Question, Speculation, and Worldbuilding; Why do so many Pony works use Human weapons? · 9:49am Oct 14th, 2013
I was reading a pony fic the other day, and it revolved around Braeburn and a lever-action rifle. Between the bloated prose and the sheer absurdity of the gun mechanics, I couldn't sit through it.
I find myself asking this question a lot, doubly so with crossovers (which are usually shoehorning in plenty of other elements too); why does seemingly every pony fic and artwork try and import human weapons into the setting? Human weapons are designed for humans (obviously). This is especially true of swords (which rely on wrist action) and guns (which require a two-handed grip to be held steady, and which require fairly specific body angles to be sighted correctly). I have no doubt that some works attempt to tailor pony weapons to pony bodies, but I haven't seen any yet, and it is definitely the exception, not the rule.
We've seen more than enough in the show to fuel speculation. Just to name a few;
* Applejack using her tail to operate a lasso--there's all sorts of weapons that could fit in with that, and having an unusual angle of attack while still keeping other limbs free could make for some interesting fight scenes. Scorpions, anyone?
* Long-distance telekinesis--there was some Star Wars EU stuff where Force users operated multiple lightsabers or used them to attack from weird angles, and plenty of pony fics do pair unicorns and swords. I don't think a sword would work well for telekinetic combat, though. Why not use a smaller object (needles, darts), or one that has more angles of attack (a sawblade)?
* Clip-on weapons--I'll be honest and say that the show writers didn't wow me with this one. Fine for theatric jousting, but being unable to reposition your weapon would be very unhelpful in actual combat. Clipping on disposable weapons like smoke or flash bombs might be an interesting way to avoid the "no hands" problem, though.
* Flight--A lot of fics do actually use this, but mostly so pegasi can have hooves or mouths free to use more traditional weapons (the grip-less swords in Upon a Falling Feather and the spring-loaded spear in A Cause Worth Dying For come to mind), and they rarely touch upon other ideas. Dropping stuff on your opponents, for instance; caltrops would be cheap, retrievable, and wouldn't impede pegasi at all. Nets would also be hard to dodge from that high up.
* Mouths--the biggest problem here is that moving your head also means changing your field of view. If using this route, it's quite silly to think that ponies would use vertically gripped weapons like swords or spears instead of perpendicular/horizontal grip weapons (there is one ponyfic I've read that used spears with horizontal handles, but A. it didn't mention that until the authors notes 
and B. it was a clopfic).
I know there is some desire for verisimilitude here; the writers are presumably humans, and thus are more familiar with human weapons. A strength of fiction is exploring these alternate scenarios, however, so it always strikes me as unintuitive for many reasons.
Feel to express your thoughts in the comments. Especially if you are disagreeing with me. Especially if you have any fics/artwork that you think think would change my mind.
Does this story happen to be Treasure in the West, by DiveBomb?
Well, ponies also use scissors. What the use those two holes in the handle for the scissors are I'll never know for a pony, but it's there. Basically the ponies use so many human items that apply no actual sense of use, weapons are just barely brushing up on the subject. Fallout Equestria tried to alleviate the gun use issue with using your mouth, but boy did it ever not translate well. Wonder why most popular FoE stories have unicorns as the main character? Because using magic to reload a gun is way fucking easier than using your hooves.
1419324
Also, that's my guess as well.
Always felt like, of all the things authors tried to shoehorn into the MLP setting, guns were by far the most ridiculous. I mean, the latch-on holder, or better, the gun-in-mouth-thing, is just such an amazingly absurd visual I can't believe anyone writes it out and doesn't burst out laughing right there.
1419326
There is also the fact that a "Battle Saddle" is literally the stupidest thing ever thought up by any author ever XD
Well, the name is . . .
1419332
Hey, ponies have to hunt for their food. Give them some slack.
1419324 1419331 Yes
1419326 1419332 The scissors and such are just the writers being lazy/using shorthand. Fanfic has more space to explore these things (hell, that's the point of fanfic to some people), so there's really no excuse unless that is far removed from the focus of the story.
Mouth guns are suicidally stupid, since the recoil would break your neck after very long and, as noted, aiming it would be stupidly difficult. Both these go double for an actual combat scenario.
And a unicorn is the pony type least likely to use firearms; they have magic lasers.
1419335 Even in the dark ages shown in "Hearth's Warming Eve" the ponies have already figured out animal husbandry and farming. If they ever needed to hunt (debatable, being predominantly herbivorous), then pre-made traps would be more than enough for varminting or fishing (you can make a crab trap with some spare wire mesh, and rabbit traps are just nets).
1419341
Pfft, screw lasers. More daka!
You touched on it with the TV Tropes link, but there's an extra element to it: most writers are lazy. It's much easier to give ponies weapons that already exist rather than come up with new ones. Sometimes it's justified, usually as "reverse-engineered human/griffin/Diamond Dog/other species with hands technology," but most of the time it's just because the writer wanted to spend his/her headmeat cycles on the story rather than the props. At least, that's my theory.
It's a shame, because I find questions like what kind of weapons a fingerless species would develop quite fascinating.
People like to give ponies guns for the coolness factor, I suppose. Too often when they show up, they're not tailored for pony use and seem just like ours, which is a problem, but I don't think it's much of a stretch for some variation on guns to exist, or more primitive stuff like crossbows or bows and arrows. Frankly, I'd be shocked if Equestrian society got as far as it did without inventing any kind of projectile weapon. You are right though. It is a little silly for ponies to use ranged weapons completely identical to what we use. Their physiology is just not suited for it.
Swords and such though I don't actually think are that impractical for ponies, despite the field of view thing. In the face of a challenge like that, you adapt and overcome. I'd imagine they'd just get good at keeping their eyes on the target even while swinging their heads to the side, or use a different fighting style that wouldn't restrict them so much. Unicorns have telekinesis, and that means that they have an easier time with just about every weapon there is almost by default. If other ponies use weapons at all, then I figure there must be some kind of trick to the mouth grip or mounted weapon styles that gives them a more even footing.
What that trick is I couldn't tell you, because I haven't thought of it myself. But thinking about the logistics of this world, if all these weapons as they're built for humans are impractical for earth pony use, then there must simply exist modified versions in that world. Because the idea that lassos and scorpion-like tail weapons are all they can use properly in combat is even more ludicrous to me. When we bring the other two races into it though, that's when the potential range of weapons gets a little more fantastical.
Or if that rambling I just spewed out wasn't enough, I can always say that guns and tanks are canon anyway because of stuff Rainbow Dash said in season two. But we haven't actually seen either, so I consider that cheating.
I think that it's actually acceptable to do this, to a degree. The show has shown ponies using tools/weapons (hammers, lances, trains) that are clearly not the most efficient for a pony's use. The trains are a particularly egregious example in that earth ponies pull it because... actually, I don't think the show writers have ever explained this one beyond the visual appeal. So while I'll readily agree that a lot of human weaponry gets difficult to suspend one's belief for, some of it is fine particularly if effort is made to explain it. I'll give Fallout: Equestria due credit here for at least attempting to make guns work (although the whole "guns fired from mouths" thing was dumb, and she probably should have stuck with the battle saddle idea). Most fics I see that use guns go the route of guns in this way:
"PONIES WITH GUNS!"
"Why are there guns?"
"PONIES WITH GUNS, MAAAAAN!"
I'm getting a little stuck on guns here, I suppose, but they always seem the most immersion-breaking.
Anyway, while I'm sure to a degree it's laziness and most writers being human, I think I'm a little more okay with it than you seem to be.
1419341
Since the guy is an actual gunsmith, he knows his stuff. I don't know if you can truly call it absurd.
On prose, though, that is whatever. To each his own.
Well, first, it was a joke XD Second, they wouldn't eat meat in the first place XP
I read a fic once in which ponies fought by throwing pies laced with contact poison, just strong enough to put a pony to sleep. That seems pretty fitting for this setting.
1420368 Now that's a delicious idea.
1419341 I think of magic bolts as a less-than-lethal weapon. Twilight downed a lot of changelings with it, but they seemed to work more like rubber balls. Not that this is bad, just that normal and less-than-lethal ammo are used for different things; I think a unicorn can be very versatile with both depending on the situation.
1419326 Unless you are alone, you can hide and take the time to reload (but of course, do it quickly please) while your companions keep firing. And if, like some people believe, their hooves work like this, the only thing that would impede a non-unicorn to reload quickly is practice. And I imagine a unicorn without the skills of Twilight or even Rarity would need some practice time too.
The problem with guns (or bows, or crossbows, o many melee weapons) is that they are so specifically tailored to a given type of body, that only races like the minotaurs are credible using them. If you want a pony to use a human made gun, they will need 1) extra training beyond the normal one for bipedal beings, so they can pose properly with it (if only to aim!), 2) modify those guns for proper pony use, or 3) both. A pony trained to correctly stand up in two/kneel while carrying a normal gun might probably loose their movement factor. But modifications on the guns should make an easier time using them (triggers and handles made for hoofs, safety wrists straps, any kind of convenient way to quickly/safely holster the gun when walking and running...). In any case, I can see shouldered guns working if the tech allowed it, and it could be one of the best bets for earth ponies, but if you had to aim by eye, just don't give it to them because they wouldn't hit anything.
Even more, some weapon types could be easier to use for ponies than others. A rifle made with a bullpup system is shorter than a normal one without loosing much or any precision or firepower; maybe a pony might struggle less with a bullpup when moving with it, though I heard it's more awkward to reload.
You must think to on each pony race role in a settling with guns too. For example, flying around a combat zone would be akin to suicide, but I can see a pegasus easily carrying a sniper rifle and "jumping" to advantageous spots to harass the opponent, as long as they keep a low profile. But of course this is more about how they use the guns in a tactical sense, rather than how they can actually use them.
Anyway, ponies have hooves. It's like wearing a natural and perpetual rock-made boxing glove. We need to train our knuckles to make them remotely like that (read: break them by punching things, let them heal, repeat), and the fists of professional fighters are recognised as weapons. If you need an actual weapon for something more than smashing, I think I saw a drawing of a batpony using small claw weapons, though I don't know how credible those are.
1420368
You don't even need to use the poison! The showdown in 'Over A Barrel' is clearly a shootout, even though there are no guns in sight.
@Everyone; certainly there is a cool factor in having guns present (the "DUDE, CHECK OUT THESE GUNS" mentality Vimbert mentioned), but if it breaks suspension then that stops being a viable excuse. I admit I may have a weaker willing suspension of disbelief in this regard, since I do have some passing experience with real firearms. I've sat through and enjoyed plenty of other unrealistic things, though (I mean, come on, the guns in Borderlands shoot electricity and acid, and one of shotguns in 2 fires exploding swords), so take that as you will.
1419454 1419944 Yes, I touched on that theory here; 1419341
That explanation, sadly, doesn't really go very far; it's clear that many writers do spend a lot of mental effort trying to reconcile human weapons and pony anatomy.
At some point a good writer should ask themselves whether inventing a new element would take less effort than contorting an old one. This is especially true of guns since, as 1419332 pointed out, it's an absurd visual.
1419768 The field of view thing is pretty important when fighting a maneuverable enemy. Like I noted above, a T-shaped handle would at least make using spears and swords semi-plausible; a weapon sticking out to your side is very hard to injure something with, both because of leverage and angle of attack.
You're right that firearms or other ranged weaponry could well exist in some form (mounted cannons come to mind, and they actually predate small arms in real life history). And if you want to see some non-silly close quarters combat involving scorpions, look up some Deadly Creatures gameplay.
1420256 yes, the guy is a gunsmith, for human guns. I didn't mean "mechanics" as in the operation of firearms or the chemistry of gunpowder, I meant the fundamental anatomical disparities; the story definitely did not impress me in that regard.
1420368 That's tragically delicious. *badumtish?*
1420399 The shoulder-mounted concept is an interesting idea; we've seen ponies walking on three legs, and we know earth ponies have super strength. A shoulder strap to hold it, a hoof to steady it, and a mouth trigger is actually a tad more believable than some of the other gun mechanics I've seen.
1420626 I think it was in My little Metro where I saw guns working like that, with some kind of modular backpack/straps that can fit a few weapons at the same time. It even has the mouth trigger, and though it's an idea I can't completely buy myself, at least it's shown as very awkward and uncomfortable. The main character usually complains in battle about his mouth and teeth hurting from the recoil.
And yes, the concept is acceptable. It's just that my problem with it is the aiming, but I see no problem if the character is filling a machine gunner role, because he's mostly there to provide suppressive fire and not precision fire.
1420712 Well, ultimately it comes down to the same problem; ponies may or may not have similar tech to humans, but they wouldn't use it in the same way. Flight, super strength, and telekinesis would result in very different battlefield tactics and strategies than what humans are used to. This is especially true with firearms, since real world tactics revolve around suppressive fire, cover, and maneuvering.
Oddball combat scenarios are all over the place in fiction (I mean, Push wasn't a great movie, but it has some sweet combat scenes in it), so why are ponies always piggybacking on other situations/technology?
As far as spears go, they're cannon (thanks to a Canterlot Wedding) and it's apparently possible to manipulate them with two hooves. I'm thinking some kind of enchantment would probably allow them to slide it along their forehooves to change its vector.
Secret of My Excess also inspired me to my own version of the wingblade, which is basically a curved dagger that sits at the end of the wing joint. Enchantment would again be used to explain how it stays put, using separate magic words to activate and deactivate the "stickiness".
Lack of imagination comes to mind but idk
That's why I feel a lot of people like unicorns for this sort of thing "magic grips gun like a hand would"
But its the same in the show what would they even have scissors like rarity uses why not create something any pony can use.
I think I'm just rambling but I agree with you
1421355 I'm no weapon expert, but the spears in Canterlot Wedding look like throwing spears/javelins, not combat/thrusting spears; thrusting spears tend to have bigger tangs/connecting pieces and a larger striking surface. Admittedly telekinesis, wind magic, or mouths could all be used to throw things pretty easily, if not accurately.
Using magic is a perfectly reasonable way to integrate weapons in the setting (it's been established in interviews and such that electrical gadgets all run on magic, after all), but I think that there would be plenty of non-magical weapons available. We know that the pony tribes used to hate each others' guts, so there must have been a period of time where they all developed their own technologies.
I've heard mention of wingblades before (somewhere). Someone pointed out that hitting something with your wing mid-flight would not be a good idea, and frankly I'm inclined to agree; there's no way to guarantee that the blade will actually cut (unless you want to use some adamantium-esque fantasy metal or more magic), and even if it did it would still ruin your flight path. Admittedly, horizontal blades were actually one of the signature weapons in the Zoids series (showing my age by mentioning it) and they got quite a few appearances on-screen. In the video games they were useless due to their silly attack angle, though.
1421454
Hmmm, just looked at the episode (at 7:23) and they still seem pretty sizable. Like the one head is bigger than a pony's ear, which is rather large, considering the size of their head. Also, the unicorn guards hold them out like they want to use them for melee (which is really weird, considering they're on a parapet...).
As for the wingblades, I think the pegasi having some other factor in their flight may allow them enough leeway to use their wings for in-flight combat. Or at least it seems to be possible at the skill level of the Wonderbolts. Even on the ground, though, such a weapon would give pegasi both a reach and raw limb count advantage.
1421581 They really aren't that big (especially when you consider how tiny ponies are). The pointing them is no doubt more for intimidation than intent to use. I could be wrong, of course, but they definitely look like javelins to me.
That's a good point about the wing blades being used on the ground, though. We've seen times where wings are used as faux-limbs, and despite being hollow their bones appear rather durable, if Rainbow Dash crashing all the time is any indicator. And no doubt there would be plenty of times that pegasi would need to fight indoors or other un-flyable spots.
I dunno if it's been said, but Fallout:Equestria did a pretty good job of solving the 'guns for ponies' thing. Pistols and such were held in the mouth, but heavier weapons, such as rifles and shotguns, were usually held in 'Battle Saddles', a saddle with straps for the weapon, and a bit near the mouth to aim and fire. Rocket launchers and heavier sniper weapons were almost always integrated with a battle saddle, though unicorns could hold things like standard sniper weapons in telekinesis. Melee weapons were held in the mouth though. Or telekinesis. The point is, the writer made an effort to explore how these weapons could be used by ponies in ways that made sense.
1489515 Fallout Equestria is actually the first thing that came up in previous comments; general consensus is that it breaks willing suspension, and is an absurd visual.
http://www.fimfiction.net/story/125903/ss-in-equestria ?
4169901 Haven't read it: you'll have to be more specific
4170093
4171654 It sounds pretty standard. Adding magnets to the "ponies using human weapons" situation sounds to me like a Hand Wave at best.
Given the author names a specific model of weapon, I imagine there was some element of Author Appeal involved. There is, however, actually a more plausible explanation for ponies using human weapons here: if the humans were transported to Equestria and became ponies, then they would only have their own weapons and need to make do. It has its silliness, but it makes some degree of sense.
4171668 It's an Nazi Waffen SS officer Teleported to Equestria after getting shot by a Russian sniper trying to escape berlin as the Third Reich ended. Basically He creates the 1st Germane Reich
4171789 I stand by my previous statement
4172462 Alright. Continue by your own opinions.