The computer’s screen glowed softly in the early morning. The one whose eyes were fastened on it was already well awake, ready for a new day. The body which held the eyes was held to a chair by gravity, but it slouched over the desk, bending towards the glow, almost as though the owner of the eyes was seeking the source of light. Of course, his day was likely to involve checking over a grotesque amount of bad fanfiction.
Not that he had any choice, for some reason, a pony-fiction website had hired “Literary critic496” to judge fanfiction with a patient eye, not just the fanfiction that deserved a good reputation, or the stuff that was ingeniously new and held so many ideas that had not been done before. No, Literary Critic496 was forced to read every fanfiction out there, which, interestingly enough, includes badly written Human In Equestria fiction. Unfortunately, he can’t get away with it, especially not at a rate of $6.90 an hour.
Many people in his life who knew about his shameful and incredibly annoying profession had said “A graduate from Harvard summa-cum-laude, and a degree in creative writing should have a better job than reading fanfiction, especially not fanfiction from My Little Pony: Friendship is magic”. Naturally, Literary Critic496 (or Steve as most people who knew him referred to him by) had a differing opinion. With his job, he could plow through more literature than any human before him, even if the majority of the stuff that he was forced to read was awful. The job put money in his wallet, and a small amount of food in his refrigerator. What else could Steve ask for?
Even in the wee hours of the morning, the literary critic found himself swamped with an astounding number of terribly cliche human in equestria stories. The verbal diarrhea nearly threatened to cause the critic to tear out his eyeballs, but Steve was not weak enough to gouge out his eyes for the sake of avoiding some retarded fiction, no he was a strong man, a stronger reader, and an astounding literary critic. His reviews, as with a flamethrower, struck out at the awful fanfiction, eliciting the authors who had never felt his firebrand before to beg for mercy, promising to write better stories, and then promising to have no less than four pre-readers assure them that their story was good before they would try to submit another attempt at their fictional pursuits. The critic gazed over the fevered replies of the authors, begging for mercy in his reviews, finding that his work had been done, and the evils of the terrible fiction had been purged with fire, he opened something that most people would consider more professional than a fanfiction website(his email).
His eyes glazed over in righteous fury, while he spent the next hour and a half using his same passion to avoid the pitfalls of spam, complaints from angry writers claiming that he had “Driven off their fanbase”, or even fans of his critiques. Then there was a story that someone had sent, concerning a certain blue unicorn with an ego problem.
The critic strongly considered ignoring the email. It was from one of those authors which he had flamed terribly. Not that the fool known as “McWriter” was worth a grain of salt(even when salt is virtually worthless in developed countries), but it was not everyday that he received a story from someone knowing that they would be so thoroughly grilled that the story would likely catch fire.
Was it a challenge? Some kind of assertion that the author was better than him? The author could even be claiming that he had improved so much that there would be no chance for the critic to find a valid insult to throw at him! Steve’s anger grew. Nobody could ever call him out on this! Nobody could avoid his own special talent! Nobody could take away his only righteous rage in life!
Steve yelled into the screen. “You can’t beat me you BIATCH!” His index finger fell upon the left mouse button as though it was the ultimate enemy. The mouse exploded underneath his hand. The critic regarded the scorch mark on the desk cautiously before opening up the drawer on his desk, which sloshed with a sea of computer mice. He took one and plugged it into the laptop before clicking on the email.
Odd, it was in a PDF file. The critic already had a few insults about that lined up for the incompetent sender of the email. As he tried to penetrate the dense text, his vision began to deepen. It narrowed to a single line, then a single word. The critic believed that it was his own perception’s fault, that he had gone too many nights without decent sleep, suddenly an overlay appeared on his cornea. Etched into it were the blasphemous dho-nha diagrams. He felt himself channelling energy into them, but of course, the literary critic could not let something so crass as dark magic ruin what was actually a very interesting storyline, he might actually have to compliment the author after scolding him for using such an obnoxious format to transmit it to him. Every word that the critic read caused the tesseracts in his eyes to glow brighter and brighter, holes in reality opened up, but the plot was just too interesting. The world died in a blinding flash.
A single light appeared in the darkness, swinging wildly, illuminating swathes of floor and furniture. After a few minutes, the critic realized that he wasn’t going to figure out how Trixie and Twilight Sparkle are actually human robots. He was on the defendant side of a courtroom, whose darkness implied a truly great size. Steve considered everything for a moment, then realized that the policy of being as much of a douchebag as possible to authors meant that he was in for some very creative revenge. Ghostly images appeared in the courtroom around him. A less ghostly judge ascended onto the bench.
The judge was a pony. Fierce blue eyes and a blond mane adorned his head, his coat was slate grey, the cutie mark had nothing to do with justice and everything to do with writing, being completely generic otherwise. The blue eyed one glared at the critic. The ghosts began to make noise, useless conversation, really just noise. There was no real character to any of the conversations that took place behind the critic, the author was not as good as he would expect, given the way that the critic assumed that he was brought to this illusory courtroom.
A bailiff stepped forwards then yelled. “ALL RISE FOR THE HONORABLE JUDGE McWriter!”
True to his command, the audience obeyed, the critic hesitated for a moment, but still rose. Then everybody sat down.The critic found his name ridiculous, absurd for anyone with a brain, let alone the obvious self insert(for the sake of god, he even used his username).
“Jury, do you have a verdict?” The judge asked. Another pony stood up in the jury box. “We do, your honor. We find the defendant guilty of obstruction of the creative process.”
“Hmm... Now what can I do? Now let’s see, I can’t give you a cruel or unusual punishment... Oh wait, this isn’t the United States, of course I can.” The judge smiled warmly at the critic, the critic simply wondered why he hadn’t already condemned him to whatever Cupcake fueled hell the author thought most unpleasant.
“You are sentenced to fall to every single cliche in the Human in Equestria genre, court dismissed.”
“You won’t get away with this McWriter!!!” the critic screamed as he was flung out the door, into a swirling portal. “Hmm. Now I’ll have to make it even more undignified, he didn’t refer to me as ‘Your honor’.” The stallion shrugged. “I’m sure that his presence will make my story better.”
The pony left through the door behind the bench, whistling something that would have made a music critic cringe.
The critic saw a large forest come up beneath him. “Dammit. I’m already going to the most overused locale for this.” The critic, being an inexperienced skydiver, spread out his arms and legs, angling himself away from the forest. Surprisingly, this tactic worked, unfortunately, falling from a great height into the ground was not the best way to go, so the critic did the next best(and least cliche) thing that he could think of. He aimed for a yellow pegasus.
A small white speck looked up at the sky. He could tell something was going wrong, but where? A strange creature plummeted towards himself and Fluttershy. Of course, Angel being Fluttershy’s guardian, or perhaps feeling some kind of cosmic relationship to his caretaker, readied his special carrot. The carrot’s tip, freshly sharpened, gleamed in the light, he jumped off his caretaker’s back, plunging the carrot between the ribs of the strange creature. The body of the creature fell at Fluttershy’s side, rather than on top of her, hitting the ground with a series of sickening cracks.
The pegasus was astounded. “Angel! Are you okay?”
The bunny nodded. Fluttershy noticed the creature, impaled through by a carrot, whose tip still gleamed despite the blood that had been shed upon it. The creature twitched, shuddered, but continued to breath “Oh... my.”
The pegasus dragged the creature back to her house, she simply had to take care of it. The temptation of Philomena in the back of her mind was once again ignited by the curiosity that this kind of creature created in her. “Maybe Twilight would know how to take care of this thing. What do you think Angel?” The bunny just glared at the creature. “Come on Angel, be nice.”
The bunny had no ability project kindness towards the creature that lied on Fluttershy’s couch. Who could blame the rabbit? Unfortunately, the only creature in all of Equestria who could find a true, completely unrestrained objection to the distrust he felt towards the creature was, in fact, the one which he had protected by putting the creature in this state in the first place.
Angel’s caretaker had left, Fluttershy had gone out on her own to seek out Twilight, if anypony could help this unknown creature(or at least help her find anatomical reference to aid in bone setting). Concerned for the well being of the creature, Fluttershy had asked Angel to take care of him in her absence. Even with his suspicion, the rabbit could not ignore the whispering of guilt that Fluttershy’s continual innocence had sown within his head.
The rabbit was roused from his concerned thoughts by the raspy wheezings of the creature. He went into the kitchen to grab a cup, or possibly a bowl of water. The rabbit walked out of the room, facing the creature, finally turning around once it passed out of the room.
The grey stallion walked in the cottage noiselessly. It was one of the many perks of self insertion, nobody who read his story could ever prove that he was not the most stealthy being in all of existence. The fierce blue eyes examined the human which lied on the couch, severely injured. It was doubtful that he would survive, “Dammit Steve, I had higher hopes for you. Why did you have to try and land on Fluttershy? You should have known that nopony can hurt her with impunity.”
The author took out a notepad and a pencil, holding them with magic. The moronic author began to scribble something that was, in itself, too declarative to fit within any given story on the page. “Humans heal very quickly in Equestria because of the ambient magic.” The human began to convalesce. Bones reset themselves, breathing eased. “Excellent. Now I can leave. The story should take its course without my intervention.”
The rabbit decided to give the creature a chance before he would take it upon himself to kill it properly this time. The rabbit walked back into the room where the creature had been resting before. The rabbit stared at the creature, which was sitting up, massaging its head, pouring all of its suspicion, hatred, and anger towards it. The creature turned its head and cringed at the full emotional onslaught of the rabbit’s gaze.
What happened next was unexpected, by either the rabbit or the human who had been injured. The human apologized. “Now look, Angel?” The rabbit nodded at his name, but refused to drop the accusatory stare. “I’m sorry about Fluttershy, I know that you take her life seriously, and I did not mean to hurt her.” The human felt his heart moved by some force that was probably attributable to the ‘Transformative Properties of Ambient Magic in Equestria’. Noting this effect, he adjusted, upping his aggression to properly convey what he wanted.
“You, see, I wanted not to hurt Fluttershy, but to save myself, namely by landing on that worthless pile of yellow fluff and feathers that you seem to hold so dear to your heart, or whatever it is that contains such resolute, hardened hatred that forces you to spring upon the rest of the world like a monster. Protecting the innocent is no excuse for hurting those around you. So screw off, you damned white rodent.”
The rabbit was not impressed by this display of hostility. He readied the Carrot of Great Justice, pulling it out from whatever pocket space which stored it while not in use, the tip gleaming in the light. The human pulled The Cell Phone of Dubious perception out of his pants pockets, finding it working, obtaining perfect reception. The Rabbit lunged at the human. Steve smiled, no rabbit could have as much indirect experience with fencing as he did.
McAuthor smiled as he dug through the critic’s belongings, occasionally glancing at the view of the fight that was going on. The human was already displaying incredible OC powers in this fight, whether it was the quick regeneration, the perception of his own feelings, or the “Indirect Experience with fencing”, he was already beginning to fail his own self-declared imperative, never fall to cliches. The blue stallion smiled as he found a “Harvard University” diploma, the strange thing was that “Harvard” had quotes around the name, indicating that it was probably not the “Harvard” that most people thought of in terms of higher education. McAuthor laughed, this creature was the source of his woes? Hardly fitting considering the petty terms of life that he embraced.
The author turned to the critic’s laptop, looked it over, “Eh... I’ve seen nicer.” His eyes were drawn to the mouse-blast burn on the side, “What the hell?”
“STEPHAN! I KNOW YOU’RE IN THERE! YOU OWE ME YOUR RENT!” The door to the rest of the apartment complex shook both with the force of a “Jewish Landlady’s” shout as well as the associated arthritic fists that cracked painfully each time the fist met with the wood of the door.
McAuthor considered suing his writer’s powers to make the annoying, frightening, and altogether obnoxious caps lock become more polite, or even better yet, cease to exist. Unfortunately, he realized, this was not his story. He was a pony, he could not be bothered to figure out how he would use the fire escape, or to figure out how he managed to infiltrate the apartment to begin with.
Needless to say, the author was paralyzed. The doorknob rotated slowly, McAuthor jumped behind a scrawny ficus, hiding behind such a plant had to make the pony less visible.
The door opened, the landlady stuck her head inside, looked around for a moment, then closed the door. The author let out a sigh of relief before the ficus began to talk to him
Sorry to anyone whose username might be either McAuthor or Literary Critic496. Also to the “Steves” of the world.
