An alien scientist is startled when Pinkie Pie stumbles across his ship in the woods near Ponyville. For him Pinkie is a problem: he's not allowed to make contact with intelligent natives.
Pinkie Pie is overjoyed when she stumbles across an alien spaceship in the woods near Ponyville. For her the alien is a new friend, to be given a Welcome to Ponyville party with all sorts of treats.
Of course, the alien is really alien- a methane-breather who can't leave his refrigerated ship. His biochemistry is very different from a pony's. Can Pinkie Pie find something he can eat that isn't poison? And can he keep other ponies from finding his hiding place and forcing him to leave before he's had his party?
Tied for second place in the Science Fiction Contest II. First draft released early as a Patreon exclusive, now posted here in edited form for everybody.
EDIT: Wow! Straight to the top of the Featured list! Thanks, everyone!
Part of the Remember Fort Libris print anthology, thanks to our Kickstarter supporters!
(hasn't read the story yet)
Pinkie Pie would be both the best, and worst, intergalactic diplomat in all of ponydom.
Interesting.
breathes methane o.o
Intresting. Id have thought there would be alot more silicones in methagenisis, given thats primarily what silicones are, a silicate backbone with methane groups instead of hydrogens. Oils, Elasotmers, rigid frameworks etc. Cant remember the boiling points of silane , it being 30 years since I last did this stuff at university.
Still, handy having Pinkie bypass a lot of temporal problems by getting the two most important books immediately and keeping Twilinanas out th way.
things is, with Fluttershy, are Constelation Beasts like the Ursa Major, just magical equivalents of cryogenic vaccuum based lifeforms, or such lifeforms that have used the magical fields to create enviromental matching encapsulations? Sort of like the bioforms have vastly higher tech than the aliens?
I was meaning to ask:
While reading the story on Patreon, but I'm so culturally out of it, I can't figure out what the title's referencing...
Mike
A new Kris Overstreet story, oh frabjous day!
11541506 "Me thane" is the joke, i. e. the personal pronoun "me". It's a pun.
If you're younger than forty, you probably won't get the "Me Tarzan You Jane" joke that my generation and our parents had, but that's as close to any reference as it gets.
Oh dear, poor Fluttershy is getting drafted into extraterrestrial negotiations.
11541506
Pretty sure it's an adjacent riff on "me Tarzan, she Jane". Not sure why, since that's not exactly a topical reference, but it's what comes to mind.
11541443
Honestly, much closer to the best. Her most valuable trait in context is extremely powerful intuition, which would dramatically smooth out any translation deficiencies, and maybe even sense malicious intent if any. It also allows the parties to save time, allowing to quickly and correctly decide on what information to provide.
It's going to be interesting if our visitor gets to see any real undisputable magic. Upon witnessing it I think the most likely reaction is concluding that he is in fact dealing with a "sufficiently advanced," species far beyond his own technologically that likes to use primitive tech in day to day life for cultural reasons. Given that ponies are capable of manipulating time itself and traveling the multiverse he wouldn't exactly be wrong.
Sounds like Tinat hasn't quite worked out word order or how "be" verbs properly function in Ponish just yet. Does lend for a nice Yoda-esqueness to the translation though, so for now I say own it, Tinat.
Pinkie, you bring Twilight into this, and it'll BE way more than just one pony whether you want it to or not.
Having bones made of ice is kind of neat. I bet you can heal broken bones really fast with some advanced heat therapy.
Well, Tinat, it's probably for the same reason Earth did--a day or a night is roughly equivalent to 12 hours apiece, and that was just caught on.
Incidentally, though, it wouldn't surprise me if there's a 24-hour clock system in use somewhere out there in Equestria.
Roughly the same, actually.
Sounds like the animal life are going to cause problems.
11541615
To be fair, I'm over forty myself and got the reference, but I can see why someone else might not have.
It took a moment of staring at the title to realize some folks might pronounce it "mee thane" rather than the "meh thane" the accents in my region favor.
Priceless.
11541718 The problem with that in Tinat's case is that the ice would be among the last of his body parts to melt.
But you still love 'em anyway, Twi, admit it.
Yeah, not something that'd exactly come up all that often, would it?
Okay, I get where you get the "Star Wagon" part Kris (so much so I'm surprised you didn't go all the way and just called it "Wagon Train to the Stars"--I would've), but I'm not sure where you got the "Uneven Balance" part, and as a long time fan of the franchise being parodied here, I must know the answer here!
Star Wars would probably be more her speed then. The reason why is right there in the name.
Pinkie's going to invent molecular gastronomy in the process of trying to make a methane-based cake or what have you.
11541878 "Uneven Balance" isn't a direct reference. I had in mind the episode "A Private Little War," but I couldn't think of any way to work that into (a) a pony-friendly turn of phrase that (b) fit in the "X and the Y" adventure book series title format.
11541883
I figured you probably had a specific episode/movie in mind behind it, I just had no way of narrowing it down to which one. "A Private Little War" makes perfect sense in retrospect though, given the context.
I wonder how Pinkie will feel about creating something that she absolutely positively cannot taste?
11541889 Bear in mind Pinkie grew up in a family that eats rocks.
Well, that settles that then.
You got that a little backwards, Tinat, but we'll just associate that with your general lack of sleep.
No, actually--already too attached to my vanilla ice cream, and I already knew where substitute vanilla flavoring is derived, so...not really so fazed by it anymore.
Anyway, I enjoyed this story, but I especially enjoyed Tinat and his species. Most "ponies meet aliens" fics just have them meet humans (as you yourself are no doubt aware
), which is fine, but its nice to see a story that has them meeting an alien that would be genuinely alien to us humans just as much as it would be to them, and it's what really makes this fic stand out from the others for me. 
I hope the ultimately positive encounter with the ponies helps urge the autrenkts to be a little less afraid of making first contact in the future. I get their reasons for caution, and Tinat's captain is right--one out of four doesn't exactly make a trend. But you can't exactly ever overcome that problem by staying forever afraid of it either. It actually made me think of a webcomic I've been following in which featured a space-faring species that, due to similar first few bad first contacts, was paranoid of making direct contact with any intelligent species not their own but as a result were missing out on a lot of the wonders of the universe (among possibly other things that have been implied but not yet revealed at the time of this comment) and I'd hate to see the autrenkts fall for the same trap. So hopefully Pinkie and co. at least proved to them there can, and likely will, be exceptions from time to time, enough to try and at least keep a more open mind to it.
When in doubt, booze your problems away.
Well this was a fun story, thanks for telling it!
This was a lovely little story, and I'm very glad Pinkie managed to have her party for the alien. Any chance we get to see a continuation of this?
...does this goo-boi eat feces? The description, plus proboscis, gives me fly vibes.
Yaaay I love your stories, and I love when you mix science and silliness! The concept of ice-world aliens is fascinating! And of course Pinkie would immediately establish contact. XD Honestly the only part of this I found a bit suspect was them having a translator for a race they just met, but that's also a staple of basically every scifi show ever, so it would be hypocritical to object to it now of all times. Can't wait to see where this goes!
That was DELIGHTFUL! Pinkie is the best First Contact pony. Also oh noooo poor Fluttershy is not ready for this XD;;;
This may truly be Pinkie's greatest challenge! But WE BELIEVE IN HER!!!
Oh noooo poor Pinkie! She tried so hard but Twilight is just too smart for her. I love that Twilight didn't even question her realization that it had to be aliens, because this is PINKIE. XD
Wonderful story overall, very flavourful and fun. Would love to so more of Tinat in the future.
OH NO HE GOT THE STARE XD
"I'm tired, I'm upset, and I very much want to get intoxicated right now." This poor guy I feel so sorry for him but also so proud of Pinkie's solution.
That was delightful! I love the idea that the aliens' first positive First Contact was with a "deathworld" XD Honestly it kind of makes sense that, if you got past the initial terror of each other, you'd be able to make peaceable relations with a race from a world so different from yours that there's basically NO risk of either world having any reason to invade the other. I enjoyed this immensely, great return to the main cast and a fun bit of science besides! Thanks for sharing!
Very fun story, and another step on trying to get round to doing the entire evolutionary sequence from simple atomes and molecules to self replicating dynamically stable structures and ecologies.
time to crank up the pressure and reduce the temperature and redo Millers brew for methanogenesis?
Oooooh, this is interesting already.
Well done!
Bravo! A wonderful story!
The ghost of Hal Clement approves. (I grew up on his stories. Love this.)
A reminder to the Chemically Challenged youth out there. Oxygen is a nasty monster in the universe. It combines explosively with the most common element (Hydrogen), binds to about everything in the periodic table, and is a generally greedy thing. Chlorine is probably the second-most terrifying element compared to it, while Silicon is more of a theoretical building block of life than practical.
Fair concern. The citizens of Ponyville panic when bunnies come into town.
Tinat from Titan, I presume?
With dihydrogen monoxide!
Fantastic story. Using an alien from a decidedly non-Terran environment was an inspired choice. And I love how despite being such a different kind of creature from such a wildly different environment to our own, you opted not to depict Tinat as some pseudo-eldritch blue-and-orange-morality-operating enigmatic being, and more just, well...a different kind of person. It's a very refreshing take on a sci-fi alien depiction, and fits in very nicely with the values Twilight and her friends hold to.
It's been a long time since I felt like I could call a Fimfic a "new favorite", but for the brilliance of the premise and the sheer fun had reading, I think I'm justified in calling this one.
Two thumbs way up. 👍👍
11542236 I haven't read many of his works, but Mission of Gravity occupies a spot of honor on my bookshelf.
(Well, one of my bookshelves. Please don't ask me to find it...)
11542249 Good catch. That "water" was added in edits.
11542241 Fluorine is much scarier than any of those, but is pretty much never found in pure molecular form. For obvious reasons.
That said, there's more than ten times as much oxygen in the universe as there is any of that other stuff.
Acetylene has positive enthalpy of formation (and also explosive)