities and being on stage.
Crème jerked at Plantain's mane. Plantain ignored it. "I... just know. You learn things, being on the road. I've met a lot of ponies." The words sounded false even as she spoke them.
"Maybe it's safe now?" Oliver began to cautiously stand up. "Maybe the bad kitty gave up!" Isla grabbed Oliver's coat and tried to tug on it to force him to sit down again.
A Dog Wood Tree exploded with a canine scream. Fragments of wood and leaves showered the clearing. Bits of fur-fiber drifted down. Some got into Oliver's mouth as he quickly went to ground again. The delicate boy spit repeatedly before using his fingers to remove the last of the hair-like plant fibers.
The Dog Wood trees were yowling much louder than before, a cacophony of barks and strangled cries. The clearing was filled with noise that hurt the ears. When the tree had been destroyed, Petra had instantly looked in that direction. Before she had closed her eyes against the flying bark and leaves and fibers, she was sure she had seen a shimmering snake of black.
It was impossible to talk with the horrific yelping of the trees, so the children and pigs and chickens and pony and bunny sat together in silence, pressed tight for what meager comfort they could offer each other. The pigs panted, their fat bodies working like pink bellows. The chickens stood like statues, except for poor Beaktrice, who had outright fainted.
When the barking and yowling had died down enough for words to be heard, Cutler the pig finally spoke.
"I've been considering things." Tourt Pière might be the most learned and intellectual of the swine, but Cutler was the most analytical of the pigs. "I think the Beast cannot bear the sound of the trees. It will come back, I think, again and again, until all of the Dog Woods are gone. Then it will feast."
"Shut up!" Seraphina was still pressing on Asher's head, as best she could. She had never stopped. Milo's shirt, which he had offered instantly, was now a solid crimson mass of wetness. Asher didn't seem to be bleeding anymore, but he was not well. He lay unnaturally quiet, shivering despite the steamy warmth of the jungle-like environment. The look in his eyes was very far away.
Petra took off her coat. It was her treasure, the first piece of Equestrian clothing she had been given. After she had been reconstructed, she had been taken to a room to change clothing before the pegasus carriage to Equestria. Anything made of earth matter might not survive the flight through the barrier. There had been a number of boxes, each containing clothing that had been made from Equestrian fabrics and materials. Petra had been delighted at the pretty, red coat.
"Put this over Asher. Try to keep him warm." Petra tossed the coat over Asher's body as best as she could, then turned and picked up her stick once more.
"But it's too warm!" Seraphina's hands were drenched with blood, as was her clothing. She wasn't thinking straight anymore.
"He's shivering. Look at him!" Petra turned to stare at Plantain. Instead, she noticed a pair of beady, black eyes looking at her from inside the pony's yellow mane. The bunny doe began jerking Plantain's mane over and over as if trying to tear it out by the roots.
"Plantain." The pony wouldn't look at her.
Out of the corner of her eye, Petra saw another Dog Wood detonate into woody shrapnel. Again the children were dusted with fibers and leaves and bits of wood. Once more the discordant symphony of shrieking puppies made speech impossible.
When their ears had stopped ringing, Cutler could be heard. "Yup. Two down, ten to go. Twelve trees. It may not need all of them gone. Depends on how hungry it is, and how much the barking hurts it." Seraphina raised a hand to slap the pig, to hit it as hard as she could, but then slowly lowered her arm. Cutler, for his part, did not even flinch.
"Plantain." Petra watched as the little white shape of Crème Bûnnée began slapping and pounding the withers of the chestnut filly. When that did not work, she dropped to all fours, knocking her hat entirely off. The little top hat fell to the ground. Crème pushed aside pony coat and bit as hard and as deep as she could. Petra saw a tiny bead of blood on Plantain's ruddy neck.
The trees were almost quiet now.
"The spiders had a hard time convincing the princesses to let them stay. Celestia wanted to send them back to the Everfree the moment she saw them. She said I was irresponsible for putting them into the show." Plantain had not reacted at all to Crème biting her hard enough to break her skin. "But I translated for them, I fought for them, as much as I could. If it hadn't been for princess Luna stepping in..."
"You know another creature from the Everfree, don't you?" Petra watched as Crème stopped biting and looked up at her. The dark eyes stared back, as the little bunny's crimson-stained mouth slowly closed.
"She's my best friend, Petra. Nothing I could say would convince either princess, if they knew." Plantain's eyes filled with tears. "My best friend in the whole world. She made it possible to get the other bunnies to dance. She taught me how to speak with the spiders. I would be nothing without her. Nothing. Just... just some fancy stallion's 'plus one'. Another empty, Canterlot socialite for my mom."
"I don't understand. She's completely sweet. She is utterly charming. How could the princesses ever dislike dear little Crème?" Petra noticed the other children slowly beginning to catch on as they looked at the little creature.
"They can't help it, they really can't. I've been lucky so far, I know it." Plantain was crying now, she couldn't stop. "She's warned me. She can write you know. With a pencil, she can write. She's taught me all sorts of things. So many things."
"What, what did she warn you about?" Petra had an inkling, but she needed to know for sure.
"They can't help it. She's only part Snow Bunny, but it's still part of her. She's cold to the touch. It's their defense, the only one they have!" Plantain sniffled. "They can't help that they can't always control it. There's always a risk, but Crème's only lost it twice, and both of those times were out in the fields..."
"What happened?" It was not merely a question.
"She didn't mean to. The bunnies... the other bunnies just weren't fast enough. They tried to run... but..." Plantain was crying again. "Crème got spooked! They said there was a cockatrice on the loose, it was all over, and... Crème just got spooked and..."
"That's why... you said you had a whole troupe of dancing bunnies and... oh dear." If rabbits couldn't outrun what a Snow Bunny could do... the thought sent a shiver down Petra's back. She looked into the dark eyes of the little lapine on Plantain's back. The little bunny was a living, carrot eating, deadly cryogenic bomb.
"It wasn't your mother, was it?" Plantain cried harder still. "That wasn't why you had to leave your show."
"There... there weren't any... any bunnies... left... to dance..." Plantain collapsed, perilously almost unseating the clinging Crème. The little bunny doe clung to her friend, stroking her withers gently, lovingly, trying to comfort her.
It was terribly rude of course, but inside herself Petra couldn't help but think how much better it would have been if Crème had detonated over the banana spiders instead. Bunnies were so much cuter than spiders, there was just no getting around that fact. "Could... Crème... do that to us?" The question had to be asked. It would have been in any case - it was in the minds of nearly all of the remaining children, pigs and chickens except for Asher, who was in shock, and Penderloin, who was perpetually absent in mentia.
"But she hasn't!" Plantain looked up with pleading, reddened eyes.
Another Dog Wood was shattered by the slash of a ropy, ghostly tentacle. Petra saw the event clearly, the dark shape bolder now, dashing close to the clearing, whipping the little tree en passant, before flowing back into the endless darkness of the Everfree.
It was some time before anyone could speak again, but it was shorter than before, and the Dog Woods sounded more mournful and baying than their previous ferocious barking. Where Equestria was gentle and kind, the Everfree was harsh and cruel, and every warning the children had heard before entering seemed now to mock them in their hearts.
"All this time!" Seraphina was busy tending to Asher, who had stopped shivering, but still looked very pale and far gone. "All this time we've been under the most terrible threat and you never thought once to tell us?" She was livid, angry and betrayed, afraid for herself and the others, and overcome with the horrors of the moment. "How could you do such a thing? You're... you're a PONY!"
She had spoken the word as if it answered everything. In a way, it did, for most of the children.
"Crème is my BEST friend!" The reply was defiant, fierce. "You... you humans might turn on each other right and left and think evil things but you're right - I AM a pony, and I take care of my friends NO MATTER WHAT!" Plantain, standing again, shifted her hindquarters, no longer aiming exclusively at the dangers of the forest. Any child that went for Crème would face her hooves.
The dark shape was approaching. This time, it was ever so slow. It padded soundlessly out of the sheltering trees, head low and tentacles wide and high above its nigrescent back. It's panther mouth grinned knives and daggers at them.
"Plantain!" Petra whispered harshly. "Everyone!"
All divisions between the group vanished instantly with the advent of what likely was an earnest attack. The Beast was huge, and they had already seen how quickly it could move. It was difficult to even hit, because it shimmered and shifted in some strange direction that neither eye nor stick could follow. The living nightmare left a clawed print for the first time within the boundary of the clearing. With three Dog Woods gone, the perimeter was no longer a barrier.
The ebon nightmare stopped, holding still as if it had been turned to stone. Then the powerful muscles of the two hind pairs of legs began to tense and thicken. The yellow eyes narrowed, the slits within them widening. The claws on the forward pare of legs dug into the ground.
The massive jaw began to slowly open, the knives and swords of enamel within them drooling thin streamers of digestive juice.
Milo had slowly been bringing his branch up, to hold it as a spear. Petra had done the same with her own. Oliver readied a rock, prepared to toss it overhand at a moment's notice. Little Isla held her short twig ahead of her, as if she imagined it a wand of fireballs.
Seraphina, whimpering, covered Asher's coat-shrouded body with her own, making a shield of her living flesh.
Plantain, her flanks facing the incarnation of death, braced her forelegs. "Everypony! Drop flat! Don't even try. It will go for me, I know it will. I've got the most meat. Just drop! Now!"
Petra was aghast. "That's stupid! We're in this together!"
"You don't understand! Celestia will come for me, after! In that moment, I can tell her where we are and she can save you!"
"You mean..." The true horror of their real vulnerability suddenly struck Petra. "After you die."
"You can't afford to get killed!" Plantain wiggled her rump and swished her tail like a flag at the beast. "You've got nothing inside!"
The Covenant. Father always said Celestia was a stickler for the law. If it was written down, if she gave her word, she would keep it to the letter, no matter what. No matter who got hurt, no matter what the result. Celestia was Law.
Human. The entire Covenant existed so that the elite could remain human while the entire world was turned into ponies. And Celestia had kept her word, as she always did. Celestia always kept her promises. Humans could lie and cheat and steal. But Celestia existed to protect her peace, and her peace was based on her promise.
Petra, like her parents, like all the elite, were as human as it was possible to be within Equestria. Completely human. Completely mortal.
She felt the fear take her. Petra began to shake, her stick quivering in her grasp.
It happened so very quickly that the motion only registered after the fact. Petra felt dark fur against her cheek. She did not feel the errant claw slash open the side of her arm. When the tenebrious wind had blown past, before the blood began to trickle from her accidental wound, she found herself being dragged by pony teeth.
Plantain was galloping, running as fast as she could while stumbling and dragging Petra like a rag doll. Her every hoof fall thudded desperately, pounding not always into ground, but more than once onto Petra's dragging arm or leg. Petra did not feel her arm snap during one such impact, all she was aware of was the sensation of motion and the blossom of white behind Plantain's flowing tail.
It looked like an explosion in slow motion. Spikes and jagged blossoms of niveous alabaster expanded outward at a frightening pace. The chickens could not hope to escape it, Cluckalina was a statue of frost, wings spread, attempting hopeless flight. As the ground bumped below her, and the enshrouding leaves claimed her view, she glimpsed the pink bulk of silly Penderloin turning to snow, his dumbfounded eyes unaware of his last, frozen, heartbeat.
The last thing Petra comprehended about the scene, before the thick Everfree turned the spreading white to endless growing green, was the petrified ice-sculpture that had once been a living Displacer Beast, frozen in mid bite of it's terminal meal.
Dangling in halves, held perpetually in deceased jaws by icy, solidified strands of saliva, was the last stand and final testament of devotion by the greatest of all dancing bunnies, Crème Bûnnée.
Oh my. This is a frightening prospect.
I'm shocked.
2869390
Me too, actually. This is not one bit the way I imagined this story going.
You know what I thought was going to happen?
I had imagined that the children and animals would have had a bit of adventure in the Everfree, then make it to Canterlot where they would have hung out with some characters from 27 Ounces that many of my readers have asked about, while they wait for an appointment with Celestia and/or Luna. Meanwhile, Banana Acres would have ended up comparing notes with Liliane Bettencourt only to discover they are not that different in outlook.
But that isn't what happened at all!
Now, because I write stories by mental simulation, I am worried about the fallout of all of this. I am assured by my muse there will be a happy ending. I just don't see how that is going to work at the moment, but... she never fails me, so I guess we'll just have to see what happens next. If there can be a happy ending after all, I will be astonished. Just gotta trust, I guess.
There does seem to be a happy ending in sight: the eradication of an anomaly.
No! Poor Dobby!
"Crème"
Crème!
2869424
You have a tremendously bold interpretation over humanity. I find the rejection of pneuma to be highly fascinating! I see why you wish to do this... at least, from my interpretation, you are illustrating that humanity are islands that exist in permanent state of autonomy, each having no mean to carry forth that existence into something that is more inclusive and more ethereal, as it were.
Therefore, humanity cannot connect with what lies beyond the scope of its own individual bias, observations and reach. That doesn't necessary mean that it becomes impossible for individual beings to reach out and understand, but it does mean that a greater global conscience of sorts is not to be, as it were with say the like of ponies.
Why, as odd as it is, I see a parallel with your viewpoint to that of Kill'em all Tomino of Gundam series, in a way. You didn't introduce Newtype human that can actually develop and reach that pool of pneuma . You present ponies and their world for that.
Poor crème....
2869499
I reason it this way: Equestria is magical, so that means souls.
Mundis, earth, I take exactly the way science describes it. Zero magic, which means no souls.
As for humanity forming a true cooperative with equality and fraternity for all - humans have had about 250,000 years to do that, and they just plain haven't. A quarter of a million years is a long, long time. Even just the last 10,000 years is a really long time, and not once, in all of that, has man ever managed to create a stable, lasting cooperative society.
I don't think it has anything to do with souls at all. I think it has everything to do with being a hunter-gatherer primate driven by hierarchy within a universe of scarcity. Not enough means whoever fights best wins all and survives. The game has rules, and Man is very, very good at those rules. Too good, actually, for the planet to survive, since the rules are open ended and Man has no governors or limiters. In the end, humanity will devour itself. It can't help it, poor thing.
Every civilization ends like the Romans, the Aztecs, and every other civilization ever. Because: reality.
I like playing with Equestria, with an ideal universe, because it allows me to define what is missing from our own universe. I can say, with confidence, what we lack that if only we had it, we could have that ideal world that is in our philosophy, but can never exist for real. I want to understand why utopia is hopeless and impossible. It isn't enough to just accept the name 'utopia' at face value. I gotta know why.
Souls would be great, but they wouldn't make Mankind play nice.
What would make Mankind play nice is not being Mankind anymore, at least not entirely. Man needs new hardware, new instincts, new drives, new basic values - and all of that would be a disadvantage in our real universe. That, I have realized, is why utopia is impossible.
Our universe demands we be what we are to survive. We can only have the kind, perfect life the more sane of us idealize if both we, and the universe are significantly different.
So... either we gotta have an Equestria, or we gotta have a cybernetic Equestria Online, and we gotta be ponies, or at least - pony like to avoid eternal suffering and eternal infighting.
I always pity humanity. Humans are the apes that dream of being angels, but they have no wings, and heaven is a dream that fades with the light of day.
It isn't their fault, and their dream of better is their glory, but it is just so sad. So very sad.
!!! I'm going to have to trust your muse as well, it seems.
2869564
You have touched on a poignant subject when you talked about humanity's drea. of the ideal world...
To be more exact, in the way that humanity keeps being Icarus when it comes to trying to reach and to form an ideal world. I can't assign this trait as positive or negative, but seeing your definition play out is really enjoyable in itself! (Not everyone will, but that's individuality)
Well... 250,000 years in evolutionary teams is but a mere blip on the radar. A few minutes in the 24 hours on this ball of earth. Its temporary formations of stellar remnants that taken this form that somehow could comprehend of this "form," to a point... the planet, as in this ball of stellar remnants will survive, but it'll go through an extinction event caused by these wily humans... which really is just an instantaneous process of self-destruction when we frame it that way.
Hey! This may bring out new species that may reach sapience, or maybe not!
Humanity has constantly struggled with collective consciousness throughout its existence, in the concept and in its implications. This is why that hearing a definition proclamation of "nope" was so novel. Be it the Abrahamic monotheism or several schools of pantheon, this is an issue that keeps itself relevant. It's a bit of a struggle of sorts in defining humanity in a larger context I suppose... but that's only my limited bias.
I don't really know if that's sad or to be happy about. Ecce Homo applies here. I am not sure if assigning truth values on humanity really works. Corporal wise, we are only collectives of space dusts that's got the ability to infer a few things, but still. we are space dust in the corporal sense. .I guess this is why I find your presentation in a more absolute term to be so riveting.
I dunno, Asher's dad, didn't Christopher Hitchens say one of the essential virtues for men is being able to think like a woman? (Also, shouldn't everyone have something as famous as Bambi in their frame of reference?)
So THAT was the bunny's secret... Something did seem strange when they mentioned snow bunnies, and there was also a bunny there, and I wondered if it was a coincidence... And decided it was, so color me surprised.
2869564
Reading that reminded me to say what I would have forgotten to.
I've been thinking about—loaded words incoming—the meaning of life. The way I understand it, it might be better to call it the ‘base objective of life’. Your Conversion Bureau stories tend to make me think a lot about this lately. And, I was also listening to the audio book for Past Sins recently. Which made me start thinking about that weird magical clone problem. Oh, and let's not forget about Too Many Pinkies. So yeah, too much, too similar material. Should I mention I am horribly disillusioned? (I need a good re-illusionment done.) Anyway, what I came up with, was that there are two co-depend objectives for life.
One: To Survive. Two: To Improve.
The word “survive” is not quite the word I want to, but it's close. All life that I know of has one thing in common: it reproduces. There may have been some form of life in the past which did not do this, but it did not survive. Life on earth is made of cells, or little tiny living, cooperating bacteria. That's what cells are to me. How did they come to this arrangement of cooperation? It was because it was advantageous to the whole, aka evolution. I think that a very common thought among humans, is that the survival of the human species is the most important thing. I think this is so wrong. The survival of any species, of life, is the most important thing. I think that the reason people so often think of only their own species survival is because of the way competitive evolution works. We have instincts to take advantage of other forms of life, because self preservation means preservation of self. It is the human ability to even be able to think of survival of the species that allowed us to look beyond the basic instinct for survival of our own bodies. The next step, is to think of the survival of life. Humans are currently unparalleled in self awareness and intelligence, and are alone in the regard (until can prove to me we're not), but we are not the only life that exists, and if something doesn't kill the other forms of life on the planet, we will not be alone forever. We might ever give evolution some help in creating other, approximately as self aware and intelligent species as us, using
sciencemad science!The word “improve” is not what I want either, but, what can you do?… In this context, to improve, means to adapt, to evolve. This evolution is not exclusive to genetics. It means to get better at surviving by all means available. Cooperation is a means of survival. Intelligence is a means of survival. The continued improvement of physical form is a means of survival. Diversity is a means of survival. I am likely missing many more “means of survival”s, but I think I got the ones I wanted to.
These two objectives are co-dependent because survival does not happen without adaptation because things change. We live in constant motion, and have to be constant motion to live.
Got anything to add? Please do!
2869424 Happy story indeed. I wonder how the parents will react when they find out that their children are dead - dead, because they insisted on
torturingeducating them to view mankind as superior. Probably blame it on Celestia again. Although I do wonder, if any of the group besides did have a chance somehow after all. Officially, most are MIA. Ironically, if they were villains they'd have a better chance to survive. Alongside ending up being half a cyborg and with the villain upgrade inclusive.Well, well, a displacer. Someone has been playing Dungeon & Dragons.
Well, I'm not too concerned about the children. As long as Plantain or Petra make it out of the woods and can inform the Princesses they should be able to revive them. Celestia stated as much with the man that died in Masada. And even if she can't revive them, it should be possible for her and Luna to recreate them from scratch. They did it once before. Yeah, a bit creepy, but better than to be dead and lost for ever.
A pity about the pigs though. I quite liked them.
Edit:
If everything else seems lost, you could drop Drizzt Do'Urden into the Everfree to rescue everyone.
2870373 It's probably his panther! He evolved it after visiting the pokemon world.
2870373
Oh, I used to supplement my income in the late 70's as a paid DM. D&D is in my blood.
Also, Hasbro owns both MLP:FIM and D&D - that's why MLP has manticores and dragons, and dungeons and cockatrices and constant references to D&D. I've made it my personal tradition, that whenever a story takes me to the Everfree, I pull out a classic creature from the AD&D first edition Monster Manual. The first one was a Beholder - that fight worked out very adventurously in Teacup: Down On The Farm. Now, it's a Displacer Beast. The third time, if I write the book, it will be a... well. We'll have to see if I write it.
Yes, I liked the pigs too. I do not yet know who survived and who lived.
Perhaps, I should get my dice?
2870710
Guenhwyvar as a pokemon? That is so bizarre.
2870722
Maybe you should. As long as you remember the most important rule:
DMs don't play to win. They play to cheat.
2869564
On the other hand, if the potential for ruthlessness that was an adaptation to this world causes our extinction, then it was actually a crappy adaptation to begin with and doesn't really reflect on Mundis at all, since that's exactly where it failed (Though I think this is already sort of the point you're trying to make with the way the setting is allegorically constructed).
But the way that a world of perfect benevolence is also such a near-universal human dream is, I think, evidence that that even the soulless, purely mechanistic universe - The activity of which is that dream, as a part of one of its types of configurations that call themselves "brains" - is much stranger and richer than it seems.
But I think ironically that does blind us to the moral progress we have been able to make. It's true that human civilization needs to switch to a new paradigm in order to continue as anything we'd consider prosperous, but as you've also pointed out, that's exactly what it keeps doing. Unfortunately, because of the continually improving standard of ethics it requires, I doubt the majority of people will ever believe society is peaceful or healthy and not on the path to ruin, even if they're all wearing crystal togas and only have their drum circles telepathically for fear of disturbing the naps of bugs (hey, and there's another answer to Fermi's Paradox: They're all too goddamn Green).
But shoot, I never played D&D or any tabletop RPG growing up, but I'd really like to try it sometime, since it seems like a unique experience... But I don't wanna just find some meetup thing online and go play with a bunch of strangers, that seems like it would feel kinda stiff and formal. But I've never done it, so what do I know?
Was not aware that Hasbro owned D&D, though - It did strike me almost immediately that FiM takes place partly in that sort of setting, which I liked as another one of the ways the show is kind of incongruous and wry towards itself, like a setting version of those "anatomical" Ren & Stimpy moments, but I guess that explains it.
2871596
I will say this about tabletop D&D - or any other tabletop RPG, any system, any set of rules, any genre:
When it is done well, it is - I strongly argue - one of the finest, most enthralling, most entertaining, and most enjoyable things that two to seven people can ever do together. A truly good tabletop RPG session is better than a movie, better than a video game, better than a book, better than an orgy - and yes, I have been to an orgy.
When it is done poorly, however, it is one of the most terrible experiences one can have - empty, degrading, soulless, and ending with shame and regret. So in that respect, it becomes the most like an orgy.
2871390 Curious, when I was running a game, I did everything I could to maximize fun and player enrichment. Sometimes that meant that dice rolls were really, uh, subjective when only I could see the outcome. Sadly, as much as I like high fantasy (I do. ), I found that D&D just doesn't do what I want it to do. It started as a mod of Chainmail, and you can still really tell. It should be termed and branded as a high fantasy tactical combat and exploration game. As it stands, they're selling the entirity of the tabletop experience with it, and I think that's unfair and misleading. Don't get me wrong: D&D is great, and really well-designed across all editions. It just isn't something I can do for very long, not without getting bored of it.
I thought the phrase "Displacer Beast" used as a creature name like this is WOTC IP. I could be wrong, because it's based on a way previous work, but this kind of stuff is weird, and They are really protective of this kind of stuff. I know that you dodged calling the beholder as such, and I think it was called an "eye tyrant", which I think is more descriptive than "beholder" anyhow. (Everybody beholds. Looking at stuff isn't what makes that particular monster interesting.) I'm guessing that you did your homework and that this is kosher in the eyes of the corporate beholders? As if it would matter anyway, but still.
2871696
At the time I wrote Teacup, Hasbro hadn't bought out D&D. WOTC owned D&D then. But now, Hasbro OWNS IT ALL!
So, write about pony, write about D&D, it doesn't matter - you are breaking the same laws against the IP of the same company. Every single last story on this website is illegal. So is every drawing and sketch. Even mentioning Beholders and Displacer Beasts is technically illegal, especially when describing anything at all about them. Oh, and every time any of us discuss the content of episodes of MLP or characters, and especially when we write anything at all about them - that is a blatant violation of multiple US and international laws.
At any moment, every single thing any of us has created here could be removed and we could be sued for what we have written and drawn. We are all criminals, every single day we are here, and criminals for every thing we've ever created here. No - give up 'Fair Use' - that doesn't apply under the new international laws, they just let it slide.
They let it slide because, currently, we are invisible to the majority of the marketplace, and because, currently, we are seen as promoting fandom, and therefore sales. If that changes, or if someone complains, then we lose it all.
Hello, fellow criminal scum!
Now, it wasn't always like that. Before the bullshit, fanfiction was legitimate and legal, and some of the best works of literature were the result of it. But now, everything is money, and we are all criminals.
So, I no longer bother with trying to hide names or give corporate ownership credits because it doesn't matter.
Yeah yeah, some derp is going to argue that 'Fanfiction exists within a gray area under the law, because of the conflicting legal definitions of blah, blah, blah, my ass is covered with boils, blah, blah." Bullshit. Fanfiction is illegal now - the very instant it becomes a problem, it will be fully illegal, everywhere and not just most places.
But they let it slide. Because it isn't a problem. Yet.
So, once again, hello, fellow criminal scum.
Welcome to the underbelly of literature.
2871696
I've experimented with other systems, and a different system makes a big... difference. When I played D&D regularly, I used my own, custom system, designed to focus on action and imagination rather than combat. Huge difference. Modern D&D is all combat, really, and I find it boring.
Things I recommend are Fudge, Mouse Guard RPG, the basic system from Over The Edge, Universalis, Puppetland, and just plain making up some stats and going for it with a handful of dice.
I have learned one true thing about all tabletop RPG games: It's the story and the people. Everything else is just mechanics.
2871877 You raise a good point there; it's rather ridiculous, in the context of a fanfic, to worry about one detail of IP infringement over the obvious and huge one that is the fanfic itself. Forests and trees, I guess.
2871903 I found designing encounters for 4th edition fun at first, and then it got tiring. The economy of actions and the slick design of numbers mean that players are encouraged, rather heavily, to get a sort of tunnel vision on the specific roles and inter-actions of their combat abilities to fight. It was a similar problem in 3ed, where characters ended up being about one to three different actions under a lot of different names. And the recursive dice and damage rolls uuuuuugh. We once spent three hours fighting a single thing. For somebody like me, that's just gruesome. I just wanted to play an ex-pirate that's trying to save her people and fight an evil empire, damn it! Who knew that could be so tedious?
My very favourite thing in tabletop, as it turned out, was exploration in the context of the adventure. It's part of what makes reading fiction fun, including a lot of stuff here on FIMF -- and that especially includes your own contributions I'll have you know. The characters are a lot of fun, too, especially when people really get into them, but I think the person playing the character is just as fun. Watching people get legitimately curious about the intricacies of a hermetic minotaur society, for example, is extremely satisfying.
As I got more experience, I found myself wanting to make a system that would facilitate and support the kind of game I was interesting in running and playing. I guess a lot of these systems are actually born from that, so it can't be my unique experience. But down that road of game design I dare not tread. One of the other reasons I stopped running that game was because it left me almost no time for any of my other interests. That doesn't work for me. If I had to chose, game design wouldn't be it, but only because of time, damn time.
loving it so fay thou I am a bit confused i thought humans could not survive in Equestria due to the magic of it.
2872364 That's still true, explained in further depth in story.
So... did any of the other children survive?
2871596
I've felt the same way for the past few years, so I joined my university's RPG club. I joined a campaign in a friend's custom system, but it didn't pan out. And only last quarter I was able to join another (Legend of the Five Rings system) and actually finish it. I've finished my first campaign! Wooooo.
It was... okay. It was done well enough, but the sense of group just wasn't there. People didn't show up all the time, or even often in some cases. There were a few really good moments, but then we ended up running out of time because the school year was ending, and the DM had to mess with the pacing and the story to fit it in, which was very noticable. I suppose that's the downside of a school club.
2871903
See, that sounds like a lot of fun. A system focused on action and imagination instead of rote and grinding mechanics, which is funny, because I'm really heavy on the mechanics on board games, and in the aforementioned first complete campaign, I got really caught up in the mechanics of combat. I suppose as I play more tabletops and get more comfortable with that brand of RPGing (and RPing) in general, I could loosen up on the mechanics and enjoy things for their story and imagination...
Really should play a game with you. There's nothing like the experience of a seasoned veteran helping newcomers to discover the joys of their field. (Oh, is that why people go into education?) I do look up to you as a fledgling amateur board game designer. That is what I currently find fun.
2872090
Board game design may be in your interest. All of the fun of mechanics and flavour in closed worlds. No need to bog yourself down creating the engine of story universes!
2873399
Here's some tales from my table, from way back when. Things were very... loose and fun.
True Gaming Stories
Looks like another Chatoyance story getting disliked purely because Chatoyance wrote it.
2869424 2869499 2869881 I read Chatoyance's fictions, and I can't help but think of two philosophers: Plato and Hobbes.
Plato believed in the human mind's ability to self-examine, reason, and extrapolate the information it gathers from that in order to understand the world, and also perform the reverse: examine the world, and come to conclusions about themselves. The ultimate reasoning behind this was that the order of the universe, the city, and the human soul were reflections of one another. Things were connected, things could be understood.
Hobbes however, going off the findings of his time, declared that "Nature is nothing but matter in motion." His entire political writing project The Leviathan was a logical extension from that. Nature had no deeper meaning, no interconnections, just atoms going on their merry way, and people left - with different senses, experiences, and memories - to try and figure things out. With no deeper meaning, people couldn't come to agree on words, and so most conflict was based on fighting over nonsensical words. His solution was the leviathan, the sovereign who would alone decide the meaning of words.
I find it amusing that in this interpretation of Equestria, things have a deeper meaning, but also a strong leader. Though thinking on it, Celestia barely has a mote of semblance with Hobbes' Leviathan, as she ultimately keeps to her contracts, whereas the willingness, ability, and obligation to break contracts is exactly what the Leviathan possesses that his subjects do not. For Hobbes, such lawlessness was what he believed was the state of nature, which the Leviathan exists within constantly.
I'd have to say that these stories, the Hobbesian clockwork
orangeuniverse is being crashed in upon by Platonic idealism.It's like watching Thomas Hobbes and Plato have a fist fight... I kind of have trouble visualizing that image without a volcanic eruption in the background.
2873950
Which is what, exactly? It always seemed to me like that's where people stop, simply assuming that the existence of the supernatural would bestow some kind of transcendent meaning on life, but never pausing to examine what that might be or how it would work.
While he was something of a moral monster otherwise, I think Sarte had it figured out in that existence is inherently meaningless, because what could possibly be the point of any supernatural order over a purely natural one? All it ever seems to boil down to is a slightly more sophisticated version of "Well, we'll play harps among fluffy clouds forever, so the pressure's off and we don't have to think about it," but they never stop to question the value of the metaphorical harps and fluffy clouds. But meaning is overrated, anyway.
I do like your comparison with Plato and Hobbes, though, but I'd say a more accurate angle would be using Hobbes' idea of a central authority that monopolizes the various cognitive and ethical Darwinian niches that are one of many ways to make a living in a perfectly aloof materialist universe, but that are incompatible with the more humanist values of a mystic like Plato, leaving more cooperative lifestyles as the only viable option, which I'd argue is ironically much closer to Celestia's strategy than anything Plato would come up with. Celestia has Hobbes' monopoly on violence, but it's the synapses that are policed, instead of the streets.
2873902
It's actually become hilarious - look at those thumbs! over a hundred, each side, most of the votes doubtless sockpuppets. Thumb voting is utterly silly and pointless, and the dislikes on this story are living proof of that fact.
The entire effort of the ACB fools doing the downvoting is to prevent me from appearing on the front page of FimFiction. They are gaming the program, to prevent my work from being listed.
Yet - have you seen what is actually featured on the front page? Sexual misadventures and bondage porn, blood and war, and... what appears to be some kind of 40K bullshit pony hatred. Better than the usual foal rape, but...
Yes, I am being downvoted as part of the ongoing war against the horror of... whatever it is these crazies imagine they are opposing.
But no particular loss.
I have my readers...
And my readers have me.
With all the D&D-style stuff in the Everfree (remembering the beholder from Teacup Down on the Farm), I'm thinking displacer beast?
Ha! Nailed it! Also, there doesn't need to be an apostrophe there. Pluralization is not possessiveness.
2871877
According to this, WotC was bought by Hasbro in 1999. So whether or not D&D was published under the Hasbro label or WotC label, Hasbro still would've technically owned it. Or am I failing to do enough research and it's an even more convoluted corporate maneuver? Because with the twisted ways IP laws and properties are being abused these days, that is 100%, unsarcastically, unironically, plausible.
2874063
Hear, hear
2868634
K, my anger's cooked off since that comment was posted. Still.
Then what did you mean by weighing comments beyond using them as a static statistic? It's not a smart decision, because they can't be automatically 'weighed'. Word content, context, reference to the story, opinions, arguments. You have to gauge for many different situations.
A story that has an argument about pandas can hit Featured. Comments that are completely unrelated to the story will count towards this stat. It's just not a good plan, honestly, when we already have the (yes, abused) voting system.
I can only see this resulting in the Featured Box being, again, dominated by only those who are really popular because of everyone spamming how great the recent chapter is. Nothing that isn't communicated to a ton of people very quickly is ever going to get up to the box.
2875484
I think you are missing the real issue here.
The 'Featured' box is bullshit. Thumbs are bullshit. Both are just measuring cyber-dicks to see who has the longest electronic ding-dong. It's 'gamerscore points'. It's bullshit.
What pays the bulldog is comments. We all want comments. We live for comments. Comments are the paycheck for an author. Praise is solid gold bars. Interesting discussions are silver coins. People bitching is being spit on. What really matters is the gold and silver.
Thumbs cause needless conflict, like the stupid war over my current story. Over a hundred likes and a hundred dislikes? Stupid. The thumb-down bastards are retarded children.
What really matters?
My good readers leaving good and interesting comments. That is what matters.
Thumbs are too easy. They make it simple to spit. Everyone benefits - except for assholes, of course - if folks have to take time to make a real comment, and can't just push a button and be done with it.
That is the real issue, I think.
2875561
Ok. First off, the Featured box is still pretty hard to get to without selling yourself out, and the good fics that get up there wholly deserve it.
But we aren't talking about the content of Featured. Basically, changing the system like this would inspire people to comment more on stories, yeah? I do enjoy a good comment, definitely. Helps me improve as an author, and it's been quite a while since I got a proper comment review.
Still... what about the guys who really aren't all that famous? People who enjoy your stories don't always favorite it, and don't always follow you. You get a comment from them and then that's it. Popular authors (like you, or skirts, or the mods and admins of the site, or The Descendant... and others) will get a shit ton of comments, while others will get the sparing comment or two, which may not always be helpful.
Though the voting system is flawed, it's something that does get unknown authors into the spotlight, and people do still read Featured stories. It's what gets people an actual number of comments, because people who don't like your concept? They'll come and talk about it. People who think your story is flawed? They'll come talk about it.
But what happens when it just... slips under the radar? You still need to depend a lot on friends for what the community can provide. Given some thought, the comment system could be a good idea, but it really needs a lot more thought than a simple change like this.
2871696
Exactly, the DMs job is to tell a good story. But too often you find DMs that try to play it all by their sourcebooks or get cranky if players try and subvert their idea how things should roll. That's why a DM must be able to
cheatbend the rulesbe creative to make it fun for everyone.2871877
To quote "the dark knight returns": Of course we're criminals. We've always been criminals. On this planet we have to be criminals.
2873714
Oh dear! Has anyone ever told you that your page looks like 1999? I wanna grab one of the old AOL-CDs from my wall and surf some geocities pages.
God, sometimes I miss the old net.
I did not see that coming. I mean it's very good, but goddamn that's a lot of dead characters.
Rocks fall, everyone dies.
3252557
Not... quite. Death is such a terrestrial concept, after all.
¡The fæces just got real! I figure that only Plantain will survive and I figure that only because she is in the end of the Reasonably Adamant Down-with-Celestia-Newfoal-Society, which takes place over a decade after the end of Earth. If I ever find myself in Equestria, I shall avoid the EverFreeForest.
Not if it's what I think it is. Sounds like a displacer.
Damn.
Sometimes it sucks being right.
Yes. That...could be a problem.
Oh, no. Not Crēme, please. I loved that little bunny.
I'm actually crying right now.