//------------------------------// // 1. It's just like the Wizard Of Oz! Except without Dorothy, ruby slippers, that little rat dog... // Story: It's Always Sunny In Equestria // by deadpansnarker //------------------------------// “Huh. Well that was the biggest waste of time, energy and outsourcing of animation ever…” The visual torture was finally over. The much-hyped ‘My Little Pony: A New Generation Of Suck’ on Netflix had finished, and what was my expert opinion? This may surprise all you naysayers, but I actually loved it! It was majestic, it was magical, it was plain amazing… No, I am not in fact being sarcastic (for a change). What I am referring to is the first minute or so, with the original animation and the voice actresses reprising their roles from the unsurpassable G4 classic.  For a blissful moment, I thought all that crap about a show I adored and worshipped growing up concluding in favour of an underwhelming CGI monstrosity was just my overactive imagination imbibing too many Wild Cherry vape fumes. No such luck. As soon as those little sh*ts started taking over the dulcet tones of my favourite pones and the real computer animation reared its literal ugly head(s), I was ready to quit there and then. Return to FIM once more, for it would take me an entire rewatch of all nine glorious seasons to overcome the profuse trauma of what I’d just witnessed. But, nope. Like the resilient, foolhardy sap I am, I sat there for the next hour-and-a-half without moving an inch. Tolerating the by-the-numbers plot. Listening to the uninspired dialogue. Hearing the mediocre tweeny songs. Staring at those uncanny valley, creepy equine freaks the whole time. Anyone who tells you this charmless style is an upgrade from Flash… they’re lying. Also, check to see whether they’re safe or not. Something tells me they very well maybe talking under duress… In any case, I survived the ordeal. Just. But before I receive my medal of honour, I have but one question to pose to the makers of this travesty, this mockery, this utter bastardisation of a great, great franchise? Why? Why not make a new program, then proceed to ruin that instead? Why sully the name of a legend, by dirtying it with your own worthless ideas? MLP G4 was fine as it was, it didn’t need a continuum based around weird characters with stupid names, predictable motives and quirks carried over from the previous incarnation. I mean, hello? Anyone who doesn’t look at Izzy Moonbrow (See what I mean about stupid names?) and doesn’t immediately clock ‘Pinky Pie, but with a love of crafting not baking and no toothless alligator’ is not only under duress, but probably has a gun pointed directly at their temple. Don’t hesitate. Call 911 or 999 now (depending on which part of the world you live. Outside the USA or UK, sorry can’t help you. RIP). And that’s not even getting into the other imposters who’re allegedly replacing our beloved Mane 6! There’s Zipp Storm, some Rainbow Dash-wannabe who hasn’t an ounce of the wonderful Wonderbolt’s charisma. What about Pipp Petals her sister, a pale shadow of Rarity who’s sole trait seems to be that she's a bit of a diva. The only stallion present is Hitch Trailblazer, a real rules-obsessed jerk voiced by the guy who played the most useless X-Man of them all. Remember I said X-’Man’. Rogue doesn’t count. And as we get to the last of our five mains (not even six, booooo) that’s when my hackles really start to rise. The protagonist here, the stand-in for our beloved Twilight Sparkle, is the most annoying brat to ever gallop their way into a MLP-themed show. Sorry, Diamond Tiara. Commissarations, Cozy Glow. For Sunny Starscout has well and truly stolen your crown. Not only did she wreck her hometown of Maretime Bay’s big bash at the beginning, she also practically forced her so-called best (and unsurprisingly only) friend along on a journey he didn’t even want to take. Oh, and don’t forget stealing crystals, trespassing in other nation’s lands, breaking out of jail without permission… Of course, to make us feel extra special warm ‘n’ fuzzy towards her, they give her one of those unbearably cliched backstories where her father is gasp dead. Complete with a brief interlude where we see what a good dad he was, before snuffing it offscreen later. And her mum? Never even mentioned!  By the way Hasbro, Disney called. They’d like their scriptwriting playbook back please. Whatever. There’s no freakin’ way this imitation of a ‘hero’ they’re so desperate to market that the writers gave her a holographic horn and wings during the inevitable happy ending will fly her way into my heart! And you thought Twilight’s transition to alicornhood was sloppy… Well, I don’t know about you losers, but I’m getting onto the Internet right now to register my disgust with the world! My couple of hundred subscribers are waiting with bated breath to hear my every syllable on the subject, and it’s my God-given duty to inform them of what an absolute tragedy has occurred this day… ...Just as soon as I’ve slurped my apple juice. And scoffed these Jaffa Cakes (I’ll fight anyone who says they’re not cakes. Sacrilege!!) There, all done. Now I can get down to some serious gung-ho keyboard-warrior type stuff! Let’s see now… ‘so bad, the entire cast deserve a one-way trip to the glue factory’. Say, that’s good! They should quote that on the Rotten Tomatoes homepage. Real critic, me.  But it was just as I was in the middle of a particularly vindictive passage about Sunny Starscout being the love child of a jackass, an orange M&M and the Hunchback Of Notre Dame that something strange started to happen. Naturally, with me practically frothing at the mouth reaching for descriptive prose regarding this most hated of hated characters in the new G5 canon, it was already too late before I took notice. The lights began flicking on and off. A bizarre image appeared on my monitor screen. And… since when were my feet hairier than my back?  I actually said that last part out loud, immediately wishing I hadn’t. For my voice… was not my voice… it sounded like something out of High School Musical or something, at least an octave or three too high. I glanced down at my hands in terror, realising that all my fingers were now gone to be replaced with nowt but fuzzy, featureless nubs. I wanted to scream out loud but couldn’t, mainly because no-one else was home but mostly because I felt so t-i-r-e-d all of a sudden. Which was somewhat of a surprise, considering I must’ve consumed enough Red Bull today to stay sharp during a hurricane. Speaking of hurricanes, it was as if the whole room began spinning around of its own accord, and just before my rapidly evolving head crashed against my desk in a state of complete unconsciousness, I heard pithy words that would come back to haunt me for a long time to come. “You. Will. Believe.”  ……………………………….... “What the…?” I rose from my nightmare to the alarm, hot sweat pouring down my face. Oh, it was just a bad dream, that’s all. I must’ve finished my online rant yesterday, then went straight to bed afterwards. I should go and see if anyone’s responded… let me just get up, trot over to my computer by the window of the lighthouse. But first, I better tie this unruly purple mane back so I can see what I’m doing… wait, what? This was the point I figured out something was wrong. Very wrong indeed. Not the fact I didn’t even own an ancient LCD alarm clock, or any of the other baby junk in here. Not the girlish change in voice, or that I now ‘trotted’ instead of walked. Not that my Apple Mac was nowhere in sight, or my sturdy bungalow had turned into a crumbly old lighthouse. No. It was the purple hair that now partially obscured my vision, when in reality I have a crew-cut.  What on Earth… I thought the name of a planet I apparently no longer inhabited, realising my ailing head must be one step (or trot) away from a nervous breakdown. Calm yourself down, dude. This is all just some disturbing fever dream caused by an undiagnosed brain tumour, or something. Although, that doesn’t sound much better. Let’s try pulling this mane a bit to see if it can’t help restore you to default settings… “OW!” “Oh, are you alright? You shouldn’t do that to yourself, you know. Pony hairs are awfully sensitive…” Huh? Just as I was about to completely lose it at the revelation that this new equine body was actually mine, and this wasn’t any kind of made-up fantasy delusion disease-related or otherwise, another therapy-inducing doozie was about to make itself known. For in what I now recognised at Sunny Starscout’s bedroom from that dumb movie, I could hear somepony I could never forget. Her royally rich tones came directly from the bedside table next to some raggedy old roller-skates, and I immediately pushed aside that annoyingly punky-purple hair to glance at her in awe… Straightaway wishing I hadn’t. “I know it’ll take some getting used to, but me and the girls are all here for you!” The miniaturized version of Twilight Sparkle that Sunny (now me, apparently) owned was now alive, and talking to me alongside her equally mobile but diminutive plastic friends. “Just give us a few minutes of your time, and we can explain everything…” But there’s no time for ‘explanations’ when you’re on the verge of fainting… Actually, replace ‘on the verge of’ to ‘just’, and you would be somewhat closer to the truth. Well, goodnight everypony. It was lovely meeting you all, but it is my sincerest wish that by the time I open my eyes again, you’ll all have f*cked off back to Equestria and I’ll be in my usual obese male bipedal body. At my usual address, to boot (not hoof). But as I was about to discover to my utmost disappointment and horror shortly, no such luck.