The Conversion Bureau: Green Tea

by Da Bunnana King

Rewriting the ending and fleshing it out

So it seems that most of you hated the ending and the parts after he was converted so I have decided to go back and put more flesh onto it because to be honest I was rushed because I had to do stuff IRL for a job, school, cadets and others stuff I ain't going into to much detail about, so expect something when ever the f**k I feel like doing something.

Oh and to the comment section here is a picture for you on the Alt ending and it's progress.

Its nearly done, and quit your talkings of morals and ethics.

-DBK

Comments

[Yonasomun]

Conversion Bureau’s with drive-thrus are an amazing idea.

Special offer, only this week: Order a ponification and you get a free milkshake with the amazing zap apple flavor.

Someone should write a parody fic about that.

959811
Yes Jacob took the fact that his friends acted behind his back to force a decision upon him pretty well. Your explanation makes some sense but I don’t think that he secretly wanted to be a pony but hadn’t the guts to do it himself. In my eyes he wasn’t sure if that's what he wanted. He just needed more time to make a final decision. But no, we can’t have that! All the cool kids are ponies now so you must be a pony, too. Hurray for peer pressure!

[Da Bunnana King]

963015
Well the way I was attempting to write Jacob was, he wanted to fly but he was afraid to actually go with it (god I need to make sure to get that across better so it's a fault on my part.) so he just kept on beating himself about the matter but since his friends didn't want to see that they... pushed... well more like round house kicked Jacobs choice off a cliff into a burning sea of snakes and spiders and make the choice for him. I will admit that I should of added in 'I'm going to kill you guys but you kind of were right about it, but it doesn't mean you get off easy' dialogue thing in there. So I'm doing that now, and if there's anything else that seems crap PM me or yell at me in the comments.

Post fic,
Nek Minnet
People in the comments are talking about ethics and Chat's building a Pizza Hut in Equestria and doesn't want to look at my resume. Oh and I'm going back and putting more meat on this thing's bones.

[Da Bunnana King]

963624
I got that feeling so I am re writing it or did you not read the second page?

[Newfoal 3]

972628

Wait, are you saying that being capable of such anger is good and worth still having? only on the basis that it was once part of your brain.

Let me pose a question then to someone that would be against ponyfication (I take it you are), as I have been wondering as to what the objections to it are.

The question is this, where we to find a cure to psychopaths (i.e. to make those that can't feel empathy be able to feel it) do you think it would be good for the person to take such a cure for something that isn't an illness but rather a genetic difference at the level of the brain.

[Defoloce]

972979

This isn't a very good approach to arguing your point. Anger is not psychopathy, so they can't be interchanged in this way. Anger is part of the normal, healthy range of emotions; psychopathy is not. It is normal for humans to feel anger. So it is, for that matter, for ponies. Perhaps they can't feel it as severely or powerfully as humans can, but in "configuring" the human psyche to emulate this, they are definitely losing a part of themselves. Human memories remain intact, and that includes emotional memory. There is a pervasive, philosophical wrongness to it, regardless of the practical arguments.

It's like how you can't just pull out all of a shark's teeth and call it a whale.

[Newfoal 3]

973248

I never implicated that psychopathy was anger, but I was rather trying to see if the objections to ponyfication was in part due to that it was not seen as a improvement and a good way see more clearly in mercy waters is to gauge it from a step behind, so we just think of a worse human to be able to see how a better human would be like.

As far as anger being a "healthy" emotion, I believe that having a release valve on that anger is healthy but I would pose that it would make one a better animal to not be able to have such anger at all, anger that easily cloud judgement and are capable at negating all other faculties in favor of such primal urge.

I think I agree on that they are losing something, but I also say those things lost aren't worth having there in the first place.
(So if the psychopath are "cured" would you say that he had lost something then?)

With it being philosophically wrong, if something is identified as bad and cannot be change by mere thoughts alone say the ability to not being able to empathy with others, why is it then wrong to change it the only way it can be changed?

(I wouldn't agree to that analogy but if you change the brain of the shark to favor krill and not be as aggressive I'd say that shark is more like a shark shaped whale with the memories of a shark since what we are discussing is more then mere cosmetic change)

EDIT:
you changed your comment while I was writing this so let me just add this:
psychopaths are a normal, they are just not the norm and they are in fact healthy in the emotional sense they just have different gens then most of us which makes some of them incapable of feeling empathy.

[Defoloce]

973708

You're using psychopathy again to engage me in the philosophical argument while sticking to anger for the practical argument. I know why: it's because it's a much more defensible position from which to argue. I'm not going to bite, however, so forget psychopathy. I'm not going to talk about psychopathy any more. Jacob neither gained nor lost psychopathy by going pony, and indeed the word "psychopath" occurs not once in the story, so it has nothing to do with what my concerns are.

I assure you that my objections to humans being mentally reconfigured has nothing to do with whether they're better or worse off for it. Again, the better/worse thing is all practical stuff. In fact, here's a freebie: Jacob is probably better off as a pony! All of humanity? Sure, why not! The ends still don't quiiite justify the means there, though, do they? If they did, then the PER would enjoy full and explicit sponsorship of the Crown and pegasi would be detonating aerosol potion-bombs in the lower atmosphere. Consequences? What consequences? Nobody left is physically capable of being truly angry about it, so that makes it okay! As evidenced in this story and in Chat's RADwCNS, they somehow feel they should be angry, but they can't. There's disparity between their old human identity and their nascent pony identity. Something is off. Something is wrong. They can only stumble about in a cutesy imitation of outrage, however. A smile's been tattooed onto their soul. That's pretty disturbing, when you get down to it.

Anger does serve a purpose, and we are able to feel it for a reason. We feel it when we are wronged, or when we feel helpless, or when we think an injustice has occurred. Anger is motivation, and excessive amounts can cloud judgment, as you said. That goes for any emotion, though: sadness leading to despair, happiness leading to complacency, and so on. The answer, however, is not to get rid of it, even though it's convenient for ponies. If someone wrongs us, are we then not allowed to be angry about it just because the one who wronged us is freakin' adorable and only had our best interests in mind?

[Newfoal 3]

974345

Do forgive me for turning this into an argument (I leave those to Chat since she is much better at them and more fun to read) my intentions is more to pick someones brain that disagrees with me to understand the tough processes and I only use psychopaths for the example as they lack what is universality seen as positive (empathy (not all of the diagnosed cases but some)) and the only way one could ever change that is through changes in the brain and my point is that so is it for everything else in the brain to since we are just matter, and being just matter makes the practical stuff all that matters for the is by that account the smile is already tattooed into our very being (or soul if you will) its just a different smile you and me have now since we know we are going to die and all our loved ones will too.
So why be happy at all? well, other things in the brain make up for it to be able to be happy with dopamine, endorphin and such and makes us "happy", one great chemical brain cocktail.

That the "false" smile is unsettling I can understand but it is the same for us now, it's still disturbing but I cannot claim that its not there.
It's just what it is like being an evolved sentient animal, to have thoughts that are not our own as we are not just only sentient but we also carrying the baggage of evolution.

Anger is there because it served an evolutionary edge in survival, to to boil it down to its main component - adrenalin and a will to act with determination.
And anger is just an expression of sadness that something has happened that you did not wish to happen but anger usually dissipate because the brain makes up for it with other things to get over it, ponies brains are just better at getting over it or making up for the sadness and perhaps won't let anger get the better of them.

Well you are allowed to be angry, you just wouldn't have it in you to be angry in the same way just like you wouldn't have it in you now too be angry over several weeks over the same thing, you might if you kept reminding yourself of it all the time during those weeks but it wouldn't be natural anger of what we as animals are capable of.

As far as the story goes and the moral with it of ponyification against ones will, if there wasn't a magical bubble of death coming then I'd say its wrong.
But that is not the case in these TCB stories the bubble is coming and unless the person were peaceful and rational and decided too rather end its life then go pony, all other conversions but that one would be moral.

[Tinandel]

972979
974345

Apologies, for some reason I never got a notification of your response. Wasn't trying to ignore you, just didn't know you'd asked me anything. Fortunately, Def summed it up pretty well in my absence. Psychopaths, quite simply put, are sick. They are not well. They lack something. It's not that they have an overabundance of anger, it's that they don't have enough empathy. If there were theoretically a way to 'cure' a psychopath by inducing empathy with a drug, you wouldn't be taking something away from them, you'd be giving them something. A capacity they didn't have before.

It's one of the many reasons lobotomies or electric shock treatment were very quickly shelved as legitimate treatment methods at asylums; they weren't giving patients anything. They were just taking things away. What was left was something less than human. To a lesser degree, it's also why so many people with mental disorders despise their medications and often go off them. They feel diminished, like they're walking through life in a fog. They're not who they're supposed to be, and it just feels wrong. Even as terrifying as their normal state of mind may be, they often prefer it because at least they still feel like themselves.

An ordinary human being is plenty capable of feeling both anger and compassion; they are not in any way diametric opposites. And as Def said, anger is quite simply a fundamental part of being human - putting aside moral implications of whether anger is good or bad, the fact remains that you are losing something. Something that is a major, major part of your identity.

As for whether I'm for or against conversion, hypothetically speaking? It's a tricky subject, and it varies quite a bit in substance from author to author as well. By all rights I should say against, against, emphatically against. It's running away from your responsibilities, it's abandoning your history, it's taking the easy way out, it's losing your hands (seriously... kind of a big friggin' deal, magic or no), it's having your very sense of self permanently altered.

For me, the sticking point is whether or not the Barrier was intentional on Celestia's part. Whether she was deliberately trying to attack and overrun Earth, or whether it was all a freak cosmic accident and tragedy, like she publicly claims. If the Barrier was indeed a purposeful attack, then any justification she could ever make would ring awfully hollow in my ears and I'd be out for blood. If she was telling the truth however, and the Barrier was something she simply couldn't stop?

I'd have to think long and hard about it.

[Feurisson]

974345 This is a fantastic post and I would favorite it if I could. Thank you. And the things you mentioned are the reason I still haven't given up on this sub-subgenre, as I still hope that I'll come across a fic that examines the changes the human mind goes through during and after conversion in greater depth and detail. Something like a psychological fic examining their incapacity to feel real anger, like you mentioned.