"Breaking Peeved" explanations · 3:31am Jun 12th, 2016
A lot of readers left comments saying they didn't know what was going on in "Breaking Peeved". Here's a complete spoilerific explanation of what I had in mind, followed by writing issues. I've used spoiler tags only to conceal the ending, because otherwise they make it too hard to read.
What was going on:
The name is a reference to Breaking Bad, a TV show about Walter White, an innocuous chemistry teacher who becomes a horrible crystal meth kingpin. It's one of the best-written shows that's been on TV, and I recommend it highly, though I'm only into the 3rd season of it so far.
In the first scene, Fluttershy's friends don't want her to know that Angel is a criminal kingpin, because he supplies each of them with something they want. That determined that the rest of the story would show the illegal activities of each of the other Mane 6, and then wrap the story up somehow.
Pinkie puts addictive stimulants in her baked goods, either cocaine or amphetamines, which both suit Pinkie. Apparently cocaine is absorbed more efficiently if you eat it than if you snort it, but much more slowly, so there's no sudden peak high. She says “Welcome to Sugarcube Corner, where the first one’s always free!” at the end because of the trope saying that dealers of addictive drugs give out the first sample for free. (I doubt this trope is true.)
The bag "looks just like the ones my duck feed comes in" because it is a bag her duck feed came in. Pinkie says "That's the point!", meaning she hopes anyone who sees it will assume it's duck feed. (This is problematic, as one would not like to see sacks of duck feed in Sugarcube Corner.)
There are clues in both of the scenes with ferrets that Fluttershy has trained them to act that way to fool others into thinking the ferrets understand what they're doing.
Fluttershy had to count her money after getting home, because if she were really puzzled about why she still had money, she surely would have counted it, so not counting it would have given away the ending. But there was a lot of it, hidden in an odd place, and she wasn't surprised by how much there was, making her action compatible with the ending. The first version had her money in a glass jar, but then Leonzilla convinced me the scene was too misleading, so I changed it to be more money, because she ought to have more money if she's making lots & isn't spending lots. Then I had to change it not to be a glass jar on a high shelf, because it would weigh hundreds of pounds.
Rainbow supplies the Wonderbolts with performance-enhancing drugs, including at least some that can be taken shortly before a competition. (Leonzilla suggested she was also fixing the race with Angel Bunny, which was a good idea that I didn't think of, but that would require Dash to have talked with Angel, which she couldn't.)
Dash can be alone with Angel because Dash is the only pony who could be alone with Angel and not figure out that Angel couldn't talk. Now I wish I'd had Dash be afraid to be alone with Angel.
Rarity wants prostitutes and maybe drugs to entertain high-society ponies who can fund her business expansion.
Twilight, who treats Spike like a slave and is part of a conspiracy-theory group that thinks there's a big cover-up of the laws of physics, wants magic-enhancing drugs. She might be overdosing on them because, in typical Twilight fashion, she always panics and thinks she needs more. Or Fluttershy might have given her drugs that made her sick, because she knew before giving them that Twilight was supposed to help Celestia with something. (Spike 
is clueless about the drugs.)
Applejack is part of an ultra-right-wing earth pony militia and buys weapons for them.
Celestia is either working with or for Cadence, or (my thought) is the big Equestrian crime boss of them all, and takes Angel away for trying to push into Cadence's meth territory again.
At the end, we find out the animals can't really talk--Fluttershy pretended they could in order set up Angel, who's just a bunny, to take the inevitable fall for her.
Story stuff:
Friendship is Witchcraft was a big influence, as Sypher noticed.
I used a third-person exterior point of view (POV), meaning not showing any character's thoughts, because I had to avoid revealing Fluttershy's thoughts.
The last paragraphs shift into some genuine sadness for Fluttershy. She is all alone again. I think this gives the last line an extra gut-twist, but it also gets at stuff I had not thought out clearly, but which DustTraveller articulated and went beyond in this comment.
That's why Fluttershy keeps offering ponies tea, and they keep turning her down. That was to show that they were using her, not seeing her as a friend, even though they would have if she hadn't been so useful to them. (I wish now I'd had her offer Spike tea, and had them drink.)
Another slightly serious subtext was Applejack's militia. She gives a theoretical justification for it which sounds noble, yet in practice the group attracts mostly racists and hypocrites, and turns to mass violence. This mirrors my own despair at how every noble cause breaks down or gets hijacked when you try to put it into practice.
I don't think this is a great story, but contrast it with the usual treatment of this idea on fimfiction, which would be for the description or picture to suggest that Fluttershy was dealing drugs, and then have 2000 words which end with "ha-hah, Fluttershy deals drugs" or "ha-hah, I fooled you into thinking Fluttershy was dealing drugs when she was really doing X."
- Instead of introducing "Fluttershy deals drugs" as the punchline, or introducing it at the start and taking it away as the punchline, I took it as the starting point, and lampshaded that the story was a mystery about whether or not Fluttershy dealt drugs. The ending didn't pretend to come out of the blue. Every scene was designed to suggest one resolution, yet also, in retrospect, to necessarily play out the same way under the opposite resolution. TL;DR: The hook should not be the story.
- The story had a lot of other jokes along the way to the ending. This is important. Don't ever think one joke at the end is big enough to ask the reader to read a thousand words for.
Trivia:
I began the story as a cynical attempt to get into the featured box by combining a reference to the latest episode with Flutter-dealer click-bait. 
That's why I wrote it quickly and without pre-readers.
It worked.
PresentPerfect came up with the name.
The very first scene I started writing was Derpy delivering a ridiculous amount of cold medicine, & Fluttershy explaining to Dash that there were dozens of bunnies deep underground who never came up to the surface because they always had colds. Then I switched to using Scrivener, started again from scratch, and forgot to incorporate that part. 
(Had Derpy appeared, she would have been sweet and innocent. 
)
I wrote 3 of the 7 scenes still thinking the story would end with Angel being the drug dealer. It didn't occur to me until then that I could make the end stronger by changing that. Then I had to rewrite 2 of those scenes, changing the events and the POV. So this is an example where writing the story starting with the ending would have been less work. That's to be expected, since it was a story relying more on how it would end than on character realism.
Some of my favorite jokes are things nobody else has mentioned as funny:
- when Fluttershy says Angel was speaking via pheromones
- when Dash explains away her bag of stuff by saying the trading cards are life-sized
- when Rarity unknowingly points out that pony names sound like stripper names
- when Applejack talks about Angel's other associates as "dangerous ponies" while loading weapons of mass destruction onto her wagon
- when Applejack is trying to cling to her ideological justifications for her political movement in the face of the evidence that it mostly appeals to ponies motivated by racism and greed
But the tea was just tea, right?
Edit: Also, I dropped my Kindle laughing at life sized trading cards the first time through, and it's funnier knowing the end.
4016693 Yes. I didn't write Spike having tea with her because I meant for Spike to say yes, and Fluttershy to reveal that she didn't even have any tea, she just asked to see if anyone would say yes. But then I thought that would have given too much away too soon, and interfered with the mood.
4016693 The tea is never just tea.
4016711
4016712
Either all of it, or none of it, makes sense now.
What? If some reader and not smart enough to get it. Buck them.
The pheromones bit was where it went from good to great.
So it's the 2016 version of "Dark Demon King Ravenblood Nightblade, Interior Design Alicorn"?
Huh, apparently I didn't track this.
That's weird.
If you hear someone gibbering about "muh free market" and don't immediately identify them as a hypocrite or guided by hypocrites, the problem lies with you. The market is the origin of regulation (weights and measures, bread riots, medieval armies, the Code of Hammurabi, etc), a "free market" is an oxymoron. There is nothing noble at any instant on AJ's trajectory.
4016986
How is the problem identified?
How is the problem fixed?
Is the target "you" usually disciplined enough to apply the fix independently?
I've never watched Breaking Bad but I did enjoy the story.
4017084
By someone using the nonsense phrase "free market," which is the semiotic equivalent of "dehydrated water" or "fat-free lard."
The market is the origin of regulation. It is from the market that regulation enters our daily vocabulary and begins to structure our thinking. Take the AJ example, she's using gallon measurements and currency which are both established by the state. Would she purchase forty-zozzle barrels of neurotoxin instead of forty-gallon barrels? The very concept of territory she uses is regulatory.
The bit about import tariffs and subsidies is not some extra piece of hypocrisy, but is inherent in every use of the phrase "free market." Every columnist, politician, CEO and economist who harrangues about the free market does so only because they want to make regulations in their favor and repeal regulations that benefit the public.
Study, critical thinking, and breaking away from a billion dollar propaganda empire whose entire purpose is to make people work against their own interests.
Unlikely.
It isn't even a matter of discipline in most cases. Capitalist hegemony has become so universal that most people will never be given the opportunity to think outside it.
4017357 You know perfectly well that "free market" refers to a market in which people are allowed to choose whether to sell and what prices to sell at, whether to buy, and have some choice in what to buy (e.g., non-monopoly conditions). This is a clearly defined, accepted dictionary definition. Acceptance of common standards of measurement in no way inhibits freedom. "Capitalism" is the true nonsense word, as it has never been defined in a way that would not make Rameses II or Louis XVI a capitalist.
It's ok. The story was actually pretty damn clear.
4017375
You just described a visit to the supermarket, this is about the free market.
These two statements do not even remotely follow from one another. There is more choice among Pepsi products than there is between Mello-Yello and Mountain Dew. There is more difference within a Chinese take-out menu than there is between two pints of lo mein purchased at opposite ends of town.
Not to mention that the prevention of monopolies requires the sort of robust government interference which made Ron Paul lose his hair.
And nothing in your definition prevents all of this being done by state-run industries, which would make free market advocates scream in agony. Not even the monopoly requirement, as the state could be made majority share-holder in every company.
Nor is there any mention of licensing, taxation, health codes, environmental regs, OSHA, etc. Yet the free market is always endangered whenever these things enter the public view.
Cruising back to Applejack, nothing in your definition of a free market goes against her later statements about tariffs, etc, unless you adhere to the self-contradictory notion of a free market that, in fact, we are continually bombarded with everytime someone suggests a bit of social hygeine like free doctor's visits.
Your own word for her, "hypocrite," means that a free market must mean something more than a supermarket.
4017375
As for your assertion about Rameses II?
The difference in this case is quite clear. The capitalist comes to the market, he has a privileged position within it, of course, but he still goes to it. The king regulates the market, he stands above it as much as possible. The victory of the capitalists in the past few centuries has been in dragging governments down into the markets.
The ancien regime thought nothing of welching on its debts, the modern state is held hostage by a few hedgefund managers.
Remember Niven's 17th Law: nothing is so good that bad people can't like it too, so there is no cause so noble that it won't attract assholes and fuckheads.
Does one need to have watched Breaking Bad to get the humor? Have not read the story yet on account of such.
"The story I have just told is full of humor. When you have finished laughing at it, I shall explain it to you--point by point."
--Peter Ustinov, Ustinov's Diplomats "A Small Joke (the German Delegate)"
4016972 Yes, though I think chapter 1 of Dark Demon King Etc. was a better story.
4017636 No, but if you're hoping for a realistic model of the Equestrian criminal economy, this isn't it.
4017375
Well, were they?
According to Wikipedia:
Capitalism, mercantilism, and feudalism are all old economic systems. Capitalism doesn't actually require much in the way of regulation; indeed, unless the state interferes, that's actually kind of the default system that is likely to exist in a society with money. All three are kind of natural places for a state economy to go.
4017536
I think the real issue is whether or not something primarily attracts said people.
Libertarianism in practice attracts a relatively small number of very decent people combined with a very large number of people who are pretty much of the worst sort because libertarianism acts as an enabler for their behavior and a justification of their (often hypocritical) beliefs. The reason for this is, I think, primarily that a lot of pragmatic people recognize the flaws with the system, but some more idealistic sorts either fail to, or think that it would work a lot better than people think it would.
Many of the Founding Fathers of the United States were libertarians. They switched over to the modern US Constitution because they realized after a few years that libertarianism doesn't actually work in practice. It is probably because of their libertarian nature that the US ended up the way it did.
Anyway, WRT: the story itself:
I liked it. I did, in fact, catch (and enjoy) Fluttershy saying that Angel was speaking via pheromones, and it was one of the stronger hints that none of the animals could talk before the end. And Applejack's justifications (and the racist, greedy, selfish libertarian ponies) amused me.
4019243
Capitalism originally meant "the means of production are controlled by those with capital". All those other terms were added in the Wikipedia entry because everybody knows that capitalism is supposed to be a derogatory term for the free market. But once you've got voluntary exchange and competitive markets as part of the definition--which were never part of the definition for Marx--you ought to just say "free market".
The word "capitalism" is nothing but the n-word for "free market".
4019247
I felt guilty about that, because libertarians aren't especially racist. Their main mode of corruption is attracting people who don't want to pay taxes. Small-government conservatives more often are racist, so I tried to twist it that way.
It is fascinating that you wrote the story this way without actually having finished Breaking Bad. Reading your reaction to the final seasons would be interesting in light of that.
4019368
I wouldn't say that. They do corrupt people into not wanting to pay taxes, but that's not how they rope them in. What Libertarians I know were corrupted by propaganda about being your own man, independence and self sustainability, not being a pushover, and an explanation for why life isn't fair. Just because it's a misleading and poisonous explanation doesn't mean that it doesn't win a lot of hearts and minds.
It really doesn't match with the propaganda, nor the attitudes of die-hard supporters of the group, to say that the reason Libertarians espouse the end of all governance (except for a totalitarian police state protecting the rich man's money, of course) is because they're all simpering lazy bums who just want to weasel out of doing taxes. To claim the group is courting tax evaders becomes nothing more than a weak-wristed insult, that has about as much basis as calling someone a stupidhead and blowing a raspberry at them.
So it's more because they all wanna be tough guys.
While reading the story I just laughed at the silliness of it all, but now I'm pretty shocked at how convoluted these events are considering this is a story about cartoon ponies doing drugs and dealing weapons. Not that that's a bad thing. If I watched Breaking Bad and got some of the more subtle humor the first time, I probably would've laughed twice as much.
Huh. For years, I thought this scene from Arby n the Chief was just being hilariously stupid, but I guess there's some legitimacy behind cocaine sandwiches.
You have no idea how much I've giggled. I mean, Justin Cider (real peeler btw. She's got a hot bod :B), while being an awesome stripper name, can't get as far as one named "Cheerilee" or "Cherry Jubilee" or "Fleetfoot".