Premises: In 1700s an African slave ship gets caught in a hurricane and shipwrecks on the Equestrian coast. Equestrian authorities stumble upon the ship, its crew, and its cargo and bring it forth to the Princesses. Celestia, Luna, Twilight and others must now deal with the intricate issue at hoof of slavery, salve trade, and moral authority over a species not of their own.

Story: The year is 1714 and the War of Spanish Succession has come to end. The long and bloody war over the Spanish Crown is over and the once raider filled seas are now open again for ships to sail unhindered. Merchantmen now sail towards the corners of the world; the Americas, the East Indies, India, China, and Africa. Among the massive flood of ships is a British merchantmen, Star of the East, loaded down with cotton cloth, rum, and manufactured goods.

For Nathanial Blackthorn, Captain of the Star of the East, the voyage is a chance for him to beat his competition in the region and exchange his goods for ivory, gold, and slaves to reap in a hefty profit.

For James Williams, one of a number of young indentured servants on the Star of the East, the voyage is a chance for a new life. Raised in Bristol for most of his childhood he longed to find a better life in the colonies. In exchange for transportation he agreed to work it off with years of hard labor.

For Nkemdilim, a young Igbo warrior, this voyage is nothing but a uncertain future. Captured during a skirmish between his tribe and a neighboring kingdom, he was brought to a trade fort along the coast to be sold to the European traders. While little is known as to what happens to those sold to them, all that is known is that few ever come back.

After trading along the coast the Star of the East heads west across the Atlantic. With a cargo hold full of ivory, gold, and slaves, the ship sails for the Caribbean but before they make land fall in the Americas, the ship is caught a massive hurricane. After a long and stormy night, the crew and its cargo find themselves wrecked against the shore of a strange land. Blackthorn, Williams, and Nkemdilim all survive along with most of the other crew and slaves and it isn’t long before the inhabitants of the land; magical, colorful, talking ponies find them.

The strange inhabitants, upon seeing the ship and its cargo, are appalled by the scene and it isn’t long before the captain, crew, and slaves are brought before the rulers of the land, Princesses Celestia and Luna, who too are appalled by the trade of the captain and its crew. What follows is a tense debate of whether they have the right to interfere in such a horrible system, of whether they should punish such strangers to their lands, some of whom had no real hand or choice, such as the indentured servants, and if they do free the ones in bondage how will they handle them alongside the crew; besides the issue of trying to send them back to their world and the uncertainty of it, especially for the slaves. All the while this goes on, Blackthorn, Williams, and Nkemdilim deal with the circumstances of their plight:
Blackthorn seeks to return to Earth, with his "cargo" and escape possible imprisonment for something he sees as nothing wrong with.
Williams also seeks to avoid possible imprisonment, but Equestira offers him a chance to escape from the tyrannical grip of Blackthorn.
Nkemdilim also sees a chance at freedom, but he too wants to return home and not stay in this strange land.

As time passes, tensions continue to rise among the humans and the ponies, but whatever decision comes to fruition a conflict is inevitable.

Thoughts?

6345056
A bold and ambitious idea...

I like it.

I'd definitely give it a read.

6345056
Sounds interesting.

6345056
Intriguing. Do continue.

I also would like to read this as it does indeed sound like an intriguing story.

I think it sounds great. While I personally wouldn’t read it, I could see the appeal and think that it’s a good idea.

Yes.

6345056

Princesses Celestia and Luna, who too are appealed by the trade of the captain and its crew. What follows is a tense debate of whether they have the right to interfere in such a horrible system,

How is that a dilemma? There's literally one thing to consider: "are you okay with slavery" and once you've got the answer to that dilemma solved.

6345212
Rude...

6345234
Plus, their country, their rules.

Still, I don't see why they'd imprison anyone considering the circumstances. Probably give them a stern talking to and send them on their way without their cargo.

6345056

Captured during a skirmish between his tribe and a neighboring kingdom, he was brought to a trade fort along the coast to be sold to the European traders.

Wow, you don't see people admit this often in the modern day.

I sense a flame war magnet. Even if you were completely faithful to historical accuracy, there's still a lot of people out there who don't understand history, and this is a massive sensitive spot due to modern politics.

But if you're okay with people who don't know what they're talking about getting very, very angry with you, then do what you like.

Sounds interesting.

6345423
No it'd be a little pointless to lock them up, but they probably wouldn't let them go until they became abolitionists

6345056

Thoughts?

Its got potential, have an up vote.

6345507
6345056
Yeah, what Narle said there, pretty much. It's too much of a controversial subject, to the point that no matter how you treat it, it'll be more an allegorical revision of real history than a real story that is told for its own merits. No matter what you do, people will be a lot more concerned by the real-world implications of anything you say or anything the characters do and how that reflects on your own politics and stance on the slave trade than on how any of it makes sense in the context of the story.

Moonraker, I really gotta give it to you there, though: you really did your research. From the historical period to the nationalities and tribal affiliations of the characters to even their names and personal backgrounds, I could completely believe that this is a real-world historical slave ship, filled with real-world historical people that got lost between the cushions of the Cosmic Multisofa somewhere. In a way, though, this more a detriment than an advantage. If the characters were more stylized and storylike, they'd mesh just that much better with the whimsical fairy-tale world that the FIM universe really is.

As it is, a really dour and harshly serious subject crashes headlong into a world that just isn't, and there's no common ground for them to really come together. You'll either have to make the ponies a whole damn lot out of character and far more worldly than they are in the show, or you'll have to treat that serious subject from the perspective of people who are so immature and frivolous that it comes across as at best shallow and at worst disrespectful.

6345234
They can have control over what occurs in their territory, but beyond that it's ripe for a conflict, assuming it's not just one ship transported from earth and nor a shared world.

6347824

assuming it's not just one ship

It explicitly is. They're completely free to go entirely by nothing but their own moral and legal sensibilities.

6345056
That sounds cool. I'd read it.

6347829
Then they are free to impose their morals away since the worlds are separated.

6347856
In practical terms, yes, pretty much. It would make for a rather short story, though.

6347824
If it's for slavery interdiction they can do whatever they want wherever they want, it's not like when the Royal Navy went on its anti slavery campaign they worried about where the ship or who owned it.

6348239
They sure as fuck did when not in international waters, because the average navy goon might not have been able to spell "casus belli", but their bosses certainly could.

6348249
If you're putting your navy in another country's waters that's provocative if you attack someone or not. And even then they got pretty close to America during their civil war doing that sort of thing.

6348267
Just saying, "it's for the interdiction of slavery" wouldn't really be much of an argument if you were looking at it from the angle of international realpolitik, no matter how strong of a moral stance you take on it. If you piss off someone who can shoot back, they will, no matter how loathsome of an attitude to human rights they may have.

6348293

Just saying, "it's for the interdiction of slavery" wouldn't really be much of an argument if you were looking at it from the angle of international realpolitik,

Which I'm not.

The OP makes no mention of "international realpolitik"

What follows is a tense debate of whether they have the right to interfere in such a horrible system, of whether they should punish such strangers to their lands, some of whom had no real hand or choice, such as the indentured servants, and if they do free the ones in bondage how will they handle them alongside the crew;

That's very clearly setting out the issues in a moral context. I don't know where this objection has sprung up to.

6349239
I think the issue is if you actively interfere in the trade of other nations you can expect some sort of backlash regardless of the moral stance. OP may not specify if their world is connected or not but setting the precedent of seizing goods for morals isn't a good policy.

6345423
6346138

The traders could, not knowing they were stranded here, could threaten the ponies with naval retaliation. They could say that if the ponies take their cargo they would alert their navy, who would attack the ponies.

6349239
It's a hypothetical, and honestly one that I think would make the story better than the current idea as it stands. If you wanted to do a nuanced and realistic story about the historical slave trade in a fantasy setting, then doing it in a unified world would give you a good justification to examine the political and economic pressures that forced the nations of the world into tacitly tolerating it for as long as they did. As it is, the concept as given takes place in a vacuum that short-circuits those considerations and reduces it to a story that asks the magical technicolor magic friendship-ponies whether they'd agree that the darker-colored members a species ought to be considered intrinsically inferior and the property of the lighter-colored individuals.

Making a nuanced and realistic story about the slave trade that takes place in a world filled with colorful magic friendship-ponies is kind of dumb no matter how you look at it, but still, it would help.

6349382
To give some clarification the idea I was going for (in simple terms), was that it was a version of the Amistad or Creole Incident in Equestria. The idea of having the worlds connected and the threat of international reprisal would be better for the story and make it less of a "vacuum" as you put it. The "debate" that I was having going on was of moralism and pragmatism: They have strangers to their country, who practice a a system they despise, from a world where it is common. Even if they free the slaves and just give the crew a "slap on the wrist" and just sent them back would it be right? If both the captain, crew, and slaves return what guarantees could they give of not just going back to their normal ways? The captain would just get another ship and make another voyage, and the slaves they freed could easily be put back into bondage again. So do they send the crew back and keep the Africans, even though they want to go home as well? Do they imprison the crew to make sure they don't do it again? Should they even get involved at all since its not of their world and even this one ship would not change the fact that the practice is rampant there?

The idea of conflicting moral systems and debates over the often grey and murky parts of what is right and wrong is interesting, at least to me personally.

I hope this clears some things up.

6349340

I think the issue is if you actively interfere in the trade of other nations you can expect some sort of backlash regardless of the moral stance. OP may not specify if their world is connected or not

They got there because of a magical hurricane.

Pretty certain they're not magical.

but setting the precedent of seizing goods for morals isn't a good policy.

Except they're not "seizing goods" they're emancipating slaves. Kind of a big difference there.

6349372

The traders could, not knowing they were stranded here, could threaten the ponies with naval retaliation. They could say that if the ponies take their cargo they would alert their navy, who would attack the ponies.

Not only would it be interesting to see ships propelled by sails go up against a species who create tornadoes on a semi-regular basis, it would be even more interesting seeing the navies of the 18th century create another magical hurricane to go through.

6349382
With all these great ideas Wlam, I am stunned that you've never posted a thread with one of them.

Making a nuanced and realistic story about the slave trade that takes place in a world filled with colorful magic friendship-ponies is kind ofdumbno matter how you look at it, but still, it would help.

I understand that you hate fun but there's nothing dumb about using a concept like Persian Letters adapted for a contemporary audience.

6350568 That's not how the slave trading nations see it. They are, for their purposes, goods to be traded. Do the Equestrians know the world are separated? If so and the ship is in their land, there's not really much of a difficult choice to seize the crew and free the slaves.

As far as throwing the crew in prison? Technically they could do it but no laws were really violated and the human crew was conducting business as usual in their world.

And a there it is, the weaponizing of weather as if it's just that easy. Funny how we don't see that in the show, especially in a setting where we actually saw how Equestria would fight one.

They don't have a good track record Lorenzo.

6350568

Not only would it be interesting to see ships propelled by sails go up against a species who create tornadoes on a semi-regular basis, it would be even more interesting seeing the navies of the 18th century create another magical hurricane to go through.

It would be more or less an empty threat but a threat more or less. Also, I sincerely doubt the ponies actually know how to weaponize their control over the weather.

6350648
They use sails. Pegasi have been shown to be able to control wind reaching quite far just by gently moving their wings in the breezy episode. I don't think it would take a lot of expertise to have them float at one point and push them whichever way they wanted.

Of course, this can be countered by lowering the sails. That's where the pegasi carrying anvils come in

6350648
The idea of artificially manipulating wind to combat sailing ships isn't exactly super advanced.

6350705
The humans outrange them.

Because guns.

6350945
True, but the ponies have had peace for a thousand years and as shown by the changeling invasion are badly equipped to do any fighting at all.

6349516
Moonraker, I completely get what you were going for there, and I completely agree that it's something that you can write amd that could even make for a really good story, you've certainly put a lot of thought into the subject... but it would just make for a better one if you placed it basically anywhere else. The dissonance in mood and tone is just too much for that kind of story to really work without coming across as farcical.

I don't know if you've noticed or if you feel the same about it, but it's one of the problems I think fanfic on this site (and fanfic in general, really) tends to have. A lot of people treat it as basically a universal backdrop that they can use to pretty much show off anything they'd like. In a literary sense, though, it just really doesn't work like that. People tend to forget that FIM is its own work, with its own subjects and themes that it builds on, and if you want to stay faithful to the things that you ever liked about the setting and its characters in the first place, there are things you can't really use it for, because it can't really deal with those ideas and still make sense.

In a setting where centuries upon centuries of racial hatred and mutual oppression were solved by snow spirits and literal magical fire made of literal burning friendship, the idea of giving a sober and serious look at something as cynical and horrifying as the real-world Western slave trade just feels... laughable. Not because it's a bad idea for a story, or a even bad thing to do in general, it's that you honestly just picked about the worst tool possible to do it with. If you'd really like to tell this story, I'd seriously think about it as original fiction instead, or at least as a crossover with a setting that's more capable of coping with issues of this nature.

Sorry, I realize that this probably not the kind of answer you were looking for, but it's how I'd feel about a story like this if I saw it and I stand to that.

6350568

I understand that you hate fun but there's nothing dumb about using a concept like Persian Letters adapted for a contemporary audience.

And I understand that you just love self-involved wank pieces that exist for nothing but to confirm your preconceived notions, but yes, it is dumb, in the same sense that it's dumb to write a story about dropping literal Auschwitz into the My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic colorful Saturday Morning horsie cartoon for little girls and that would make any sane person who has any actual respect for the subject material ask what on Earth is wrong with you to even try.

This excludes the majority of users of this site, going by experience, but there you have it.

6350971
If a bunch of shape-shifters attack Washington DC then I reckon America would have significant difficulties fighting them.

6351006
Not when they swarm

6351010
Considering the changelings were dumb enough to abandon the single biggest tactical and strategic advantage they've got going for them (namely that they're perfect indetectable shapeshifters) in favour of just buzzing in like a big swarm of evil horse locusts, I think I'd have to agree with you there.

6350995
I think I would add in that there is also only a very limited set of choices of how this story would go either way, making it, if nothing else, boring due to knowing how it ends. Either the ponies get to them or they don't and the people then leave. The fact that this is FIM we are talking about means that there is going to be little struggle in the sense that on one side you the ponies that are exemplars of goodness, so to speak, and on the other... people who are not necessarily evil so much as a product of their time. There is going to be no back and forth, only a constant soapboxing towards slavery. Sure, the outcome of what happens to certain characters might be interesting, but in order to make the reader get interested in them you'd have to get them interested in the conflict there at first and... well, I wouldn't expect anything earth-shattering there. There just isn't room for that there.

Now, another crossover universe or original fiction would certainly be eligible to do far more with it if only considering the fact that you could have the side taking the place of FIM to be a more morally ambiguous or not so securely power set side, leaving some space open for deals, conflicts, and dynamism to take root.

6350968
Ah, so you have the maximum distance that pegasi created wind can traverse or the maximum height that a pony can drop an iron object from (or as we can call them "vertical cannons"?).

6351082

on one side you the ponies that are exemplars of goodness

Or at least exemplars of tolerance, friendship and forgiveness, if nothing else, which doesn't leave a lot of room for any kind of racism-based chattel slavery. Lorenzo isn't exactly wrong when he assumes that their reaction would obviously be to say "let the slaves go or else," because honestly, I can't really see them do anything else, either. Without going amazingly out of character, that story concept is pretty much nothing but a fairy tale happy ending at least for the slaves... which is certainly nice and pleasant, but also something you can get done and over with in a single 1.5k words chapter and which doesn't exactly allow for the kind of nuance and in-depth examination that Moonraker really wants to do.

6351095
It might be possible to do such a story, but I don't see it with the concept of a real world ship getting to FIMland temporary. Now, if there was some worldbuilding involved, setting up a place or a race that does make use of that, I could see that, though I would expect something more akin to helots in a FIM setting. Perhaps a story of trying to change a country's views and such, a more long-view and greater scope of what FIM already does, then yes that would be possible. But then you kind of lose what Moonraker wants to do and it is a totally different story.

6350995
Nothing to apologize for, you gave your thoughts and I appreciate the feedback.

And I get it, sometimes things are better done one way or in another setting then they are in another because the tones of either mixes better.

6351121
I'm glad we understand each other there. You picked a pretty touchy subject matter for your idea and it's all too easy for either side of a conversation like this to fall into treating criticism as kneejerking or being overly sensitive rather than as a valid concern.

In my opinion, you sound perfectly capable of writing the kind of nuanced and thoughtful period piece that this story deserves to be, you just need to give a bit more thought to what would make sense as the setting for doing so.

6350602

That's not how the slave trading nations see it. They are, for their purposes, goods to be traded.

You can't possibly pretend that by emancipating slaves that would somehow set a precedent, even among slave states, for seizing goods of any kind.

Do the Equestrians know the world are separated?

Magical hurricanes wouldn't be subtle I imagine.

As far as throwing the crew in prison? Technically they could do it but no laws were really violated

I'd be fairly certain there's some kind of rule against slavery in Equestria.

And a there it is, the weaponizing of weather as if it's just that easy. Funny how we don't see that in the show,

We don't see human navies of the 18th century in the show either, so it balances out pretty well.

6350648

It would be more or less an empty threat but a threat more or less.

Yeah.

An empty one. They'd just ignore it and then proceed to laugh at them.

Also, I sincerely doubt the ponies actually know how to weaponize their control over the weather.

You don't need to weaponize a tornado they're dangerous by themselves.

6350995

And I understand that you just love self-involved wank pieces that exist for nothing but to confirm your preconceived notions,

You've clearly misunderstood something here then because I've not read on this site for at least a year.

but yes, itisdumb, in the same sense that it's dumb to write a story about dropping literal Auschwitz

Actually it wouldn't be the same as what happened in Auschwitz doesn't really have the same complexities, that you purported it to have. I honestly don't think there was a great deal of complexity to the slave trade but you said it did.

into the My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic colorful Saturday Morning horsie cartoon for little girls and that would make any sane person who has any actual respect for the subject material ask what on Earth is wrong with you to even try.

We've heard it before Wlam. No one cares.

6351302

You've clearly misunderstood something here then because I've not read on this site for at least a year.

Yeah, yeah, we get it, Lorenzo wins the Internet Don't Care Olympics once again, which is why you've been arguing about it for a whole page now and would probably keep doing so interminably if given half a chance, like you usually do. Now go be a smarmy dipshit about it somewhere else, thanks.

6351326

Yeah, yeah, we get it, Lorenzo wins the Internet Don't Care Olympics once again

That's awfully interesting coming from someone who says he doesn't like anyone or anything on this site. I actually like some people here.

Now go be a smarmy dipshit about it somewhere else, thanks.

About you instead fuck off for a few months like you always do and then come back no less annoying?