The Buttery Snake Show: Update on Mass Core

The curtain parted and Buttery Snake galloped onto the stage to the applause and cheers of adoring fans (most of whom, of course, being digital recordings of applause and cheers).
“Hello FimFiction!” he called to the crowd, waving. “And welcome to the inaugural episode of the Buttery Snake Show! Now with fifty percent more butter, and seven percent fewer rattlesnakes in the complimentary egg salad! Although with age of that egg salad, the snakes are the least of your worries.
“Wait, you’re saying. ‘What’s going on here? Why is this nub nubbing on the nubstage?’ Simple answer: the board upstairs decided these blog posts were too boring. So we’re trying a new format.”
Buttery Snake crossed the stage and sat down at his talk-show-host desk in front of a wide backround that for this episode had been painted as a landscape of the Citadel from Mass Effect. “For those of you who don’t know me, I’m a side character from the stories ‘Child of Order’ and ‘To Devour the Seventh World’. Think Disicord-Lite, but a pony.”
Buttery picked up a stack of papers on his desk and tapped them against the fake wood surface, a nontrivial task for a being with hooves.
“Our very special- -and I use the term lightly if not sarcastically- -is the inexplicable defect who makes this all possible, Unwhole Hole!”
The “audience” cheered, and Unhole Hole, being mostly swallowed by a severely overstuffed floral pattern chair, raised a glass of chocolate milk to the crowd.
“Hello, Buttery…oh, wow. Is this how it feels to write in first person? It feels so weird.”
“How do you think I feel? I’m not even real.” Buttery Snake opened his notes. “So, you just posted an update to your new story, ‘Mass Core’. It says so right here.”
“Yes.”
“How many chapters? Two, maybe even three?”
“Nope. All of them.”
Buttery’s eyes widened. He looked to the audience, and then to Hole. “What do you mean ‘all of them’?”
“I post all my chapters at once.”
“What in the name of Celestia’s unshorn fetlocks is WRONG with you?!”
“What? I- -”
“You’re supposed to post them ONE AT A TIME! You know, build up hype! Sweet Luna in a burrito- -no wonder you’re readership is lower than Flutterguy’s voice! What are you, some kind of stunod?”
“Maybe…I don’t know. Stop yelling at me!”
“Stop yelling at yourself!”
“I don’t know how to post them one at a time! The system for doing so is not intuitive! I mean, does that mean I have to submit each chapter individually? Does every single one of them have to go through moderation individually? Can I do that?”
“Do you really expect me to answer that? Considering I’m a character from your own imagination and you’re writing my voice, I don’t know any more than you do. But I know you’re doing it wrong.”
“If anybody knows the answer, please, somebody tell me.”
Buttery Snake grumbled and shuffled his papers before taking a long gulp of cider from his coffee cup. “What a shlub…so, Unwhole. You’re new story that you apparently just posted in its twenty-four chapter entirety. Tell us about it.”
“Well, it’s a Mass Effect crossover.”
“What? Seriously?”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Do you have any idea how weird that is? I mean, putting ponies in a videogame about galactic politics? It’s just- -strange.”
“My mother said the same thing when I told her about it.”
“What inspired you to write a…ahem…Mass Effect crossover?”
“Well, here’s the story. I was talking to The Kaiser one day- -I know him in real life, and we talk sometimes- -and he complained to me that none of the Mass Effect crossovers he was reading were updating. And it hit me like a watermelon falling out of a tree: I could write one of those. Why not?”
“So you did? Obviously you did. Why did I even ask that?”
“Yeah. I tried to take it a little differently, though.”
“Great. And by great, I mean why mess with Mass Effect? Did you even play the game?”
“Of course I did. They were fun, but I’ll admit, they weren’t really my favorite. The world was complex and detailed, but it felt…harsh. Like it wasn’t big and wondrous, but almost overly practical. Like a Star Trek: Enterprise kind of vibe, but not as bad. Gameplay was great, though. I do ever so much enjoy lobbing biotics at things.”
“Don’t compare Mass Effect to Enterprise.”
“Sorry. But anyway, I generally left the Mass Effect universe as-is but paced it forward seventeen years.”
“Why?”
“Because I didn’t want to use Shepard as the main character- -”
“Wait, why? WHY?! He’s SHEPARD!”
“SHEPARD!” called a krogan in the audience.
“Quiet, you!”
“Well,” said Hole, sipping some chocolate milk, “I just don’t find Shepard to be a compelling character for a written work. He- -or she- -is too specific to the player, to the point where Shepard isn’t really his own character. He’s just YOU. So he gets a few camios here and there, but the main leading lady here is Jack.”
“You picked the Jack romance option in ME2, didn’t you?”
“And 3. I really like Jack. So she- -now about 40 or so- -takes a main role. The rest of the cast on her ship is OC’s.”
“That’s dumb.”
“I know. But what I was trying to go for from the Mass Effect side was to give some larger rolls to species that I felt were underused in game. I mean, all the hanar did was float around. And the vorcha- -I really like the vorcha. I don’t know why they only get a cannon-fodder role. And of course turians.”
“There are turians in ME. I checked.”
“But are there FEMALE turians? No, of course not. Well, there probably are, but not very many. Of course there’s no turian main character in this one.”
“Of course. But Hole, what about the important part?”
“Ah, you mean the ponies.”
“No, I meant the font size. What do you think I meant?”
“That’s where I had the most fun. I thought the idea of having ME characters interact with ponies as they are in the show seemed a bit…forced. So I alternate-universe it. In this universe, Equestria is a galactic empire with its own navy and starships and such. The fun part of writing this was trying to imagine how pony technology evolved, and how it went in a completely different direction from ME technology.”
“And according to this, the star of the fic is…Starlight Glimmer!”
The screen behind Buttery Snake shifted, projected with a still from the fanfiction showing Starlight Glimmer in her Mass Core outfit: dark-colored body armor, with extensive metal implants protruding from her spine and skull, her bicoloured hair cut short.
“Wow, doesn’t she look stunning,” said Buttery. He turned back to Hole. “Any particular reason why you used Starlight?”
“Mainly, she’s an up-and-coming character who hasn’t got much airtime yet. That, and she seemed thematically appropriate for the story. I also think she’s adorable, even if her hairstyle is a bit off.”
“And you also co-star Scootaloo as a young naval captain, and Lyra as a grizzled mercenary.”
“Yes.”
“Did you give Lyra back her mecha from ‘Toaster’?”
“I’m not saying.”
“Am I in it?”
“No. But it does include such ponies as Trixie, Roseluck, Carrot Top, Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash, and Twilight Sparkle all in various science fiction roles.”
“It sounds weird.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“So, Unwhole, you always predict your stats before a story. What were the predictions for this?”
“Well, taking into account what it has so far, I’d say readership of about 45, and a like:dislike ratio of 50/50.”
“You sound little jelly.”
“I’m not jelly.”
Buttery picked up a piece of toast. “I could smear peanut butter on you and put you on this. That’s how jelly you are. You’re so jelly that Hugh Jelly is- -”
“One of the last ME fanfictions posted had over 14K views.”
“And you think yours is that good?”
Unwhole Hole sighed. “No. Of course not.”
“Then quit your whining and be happy people actually read it.”
“There is one thing that I would like to say, though.”
“What?”
“Something that just gets me so…peeved.”
The audience gasped.
“Language, Hole.”
“Sorry. Bleep that out. It’s just the way the dislikes work…”
“What, bruising your pride?”
“No. It’s just that, I know I’m not a great writer. My writing is repetitive, boring, sometimes weird, poorly edited, limited in vocabulary, and full of plot holes.”
“You said plot.”
“Focus. So when people hit ‘dislike’, I really would like to know why. So that I can improve. Did ponies eyes widen too many times or they turn toward each other two often? Were there too many spelling mistakes? Did I portray a character wrong? I’d really like to know so that I can do better in the future. I get that it’s your right to leave a dislike without saying anything, and it’s okay that you do that- -but please, if you leave a dislike, not just here but anywhere, at least consider telling the author why.”
“Some people just hate the fluffy pony jokes you put in everything.”
“It’s obligatory. Almost every Unwhole Hole story needs one fluffy reference and at least one Gloryhammer reference. This one actually even has a hidden Municipal Waste reference in it for all you astute listeners.”
“We’ll watch out for that.”
“No you won’t, you won’t even read it.”
“Again, because I’m not real, Hole. You just spent an hour talking to yourself.”
“So what else is new?”
Buttery Snake laughed and turned to the audience. “That’s all the time we have for now, folks. If you made it this far, I admire your tenacity. You could consider a job as a doctor, because you have a LOT of patients. Yes I just punned, you can’t stop me. I’m not even real. So go back to your Mass Effect, your ponies. And always remember to drink your milk! Buttery Snake, signing off.”
The ending music played and the audience applauded their host and to a far lesser extend the guest, who waved as the lights faded. Credits would have rolled, but nobody could afford film crew, so there weren’t any.