A Hairy Problem
by BlueBastard is a My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fanfic.
Applejack's got a slight problem. The kind of problem that she really can't turn to her family and friends for help. Unfortunately for her, ponies are already starting to figure out what it is...and it's not going to be easy for the Element of Lycanthrop...Honesty.
The story now has a sequel: A Hairier Problem: Rise of the Furball.
The whole story has been read here
This fanfic contains examples of:
- All Periods Are PMS: Forced to try and explain her recent strange behavior, Applejack gives the reason as being this. Everypony believes her.
- Arranged Marriage: If Iron Will can bring the body of a werewolf he has killed to the Minotaur King, he'll automatically be engaged to the princess.
- Ascended to a Higher Plane of Existence: Queen Faust.
- Awesome Personnel Carrier:
- Subverted with the CMC's "car" which is anything but awesome and causes the events of the fic to occur through its crash.
- Played straight later on when the vehicle Lyra and Sandalwood were building turns out to be much more reliable and ends up being the means as to how the duo save Applejack from a crowd of dogs chasing her through town.
- Twilight uses an apple and the chariot transformation spell from The Best Night Ever on the CMC's car so that everyone can help track down Applejack. The combination turns out to create a truck.
- Body Horror: Comes with the territory of involving werewolves, but even then Applejack's first transformation into her wolf form is rather traumatic in the description from her view point.
- Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: Referenced by name in chapter 7.
- Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Princess Celestia of all ponies, albeit more of a minor case.
- Call-Forward: There's quite a few to the episode Magical Mystery Cure, mainly Star Swirl's book.
- Carnivore Confusion: Partially averted. Most ponies are treated as omnivores who can consume meat but prefer strictly vegetarian diets, while other species who are obviously carnivores openly consume meat at specialized restaurants such as The Meatery. Where such places would get specific kinds of meat like beef, pork, lamb, etc. (most of those coming from animals who are sentient in Equestria) remains unspecified.
- Character Filibuster: Applejack's thought process during one particularly odd scene where she isn't even aware of her actions until she starts listing off strange things she's done recently, where the last item is actually the thing she was doing at that moment.
- Cursed with Awesome: What all of the newly turned werewolves think of Sombra's 'gift' to them; the ability to turn into monstrous wolf/pony hybrids.
- Applejack also initially thinks that being a werewolf could actually be pretty cool shortly after undergoing her first transformation. She slowly changes her mind, though.
- Death by Adaptation: Applejack's parents were apparently killed by a werewolf attack, whereas the cause of their deaths were left unknown in canon. Chapter 17 subverts this, however: Applejack's parents were attacked by a werewolf Celestia thinks was Sable Loam, but they survived and are said to have become werewolves themselves.
- Easily Forgiven: Even though she got pinned to a wall and nearly choked out by a raging, short tempered Applejack, Sandalwood is quick to forgive her at a later luncheon where Applejack apologizes for the bad behavior.
- Eats Babies: At one point, Applejack momentarily thinks that the Cake Twins, Pound Cake and Pumpkin Cake, would make for a great dessert. She then snaps back to reality and orders a chocolate cake to avoid an awkward moment. She has a similar moment when sneaking around the Cutie Mark Crusaders as a wolf to avoid detection so she can change back into her pony form. She even imagines Scootaloo as a chicken once.
- Generation Xerox: Applejack looks strikingly similar to Fair Vista, Stable Loam's mate, because she is a direct descendant. This is also why Applejack didn't become a mindless werewolf upon transformation: Fair Vista's genes were immune to the lobotomy that the lycanthropy usually causes, and Apple inherited that from her.
- Homage: The setting of the last scene in chapter 4 is a reference to The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror ride at Disney parks.
- Info Dump: Chapter 4, also qualifies as Lecture as Exposition.
- Menstrual Menace: Later in the story Applejack actually has to go though "the joys of marehood" and her werewolf pheromones end up causing every dog in town to chase her.
- Noodle Incident: Literally. After Applejack freaks out at a restaurant due to unintentionally eating half a hamburger, a griffon who was there for the event is described as pulling out spaghetti noodle bits from her feathers. What exactly happened is never explained.
- The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: In order for Applejack to break the werewolf curse on herself, she has to kill Sable Loam. In the end, she gladly does so. However, the sequel subverts this: killing Sable Loam only put her lycanthropy in regression, which was re-activated when touched by dark magic.
- Our Werewolves Are Different: The werewolf in this case is a pony/wolf rather than the usual full-wolf.
- Painful Transformation: Applejack's first change into her wolf-like form.
- Predatory Business: Subverted. Rich's Barnyard Bargains would appear to be this, but its owner Filthy Rich is described as not wanting to drive every small business in town into bankruptcy. Rich's main competition, Stallmart, on the other hand...
- The Quiet One: Somewhat subverted with Big Mac. While in some cases he's just as quiet as he is in the show, at other times he's saying more words in one sitting than the combined total of every line he's ever said in the show thus far.
- Rube Goldberg Hates Your Guts: In order to protect the Elements of Harmony better than the magic door Discord easily bypassed, Celestia ends up creating a rather elaborate deathtrap similar to a Rube Goldberg machine that would instantly kill anypony other than herself and Twilight Sparkle who tried to get the Elements by firing a large number of exploding crossbows to make the entire trap explode or reset. It backfires spectacularly when Celestia and Luna need to get the Elements and Celestia finds disarming the trap is significantly harder than she thought.
- Schizo Tech: Equestria now has a limited number of TV sets with accompanying VCR players and a small number of movies on tapes. It's implied only the princesses and the mane six have such devices due to them still being highly experimental, but even then Queen Chrysalis somehow managed to steal a TV and VCR for herself. At the same time video game cabinets have existed in Ponyville for quite a while in show canon.
- Shout-Out:
- A new Pony in town, Sandalwood, is a deliberate Alternate Universe version of DJ Martinez from All-American Girl. Ironically, Sandalwood gets along "fabulously" with Rarity, whereas in All American Girl, Rarity is prejudiced against humans and has a strained relationship with DJ.
- Applejack's first werewolf transformation is largely based on the famous sequence in An American Werewolf in London with some changes due to her being a pony
- The latest book in the Daring Do novel series is Daring Do and the Philosopher's Legacy.
- The three main characters of The Golden Armor make a brief appearance in a restaurant setting and later end up saving Applejack from making a bad situation worse where one of the trio is thanked by name.
- One of the new restaurants in Ponyville is called The Bannered Mare.
- Iron Will's "hunting" gear bears more than a passing resemblance to Sam Fisher's usual look.
- Pinkie once mentions getting rid of timberwolves by pulling a lever and flooding the area with lava, then wondering if that only works on elephants. Twilight yells at Pinkie, asking of she looks like a dwarf.
- The narrator on Fluttershy's documentary on trees keeps repeating "the Larch".
- During a flashback sequence, when Sable Loam and Fair Vista are having lunch in a restaurant, they use the pseudonyms Roneo and Starlet.
- Snark-to-Snark Combat: Celestia and Luna tend to engage each other in this from time to time.
- Stars Are Souls: Much like in the episode Apple Family Reunion, a pair of shooting stars are implied to be the deceased Apple parents, except in this case Applejack outright says the stars are their parents looking down on them.
- What Have I Become?:
- The reaction some of the original werewolves have when the full repercussions of their condition become apparent.
- Applejack eventually starts fearing this herself after she thinks Rainbow Dash's plot looks good enough to literally eat.
