Pinkie Pie was the silliest, goofiest pony in all of Ponyville, maybe even all of Equestria. Bouncing around with a perpetual smile, she brought laughter and joy wherever she went, along with her own brand of friendly chaos and a big dose of humor and fun.
But what happened when Pinkie Pie got sad? It was hard to believe, but everypony felt down sometimes. Even the silliest, goofiest pony in all of Ponyville…
———
“Hey Twilight!” Pinkie’s merry, bubbly singsong voice greeted calm Twilight Sparkle’s ears one morning in Ponyville.
“Oh, Pinkie Pie!” Twilight answered. She seemed rather frantic. “Am I glad to see you!”
“What could be the matter, Twilight?” Pinkie responded with her usual smile.
“Pinkie Pie, someone vandalized one of my very special books!”
“Vandalized?” Pinkie’s eyes cartoonishly bugged from her head. “Who could’ve done something so… TERRIFIC? Wait… wrong word! You see, I tried combining the words terrible and horrific, and the result was terrific? Isn’t that odd? Anyway, we need to catch the vandal!”
“Maybe you can help identify them!” Twilight showed Pinkie the book, covered in all sorts of drawings and scribbles.
But once she laid her eyes on the terrible, horrific vandalism, Pinkie Pie burst out laughing.
“Hahaha! AHA! Hah… Twilight, these are MY drawings!” Pinkie said.
“…What?” Twilight said.
“The book was so dreary and gloomy, I felt sorry that you had to read books like these! BO-RING, right? So I filled the book with jokes, and comics, and funny drawings so it would make you smile instead!”
But Twilight was turning red.
“Pinkie Pie! That’s how the book was MEANT to be! It’s a very serious spellbook! And you just went and defaced it like that! Pinkie Pie, you are just so…”
“Random?” Pinkie said with a smile.
“No! You’re annoying and you just… don’t think about consequences! I’m sorry, but… I need to be alone for a while.”
“But Twilight…” Pinkie’s lips quivered. She didn’t mean to make Twilight mad.
“Pinkie, please. I want you to leave me alone.”
“Okay…” Pinkie sadly left Twilight’s home.
Once she was outside, the sky appropriately filled with clouds.
“I didn’t mean to make Twilight hate me.” She said to herself. “But… she hates me now!”
Pinkie’s curly hair, usually as big, buoyant, and puffy as her personality, became heavy. It started to straighten and slump over her like limp noodles. When Pinkie was feeling down, her hair became limp to match.
And Pinkie was surely feeling down.
———
“I can’t keep frowning forever!” Pinkie Pie caught herself moping. “Moping is like, so not for me at all. I know! I’ll hang out with Rarity!”
Pinkie Pie galloped to Rarity’s fashion boutique.
“Um, hey Rarity?” Pinkie popped her head through the door.
“Hello, Pinkie. Did you do something to your mane?” Rarity asked. “It… it’s nice to experiment at times, but I’m more used to seeing you with those big poofy curls you used to have.”
“Yeah, um… Wanna hang out?” Pinkie forced a big smile and energetic wag of her tail.
“Just you and me?” Rarity asked. “Simply marvelous! I think I even may shall dress up for the occasion.”
Rarity went to put on one of her favorite garments, but couldn’t quite find it. In the place of her favorite dress, was a tacky, colorful, garish clown costume.
“Oh the horror! Pinkie Pie, a fashion fiasco must’ve broke into my house and left this… this… color-uncoordinated ABOMINATION!”
Pinkie began to laugh again, and for a moment everything seemed right again. Even her hair began to take back its usual shape…
“Oh, silly Rarity!” Pinkie tried stifling her laughter. “It’s a clown costume! I made it out of that gloomy, stuffy dress-thing I found in your closet!”
“Dress… you mean… you don’t mean… MY FAVORITE FORMAL DRESS?” Rarity dramatically went into her usual dramatics.
“Yeah, silly! I thought it needed soooo much more glitter and colors and jewels and polka dots and stripy stripes and spotty spots! Now it’s a whole new dress, for a whole new you!”
“Pinkie… I can’t believe you just did this without my permission!” Rarity whined.
“Well yeah!” Pinkie smiled. “It’s what surprises are about!”
“Nooooo!” Rarity began crying and flailing dramatically. “Not only is it hideous, but it used to be my favorite dress! Get out! I can’t believe you!”
“Gee, I’m…”
“Leave me alone in my wallowing!” Rarity cried.
Pinkie, whose hair was now more deflated than ever, slumped out of the house with her tail between her legs.
Her usual vibrant pink hue had turned into the gloomy gray of a raincloud.
———
“No, Pinkie! You must be positive and smile! So what if I ruined both Twilight and Rarity’s days? …And their property, and possibly their entire lives? So what? I can always hang out with Fluttershy!”
But when Pinkie got to Fluttershy’s house, she found the timid yellow pegasus curled up into a fluffy little ball, sniffling and sobbing…
“Oh no!” Pinkie felt down as soon as she saw her friend was in distress. “What’s wrong? Does someone need a… PARTY?”
“No… No! That would be so insensitive! How could you!” Fluttershy burst into tears. “Can’t you see that Mr. Guppy is… is… PURPLE?”
Pinkie Pie peered into the fish pond where Fluttershy kept all her pet fish.
Suddenly, she burst out into laughter!
“Oh my, he certainly is purple!” She laughed. “Did it surprise you?”
“I see nothing humorous about this!” The crying, sniveling Fluttershy was suddenly replaced with an enraged, assertive one! “When these kinds of Bubble Fish turn purple, that means they’re gravely ill!”
“…Ohhhh.” Pinkie said. “I see why you’re sad. You must’ve thought Mr. Guppy was ill! Well, he isn’t! It’s just waterproof paint, silly! I just wanted to surprise you with a totally new color change, that’s all!”
“Well it wasn’t funny at all!” Fluttershy’s normally quiet murmurs and mumbles grew to a clear yell. “I was worried sick all because of your foolish antics and insensitivity! Leave me alone! I’m sick of you!”
“Fluttershy?” Pinkie tried saying. She wanted to make up with her friend. To reassure her. But all that came out of Pinkie was a deflated, defeated squeak.
“Flutter… shy? I… I’ll go. I’ll go away now. Sorry.” Pinkie Pie slumped.
She sighed as the rainclouds above got even bigger and looked as they were about to burst.
“I think I need to be alone too…”
Pinkie Pie trudged away, slumping so low that her limp mane and tail dragged the cold hard ground.
Her usual pink color, which had turned into a dull gray, was now changing again into a deep, deep blue. The saddest blue of them all.
Pinkie Pie was no longer pink. She was no longer herself. She was now bluer than she ever had been in her life.
———
Pinkie was now back home in Sugarcube Corner, her home where she kept all her happy little trinkets, wonderful memories, whimsical fancies and joyous little knick-knacks.
Only now, she was throwing them all away.
“Who needs them… who needs these? They’re only reminders of a certain bliss I can never return to…” Pinkie whined. And whined and whined some more.
“Oh, woe is me! Mirror, Mirror, on the wall… who is the worst, most horrible, useless, worthless pony of them all?”
Pinkie Pie peered into the mirror, and saw a blue mare with a pathetic sniveling frown staring back at her.
Large, painful tears pooled in the blue mare’s eyes and quietly ran down her cheeks.
“It’s… me, isn’t it?”
Pinkie began to cry first quietly, then loudly.
“I’m so awful… I… I’m blue! I’m a worthless friend… The only friend I have is the darkness. I shall let it consume me now… and succumb to the abyss of… of… UGH, I’m not even good at brooding! I can’t make people smile… I can’t brood… I CAN’T DO ANYTHING!”
Pinkie Pie punched the mirror in an outburst, and it shattered. The blue mare staring back at her was now broken into tiny little pieces.
“I… I’m just a broken pony.”
———
“I should leave town.” Pinkie Pie thought.
As Pinkie was about to leave down, she burst out into song.
But unlike the happy, joyous singing she usually did, this song was filled with sorrow and pain.
Pinkie Pie’s goodbye song to Ponyville. A farewell to the friends she once knew, and the memories that now seemed so distant.
“My name is Pinkie Pie…
But now I’m feeling blue.
I may not ever smile again…
Oh, what am I to do?
Nothing matters now…
And I am worthless too.
Ruining ponies’ lives is all that I ever do.
Goodbye now, farwell and bye, bye, bye
Time to go
I don’t mean to make anyone cry,
Yet I do.
Why was I ever born? Oh, why?
What will happen when I die?
…Goodbye.”
And nobody was even there to sing along.
So Pinkie Pie ran far, far away, with only a few plain old muffins on her back, because she was too sad for cupcakes.
She traveled over the hills, across the rivers, through many valleys, until she found a place that was so far and secluded, she decided it was perfect for her.
It was a cold land at high elevation, among jagged cliffs and thunderclouds, in a perpetual winter fog.
The dreary little town was almost monochrome, devoid of any color, aside from the sad blue of Pinkie’s mane and coat once she walked into the town square.
Nopony was playing in the street. Nopony was smiling.
“Wow…” Pinkie said. She was now talking in a robotic tone. “It’s such a gloomy place. I think I shall stay here for a while. I am fitting right in. See?”
Pinkie went in the town’s many emo corners to brood and sigh heavily.
“Um, excuse me…” A quiet voice said, devoid of any emotion and robotic like Pinkie Pie’s. “You’re in… my brooding corner. This is mine. I am sorry, but you need to leave.”
The owner of the voice was a sad smoke-colored unicorn with floppy ears, drooping eyes, disheveled hair and a pathetic demeanor. She looked down to the barren ground as she talked and spoke.
“Oh, woe is us. Why mustn’t we be dramatic together?” Pinkie asked. “I’ll happily… I mean, sadly share this place with you. If you want.”
“We could share, actually.” The sad pony said. “What might your name be, oh blue one?”
“I’m Bluey Pie. I was once somepony else.” Pinkie said. “Before that pony became lost.”
“I am Lavender Snow.” The pony said. “I have always been lost as long as I could remember. This town is called Doom-and-Gloomsville. There are no bright colors. No songs. No games or parties or fun. No friends. And no joy.”
“What a pitiful existence.” Pinkie said. “It’s just like mine… I once had joy, yet I have forgotten what it feels like. I once had friends too. And games and parties and fun…”
“Wow. That sounds amazing.”
This was the first time Pinkie had heard Lavender say something uplifting.
“Parties, games, fun. Friends. Joy. It all sounds amazing. Would you help me experience those?”
“Lavender…” Pinkie’s dead blue eyes filled with sorrow and tears. “I… I can’t. I’m sorry. I can’t be happy again. Being happy only made my friends hate me. Being happy only got in their way. What’s the point of being happy if all it doesn’t do anything but make people sad? Whats the point of a smile if the people around you are crying? What’s the point? What’s the point…”
Pinkie began to sob out all her pain.
“I understand how you feel.” Lavender said, her own red eyes filling with tears. “But without happiness, they’ll be nothing. Just look at this town. We have never known joy. But I think that if you try the way you once did, you could bring joy to everyone here.”
Tears dripped down Lavender’s cheeks.
“You have to try.”
———
“It sure is quiet around here lately.” Rainbow Dash said as she was relaxing on her cloud back in Ponyville. “It feels so dreary today too. Almost as if all the fun and wonder around us just… died!”
Rainbow hopped off her cloud.
“Well, I know exactly who to visit when I want to smile. I’ll go to Pinkie Pie’s!”
Rainbow Dash flew down to Sugarcube Corner, where she saw Applejack also trotting down the road. It seems she was suffering the same dilemma, and had the same idea as Dash.
“Howdy.” Said Applejack. “Something just don’t feel right today.”
“Yeah, but I hope Pinkie’s smiles will cheer us right up!”
But when they got to Sugarcube Corner, everything that made it fun and colorful was gone.
“What in tarnation?” Applejack said. “No wonder there’s no joy today. What’s going on?”
Rainbow Dash flew up to the door and found a note left by Pinkie Pie.
“Dear ex-friends. I don’t want you to see me like this. I think I’ll spare you from myself and run somewhere far, far away. I know you’re relieved. If for any reason you WANT to see me again, don’t bother to look for me.
-Your biggest annoyance, Bluey Pie.”
“Bluey Pie?” Applejack and Rainbow Dash said together.
“What’s going on? What happened to Sugarcube Corner?” Twilight and Spike were walking by.
“Dear, oh dear…” Applejack said, worried. “Come with us, Twilight! I’ll go gather the others. We have to look for Pinkie Pie and bring her back before there’s no more joy left!”