TCB Cartoons
Collection!
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I was kind of wondering what kind of cartoons would exist in magazines like 'The New Yorker', if such still existed, in the age of the Conversion Bureaus. I imagine they would be available on the public kiosks, over the hypernet. Probably even a romball edition for the twopers with jobs.
I remembered that I am a cartoonist, so... I made a number of such cartoons in roughly the style of such magazine entries. I hope you will get a kick out of these future New Yorker cartoons.
Oh - as a note, in general, New Yorker style cartoons are almost always either about sex, or they are put-downs. I have kept that thematic issue intact. For realism.
An early effort became a caption contest, in which was submitted a brilliant comic by Balthasar999, which is included here along with mine.
So, without further ado, here is The TCB New Yorker Style Cartoon Collection!
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>sees a story update from you
>gets excited
>It's comics I just read in a blog post
>still excited and happy to see them
>
the last one, priceless. Hay, more hay, It's hay, you will never guess
Oh man these just kept getting better and better. I'm so glad I stuck through till the end just for a few of those comics!
1262676
My background is in biochemistry. You have no cause to be rude with me.
Links:
Psychology Today http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-scientific-fundamentalist/200807/why-are-almost-all-criminals-men-part-i
Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_and_crime
Statistics Canada (this is a worldwide truth) http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/85f0033m/2010024/part-partie1-eng.htm
A nice slideshow if you need graphics instead of stats: http://www.slideshare.net/Austin94799/mencommitmostviolentcrimesscientistshavest167
Wiki again, on violent crime http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States
The Good Men Project http://goodmenproject.com/conflict/violence-is-a-mens-issue/
And the entire body of research on crime, throughout the history of humankind over all of time.
I am sorry you do not like this fact. That does not make it bullshit. Facts stay facts, even if they displease you.
I'm just happy to see a (relatively)new Conversion Bureau fic that doesn't use the "Ponies are Secretly Evil and the OC cast are the Resistance" concept that 90% of people who decided to use the Conversion Bureau concept write.
1262887
I never write stories like that. Not ever. I promise.
1265966
I write happy Conversion Bureau stories, for the most part. I have done one or two short stories with a tragic ending, but all of my novels and novellas are all happy endings. I don't like dark, as a rule. Occasionally it can be useful, but I don't like to play there.
1266868
But what if Gunter had preferred 'Transformers'? Autobots and Decepticons fighting endlessly, killing each other in an eternal wargame. Some people, right now, that I know of, would want that world more than they would life itself. They would want to live as their favorite toy line. They would see only excitement and adventure, and they would not imagine that they and others might be destroyed. They wouldn't imagine beyond what they loved.
Some humans, I have learned recently, actually, really truly prefer war and violence.
I can't comprehend that. But it is true. Horribly true.
And they would build that world with their hearts leaping in excitement at the thrill. It would be joy to them.
Humans scare me.
1553600
All of your comments are absolutely... healing, to me. Thank you for that. Just... thank you. And thank you for reading my stories.
this is the only story you have written that i can actually read and enjoy good job
I always find your stories to be satisfying, Chatoyance. You just have a certain air about your writing style that makes your work compelling, enjoyable, and even cathartic. You are masterful at weaving a gripping tale, and I always anticipate your next story. Keep writing, Chatoyance; this fandom is all the better for your work.
I haven't read this one but i have read bunch of other ones, and every single one of them, EVERY SINGLE one of them makes me wish i were a pony lol
2122451 I'm reading Dafaddah's work now. It's riveting to say nothing else.
2398684
MmmmmHmmmmm
1267979 Whoops, missed this comment, sorry. To answer your "Transformers fan" hypothesis, I would argue that if such a goal was pursued, they would give some thought to who was on the losing end of the fights. I'm not that familiar with Transformers lore, but I think that good guys die sometimes there, and I think it's likely that anyone with what it takes to pull off a project of such magnitude would think to consider what happens when the "bad guys" get the upper hand. To say, no they wouldn't, they'd just blindly leave gaping flaws in their scheme such that it would immediately go out of control, is merely pessimistic/dystopian and the tragic end to such a situation would not, I think, be an accurate reflection of the people who tried to build something entirely different.
I won't argue that people motivated by mayhem, people who would -- if they could -- act like the Joker in the recent Batman movies, don't exist. But that is not humanity. And people who enjoy, say, the violence of a game of (American) football are an entirely different situation.
After the game, everybody lives to play again.
2397319
I suggest watching the "Technological Singularity"
Moore's Law has us reaching that point in just over 20 years.
2398786
How about, then, an existance based on, say, Team Fortress 2? I have deliberately chosen the most colorful and cartoony of modern FPSeses, specifically because of how it handles death. Yes, you are very likely to have an extremely short life culminating in a horribly violent death... but then just wait a few seconds and you respawn, the exact same person as you were before. There is even an in-game mechanic (the Revenge kill) which triggers when you kill someone who has killed you several times in a row--something that definitively implies a continuity of identity across death.
And lest you get too contemplative of the horror of experiencing the agony that death is in the real world over and over again, consider the possibility that the death screams of all TF2 characters are expressive not of pain... but of the frustration of getting set back from the objective of the map... echoing the frustration that the player feels.
(A friend of mine once described TF2 as a "Valhalla Simulator". I think the description quite apt.)
Chapter 7 was a shock! It felt like "Fallout: Equestria" but turned up to 11. It's the kind of ultimate dystopian story that by revealing the worst humanity has to offer, and an entirely believable, distilled, essential "Lawful Evil" (to use some D&D terminology) kind of worst at that, becomes instantly unforgettable. I'll be reflecting upon it for a long time. Thank you very, very much!
3064739
I loved doing these little experiments. In my heart, I will always believe that Iceman was inspired by Universe One, in creating his Optimalverse.
3066866
Actually, the men you mention stand out for their rarity, the textbooks are overflowing with warriors and fighters and generals and soldiers - all described as the heroic flowers of Man.
Every bit of The Friendship Virus is based on fact.
The statistics about the incidence of violent crime and who actually commits it are available easily, it is no secret. Indeed, it is the province of all police and government enforcement - they know, because they have to deal with the issue.
To prove my point, check out:
http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/who_commits_crime.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epidemiology_of_domestic_violence
http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/160/3/230.full
http://www.gbchealth.org/system/documents/category_1/363/Gender%20Based%20Violence%20Issue%20Brief.pdf?1345232726
http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/TOPICS/EXTHEALTHNUTRITIONANDPOPULATION/EXTPHAAG/0,,contentMDK:22421973~pagePK:64229817~piPK:64229743~theSitePK:672263,00.html
http://16dayscwgl.rutgers.edu/component/docman/doc_view/442-gbv-fact-sheetpdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_crime
Want it in infographics?
https://www.google.com/search?q=gender+crime+statistics&client=firefox-a&sa=X&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&ei=VlsRUuGNNsTYyQH04IEw&ved=0CDcQsAQ&biw=1579&bih=720
Are you a television news person? How about hearing it from actual law professionals?
Or will you simply settle for nothing less than Oxford?
http://www.academia.edu/2573801/Gender_and_Crime_in_Oxford_Handbook_of_Criminology_2012_
Every single thing in The Friendship Virus is based on fact.
More, these facts are acknowledged by all the educated, professional men of the world. Not a bit of any of this is the least bit in dispute.
How do I know such things?
My father worked for the LAPD (where he was eventually thrown out for excessive violence - which in the fifties was saying something) and later for the US government and the World Bank.
I know these things because not only do I study and research, had a parent involved in enforcement, but... I can use Google.
As you can. Everything above is just the first of ten thousand pages verifying everything I wrote.
I have received a lot of crap about this one, single story among my more than one million words of storytelling, and every bit of it comes from one thing: men who don't like hearing the truth - a truth understood and recognized by all men in positions of power, authority and enforcement of law and order.
I am sorry you may not like reality. But reality is, well, it's REAL. Real things don't stop being real because you complain to me.
Real things are true.
If you really, really don't like this truth, then work for men becoming nonviolent.
And... good luck.
3067839
Well.
Now, I'm definitely considering my privilege on this one. It's not easy, but I'm doing it. Helps that every complaint that could be made has been made pretty constantly.
I guess what I'm wondering is what you were expecting to come out of the Friendship Virus. Of course, it is your right to write this, and if what I understand of you is true I do not fault you for it. but really, it cannot possibly surprise you that it got this kind of response. I mean, seriously, look at brony demographics, and tell me that you are surprised that people jumped on this.
See, there is nothing wrong with writing something controversial, but one shouldn't do it unless one is prepared to handle the fallout of that controversy. People who imply anything alien to what is generally accepted to be true will always face conflict whether they are right or wrong, history holds no exceptions.
I only bring this up because you seem so indignant and surprised by this vitriol this had been approached with. Come on, Chatoyance. You, I, a fair number of the people reading this....We all know your smarter than that. Argue back, defend your point, make your statement, but don't be surprised when a primarily male community reacts badly to something like this.
3165017
When I first encountered the 'brony' phenomena, I hadn't even seen MLP yet. I began reading articles about something called 'The New Sincerity' - an apparent turn, on the internet, away from cynicism and schadenfreude, and toward compassion, inclusion, and intelligence.
I had been through a lot of tears over the last decade, so, like an idiot, I seized on this meager fraction of hope for humanity and the world. Seriously, I was Up With People. I felt positive, for the first time in three decades about the future of Mankind, and the worth of human beings. Like I said, I was an idiot. I guess... I just needed hope, however slim, right?
So, when I finally saw MLP, and saw the early Fimfiction community, I was impressed. I began writing my TCB stories, because, wow, here was science fiction like I hadn't seen since reading golden and silver age stories from the forties and fifties. I felt part of a good, kind community, all working together to share in imaginative universes of wonder.
I saw ponification as 'Bronification' - as the notion that by embodying the traits of the kind ponies of that first season of MLP, humanity could improve itself. I saw Bronies as a potential peace movement, one that would eschew patriarchal bullshit and social cruelty. Like I said - I was an idiot.
And so I felt free to write all manner of stories, just as writers did back in the golden and silver ages of science fiction. The Friendship Virus actually would not have been out of place in the old Amazing, or beside some of the classic stories of that time. There are stories not unlike it, written in the fifties! I imagined the Bronies as being more intelligent, more savvy, more noble, more educated, and more expansive than they truly were.
Call it the wishful delusions of a fifty-something woman.
And for one full year, it worked. I had a whole year of this ridiculous fantasy - I got zero shit, zero attacks, it really was a full year of reinforcing that Bronydom was special.
Then the assholes came. They came from Spacebattles, they came from 4Chan, they came from Encyclopedia Dramatica, but mostly they came from Spacebattles. And they ripped my community apart.
My illusion was shattered, and with it my heart. I couldn't grasp it at first - you can tell from my responses that I was surprised, incredulous, shocked. Now you know why. I had a full year of feeling I was part of a supportive, compassionate, enlightened group. Then hell came.
Now, of course, I know better. I know that what I experienced was a fluke, an accident, a madness. The Brony thing is just as shitty as every other human club or group. Many of those who I considered my friends and supporters here turned on me when the assholes came, and became my attackers to save themselves. I saw betrayal, treachery, slander and just plain evil.
I am awake now, no longer enraptured by my humanistic dream of a better world through pony Ideals. Now, I know, as I did once before, that humanity is doomed, and that it deserves that doom.
The ultimate joke in all of this is that when I wrote the majority of my Conversion Bureau stories it was in a fog of believing that humankind would triumph and become better, and I symbolized that with ponification as a representation of the sort of inner change necessary for a better, kinder world. I used physical transformation as a metaphor for, well, spiritual transformation, I suppose. Mental, social, political transformation.
My attackers, when they arrived, consistently slandered me as being misanthropic. They were too simple, too ignorant, too hateful to see what I was fairly clearly doing. In the end, they destroyed my newfound faith in humanity, and made me, finally, truly misanthropic. I despise them for this, and because of them, I have lost that tiny shred of hope I once had for Mankind.
They showed me, beyond any doubt, that even something as innocent and kind and nice as ponies will be inevitably destroyed by human cruelty. They called my misanthropic when I was anything but, and then convinced me that I was an idiot not to be misanthropic by what they did.
I may fall for delusions of goodness - I want it so much to be true - but I am not stupid. I learn. They taught me well.
The stories from this time were written with joy and hope in my life that the world could become better. That it was possible to write anything, and have rational, compassionate responses.
I was a total fool.
That said... I had one year of hope. It hurt terribly to have that hope crushed. Oh, it hurt. But for one full year, I actually regained a belief in humanity as being something worthwhile. It was a precious time.
Now, I know better, and I will never fall for such foolishness again.
Those Spacebattles dickheads are more correct than they know: the future truly will be war, nothing but war, and pain, and suffering and misery. A steel-toed boot stamping forever on a human face.
Because they will willingly make it so.
3166802
I will not pretend I know what you went through. While I have been the subject of a certain degree of internet harassment in the past, I will admit that it did not approach that scale. But to be frank, when you tell me that you believe the human race is doomed, when you express these overwhelming statements of hopelessness...well, I have a hard time accepting that.
In my personal experience, despair is a shitty muse. I know, at least, that it inspires nothing in me but inaction, though I cannot speak for everyone. But you, Chatoyance? You're writing right now, aren't you? You're about finished with HUMAN, and did that in very little time. And I have noticed little change in your style between that and what you wrote before.
Despair is more evident then that. You can practically track Mark Twain's nihilism in his books by when his family members died. When you accept total despair, it is all you write about...at least, it's all I do.
Want to know what I think? I think you're not nearly as fragile as you present yourself. I think you have embraced hope, more than ever before. And mostly, I think you give your detractors too much credit.
The importance of a word is ultimately in who listens to it. So, I present you this: If you have truly decided that there is no decency or kindness here based on what spacebattles have told you, then they are right about whatever they say, because you have let them dictate terms. If, however, they are nothing but dust, then I am right, and you should embrace hope.
TLDR (and I don't blame you, that was a ramble): It is this one's opinion that you should dust yourself off, stand up, and accept what I suspect you already know.
3173102
I'm doing my best. Right now, I write for those few who tell me that my work matters to them, that it changed their life, or that it made them yearn, or that it just plain entertains them. I write for those who call themselves my fans - even if they might feel the need to do so on the sly - because art has no worth without an audience to see it, and because I am driven to create.
I meant what I said - I have no hope for humanity. But I do have some very silly, foolish hopes for better. Perhaps I will live to see Man create artificial offspring, better than Man, programmed with the ideals humanity can never live up to. Perhaps there is more to the universe than just chemicals and random chance. Perhaps it is enough just to have what pleasure one may take before the end.
I don't have hope - I have dreams. That is what keeps me going. I live in ridiculous, foolish fantasies and daydreams and stories, and from that I get the joy that motivates me when I am able to write. I can't write at the moment, I am too depressed. Depression is an old enemy.
But one day, I will finish my current novel. I have no idea at the moment if I can write the rest of the pony books in me. Maybe.
You don't see my depression in my stories because when I can write, I am not here. I am not on earth. I see my stories in real time, in my head, like movies, with sound and motion and color. That is why I never have to plan them, why they write themselves, automatically. It's like a simulation in my head. I feel joy when I write, because I am finding out the story as I go, and it is exciting to see such a thing happen.
I can only write when I am filled with joy. It's the only thing that makes me able to create.
But that is not the same thing as hope for the future. I escape in my stories and cartoons and dreams. I live for escape. I live for a glimpse of something better. That's me in a nutshell - I can stand to exist only because my fantasies are compelling to me. It matters when others like them too.
Want to know why I write fanfiction - though I really sort of don't. One accusation against me is true: what I write barely even exists within My Little Pony. That is a fair cop. It would be trivial to take the contents of all of my works and change the names and file off the species numbers and bam - utterly independent, original science fiction.
I used to work in the games industry, I used to paint, I used to sell my art, and my words professionally. That was a miserable time. I never got to make what I wanted to make, and I never got to write what I wanted to write, and I never got to draw what I wanted to draw. It was not for lack of trying, nor even for lack of contracts. My first sale was for an entire game, to Activision, which never got made. I got paid for it, they just never let me finish it. It was worth it to them, to get me to do the art for Aliens and Gamemaker, and other games.
After fifteen years of fighting and getting the run around, while people just used me for their own projects while promising me the chance to do my own, I learned my lesson. They lie. Always.
So, I gave up trying to make a living with my creativity. It gave me a heart attack, actually.
So now, I write fanfiction. Deliberately. Because it can never be published, it can never be imagined as a platform for a career. It is pre-damned to uselessness and vanity, which means I cannot be tempted to try to 'do' anything with it. It is safely a failure from the first word.
And, when people aren't attacking me, or attacking my family servers, or sending threats, or doing whatever petty thing they can to harm me, I actually have fun. For that year I spoke of, I had the most fun I have had in my entire life. Goddess, but it was good. More fun than anything. Anything.
All I want is to write my stories to people who like them, and not have bastards attack me for no goddamn reason. It's not much to ask. It's such a little thing.
3178567>>3178825>>3178893
Yes, as to the comments section - I have my share of abuse.
On the other hoof, thank you for reading these explorations, and I really thank you for your kind thoughts!
3178909
I noticed from reading some of your blog posts that you live in WA (to be fair I should have figured this out immediately when you mentioned "Phở Real" in Heaven is Terrifying. For a fleeting moment I chose to assume that punny Phở restaurant names were a global phenomenon rather than accept that you actually lived in hugging distance). Do you happen to live in or near Seattle? Maybe you could come to a few meetups and I could really give you that hug I said I wanted to give you!
3179092
I live in Olympia, and travel to Seattle is problematic for me for assorted reasons. But I very much appreciate the sentiment!
3224491
The twin 'hyper-nuclear' devices destroyed Equestria in Mankind Triumphant! The devices are strangelet bombs. Strangelets are a bizarre form of quark, the theory is that if a strangelet encounters normal, baryonic matter, it rips it apart and converts it into more strangelets. This process continues until there are only strangelets. It has been speculated that up there, in the universe, are strangelet stars - entire stars converted into strangelets. Nothing survives a strangelet bomb. Nothing.
With Equestria annihilated, it collapsed, back into higher dimensions. This is why it shrunk away into nothing, leaving a big hole in the side of the earth. No Equestria, no Barrier.
The Barrier is a semi-sentient magical construct made by Celestia and using part of Discord's vast, reality-altering power. In this story, he is still a statue. The issue is addressed from an alternative path in Recombinant 63. There we see the process of making the bombs, and what goes wrong - in my prime TCB universe, Equestria is not destroyed.
The Barrier can convert matter into Equestrian matter, but it doesn't do a great job of it, and it has to learn as it goes. In the first year, it can't do squat. By the fifth year, small animals are being converted into their Equestrian counterparts. If there was much more time, the Barrier would have been able to learn how to convert humans on contact. There just wasn't enough time, so... the Bureaus.
In my stories, I take the view of Celestia presented in the first season. She is basically a pony goddess, presenting as a princess. This is hinted at once more during the after-life review that Twilight experiences in the episode where she becomes an alicorn - the smoking burn mark left in her library is her death, and the classic 'This Is Your Afterlife' sequence that follows is a powerful trope. Celestia is the goddess of Equestria, but she is a classic, Greek or Roman style goddess - one with flaws and weaknesses, NOT an ubergod like in Christian mythology. That is how she can make and power a barrier - within her domain, she is literally all powerful. Just not all-knowing.
So powerful, indeed, that she has to restrain herself, lest she melt continents. That makes her weak in that she must limit herself to protect her creations. This is also why she relies on others, such as the Mane Six, to protect and defend.
Never bring a nuke to a knife fight. Nobody wins.
3241750
Very snarky, but sorry, wrong.
If any of the altered men truly wanted to become female, the same procedures that exist today still exist. That is not an issue.
But they wouldn't want to transition, because that isn't the part of the brain that was affected by the virus. I was clear on that: PNY-1 increased oxytocin receptors and production, decreased androgen receptivity and production, caused increased activity in mirror neurons and the empathic centers, but DID NOT affect the neuronal basis of gender identity. I was explicit about this.
In order for a snarky, negative comment to have any power, it has to be right to some degree. It has to be based on even a tiny speck of truth.
Consider that, the next time you try to snap at someone like a yappy dog: if you don't have a clue, you sound like a fool.
This particular writing wasn't to my personal taste. The comics, however, make me want more XD
3565869 Lazerbem, before we begin any discussion here, it is only fair to any reader to know that what we are about to discuss relates to my dissertation on “The Friendship Virus” which I copy here for the benefit of all:
Now back to you personally, Laserbem:
Your understanding of the word harmlessness and aggressive are incorrect. In your example, you say a chihuahua who is attacking your leg but not hurting you is harmless, however, my definition as used in the dissertation is “without the desire to cause harm”. If the chihuahua is intending to cause harm even if it is not causing damage, it is not harmless. Aggression in my dissertation is defined as “intent to dominate”. You may notice that it is possible for a person to dominate a conversation without physically harming another person by talking over others, or forcefully steering the conversation into a particular direction. When any such attempts impose on another's rights it is a show of aggression.
Now that that has been stated, I want to let you know that I am not going to respond to your power-point bullets anymore as they fail to ask questions appropriately and can easily be seen as accusations rather than requests for understanding. If you would rephrase your questions to have a reasonable amount of context, I would be more inclined to answer them.
About the link you have posted: I am not going to go to another forum to read about your feelings on a matter. The fact that even the link itself has the title of a different story shows me that it does not pertain to this story, and therefore at best, would force me to guess at what you meant by pointing me toward it. Furthermore, I have a sneaking suspicion that whatever is written on that site was not written by yourself, and if that is the case, presenting the doctrines to which you subscribe without your personal interpretation as an explanation of how you feel toward a matter threatens to state that you let others think for you.
3899511
Not precisely.
The PNY-1 virus is explained to affect human women as well - the answer isn't in making men into women at all, rather it is to make both sexes, male and female, dominated by compassion and nurturing before all else. The feminizing effects are just side effects, irrelevant to the primary point of the virus. They are described because my background is in biochemistry - they are likely and probable unintentional side effects.
It is true that males account for more than 90% of all violence and crime, somewhere in the comments for this chapter I have posted a mass of links and references documenting this fact to ridiculous levels - search the posts, it's there if you want to check my research. I felt it was necessary because too many male readers seem to get stuck on 'oh my god, feminized men! Feminazi politics and putting men down!' and failing to grasp that the secondary effects of the virus are just side effects and not material to the point of it all. Women need fixing, too - they account for the remaining tiny fraction of violence and crime, after all!
The same studies that demonstrate that males are responsible for virtually all crime and violence also conclude that the driving force behind this is the effect of testosterone - this is true for the small percentage of women who commit violence and crimes too. Both sexes have testosterone, females just have a lot less. That, acting on primate genes and an evolutionary history of being violent hunter-gatherers makes humans less than angelic.
Part of curing that is cutting testosterone down greatly - but it is only part. Many other changes have to happen too, and the PNY-1 virus does those as well. But... if you cut testosterone in men to almost nothing, the estrogen their body naturally makes begins to dominate. Yes, males make estrogen, just much less than females.
This is the reason some males develop gynocomastia - moobs or man-boobs. Natural estrogen in their bodies is not overwhelmed by their testosterone, and they start a weak metamorphosis. This is why feminization is a logical unintended side effect of the fictional PNY-1 virus.
But such feminization is not in any way the important part of this story.
I really enjoyed all of these little short stories. The way they were totally different, but followed a similar theme kind of reminded my of Ray Bradburry's short stories (especially Martian Chronicles). While some of the stories were a little out there, the majority were definitely stories that I would want to see expanded, or even write myself! Great work, not nearly deserving of all the thumbs down it got (though there was the one chapter that was ideologically questionable, and that is where the thumbs down must have come from).
3900983
Thank you very kindly for reading my stories! I am a big Bradbury fan - my one, single, proper MLP fanfiction 'The Ice Cream Pony Summer' was deliberately written in his style!
I also love Heinlein, Henderson, Asimov, Kuttner, Norton... all the old Golden Age authors.
3901402
I don't think I've read any of the other authors besides Bradbury and Asimov, but now I'm looking out for them to read later!
I was expecting "THE END IS
NIGHNEIGH"4423842
I did consider that. I just felt it was gilding the lily in that one particular cartoon. That said, I love that little wordplay, and still thrill to it when The Great And Powerful Trixie talks about 'Neighsayers'.
4527264
There is something wonderful about that phrase!
Oh, absolutely!
In trying to imagine a science fictional answer to, basically, humanity being incredibly violent, selfish, and generally evil - or, at least (according to all crime statistics) testosterone-driven people (women who commit violent crime have testosterone levels markedly higher than other women) - I needed something that would affect the world. Not just the subjects of a government, but every person, even those in government.
The solution I picked is indiscriminate. Rich, poor, powerful or powerless, all are subject to the PNY-1 virus. Compassion enhanced, violence reduced, and the accidental side effect is lowered testosterone (and lowered sex drive too, meaning a less crowded planer, and more resources all around. No scarcity to fight over). I was thinking like a proper hacker: what would be the most elegant, simple, and direct fix for the bugs in humanity? Something possible, something relatively easy, something inescapable, something quick.
No government can ever commit atrocity under my Pony Virus concept. Because every king, president or prime minister (there would literally be no more despots) would be unable to (literally) conscience it.
Within a week of the PNY-1 virus becoming global, all nonviolent criminals - political criminals, drug law criminals, victimless criminals - would be released. It would be discompassionate to imprison anyone for such silly reasons, and every leader, every enforcer, would feel such empathy for them that they would break down in tears at the injustice.
Six months later, all the violent criminals would follow, after it was proven that no human on earth could be violent any more. Instead, therapy groups would be formed to help former inmates cope with the sudden feelings of deep shame and regret that put all formerly violent offenders at risk of suicide.
You see, I really did think all of this through - the only answer, I am convinced, is a global one that permanently alters humanity as a whole, universally. The rich and powerful especially.
When manly ambition and the drive to conquer dies, only compassion and nurturance is left.
The more I think about this story, the more I wish it would somehow happen.
I should have stayed in biochemistry, huh?
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Really good ones, too, I might add. Being part of a writing community is a wonderful thing!
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Not within my stories. The reason is pretty obvious, if you consider what you have been reading.
Mundis, our cosmos, is vast. Many scientists currently think Mundis may be infinite in size; the part we can see is infinitesimal. Within my stories, it is made abundantly clear that Mundis has no magic, at all, period, end of story.
Equestria, in my stories, is clearly described as being a pocket universe. The entire scope of Equestria, before including the spacetime that earth represents, was likely less than the size of our star system. A few AU's perhaps. It's all magic, through and through.
After including the earth, and a swath of spacetime around it, Equestria is enlarged to around a parsec in size.That's it. Versus.... infinity.
The entire basis of Celestia reluctantly saving humanity at all is the fact that she was rescued from termination by a human. Outside of her own universe, she will fade, and die. Mundis is anathema to her existence, and the existence of all Equestrian beings.
The only reason ponies could walk the earth was that the Barrier exuded sufficient thaumic radiation to allow them not to suffocate - as Celestia once nearly did. Celestia's power drops off, rapidly, the farther she gets from the Barrier, according to a form of inverse square law. This has been pointed out, many times.
Likewise, as the Barrier expands, earthside ponies see an increase in their health, and in their powers.
But the fount of magic is not capable of flooding Mundis - it can't even begin to affect our universe. Celestia would be a poor ruler indeed if she enslaved her cosmos to providing life-support to a lone planet in a death universe. It would be preposterous.
She would also be a poor ruler to allow entrance into her cosmos a species whose single most common behavior is mass slaughter on a scale that literally defines human history. Human history is basically one long war that never, ever ends.
She has had enough trouble with the dragons, griffons, and diamond dogs, and they aren't even that warlike.
It is not bigotry to recognize that a tiger is a wild beast, and will kill you. It is not bigotry to observe and note that a cobra is incapable of coexisting without harm if it is placed in the middle of a crowded day-care. That is just rationality.
If my Celestia allowed humans in, unaltered, it would only be because she had no choice, or because she was a fool - or because she was evil, and wanted to see her ponies harmed.
Bigotry is where an individual classes an entire group as fitting an arbitrary stereotype.
It is not in the least arbitrary to define Homo Sapiens as a violently tribal hunter-gatherer species responsible for the the sixth largest mass extinction of all life in history, because that is fact, not bigotry. It is fact that their history is defined by constant conflict and mass slaughter, torture, rape, and genocide.
That isn't bigotry to not let that into your universe, that is not being an idiot.
That sounds like it would make a good short story.
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I would love it if these notions were expanded on!
4718361 I think that makes seven stories (including one I forgot about that originally was an idea for a heavily modded l4d2 map (not that I have it because Australian classifications board and their non-existent R18+))
I came up with an eighth one! I'll write the original first (because my original idea didn't include Conversion Bureau alternate universe, so I'll write the alternate universe at the end).
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I want to thank you for your comment: it allows me to re-post this mass of facts derived from both science and police files.
Everything I put in my story is absolutely correct and accurate.
Links:
Psychology Today http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-scientific-fundamentalist/200807/why-are-almost-all-criminals-men-part-i
Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_and_crime
Statistics Canada (this is a worldwide truth) http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/85f0033m/2010024/part-partie1-eng.htm
A nice slideshow if you need graphics instead of stats: http://www.slideshare.net/Austin94799/mencommitmostviolentcrimesscientistshavest167
Wiki again, on violent crime http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States
The Good Men Project http://goodmenproject.com/conflict/violence-is-a-mens-issue/
And the entire body of research on crime, throughout the history of humankind over all of time.
I am sorry you do not like this fact. That does not make it stupid. Facts stay facts, even if they displease you.
I do not have a low opinion of men. I have a factual, accurate observation of reality. This does not mean ALL men are always violent. It does mean that when there is violence, it is almost universally men who commit it. This is a fact. If you are not such a man, then, good for you. Revel in being a special snowflake, because, frankly, you truly would be so.
Be clear that what is true about almost all men does not mean that these facts refer specifically to YOU. Only you can determine whether you are exceptional... or whether you are only, pathetically, normal.
I hope you are exceptional.
All in all, these were all interesting stories! My favorite being the Sci-Fi ones i think. Ya itched my inner programming geek with those ones. I especially enjoyed the first chapter, the pony singularity. Haha, his defeatist acceptance at the end after all the evidence and supposition was real tone setter, a rampant and rapid advance of a revolution he had no hope of overcoming. Also, him interacting with Sylvia was great. Good fun. Pheonix in Hooves was also interesting, the whole discord nano-machine thing and Celestia being a mile high impervious mountain was pretty awesome.
As to the comics: Pure gold, oh my god so funny. I saw them some years back and I still get a kick out of them.
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No. The humans won through a very clever and well executed plan. They worked together and achieved their goal. I think respect has to be given to such things.
More than this, the humans in Mankind Triumphant managed to secure themselves a means to repair their broken, already dead world, as well as guarantee themselves a perpetual workforce. This future earth has no third world to exploit anymore, there are no children to work in the Nike factories or work in sweatshops - converted dissidents are a relatively humane way to deal with these issues. At least they seem to enjoy being used as labor.
In the end, beyond the gigantic crater and the loss of 25 percent of the atmosphere and ocean, humanity has come out better than before. The Bureau stories take place in a future where humanity does absolutely nothing to cure the problems of today - climate change, peak everything, nuclear waste, the holocene extinction - and thus earth is already dead. Three generations from extinction.
But, after Mankind Triumphant, humanity has bought itself a new start. Earthpony power can jumpstart dead Nature, and keep it running. Business as usual, only this time, stolen magic can clean up Mankind's mess. It is a perfectly successful win for humanity, who can continue going on just as they are right now, today.
History has shown humans wiping out entire civilizations to get what they want. This truly is business as usual. It's what Man does - you cannot argue people like Genghis Khan or Attila were anything but successes by all human standards - they achieved a dominant position, had so many children that you, unless you are African (and even then, possibly, if you come from slave stock) definitely have their blood in your veins. Winners. The golden boys of humanity.
Do not mistake me. This truly was Mankind... triumphant. I do not claim otherwise. If you feel glad, at the end of this chapter, then you are siding with both human history, and historical human values, and that just makes you normal for the species.
Some might claim that this normal is somehow wrong, that it is what is dooming all life on the planet, that it is the viewpoint that drives corporate exploitation, war, famine and injustice, that such a stance literally is the mindset that permits all atrocity and evil in the world - but I would merely point out that Man is a hunter-gatherer primate, and that feeling glad about the ending of Mankind Triumphant is just the natural expression of the human genetic heritage. It isn't just normal to feel that way - it is perfectly in line with evolution itself. And, if humanity dies, and kills off most of the planet along with it... well, that's how Nature works, isn't it? That's just animal life in this world.
The freaks are people who work to override their genetic heritage, to become something other than human. Transhumanists, people who wish they could be other than human, or more than human, or animals, or something other than primates - these people are the weirdos. They are not normal. They are not following the genetic program. People who see Mankind Triumphant as a tragedy, who want the ponies to rescue and transform humanity before it destroys itself - they are fighting Nature itself. They are going against the natural order. They are being hella uppity, thinking themselves grander than just clever, dangerous apes.
It is very arguable that such people are just plain rebellious and anti-normal and ultimately, fighting a pointless and hopeless battle to oppose the innate nature of humanity - indeed to replace it with something else altogether! They don't fit in, and they never will. They just plain are NOT normal.
I absolutely count myself such an entity. Completely. I want nothing to do with being human.
And that makes me wrong, by the majority view, and it makes you absolutely right. It makes you normal and me weird and strange and wrong.
So, it is not my place to tell you who to root for, is it?
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There is no moral. I don't deal in morality. I do depend on ethics, however. There is a great difference between the two terms, but... I think I catch your drift.
The point of The Friendship Virus is that Man is the product of blind evolution, and that this being the case, he is perfectly adapted to a life on the primal veldt, two hundred and fifty thousand years ago. Man has not changed, but his tools and power and reach have.
Humanity acts according to what it evolved to do, which is hunt, gather, mate, be tribal, raid other tribes, and kill for dominance. This is basic evolutionary psychology, and we can see it in action in today's headlines - war, rape, patriotism, capitalism, torture and power struggles, political intrigues and, of course, consumerism. These natural behaviors only threaten to destroy all life on the planer because human tools have become so powerful. Even just a thousand years ago, man was no real threat to the survival of all life.
But now, he is. Worse, he has the capacity to destroy the very world.
The problem is not that Man is somehow evil, it is that Man is ill-adapted to the technological level he now exists at. Man must be changed, must be made something other than a hunter-gatherer with severe dominance issues, or he will destroy himself, and likely the planet.
My remedy in The Friendship Virus is to enhance compassion and nurturing behavior, while sharply curtailing violent and aggressive behavior in both men and women. The effect of this, biologically, does tend to lean toward the female side of the gender divide - this cannot be helped. Statistics and science (more than provided, above, in the comments) blatantly prove my point.
I do not need a devil's advocate with this, for the same reason that no one needs a devil's advocate to argue against the Law Of Gravity. All of the world's police, for example, universally admit that 98% of all violent crime is committed purely and only by males. You can't argue this isn't so - we have worldwide records of criminal activity dating back thousands of years in every culture. It has always been so. This is fact. (again, see the many examples above, of the links to all of this)
There is no 'girls are better' issue here. There is only reality, and the fact is that if males were made to be manifestly less aggressive, domineering, violent, and more nurturing and compassionate, there would be almost no war, no poverty, no rape or slaughter or torture. Do the same for women, and there would be none of these things at all. The 'almost' would vanish.
My Friendship Virus was clearly stated to affect BOTH males and females equally, it is just biological sense that males would be affected in a more obvious way, and thus are the best subject for a story about changing humanity. It wouldn't be very interesting to follow the Friendship Virus concept through the eyes of women - the changes would be vastly less noticeable.
If humanity cannot change itself, somehow, then pretty much I rationally argue that it is doomed to extinction. That change could be anything - being uploaded to an existence beyond meat, a radical change in the meat itself (as in this story), or implants in the brain to limit behavior... something, something must change humanity and make it other than a killer ape with pretensions of glory or the planet is toast.
That is the only 'moral' here, to use your words: if Man cannot change himself, he will kill himself off in the end. And the change, whatever it is, must be physical, biological or technological - it cannot be a philosophy or a belief. Humans have had a quarter of a million years of trying out beliefs, and we are still murdering, enslaving, and torturing each other today.
Man must change fundamentally, somehow, or he is doomed. That is the only statement here.
I present one possibility. A tiny hope, something actually possible to do, by a small group of genetic hackers in a garage somewhere.
It isn't going to happen, though. You know that.
If any genetic hackers get together in a garage to make a virus to infect humanity, it won't be to make humans more advanced. It will almost certainly be to eliminate a specific race or ethnic group, or perhaps, to kill everyone everywhere. That is what humans are most likely to do. So... you needn't worry about Man being improved, as in my story.
It, sadly, isn't going to happen.
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I have, for fairly stupid reasons, a dedicated hate-fandom. Literally hundreds of people, most of which have not read a word of my stories. It's just internet drama.