Humor Practice · 12:45am Jan 27th, 2016
(I was never a particularly funny individual, so I thought I'd post a micro-fic to see if anyone gets a kick out of it.)
I didn’t honestly think of it at the time. I didn’t think of Sweetie Belle’s quizzical look. The little blush on her cheeks. You have to understand, she was a SMART KID! I’m not saying I didn’t share some of the blame in this case, but Sweetie has always been clever enough to know when something was wrong.
It had been a week since I passed out the assignments. Every student had their own subject to research, write about, and present. I had wanted something that would challenge everypony. Sweetie Belle had gotten bats for her fear of getting them in her mane. I had wanted her to face her fear and understand bats better.
She was up in front of the class when I first noticed signs of trouble.
“They’re noisy.”
Echolocation. Well done.
“They can be wrinkly.”
I nodded. Indeed, bats could be, particularly around their wings.
“They can be hairy.”
Certainly -- especially flying foxes.
“They come in all sorts of colors!”
Fruit bats, I assumed at the time. She had to be talking about the fruit bats.
“And they can be really, really smelly.”
The classroom laughed. I was struck… a bit dumb, actually.
...Okay, yes, I admit, I found that descriptor a bit odd. A list of the top adjectives for bats would have many words in it, but it wouldn’t necessarily include ‘smelly’. Then again, I suppose it wasn’t… impossible. Kids would be kids, of course, and kids use their senses to describe things.
It was at this point that things started to take a turn. Sweetie Belle produced a folder filled to the brim with photos, documents, and research notes.
Now, at first, I was excited. I was grateful to see that Sweetie had taken such a keen interest in bats. Honestly, I had believed she would be frightened of them, or find them gross and repulsive. One of a teacher’s jobs, of course, is to broaden her pupils’ horizons.
I had assumed I had accomplished that.
Oh… I broadened my pupil’s horizons that day, alright.
The moment I saw the picture of the first plot, I was confused. Then I saw the second one…
...and I was horrified.
I recognized Big Mac’s butt next. There, big, red, taut and in full color!
I honestly can’t tell you if I was aroused or terrified… or some combination of the two. The first one I had no business being in front of the foals. All I remember doing is screaming.
“SWEETIE BELLE! WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS?!”
Sweetie jumped, and the air in the classroom was littered with a blizzard of pictures of… of butts. Nothing but butts. Butts everywhere. Fluttershy’s butt. I recognized Vinyl Scratch’s and Lyra’s -- two of my drinking buddies -- even Rarity’s and -- to my horror -- Princess Twilight Sparkle’s. Oh, sure, we'll add Attack on the Principal to the laundry list of wrong!
The rest of the class was stark silent. One of the foals at the back of the class coughed.
“Y-you told me to research butts!” she squeaked, green eyes wide. “S-so I researched butts! You told me to do it!”
“WHAT?! NO! NO I DIDN’T! WHY WOULD I TELL YOU TO RESEARCH BUTTS?! I said bats! I told you I wanted you to research bats! Fruit bats! Vampire bats! Foxbats! Not… THIS! NOT BUTTS!”
Sweetie stared at me with as innocent a face as she’s ever had.
“Oh.”
I was going to scold her further -- and promptly force her to redo the assignment. It was about then that I heard a disgruntled mumbling mass of voices outside.
I trotted to the door of the schoolhouse and flung it open. A sea of ponies, a hundred in number if there was one, writhed outside, glaring angrily…
...right at me.
“There she is!”
“There’s the perverted teacher! She’s the one getting her students to take pictures of butts for her!”
“Eeyup!”
I felt my own butt hurting at that point and gulped. “U-uh oh…”
(So yeah, that's my attempt at "humor". If anyone laughed at it, post something like 'lol' in the comments section... or something. Hell, I dunno. What did I do that I could have done better?)
Yeah, I laughed, thoug of course being so short is feels kind of incomplete, too descriptive to be a joke but too short to be a fic. I would read (and I would like, I thing) something like this in a fic though, or at least, I like this kind of humor. For advice, I don't know, maybe try stay low with the descriptions and words, this looks more like a gag kind of humor, so try to play with the visual.
Also, I, really, really, recommend this blogpost:
https://www.fimfiction.net/blog/526541/if-you-punch-a-clown-in-the-face-it-will-probably-be-horrible-and-not-funny-at-all-you-monster
I found it amusing.
Make it a full story. It only needs to be 1k words.
That's how Red Meat happened. Super Trampoline convinced me to make a blog post (much like this one) into a story.