Spike’s Pony Chronicles: A Look Back

Hey horse people. I know it’s been awhile since I’ve shown my face, but a lot has changed since then. I’m in my third year at college and lost interest in the show years ago, so checking back on this little site is like opening a time capsule. I was barely fifteen when I made this account, so reading my old fics has been making me cringe hard at the weird characterization and bad morals.

Back in high school during more embarrassing times, all I knew was that I liked cartoons. That’s when MLP crept into my life, and I wanted to give back to this crazy new show that swept me off my feet. The obvious choice was to do fan fiction

Spike was my favorite. He was just like me at that age: cheeky, geeky, and a bit of a shut-in. He became my window and mirror into the ponies’ world. I was getting over a girl who didn’t like me back at the time and wanted some readable junk food to cuddle up with.

So… Spike’s Pony Chronicles…

Why “Chronicles” if Spike doesn’t even chronicle anything? I just wanted a catchy name. Truth be told, I’m a terrible reader and have little patience for it. I’m much more of a visual storyteller, which explains a lot about my writing style. Much of my narration is just unimaginatively describing what’s happening like a play-by-play.

Even now I admit: Spike and Sweetie Belle are cute together, and I made clear in the story why.

So there you have them: the couple of the century. And how did I portray them? Well…

Spike’s a whiny jerk in this story. He’s snarky and hard-working like he is on the show, alright, but has the asshole degree set pretty high. I find the climax of his picnic with Rarity particularly hard to read because of how childish he’s being. You can’t just yell at someone and stomp on their flowers because they don’t like you back. I get that his world is falling apart—but throwing yourself off a cliff? Really? You’re gonna go there? Suicide’s a heavy topic and has no place in a story like this.

Sweetie Belle is void of any personality in this story. Cuteness isn’t a character trait. She’s what you’d call a “manic pixie dream girl”: a female character used to do nothing but be perfect and fall in love with the male lead. Of course she’s there to save Spike in time and of course they talk about love and of course they’re kissing within five minutes. She’s young, curious, and naive, and I was careful to make that clear. But for better or worse, there are no Sweetie Belles in real life.

The first chapter is cutesy and all, but it tells a horrible moral for young teen boys, really. “If you don’t get your way, then you should whine, pout, and yell until the new girl comes right around the corner.”

I never really had a plan starting my stories. I’d just write a first chapter, have fun with it, and then realize “oh wait, I ought to write more.” So within the next chapter, Spike and Sweetie Belle have already broken up.

This chapter and others have no shortage of contrived drama. Part of that is because I have a comedic mind and would try too hard to be funny. At fifteen, I craved some drama for once. I knew I could make people laugh, but I wanted to try my hand at making people cry. And man, was I bad at it.

So the couple of the century breaks up because society tells them to. Spike responds to this not by asserting his ground and embracing his dragon-ness, but by changing himself to what society deems fit: a pony. It of course leads to a cutesy-wootsy ending for chapter 3, but this is also a pretty crappy moral. If I was to ever rewrite the story or do a sequel (not happening), I’d have Spike and Sweetie Belle embrace Spike’s different-ness and stand up for themselves. That’s the moral today’s world needs. I see a lot of LGBT/mixed-race subtext that could’ve been worked into this story if I was a more talented writer and not a lonely high schooler.

Though flawed, Chapter 3 also would’ve made for a cute ending. But the story continues for some reason. What pointless drama can be drummed up now? How about Twilight’s reaction to Spike’s new form? Sure. Perfect.

There’s something off about Spike and Twilight’s relationship in this story. They were like siblings in the show, but my Twilight treats Spike like the weirdest combination of property and a son. She’s uncharacteristically harsh on him. Their playful banter is fun and all, but jeez, Twilight… Spike and Twilight are definitely supposed to be me and my mom. We had a hard time understanding each other and she was pretty strict with me, but we love each other no less. I must’ve not understood her strictness when I was younger, and a lot of that comes out with Spike.

And of course the moral in the end isn’t about Spike accepting himself. It became more about Twilight accepting change. That’s a decent enough moral. I don’t have any nitpicks for that one, but it should not have been the main moral of the story.

One poorly written monologue later, Twilight accepts the change. The story ends with a kiss or something and the people who read the story liked it for some odd reason.

Readers liked it because 1.) I assume they were in the same wistful mindset I was when I wrote it and 2.) because it’s cute. It’s so damn cute. It doesn’t make a lot of sense and is probably bad for you, but it’s so sweet and precious that you can’t help but “d’awww” at it. The cuteness was very deliberate. I pinpointed what from the show made me squee and tried to cram as much into the story as I could. How could anyone not feel bad for sad little Sweetie Belle, curled up in a little ball and crying?

Come to think of it, there’s some haunting imagery that I had in there that I forgot I wrote. Spike and Sweetie Belle floating in silence on the ironing board on the glistening lake as the sun set—I forgot I even wrote that, but I kinda want to be there and see that.

Something else I’ve gotten praise for with the story was the banter between characters. I tried to have fun with every conversation and make them memorable, and even now I have fun reading it. Rarity was especially fun to write. I love how over-the-top dramatic and ornate she is, and how tender and sweet she is with her sister. I half cringe and half smile whenever I re-read this fic.

But it’s not without it’s faults. I thought I was being so deep and profound with some of the lines I wrote when really I was just being redundant and using too many big words from the thesaurus. I definitely could have used better narration and overall structure. There are also some oddly specific references and easter eggs to cars, whether it be the carriages in Chapter 1, the “Corlett,” or “Lightning McRarity” [shudders]. We get it: you like cars. But calm down, Golden Age. This isn’t clever anymore.

I also milked the side characters for all their worth. Every scene with the Mane 6, Cranky and Matilda, and Rarity’s parents go on for way too long, and way too much personality is crammed in for their single scenes. They go nowhere. And for some reason, I fetishized averting characters’ expectations whenever I could ([character] says [other character] is sad. [other character] turns out not to be sad. Comedy!).

Getting comments was great. The fact that I knew the show existed was my biggest secret, and getting an outpour of admiration for something I worked hard-ish on made my fifteen-year-old heart flutter. People said they cried. A lot asked for sequels. Some guy put a picture of a fucking tank.

I was happy with it and tried to do it again sometime later with Silver Shill, and I quickly lost interest in that. Writing’s hard. Hinny of the Shills also had a horrible moral, anyways: if you mope long enough, the girl of your dreams will find you. Interpret these morals how you will… As I grew up, Fluttershy became more relatable than Spike. I grew more insecure and wrote something with her being depressed and anxious and wanting to hide herself from the rest of the world. There was also some dumb crap I wrote about a GMC Terrain, because puns.

I lost interest in the show itself sometime around season 6, where even then I could tell it was running on fumes. I couldn’t even tell you what’s been happening on it since then. Now there’s a school? And everyone’s a teacher? Okay. The movie was nothing to write home about, but it’s nice to see had-drawn animation again.

Honestly, what’s left to do with these characters? They’ve learned every moral and have saved the world too many times, now. Are we finally going to get a shitty live action/CG movie where Uh Oh! The ponies are now in Neeww Yoorrk!!!! What wacky shenanigans will happen in the reeaal world??? Can’t wait to see the Happy Meal tie-ins.

Overall, Spike’s Pony Chronicles is the weirdest window into my young teen self and shows the power of adolescent loneliness and unrequited crushes. It’s the story equivalent of consoling a goner with beautiful lies. “It’s gonna be alright, we’re gonna send Mr. Jingles to Mouseville. Everything will be okay. I know your dream girl doesn’t like you, but another dream girl’s right around the corner. There there, Golden Age.” That’s not the way the world really works.

I can’t believe it has nearly 5k views. If you’re looking for something mindless, childish, but really cute, then check it out, I guess. Put another fucking picture of a tank in the comments if you’d like, and enjoy some classic, contrived drama.

Writing this piece of crap helped me in the long run. It got my creative writing juices flowing, and now I have fun writing essays instead of dreading them. As for a future in storytelling, I’m actually majoring in animation right now with an emphasis on storyboarding. So maybe some Golden Age banter and fun will make it to actual TV cartoons someday…
This was an odd phase, but Spike said it best: “Change is nature, Twilight, and sometimes it’s for the good of things.”

(ignoring it wasn’t even nature that changed him, it was fucking witchcraft).