The Human Who Brought Guns To Equestria
I haunt various Pony forums, and one day I came across a topic I particularly dislike, one far too common. Some gun-nut, meaning a little boy (of whatever physical age) who thinks guns and weapons of mass devastation are almost sexually beautiful and desirable, posted a very large image of six guns of increasing destructive power. The premise of this topic was to show off the guns while asking the reader to imagine how they would - presumably proudly and violently - demonstrate the weapons to our gentle Equestrians of the show.
Naturally, this disgusted me. Not just because I despise any fixation on the worshiping of guns, but because the usual response is always an adolescent power fantasy that involves one lone man conquering all of Equestria with the power of his lovingly-polished gun collection. The original post offered that the guns would never run out of ammunition, and would always work perfectly forever. The implication of what the reader should be thinking was obvious. I think differently.
I think things all the way through.
The Human That Brought Guns To Equestria
By Chatoyance
You need to understand, I am a simple unicorn, I don't have a lot of magic or anything. I work at the local Starcolts making Hay and Berry Whipachinos. I serve members of the Royal Guard drinks, I never expected to end up defending Equestria.
Basically, this creature appeared. I don't know why, or how - that stuff is beyond me. I could sense some kind of translation magic on it, though, so I could understand what it said. The creature was about twice as tall as me, and it stood only on two legs, like a diamond dog. It only had hair on the very top - on it's head. I've never seen anything like it. Oh - it wore clothing, if that matters.
It had these things hanging all over it. Metal things. Some parts were smooth, some looked complicated. Many bits looked like sections of plumbing, only very tiny. Tubes, mostly. Tubes and these stick-out bits that the creature grabbed onto with its forelimbs. Those looked kind of like claws, only soft. The entire creature looked soft and kind of weak, actually.
It was very mean. It yelled at me. It said it was superior, that it was here to prove that. It screamed about taking over Equestria. It even claimed it was going to kill you, princess. Seriously. You and princess Luna, both! That's when the creature told me it was called a 'hyoo-mon'. A Hyoo-mon 'Mahn', whatever that is. It told me it could kill anypony - kill anything! Even dragons! Yes, Princess, that is when it started using the terrible devices.
It was very loud. All of the metal things were. They sounded like fireworks, or even louder. Some just went 'Pop! Pop! Pop!'. But whenever the creature pointed one of them at some innocent pony, after the pop sound, a big hole opened up in them. All the way through. Sometimes the pony died instantly. Sometimes they just stumbled, fell, and started screaming. I am so thankful you cast that 'Calm' spell on me, princess. I don't think I could even tell you about all of this if you hadn't done that.
Anyway, the creature seemed to enjoy taunting me with how it could kill. I... I kind of got angry. I got more angry than I have ever been in my life, princess. I was so angry, that I wasn't scared anymore. I had to do something. I had to make the creature stop.
I was afraid to kick the creature. I just knew it would point one of the metal tubes at me before I could even try to kick it. But I had to do something. I just had to.
Like I said, I work at the Starcolts. I make Whipachinos. I take a ball of sparkling water, and whipped cream, and syrup and stuff, and I hold it up in the air in my hornfield. While I levitate it, I spin it really fast. Then I reach inside the floating ball and I make another little hornfield, just a small one, and I spin it really fast the other way. That whips the drink up really fast into a frothy blend - it just takes a second or two! Then I drizzle the ball of whipped drink into a mug or glass. I'm really good at it - I can do it with my eyes closed! I just feel where everything is with my hornfield. It's automatic, now.
Yes, Princess. That is what I did. I did it almost without thinking. The creature had just shot Hyjinx through the head, and that was all I could stand. I don't even think I was looking at the creature when I did it. I just felt the thing's head. I felt the fur on the top, and... I just reached under it. I made a little hornfield, and then I spun it really, really fast. The creature just dropped. It didn't move, after that. It just... stopped. A little pink foam started dripping out the side of its head - I think out of its ear. It looked like some kind of ear, flat and close to the head. There was a lot of pink foamy stuff.
And that's the whole story.
Princess Celestia? Could you please make it so those creatures can never come here again, ever? I really didn't like that thing one bit. And also, Princess? Could you please erase my memory? I don't think I can live with knowing what I did, even if it saved all of Equestria. I definitely don't think I could ever make a Whipachino again. Please erase my memory. You will?
Thank you, so very much, Princess Celestia.
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Oh dang... poor little pony... erasing his memory is a kindness, after that horror...
This is why most naked power fantasies throw in a "humans are immune to magic" rider. Of course, that doesn't change the fact that you're only one person and a town of frightened ponies can do all sorts of indirect things to you if properly motivated. If half a dozen mares can take down mad gods (with artifact-level backup,) one gun nut won't be hard to crack.
"Demonstrate guns" is just stupid anyway. The ponies have cannons, mortars, and rockets (party cannon, fireworks). "Oh, a little baby cannon you carry around. Not sure why that'd be useful to a pony, but whatever." Having seen what unicorns, pegasi (weather, kinetic energy) and earth ponies (Maud making gravel, AJ bucking trees) can do... yeah, they don't care much.
10824394
Kinda, but a nonmagical gun would possibly have been useful vs Tirek
Honestly, the type of guy (and it's nearly always a guy) who revels in causing destruction for it's own sake and treats weapons as sexual objects both disgusts and baffles me. Wanting power to achieve a goal (what sort of goal you're pursuing is a separate issue) is one thing, and wanting power to feel safe is understandable, but power and destruction for their own sake is an all-too-common abomination.
The one thing that always burns me up about SF is “hyuumon”. Any species of similar intelligence and anatomy shouldn’t have any trouble pronouncing the word “human”. I realized at some point that stretching out a word as if it is hard to say is a way of making the human viewer/reader feel superior that the species respects them so much that they fight to get this word right as if it is of utmost importance. Through an experiment, I found that saying the word shorter or sloppier than it is supposed to be, pissed off those who feel so proud to have this name. For that reason, I always write nonhumans saying “humin” to demonstrate that the word has no importance to them.
I tend to believe Celestia wouldn’t erase ponies’ memories unless they were absolutely crippling. I believe Celestia wants others to ascend into alicornism, and that requires not protecting them from life experiences, even the bad ones.
Such a sad thing for an innocent pony to have to do, but also glad they were able to protect their other friends. Glad they could at least forget the monster that came to the shop.
10829370
Deliberate, knowing wink to decades of science fiction, most recently Star Trek's Ferengi , who are also referencing the ancient inside joke, to readers in on it. Many readers like to enjoy common tropes that are associated with the history of their favored genre - not many real cowboys, for instance, ever got to visit a saloon with a player piano in it, but it is a trope, so every western show or movie has to have just that. Identifiable tropes are great fun for most readers and viewers, and are experienced joyfully despite the knowledge that they may be arbitrary, artificial, or unlikely. I like pleasing the majority of my readers in this manner.
I believe a complete innocent, being forced to horrifically murder another intelligent being using the same technique they commonly make food with, is inherently psychologically crippling. Especially since the character literally said as much and begged to have their memory erased.
That is clearly some kind of personal notion you enjoy, but there is nothing in the canon show whatsoever to indicate anything even adjacent to such a plan. Indeed, it was made very clear that common pony Twilight's ascension to the status of Princess was unexpected (at least so soon) and vanishingly rare - indeed unique in all of Equestrian history. At least, in the canon show. Additionally, several episodes dealt with the effort of the Crown to suppress dangerous knowledge and dangerous information that no pony should be allowed to ever know. Some series episodes entirely hinged on that point. In this short, I am not trying to deviate overly from the canon show, nor to introduce arbitrary fan theories or notions about the show.
Still, thank you for reading the story, and it feels sad that you needed to express only negativity about it, with no positive points whatsoever.
Clearly, I cannot please every last reader. No author ever can.
10829824
Taken in its entirety, the show doesn’t have enough consistency to say that any but the most basic of facts are canon. You know my favorite nitpicks, so let me use a different example: At Cranky’s wedding, there was a changeling… Or was there? Was that a visual gag because no one talked about it afterwards or did it really happen? If it really happened, why was that changeling not a rainbow changeling? Outside of universe we know that episode wasn’t yet written, but in universe, without omitting anything, this doesn’t fit right with everything else we know about changelings. Maybe a simpler one: in the pilot Twilight was shocked that Pinkie Pie was actually singing as if life had become a musical. That appears to be as unexpected as people singing their thoughts in real life, but many times later ponies are singing and we have to ask if that is the character actually singing or something the audience is supposed to understand as fudged.
MLP is so utterly fractured that every viewer who is watching the show as more than a brain twinkie has to cherry pick an interpretation. My cherry picked interpretation is that Celestia’s order for Twilight to study the magic of friendship was so that she could grow in knowledge, wisdom, and above all compassion. This kind of spiritual growth is not merely the accumulation of information but the synthesis of experience to transform her into something beyond mortal. In Celestia’s own sung words during Twilight’s ascension, “And I’ve watched you from that very first day to see how you might grow, to see what you might do, to see what you’ve been through, and all the ways you’ve made me proud of you. It’s time now for a new change to come. You’ve grown up and your new life has begun. To go where you will go, to see what you will see, for it’s time for you to fulfill your destiny.”
Destiny in one line and extraordinarily unexpected three minutes later during coronation, so no words or actions are ever 100% consistent, yet I cling to my interpretation of spiritual growth because it was the first thing to be demonstrated through the pilot of the series before anything else was written.
I wasn’t trying to be negative, I just didn’t want to repeat the obvious. That happens with a friend of mine where we feel that it would be correct to add something topical and it turns into a repeated speech about the woes of shared negative experience, and I thought I would spare you that since we both know how annoying gun nuts can be. I’m not sure what I could say about the goings on in the story, but I have given some thought to other “gun ifs”. Again with cherry picked interpretation, I really enjoy the cartoony image of a POed earth pony reflecting the bullet off of a bulky peck back into the shooter. Taking the interpretation that earth ponies move magic by touch, this holds water. A far more gruesome yet entertaining thought is a high speed pegasus releasing the compression field around them at the exact moment they fly inches behind a gunner. It gives new meaning to the term Rainbow Vac. XD
Other than sharing the frustration, I don’t know what to say, because it really should be painfully obvious to everyone that humans can’t win against ponies because ponies have magic. Even in the event of super secret plans to hide bombs all over Equestria and detonate them all at once, ponies have power over time and space. Something world ending happens? Specifically trained time traveling pony hops back in time with a message of what happened to give to herself and Celestia. If needed, the same pony from the past travels further into the past as many times as needed in order to defeat the problem. This is assuming that Celestia and Luna do not already have the ability to travel freely in time as well as see possible futures… I for one believe they do but choose to allow bad things to happen so that spirits can grow not merely in lessons of tolerance but also in their own mastery of magic so that they can take care of themselves. This of course implies reincarnation, but you already know that is reality to me.
About the Starcolts pony, throughout my own many incarnations, I have found myself in similar situations that were nowhere as clean, and I was disturbed in the same way. I can even say it ruined those lives, yet in this incarnation, the result of those experiences is greater desire to minimize suffering for myself and others, and it does create tolerance and compassion. I don’t want to sound like I’m saying that terrible things should happen, but because a perfect god doesn’t exist, bad things do happen. You remember that I wrote Wind Feather as a young soul born into a post Discord Equestria where every pony loves every pony and no pony does wrong. He believed himself incapable of wrongdoing because he never had done anything that even felt morally uncomfortable let alone questionable. His effective perfection is what allowed him to pass such harsh judgment onto newfoals and through ignorance and arrogance, execute them. Any experience in his existence, not merely his singular life but his whole existence, would have helped prevent that from happening. That is where I see this Starcolts pony now. To remove this memory now means the next time something similar happens it will sting as if the first time and perhaps cause more suffering.
I don’t know what I could say that is genuinely positive about the story, and I’m sorry about that. It just seems that stories with ponies and guns don’t come out very positive.
10824394 A smaller cannon could be useful to be carried more easily and probably shoot streamers or fireworks farther and other fun things! Also, Equestrian smiths might be able to take it apart and make even more interesting inventions, if this Equestria approves of such technical development.
On another note, Chatoyance, this story reminded me a bit of C. S. Lewis's Out of the Silent Planet. Our protagonist's kidnappers, human supremicists, try to overawe the "primitive natives" only to be summarily hauled in for questioning in a manner nothing like they'd expected.
I saw this story in your user page feed.
10829370
Hm, may be you can spell out a bit more of your views on how she might help pony in such situation? {partially because dealing with painful memories kinda ...relevant on this Earth
As for Celestia not wanting to show something to ponies ... well, show was written on Earth in specific time. From what I read ponies in Chatoyanceverse definitely sensitive to pain and suffering, and Celestia/Luna definitely not into 'making Men out of you BY PAIN!' (ref. to one episode from Going Pony, i think). So, just batching ponies in mental pain (of the past? or alternative/parallel worlds) not something they naturally will do. So, their motivation is slightly different from Earth's elite or ordinary citizens. Or this is my specific headcanon!
PS: assuming lack of religious-based repression, and quite different psychological baseline - it might be interesting to imagine what ponies might invent instead of BDSM .... because, well ... at very least they probably not very interesting in S part of it ...? While may be it will be just that they consider quite dangerous/yet worth probing at situations humans not even put much thought into?
The Hyoo-man has its brain puréeed. It one would pour its brain into a cup, it would not fill a StarColts' Demi:
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