I write pony words. Millions of them. Some people actually think they might be worth reading. I am very thankful for that. Also, I have a Patreon now?
Steady Hoof, like most ponies, has a cutie mark. However, unlike most ponies, her cutie mark represents something... not quite on the right side of the law. Given her circumstances, she has been hired on as a personal assassin for Princess Luna.
She's not happy about it.
She thinks?
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I opened this outta a morbid curiosity.
Damn I actually reallly liked this.
Ooooh, just getting right philosophical.
We go through more therapists that way...
such a interesting character. So glad its multi chapters cause I wanna see where this goes
And another story on my tracking list, I can enjoy stories like these for ages.
I don’t believe in bad or good what she should be asking is if her talent is killing and she is using her talent to help ponies if she feels that she can control her self and make the hard decisions when she gets fired. She could ask Luna to petrify her so when she is needed in the future she can be released and redeployed or she can end her life if she feels she can’t stop her self from harming innocent ponies. So the gist is who does she want to be and continue to live with the choices she makes
whole chapter I was complaining in my head about how terrible that psychiatrist was
This turned out to be a lot more interesting than I was expecting. In a way, I'm kind of reminded of Firebrand and Aeon's discussion about influence and control in the context of "Every Little Thing She Does". Some very poignant and deep questions about morality and its possible dependence on contextual elements. I'm eager to see where this goes.
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Yeah...
And then we found out that yeah, he was very, very terrible and she broke his neck!
FEATURED: 11/26/18
Man oh man. I read this thinking 'wow, what a great twist and philosophical question! I ended up liking this character a lot more than I thought I would, and had a satisfying read.'
...Then I realized it was marked incomplete.
So psyched.
I wonder what other regular ponies or even the Mane 6 would react on learning about the team of Pressure Point, Clear Mind, Cleaner and Steady Hoof doing what they do.
Wouldn't do too badly as a standalone oneshot. Yet it's marked incomplete, which means more adventures of Steady Hoof and her missions in the dark underside of Equestria. Equestria After Dark, if you will.
#Edit: Upon rereading, I've realized we really should have seen this coming as soon as we realized Steady had been going steady (snrk) with her work for 3-4 years now. It seems a little strange to be having a crisis of conscience now of all times.
I want more on this Steady Hoof. Might do something similar with Rares or RD... maybe. I dunno. Would it be good? Steady what do you think?
This whole debate reminds me of the regular conflict between Daredevil and the Punisher. Can good truly be achieved through violent means? A definitive answer is hard to reach, especially when there exists a slim chance for redemption.
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Yes it can be. Indeed, sometimes it MUST be. When words fail and no side has yet backed down, only violence remains. Punisher has been, OFTEN, far too zealous in his work, but the general idea he has is appropriate.
Look at the revolving door of villains in Marvel and DC. Each time they escape, they kill more people, get punched in the face, then go back inside for a bit. How many times does Punisher have to put a truly vile criminal down vs. that? How many victims has he prevented? As opposed to someone like say, Batman, who just clocks Joker each week on Monday, and Joker's out by Friday to have a weekend of murder. And he prefers large-scale ploys, too, kills people by the dozen or up to the thousand. But because they keep putting him in a correction facility or a prison cell, he's allowed to do it over and over again. When a single bullet could have saved perhaps tens of thousands of lives.
Kinda like Grosse Point Blank, which is really neat. I hope she finds someone to love too.
Wait... Steady Hoof is a Pegasus mare... seriously? Did you use one of the medical my O.C.s from my story series?
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You know it's probably a coincidence? I doubt any authors intentionally go around 'stealing' names. There are a finite amount of names, and a whole heap of stories, so it would take forever for an author to check with every single story to make sure they aren't stepping on any toes.
9317177 Less likely for me. I have had this problem before.
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Your most viewed story has around 8k views. The user base of fimfiction.net is slightly over 250k users.
This means there is a 3.2% chance he has seen your story (assuming that is the one the character is from). On top of that chance, you need to take into account that Bronywriter probably doesn't want to steal names for this very reason, and that pony names are mostly puns or wordplay, which limits the amount of available names for a character even more.
I don't mean to be rude, and I understand that frustration, but it's always a good idea to obtain evidence before making an accusation.
You made me feel bad for an assassin pony of death.
Good job author.
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EDIT: FEATURED: 11/26/18 - 11/27/18
This sounds just like that storyline from Deadpool comic where he went to a psychiatrist to murder him for molesting a girl.
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I would never, ever, ever do that. I would never need to. That would be very wrong of me, and it's not something I would do. If I read your stories and knew the character, I would have named her something else.
9317485 Fair enough. I'll consider it a coincidence then.
Really stoked to see an incomplete tag on this! I liked the concept, and the character was definitely believable. I wonder what else in in store, can't wait
This reminds me of a phrase from a TV show I occasionally watch, "sin-eater": one who commits sins so that others don't have to.
Also, Cassian from Rogue One.
I re-read this again and I still love this one.
This is really good, Dark Comedy indeed
Steady‘s problem with her cutie mark is really interesting
I mean it is her special talent but that doesn’t mean she has to be bad
Reminds me a bit about a web comic named Welcome to hell. The main character has ‘homicidal tendencies‘ which means he is good at killing, but he is still not a maniac the act is just (relatively) normal for him
Anyway I will definitely follow where this story will go
Decent exploration, although I feel that that that inclusion of a torturer on the team kind of slants matters against it being a morality study and makes it more of a genre piece. Fundamentally, torture does not work as a method of acquiring information.
i.imgflip.com/2nl67h.jpg
Love this!
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Except the Punisher never accomplishes anything either. For every criminal he kills someone just as vile takes his place and the crime rate of MU New York stays the same.
Debating crime fighting methods in a fictional universe where the status quo is all powerful is pointless.
Nice.
I need more wholesome stories about homicidal Ponies.
And now I kinda want a meeting between the respective princesses goon squat.
God....damn. This is brilliant. A perfect example of showing justice isnt black and white. Its gray.
9318227 Yes, in a world of magical non-existent ponies.
Seriously, don't base your life on fanfiction.
9318077 All you have to ask is this: How well did negotiating with Nazis turn out for Chamberlain?
Nuff said.
So... the doc she sees also happens to be a murderer or whatever? And Celestia and Luna, the ALL-POWERFUL DIARCHS... don't just throw him in the dungeon but allow legal shenanigans... and then have him killed anyway, meaning their legal system is a bigger sham than ours has ever been and instead resembles a banana republic where the leaders just have their enemies assassinated.
Wow... this is what we call textbook hamfisted.
I mean, come on. This is just pushing suspension of disbelief off a cliff... like Steady would do.
Also, anyone care to justify a pedophile Cutie Mark? Yeah, didn't think so. They don't work that way for a very good reason: It'd be utterly idiotic if they did and pretty soon foals would be terrified of what twisted fate they'd be forced into.
It takes more than arm chair-level philosophy involving magical pony fate to impress me.
Besides, I just erased several quadrillion sapient life-forms. (Alondro is now Thanos, because he says so.)
9318308
We also have a double jeopardy law. He got off and therefore cannot be charged with the same instances again. OJ almost definitely killed his wife, but he can't be charged with that again because he got off. What the psychiatrist did doesn't matter to the story. It's like Steady said: she doesn't go after everyone who does a bad thing. If the psychiatrist had been convicted of whatever it is he had done and served jail time for it and this was a conversation after he had gotten out of jail, she wouldn't go after him. So it's not like Luna is just having every single bad pony killed.
Every time. Every time you might make an interesting point to think about you pull this nonsense. It takes more than pathetic peacocking to get me to take you seriously.
9318424 Well, this is a fanfiction about a world where ponies get fate stamps on their ass.
Why would I take it seriously as any sort of moral or philosophical study? It's all just fiction. All fake.
It's the same sort of reasoning as why Tolkien despised allegory. You can twist your world's 'reality' to whatever you wish it to be, thereby poisoning the lesson with propaganda, intentional or not. No matter what, it can never represent a real situation. In reality, these stories are never black or white or grey. They are colorless until someone decides they mean something. In my case, however, they remain perfectly clear and I see only the author's meddling hand behind the glass.
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I see you are also a being of culture.
9318437
Why do you even bother leaving a comment then? The only reason you would have to even argue any of this is if you thought it had some significance, then the second the author called you on this you reaffirm that it doesn't matter and they shouldn't bother you about it. You are such a hypocrite.
So is there gonna be a second chapter?
9318437
So then why do you care about any of this? It's not like this story is even over, so you don't know what the ultimate conclusion is. It's just the introductory stuff. Why don't you just stop reading? Why are you working yourself into this frenzy with something that is ultimately meaningless to you? The whole point of pretty much every story on this site, or heck, all of fiction, is "what if?" I don't think that there are ponies with murder cutie marks on the show and it would be weird if there was. Part of the fun of fiction is that I can ask "what if there was a pony with a murder cutie mark?"
All fiction is "what if?" All of it. Saying that none of it matters... well, you and I both know that's not true. Fiction has changed culture.
Good for him. I do think that TLotR is better without it, sure, but that doesn't mean that there's no value to it. C.S. Lewis wrote masterpieces with allegory.
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There are plans to continue, as I understand it.
This is a very interesting story. Good job with character development on Steady. Would love to see more of her.
9318528 Because I consider the story construction. I can enjoy Lord of the Rings because it's a masterfully written work, an intricate painting with words.
It doesn't mean I pattern my life around it.
And that goes for stories with allegory as well, given that it's very easy for me to determine how a story is slanted and stilted toward the author's viewpoint... which is why it tends to annoy me. The more heavy-handed, the worse it becomes. In most modern instances, allegory is wielded as a blunt instrument.
Aside from your penchant for having foals violently murder each other by bashing each other's heads in... That comes up disturbingly often... are you subtly trying to tell us something? Wish-fulfillment?... these worlds often don't fit the larger picture. Well-crafted fiction leaves us with a 'complete' world that we can see coming into being within its context, even short stories can manage this with a few well-placed and crafted lines of exposition (see "Harrison Bergeron"). The simple, innocent Equestria of the show USED to be that way. Now, of course, it's burdened with continuity errors and plot holes galore and ill-fitting movie, comic, and EqG canon; and as such is just so much paint thrown haphazardly on a canvas.
But to your point: what if there was a murder cutie mark? Well, unless such a thing was commonplace, I would expect the Princesses would be exceedingly concerned that this guiding magic would curse a pony with such a thing... if they behaved like 'real' people at all. Ah, but this is a dark and gritty Equestria where ponies are serial killers from birth and rape each other and commit every form of human atrocity. In which case, how exactly did the Mane 6 stop NMM in this universe? Because, be honest, a REAL psychotic alicorn who wished to kill her sister wouldn't even hesitate to wipe out 6 untrained mares whom her sister sent to gather the only objects capable of stopping her.
Adding 'realism' to Equestria causes every thinking individual to start questioning the larger contexts involved which we know must be in effect to arrive at this place in its timeline.
Do you yet see the issue? Let me spell it out: Equestria only works as a relatively innocent fantasy land. Reality would all but instantly destroy it. To maintain order in a world where ponies differed from humans by nothing more than physical appearance and magic, Celestia would by necessity become a true tyrant, perhaps more benevolent than most, but she would still be forced to become an authoritarian monarch. That's simply how the cards would be dolled out. She would never allow our type of courts to exist, there'd be no background to support their formation nor reason for them to exist (our courts are a direct result of our sociopolitical system, after all), and there'd be no need to with magic providing many easy means with which to force the truth out of criminals or to view the recent past (scrying becomes a thing with magic, ya know?) and find the absolute truth.
I cannot see Celestia in any of these 'gritty' Equestrias permitting freedom to these primitive savage ponies who wither and die before her eyes after lifetimes of doing wickedly. She WOULD come to see herself as a goddess, as truly divine. Hubris WOULD become part of her very being, because compared to the mortal dreck she'd be forced to deal with year after long, miserable year, she practically is perfect!
This would be an unrecognizable Equestria, with a massive military force built up in readiness for the last thousand years in preparation for her mad sister's return, steeped in offensive magic. And instead of the night lasting forever, I suspect instead the endless glare of Daybreaker (ugh, I still hate that name. Come on, 'breaking the day' is implied in it, that sounds more fitting to NMM's henchpony or something similar).. the glare of 'Corona Blaze/Stellar Prominence/Sol Invictus' would beat down upon the unhappy land forever.
Well... until the obviously psycho Discord of this world would break out and sadistically mutilate and slaughter everything in gruesome, mind-bending ways not even the effects guys who worked on "John Carpenter's The Thing" could stomach. Then everything would be dead and the Writing Gods would just blink that hellscape universe out of existence.
There's only so much darkness one can stuff into happy rainbow pony land before it simply breaks. Murder being commonplace enough that a murder cutie mark is seen as anything but a horrific curse leading Celestia and Luna to question the very foundations of their Fate Alteration Butt Stamps is one of those world-breakers.
So yes, feel free to ask the question of how a murder mark would be viewed. But keep it within the context of the show's world. How would the Equestria WE KNOW OF react to such a thing? Frankly, it would still break it in the long run unless it's a one-off. But it would be a more believable breakdown, especially if the WHY of such a Cutie Mark is left an eerie and unpleasant mystery.
I would also think, given how easy it actually is to kill someone, that a natural talent for killing would manifest in the more subtle methods which actually require more skill than stabbing, choking, or breaking somepony's neck (things anypony with even a modicum of training could perform... on that note, the pony in this story started out bashing a foal with a rock... and got caught... not exactly showing natural talent there!). A penchant for poisons would be perfect. It'd be along the veins of potion-making, and likely involve some magical means of doing the victims in. Delayed action toxicity, mimicking a natural disease, making them clumsy at just the right moment, attracting deadly predators... there are so many interesting murder mechanisms one could come up with for a magical mixture.
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I’m no Samaritan, that’s for sure.
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Well, technically speaking it placed Britain in a position where they could weather the inevitable Nazi attacks; Chamberlain was also responsible for increasing the budget Britain was spending on war preparation, as Britain at the time of said negotiations would've been (in the immortal words of my history professor) "Utterly and completely fucked in trying to engage the Nazis in a land war." But yeah, it's pretty easy to paint Chamberlain as limp-wristed moron when you disregard his years in service and view history through the lense of a time-traveler, like we oftentimes do.
As for the story, hey, I think it's interesting. It's pretty morbid, got some delightful dark comedy, ect. That being said, Bronywriter, I do have a bit of criticism; I think, at times, the almost cartoonish levels of ultra-violence our protagonist performs can kinda detract from the internal struggle she (may?) be having. If that's the point, s'all good, but if not, something to maybe keep an eye on.