Humans and Their Circumstances · 12:33pm Feb 9th, 2016
I was going to be more indirect, but I just want to get this off my chest: I never want to read an HiE story featuring "nondescript brony in Equestria" or "'wannabe genre-savvy "non-brony" who nevertheless knows about the show' in Equestria". Ever. The entire class of HiE work where the human is aware of MLP as an animated production is basically a write-off, as far as I'm concerned.
What's the appeal? What's even the point?
I mean that for readers, of course.
To be sure, I understand the catharsis of unabashed wish-fulfillment as well as any crater you'll meet! But that does nothing to address why anyone would want to read it.
This isn't an indictment of humans in Equestria-- I actually adored the first half of Project Sunflower, and the rest of it is still entertaining. It's that this self-aware Normaldude McSmurfbro is the least interesting human imaginable to support a novel-length story. And that's not an indictment of normal people as protagonists so much as an observation that foreknowledge removes much of the dramatic tension found in facing the unknown.
Now, maybe there are some of these stories that end up being truly interesting and well-written! But if they don't have a compelling hook, how would you know? More to the point, if they don't have a good hook, what are the odds that the rest of it is worthwhile? This is the fallacy inherent to the old "im bad at summeries just read its better than it sounds" sort of spiel, too; these things are indicative of quality.
While I'm thinking of it, Displaced. Oh my, Displaced, why do you exist? It's a flimsy excuse to say, "But my special snowflake OC isn't really an OC because he-" (for, let's be honest here, it's always a guy) "-just randomly received uber l33t powaz that are juuuust like <insert writer's favourite character here> because the gods hate him teehee". Is anyone really fooled?
The only exception, IMHO, is a subversive comedy. There, you can freely poke fun at the writers, the watchers of the show, and the plot holes in the show.
There are a few exceptions to this general rule, but they are very few.
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There is that. But I find once humour enters the equation, things just get weird. The bar for even a minimally successful comedy is high, so to do justice to the subversive style requires an extremely high level of craft. Once you've reached that point, basically everything is fair game.
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It's very much a YMMV thing. I've done a few subversion, and some of them have been well-received and other have not. Spending the Night with Fluttershy, for example, was fairly well-rated; Putting Flash Sentry in a Woodchipper less so.
On the non-comedy front, there are a few fics in which having the protagonist aware of the show is an important plot element; again, it's very hard to pull off successfully. Most of the time, if the rest of the fic's good, it's something that a reader cringes and moves past.