Lily is most likely gonna end up derped… kicked in the head and nearly suffocated…that’s gonna be showing signs of brain damage.
Honestly I’m with you, Martha essentially lied by omission to her granddaughter and she seemed like one of those old people who treated their children badly and don’t wanna fully reflect on it (oh she did acknolwedge that she might’ve had a hand in how cindy ended up, but that’s the most thought she gives). The mother was terrible yes, but the foals were innocent.
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To be fair, just because you’re an elderly doesn’t give you a free pass to just be unncessarily cruel. I get the feeling that she was one of those old people way too set in their ways to change and shitrats are not, those were her granddaughter’s pets and the fact she killed two of them and kept it a secret is just…wow
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Just since character motivation is being discussed and Martha and Dan’s interactions happened off screen.
Dan had in fact already shot down foals in the past and the phone call at the end of chapter 1 had involved a suggestion of foal-b-gone before Martha decided on watching the fluffy while her granddaughter was away.
None of those foals were supposed to be born in the first and would likely have been give away to random takers including explicit abusers. This is the best timeline for everyone involved except for bella.
In regards to Martha favoring natural colors. None of the cream foals would have won her over since they all resembled their bitch mare mother. Dakota alone cracked her icy exterior and won a better fate for them then the were going to get.
I tried to include as much detail in the story without getting into flow breaking tangents and writing pages of exposition.
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Everyone sucks and I hoped Dakota would meet the end of a boot. Fine story. Just everyone involved except the granddaughter is awful and it’s kind of shitty of the grandmother to force a replacement fluffy on her just because she doesn’t like it.
It would have been a hilarious ending if the granddaughter took Bella home because “It’s my fluffy” and left the foals on the farm, though.
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She actually said in one part that she blames herself for how her daughter turned out, that she was too strict with her and alienated her as a result. I’m not excusing her behavior. I’m thinking Bella reminded her of how manipulative her daughter now is (as a recovering junkie, I can tell you that one of the unsavory things all junkies have in common is being manipulative and dishonest) and she just felt an urge to destroy this embodiment of the monster she’d created.
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Thats actually a thing I considered while writing this story, Bella is both a metaphorical reflection of Cindy as well as in some ways a physical reflection since Cindy imprinted on Bella before giving her to Marie.
Great series of stories.
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True, I was just bringing up a point on why someone could feel that way towards Martha, which I also feel the same. I’ve seen and heard of older folks who’ve messed up their kids (to varying extents) and while they do think of it a bit, they’re far too set in their ways to truly change, so Martha’s characterization struck a chord with me.
Also, I have a controversial opinion that fluffies should be given some level of consideration for traits that most people would harshly punish them for (ie, not liking “poopie babies”, being noisy, etc.) and that training them out of these traits takes patience and positive enforcement since well…they were genetically engineered by humans and came out really fucked up as a result…Idk, it just gives me the same vibes as parents who had a hand in molding the environment that resulted in their kid being majorly messed up and just further abusing the kid instead of stopping to think for a second why they ended up like that. Bella, while undeniably irritating for how she rejected Dakota on the basis of colors, is following the genetic programming Hasbio put into her and no doubt the psychological torture enacted on her made it worse. Not to mention, again, Marie loved her enough to want her grandmother to promise not to hurt her or her babies…which Martha did anyway.
Or maybe I’m just a really soft hugboxer who can’t help but have empathy for the genetic oddballs doomed by man’s hubris that are fluffies. Who knows?
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neboloby pokračovanie dakotových súrodencou
I am writing a short story that I will release between Christmas and New Years
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I have no clue how I missed this series until now?? I think the AI image may have put me off or I was just being unobservant when this was being uploaded.
Martha is brilliant. I absolutely cannot wait to see her again. I love the amount of differing opinions she’s brought out of people here and her family’s dynamics are fascinating. You brought some great complexity to them.
Second-bestest baby being eaten by chickens? Brilliant. Bella being gross and entitled? Horrid. The right kind of horrid. Dakota is a good lad and poor Lily being derped/killed? by her own idiot mother’s impotent flailing is such a sting since she was just a bystander to Bella’s bullshit. I hope she makes it through, but she’d have to rely on her sisters more than her mother, surely?
Loved it. As always, can’t wait to see more from you.
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Ngl its super easy to miss content on here. I uploaded the entire thing in under a day.
Yeah, this was the main thing - order-of-events wise, it’s hard to picture the kid replacing her beloved fluffy with one of its foals, even if it is cuter. And if she comes back for Christmas then there’s absolutely no way she won’t realize how badly grandma has treated the other fluffies.
Further, both Bella and Dakota are being vocal about the foals that existed before - the child will have followup questions. I liked this story, but I feel like a lot of convenient things happened to include all the scenes the author wanted.
Plus, one can say that the fluffy ponies are disposable toys and that two were disposed of like “defective livestock,” but then the whole story is full of fluffy ponies experiencing a range of emotions and desires. You can argue that Martha is just a hard farm woman, but the fact remains that she’s got a foal bodycount (and we weren’t informed of any defects on their part) and Bella doesn’t. Painting grandma as a hero for her targeted, color-based animal abuse and manipulation of her granddaughter is… a taller order than the story manages.
Theres a lot of things going on. Marie is pretty young and does view Bella as a toy given how spoiled and entitled the mare is.
Dakota doesnt consciously pick up on it but the continued soft rejection by his mother has made him rejection sensitive so he would go along with anything Marie wanted to so instead of crying about tea parties, or makeovers, or brushies when Marie decided to read a book or draw in her diary.
If you’ve ever had a furby in your house, you will know how annoying it is when it randomly starts begging for shit at 2AM.
As far as body count, Bella absolutely would have killed Dakota if Martha hadnt stopped her on several occasions. Her orange foal would have grown up so spoiled that he became a hellgremlin and raped his sisters.
As far as conveniences, people dont really pay attention to what fluffies say since they are always living in a made up play world like toddlers. I can chalk up a number of interactions not making sense due to my autism but generally people arent rational actors and people doing dumb shit with poorly thought out motives is pretty common.
Didn’t want to go hard because this was well written and had a lot of effort put into it from a relatively new member. It’s just hard to escape that Martha is even more horrible than Bella. She hates Bella from the start and even if the orange foal was going to grow up to become fluffy Hitler. She killed the foals in front of Bella to scare her into submission. And she became a “Poopie Babbeh white knight” at the same time and projected herself onto Dakota. Bella is a brat but she lashes out at Dakota because she see’s him as the source of her problems.
It would have been a fun twist if Dakota had blabbed to the grand daughter that Martha is a ruthless foal killer and the grand daughter freaks out that the whole plan was to try to get her to ditch Bella and take Dakota as a warped form of revenge on the ex-wife so she takes Bella home instead leaving Marie with a bunch of foals she doesn’t care about and Dakota who’s a failure who blabbed.
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Yeah but see, even there, you just rolled right past the green one she fed to the chickens. It was a really cool scene and great to read about in a fluffy story, but like I was saying… it’s hard to see in what way Bella is a more self-serving or cruel character than grandma.
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Theres obviously some plot holes. I just wrote what came to mind as I worked through it. I wont deny that Martha isnt a great person but shes still a farmer who is handling subpar livestock whereas Bella tried to commit infanticide.
I have a specific reference frame as the author into character motives and backstory that the audience doesnt which obviously shapes my perception and conceptualization of the characters. I am planning a series on the breeder Bella came from to explain why she sucks and other backyard breeders suck.
Given my changing opinions, would I have written the same story now? Maybe not. I almost had Bella kill Dakota in front of Marie.
Will Marie figure out Martha is messed up once she’s a teen and the rose tinted glasses come off? Maybe.
I will probably revisit Dakota when I figure out somwthing to do with his special talents. I will probably write one more story with Martha and Bella.
I’m honestly surprised this story spawned as much attention as it has.
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The story is well written. But Martha remains an indefensible character.
An argument can be made that Bella isn’t subpar. Going by the “usual” assumed background fluffies were intended to be bright colors. Poopie colored fluffies=unlikely to sell=best to have culled by the mares without human intervention. From a “livestock” perspective, Bella is arguably a better example of her species than a “Aww babbehs am gud babbehs!” mare loving her litter of dark brown foals equally.
Martha had other options available which would’ve allowed Dakota to live. Instead, she immediately jumped to “Well, kill the bestest” not once, but twice. An argument could be made that the first incident made Bella even more actively murderous.
Ultimately? Martha’s a poopie babbeh white knight, seeing nothing wrong with killing newborn foals that do not meet her color preference while seeing the same behavior in a fluffy as something abominable. And she’s made even more pathetic when you add in that it’s also ultimately part of an attempt to get one over on her substance abuser daughter in the eyes of her granddaughter.
From a story standpoint, Martha would’ve been more sympathetic had she gone with separation and formula for Dakota, and not resorted to killing foals herself and Bella just killed Dakota in front of Marie. Instead we get a hypocritical old woman trying to look better in her granddaughter’s eyes than her methfiend daughter.
Any defense of her that isn’t “She protected a poopie! She must become a saint or the pope is the antichrist!” or “All fluffies deserve it! Feed one to pigs next!” requires stuff that isn’t present within the text of the story proper.
A fitting coda? Dakota breaks his back leggies and needs to be made a huggyfluff on the same day Martha breaks a hip and ends up losing the farm because of requiring assisted living.
The writing itself isn’t BAD (and neither is your art. It reminds me of booru stuff in a good way). But defense of Martha just requires a ton of mental gymnastics.
It’s not just Martha that’s a bit of a problem. Dakota is a massive problem too because an additional trope trap that comes with the “Poopie Babbeh savior” trope is “The poopie babbeh is always the most intelligent, most loving, most caring and most perfect fluffy” which fits Dakota to a tee. Yet Dakota just goes along with Martha and doesn’t seem to care for it’s siblings. It’s why I wanted to see him fail by panicking and telling the grand daughter that Martha killed two of Bella’s foals because while he’s being being spoiled by Martha he’s still a bit scared of her.