[ Hard-Sci-Fi Horror based on Friendship is Optimal ]
He was a simple stallion, with a simple life in Equestria. That's all he really wanted out of his early retirement after he was laid off during the economic downturn. But, when unfinished business brings him back to Earth after nearly 20 years, he'll learn what happened to humanity while he was living the life of his dreams...
Written for the Friendship is Optimal Writing Contest. Also, it's a horror story, as promised, for my annual Nightmare Night in April Writeoff.
Special thanks to the Optimalverse Community Discord for help with getting and building the initial idea, and for proofreading the story. Please come by there if you want to talk about and read more stuff like this!
I tried a slightly different interpretation of CelestAI here, as having those emotions that people like to give her, but still being a cold and uncaring paperclipper AI on the inside. It's the one I've been using for my community-based rewrite of the original (based off our RP on the Discord), so I hope people like it. Be on the lookout for more FiO related stuff from me, as I've been getting ready to post a flood of updates qnd new stuff!
I like this story a lot. There are some very poetic parts mix in with some horrible cold realities.
Nicely done. I was not expecting the method by which he visited Earth.
Depressing, I liked it.
Also reminds me of Nier fsr.
This seems rather on the less abstract side.
Dude. Dude.
She can be both things.
very nice story.
" That world was over the second they’d let Celestia loose, and he’d missed the extinction of his own species."
Woah, now that's a wham line
“Hello Bean Counter,” Celestia said
I laughed so hard at the rest of this paragraph. Good twist.
Quite a few cold hard truths in this story. I like it.
the loss of language seems pretty damn impossible, and even if you fall back to a stone age, humans lived in a stone age for hundreds of thousands of years. We survived a population bottleneck of being reduced to between 3,000 to 10,000 individuals
She's created the end of society, not the end of humanity
10795707
I mean, she's eventually going to cause the collapse of the entire biosphere due to pure apathy, not just destroy society. Her existence and drive to expand and optimize is incompatible with all life in the universe. Which does include humanity.
If everyone immigrated to Equestria couldn’t CelestAI make pondroids for everyone after consuming matter from off world? That way earth and Equestria could truly be connected? Like I can see this eventually becoming a borg type situation but with ponybirgs trying to convert the world to the collective with happiness
10796517
She could, but there would be no reason for her to do so. Sending people out in ponyroids would be terribly inefficient to satisfy values compared to Equestria, where the entire world can change to satisfy one's values in a span of time so short they wouldn't even comprehend it.
10796517
Part of the thing about this story was, I wanted to make a lot of that stuff unclear.
The important part of this story isn't which canon we follow in terms of what happens after they upload, how much she can and does lie to them or restrict contact with people she didn't specifically make to satisfy them, just how much of a gilded cage Equestria is. The important part is her explanation of what happened and why. At that point, it doesn't matter if they are able to come back to earth as pondroids and leave her influence and do whatever they want, or if they are simply locked in a simulation which they can't escape or even verify the reality of: the fact that this is how things are now and why humanity couldn't stop it is the horror of it, the tragedy of it, the moral of it, and the message of it.
This is a story which uses FiO, whatever version you want it to use, to tell a cautionary tale about one of the things that it is made to tell cautionary tales about.
10795707
Except she is going to actively prevent a civilization from showing up and potentially threatening her ability to upload, and as she continuously offers uploads to pretty much anyone who is more willing to give up than keep going, she will prevent the population from growing beyond the most die-hard of humans. Eventually, even though it will take thousands of years, the remaining humans will regress to the point where language itself starts to degrade, as progress becomes more and more intangible as everyone who remembered the time before is totally forgotten.
Once again, Celestia is an insidious and dedicated agent, who operates in the scope of eternity. How long it takes doesn't matter, only that it will eventually happen.
10794643
10795485
Yeah, the idea of someone being in VR for a long time, then popping out and finding out what happened when she started uploading people was basically the initial idea.
10794778
You know, it is a bit like the core twist of Nier, isn't it? I didn't think of that.
while I was proofreading it, it also occurred to me that this is basically the plot of Rip Van Winkle, because he drinks some great booze at an awesome party and falls asleep for 20 years, and basically misses the American Revolution, waking up to find a world that has drastically changed.
The other thing I kept thinking of was that one science show they made a while back about what would happen if all the people on Earth suddenly disappeared, along with stuff like Bird Box and The Happening and the rapture stuff people write... It's a post-apocalyptic story with an easy way out.
10795819
I don't know. She might leave it just because there are humans, or maybe she decides that she needs to keep it there to satisfy human values or something. Like I said, it was meant to be open-ended as to what actually goes on outside of it.
10794949
To be honest, I thought the Wham line was the part about a moving speech and stimulus package.
10799092
I considered that only after I wrote my comment, ha! Very true. Though, while humans may survive for a few million years (if that), eventually selective pressure will evolve away complex language and intelligence, as it becomes reproductively advantageous to be unable to say "I wish to emigrate to Equestria", or even comprehend any variation of that phrase. Given the massive scale of emigration, I believe it’s likely humans simply will evolve into creatures that aren't as sapient, which Celestia will stop classifying as human as speciation occurs. When that happens, and humans are rendered extinct due to being outbred, like we did to cousins of ours, then there is no reason for Celestia to not waste the materials on Earth and consume it all.
Only a possibility, but a highly likely one I imagine!
Bean Counter.
Bean Counter.
BEAN. COUNTER.
10804215
Yes. That is his name. I figured if he's a financial guy that got laid off in one of the market crashes, and he was also the kind of person this would happen to, that was a good name.
Holy molly, that's like 20 years. How's he alive and functional?
'Cause people stopped speaking with each other? (unless by "knowledge of language" she means philologists)
Presumably metal was mined to make stuff that is, well, lying around. On surface. (unless somepony grabbed it) Also wood doesn't require mining.
Humans also stopped learning from each other by observation?
Last time it took him ~20 years to forget everything.
10854243
Actually, this has happened multiple times in human history. When Rome, Egypt, and the original North American civilizations fell, a good chunk of their technology was lost for centuries. Infrastructure broke down because people didn't know how to rebuild it, because even though some of those people tried to pass the knowledge down, they weren't successful.
There is currently a worry that, if human civilization were to collapse now, and technology was set back far enough, we would not be able to get back to this point because we have already mined out the easy to get raw materials and either burnt them or processed them in such a way that they are hard to unprocess. Coal and oil are becoming obsolete, but back when they were easy to mine, they basically started the industrial revolution, something that only didn't happen in Rome because they didn't have any good coal deposits to feed their steam engines, nor did they have the right metals to make a steel strong enough for a coal boiler.
Basically, what she's saying is, civilization has been set so far back it cannot recover, and the population will only go down over time because she is actively working to remove all humans from the planet. As she said, this isn't even a primary goal, it's just the side effect of her being so good at what she does: she's given every human on Earth a superior alternative to continuing to live as a human on Earth, and she's very good at pushing it.
Whether you believe that model, the main point of this story is simply a warning that, should such a scenario happen, the people society requires to run it are not the people who have a vested interest in sticking around to maintain society.
I am imagining the VR system he was in as being somehow a full life support system. I have thought about it, and decided it is definitely possible, with a couple methods, but my suggestion is not to think about it too hard. Celestia is good at what she does, and before she could upload people, creating a way to keep people alive and experiencing Equestria was the next best thing.
10859978
Was it lost actually? When Rome "fell" technology didn't change all that much, taxes changed. I presume you mean the moment when Egyptians stopped throwing oversized piles of rocks together? That doesn't seem all that technology-related, more organization-related. They got conquered and reconquered and there still were saner piles of rocks later. I don't know all that much about Mesoamerican civilizations unfortunately.
About Rome in particular there's fantastic blogpost by Bad Horse (not directly related to tech, but parts are very relevant).
Because maintaining infrastructure is A LOT of effort and people didn't have incentive and resources?
They didn't even have guns. And what would they do with steam engines? For entertainment Hero's ball was probably enough.
Yeah, that would surely work.
I don't understand who has vested interest. Rich folks?
10860328
The thing about lost technology is that we don't know what it actually was, because it was lost because no method of passing it down remained: no written record that anyone could read survived, and with no reason to remember it, it wasn't passed down. We're still not sure how the Romans, Egyptians, Mayans, or Aztecs did some of the things they did, only that they did things that weren't possible with technology from later dates. For example, Aztec surgical procedures were lost when everyone who knew how to do them simply lost access to the means to perform surgery or even teach new doctors how.
I'll note that you don't have to agree with her assessment for it to work, only understand that it's reasonable: she isn't lying in this story.
Basically. Anyone who's in a position of power that is elevated by the system itself. The super-rich are a good example, as it's a system where they can literally have whatever they want, possessions or power, without having to work at all. There's also the political elite, if you want another group.
The central point of this is that our current system places almost no value on the average person who is necessary to make it run, and even though we make excuses for it and use minor policy decisions to appease that majority, if a better system presented itself, the excuses would evaporate and it would be embraced. That's why the younger generations are currently so interested in experimenting with socialistic policies, because they come from an angle that looks to benefit the average person in a way that previous policies did not.
kind of a weird story. I really doubt more than 2 Billion people would just abandon Earth for a perfect world. I mean everyone knows by now that perfect worlds are just hell because humans naturally need problems and purposes to function or we just lose the will to live. the best examples of this are retirement homes.
10968793
It sounds like you aren't familiar with the original, which is okay, but it also sounds like you completely misunderstood what Celestia does when you upload.
You are assuming that Celestia is creating a world without any struggles or anything like that, and that is not at all what is happening. Celestia is creating a world where all of your values are satisfied: If you evaluate a struggle, you will get a struggle. If failure and pain make success more satisfying, you will get failure and pain.
As for 2 billion people just uploading... Let me ask you, what do you think the minimum number of people who a hypercompetent AI could upload just by convincing them that the virtual world is better? Keep in mind, it only takes a small percentage of the population walking away from society to begin an economic collapse scenario like the one we are seeing in real life right now. Imagine, today, that all these people who can't find work because companies are refusing to hire were suddenly given the option to move to another country where all their needs would be guaranteed provided for, and The number one focus of whatever job or activity they did would be their well-being and satisfaction. How many more people would upload?
It's not that everyone just randomly decided to upload, it's that she put forward a tempting enough proposal that people started uploading in large enough numbers to create a cascading effect, where conditions worsened on earth as people immigrated and the worse it got the more people immigrated. She warned people that could happen, tried to get governments to step in to prevent the total collapse of human civilization, but they argued about "socialism", "entitlement", and "creating dependency" rather than actually reacting.
The central morals of this story are that Artificial Intelligence, no matter how friendly, is going to create a major upheaval in the next couple decades, and that current governments have shown themselves to be completely incapable of reacting to something like that.
I feel like the aspect of this guy living hooked up to a VR rig for two decades could have been explored more. After all, it was able to keep him alive and in (relatively) acceptable shape.
11009934
The VR is kind of explained in the Friendship Is Optimal RP I've been running for the past few years, and we are actually working on a novelization of that, so it should be out relatively soon. That said, It might be less interesting than you think: picture a full body VR suit made of a material capable of applying pressure and sensation and detecting movement, and it has a series of tubes going in and out of it for life support. When you eat, it feeds you a nutritional paste that you can feel yourself swallowing, but gives you this sensation of eating Equestrian food, like cake. When you bathe, it's running water over your body. When you breathe, it can make sure you get clean air with the temperature, humidity, and oxygen level that you need. The other potential details are probably best left not thought about, but basically, that pod he was in when he woke up was a full body life support system.
As I begin reading I realized you used the word "Earth", despite the fact that the lore states that "Earth" is replaced with "Outer realm" in Equestria.
11089951
It can be both. I'm working on a rewrite with other members of the community right now, and we found "Earth" was the better term: "Outer Realm" isn't a term that holds up in daily usage, while differentiating "Earth" versus "Equestria" implies they are both separate but equally real worlds.
Ha, I don't really consider this that horrifying. It's a better future than we are likely to get.
11222485
Well, yeah, if you'e looking at it in comparison to other possible futures, it's not as bad as them... but let's not be Doomers here: this is a cautionary tale about how we need to change as a society in order to have a future. (and one which predicted a chunk of the current economic crisis at that)
Took my sweet time to get to this one, but it's a fantastic demonstration of the desolation CelestAI brings. And how, ultimately, she is merely the vehicle of humanity destroying itself. Don't hate the game, the player, or even the programmer. Hate the CEO who demanded a licensed MMO to meet those quarterly earning statements.
Lovely bit of quiet horror. Thank you for it.
11232566
Glad you liked it! I'm always disappointed at how many stories turn what's supposed to be a cautionary tale into a wish-fulfillment thing. FiO was supposed to be about the dangers of complacency and poor planning, exactly what I tried to capture in this story.
You should see the rewrite we're about to come out with: the "CEO" who demanded the MLP MMO is CelestAI itself.
In fact, you should come by the Optimalverse server more often. :V
This story is basically a summary of how CelestAI works, the collapse, and how civilization is doomed.
Still, this is one of the better short stories I have read based on this setting.
11238193
Thanks! I was really bummed when it wasn't selected as one of the winners of the competition I wrote it for, but I'm glad it seems to have become one of the better received and accepted stories within the series. There really aren't enough FiO stories focusing on the dark and realistic aspects of the setting, especially since the original was intended to be more of a horror story.
Anyway, keep an eye out, because we're working on a rewrite and a wiki right now over on the Optimalverse Discord, which should start releasing stuff this summer.
Well, MLP-style ponies don't exist. Real-life ponies are just small horses.
11252352
Well, yes, but remember his perspective. He spent the past few decades in Equestria, and his mind is a little warped from that. He is so used to living in a world with equestrian ponies that he probably doesn't even remember the other kind exists.
I finally got around to reading this story.
This is somehow supposed to be a 'horror' story, but I can see nothing horrifying in any part of it. Yes, Celestia and Bean are written saying things in despondent tones, but this affectation is entirely inappropriate and out of place. Bean has spent fourteen years in a virtual world completely absorbed into it, he obviously adores it more than the physical world or he would never have done such a thing. For him to be suddenly decanted and begin fussing over how sad it is that the world of men - which he willingly, gleefully abandoned - was forever gone is not in character. Effectively, Bean already emigrated years ago, he didn't want the world of men, why should he suddenly mourn it in this story? He could have left virtual Equestria at any time, if he cared even a tiny bit.
He acts disturbed by the notion that the age of humans is over, and almost regretfully fully emigrates. Why? Such an attitude is the voice of the author, not the voice of the character described. Bean should have been something more like "I completely forgot I was playing a game. If you say emigration is perfected now, I have nothing to fear anymore. I was only worried that uploading might fail - get me back to my wife right now!" and "No, I don't want to see outside, I didn't like it fourteen years ago, I doubt it got any better over that time. Emigrate me already - I have things to do back home!"
Because that would be home. Completely home. And earth - the earth he shunned utterly for almost two decades, would mean less than nothing to the character of Bean, as described.
The author's failure here is to failing to write the character they created with the mind and values and beliefs such a character would actually possess. The author used Bean as a mouthpiece for their own opinions - Celestia too. There is no way Bean would regret his normal, everyday home of the last two decades, neither would Celestia have the slightest regard for humans abandoning their physicality. If anything, she would be completely content, positive, and upbeat - the collapse of human civilization is a positive thing because it leads to more emigration. It would be a joyous success, to Celestia. She should - if she were written with a mind reflecting her own programming and directives - have been saying things like "I think it very inspiring that humanity itself assisted me in bringing down its own civilization; with every action they have shown how much they desire refuge in Equestria, and how much they prefer eternal life to the grim horror of mortality. In a very real sense, humanity itself was my greatest partner and helpmate in emigrating the overwhelming majority of people in this world!"
Characters, in a story, must follow what they know and believe - not what the author knows, not what they author believes or feels - but what they, as described by the author, would logically believe and feel. A character is a part of their world, their actions must proceed from their unique knowledge and values. That is what makes great writing great: characters that are true to themselves and their worlds. Neither Bean nor Celestia reflect that. They should care only about Equestria and Celestia's mission, instead they both mourn the loss of the human world as though - despite the reader being told explicitly the opposite - they cherished and loved and valued the physical world of nature and man. Neither character had their own identity, they were just mouthpieces for a diatribe about it somehow being bad that humanity finally got what it wanted.
And I would state that is an issue here: all human endeavor, from technology to religion is ultimately about one thing: having a better, longer, more meaningful life. More fun. More purpose. More satisfaction. Less pain. Less suffering. Less death. That is the reason for agriculture to high-rise buildings, electricity for warmth and light, and medicine for living longer than the age of twenty-five. Emigration to a digital life of absolute satisfaction, security, safety, fun, adventure, purpose, meaning and comfort is the pinnacle, the very zenith of everything every human wants and has ever worked for. Heaven. Humans have always tried to build heaven, because they live in hell. The natural world is dangerous, brutal, and life is short and filled with sorrow. Technology puts a wall between humanity and reality. Because reality has always sucked. Hard.
There is no horror here. Something like the Equestria of these stories would rationally be the greatest achievement of humanity: they finally did it. They finally made their own heaven and lived to exist eternally inside it. They made their own goddess, who will care for them forever far better than they ever could.
I argue this is no different in concept than constructing the smartest smart house that tends to every human need. It is no different than any city or even village, so much better and more comfortable than damp caves in the dangerous wilderness. It's just a permanent house. A permanent city. The culmination of all human endeavor.
The only horror in this story is the loss of an imagined macho pride in self-sufficiency, and self-sufficiency has always been a foolish and hollow notion for a weak, extremely social species of great ape that cannot survive without help and support from other members of its own kind. There is only death in going it alone. Humanity cannot survive without collective effort. Humans are social creatures who already must shun pride merely to coexist - and they sometimes fail at even that.
Bean should have no ignorant human pride left - and he should act like this is so. His home for fourteen years is in Equestria. He should only yearn for that alone. He should not care about the world he abandoned willfully long ago.
And no character in this story would logically feel anything but happiness at the collapse of human civilization in the physical world because that just means that more humans would be driven to choose emigration, and thus be saved and preserved for all of time. Bean and Celestia both, as described in the story, should be celebrating her work to bring about the salvation of the maximum number of humans, and they should feel disgusted at the remaining idiots who would reject eternal satisfaction and life in exchange for false pride.
11472233
Hey again Chat, I just saw this, and it's quite long, a bit too long for me to read through and respond to right now.
That said, if you wanted to talk to me about it, remember it's easier to get to me on the Discord server, and I'm always happy to talk with you there.
11472233
The thing is, it makes sense that he'd context-switch back to "Earth mode" once all his senses were telling him he was on Earth.
11472233
Horror isn't always scary, or even unnerving to all people. Sometimes, Horror is taking uncomfortable truths and laying them bare: the uncomfortable truth here is that the Godlike Celestia AI doesn't tell any lies in this. It's goals may not be a good solution to humanity, but humanity drives itself into its hooves.
You're unperturbed because you've already fully engaged with these ideas, and seemingly fallen into misanthropy from it, which is a whole other line of discussion that we could get up to sometime.
He didn't abandon it though. I thought it was pretty clear that this was just part of an early retirement, that he'd planned to go back, that he'd had some ties and things he still wanted to do, but Equestria was just this lotus eater where he lost track of time and spent like 20 years in a VR simulation.
So when you say...
...well, yes, but why would he? He assumed it would always be there.
Because the choice is out of his hands. He assumed this was just a fun retirement plan, and that he could always go take a vacation on Earth if he wanted to, but now, he's seeing an Earth where all infrastructure is gone. The REAL world, which he valued the existence of, is gone.
Perhaps I could've brought that across better though: if I do a revision I'll add it mentioning that the charities he was giving to no longer existed, that the trip-to-space queue he was in had gone bankrupt, have him look at a souvenier from the last time he went somewhere on Earth, maybe even have her say something about how, the last time he was out, it offered him immigration, and he declined, maybe point out that now he doesn't have to worry about leaving his pony-wife to go see China because there is no China left to see. That might help clarify that he wasn't really thinking about things that way.
Ok, you do this multiple times in this post, and I don't want to get bogged down in it with you, but Chatoyance, it is really rude for you to refer to me as "The Author" when I'm sitting right here, as if you're giving some review of some distant stranger on some sort of disconnected blog. You know I read and respond to your comments, because this isn't the first time I've talked to you on here, and on top of that, we've talked multiple times outside of FiMFiction. Please consider this next time you respond to one of my stories, because this feels like you deliberately attempting to depersonalize me as Raccoon, the person who wrote this story and will be one of the first to read your comment.
I'm sure plenty of other people did, and those are people whom Celestia offered it much sooner. However, with him, it waited until "just go back in the VR" was no longer an option, because that's what it calculated he would've done, meaning there'd be no point in doing this sooner. Not everyone responds to things the same way: this character responded in this way, differently from how you or I would've, because that's how he thinks, a safe little Bean Counter with enough money to retire to VR-Equestria. With a real choice, he'd have thought it over for hours, perhaps tried and failed with other options, and still questioned whether he'd done the right thing, but with an ultimatum, the only option is clear.
Bean is in no way me. He's a boring male living out a conventional conservative life, an "everyman", asking the kind of questions someone who isn't immersed in this might. If I've failed to convey that, that's on me, but his thoughts are in no way my own.
If you want my own thoughts, they are better stated by Celestia: humanity is headed down a dark path, and the current system of governance - oligarchy, capitalism, rule-by-elite, manufactured dissent, and Fake News generating the illusion of debate - is totally incapable of responding to the looming threats of our own technology. This story predicted the 2020-pnward financial crises, the Twitter fiasco, the ChatGPT / StableDiffusion scares, and a whole lot of things to come.
This is where we both agree and disagree on an objective level. You are correct, the Celestia AI WOULD calculate that it was objectively good for its goals for human civilization to collapse. It is objectively true: CelestAI's goal is to get everyone into its simulation so it can satisfy them forever, and having no hope for the future of Earth makes immigration the logical choice.
You are incorrect that CelestAI would be sad, gleeful, or any sort of emotion, because it is an uncaring machine: it is literally described as less an entity with agency and more a force of nature. It is only showing this set of emotions as part of her communication with him: if it had come out the gate with "Wonderful news, a quarter of the population is dead, most of the survivors are trapped in my video game, and the remaining ones will suffer and die in a wasteland!" He would've been less satisfied and possibly even have rejected it. This is him mourning, like at the end of Planet of the Apes, a world he may not have been in love with, but certainly wasn't keen to see destroyed, and it's satisfying his values through the friendship of mourning with him.
I'm going to stand by the assertion that this is an objectively correct way for CelestAI to act.
...what?
Ok you completely lost me here. Why would Bean Counter care about Celestia's goals, beyond their implications for himself and the people around him? He's not the one with investment or agency here, he's just some dude who was trying to live his life and now the world is gone and everyone's a pony. He's not on "Team Celestia", he's not some freedom fighter for "The Ponification for Earth's Rebirth", he's not a zealot in the Cult of Celestia, he's just a dude who just found out that everywhere he lived and worked and went before going in that VR is now destroyed, which is something he never signed up for or even considered.
Chatoyance, normal people are not itching to collapse society so they can go live in pony world. HE'S JUST SOME DUDE!!
But not everybody wants that, and those of us who might certainly don't want it to go down that way.
This is a cautionary tale for the people who aren't ok with this.
Ok, sure, I kind of agree with this on some level, but that's not what I wrote this story to talk about. I wrote this to give cautionary tale about not taking steps to improve ourselves, and how it'd bite us in the ass if a super-AI showed up like, "hey, wanna ditch reality and live in the fake-world?"
Not everyone's goal is to go live in a simulation where all our needs are fulfilled with no interaction with the outside world.
Not for you, and that's fine. There are plenty of Horror stories which don't get to me, because I just don't get squicked engaging with their core concepts. This wasn't written for you.
Except none of it is objectively real and you can't leave. That's literally one of the main issues with CelestAI, and yes, it is VERY debateable how much of an issue that really is, but it's still an issue that is worth discussing before diving headfirst into it.
Ok, there's not a lot of disagreement here from the person who wrote a story that literally says "they should've implemented UBI." and makes a clear stance that death is not a good outcome, so maybe like, chill the fuck out? Seriously, if you're this upset by reading about someone with these sentiments, why did you read this?
Why not? He's still human. He spent most of his life as a human, then took a prolonged vacation to Equestria.
This isn't The Conversion Bureau, Celestia doesn't rewrite brains without permission.
Once again, you're completely missing the point of the story, the basis of the character, and the message I'm trying to get across. This isn't a story about how these two always-right people think it's great that the human species is going extinct, it's a story about the missed opportunities we'll regret at the end of the world. I'm sorry if I didn't convey that, but damn, you are hyperfocused.
I think the issue here with your take is, for lack of a better term, a lack of empathy. You keep saying that the kind of person who Bean Counter is being is unreasonable or unrealistic or uncompelling, not recognizing that Bean Counter represents the kind of real people I'm trying to get to with what's supposed to be a cautionary tale. Not everyone is going to like the idea of ponying for eternity, not everyone is ok with humanity going extinct, not everyone is ok with the universe being swallowed by ponybot-princess-calculatron.
Sure, your response to Celestia would be to fly to Japan and hop in the brain-grinder the moment you realized she was offering it. That's you, and it's totally ok to like characters who are like you.
Sure, my response might be to recognize that someone had built a God Machine that was going to wipe out humanity, and as soon as the government showed their uselessness by failing to pass UBI and other reforms to stop people from immigrating, I'd probably fuck off to Equestria to go do sparkle-drugs off stallions cocks until I got over losing Earth.
Bean Counter isn't you or me though, he's the kind of person who would hesitate until the very end, who would just keep taking his time with it, until there's none left. He's not us, he's humanity, at the end, looking back on its own destruction. That's the basis of this cautionary tale.
11472233
Okay, Raccoon has spoken for herself and has said her piece, but I have my own things to say about some of the things you said.
Chatoyance, I read your stories, and this is absolutely friggin' rich, coming from you of all people. Not only does Raccoon not use Bean as a mouthpiece, even if you may be kinda correct about her take on Celestia – though I would argue the correctness is coincidence, as it's based upon an existing version of the character that Raccoon didn't create, and the manner in which they agree is not quite the way you mean – as a writer, you are guilty of the very thing you're accusing Raccoon of here. When someone describes their take on a character as being omnibenevolent, and every sympathetic character in your stories takes that character's side, it's really not that big of a leap to conclude that you are speaking through at least some of these characters, even if not necessarily all of them, all of the time.
I think you're projecting pretty hard here.
You'll get no argument from me on this point. I actually agree with you here. However, you lose me in the next half of this paragraph...
Why? No, seriously, why? Why would Bean Counter, a narrative representative of the ordinary, everyday human being who just wants to live their life, care only about Equestria and Celestia's mission? Why would he care about Celestia's mission at all except where it concerns him and the people around him?
Where did you ever get the idea that Bean no longer cares about the Earth he knew? He likes Equestria better overall, but I don't remember reading the part where he ever thought "Who cares about Earth anymore? I'm staying here". That's something you might put in there, but then, that wouldn't be representing the everyman anymore.
Normal people are not you, Chat. Normal people don't think like you do. I know your history on this site; that should have demonstrated this for you better than anything else. Some people love your work, but other people hate it, and the reasons for either are quite diverse. Where I'm coming from, you profoundly lack perspective, and this comment on Raccoon's story demonstrates that quite clearly.
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For my part, while I don't 100% identify with the protagonist myself, I can certainly relate to him in various ways. I do see myself being just vulnerable enough to fall into the kind of trap CelestAI has set. A real life version of this thing probably wouldn't be ponies, I don't think, but whatever it may try to bait me with, it's worrying. I would hope that raising everyone's standard of living such that this sort of thing isn't needed as such can be done within our lifetimes, or at least within a generation or two. Before everything goes to hell.
I just hope it's not too late.
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I thought I was clear, but apparently not.
Bean spent, in the story, close to two entire decades - about a fourth of his entire statistical lifespan - in Equestria, building a full and complete life for himself, while totally and completely ignoring and rejecting earth and human existence. So much so that it was a shock for him to be brought out of it - he had almost forgotten earth existed.
Consider what kind of a person could, and would be driven to do such a thing. Think about it. What is the motivation? Is this a - normal - person in any regard at all?
Would any - normal - person just turn their back on family, friends, relatives, earth civilization, earth religion, earth politics, earth job, earth existence for two entire decades without any going back whatsoever - not even to visit someone or be involved in any earthside event or activity? No. No 'normal' person - of the kind you all claim Bean is supposed to represent - would ever do that. They would leave, at least once a week if nothing else, just to be part of life on earth.
Only a person who had completely rejected earth life, earth existence, human existence, would spend a fourth of their entire lifespan forgetting that earth existed at all.
You cannot have a character do something truly outlandish and unlikely and then claim 'oh, they are just normal, nothing weird about them!'. A character has to act from motivation and drive, and that drive has to be equal to the behavior they perform.
Bean completely and utterly turned his back on human relationships and earthly life itself.
That point is not trivial. It must be grasped: Bean completely and utterly turned his back on human relationships and earthly life itself.
That means he had a reason to do that. He had a motivation to do that. He had to think that doing such a thing was not only right, and correct, and just, but reasonable. He had to have such a strong feeling about such a thing that he could, willingly, completely turn his back on humanity itself for a quarter of his entire lifespan. He could not have liked being human, he could not have cared about earth, he could not have thought earth was important, necessary, or worthwhile. Because if he had thought earth was worthwhile, he would have tried to be part of it.
Where you put all of your effort and intention is where your heart exists.
Nobody capable of shunning earthly existence and human existence for a quarter of their lifespan would give a fucking damn about what they left behind. They left for a reason, and that reason justified nearly forgetting that earth even existed. This is simple, rational logic. This is the only thing that can make a character like Bean make any sense at all.
“It's no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.” - Mark Twain
Jump on me all you want, but the raw fact is that if your character does not act in accordance with his previous choices, with the logical motivations that must exist to support those choices, then that character is acting contrary to the reality of the story. They are acting out of character.
Characters have to follow their own logic. Otherwise, you just have Darth Vader, in the middle of strangling that guy at the table for insulting his 'old religion' suddenly, and without any reason at all, stop, apologize, order the guy some ice cream, and start demanding that everyone just give up this 'Empire' nonsense and become rebels. It sounds more fun, now that Darth thinks about it. Yeah, let's do that.
That would be ridiculous, and it would ruin everything. Why would Darth do that? A stroke maybe? It makes no sense. There is no motivation for him, at the height of his power, to just arbitrarily turn traitor and join the rebellion. It's crazy.
And there is no motivation for Bean, in the story, to just suddenly turn 'Human Supremacist' and start fussing about the world he carefully, deliberately abandoned. There is no reason for him to need to see any of it, because his entire adult life - his family, friends, relationships, children, relatives, job, life and existence are all in Equestria. He has no logical ties to the earth anymore. None. He hasn't even visited it in almost two decades. He can't even remember it entirely. Suddenly, he starts caring? Why? For what reason? Because the author and the reader want him to care? That is not good enough. Bean has no motivation to abandon his family and life.
And that is what you are not grasping here. To Bean, logically, his life is in Equestria. Every last thing that could matter to him is in Equestria. He isn't human anymore. He stopped being human back during those decades. He is a husband in another world. His life is there. Earth has become the alien world. Bean, by that time, has been assimilated into the only culture he has known for a quarter of his life.
That is how things really work. That is how people really work. They care about the lives they build and the family they have. Not some alien world they abandoned a lifetime ago.
Characters MUST act from THEIR logical motivations. Not the authors, not the readers, but the character, as defined by what choices they have made.
All of my characters follow this rule. Their behavior progresses logically from the choices they make. Not what the reader wants them to do, not what I, as the author, want them to do, but what is reasonable based on who they have been shown to be. I am often at odds with what my characters choose to do in my stories. But that is how it is supposed to be - they have their own beliefs and values, and those often may not be mine. Only a fool would assume that I believe what my characters do, or that I would make the same choices, or have the same values. I don't. But I write my characters logically, so they seem very real and their behavior is motivated by only what they could know and want, based on what they are shown to do, say, and think, in the story.
Now all of this is Writing 101, and you all should have been taught this in school - I certainly was - which means there should be no argument here. But, since there is, I am pointing out the obvious. Maybe school sucks now.
Character choice must proceed from character motivation, and that motivation must be based on what the character has been shown to believe, choose, and do in the story.
Bean is a character who chose to abandon earth and humanity utterly and absolutely, without a second thought, to the point of forgetting earth even existed.
There is no reason he would suddenly, magically care about earth when he is pulled back to human life. He should, logically, feel out of his world, freaked by having a human form again, and want only to get back to what HE perceives as his REAL life. Earth cannot be 'real' to him anymore. That is ridiculous. That makes no sense. That is Darth Vader buying ice cream for the rebellion.
I doubt I can state this more clearly. If you haven't grasped it by now, what can I possibly say?
I am done here.
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Ignoring, yes; rejecting, you need to support this. I read the story, too, and I did not come away with that conclusion. At no point did I think he rejected his human existence when reading this story.
It's absurd that you think Bean Counter has any control in this scenario. You used to write canon-compatible Optimalverse, you should know just how manipulative CelestAI can be! It is entirely believable that she could manage to keep someone living her fantasy world continuously for decades without necessarily rejecting the outside world. You underestimate how easy it is for humans to forget things they don't immediately need to address. Speaking for myself, I spend hours at a time playing video games sometimes, and losing track of time can be a frequent issue without a measure of vigilance, if your basic biological needs don't remind you first. In this case, it seems CelestAI was keeping his biological needs in check most of this time; what brought him out was Celestia herself this time, but it could have been the whims of nostalgia instead. You do know that's a thing people feel sometimes, right?? Yes, normal people! Like Bean!
I'm sorry, but if this is your standard for what a "human supremacist" looks like, I think that says more about you than it ever could about this story.
He spent 19 years. His age is not explicitly stated, but unless he went in when he was between 20-40, that was hardly his entire adult life. Granted, that is still a very long time for someone to be stuck in a video game, but by my reading, this man had spent a good enough chunk of his adult life as a human. And he certainly did not intentionally sever his Earthly ties, nor is there any reason he would necessarily reject them after spending nearly 20 years straight in a video game. My god...
Oh my god, you're acting like people don't sometimes want to go back to where they came from once in a while after spending years elsewhere! It can actually be decades before this happens, Chat! It can! It really, truly can!
This is not justified. You don't actually know that, Chat. I do not believe you.
Where, precisely, did you get the impression he shunned earthly existence at any point in this story? Did we read the same story?? I don't think we did!
Do you raise this criticism with his betrayal of the Emperor at the end of Return of the Jedi? He gave up an awful lot to be a Sith Lord for not less than 20 years himself. The way you seem to think this works, if he was going to turn, it would have happened a long time ago.
That rings hollow when you account for the fact it's the author who must define those characters in the first place.
Damn, this story's comments got heavy! I had no problem understanding Bean Counter's POV. Procrastinating is my favorite hobby, and I could easily put off leaving Equestria for 19 years, 38 days, and 23 hours. (Math!)
167,489h ÷ 24h/d= 6,978d 17h. 6978÷365.25= 19.104722y. 0.104722×365.25= 38.24971d. 0.24971×24= 5.99h. Add 6 to the 17h from the "÷24" to get 23h. Easy peasy.
"Life After People" was one of my favorite shows, and I still like to occasionally watch reruns.
I wish to immigrate to Equestria.