YMMV / Hooves of Death

• Angst? What Angst?: While witnessing the Yellowstone Camp crash and burn was quite harrowing, it only takes a quick pep talk from Blaze and Kate to get her moving again, despite the fact that just about everyone she knows (especially her crush, Commander Sprinkles) is likely dead. Less than a day later, she's back to smiling and cracking jokes. Meanwhile, it's hard to tell if Blaze more sullen than usual, while Kate is used to it at this point.
• Arc Fatigue:
  • Around season 3 more and more readers became tired of the increasingly convoluted story twists that kept Glitter and Death apart, as many felt at this point the author was essentially just stalling and drawing the story out to an annoying degree. This got especially bad in episode 123, where Death and Glitter are finally reunited, but are kept from becoming steed and full-fledged rider once again by Famine stopping them at the last second. Readers' frustration with this particular story-line became so bad, it got its own term: "steedblocking".
  • The on-going love triangle between Glitter, Blaze and Sprinkles that has yet to be resolved or even hint at an outcome, but tends to pop up seemingly at random whenever the author needs interpersonal conflict to tear the group apart. See Romantic Plot Tumor below. Said fatigue has let up a bit after the author eventually wrapped it up.
• Complete Monster:
  • Pestilence is the third Horseman of the Apocalypse and the most malevolent. Taking Glitter's brother Starlight as his steed, Pestilence convinces Death that humanity deserves to suffer for their crimes and that the apocalypse shouldn't end. Pestilence unleashes zombie plagues and has Sorceress experiment on immune magical creatures to find a way to infect them. Pestilence sends Death to kill Kate, the girl prophesied to stop the apocalypse, and has his zombies invade Griffin kingdom after he learns the heroes are there. When Death returns, having failed to kill Kate, Pestilence sends him to kill Famine, who refused to go along with his plan. Pestilence captures Glitter, Death's steed, and tries to have Death kill her to make sure the apocalypse is eternal. After Starlight frees his sister, Pestilence has him imprisoned. When the Fae queen Vardeline tries to offer him an alliance, Pestilence has her drained of her magic and left to die. He uses Fae magic to strengthen his zombies and sends them to attack Glacier Park, resulting in the infection of Famine's steed. When faced with the heroes and their army, Pestilence uses his zombies as a shield and gloats that with Fae magic, no being on the planet will be immune to his zombie plague.
  • The Sorceress is Pestilence's servant, tasked with finding ways to infect immune magical creatures. She is given Commander Sprinkles and allowed to experiment on him for months before turning him into a sapient zombie. The Sorceress then infects other unicorns and magical creatures. The Sorceress makes her base in the Grand Canyon where Summer Fae hid and fills her cave with trophies from her kills. The Sorceress starts capturing Fae in order to find a way to infect them, eventually capturing Queen Citrine. When Glitter, Blaze, and Peeble set off to rescue the Queen, Sorceress tries to get Sprinkles to murder his friends before sending her other unicorns at them.
• He's Just Hiding: Commander Sprinkles seems to pull a Heroic Sacrifice in Episode 7 so that the remaining survivors can escape, yet he's also Made of Iron and he's on the comic's cover art, prompting this reaction from most readers. They would eventually be proven right when he returned as an intelligent zombie in episode 61.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The early chapters have some similarities to The Conversion Bureau, but at least humans and ponies have an external force to hate instead of just each other.
• I Knew It!: Commander Sprinkles being alive was something a lot of readers had speculated even early on. Granted, when he returns it's as an undead, but still.
• Romantic Plot Tumor: The Love Triangle between Sergeant Glitter, Blaze and Commander Sprinkles is generally considered one of the weaker aspects of the story. Particularly since Blaze's jealousy over Glitter being more drawn to Sprinkles has him stuck with the Jerkass Ball more than once and Glitter's obliviousness to Blaze's obvious feelings for her makes her look uncharacteristically dense.
• The Scrappy: Blaze isn't really well-liked among readers. Many consider his feelings toward Glitter too possessive and his constant jealous outbursts and tantrums every time it looks like Glitter might have feelings for someone else didn't exactly help his case. Not making it better is that his "confession" in episode 125 is motivated by yet another burst of jealousy after seeing Sprinkles comfort Glitter and the fact that his rant about how hard he worked for Glitter's affection and his frustration about seeing her give it to somebody else comes across as more than a bit entitled.
• The Woobie:
  • Kate. Her entire family ended up as zombie-food, the safe haven she's brought to is destroyed mere days after her arrival and seemingly every magical creature that isn't Glitter or Blaze seems to either despise her or have it out for her. To add onto all of that, she's later on told that she's to become Providence, the fifth Horseman and the one destined to slay the deserters Pestilence and Death and end the apocalypse. She feels enormous pressure to live up to that title and early on wishes it would have been someone else.
  • Glitter. Like Kate, she lost her family to the zombies and ends up losing her crush and her new home at the start of the comic.

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