//------------------------------// // Chapter 3 // Story: You Ought to Be In Pictures // by McPoodle //------------------------------// Spike made his way to his own miniature trailer, cramped even for his short frame. He sat in a chair at a table, staring off into space. After a few minutes, he finally picked up the feature script he had been promised, “Secret of My Excess”. “It’s not exactly the ‘Secret of My Excess’ that you remember, readers. First draft.” He read through it, the look of incredulity on his face growing greater and greater with each flip of a page. Twenty-two pages later... “What the buck!” Spike slammed his head into the tabletop. And waited for the world to stop spinning, so he could get off. A few minutes later, there was a knock on the door of the trailer. Spike sheepishly opened the door. “Sorry, did you hear that?” he began, before he saw who was at the door. “Holy cow! You’re Daffy Duck!” Daffy adjusted his dapper polka-dot bow tie. “Yes. That I am.” “I love your cartoons!” Spike gushed. “I watch ‘Duck Rabbit Duck’ over and over in the research library.” Daffy’s bill shook for a moment in distaste. “Yes, that one comes up a lot. Spike, I’m here for you.” “For...me?” “Yes. I’m a talent agent for toons.” A card was quickly produced and just as quickly returned to hammerspace. “And I believe you need my help.” Spike looked confused. “I already have an agent—Twilight Sparkle’s agent.” Daffy rolled his eyes. “Well, that’s your first mistake right there. May I come in?” $ $ $ Daffy Duck slammed down the script with disgust. “This needs a complete re-write,” he said coldly. “I know!” Spike exclaimed. “My character transforms into a complete donkey, for no other reason than because he turned thirteen, like the switch to ‘teenage jerk’ was just thrown! The stuff he does to poor Rarity alone...” “Come on,” Daffy said, putting on a porkpie hat. He led Spike out of the trailer. “Even if you don’t sign with me, I’ve got to help you deal with this disaster.” And then he raced back in a moment later to grab the script. $ $ $ Mitch looked down at his script. “I don’t see anything wrong with it,” he said simply. “You’re going to trash Mitch, aren’t you?” “No! Why would you think that?” “I dunno. I just get this intuition that everybody dumps on poor Mitch all the time.” “Really?” Daffy asked calmly. He was sitting on a booster in the seat across from the human screenwriter, his hat held in his lap. “Not even the part when Spike burns down the Library Tree?” “I told you that this was the first draft.” Mitch shrugged. “The town rebuilds it at the end. To show how much they have bonded with Twilight.” “I don’t think tree buildings work that way.” Mitch leaned forward. “Hey, don’t go lecturing me about how the setting works.” Spike stood there quietly at the side of the table, looking eagerly at Daffy as the cartoon duck said what he was thinking. “So you’re not going to change it?” “The new powers that be have decided that making fun of the male characters will appeal to the target demographic,” Mitch said stiffly. Seeing the look on Spike’s face, he loosened up and added, “I wrote what I was asked to write. If you can get Rob to change his mind, I’ll give you something more sympathetic to your character.” “That’s it?” Spike asked quietly. “It’s the best we can get,” Daffy said with a sad nod as he put on his hat. “Come on.” They walked out of the writer’s building. And then he had to go back in and get the script again. $ $ $ Rob, the story editor, looked down at the script with a sigh of disgust. “My hands are tied,” he told them. “Hasbro has some very strong ideas of what will sell toys, and without Lauren they are becoming much more hands-on. You’re going to have to do something dramatic. Because...they’re writing you out next season.” “What?!” Spike exclaimed. “Yeah. You’re going to be the sinister manipulator behind everything in the season finale. You’ll lead a dragon invasion of Canterlot in Part Two, and you’ll be run out of Equestria by the end. Big dramatic episode for Twilight.” “That’s...that’s horrible!” Spike cried out. He looked over at Daffy. “You tell him, Daffy!” “It’s horrible,” Daffy said quietly. “And we’re not going to stand for it. Spike wants out of his contract.” “I do?” Spike thought for a moment. “...Yeah! I want out of my contract!” “Oh no. Don’t,” Rob said in a dull voice. “Yeah, that would definitely be dramatic.” He pulled a pile of pages out of a drawer with the words “CARTOON CONTRACT” on top in big bold letters. “Spike, are you sure?” he asked. “This won’t be good for your career.” “I don’t care,” Spike said, pounding a fist down on the contentious script. “Wait, how did he do that? Isn’t he too short to reach the top of the desk?” “He bilocated, Slappy. You’re a toon. You do it all the time.” “If I make that episode, and the finale, I’ll be typecast as a villain for the rest of my career, like every other toon dragon out there, and I’d rather quit that have that happen. I. Want. Out.” “Okay,” Rob said simply. He tore the contract in half and dropped it into the wastebasket. “You’re out of your cartoon contract. We’ll re-write the necessary scripts without your character.” “A pleasure doing business with you,” Daffy said, climbing up on the desk to shake Rob’s hand. He then hopped down onto the ground and led Spike out of the room. A security guard was waiting outside. Together, they went to Spike’s trailer and cleaned it out. For a moment, Spike considered telling his costars what he had done in person. But then he remembered how often they had ignored him, culminating in how they had just barred him from the wrap party. So, he wrote a heartfelt goodbye letter instead, and taped it to the door of Twilight’s trailer. “So, what do you want to do now?” Daffy asked. “Are there any parts you wished you could play?” Spike immediately produced a copy of Variety, advertising the casting call for a new film in New Zealand: The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. “This is the part where you get your list of movie productions from 2011 that could possibly have a toon character in it and convert it into a check list. Because Dodo is going to reference them all.” “You know me too well.” “This!” he exclaimed. “Smaug is the most-famous dragon part of all time. I’ve got to play it. And here I was thinking that my contract would keep me from ever having a chance!” “Good for you!” Daffy exclaimed. “But isn’t Smaug...a little bigger than you?” Spike scoffed. “Have you seen the special effects in Lord of the Rings? They’ll be able to scale me up easy!” Daffy took a close look at the article. “It says here that they want an extensive filmography for any applicants to the lead roles. What else have you been in?” “Well, there’s this one commercial I did for Kozy Shack pudding...” “If any of you readers are not American, that was your cue to shudder in disgust.” Daffy gave Spike a doubtful look. “OK, I can get parts in other movies, easy! My family has connections. They are all in hibernation for the rest of the Twenty-First Century... But I can still get some parts...easy! And with your influence...?” Daffy shook his head. “Sorry, pal. I’m a TV agent, not a movie agent. You’re on your own for this.” “Oh,” said Spike, deflated. “I’ll still do it!” He took out a cell phone and dialed a pre-set number. “Trixie?” he said into the phone after a moment. “Can you pick me up early? We’ve got some travel plans to make...we’re going to Hollywood!” After hanging up he turned back to Daffy. “Thank you so much—I never would have gotten the nerve to quit if it wasn’t for you. And now I’m going to be famous!” “Good luck,” Daffy said, watching Spike walk outside to await his ride. After a few moments of making sure that Spike wasn’t coming back into the building, he walked back into Rob’s office. “So, Robby-boy!” he exclaimed. “Now that you have a spot open on the payroll, let’s see about filling it with a celebrity cameo!” Rob looked to see who Daffy had brought into the room with him. “Me. I mean me.” “Oh,” said Rob. “That could work. You’ll have to audition.” “Are you kidding?” Daffy exclaimed, pulling his head-feathers. “Don’t you know who I am?” “Oh, it’s not to see if you can act,” Rob said, getting up and leading Daffy out of room. “It’s to see how your chemistry is with Fluttershy. Come in tomorrow at 9 am.” “I am excellent with shy characters. A perfect introvert’s introvert!” Daffy bragged as Rob went back in. With Rob’s back turned, he rubbed his hands together at how well his little scheme to use Spike to break back into show-business had gone. Away from Warner Bros. Away from a world where he would always have to play second fiddle to Bugs Bunny. All of Daffy’s time spying on the cast and crew of My Little Pony was about to pay off. Daffy was going to become a feature performer again, like he was in ’38. All he had to do was shove all those pony broads out of the way and remind the world of what kind of star he really was. “Remember, folks, nobody does over-the-top supervillainy like a toon! TV Tropes even has an entry on it!”