The show My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic isn't normally the type to catch my interest. It's not that I easily give in to gender roles or gender stereotypes or whatever. I've never been that kind of guy, even when I was a teenager. I've always done what I wanted, whether it went against the norm or not. Of course, it helps that I can be pretty intimidating if someone tries to make fun of me for my interests. The reason I initially wasn't interested in the show was simply because I didn't think it was my cup of tea. I watched the original show with my little sister a few times and I could never invest myself in what was going on. When I found out that there was another incarnation of My Little Pony, I thought it would be just like the original. Imagine my surprise when I stumbled across the Brony fandom, and subsequently gave the show a try to see what the fuss was about. But I don't want to go into how I became a Brony. For those who don't know, a Brony is an adult fan, normally male, of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. Pretty weird, I know, but I also won't go into that. I instead want to talk about an incident that occurred less than a year after I got into the show and the fandom. An incident that I find scary mostly because of how confusing it was. To this day, I'm not sure what to think of it. I'd like to assume there was a logical explanation, but at the same time I think there was something paranormal going on.
To start with, the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic wiki is a wealth of information about the show and its characters, particularly the fan-named background characters. I went there frequently to find out as much as I could when I was adjusting to the whole Brony thing. I spent an especially long amount of time memorizing all the background characters, or at least the most popular ones. I never paid too much attention to the ones that barely got any recognition in the fandom and none at all in the show, until that one Saturday. I was bored and decided I'd give myself a little challenge: I'd go to the show's wiki, read up on every single background character, than quickly close the page and try to see how many I remembered afterward. Upon bringing up the page, I was immediately surprised at how big it was. There must have been at least fifty background characters, all of them with specific names. But I preserved. I began to go down the list, paying attention to the strange names of the characters and trying to cement them in my memory. I was rapidly losing faith in my memory skills as I scrolled down. When I got to the “D” section of the page, I was surprised to find that the section did not start with a pony whose name began with “Da” or something like that. Instead, the section began with a pony whose name was simply “D”. Most of the ponies, fan-named and otherwise, had names to reflect their personalities or special talents. I couldn't think of a talent or personality that would be represented by the name “D”. Curious, I examined the screenshot and information next to the name. According to the information, the pony was a female and a pegasus. The screenshot was low quality, but it appeared to be from one of the crowd scenes in “Boast Busters”. The image was cropped and zoomed in to allow me to see the pony I assumed was D. Her fur was black, like Luna's, and her eyes were a dark shade of yellow. Her mane was red, almost the color of blood, and it hung so limply it looked as if someone had splattered paint all over her head and neck. All the other characters present around her looked happy or at the very least indifferent, but D had a miserable expression on her face and her eyes were focused on the ground, rather than the stage. Her design was different from that of the other background ponies. While a lot of the other ponies seemed to have been made from the same base, D had a more original body type. She was extremely thin. Some fans of the show might know of the pony Fleur De Lis, whose also very skinny. But D was skinny in a more disconcerting way. It might have been my imagination or just the low quality of the picture, but I thought I could see the outline of D's ribs and leg bones underneath the fur. That was silly, of course. The animators would never go into that kind of detail. This was still a kids' show. Even some adults might find that type of detail a little unnerving. I was surprised that I hadn't seen D in that scene, considering her unique design. But I'd only watched the episode twice and hadn't been paying special attention to it because I honestly found it to be one of the weaker storylines. Seeing D made me forget all about my challenge. The more I looked at the screenshot, the more disturbed I was by her design. Bones or not, she didn't exactly look kid-friendly. That mane, for one thing, and the miserable expression on her face that didn't match any of the other ponies. In fact, the miserable look on her face didn't match the show itself. I'd never seen any character, even a character who'd just been wronged, look that sad, as if they had lost a battle with their own personal agony. I know it's ridiculous for me to be saying that about a cartoon character, but you'd have to see the pony to understand. As creeped out as I was by the animators' decision to use such a creepy background character, I was convinced that D must have inspired some great fan fiction in the Brony community. I went to Google Images and searched for her name. The page loaded pretty quickly and I skimmed the results. To my astonishment, there was not one piece of fan art featuring D. I searched for fan fiction and even fan music. Nothing. Not even a mention on the popular forums about this weird pony. I wasn't scared or anything, though. I assumed D was an OC (original character) or something that ended up on the page by mistake. That was bound to happen once or twice. I went back to the page and found D again. I took a screenshot of the whole page and planned to send it to a moderator. But it was getting late, so I decided I'd do it in the morning. I went to bed that night without any particular worries and I didn't have any nightmares. None that I know of, anyway.
The next day was busy for me. I slept late and had to heat up my breakfast in the microwave. Then some of my friends came over and we played video games for most of the day. It was early evening before I remembered D and the screenshot I planned to send to a moderator. Since I had an hour before dinner, I decided to get it out of the way. I went to my computer and pulled up the screenshot to take one last look at it. I again reflected on this weird pony whom I had decided was an OC. The person who made it must have had some emotional issues, I thought. After I closed the window, I logged into my Wikia account. I saw that I had a message. Forgetting D for a moment, I went to read my messages. It was a reply from the user who promised to hook me up with a .zip folder of all the episodes, from Season 1 to the current season. He had finally downloaded the last few episodes and added them to the collection. I took it gratefully and thanked him for his kindness. Distracted from my original purpose, I downloaded the folder as quickly as I could. I left my computer on while it downloaded. Meanwhile, I read a book and, eventually, went downstairs to eat dinner. When I came back, the download was finished. I was relieved to see that every single episode was present. Most of them were of good quality and in MKV format. I chose a random episode to see if they would play on my computer. I think it was “The Best Night Ever”, the Season 1 finale. I soon was invested in the episode and forgot about all else except the stuff happening on screen. Halfway through the episode, I paused because I needed to use the bathroom. By coincidence, I happened to pause on one of crowd scenes. I got out of my chair and was about to leave, but something caught my eye. To the very left of the screen, mingling among the crowd, was a familiar black pony. I couldn't believe it at first. I returned to my seat and used the built-in “Zoom” feature in my video player. It was a little blurry, but I could tell it was D. And if I wasn't mistaken, she had the same miserable expression on her face. I frowned. So, D wasn't an OC? If she was a legitimate character, why did the animators make her look like that? And why was there no work in the fandom about her? I was confused. I came back to the computer and closed the video player. For some reason, I didn't think to take a screenshot. I simply closed the window and opened another video. This one was the episode “Party of One”. This time, I didn't have to look closely or watch halfway into the episode to find D. She was right there in one of the scenes after the opening sequence, standing in a corner at Pinkie's party. She wasn't doing anything. She was just standing there, holding a deflated pink balloon and staring miserably at the floor. It could have been a still image. I watched the rest of the episode, but D never showed up again. After that episode, I watched some Season 2 episodes, starting with “The Return of Harmony”. In each one, D was standing in the crowd, or in a corner, or somewhere else in the background, always looking sad. Sometimes she would be holding an item relevant to the scene, like a book or a cupcake. The weirdest thing was that D often appeared in scenes that she shouldn't have been in, like the scene in the second part of “The Return of Harmony” in which the main characters are all gathered in the library after Discord brainwashed them. It should have just been the main characters, yet D was standing in a corner with a book in her hooves at one point. She disappeared when the scene changed and didn't appear for the rest of the episode. I moved on to Season 3 over the following week, getting more puzzled by the episode. She appeared more frequently in Season 3, occasionally three times in a single episode. I started to think that she looked a little sadder each time, or maybe I was imagining it. I took a break before I moved on to Season 4 about two weeks later.
In the show, ponies have these little images on their rear ends called “Cutie Marks”. They're meant to symbolize the pony's special talent. I realized after watching so many episodes that I had never seen D's. In every appearance, she was standing in such a way that her Cutie Mark was completely obscured. I had a strange desire to see it. Was it curiosity? No, it was a little more than that in hindsight. I felt like her Cutie Mark was important. That was why I finally started watching Season 4 two weeks later. I started going through the Season 4 episodes one by one. She had to have at least one scene where her Cutie Mark appeared. You're probably wondering what I was thinking at this time. The truth is, I didn't know what to think. I guess I had made up my mind that it was some kind of prank or secret Easter Egg or something. I decided that once I was finished spotting D, I would have a frank word with the guy who sent me the episodes. I thought he was also the same guy who put D on the Characters page to begin with. Some kind of weird joke to mess with fans and non-fans alike. At the Season 4 finale, I wasn't awed by it like I usually was. Normally I would have been singing along to the songs and practically cheering over that unexpectedly intense battle scene. But all I could think about was D. The guy must have gone to immense trouble to get her into every episode, even though she was just a still image. And he had done an amazing job. Every time I saw her, I could have sworn she belonged there. At the end of the Season 4 finale, Tirek was being defeated. I hadn't seen D anywhere throughout Part 1 and I thought that was the end of her. But then, at the very corner of the scene, D appeared. She wasn't just there like the other times. She appeared, as if added in at the very last minute. And she was staring directly forward, into my eyes. I jumped, promptly forgetting everything else happening on screen. Having not seen D, I was surprised to see her just poof into existence. And she was looking at me, which was even creepier. As I stared, to my further surprise, D moved. She was no longer a still image in a corner. She turned sideways so I could at last see her Cutie Mark. But it didn't look like a regular Cutie Mark. It was far too disturbing to be a regular Cutie Mark or anything that should ever appear in a cartoon intended for children. The animators weren't sick-minded enough to have anything like this in the show, even as a joke or an Easter egg. The “Cutie Mark” looked as if it was carved directly onto the pony's flesh. There was blood, animated yet disturbing blood, dripping from it, as if it was fresh. The “D” was larger than the letters proceeding it, giving it a strange look. The word was “Deleted”. I only saw it for about five seconds. Then D turned back to face me. Her face was no longer miserable. She looked angry. Angrier than I thought it possible for a cartoon equine to look. She looked as if she hated me, for some reason. I didn't know what to do or what to think. And before I could do or think anything, my computer crashed.
When I got my computer to turn back on, I found that it had completely gone under. I wasn't surprised. It was an old machine, in terrible condition when my parents first bought it second hand. They didn't think it was worth the money to buy a brand new computer, because they assumed a second hand, old and used one would be just as good. It did work decently for a year or two, but I always knew it would eventually go under and take all my files with it. Fortunately, I had backed up some of my important files, so it wasn't a complete loss. Except that I hadn't backed up the episodes or the screenshots. Those were lost forever and I had no proof of anything that had happened. My parents decided to buy me a brand new computer. While I was waiting, I used the computer at my friend's house. I sent a message to the guy who got me the episodes and asked about the pony. But he never sent me anything back and I later found out that his account was suspended indefinitely for some unknown reason. I asked around on forums about D and no one seemed to have any information. I also checked the page where I had first seen D and she was gone. I found some online resources that allowed me to watch the episodes. I watched through most of Season 1 and found no D, even in places where I had seen her before. She wasn't present in any storyboards of the show I uncovered. She wasn't talked about in any interviews or convention footage I watched. I asked my fellow Brony friends and none of them had heard of her. It was as if she didn't exist. But my memory told me a different story. I couldn't get her out of my head, especially that disturbing Cutie Mark. I keep wondering what would have happened if I had sent that message to a moderator, along with the screenshot. Would I have gotten answers? I don't know. I just know that D, whoever or whatever she was, is gone forever and I can't prove she existed. I'm still a Brony, but I don't watch the episodes too often. I keep expecting to see D somewhere in the background. And, call me childish, but I really don't want to see her. That angry look she gave me that last time, that look of pure hatred and rage, makes me shudder just thinking about it. I don't know if D was the product of a prank or some kind of supernatural force. I don't care at this point. No one would believe me if I told them anyway.
