The Buttery Snake Show: A BAD Story

Buttery Snake looked at the manuscript on his desk. Then he looked up at the guest, one Unwhole Hole, who was sitting in a chair across the stage from him. Then he looked down at the manuscript again before bending under his desk and spilling his oats.

            “You’ve got to be kidding me,” he said, wiping his mouth. “Pulling my leg, yanking my chain, squeezing my hot-dog…”

            “I don’t think the last one is a real expression.”

            “Quiet you!”

            “I’m not making sound. I communicate in the form of text.”

            “Then stop typing!” Buttery Snake picked up the manuscript and slapped Unwhole Hole with it. “I just read this thing, and it’s TERRIBLE!”

            “You didn’t read it. And you didn’t just hit me. You’re a fictional character who played a minor role in my first two stories. Does anyone actually remember that? That was years ago.”

            “Don’t tell me what is and isn’t real, psychology isn’t a real science!” He pointed to the title of the most recent Unwhole Hole story: “Fluttershy and the Janitor”. “Please tell me you didn’t write this!”

            “I don’t know if ‘writing’ is the right word for what I did to make that,” said Unwhole Hole.

            “It’s terrible! Horrible! Horrendous! Titillating! The BAD kind of titillating!”

            “How so?”

            “Have you looked at it? It doesn’t even really show a narrative structure! Half the plot points just go on hanging without even being remotely addressed! The climax has NOTHING to do with the rest of the story!”

            “You’re point?”

            “Don’t bring my pointy bits into this!” Buttery Snake covered his horn. “Explain yourself!”

            “It wasn’t supposed to be good,” explained Unwhole Hole. “It’s wasn’t even written as a story.”

            “But it is one. That’s like making a car out of raisons.”

            “Sticky.”

            “You’re sticky.”

            “No, I’m not. Well, not very much so. Most of the time. No. This was written as a comedy based around about two or three jokes.”

            “You can’t make a story based around three jokes.”

            “One joke, really. And no I can’t. Hence, this. It’s basically a dirty joke. Continuously.”

            “And you wrote this because?”

            “Because I had never written an Equestria Girls story before.”

            “Oh,” said Buttery. “Well that’s a valid reason.”

            “No it isn’t. Writing for EG is RIDICULOUSLY hard.”

            “How so?”

            “Because I never realized how important having some amount of freedom over the setting is. EG is restricted almost exclusively to a high school. I mean, have you ever been to high school?”

            “No.”

            “It’s one of the most boring places on earth. Nothing happens there. Nothing anyone wants to read about anyway. If high school was interesting, half of American students wouldn’t drop out of it.”

            “But isn’t it full of all sorts of raging hormones and interpersonal drama?”

            “Bull hockey. When have I ever written about that stuff? I write simplistic horror stories and science fiction, with a few comedies thrown in. I can’t do interpersonal drama. Without a world to build, I’m useless.”

            “But you still wrote a story.”

            “And it was terrible. I actually got seven pages in and had to restart. I just don’t know what went wrong!”

            “That’s what happens when you base a story around three joke-scenes.”

            “I know! Normally I write comedy by improvisation.”

            “Meaning?”

            “I set up a scene with a general purpose and let the characters do and say what they may. I don’t plan it in advance.”

            “You know they’re just extensions of you, right? They’re not actual people with independent volition.”

            “Neither are you.”

            “Touché.”

            “This style actually works sometimes. ‘Toaster’, ‘Herp Derp’, ‘Dinklehuegen’, they were all written with that basic style. The characters interacting made the scenes work. But in this one, it just didn’t. They would start talking and then…get distracted, I guess. They’d stop making jokes and just start having boring high-school conversations.”

            “It might be the Kaiser’s theory of the grounding OC.”

            “The what?”

            “The Kaiser. He proposed that comedy fanfictions work best when they have an OC to act as a foil to provide the main motion of the plot. In other words, someone to provide the zaniness. Without the OC, the canon characters have to behave out of character.”

            “Like Celestia in ‘Janitor’.”

            “Exactly. The joke is that she’s not in character, but that undermines her role as a whole. The main characters just aren’t funny on their own. The canon isn’t designed that way. They need a motivator.”

            They both paused.

            “I forgot which one of us was saying what.”

            “So did I.”

            Unwhole Hole leaned back in his chair. “So that’s why this one didn’t work. It failed to create a compelling setting or circumstance. Instead of funny characters, it had funny situations. And that just isn’t enough to keep a story going.”

            “Indeed,” said Buttery Snake. “But what would be ironic would be if this is the one story that finally gets you on the map.”

            “It had better not be. I’m already calling it. This is going to be one of my least well received stories ever.”

            “Worse than ‘Four Yellow’?”

            “Worse by far. ‘Four Yellow’ at least had a 50:50 ratio. This one’s going to be in the red.” Unwhole Hole sighed. “But that’s okay. No more than thirty people will read it. If any do at all.”

            “What do you mean?”

            “I submitted this one to moderation. I’m not sure it’s going to get through.”

            “You gave it a mature rating, right?”

            “I did. But the rules get a little weird with Equestria Girls.”

            “Why? They’re just more boring versions of ponies.”

            “That’s the problem. This site does not allow sexual content with human or anthro minors.”

            “Wait. Hold on. So teenage Scootaloo can have a weird lesbian affair with a slave pony twice her age- -”

            “Mass Core 2, if anyone’s keeping track at home- -”

            “- -but EG Fluttershy can’t actually bump the monkey?”

            “Nope. Not at all. Strictly forbidden. Verboten, even. At least under my interpretation of the rules.”

            “But nobody did the horizontal bop in this story. Or even the vertical one.”

            “Exactly. That’s the joke. It’s a massive ‘that’s what she said’ double-entendre but with none of the single-entendre that would get me in trouble. But…”

            “Butt…”

            “But it still has teenagers discussing sex and that sort of thing. Teenagers clearly do not do that in real life. So if the mods decide it’s a no-go, this story is never going to see the light of day. I’m not rea-writing it. Followers only.”

            “Well, that sucks.” Buttery Snake paused. “Kind of like Flut- -”

            “Don’t you dare!” Unwhole Hole cleared his throat. He had allergies. “Anyway, that would probably be better. Because this story is hella dumb.”

            “It is,” agreed Buttery. “So let’s hope the mods veto it. For all our sakes.” He threw the manuscript in a wastebasket. “So. The next one?”

            “Next what?”

            “Don’t give me that. You’re always planning at least one story in advance.”

            “Ah. Yes. I actually have had an idea recently.”

            “And it is?”

            “A cyberpunk noir story in a futuristic version of earth.”

            “Cyberpunk and noir?”

            “The two mesh nicely. And it’s been a long time since I wrote anything cyberpunk.” Unwhole Hole paused. “I might do a theory post on that later. But right now, let’s just see how it goes. I think it will be really cool if it ever gets off the ground. It will almost certainly get me to my word-goal.”

            “Word-goal?”

            “Yes. As you know, Fimfiction tracks an author’s total number of words. Right now, I’m about fifty thousand away from the two million mark. If ‘Janitor’ passes moderation- -”

            “Pray to Celestia’s butt it doesn’t!”

            “- -then I’ll only be 20K away. And this next story should easily cover that.”

            “And when you get to 2 million words?”

            “Well, I guess I’ll feel more like a real author. You know, like the guys who have fifty to two hundred stories. I’ve only got eighteen right now, and about a tenth the words they have. But I’m getting there.”

            “Very, very slowly.”

            “Forty three followers, Buttery.  Excellent fellows indeed. I’m doing pretty good for a writer in this stage of his career. That’s a lot of followers for someone at my level.”

            “If you say so.”

            “I do say so. Thank you all, follower-folk, for following me. And from refraining from doing so in real life. I don’t have enough chocolate milk to share right now.”

            “And that’s all the time we have for now,” said Buttery, checking his several watches. “We’ve got to go for now. More blog posts might be coming soon. Or not. I have no idea. So until then, we’ll be hanging out in the far reaches of your imagination. You know, touching your cobwebs and haunting your fever-dreams. But assuming neither of us die, we’ll be back. Just like those burritos you ate earlier.”