Another "What if.." - what if TV show about Equestria was reflection from some other real world?

So, I crash-landed at discussion's tail at https://www.fimfiction.net/blog/812749/worldbuilding-x-harnesses-pt-1#comment/4873884 with basically completely unrelated rant, and after some hors of thinking decided to amke my own blog post.

Well, I just tossed out out of random idea about Equestria from TV show being sort of mindcast from another, real world of sapient ponies. What this possibly can mean?

One can imagine different scenarios - from 'voice in the head' leading scriptwriter/animator to do his/her work differently from what s/he used to do (and think differently, too. But may be not different enough ...) to more two-way discussions at usual decision-making circles, and reaching some (secret) agreement, for example producing tv show from real actor play done by actors in another world, recorded via electronical devices like cameras.

But why sapient ponies from another world may even start to engage in such work? Because they are advanced ponies, and they already practicize for quite some time combining art and science/philosophy , so their theatre/cinema/stage magic is another important way to understand their world better, do something unusual, predict possible future problems related to society's development, re(re)reflect on their own past, and so on!

Little magical horses might be not building giant cities and sky-reaching architecture, but they learned by their past (because in their world power is much more reachable, even if for some unicorns. And political climate is not figure of the speech! May be whole giant phenomena of atmospheric spirits was by itself created as kind of sociological instrument, indicating and even actually freezing most deadly forms of conflict?). They learned to care about to where society really goes, to care about beings much more than about things, to control themselves..in quite non-human way.

So, when they 'meet' humanity they decided to play some really good act for new audience. They can build whole cities in just few months via magic and very unbelievable for humans kind of voluntary co-working. They can do stage magic, special effects of some kind where they can't build something directly. They play, but at the same time live their performance, often even long before it started to be 'broadcasted' and after it officially ended. Some details even probably aimed at magic users of their homeworld - like, for example when 'queen of drama' Rarity crying with literal fountains of tears - she might do so by telekinetically moving water out of some volume somewhere out of stage. Unicorn audience will realize how much effort this usually cost, but for external human viewer it might be just overly-dramatic overacted scene!

And imagine when they realize all their effort was deformed at another, human side to simple, even overly simple show, with great loss of details, lost of many logical links they placed in it, and becoming in fact not very moving (compared to envisioned version! because ponies wanted to help those poor childrens of Earth, so they come up with multiyear performance, in hope it will be helpful for another side) piece of film.. Will they angry at humans? Probably not in they way humans will be angry in such situation! because they still played a lot of (imaginable) humans, they lived it and at some day they probably will retry with another method ...

But again, this sketch was imagined by me not because I think anyone will pick it up, but most as just sideeffect of thinking about unwritten rules of hierarchical interactions among ideas: MLP as tv show considered canon, thus most important base, everyone should look at. Surely, many great fiction stories were written exactly by moving quite away from "story as told on TV". But canon still considered most admirable source of ideas, defining whole imaginable worlds. Of course if you were moved by particular book, animation, film - and want to write more in same universe - you agree to get some ideas from your source of inspiration. So, magical land of very multicultural and multispecies civilization comes in. But then, should fiction inspired by "My little pony" always attempt to explain details as they were shown on screen? Or you better to abstract yourself away from picture and story back to very barebones and start anew, building links and histories and relations between parts of the world as they more likely might be, in case such world was real? Moreover, isn't this great opportunity to explore some social, political and economical alternatives? Ponies living some kind of parody on Earth's dominant civ history not very great if one want to uncover more from forces shaping our real human world, to move away even in imagination from those constrains, and apply some ideas/lessons learned from such flight of imagination back to real world? So, there is conflict: in show we see quite too earth-like civ, where great amount of details about how they function as society just never shown, or assumed to be the same as here on Earth in so-called 'civilized' countries. Well, for sapient ponies playing with forces of life and laws of physics for quite some time even idea about what is important, is advanced, and is civilization can be quite different from our current mainstream view! Architecture, teaching, way of dealing with problems, internal prioretization - all quite non-human. For example, my old badterm capitalism only so damn bad with specific human-type of civilization, where it become force created by humans, yet not truely controlled by them. Enslaved by monetary currents! Hardly advanced state, esp. if you live in such world and realize how unfree it behind all this rhetoric of freedom. But capitalism is in turn based on specific ways humans deal with power abuse issues in their own society - they barely can detect and stop them early enough! With better political will (at the level of individual and up) some ideas will never grow too big! With real empathy even semi-articficially (culturally?) installed you will prioritize things like they must be - beings first, things later! Yes, it sounds like civ-level mind control - but today humans ARE mind-controlled by their current dominant culture in such a way they barely can think, and nearly never act in search of alternatives!

Hm, back to alternative-ness of imaginable worlds..This conflict between need of showing logical picture with details and what we saw on screen (I actually started from reading fan fiction - writings still wins big time over moving pictures, because making those moving pictures still a lot of labour, you can't create even 20 min animation film all alone, yet you can write text what will be read for that long!). This conflict can be resolved by just accepting show it was just show, and building whole new world around this idea! So, real alien ponies may have different customs, different ideas about how politics and economics and teaching should function ("what if teaching went wild?" by Anthony Weston definitely comes to mind when I think about ways horse-beings may organize their education - not class-room but field, not heirarchy but co-exploring, with real, not too scripted role-reversals between teacher and pupil, and without some specific children dumbification of real world) - yet after filtering via human's eyes and our local ideas what is good and wrong, what must be shown and in what kind of way - it really become _just_ family show from TV... A bit like difference between volt apples and usual (for Equestria) apples, if you allow me to use this analogy - we saw watered down version of what was prepared. So, go out and try to imagine how real thing tasted like!

Comments

[Andrew-R]

upd: apparently idea about Equestria being real was not new a all, for example here: https://www.fimfiction.net/story/330783/9/friendly-fire/chapter-9

[Andrew-R]

upd2: similar views on what advanced society actually should mean and from where it might come were expressed in https://www.fimfiction.net/blog/207250/why-humans-suck#comment/1557443. (comment #84, starting from

In previous comments, I likened the fact that the main characters of MLP are magical ponies to supersonic travel, because in order to have control over so much power and not have destroyed one's self, civilization, and/or the universe, those beings must have great personal control over their own emotions which would have come about either through personal development or an ingrained understanding of cause and effect multiplied by morality, because if they did not have this understanding, they would have already destroyed themselves at least through the pursuit of unmoderated selfish gain. Even though there are selfish characters, they are moderated, I believe, by an internal thought process that boils down to the idea that if they use their personal powers beyond a certain extent they will lose any claim of not being evil, and become alone in the universe either by being ostracized or by being the sole surviver should they demand attention from others by force, and should the latter come about they know they would eventually face the guilt of their selfishness.

[....]

More stories where Equestria was imagined as real world, interacting (from perspective of character, at least) with ours via TV show:
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/76626/p-theory (and after reading this story I know who was artist behind quite popular and strange camo.derpicdn.net/695cd31c3a04d1fd5630642a0a33a16f189a2a38?url=http%3A%2F%2Ffc07.deviantart.net%2Ffs70%2Ff%2F2013%2F195%2F9%2F2%2Fcanterlot_small_by_balthasar999-d6dg5pf.jpg illustration of high-tech, high-magic Canterlot ..while it seems Balthasar999 was not seen for nearly full last year ...
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/131491/24/the-poly-little-pony/broken-dreams (specifically Dream #4)