As a stranger in a strange land, sometimes you need to get a different perspective to see how you might fit in. Jeremy gets his chance to see Equestria from the bottom up when he gets in trouble with the law. Ponies have such a happy, peaceful society that it's easy to forget that perfection doesn't exist, and there's always going to be misfits and the disenfranchised.
“It is said that no one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but its lowest ones.”
― Nelson Mandela
Chapters (1)
That escalated quickly.
Holy crap something new from you?!
That escalated quickly. Love the worldbuilding and technology.
Personally, I think Jeremy was perfectly justified in knocking out Featherflick with a chair.
1.) Featherflick escalated the situation by physically assaulting him.
2.) There is a considerable disparity of strength between the two.
that cliffhanger was INTENSE!!!
3031831 yes, yes it did. Although it was self -defense. Even though he smashed her with a chair.
You've got me interested. Very interested, mind. Can't wait to see what else you've got in store. You've earned a like, fave and follow from me.
And that's one reason why fucking with humans is a bad, bad idea. We tend to get extremely violent if physically assaulted, even if that means a degree of self-destruction.
Featherflick was asking for it.
By the way:
You forgot the "a" letter there.
The moment the Elements of Harmony turn their back on him, that weird human turns into Hoofler and starts smashing up the place, braining ponies with chairs! He's a public menace I tell you! Next he'll be trying to lure ponies off somewhere, like the pond, and cook them over an open fire at night!
It'll be interesting to see this unexplored part of Equestrian culture... their legal system. Would it be too cliched to say I can't wait to see Pinkie in a suit yelling "Objection!" every time the prosecutor starts talking? (Well, until the court has her thrown out, possibly literally)
When a six-foot tall man swings a chair down on your face, you're gonna be out like a light. And probably suing, too.
I believe I will quite enjoy this stories antics,and I eagerly wait future chapters. Though only one thing bothered me...
Honestly. the start of this story had me worried. The zero background story, or introduction, whichever way you'd prefer, was a bit intimidating. The lack of "hows" and "whens" at the beginning gave a feel that I was supposed to know something before reading this. In a metaphorical sense, I felt as though I was learning to swim again, only to jump into the deep end and flail desperately to the other side hoping it was getting shallower, and then to (discovering, for once, the entire chapter is an intro) find I was in a kiddy pool the whole time.
I mean none of this in a negative light, just explaining how one felt upon reading, in hope to improve in any way. By all means, if this was intentional, you've done a great job. Carry on good sir/madam/"insert preference here."
He'll be in the jailhouse now.
humans pumping with adrenaline equalls smashed chairs
Wait,wait, wait.
Why does he have to go to jail? She touched him first. Not saying they're not both at fault but she attacked him. He could have busted his head open when he hit the pavement?
davenport deserved that verbal lashing he made derpy cry Jeremy is best human for defending derpy
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So, ponies have strenght, magic and the equivalent to human ingenuity and tech-savvyness. Nothing for us, puny humans?
Don't fuck with humans, Featherbitch deserved that chair to the head
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Aggressiveness
Hands
Agility
Not having a mark on our ass that dictates our entire life
There are other things that other people can list off
I think his point was that it's folly to think a human could show up and "educate" the poor simple pony masses to a new age of technological enlightenment--it's actually a good point to make, since the argument for such enlightenment smacks of the old "white man's burden" line of reasoning...which certainly leaves a foul taste in my mouth when put into those terms.
On that alone I'd applaud the author.
Also I'm fairly certain a pony could not pick up a chair and use it as a weapon. Either through simple skeletal structure, or possibly even temperament, I'm fairly certain Jeremy has just done something very eye-opening in terms of personal combat.
Can't wait until we see the prison--and the inmate's face when they realize just what Jeremy is capable of.
3034884
No. What I dislike is the "Ponies Are Better" some authors put in their stories. I like to think humans has ingenuity, determination, adaptability and progress as opposed to Ponykind´s magical talents, physical strenghts and "harmony", to the point neither side is inherently superior, but in fact both can support well each other (like in All American Girl)
3034047 As far as I understand it, Jeremy will only stay contained until trial, enough to take a detailed look into their carcer system. Maybe in the human world he'd remain free until then, but I'm pretty sure Equestrian laws are a bit more strict on violent behavior like this, even if it was self-defense.
...Wait a minute, he gets knocked to the ground by an aggressor, then said aggressor follows up by going towards the person who they knocked down (Still pissed off) but when the victim strikes it's not self defense?
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Given how ponies function, I would imagine that wielding something as a weapon could be evidence of premeditation. An enraged pony isn't likely to grab something, they'll just go at it tooth and hoof. Also given their herding nature, doing anything aside fleeing from a fight could get both parties in trouble ("He was trying to fight you? Why couldn't you just run away to the herd/town square/bowling alley/police station?).
As Nugar has pointed out, we don't know anything about their justice system. For something that a good lawyer could wrangle as premeditated attempted man/ponyslaughter, he might be looking at having all his assets seized for restitution and being permanently incarcerated. Even more playing up on his savage nature, combined with an unfortunate infection during the mare's hospital stay, and he could easily be a carnivore on trial in an herbivore nation for premeditated murder. Death penalty, probably not. Indefinite petrification? Celestia's statue garden indicates a possibility.
Well...who wants a jail party?
PINKIE! Bake him a jail cake... with a file in it.
3034905 I understand and sympathize with that argument, "elves/na'vi/ponies are innately superior to humans" is a plot thread I CAN'T STAND and wish to see die in a fire at any and every opportunity.
But again, I do not think that is what's going on here.
My hypothesis is that we have is two distinct conflicts, and that they are intersecting in such a way that it appears to be a "ponies are better" sort of story.
The first conflict is a clash of cultures. Jeremy is a stranger in a strange land and so it stands to reason that ponies would not want things that human's want, or need things that human's need. Therefore a good deal of his technical expertise is impractical at best in Equestria--mostly for economic reasons. Technically this is the same reasons why "a Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" type stories fall flat on their face when scrutinized. You need a lot of things just so in several spheres beyond the technological to produce all the really cool things of the modern era and neither Medieval England nor Equestria have it right at this moment.
The second conflict is Jeremy's quest for fame and individuality. The story makes it clear that what small contributions he CAN make are not enough for him. He wants to be famous--preferably for his contributions to society, but given conflict 1, he cannot do so. This is throwing his very identity into question--in other words "what good am I when the individuals around me do not need what I can offer?"
Now normally neither of these two conflicts twitches the "elf-alarm" but combined they very easily do. "What good am i when the individuals around me don't want what I can offer?" mixed with "Ponies want and need different things than humans" can very easily be read as "What good is humanity when ponies don't want or need what humanity can offer?" As it stands however I do not believe we are at that point yet. What we have here is a great "low point" in the characterization that will eventually build up until we see exactly what Jeremy the human is capable of showing society as a whole.
As an aside there is a sticking point for me in the ponies being "physically" superior to humans. I'm not thrilled with it, but it does make sense both in canon (why ELSE would the ponies pull that train over a nice flat chunk of land if it wasn't easy enough to be worth saving fuel) and in regards to the story conflicts (why would ponies need an internal combustion engine if they could just haul their stuff themselves at comparable speeds?). The fact that Jeremy leveled an athletic pegasus with one blow helps mitigate this point as well--for all their strength, the ponies are just as susceptible to simple tool use and sucker punches as every other "more powerful" animal humanity has come into contact with over the course of its taking over the earth. And I imagine this point will become clearer once Jeremy gets into his obligatory prison brawl.
TL:DR it's a good thing to be worried about, but I seriously doubt the story will fall into that trap.
Oooooh, hoohoohoo...
I like this.
At least Jer did everything right, here. He didn't start the confrontation. When it did start, he immediately attempted to disengage. And when he could not, he used a mechanical advantage to make up for the strength disparity, which I feel is a reasonable escalation of force. Plenty of witnesses, too.
Now, we just have to see if this remains a civil case, or if criminal charges are filed.
Pretty good so far, and I hope very much you continue it! It's rare to see the Pony legal system, save in AUs where everyone and everything is "out of character" anyway.
(BTW, I have trouble seeing Featherflick being seriously injured here - ponies are tough. Rainbow Dash does stuff like fly into cliffs without any noticeable injury. Knocked unconscious, yes. Killed/put in a coma/brain-damaged? No. But if she was, we'd need a Dark tag, anyway.
)
Wow, I wonder if Jeremy when he finally does experience the legal and penal system he calls the ponies out on the treatment of them and say that in most civilized human countries Prisoners are treated better than that.
A unicorn certainly could use a chair, so I don't think they'd consider it a sign of premeditation that he used one.
BTW, why should our species, alien in form and abilities and to some extent in psychology, be complementary? The fact that the Ponies don't need or want a lot from us doesn't have anything do to with the relative worth of humans and Ponies, annoying as Jeremy may find it.
Streptococcus pyogenes
3035806 Well....Maybe Brain damaged. I mean, look at Derpy. She's proof that being brain damaged doesn't mean you're stupider. The brain controls lots of stuff, like the eyes. I've been hit so hard once, my eyes crossed.
They went back to normal, but yeah, you get the point. Also, this.
YES! the one side of equestria no one ever dares to write about! this story is so well balanced and believable I, personally am completely unable to topple any bad plot points over... because there are none.
Great job sir!
Ooooooh snap, sh*t's gon get real now.
Things I liked: the whole cliched 'let's improve ponies with technology!' angle being shot to hell, how this guy isn't some 'perfect joe' though that's kinda obvious given the subject, the worldbuilding you've got going on (and how - while using some of the emerging tropes [herds] - changes them enough to make them your own), the fact this guy's got an actual career on Earth instead of YET ANOTHER 'high school kid in Equsterah lol,' annnnd he has actual character.
Things I'm not so sure of: Guy sounds fucking misanthropic - might be narrator bias but 'Frankly, you’re nicer than us humans' makes me super wary about where this is going. The threat of this becoming a 'suddenly human bad, oh no rampaging monster, the horror' situation. Please keep that to certain jokes/reactionary ponies and not a 'thing.' Uhm ... that's about it, really. So far.
He's a bit of a reactionary douche but, hell, I can't really blame him that much. I'd like to see more of 'traditionalist' ponies and maybe some judge-bias in this case as well as some 'pony reaction' to this - both good and bad. So, yeah. Good on ya for this chapter.
3032532
Whoops. The most intense part of the story and I screwed it up. Thanks for the catch, it's fixed now.
And yes, one of Jeremy's rather negative traits is that he responds poorly to being personally challenged. He knows this and tries to compensate the other way, by being polite and going out of his way to make others at ease around him, and he's not too bad about being stubborn about ideas, but if you challenge him physically he's going to respond agressively. He's hardwired to respond to any percieved threat with reflexive violence.
Some people scream when startled.
Some people freeze.
Some people lash out. Jeremy is in this category.
3033136
In media res is a fairly jarring way of starting a story, especially because it leads to a lot of exposition infodump like what happened here. That's a bit awkward and not exactly an exciting read.
However, despite it's problems, I picked it for this story because we've seen enough human in equestria stories that cover the 'first contact' of coming to equestria, everything is weird, omg talking ponies, omfg magic, etc. It's been done before. It's been done before, well. I didn't have anything new to say about it.
I only have things to say about, as mentioned in another comment, 'the white man's burden' and what the equestrian prison system must be like and the kind of beings you'd find in it. And since that's what I feel is the interesting part of the story, I wanted to skip to that as fast as possible.
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Thanks. I do my best to pay attention to the little things, because the little things are where characters live. Jeremy was falling into a fairly easy trap of seeing ponies as living in a near utopia, lack of certain technologies notwithstanding. Hell, they are probably considerably nicer, both as individuals and as a whole than humans. 'Better'? Apples and oranges. There's a lot of things to be proud of as a human that ponies clearly haven't achieved. But kinder and nicer? Yeah, almost certainly. But 'perfect'? There's no goddamn way.
If you want to make a successful invention, it's got to fill a need. And if you want to find a need to fill, it helps to talk to the needy.
3034884
Oh man. The best part of getting comments is getting a comment from someone who gets it. Long response, I'm basically responding to all of your comments at once.
I'm proud of the shit humans have done and can do. I'm also an educated white man proud of his technical knowledge. I'd love a chance to go back in time/to a fantasy world/equestria/pick your place and use what I know to make a difference.
The thing I can't stand is when it's portrayed as easy. Societal upheavals are handwaved. Suddenly all of the poor technologically impaired whatevers start listening to the modern man, because clearly he knows best. If anyone objects, it's clearly because they're a hidebound asshole and they must be removed as an obstacle, preferably after abject humiliation for clinging to their outdated ideas.
Look, I'm all for science and progress. Big fan of it. But nothing worth doing is ever easy. This is most definitely NOT a 'take that' to stories where the humans come in with awesome human knowledge and traits and get shit done. And I'm not even saying there aren't any good stories about humans doing human things in equestria. I've read several I liked. I've just got a few things to say about some stuff that seems to have gotten overlooked. And, because THAT'S the stuff I want to talk about, I'm going to emphasize it more than I think it would be in a totally realistic fic. Jeremy is going to run into extra problems specifically because I want this fic to be about those problems and how a human could solve them.
After all, the thing about humans I'm most proud of is that we're highly adaptable and we overcome problems thrown at us? How much of a fuck yeah can you really give to humans who don't have any challenges?
This isn't about humans vs ponies, though. Ponies don't seem to need saving. They've managed civilization without opposable thumbs. That's deserving of some serious respect, I think. This is about one man, Jeremy, doing the best he can alongside the friends he makes. The sooner he realizes that, the happier he'll be.
Seriously, ponies must be freakishly strong. Rarity struggles a bit with a goddamn rock bigger than she is, but she carries it, and she's the pampered unicorn mare. I'm going to handwave some stuff like Big Mac effortlessly towing a HOUSE as being cartoon physics and not actually possible, but things like pegasi flying towing a small cart full of stuff seems so integral to the way the world is presented I'm just going to accept it as common. Even the CMC seem about as strong as an adult human male, given the stuff we see them hauling around.
You've got to make crappy, low power, low effeciency internal combustion engines before you can make awesome, high power high efficiency ones. When your average goddamn pony is stronger than the primitive ones, it's gonna be pretty hard to convince everypony to devote the resources and effort to get all the way to the advanced engines that would actually be useful to them.
Kinda like the troubles we're having with space flight, really. Right now, it can't pay for itself, so it's hard to fund. Eventually, I hope as much effort, or even more, goes into hyper advanced spaceship engines than is currently poured into automobiles.
3034905
Yeah, I can't stand 'ponies are perfect, humans suck' stories. That's definitely not what this is. But it is important to remember that ponies are different, and humans aren't neccessarily going to know what's best.
3036046
...wut. I'm going to assume that your post means your name is Gram and that you're positive about this story.
3035835
Nah, because that would turn this from a story about how humans and ponies have their good points and bad points into a story about how ponies are secretly monsters.
Seriously, read the Nelson Mandela quote. I would not be able to respect ponies at all if they were terrible to all of their criminals.
3036674 BLASPHEMY!!! Ponies are PERFECT!!!
They are akin unto the angels! THOU HAST BLASPHEMED AGAINST THE MOST HIGH PONY!!!
YOU WILL BE EXTERMINATED!!
3036563
Hey, thanks for the comments.
No, Jeremy isn't misanthropic. However, he does sort of have stars in his eyes when it comes to ponies, at least up until he had to smack a bitch. Here's a guy who knows as much about how bad humans can be to each other as anyone else who knows a bit of history and watches the news and has (had) access to the internet. He also has a pretty good idea of what would happen if an alien, like a pony, was to suddenly show up on earth. Spirited off to Area 51 for vivisection is probably unrealisically dark, but even best case scenario that alien would be all but put in a cage, with threats from random psychos and alien conspiracists, to fans and worshippers, and even in a best case scenario they would never ever ever be allowed to live anything at all resembling a 'normal' life.
Yet he stumbled away from a pretty scary encounter with a pissed off hydra, through trackless swamp, to be found, taken care of, educated on his situation, offered a chance to go home, if somewhat in the future, and given fair value for not just concrete knowledge, but also the vaguer bits of theoretical knowledge. He's also been able to live on his own, largely unsupervised, and isn't followed around by weird ass human fetishes. (I like fanon human obsessed Lyra but I'll get to what happened there later.) That's way, waaaaay better treatment than he had a right to expect.
So yeah, he's pretty goddamn impressed by ponies. But while, no, he's not going to find out that it's all a veneer over xenophobia (omg he eats meat he's gonna eat us!!!!1! Goddamn it they live alongside gryphons and bears and shit.) or some other unsavory sort of thing, he is going to find out that they damned sure ain't perfect.
This fic is proving to be a hell of a fine line to walk. Humans aren't all conquering heros, but they don't suck. Ponies aren't the perfect friends, but they aren't frightened herbivores, either.
But in all the plot talk I've had on here, I've neglected to mention that this really is supposed to be a comedy. Dust and I have come up with some hilarious shit to happen in prison.
Hey now, that was self defense!
Don't worry about what other people think about how you portrayed ponies.
Personally, there's no one I find more irritating than someone who thinks ponies are perfect and humans are evil.
It's just pathetic to think that way, in my opinion.
It's nice to have an author who mixes things up a little.
3036563
I will personally guarantee a complete lack of misanthropy in this author's style, message, and mindset.
Like Nugar himself mentioned, this story isn't trying to portray his character as a rampaging monster, nor ponies as perfect. He's a guy with a reflexive self-defense mechanism that's landed him in hot water. However, he's already been established as a generally stand up guy that Pinkie (and most of the other elements, apparently) likes.
As for the points about Human technology... its a very good point and an interesting take. All modern technology is based off of a very long series of independent incremental advances. You have to have extremely specialized knowledge to be able to take pretty much any single invention from start to finish on the tech scale... not to mention be able to recreate the entire industrial revolution singlehandedly. Most bits of modern technology rely on infrastructure that is naturally developed first or alongside. You can't have a TV in every home if no one has electricity. Nor cars if there are no roads or gas stations.
And even if you have all that... there has to be interest in it. Ponies are physically and culturally different, so some of what's necessary for you (washing machine) is an expensive curiosity for them.
In either case, I doubt you'll be disappointed with where this is going.
This is beautifull.
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Well, that was more of a 'please tell me now so I can bail - no hard feelings' post. I hate following a story only to have it turn into some Libertarian rant halfway through a chapter and kill all the magic for me (as a RANDOM AND COMPLETELY UNRELATED/UNEXPERIENCED example).