Things I do not appreciate · 2:20am Aug 1st, 2013
Hello again everyone! Today I'd like to focus this post on some certain story aspects which have gotten to me in all the wrong ways. However before I vomit my built up whininess on you fair readers I'd like to take a moment to apologise for a couple of things. First I'm sorry for the lack of updates I have posted, mainly the continuation of my latest crossover story 'Faith and Fire: Divided'. I could throw any number of excuses at you to explain why I have somewhat neglected the story for so long, but that defeats the primary point that I am making which is that I intend to soon change this inactivity and hope to get writing again ASAP. Secondly I will be going away on a holiday as of friday for a week and will not be likely to update any stories, edits or comments for this period of time. Thank you for understanding and I hope to present better and longer chapters for my stories in the near future.
Alright then, onto the main point. Recently I have been reading several 'Human in Equestria' fan-fictions, a genre of fics I'm a bit of a sucker for seeing as I dearly love the species I belong to. However as much as I recognise that there are many great and well written HiE fics, there is a tremendous trend of teeth-grittingly painful fics that portray not humanity, but instead the reader him/herself self-inserted into the story. I can respect how fun it is to insert your own personality into a character and roleplay it through a story based in Equestria, but such a thing brings up several problems that I can't help but notice, in no part helped by the similarities they all have.
It seems that a lot of writers of HiE stories have many things in common, some being:
1-Severely repressed anger issues.
2-Tendancies to mentally solve issues they face with mindless and excessive violence.
3-The need to make their characters (themselves) utterly invinsible.
4-Deep-seeded phsychological issues that cause them to act anti-social and psychotic.
5-A god-complex.
6-The vicious love for Call of Duty/Halo.
7-Little to no faith in their own species.
8-Very extreme and forcibly advertised political/religious opinions.
Now, as I have already pointed out, this does not apply to every HiE fic on this site (or elsewhere) but does cover a wide range of writers whos' stories I have read. I will not mention the titles of these authors as the purpose of this blog post is not to highlight awful writers, but to educate and warn those who are yet to write a story (but plan to) or are willing to adjust their current story to make it more enjoyable for others to read. This does not apply to writers who have the qualities above as most are far to stubborn and brainwashed by their own sense of superiority that it is pointless to present them with any alternative way of writing. Common responses to expect when dealing with these individuals are:
- 'This is my story and I'll write it how I want.'
To this I say; I very much respect such a response but it is far too absolute and shallow to work with to achieve a constructive conversation. I get you want to write a story YOU enjoy, but the point of publishing it is presenting it to the public for them to enjoy as well. If you want to write a story just for yourself, keep it in your documents.
- 'I wrote that character with the bulletproof underwear because his government awarded it to him after the nuclear virus battle of WW3, as well as granting him an excuse with excusing excuses and a blahdy blah blah."
When writing a character it's great to throw in your own sci-fi and such, but at least have the nonse to shave away all the 'insta-wins' they may have. If overpower them then you'll detach any sense of desperation or stress they may have placed on them as the story progresses. This leads to the story becoming predictable and dull.
-'Deleted comment.'
Yeh...this'll happen a lot when the author sees you have a valid point. When you can't beat 'em, delete 'em.
All this occurs in the comments of writers stories that have the qualities listed above, qualities that are easily resolvable. This will make the readers of your story enjoy the writing much more as they can better attach themselves to your characters and appreciate the situations they're in in the right way. The solutions are as follows to the appropriate issues:
1- Of course humans all have some form of aggressive tendancies, and few reflect this more than my own fics. However certain fics have their characters not simply bearing hostility, but relying on it. As much as you may want your character/s to be the tough guy/s you will need to realise that a character that is consistantly angry and hostile will make for a bad character for the audience to relate with, because everyone isn't as angry at life as you may be. Your character should be angry and hostile in the right environments, but ultimately keep somewhat of a level head the rest of the time. In context, a character may well have hostile tendancies towards the start of a MLP fanfic as they are distressed by the bizzare situation they've landed in, but this should not carry on beyond the 3rd/4th chapter as humans are generally adaptable creatures. Give them this quality and the audience will both relate and respect the characters you have created.
2- There are a lot (nearly all) HiE sci-fi fics that have the main character/s land in the fairytale land of Equestria only to blow the crap out of it. Everyone loves guns, explosions and tanks, but this is not an excuse to breed sacrificial lambs in your story for the character to destroy, it's just not tasteful. If your character is in the military and bears firearms use them in a conserved, smart way. Don't do the usual (even I did this, to my shame) and present the characters with a horde of griffins/changelings/dragons/manticores just to kill them as a statement to how tough they are. If this is all to lead up to the ponies in the story going all, 'Oh look how scary they are, lets be scared of them so they can later show there softer side and we all learn a valuable lesson in friendship!', then just drop the cliche and think of a more original/witty way for your character to use their weapons. Make your character stronger by overcoming problems with not just their equipment, but also their minds, their physical struggles and teamwork.
3- Make your characters killable. If you grant your super sci-fi soldier halo shielding, invisibility, titanium armour, jetpacks, super computers, lazer guns, grenades etc. then put them against an enemy that disregards such things and makes them very much vulnerable. A story were the character/s are so indestructable and olympian is uninteresting and one-trick. Have your character use his abilities, fail, fall, mend themselves, find help, forge a plan, take the plunge, struggle and then achieve their goal instead of the normal: Threat, guns, shoot, move on. Don't forget to perhaps kill of a couple of secondary characters, or even a primary character to really hit the readers in the hearts. Have such an event spur the other characters on, or even retreat and initiate their original failure.
4- A character with issues is always the cliche heartthrob. 'Oh look at me, I've seen bad things and killed people and my parents died so now you must feel sorry for me/be scared of me'. If you want to play this card, be prepared to follow it up with consistent and detailed development. Does their condition worsen, does it get better. If so then why? Will this continue or will they take a turn in the future. Who does this issue affect exactly? Make it a key part of a story, not just an ugly note stapled to the side. And for goodness sake, don't make them whiny. Maybe a freakout half way through the story escelation or something, but to constantly bring it up (even more than just the once) is just plain annoying and makes the character instantly appear weak and unlikeable. They should either deal with their problem or be tragically consumed by it.
5- This one's popular, and ties in with being indestructable. A character with self-confidence is great, really. I t shows a character that can be relied on and that is willing to make the hurdles. But it can easily slip into the realms of them becoming arrogant and self-obsessed, and is even inserted intentionally. If you want your characters to be such a**holes then develope the quality. Most likely the events they experience will change them in some way, and once again you can flip it either way. You can either develop them into the sentinental sod or the villain, but either way make sure they genuinely undergo changes. The consistent, unchanging, arrogant know-it-all characters are so difficult to connect with that it the audience can begin to quuestion whether they're actually human at all.
6- Lots of kids love these games nowadays, and I've played them a couple times. But inserting the lore from them into your story is something that I find utterly permissable, even favourable, but is often uncontrolled and becomes the basis of the whole story. There are stories out there where the main characters' gun has more development than the character down to all the screentime it gets. This ties in with the indestructable quality, and I strongly advise shaving down the way you intergrate the sci-fi/modern hardware in your story. Either have their weapons/tech holstered most of the time down to the story making actual development (that doesn't EVER need the appearance of a weapon), or have their equiptment damaged or lost for some reason. A character needs to drop the first person shooter veil every other chapter to do some personal development. If it's a story consisting of just some space troopers pointing there guns at everything that moves, casts a spell or that has a different social structure to them. then it's just going to get boring and cringy after a few chapters.
7- Mankind is awesome. You hate humanity or being human, go live in the woods you damn animal. Mankind is born good, but ultimately moulded by the society it develops through. If you want your character to hate humanity, give them a PERSONAL REASON to do so. So many fics play the 'Humans have war and fight and argue and don't share andandandandand!', it's disgusting. Why not even have your character a noble, enlightened, polite, open minded and generally a decent person? Why not do some crazy sh*t like that?! Give them a genuine backstory that shapes them into a textured and relateable character. Hell, the Joker was evil to the bone, but relateable down to the reasons of his cruelty (Which was just to see what happens when you blow up random stuff). Good or evil, give your character fuel to drive them through the story, because the bog standard 'I hate everything and that makes me superior to puny ponies', is just cold now, get over yourselves.
8- Reflecting your personal beliefs through a character is most likely going to turn the character into, well, you. And unless it's designed to be a self-insert story for the author (which is a no-no anyway), then craft a character from qualities and traits that are not your own. Have their beliefs challenged and even changed over their time in Equestria, especially since the world most likely defies the laws of physics itself and would tap on the side of anyones brain. Don't, and I mean DON'T, swing to either extreme of either, 'All pony magic is bullshit and science is the only answer' (This is arrogant and just swims against the flow of the show. Aspire, but don't outright defy just because the idea of the unexplainable scares you) or, 'Science and reason is a load of complicated rubbish and magic is the ultimate insta-kill to anything made by man' (Everyone loves the mystery and wonder of magic, but using it to swat science and tech to the wall is just childish and dumb).
Above all, your story should be FUN TO READ. Get a target audience, cook up the ingredience and serve up the soup. There will always be people who just can't be satisfied, but when you get 3, 4, 5 of them saying the SAME THING, it's most likely for a good reason. If the same issue comes up, either re-write the story or maybe consider a different field of writing. Remember, make the story full of flavour and drive, the setting diverse and give it an end game, explore both sides of the human and pony world and mix up their qualities (no one species gets to be all right in this area of writing) and make your characters relatable, give them solid qualities that are not your own and make them very much vulnerable in one way or another. I get people don't like being told what to do, but I'm not alone in thinking that it's a waste of internet space having fics that just portry a 14 year olds fantasy space troopers going to Equestria to kill stuff with super rail-guns and wash away the way the ponies percieve the world to replace it with the human perspective. I have been a criminal of awful writing so far and intend to fix my style of writing.
Sorry for the rant, thanks for reading!
I for one thought I was alone on the matter, I agree with you and there have several HIE stories I have stopped reading because they refuse to listen to reason and walk down the path of stereotypes.
On a similar note the points you listed I agree on but I find there are some other points missing.
1:everypony wanting to be with you
2The princesses wanting to be with you.
3 Cannonball style relationships.
4 Pacifist
5 Lyra (though I'm a major fan of her being interested in humans, they always go with it's an obsession and wants to get in their pants.)
Actually to counter number seven you can also add a severe case of "Humanity Fuck Ya!!"
Emperor's grace, you're so right. I especially hate it when Celestia is presented as a goddess. Always. I have higher standards for divinity.
And I find it especially annoying when a character keeps beating himself up for being human. But when someone tries to make ponies out as a superior species, that just makes my blood boil. Becausel let's face it, they're not. 90% of the upper class are total pricks.
Remember Blueblood, most of the nobility(Fancypants being the sole exception, really), that clerc who sold cherries more expensively, because Fluttershy needed them badly(something illegal on Earth, but aparently not there, HA!), those two mares who stopped their carts to chat up in the middle of a bridge and wouldn't move. These are just examples on the top of my mind.
I'm not saying humans aren't sometimes like this, just that ponies aren't always nice. And we really haven't been explictly told that they haven't had wars with other kingdoms. We also don't know how fast fast their technology progresses(if at all).
1254450 When it comes to Celestia (Luna, Twilight and Cadence) I always depict them as...demigods...sorta
They have a significant and spectacular power, but it only covers one field in magic. I can't imagine Celestia is much of a fighter. I get how neither ponies nor humans are perfect, but I have to give the moral upperhand to the ponies (Hell, they live in a fairytale land, what did you expect?). They can be inconsiderate, ignorant and a little mean, but they're dozens of tiers below us when it comes to evil. Not saying humanity is all or even mostly evil, but we know that field much better, and the ponies ARE the ones with a 99% working social structure. Also, ponies fall short in terms of understanding such evil, and perhaps the deeper phylosifies (Can't spell 
) that tie in with it. Like how ponies have to resort to the use of spells or magical relics to contain an evil, whereas humans use their whit and cleverness to extinguish it for good.
Also, if ponies had any civil wars it must have been covered up very well, seeing how will knit together their society is. Either there wasn't one to begin with, or Celestia and Luna have something to hide.
1254044 Always a fun ideal to start out with, but don't forget to tone it down after a while. Most likely that the forces in Equestria will begin to counter human superiority. If this doesn't happen, the story will just be singing the same song the whole way through, and that just gets boring after the 3rd/4th chapter
1254029 In response to 1, 2, 3 and 5, I'm personally not one for human x pony shipping really. Not saying people shouldn't give it a good old go now and then, but you're right in pointing it out as something that happens:
-Way too quickly (Sometimes within chapter 1)
)
-Way too easily (There's no development, just the apparent use of the 'Want it need it' spell)
-Way too often (Suddenly the main character becomes a pony pimp, great
As for 4, I agree in the sense of not having your character dodge around problems in cowardess, but I genuinely believe in good soldiers being humble servants. Far too many fics go the opposite route to pacifism and portray their soldier characters as mindless, over-aggressive, mentally ill, gun totting, overpowered nutcases that resolve every threat with the use of their weapons and every argument with vile and uneccessary threats. Writers should learn to give their characters a sense of humbleness once in a while. Have them be wrong, given a reasonable order by a princess or guard and even tought a lesson or two (not neccessarily in friendship) in morals, responsibility and the quality of life.
1254600
Not that I opose it on some levels but it seems like every character opposes violence but is chuck norris and bruce lee's love child in a fight
1254921 I know what you mean. One minute it's all up on their morale high-horse, the next they're pushing their thumbs through somethings eyes and laughing about it.
1255234 where do you stand on anthro though?
1255946 I write purely in anthro style. I do this purely down to me not being good enough a writer to think of how quadrapeds interact with my other (more human) characters. Plus I prefer the more diverse activities and expressions anthro characters can give. I'm awful, I know, but I had to have something rubbish slightly more rubbish in my stories than the rest of the rubbish.
1255972
I agree with you on anthro while easier in some aspects it does have its challenges
1256381 Yeh I guess. I just like the convinience of hands.
1256458 don't we all also is equestria divided fic you're working on anthro?
1256477 Yes, due to reason previously noted.
1256479 just making sure