LJ Idol Season Ten: "On A Hoof And A Prayer"

[halfshellvenus]

On A Hoof And A Prayer
idol season ten | week 23 | 1470 words
Backing the wrong horsex-x-x-x-x

Comments

[penpusher]

Aw, Clancy is a true Knight! And I very nearly went the Mister Ed route myself except I already did on my own with the "WTF Episode of Mister Ed" complete with youtube video of the actual ep! If I didn't already write it five years ago, it might have been a perfect fit for this prompt!

You really Peg(asus)ed this!

[halfshellvenus]

The whole idea of some agent repping a horse with so little talent--in the age of Mr. Ed and decades of Wonder Horses-- was an irresistible road to travel with this prompt. Writing from the horse's perspective was even better, though. How sad to BE that wrong horse, the one with all of the ego and nothing to back it up. Really, it's like kids these days who want to grow up to be famous for... being famous. \o?

I learned more about the TV shows and horses of that era than I ever intended to-- jeez, the research! The Wonder Horses were incredibly smart, and Mr. Ed's portrayer was along those lines. They built a show around the idea of him without any sense of how very much he would live up to it. :D

[tsuki_no_bara]

clancy isn't much different from a million human guys who want to be famous but lack the talent and the presence. i love the exchange about dark horses on tv: "what about sidney poitier? he's dark and he gets lots of roles." "yeah, but he's young and handsome and has talent." ouch. but it ends up being a very sweet story, and not the crack i was expecting. (don't get me wrong - you give good crack, and a story about a horse who wants to be on tv could easily go that way, but this was pretty straightforward and gave clancy and brewster real personalities and lives. and i liked it!)

[halfshellvenus]

who want to be famous but lack the talent and the presence.
I would like to think that was less common in the '50s and '60s, or at least that people hoped they were pretty enough or talented enough for TV or the movies. Instead of just, "Well, why NOT me? Because I want that."

Being spectacularly unaware of your own lack of abilities has always been all too common, though, sadly!

Poor Clancy really doesn't have much in the way of talent, which at least Brewster is willing to admit when the difference between success and not is so glaringly obvious.

Some of my crack does end with pathos or sweetness, though usually it's just evil humor all the way through. But Brewster made me like Clancy more and want better for him. There was no Brewster in mind when I started writing this, but apparently he had other ideas!

[marlawentmad]

The perspective worked great; I'm so pleased Clancy had such a good friend & that he found some kind of contentment.

[halfshellvenus]

A good friend can make all the difference, especially when you don't really have what it takes for success and yet any normal horse (or person) would objectively realize that you have a good life. Had Clancy never gotten the idea to be a star, he would have arrived at contentment much sooner.

On the flip side, there's Bamboo Harvester, cast as Mr. Ed. He was bought as an ordinary--though very attractive--horse, without any idea of how incredibly capable he would be at learning tricks. More talented than most people could ever hope or expect a horse to be!

[marlawentmad]

I never thought much about the horse behind the show, but I sure am curious now!

[rayaso]

I loved this! It was sweet and funny at the same time, and both are hard to do separately, let alone together. The details about horses and "actor horses" was great. The trajectory of Clancy's "career," with a little stop for his homemade hooch, would be so familiar to wannabe human "stars," especially of the 1950s-60s. You had a lot of great lines. I especially liked, including "Clancy just wasn't Wonder Horse material" (which was so dry), "Please-I'm a chocolate bay!" and "He'd asked the cow to put in a good word for him," which is just so absurd! This was excellent work, and so creative.

[halfshellvenus]

Imagining what an acting/modeling career might look like for a horse was one of the fun parts of writing this-- and of the parallels to human crowd scenes and non-speaking parts that indicate that you ARE getting work... but not very exciting or necessarily even promising work. Maybe you'll always be a random background horse, and never the lead!

This part, Clancy just wasn't Wonder Horse material, is one of those irresistible parts of writing a self-deluded character. Clancy has no visible talent to speak of, but he contents himself with thinking, "Okay, so I'm not super-horse or anything, but still!"

[bleodswean]

AWWWWW! So glad Clancy had a long life and found contentment there at the end. Not all of us can be Mr. Ed.

I really really liked this line - but now his big dreams only happened when he slept !!!

[halfshellvenus]

When are dreams are so much bigger than our talents or possibilities, it's better that they don't consume our waking hours!

Sometimes, that's where people find necessary inspiration. But if you don't have the talent for what you want, and hard work won't get you there... you may be much better off just accepting reality. Of course, part of the problem is that you have to recognize reality, and not be telling yourself that you are an AWESOME horse, so amazingly handsome, and that you should of course be the star of everything!