The End is Neigh!

Content warning for: cannibalism.

Cupcakes is a fanfiction written by Sergeant Sprinkles, originally posted to /co/ in January 2011 and mirrored to brony news aggregate Equestria Daily.^{1 2} Site owner Sethisto described it as “legendary for being the most brutal and disturbing pony story ever written. It will give you nightmares, and will ruin Pinkie Pie forever.”² Sethisto would apparently ban further Cupcakes content on the site according to 4chan.³ Despite this, reception was mixed at the time. Some thought it “was [a] great literature piece”, while others derided it as a ”ridiculous” “grammatical train wreck that it ruined all, if any, of the immersion”.⁴ The author himself, under a different account, was incredulous on how the story became so popular.⁵

Cupcakes begins with Rainbow Dash flying about Ponyville, taking a detour to Sugarcube Corner to make good on a promise to help Pinkie Pie. When she gets there, Pinkie tells her they’re going to make cupcakes - but Pinkie will do all the work. She gives Dash a drugged cupcake, and when she wakes up, she’s strapped down to a table in a room decorated like a party - with pony bone, hide, and organs. Pinkie - dressed in a dress of cutie marks, pegasi wings, and unicorn horns - explains that Dash’s number came up, and that she will become the special ingredient in her cupcakes. Pinkie tortures Dash, slicing her up, electrocuting her, and removing her organs. When Dash is dead, Pinkie decides to stuff the body to keep her forever, vowing to do the same to her other friends when their numbers come up.

Cupcakes is not well-written. There are capitalisation and formatting errors throughout the fanfic, and phrases like “she didn’t have number”, “I got chance”, “Pinkie moved the next”, “How would like”, “have to a friend”, and “was really was nice” make it feel like Sergeant Sprinkles was racing to write the first pony gore fic. Words are duplicated as often as they are omitted. Commas tend to show up when they shouldn’t and disappear when they’re needed. Two mistakes of note are Dash losing “conciseness” and Pinkie taking off her small intestine from her “bowls”, an error so funny it took me out of the torture. The descriptions average out to be functional when you don’t factor in the errors. Some of them are great, such as Pinkie’s pony-parts party room, or they’re too clinical for their own good, like most of the gore. There’s a mechanical, “this then that” cadence to it all that never allows Dash - and the audience - to feel the torture beyond the epithelium.

Cupcakes suffers from the “Jekyll and Hyde” effect - its popularity ruins its twist. Like how we all know Dr. Jekyll is Mr. Hyde, we all know Pinkie is a murderer. Like in Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde where the story without the twist becomes mid-tier gothic horror, Cupcakes without its twist becomes a subpar creepypasta.

However, where Cupcakes truly shines - and what gets lost in derivation - is Pinkie’s character. Cupcakes derivatives base their Pinkies on “Party of One”, a season one episode of the show where Pinkie becomes depressed, delusional, and straight-haired. But Cupcakes predates “Party of One” by two months!⁶ Sergeant Sprinkles could not have written Cupcakes!Pinkie as the mentally-unwell, straight-haired Pinkie depicted in that episode. What makes this story scary (or what would make it scary, provided you were a brony in 2011) is that this is normal Pinkie.

The Pinkie in Cupcakes isn’t depressed. She’s not crazy, beyond being a murderer. She’s excited to have her friend with her, jovial while gutting her, petulant when she isn’t getting her way, and even misses Dash after her murder. Towards the end of the story, she makes rapid-fire puns based on the organs she pulls out of her, which outside of the morbidness, is in-character. This is as show-accurate to Pinkie as you can get while making her a murderer, and the perception of Cupcakes!Pinkie as being similar or the same as “Party of One”!Pinkie by the fandom has destroyed what people expect when reading the story. If you go into Cupcakes assuming this is straight-haired Pinkie, obviously she would kill Dash. If you go into Cupcakes assuming this is curly-haired Pinkie, it's shocking that she would ever consider it.

The Pinkie of Cupcakes is not only herself, but delights in her carnage. Pinkie is bound by a “number” system, where she kills a pony if their number comes up. Though she says she doesn’t make the rules regarding the system and calls it one of her “responsibilities”, she clearly enjoys her work and is opportunistic in her murders. She kills Gilda despite her not having a number because “when was I gonna get another chance to try a griffin?” The particulars of the number system are not elaborated on outside of everyone in Ponyville - including children - having them, but it would do a disservice to the story to do so. It leaves Pinkie’s motives vague enough to wonder if someone is forcing her to kill or if she’s only systematised something she already loves doing.

There is an edited version of Cupcakes by Edinpony. This edit is the canonical story for many people and was often used as a script for dramatic readings. Edinpony improves on the grammar and prose for the most part, bringing the story into competency. The descriptions are more visceral, though I’m still left wanting for the knife to be twisted in more. However, multiple errors are still in the story, including “conciseness” and “bowls.” What’s worse is that, in an effort to elevate the story, Edinpony throws in epithets like “the pink pony” and “the blue pegasus”. Amateur writers often do this because they’re afraid of repeating names and pronouns, but names and pronouns are often read like “said” - completely skipped over. This wouldn’t be as much of an issue if Cupcakes was written from Pinkie’s POV, because her dehumanising (dehorseifying?) Dash by calling her “the blue pegasus” could be an interesting window into her psyche. But we’re operating from Dash’s POV. Why would Dash call her “the party pony” as she’s being gutted by her? How is Pinkie being pink, or herself being blue, relevant to the torture? The audience of an MLP: FiM gorefic already knows these things about these characters - and more importantly, we already know their names!

Edinpony’s Cupcakes also makes one interesting cut to the original. The original Cupcakes didn’t end on Pinkie deciding that she’ll stuff all of her friends. It ended on Silver Spoon waking up strapped down like Dash was and Pinkie letting Apple Bloom kill her. This is important to mention because many Cupcakes derivatives include Pinkie having some kind of assistant (usually a Cutie Mark Crusader), and without the context of the original story, it is easy to assume that those additions were added later. The removal of that scene gives Cupcakes a better ending, but I would not personally remove it because of that important context.

Cupcakes should be read for its impact on the brony fandom, but outside of its novel use of Pinkie being in-character as the source of horror, it’s a bunch of nothing. The prose is functional, the grammar and formatting are bad, and if you’re not intrinsically creeped out by gore, it isn’t scary. In a world with plentiful pony gore fanfiction, Cupcakes would barely make a blip today. But I suppose that’s like calling Seinfeld unfunny - it's not its fault it spawned a genre.

Content warning for: dubious depictions of mental illness.

Rocket to Insanity is an unofficial sequel to Cupcakes (seemingly) written by Immolation¹ and published on Equestria Daily on April 7, 2011.² It was generally well-received on release, called “extremely well written”, “tastefully written”, and brought one commenter to tears. However, some said it “IS NOT WELL WRITTEN. IT IS NOT EVEN GOOD.” and like a B-movie.²

Rocket to Insanity reinterprets Cupcakes to be recurring nightmares Rainbow Dash has, causing her to avoid sleep and lose her mind. Her friends notice her deterioration, and Pinkie Pie offers her some cupcakes - triggering Dash into a murderous, defensive frenzy where she fractures under the weight of sleep deprivation and fear.

This fic is worse than the Edinpony edit of Cupcakes when it comes to epithets. Rainbow Dash is called some variation of “pegasus” more than she’s called her full name. Pinkie is called the “pink pony” or the “earth pony” about as many times as she’s called Pinkie! Applejack is called an epithet a third of the time the story refers to her. Combined with purple phrases like “life fluids”, “ichor”, “life force”, and “life essence” for blood (a 5:9 ratio!) and Pinkie trying to comprehend an attack “upon her person” with her “visage” frozen in fear, the author is deathly afraid of perceived repetitive prose. The use of “filly” to refer to Dash and Pinkie, for whatever reason, comes off as needlessly patronising, and is either the author not knowing an adult female horse is called a “mare,” or is intentionally doing the pony equivalent of calling a woman a “girl”. I stress that when people read a story, names and pronouns are almost invisible. They are there to orient the reader to who is in a scene and doing actions. Yes, you can use them too much, but that would be the same issue as overusing epithets: you are being redundant in your information. Furthermore, Rocket to Insanity has inconsistent formatting, forgetting spaces after ellipses and closing quotations, “Pinkie Pie” is hyphenated, and Sugarcube Corner is called “Candy Corner” despite its name being known at this time.

Issues aside, there’s a solid story here. The descriptions themselves are average-to-good, descriptive enough to hit but not dragging in length. The author captures sleep deprivation and paranoia well, so much so that I, both paranoid and sleep-deprived, find little to complain about. The fic plays around with its sentences and spelling, using sentence fragments and words smashed together to communicate the press of thoughts and speech Dash has. Does it always work? No. Some of the sentence fragments have poor rhythm and make little sense as fragments, but when it does, it conveys the anxiety well. Passages like “Dash stared at them. They were the same color. Same kind. [new paragraph] Run.” are excellent in showing how quickly Dash finds threat in something innocent. Her thoughts aren’t declared as thoughts, blending into the narration, making it wonderfully difficult to distinguish Dash from her paranoia. My only real complaint with the story itself is how it ends, with Dash maniacally laughing after she kills Pinkie, but only because it feels like a letdown. I was expecting something like a murder-suicide, but I understand why the author would choose this as a climax.

Rocket to Insanity is an interesting take on the Cupcakes concept that, while it needs another edit, was generally enjoyable.

Content warning for: mentioned rape, depicted rape, depicted pedophilia, and dubious depictions of mental illness.

Ask Pinkamena Diane Pie (APDP) is a Tumblr ask blog by crookedtrees and was first archived by the Wayback Machine on October 6th, 2011. Ask blogs are a type of blog where the person running the blog roleplays as a character, answering questions as the character. “Pinkamena Diane Pie” is Pinkie’s full name, as revealed in “The Cutie Mark Chronicles”, and “Pinkamena” is the name often given to Cupcakes!Pinkie to differentiate her from canon Pinkie.

APDP holds such nostalgia for me. The artstyle, sketchy and all pink, is distinct and perfectly fitting for the Pinkamena we get here. There is no real plot to APDP, aside from Fluttershy escaping (90-93, 101-111) and Mrs. Cake joining (145), but that’s to be expected. APDP was one of the first big pony ask blogs, and those that came after had more in-depth stories.

APDP follows a straight-haired Pinkamena, isolated (1-2, 41) and depressed (28, 41-43, 121), as she murders (3, 41), rapes (8-11, 47), and bakes ponies into cupcakes (139-144). Pinkamena says that her depression only lifted when she gave in and “[fed] the monster” inside of her (44-45), as it gave her control and release (46). Murder is Pinkamena’s primary coping mechanism for depression, calling the “rape and bondage and cannibalism” her “hobbies” (47-48), the latter of which being her favourite (75). She also makes art, such as clothing and decor, from her victims (55-59, 126-130). While more toned down than canon Pinkie, Pinkamena has a silly streak that adds some humanity to her (80-83, 98, 115-116). The only time we see Pinkamena with curly hair - the only time she herself says it curls up - is after she dreams of being with all of her friends, who forgive her of all the horrible things she’s done (131-137).

Pinkamen’s most relevant relationship is with her assistant, Scootaloo (20-28). Pinkamena describes her as being “somepony who understands and trusts [her, m]aybe to a fault” (51). Scootaloo has the same monster inside of her that Pinkamena does, and Pinkamena wants to give her something she never had at her age: a friend (149-156). Though she does admonish her when she makes mistakes (112-113), she treats Scootaloo with tenderness, hugging her even after Scootaloo tells her she didn’t do something she was supposed to (54). However, their relationship is not platonic. When asked to describe what love is, she says it’s when you “don’t want to murder [somepony]” (40), and is explicit in not only removing Scootaloo’s number (50), but keeping it removed (73). When asked to kiss her, Pinkamena insists the kiss “has to be completely platonic”, kisses her with tongue, and then reiterates it was a completely platonic kiss - to Scootaloo’s confusion, as she doesn’t even know what platonic means (60-69). Her “platonic” feelings are seemingly reciprocated, as a look gives Scootaloo a “wingboner” (73). They even sleep in the same bed (37-40, 131-137).

On one hand, Pinkamena relies on murder to cope and enjoys raping her victims. Her preying on Scootaloo, a child, could be in service to her twisted morality: the only person she can connect to, which helps her cope with depression, is underage. On the other hand, the way in which their relationship is depicted, explicitly coy with her saying “I’m going to be in so much trouble for uploading this” (67), the punchline of a child’s favourite part of the murder process being rape (75), and crookedtrees having drawn porn of Pinkamena and Scootaloo before (159), Pinkamena’s pedophilia comes off not as evidence of her broken worldview, but as something to shock or even arouse the audience. It does neither for me, and I’m left disappointed that she never gets to reach Humbert Humbert levels of self-justification.

IF that doesn’t bother you, APDP is a light read. Beyond Pinkamena being explicitly in control of the number system (50, 73), the only addition to Cupcakes lore it makes is popularising straight-haired Pinkie as being Cupcakes!Pinkie. Pinkamena is as cute as a pedophilic murdering rapist can be, I suppose, but you can find more engaging pedophiles, murderers, rapists, and cute ponies elsewhere.

Content warning for: depicted bullying, depicted and mentioned suicide, depicted cannibalism, dubious depictions of mental illness, and depictect terrorism.

Muffins¹ is a multi-part, alternate universe continuation of Cupcakes written by Reitanna Seishin, starting with the publication of the eponymous Muffins on June 30th, 2013, and continuing until December 6th, 2016. Seishin created the first story after reading Cupcakes and getting into MLP: FiM. She chose fan-favourite Derpy Hooves as the protagonist due to her love of muffins and because of her being mistreated (both in and out of universe) for a suspected learning disorder. While not part of the same universe, Pinkie’s Party, another continuation of Cupcakes by the same author, was referred to by her as an early version of Muffins.² Seishin started writing Muffins when she was 23,³ both as a hobby and a way to vent.⁴ However, fan impatience caused her to take the series in a different direction and eventually to put the series on indefinite hiatus due to it feeling like an obligation.⁵ The series was written out of chronological order, with Seishin filling in gaps as she went; she recommends you read in publication order,⁶ though I read in chronological order to make a timeline of events.

I have fond memories of Muffins. I remember drawing fanart on my old laptop in MS Paint while listening to Seishin narrate. I’ve since forgotten everything but the most important plot points, and since I listened to the narrated versions rather than read the stories, I stopped when she stopped narrating them.

Understanding Seishin is important to understanding Muffins. To be brief, her life started with abuse, grew into bullying, and continues to be a struggle. Seishin has self-harmed since middle school and has made multiple suicide attempts since high school. Therapy has not helped her and she believes her condition cannot be cured. Seishin considers herself disabled, having experienced ableism as a child, and hates being pitied for it. Along with bipolar II and social anxiety, she also suffers from body image issues.⁷ All of these things, given the series’ ventfic origins, are present in this work.

Plot

Muffins begins with Pinkie convincing Derpy to join her and Apple Bloom in “making cupcakes” (Muffins, Derpy’s First Project, Payback). Pinkie’s sisters, Marblestone “Inkie” and Limestone “Blinkie” Pie, soon come to Ponyville and join in, but they bring an additional Pie sister with them: Obsidian “Minkie” Pie (Pie Sisters Reunited, Minkie Pie’s Turn). Minkie was the oldest sister, but was imprisoned because the Pie sisters’ parents believed she was evil (The Imprisoned Pie, Revenge of Obsidian Pie, Pie Sisters Reunited). The Pie sisters, Derpy, and Apple Bloom consider each other family, with Derpy and Minkie becoming friends (Free Like a Pegasus, Just a Little Girl Time). However, when they try killing the remaining Elements of Harmony, Fluttershy escapes, runs to the police, and gets the Pie sisters imprisoned (The Fun Never Ends).

Meanwhile, Babs Seed, after dealing with her bullies in Manehattan, realises she enjoys murder (Grudge of a Bad Seed). While Derpy and Apple Bloom are on the run, they ask her for help in breaking the Pie sisters out. She agrees on the condition that she gets to join them (Prison Break). The Pie sisters, Derpy, Apple Bloom, and Babs (collectively called “the bakers”) finish the job in killing the Elements of Harmony (The Fun Never Ends, Farewell to Kindness, Twilight’s Fall), and after torturing the other Cutie Mark Crusaders (Final Crusade), start their revenge on society by terrorising Ponyville (Let’s Welcome Chaos).

While writing the main story, Seishin also wrote side stories. These include Derpy’s backstory (Derpy’s Story), why Pinkie puts pony meat into cupcakes (Pinkie Pie’s Success), the Pie sisters’ pasts (The Imprisoned Pie, Even Rocks Break, All That Glitters), the murder of Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon (Broken Tiara, Silence is Silver), and Minkie’s thoughts (collectively called The Mad Musings of Obsidian Pie).

How to Read Muffins

If you want to read the series, what should you read? And in what order? Below is a chart I made of the series in chronological order, though Seishin recommends you read in post order. Solid lines represent pathways that I can establish, while dotted lines indicate stories that follow each other in post order only.

But what is the most efficient way to read Muffins, given that the stories overlap? Here’s how I would read the series if I could recommend it to someone.

1. The Imprisoned Pie, to learn that Minkie is the fourth Pie sister and has been trapped in a cellar for Pinkie’s childhood.
2. Pinkie Pie’s Success, which establishes why Pinkie is baking ponies into cupcakes.
3. Even Rocks Break and All that Glitters since they establish Inkie and Blinkie as characters.
1. SKIP Element of Kindness, as it is an unnecessary backstory for Fluttershy which isn’t relevant.
4. Party of None, which establishes Pinkie’s move to Ponyville and her starting her murders again.
1. SKIP Broken Tiara. It should be read only if you want more context on Apple Bloom’s emotions towards murder.
5. The original copy of Cupcakes, not the Edinpony edit, due to its original ending with Apple Bloom.
1. SKIP Silence is Silver, for the same reasons as Broken Tiara. If you want to read one, read this one.
2. SKIP The Party Pony. While it establishes the Pinkie/Derpy friendship, it’s unnecessary context.
3. SKIP Derpy’s Story, as the information in it is given in other stories.
6. Muffins, to establish that Derpy is Pinkie’s apprentice.
1. SKIP Derpy’s First Project and Payback. They feel like “early installment weirdness” and only provide more Derpy content.
2. SKIP Revenge of Obsidian Pie. Its events are described in Pie Sisters Reunited.
7. Pie Sisters Reunited, as it brings the Pie sisters together.
8. Meet the Team, as it establishes the discomfort the Mane 6 have towards the Pie sisters, as well as Fluttershy not trusting Minkie.
1. SKIP Free Like a Pegasus. Derpy and Minkie’s friendship is set up in other stories.
2. SKIP all Mad Musings of Obsidian Pie. They contain no plot-relevant information, read like Seishin’s vents on her blog, and Minie’s character is established elsewhere.
9. Minkie Pie’s Turn, as this is our first look at Minkie.
1. SKIP Just A Little Girl Time. It shows the bakers’ and Mane 6 interacting but provides little new information.
2. SKIP Inky’s Stellar Obsession. It’s irrelevant and the traits Inkie and Blinkie are given in the story are shown elsewhere.
10. Apple Bloom Gets Her Cutie Mark due to what the title says.

Apple Bloom Gets Her Cutie Mark works as an ending to the series, setting the series at a decent 35.1k words (assuming you’ve already read Cupcakes). You can stop reading here.

1. Grudge of a Bad Seed and The Fun Never Ends. Grudge of a Bad Seed spoils The Fun Never Ends, along with Prison Break, but reading it provides context for why Babs is allied with the bakers. If you’re reading to the original ending, read The Fun Never Ends only. If you want to read until the end, start with Grudge of a Bad Seed, then read The Fun Never Ends.
1. SKIP On Trial. It has no new information.
2. SKIP Prison Break. Its events are embedded in The Fun Never Ends.
3. SKIP New Elements of Harmony. Babs’ integration into the bakers is done in Farewell to Kindness.
2. Farewell to Kindness, for reasons prior.
3. Twilight’s Fall, relevant only because it kills off Twilight. This is the most skippable “main line” story.
4. Let’s Welcome Chaos, as the finale of the series.
1. SKIP Sting. It’s setting up a continuation that never comes.
2. SKIP When Bubbles Pop, as per Sting. If Muffins ever gets finished, then these stories would likely be necessary.

With these additions, the series becomes 93.6k words long, still half as long as the about 180k words of all the stories combined.

Prose

Seishin’s prose improved as she wrote the series. Muffins (the story) is littered with spelling mistakes, not helped by its unremarkable descriptions of torture. In contrast, Silence is Silver is more graphic with less errors. The spelling errors are understandable, and I commend her fastidiousness in spell-checking the latter stories. Her grammar is fine, but she overuses “lain” as the simple past tense of “laid”; “lain” is the past participle, used in conjunction with “have” to form the present perfect, which expresses a past action having present consequence. She also likes using “for” as a conjunction, such as in the sentence “She knew that this was the pony in question, for she was unlike anypony either of them had ever seen.” (Inky’s Stellar Obsession). This isn’t incorrect, but “for”, to me, feels more formal than “because”. “She knew that this was the pony in question, because she was unlike anypony either of them had ever seen.” fits the formality established in these stories. While the Pie sisters relayed the discovery of Minkie Pie, the lack of proper dialogue formatting made it hard to read and difficult to tell who was speaking (Pie Sisters Reunited), but this was an isolated issue. Other things, such as the use of epithets, aren’t something I can fault Seishin for, since most of these stories are plagued with them.

When Seishin hits her stride, she is a fantastic gore writer. Broken Tiara and Final Crusade both have moments where I physically recoiled. Sections like “She also dribbled oil along other parts of her skin, including her flank wounds, as well as her skinless belly. Boils and blisters appeared anywhere the hot liquid touched.” (Broken Tiara) and “Sweetie Belle did not hesitate as her friend had, but placed the cheese grater over Scootaloo's shoulder, and quickly began scrubbing the skin.” (Final Crusade) are fantastic, visceral, painful descriptions. However, because Muffins focuses so much on its torture, the torture becomes monotonous quickly. Let’s Welcome Chaos was comical in its violence, which, after over one hundred thousand words of, I was not reacting to. I expected that, given that most of these stories involve an extended torture scene, but it may have been better to space out the bakers’ murders for them to be more impactful.

I am not going to analyse every single story’s prose, but instead I’m going to use two stories as case studies for the best and worst this series has to offer. Silence is Silver depicts the murder of Silver Spoon, starting right when Cupcakes leaves off. Apple Bloom is struggling with losing empathy after her first solo murder of Diamond Tiara, and has replaced Applejack with Pinkie Pie as her true big sister. But due to Silver Spoon’s past of trying to imitate Diamond Tiara to fit in, she consents to having her cutie mark removed, and apologises for being a bully. Unlike Diamond Tiara, Apple Bloom believes Silver Spoon’s apology is genuine, and wants to free her after taking her cutie marks. Pinkie, however, has other plans, and strategically cuts her own throat to bleed out. Apple Bloom kills Silver Spoon to save Pinkie, which destroys her empathy for all other ponies but Pinkie. It’s a solid arc with some solid torture, and works as a standalone sequel to Cupcakes.

However, what brings Silence is Silver down is its reliance on exposition and needless clarification. A few paragraphs down from setting up how traumatising murdering Diamond Tiara was for Apple Bloom, the narration then tells us that killing her “caused her mentality to undergo such an extreme amount of trauma”. This can be inferred, not only because the narration told us before that it was traumatising and that she lost empathy for others afterwards, but also through what Apple Bloom tells Silver Spoon: “If it wasn't fer her, I'd never have been mentally capable of handlin any more killin. Watchin it was just fine, but when I did it myself… It hurt! It hurt so bad! Oh, but it felt so good!” Another instance of this happens as Apple Bloom tries to convince Pinkie of Silver Spoon’s remorse, which is then followed by “It seemed that Silver Spoon's confession and apology had awoken a small part of her destroyed empathy, for she knew how Silver Spoon felt. Apple Bloom really believed that she deserved to be released.” Instead of weaving Silver Spoon’s history with Diamond Tiara in the back-and-forth between her and Apple Bloom, the story spends almost a thousand words on describing it.

Grudge of a Bad Seed is the longest work in Muffins, and works largely as its own story. It follows Babs Seed, living in Manehattan with her sister Jazz, and her experience being bullied by three other foals because she doesn’t have her cutie mark. Seishin is capable of succinct descriptions, such as Chain Link, Babs’ older friend, being described as “another earth pony who had a pure white mane, tail, and hide, looking like a snowpony [...] wearing an ornate necklace composed of hundreds of circular metal loops that he had made himself,” and Babs’ classmates, who get even less description. However, most OCs in the story have a habit of being overdescribed, dumping chunky paragraphs describing the minutiae of their appearances. Babs’ bullies have almost four hundred words introducing their appearances, when you could easily describe them well under that! Any other traits, like eye colour, hair colour, cutie marks, and clothing can be described when necessary, and they’re usually not as necessary as you think.

It continues the same hand-holding as Silence is Silver. When Babs gets her cutie mark after planting an apple seed, Chain Link says that it symbolises both her capacity for growth and a deadly secret, as he told her about apple seeds containing cyanide. I don’t have an issue with this, because the point is redirection: we’re led to believe her secret is her self-harm, but it’s actually her bloodlust. But instead of letting us come to that (very obvious) conclusion ourselves, it is instead spelled out for us: “Her destiny wasn't to just grow apples, it was to grow herself, to show that she was capable of unimaginable things, things that no pony would ever guess she could do.” We as an audience are so dumb that we can’t pick up on the obvious foreshadowing of Chain Link saying apple seeds contain cyanide, nor Babs hoarding apple seeds, nor Babs using apple seeds to poison her bullies, because after Babs poisons her bullies by convincing them that she was giving them drugs, we are told that Babs didn’t give them drugs, but crushed up apple seeds, which have cyanide in them.

What’s infuriating is that there is a passage within this story that succeeds at implicating without hand-holding: it's when Babs runs home after a particularly bad bullying incident and self harms. It’s been established that Babs has a diary that she keeps secret. The expectation is that it's a diary that she writes in, but when narration mentions that “[Babs] had been clean for six months” (emphasis mine) when bringing it up, the implication is immediately understood. There’s a short bit of dramatic irony until the reveal that her diary is a hollowed-out box that she keeps a razor blade in. All of that rested on the use of “clean”, since Babs wasn’t implied to be using drugs.

This “show, then tell” mentality likely comes from Seishin not trusting the audience to come to the right conclusion about her writing. I say this because this was an issue with my own work, and that is why I did it. How will we know what these OCs look like if they’re not described in My Immortal-esque detail? How will we know if Apple Bloom is affected by Diamond Tiara or if Babs’ cutie mark represents growth and a deadly secret if it's not explicitly told? It’s condescending. I know Seishin wasn’t writing for children or teenagers because she’s said so herself, but only children and high school English class flunkies would be able to miss such obvious literary devices.

The Bakers

I point out the solid arc of Silence is Silver because it stands in contrast to the rest of the series. The bakers do not grow or change, nor do they have defined arcs beyond “I’m not a killer. I’m a killer now.” You would expect that, as the series started with her, that Derpy would be our main protagonist, with the rest of the bakers serving as support. It does seem to be like that, as Derpy vents her anger at experiencing ableism (Muffins, Derpy’s First Project, Payback), and how her experiences with ableism have shaped her (The Party Pony, Derpy’s Story). But Derpy becomes backgrounded for Minkie, and the ableism angle gets dropped.

But Minkie lacks a strong arc. I assume her arc is finding happiness after abuse, but she struggles so little in pursuit of that goal. You would think that, as Minkie never got to develop social skills, she would cause friction within the bakers, but her deficits never impact her. When she is off-putting, it's only to characters who don't matter (A Little Girl Time, Minkie Pie’s Turn). She only meaningfully hurts her victims or those who deserve it (Minkie Pie’s Turn, Apple Bloom Gets Her Cutie Mark). The only time she causes any conflict with the bakers is an offscreen fight with Blinkie, who forgives her regardless (Mad Musings: Forgiveness). You would also think that Minkie would suffer through more severe mental health issues than his foalhood self-harm (Minkie Pie’s Turn) and general pessimism, even with the support of her sisters, that would cause conflict as well, but Pinkie causes more genuine conflict with her mental health issues (Let’s Welcome Chaos) than someone who was locked in a cellar for most of her life.

This isn’t unique to Minkie. Derpy’s intellectual disability causes her no more issues than future cupcakes calling her slurs. This is despite Derpy’s forgetfulness resulting in the Pie sisters getting arrested and put on death row. Blinkie, the Pie sister established to have anger issues and difficulties with empathy, holds no resentment towards Derpy - not even anger while knowing that Derpy meant no ill will (The Fun Never Ends, On Trial). Why would Blinkie conflict with Minkie’s understandable issues with socialisation, yet seemingly forgive Derpy getting her and her sisters imprisoned?

Do the other bakers have arcs? Pinkie, Inkie, and Blinkie don’t. Outside of Silence is Silver and Grudge of a Bad Seed respectively, neither do Apple Bloom and Babs. The bakers meld together into a murderous whole, their personalities only formalities of having separate characters and their motivations unified into meaninglessness. You can’t say that Batman’s rogues’ gallery blend together. There is a meaningful difference in the methods and motivations of the Joker, Riddler, Poison Ivy, and Catwoman. But the bakers all murder the same.

In a series centering around a group of murderers, one would expect them to have distinct motivations, preference in victims, and murder methods. You can’t say the Joker, the Riddler, Poison Ivy, and Catwoman are all the same type of villain even if they all target Batman. But the bakers all use the same play-based murder methods for the purpose of making cannibalistic baked goods and hold resentment towards the world due to it allowing them to be abused (Let's Welcome Chaos). You could argue that, because the bakers consider themselves a family (Mad Musings: Forgiveness, On Trial), that their unity reflects their cohesion. I would argue that most of the bakers are superfluous to the story.

Take Inkie and Blinkie in Inky's [sic] Stellar Obsession. Inkie is ensnared by a mare's beauty and wants to preserve her body after "playtime". Blinkie, however, has body image issues that she takes out on ponies she perceives as more beautiful than her. You would think that Inkie wanting to preserve her body would conflict with Blinkie wanting to make her as ugly as she feels, but they kill her without difficulty. They don't fight over their misaligned goals, because they both have the same goal of killing this mare, even if their stated goals oppose. Would it make any meaningful difference for Pinkie to have fallen for this mare and killed her herself? Furthermore, Inkie and Blinkie, despite being set up to be emotional opposites, do not express that in their murder methods. If Inkie is meant to be cold and analytic, why is her demeanor the same as the other Pie sisters? If Blinkie is meant to take out her body issues on others, why does her torture not focus on disfigurement?

I believe this lack of distinction and lack of arcs are why the bakers are called Mary Sues - a term often applied to female characters unchallenged and given preference by the narrative. Seishin disputed this as a criticism, and while I agree with her that the term is vague and unhelpful, her actual argument is flawed. She argues that, because she's based the bakers on real-life serial killers, and since real-life people can't be Mary Sues, the bakers therefore can't be Mary Sues either. Furthermore, she believes that critics call the bakers Mary Sues because they're not giving her the same suspension of disbelief that they give to others.⁸ I also agree that real-life people can't be Mary Sues, because real life doesn't have an author whose hand can interfere. God did not have pictures of Ted Bundy in flower crowns on his laptop as he sent angels to interfere with police investigations; Bundy was, to paraphrase Seishin, highly intelligent, which was the true reason he was able to evade the law for so long.

For the most part, Seishin succeeds in establishing the bakers as intelligent enough to get away with murder. As a filly, Pinkie would lead her victims away from witnesses, drug them to sleep, and take them to another location to gut them (Pinkie Pie's Success). Her extroverted persona integrated her well into Ponyville's community (Party of None), reflecting how many serial killers aren't suspected because they are pillars of the community. Pinkie spaces out her murders so she's not suspected (Party of None), and since Ponyville hadn't experienced a serious crime since Discord, she knows no one will assume murder (Grudge of a Bad Seed).

What does break my suspension of disbelief is the entire sequence where the Pie sisters are broken out of prison in Prison Break. Derpy and Apple Bloom, while on the run, get an all-too-complicit Babs involved. Jazz, while knowing that foals have been murdered by the bakers, and that some of the bakers are still at large, decides to let Babs go alone to Ponyville. In prison, the Pie sisters, intelligent enough to get away with numerous murders, are housed two-by-two, giving them the opportunity to scheme an escape. Babs, despite not being family or a known friend of the Pie sisters, is able to talk to four highly dangerous death row prisoners in private, with no mention of the conversation being watched or recorded. Babs successfully convinces a guard that she was screaming and crying at the Pie sisters while they were instead planning an escape, and the guard doesn't question that Babs' volume wasn't reflected seconds before she left the room. And if that guard wasn't by the door, why wasn't he guarding the room of these murderers while an (to him) innocent child was in the room with them? And when the breakout happens, is no one watching the cameras at a facility hosting highly intelligent murderers enough to notice the cameras being blacked out? Why does it take until morning for the guards to notice that the Pie sisters have broken out?

Some people get pedantic with suspension of disbelief. It's not a crime for a story to be a little unrealistic. Seishin also mentioned being criticised for the Pie sisters having a short trial. That didn’t break my suspension of disbelief. However, Prison Break is a story about breaking out of prison. The Pie sisters' escape is what the plot is predicated on and is something readers will pay attention to. The authorial hand in this story undercuts the intention of the Pies being intelligent killers. If everyone but the bakers has been lobotomised, how smart are they?

Murder and Sympathy

Seishin has stated that the bakers are meant to be the villains. However, it seems like she didn’t set out to make them villains. Candy Mane talks down to Derpy, Roseluck slurs her, Spectrum was her childhood bully, and Applejack thinks she doesn't understand murder because of her disability (Derpy's First Project, Payback, Apple Bloom Gets Her Cutie Mark). The Pie sisters kill their horribly abusive parents (The Imprisoned Pie, Revenge of Obsidian Pie, Even Rocks Break, Final Crusade). Apple Bloom kills both of her canonical bullies (Broken Tiara, Silence is Silver). Minkie kills a foal that told her to kill herself (Minkie Pie’s Turn). Along with stories that humanise the bakers, the impression is that the bakers are meant to be characters we root for and sympathise with.

The shift in sympathy comes in The Fun Never Ends, where the bakers break Twilight for no reason other than it being funny, and their subsequent victims (Fluttershy, the Cutie Mark Crusaders, all of Ponyville, and a literal infant) are all innocents (Farewell to Kindness, Final Crusade, Let’s Welcome Chaos, When Bubbles Pop) . I believe this shift could have happened for two reasons. Either Seishin, due to the popularity of Muffins, decided to move away from using the series to vent, or she made it more explicit that the bakers were bad people due to children idolising them. But even then, the bakers are the only characters we are meant to have any sympathy for. We never have the time to grow attached to their victims, and the only attachments you’ll have to them is if they’re canon characters.

With how lightly murder is treated, you'd think it really was a game. Pinkie jumps to murder too quickly after discovering her own blood makes her baking taste better. When Inkie and Blinkie see her killing another pony, they don't react in horror, but with advice on how to do it better. Derpy immediately accepts that Pinkie is a murderer and joins in, but Celestia forgive you if you think Pinkie, someone Seishin intends for us to see as intelligent and crafty, is manipulating Derpy, intended to have an intellectual disability, into killing others, because you're constantly reminded of her awareness. Babs joins the bakers on a whim that is only elaborated on in optional side stories (The Fun Never Ends, Prison Break, Grudge of a Bad Seed). Only Apple Bloom seems to struggle with the fact that she's killing someone, and only for two stories set before the main plot (Broken Tiara, Silence is Silver). And those stories are better off because they bother to analyse how murder impacts a child's psyche, rather than glossing over it like with Babs.

Should You Read Muffins?

While Muffins flirts with interesting concepts, such as how aware people with intellectual disabilities truly are, villainous protagonists, and found family helping one cope with incurable illnesses, it doesn't hit nearly as hard as it could. The stories spend more time telling you how to picture Seishin's OCs in your head and how to correctly interpret what she's writing, presenting torture without weight, characters without arcs, and plots with obvious authorial sleight-of-hand. I never expected Muffins to be perfect (Seishin’s common response when she's criticised), but I did expect a little more than what I got.

I’m most disappointed by how quickly it forgot its roots: of illustrating the competency of a person with an intellectual disability without leaning into patronising “differently abled”-type narratives. That kind of story interests me, and I believe Seishin, with her personal experience, would be a great person to write it. Muffins has loads of potential, and Seishin clearly improved with each installment. If she wants to lean into slasher-style silliness like the latter stories suggest, she could pull off the horror-comedy excess of mass murder. And while none of the characters truly grow, I have a soft spot for Minkie. Yes, her arc is subtle, but what we get is sweet, and I wish we got more of her friendship with Derpy.

If you’re truly interested in reading it, follow my guide above. I can’t recommend the series as a whole. However, if you want a sample of the highest high, read Silence is Silver. It works as a standalone sequel to Cupcakes, and as one of Seishin’s most recent entries, is her best work in the series.

Content warning for: depiction of eugenics.

“Rainbow Factory” is a song produced by WoodenToaster, one of the old famous brony musicians, published on YouTube on August 14th, 2011.¹ Rainbow Factory - the fanfiction - was written by Aurora Dawn and published August 19, 2011. Aurora Dawn wrote the whole story while "hopped up on NeoCitran and Buckleys, fighting off a bad fever", writing by the seat of their pants. Described by one commenter as "the thinking man's Cupcakes", the fic was received well.²

Rainbow Factory opens on a description of the eponymous factory - a mysterious place that makes rainbows, but no one knows how they do it, and no one leaves sane enough to say. It transitions to the flight testing of Scootaloo, Aurora Dawn, and Orion Solstice. Cloudsdale has always been nationalistic, and those who fail the flight test are deported as disappointments. When Aurora breaks her wing during the test, Orion forsakes his freedom to help her, distracting Scootaloo. The three ponies are taken into the Rainbow Factory and Rainbow Dash herself explains the true nature of rainbows. Rainbows used to be made by Celestia, but after Luna's banishment, between having to raise both the sun and moon and make rainbows, she delegated the latter task to Cloudsdale. However, while everything has Spectra - pure pigment - the magic in ponies made it easier to separate from them. Scootaloo attempts to escape after Orion and Aurora are fed to the Pegasus Device, the rainbow-producing machine, but can't escape. Covered in blood, Dash asks her for her last words. Scootaloo says that she has beautiful eyes.

Rainbow Factory alternates between poorly written and insanely gripping. Aurora Dawn has clear promise as a writer, but doesn’t hit the mark all the way. There’s odd capitalisation throughout the story, awkward wordings such as “beaming hate with his vision”, and a consistent misunderstanding between then and than, it’s and its, and lead and led.

However, the most egregiously amateur aspect of Rainbow Factory's prose is that Aurora Dawn believes said is dead. "But it is!" you tell me. "You should always use strong verbs, and said is a weak verb that people repeat ad nauseum!" I will concede that, much like any word used too much, an overuse of said makes your prose repetitious. If you end every single line of dialogue with said, it will obviously become a problem. That's not an issue inherent to said. Rainbow Factory loves the word slowly, using it to the point of meaninglessness instead of opting for stronger description. There was a rewrite of the story, done in 2021, but the edit doesn't change much outside of removing the glaring errors.

Have you ever seen Avenue Q? Bear with me. Avenue Q is a musical that makes use of Muppet-style puppets as characters on stage. Unlike Sesame Street, which is only seen from specifically shot angles, Avenue Q is a live performance. They can't hide the puppeteers under tables or sets so the actors for the puppets are dressed in all black. This is stage-speak for "you're not supposed to pay attention to me." The actors never disappear, but you’re meant to ignore them as part of your suspension of disbelief. Said is like one of those actors. You see it, but much like names and pronouns, you ignore it. You tolerate its presence because its absence will make the story harder to follow. Used too often or too sparingly, the artifice of fiction becomes obvious.

However, it is a mistake to say that focus on the actor - to the verb - is always bad. Because readers are so primed to treat said like stage direction, breaking away tells readers to pay attention. Characters don't typically yell or whisper all the time, so when they do, it means something. Furthermore, sometimes said is the wrong word poetically. Do you think a writer can ignore meter and consonance because they're not writing poetry? I counted, in a story a few hundred words over eight thousand, one instance of said. If all your verbs are super, none of them are.

What I did like about Rainbow Factory was its interpretation of the lyrics of the song it was based off of for its worldbuilding. Aurora Dawn had little to go off of as to why the Rainbow Factory would be "where your fears and horrors come true", and ended up creating a Cloudsdale whose "social psychology" is nationalistic and eugenicist. Pegasi, even outside of the Factory, are callous towards failures - Aurora’s broken wing gets her no sympathy or medical attention. Even before the reveal of where flight test failures truly go, the three child protagonists believe they're being deported. Cloudsdale's "great responsibility" is providing rainbows after Celestia got too busy to keep doing it herself. The "Pegasus Device" is what allows Pegasi to make rainbows from ponies. "Not a single soul gets through" has been reinterpreted to not just mean the flight test failures that are fed to the Pegasus Device, but also the ponies that work there, as they're unable to leave. It's good worldbuilding and is woven into the story well.

The two OC additions, Orion and Aurora, are good supporting characters to Scootaloo. They have enough time on the page to show off their character without dominating the story. This is Scootaloo's story, after all.

I'm not sure how to interpret the ending. If Rainbow Dash is covered in blood to the extent that only her eyes are visible, is Scootaloo rejecting that she is a monster by saying "You have beautiful eyes"? If the eyes are the window to the soul, and Dash's eyes are the only part of her not concealed by blood, does it mean that Dash can be saved? Is Scootaloo trying to appeal to the last bit of humanity (horsemanity?) in her by mentioning her beautiful eyes - her beautiful soul? Dash's eyes are consistently called "rose" coloured - roses as symbols of love. Does Dash still love Scootaloo even after everything, and can Scootaloo recognize that, locked deep in her soul, that she still does?

Rainbow Factory has obvious flaws, but it is an engrossing read. What it does poorly is mostly compensated by what it does well, and I’d recommend it to bronies who have only seen derivatives based on it.

Luna Game is a series of platforming games made by an intentionally-anonymous brony (let’s call them LunaDev) and first published on April 3rd, 2011. LunaDev created the first Luna Game as a prank for her online friends, inspired by creepy Apple Bloom and Pinkie Pie images she found online. She anonymously submitted it to Equestria Daily, wanting not only to avoid the inevitable backlash, but also to add to an intentional creepypasta factor.¹ Because of the game adding files and being intentionally difficult to close out of, Equestria Daily took down the original Luna Game post and banned all other downloadable games from being posted on the site.² LunaDev describes the first few games as being storyless, though they could be read as Luna having recurring nightmares about dying or killing others. There was no “grand story” and the games come from the premise of “[L]una falls down, horrible things happen”.⁴ Reactions ranged from “the scariest things I ever had to go through” to “there are better ways to spend an afternoon”.³

Luna Games 1-4 are Sonic.EXE-tier games where you control a pixel Luna, walk right, fall, and get jumpscared, requiring Task Manager to close the game unless you want to wait it out. Luna Game 1 has a random chance to display the creepy images it was inspired from, and both creates extra files on and screenshots your desktop. Luna Game 2 has two jumpscares (wow!). Luna Game 3 just has a dismembered Luna sprite with red and black eyes, the game closing when she opens them. Luna Game 4 is longer, with more interesting platforming, but also an eyeroll-worthy Ben Drowned reference.

Luna Game 0, a prequel to the other games, changes the formula by attempting a story. Celestia tells Luna, fresh from being Nightmare Moon, to make some friends. You collect items for the Mane Six, but when you collect the final item, the music cuts out, and Luna has a flashback to being Nightmare Moon. The Mane Six tell her that Pinkie is looking for her too. Pinkie wants to throw a party for her, but Luna kills her after hearing a voice that tells her to. The game shuts itself off, but returns for one last jumpscare.

Luna Game End is the final Luna Game, which starts as walking right, jumping into a pit, not dying, and Luna saying she’s tired and taking a nap. In her dream (or when she wakes up), she continues walking right from a completely blank world, to a sunny world, to a glitched world like in Luna Game 3. In the glitched world, she has to platform to escape an encroaching darkness that will always get her. When it does, she wakes up, continues walking right and sees shadowy ponies talking about how they are in pain and how they need help. Eventually, she hits a wall and has to walk left (exciting!), where she approaches Nightmare Moon while having jumpscare flashbacks. Luna is sent to a dark, crumbling world, where she is forced to fall again. The dismembered sprite is reused and the game shuts off. But if you’ve played Luna Game 0, you get a different cutscene. Luna wakes up, and the Mane Six tell her she passed out. Pinkie tells her a party would cheer her up. Luna still thinks something is off, but she brushes it off… but not before Pinkie changes to Pinkamena.

All Luna Games make use of stolen assets. LunaDev herself admitted she never asked permission to use the art or music she did, nor did she credit the artists she stole from. However, on her now-defunct website, she has attempted to find credits for everything that isn’t hers. LunaDev does not look back fondly on these games. She calls Luna Game 2’s movement code “mostly bad” compared to the “absolutely atrocious” code from Luna Game 1, and Luna Game 0’s main feature is a “maze fetch quest”.

Luna Games 1-4 are not worth your time and I struggle saying more about them than I already have. Luna Game 0 and End attempt a story, but it’s a sparse story, both suffering from the same failures as the games before. If you want a jumpscare-based indie horror experience made by one person, play the first Five Nights at Freddy’s. If you want an EXE-type game, play Sonic.EXE. If you want a horror game that modifies your computer in some way, play Doki Doki Literature Club. If you want pony gore, FiMFiction has a tag for that. There is nothing any Luna Game can offer you that isn’t done infinitely better elsewhere. To quote LunaDev looking back on her work, she could’ve spent more time making the games actually fun.

Content warning for: sexual masochism.

Ask Lil Miss Rarity (LMR) is a Tumblr ask blog by Luv “Jay” Tonique that started on October 11th, 2011.¹ His² reasons for creating the blog are unclear, though was likely inspired by Ask Pinkamena Diane Pie (APDP), given how it is referenced at the start (1).³

LMR follows an alternate universe Rarity. When Pinkie disappears, followed by several other ponies, Rarity has nightmares about being kidnapped. One rainy night, she kills her pet cat Opal after being scratched by her - and realises she’s a masochist. She then sees the “curiously unhidden” work of a murderer - Pinkamena - and falls both in love and in deep sexual frustration by Pinkamena’s seeming disinterest in her. Out of Opal’s corpse, she fashions a doll of Pinkamena - her heart inside its chest (11). Rarity’s earlier adventures are typical fare for Tumblr ask blogs. She attempts to introduce Sweetie Belle into masochism (15), is sexually involved with Rainbow Dash (21), and brands herself with the heart-shaped brand that has become iconic (23).

The blog would not remain this simple, as Tonique introduced more lore to the series. After hitting her head, Rarity wakes up in a normal Ponyville, but brings her darkness into it. She gives birth to Abbadon, a world-ending creature, choosing to do so to become a mother after being told it was impossible (77-86). Twilight summons Abbadon’s father, Malice, whom she sacrifices her mind to so he will kill Abbadon (88, 91-98). The world is reset when Rarity is revived after dying (96-102). Rarity discovers she is the “Alpha Sinner” that controls the fate of other Sinners, who are marked by a black eye, but that Malice’s tendrils are going out across Equestria to corrupt ponies (106-108, 114, 118). Malice explains to Twilight that this fate happened when she drew special tarot cards from the book she used to summon him. These cards were stolen and brought to Trixie, who believes that not only do the cards control the Sinners’ fates, but that she is the true Alpha (120, 136-145). Trixie summons the demon Caliphos to get the cards back after Rainbow Dash steals them, kills him after he insults her, but not before Twillight is injured trying to protect them (163-164, 170, 185).

Rarity takes Twilight to Zecora who speaks to Malice, asking for the summoning book for Lucidia - Malice’s wife (187-195). While Malice’s tendrils corrupt, Lucidia purifies - not making paladin-like Virtues instead of sinners. Much like no world can be completely ruled by fear (Malice’s domain), no world can be completely ruled by love - as worlds purified by Lucidia die in their crusade against sin (120, 124-126, 214). Malice lies to Twilight about the nature of him and Lucidia meeting - that it would destroy all universes (214). Afterwards, Rarity and Applejack find Apple Bloom’s soul wandering around, who later shows her a vision of how she died - through negligence on Trixie’s part (198-201). But Applejack already has a replacement body for Apple Bloom, stolen from an alternate dimension and powered by a piece of that Apple Bloom’s soul (201-203, 207). Applejack reveals that she is no longer a Sinner, but a Virtue, and the Omega at that, complete with a glowing blue eye (245-247). The Omega decides the Sinners’ fates, including the Alpha’s. Applejack kills Opal - who by this point is a shapely living Pinkamena doll - and Twilight, whom she knows contains Malice (129, 240-243, 250).

Malice lies to Twilight again, saying he can revive her if she gives him full control. She swaps places with him in her mind, becoming his subconscious (254-259). Malice repairs Opal, whose nine lives revive her, because he needs the natural chaos of a cat for his plan (275). As Rarity and Applejack banish Apple Bloom’s wandering soul to put her in the waiting body, they find that the body has trapped the Crusaders, and is causing havoc (270, 276). Applejack and that Apple Bloom fight, Apple Bloom telling her she was defying God in bringing her here (279, 284-285). Sweetie Belle, accidentally corrupted by Opal, kills Apple Bloom (296, 300-302).

Twilight sorts through Malice’s memories, discovering that he lied to her about needing control to revive her, instead wanting control so he could reunite with Lucidia (304-309). Failing to convince him not to, Twilight deletes his memories of her, rushing as he meets Zecora, who has the book to summon her (310, 312, 314). But it was all for nothing, as Zecora is the one who summons her, not Malice (315-316). As Lucidia kisses Malice, they disappear, freeing the world of their influence and Twilight of Malice (316). Afterwards, the blog resumed normal operations (318) before being formally discontinued on December 15, 2023.⁴

This is a summary that intentionally omits information and streamlines the plot, because not only was my original summary over two thousand words long, it was two thousand words of a very, very convoluted plot. What started as “Rarity Cupcakes-ways and horny” spiraled into a story about multiverse-ending Armagheddon. Readers at the time must have disliked the direction LMR was taking, as Pinkie tells Rarity to “SHOVE A FUCKIN’ KNIFE UP HER BUTT” because people miss the “sexy masochism” that’s been replaced with “crazy storytelling”(261).

I can’t say Pinkie is wrong. Concepts are introduced and dropped frequently. Did Rarity somehow bring the ponies from the uncorrupted world into her world? What happened to the other ponies, which includes a murderous Pinkamena? Does the Alpha or Omega truly control the fates of the sinners? Why introduce the tarot cards as important if they’re going to be dropped after Rarity draws them, and why can’t Rarity redraw if she, as the Alpha, can control the fates of the Sinners? Why can’t Applejack do it if the Omega has control over their fates? The black eye is emblematic of the Sinners, but Trixie - explicitly not the Alpha - has two black eyes, while Rarity has one. What’s the significance of that? If she’s double the sin, why is she not the Alpha? Are the Sinners a group of people, marked by the black eye, or are they anyone touched by Malice’s tendrils? How did Applejack become a Virtue when she was a Sinner before, Lucidia not having been summoned by that point?

And instead of this lore being integrated into the story, it is disseminated through walls of text that crowd the panels. Applejack is hit with the exposition stick often along with Malice. It made the latter parts of the blog a slog to get through, every day I had to read a part knowing I was going to have to parse through lore that would inevitably be retconned.

LMR wants to tell a story about the dual importance of love and fear. A universe ruled by Sinners will die like a universe full of Virtues. Both Malice and Lucidia feed off fear and love, migrating universes when they’ve exhausted their food source. The blog doesn’t goes hard enough on this message. There’s significant confusion around whether Malice and Lucidia are able to exist in the same universe, and although Malice is lying to Twilight about it, he’s inconsistent with his lie and inadvertently spoils the twist that both of them can exist in the same universe. The actual plot ties in weakly to that theme. Rarity’s infatuation with Pinkamena is retconned by the time this gets established, and I suppose Opal still loves her despite being murdered by her.

APDP, the clear inspiration for this blog, kept things simple. It was about Pinkamena being a depressed, raping murderer, and it worked because it was ultimately a character study. There was no complex lore, no world-ending threats. Just Pinkamena and Scootaloo. LMR’s Rarity is a witness to her own story, a side character in her own blog. She’s barely a protagonist as she undergoes no arc, and the story seems to want to focus on everything but her.

Who’s the protagonist then? Twilight.

Viewing LMR from Twilight’s perspective, the story is much clearer. There’s no slice-of-life lull at the beginning to seduce you into a story about the world ending - that’s what it starts with. Rarity plays the part as the bringer of Abbadon, but Twilight is the one that summons Malice to save the world. Twilight is the one that has to live with Malice inside her. Twilight is the one that grows fond of Malice, and Malice fond of her. Twilight is the one being manipulated and lied to by Malice, and Twilight is the one actively trying to stop him. Twilight is the character with the arc, not Rarity, who feels like a legacy element - kept because she is Lil Miss Rarity, and not because she’s important.

Twilight’s relationship with Malice is one of the high points of the blog. Malice is a sleazy demon, harassing Twilight when he possesses her, and reveling in the power she gives him. However, due to the nature of the ritual used to summon him, Twilight is forced to rely on him for company, and through sheer exposure, not only does she start to like him, but Malice softens up, treating her more like an equal. Malice’s interest in Twilight stems from her resemblance to Lucidia, and though he lies to her to meet Lucidia again, he leaves Equestria fond of her, and Twilight regretful of erasing his memories. It’s an arc that I didn’t expect to enjoy so much, and it speaks to the kind of character drama that the blog should’ve had.

I have a soft spot for LMR’s artstyle. The blog is drawn on a pink background reminiscent of APDP, with sparse colouring for certain details. You can see Tonique improve from post to post, and while the latter posts are more skilled, I’ll always be nostalgic for the first hundred or so pages. The art is decent at worst and skilled at best.

A lot of people rail against LMR’s sexual content. On one hand, early LMR was like APDP in the sense that children were sometimes sexualised, such as Rarity’s makeover to Twist (39) and Rarity trying to get Sweetie Belle into masochism (15). And like APDP, the sexual content feels like it's meant to arouse. On the other hand, the object of sexualisation is often Rarity herself or the other Mane 6. Tonique has admitted to retconning the “few crowdpleaser foalcon [pony child porn] moments” in LMR due to wanting to distance himself from it.⁵ Later LMR’s sexuality leans more ecchi, fat asses and curves without overt sexuality or fetishism. Should it have been a blog that children could easily find? Probably not. But the conversation around LMR is dominated by discussion of its sexual content, the thing that causes the most immediate and visceral disgust, rather than its actual writing problems.

I don’t recommend Lil Miss Rarity. Even through my nostalgia, I did not enjoy reading it. While the art is competent, the lore strangles what should’ve been a character study like its inspiration. Rarity isn’t the main character after a while, and even Twilight’s plot can’t salvage how boring it was to wade through the vomit of worldbuilding disease. Rarity should’ve stuck to sticking knives up her butt.

Content warning: graphic child rape and mutilation, guro, scat fetishism, urine fetishism, and vomit fetishism.

Sweet Apple Massacre by bigmacintosh20111 is a fanfiction originally uploaded to Fanfiction.net on June 28th, 2011.¹ Allegedly, bigmacintosh20111 wrote it to take revenge on another brony who kept beating him in Black Ops, though I can’t substantiate that claim.² bigmacintosh20111 is an enigma, having a blank Adult-FanFiction profile,³ but considering the story was removed from Fanfiction.Net¹ and the sheer difficulty of finding a good enough copy to annotate, no wonder the author would be as obscured as his work. TVTropes called it “the greatest contender to dethrone Cupcakes for the title of darkest My Little Pony fanfic ever”, corroborated by reviewers at the time.⁴

Why is the story so hard to find? It might be because the plot is focused on Big Macintosh brutalising and raping the Cutie Mark Crusaders. I’ll spare you most of the details, much like the author did. For a shockfic, bigmacintosh20111 is remarkably restrained in his descriptions of what Big Mac is doing, skipping over swathes of time that could be used to unnerve and disgust the reader more. The story shines when it actually bothers to describe the violence and sex, like when Big Mac skullfucks Sweetie Belle. It forms a wonderful pit in my stomach to read that section, but it is one opportunity taken out of many missed ones. bigmacintosh20111 seems to be an older author based on how he uses double spaces after each sentence, but aside from that, the story lacks the errors I’ve come to expect while doing this project.

If you’re confused by my boredom, it's because I’m not shocked. It’s a little unsettling, but it’s a jumpscare of a story. My love of darkfic has inoculated me to this. I’m comparing it to Advanced Potions, the Cupcakes of the Severus Snape subfandom, where Snape rapes and mind controls an underage reader insert. I’m comparing it to Subjugation, where Dumbledore rapes, beats, and breaks a pregnant Snape. Both of these fanfictions are much longer than Sweet Apple Massacre, which allows them to build to and upon the darkness they want to achieve. Advanced Potions is one of the best fanfictions I’ve ever read, but I can’t read it again because it made me feel so sick I had to take a break from everything Snape. I couldn’t think about him without remembering everything he did in that story.

Will I do that with Sweet Apple Massacre? Nope. As I edit this in late October, months after I initially read it, I’ve forgotten any emotional impact the story had on me. I suppose this would shock you if you’ve not been exposed to graphic content like this, but to me, it's a pizza cutter fic: all edge, no point.

Story of the Blanks is a game made by Donitz and published on Newgrounds on July 2nd, 2011. They constrained themselves to use genuine NES graphics and graphical limitations, despite the game being made in Adobe Flash. This game was created for, and later won, Equestria Gaming’s creepypasta game contest.¹

You play as Apple Bloom as she and Twilight try to leave the Everfree Forest. They get trapped, and while Twilight tries to remove trees that are in their way, Apple Bloom follows a pony deeper into the forest. She stumbles on Sunny Town, a town where all the ponies are blank flanks. Everyone is friendly - for now - though it seems off. When Apple Bloom enters a certain house, she finds pony bones in the fireplace. Running from the scene, she’s met with Sunny Town - now dark - and the true forms of its inhabitants: zombies. They tell her that “she” had the “curse” of “the mark”, having to kill her for it. Apple Bloom escapes the zombies, and finds the pony she saw at the start - Ruby - who promises to protect Apple Bloom. Twilight intervenes, and the two leave, Ruby telling Apple Bloom she’ll see her later.

The best word I can use to describe Story of the Blanks is simple. Simple, but insanely good. It knows its limits, it’s not in your face, and ends up successful. It doesn’t need drawn out gameplay, complicated and obfuscated lore, or to beat you over the head with gore to be scary. When Apple Bloom finds Ruby’s bones in the fireplace, and you see her shocked reaction, that’s good horror. It’s not a jumpscare per se, but it is sudden, and introduces so many questions. We don’t know it is Ruby until the zombies of Sunny Town talk about how they had to kill her for getting her cutie mark.

Story of the Blanks knows that sometimes, the best horror isn’t from being beaten over the head with dead children, it is unease and zombies. And I think that makes it worth it.

Content warning for: pandemic.

The Cough is a fanfiction posted by Ebon Mane on FiMFiction on August 18th, 2011. Reception was largely positive, with commenters calling it the “quickest, yet most gut wrenching grimdark ever”.¹

The story, barely more than one-thousand words, follows the Mane Six as they hide out from some unknown disease ravaging Equestria. And then someone coughs. The disease is only contagious towards the end, so whoever coughed needs to die. Fluttershy immediately outs herself as having coughed, and Rainbow Dash, her girlfriend, has to kill her. But after she’s dead, someone coughs.

There’s easily skipped formatting errors, but what bothers me is the epithets. Half of the time (and I did calculate it, it is close to half) you will get an epithet instead of a name. I will keep repeating that no one cares if you use a name or pronoun more than you think you should. We know Rainbow Dash is a weather mare. We know Fluttershy has a pink mane. This might be useful if this was an original work, but this is a MLP: FiM fanfiction. We know this already.

Despite this, The Cough is one of my favourites in this set. It is as long as it needs to be while not feeling rushed. The prose is effective in causing dread, using the mystery behind the disease to its benefit. The disease can’t be cured by the princesses, nor slowed by Twilight. Twilight reiterates to Dash that she “saw what happened out there. Do you really want that in here?” Someone has to die to stop the spread, Applejack rationalising it’s better for one of them to die than all six. I love how the story ends the same way it begins too - silence and a cough. It sets it up for the events to play again. How many ponies will die until the coughing stops?

The addition of Dash and Fluttershy being a couple makes the inevitable murder hurt more. The reason it has to be Dash to kill her makes sense - no one else is strong enough, and Dash wouldn’t let anyone else try. Their relationship also adds to the question left unanswered by the fic: who coughed? Was it Rainbow Dash, who, immediately after the cough, tried to deflect? Was Fluttershy simply trying to cover for her as she couldn’t “live with [herself]” if any of the Mane Six died? This is never answered - and it doesn’t need to be. The horror is in the lack of answer.

The Cough is great. It’s so short that you don’t have an excuse to not read it.

Why I Stopped Watching My Little Pony is a fanfiction by Opium4TmassS, published on FiMFiction on June 28th, 2016. Opium4TmassS was inspired by Candle Cove and other creepypastas in writing the story. Reception was mixed, as commenters complained about the ending coming out of nowhere and the story being too short.

Why I Stopped Watching My Little Pony is a lost episode creepypasta written as an e-mail exchange between Hasbro’s legal department and mother Alicia Garcia regarding the recent episodes of MLP: FiM. Her daughter, Jennifer, is a big fan of the show, but the only toy they can find of the show is a creepy Twilight figure Jennifer saw at the playground. The figure causes a strange incident at a friend’s house, and Alicia thinks the figure hates her. Alicia then describes the recent episodes she and Jennifer have been watching, all of them cruel and graphic - and Jennifer not reacting to the cruelty in them. Alicia can’t turn on the TV without an episode playing, no matter the channel or time, and disconnects the TV from cable. However, Hasbro’s legal team, in a prior email, told her that there was no current My Little Pony cartoon. As Alicia reiterates that it has to be Hasbro’s show, the TV turns on, playing the show in the background.

While the story has an interesting framing in being an email to Hasbro’s legal department, the story is unintentionally incoherent. Alicia has sent a letter before to Hasbro’s legal department about these strange episodes and has gotten no good response. Considering the violence of the episodes she’s watched and how it's affecting her daughter, incoherence could impart the ragged desperation she has in trying to understand why these episodes were allowed to air. However, it is less like “a mother loses her mind trying to get through to a corporation” and more like the author themself is rambling. There are lines like “I once asked one of the clerks when if ever you will have some but she had no idea of what I was talking about, she has never heard of it.” and “Their neither good or wholesome we started watching and to tell you the truth their more than a little sick.” that come off as authorial negligence over exasperation. The author does not know the difference between its and it’s, or there, they’re, and their, and switches plurals and possessives a few times. Verb tense is also inconsistent, especially when describing the content of the episodes.

The content is also not great. I do like how the twist is subtly foreshadowed by there being no toys for Alicia to buy, and I like the twist itself being that the show doesn’t exist. I can see the clear inspiration from Candle Cove, and it works here as well. Unlike Candle Cove, Why I Stopped Watching My Little Pony is just… silly. The incident with a friend I mentioned earlier is one such example. Jennifer takes her Twilight toy to a friend and then isn’t allowed over at that friend’s house. That friend has also not been at school, because of “[s]omething about all she does is scream now-a-days and had to be placed into a hospital.” The use of “now-a-days” gives the description a whimsical flavour, and the actual event, of this Twilight toy inducing insanity in this child, is ridiculous. Things like there being no toys to purchase and the show always being on add to the mystery. They’re not in-your-face creepy and add to the subtle unease the author wants you to feel. But stuff like that, and how the story ends with Alicia, still typing an email to Hasbro’s legal department, writing “Wait I can hear the show coming on in the bac…” is best described as silly! Why are you still typing when something clearly wrong is happening in the background? No one would do that.

However, there’s a good concept here, and enough bones that this story could be reworked easily. I don’t mind the gory episodes here. They don’t drag, they’re not needlessly detailed (both in-universe and narration), and continue the thread of “something about this show isn’t right”. It doesn’t feel like gore for gore’s sake, and combined not only with the verbal cruelty of the ponies in the show, and Jennifer’s nonreaction to it, the episodes are unnerving. But the story can’t help itself from throwing in some insanity-inducing plastic toys and continuing writing when you shouldn’t.

Why I Stopped Watching My Little Pony is one story in a series. I will not be covering the whole series, since I didn’t read all of it as a child, but I will be talking about one of the sequels I did read.

Flutterschmooze is a direct sequel to Why I Stopped Watching My Little Pony, published on FiMFiction on July 31st, 2016. Opium4TmassS cited Abandoned by Disney and Five Nights at Freddy’s as inspiration for this story. Reception was more positive, with commenters generally liking the story.

Flutterschmooze is formatted as an internal investigation report at Hasbro regarding a meet-and-greet with people dressed in Mane Six costumes that went wrong. Catherin Wilson, the actress meant to play Fluttershy, came to the event in a dirty costume and proceeded to act strangely towards guests. When Darryl Castle, one of the escorts for the costumed characters and testifying as part of the report, put his hand on Wilson’s back, it felt squishy, and left black, burning residue on him. Castle called security, feeling uneasy around Wilson, and asked Roger Halstead, one of the security guards, to keep an eye on her. However, this leads to him discovering the real Catherin Wilson, bloody, nude, and delirious in a mop closet, having written a message about “the Fluttershy’s [sic]” hating her. While this happened, Halstead’s torso is melted away, assumedly by the thing in the Fluttershy costume. Donna Nixon, the person writing the report, believes, along with Castle, that Wilson had taken some kind of airborne psychotropic drug that affected her and everyone else in the mall. Wilson was committed to a psychiatric hospital, though disappeared two weeks later. In her room, someone left her yellow balloons decorated with pink butterflies and bunnies, as well as a Fluttershy figure with blacked out eyes.

This story is stronger than Why I Stopped Watching My Little Pony. There are very few errors outside of Wilson’s bloody writing, which can be explained in-universe. The story doesn’t jump to a supernatural conclusion, even though that seems to be what’s going on. Wilson’s behaviour at the beginning is described as intoxicated and later described as being under a drug, which are all natural conclusions to make given her behaviour. The progression of events naturally builds the horror, starting with Wilson’s strange behaviour, then how strange the costume feels, finding Wilson in the closet, and then Halstead being melted in half. Flutterschmooze plays with the unknown and the mystery of what’s going on in a fun way. We don’t know if Wilson is in the costume until the end, and the explanation of “mass hallucination” is intentionally unsatisfying. Paired with Wilson’s surprise hospital gifts, it suggests - but never outright states - that there is more going on than what anyone involved believes.

Halstead’s death (or not death, as the story leaves it vague) is a bit much, though. It comes off as “gore for gore’s sake” and is a mark against the story. Finding Wilson in the closet is a better climax, as it answers the question of “Is Wilson in the costume?” which is what the story has been building to. I also took issue with the insistence, at least at the start, with specifying that Wilson was playing Fluttershy. Who Wilson was playing isn’t important to the report, even though it would be important to the brony audience of this story. One mention is enough, just to further clarify what role Wilson was meant to play in the meet-and-greet. I do, however, love that Castle’s report starts to conflate the two as he’s unsure of if Wilson is even in the costume. That feels like a more realistic use of reference to the character - calling it “Fluttershy” at that point is more accurate than calling it “Wilson”.

There’s a lot to love about Flutterschmooze, and it succeeds in being creepy too! Do you know how many stories in this review series I can say have actually scared me? Like with Why I Stopped Watching My Little Pony, Flutterschmooze needs a little editing to be perfect, but even as is, I’d recommend it.

Super Filly Adventures is a Flash game made by Jay6 and published to Newgrounds on September 10th, 2011. Jay6 made this game in two months for Equestria Gaming’s 16-bit game contest using Flash CS4.¹ Inspiration for the game came from Luna Game and Story of the Blanks.²

Super Filly Adventures follows Jade, a pegasus filly with no cutie mark, and her adventures in trying to find it. She’s new in Ponyville, so Pinkie decides to throw her a party, and tasks Jade with giving invitations to all of the Mane Six - and Derpy, if you choose. You and Applejack make muffins together. This is where the path diverges in a normal game: either make good muffins or bad muffins. Good muffins lead you to the standard ending, where Jade gets her cutie mark after fighting a dragon. Bad muffins lead you to the Derpy route, where Jade’s cutie mark is a muffin.

But these routes were made last in development.² There is a secret route, only unlockable between 11pm and 6am - the “blank flank” route. You go to the Everfree Forest and Zecora tells you to go away, her eyes blacked out. You find Luna inside, who says she’s hiding from the “Bloody Hooves”. You’re chased by them, and when you find Luna again, she is dead. You’re killed soon after, and are presented with an image of Jade getting her limbs ripped off. Majora’s Mask reference, Twilight comes to find Jade, jumpscare, roll credits.

I don’t like this game. Jade walks slowly, which drags the game out. The art direction is a mess, with pony sprites, pixellated vector backgrounds, pixellated fanart, and sprites ripped from other games mashed together. The text is hard to read, but the dialogue is inconsequential. In the standard route, the gameplay is monotonously simple until the dragon fight, which is a massive spike in difficulty compared to “choose the obvious best option to make muffins.” In the Derpy route, the gameplay is just as simple, though you skip the dragon fight. Even the blank flank route isn’t worthwhile. Jay6’s commentary mentions that more was planned - the dragon having more moves and the Derpy route having a boss fight - and it makes me wonder how much better the game could’ve been.³

I can’t be too hard on a first attempt at a game. For two months of work,⁴ it’s a decent result. But I can’t recommend Super Filly Adventures. Everything it does is done better by other games.

Content warning for: child abuse and neglect.

My Little Pony Theory, popularised as The Truth Behind My Little Pony due to CreepsMcPasta’s reading of it, is a creepypasta published anonymously on the Creepypasta Wiki by at least July 25th, 2012.¹ It was deleted off the wiki, along with many other dubious-quality classics like Jeff the Killer, sometime between 2013 and 2014. Creepypasta Wiki moderator LOLSKELETONS said, regarding its removal along with other creepypastas like it, that “We don't need [creepy MLP fanfic] clogging up this wiki.”² Reactions were mostly positive, with many people believing the story was true, and others saying it obviously wasn’t.³

My Little Pony Theory is another entry in a long line of creepy kids’ media theories that purport to tell you the truth on why a piece of media was created. Angelica from Rugrats was schizophrenic and hallucinated all of the babies. Ash Ketchum from Pokemon never grew up because he was in a coma. The Ed, Edd, and Eddy cast are in purgatory. My Little Pony Theory puts forth that each of the Mane Six are based on six real life girls who all died on the same day. Much like its contemporaries, it struggles to make its concept make sense.

To be clear, no little girls died on November 7th, 2004, who all went to the same school in North Carolina. This is not a true story, and you would have to be too young to read this essay to believe it is. The concept is predicated on the narrator not believing that Lauren Faust would choose to work on “the re-make of some 80’s toy commercial” over her own original ideas. The answer the story gives is, well, she wants to give all these dead girls a happy life as ponies! Obviously! It couldn’t be because Faust needed the money, right? Faust, who would’ve been working on The Powerpuff Girls and Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends in California,⁴ knew enough about this event on the other side of America to base a show off of it. And just to clarify: this is an event the narrator could only find through a local newspaper article that a friend in North Carolina had! How could Faust even learn of this?

The story is little more than a collection of snippets about these girls, their terrible lives of abuse, their deaths, and then what pony was based on them. I’m glad the author handholds me through which girl became what pony, because I’m too stupid to know that the sporty tomboy could be the sporty tomboy Rainbow Dash, or the fashionista dreaming of Paris could be the fashionista Rarity who dreams of Canterlot, or the academic high-achiever could be the academic high-achieving Twilight! The author is not subtle in characterising the girls, and despite that, they must make it clear that the girl who rescued animals became Fluttershy! No, really! I would’ve thought Applejack would have rescued animals and Fluttershy would’ve had the big family on the farm! Thank you so much author! Thank you so much!

The prose is sufficient, though the author loves the phrase “often times” and explicitly tells you that Pinkie Pie’s story is the saddest. Awkward wording like “made the neglect worsen”, “an A student”, “they each earned one's cutie marks”, and a peppering of capitalisation and spelling errors aren’t compensated with a good plot, engaging characters, or any effort that would make me overlook them.

I do think it's a creative twist that the girl Pinkie was based on died because she delusionally believed she could fly, mirroring Pinkie’s original design as a pegasus, and that the sonic rainboom, which ties the Mane Six together, is meant to represent that they all died on the same day, but that’s about it. Read Rugrats Theory instead. It’s not good, but you’ll see where most creepypasta theories - including this one - get their DNA from.

Half-Baked Sun Cakes is a lost episode creepypasta written anonymously and seemingly first published on the Creepypasta Wiki on July 25th, 2012. When it was on the Creepypasta Wiki, commenters commended the story for its subtlety and lack of adherence to creepypasta cliches, though called it not very creepy.¹

Half-Baked Sun Cakes is the in-universe half-remembered recollection of an episode the protagonist saw at one in the morning. It’s a normal episode, except the only pony around is Twilight, who busts into Ave Maria towards the end. The episode gets accidentally deleted, and the protagonist can’t find any discussion of it online.

This is going to sound off-topic, but bear with me. Do you know what an “Anti-Sue” is? If a Mary Sue is a character who is so perfect and special, an Anti-Sue is the reaction against her. Your cliche red-and-black alicorn of darkness and angst versus a simple Earth pony gardener. Intentionally avoiding making a Mary Sue means you’ll make a good character, right? In avoiding the undefined maximalism of the Mary Sue, you end up with a greige character. God forbid we’re overstimulated with colours.

That’s what this story feels like. Half-Baked Sun Cakes is written in avoidance of lost media creepypasta cliches. There’s no gore, no dead children, no suicides, nothing that couldn’t feasibly be in a real MLP: FiM episode. The horror comes not from hyperrealistic blood crying out of empty eye sockets, but from this being a normal episode where everyone but Twilight is missing. I’m not saying this episode would be better with a few more dead children, but the story is so concerned about avoiding cliches that it's a horror nothingburger . Even the protagonist can’t remember most of the episode.

The gaps in the protagonist’s knowledge feel like they’re being used in the same way SCPs redact information, but the SCP Foundation, in their own writing guide, mentions that you should only redact information if censoring it makes the work more interesting.² I want to know more about the episode. I want a play-by-play so I can sink into the uncanny valley that this creepypasta wants to evoke. The gaps in the story don’t make it creepier; it makes it frustrating to read.

This story is clearly inspired by the Spongebob Squarepants episode “Gone”, and unfortunately for Half-Baked Sun Cakes, I was more uncomfortable watching Spongebob descend into madness than anything I got from reading this story. Spongebob notices that he’s the only person around early into the episode, while Twilight is blissfully unaware until the very end. MLP: FiM is no stranger to characters going crazy; even Twilight gets to lose it in “Lesson Zero”. Why not take inspiration from that episode? Why not show Twilight trying to complete the task of making sun cakes for Celestia while breaking from the pressure of not having any help to do that task? That would make the final shot of her being heartbroken hit so much harder: she tried her best, but she’s so alone, and she doesn’t understand why.

This is on top of the issues with tense swapping, missed punctuation, and the tonal whiplash of “Hot dog! A sneak preview of a new episode AND a musical number?” Twilight’s cover of “Ave Maria” fulfills the purpose of a random dead kid in other lost episodes, but am I supposed to be creeped out by Ave Maria? How does this connect to anything in the episode? Did the author finally realise they were writing a lost episode creepypasta and needed something weird to happen?

I do think there’s a good story in Half-Baked Sun Cakes, and I’m happy to read a diversion from the gorefests of what I’ve reviewed thus far. However, it’s underwhelming in an attempt to be different, forgettable in its attempt to stand out. Just watch “Gone” if you want this story done right.

Forever Faithful is a fanfiction by Konseiga, published to FiMFiction on November 4th, 2012. Reception to the story was positive.

Twilight Sparkle has died in a freak accident. All the ponies of Ponyville mourn her, including Celestia. However, back in Canterlot, Celestia gets a letter from Twilight - in death. Twilight tells her over a series of letters that she is both growing more powerful and wants to bring her friends with her, killing them off one by one until they are all dead. The next pony on her list? Celestia herself.

I had high hopes coming into Forever Faithful. I remember stumbling on ObabScribbler’s dramatic reading and bawling at the beginning. However, I had little memory of what came after, like how people only remember the beginning of Pixar’s Up. Unfortunately, after reading it again, I understand why I forgot. Forever Faithful is competently written, with few mistakes. However, while the concept is interesting, the story got little rise out of me. Even the funeral scene at the beginning that reduced a young me to tears couldn’t provoke more than detached interest now. Twilight being corrupted by power is a subtle arc, but the humour of “Want to know something funny? I don’t care! I don’t care that I took a pony’s life; in fact, it felt good.” ruined the horror of her playing god with other ponies’ lives. Since Celestia never witnesses any of Twilight’s murders, they lose their impact. If I were to write this fanfiction myself, I’d lean more into Twilight trying to convince her friends to willingly follow her into death. Twilight can play puppetmaster to a string of suicides that, to everyone but the princesses, seem caused by grief.

Forever Faithful is average. It’s not bad, but it doesn’t go far enough to be truly good. The concept carries the story more than the story carries the concept.

Content warning for: cannibalism.

Equinox is an alternate universe created by Riygan which started as a Tumblr/deviantArt ask blog. Equinox used to be like Equestria, until the fearsome Queen Blackhole killed her sister Eclipse. As queen, she covered the world with mutagenic smoke, corrupting its inhabitants.¹ The Mane Six all have counterparts: Dimmed Star (Twilight), Stone (Rarity), Spiderlock (Fluttershy), Dull Sloth (Rainbow), Rottenbunch (Applejack), and Zalgy Cake (Pinkie Pie).

Dimmed Star is Queen Blackhole’s student, obsessed with dark magic.² Stone is a gorgon pony who has a statue garden made from petrified ponies.³ Spiderlock went to Dimmed Star for a transformation spell to become an animal, but was instead used with a parasprite that makes her eat others.⁴ Dull Sloth is a cannibal whose lost wings were replaced with rockets by Dimmed Star.⁵ Rottenbunch died years ago, but was revived by Dimmed Star as an experiment to create a zombie. She doesn’t like her sister Wilted Core is dating Motorloo (Scootaloo).⁶ Zalgy Cake is more of a prankster than a party pony, and finds it funny when other ponies are harmed in her pranks. When she’s depressed, she becomes Zalgressa, who is very dangerous.⁷

This alternate universe holds immense nostalgia for me as I stumbled on mindlessgonzo’s dubs for it. But looking back, I don’t know why I was so obsessed with it. It’s a corny grab-bag of stock horror tropes and creepypasta cliches. Most of the ponies lack development beyond the descriptions Riygan gave them on their deviantArt pages. Even Zalgy Pie, the pony with the most development, is little more than a crueler Pinkie. Maybe that’s all she needed to be, but I’m left wanting more.

It’s a cool concept, but this is all there is! Points for capturing my 10-year old imagination, I suppose.

Content warning for: depicted drug use, depicted graphic abortion, depicted child sexual abuse, mentioned rape, mentioned incest, depicted racially motivated hanging, censored racial slur, scat fetishism, urine fetishism, vomit fetishism, references to pornographic films and games, references to snuff content, depicted school shooting, and references to real-life shootings (Columbine, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook, Chardon High School, Weis Mall).

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic: Goodwill DVD is a creepypasta by NitannyPony17 that I first encountered through The Shadow Reader’s narration of it. It is not a popular nor influential creepypasta, but it is one of my favourites. Not because it’s good, but because it is fascinatingly bad. Let me explain to you why this terrible thing has captured me so damn hard.

Our protagonist is a highschool redneck from Pennsylvania who can’t watch MLP: FiM because he doesn’t have The Hub, his internet is poor, and no stores around sell MLP: FiM products. While at Goodwill (not because he’s poor, he clarifies), he finds a mysterious DVD, which plays normally until it asks to run an EXE file. That EXE file has Fluttershy shooting up the Ponyville Schoolhouse, murdering all of her friends who are responsible for various crimes, as well as blowing up a theatre before getting arrested. Littered throughout are references to sex games, snuff films, and school shooters that the protagonist almost always clocks. Fluttershy goes to jail, not before Princess Luna speculates that Fluttershy’s childhood abuse led to this point, and after some Fluttershy gets dicked down by some school shooters, the episode gives the protagonist a seizure. That seizure ends up saving him from a school shooting, perpetuated by the girl who made the episode. The creepypasta ends with the protagonist telling the viewer to get help if they or others want to shoot up a school, ending on a Bible verse.

Justifying Its Existence

Lost media creepypastas often struggle to justify their existence in-universe. Take Squidward’s Suicide. The existence of the episode is justified as the narrator, being an intern at Nickelodeon, can see episodes before they air, and that the strange content in the titular episode was due to someone editing the file before it was shown. However, barring the implausibility that an unpaid intern would see anything leakable, the episode still focuses around Squidward killing himself. This episode would have had to pass through conception, writing, storyboards, voice acting, the lengthy process of animation, foley, and editing to get to this point. It begs the question of why it got this far, only to now be noticed as not suitable for children.

Goodwill DVD also fails to justify its existence. In-universe, the episode the protagonist watches is by a girl (unnamed in the story, let’s call her shooter-chan for convenience) from his high school who loved MLP: FiM to the extent that she was able to copy the show’s style perfectly, including in motion. Why she made the episode isn’t known, though the protagonist speculates it could be a cry for help, or something more sinister.

Reading this story, I’m struck with how similar shooter-chan’s case is to Randy Stair. Stair was a fan of Danny Phantom, in particular the character of rockstar ghost Ember McLain. Stair would post animated videos of Andrew Blaze - Stair’s ghostly self-insert - and her adventures with Ember and a cast of other ghosts on YouTube. Such adventures would include her shooting up the high school Danny Phantom takes place at, prior to killing three people at Weis Markets superstore, Pennsylvania in 2017.¹ Both Stair and shooter-chan are animators who copied their favourite show’s respective styles, who had a particular favourite character (Ember for Stair, Fluttershy for shooter-chan), and whose work ended up telegraphing the violence they would commit.

Stair’s existence, regardless of if NitannyPony17 knew of it (given that I couldn’t find a publication date for the story), makes it difficult to accept this episode could exist in the state it did within the narrative. Stair did upload exclusively animated videos, but the longest I could find was a little over four minutes. Stair’s content was mostly live-action with animated additions similar to Who Framed Roger Rabbit. The episode described in the story is, at minimum, forty-five minutes of show-accurate, fully voice-acted animation made by one high school girl. The animation quality could not have been amateur like Stair’s work given how often the protagonist mentions it looking like Lauren Faust made it herself.

To pull another comparison, Double Rainboom, a thirty-one minute animation made as an animation major’s senior film project, was not show-accurate. Shooter-chan, a high schooler, must be more skilled than an animation major to pull this off. And Double Rainboom took the creator his senior semester to make, with over one hundred volunteers!² While it had been a year since shooter-chan was raped by the football team, again, this was an animation major’s senior film project. You’re telling me that shooter-chan, an abuse victim since kindergarden, raped by the football team with no justice given, took a year to create about an hour of show-accurate animation with voice acting instead of, you know, just shooting up her high shool and being done with it? Stair’s own animated videos are dwarfed by Goodwill DVD’s episode, despite having more time to create something of comparable length.

Too Many Words, Not Enough Good Ones

Goodwill DVD is a little over six thousand words long. Removing the protagonist’s needless asides about what pickup truck everyone else drives, recognising the music in the episode being from this other piece of media, and him telling the audience how to feel, the story is under four thousand words long. I rewrote the story down to two-and-a-half thousand words, with no loss of content. The story includes phrases such as Clearfield County being “very large in square footage and spread out”, the protagonist “not worried about [his] own being” after seeing a gun with blood on the muzzle, and “Rainbow Dash expressed sorrow for her fallen friend, but was caught by fear for her own life.” when Rainbow Dash finds a gored Applejack. NitannyPony17 overuses words such as rather and seem, even in the same sentence (“It was a rather realistic explosion and the sound of the bodies crunching and splatting was rather gruesome, but it still looked like the Lauren Faust style animation.”) Ponies have blood curdling screams which they use to scream bloody murder a few too many times, and blood only ever seems to splatter on walls. When a pony sees someone die, they only ever express sorrow, this wording being repeated thrice in a seven-sentence range.

There’s a phenomenon that, in my notes, I called “Sonic.EXEing”. This describes two things: the reference of external media in a creepypasta and numerical specificity. I have grouped both of these under one category because both are for the same purpose: they are stage directions for anyone who wants to make these lost media into something tangible. Sonic.EXE has descriptions such as “that awful, Kefka laugh... right after 10 seconds have passed” that don’t work as descriptions. I have never played Earthbound, so I don’t know if I should be creeped out by Kefka’s laugh. I also don’t innately know how long ten seconds lasts. You could feasibly rewrite this phrase as “that awful laugh, right after a few seconds have passed” and lose no meaningful information.

I bring this up, obviously, because this story Sonic.EXEs. Twilight and Spike fuck in a manner similar to a specific pony porn game. Applejack abuses Applebloom “in a manner similar to that of the Thenardiers toward Cossette in Les Miserables”. Sinister music, “the kind of music you would hear on Criminal Minds” plays when Fluttershy is looking at herself in a mirror. Fluttershy calls a lynched Zecora a slur in the voice of “Bob Ewell, from the 1962 film, To Kill a Mockingbird”. As Twilight and Spike fuck, “one of the movements of Johan DeMaij's Lord of the Rings Symphony” plays. Fluttershy paints the red smile from The Mentalist. Cadence and Shining Armor go to a performance of Handel’s Messiah. Fluttershy smiles like Smile Dog, another creepypasta. After Fluttershy shoots herself, her blood and brains come out her mouth like in the Budd Dwyer suicide recording. We even get a Ben Drowned reference in the form of a backwards Song of Healing. As for numbers? Our protagonist, disgusted as he is with the episode, counts each time Fluttershy stabs Twilight as “I have a very good sense of numbers and was able to remember each stab even when I was paying attention to the blood and gore”. He counts ten seconds held on Fluttershy’s “natural selection” shirt, Pinkie seizing for one minute, ten minutes of Fluttershy getting it in both ends by school shooters, and two black screens of thirty seconds and a minute.

None of these specific descriptors, whether referential or temporal, add to the experience. If you’ve never seen Les Miserables, To Kill a Mockingbird (1962), The Mentalist, the Budd Dwyer suicide, or Ben Drowned, you don’t know what’s being described. If you’ve never heard the soundtrack to Criminal Minds, Johan DeMaij's Lord of the Rings Symphony, or Handel’s Messiah, you don’t know what you’re supposed to be hearing. These are creative cop outs, something a lazy writer can drop in in lieu of… you know, actually writing good descriptions? These cop outs ruin the horror. For example, with the Budd Dwyer suicide, I found a Reddit comment (a Reddit comment!) that gave me more of a reaction than anything in this story. Why did the author not describe the graphic gore I came to this story for, but wastes hundreds of words on telling me when to be scared or when to be sickened?

Our Strange Protagonist

Much of the word count comes from the needless asides the protagonist makes. He’s not going to Goodwill because he’s poor, his parents are “rather hickish”, and most people in the area drive red Dodge pickup trucks - including himself. Later, he has a “Grand Mal Seizure” caused by stress, “called psychogenic non epileptic seizures, or PNES”.

And speaking of the protagonist, he seems more concerned about preserving the secret of him being a brony rather than giving evidence to the police regarding a school shooting, saying he didn’t want to “victimize” himself more and that maybe someday he’ll tell everyone that he’s a brony. This is despite describing the school shooting - which he wasn’t even there to witness and be threatened by - a paragraph before.

He has about as much knowledge about school shooters as shooter-chan, along with pony porn games, fetishistic sex positions, and snuff/shock films. For the latter, regarding Fluttershy bleeding out of her mouth “similar to that of the infamous Budd Dwyer suicide”, that description matches what other people have described happening in that recording. Why does our protagonist, who has admitted to seeing such classics as “Two Girls One Cup” and “Three Men One Hammer”, watch such graphic things? And despite that, this Newgrounds-tier pony gore animation causes him to literally piss his pants in fear when he sees an eyeless Fluttershy crying blood. The Cutie Mark Crusaders being blown up in graphic detail didn’t disturb him because “I hunt during deer season and I saw many war movies”, but he almost throws up at the sound of cut flesh, something he would have definitely heard while field dressing deer.

Tactless, Tasteless

But this is a story about a school shooting, no? NitannyPony17 has a deep knowledge of multiple school shootings, such as the Columbine massacre, the Virginia Tech shooting, the Chardon High School shooting, and the Sandy Hook shooting. This is to be expected, as the episode being described was made by a girl who idolised these shooters to the point of copycatting. But our protagonist - redneck and with a shoddy internet connection - also knows a shocking amount about these killers, enough to call almost every reference as he sees it. With both Sandy Hook and the Chardon High School shootings, I understand, as they would be recent during the time of the story, but the Virginia Tech shooting would be five years ago, and Columbine more than a decade.

The specificity in which NitannyPony17 knows about each of these shootings is concerning. Fluttershy dresses in a “natural selection” shirt and is armed with machine guns, knives, and grenades like with Columbine. Fluttershy asks in a male voice if Rainbow Dash believes in God, taken directly from footage of that shooting. They even quote Eric Harris’ website and journal and Dylan Kleibold’s poetry. The episode is named after Adam Lanza, the Sandy Hook shooter, and is dated the same day as the shooting. Fluttershy quotes, albeit replacing some words with pony variants, the speech given by TJ Lane, the Chardon High School shooter, at his sentencing. And poor Seung-Hui Cho! He only gets a single mention in the episode as the producer of the episode!

Far be it from me to shame someone for having concerning knowledge, but the type of knowledge they display in this story, given what this story is about, makes me wonder. Why have they assumedly watched Budd Dwyer’s suicide tape? Why have they watched “Three Men One Hammer”? Why are they reading the journals and poetry of the Columbine shooters and watching them massacre innocent teenagers enough to quote them? Why did NitannyPony17 want to mention that Spike and Twilight fucking was similar to a specific pony porn game? And for the protagonist to share this knowledge? It seems like the only difference between him and shooter-chan is that he didn’t shoot up a school.

This Isn’t Over

Imagine, if you will, a story about a rural brony, isolated from others and bullied for his interests. He copes by taking comfort in school shooters, fantasising about finally getting his revenge on his bullies, but never able to bring himself to do it. Why he can’t do it could be anything - his family, online friends, concerns for his future - but he just can’t bring himself to.

There’s a girl at his school. She’s quiet and blends into the background. She’s bullied too, and there’s rumors going around that she’s a druggie, a whore, and even got an abortion after letting the football team fuck her. Our protagonist wonders if the rumors are true - after all, the football team bullies him too and wouldn’t be above using their position as assets to the school to cause trouble. He knows she’s also into MLP: FiM, and has caught her drawing show-accurate fanart, usually of Fluttershy - his favourite pony.

One day, while looking for records and books at Goodwill, he stumbles on a MLP: FiM DVD. It’s cheap, and he can’t watch The Hub nor pirate the show due to his rural internet, so he buys it. Any pony content is better than none. He goes home and watches it, and it’s normal until the end, where a new option shows up on the episode select screen: “Unaired Episode 12-14-12”. The date strikes him as familiar, but he can’t place his finger on why.

The episode starts with Fluttershy thinking about her friends: a child-abusing Applejack, a child-molesting Rainbow Dash victimising Scootaloo, a drug-abusing Pinkie, a drug-running Twilight, and Rarity getting an abortion. There’s a flashback showing her being raped by both her old Cloudsdale bullies and even a pony the protagonist thinks is her father. Fluttershy is pissed, arming herself and wearing a “natural selection” T-shirt. It cuts to the theme song, normal except the episode is produced by “Seung-Hui Cho”. The protagonist catches these references, and knows what’s going to happen.

Fluttershy goes through and kills every single person who has wronged her, animated in a graphic yet show-accurate manner, carving their crimes into their flanks. All the while, Fluttershy references and alludes to multiple school shooters, some that the protagonist can catch, and others where the reference is so much of a deep cut that it goes over his head. After she is done, she ends her rampage by opening fire at the Ponyville Schoolhouse, not only killing everyone inside, but the victims of the Mane 6, Scootaloo and Apple Bloom, as well. Fluttershy is sentenced, echoing the words of TJ Lane, a recent school shooter, before pulling out a gun and shooting herself.

The protagonist is sickened by what he sees, but his mind is on the girl. Things about the episode line up with the rumors around her, and considering how accurate it is to the show, he wonders if she would make such a thing. He decides she didn’t, because a girl like her could never have such evil inside of her.

He stays home from school the next day, feeling sick from the episode, and is proven wrong. That shy girl shot up his high school. She killed her father first, then the football team, her former friends, and finally herself. Apparently, she had been sexually abused by her father since childhood, raped by the football team, had to get an abortion afterwards, and turned to drugs to cope. When she killed herself, police found a small Fluttershy figure on her, and when they searched her house, along with finding gory yet show-accurate animations on her computer, they found shrines to multiple school shooters, and a journal making explicit her ideation and obsession with them.

The protagonist is left reeling. That girl made that episode, he’s sure of it. She laid her feelings bare through it. Though the Mane 6 clearly represented her former friends, they also represented herself, symbolically killing herself before actually going through with it. The protagonist is struck by the similarities between him and the girl - two isolated MLP: FiM fans, bullied by their peers, and wanting to get revenge through violence. The protagonist had enough support to have something to lose. The girl had everything to gain in murder.

Yes, I’ve moved around some details. I don’t think Rainbow Dash is smart enough to cook meth and it would make more sense for her to be the one using her fame to exploit a child, but everything else is accurate to the story. This is why I’m obsessed with Goodwill DVD. Buried in its tasteless use of real-life tragedies, rape, and violence; obscured by its “writing to a wordcount”-core prose that tells the audience when to be scared; and underneath the self-incriminating knowledge of the author: there is a good horror story hidden here. If NitannyPony17 went harder on the similarities between the protagonist and shooter-chan and the thought of “I could’ve been the next Adam Lanza,” this could’ve been excellent horror. But as it is written, it’s a paint-by-numbers lost media creepypasta that only stands out because of how poorly it incorporates its subject matter into its narrative.

Content warning for: fantasy racism and religious abuse.

Apple Corruption, originally published as Life with the Apple Family¹ is an alternate universe fanfiction written by Wolfboy183 and published on FiMFiction on May 1st, 2013 and ending on April 25th, 2014, with an additional chapter published three years later. The story was polarising, currently sitting at a 92:139 like-to-dislike ratio, with commentators split on if the story is effective in its recontextualisation of the MLP: FiM universe and characters, or if it is “mindless guro like [C]upcakes”.

As I read the comments, I do want to make something clear to anyone who wants to review anything. If you write anything along the lines of “you’re fucked up for writing this” or “you shouldn’t have written this”, you need more justification than being upset or disgusted. Apple Corruption is not The Turner Diaries or Mein Kampf. Wolfboy183’s stance on what he portrays in this fanfic are clear and do not indicate someone who wishes to harm others. And if you’re seeking stories out like this to read just to make yourself mad, as one commenter did, that’s not the author’s fault. None of these knee-jerk reactions ever gave Wolfboy183 any actionable critique. If you can’t give actionable critique, don’t comment. If all you can do is whine and bitch about how the tagged darkfic is dark and upsetting, block the author first, or get mommy to enable parental controls. Okay? Okay.

Synopsis

With that introduction, Apple Corruption must be a fucked up fanfic, right? The story follows Sweetie Belle, having been adopted by the Apples after Rarity died in an accident and learning the Apples aren’t as kind as they seem. Applejack works her to death, beating her if she complains, and directs her religious fanaticism and racism towards her. After Applejack fails to legally change Sweetie’s name to “Apple Belle”, Applegem Frost Apple, a relative from the highly conservative Nimbuscait City, tells her that if she doesn’t dehorn Sweetie, Celestia will curse her farm(1, 2). Granny Smith wants to go to Nimbuscait, but only to see relatives, and tells Applejack that they will not be dehorning Sweetie when they go, as dehorning unicorns is legal in Nimbuscait. However, Applejack goes behind her back, causing Granny Smith to crash the religious ceremony to dehorn her and burning bridges between the Sweet Apples and Frost Apples (3, 4). Her disappointment in Applejack makes her doubt her convictions, but when Granny is killed in an accident, it only further entrenches her beliefs (5). Without Granny to hold her back, Applejack attempts to kill Sweetie’s magic in other ways, such as Applegem’s “gifts” of a magic-destroying potion and a horn cap that prevents magic from being cast. But by chance, Sweetie finds Rarity in a magazine - alive, against all odds, and living in Canterlot (6). She tries to get Twilight’s help, who dismisses her, though records her memory for later (7). Big Mac goes behind Applejack’s back to not just destroy the potion she’s been giving her, but to sign her up for magic classes. But Sweetie can barely cast, is bullied as a result, and Applejack almost kills her when she finds out (7, 8, 9).

Twilight is shocked when she finally sees Sweetie’s memories and goes to Acorn Tibbs, the chief of the town guard, who, along with mentioning both the influx of Apples and their legal inability to intervene on the farm, shows her an article on how the Elements of Harmony are slowly corrupting their bearers - herself and Applejack included. He advises her to go ask Applejack herself what’s going on, but when she does, Applejack runs her out of the farm (11, 12). Sweetie recovers from her beating, but has to wear her horn cap, as Applejack almost ripped her horn off, but her magic teacher, along with Cheerilee, discover the damage, and take her to the hospital. The guards, now almost wholly staffed with Apples, refuse to do anything (13, 14). Later, Cheerilee is given an order to stay away from Big Mac, whom she’s been dating, as Applejack wants him to marry an Apple mare. This order was delivered by Sundowner, an old friend of Cheerilee’s, and an unhappy Apple who knows that Sweet Apple Acres has been importing dangerous blood apples - an engineered apple that saps the magic from unicorns. Cheerilee doesn’t believe her until she sees it for herself. Twilight helps Sundowner escape Ponyville, telling her to go to Celestia with a message for help (15, 16).

Sweetie finally escapes from the farm, and after stealing and reading a spellbook that Twilight dropped, connects to slaughtered unicorns of the past. One of these unicorns is Sweetie’s ancestor, Aura Belle, who explains that she is going to use the power of the spellbook to take revenge on all ponies that have hurt unicorns (18, 22). Scootaloo finds her, but Sweetie uses her as bait to get Twilight off her tail, though Scootaloo eventually tells her that Sweetie stole the spellbook. However, when she helps Scootaloo’s family escape Ponyville, intending to escape herself, Rarity, who has come to Ponyville to try and understand why Sweetie hasn’t been getting her letters, steps off the train (19, 20). As they catch up, Twilight sees her library on fire, and is arrested for setting it on fire, along with Rarity (21). Meanwhile, the non-Apple guards are fed up with the Apples, and decide to bust them out, going through the sewers as they realise the Flare - a device that will alert Canterlot of what is happening - is gone, likely stolen by the Apples (23).

Not knowing the unicorns of the past are controlling her, Sweetie begins her destruction of Sweet Apple Acres, goring every Apple she can find, though sparing Apple Bloom (22, 23, 24). When Twilight and co. escape the sewers, they immediately know she’s the one causing the destruction. They close in on her location, most of the guards dying from traps Sweetie has put on the land (25, 26, 27). Maud joins the party, searching for Pinkie, who has been captured by the Apples (24, 28). Sweetie gets her revenge on Applejack, killing her just to revive her and taunting her about her past. Though Maud eventually kills Sweetie, she reforms, whole and unpossessed, causing Aura Bell to get upset (28, 29).

This is where the story ends. The last chapter does not continue the story, but instead recontextualises it as a story written in-universe by a school colt as a joke. The writer of the in-universe newspaper article describing it lambasts Applejack and others for getting so upset over a joke, and describes how the story got the ire of “urban hoofists”, a group of college-educated but uncritically thinking rabblerousers that want to divide the pony races again (30).

Prose

I did my best in trying to ensure that Wolfboy183’s prose wasn’t affected by a learning disability, age, or not natively speaking English. Wolfboy183 was 21 when he first started writing Apple Corruption, and his other accounts point to him living in Vancouver.² None of his comments ever disclosed a learning disability, despite having a plethora of opportunities to.

I say this because the prose is atrocious. There are errors in almost every paragraph. Words are erroneously capitalised - or not - at random. Ellipses never have spaces after them, and commas sneak away from clauses they ought to be in and splice themselves elsewhere. Applejack should’ve renamed Sweetie Belle “Italics”, considering how badly the fic abuses them. There’s even a chapter where the text spontaneously center-aligns itself (7).

Words are duplicated or absent. Prepositional phrases, such as “in front” and “on top”, are consistently written as one word, which extends to phrases such as “a lot”, “every time”, and “each other”. “Across”, “laid”, “premesis/premeses”, “its/it’s”, “whose”, “hers”, “led”, and “seize” are consistently misspelled. Even proper nouns are misspelled, such as “Grannysmith” (2), “Big Mack” (3, 10), “Silver Spoons” (14), “Silverspoons” (17), “Ana” (21, 23), “Aurabelle” (23), “Jersey” (24), and “Goldenoaks” (25). “Sake” in the phrase “for fuck’s sake” and similar is written as “sakes” (21, 22), and some inscrutable reason, “save”, in the phrase “save for”, is almost always replaced with “give” (21, 23, 24). Sometimes, the spelling errors are so bad I can’t tell what word was meant, such as “socially cohese with other ponies” (20), and even become humorous, such as “deer crap” for the crablike creature Sweetie turns a deer into (23).

Swearing is inconsistent, both in-narrative and in dialogue: in one instance, Rainbow Dash tells Scootaloo that her wings being malformed is “pure duckshit”, to “shut the hell up”, but also asks her “how the bucking hay” she expects to work in Cloudsdale (11). The prose can’t decide whether to use “crap” or “shit” in narration, even using both in the same sentence (21). It comes off as the same kind of noncommittal immaturity of a child who wants to be edgy, but is afraid of getting in trouble for swearing.

The ponification of words is distracting. Words like somepony and anypony I’ll accept, since the show uses them, along with hoof for hand. But ponysonal (15), everyfoal (15), and imponane (28)? What about pone-hunt (25), when pony-hunt is right there? Why is stallion often shortened to stal, which starts popping up towards the end of the story (21, 23, 24, 26)? And for that matter, why are assumedly adult stallions called colts for no reason (13, 21)? In the same vein of awkward, some delightfully 2010s words sneak into the narrative and dialogue, such as Sweetie scoring an “epic” spellbook (18), and one of the guard ponies calling the other a “noob” (25).

The prose is peppered with cuttable phrases like “[in] either case”, “[the] problem was”, “[the] funny thing is/was”, “somewhat”, “pretty much”, “anyways”, “and so forth”. This ruins sentences such as “[Granny Smith’s] death became somewhat too much for [Applejack] to take.” (5). Read that sentence without “somewhat” and tell me how much better it reads. Hell, replace “became” with “was”, a much more punchy, direct verb, and get back to me. “This here” is a patented Apple family verbal tic, used so frequently you’d think the author never heard a Southerner actually speak. “Feel” is used in every instance “was” could be substituted in for a more close narration. Sensing words such as “feel”, “hear”, and “see” distance the narration from who is experiencing it in the story. You could take “She felt weak and hardly able to move at all. When she tried to eat, she simply puked. She felt extremely dizzy and was almost unable to talk.”(6) and replace every “felt” with “was”, and have it read better. Abused fillies saunter to and fro (11, 12, 13), the author ignorant of the condescending and sexual connotations of the word. Once, Sweetie’s instincts sharpen her awareness, making her… sharp and alert (17). Though we are told Applejack calls Apple Mend and Apple Aid “Mend” and “Doc” (11), god forbid you forget that, as we are reminded of this more often than they’re called those nicknames (13, 20). The only animal worthy of making metaphors out of are cats, with eleven instances of cat-based metaphors through the whole text (9 [x2], 11, 17, 18 [x3], 20 [2x], 23, 24). For some inexplicable reason, there are four instances of ponies pissing themselves in fear (13, 19, 21, 24).

The story is married to adverbs like a Mormon is married to his wives. Most people would find this many adverbs downright illegal. Again, take the passage “She felt weak and hardly able to move at all. When she tried to eat, she simply puked. She felt extremely dizzy and was almost unable to talk.” (6). What are hardly, simply, extremely, and almost doing in these sentences? Does “She felt weak and unable to move at all. When she tried to eat, she puked. She felt dizzy and was unable to talk.” not confer the same understanding? What about this: “‘Ah tried to rip it off. [...] Would've solved all her magic problems,’ Applejack spat bitterly. ‘Of course, then she’d be dead,’ Doc said, ‘Look, Applejack, [...] leave the horn alone. Whip or slap her if you need to keep her in line, but please, I beg you, on her behalf, let her horn alone.’ ‘Fine,’ Applejack replied grudgingly.” (11). Can we not infer the bitterness by the fact Applejack failed to rip her horn off, nor her grudging acceptance of Doc’s orders by her saying “Fine”? What about when Sweetie Belle attacks an Apple and “The retinas in his eyeballs were destroyed, essentially blinding him permanently.” (23)? As opposed to temporarily and inconsequentially blinding him while his retinas grow back?

Adjectives don’t fare much better. They are strung together like beads on a necklace, one after the other after the other after the other. Rainbow Dash is Scootaloo’s “harsh judgmental and critical idol” (9), Acorn Tibbs thinks Twilight’s suggestion to send in a vigilante group is “rash, irrational, and reckless” (12), and Fluttershy is “skittish, anxious, depressed, passive, and guilt ridden” (25). This is also an issue with repetition: Dash being a “critical idol”, Twilight giving a “reckless” suggestion, and Fluttershy being “skittish and guilt-ridden” are more succinct. Twilight is consistently described as a “lavender unicorn” in later chapters - an epithet that only Applejack (the “orange pony/hick”) is hit with the same frequency of. Even Sweetie Belle gets epithetted as “the filly”. If this is from her perspective, which much of the story is, why would she self-describe as “the filly”? If the narrator is more omniscient, what reason do they have to repeat information we already know?

The fanfic often summarises itself in a manner that reminds me too much of ChatGPT, though given the publication, I know it couldn’t have been written by an AI. The Apples are introduced as religious, their religiousness shown, and then described again as religious (1). Applejack herself is constantly described as an authoritarian racist (1, 11, 15), as though her tyranny on the farm and mistreatment of Sweetie didn’t clue us in on that. Nimbuscait, previously described as allowing dehornings (1), is then described as “not unicorn-friendly territory” (3). This reaches humourous extremes, such as Applejack being described as a “hater, and a racist” (15).

The narrative consistently stops to infodump, sometimes in parenthetical asides, but usually for hundreds of words at a time. Often, these infodumps are better summarised by how the characters are affected by that information. Such as Sweetie Belle getting headaches and pains as Applejack uses a potion to dull her magic, a paragraph of forty-nine words followed by two hundred sixty-three words of exposition right before it (6). I get the feeling this may have been better off not as a narrative, but an in-universe encyclopedia.

Multiple fandom references are shoved into the text, such as Snowdrop (6), the Rainbow Factory (11), Scootaloo being a chicken (11), Sunny Town (24), and Fluffle Puff (25). There’s not an inherent problem with doing this, as the Rainbow Factory fits perfectly in the universe that’s been built here, but Scootaloo being called a chicken and Fluffle Puff being arrested are easter eggs without a hunt, fanservice without anime titties. This even extends to 4chan-derived phrases such as “spilling one’s spaghetti” to mean “to embarrass oneself” (13), which is as unfitting as it is hilarious to include.

Are there any instances of good prose? Not a lot. Dream sequences are one of the only times when the prose crosses from terrible to poor, sometimes even decent (11), but even then, it still suffers the above issues. There are very few passages without some glaring error, and the prose’s repetition and wordiness bog everything down.

Story

If the prose is bad, is it at least compensated by a good story? Not really. You can skip the first chapter. No, really. Everything in the first chapter is better set up in the second or in other chapters. There’s nothing to be gained by reading the first chapter outside of the lore dumped on you. Carousel Boutique burning down, Sweetie being adopted by Applejack, Applejack being abusive, and the introduction of Applegem and Nimbuscait are all in chapter 2. Granny Smith defending Sweetie and revealing why her family moved from Nimbuscait to Ponyville is in chapter 4. The ethics of dehorning? Chapter 6. Sweet Apple Acres being outside of Ponyville law? Chapter 12. The Apple family being racist zealots? The whole damn fic.

One of the biggest sins any story can be is boring. I read fiction to be entertained. The one-shots I’ve read for this series are usually safe from being boring, since they don’t have the time to drag. Longer stories, however, have this as a risk. I had more fun reading the entirety of Muffins, a fanfiction of comparable length to Apple Corruption, than Apple Corruption itself. Why? Despite its flaws, Muffins mostly understood the concept of payoff. Set up victims you want murdered, and then kill them in the Cupcakes style the audience expects. I only got bored with Muffins when I got too used to the stimulus - and when the formula changed from “acceptable victims” to “anyone, because look at how powerful the bakers are.” Apple Corruption switches its focus in the middle of the story. It starts out describing Sweetie trying to survive in a new environment, but the story gets so distracted by pony power plays and politics that she gets sidelined in her own story. I don’t care about the power plays. I don’t care that Applejack is trying to take over Ponyville, nor Twilight’s adventures with the OC town guard. Even as a child, when I loved this story the most, and my taste in literature was less discerning, I was skimming. I have a memory of being at my grandparents, reading this story, and skimming chapter 21 because it was so piss-boring and irrelevant to what I wanted from the story that I didn’t care if I missed anything. Coupled with the unnecessary lengths of these chapters (some chapters over ten thousand words!), fluffed up by the prose’s tendency to ramble and repeat, this story was a slog to get through, and I wanted to do anything else.

One would think a non-linear narrative would be a bare minimum of interesting, but Apple Corruption is so poor at executing non-linear storytelling that it takes the story down further. Events are told to us after they ought to have been described, and the demarcations between flashbacks are hazy at best. Chapter 2 tells us that Sweetie has already come home from Nimbuscait before she actually does in chapter 5. Sweetie’s flashback to when Applejack adopted her extends over two chapters, starting in the middle of one and ending in the middle of another (5, 6, 7). Sundowner (which is the unfortunate name of a type of apple) leaves in chapter 16, but she’s described as being at Sweet Apple Acres in chapter 17, and the formatting makes it unclear that this was meant to be a flashback. I love a good nonlinear narrative (cough cough Homestuck) but you need to be a damn good writer and a damn clear writer to pull that off without it getting confusing.

The overlong story prolongs itself further by utilising copious dei (rather, diaboli) ex machinis. Why can’t Twilight telepathically tell Celestia what’s happening with Applejack, given that telepathy between unicorns was established prior? Because she’s been telepathically blocked by her for calling too much. Spike is, somehow, not around to send letters either (16). Why could Sundowner not reach Celestia when she was sent to Canterlot specifically to contact her? Because she was on vacation (21). And Luna wasn’t? And there’s not a whole system of pony bureaucracy that’s been vomited onto us that could pass this on to someone who has authority in the princesses’ stead? And yet, the story blows its load by revealing that Rarity - crucially believed to be dead - is alive in chapter 6 of 30, taking away any punch her coming off the train in chapter 21. And then Maud shows up, hypercompetent and equipped with special, unforeshadowed magical rocks that help her get to Sweetie (28). And somehow, she also knows that killing Sweetie won't actually kill her (29). It's a deus ex Maudchina! Wolfboy183 said common sense would kill the story.⁴ Maybe he should've written it in a manner where common sense wouldn't solve the plot, because as is, it relies on a staggering amount of incompetence from multiple ponies to occur.

But I think he would agree with me that the story is a mess, considering he has said the story drags and even stopped writing it because he messed up the plot.⁵ Wolfboy183 writes by "carv[ing his] way through the plot", going on tangents along the way. He did intend to overhaul the story when it was finished, but it never was, so whatever he planned to edit, cut, or change is anyone's guess.⁶ I don't write like this, so I can't advise those who do, but perhaps better note-taking and proofreading before publication could've cut most of the fluff, or at least better incorporated it.

Characters

So are the characters good? Let me skip past the common criticism that Applejack is out of character, because this is an alternate universe and is clearly part of the narrative Wolfboy183 wants to tell. Applejack, initially, has an interesting setup to be an abusive, racist zealot. She is traumatised by what happened to her mother, where she was caught in a witch-hunt and killed, and is further destabilised by Granny Smith’s death. Not only this, but her Nimbuscait relatives, such as Applegem, are involving themselves in her life, telling her that she can regain some kind of control through strict religious observation. And through that, she devolves, putting others through the same kind of abuse she herself went through. This is a solid concept for a character, and perfectly fitting the theme bigotry perpetuating itself through its effects on those who receive it. However, it doesn’t matter because of Element of Harmony corruption: Applejack isn’t having her trauma and religion exploited by people who ultimately never had her best interests at heart, but rather, she is a racist zealot due to being an Element bearer. I like this as a concept, but it is a worldbuilding-diseased lump on what already worked fine. But we couldn’t just leave it at her having witnessed too much death for her to handle, because, for some fucking reason, its revealed (in chapter 28 of 30, mind you) that Applejack was a victim of child sexual abuse by religious ponies, being whored out by her father. This shit comes out of nowhere, and I struggle to see the intent in it. Is this supposed to be shocking? Is this meant to humanise Applejack (while Sweetie is torturing her)?

What about Sweetie? She doesn’t have much personality outside of being an abuse victim. One of the commenters pointed out that Apple Corruption suffers from what TVTropes calls “Darkness Induced Audience Apathy” or “Too Bleak, Stopped Caring”. This trope describes when a work is so dark, so miserable, so hopeless, that conflict is meaningless. Why should you care about Sweetie’s welfare when it takes her five chapters to find a shred of hope that is swiftly taken from her? Why take victory in her getting to go to magic school when she’s bullied and beaten for her poor magic? Sweetie never truly gets her revenge despite her developing resentment, because she’s not in control of herself once she connects with the spellbook. Why care? What’s the point?

The other characters aren’t much better. Scootaloo contributes very little. Apple Bloom retains none of her go-getter attitude, and is continually called stupid by the narrative. Twilight’s going through her own Element corruption arc and ranges from needlessly mean to annoyingly anxious. Rarity contributes very little as well outside of the unresolved question of if Sweetie is her daughter rather than sister. Big Mac, Cheerilee, and Sweetie’s magic teacher also don’t provide much to Sweetie despite helping her. I don’t get the feeling that Sweetie sees them as supports, and sure, there’s something fun to be had in Sweetie being so abused that she distrusts everyone, but could we not have had more Sweetie and Big Mac moments? And then there’s the guard ponies: Promontory, Shamrock, Peachy Cream, Pigpen, Rose, Shortstack, Welly, Clover Grassblade, Crafty Crate, Luftwing, Deep Blue, Quick Fix, Orion, and Beef Oats. Yes, that is sixteen ponies, and all but Promontory (introduced chapter 12) are introduced all at once (in chapter 21)! First of all: where is Acorn Tibbs, the actual captain of the guard? Why is he off in another county while the Apples are filling out the ranks, which he is cognisant of them doing? Second of all, why are sixteen characters being introduced at once? Not even Homestuck dropped all twelve trolls on you at once, and when it did drop twelve more trolls at once, the response from the fandom was a resounding “okay?”. None of these characters matter. They are barely distinct from each other and they die anyway.

There is, however, one character I like. Her name is Anna Apple-Pomme (or Pomme-Apple, or Pomme, or many other permutations of that name). Unlike the other Apples, who are characterised as country bumpkins, Anna is a lawyer (14) Manehattanite (21) that serves as Ponyville’s town guard’s new legal secretary (15). Though allied with Applejack’s goals, after they fail to oust Mayor Mare from power, Anna is the one to rein in Applejack’s desire for violent retribution. Not that she cares about unicorn lives, but extrajudicially executing Twilight, for example, would get the ire of the wrong ponies, such as Celestia herself. In an effort to rehabilitate the Apples’ reputation after an incident with an Apple puts a foal in the hospital, she tells Applejack to visit that foal and make a payout to her family (21). Her bigotry against unicorns, unlike Applejack’s, isn’t rooted in “superstition” (21). She fails to see why the other Apples fear/worship the pegasi and understands how kowtowing to them is a bad long-term strategy (25). When Sweetie comes to destroy Sweet Apple Acres, though she doesn’t know she’s her, Anna flees (26), telling an underling “[Your new wife and brothers] are dead, you’re not, now come on! They chose to take up all that [...] zealotry, and look where it got them!” (26). It’s not a lot, but on top of being a fun character, she’s a breath of fresh air: she is an urban, educated, mastermind of an Apple, unconcerned about religion - yet still hates unicorns. Why? It would help the story’s themes if Anna’s motivations were examined deeper. How do urban Apples sustain their bigotry without relying on religious decree? How does her bigotry manifest in different, even contradictory, ways to religious Apples?

What did I like?

Why did I like this fanfic as a child? Why was I so excited to return to it a decade later? The worldbuilding. If Wolfboy183 wrote an in-universe encyclopedia about Equestria instead of this story, I would sit the fuck down. Wolfboy183 put so much effort into his worldbuilding. The founding of Ponyville is twinned with the reason the town guards can’t save Sweetie: the town charter gives them the legal right to enforce their own laws on their own land. Ponyville, along with its neighboring counties, is considered a diverse and harmonious place, free from the racial tension outside of it. Such racial tension is found not only in Nimbuscait, which allows for dehornings, but also in Quartzgleam, where unicorn vigilantes fight against all enemies of unicorns. Pegasi aren’t exempt from their own bigotry, hating grounded pegasi (lowercase P), abandoning deformed young on the ground, and having genetically engineered blood apples to kill unicorns. And that’s not all. Ponies measure time via the angle of the sun, written in degrees. They have different days of the week. They measure length by hooves, trots (about the length of Big Mac), kilotrots, and day trots (about the distance a pony can walk in a day); and weight in bars. Earth ponies use special hoof shoes that allow them to handle objects like shovels and pens. Ponies use bioluminescent plants for light in lieu of electricity. There is clear thought put into every facet of pony life. The towns aren’t vague points on a map: many of them are mappable and are used to describe direction in relation to each other. Equestria isn’t dark for no reason: its racism fits in with the themes of the story. These historic and geographical descriptions make Equestria feel so much more extant, more tangible, in a way I go nuts for. It hurts me to see how this genuinely good lore is used to bludgeon the audience out of the narrative. In the hands of a better author, these things would be woven into the narrative, not stand apart from it.

Ending and Reinterpretation

Before I can wrap this up, I have to talk about Wolfboy183’s claims that this was written as a joke, and the final chapter written years later. Throughout publication, he has said that he wrote the story both for the few that liked it, but also to piss off those who hated it. After a few years hiatus, he said that after he started getting downvoted, he "just started trolling".⁷ I doubt this fic was intended as a joke. The thought he put into the lore says otherwise, and regardless, it doesn't get much of a reaction out of me either way. Unlike My Immortal, which is both hilarious on its own and fantastic as satire of fanfic tropes, Apple Corruption never hits those same highs. The execution of its subject matter isn't offensive nor painful enough, and its errors are less intentionally funny and more like genuine mistakes. Considering the fic is prefixed now with Really Bad Fanfics, Wolfboy183 may be trying to distance himself from what he wrote by calling it a joke, dismissing the few good aspects about it to save face.

The final chapter is strange. It’s weird and more indicative of Wolfboy183’s beliefs than him writing a darkfic, and no one in the comments mentions it. The meaning of this chapter is clear: Applejack and other ponies are obvious stand-ins for the critiques Wolfboy183 got, and Clover Grass Blade, a declared OC, is Wolfboy183 himself. The in-universe author of this newspaper article blames this widespread hate on, get this, the college-educated: “News of the story has left Ponyville[...]. These include any town that is home to a former univerity (sic) or college, turned ideological cult center, which produces hundreds of thousands of young ponies who are completely delusional and stripped of their mental faculties, and abilities to listen, reason, and process and reject harmful information at their own will. [...] And these fanatics have shed all moral standings, and chase power, by pursuing their new found ‘philosophical’ dreams, at the grave, and destructive expense of other ponies, who never asked for any kind of fight, conflict, or even problems. [...] The exact opposite against the Princess and pony freedom, are those who claim to have gone to the big cities' once-prestigious schools.”

These college-educated folk are connected to something called “Urban Hoofism”, which “doesn't let ponies write as they do, say as they say, or act as they act” and is promoted through “anger, hate, disgust, shame, guilt, and the forcefully accepted ‘soft slow murder’ of anypony who gets in their way or shows up on their radar”, but most importantly: racism. In its “benign” form, it is the measure that animals use to separate themselves from danger. The example given is a cat with a kitten, seeing a fox, and running with the kitten away from the fox. An Urban Hoofist would “want to see the cat stop, and pretend to be friends with the fox while it kills and devours them both. Another urban hoofist would tell the fox to stop hunting killing (sic), and eating, and live on a diet of plant material.” “Foxes and cats are not designed to just stop and act like friends” he writes, “Intelligent mammals [...] use prejudice [...] for identification, not hostility.” The Urban Hoofist way of dealing with problems is a “social pandemic” and “cancer” rocking small towns like Ponyville.

This kills the intended message of Apple Corruption. “Racism is bad!” the last twenty-nine chapters shout. “Look at how racism hurts innocent children and plays on people’s trauma to make the world a worse place!” “Except,” says the thirtieth, “when it is used to protect ourselves and our family, and those who think otherwise are working against nature.” Did Wolfboy183 forget what he wrote, or did something happen in the three years between chapters twenty-nine and thirty? Did I forget to mention that this chapter was published in 2017? Antifa, Black Lives Matter, the “woke mob” cancelling comedians “just making jokes” and forcing us to live unnaturally - that is what Urban Hoofism is meant to represent.

Conclusion

Is this story salvageable? Of course. It wouldn’t be that hard of a fix, either. Show Applejack being corrupted over time, starting as a more strict version of her canon self and being radicalised by Nimbuscait Apples. Get rid of her Element corrupting her - it’s not necessary for the story, and undercuts the theme of hate begetting more hate. Reveal Applejack’s trauma more gracefully, either through Sweetie overhearing conversations, or through Applejack POV chapters. Sweetie needs more allies, not just Granny Smith, who should die much later, but Big Mac, Apple Bloom, and Apple Mend, who should be involved much earlier and more often. Reduce Twilight’s side plot or involve it less with the Apples taking over the town, and more with her friend abusing a child. Play more with Sweetie’s hate of the Apples and how that colours her perspective on the world. All that could make a fascinating darkfic about how racism spreads, starting from systemic roots, taking advantage of trauma, and being transmitted to children who don’t know better.

Apple Corruption’s strength is the world it builds, but that’s all it has, and it is burdened by the author’s inability to hold himself back from infodumping. You’d have a better time reading the Silmarillion without reading Lord of the Rings.