An innocent game of frisbee-toss goes wrong when Silver Spoon's pet Buddy breaks his leg and has to be taken to the vet.
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- Member Since 2nd Nov, 2012
- offline last seen 31 minutes ago
Admiral Biscuit
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Admiral Biscuit
Joined 2nd Nov, 2012 ·
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Poor Buddy. At least he won't be in any more pain. It is nice to see Silver Spoon doing what's best for her pet and not herself. I am purposefully trying not to think about the fridge horror of knowing that Humans can recover from a broken leg perfectly fine, and the potential that Buddy may be sapient.
Nothing 'potential' about it, mate.
That was a living, breathing human being.
Holy crap, that got dark quick.
5107783 Ah, but is this a human like in our world? After all, by that logic you can claim the ponies there aren't sapient.
5107867
Most definitely open to interpretation.
5107867
Maybe I should have put a dark tag on it.
5107783
Well, humans in this alternative universe may lack the ability to think abstractly, thus making them mere animals. That's what I'm hoping, because otherwise they just straight up murdered the guy.
5108091
And what's your basis for that?
At least she can visit the grave.
I dont feel too good.
That was truly bizarre.
5108117
Because the alternative is horrifyingly twisted? Also, the part where they discuss euthanizing him right in front of him and he doesn't make any attempt to stop them? And the fact that we have fully sapient magical ponies with permanent marks of their destinies on their butts. At that point, assuming that humans in that world are sapient simply because we are is a rather dicey proposition.
5108183
dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/37540750/_ponies/gilda%20this%20up.PNG
5108091 5107783 5108117
They knew damn well he was intelligent. That's the really fucked up thing.
That, and that it happened so quick. There really wasn't a whole lot of thought process going on in Silver's head. Kind of just like 'ok, let's euthanize him.' I think anyone would have a bigger internal dialogue than that, even a farmer putting down a horse with a broken leg. And Buddy is supposedly a beloved family pet, not just, you know, livestock.
I have to say Admiral, this didn't pull off the dark thing. It didn't even pull off the sad thing. There was so little explored into Silver Spoon's feelings on the matter, and even less of her actual relation with Buddy. So it's kind of hard to feel sad for a character that we didn't know, and harder to feel sad for another character that was barely feeling sad for the first.
The concept alone isn't sad, it's just... fucking bizarre. I mean, it's clearly obvious what you're implying here. Shoot a horse with a broken leg. I got it. But that twist isn't really enough on it's own to make a story. Make a point, maybe.
Hope you don't mind the criticism, btw.
5108846
Possibly. Then again, my cat "says" things all the time. He even has enough variant vocalizations that I might call it a "language". More likely, there simply isn't a shorthand for the noises humans make in the same way that we would just have a dog bark. Because, frankly, a story where a Silver Spoon's non-sapient pet human has to be put down is sad and a bit odd, but that's it. A story where Silver Spoon's sapient pet human has to be put down contains slavery and murder, and damn well be marked with the Dark tag. Since this wasn't, at least at the time of posting, I have to assume that Buddy is just an animal. If I'm wrong, and Admiral Biscuit does mean for Buddy to be sapient then this definitely needs the Dark tag added.
5108938 Honestly? I think Admiral didn't put that much thought into it. Probably more of a 'oh wouldn't it be funny if...'
5109236
5108117
5108938
5108183
While I agree that this story could definitely benefit from being longer and a little better planned out, one thing you guys should keep in mind is that Admiral is writing one of these stories every single day. It's not surprising a few details are lost here and there, because that's one hell of a time constraint.
5109342 I... know? He's flexing his writing skills, and I'm flexing my criticism skills.
5109342
Believe me, mate, I know. I've been pre-reading every single one of them as they come out.
5108846
I've been saying this since minute one in the comments! It's excellent. The ability to invert concepts in things like this is one of the Admiral's best traits as a writer, and it's why he's so damn good at writing creepy little shorts like this one. To wit:
It's absolutely enough to be its own story. It's not just about taking horses behind the woodshed -- it's about how quick people are to discard their pets at all. How often do you hear about people killing/neglecting/abandoning their pets? The only reason this is any different is that it's a human. Which is to say, no different at all.
5109342
Well yes, that's the point of the exercise. If anything, I would see the debate over the story as a good thing, as it means we care enough about it to discuss the meaning.
5109236
That is very much a possibility. Now, to be clear, I definitely could be wrong, and I'm sure the idea that Buddy could be sapient is supposed to come to mind. I simply don't think that it is the obvious conclusion, or even the correct one. Buddy's actions just don't seem to have enough self-awareness for me to credibly believe he's sapient. Although that could, in turn, simply be due to everything being filtered through Silver Spoon's perspective, and all the biases that entails. Which why I love first-person limited, to be honest. It facilitates discussion over what's really happening, which I think is far more fun than just having everything told to you straight out.
5108846
If anything, it was originally planned as a dark comedy--for dark(er), wait for tomorrow's post.
I did gloss over the ending pretty quickly, it's true. One thing that makes me lazy sometimes is that I'm (mostly) using characters that other people have developed, so I don't have to do a lot of the legwork when it comes to character development. I'd predict that this story would likely be sadder to someone who's had to put down a beloved family pet, as they would probably project their feelings onto Silver Spoon. Mind you--I'm not saying that as a way of implying that you just don't have the right feelings; a good author ought to be able to put you in the right frame of mind with little to no predisposition on the reader's end, so in that respect I failed.
Again, it was originally intended as a dark comedy. Perhaps if I had intended it as a sadfic from the beginning, I would have done it a little differently. It's certainly a genre I need to improve upon. IMHO, for a real sadfic, the author needs time to build the characters and to get the reader invested in them enough that the reader actually cares--while we can get lazy because we're using someone else's characters, we the authors still have some work to do; we can't just say "look at this, it's sad," and be done with it. But, would you have had a different take on this story if it had been Sweetie's pet? Or if it had been a Winona and Applejack story?
Not at all.
One of the reasons for doing one-shot-ober at all was to move out of my own comfort zone and try some things I otherwise wouldn't. If I want to get better, then I need people to honestly tell me why it sucked and what I should have done differently.
EDIT: Also:
was in fact the original idea. The story took a different turn from there, but it's not the first time the story I originally planned and the story I actually wrote were not the same.
5112922
That was pretty much what I thought. It's k though, sometimes those are the best stories!
Uh... no. I mean, written as it is, it could have been AJ and Winona, wouldn't have made a lick of difference.
And I really don't think that's a word length issue. Though I will say, about 2k words would have been better. But still! I'm a firm believer in the idea that you can get a LOT across in a very few words. Short and sweet.
I know I'm just nit-picking on a story you wrote in a day on a whim.
This is a very silly story, and the only odd thing to me is how Ponies know he can speak yet somehow have learned 0 ways to translate by then
5114704
Cats have a wide range of vocalisations, but very few people choose to treat that as a language.
5114798
Speaking cat is not that hard
5117166
Well, not for some of us.
Though I'm guessing Silver Spoon and her mother aren't exactly the type of people who'd invest the effort in learning it.
5112922
"I'd predict that this story would likely be sadder to someone who's had to put down a beloved family pet"
Ehh... as someone who's had to put down a beloved family pet, I can assure you, this felt more silly than sad. And it was definitely messed up, as well. But... no, putting down a pet is traumatic. Utterly traumatic. To watch their breathing slow, to know you asked someone to murder them, to feel that guilt welling up in your chest while their expression dulls and their muscles go slack, to know it was either that or a slow, drawn out death full of panic and pain...
...it's horrible, and I don't wish it on anyone.
5109660
"It's not just about taking horses behind the woodshed -- it's about how quick people are to discard their pets at all. How often do you hear about people killing/neglecting/abandoning their pets?"
This statement, and statements like it, bothers me. How often do people abuse their children? How often do stallions kick their foals to death for some perceived flaw? How often does a sow eat her own young? How often does a lion maul his mate's newborns so that she'll go into heat again? How often does a new mother kill her baby because there's something 'wrong' with it? How often does a seahorse devour its own children?
We are, barring our complexity, literally no different from the other animals, and to treat the things we do as somehow unique- and not merely as more complex expressions of the things that other species also do- is dishonest. Animals kill/neglect/abandon their young all the time, and humans- due to the way our brains are wired- perceive many small animals as children or child equivalents, leading us to adopt them and to treat them as children- along with the perceived NEED to protect them from 'dangerous' humans or situations, just as we would human children.
If we were solitary predators, our perception of animals as children might not matter- what does a solitary predator care for the young of another, after all?- but we function in groups, which leads to an in-built desire to take care of one-another's children with the given understanding that this altruistic behavior will, in turn, be reciprocated (which makes it decidedly not altruistic, but you know what I mean).
Animals, for us, often act in the role of surrogate children, due to how we determine whether something is a child or not (the cat is fairly well documented as having almost exactly the same facial proportions as a human baby, making them nearly perfect for playing the role of changelings- and I don't mean the MLP kind, but you're welcome for the fic idea). This means we, as a species that functions in groups and benefits from cooperation, are compelled to protect various other animals, even though our higher functions are able to look at them and go "This isn't human." You can see the same thing happen with other animals, from time to time. It's a programming glitch, nothing more.
In any case, I've strayed from the initial point. Humans do nothing worse to their pets than they do to their kids, which is nothing worse than what other animals do to THEIR kids, which is ultimately the result of countless centuries of evolution. This is neither good nor bad, it merely is. It is not strange that animals die and suffer as often as they do while under our care, but rather that we're still so successful as a species in spite of the fact that we're essentially playing host to an ever-growing number of coocoos who only serve to replace our own young.
...then again, people in first world nations have more pets than those in third world nations, and we also have declining birth rates... hmm. That's certainly worth thinking about. Clearly, this is the fault of those furry changelings...
Pardon the odd style of writing, I developed it over the course of the last year and it's become quite difficult to shake. It doesn't much help that I'm on my phone. I'm also sure that some of these thoughts are incomplete; I genuinely tried to work out the reasoning as clearly as possible, but when an idea's been floating around your head for long enough it becomes difficult to separate it from the pool of other ideas which have latched to it and used it as a base to grow off of, leading to conclusions that seem as though they've sprung out of nowhere. I've... gone over this a multitude of times, and hopefully it wasn't 'offensive' to anyone. Actually... scratch that, SJWs suck and Social Justice is the stupidest idea in the history of ideas. There, now it's offensive.
5124743
Always good to log in and see an angry dissertation waiting for you.
Please, re-read my comment in its entirety, paying special attention to the last two sentences. I'm not entirely sure where the miscommunication happened here, but I thought I made it pretty clear that, as far as I'm concerned, humans are animals, and that this story shouldn't be treated any differently than, say, Old Yeller simply because the euthanee happens to be human rather than a domesticated dog or cat.
Also going to call you out on the random attack on 'Social Justice' or whatever. Firstly, if it was intended as some kind of poorly-executed slam against me, then congratulations, ya done goofed: I don't subscribe to much (if any) of that philosophy.
Secondly, what the hell does this have to do with the rest of the point you were trying to make? Absolutely nothing. If you're trying to be deliberately provocative, go do it elsewhere. This isn't the place for you.
Thirdly, getting pissy about people potentially taking offence at something you say, when you yourself apparently take great offence to a point you thought (incorrectly) you saw in my comment smacks a bit of disingenuity, sir.
5125715
Hahah, nah, the SJW thing was a joke. Tongue in cheek. I was being silly.
And I wasn't actually angry at any point during that, nor was it actually specifically directed at you personally, but rather, the sentiment in the statement highlighted. It's something that, on its own, I've seen in so many places at so many times that it really does just make me cringe.
In any case, if I were angry at you, I'd have talked about you, I promise. I suspect that when you saw the post you read it in your head in the angriest voice you could muster because, well... many people seem to get either incredibly terse or overly verbose when they're mad, so I do get why you'd be inclined to take it that way. I can assure you, however, that no offense was ever actually intended to anyone.
Besides SJW's, screw those people.
There, see that? It can be taken as a non-sequitur, you see, which functions easily as a joke when added to the end of a 'serious' statement, as it appears to have no actual connection to the rest of the post. Likewise, it also functions as a contradiction of the prior message, dismissing everything I just said in a display of hypocrisy which, again, is often considered to be funny. And now that I've explained it, it's actually neither of those things, because a joke that's been explained is no longer a joke- it's a lecture.
5125748
Oh, you just reek of pretentious.
First off: cut the condescending tone. I'm full well aware of what a joke is, and they usually don't involve bringing in completely unrelated topics solely for the purposes of abuse. You tried, twice; it fell flat, twice.
Second: nice try dodging the original point. Again, I entreat you to read the entirety of my original comment in context. Again, I'm not sure where you got the idea that I felt humans and animals were exclusive categories, but I'm fairly sure the last line of the original comment should put any concern on that front to rest.
As to:
What sentiment? Again, in context, the purpose of that statement in the original comment was purely factual, for the purposes of comparison to the story. Euthanising a pet -- justified or not -- is something that happens regularly. Fact. Period. Free of judgement. I was responding to people who were getting worked up over the fact that it was a human being euthanised rather than an animal, and arguing that the reality of the situation is, that a human-like society with humans as pets would would not treat them particularly dissimilarly from the way we do our own -- for better and worse.
Protip: in future, try to read through and understand the full context of a comment before you single out one phrase you find 'cringeworthy' and blow your pedantic load all over the comments section.
5126579
So, I wrote a thing here. I was kinda mad when I wrote it, and I kinda still am.
Then I wrote an apology instead, because I'm not a huge fan of arguing. Discussing? Absolutely. But when the other person wants to assign motives and emotions to what I've written beyond what's laid out, and moves into what are, essentially, personal attacks? Not a chance.
Then I erased it and wrote a bunch of insults instead. But I'd rather not resort to calling people nasty things, since that's your shtick and, well, never let it be said that I stole another man's material. So instead, I'll make this post and compel you to waste your time reading it!
But really, I already tried to apologize, and you just got madder. I'd say I'm sorry again, that I wasn't trying to paint YOU as the bad guy, that quoting your post was meant to provide an illustrative example of the general thoughts I tend to rail against and wasn't actually supposed to be a personal attack (and by the way, I hate to tell you this but, uh... your whole "READ MY WHOLE POST" nonsense? It sounds EXACTLY the same, whether I take two lines or all of them, so if you were trying to make the same point I was... you failed.) buuuut... you're just gonna froth at me more anyway, aren't you?
5126678
Fair enough. I didn't get a particularly apologetic vibe from your first response, but, since you've made it clear that was the intention, consider it accepted. I just hope you'll be as willing to accept mine.
I should have done the same as you, and given myself another two or three drafts to work out the frustration before posting.
Obviously, there's some kind of disconnect here: we've both made and explained our respective points, and something about each just isn't getting through to the other person. That's fair, that's life, and that's probably where we should let the matter lie.
Here's to starting over, on the right foot.
I.. that was sick..
it's so sick I want to down vote REALLY BAD
but is so well written and I love the concept of Silver Spoon having a garden and connecting with her Earth Pony roots that Imma have to give a thumbs up
Gotta give you props for the concept as horrifying as it is, reversing the roles in the situation. Because if Buddy owned Silver Spoon and she broke her leg… (brrr) I just don't want to even think about it
5187541
You might also enjoy another story of mine, Diamond Tiara Dies Alone. There's a fair bit of character building for Silver Spoon in that one, too.
Also, although incomplete, Re-Looting by Nurse Redheart has some good Silver Spoon speculation.
Thank you! It was one of those 'what-if' ideas that I just had to write.
5187661 oh yes DT Dies alone was tragic but beautiful. Indeed there was allot of positive character building for Silver Spoon.
I'll check out the Re-Looting as well.
This has got me feeling some kinda way...
What an absolutely brilliant concept.
6360504
Thanks!
No
No
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!
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The Mares of Diomedes I Can take, but this, this is just too much.
*walks to a corner and lays down on a fetal position*
~Leonzilla
6858319
It was supposed to be a comedy. Then it kind of drifted off-track, and I don't know what it as any more. I sort of have a theme of humans coming to bad ends; see most Not another Pony on Earth or Fimfic Authors are in Your Bed.
6859787 I will tell you what it is.
This is a tragedy, no way I see you convincing me otherwise.
This was horrible (in the good way). I could not care less about the suffering and I would be just as mortified if the story was about Silver Spoon's dog. No, what really gets me is the levels of insanity presented. It upsets my stomach just to think about it.
The presentation of a clearly wrong moral choice that it's interpreted and believe to be the right one it's crazy! It's messed up! and it just about one of my favorite parts about the dark genera. To expose the controversial aspects of real life in an artistic way, it's beautiful, yet horrifying.
There is some many things I find wrong about the scenario presented, so many it made me rave.
All I can say sir, is that you sure know how to write, even when you don't know what you are actually writing.
~Leonzilla
I lol'd. :V
6942962
That may mean that you're a terrible person.
Or it could be that this is very much a story which depends on what the reader brings to it.
6943166
I don't understand why this story isn't tagged Comedy. :B
O.o Well. That's...a bit uncomfortable. And is making me look at my elderly cat with some guilt.
The entire notion of humans in Equestria is often just used for fetish material, but here, it's more just horror. If in our world horses are pets, perhaps in the world of ponies, humans are the pets. So...when one of our pets gets too sick or hurt, we do what is kindest...and so do the ponies.
It's a little more disturbing in that we can recognize Silver Spoon's pet as sentient. The author makes no effort to turn the human into just a beast. The ponies simply can't understand the human, and so don't attribute it with sentience. Which...again, giving my cat worried looks.
Thanks. Now I'm going to feel so guilty when she gets shoved in the kennel for her next B12 shot...IT'S FOR YOUR OWN GOOD, PUMPKIN!
If you prefer audiobooks, there's a dramatic reading of these by Shadowofcygnus on YouTube.
This actually put me in mind of (original) Planet of the Apes.
Also, as has been noted, a comedy tag might not be the worst thing in this case.
6943965 Yeah. Nothing say you can't tag them both COMEDY and DARK at the same time.
Wow... Your writing has improved markedly since 2014, Admiral.
8355822
Wow... Your writing has improved markedly since 2014, Admiral.
Thanks! (I think.)
My first One-Shot-Ober was . . . interesting. Besides working two jobs, and doing the fics, I was also a leading role in a play that opened in late October, so I did not have a lot of writing time, and some stories got really rushed. This was one of them--it could never really decide if it was supposed to be funny or dark.