"Why Do I Have So Many Dislikes?"

Spike sat humming away to a jolly tune as he penned down the plot to his story. This is going to be great! He thought to himself, smiling.

Since the invention of something called ‘the internet’, ponies could now share anything they wanted to other ponies. Whether it be thoughts, statements, facts, or stories! This was his first story ever, and he just knew it would be perfect. After all, he was practically the brother to the most grammatically correct pony in the cosmos, and he knew just what to do to make it great!

With a flourish of the quill, he slowly began to type out the first few words to his first fanfiction, on a website he had found called PoPFiction, which is a shortened version of Power Ponies Fiction. A website that housed all kinds of fanfiction for this ‘fandom’, even the more… exotic ones. He knew to not turn the mature setting on, or else Twilight might find out. He didn’t want Twilight finding out.

But he had finally come up with an idea after ages of reading and commenting on stories. He had finally broken the mental barrier in his mind and just knew he would get popular on this new website! Hopefully, he would even make the heralded ‘Featured Box’, a place where all stories went when they were perfectly perfect. The best of the best! There wasn’t one story yet to fail his expectations, although he wondered why the bottom three slots kept having old stories pop up whenever they updated. How odd…

Cracking his knuckles with a wince, he smiled and began to mutter under his breath as he slowly typed away. “Hum Drum panted as he successfully finished his morning workout. Just outside his room, Radiance looked at him with starcrossed eyes…”

Spike finally finished it! He actually did it! This was the most words he’d ever written in one sitting, nearly a thousand and a half, and it was beautiful. He had been a long-time HumDance shipper, a shipper being someone who put two people into an impossible relationship together, and he had always dreamed of writing something as good as stuff he had come across the site. He was so proud of his work, he quickly checked it for errors and added an author’s note at the top, saying ‘This is my first story, please leave a like and follow!”

Finally, he published the story and submitted it to the moderators: A group of ponies who monitored the first-time story posters on the site. Once you had passed some sort of moderation test, you were allowed to ‘auto-submit’ stories, which he had found out with glee when he was going through forum posts. Too bad this was his first story. Now he would have to wait several hours for his story to get seen.

Glancing at the clock to his left, he yelped. Twilight had been out doing errands, and he had promised to dust the library before she came back. Now it was almost 7:00, and he still hadn’t done it! With a sigh, he cleared his history and closed the tab on his web browser of ‘Google Agility’, which was much better than his first one, ‘Internet Turtle’.

Whelp, better get started, he thought before grabbing the duster. That was, until he heard the castle doors open and the unmistakable ring of Twilight’s voice.

“Hey Spike, I’m home!”

“Ponyfeathers,” Spike muttered before Twilight came into view.

“Uh, hey Twilight! How, uh, how was that meeting with, um, Mayor Mare?”

Twilight slowly raised an eyebrow as she scrutinized him and the library around her. Gingerly wiping a hoof on a shelf nearest to her, she inspected it before narrowing her eyes at Spike. “Spike? Did you dust the library like I asked?”

“Eh heheh, about that…” Spike bristled nervously.

Twilight deadpanned at Spike. “You didn’t, didn’t you.”

“Uh… y-yeah…”

“What’s the excuse this time?” Twilight snarked as she swiped the duster from Spike’s claws and began to do it herself.

“I… uh, I was- uhm, I was… writing a story?” Spike said. He then watched in confusion as Twilight virtually brightened at the words and she stopped what she was doing. She then ran over to Spike and gushed.

“Really? Oh! What kind of story? What’s the genre? How long is it? Is it good? Has it been edited yet? Can I check for grammar and spelling mistakes? Ooh! I would love to do that for you!” Twilight began to say as she began to list off things she would be able to do for Spike. Suggest ideas, edit, add to it. Abruptly, however, Twilight stopped and narrowed one eye as she raised the brow of the other. “This isn’t just some excuse to get away from not dusting the library, is it? You’re not going to go unpunished.”

“Uh, no, it’s not an excuse. I actually wrote a story. So uh… what’s the punishement?”

“No internet for two days.”

“What?!” Spike cried in alarm. “But I wrote it online and posted it! How am I supposed to show it to you when I can’t use it in the first place?” Suddenly, he realized what he said and instantly knew he didn’t want Twilight reading his shipfic. For some reason, he got bad vibes from the thought of Twilight reading something… something like what he had written.

“It’s online? Does that mean other ponies can view it and criticize it?” Twilight brightened again. “Wow! That just means more ponies to backup any of my claims of lackluster writing!”

“So that’s a no-? Hey!” Spike asked before shouting.

Twilight grinned. “I’m just kidding! I’m just kidding! And yes, but only until after I see it tomorrow and you get some sleep today.”

Spike nodded with a facial expression somewhere between horror and mixed happiness. “Uh, yeah! Heh heh, read my story… Great! Just… great.”

He trudged away to his room in a stupor of thought. This was going to be a long night.

“So? Where is it? What website did you write it on? InkPad? Google Docs?”

“Uhhhh… PoPFiction?” he said nervously as he typed in the URL. It was too early to read fanfiction, much less showing his defacto big sis his fanfiction which he thought was great but was now beginning to doubt himself. Spike didn’t like the uneasy queasy feeling in his stomach now that he was showing somepony he knew his own works.

“You wrote fiction?” Twilight raised an eyebrow. “Please don’t tell me you wrote fanfiction.”

“I, uh…” Spike twiddled his thumbs nervously as the webpage loaded and the front page of PoPFiction showed all recently posted and updated stories. “Y-yes?”

Twilight frowned at Spike as she looked over the fanfiction website. “Why’d you have to write fanfiction of all things, Spike? Fanfiction, instead of dusting the library?” Twilight tutted and shook her head. “I think I’ll add no T.V. and comic books to that list of punishments.”

“W-what? No!” Spike tried to argue but Twilight held a hoof up.

“No buts. It’s already been done.” Twilight then smiled excitedly and floated a notepad up with a quill. “Now, show me your work! However mundane it is compared to the non-fiction books I’ve told you to read.”

Spike gulped and grimaced as he went to his account, ‘RariBae’, clicked it, and went to his stories tab. With one glance at his story, he shouted in surprise and disbelief. “What!?”

Twilight jumped back at Spike’s outburst. “Spike? What’s wrong?”

“Wha…” Spike frowned as he stared in shock. “Why do I have so many dislikes!?”

“What?” Twilight said as she looked over Spike’s shoulder. She caught a glance of a red bar dominating the side of what she assumed was the title. Beside the red bar was a hoof pointed down and the number 1,397. As she looked over the page, she found that it had several grammatical errors and a sporadic use of capitals.

“When somepony doesn’t like a story, they can click this thing here and it adds a number to the number of dislikes.” He scrolled down to find countless comments saying how bad the story was, the lack of editing, pace, grammar, and OOC, whatever that last one meant.

“Well that’s rude,” Twilight pouted. “Did they at least write down why it was bad?”

“Yeah, but this doesn’t make sense. I wrote it so well, too. It took me forever to write it…” Spike frowned but Twilight patted him in the back.

“Let’s see what’s wrong with it, then, hm?” Twilight scooted Spike off the chair in front of the ‘Computer’ and set all her writing utensils into place before clicking the chapter and beginning to read.

Spike immediately regretted his decision as he saw the frown on Twilight’s face. Not only that, but he had forgotten he had written a shipfic. He twiddled his claws and sweated nervously as he looked around awkwardly. “I’ll just uh, dust the library I guess while you’re… doing that…”

He rushed away and in no time did the job Twilight had assigned him to do the previous day. He could still hear the scritch-scratching of Twilight’s quill when he finally put the duster away before he approached the computer table slowly. As he glanced at what Twilight had written, his mouth dropped. She had written at least 3 full pages of notes and scribblings.

“Ah, Spike! You’re, uh, back! Thanks for dusting the library, it really needed it. You know, maybe you could help me rearrange the library again after-” Twilight realized she was about to go on a tangent and facehoofed, “-anyways, yeah. You’re story was… interesting?”

“Oh! U-uh, what are those notes you have there?” Spike asked, laughing anxiously.

“Oh, these?” Twilight chuckled nervously before unsuccessfully hiding them behind her. “It’s- uh, nothing! Nothing, heh heh. You’re story was… great! Yes, it was wonderful.”

Spike squinted at Twilight at that. He switched between Twilight and the papers she now tried to keep out of view. “Come on, Twilight. I can’t get better without some comments.”

Twilight bit her lip, before sighing and floating the papers back in front of her. Taking a slow deep breath, she read through them quickly and fixed Spike with a sympathetic look. “To put it frankly, it’s horrible.”

Spike felt like he had just gotten a punch to the gut.

“Probably worse than that one children’s book I had gotten a while ago with all those typos in it.”

Having the Princess of Book-ness herself say Spike’s story was horrible was as heart-wrenching as getting roasted with fire by your true lover.

“I’m sorry, but the amount of misspellings and improper word choices as well as the very pace of the story and the near lack of capitals made it almost unreadable.”

There goes Spike’s dignity.

“The paragraphs were oddly indented or spaced out and the dialogue was all wrong.”

Spike swore his scales were turning grey.

“And the characters were just way too into their… *ahem* relationship to be their actual personalities. They would never have reacted like that, with Radiance being all class and Hum Drum being the sidekick, it would never really work out.”

Spike stare listlessly into empty space. He had worked so hard on his story. Now it was completely destroyed by the users of PoPFiction and Twilight. He must’ve been staring into oblivion for much longer than he thought, because Twilight waved a hoof in front of him a few times.

“Spike? Are you alright?” Twilight asked worriedly.

Spike nodded slowly before walking out of the library, slowly closing the door behind him, and he went straight to his room, where he proceeded to stare emptily at the ceiling on his bed. Twilight opened the door to his room and saw his empty eyes before Twilight frowned.

“Hey Twilight,” Spike said monotonously.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Twilight said softly.

“No, my story just got ripped in half and I’m an idiot for writing it,” Spike muttered.

“Hey, it’s still written by my favorite reptile. I’ll hold it close even if it… isn’t exactly the best.” Twilight cocked her head to the side in thought before walking up to Spike and hugging him. “And then we can write a story together, how about that?”

Spike felt a tear roll down his cheek, and he hugged back. “Thanks, Twi.”

“Now about that punishment…”

“Aw ponyfeathers!” Spike moaned and Twilight laughed.

“Come on, let’s go get something from Pinkie.”

And with that, they left for Sugarcube Corner, the most disliked story on PoPFiction now left behind, gaining at least twenty downvotes a day.

The End!

“That’s way too sappy of an ending, author,” Discord pouts as he folds his arms.

Hey, it was either that or Spike try commit suicide by jumping off the balcony!

“Twilight would have caught him with her magic anyways. T’would have been more entertaining.

Oh shut up, you. This secret conversation shouldn’t even exist.

Discord smirks. “But it certainly adds to the story, hm?

*Sigh*