The Rejuvenation Play
is a My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic/Doctor Who fanfic by Purple Patch, published in 2016 on FimFiction.com. Set approximately seven years before Season 1, it tells the story of one very eventful play taking place in Ponyville. A heavily-pregnant Derpy Doo is taking part in the event, playing the equally-pregnant Dandelion. Meanwhile, Princess Celestia is in the audience, most of the other actors have their own issues and the Doctor is running around. This cannot possibly end badly.
This is the first story in The Rejuvenationverse, and the direct sequel is Fanfic/Old Fences.
This story contains examples of:
- Aristocrats Are Evil: Played straight by Countess Magnifying Glass, although not by Derpy, her niece.
- Bedlam House: Glanders Gate is described in this way.
- Beleaguered Bureaucrat: Mayor Mare.
- Evil Matriarch: Countess Magnifying Glass of Invitro Hall.
- Evil Overlord: Tirek, as in canon.
- Half-Human Hybrid: The father of Derpy's foal is the Doctor, after a drunken encounter some months earlier.
- Hot as Hell: Aloe and Lotus' costumes are designed to evoke this.
- I Choose to Stay: The Doctor, at the end.
- Incendiary Exponent: The Megan costume. Apparently dynamite is part of its construction.
- I Need a Freaking Drink: Mayor Mare and her friends after the play. They go for something stronger after meeting Countess Glass.
- Large Ham: Bulk Biceps, part of the reason for his casting as Tirek in the Rejuvenation Play.
- Maternity Crisis: Derpy goes into labour towards the end of her first scene.
- Meet Cute: After the Doctor bowls over Fancy Pants, he's helped up by Fleur.
- Noble Fugitive: Derpy, although until the end of the story her pursuers were content to let her live in hiding.
- No Plans, No Prototype, No Backup: The 'Family Agreement' signed by Derpy. There were copies, but they were destroyed after Derpy started using them as evidence of abuse. The original was later destroyed by Mayor Mare to keep it from being enforced.
- Not That Kind of Doctor: The Doctor is less than helpful during the delivery, despite his best efforts.
- Not What It Looks Like: An unconscious Written Script with his head between Derpy's legs. He'd fainted upon being told she'd gone into labour.
- Oh, No... Not Again!: Lyra's response to her Megan suit spontaneously breathing fire despite not having a flamethrower installed.
- Pantomime Animal: Megan, as played by Lyra and Bon-Bon.
- Produce Pelting: Invoked by Mayor Mare on Aloe and Lotus to try and stop the play's rating getting any further above PG.
- Purple Prose: Ponet's rewritten lines suffer badly from this and Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe. To the point where he gives Celestia flashbacks to Luna.
- Really Royalty Reveal: Derpy is revealed to be related to one of Canterlot's most noble families in the epilogue.
- Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: Countess Glass has this philosophy.
- Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: And when the above fails, she falls back on this.
- Shoot the Messenger: Tirek to Verrucas, Ponet's dismay at having such a small role results in attempts to pad his part.
- Show Within a Show:The eponymous Rejuvenation Play.
- Stage Fright: Written Script suffers from this. To the point where he rewrote most of his lines to give them to other people.
- Stylistic Suck: The play definitely suffers from this.
- Summon Bigger Fish: When Countess Glass threatens to use her influence to ruin Derpy's life, Mayor Mare points out that Celestia attended the birth of Derpy's foal.
- What Could Possibly Go Wrong?: Carrot Top thinks this. Her thought is interrupted by a Screaming Birth.
