optional canon JOKE world building, Pony POV Series · 12:21am Aug 5th, 2016
Newly dead pony arriving in afterlife: "I never believed it, I always laughed in the face of everypony who told me different, but... ALIENS ARE REAL!"
Many times, the spirits of death, and the afterlives themselves, have to deal with ponies for whom, even being dead, the existence of aliens is easier to believe than an afterlife. And as such, believe they've been abducted by Martians, giving a clone body of their younger self, and are in a holodeck, with all their loved ones and ancestors having been abducted by aliens and given younger clone bodies leaving their old bodies to rot. And that their loved ones insistence in it being Heaven, is just for 'small minds' who can't comprehend that their planet is the only one with life in the universe, and that the aliens are just politely pandering to their outdated superstitions.
Alicorns having to host ponies who don't believe in the afterlife, and are convinced they've been abducted by aliens and nothing will convince them otherwise, so the concepts mostly just humor them. They did live a selfless, loving life (and not the 'I love my family and think everypony else is cattle' or 'I selflessly serve the dictator's death army' sort of way either). Most tend to figure it out on their own within a million years or so.
"In the face of eternity, finite things such as relationships and love are all meaningless!"
"If you believe relationships and love are finite, then I pity you." - Unknown exchange.
Removing the pony part, this is a concept that a lot of people would find amusing.
It's right up there with "Does deconstruction base teleporting kill you" and "Are we in a simulated reality" since "There is nowhere to stand to observe the effect". If you teleport or are replaced with a clone, the world looks the same to everyone else, and either you die and can't tell anyone, and your clone assumes they are the original, or you teleport
And without a way to interact with something outside the matrix, you can't know it exists, or doesn't
Not to be compared to "Friendship is Optimal"
I once read a modern follow-up to Dante's inferno that had the protagonist believe for the first half he was in an alien theme park.
So who accepts reality faster, the deniers in heaven, or the deniers in hell?
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Good question.
I love it.
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Thanks.
In light of the most recent episode's chronic disbeliever in the obvious...
I totally read that in Patton Oswalt's voice!
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AH!
But are aliens real in POV? That is the real question! (Except it probably says somewhere and I'm to lazy to re-read everything again)
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Check out CMC's Journal of the Unexplained on deviantart.