Fanfic / Hands

Hands (also found here) is a fic by Andrew Joshua Talon, better known for the fic Progress.

It uses the "Human in Equestria" concept, but makes it much funnier than the usual fare.

On July 1, 2020, the author announced the fic was canceled.

However, it has a reboot called The Stars Revolt!, which has a sequel called Short Hand.

See here for the OMORI fanfic.

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This fic has examples of:

• Action Survivor: Andrew is a normal guy but can be surprisingly dangerous if pushed, especially if he has his weapons on him. As the demon found out.
• Anti-Villain: Yes the Changelings invaded Earth and later Equestria, but their only goal is to survive. Chrysalis even states shortly before her Villainous Breakdown that she was trying to keep everypony alive.
• Armor-Piercing Question: Said to Chrysalis from Andrew, "Didn’t you think of just... Asking for help?"
• Audio Adaptation: Found here by multifanficaday.
• Awesome, but Impractical: The CMC produced three different bullets for their first gun. One shaped like the Apple family barn, one like Rainbow Dash, and one that was sort of bullet shaped. It's not hard to guess which one Andrew decided to use.
• Berserk Button:
  • Hurting Andrew for Twilight and Fluttershy, and vice versa.
  • Rarity takes the changeling attack ruining all her hard work on the wedding dresses very badly (unfortunately for the changelings).
  • Andrew attempts to use this to break Shining Armor out of his hypnosis. He does this by describing what him and Twilight, his younger sister, get up to. Cadence shyly informs him that it would take much more to get Shining to even blush.
• Big Brother Instinct: Shining Armor really doesn't like Andrew dating Twilight.
• Big "WHAT?!": Applejack and Rarity when Andrew reveals that he gave the CMC weapons as part of the Ponyville militia response to the changelings.
• Butt-Monkey: Andrew, sometimes as a result of his own doing, but mostly just due to bad luck.
• Calling Your Attacks: Rainbow Dash when trying to sneak attack Chrysalis. Andrew lampshades how this defeats the purpose of a sneak attack (which fails, naturally).
• Camp Gay: Andrew claims his brother is so stereotypically gay that "It was like someone walked out of Will & Grace for the sole purpose of annoying straight and gay men alike." He doesn't give any indication that he thinks less of his brother for it, though, and does claim that he misses him and the rest of his family.
• Cat Fight: Twilight and Fluttershy are implied to have had one while Andrew was accompanying Spike on the Dragon Migration.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: Twilight mostly, but Fluttershy can and has shown this as well.
• Cluster F-Bomb: Chrysalis' Villainous Breakdown involves her repeatedly shouting "bullshit".
• "Could Have Avoided This!" Plot: Andrew asks why the Changelings couldn't have just asked for help with feeding rather than invading.
• Christmas Episode: There's a two-parter where the CMC decide to cheer Andrew up over being away from his home and family for the holidays by putting on a play of the Nativity. Despite being really out there with some details, he still enjoys it.
• Crossover: With "Versus Equestria", another Humans in Equestria fic.
• Denser and Wackier: Initially billed as a 'slightly more realistic take on HIE' via Slice of Life, but progressively becomes more and more silly.
• Despair Event Horizon: When the Changeling invasion is thwarted and her race is apparently doomed, Chrysalis tells the heroes to go ahead and kill her.
• Distracted by the Sexy: When Twilight shows off her skill with the shape-changing spell on her friends, Andrew is notably tongue-tied.
• The Dreaded: Humans to dragons. Comes in handy when Andrew has to protect Spike from those teenage dragons bullies.
• Dr. Jerk: Nurse Redheart, towards Andrew at least. But that's mostly because he keeps ending up in the hospital so often.
• Everybody Hates Mathematics: Applejack's not really hurting for money at all, she's just incredibly bad at math. She thinks zeroes are bad and as Big Mac demonstrates, their account has plenty of zeroes.
• Exact Words:
  "Of course you won't just be going around in purple!" Rarity said with a laugh. "Why, just purple would be absurd!"
• Extended Disarming: In chapter 16., as Andrew is accompanying Twilight and the Mane 6 to Shining's wedding, they must pass through a security checkpoint at the Canterlot train station. Disarming and the removal of many objects, including multiple weapons, ensues.
• Failure Is the Only Option: The CMC have done and created amazing things under Andrew's tutelage. Still no cutie marks.
• Fluffy the Terrible: Andrew takes to calling the manticore chasing him all the time "Chewy".
• Full-Name Ultimatum: Twilight does this to Andrew whenever she's mad at him.
• Godzilla Threshold: Despite the seriousness of the situation, played for laughs — when warning Ponyville about the impending changeling invasion, Andrew says things are bad enough he's going to have to ask the CMC for help. Played a bit more seriously when we find out this means giving them guns. And MORTARS.
• Hammerspace: Pinkie Pie, naturally. Andrew tries to get an explanation a few times, but the inquiries just go over Pinkie's head.
• Heel–Face Turn: The changelings are offered a second chance after being defeated. They take it, and Chrysalis herself ends up living with Twilight and Andrew as a "Friendship Intern".
• Hidden Depths: Fluttershy is shown to be remarkably kinky at times.
• Horde of Alien Locusts: How the changelings are interpreted here. They invaded Earth at some point after Andrew ended up in Equestria, but humanity fought them off.
• How We Got Here: The royal wedding arc starts with a scene of Andrew and the Mane Six fighting through an army of invading changelings, before flashing back a couple of days. When the story catches up, Andrew helpfully points it out.
• Humans Are the Real Monsters: At least, according to the changelings. Though their opinion is somewhat justified by the fact that humanity not only fought them off but also destroyed their Hive. Andrew shoots this down by pointing out that the Changelings did try to take over his species using mind control and were planning on draining all their love energy.
• Humans Are Warriors: We managed to fight off , and eventually destroyed, the Changeling Hive, despite their having infiltrated us beforehand to try to make us less violent and more able to be conquered.
• I Take Offense to That Last One: Twilight calls Andrew an "Indecisive Cowardly Jerk."
  Andrew: Indecisive?!?
  • Lampshaded by Spike.
• In Spite of a Nail: Despite Andrew's presence, several storylines have the same endings: Twilight completing the Time Loop, Fluttershy standing up to Iron Will, the Changelings being defeated... but the smaller details are often different. For example, Twilight's warning to her past self was a warning not to get worked up over... certain romantic problems, and the Changelings, while defeated once Shining Armor and Cadence work together, are redeemed... somewhat...
• Intergenerational Friendship: Andrew and the CMC.
• Interspecies Romance: Andrew and Twilight. Eventually Fluttershy gets in on it.
• Least Rhymable Word: Andrew tries this on Zecora with the word "orange". She is amused by the attempt.
• Love Triangle: Twilight/Andrew/Fluttershy.
• Megaton Punch: Applejack accidentally kicks Andrew through a wall, breaking his jaw, when Granny Smith tries to help Andrew massage Applejack's stiff leg muscle. She surprised Applejack by pressing Andrew's hand onto Applejack's lower flank.
• Noodle Incident: According to Andrew, the CMC once tried to build a spaceship. He doesn't elaborate, saying he doesn't think he can without descending into cursing.
• Orion Drive: The human space warship Enterprise (yes, this is lampshaded in the text) uses one.
• Pirate: One omake has Discord setting up a pirate simulation for Pipsqueak and Luna. Things quickly get out of "hand".
• Polyamory: Eventually, Twilight, Andrew and Fluttershy reluctantly decide to live in a threesome. And then Chrysalis gets in on it, sorta.
• Rage Breaking Point: Having been teleported to the Everfree by Chrysalis, aware of the impending invasion and that his friends and girlfriends may be dead, and having spent a whole night being chased by the manticore obsessed with him, Andrew finally snaps, stands up to said manticore, screams in its face, and threatens to rip out and eat its eyes if it doesn't help him. Either impressed or scared, it agrees.
• Remember When You Blew Up a Sun?:
  • The Mane Six like to keep bringing up all of Andrew's adventures, whether he wants to talk about them or not.
  • When Chrysalis threatens the group, Rarity points out that they've beaten Discord and Nightmare Moon, and that she's "small change" compared to that.
• Romantic Comedy: Andrew's relationship's with Twilight and Fluttershy and the situations this brings.
• Running Gag: Almost every mare flirting with Andrew. Lampshaded by Pinkie.
• Self-Deprecation: According to the author, the story was meant to be a satire of Human In Equestria fics. "Where did I go right?"
• Ship Tease: Applejack and Royal Guard member Galland.
• Shout-Out: All the time, though no one ever gets Andrew's references.
  • The two people onboard the Enterprise whose iPhone Andrew and Twilight discover are named after the main characters from Dead Space.
  • Funnily enough, he does reference Farscape, a sci-fi show where the protagonist was similarly in a fish-out-of-water situation and made frequent pop-culture jokes that none of the locals ever got.
  • "If I'm crashing, I'm doing it quoting Firefly."
  • The character's name is "Andrew Shepard."
  • He calls the entrance to Tartarus a Hellmouth.
    • The succubus that tries to seduce Andrew is said to look like "A pony version of Morrigan from Darkstalkers."
  • Andrew makes reference to Doctor Who several times, including comparing one of Rarity's outfits to something the Eighth Doctor might have worn, and saying that in a Paradox situation, one of the possible consequences is "Time Bats," which actually did happen once. Just after he says that, Twilight says that one theory of Time is that it's a Timey-Wimey Ball, using the words of the Trope Namer.
    • Pinkie compares her (humanized) body to "A Big Bouncy Castle," which is what Cassandra compared Rose's body to.
  • In chapter nine, he explains the plot of The Magic Goes Away by Larry Niven to some of his friends.
  • While trying to talk to Fluttershy (who is having none of it, by the way), he takes himself hostage.
  • When Spike is reorganizing the library to tease Twilight, two of the books are Equestrian Gods and Sandmare.
  • When observing the dragons, he compares himself to Jane Goodall and Daniel Jackson.
  • His dragon name is Smaug.
  • The name of the humans' primary starship is the Enterprise.
    • After the war, more ships are made: Falcon, Neil Armstrong, Normandy, Columbia, and Galactica. It's mentioned that other nations have other ships, but these are the only ones mentioned.
  • The battle between the Enterprise and the Hive is based off the climax of Footfall.
  • He nicknames the manticore that chases him around "Chewy", a shout-out to Star Wars.
  • Andrew compares Nurse Redheart to Nurse Rached. The two of them also discuss literature, leading to Andrew bringing up The Catcher in the Rye... and how bad it is, describing the protagonist as a "whiny bitch".
• Speaks Fluent Animal: After confronting and finally standing up to the manticore, Andrew suddenly finds himself capable of understanding it. He doesn't know why.
• Spit Take: Twilight has one with enough force to knock Andrew over when Chrysalis asks them to make out.
• Steampunk: Among the various reinforcements at the climax of the changeling invasion is a "steampunk version of a Stryker armored vehicle, complete with whistles and guns", with the main gun being manned by the Ponyville blacksmith. Andrew later amends his description, pointing out that the gas engine detracts from the steampunk style.
• Sword and Gun: Spike is briefly shown armed this way when he shows up with The Cavalry to fight off the changelings.
• The Tease:
  • The rest of the Mane Six tend to fake flirt with Andrew just to mess with his head.
  • Chrysalis is this by definition. Especially once she moves in with Andrew and Twilight.
• Tempting Fate: Andrew is savvy to this trope, and tries to avoid it. When he does slip up, however, he tries to reassure himself by saying that if it's written down or thought rather than said out loud, it doesn't count.
• There Was a Door: Cadence makes a comment to this effect when the cavalry smashes through a wall.
• Villainous Breakdown: Chrysalis, upon Shining Armor breaking free of her control.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: Twilight creates a spell that transforms ponies into humans. She refines it over the course of the story, going from merely being anthropomorphized ponies to being practically indistinguishable from real humans, barring wings or horns depending on what race they were prior, of course. Twilight eventually learns to perform the reverse on Andrew.
• Wall of Weapons: Andrew has a chest full of guns and at least one flamethrower. All made by the Cutie Mark Crusaders.
• We Can Rule Together: Chrysalis offers Andrew to serve her and help take over Equestria. He naturally refuses, and she just as naturally doesn't take it well.
• Weirdness Censor: After a while, Andrew stops letting the weird, crazy stuff that happens to him get to him.
• Wham Line: A militarized Dream Chaser spacecraft makes a one-way trip to Equestria, its pilot mortally wounded, shortly before the changeling attack. It's mentioned to have traces of "some unusual isotopes" clinging to the hull plating. "We were only able to replicate them by induced nuclear fusion and fission in some alchemic experiments..."
• Worthy Opponent: According to Fluttershy, this is why that manticore keeps chasing Andrew. He's less than flattered.
• You Are Worth Hell: When Andrew goes to Tarturus looking for Twilight.
• You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: Andrew says this almost word-for-word when, fleeing from the manticore in the Everfree, he finds an opening back to Ponyville... only to find himself on top of a large cliff.

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