Thunderclouds - Notes · 4:11am Oct 8th, 2015
This blog post will contain discussion about Thunderclouds, now that the story is complete.
Spoilers!
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This was a darker story than I normally write. There was no happy ending.
The More Most Dangerous Game prompt challenged authors to write a fresh take on a classic MLP:FIM fanfiction; this story is based on Anthropology. Just like in Anthropology, the character is a pony who believes in the existence of humans, with disjointed memories of the human world, and is later revealed to be a transformed human. But in this story, there was nothing benevolent about the protagonist's transformation.
Man, this kid's turning out to have all the hallmarks of a sociopath isn't he? Now to see what is the final straw...
That was the intention. The character development of Thundercloud included other crimes, hurting others, and torturing animals. It was the latter example, seen in Chapter 5, that I hoped would lead readers to realize that.
Part of me now thinks that Pony is a simulation and they're trying to make him behave and keep repeating that statement to him over and over again to try and make him behave. And when he realizes that pony is fake he'll wake up and be in the human world and find out he was some criminal being experimented on.....Anyways.
This was close to spot on, getting everything right except for this being an experiment. Rather, this is future punishment for prisoners, considered sound social policy.
This story touches on certain themes: the role of nature vs. nurture in shaping criminal behavior, and what the best (most effective, least cruel, safest) way to deal with criminals. I'm not going to state my opinions on these, except to say I think the kind of treatment in this story to be far worse than anything commonly seen in crime and punishment.
They're big and stormy and get you wet?
--Sweetie Belle
3451661 Very true! But this blog post was posted before it was finished being written, as a placeholder for the comment in the author's note of the story Thunderclouds.
I was sort of hoping things would come out right until the Reveal.
Query: at what point do we give up, convict the sonofabitch of Grand Theft Oxygen, and strap him in for the Ride? I hate to tell this to everyone, but some are, indeed, irredeemable. (The textbook example is Ted Bundy; if real-world is too harsh, go to crime fiction and consider Hannibal Lecter...)
3451691 In cases like the one in this story, multiple counts of premeditated murder aggravated with charges of torture, I don't want to waste any time trying to redeem the convict.
Thundercloud seems to be in a crack in the system. Maybe those who have chosen to be horrible people can be changed through the virtual Equestria, but he's demonstrated genuine mental illness. There doesn't seem to be any hope of him changing his behavior; it looks like he's going to be living life after life as a pony without hope of escape. How many times has he already been reincarnated? Is there a time dilation factor at work between Earth and the virtual reality? How on Earth did anyone get Hasbro approve of this rehabilitation program?
In all, this was darkly fascinating, but I'm left with those questions bouncing about my brain.
3452141 There are a lot of details left unspecified, but if you draw the conclusion that he's never getting out of the simulation, that's what I'm going for. Throughout history, some group of university professors, political groups, politicians, and/or bureaucrats have declared that X is the proper way to handle Y, and we now look back and wonder what they were thinking. Some examples include shock therapy and lobotomies.
In this story, some person got the idea that this kind of therapy, stripping a criminal of his identity and forcing him to live a happy pony life, is the proper way to rehabilitate the worst offenders. They have studies to prove it! It's not going to work for the mentally ill or the amoral, but you won't be able to convince this person.
I see that the human world in this story has no My Little Pony; it just happens to be the inoffensive form created for this therapy. There is some unspecified degree of time dilation going on. Probably, the person who created this has studies that say the optimal time for this treatment (peer reviewed and everything!). I think that Thundercloud was his first identity, but it won't be his last.
If they ever decided to deem this as unethical then they will have a whole slew of nature vs nurture research.
The idea that society advanced enough to be able to program something as intricate as another world like this is an interesting concept. Thundercloud never has any gaps in his memories, or sees glitches in the system. But the first few people who gone through this process likely had. Wasn't there five Lyras in the crowd scene? Wasn't Twilight's magic pink instead of purple? Wasn't that pegasus an earth pony earlier?