Patreon blog takeover: So, Estee, why DO you hate humanity (in Equestria)? (Winter_Solstice) · 9:51am Jul 27th, 2018
We'll lead off with the actual question.
What are your thoughts on HiEs? Not 'Brony in Equestria' tales; those are crap for the most part. I'd love to hear your thoughts on the former.
Actually, you're going to get a little of everything. And if anyone links out this blog, I'm going to see a lot of hate.
Let's start.
I recently gave David Gerrold just a touch of bashing over in Mah-Teor, and so it may be fair to open this up with a theory he passed on through the character of James McCarthy and yes, it's an unfortunate name, but you have to see the rest of his life and then you'll know what unfortunate is. The concept is this: most humans have two stages in their lives. The first is called Waiting For Santa Claus. At some point, you figure out he ain't coming, and then the majority switch into the second part: Waiting For Rigor Mortis.
There's a third stage. But in order to reach it, you have to give up on waiting.
It seems to me that we're also looking at a pretty good way to describe the HiE genre as a whole.
Waiting For Santa Claus
Or you could just go to a convention and find him. After all, the modern Santa isn't going to give things away any more: he wants the truly dedicated to pay an admission fee, just before allowing him to turn a -- profit? What does the Merchant get out of all the Displaced stories, other than the satisfaction of seeing yet another Equestria ground beneath someone's overpowered heel?
It probably doesn't matter. We're looking at what the arguable majority of those writer get out of it: wish fulfillment.
I have an attic. I'm not sure I've mentioned that before. My apartment is in the top layer of the building, so the attic is just about the only (dubious) luxury I receive. And somewhere up there are notebooks, things I've saved from around middle school because that was the point where I managed to first keep things from being thrown away. Homework assignments, mostly: some of them might have even been finished. My trying to practice drawing. (I can't. I never could. I maybe managed a cat's eye once.) My trip to the magical land of --
-- yeah.
When you're a kid... a pre-teen, a teenager... your own life often becomes something you want to escape. You want to go somewhere better. A place where you'll be respected. Where someone will listen to you. Where maybe you even have a touch of power, as opposed to the helplessness and utter lack of control which most kids have over their own lives. I know for a fact that I wrote a story where I went somewhere else in the name of being myself. I think I was around twelve, thirteen at the time, and I also know I didn't get more than two handwritten pages before I stopped.
It's a kid's fantasy. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with it: when you're a kid, you dream. And part of being a writer is hanging onto that part of yourself, allowing the dreams to still come forth. But you learn how to temper them. Blend in more elements of reality. You learn about consequences. You need consequences. 'I can do anything I want and no one can stop me' -- that's the scream of a frustrated id, the youngest of kids, the ones who just feel entitled to get what they want and nothing, no one else matters.
It's also the battlecry of the worst Displaced writers. The ones who just want to, shall we say, @#$% some ^%&! up. Because picking a Displaced stand-in for yourself often seems to be a matter of locating the most overpowered possibilities. It isn't about meeting your favorite characters: it's about making sure none of them could stop you. We're talking about people who feel the Infinity Gauntlet is an idiot's choice because eventually, you might want to wash your hands.
Displaced stories are wish fulfillment: I'm there now, and I'm special. But the worst of them are the darkest wishes: the ones where the id reigns supreme: you do what you want to whoever you want and no one stops you. In the darkest corners of the category lie those who are working out some pretty dark stuff and since this is wish fulfillment, wondering just why they were wishing for that may lead you down some pretty disturbing paths. There are Displaced stories where it's just 'I'll do whatever I want because no one can stop me,' and then there's the section where they're not stopped because there's no one left alive to do so.
It's not a category which deals well with reality. 'I'm armed with a magic gun which lets me do anything!' Well, you'd get a few shots in, but once the ponies see the gun is at work, they're going to take it away. 'It's telekinesis-proof! It always comes back to me! It kills anypony who tries to steal it! It's invisible and intangible and' yeah, we get the idea. It's whatever that person needs it to be in order to keep being unstoppable. To quit feeling helpless. To destroy everything beautiful.
There's always that category, isn't there? Here's this wonderful place. A world we can't ever reach. And if it can't be ours, then let's send a representative of ourselves there and ruin it. That's the id, too: you can't have that toy, so it's time to break it.
(This is still in the Santa Claus category. There's kids who write for a new game console, a few new releases, and incidentally, in order to make sure I get some playing time in without interruption, please off my parents because I've been ever so good this year, at least by my definition. Santa Claus don't judge, except for the whole naughty/nice thing, and now he knows what'll happen to him if he winds up on your bad side with the wrong call.)
But that's the worst of them. The ones who just want to see every world burn because it can't be theirs. Other writers... they're just trying to escape from themselves. Here I am! Only it's not me any more. It's a better me. It's the me with real power, and I can do things with that power which the character whom I just co-opted into myself would never try. I'll be benevolent, I swear I will! I always would be, if I had the chance. If I was just free to do so. If there was an opportunity...
...if I got my wish.
Wish in one hand, spit in the other. See which fills up first.
It's about escape. For some, it's escaping your own skin. Others, the perceived shackles of morality. A few just want the rage: hey, you can't stop me from breaking everything, because it's my story! -- but even those are escaping, if mostly from sanity.
There's an easy way to tell when you're in the worst of the Displaced stories. Look for consequences. There won't be any. After all, that's not how a child's wishes work.
Now... that's not all of them. There are probably good Displaced stories out there. But I feel they have to start with consequences. You can go in as the most overpowered, the most superior --
-- oh, right. Superiority. Let's touch on that.
Who wants to beat up some ponies?
Sure, they've got magic. But us -- we've got guns. (Invisible, intangible, they supply oxygen and make you fly.) Yeah, the show makes it look like they're better than us in some ways, but we can totally wreck that. What have they got which stops tank shells, lasers, nukes...
Sure have been a lot of invading armies in HiE stories, right? Hail the conquering superior beings! We have technology! And we're going to completely ignore everything magic could do to stop it, because we're better than you, no matter how much the show might have made us feel like we'd be second-class! In fact, magic doesn't work on our tech! Actually, it destroys magic! And...
...right. Whatever you can't have...
But again -- that's the worst of it. There could be a titanic human/pony battle. Each side trying to figure out what it can do against the other. Tactics and counter-tactics, constantly shifting as the opposition learns about the enemy. There's a lot which could be done with it.
But if you need tactics, it means you have to think your way through. That you acknowledged it was possible to fail.
The recognition of consequences.
We were going to reach the CDA at some point. It might as well be now.
The Canterlot Deportation Agency -- I make no secret of this -- started as a backlash against bad HiE stories. It was a simple thought: do you really think that after the first five, ten, two hundred times this happened, Equestria wouldn't be ready for it? After all of these id-driven killers came through, that they'd eagerly accept any decent human who managed to stumble into a gate? HiE stories so often have humans acting like the enemy, and so they became the enemy. Sure, maybe you can choose a few to serve as a fifth column, but they still have to be supervised. Good thing they were sent back to their own side of the Barrier, where they can't hurt us. And the one who say they're peaceful, act that way... they could change: isolate them, lock them away somewhere. We know what humans do, because we saw it. They're insane. Any one of them could snap at any moment. They're powermongers, they don't see us as real, they don't care about consequences...
When you look at the CDA's world as one which had been through a few dozen of the worst HiE/Displaced stories and survived... then it starts to make a little more sense. How can you trust a human? Is there truly such a thing as a good one? Can they stay good? What if they're just too different?
Because that Equestria has been dealing with everyone's self-inserts, and here's a news flash: most self-inserts are @$$holes.
We edit ourselves. It isn't always a positive.
We're partially out of Displaced now, more into the category of 'It's me in Equestria. The real me.' Another wish fulfilled.
And here's where we find out how much courage you really have.
Think of the single worst thing about yourself. The most offensive aspect of your being. Something you've said which drove people away, perhaps? Some beliefs which you'd rather not have others knowing about? How's your temper? Have you ever hit someone who wasn't trying to hurt you? Do you like hitting people? Maybe you hit them all the time because it's fun. Hey, how about that thrill which comes from verbal abuse? Oooh, breaking down someone's self-esteem, ain't nothing better than that, unless you also pocketed their billfold on the way out. Got any prejudices? Ever try to impose your viewpoint on others against their will? Say, how much time have you spent on Instagram lately, trolling the comments? Are you owning the libs/cons? How's your hate?
Okay. Got that in mind?
Good. Now: picture yourself in Equestria. Acting exactly that way. So now it's owning the libs/cons/ponies -- oh, don't want to do that? But it's a self-insert. Isn't that part of you?
It takes an odd sort of courage to place yourself in another world and be just as you truly are. And that's for the warts-and-all phase -- with your actual warts, because as said above, a child's wishes don't come with consequences, and so some will pull out all of the social control rods and be the complete jerk which they'd always wished to be. But others will improve themselves. Edit around the rough edges of their personality. Hey, I only have that knee-jerk reaction to a certain group and they're not in Equestria, so I'm golden! And as for what I believe -- well, everyone else can believe it too, right? That'll make things easy.
Unrealistic, but easy.
How honest can you be with yourself? Could you really be you? Are you afraid of how those beloved characters would react if they knew the real person? Can you admit to your flaws? Just as hard: can you admit to your virtues? The real ones? Because as much as some people make themselves better in the transfer, others just dump on their own identities. No one could ever love me, and now I'm going to demonstrate why it would also be nopony.
'But Estee,' someone may have said, 'didn't you say Bree was your self-insert?'
There's an argument to be made. We don't share full lives and backgrounds. Bree, like other characters, represents aspects of the whole placed in a new setting, with the question 'What happens now?' And the answer was 'consequences,' because the other half of that argument says Bree is a mess. Bree doesn't have a happy life. Any power she has came with a price, and she's still paying it. She has lost everything: everyone she ever cared about, everything she might have loved, her entire world is gone -- but consolation prize, she gets to have her final breakdown in Equestria. How very special: the chance to potentially commit suicide on foreign soil. Equestria offers survival, and that's not the same thing as living. There's a very real question as whether Bree knows how to live.
But as for being a self-insert? We're not twins down to the last levels of our psyche. However...
if you wanna be profound
if you really gotta justify
take a breath and look around
a lot of folks deserve to die
...she does represent the aspect of me which sometimes feels the plant has a point.
There's a price for that p.o.v.
There are consequences.
I go to Equestria and take over.
I go to Equestria and destroy it.
I go to Equestria and everyone loves me.
I go to Equestria and when I say everyone loves me, it's everypony and bow-chicka-bow-bow!
I go to Equestria, but now they're all anthros because otherwise the sex would be too weird.
I wish...
Waiting For Rigor Mortis
Because Santa ain't coming. And when it comes to Equestria, neither are we.
There's some overlap here in the destructive categories: I know I can't go there, so I'll just make sure no one else can either. That's the expression of the uncontrolled id, but it's also a dark way of dealing with rejection. You can't get there, you can never get there, you almost feel that it's out there and just doesn't want you -- so you're going to return the favor. You don't want it any more, either. Boom.
We can find some dark stories here. The human sitting in a dungeon for the rest of their lives, because they made it to a world which doesn't want them. Isolation in a cave, the Everfree, the wild zone of your choice. Voluntary isolation because they've realized that as humans, they're something which shouldn't be around ponies. They're the monsters. Look at what we do, look at what we are. Point to a pony genocide. Name one time ponies decided to go into war because some other ponies didn't worship the same imaginary face in the sky, which just happens to look a lot like your father's face. Show me ponies with chemical weapons and napalm and just hurting others for the sake of the pain.
We're not deserving of such a bright place. We shouldn't even get to dream of it. And so when we find ourselves there, the first shunning often comes from within. Outside echoes quickly follow. And this is a category with a flipside. There are ponies on Earth stories which take the tactic that such visitors are too bright for this world, and so that light must be extinguished before it makes us think of what we might have been...
Destroy what you can't have. Sometimes you know you can't have it, and that's what destroys you.
There's a lesser category of rigor mortis: the brainlock of boredom. And HiE stories can be very boring, because formula. And I mean an actual follow-the-steps formula. Say it with me now: human appears in -- let's make it the Everfree, right? And of course that human has to come across a monster. Maybe it gets beaten and that's how the human proves they're okay. Maybe a pony rescues them. Fluttershy tends to the wounds, and now we've got the grand introduction scene, you've just got to meet every character and naturally Pinkie throws you a party. Now it's off to Canterlot and how many times have you read this?
An HiE story can be very formulaic in its opening stages. (It gets so bad that in part, I created the CDA to avoid all of the initial steps. 'Yes, you're a human. We've had three years of you. This is the next bit.') There's a trope called The Stations Of The Canon, where a character substituting for the hero of a story must do certain things in a given order: can't be a Hogwarts student without the Diagon Alley visit! It is very much in play for HiE stories. Here we have The Visit To The Cottage: bow your head in deep respect and... genuflect, genuflect, genuflect! We've seen it a thousand times, we could easily see it a thousand more, and you need to have the courage to change that. So here's a Hogwarts story for you: you never make it to Diagon Alley, not for shopping. You don't find out you're a student until two hours before the train leaves. You just barely make it into the station, your head is still reeling, you haven't accepted any of this and by the way, you don't have books, robes, and you unheedingly ran past the wand shop on your way in. Good luck.
We know you're going to speak with Twilight. We know there's going to be a party. We know and it's boring. Muscles stiffen. Eyelids droop. Interest dies.
You want to make a unique HiE story? Take off the E. Drop a human into the middle of Yakyakistan. They don't even find out ponies exist until Act Three.
Give Up On Waiting
Which means going out and doing something yourself. Something real.
Ultimately, HiE is a genre. And like a lot of genres, it has its tropes. Well-worn conventions, paths grooved into the road until they become ruts. But it's a genre, and so it's possible to tell stories within it. Good ones.
The issue is getting out of your own way. The problem is growing up.
We've been talking a lot about self-inserts and Displaced here. Why? Because that's the worst of it, and bad reviews are more fun to write than good ones. But also because there's a change to be made when we start heading for the positive pole of the magnet.
The best HiE stories are about characters.
Yes, that's a truism. 'Gee, Estee, the best stories for just about anything are about characters!' But in this case, I mean we're looking at three-dimensional personalities. This can even include Displaced and self-inserts --exceptionally honest ones, from writers who understand what consequences are. We're not always looking for the wishes of a monkey's paw, where everything has a price. We're just asking for... thought. A child would wish for every dropped coin in the world. An adult would step back before eighty tons of loose metal dropped on their head.
If I asked you for the best HiE story you knew, to describe it... where would you start?
With the human, right?
"It's the one with the guy who was a steelworker, he's pretty good with rivets but he never really got into the PC stuff, he still whistles when he sees a pretty girl go by but then he blushes and stammers a lot if she glances back at him, he kind of wants to be better but he's from this really old-fashioned home, he went to church every day and he's not sure ponies have souls because there's no Bible here or signs that Jesus ever visited, he wants them to have souls and he's starting to feel a little weird about --"
Funny how there wasn't one thing about a magic-proof gun on that list.
You see the same transition with comics. Kids talk about flight and super-strength and capes. The adults talk about farm life, adoption, and how your morals define you. Ultimately, it's going to be about the character. Even if that's you. The real you. Or the aspects of yourself which you dress up and send out in your place. Because if it's a genre, then it exists to tell stories -- and stories are about characters. But they're also about consequences.
The overpowered Displaced -- eightieth one this week! -- does whatever she wants, no one can stop her, and nobody cares because there were already seventy-nine and it's only Tuesday.
A character struggles. They have to make an effort. The world pushes back. Actions lead to reactions. There's fallout. Things they didn't expect. All they can try to control is their own behavior, and they don't always succeed because characters are flawed.
What do I think about HiE? I think it's one of the most mishandled genres on the site. It has the potential for great stories, and some great stories have been told through it. But in the end, there aren't many real stories. It's vengeance and doing whatever you want without price, it's power trips and overpowered trips and God mode is just too weak. Sometimes it descends into rigor mortis -- but for the most part, the majority of HiE stories aren't stories at all. They're wishes.
And in that kind of tale, the only person who cares about a wish is the one who made it.
You raise some valid points, but as usual, I just can't be as cynical as you. I am, in many ways, a simple man, with simple pleasures. I haven't read any of the Displaced fics, but I have read several HiE fics that could reasonably be classed as "wish fulfillment". And I enjoyed them. Much like I enjoy certain episodes of the show that others critique to pieces. I do have my limits, e.g. Spike at Your Service (everything but the moral at the end sucks), but overall, I look to my ponies for entertainment. If I'm being reasonably entertained, the story/episode/whatever is doing at least half of its job right.
Then again, perhaps my lack of cynicism stems from a corresponding lack of experience. What do you think?
I think that most of your analysis is spot on for the so-called Isekai genre. Which HiE is technically part of.
So Soul Survivor is one of my favorite stories of yours, but reading it gave me a bit of whiplash as well. I suppose now's as good a chance to ask the question that kept coming to my mind when I finished it.
Would you still have written CDA if President Trump were elected before you first put pen to paper?
Amazing ending to an amazing analysis. I might start using this phrase.
Definitely a lot to think about. Consequences are a necessity for pretty much any story, but that means acknowledging imperfection. Given how some people react to criticism on the story itself, is it any surprise that they can't conceive of the protagonist doing any wrong?
I have an inherent aversion to HiE stories (I've not even read Estee's) and I can pretty much count on the fingers of one hand how many that have passed that.
(Smart readers may equate part of that to my inherent aversion to humans to start with. They would not be entirely wrong.)
(Crossovers too, for that matter, have to be particularly well done to pique my interest.)
Descendant did one that was history-related (about a dying lad involved in... I forget which battle in the US Civil War (Gettisburg, I think?), appearing in fluttershy's garden, written on the anniversary of said battle - which was sad and poignant); there was of course, the incredible And That's Terrible by InsertAuthorHere (because really, does it count if it's Lex Luthor?) and one with Wolverine that started promising, but rather missed Wolvie's characterisation (given that I suspect Equestria would be a place he might actually have found some piece, not run off into the Everfree to kill monsters because he's drivien by violence... *sigh*)
Displaces stories strike me as even less interesting than the actual characters and usually self-inserts (when they are particularly advertised as such in summaries[1]) are also usually a bad sign. (After all, I don't indulge my enormously megalomania and produce stories where Bleakbane Goes To Equestria And Hilariously Murders All the Antagonists - ALL the Antagonists - With His Rocket Launcher[2], so why would I indulge anyone else's?)
[1]Which you a lot on Fanfiction,net where the quality control is... Less.
[2]Or even Bleakbane Goes To Earth And Non-Hilariously Murders All Of The Incompetant, The Stupid, The Making-All-The-Money-Obsessed And The Bigoted In A Variety Of Entirely Brutal And Unfunny, Messy Ways And Stakes Their Burning Souls Out On The Moon, for that matter.
I'm toying with an idea. Something of a thriller, something of a mystery, with SF bits tossed in for good measure.
The story takes place on a planet basically encased in a stellar Kinder Egg, isolated and separated from the rest of the universe. And at the end they look to the skies and recieve a message; "Do not be afraid, we are here for you."
I haven't decided whether the world it takes place on should be Earth or Equestria and the visitors from Outside human or equine.
HiE (and for that matter, PoE) can be good. You just have to step far away from the Merchant's merchandise table.
I find it hard to believe that these sorts actually believe in washing.
I hate to say it, but this is why I've always enjoyed grimdark fics. :B
Oh, hey, that was my M.O. for writing HiE, too, except it was more the gross sexual wish-fulfillment stories than the "fuck yeah, humanity!" ones. :B
The funny thing about trying to write yourself is that, even if you're being honest about who you are, it's still dashedly hard. The moment you set foot on the page, you stop being yourself, and if you're writing yourself well, by the end, the you on the page won't be anyone like the jerk sitting behind the keyboard. 'Death of the author' indeed.
Nice, some meta in the morning. Anyone need a name for a fiction analysis podcast?
It's fascinating breaking down story tropes and seeing the gears behind why stories operate the way they do. Even if in this case it's less analyzing the actual genre than the ones writing it. It's fresh and interesting to engage with, since there's probably a thousand blogs out there already talking about what sucks in the genre (to them) and none of those are gonna match. (Or have good reasons why those things suck. All we need to know is that it sucks.)
I like how you always brought it back to denying or accepting consequences. That's almost like a fundamental core of so many aspects of life, so articulating it through the lens of HiE fic here is a cool way of getting people thinking about these concepts.
All neat points, and the nature of the third perhaps why ive been able to enjoy a few of them. They aren't about the events of show, but its the ones behind. They cover the people, as a whole.
And if i ever made it over as me. All they'd find is a body where I
A: Ate something that may have been toxic out of hunger/desperation/need. Its assumption to assume that the vegies might or might not be toxic to human physiology..
B: Got eaten/mauled/trampled by pony, critter, or something else.
C: Let my inner demons finally assume I broke down mentally, this isnt happening, and go off myself. (Because I am not so cruel as to do this to another.)
I know what kind of person I am very well, flaws, and what few things might be a strength. The nature of biofeedback has been a blessing and a curse in that sense.
The one thing i'm very thankful for is the nature of being cruel, mean, or some others, outside the FoF reactions, tends to make me very ill.
I show the positive because I am a very sad sack that might, just might be called an individual by virtue of awareness.
You do raise some fair points. Personally I think that far too many writers have done a poor job on thinking out the consequences of dropping in a character from one universe into another and just what that can change. The sad part about how good Equestrians are compared to humanity is the takeaway that the show is geared to kids first, drop some of these same type of characters into let's say Gotham and suddenly they are in a pond they would be smart not to cause much ripples in. In one example, from off site, Power Girl with some extra memories from another character from another universe is dropped into the Marvel Universe during the whole Civil War debacle. She decides that she wants nothing to do with it and there is nothing many can do about it.
My question is what are your favorite stories that have displacement in them or which ones do you find tolerable? Personally I find the Not a Brony universe to be some what nice as the protagonist acts like how I would expect a somewhat decent human to.
One of the very first My Little Pony fanfics that I ever read was a human in Equestria story called My Little Balladeer. It is an extremely good story in part because it is not a self insert; it is a straight crossover with one of the heroes of Manley Wade Wellman's urban fantasy stories, and it handles John very well.
Because John is a pre-established character who in the original source material is in late adulthood to early middle age, it is not about childish wish-fulfillment. John already has an established life, including friends and a spouse, and while he finds Equestria an interesting place, and likes most of the Ponies he meets, he mostly wants to make it back home to be reunited with his wife. He is not overpowered compared to the world around him: he has some useful abilities, some unique to himself, but generally speaking he is a modestly powered hero dealing with other heroes and villains.
Specifically, he is a mage, and one from a sort of tradition uncommon in Equestria. He is also a woodsman and military veteran, having the skills that one would expect of someone who has spent a lot of his life traipsing around the backcountry collecting songs and strange lore, and who survived the Korean War as an infantryman. Which is to say, he is a competent man, but he is not superhuman.
I think the crossover / human in Equestria works well in this case because the author was faithful to the source material of both universes.
So, is this based on an actual story?
Best HIE would be The Rise of Darth Vulcan by RHJunior over at Archive of Our Own (Reality Check before he got kicked off this site. (or just left, IDK)) Takes the attitude “This is Hell, nor am I out of it“
2-3 fairly good POE stories
All American Girl (side stories is even better) https://www.fimfiction.net/story/25148/all-american-girl
Sequel to Kind Hearts and Coronets, but you need not read that first.
Biblical Monsters https://www.fimfiction.net/story/87619/biblical-monsters
But, I always figured your CDA stories as a prequel to Conversion Bureau. It's what drove them to it
Estee, ive a question for you. Whats the difference between a human and changeling, (Chrysalis era) when you get down to it on who and whom when you approach things?
David Gerrold, in the days before the Martian Brain Eater Fungus got to him (and he had a fifth Chtorr book coming out Really Soon Now(1)), had made some great points on the nature of writing and human existence.
But, he seems to have forgotten-or doesn't want to think about-the third possibility. If we can't wait for Santa Claus and we we can't wait for rigor mortus, what do we wait for?
I think he got close, but not quite there yet. After my little shock with mortality a year and a half ago, I realized what that third thing is.
Making our own Santa Claus, and his presents, and all his toys, and all his gifts. And sharing them with the world. For some of us, that's building something new, for some of us, it's helping people. For me, it's finally getting off my ass and writing my own, non-fanfic story. I can see how much self-insert is in there, but there's also realizations of how many issues I have-and I'm still working on.
(1)-I genuinely expect to see "The Last Dangerous Visions" come out before "A Method For Madness", and Harlan Ellison is dead and famously told people that his literary executor has instructions to destroy all his unfinished work.)
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Reality Check choose to leave the site. The biggest problem with Darth Vulcan is that people forget to see him as the villain he is and made him into a hero. That whole story is also a good deconstruction of the whole story idea.
Also great plug for All American Girl. That is a good PoE style of displacement. I do highly recommend the side stories as they often contain certain scenes from a different point of view.
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Darth Vulcan is the protagonist of the story. One of them, at least. Most readers, especially of fanfic, consider protagonist and hero to be synonyms. Darth Vulcan is not a hero, he is an asshole playing out his power fantasies.
(I like the story for the most part, but Jesus fucking wept, the ponies are so carrying the Idiot Ball that they all have a custom harness to carry two each at times... One of the biggest forces in Equestria is Friendship-right on the top of the title, says it right on the tin. And, what do they do when they summon someone else to fight Darth Vulcan? They don't summon a team, or friends-they summon a single guy to do a straight up fight, to beat a single guy that has proven that he will do anything to win.)
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That is more on Celestia's head then anyone else. She keeps trying to go with the same plan even though she has been told and proven to her that she needs to completely change her game book. One wonders if instead of getting a LARPer who is stout she had gotten a USMC member who had all their gear?
I think some of what you just described can be summed up with a single quote from the Joker: Sometimes, you just want to see the world burn.
Some people then go out and set it on fire. Other people think, ah, hum, that doesn't actually align all that well with my core values and who I am or want to be as a person, and I might end up feeling bad, so I shan't. But fiction... in fiction, there are inherently only the consequences you want there to be. There's that ultimate power. So you set that on fire instead, and cackle gleefully along the way. Or you go and read about the fires others have set, if you're lazy, cackling just as gleefully. How nice to get that wish fulfillment, without even having to strike a match.
On that note, I also find it somewhat.... let's say humorous, that this is a point you make, about not being able to have nice things so the writers ruin them.
Considering how unhappy your Equestria can get and how many of your stories end on a bittersweet note if not a pretty dark one, one might start to wonder if there's not a little bit of conscious or subconscious self-reflection going on here.
4908707
The LARPer wasn't bad, he was just one solution to a single direction that Darth Vulcan presented. Darth Vulcan fights well? Get a good human fighter. The problem is that Darth Vulcan has moved into the category of warlord these days, and what they needed was not only a good fighter (or four or five), but someone that's a good warlord in return. Darth Vulcan has gotten this far mostly because he's done a lot of stuff that is old hat to humans, but ponies don't know about. He's an amateur, a gifted one good at thinking on his feet, but the moment someone competent with a good staff comes in, it's all over but the shouting. And between the Amulet and his own personality, he's going to not be ready for a competent human officer that has even an average staff backing him up.
(And, most "strong" people tend to be stout. I've seen the guys that do caber tossing at the Scottish Games, and they HAVE a belly, unless they're really young. So do blacksmiths and serious SCA fighters. The "six pack abs" takes a lot of very precise exercise and diet to achieve and most of them have horrible endurance. Looks nice...but not really practical.)
I don’t consider displaced to even be HiE. The only one that is even remotely decent is a deconstruction of the entire phenomenon. The rest have cardboard cutouts who bring nothing human to the story.
4908650 I agree - is this describing a real story? Because if so, I really want to read it!
You have, far better than I could ever have dreamed of, summed up exactly why I find HiE so frustrating. It's not even that I mind the wish fulfillment in small doses - as 4908567 puts it, when written well there is entertainment to be found there. What irritates me is how little of anything outside of the two categories you put forth exists. And you're right - there is a lot of potential in the genre. Guess I'll just have to keep looking for the few stories that get it right.
What of the Third Way, where the pony, person, entity, takes their Wikipedia on a disk, say from Equestria Girls, combines it with saturated magical enviroment of Ponyville etc, workes for 16 hours a day at least for 5 to 10 years, and builds a Chaos Computer thats full HEX Magitek, designed to extend expand and improve itself. Then loaded with the Harmony values.
How much would that Artifact be able to gain in ability, in power, their child given the best start they can in the most fertile and helpful enviroment possible.
How hateful that this creation will be able to outdo all theUltimate Power Evils LOLs because it knows the meaning and design of The Final Trap and so cares not for it?
And then you feed it Discworld and it learns about L-Space, 4th wall and how to write good quality stories.
Admitidly there was an article today about an AI trying its digits at writing Shakespear style Sonnets. Apparently, after only 11 years since Watson, it aint too bad. Our tech can keep going for another 20 years.
4908579
I'm pretty sure they did.
4908591
Have you read "Mystery, Mayhem, and... Murder? Oh my?" It's a crossover with Psyche and it's pretty solid. There's another one about Rorshach that I remember liking it a lot, but I can't find it anymore.
this reminds me of an online novel, "Armageddon", somewhere on this site:
http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/index.php
in that story, literal demons from Hell invade Earth, armed with pitchforks that shoot lightning and 19th century technology...and are SLAUGHTERED by modern tanks and artillery!
oh THAT reminded me of the famous "Fallout: Equestria" stories, where a war with the Zebras led to the use of the magical equivalent of Chemical weapons and Nuclear weapons, "megaspells", which devastated the world...
it started as a crossover with the Fallout video games, but it's taken on a life of it's own.
here's an ACTUAL game someone made based on it:
http://foe.ucoz.org/pfe.html
i have read a few interesting HiE stories...well, it's not quite the same when they immediately turn into random ponies (as if they stepped through the EQG portal), or take the place of official characters. one of my favorites is "it's a screwed up life" where a random Brony somehow turns into Screwball.
One interesting thing about the CDA setting is the one question no character has yet to ask. A question I feel is fairly obvious in retrospect, and that the answer to could be rather intrigue. If there are thousands of Earths out there in other universes, why is there only one Equestria?
I have one HiE story myself, and I tried to tact in a different direction with it. The main character is trapped in this world, not the first human to be so, but it's a very rare event (like one a century rare). Her skills and knowledge are completely useless compared to the world around her and she doesn't fit in with much of anything. At one point she wonders if she's died and Equstria in just hell. She's not even friends with any of the main characters.
4908661
I guess TCB is sort of the opposite end of the scale from this. "Humans are all so awful and terrible and lets just get rid of them on the barest of pretenses."
4908804
Magic gives you dimensional tensile strength, so there's magicless Earth crumbs all over the multiverse?
4908591The Youth in the Garden was the first HiE fic I was ever moved to read and it still remains the best; although I've read one ore two since which aren't trash.
4908861
I could see the CDA leading to Conversion Bureau because
EQ mostly gets assholes going there
If all you see are assholes, how long until you are convinced that assholes are all that there is to see?
As far as Ted, AKA Darth Vulcan, goes
Anti heroes in sci-fi date back to Alfred Bester in the 1950s
(Try The Stars My Destination, if you're interested. )
The tradition is almost as old as I am
4908861
Or worse, this one Equestria somehow is the dumping ground for all of these terrible things. Acting as a form of ablative armor for every other Equestria.
4908758
I'm afraid as I don't know what Psyche is, it would be lost on me,
4908758 4908934
Psych (no E) was a comedy-drama detective show that premiered on USA two years before The Mentalist premiered on CBS. This is relevant because fake-psychic Shawn Spencer is pretending to be psychic, and he and his business partner Gus Guster describe their role with the Santa Barbara PD as being like "The Mentalist" except real.
(To be clear: in its run, there was maybe one character who showed up for five minutes who might genuinely have been psychic.)
I think a lot of the bad (subjective) HiEs are written by younger writers who, as you said, want to exercise some control over whatever part of their lives that they can. In my work as a reviewer for The Goodfic Bin, I've come across some truly terrible stories that simply reek of wish fulfillment, and they're easy to spot within the first few chapters. More mature writers tend to escape that trap, and I've read some gems that express this.
In all cases, thank you for your answer. It was most enlightening!
4908887
honestly, that sounds like the most Estee answer.
...it's probably a bad idea, given that I've only just gotten back into the groove of writing one of my older fics buuuuuuut...
i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/258/210/dcb.jpg
As far as the CDA is concerned, I think it's rather touching that one of the best of the protagonists that has landed in Equestria is a Commie Mutant Traitor.
I think what worries me most about most of the displaced stories, the violent ones in particular, is that they're written by people of an age you would expect to have figured out these stories are not only brutally childish and devoid of meaning, but are often soul crushingly boring to anyone even mildly interested in finding deeper characters. Well, now that I've destroyed the world and made everyone my harem, what can I do now? Well, since the only relationship I can have with this world is purely self aggrandizing, the only option is for everyone to love me more, to destroy everything even more, to have enemies just powerful enough to make me look impressive even more, on and on ad infnitum.
There is no end point to a fantasy fulfilling story, only ever greater heights of insane fantasizing. In layman's terms most of these stories just stick their heads further and further up their own butts, shamelessly blind to their own faults.
I used to give the genre a shot. There's a long dead fic, Twilight and an ex soldier dropped into a Lost scenario mixed with Tremors, that was half decent. But also dead. So I tried...
... and it's gotten to the point where the mention of humans, even Equestria Girls, is a deal breaker for me.
4909417
I welcome EqG mentions, but solely because Sunset Shimmer is a better designed, more fleshed out, and more interesting foil for Twilight than Starlight Glimmer.
4909092
I agree, though what will happen when the characters in the setting start asking those same questions...
I suddenly feel better about the one I’m working on since I started the characters in Free-Love-Bug Land.
Have you read Returning Home, Estee? It might count as enough of a subversion of the formula with enough character for you.