Zephyr's Job Interview (Part 2) · 5:48pm Jun 10th, 2016
Now that I've gotten the more emotional bits out of the way, here's a little more background about the story.
Originally it was going to be something closer to Cupcakes, with Fluttershy losing her temper with her brother, drugging him, and then 'making something useful' out of him. Though it's a classic plot line, it didn't have the same emotional impact. for one, I really wanted a scene where not just Fluttershy, but Zephyr's mom and dad tell him how they felt about it. While you could do that in that kind of story line, if any of them had the ability to back out or stop what was happening, it would be hard to believe that those three timid ponies would stick with Zephyr's torment all the way to the grizzly end. Besides, I was already pretty sure that I wanted to incorporate The Knackerman into the story somehow, so it made more sense for the Shy family to be 'tricked' into thinking this was the best thing for Zephyr, and then to have the actual process taken out of their control once that decision had been made,
As for the Knackeryard itself, no I am very sure that it doesn't reflect the lay out of any real knacker works. For one thing, I'm fairly certain that they don't process all of the harvested materials under one roof. Knackeries tend to be more concerned with the active skinning and dismemberment of animal carcasses, and the various harvested materials actual go into a wide range of products, not just the three I picked to highlight. Or, sometimes, they just go to the incinerator... It really depends if the operation is geared more towards simple disposal or reclamation.
My Knackeryard is actually based around several different factories I've worked in rather than the actual processing plants that they're described as. The open vats and casual use of high heat furnaces are definitely something I've seen first hand. In my case those vats could contain anything from boiling acid to liquid cyanide... (the manufacturing world is rarely safe and it isn't often pleasant smelling.) The huge walk in freezer where the pet food was processed was actually more of an homage to time I spent in deep freezers, both in my time as a Butcher and in the manufacturing environment. Truth be told, you likely wouldn't want to process meat in subfreezing temperatures as frozen flesh is much harder to cut, but I figured so long as the meat was in a constant process of being heated and chopped, it would really only be the cast off and spillage that would have a chance to freeze.
The part of the Knackeryard I've had the most first hand experience with would be the description of the catwalks and leaking pipes above it all. It's amazing how neglected the out of the way innards of a facility can get, even when they are a vital part of processing. Moving along rusty catwalks and ladders, passed leaking pipes that are transferring steaming hot liquids isn't an errand for the faint of heart or those who aren't up to date on their tetanus shots. The 'Disassembly line' is a pure work of fantasy, based only loosely around the inner workings of modern slaughterhouses.
While the pneumatic or 'air' hammer is a device used to render an animal brain dead, it's not as messy as I made it out to be, and usually an animal is hung upside down and drained of all their blood before any further processing occurs. These are steps most Knackers can skip, because the majority of the animals they process are already dead. A step that's left out of the process is that there are actually several stations focused on cleaning the animal carcass, rending it as close to sterile as possible, to keep any contamination out of the meat. While it would have been sort of funny for Zephyr to have had to stand there and be scrubbed down, I felt like it would've been too much of a break in the action to include. This is a horror story after all, not an animal husbandry documentary. The automated skinning and butchery machines are not something that exist, or at least not in that form, and are intended as kind of a bizarre almost sci-fi element to the story. The Knacker clans 'traditional' way of handling Zephyr's carcass is still sensationalized but probably much closer to how it's actually done... well, minus the Chainsaws anyways.
Something I wanted the story to imply was that Fluttershy had actually had several dealings with the Knack family previously. This isn't to imply that she is familiar with their sadistic nature, or that she was even aware of what all went into the process before she was offered the chance to see her brother off. I just thought it would be funny if the Knackeryard was where she had to go to get pet food that had actual meat in it for her more carnivorous pets... as well as being the place you took your pets to when they were at the end of their life, or injured, and needed to be put down. The Knackeryard isn't meant to be a happy place, but a vital place all the same, and one where ponies don't actually want to know what goes on inside, but are happy to buy and use all of the products that they produce.
Having Fluttershy break down during the epilogue, I just wanted to show that she regretted what had happened, and she had managed to put tow and two together and realized just what happened to her brother after the Knackers finally put him out of his misery. Originally she was going to go nuts, put the pet food bag on her head as a rough mask, and start killing her friends... but that seemed a little too far and unlikely, even for a horror twist. It's better for her to simply feel miserable and slightly unhinged but unable to tell anyone why.
Well that explains how you managed to be so detailed in the factory's description.