I just like stories where everything is basically awful forever for the whole world. Might have overlap with Dark With A Good Ending and Dark n Bitter depending on how many ponies survive.
Shelf Title does not necessarily mean nobody dies. It just means that the badness stops one way or another and at least someone survives long enough to see the end and maybe move past it. Horror comedies are abundant here!
These ones kinda hurt, but it's not all bad. Implies some sort of 'gentle' or hopeful resolution that cushions the blow from the rest of the story. Everything else might've been painful but it's over, they're at peace.
Involves the sudden or secret downward spiral of a single focal character into Probably Murder. Implies a lack of outside forces directly acting on the character's mind such as possession, but can include mind altering drugs and supernatural sources of stress. It's usually Twilight or Pinkie.
Implies that the wrongness is contained entirely within one horse, and is the result of an outside force acting upon that horse instead of being a (semi)voluntary action. Said horse may not actually be who they claim to be, hence shelf title. Mutually exclusive with PotWBaF shelf
Well that went REALLY wrong REALLY fast. 'Oh Shit...' ending and/or elements of fridge horror are mandatory here! Nobody gets a happy or even painless ending here!
There's a repulsive twist in there somewhere. Something gross happens to at least one person as the focal point of the story. The gross thing can be gorey or not, but cannot be sexual. This genre overrides all other shelf categories unless there's a total apocalypse scenario in there somewhere too.
(Bookshelf title does not indicate I disliked the fic!!!) Wow! That basically didn't end well for literally anyone in the story! It wasn't even an apocalypse, everything just went horribly wrong for a few stupidly unlucky horses! Usually implies sadness over sheer fear factor, but still the sort of sadness that makes your skin crawl. There is no happy ending. The pain lives on after the credits roll.