Everything made too much sense. The citizens of Ponyville went about their daily routines, or something like that, without ever questioning the nature of their existence. Of course they didn’t. How on Earth could they know that they were only useful as an exposition device in a work of fanfiction? Described in a conveniently vague way.
Only Pinkie Pie knew that the whole thing was a sham, a poorly constructed replica from the imagination of an unambitious young man. And while she was happy to play along with the sham most of the time, when handled by professional writers and talented amateurs, this particular story was already far too dull. So naturally she decided to show up that talentless hack she was working for and write a story of her own, starring herself; a self-insert.
Reaching into the deepest depths of hammerspace she pulled out a typewriter, aligned a sheet of paper and set about creating a scene for the story to take place in:
‘It was a beautiful sunny day and the ponies of Ponyville were watching pretty Pinkie Pie play, but then suddenly’
Noting the irony of what she was doing—the exact same thing the lazy writer had done a few paragraphs ago—she stopped to think. A mistake had already been made. There was something missing, something that every good story ought to have. She was already there as a character, but she had to do something. Oh, what was it? She thought with all her brainpower. She needed, she needed—
“Dialogue! Oh my gosh how could I forget to put dialogue in the story, I mean I love love love LOOVE to talk and I’m writing about myself here so I really should start talking in my story and wowee! isn’t this fun? I never knew how much I’d miss talking when I couldn’t do it but now I can and I just feel like talking forever and ever and ever and… Oh shoot, that was a run-on sentence wasn’t it?”
It was, but there was no need to worry since she often talked in run-on sentences anyway.
“Alright! So yeah, what should I do?” She then gasped her deep gasp. “I know, I should totally write in my friends, too!”
And with a little *poof*, Rainbow Dash appeared from nowhere in particular. She looked around in confusion, “Waddah wuh? Hey, where am I?”
“You’re in my story, Dashie!”
Rainbow bolted at the unexpected sound of Pinkie’s voice and landed sharply on her butt. Exactly what her butt landed on was unclear; Pinkie hadn’t said where her story was set.
“Okay, okay, Mr Meanie-Narrator-Pants. The story’s in, uh, um, The Everfree Forest!”
Rainbow got up from the muddy ground and straight away her face fell at the sight of a monstrous Ursa Major towering in front of her, teeth glistening with drool. She froze, started trembling and then managed to squeeze out a few words, “P-p-p-Pinkie? W-what did you do?” The Ursa slobbered and grumbled at the meal in its view.
“Oh yeah, that’s not a great place to start, is it? How about, ooh! ooh!, Twilight’s Library!”
Rainbow took off at near supersonic speed to escape the monster and almost immediately smacked face first into the hard wooden ceiling. She peeled off and plummeted onto Spike, crushing him a little bit.
“Now wait just an isty-bitsy minute, you dumb narrator. I didn’t say that Spike was there!”
Rainbow Dash landed on the floor, not Spike.
“That’s better.”
Rainbow groaned with pain as she staggered to her feet, watching cartoon stars orbiting her head.
“Hey now that’s enough, just stop right there! Stop the story! STOP!”
The story stopped.
“Good. Now listen up, and listen close. I didn’t say she should have stars going round her head, now did I? Did I?”
Pinkie was right, she had never said that.
“Yeah, that’s right, buster. This is MY story, and I—”
Pinkie Pie had gotten awfully out of character recently, all shouty and angry, not at all like her normal self. Normally she was bright and cheery and loved every pony she met and—
“Oh no you don’t. You can’t shut me up by saying I’m acting out of character. Let me tell you something, bud, Lil’ Miss Pinkie can get awful mad when she wants to. Yeah, you wanna try it? I bet I could take you on. Come and get some!”
By this point, her character voice was almost indistinguishable from that of Rainbow Dash. There was very little essence of Pinkie left in that movie-tough-guy dialect, as opposed to her normal chirpy, sickly-sweet tone.
“Oh yeah? Well, uh, you…”
Exactly. The character could’ve switched in-between patches of speech and no-one would’ve noticed.
She fell out of the kung fu pose she had been in while talking, and slumped to the ground. “Oh. Oh no. I can’t not be me, right? I have to be me. I know I’m me. How could I be anypony else?”
The onset of an existential crisis, dear readers.
“Sh-shoosh! If I were Dashie then I’d still be all angry like I was before, right?”
Perhaps. But more likely she would’ve been angrily hovering in the air if she had actually been Rainbow Dash.
“Huh. Hey, yeah!”
And besides, the now-halted story was supposed to star herself. Why not resume it as a character study? Show the world that she really knew her own self.
“… Alrighty then, let’s do this.”
With only a little concentration, a new Pinkie Pie sprang into existence.
“Hey Pinkie!” said Pinkie.
“Hi Pinkie!” replied Pinkie.
“You should try this writing thing, it’s totally fun.”
She giggled, “Okey dokey, let’s go!”
Pinkie wrote about Pinkie, who in turn wrote about Pinkie, who also wrote about Pinkie, who yet again wrote about Pinkie. And so this recursion carried on endlessly, like two mirrors reflecting each other. The ∞th Pinkie then set up her typewriter and wrote five simple words:
‘1000 words? Piece of cake.’