You've gotta publish the chapters! I see a title and synopsis but no chapters.

474444

D'oh!

Fix'd.

And thanks.

I would actually class this as something other than a trollfic. It gets rather philosophical at the end and is very thought provoking because we know that there are actually people like that out there.

474554>>474444

Dang it, I can't even troll right.

I also see I forgot to indent the paragraphs. Fixed that problem, too. Thanks for reading and providing your thoughts!

. . . we know that there are actually people like that out there.

I think I am those people . . .

474563
If you want a good trollfic, there's one that I think is still in the featured box. Basically a guy manages to get to Equestria, with the sole intent of shagging a pony. However, everypony denies any knowledge of sex or anything connected with it. Just when he thinks it can't get any worse, they put him through a humiliation conga and boot him back to our world.Once he's gone, the ponies laugh at his stupidity and it is inferred that they troll everyone like that.

And I think perhaps at some point all of us wish that it were real outside of our imagination. Lets face it, this could be considered a crapsack world compared to Equestria. But the better course of action is not to try and make believe that it is real but to enjoy it for what it is.

474563

If we're talking quick edits...

He dug into his pocket until he found his Fluttershy brushable.

Postpositive, pls go.

I'll leave most of my thoughts for when the fic itself's released (If I remember; I'm usually terrible about doing that), but I will say here that you created a somewhat successful troll fic, in that the reader goes in expecting one thing and gets a sudden jolt of introspection instead. It's... wry with a healthy, sub-textual dose of fandom-depreciation.

Though I still have no idea what the comedy tag's doing there. The overall theme for this is undoubtedly tragedy. Are you tweaking Wanderer-D's nose or something?

474665

Are you tweaking Wanderer-D's nose or something?

Bwahaha. No, I just have a lousy sense of humor, but I did put those tags on partly because he said I could. I suppose I'll pull the "Comedy" tag off. See, this is why I wanted people to look at it before I submitted.

474662

Yeah, I saw that up there. See, I don't even think I'm capable of writing something like that.

EDIT: And the postpositive is dead. Maybe I've been looking at toy descriptions for too long, because I was using "brushable" like a noun or something.

Hmm. I'm torn. I like the concept, quite a bit. My main problem here is that the story was quite heavy-handed. You had your characters engage in some overtly philosophical discussions that I don't believe they'd be capable of. You also gave them some character traits that I don't believe they'd have. Mike was the worst offender, here. He seemed like a strawman of a clopper—I don't feel you were fair to him at all. Some of the statements the characters make also betray a lack of nuance, for instance, when Steve says he didn't have any luck with real girls so he got into furries and then ponies. Things like that showed me the puppet strings you were wielding, and broke the immersion.

The message itself is great, but I wish you'd established it aesthetically instead of effectively preaching. Then again, bronies, as a group, are pretty thick—perhaps the subtlety would be lost on them.

474708

I will not argue with anything you said. I realized I was running a risk of heavy-handedness when I went into this. I may revise before submission to the mods.

Steve's final comments, however, are based on someone's comments to me in a real conversation I have had, though I will say no more on that subject for the sake of someone's privacy. Steve's statements are meant to represent the beginning of serious introspection, but I leave it to the reader to decide whether I can do a good job of writing anything resembling serious introspection.

I will confess to being unfair to the clopper guy. I will also confess to thinking I was being hilarious while writing him. You are correct: he is not meant to be a real person or a representation of one.

EDIT: Incidentally, all criticisms here will help me edit my fanfic novel-in-progress, which, while very different from this story in tone, content, and scope, will touch on similar themes. Criticism most definitely welcome.

DANG, son. That bit you said came from a real conversation got me right here:

You've got my hit, like and approval. I'll get back to you on the fourth part.

On Karl: I could see taking him out for being too over-the-top, but I'm not sure what he'd add to the story if he wasn't a comic relief strawman. I think Steve is already Karl, taken seriously and made more widely relatable.

But yeah, the high school sweetheart/no-luck-with-women part stands on its own. Drawing the real girls->furries->ponies map is not necessary.

475206

Point taken. Two readers want that nixed, and your reasons are good--I fell into Captain Obvious Mode. I'll delete that part.

I avoid HiE like the plague because they are almost always blatant shameless wish fullfillment, where the characters we actually care about are reduced to plot device to serve the fantasy of the author.
I prefer devious people with subtler methods, with indirect self-insert.

So quite logically I loved your story.
Subverting the concept was quite simple in retrospect, you merely had to Take Things Seriously.
"Are you a satyr?"
"Grotesque"
And it was enough!
The ridicule of the situation was painfully obvious!

If I had to criticize, I'll say you could have been a bit more subtle with the moral at the hand, letting the reader "get it" from the events without having a character tells us loud. It felt a bit redondant and quite heavy-handed.

To conclude I must say I had more laughs with this story than with an average feature-box worth of "comedy" fic.

477070

Thank you.

Yes, it's heavy-handed indeed. Preaching when I'm supposed to be storytelling is one of my many faults. I might just let it stand in this case, but then force myself to delete the sermons from the novel-sized HiE I have in progress.

Although I took the comedy tag off per the suggestion of 474665, your comments make me want to put it back on there, but so far you're the only one who's told me my jokes are funny. Perhaps I'll flip a coin to decide if it's a comedy or not.

I admit, however, that you're laughing at things I didn't mean as jokes, though I find it gratifying to know they're funny. I used the word "grotesque" only because I thought that's exactly how an anthropomorphic horse would probably look in real life, and I had Fluttershy wonder if Steve was a satyr only because I thought that might be an honest mistake she could make, since they likely have satyrs in their world, and satyrs are mostly human-looking.

"and satyrs are mostly human-looking."
I loved the mythological reference, it feels so much more "canon" that the monkey analogies lesser authors use.

And there is a french-language added bonus, a satyr(e) is also a big pervert
I thought it was the same in english, but according to google it apparently isn't the case

479845

Ah, I understand now. I was ignorant of the French reference; I really did have her mistake him for a satyr only because that sounded plausible to me. It makes sense that the word means pervert in French, since satyrs, traditionally, were sexually voracious creatures who spent most of their time chasing nymphs. I assume Equestrian satyrs are more like the G-rated Narnian variety, which can take little girls home for tea without anyone getting nervous.

You've touched on a pet peeve of mine in science fiction. Humans, at least at first glance, look only vaguely like monkeys, and so if a race from some other planet or some other universe instantly, on first contact, compared us to monkeys, it would be odd. The oddest part would be that they had monkeys on their planet. I once read a story in which an alien from another star system, upon his first sight of a fully clothed human female, looked at her breasts and said, "A mammal!" My immediate reaction was, "There is no way he would instantly identify those ambiguous and oddly placed lumps as mammary glands. And why does life that evolved on another planet include mammals, anyway?"

Of course, the ponies do have monkeys (and mammals) in their world, but we still resemble monkeys only vaguely. I think a character from a human-free fantasy world would probably select something like a satyr first when making his misidentification.

I do have monkey references in my novel-in-progress, though. Perhaps I should reconsider. But I also have some of the humans comparing the ponies to Earth horses, even to the point of trying to explain the structure of Equestrian society by reference to herd behavior, so turnabout is fair play.

479994
Yes! the half-goat half-human creature which stands on its hind legs,
Of course an equestrian would think of that when confronted with an humanoid creature
That so obvious in retrospect.

When I saw (never read sorry) that scene in the first narnia movie adaptation I was like :"A satyr? really ? what the ..." and then they had tea
I thought at the time it was a deliberate and quite ballsy easter egg aimed at the adult audience, but if satyr are "safe" in the anglosphere I must reconsider

I hate that most people simply cannot consider things from another point of view. If its obvious to us it must be at least very clear to everyone else, hence the boob-oogling alien. They cannot imagine sentient being who doesn't watch out for That first.

One thing that irks me in stories where the ponies interacts with non-brony human or other world entities is how everyone can tell the ponies gender within 3sec. We as bronies are used to them, and we can do that, but to "normal" people it is far from obvious.
Personally, if you showed me a horse in a field I would fare no better than a coin toss to tell it's gender.

A monkey reference coming from some kind of natural science pony could make sence, especially after seeing our unhooved feet which disqualify us as satyr.

482584

One thing that irks me in stories where the ponies interacts with non-brony human or other world entities is how everyone can tell the ponies gender within 3sec.

Well, you can tell the sex of a horse quite easily. I work on the assumption in any HiE story, unless it's stated otherwise, the world of ponies has been altered to a non-cartoonish one where the ponies would have a complete anatomy. I do have a scene in my work-in-progress in which a human character, upon meeting Rainbow Dash, takes a glance at her underside to make sure she's female, since he can't instantly judge by her voice.

If its obvious to us it must be at least very clear to everyone else, hence the boob-oogling alien.

It wasn't ogling in this case; the alien's interest was scientific and disinterested. What wasn't believable was that he could identify human body parts so readily.

I thought at the time it was a deliberate and quite ballsy easter egg aimed at the adult audience, but if satyr are "safe" in the anglosphere I must reconsider

C. S. Lewis was no naif; he was a literature scholar, and he knew exactly what he was doing with the satyr, which was the same thing he did with everything else in those books: he Christianized them. There's a scene in one of the later novels in which the characters party with Bacchus.

483061

I do have a scene in my work-in-progress in which a human character, upon meeting Rainbow Dash, takes a glance at her underside to make sure she's female, since he can't instantly judge by her voice.

I hope she bucks him in the face

It wasn't ogling in this case; the alien's interest was scientific and disinterested. What wasn't believable was that he could identify human body parts so readily.

Ah, what I wanted to convey is that human are used to watch for certain body features in other humans, breast/no breast, hair color, specific shape of the nose, chin, etc.
So a human gaze would wander immediatly on the breasts a dressed woman (boob-ogling) while a non-human would have no way of telling them apart from the clothes and thus would have no reason of looking at it specifically (no boob-ogling in the alien). The alien felt like a boob-ogler, but I was prejudiced.
In fact I agree fully with you if I read you right

C. S. Lewis was no naif; he was a literature scholar, and he knew exactly what he was doing with the satyr, which was the same thing he did with everything else in those books: he Christianized them. There's a scene in one of the later novels in which the characters party with Bacchus.

youh ouh! I felt alone laughing at that scene in the cinema, most people don't even know what a satyr looks like anymore and they just saw him as a ramdom "monstrous-yet-friendly creature"