Make up some rumors about humans. · 7:38pm Jul 15th, 2014
Okay, you’re a human for this one. And the shit you’ve heard on the grapevine, woo!
Looks like the Ponyville locals got wind of your existence, but a metric fuck ton of the details got distorted before the town eventually settled on some bizzar fable about what humans are.
The shit that they believe. Jesus. They've spread rumors about us.
BUT! These rumors should not be disregarded as fears of an imaginative public unprivy to the details of our contact with ponykind, but as cautionary tales that can cast light on the social dynamics of Ponyville.
I want to hear what kinds of rumors/fables you’d think the ponies of Ponyville would make up about humans. Ones that paint humans as story book characters (bit part characters, not main characters) that have some role in teaching a lesson. Cautionary tales.
Does one fable basically dramatize the threat of unorthodox stallions corrupting the minds of naive young mares and innocent fillies? And that the lesson of the tale is that “a proper mare should seek companionship through the right channels, employing the matchmaker’s services”?
Just make up some bullshit. I get off on that kind of crap.
Well, one good rumor could be about how we don't have magic. Perhaps the divines felt that giving humans the power of magic would be catastrophic and thus created us without that ability, forcing us to learn and understand. If we wanted power, we had to attain it by ourselves, which in turn would temper our curiosity with wisdom and respect for things that are dangerous.
Or you go just go with the rumor that we're over-sexed monkeys. There's that too.
That Humans have high endurance.
Or more like, heat doesn't affect them as badly as it does ponies. What with our ability to sweat and effectivley bleed our heat off.
2288259 Hmmm... so either The Divines knew that we'd probably be destructive, but they created us anyway, or we were once Very destructive beings who once had magic and our magic was taken.
If the ponies believe the first one, then they must on some level know that peace isn't the ultimate goal that the Divines want for each species. Survivability, yes, but not kumbayah rainbows and hand holding.
2288276 So if we have high endurance, particularly endurance to heat, what does that say about us? We've seen Tartarus in the show, which is dry but doesn't necessarily look hot... so we're not creatures from Tartarus.
Dose our high endurance say anything about us? About what we do, about where we live, about how we think, about how we treat ponies?
2288320
We're tenacious. Most animals can go very fast, but only for short periods of time. We might not be as fast, but we can outlast them. We never give when hunting or fighting. When the ponies are tired, we can still keep going. LONG after they've stopped.
2288320
Maybe from the Zebralands.
2288330 You'd think with our willingness to push our physical bodies through hell and back, that we'd let our minds suffer. That we'd never think of using tools.
But we did. We bashed rocks together, one thing led to another, and now we have space ships.
2288380
True, we can push our bodies farther than most animals, but that doesn't mean that life was easy. We still couldn't kill animals with our bare hands or break trees for fire wood by kicking them. Even we have our physical limitations. And when we have limitations, we gotta think around them.
2288365 Hmmm... black and white bio suits. Yeah, I can see them making that association. Given how the townsfolk of Ponyville knew so little about zebras that they thought she was more of a monster than a person from another country, I can't imagine them thinking that we'd have some idea of government and we'd have culture.
They'd probably think we were monsters or wish granting golems or something, not truly reasonable beings.
- Humans are so completely hairless they actually shine, but will attack you if you ever see your reflection in one.
- Humans are all some hue and shade of earth tones, the better to spring at you unannounced from the dust or soil, so keep your surroundings clean!
- Humans wear clothes all the time because they treat their entire lives like a special occasion. You could learn a thing or two from that instead of loafing about eating grass, young'in.
- Because they have claws to pick everything up, humans are very distrustful of what they put in their mouths. They'll only eat live prey, because nothing has poisoned it yet, either. So play dead if you don't want a hungry human to eat you.
- With their soft feet, humans are very sneaky and slink around everywhere like a mischievous foal. Be grateful for our nice cobblestone streets and wooden floors, so you can hear the reassuring sound of your friends' hooves, and be proud of your own—A good sound means a healthy hoof. Talk to your local farrier if you feel they're too soft or you're experiencing excessive wear.
- Humans have magical glowing obelisks they keep on them at all times, that allow them to use their clairvoyance powers and that whisper secrets to them. If you attempt to steal one you will be attacked, but if you find a lost one, the human will grant you a wish upon its return. Hooves don't work on them but you can use your nose, though they say the whispers are mainly about what different ponies you know taste like or will make you go crazy, so maybe you don't want to.
- While they're lighter and physically weaker than most ponies, human claws are sticky and cannot be pried off by a hoof—They will only let go when they want to and even biting their claw won't always work. They are also very difficult to tire. Cloud Garden claims she got only half a mile from Rainbow Falls with one clinging to her back leg before she had to land and the human was still wrestling her and she only got away by chewing through the rope when the human's back was turned as it listened to whispers from its little amulet about how to cook her, but then she also says her fat dad is an ex-Wonderbolt, so...
Gag rumor: If you hit a human with a willow branch s/he turns back into five monkeys.
2288437
Those are pretty damn good!
2288437 Okay, now THIS is what I was originally asking for! Rumors that turn us into creatures of myth, or turn us into mustache twirling cackling witches.
I can see this having less to do with discouraging slobbishness and more to do with making sure ponies stay on top of being stewards of the world. They've domesticated the entire world, down to the weather and making the leaves fall from the trees. That's a lot of hassle and it would be soooo tempting to be lazy, and just let nature take care of itself. This particular cautionary tale you've got going is so sexy in how short, sweet, and manipulative it is. God this is sexy.
This is my second favorite one, although I'm not sure why.
I especially love your inclusion and description the the glowing obelisk (iPad, phone). In a true encounter with humans, however brief it may be, the obelisk would stand out. It's got to, it's a glowing thing that the human is all too willing to consult every few seconds. Especially if the machine is playing sound, it'll sound like incomprehensible whispers at a distance.
I can also easily imagine that a human, who spots a pony, pulls out his phone and starts recording/ blogging his encounter. From the pony's perspective, the human is moving its gaze back and forth from the obelisk to the pony, consulting it. With our small intense predatory eyes.
2288482 How would an initial encounter play out anyway? And how would they describe us afterward if they didn't get a good look at us.
You know, I think we'd be described as giant bipedal maggots if they saw us in space suits (white, kinda shiny body, big black head), so I think they'd merge our tale with concepts like death and decay.
2288690
True, our space suits do look a little like that. If this is a first contact situation, chances are, they might think it is was a hoax. If you saw an alien, you'd probably think "This ain't real. It can't be"
They might not even react. But if they did know we're aliens, they would almost certainly panic. That's kinda their thing. The few that DO approach are probably the ones who will spread the rumors in the first place.
2288704 I wonder who the contactees would be, 'cause that would certainly influence the ways in which the tales are initially woven.
Foals would probably spin tales about us being huge mindless eating, chasing, and killing machines. Although, I can easily see how an adult would come to that conclusion too. "To Twilight’s side, Lyra made the mistake of trying to run. It was that movement that made the creature want her. These bipeds were by nature predators- she had seen them eat meat personally. Being cooped up on a tiny ship with nothing to hunt did nothing to remove there primal instinct to lunge at a moving target, if anything, evidence suggested it enhanced their urge. Twi saw the creature’s gaze shift to focus squarely on her colleague."
Ponies who are striving to feel special might mentally put humans on a pedestal and then hope "they get chosen" by us. Especially if word of our wondrous technology gets out, or if we somehow don't get labelled as bloodthirsty animals.
2288752
Our ability to kill would awe them. To them, we have the power to kill from a mile away, with a mere flash of light and roar of thunder.(I mean, of course...guns.)
2288757 Depictions of humans would probably look nothing like humans. Ponies might put humans into the same category as chimeras. For instance, we might be shown having lightning shooting out of our hands (a representation of the thunderous sound of a gun being fired). If we're described as being "strong like an ox," drawings of us might make us minotaurs or something.
2288768
That's very plausible. Without seeing something for yourself, your idea of what something looks like can be very skewed.
For example, about a hundred years ago, some people thought that sharks had their mouths on the side of their face. Some even thought they were poisonous!
Just goes to show how second hand accounts can alter details down the line.
2288482
Thanks!
2288554
Glad you like! You're right, this kinda stuff is a blast to come up with. I'm cribbing details from the same mental image of the late 21st/early 22nd Century stranded astronauts I wrote in your other post, of course.
Hahaha, thanks. Along these same lines, given that ponies don't interact much with and probably don't know much about "regular" nature, they might believe in some version of spontaneous generation. Since humans are vertically oriented and have limbs that bend and stretch out, there might be a (very fringe) superstition about proper tree buttressing and pruning, i.e. that humans, being a similar range of colors to tree bark, are almost a kind of dryad (or timberwolf), the result of letting your trees get too anthropomorphically misshapen (hence why they seem to originate from the Everfree, too). This would also explain why they only have hair on the top—It's all the condensed leaves.
Say, I was actually going over my bookshelf just now when I found this
:
2288777 Dolphins were depicted as having dog's heads because on a captured (dead) dolphin, the meat would rot away, leaving what looked like a dog's skull.
Imagine if they ran off with an article of clothing, but they couldn't quite figure out how it laid on a human. They might depict us like creatures from The Thing.
2288792
"The Thing"?
Great, now we're back to head-crabs!
2288787 Where on Earth did you find that story? I must know... I don't know how you manage to find this stuff on FimFiction. Is there a "first contact" or "anthropology" tag I don't know how to use?
2288831
Haha, whoops, that was supposed to be a joke, about it being a fake excerpt from a book on humans I somehow owned. I just made it up now, in the back of the Alliance Bakery lounge (where I technically came to work on my own story).
2288832
Damn it, I love a good field-study sounding excerpt. Jesus, that was well written and sexy. It’s people like you who make people like happy to own and operate an illegal underground sex dungeon.
You know, I'm gonna check out the two stories that you've written. I didn't even knew you wrote before today. Clearly I should have been paying better attention, because Dayamn!
2288845
Well thanks, I'm always honored when someone likes something I wrote, especially since to be honest I'm much more of an artist than a writer, and actual storytelling isn't something I've mastered by any stretch of the imagination, though I hope what I've produced so far is still at least dungeon-worthy.
2288993 In all seriousness, I might just
stealborrow Flitter's and Cloudchaser's rumor. Same with Rainbow Dash's.2289254
Go for it.
2289254 What if communication happened but was misunderstood, Like they ask about who controls our world. We say we dont understand. We explain how our world works. Suddenly Cults worshipping the Eldar Gods from the beyond the sky using magic without magic. The stories of a world without magic and hramony leads to us being viewed as beings on par with discord but the other end of chaos. Or that we serve a being so powerful he holds reality together (misunderstanding God), and we have no need for magic because this being handles it all. (might be easier for them to grasp then no magic at all)