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Twilight has come to a sad conclusion - that everypony in this town is, in fact, crazy, and as the only sane mare left, it's up to her to take care of it. The problem is, she has no idea what she's doing, and may end up doing more harm than good as she drives her friends to insanity with her eagerness to help.
Hah, Discord had the main six break their friendship through magical brainwashing and it turned out to be ineffective. What twilight is doing might be more effective over the long term, even if she thinks she means well by it.
Tracking this, I can't wait to see how the others get diagnosed by Twilight and how it all gets resolved.
As a psychology grad one day aiming to be a therapist myself... I can say with COMPLETE confidence that Twi doesn't know what the hell she's talking about. Applejack is about as far from autistic as you can really get.
Rainbow Dash is certainly CLOSER to HPD than Applejack is to Autism, but in all honesty, I could bend the things Rarity and Pinkie Pie have done to make it seem like they have it as well, and Dash has done a fair amount to discount herself from it.
Because I have Autism myself I'm not sure if I should feel humored or incredibly insulted by this. I'm not in the mood to lecture about what Autism is really like at the moment, and I have nothing wrong with being compared to Applejack, but this fic seems to have the definite potential to make a lot of people very angry. While those who don't have the referenced disorders may get a chuckle out of it, the ones who do have them are just as likely to feel extremely insulted. Also, because this one is the first in the series, I'm frankly not sure I myself will be able to get over my irritation about it and really enjoy any of the future ones.
I wanted to address this as quickly as possible. I was actually going to say something about this in my author's note for chapter three, but when I read your comment I figured this was as good a place as any. Prepare for a very long and very serious response.
First of all, I apologize for offending you, as this was not my intention. As I said at the very beginning, this story is not meant to be taken seriously as all, and is best enjoyed on a gratuitous level.
Secondly, I wanted to explain the general concept behind the story.
The majority of the fandom likes to joke that all of the main characters have experienced some manner of a mental breakdown during the course of the series. I have a personal interest in psychology myself, but am in no way a professional, so in general I refrain from making jokes about serious issues like these, since I know that many people do not find these comments at all funny. Specifically, I don't find jokes like that funny because someone in my family has issues with severe depression, and seeing jokes about her becoming "suicidal" in her Pinkamina state aren't especially funny to me.
The purpose of this story is to act as a response to jokes about the mental well-being of the cast. For example, when fans joke about Pinkie being schizophrenic, they rarely really know what they're actually talking about, and they often greatly exaggerate her behavior in order to shoehorn her into the mold. Real schizophrenia is obviously incredibly different than what the fandom has diagnosed her with.
So I wrote a story about a pony who has no idea what she's talking about trying to diagnose her friends with whatever she thought best fit them because she's determined to find something wrong with them. Twilight is oblivious and doing a terrible job, but this is intentional, and the story may seem a bit cruel sometimes, but that's because I think it's cruel to the characters to be determined to find problems with who they are.
The story is not meant to be serious, or an expression of my own personal views. It is a satire, in a way. I was aware from the beginning that it may offend some people and I am prepared to deal with those consequences, but I just wanted a chance to explain why I wrote it at all. And above all it's meant to be silly, as a way of dealing with my own personal issues with the fandom, and as a personal challenge to myself, since I got stuck in an angst-rut.
Once again I apologize, and I hope this message can clarify my intent for any potentially offended readers in the future.
I know when I first read this, my exact thought was "if rarity doesn't have OCD I'm going to flip the fuck out." I knew it was going to happen. It's inevitable. But on another note, being borderline autistic myself, applejack of all ponies doesn't seem autistic. If any of them, that would be pinkie pie. Applejack seems like she has more of an inferiority complex. She always has to prove herself and can't deal with failure or letting anypony down. Applebuck season was a prime example. She worked herself to the bone and still tried to help her friends. A normal pony would respectfully cancel, not come in dazed and tired. Plus, autistics can be quite good liars. I can lie to pretty much anypony if nothing big is at stake. Anyways, *steps off of soapbox* that's my rant
Holy crap, this is waaay more popular than I expected it to be. I have more comments and views on this than anything else I've written and apparently I have 17 people reading RIGHT NOW. Yikes.
I have all of the chapters planned out in advance, actually. In my opinion Applejack is the sanest, most practical pony of the bunch, so I started with her; and the plan is to gradually descend deeper and deeper into perceived madness. So yes, Fluttershy's will be bad, but Pinkie's will be even worse. I, for one, am excited.
Also, to people asking if I'll write about anypony other than the mane 6 - the answer is, "maybe." I only planned to do the six main characters, but if this experiment proves ultimately successful and triumphs over the minor controversy it seems to have stirred up, then I may write a sequel.
(I'll be honest. I'm in high school and typically only get an hour or two of free time a day to write. So it all depends on whether I end up liking this enough to spend that time writing anything else for it.)
SPOILER: This was all a hallucination in Twilight's mind.
What I find the most interesting is that the craziest pony possible is the one playing shrink. Given that Celestia had to shout her down when she started blathering about how if she couldn't find a problem to solve, she'd have to make one, we are not dealing with someone capable of coping with the real world.
That being said, the jerk in me would like to see Twi's therapist (whose name shall remain Ditzy) ask her why it is that she's ashamed of her parents and extended family. I mean, ever since Celestia took her under her wing, Twi seems to have forgotten that her mother and father and any siblings that she might have even exist; I mean, really, she even forgot that she had an older sister who's a stage magician because every third word out of her mouth is Celestia.
The idea was that Fluttershy figured out exactly what kind of crap she was gonna pull and cut Twilight off before she could even start with her. I'll make sure to mention Fluttershy again later, though; there are at least two or three chapters left.
(Don't worry, guys, I haven't forgotten about Pinkie Pie. The great thing about being the author is that even though Twilight's decided she's done, I can use contrived twist after contrived twist to keep it up as long as I want.)
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
BEST CHAPTER EVER!!!!!!
I KNEW IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
FLUTTERSHY IS THE BEST PONY!!!!!!!!!!111111
something tells me they are going to make her do something ridiculous before they can forgive her.
and let them actually talk to a REAL psychologist!
I certainly hope Fluttershy actually FEELS BAD about her little outburst later. If not, then she's just a dick who plays sweet and then blows up at people when it serves her.
Really, Twilight's getting dumped on, here.
First off, is she WRONG? She thinks the ponies around her have a screw loose. I'd be hard pressed to disagree with her! Rarity, even sans OCD, is picky, vain, narcissistic, and prone to dramatic histrionics. Rainbow Dash had a complete meltdown when her eggshell-thin ego was threatened at the Best Young Fliers' competition. Pinky Pie's whole personality warped just because she thought noone wanted to come to her parties anymore. Fluttershy went nucking futz at the Grand Galloping Gala. Even Applejack, the most stable of the group, nearly killed herself trying to do the work of six ponies all by herself, ran away from home when she didn't win first place at a rodeo, started a RANGE WAR....this is not the behavior of mentally stable ponies!
Second, what's the cutoff date for calling a spade a spade? "How dare you judge us after just a couple years living around us..." oh come ON, girls. If nothing else, after the Grand Galloping Gala the verdict was IN.
Third, Twilight is only doing what Twilight always does--- she saw that something was broken, got a book and tried to fix it. Oh what a JERK, right? Trying to help her friends like that.... she should be like everyone else, and just let her friends spend the rest of their lives stuck at the corner of Fourth and Bananas.
I have to say, you captured Fluttershy perfectly. Simply perfectly. 
Anyway, I think Twi is just being a bit if an idiot but she did deserve a stern talking to. Flutterrage might've been going a bit too far, but Twi was messing with the delicate lives of the ponies around her...
But, as AA repeatedly said, this is not to be taken seriously so I'mma stop typing now 
Since no-one pointed it out, I just went and checked the episode...
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my life. . . what is it?
"WHAAAAAAAAAT? YOU THINK I'M A TROLL? AN UGLY HIDEOUS DEFORMED TROLL? OH, IT'S TRUE, I'M HIDEOUS! YOU NEVER LIKED MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" 
Seeing the list of what people are reading on the front page and seeing something you've written on there. 
Honestly Fluttershy is the only one that has a CHANCE of having autism, and it's pretty small.
Image: http://oi53.tinypic.com/15yc7ex.jpg
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