It was a dark and stormy night. On a rocky crag overlooking the choppy sea, a fearsome castle with battlements and spires loomed menacingly in the howling rain. Lightning flashed often, illuminating the world in bursts of white before instantly going back to the grim blackness of the storm.
On the tallest spire of the evil castle, a man in his fifties, but retaining the build and musculature of a man twenty years younger, stood stone-stiff in the howling wind and the whipping rain. He was sopping wet; he did not care. When lightning flashed, he blinked in pain. He still did not care.
It was finished. Finally, after all of his years of work, it was finished.
He broke into an insane smile just as a bolt of lightning broke the sky asunder. Raising his hands, he roared with maniacal laughter, drowned out by the thunder that boomed like a cannon.
Turning on his heel, he ripped the glistening wooden door open and stomped back into the castle, slamming the door with a clunking boom that sounded oddly like the cracks of thunder outside.
The man shook his frizzled white hair and stomped down the torchlit hallway into the main chamber. In this grand room, tables covered with white cloths were spread around at abandon. Hanging from the rafters were electric-conducting instruments of brass and iron. Papers and books towered in stacks, and a main table was covered with spare parts and devices covered by a tablecloth.
The man ran down his white medical coat with his black rubber gloves and looked down a side chamber. “Igor!” he roared. “Come quickly! It is finished!”
A drooling lump of a man stomped into the main chamber, balding and disproportionate. “Yes, master,” he slurred obediently. “What is it, master?”
“The project I have worked on is finally done this wretched night!” the man proclaimed triumphantly.
“Oh, thank goodness,” Igor said in relief. “I was hoping you would allow me to see sometime soon. It seems like I'm always stuck cooking for you now instead of helping you on your inventions.”
“Oh, Igor, I am sorry to leave you with the horrible job of doing the dishes every night,” the man said. “But this project required professional help and attention that just couldn't be marred by...well, you.
“But fear not, Igor. This is the worst one yet! Without a doubt, it will bring more misery into the world than ever before!” He raised his fist over his head. “I call it...MY LITTLE PONY!”
Igor gasped.
“FRIENDSHIP IS MAGIC!”
A crack of the thunder split the air apart on those fateful words.
Igor licked his lips eagerly. “Show me, master.”
The man threw back the tablecloth, revealing DVD copies of all nine seasons. “It's an entire TV show devoted to friendship! From the outside, it looks cute, fun, and colorful. But on the inside, it's full of awkwardness, cheesy writing, and guest stars they could only afford for a couple of episodes!”
Igor picked up a copy of My Little Pony: The Movie. “Cheesy writing?”
“Oh, yes, Igor!” The man swiped the movie out of his stumpy fingers. “The cheesiest of the cheese is stuffed into every episode. It's so cheesy, they even got Weird Al Yankovic, the cheesiest person alive, to play a pony called Cheese Sandwich! It's so cheesy, it made even Twilight Sparkle say she doesn't like cheese. Or quesadillas. She said it in an episode herself.”
“Twilight...Sparkle?” Igor asked.
“The main protagonist,” the man effortlessly answered. “You see, the premise of this innocent show is having a prideful pony from upper society come to a small country town and learn about the benefits of friendship, humbling her as she goes on later adventures. On the one hand, it's the same premise of the first Thor movie. But on the other hand, it's also the same premise of the first Cars movie!” He let loose a peal of laughter, accentuated by the flash of lightning outside the windows.
“It stole from other movies?” Igor gasped.
“Not so much as it stole from itself!” the man replied eagerly. “You see, each of the main characters is based on earlier versions of the show in much worse adaptations. Not only is it copying itself, it also is generic in and of itself!” He held up six cards, each showing a different face of a colored pony. “We have the cute smart one.” He flicked Twilight's picture over his head. “The cute country one.” He flipped Applejack away. “The cute tomboy. The cute shy one. The elegant one that's hot as heck, but also a massive cunt. And Pinkie.”
“Who's Pinkie?” Igor asked.
“Pinkie is a class of her own,” the man answered. He tossed all of the cards over his head, drifting down like snowflakes. “But listen here. Even though these ponies are some of the most well-developed characters in the show, they are the ones the community ignores! Instead, they would prefer to focus on unimportant and socially ambiguous characters like Derpy Hooves, Lyra Heartstrings, or even Colgate!”
“B-but why do they have to all be so cute?” Igor nervously questioned, staring at the upward-facing picture of a winking Rainbow Dash.
“To sell toys,” the man responded sinisterly.
Igor gasped amidst a rumble of thunder.
“That's truly the evil thing about these ponies,” the insane man continued, prancing around the table and throwing off another tablecloth. It was revealed to be boxes of fuzzy ponies with heads twice the size of their bodies, inside cardboard packaging. “They weren't even supposed to be fully developed characters! All they had to do was appear onscreen, and toy sales came trickling in whether they did anything or not! Just like the Barbie franchise!” He let loose another cackle of laughter.
“Okay…” Igor mumbled in fright. “But how good is the show itself?”
“Oh, that's where the fun really begins!” the man gleefully answered. He led Igor over to a table and threw the tablecloth off the form underneath. “You see, the show...is actually good. Who would have thought?”
Igor stared. On the table was the IMDB score of 7.7 out of 10, alongside the many awards it had won.
“With its colorful images and fun slice-of-life style, this show is like drugs for your eyes.” The man held up a card with the quote on it. “And that came from a real review.”
“But…” Igor was initially at a loss for words, but he regained his lumpy composure quickly. “But if it's this good, why is it so bad?”
“That's the thing! It once was bad! If you went back to 2008, you would be deemed insane for liking My Little Pony because the show back then was garbage!” He skipped around to another side of the table. “Especially in the 90s. The 90s were such a lawless wasteland. It was like the 80s ate the 70s and threw it up again. Super Soakers, Pizza Bagels, and Power Rangers dominated a kid's lifestyle back then. Not to mention that habit everyone has nowadays of bringing up McDonald's handheld video games and saying “Only 90s kids remember these.” Oh, what a cruel world. I love it!”
“B-but what's so bad about this?”
“Igor, don't you see? All I did was reboot this long-dead franchise into a money-making machine by disguising an excuse to sell toys as a good TV show!”
“Isn't it the other way around?” Igor asked. “Disguising a good TV show as an excuse to sell toys, I mean?”
“It can go both ways,” the man admitted. “But here's the clincher! This is a legitimately good, creative show...for a reboot! Reboots are the way to go nowadays! What's the point of new ideas when you can just use the same stories that worked before? Harry Potter, Star Wars, Star Trek, DC and Marvel, Jurassic Park, Halloween, Saw, Ghostbusters-” A flash of lightning accompanied the last statement, shaking the castle.
“Ah! Ghostbusters!” Igor made the sign of the cross.
“One of my most vile creations yet,” the man admitted. “But enough about the movie industry! This TV show will also change internet culture as you know it!”
He went over to another table, beckoning Igor to follow him. “Imagine it, Igor. Imagine avatars on Youtube comment sections, displaying pictures of pony meme faces, or the smirk of a hand-drawn original character taken by a camera so poor, you can barely see the outline of his face. Or the countless fanart of each of these main characters in bathing suits, Spandex, socks, or ball gags, in forums dedicated to either furries or the criminally insane. Or both, really. I don't see a difference. Imagine the unnecessary lewd images of these ponies cropping up everywhere to the point where it's just normal to see a reference to My Little Pony anywhere you go. Blogging webs! Video channels! And that awful fanfiction website.”
“Is it going to be even more prolific than anime?” Igor asked in horror.
“Wrong!” the mad scientist cried, jabbing a black-gloved finger. “Nothing...is more prolific...than anime!”
“Well,” Igor said with a hint of hope. “At least it'll only be kids watching this. Right?”
At that moment the man burst into a round of frenzied giggles. The giggles quickly turned into loud, uproarious laughter that reverberated off the vaulted ceiling above him. There was a hint of knowing in his laugh, but the laugh was also insane and unbridled.
Igor hesitantly began to join laughing as well. Before he could get very far in his own evil cackle, though, the man shushed him with a black rubber finger. “Only I do the laughing.”
“Sorry.” Igor almost genuflected as he went back.
The man went to a table covered by another white sheet, but underneath it was the outline of a bulky human form. “The majority of the fanbase is not actually little girls, mothers, or timber wolves,” the man said, holding back his voice with difficulty. He then raised it up to the sky as he ripped back the white sheet. “IT IS INSTEAD THIRTY-FIVE-YEAR-OLD MEN, AND ANGSTY, BLACK-HAIRED, EMO TEENAGERS!”
Lightning flashed outside right as he let loose another peal of fanatical laughter over the unmoving form of an overweight man with a receding hairline and a wrinkled pink shirt. On his chest was a short-brimmed fedora, and over his closed eyes were a pair of small glasses.
“Oh, Igor, this is the best part of it all!” the man continued, wringing his hands with barely-restrained glee. “With the creation of the acne-covered Brony, this ultimate evil is complete at last! Socially awkward, bad at grammar, and constantly pushing his OC into other people's faces as much as possible, this breed of human is right on the border of inhuman! It's like a living, breathing version of Facebook, except at least Facebook respects your tastes. This breed spends 75% of his waking time online and has cheeto dust caking his fingertips. And then there's his facial hair. It starts out faint and wispy...and there it remains. Like someone took scissors to a toothbrush.
“But his most defining feature is a mental illness of some kind. At the least, high-functioning autism or asperger's syndrome. At the worst, heavy-level depression or self-harm tendencies.”
“But why?” Igor pleaded.
The man gave an evil cackle. “Because they all need to be healed in some way by the show's good messages and morals! Nobody else would go and see this voluntarily unless they held some sort of pain inside of them. It's teaching them, entertaining them, and making them feel better about themselves. It's the Bob Ross of children's television!”
Igor smiled. “Then everyone is going to like it after all!”
“Not when people like this-” The man gestured at the hippopotamic land mass on the table. “-are the poster boys of this show's promotion! It's even a belief that if you become a brony, you physically morph into this stereotypical shape of a man involved in this piece of media, thus deterring any attempt to watch it! It's like trying to get someone to join a religion, or the Liberal party, or a pool club.”
After stuttering while finding a response, Igor countered with, “B-but when everyone sees how inclusive this fanbase is, won't they see that there's gotta be something in there that everyone enjoys?”
“Most people will find this fanbase is more exclusive than inclusive!” the man declared. “These either large or skinny men with pasty skin will instead insist the show is made for them, and not the little girls the show really was made for. These men will do many, many things no little girl ever would to prove their point!”
“L-like what?” Igor asked nervously.
The insane man smiled so wide, his lips reached his ears. The torchlight in the room lowered to flickering pinpoints, and his eyes glittered menacingly.
“The first example is walking around with these plushies under their arms in college or on the street,” he growled gleefully. “They then make low-quality videos of them kissing these things or masturbating to them. Then, they write fanfiction of these beloved characters doing the very worst things imaginable. Pinkie Pie cutting Rainbow Dash into little pieces and putting her into a meaty cupcake! Rainbow Dash cutting Scootaloo into little pieces and putting her into a rainbow! And so much lesbian porn! Oh, the lesbian porn! It's going into overdrive! PLUS ULTRA!”
Igor shuddered at the My Hero Academia reference.
“These men even talk crap about the old My Little Pony franchise! It's like the Star Wars fandom’s opinions on their own movies, but oddly reversed! The only positive thing this part of the fanbase has done is Fallout: Equestria.”
“Oh, that actually sounds cool,” Igor commented.
“And then they ruined it by making twelve thousand other stories based on the exact same premise!” the man concluded.
“No!” Igor wailed. “Why?”
“Because this show is evil!” the man raved. “It may look good, and do good, and inspire people to change, but in reality, it's just a hypnotizing piece of media that will draw you in and never let you go again! Once you get involved, you can never escape it! Like cigarettes, or going to Applebee's once!”
Igor shook his head furiously. “No! No! Enough! You're wrong! You'll see, master! If you fully unleash this evil on the world, people will do good with it! People will see that this is such a gift to us all! They couldn't possibly ruin this!”
“No, Igor! You're wrong!” the man insisted. “Get ready for a world full of poorly-drawn alicorn OCs, internet arguments about the best pony, and bootlegged copies of the episode where Derpy first talks and isn't censored by Hasbro! SOON, ALL OF MANKIND WILL SUFFER!”
Igor waved his arms defiantly. “No! No, master! This show has a soul! A life to itself! Nothing anyone can do will extinguish that spark of creativity! Of love! People can enjoy this show no matter what!”
The mad scientist wasn't listening. He instead went over to a bubbling cauldron and grabbed a pair of tongs. Slowly, slowly, he pulled from the cauldron a rectangular object, being careful not to let it touch his skin.
“But will they?” he asked dramatically, showing the dripping object to Igor.
Igor widened his eyes in shock. “No! No! That's not true! That's impossible!”
“Search your feelings!” the mad scientist roared, displaying the Equestria Girls 4-pack DVD case between the tongs. “You know it to be true!”
“Nooooooo!” Igor wailed, collapsing on the ground. “Nooooooo!”
Author's Note
I loved writing this. I was inspired by the mad scientist sketches by Studio C.
