There's a series of six chapter books known as Ponyville Mysteries. I highly recommend them, and they even fit the Nightmare Night atmosphere! They have characters staring into the face of death, and lore, and an overarching plotline. It's the CMC at their best.
I hadn't watched most of season 8 or any of season 9 until a few weeks ago, nor any of G5 until this week, due to horrible anxiety. (Yes, anxiety about watching a tv show I want to watch. My brain is messed up.) So in no particular order, I need to get out some thoughts.
I'm watching through the show again, and noticed a lore thing that I thought was worth making note of. In Spike at Your Service (yes, that horrible episode where Spike is depicted as clumsy and incapable of things like cooking and cleaning that he's been shown to be skilled at in most other episodes), Spike has this personal "Spike the Dragon Code" card. But what's interesting is where it
...When you're just looking at the latest stories, and suddenly there's a propagandist promotion of an extremist who advocates against democracy and openly admires the worst dictator in history in the description of what you naively thought was a shipping story?
...When an avowed Communist asks for money as though that isn't inherently hypocritical?
Yup. As long as kinky clop stories remain the same, it won't be ALL bad