My World Is Empty Without You
Chapter 2A
“I really didn’t think you had it in you,” Angel said with a vicious grin as he stood on the back of Fluttershy’s chair and read the pages she was writing.
Fluttershy arched an eyebrow and turned around in her seat. “You… do realize I’ve written over two dozen full length novels, right Angel? I know you don’t read them, but I’ve written plenty of violence before.”
“Sure, sure,” Angel rolled his eyes, grin turning into a smirk. “But torture? Ripping the feathers out of her wings, burning her hooves? That’s nasty! Not very… kind of you.”
Fluttershy turned away from her typewriter, and gave Angel her full attention as she also took note of Ryooki, paws over her mouth in abject horror.
“R… R… Ripping out her feathers?!” Ryooki whimpered.
“Ryooki… I understand what you both mean. It seems like too much, but when writing fiction, especially adventure fiction for young adult—”
“Young?!” Ryooki shrieked, as Fluttershy’s ears pinned back briefly.
“Yes…” Fluttershy nodded slowly. “I have fans who are only eight years old, but the majority of my readers fall in the twelve to twenty demographic, which… to be fair is a very lucrative market.”
“But… but… you’re ripping feathers out!” Ryooki cried.
“And sometimes, when we are young, we need to know that bad people exist out there,” Fluttershy explained calmly. “And that pain can happen. It’s never portrayed as justified, I never show Daring Do causing pain to others without regretting it, or it being a difficult decision. The heroes don’t do evil.”
“Who says it’s evil?” Angel asked with a grin. “It’s the rule of the forest. Might makes right. If you can hurt the people you don’t like, you do it. You win.”
Fluttershy leveled a very gentle glare at Angel.
“That is precisely not the reason why I include violence and suffering in my books. Angel, in the past you’ve told me that if I ever had foals, they’d be insufferable, because they’d think the world was full of wonderful happy things, and know nothing of the bad parts, right?”
“Uh, sure,” Angel said with wide eyes, Fluttershy assuming that he was surprised she remembered it.
“Well if my foals read books where sometimes really bad things happened, but there was always a way to get through it, and it was almost always a bad person who went out of their way to cause that pain, then do you think they’d understand the world is more complex than that?”
Angel nodded slowly.
“So that’s my point,” Fluttershy said as she stood and went to the kitchen. “In this adventure, with a truly horrible pony in charge doing truly horrible things, it makes sense that Daring Do is a threat to them. They have to warn her off, disincentivize her. Maybe… maybe even scare her a little.”
She came back with three bottles of apple cider tucked under her wings, passing them out before sitting.
“If I didn’t show that pain, if I didn’t show bad ponies, then it wouldn’t be honest,” she said as she held up the apple cider bottle, mentally reminiscent of Applejack.
“Bad is bad!” Ryooki said, frowning as she uncorked her bottle. “You don’t have to read about… about a hot poker in the bottom of a hoof!”
“Pansy,” Angel snickered.
“Don’t be mean,” Fluttershy admonished before taking a sip of the cider and looking to Ryooki. “We have to learn what bad is somehow though, don’t we Ryooki?”
“Bad things are bad, hurting others is bad, Angel is just a bad rabbit for thinking they’re not,” Ryooki retorted.
“Oh no,” Angel said flatly. “I’m a bad rabbit. Whatsoever shall I do.”
As Angel guzzled his cider, Fluttershy shook her head.
“I um… Oh, I know how I can explain this,” Fluttershy finally said, gesturing to Ryooki. “Is there a situation where it’s ok to hit someone, Ryooki?”
“Sure,” Ryooki said reluctantly. “If they’re doing something really bad, or if they’re about to hurt themselves…”
Fluttershy nodded slowly. “So hitting someone isn’t the problem. The problem is hitting someone for the wrong reasons.”
Ryooki bit her lip and sighed. “Yeah… I suppose so, but we figure that stuff out on our own!”
“Not always,” Fluttershy says quickly. “Like… is there any situation where it’s ok to rip feathers out of a pegasi’s wing?”
“No!”
“There you go,” Fluttershy finally relaxed a little in her chair. “So we have to learn what reasons are okay, what motivates evil and what good ponies do in the worst situations. This is how self-defense is justified, and how we cannot allow torture by anyone, even if there is supposedly a good reason.”
“Untrue!” Angel said gleefully. “There are good situations where torture is involved!”
Fluttershy leveled a much less gentle glare at the bunny.
“That’s a difference of morals. I don’t believe it is ever acceptable. You do. You’re wrong, but I don’t think I can change your opinion on this. It’s philosophical.”
“What a copout,” Angel reported with a smirk, before guzzling the rest of his drink and tossing the bottle on the floor before making air-quotes with his paws. “‘It’s philosophical.’ No it’s not. It’s practical.”
“Practical because you think it’s a tool,” Fluttershy sighed, sitting back in her chair and mentally settling in for the long haul. “But study after study shows that every instance of torture being used historically not only fails to provide better information than passive spying, but it runs into the same ethical problems as capital punishment. Every failure of the system is magnified exponentially… Wow I really sound like Twilight,” she chuckled.
“You’re talking about torture and killing people,” Ryooki said angrily. “Like it’s…. It’s… just a tool! With pros and cons and… that’s horrible!”
Fluttershy looked at Ryooki, as she rolled her bottle between her hooves.
“It… The only way I can talk to Angel, where he could conceivably come to agree with me, is by starting out sort of close to him, Ryooki. I have to use his terms, and treat it like it is a tool. With pros and cons. Because there are pros! I know you don’t want there to be, and I don’t want there to be an… an ‘upside’ to torture,” she said distastefully. “But if you have absolute certainty that you have the right creature, and you have a limited amount of time, and the amount of harm done by retaining that information is great enough, a case could be made for the use of torture if your culture doesn’t ban it outright. It’s barbaric, but it existed for millennia for a reason.”
“That doesn’t mean that it has to be in your story,” Ryooki grumbled, looking away.
“No, but this is all about the inspiration for Daring Do, isn’t it?” Angel asked with a sinister smile. “Get in some fictional jabs at your dear friend, Rainbow Dash. What, did she turn down a date or something?”
“Oh hah-hah,” Fluttershy said angrily as her cheeks turned red. “Make fun of Fluttershy because she’s no good at romance. But no, not even a little. Rainbow Dash has been a jerk lately, and not… not very kind to me, but Daring Do and Rainbow Dash have been very different ponies for a very long time. But settle down you two, I need to figure this out.”