You Ought to Be In Pictures

by McPoodle

Chapters

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Credits & Acknowledgements

Chapter 1

You Ought to Be In Pictures

A My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic / Looney Tunes crossover fanfic

By McPoodle

Prologue

Once upon a time, in the magical land of Canada...

...There was a wonderful animation company called DHX Studios. They put themselves in Vancouver, unlike Hollywood like most of the other animation studios, because they wanted to bring Canadian magic into all of their creations.

“I thought they did it for the tax break.”

“Hey, are you telling this story, or am I?”

“All right. Carry on, MacDuff.”

Now one of the things that made DHX stand out was a healthy respect for the old theatrical cartoons. In fact, DHX’s (ssss....) cartoon collection—called the “research library” whenever accountants got involved—was one of the biggest collections of pre-WWII cartoons in the world, outside of the obvious suspects like Warner Bros., Walt Disney and Jerry Beck.

It was Saturday afternoon at that “Research Library”, which meant that an official meeting of the Black & White Society was in session. The big table had been resized for toons and turned into a poker table. A cloud of gray cartoon smoke hung over the table—because hey, it’s a poker game in a cartoon. The cloud was refreshed from time to time by puffs from Popeye the Sailor’s pipe anytime he lost a hand to Daffy Duck, which was nearly constantly now—poor guy. Musical accompaniment was provided by Horace Horsecollar on an upright piano, which was slightly off-key. He was playing a cover of “Puttin’ on the Ritz”.

“Here, let me click that link. And...there—background music!”

“Wait, what did you just do? And where are we, anyway?”

“We’re in a book! It’s this collection of words that tell a story without pictures, invented in the dim caveman days of humanity!”

“I know what a book is! I’m just not used to being inside one. I didn’t get adapted to other media that often. What happens if I

Fh450df-wh5Gsdftrr234!

“Hey, stop that! Now, where was I...”

Suddenly, there was a knock on the door, causing the music to stop with a suspicious record-scratch sound, and all eyes to look suspiciously at the door.

...Suspicious!

On the other side of that door, the gray and white toon squirrel stood nervously, her little flower-topped hat in her hands. She was—

“Hey, that’s me! Why are you bothering to describe what I look like?”

“Oh, well I’m not just telling this story to you, I’m also telling it to them.”

“What do you mean by...hey, when did you folks show up?”

“Ahem...”

She was tall—for a toon.

“And I was not nervous. Let me state that for the record. I was cool as a cucumber.”

“... Anyway—”

The door opened suddenly, and at first the toon squirrel saw nobody there. But then she looked down and saw a little cartoon toddler with pale white skin, a long gray shirt that went to his knees, and a pair of formless white shoes. His pale blonde hair ended with a large cowlick at the front of his head, and he had his arms crossed. “Well, what do ya want?” he asked in the high-pitched voice of a petulant child.

“You don’t like him either, do you?”

“They’re going to stop reading if you keep interrupting.”

“Fine, fine...”

“I, uh, was wondering if I could hang out with you guys for a day,” the squirrel said with a generic New York accent.

The boy gave her a critical eye for a few seconds. “You’re not a Thirties Toon,” he said judgmentally.

“No, Nineties,” she said. “But I’m a real big fan.” After a few more awkward moments she added, “And I’m practically black and white already” as a joke.

“Aw lighten up guys,” a voice said from the back of the room. An odd little cartoon stepped up behind the boy, a sort of bird with a head like a stubby pencil, a ring around its long stick of a neck, two big feet that stuck sideways out of its little shaggy body with tiny legs, and a tiny umbrella that sprouted out of the back of its head.

“That’s you. Why don’t you just say that it’s you?”

“Because I don’t feel like writing a first-person story today.”

“Gogo!” the squirrel exclaimed in recognition.

“Eh, just Dodo is good,” the bird said. “Slappy’s alright,” it explained to the others. “She’s got Thirties in her backstory.”

“OK, I’m sorry, but I really have to interrupt here. What was up with Gogo? I thought he was, like your son or something.”

“WB said they only wanted ‘next-generation characters’ for the Tiny Toons main cast. I didn’t want to be no stuffy professor, so I chibi’d myself and said I was my own bud. Not my son.”

“Wait...’bud’. Like an amoeba?”

“Does that gross you out?”

“No actually I’m picturing a tiny you popping out of your head, and it looks adorable. Uh...that’s it. You can get back to the story.”

The boy jumped up on top of Dodo’s head to look Slappy in the eye. “Say my name,” he challenged her. “You can’t get in here unless you know who I am.”

“Oh, oh! I do know you,” Slappy insisted, while racking her brain. “It’s not WB, MGM or Fleischer/Famous, so...it’s...ah...Vonzy!”

“Nope! You didn’t get it. Goodbye!” And with that, the boy tried to slam the door shut, only to be stopped by Dodo’s beak getting in the way.

“You’re Scappy’s little brother!” Slappy exclaimed from behind the partially closed door. “And...and...ooh! It’s Oopy.”

With a roll of his eyes, Oopy re-opened the door. “OK, fine,” he said, opening the door fully. “Doats, if you’d do the honors...”

Dodo, suddenly holding a big cigar with a hand attached to an arm it didn’t have before, blew a big puff of gray smoke right at Slappy. When it had passed, Slappy’s hat and other accessories had gone monochrome, along with her formerly blue eyes. She was otherwise the same character as before. The bird then suddenly extended its neck to cause Oopy to be launched back into his chair.

The chair was in fact a booster on top of a booster on top of an ordinary chair, because he was so short. After landing, he stood up and faced the pair. “Keep her under control, Doat! I don’t want any interruptions on this next hand—I’m going to win this one for sure!”

“You keep telling yourself that!” Dodo teased, then looked back at Slappy before leading her towards a little table at the back of the room as the music and card playing resumed. “Come on,” it said, “We’ve got plenty of time to talk. I’m supposed to take Daffy’s place if he ever runs out of chips or stops wanting to play. Which is not going to happen.”

Horace started playing a smooth cover of “Sing, Sing, Sing”. In a darkened corner of the room Slappy saw a nightmarish figure primarily composed of open safety pins—The Pincushion Man, a sour expression on his face and nursing a whiskey sour. Like Slappy, he had had his colors drained before being admitted. Slappy looked away with a shudder. “Um, thanks for not reverting the model with that smoke trick, Dodo,” Slappy said as she sat down. “I never played the Slap-Happy version of me enough times to identify with it.”

Dodo laughed. “Slappy, you need to learn to be a lot more flexible. Horace over there is never on-model, and most of us have had so many writers and re-designs over the years that who and what we are is a matter of multiple choice.”

“Wait a second! Toons can’t switch to an entirely new model by themselves! So where did Gogo come from?”

“...What if I said that I knew a guy?”

“You knew a guy.”

“Yeah.”

“A back-alley Artist.”

“They exist!”

“...Fine.”

“So how’s life treating you these days, Slappy?”

Slappy opened her mouth for a moment, then closed it. “It was going to lay the sob-fest on you, but seeing these guys makes me realize I’m full of hooey. It’s 2011, a decade and a half since my show was cancelled, and I don’t get recognized on the streets most days. The letters worth replying to have completely dried up. And, well...I’ve always felt like the fifth wheel around Yakko and company.”

“Do you really need to include that in a story that they are reading? It’s not going to help on the day if and when Animaniacs gets rebooted.”

“Well why else were you in Vancouver? The readers want to know!”

“...”

“That leaves me with a lot of free time and thanks to DVDs I finally get to watch all of the cartoons I was supposed to be based on.”

“Well it’s good to see you,” said Dodo. “How’s Skippy?”

Slappy sulked. “We don’t talk about Skippy.”

“And you included this part because...?”

“There’s a small chance that they includes Skippy. Toons can read too, you know.”

“Nice rainbow you just summoned over your head.”

Dodo winced. “Right. I forgot. Anyway, it’s not that bad for us gray folk—people watch our stuff on DVD too, so we have our share of fans. They’re...kind of crazy, and not the Thirties kind of crazy.” With a mysterious smile it added, “Besides, some of us find ways to get by.”

“Ooh, I’m really feeling it now!” Daffy exclaimed from the other end of the room as he laid down his cards. “Read ‘em and weep!”

“Well blow me down!”

A chorus of groans could be heard from Popeye, Oopy and Flip the Frog, the other three players at the table.

Slappy frowned as she got a good look at Daffy. She was about to say something, when she was interrupted.

“Can I get you two anything? Perhaps a ginger ale?”

Slappy looked over at the new toon, and then her eyes went wide. “Betty Boop!”

“You know, you’re really writing me out of character.”

“Yeah, I know...you were ‘cool’ the whole time. But admit it—that was what you were actually feeling.”

“...”

Betty smiled demurely. “Hm, yes,” she said. “Pudgy and I are taking care of the food and drinks today. Non-alcoholic if at all possible.” She looked over at the poker table and frowned. “I wish that Popeye wouldn’t bring his pipe to these affairs. Smoking is a nasty habit.” Betty’s attire was transformed from a short, low-cut cigarette dress into a long and demure housewife’s dress. Even her distinctive earrings were gone.

There was an approving “yip” from Pudgy, an overly-cute little white dog with a black spot on his back.

Slappy’s jaw dropped open in shock.

“Two ginger ales would be fine,” said Dodo. It waited until Betty was out of hearing to close Slappy’s mouth for her.

“What happened to her?” Slappy asked in a whisper.

Dodo smiled sadly. “It’s like I said: we toons are multiple-choice. Nobody remembers Betty from the late-30’s, after the Hays Code came down on her.”

“I...um, does she prefer to be this way?”

Dodo pursed its beak, watching as Betty prepared some miniature sandwiches for the poker players out of white bread, slicing off the crusts. Pudgy was keeping a close eye on her, yipping happily every once in a while. “I’m not sure,” the bird toon finally said. “I suspect that Pudgy is somehow making her this way. He wasn’t in the swinger era cartoons. I’ve tried to talk to her about it and...well at the end of the day it’s Betty’s choice. She could easily assert herself if she wanted to.”

“Wait, did you say ‘Pudgy’?” Slappy asked incredulously.

“Yeah,” said Dodo. “Why? Does the name ring any bells?”

“Let me get back to you on that. So Betty Boop, the swinging symbol of an era, has domesticated herself?” Slappy sighed in resignation, and then looked over to Daffy, who was woo-hoo-ing as he collected yet another jackpot of chips from the other players. “So I guess it’s the same way with Daffy over there? He’s way more famous for his post-War color cartoons...”

“Where he’s Chuck Jones’ negative example,” said Dodo sourly. “Always losing so Bugs Bunny can win.”

“So this is Bob Clampett’s version,” Slappy said.

“I’m beginning to suspect that they are a bunch of crazy theatrical cartoon collectors.”

“I can neither confirm nor deny that.”

Dodo nodded. “And Popeye’s the Fleischer version. He told me he liked his dialog more back then, back when every fifth cartoon was about something other than decking Bluto for stealing Olive Oyl. As opposed to Famous, when zero percent of the cartoons were non-pounding, and a third were cringe-fests.”

Betty came back with a couple of ginger ales and some little sandwiches. “I brought you some cucumber sandwiches. You looked a little peckish.”

“It’s how I’m drawn,” Slappy said quietly, as Betty picked up a bigger platter and walked over to the poker table.

Betty coughed politely a couple of times, both because of the smoke and to get the players’ attention. She waved her tiny little hand with the weird pointy fingers (because animators couldn’t draw realistic human hands back then) and cleared away some of the cloud. “Soup’s on!” she said brightly.

Flip frowned. “I don’t see no soup,” he said in his deep baritone.

“It’s an esspression,” Popeye explained, picking up the plate of sandwiches with his enormous hands.

Oopy just walked across the table to pass out the drinks.

Daffy grabbed a tall bottle of Jack Daniels. “And to the victor goes the spoils!” he exclaimed. He ripped off the top like it was a cork and threw the bottle back.

Betty snatched the bottle out of his hand. “That is not for you!” she shouted, easily the loudest thing she had said all day. The amber liquid which had already poured out of the bottle remained suspended in mid-air, as shocked as every other toon at Betty’s outburst.

Daffy stretched up in order to get at the suspended whiskey. Betty glared at it. The floating puddle winced and slunked back into the bottle.

(I will leave it to your imagination to picture how that would actually look, given that the liquid never manifested a face or formed a recognizable figure.)

“Aww...” Daffy pouted in defeat.

From atop Betty’s left shoulder—

“Wait, which side is the shoulder-devil usually on?”

“The right shoulder.”

“OK then...”

From atop Betty’s right shoulder, a smirking Pudgy thumbed its nose at Daffy, just before Betty turned away.

“Why that little...!” Daffy lunged forward to tackle the little dog but was pulled back by his fellow players.

Not noticing the altercation at the poker table, Betty sighed as she made her way to the far table. The Jack Daniels was for the Pincushion Man—he had a lot of sins he needed to forget.

Slappy picked up the little plate with the sandwich and inspected it. “Of course it has a doily,” she remarked. “Does anybody actually eat cucumber sandwiches?”

She looked over to see that Dodo was looking at the door, its eyes unfocused. “Dodo?”

Dodo suddenly looked at her. “I’m sorry, Slappy, but it’s my turn at the game. Try and entertain yourself while I’m gone. Like, you could talk to Horace—everybody keeps pretending he doesn’t exist. Including the Walt Disney Company.”

As Slappy watched, Dodo waddled over to the game table and tapped Daffy’s shoulder. It whispered something into Daffy’s ear.

Daffy stared intently at the door, and perhaps through it. Then he put a big fake smile on his bill. “Sorry fellers, but I’m gettin’ out while the gettin’ is good! Don’t treat them too rough, Doats.”

“Wouldn’t think of it, D,” Dodo said, clambering into the chair that Daffy had just vacated. It picked up the deck of cards and shuffled it chaotically, the fifty-two cards seeming to multiply into the hundreds as it manipulated and tossed the deck from hand to hand. “Alright so! The game’s seven-card stud, threes are wild, and jokers are threes! The odd-numbered hearts are ten higher than their face values and also count as diamonds, but only in full house hands. And furthermore...”

The others groaned at the mess of new rules. “I’m out!” Popeye cried. “Ready to step in, Pinny?”

The Pincushion Man slammed down the bottle he had been drinking from with a really creepy smile, and strode over to the table, sitting down in Popeye’s seat. “All right boys! Let’s really get this game started!” he exclaimed in a semi-metallic voice. Popeye stuck his pipe into Pinny’s mouth, so he could keep up the smoke cloud—you couldn’t have a poker game in a cartoon without a smoke cloud overhead! I don’t make the rules, folks.

“Has anybody seen Pudgy?” Betty asked, leading the others in a search of the room.

Daffy had stepped out of the room during all of this, completely unnoticed.

Chapter 2

Twilight Sparkle’s eyes lit up. “Spike! Spike, it’s all so clear!” she exclaimed to Spike the Dragon, who looked like he was going to throw up. “Can’t you see? Discord’s trying to distract us from what’s important. He knows how powerful our friendships are, and he’s trying to keep us from seeing it. Do you remember what I said the first day we arrived in Ponyville?”

Spike opened his mouth.

Twilight kept going without waiting for him to answer. “I told you that the future of Equestria didn’t rest on me making friends. But the opposite is true! The friendships I’ve made since I’ve been here are what saved Equestria from Nightmare Moon. And now they need to save it from Discord!”

Spike moaned in pain.

“You’re right, Spike,” Twilight said in reply. “I’ve got to fight for my friendships. For them. For me. For Equestria!”

Spike moaned once more.

Twilight finally noticed his pain. “Oh...uh...why don’t you just stay here and rest? I’ll take care of the fighting for friendship thing myself.” She exited the room.

Spike moaned for a third time, and then belched loudly.

“Cut!” the director exclaimed. “That’s a wrap!”

The ponies watching the filming laughed at Spike’s predicament for a second, and then switched to cheering Twilight’s performance. The film crew applauded. And the filming of Season One of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic—which also included the season premiere of Season Two—was now complete. “The Return of Harmony” (Parts 1 & 2) had been filmed out of order. As a new character, Discord needed a Voice, and that human’s restricted schedule forced all his scenes to be filmed first.

“Are you going to explain what a Voice is?”

“I thought you said that this story is being read by animation fanatics. As for the rest of you, an Artist (with a capital ‘A’) creates the look of a toon, and a Voice (with a capital ‘V’) creates the voice and personality, by literally recording the voice for the toon’s first appearance. After that, we only have to possess our Artists and Voices when we’re asked to do something we’ve never done before.”

“...You really shouldn’t have brought up that ‘possession’ business.”

“Um...oops?”

Rainbow Dash walked up to Twilight. “Great scene, Twilight!” she enthused.

“Oh, so you actually noticed a performance by somebody other than you?” Applejack joked, sans accent.

“Hey, this episode was a great chance to play out of character,” Rainbow explained. “This was the sort of drama we don’t get to do nearly enough of. I hope the next season is one big arc. Think about it: a feature episode for each of us! And two or three for you, Twilight.”

“Sure, sure,” Twilight Sparkle said indulgently. “At least we know there’ll be a Second Season, gals.” Looking off stage, Twilight asked, “Have you heard about anything after that?”

Lauren said nothing. This was the end of her participation in the series.

“Hey, did you bother to get permission from any of the humans involved for their use in this story?”

“Well, it’s not like they have to get a toon’s permission to yank them around for anything specified in their contracts.”

“Wow, bitter. I’m going to apologize in advance to you poor readers for any mangling of the personalities of the beloved Friendship Is Magic crew by Dodo here.”

The actual executive producer tugged on his collar. “Ah, well...” He glanced over at Meghan, at this time just one of the writers. “Nothing is in stone yet, but, uh, we’re working on a solo movie for Twilight.”

Rarity had to sit down just to throw up her arms in exasperation. “And there we finally have it! I knew the ensemble approach couldn’t last forever! Welcome to the Twilight Sparkle Show.”

“It’s not like that, honest!” Twilight assured them. “You’re mostly all in the movie, too. It’s just...well, I can’t tell you the details yet.”

“I don’t want to think about it right now,” Applejack said.

“Then stop thinking altogether; the after-show party starts right now!” Rainbow announced. “Come on, gals! Conga line!”

The other members of the main cast spontaneously formed a line and started singing “At the Gala”. They marched off set, leaving the crew to take down the set of Twilight’s bedroom.

“Musical link?”

“Nah. They all know it by heart.”

One member of the main pony cast stayed behind. “Can I walk you to the car?” Pinkie asked Lauren.

“Pinkie, I said no more parties,” Lauren warned. “Last night was the real goodbye.”

“I know!” Pinkie exclaimed. “It’s just a goodbye walk. Nothing else.” She nudged her nose under the cardboard box of Lauren’s belongings and bounced it onto her back. “See, I’m being useful and everything!”

Lauren smiled warmly. “Alright. It’s this way.”

$ $ $

“What was that?”

“Section break.”

Spike watched all of this with a smile on his face. But on realizing that he was now alone, he ran off to catch up with the pony conga line.

“Say, where’s Pinkie Pie?” Rarity asked.

“Off doing her own thing, as usual,” said Rainbow Dash, “which is fine by me. That toon is weird.”

“Rainbow Dash!” Rarity exclaimed. “One shouldn’t gossip behind one’s back. Although...I wonder how many toys she would be selling if the little girls knew what she was really like.”

“Who’s gossiping now?” Applejack teased.

Fluttershy was there, of course. But she wasn’t saying anything, being only a little less shy in person than she was in character. An exhausted and newly arrived Angel Bunny stood on her shoulder, looking out vigilantly for anybody trying to pull one over on his mistress.

Spike saw the line of ponies enter an extra-large trailer thumping with dance music. Just as he went to follow them through the open door, he was stopped by a hoof held out by Twilight. “Say Spike, this is an adult party in here.”

“Is it?” Spike asked, peeking in to see to see a couple of human Chippendales dancers gyrating around.

“Yeah, you’d be...bored,” Twilight said unconvincingly. “And it’s girls’ only.”

“Oh,” said Spike, looking down. He put on a fake smile. “That’s alright. I got the script for my feature episode in Season Two. So, I’ll just look it over, and go home for the day.”

The door slammed in his face.

“I’ll...be fine.” With a roll of his eyes, he turned and walked away.

“And that?”

“That’s an even bigger section break. It means the point-of-view just changed.”

Twilight made her way to a corner of the trailer and slumped down on the ground, her head in her hooves.

A few minutes later, Rainbow Dash sat down beside her with a couple of drinks. “Hey, are you alright? The performance wasn’t that bad, was it?”

Twilight laughed mirthlessly. She picked up her drink with a sticky hoof and sipped it, rolling the glass between her hooves.

“I didn’t have a way to sneak it into the story, but toons do have limitations in what they can and cannot do. Twilight can’t actually levitate anything when the special effects department is not around.”

“You’ve been a main character before, Rainbow. You know that the execs tell you things. Things you’re not allowed to tell the other toons.”

“Because of the contract! Dun-dun-dun!”

Rainbow nodded.

Twilight sighed. “What I happen to know is about Spike. I’ve been avoiding him because I want to tell him. He deserves to know. But...I can’t.”

“Well you don’t have to be specific, Twilight. Just say, ‘Hey buddy, you might want to tell your sitter that you’ll be “working from home” after Episode 3 of Season 2.’”

Twilight shook her head. “They’re not killing him off. I kinda wish that’s what they were going to do, though.”

Rainbow winced. “That bad? Well...I can’t say that I’m surprised. I’m glad that this show is giving us gals our due, but it’s too bad that the powers that be have decided to couple that with the stuff they’re dumping on the male characters. I wonder if that’s why Lauren’s leaving.” She looked over at Twilight, taking in the sudden haunted look on her face. “Don’t tell me: that’s something else you’re not allowed to tell us.”

Twilight looked Rainbow in the eyes. “I’m scared of where this show is going, Rainbow. I mean I heard all of your stories but unlike you, I’m a brand-new toon. I...don’t like change.” She looked over at the door, imagining Spike standing on the other side. “And I don’t like confrontations.”

“Wasn’t this supposed to be a comedy? When you told me the title, I thought it was going to be a comedy. With Porky Pig.”

“...Me, too. And Porky’s enjoying an eternal retirement in Tucson, with his children, and grand-children, and probably a couple more generations after that. He’s saner than any of the characters in this story. Including us.”

“Especially us.”

Chapter 3

Spike made his way to his own miniature trailer, cramped even for his short frame. He sat in a chair at a table, staring off into space. After a few minutes, he finally picked up the feature script he had been promised, “Secret of My Excess”.

“It’s not exactly the ‘Secret of My Excess’ that you remember, readers. First draft.”

He read through it, the look of incredulity on his face growing greater and greater with each flip of a page. Twenty-two pages later...

“What the buck!”

Spike slammed his head into the tabletop. And waited for the world to stop spinning, so he could get off.

A few minutes later, there was a knock on the door of the trailer.

Spike sheepishly opened the door. “Sorry, did you hear that?” he began, before he saw who was at the door. “Holy cow! You’re Daffy Duck!”

Daffy adjusted his dapper polka-dot bow tie. “Yes. That I am.”

“I love your cartoons!” Spike gushed. “I watch ‘Duck Rabbit Duck’ over and over in the research library.”

Daffy’s bill shook for a moment in distaste. “Yes, that one comes up a lot. Spike, I’m here for you.”

“For...me?”

“Yes. I’m a talent agent for toons.” A card was quickly produced and just as quickly returned to hammerspace. “And I believe you need my help.”

Spike looked confused. “I already have an agent—Twilight Sparkle’s agent.”

Daffy rolled his eyes. “Well, that’s your first mistake right there. May I come in?”

$ $ $

Daffy Duck slammed down the script with disgust. “This needs a complete re-write,” he said coldly.

“I know!” Spike exclaimed. “My character transforms into a complete donkey, for no other reason than because he turned thirteen, like the switch to ‘teenage jerk’ was just thrown! The stuff he does to poor Rarity alone...”

“Come on,” Daffy said, putting on a porkpie hat. He led Spike out of the trailer. “Even if you don’t sign with me, I’ve got to help you deal with this disaster.”

And then he raced back in a moment later to grab the script.

$ $ $

Mitch looked down at his script. “I don’t see anything wrong with it,” he said simply.

“You’re going to trash Mitch, aren’t you?”

“No! Why would you think that?”

“I dunno. I just get this intuition that everybody dumps on poor Mitch all the time.”

“Really?” Daffy asked calmly. He was sitting on a booster in the seat across from the human screenwriter, his hat held in his lap. “Not even the part when Spike burns down the Library Tree?”

“I told you that this was the first draft.”

Mitch shrugged. “The town rebuilds it at the end. To show how much they have bonded with Twilight.”

“I don’t think tree buildings work that way.”

Mitch leaned forward. “Hey, don’t go lecturing me about how the setting works.”

Spike stood there quietly at the side of the table, looking eagerly at Daffy as the cartoon duck said what he was thinking.

“So you’re not going to change it?”

“The new powers that be have decided that making fun of the male characters will appeal to the target demographic,” Mitch said stiffly. Seeing the look on Spike’s face, he loosened up and added, “I wrote what I was asked to write. If you can get Rob to change his mind, I’ll give you something more sympathetic to your character.”

“That’s it?” Spike asked quietly.

“It’s the best we can get,” Daffy said with a sad nod as he put on his hat. “Come on.”

They walked out of the writer’s building.

And then he had to go back in and get the script again.

$ $ $

Rob, the story editor, looked down at the script with a sigh of disgust. “My hands are tied,” he told them. “Hasbro has some very strong ideas of what will sell toys, and without Lauren they are becoming much more hands-on. You’re going to have to do something dramatic. Because...they’re writing you out next season.”

“What?!” Spike exclaimed.

“Yeah. You’re going to be the sinister manipulator behind everything in the season finale. You’ll lead a dragon invasion of Canterlot in Part Two, and you’ll be run out of Equestria by the end. Big dramatic episode for Twilight.”

“That’s...that’s horrible!” Spike cried out. He looked over at Daffy. “You tell him, Daffy!”

“It’s horrible,” Daffy said quietly. “And we’re not going to stand for it. Spike wants out of his contract.”

“I do?” Spike thought for a moment. “...Yeah! I want out of my contract!”

“Oh no. Don’t,” Rob said in a dull voice. “Yeah, that would definitely be dramatic.” He pulled a pile of pages out of a drawer with the words “CARTOON CONTRACT” on top in big bold letters. “Spike, are you sure?” he asked. “This won’t be good for your career.”

“I don’t care,” Spike said, pounding a fist down on the contentious script.

“Wait, how did he do that? Isn’t he too short to reach the top of the desk?”

“He bilocated, Slappy. You’re a toon. You do it all the time.”

“If I make that episode, and the finale, I’ll be typecast as a villain for the rest of my career, like every other toon dragon out there, and I’d rather quit that have that happen. I. Want. Out.”

“Okay,” Rob said simply. He tore the contract in half and dropped it into the wastebasket. “You’re out of your cartoon contract. We’ll re-write the necessary scripts without your character.”

“A pleasure doing business with you,” Daffy said, climbing up on the desk to shake Rob’s hand. He then hopped down onto the ground and led Spike out of the room.

A security guard was waiting outside. Together, they went to Spike’s trailer and cleaned it out.

For a moment, Spike considered telling his costars what he had done in person. But then he remembered how often they had ignored him, culminating in how they had just barred him from the wrap party. So, he wrote a heartfelt goodbye letter instead, and taped it to the door of Twilight’s trailer.

“So, what do you want to do now?” Daffy asked. “Are there any parts you wished you could play?”

Spike immediately produced a copy of Variety, advertising the casting call for a new film in New Zealand: The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.

“This is the part where you get your list of movie productions from 2011 that could possibly have a toon character in it and convert it into a check list. Because Dodo is going to reference them all.”

“You know me too well.”

“This!” he exclaimed. “Smaug is the most-famous dragon part of all time. I’ve got to play it. And here I was thinking that my contract would keep me from ever having a chance!”

“Good for you!” Daffy exclaimed. “But isn’t Smaug...a little bigger than you?”

Spike scoffed. “Have you seen the special effects in Lord of the Rings? They’ll be able to scale me up easy!”

Daffy took a close look at the article. “It says here that they want an extensive filmography for any applicants to the lead roles. What else have you been in?”

“Well, there’s this one commercial I did for Kozy Shack pudding...”

“If any of you readers are not American, that was your cue to shudder in disgust.”

Daffy gave Spike a doubtful look.

“OK, I can get parts in other movies, easy! My family has connections. They are all in hibernation for the rest of the Twenty-First Century... But I can still get some parts...easy! And with your influence...?”

Daffy shook his head. “Sorry, pal. I’m a TV agent, not a movie agent. You’re on your own for this.”

“Oh,” said Spike, deflated. “I’ll still do it!” He took out a cell phone and dialed a pre-set number. “Trixie?” he said into the phone after a moment. “Can you pick me up early? We’ve got some travel plans to make...we’re going to Hollywood!” After hanging up he turned back to Daffy. “Thank you so much—I never would have gotten the nerve to quit if it wasn’t for you. And now I’m going to be famous!”

“Good luck,” Daffy said, watching Spike walk outside to await his ride. After a few moments of making sure that Spike wasn’t coming back into the building, he walked back into Rob’s office.

“So, Robby-boy!” he exclaimed. “Now that you have a spot open on the payroll, let’s see about filling it with a celebrity cameo!”

Rob looked to see who Daffy had brought into the room with him.

“Me. I mean me.”

“Oh,” said Rob. “That could work. You’ll have to audition.”

“Are you kidding?” Daffy exclaimed, pulling his head-feathers. “Don’t you know who I am?”

“Oh, it’s not to see if you can act,” Rob said, getting up and leading Daffy out of room. “It’s to see how your chemistry is with Fluttershy. Come in tomorrow at 9 am.”

“I am excellent with shy characters. A perfect introvert’s introvert!” Daffy bragged as Rob went back in. With Rob’s back turned, he rubbed his hands together at how well his little scheme to use Spike to break back into show-business had gone. Away from Warner Bros. Away from a world where he would always have to play second fiddle to Bugs Bunny.

All of Daffy’s time spying on the cast and crew of My Little Pony was about to pay off. Daffy was going to become a feature performer again, like he was in ’38. All he had to do was shove all those pony broads out of the way and remind the world of what kind of star he really was.

“Remember, folks, nobody does over-the-top supervillainy like a toon! TV Tropes even has an entry on it!”

Chapter 4

Los Angeles was a much brighter city than Vancouver. Brighter, and louder.

The Hollywood studios were an exclusive neighborhood; if you weren’t a tourist, you were an actor. Black stretch limousines dominated the streets, serving their one purpose of giving a prospective star the perfect entrance. One of these limos was unique however, in being half the length and height of the others.

The driver of this limousine, Trixie Lulamoon, leaned on the horn as yet another limo cut her off. “Hey, Trixie’s driving here!” she exclaimed. When she pulled up to a traffic stop, she looked back at her lone passenger. “So...Trixie might have gotten lost. What’s our first stop again?”

Spike sat on royal purple cushions, wearing a matching bathrobe open at the chest and a pair of round purple sunglasses. He examined his checklist. “DreamWorks,” he said finally. “It should be just around that corner.”

The light turned green; Trixie instead shook her head. “Isn’t DreamWorks in Glendale?” she asked.

The limo behind her started honking.

“The animation studio is, but the film studio is here in Hollywood along with everybody else,” Spike said.

Another horn honk.

Trixie whipped her head out of the exterior window to glare at the driver behind her. “Hey, hold your ponies!” she exclaimed.

She was rear-ended, pushing her car into the intersection.

“You’re paying for that!” she cried, springing out of the car.

The driver’s side door of the normal-sized limo opened, and an 11-foot-tall cartoon gorilla in a chauffeur’s suit emerged.

“On second thought, Trixie graciously yields the right of way to you,” she said, before popping back in her little car and speeding it around the corner and into the DreamWorks lot.

The bored toon security guard looked down at the limo from his post. “State your business,” he drawled in a generic New York accent.

The passenger window rolled down and Spike leaned out, looking as imperious as possible. “I’m here to accept the role of the latest villain in the Kung Fu Panda sequel, Lord Shen.”

“Kung Fu Panda 2. Check!”

“You’re about four months too late, Mister,” the young guard replied. “The part’s already cast. And it was a peacock, not a dragon.”

“What?!” Spike exclaimed indignantly. “Did they even read their sources? The script clearly states that the Lord Shen character invented the cannon in order to take over the world. Everybody knows that it was a dragon who invented the cannon.”

“Dramatic license,” the toon guard said laconically. “And besides, it was a Chinese dragon. You look...kinda Western to me.”

“Hey, that’s racist!” Trixie butted in. “And it’s not like Jack Black’s Chinese.”

The conversation was interrupted by a familiar angry honk—the same gorilla-driven limo from before wanted to get into the studio.

“You’re going to have to turn that car around,” the guard said. “That’s Jack Black in there, none other than the Voice of Po. He’s here to record some ADR.”

“Let that sink in, boys and girls: In 2011 the cartoon character Po was so big and famous that when it was time to record ADR, Jack Black was the one with more free time on his hands.”

“We’re not finished!” Trixie shrieked.

“Yes, we are,” Spike sighed. “The part’s cast, Trixie. Let’s move on to the next studio.”

It took about ten minutes of automotive ballet for the small limo to get off the lot, and the big one to drive in. And lots and lots of inventive toon cursing by both drivers. Skippy the Squirrel watched the whole thing with a bemused smile on his face.

“The nerve of some toons,” he remarked.

“Wait, that’s where he is? He’s barely out of the industry! He said he never wanted to look at another toon for the rest of his life.”

“Look, both of you are stubborn to a fault. I think you should be the one to reach out to him.”

“I’ll...think about it.”

Daffy showed up for his screen test at 9 am on the dot. Fluttershy and Angel Bunny were waiting for him.

“I’ve got a rather large menagerie already,” Fluttershy explained. “And the only one allowed to show any character is my wonderful Angel here—it’s in his contract.”

Angel smirked and thumbed his nose at Daffy.

Daffy only knew one toon who liked to do that. A toon that coincidentally Daffy had never seen on days when Fluttershy was filming.

Daffy suppressed his reaction to Fluttershy’s words and Angel’s gesture by force of will. Merely a slight purse of his lips to indicate a redoubling of will.

“So, you’ll just be a background character,” Fluttershy continued. “Is that alright with you, Mr. Duck?”

“I’m here to serve my craft, Madame,” Daffy said with a cultured accent. “If the best way to do that is to sit quietly on the background cell, I will do so gladly. Or...background ‘layer’ I believe it is now?”

Fluttershy shook her head. “Computers give me a headache.”

“Oh, you weren’t Drawn for this show, Fluttershy?” Daffy asked.

“No, Rainbow and I were Drawn in 1980, for a forgotten TV special.” She looked around her for a bit at the empty stage, then up at the rafters. “I used to be...a lot bigger. At least I’ve been allowed to keep the same personality in all of my parts.”

“Rather the opposite with me,” Daffy noted sadly. “Same shape, different personalities.”

“You know, if this is supposed to be Clampett’s Daffy, he’s way out of character.”

“You do know that us toons can be serious off camera?”

“So is there anything else you need from me?”

“No,” Fluttershy said. “You’ve got the part. I just needed to make sure that I wasn’t getting the wrong Daffy Duck.” She smiled. “The background artists like sneaking little jokes into their work, and that odd older demographic watching the show seems to like them. You’ll be free to improvise some minor antics in your appearances.” She turned stern. “I trust in your professionalism to keep such antics from upstaging the stars.”

“But of course,” Daffy said with a formal bow.

Fluttershy giggled behind her hoof.

Angel glared, then tapped his mistress’ head a few times with a paw.

“Yes Angel, I know,” Fluttershy said. “Well, I have a brunch appointment to make. You can see yourself out?”

Daffy nodded affably.

The smile dropped as Fluttershy and Angel turned the corner.

“Pudgy...” he hissed maliciously.

“What do you mean you’ve already cast Thanos? This is just a cameo!”

“Sorry, kid. Marvel plans pretty far ahead.”

Spike walked away from the casting call for The Avengers and back into his limo. He looked despairingly down at his list, with all of the entries crossed out: Q in Skyfall, The Lizard in The Amazing Spider-Man, The Lorax, Olaf in Frozen, and now Thanos in The Avengers.

“Check, check, check, checkity-check!”

During this time the car pulled out of Marvel Studios and drove down a few blocks before parking.

Spike looked up as Trixie opened the passenger door and sat down beside him.

“Trixie thinks that maybe you’re going about this all wrong.”

“Yeah?” Spike asked quietly.

“You’re trying to start at the top. How about if you go for a role that isn’t above the title? At least that way you’ll have your foot in the door.”

Spike thought for a moment, then nodded. “That makes sense. What do you have in mind?”

$ $ $

“Here’s a video of some of my work—excuse the poor cinematography.” Spike was in a room with a couple of doubtful stunt coordinators. One of them took the offered DVD-R and put it into a player.

The attached television lit up and began showing scenes of Spike driving a custom car sized to his dimensions. The two humans said nothing for a few minutes as they watched the footage of Spike’s car driving over ramps, climbing up embankments and drifting.

One of the men paused the video in the middle of a loop-de-loop. “Now hold on,” he complained. “That curve’s too tight. This footage must be fake.”

“Gentlemen,” Trixie said from a chair beside Spike. “You forget that this is a half-size, half-weight car. That changes the physics.”

“Hmm...Jack, if we could scale the set to match that car, we’d be able to pull off stunts that otherwise would be completely impossible. Dress him up and film him so he looks like one of the leads.”

Jack nodded in thought.

“So, are you interested?”

“I’ll have a talk with Justin just to be sure, but yeah, I think we can use you.”

“Yes!” Spike said with a fist pump.

“I’ve got one question, though: Aren’t you underage?”

Spike rolled his eyes. “Actually, I’m twenty-seven-and-a-half years old. But I don’t drink, I don’t like loud noises and like most toons Drawn in the Twentieth Century, my tastes are probably what you’d call childish. I like stunting because it’s fun, and I’m indestructible.” He produced his driver’s license for proof of the first point.

“Practically indestructible,” warned Trixie.

“I’ve found that that is always a tricky point with humans. Most Twentieth-Century toons are like human children in some ways, and like human adults in others. We want some responsibilities, and we absolutely don’t want others. That’s why Spike has a babysitter and a driver’s license at the same time. And Trixie shows how some toons move past the limitations of their creation, and will themselves into becoming adults by the human definition of the term. I just wish the legislators would finally get around to writing the correct laws to apply to the majority of toons.”

“...Have you gotten down from your soapbox yet?”

“Har, har.”

“Yeah, yeah, practically indestructible,” Spike said dismissively with a wave of a claw. “I haven’t had a part yet where I could show off the driving. Doesn’t fit into the dragon stereotypes.”

Jack looked at the picture on the driver’s license, which didn’t exactly match up with Spike’s current appearance. And then he did some math. “So wait, you’re Rescue at Midnight Castle Spike.”

“Yeah,” Spike said with a small smile as he retrieved the license.

“I loved that original show.”

“Really?” Jack’s boss Spiro asked incredulously.

“Well not the ponies. And not you, Spike—you were written and voiced to be way too annoying. Neither of which I hold against you.”

“Well, you’re not exactly hiring me for my cheerful personality,” Spike joked. “So I guess it was the villains, then?”

“MLP villains were the best. Is there any chance that Tirac and Scorpan will show up in the new series?”

Spike looked darkly at the ground. “I wouldn’t really know about that,” he said.

Jack looked down at the resume, with its clear end date for his time with DHX Productions Vancouver. “Oh, right,” he said. “Well assuming everything goes through, we’ll have a contract out to you by tonight. In the meantime, welcome to the Fast & Furious family!”

In the wake of the success of the fictional film Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, a chain of licensed restaurants sprang up across America staffed by toons, The Ink and Paint Club.

“Please note the word ‘fictional’ above. Everybody always thinks that film was based on real life events for some mad reason. As if the existence of something like Dip could be suppressed if it was a real thing.”

“Who’s on a soapbox now?”

Twilight Sparkle summoned her costars to a private room at the Vancouver Ink and Paint to tell them about the two letters she found taped to her trailer, the first of which was from Spike. All of the pony toons were shocked at hearing the news of his departure, with the exception of Pinkie Pie. She had already faxed a copy of the letter to his Voice, Cathy.

“Now before you start condemning him, let me say this,” Twilight butted in as their voices were beginning to rise. “I think he made the right decision. We’ve all been making fun of him, leaning into his role as the butt of the jokes, and I think he just got tired of never being taken seriously. He told me that when he was hired, he was promised more respect than he got in his earlier series, but we all know that didn’t happen. So, I for one wish him the best.”

Fluttershy tapped the side of her glass with a fork to make sure what she said next would be heard. “I...um...I agree with Twilight. I’m going to miss him—he introduced me to Monty Python, but he had a serious side, too. We had some very interesting talks about the fictional ecology of dragons, and how toon dragons have decided to adopt some of these habits, and reject others, including how they die. Ooh! Twilight, have you been told how the writers are going to handle Spike’s leaving? I hope they don’t just kill his character off.”

“No, I don’t know yet.”

“That’s fine,” said Rainbow Dash. “It’s good that you told us first. That way we’ll be ready when the animation press wants to write a hit piece on Spike and try to ambush us for quotes.”

The others nodded grimly in agreement.

“So, what was the other letter about?” Fluttershy asked.

“Oh, it’s from Daffy Duck. Yes, the Daffy Duck. He’s the one who convinced Spike to make the big step.”

“He’s joining the cast,” Fluttershy added. “In a minor capacity.”

In another private room at the Vancouver Ink and Paint Club, Daffy Duck was met by Slappy Squirrel, who slid a manila envelope over to him. She then pulled out a little book full of the notes she made and consulted them frequently while making her explanation.

“I knew I heard the story of Betty Boop and Pudgy before, and I finally figured out where,” Slappy explained in a low voice. She got up, walked over to the door, and yanked it open, expecting an eavesdropping toon to fall down on the other side. When she was absolutely sure they weren’t being spied on, she crept back to her seat and continued. “There was this Eighties toon called The Real Ghostbusters, spun off from the movie. What most people don’t know is that a lot of episodes of the series were based on real supernatural beings and events. Furthermore, the head writer of the series quietly put up a website a decade ago and posted nearly fifty scripts that were never made, and for those he didn’t tweak the names to protect the innocent.

“In the 1920’s, several church groups banded together to protest the effect of immoral films on the youth of America, resulting in the creation of the Hays Code in 1929. By 1934 it was clear that none of the studios was actually obeying the Code and that films were ‘worse’ than ever. A man named Joe Breen decided that Betty Boop cartoons in particular were so corrupting that they would destroy an entire generation of impressionable children, so he summoned a demon lord, Astaroth, to force the world to bow to his morality. Astaroth easily overcame Breen, and then took his form and imposed the Code on Hollywood, knowing that the hypocrisy that this would generate would damn far more souls than the honest sin of the pre-Code era.”

“Doats, why did you decide to include the general public in the audience of this story, out of all of the stories I’ve asked you to tell me? This is the only one with a demon in it!”

“And haven’t you ever wondered where toons came from? You don’t think Gertie sprung to life from the page in 1914 all by herself, did you? Her Artist desperately needed a hit show to get out from under Hearst’s thumb. Desperate enough to, well...”

“Doats, that gives me all kinds of thoughts I’d really rather not be thinking right now.”

“As a shapeshifter, Astaroth took a variety of forms in order to enforce the Code, including Pudgy and Jiminy Cricket. His favorite scheme is to approach individuals, usually female toons, afraid of their own immorality or power, and promise to lock those negative traits away. What actually happens, however, is that the buried personality trait grows and grows over the years, leading to a catastrophic explosion.”

Having finished her report, Slappy looked up into the stunned expression of Daffy Duck. “What have I gotten myself into?” he asked. “So, I seriously have to exorcise a demon of Hell to protect my part?”

“Yes,” said Dodo, who was suddenly in the seat next to Daffy.

“Don’t do that!” Daffy exclaimed.

“Oh, come on, you’ve got to let me have some fun!” Dodo replied.

Slappy frowned. “Dodo, am I going to find an episode about you in that archive if I keep on digging?”

“Not anymore you won’t,” Dodo said flippantly.

Slappy threw up her arms in the air. “So, who’s side are you on?” she asked.

“The fun side, of course—silly humans with their insistence that all higher powers have to be either absolute evil or absolute good. Even Astaroth does nice things when he’s bored enough.”

“You know, I haven’t really thought about the implications of that little admission of yours, Doats. Should I be leaving little ink-smudge sacrifices to you in the morning? Were you the one who waved your magic wand over Gertie the Dinosaur, and are you now slumming among your creations just for kicks, pretending to be one in order to ‘pass’? Do you know how much this is going to change our relationship in the—”

“The readers really don’t need to hear about what goes on in...well, you know.”

“Ha! My little prude.”

“Anyway, defeating a demon is easy, especially if a toon does it,” I...err, Dodo continued. “I’ll start teaching you the ceremony tonight. It’ll only take you...a couple of months to master.”

“Oh, is that all?” Daffy asked sarcastically. “And until then I have to pretend that I don’t know the blood-curdling truth. To either one of his current personas.”

Dodo raised a suddenly summoned eyebrow. “You’re telling me the bluff champion of the Black and White Society isn’t capable of a little lying by omission?”

Daffy sighed. “Who knew I’d actually stumble on an altruistic reason for stealing a part? So would that ceremony work on you?” He had been associating with the strange “toon” for decades and had long since figured out that Dodo was more than it appeared to be.

“Say it together with me, boys and girls,” Dodo said cheekily. “Not anymore it won’t.”

After his fantastic work for the Fast & Furious franchise—he wasn’t sure if his scenes would end up in Fast Five coming out later that year or the inevitable sixth film whenever that was made—Spike now had a solid demo reel to get further parts. He got a bit part in Pixar’s Monsters University as an out-of-control racecar fanatic, but his part ended up on the cutting room floor and the troubled film would not even be released for another two years. And Pixar got him to Disney.

“I’m being completely honest when I say: I’m a huge fan of your work,” Spike told the director he was auditioning for. “Although the monster movies gave me nightmares. But I really loved Spider-Man.”

Sam grinned indulgently. “What part are you applying for, Spike?”

“Whatever you’ve got, to be honest. Oz has all kinds of crazy creatures in it, so whatever part you need, I can play it.”

“Hmm...” Sam pondered. He looked over for a moment at Trixie and frowned. “Don’t I know you?”

“I believe you were offering a part to my charge, not to Trixie.”

“Would you mind being turned into a winged monkey?” Sam asked Spike, but his eyes were still on the powder blue pony.

“Did you say ‘wings’?” Spike asked eagerly. “Yes, absolutely yes.” He turned and enthusiastically hugged Trixie, who squealed in happiness.

“I do remember you!” Sam said triumphantly, pointing at Trixie. “Mary Lynn and the Distrustful Witch, 1981. My cousin was a huge fan of the series, and of your character in particular. I gave her a hand-made plush of Trixie the Witch on her eighth birthday.”

The pony blushed. “Trixie is honored that you remembered Trixie’s little foray into show business. Trixie retired immediately afterwards, to go into child care.”

“You must have gotten a part since then,” Sam said, gesturing at her. “You were a short little blue witch originally.”

“Yes, well Spike here talked Trixie into stepping into a role in Friendship Is Magic when Broom—, err, the original actress, asked for too much money when she found out she was going to be redrawn as a pony. Trixie was glad of the opportunity to re-unite with her former costars. My original Voice Kathy was still around to renew it with Trixie’s same distinctive way of speaking, and the character design is quite similar.” She looked down at herself. “Trixie’s really come to like it.”

Sam furrowed his brow. “‘Friendship Is Magic’... That’s that brony show, right? I didn’t know it had any connection to Mary Lynn.”

“Rainbow Dash is Mary Lynn,” Spike explained. “Has the same hair and nearly the same voice. And Fluttershy’s from the first special.”

“Mary Lynn and the Reluctant Beast?”

“Yes.”

“You’re probably thinking that Mary Lynn is a made up series, like Rainbow Brite. To which I will refer you to Fluttershy’s statement in Chapter 3: it was a very obscure series.”

Sam picked up his laptop, brought up a web browser, and started looking for an image of “Fluttershy”. “Didn’t she marry that one rock star?” he asked. “The one that turned out was—”

“She got a divorce,” Trixie said with disgust. “On the grounds of unendurable cruelty. He had figured out that toons can take a lot more abuse than human women.”

“Dodo. Dodo. You didn’t need to go there. Look, the story’s rating just went from ‘General’ to ‘Teen’ with that one sentence!”

“The reader deserves to know more about Fluttershy’s off-camera persona.”

“Oh,” Sam said quietly. “It’s a wonder she stayed in the business.”

“She found a way to cope, somehow. And that ‘somehow’ involved non-stop acting. She’s had dozens of parts over the decades, dozens of forms. None of them like how she was then.”

Spike leaned over to look at the web browser’s results. “Ignore all of those,” Spike said flatly, reaching forward to slide his claw on the touch pad and bring up an official image of the character.

“Well...she’s the same color. And the name’s a dead giveaway. But otherwise, I don’t really see a connection. I suppose that was the point.”

“Watch an episode or two,” Trixie said. “You’ll see it then.”

“I’ll look for your episode,” Sam said. “What’s your character’s name?”

“Trixie. The Great and Powerful.”

Sam and Trixie laughed.

“You know, I’d give you the lead role right here and now if I could get away with it,” Sam said, “But you don’t cross both the Walt Disney Company and the L. Frank Baum estate lightly.”

Several months passed, and filming finally began on the first of the remaining episodes of Season Two: “Lesson Zero”. The episode dealt with the fallout of Discord’s mind-control tricks on the ponies, although as a kid’s show it couldn’t actually come out and say that. So instead, Twilight Sparkle had a mental breakdown for no other reason than because Spike wasn’t there to talk her down from her monthly freak-outs. The reason given for Spike’s absence was because Twilight’s boss the Princess had tracked down Spike’s long-lost parents. Daffy had gotten to have a little background gag: He was flying across the sky in each of the cutaway segments, and with the third one he started crashing into things, more and more obviously and painfully, as symbolism of Twilight’s decaying sanity.

At one point Twilight stopped the filming, having some trouble with how to play her character’s increasingly unhinged behavior. The director allowed her to go over to Rob’s office. There she used the videophone to dial up Tara, her Voice. Tara had had lots of experience voicing insane characters—

“Personally, I don’t think Tara knows how to Voice a completely sane character.”

“Are there any completely sane characters?”

—So she was able to give Twilight lots of tips on how to develop her own brand of crazy. Twilight returned to her part with increased self-confidence, and a very convincing display of mounting mania.

A primary theme of the episode was the harm caused by not taking your friends’ crazy beliefs seriously. In between takes, the girls agreed that this was the writer Meghan’s response to their own guilt in not recognizing Spike’s pain earlier.

“So, what, do the writers spy on the toons? I’m asking because the Animaniacs writers knew everything.”

“They kind of just...know these things. It’s similar to the poss—”

“We don’t talk about the ‘P’ word.”

During the lunch break, Fluttershy retreated to her trailer with Angel, as she usually did. She was interrupted by a firm knocking on the door. She opened it to look out at her two visitors. “Yes?” she asked uncertainly. Angel, from his usual position on her right shoulder, looked at first cruelly at Daffy, and then worried at Betty. Especially since she was wearing her dress from the old days.

“Fluttershy, this is an intervention,” Daffy said rather firmly. “That creature is not who he says he is.”

“He’s a demon,” said Fluttershy, walking down to the dusty ground.

“He’s a—oh, you know.”

“He...” Fluttershy sneezed—in an adorable manner—as some dust got up her nose. “He was completely honest with me. I had a temper problem, and Astaroth helped me to deal with it. He said that demons aren’t all bad, and they like to do ‘meaningless acts of kindness’ from time to time to assuage their guilt.”

“Well, that’s how it starts,” Betty said. “But it soon became a lie.”

“It was never a lie,” Angel said in a cultured voice, hopping down to stand on his hind paws between the pair. “You were consumed by guilt as all the humans you partied with dropped dead from overdoses and excess, while you remained just as beautiful as when you were drawn. You told me you felt like a living Picture of Dorian Gray. You were glad to be changed.”

“Yes...in 1934,” Betty admitted with reluctance. “But you’ve kept me trapped as the perfect little housewife—without a spouse—for sixty-seven years! I’ve tried to become myself again, or at least find a middle ground of some kind, but you’ve talked me down. Over and over again. And it wasn’t just words. You controlled my mind, Astaroth. Used me to talk other frightened women into surrendering to you. Including you, Fluttershy.”

“I believe your time on this world is over,” Daffy told the little demon. “And I’m prepared to fight for these two women. With these two women, if they’ll accept that help.”

“I’m finished with you,” Betty declared to the bunny.

Fluttershy thought. “How about a trial separation?” she offered. “Just to see what I’m like without you.”

Astaroth made a cold chuckle. “I don’t negotiate with toons.”

Fluttershy blinked. “Then what was our agreement?”

“Me taking over your mind by means of a disguised verbal spell,” Angel said baldly. “The same applies to you, Toots.” He snapped his paw, and Betty’s dress reverted to the safe version.

Daffy reached over to the switch of a large fan that was standing next to him and turned it on. This blew away the layer of dust to reveal the pentagram underneath, a pentagram that completely enclosed Astaroth.

Fluttershy, seeing this, stepped back so she was no longer inside the pentagram.

“I’ve got a hex, and I know how to use it,” Daffy bragged. He made a gesture to activate the runes.

There was a flash, and the demon was revealed in his true form, resembling a human man with feathered wings and wearing a crown. He looked down at himself with some surprise. “Well,” he said with only a hint of surprise. “What do you know? Alright. You’ve got me. To be honest, the fun ended in the Sixties. Girls? I formally release you from my control. Have fun with that.” He looked Daffy right in the eyes. “I’ll be back,” he vowed.

Daffy made a complex gesture with his arms. Red smoke started to rise inside the pentagram but did not cross the boundary formed by its outline. “Now git!” he commanded.

The smoke cleared, and the demon was nowhere to be seen.

“I suppose I should thank you,” Fluttershy said to Daffy. “However can I repay you?”

“Well, since he isn’t around to enforce that ‘main supporting character clause’ anymore...”

$ $ $

The first scene after lunch involved Fluttershy wrestling a bear, cheered on by Daffy. The cast and crew watching noticed that she really got into the part, to a degree that frightened poor Harry.

Chapter 5

The time had finally come for Spike and Trixie to travel to New Zealand for the Smaug audition. He had done quite well as Finley, the winged monkey character from Oz the Great and Powerful, and Sam had helped him improve his audition reel by leaps and bounds.

Trixie came along as Spike’s caretaker, of course, but also because she was a massive Sherlock groupie, and Smaug’s Voice was going to be none other than Benedict Cumberbatch.

Unfortunately, they had both overslept. Combine that with the horrible L.A. traffic, and they arrived at the airport twenty minutes too late for the only daily flight out to Auckland.

Spike started panicking. “The auditions are today! Why didn’t we leave a day earlier? Or a week?”

“Stop Twilighting and listen to Trixie. Trixie knows a human in Brisbane. Getting from there to New Zealand will be a snap. We just need a videophone.”

A few minutes later, they had both squeezed into the tight videophone booth while Trixie dialed the number.

A human woman with short red hair answered. “Hello?”

“Tegan!” Trixie exclaimed. “This is Trixie. You remember Trixie, don’t you?”

The woman scowled. “You’re calling in your favor, aren’t you?”

“Hey, this one will be easy. Trixie will even pay for it. We just need to...”

Trixie pushed her hoof into the screen. She grabbed Spike’s hand and before he knew it, both of them had been transmitted across the Pacific Ocean and found themselves on the floor of a modest apartment kitchen.

Tegan hung up the phone, which now only showed the inside of the empty booth.

Trixie calmly got up and dusted herself off. “There. That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

Tegan sighed. In a sarcastic voice she said, “Gee! Sometimes I wish I was a toon, so I didn’t have to use planes to get from place to place.”

“You’re a stewardess. It’s not like it’s hard for you either. Now could you be a dear and drive Trixie and her charge to the airport? We need to get to Auckland before noon.”

“...There is no way that the human’s name was Tegan.”

“Well...no, I was protecting her privacy. It’s an inside joke.”

“An extremely obvious inside joke. And yet you didn’t disguise Lauren’s name at all.”

“Are you still on that? Artistic integrity!”

As they were walking out of the apartment, Spike pulled Trixie aside. “Hey, can any toon do that?”

“Sure,” said Trixie. “The trick is to keep yourself from accidentally beaming yourself any time you touch a screen, once you know you can do it.”

$ $ $

“You’re the only toon dragon to apply for the part,” the director Peter told the pair at 12:15. “So that’s a big plus. What do you think?”

Benedict was still leaning over the computer workstation, using a mouse to scrub Spike’s audition reel back and forth. “I don’t know,” he said at last. “You don’t exactly look the part.”

(Trixie silently squealed to herself on hearing the master’s voice.)

“True, but you can make me look the part,” Spike replied, giving a pleading look at Peter.

Peter got up. “Well, I’ve been dying to see the character model that Weta put together for me. Let’s go out onto the big stage and try it out.”

Back in Vancouver, shooting was interrupted with the news that the Hasbro executives were visiting the set. Everyone gathered in front of the library tree exterior.

“Ah, there are our stars!” proclaimed the Hasbro exec. “Come on, let’s take a picture of the stars of our hit toy line!” An assistant whispered in her ear. “Hit television show,” she then corrected herself. The team of photographers she had brought with her then stepped forward.

“Well, that’s funny, she said flatly. The villain of the piece shows up, and she has no name! Where’s your ‘artistic integrity’ now?”

“...I’m trying to keep everybody else in character. I don’t like Ms. Name-Redacted, so I’m mangling her character to Heck and back, and that means I don’t feel comfortable using her real name.”

“Is Heck a different place than Hell in the vast cosmology of worlds?”

“Yes. Don’t you read Dilbert?”

Afterwards she led the cast into the library tree interior set, where a table with several contracts and pens had been set up. “I’ve got your new contracts all drawn up and ready, extending your time out to sixty-five episodes, and a movie! Isn’t that great?”

Rainbow Dash picked up her contract and started hoofing through it. It was a lot thicker than the previous contract and had a big “CONFIDENTIAL” watermark across every page. “Wow, you’re giving everything away in here.” And then she stopped, and looked nervously over at Fluttershy, who was going through the pages at a slower rate. “Ah, you might want to re-think the Second Season finale,” she told ~~XXXXX~~ the executive.

“That finale is going to be wonderful, even better than the premiere!” the executive exclaimed. She looked over at Daffy standing just outside the door and beckoned him forward. “Daffy Duck here took care of the re-write, and I think he did a fantastic job!”

Daffy walked over, his chest puffed out from the flattery. “I just punched it up a bit.”

“A bit? You fixed all of our plot holes!” the exec exclaimed.

Twilight, who was in the middle of reading the revised script, wondered if there was some fundamental difference in how the two of them defined the term “plot hole”.

“Ha! Shots fired!”

“Dodo, the controversial opinion is not that “A Royal Wedding” is flawless; it’s insisting that the script has no plot holes whatsoever.”

“Well, you’re no fun.”

“I don’t even mind how, in warning Twilight of the danger of the false Cadance, you basically made yourself into Spike’s replacement,” the bigwig continued to gush. “I mean, you’re Daffy Duck, for crying out loud! If that doesn’t pull in more of those ‘bronies’, then I don’t know what will!”

“Do bronies actually buy the toys?” one of the executive’s assistants asked another.

“We’re working on that,” the other replied.

“This is wrong,” Fluttershy said in a dangerously quiet voice. “Lauren promised me that this would be a show about friendship. How it can solve all of our problems.” She put down the contract and started advancing on the executives. “She said she was tired of all of the shows telling girls that they would only be happy if they fell in love. She wanted this show to be the alternative to that, a show to tell girls that they didn’t have to live that way.”

The executive looked incredulously at Fluttershy, the one she always identified as the pushover. Was she a little bit bigger now? And off-model? “Well, I’m not going to change anything,” she said defiantly. “Love sells way better than friendship. In fact, that’s going to be the name for the show starting with the third season—”

“You really don’t want to be doing this!” Rainbow Dash warned. “Why don’t we take a few days to think this over? Fluttershy, don’t you want to give the folks at Hasbro a few days to reconsider?”

“I’d like to hear an answer now!” Fluttershy barked, her voice noticeably deeper. “What’s the new show going to be called?”

The proud executive stuck up her nose in the air with pride. “We’re going to call it My Little Pony: Love Is the Answer!”

That was the wrong answer.

The transformed Spike was marching through the holographically-projected town of Laketown with abandon, stomping one cottage after another like he was Godzilla. “I’ve always dreamed of being this big!” he bellowed.

“You’re not convincing me,” Benedict said sourly.

“Right, right,” Spike said, calming down. “Can you give me the Lonely Mountain set? That’s where all the good lines are.”

At that moment, an assistant raced into the sound stage. “Excuse me, Mr. The Dragon?” he asked, looking around him.

“Up here,” said Spike.

The assistant looked up, and up, at Spike putting on a terrifying visage. He dropped to his rear in abject terror.

“OK, that’s better,” noted Benedict.

“I’ve got a video call from America for you, from a Miss Twilight Sparkle?”

“I...um...how hard is it to turn this Smaug skin off?” asked Spike.

“Hard,” said Peter, sitting at the computer. “Ah, here’s the call. I’m routing it to the east wall.”

One whole wall of the simulated town disappeared, to be replaced by the gigantic face of Twilight Sparkle. “Spike, Daffy told me where you were, and...wow! You make a great Smaug! Anyway, how good are you at talking Fluttershy down from one of her attacks?”

“Second only to Angel, I’d say.”

“Good. We need you here, now. As Smaug.”

“As Smaug?”

There was the sound of a distant explosion, and the light behind Twilight’s head briefly flared. “In case the talking doesn’t work. Fluttershy’s kind of...big now.”

Spike looked down helplessly at Trixie. Trixie shrugged.

“Well, it’s a good thing this screen is so big.” He started advancing towards it and then stopped. “Hey, you look like you’re inside.”

“So?”

Spike gestured at his size.

“Oh. Well this cord isn’t very long. Rob, do you think—?”

There was another explosion.

Rob appeared in frame, bodily picking up a surprised Twilight. “Just count to three and do it! And prepare for a big entrance.” He then ran straight for the door.

“It was YOU!” the Beast roared at Daffy as it reached its full size of forty feet, completely demolishing the Library Tree set. “You didn’t take away my Angel for me, and you didn’t talk Spike into leaving for him. You did it all for yourself, and your enormous ego!”

“Are you going to describe ‘the beast’?”

“No. Reader, if you have the special on VHS then you know. And if not...what you are imagining right now is much better than how the character was originally drawn.”

“Well, you’re not so little yourself, Sister!” Daffy sneered.

A giant fist then flattened him, but he sprang right back to three dimensions. “Can’t catch me! Woo-hoo! Woo-hoo!”

A few minutes later poor Rob’s office was similarly obliterated, and now Spike was surveying the scene. “Hey, why didn’t you call Lauren?” he asked.

“I did that first,” Twilight explained. “She’s over there in the chair, eating some of Pinkie Pie’s popcorn. She’s on Fluttershy’s side.”

“Oh.”

“And then Daffy ran by and told me to call you.”

“You’re running out of sets,” Spike remarked as the Beast, aka Fluttershy, destroyed another one in her rampage.

“That’s kind of why I called you,” Twilight dead-panned.

“Look, you’ve got to do something, and fast,” Rainbow Dash pleaded, flying up in front of Spike’s face. “Sooner or later she’ll remember who she’s really mad at, and although I think that guy honestly deserves a pounding, I hate to think what the collateral damage is going to look like.”

“All right,” said Spike. He strode out to stand before the Beast. “Hey, Fluttershy,” he said casually.

The Beast stopped its rampage, and blinked. Being a toon, she immediately knew who she was looking at. “Spike? You...got the part? You’re Smaug?”

“Well it’s not guaranteed, but I think I made a good impression on my Voice.”

“Well that’s wonderful!” the giant Fluttershy exclaimed.

“So, what are you doing?” Spike asked innocently.

“Destroying the patriarchy.”

Spike gave her a look.

Fluttershy reconsidered. “Well alright. I’m just trying to smash Daffy over there. Say hi, Daffy.”

Daffy poked his head out from behind the piece of rubble he had been using as cover. He didn’t say anything.

“I said: SAY HI, DAFFY!” Fluttershy bellowed.

“hi,” Daffy squeaked with a little wave, after nearly being blown over by Fluttershy’s scream. He was then flattened again by Fluttershy’s fist.

“Daffy here has demonstrated the first lesson of Not Being Seen,” Spike said in a faux-British accent. “Not to stand up.”

Fluttershy tittered, which sounded very odd with the deep tone of her voice. “Oh Spike! I just found out that Daffy here tricked you into leaving so he could take your place as Twilight’s sidekick.”

“I wasn’t going to let him have the part!” Twilight’s voice shouted from a few feet away.

Spike frowned. “Is that true?” he asked the swaying Daffy.

“Absolutely!” Daffy said brightly, a dopey grin on his face. “All part of my evil plan!”

“I’m going to have to smash you now,” Spike said seriously.

“Smash away!” Daffy cried out giddily. As he saw the Fist of Doom approaching, he asked himself, “Why does this seem familiar?” His expression darkened. “Oh. I remember now: Duck Season.”

*SMASH!*

Mitch took that moment to step out of the port-a-potty. He looked up at the two giants, and promptly returned to his tiny refuge...until he remembered what happened to the lawyer in Jurassic Park. Then he stepped back out, waved awkwardly, and made his way back to his trailer.

“...”

“What?”

“We’re agreed that we can’t sign these contracts,” Twilight said to the Hasbro executive in the parking lot a couple of hours later. “Daffy’s fired, and if he’s willing, Spike’s re-hired.” Everyone was sitting in director’s chairs, facing each other in a circle.

By this time both Fluttershy and Spike were back in their Friendship Is Magic forms, the later due to the simple expedient of Peter turning off the workstation with the Smaug program on it.

“Well, I’ve got a little cameo in the first Hobbit movie to film, but I’m sure I can fit into your schedule otherwise.” Turning to Rob he asked, “What about my contract?”

“I tore up a blank,” Rob admitted. “Here’s your contract right here. I knew you’d come back, once your leaving had done its job of shaking up the company. I, uh, didn’t think that the ‘shaking’ would be literal.”

“‘Shaking up’ is an understatement,” said the executive, who seemed surprisingly calm. “We’ll be taking the damages out of your paycheck, young lady.”

“We’ll all cover the expenses,” Rainbow Dash said.

“That includes us,” said Rob.

“And me,” Lauren said from her chair. “I’ve got a bit stashed away for a rainy day.”

“Oh no, Lauren,” Fluttershy said. “You’ve got better things to spend your money on than the results of my mental problems.”

“Don’t ever say that,” Lauren said firmly. “And besides, I’ve already put a lot of money into Hasbro. I’m a stockholder now, and quite a substantial one. I’ve figured out that money is the only real way to influence how the company runs this production. I may no longer be in charge, but I still care about all of you.”

A massive group hug ensued.

“Now what about the episodes?” Lauren asked the executive.

“Spike, you’ll have plenty of time to film your scene in New Zealand while we rebuild the sets and re-write the scripts. Mitch here has a great idea for how to re-write ‘Secret of My Excess’, keeping Spike sympathetic. As for the finale...I’m open to ideas. Given the following constraints: it needs to be an event episode, there has to be a royal wedding, and Tori Spelling’s doing the promotions.”

Fluttershy looked at Twilight, and an unspoken communication went between them. “Give the episode to Lauren,” she said, in a tone that left no room for argument.

Everyone looked at the ex-producer. “Aw, really?” she asked. “I sort of left so I wouldn’t have to do a wedding episode. But if that’s the only way we’re going to get through this...then fine. I’m not helping you on the movie, though.”

“Why?” asked Fluttershy, picking up one of the rejected contracts. “What happens in the movie?”

“No!” Rainbow said firmly, taking the contract away. “We’re not going through that again.” And she pointed at the flattened sets.

Meghan shrunk down in her chair. “I also had a list of bullet items I had to satisfy,” she muttered.

And that’s how my little plan to get Spike to save Season Two worked out. And Daffy helped, completely unintentionally.

“Your plan? What was your motive?”

“I’m one of the main characters, silly! Ooh, and I’m late to my day job!”

“Wait, where did that zipper pull come from. What are you...PINKIE PIE?!”

“Surprise! Oh, and I’m her, too.”

“...I need a vacation.”

Credits & Acknowledgements

A lot of people can say that Friendship Is Magic got them through a rough patch in their lives. Being a few decades older than those people, I instead say that Looney Tunes and Merry Melodies got me through my rough patch. (I’m referring to the TV airings in the 1980’s, not the theatrical airings in the 1930’s—how old do you think I am?) The two series were created by Leon Schlesinger in 1930 to compete against Disney’s Mickey Mouse and Silly Symphonies series: Looney Tunes cartoons were character-driven and remained in black & white until 1943; Merry Melodies used one-off casts of characters to act out songs from Warner Bros.’ vast catalog and was in color starting in 1934. By the time both series were in color, they had become interchangeable.

Daffy Duck was created for the cartoon “Porky’s Duck Hunt” in 1937—Porky was the outstanding star of Looney Tunes during the brief period from ’35 to ’37, but he was soon eclipsed, first by Daffy and then by Bugs Bunny starting in 1938. (Link is to just the ending of the cartoon, as Daffy wasn’t really in his first cartoon very much.) “Duck Hunt”’s director was Tex Avery, and his Animator was Bob Clampett, who soon rose to become a director himself. His Voice—the Voice of most Warner Bros. cartoon characters—was Mel Blanc. (A great Daffy Duck cartoon of Clampett’s is “The Daffy Doc” from 1938.)

At first Daffy and Bugs were equally-annoying characters, but under Clampett, Bugs was the wily one, while Daffy was straight-out insane, often bouncing around the screen with his distinctive “woo-hoo”s. By around 1950 he had evolved into the form that you probably know him as, the “Chuck Jones” Daffy: always second to Bugs Bunny, perpetually jealous and insecure. Jones once said that “Bugs is who we want to be. Daffy is who we are.” I find this version of Daffy very funny, but then I feel uncomfortable afterwards in how much like him I am. I think the definitive Jones Daffy quote came from the minor cartoon “The Abominable Snowman” to justify why he is yet again trying to murder Bugs: “It’s a simple matter of logic. I’m not like other people. I can’t stand pain. It hurts me.” So I welcomed the chance to write for the happier version of the character.

Animation in the Silent Era frequently involved cartoon characters interacting with live-action surroundings and even fighting with their creators. This became much less common in the Sound Era. “You Ought to Be In Pictures”, made in 1940, is one of those rare Sound Era live-action-and-animation films, and was directed by Fitz Freleng. It directly capitalized on Porky Pig’s fall from popularity: the story is set in the Leon Schlesinger and Warner Bros. studios, and is about Daffy convincing Porky Pig to walk out of his “cartoon contract” so he can be a movie star opposite Bette Davis (“for three grand a week!”). And as soon as he leaves to fruitlessly try to get a part at Warner Bros., Daffy steals Porky’s spot as the star toon with Schlesinger.

The character of Dodo comes from the Bob Clampett cartoon “Porky in Wackyland”, from 1938. Porky’s a world explorer who seeks the “last of the do-do’s” for a huge cash reward. He finds the creature in an insane world where anything can happen. He was Animated by a team, but I saw the most footage from Izzy Ellis and Bobo Cannon. He was Voiced by Mel Blanc, of course.

Tiny Toon Adventures was an American animated series for television, originally airing from 1990 to 1992, created by Tom Ruegger and produced by Amblin Entertainment and Warner Bros. Animation. It’s about a group of second-generation toon characters who attend Acme Looniversity in order to learn how to take over as the next stars of the Looney Tunes. The classic characters from the theatrical cartoons had cameos as professors at the university. Gogo Dodo was a decidedly minor character styled after the character from “Porky in Wackyland”.

Animaniacs was a follow-up series by Amblin and WB, running from 1993–1998. It was arranged as a variety show, with separate casts for each segment that rarely interacted with each other. Wakko, Yakko and Dot Warner were the stars. Slappy Squirrel and her grand-nephew Skippy were in their own segment: Slappy was a grouchy retired toon from the 40’s, and Skippy was too innocent for this world. Most of the episodes involved Slappy easily outsmarting and cartoon-maiming her many geriatric enemies, all coming from the ”old days” when she was “Slappy the Slap-Happy Squirrel”. The character was largely inspired by Screwy Squirrel and other short-lived Tex Avery characters. I couldn’t tell you who Slappy’s original Artist was, but her creator, Voice and writer were all the same person: Sherri Stoner.

The story is set during the period when Lauren Faust (yes, I actually know her last name) was transitioning out of her position as chief executive for Friendship Is Magic, and coincidentally the studio changed from being Studio B to DHX Studios Vancouver. It is my personal opinion that while the show that continued carried over a great deal of Faust’s best ideas, that something fundamental was abandoned during the transition, pushing a mostly-slice-of-life show down the inevitable path of being an epic adventure show with occasional slices of life to set up the next adventure. I was and am fully on board with this change, but I am at least a little curious about what would have happened if Lauren Faust had never left, other than the fact that the show would almost certainly have been cancelled by Hasbro before it reached 65 episodes.

Oopy was from the completely-forgotten (and mostly-rightfully so) Scrappy cartoons (1931–1941), created by Dick Huemer for Charles Mintz’ Screen Gems Studio and distributed by Columbia Pictures. Scrappy was a dull little boy who let his imagination get away from him. His frequent antagonist was a bratty little baby originally called Vonzy, but later Oopy.

Popeye the Sailor and Betty Boop belonged to the Fleisher Studio, which became Famous Studios, and they eventually became Warner Bros. property. She was Animated by Grim Natwick. Her original Voice was Maggie Hines, but many individuals voiced her afterwards, most commonly Mae Questel in her hayday. Betty is far better known nowadays for her merchandise than for her original cartoons—which were all in black & white (with one exception)—and nobody remembers that she was “domesticated” by the Code in 60 of her 126 appearances. I can’t stand those post-Code cartoons. Nobody can. As a way to link this story with “Discord’s Equestria Control Room”, Koko the Clown co-starred with Betty in several of her most-surreal pre-Code cartoons, including “Minnie the Moocher” (1932) and “Snow White” (1933).

Horace Horsecollar: For a brief period, the Mickey Mouse series was supposed to be about a group of anthropomorphic farmyard friends hanging out together. So that meant you had to have horse (Horace) and cow (Clarabelle Cow) characters. Clarabelle still shows up from time to time, but you rarely see Horace anymore, simply because he was nothing but a boring straight-man.

The Pincushion Man was the antagonist from this weird 1935 Ub Iwerks animated short named “Balloon Land”. Considering the main characters are living balloons, Pincushion is clearly a serial killer, and he is quite clearly killed at the end of the film by the balloon people in retaliation for his reign of terror. In other words, you really ought to watch it—it’s good wholesome fun!

“We don’t talk about Skippy”: No, no, no, no, no.

“Nice rainbow you just summoned over your head.”: Because the more you know...

Flip the Frog: Walt Disney’s artist partner Ub Iwerks was lured away from his side by Pat Powers in 1930 to found his own studio and make cartoons for MGM. (This was before MGM formed their own studio and created Tom & Jerry.) Just like with Schlesinger, Iwerks made two series: Flip the Frog with a constant cast of characters, and the fairytale-inspired ComiColor Cartoons, where all of the characters were one-offs (and some of them were serial killers). Flip was one of many characters created at the time designed to steal Mickey Mouse’s limelight; none of them succeeded. The Flip cartoons are a little weird, because Ub Iwerks is a little weird. After his studio inevitably failed he and Walt Disney reconciled. Iwerks turned his attention to technical innovations, and became known for the multi-plane camera, which he used in animated shorts and films to create a three-dimensional feeling. (Between Flip flopping and Iwerks Studio folding, there was also Willie Whopper, a better version of Scrappy.)

The Hays Code (officially known as the “Motion Picture Production Code”) was created in 1929, adopted in 1930 and named after Will H. Hays, president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America. It was created as a means by which the movie studios could police themselves before the blue-noses got mad enough to impose government censorship on the industry, which the Supreme Court in 1915 had already decreed they could legally do anytime they wanted to. The Code had no teeth until 1934, when Joseph Breen became the head of the Production Code Administration and amended the Code to say that his office had to put their stamp of approval on every film made in Hollywood, or no theater in America would show it. The amendment went into force on July 1, 1934, and that was the day that Betty Boop cartoons started sucking. The “Code Era” ended on November 1, 1968, when the MPAA film rating system went into effect. Between 1934 and 1968, every movie and short made was effectively G-rated. Oh and I suppose I need to go on the record and say that I do not believe that Joseph Breen sold his soul to a demon in order to control what every moviegoer in America would be allowed to think, and I certainly don’t think that he was then murdered and replaced by the demon Astaroth.

Speaking of which...Astaroth is a Great ~~Duck~~ Duke of Hell, included in several catalogs of demons written over the centuries. In one of these catalogs, he is said to exploit human laziness, self-doubt and “rationalized philosophies”, the last of which made him perfect for my use. The “Star of Astaroth” is the McGuffin in the Disney musical Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971), a favorite of mine growing up. He’s name-checked in the 1976 Hammer Horror film To the Devil a Daughter. He is the spirit that animates the title character in the influential Silent horror film The Golem: How He Came Into the World (1920). He’s been in lots of other books, movies, television series and video games, but those are the ones I’m most-familiar with.

Angel Bunny is a demon. I don’t think anybody disagrees with that. They merely differ in which demon he is.

Chapter 2 begins with a lengthy quote from the transcript of the episode “The Return of Harmony Part 2”, written by M.A. (Mitch) Larson. It aired on September 24, 2011.

Lauren Faust created My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic in 2009, with the first episode airing in October of 2010. With the airing of the final episode of Season 1 in May of 2011, Faust announced that she was transitioning from executive producer to consulting producer, and with the Season 2 finale in April of 2012, she left the show altogether. The parting was almost-certainly amicable and planned from the start, which has not stopped the more fanatical fans (such as myself) to assign solid reasons why she chose to leave—I put those arguments in Fluttershy’s mouth.

G1 Spike was created for My Little Pony: The Movie (1986), directed by Michael Joens. As usual for modern animation, it’s nearly impossible to tell who first Animated any character. His original Voice was Charlie Adler. For G4, his Voice was Cathy Wesluck and I’m going to say he was Animated by Lauren Faust.

Other Friendship Is Magic characters: Rainbow Dash and Applejack Voiced by Ashleigh Ball. Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie Voiced by Andrea Libman. Rarity Voiced by Tabitha St. Germain. And Twilight Sparkle Voiced by Tara Strong. All of these characters (plus Angel) presumably designed by Lauren Faust, even if she might not have personally Animated them.

Meghan: Meghan McCarthy, beloved writer for the show and eventual script editor. She also wrote the script for the original Equestria Girls movie.

“Duck! Rabbit, Duck!” is a 1953 cartoon directed by Chuck Jones and written by Michael Maltese, in which Bugs and Daffy continually try to confuse the hunter Elmer Fudd, efforts that inevitably end with Daffy’s beak being blown off of his head by gunfire. “Duck season” of course is a phrase that will stick in the head of anybody who’s seen that cartoon. (Chances are high that the above link is already dead. Look for a video of the cartoon that is 6 minutes and 51 seconds long, and not pitch-shifted or altered in some other way that ruins the jokes.)

“You’re going to trash Mitch, aren’t you?”: M.A. Larson would eventually write “Magical Mystery Tour”, the episode where Twilight would get her wings. At the time, this made many people very angry and was widely regarded as a bad move. He had a checklist.

Rob: Rob Renzetti. The executive producers of Friendship Is Magic for Season 2 are not as well known to the fans as Lauren Faust (Season 1) or Meghan McCarthy (Seasons 3–5 & 8). So I used Renzetti instead. He was the story editor, and therefore not the guy with the authority to cancel a contract. Over the years he has worked on a lot of shows, including The Powerpuff Girls, Samurai Jack, Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends, Gravity Falls and his current series Kid Cosmic. He was the creator of My Life as a Teenage Robot.

Smaug: Character from The Hobbit (1937), written by J. R. R. Tolkein.

All of those 2011 movies: OK you know what? I’m tired, and I don’t think I have any interesting quips, so can we just skip the movie credits, just this once? Because otherwise I’ll be up for another six hours researching them all. They all either came out in 2011 or were made in 2011—let’s leave it at that.

Jack, Spiro and Justin: Stunt coordinator Jack Gill, stunt director Spiro Razatos and overall director Justin Lin, all associated with Fast Five. I probably got lots of things wrong with this scene; I never saw any of the Fast & Furious films.

“The Ink and Paint Club”: Inking and painting are the first two steps in creating an animation cell. There was also a Disney Channel show with this name that aired in the wee hours of the night between 1997 and 1998; it included lots of theatrical Disney cartoons and I ate that show up like candy.

Cathy: Cathy Wesluck is Spike’s voice actress.

Monty Python: Used to set up the “how not to be seen” reference.

The Real Ghostbusters was an American animated series for television, running from 1986–1991, based on the 1984 film Ghostbusters. (The “Real” was in the title because Filmation had an unrelated 1975 series called “The Ghost Busters”, and they refused to hand over the TV rights to that name, even making a revival animated series with the goal of tricking Ghostbusters film fans into watching it.) It was produced by DIC Enterprises and Columbia Pictures Television. The show devolved in quality after the third season, ending up as a vehicle for the childish character of Slimer by 1988. Writer J. Michael Straczynski (yes, that J. Michael Straczynski) was the story editor for the first (good) season and wrote many of the best-regarded of the episodes, such as “Collect Call of Cathulu [sic]”. That and many other episodes in the early seasons were well-researched to include supernatural beings from both folklore and well-known fiction.

“Gertie the Dinosaur” (1914) starred the first cartoon character that could really be said to “come to life” in the minds of the audience, despite not saying a single word. The 12-minute film was entirely drawn by the newspaper cartoonist Winsor McCay in order to escape the hell of his day job: creating editorial cartoons expressing opinions he despised for the Hearst Newspaper Syndicate. (An assistant handled the stationary background of the short.) I always say: If you’re going to create an alternate universe, always be sure to work out the origin event when history started diverging, even if you have no intention of revealing that moment to your readers.

Sam: Sam Raimi, director of Oz, the Great and Powerful (2013, but filmed in 2011). Spike references his horror films (The Evil Dead, 1981) and Spider-Man (2002).

Mary Lynn: Yes, I made her up. Rainbow Brite was a huge inspiration, though.

Broom—: Broom-Hilda is a comic strip about a witch. It’s been running since 1970. The character has appeared in television animation three times, as an ensemble player: Archie’s TV Funnies (1971), Fabulous Funnies (1978) and The Fantastic Funnies (1980).

Kathy: Kathleen Barr. Her career as a voice actress dates back to 1979, which is why I dated the Mary Lynn cartoons when I did. It would really be more accurate to say that her continuous career in American animation started in 1992, but I needed Trixie to be older than that.

Tara: Tara Strong. A bigger contrast between real-life person and voiced character could not be conceived than that between Tara Strong and Twilight Sparkle. Except when Twilight was insane.

Tegan: Tegan Jovanka, fictional companion to the main character of Doctor Who between 1981 and 1984, played by Janet Fielding. Tegan was a stewardess for “Air Australia” who hailed from Brisbane, Australia.

Peter: Peter Jackson, director of both the Lord of the Rings movies and the Hobbit movies.

Weta: Weta Digital, the special effects company used by Peter Jackson. It changed its name to Weta FX in 2021.

Laketown and the Lonely Mountain: Laketown is the name of the town that Smaug burns in The Hobbit. Smaug lives inside the Lonely Mountain.

Pinkie Pie: A new origin for every time I use the character...check!