Deconstruction Fic / My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic

My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic

Many fanfiction writers have made Deconstruction Fic that deconstructed both the original show and its characters.

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• Fall of Starfleet, Rebirth of Friendship has its own page.
• Anthropology does this to the common "Lyra is Intrigued by Humanity" genre. Her fascination with a creature which in this setting does not exist anymore, and her adopting of their habits- wearing clothes, sitting upright, growing hands- are met with skepticism and confusion from her peers at best, and outright anger and revulsion at worst, especially by her roommate Bon-Bon. Lyra herself starts to believe that the ignorance ponies have of humanity is all a big conspiracy, and that the government is spying on her. And she is absolutely right.
• A Delicate Balance: Pretty much the entire thing is an extended example of this as applied to Shipping. Specifically concerning the fact that just because one's Love Confession is accepted doesn't mean things are going to go smoothly.
• Applejack's Love is a more serious look at romance stories in general. Sometimes you don't get the person you love the most and your attempt to get them can lead to both of you losing the friendship you already have.
• Bittersweet deconstructs Pinkie Pie's Sweet Tooth nature by having her contract diabetes and committing suicide.
• Chemistry deconstructs the fan portrayal where Cadance is a Goddess of Love (and, subsequently, Lust). Cadance needs to take medication and visit a therapist or else she'll enter a heat-like state. When in this state she becomes an Extreme Omnisexual that makes her a danger to others (even foals). Even ignoring that, Cadance's powers are prone to Power Incontinence. When she was twelve she accidentally manipulated the minds of various ponies and caused several conceptions (including Twilight's), which resulted in criminal charges.
• Equestria: A History Revealed lovingly parodies the Equestrian history genre, as a historical essay with its own Lemony Narrator who is a massive Conspiracy Theorist, and at times even freely admits she is making things up as she goes along. Doesn't stop the fic from being a blast to read.
• Equestria: Civil War deconstructs the ending of the season five finale, where Twilight Sparkle forgave Starlight Glimmer for everything she had done and took her on as a student (bear in mind, her crimes include creating a cult, erasing the Cutie Marks of hundreds of ponies during the reign of said cult, and creating multiple Bad Futures in her attempt to get revenge for the Mane Six destroying said cult). Just like in real life, a high profile political figure instantly forgiving a terrorist for her crimes and installing her in an important place in the government does not come without a nationwide controversy. Many ponies accuse Twilight of being far too lenient and a Horrible Judge of Character, and those same detractors also accuse Starlight of taking advantage of Twilight to escape punishment. It got to the point where a mysterious pony is working behind the scenes to discredit Starlight so either Celestia (who has more authority than Twilight) could overrule Twilight and punish Starlight, or the public and political pressure would force Twilight to cave and receed her decision. All of this demonstrates that just because Twilight is willing to forgive Starlight, it doesn't mean anybody ELSE is willing/able to do so. Crime rates have also increased since the event in question, because many criminals think that if Twilight, as one of the four princesses of Equestria, could easily forgive Starlight for her crimes, they would be Easily Forgiven and get let off the hook themselves. These same criticisms also extend to other villains that Twilight previously forgave, such as Trixie (who enslaved the entirety of Ponyville), Discord (who turned all of Equestria into his own personal Cloudcuckooland, in addition to continuing to pester the ponies), and the Changelings (who caused an invasion that, as noted in the story itself, killed and injured numerous ponies). All of this culminates into the Reformed Antagonist Registration Act movement, who believe that regardless of reformation or remorse over their crimes, villains still needed to face the consequences for their malicious misdeeds. This movement gains a lot of supporters, including Rarity, Applejack, and Cadance, because RARA is a check-and-balances system which will monitor reformed villains and make sure they have genuinely turned over a new leaf.
• Five Score, Divided by Four: Chapter 21 of the clean version deconstructs the MLP fandom's "ponies as pets" fanart trope by showing how horrible of a fate this would be for the show's characters if it actually happened to them. In it, Pinkie, Rarity, and Shining are kidnapped by a group of thugs who plan to sell them off as house pets. The author pulls absolutely no punches in describing how horrible, degrading, and humiliating this is for the trio.
• Friendship is Empathy does this to the controversial "Mysterious Mare-Do-Well" as well as the ending of A Canterlot Wedding, Part 1, showing that Rainbow Dash has actually come to resent her friends over their actions in the episode when she had to seriously think about it while Twilight is still hurt over how easily she was abandoned by her friends at the Canterlot Wedding for somepony they barely knew.
• Letters From A Disgruntled Friendship Student: An interesting example in that it's the main character herself who acknowledges and points out things that don't make any logical sense.
• Loved and Lost deconstructs the fallout of "A Canterlot Wedding". Immediately after stopping the invaders with Twilight, Prince Jewelius tells the citizens a slightly altered recount of how Princess Celestia, Shining Armor and Twilight's friends failed to suspect Queen Chrysalis and refused to listen to Twilight's warnings about her. Once they're told about this (and once they witness the heroes making a failed escape attempt in response to Jewelius' New Era Speech in which he promises to rectify their mistakes), the citizens turn on the heroes for putting them all in danger and accept Jewelius as their new ruler.
• Marionettes: Deconstructs the idea of Monster of the Aesop by showing how heartless it is for a being to only exist for the purpose of teaching a moral lesson. The Masquerade is also deconstructed, as rather than keep the public safe, it's kept them in the dark about serious threats that could have been potentially stopped earlier than they actually were. This can and has gotten ponies hurt or killed, which is why the filly Bon Bon and Lyra are guardians of, Tootsie Flute, is an orphan to begin with.
• MLP is a deconstruction of the entire show which aims to bring the Fridge Horror and more adult implications of the show to the forefront; it is also a deconstruction of other Friendship is Magic fanfics. For instance, it ties together the common fanon that Rainbow Dash is gay with the fact that she moved out of her hometown of Cloudsdale by presenting the theory that she was driven out due to homophobia. It also emphasizes the Vile Villain, Saccharine Show and Surprisingly Creepy Moment aspects of the show to paint Equestria as a full-fledged Crapsaccharine World, and plays the main characters' flaws far more seriously and dramatically than the original show did.
• My Brave Pony: Starfleet Nemesis
  • The original story's Speak Ill of the Dead of Twilight Sparkle is deconstructed when Starla insults Twilight and Lightning tells her to stop.
  • Starfleet and the Unicornicopians' Fantastic Racism is hardly tolerated by the Equestrians.
  • Spike, despite receiving a power boost in Starfleet Magic is still regarded as a child by the Elements of Harmony and they point out how unethical it is of Starfleet to send him into battle. He also faces harassment from soldiers under his own command because of his age and species.
  • Starfleet's inflexibility is taken apart. As demonstrated in "Promontory", the caribou easily massacre hordes of Starfleet soldiers because the Space Ponies couldn't adapt to the situation. Their uniforms also make them easy to spot in the forest they are currently in while the caribou stick to cover. The caribou also take advantage of the fact that Starfleet need to say phrases to summon their attacks and weapons.
• Parting Words: The fic tears into Celestia's Trickster Mentor methods, showing the harm they caused, the consequences of them, and the reasons why such a wise, benevolent character would do something so flawed. It does a similar thing with Applejack and the other adults' failure to address the CMC's bullying.
• Party of None deconstructs the logic of Dark Fic applied to the actual Canon episode "Party of One".
• The Pony POV Series deconstructs many things in the series, such as the fact Scootaloo doesn't have any known family being explained by Parental Abandonment, Diamond Tiara being an Alpha Bitch being due to a horrible home life, Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy having Split Personality disorders, and the primary focus of the story being that the World-Healing Wave following Discord's defeat didn't fix the ponies he Mind Raped all the way. Ultimately becomes a Reconstruction and the characters ultimately end up better than before as a result.
• Post Nuptials takes a much closer look at the subplot in "A Canterlot Wedding" in which Twilight is Made Out to Be a Jerkass by her friends for accusing Princess Cadance of being evil, only to be technically proven right later when it turns out the true Cadance was kidnapped and replaced with the sadistic Changeling Queen to kickstart an invasion of Canterlot and enslave Equestria. In the canon two-parter, Angst? What Angst? is employed, but in this fic here, Twilight's friends feel beyond horrible for how easily they were tricked into turning against her (in Spike's case, he's so wracked up with guilt that he can't even bring himself to be in the same room with Twilight because he's afraid she'll completely reject him). Then when Twilight easily forgives them, they actually feel even worse because then it makes them think she is too good to be their friend. Twilight, meanwhile, actually feels extremely hurt and betrayed over what happened, but also blames herself for not gathering evidence or privately sharing her suspicions with Princess Celestia before throwing out barely sound accusations. As a result, she simply pretends to instantly forgive everybody to avoid thinking about what could have happened if she turned out to be wrong. This only lasts for one day, however, so in the last chapter she finally admits to both herself and her friends that she's furious and chews them out over how they treated her. This allows Twilight to start truly forgiving everyone, because she's no longer holding in her anger and resentment over the whole thing. However, there's still some damage done due to what happened so a minor sub-plot of the sequel focuses on Twilight learning how to trust her friends again.
  • Families manages to take a dark and realistic look at several fan fic ideas, like Scootabuse, Tyrant Celestia, and dealing with some consequences that failing to stop a full-out invasion would cause.
• RainbowDoubleDash's Lunaverse uses the alternate perspective of Trixie and her universe's Element-bearers to reexamine the canon Mane Six. Nothing changes about their personalities, but the results are very different.
• Shorn: Of Last Evening Together by Penstroke Pony, writer of Past Sins. Penstroke, who wrote the story as a silly tale of Rarity spending some time in contemplation about having to shear her mane and tail hairs to go to the monastery, wasn't aware of the negative historical connotations of hair shearing a woman. R.H. Junior wrote Shorn to set the record straight regarding the practice, making historical parallels to real life events and anecdotes in his version.
• The Ballad of Echo the Diamond Dog: Of the MLP "Human In Equestria/Self Insert" subgenre. Instead of a pony, able to get along, he's a Diamond Dog, who are regarded about as well as... well, Orcs. Instead of things going his way, he's rendered mute within minutes of his arrival. Discord openly states that his presence there is guaranteed to cause chaos wherever he goes. He faces out-and-out racism because of his species. Darker elements of the show are explored.
• The Conversion Bureau spawned numerous stories of this kind of varying qualities.
  • Grayscale has the scenario play out as usual... but all the ponies have the same characterization as the show, including/especially Princess Celestia, who does not have any control over the barrier and does make the process entirely voluntary. The Equestrians themselves are divided into those who believe they're committing genocide and those who believe they should save as many people as possible. It's mentioned that while the Human Liberation Front attacks the bureaus, so do ponies. The Mane Six nearly broke up when they disagreed about the process was right or not. Pinkie Pie did go insane and is in an asylum. The ponies who work at the centers themselves burn out mentally, and the readers see what happens as a pony doctor goes insane and tries to kill her coworkers, as well and being driven to despair and begging for someone to kill her.
    "We tear them so the soul leaks out! Nothing left, and something grows, but it's not what it was! Not what it was!"
  • The universe presented in The Conversion Bureau: Not Just Ponies is a unique twist on it: it's a deconstruction of both the common types while reconstructing the setting. Namely in this universe, the issue really is a natural disaster no one has any control over, and the common portrayals of the setting are believed to be true by some on both sides, but those assumptions are wrong and the consequences of people believing they are are explored. As a result, New Foals get treated with Fantastic Racism by both sides, the PER and HLF are both extremist lunatics who grossly misunderstand the issue and cause more harm than good, and the attempts by some bits of humanity to 'save' the human race amount to trying to kill genuinely good people who are trying to do whatever they can to save another race from something neither side can control. One instance is the PER converting a human... who was going to convert anyway, but into a different creature who is now trapped as a creature they didn't want to be.
  • The Conversion Bureau: Not Alone: This fic takes the original story and shows just how it would realistically play out.
    • First off, humanity is not flattered by the ponies' Holier Than Thou judgmental attitudes and blatant Assimilation Plot, declaring war as a result. Also, the effects of the expanding Equestrian barrier are further examined (the loss of infrastructure and displacement of millions of people causes a major humanitarian crisis), and it's shown that some ponies (and non-ponies) sympathize with the humans.
    • Even the ponies suspect something's wrong with the conversion bureaus when they realize there's something seriously off with the newfoals.
    • Pony superiority over humans in battle was also shot down, as Rainbow Dash finds out the hard way. She initially wanted to go out to the front lines, "bucking all the humans before they could hit her," but this ambition dies very quickly once she sees the Royal Guards returning from the battlefield, many of whom are wounded badly or permanently disfigured.
    • The barrier is also given some deconstruction - the author points out that while magical barriers are strong, it is shown that they can be broken (specifically pointing to the Canterlot Invasion by the Changelings in Season 2). Thus, sufficient firepower is capable of bringing it down.
  • The Conversion Bureau: The Other Side of the Spectrum:
    • Like Not Alone, it's shown that the barrier's displacement of millions of people has caused a major humanitarian crisis, and such large chunks of land being lost behind it means that humanity has less arable land to farm crops and raise livestock, so food production is cut down sharply. The Starvation side story and lines of exposition in the main story reveal that civilians have to get by on meager rations as the military takes most of the priority in getting most available sustenence, and some people are hungry and desperate enough to either resort to cannibalism or make a meal out of the Newfoals.
    • The second chapter of the Calm Before the Storm side story is specifically dedicated to deconstructing a point of Fridge Logic with the Conversion Bureau genre - how is Equestria able to support both a war against humanity and a sudden influx of millions to billions of newfoals? The story has a clear answer: they can't. For one thing, they're forced to rapidly industrialize and destroy their own environment to produce enough materials to just stay afloat in the war, making them no different from humanity in that regard. There's also nowhere near enough jobs or food to support this explosive growth, and their economy has grown dependent on the mass exploitation of newfoal slave labor, screwing them over even more in the long run. On top of that, thanks to the barrier, they've destroyed all the infrastructure and materials they could have possibly used to support their war effort and make colonizing Earth easier, so they've only made things harder for themselves. And it also shows that having zombie-like citizens obedient to a fault is pretty bad, culturally, given that the newfoals are explicitly mentioned to work themselves to death if they aren't told to take a break and they make the perfect prostitutes because they literally can't say no to anything a natural born pony asks of them.
  • The Negotiations-verse: The story makes it clear that a mostly medieval/slightly industrialized nation (whose soldiers wield swords, spears and arrows) wouldn't do well in warfare against 21st century tactics and weaponry, Twilight Sparkle has to work tirelessly to bring about peace between humanity and the ponies in the aftermath of the Conversion War, and even comes up with a reason for why Equestria would even go to Earth in the first place.
• The Flash Sentry Chronicles: Spike's crush on Rarity gets deconstructed. While Rarity never encouraged Spike's crush on her, she also did nothing to discourage it either. Also, because Spike is still a child, he thought that all the times she flirted and coddled with him were her returning his feelings. As a result, when he finds out that Rarity had been dating Lightning Blitz, he doesn't take it well, and even after Rarity tried to politely turn him down, he still tried to win her affections. It took Lightning Blitz to ask him some uncomfortable questions, and calling him out on it to convince Spike to let go of his feelings for Rarity.
• The Last Draconequus: Not The Hero is a deconstruction through and through, showing what a typical Gary Stu self-insert looks like from the outside. Essentially, the villain of the story is a Reality Warper with powers surpassing even Discord himself, who has mind-raped the main six and the princesses into loving him and thinking he's a great hero, and even altered the Elements of Harmony themselves to make himself into the seventh Element. He's terrifying.
• The Non-Bronyverse: Don't Go Into the Everfree Forest, TD for ponification fics. The change is nightmare-inducing and whatever he's contracted is slowly brainwashing him into thinking he's always been a pony.
• The Rise of Darth Vulcan: Vulcan tears into quite a few things about the show AND the fandom, from the ways ponies live, Diamond Tiara's continued behavior as a bully and the many, many stupid decisions by the Princesses, and many a fanfic plot that makes no sense even within the confines of what is shown in the show. And he's not afraid to tell the Princesses about his observations. The story itself deconstructs quite a few other tropes:
  • The Main Characters Do Everything: Deconstructed on the side of the Equestrians. The Mane Six are just six gifted civilian ponies who lack the training or mindset to deal with someone like Ted, and their lack of preparation ends with Pinkie Pie being hurt emotionally and physically when her method of capturing him (using the Party Cannon) doesn't work right at a critical moment.
  • The Chessmaster is deconstructed through Celestia primarily. The Celestia of this story seems to be addicted to her scheming, always going for the convoluted clever plot to do things when more direct action might be more appropriate instead. Disturbingly, she outright tries to invoke being a chessmaster, buying into her own hype.
  • Murder Is the Best Solution: Vulcan makes a point to avoid it (and to avoid extreme measures in general) because it would make his opposition come after him with much more enthusiasm.
• The Sun is Tired takes the favorite fandom sawhorse of Celestia being a tyrant and beats it up by showing how a good ruler could get that image.
• The World Jumper: Regarding Mare-Do-Well. Turning Trix would also deconstruct the real danger behind even comedic enemies like Trixie.
• Twilight Sparkle, You're Being Ridiculous
  • The fic deconstructs the "Canterlot Wedding angst" fics but in a different way. Many such fics have Princess Celestia exiling Twilight over her misbehavior at Canterlot's wedding. Celestia herself laughs at the idea of banishing Twilight: Princess Celestia is a Reasonable Authority Figure who would never banish her prized pupil and a Bearer of the Elements of Harmony over a minor slight. Instead, they talk their fears and concerns out.
  • The sequel takes a sledgehammer at the idea of Twilight undergoing a Face–Heel Turn: despite being hurt over the wedding, Twilight would still be too nice to be truly villainous and she immediately regrets hurting somepony, even accidentally.
• In the story Xenophilia, the low male-to-female ratio in the cartoon is deconstructed when Rainbow Dash mentions that for every four fillies, only one colt is born - closer to one in seven in Ponyville - and as a result many mares end up either lonely or having to resort to lesbian relationships, and monogamy is percieved as selfish by many of them.

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