The Buttery Snake Show: New Stories · 8:28pm Aug 22nd, 2017
Buttery Snake sat on the stage. Or, more specifically, on a chair at a rickety desk stained by some brown substance that was not coffee. He looked out at you, the audience.
“Yes. Yes I can see you,” he said. “But you have to wonder. When you’re not reading, where do I go? Do I just disappear? Do I stay here?” He grinned widely. “No. I don’t.”
“Buttery,” said Unwhole Hole, who, being a relatively small person (not really) was being almost eaten by a badly stained chair that someone had stolen from a college dormitory. “Stop scaring them.”
“GAH!” cried Buttery, jumping. “You stop scaring ME! Don’t sneak up on me like that!” He started to pant heavily. “Oh, my heart!”
“You’re a fictional character that acts as my foil. You don’t have a heart.”
“YOU don’t have a heart. I mean, come on!” He picked up a pile of brown paper towels which served as a manuscript. “Look at this! ‘Guardians of Chaos’? Apart from being a horribly unoriginal title, this is HORRIBLE!”
“Says you,” said Unwhole Hole, crossing his or her arms. “Currently, it is a mild success. Over fifty readers, and nine likes to one dislike.”
“But do you have to write things like this? I mean, look what you did to poor Rainbow Dash!”
Unwhole Whole shrugged. “It’s what I do. I’ve found that my specialty tends to be toward three subjects: dark action-scifi, horror, and comedy.”
“What about the clop?”
Unwhole Hole glared. “Do I have to hit you?”
“See! You’re already on your way! Can I put on a gag first?”
“Eew. No.”
“But without the gag, I’ll scream.”
“Nobody can hear you. We communicate by text. And text is silent.”
“Not on your computer. You probably woke up half the western France typing that last story.”
“I don’t live in France.”
“I know.”
Unwhole Hole sighed. It was a common cliché of his.
“So,” said Buttery, “from what I’ve heard, this was a request?”
“Yes. From one Dragon Whisper 243. Although, frankly, I feel kind of bad. This was not at all what he asked for.”
“Then it’s not a request, is it?”
Unwhole Hole shook his head. “The directives were: a world where Discord defeated Celestia and Luna and Chaos rules, and where there is a group of Discord-chosen warriors who serve him. He then listed the characters he wanted, including one OC.”
“Did he want it to be a depressing post-apocalyptic world where everyone hates each other?”
“No. Not at all. He seems like a good guy. He probably wanted the Watchers to be heroic instead of nihilistic murderers.”
“That sounds more fun.”
“But very hard for me to write. Oh, and he actually has more ideas. If anyone thinks they can write happier stories, he might be happy to hear from you. He had a few ideas that were just too far out of my wheelhouse.”
“Wheelhouse? What are you, some kind of hipster?”
“Hipsters are a conspiracy by the liberal media.”
“Indeed.” Buttery shuffled his papers. They were blank, but he shuffled them anyway. “So,” he said, “are you doing requests now?”
Unwhole Hole thought for a moment. “I can,” he said, “but it has to be something special. Something that makes my creative gland tingle.”
“Eew.”
“In other words, it has to be something extremely compelling. Something I have a good idea for and think I can do. Anyone can ask, but it is very unlikely that I will do what they say- -and there is a sort of monkey-paw effect. Whatever they wish for comes out strange and perverted.”
“Clop?”
“NO.”
“He means ‘maybe’.” Buttery looked up at Unwhole Hole. “So. You have another story too?”
“Yes. A small comedy. I actually wrote it in less than twenty four hours. It’s going through moderation right now.”
“That’s what, your sixteenth? Do you still have to be moderated?”
“I’m not a very moderate person. Unless I’m rating the story ‘mature’, I always like to go through moderation so they can make sure it meshes with the site rules. What I think is ‘Everyone’ tends to be ‘Teen’, but not always. So it helps if they take a look at it before it goes in.”
“And this one is…”
“I tried for Everyone. But it will probably come out Teen. It depends on how well the dirty jokes were hidden.”
“You just can’t stop with the dirty jokes, can you?”
“No.”
“Then you should write clop.”
“Me trying that would be a dirty joke. On the reader.”
“Is that what you are doing next?”
“I don’t know what I’m doing next. I have some ideas.”
“Like what?”
“I’ve been meaning to work on the blog more. I wanted to have some interviews to discuss my ideas about some features of writing, like OC construction and Mary Sues.”
“You always say that.”
“Well, I want to get Bob D’Bordeaux to show up on this stage, but she’s hard to catch.”
“You do realize she’s a fictional character. That you made up.”
“You’re a fictional character that I made up.”
“Yes. I know. So are you.”
Unwhole Hole paused, having never considered that. It was almost paradoxical, and gave him an odd headache. “Possibly.”
“And story wise?”
“I have some ideas. Maybe a horror. I’m still trying to reach the horror holy-grail of an Everyone rated horror.”
“There are not many of those.”
“No. It is very challenging to write, because it needs to be terrifying without being gory or intense. That’s not an easy combination, which is why I am drawn to it. It requires a focus on atmospherics, which is something I need to work on a little more.”
“Any ideas on the subject?”
“Well, I was taking a language lesson online the other day, and one of the phrases to translate was ‘this is the last train car’. I found that sentence terrifying. I want to write a story around that. If I do go with it, I’ll probably star Berry Punch. She likes riding the trains.”
“Any others?”
“Well, I did have a thought for a comedy that involves an event called the ‘Alicorn Games’, in which all the alicorns brutally murder each other repeatedly in a Hunger-Games style arena. For fun, of course. Since they’re immortal, they heal. It would be an over-the-top violence kind of thing.”
“Sounds a bit extreme.”
“I know.” Unwhole Hole turned to the audience. “But I’m just brainstorming. Neither of these are guaranteed. I still need to see where my think-organ points me.”
“Eew.”
“Eew yourself, weirdo.”
Buttery Snake smiled. “Well, I guess that’s it for now. I need to go back to the place I go when there isn’t a blog post. So, reader-mortals, I would recommend against checking the…well, you’ll find out soon enough.”
He then laughed menacingly even though he is of course fictional and does, in fact, vanish when the blog post ends. Supposedly. �-�O
Actually that sounds interesting.