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Fanfic / Cheerilee's Garden

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Want a good reason for why you should pay attention in school? Here you go.

Meet Cheerilee: teacher, loveable character (on My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic), and - according to fanfiction writer Unahim - a sadistic killer of children. Well, at least the children she deems worthless.

Cheerilee is facing a problem that probably many teachers have in their careers. Her students are acting up and not paying attention in class, and whatever they do pay attention to just isn't sinking in. Cheerilee has tried and tried again to teach this restless bunch, but everything she's tried so far has failed. Cheerilee is at her wits' end. She feels worthless as a teacher and, thanks to her students' inability to learn, is on the verge of a mid-life crisis. Her whole life, sanity included, is crumbling. She doesn't reach out for help from fellow teachers, nor does she see a therapist. She finds a different, possibly better solution.

Brutally and sadistically torture and kill any and all children that are giving her trouble, in a way that is very reminiscent of Cupcakes (Sergeant Sprinkles). In fact, many would say Cheerilee's Garden is Cupcakes's Spiritual Successor. Right down to being a Troll Fic gone a little too far.

The fanfiction can be read here but be warned: It's Cupcakes's Spiritual Successor for a reason. Has a PPC mission here.


Cheerilee's Garden provides examples of:

  • Alone with the Psycho: Twist gets this feeling when she realizes that Cheerilee, who has been transferred to her school, might be the killer. She's terrified at the prospect of having to come to school for the rest of the year.
  • Artistic License – Physics: Scootaloo's legs should have snapped long before she was crushed.
  • Asshole Victim:
    • Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon's deaths are just as gruesome as everypony else's, but their bullying ways may paint it as deserved.
    • Cheerilee herself becomes this when Twilight kills her. Unfortunately, this, combined with misintepretion of Spike's letter to Celestia, makes the police think that Twilight committed all of the murders and that Cheerilee was just another innocent victim.
  • The Bad Guy Wins: Cheerilee has a terrible inability to get rid of evidence in a smart and safe manner. Fortunately for her, Twilight arrives on the scene and unwittingly destroys the evidence for her. Although Cheerilee is killed by Twilight, she posthumously gets off scot-free while Twilight is blamed for her atrocities.
  • Bring My Brown Pants: A few of the characters urinate themselves from their torture.
  • Bullying a Dragon: Cheerilee decides to drive Twilight, the Element of Magic and somepony who would completely outmatch her in a fair fight, over the Despair Event Horizon by slaughtering all her friends and relaying this information to her. Naturally, this ends up being Cheerilee's undoing.
  • Cold-Blooded Torture: This and below make it obvious how abhorrent Cheerilee is.
  • Cruel and Unusual Death: All of Cheerilee's victims.
  • Dead Man Writing: Near the end of the story, Spike sends out a final message as he lies on the ground dying to expose Cheerilee for her crimes. However, since he had to rush the writing, it ends up getting misinterpreted, and Twilight ends up taking the blame instead.
  • Death Trap: Cheerilee sets these up to take out the Mane Six.
  • Defiant to the End: Rainbow Dash (unsurprisingly), Spike and Applejack.
  • Descending Ceiling: Scootaloo's "punishment". She's trapped in a metal cage with thin bars for the floor, and a metal plate is slowly descended upon her, eventually crushing her into goo.
  • Despair Event Horizon: Apple Bloom, though obviously terrified and in mortal agony, stays spirited and defiant throughout most of her torture. It's only when Cheerilee cuts off the skin from her flank and points out that she's failed in her goal as a Cutie Mark Crusader that Apple Bloom is finally overcome by tears. She offers no further words or notable resistance in the remaining few minutes of her life.
    • It's implied that Twilight's death drove Celestia to this, as she decides that any system that would send her student to her death was flawed, and plans on razing Equestria and forming her new, totalitarian Solar Empire.
    • Twilight too, upon realizing even Celestia didn't believe she was innocent, driving her to throw herself off the roof.
  • Dirty Coward: Cheerilee takes sadistic pleasure in torturing her victims as long as they're helpless and she has Anti-Magic and death traps to back her up, but is reduced to begging for her life as soon as Twilight puts her on the ropes.
  • Disproportionate Retribution: Murdering misbehaving colts and fillies is not the answer!
  • Downer Ending: See "The Bad Guy Wins" above. Even then, another layer of depression is added when Celestia plans to raze Equestria and form a new, totalitarian Solar Empire.
  • Driven to Suicide: Twilight Sparkle, upon realizing even Celestia didn't think she was innocent.
  • Dying Declaration of Love: Spike and Rarity moments before they die.
  • Evil Gloating: A rare heroic example, where an utterly pissed-off Twilight sadistically taunts Cheerilee before killing her. Since Cheerilee enjoyed her own victims' ineffectual pleas for mercy, it's painted as deserved.
  • Eye Scream: What happens to Silver Spoon.
    • Fluttershy gets an eye stung out by an Everfree Forest insect.
  • Fantastic Racism: Cheerilee seems prejudiced against unicorns, holding them in contempt for relying on magic. She takes particular pleasure in the idea that an earth pony could take down Twilight Sparkle.
  • For the Evulz: Cheerilee's motivation, though she won't admit it even to herself. See "Knight Templar" below.
  • Gorn: Unless you're not familiar with Dark Fics or know what the story is about, chances are you'll want blood. And oh boy, will you get it.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: Silver Spoon is given the choice between being tortured herself or hitting a button to dump acid on Diamond Tiara. When faced with the prospect of her tongue being cut out, she does hit the button, but is so guilt-stricken at hearing her friend's screams that she stops, and resolves never to hit the button again. It only buys them a few more minutes of life, but they at least die together.
  • Hollywood Acid: Cheerilee uses this as part of Diamond Tiara's "punishment".
  • Hope Spot: There's a short section of the narration where Cheerilee laments that the play is too short to allow her to torture Snails to death as she has been doing to his classmates. So she resigns herself to making his death quick and violent rather than drawn out and violent.
    • There's one where Celestia rescues Twilight from her execution and proposes they run away, but it's shattered almost immediately when she reveals that not even she thinks Twilight is innocent. This drives the latter to jump off the roof to her death.
      • By extension, the setup for this tragedy is Spike's final moments, wherein he is able to call for Celestia's help by sending a hastily-written letter describing their situation. But that very letter is misinterpreted by the royal court as evidence of Twilight's guilt, and Celestia's presence at the scene of Cheerilee's death provided the means by which Twilight was saved from death, only to be wrongly convicted. Thus, had Spike not sent that letter, Twilight would never have been Driven to Suicide by Celestia's belief in her guilt, and Celestia would never have been driven to doom all of Equestria to an eternity of tyrannical rule under the reign of the Solar Empire.
  • I Lied: Cheerilee promises to let Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon go if the former managed to reach the latter. A difficult task, considering that Diamond Tiara's legs had been Stripped to the Bone by acid, but she pulled it off... and then Cheerilee reveals that she lied and dumps acid on them both.
    • Has this to say later.
    Oh Applejack, so honest that you’ve forgotten ponies can lie, have you?
  • I'm a Humanitarian: Well, Apple Bloom isn't by choice, but Cheerilee tricks her into drinking what's left of Scootaloo.
    • Cheerilee herself shows some proclivities toward this, given her increasingly frequent habit of tasting her victims' blood.
    • The same goes for Twilight, who is force-fed the remains of her friends.
  • Insane Troll Logic: Cheerilee decides the Mane 6 are fair game because her students weren't paying attention, and several of them were close to Twilight and her friends, therefore it's Twilight's fault for "corrupting" them. It's clear that her real motive is simply to punish anyone who tries to bring her to justice.
  • Karmic Death: In the end, Twilight kills Cheerilee just as brutally and sadistically as the heartless teacher killed her own victims. Cheerilee's tongue is torn out, her eyes are burst in their sockets, and she is slashed all along her body, all of which are variants of "punishments" that she herself doled out to ponies who were powerless to stop her.
  • Knight Templar: Cheerilee initially seems to become this, thinking that the naughty foals and "corruptive" influences like the Mane Six must be purged to bring peace and morality to Ponyville. Its subversion becomes increasingly obvious as the story goes on, though, culminating in the moment where Twilight calls out Cheerilee for using her "cause" as a weak excuse to cover up the fact that she is a Serial Killer who murders ponies for the enjoyment of it.
    • At the end, Celestia vows to become one as well in order to avenge Twilight against the legal system that screwed her over.
  • Mercy Kill: Cheerilee made an already-tortured Rainbow Dash do this to her friend after mortally wounding her.
  • Miscarriage of Justice: Due to a nasty series of Contrived Coincidences, all of Cheerilee's crimes get pinned on Twilight instead.
  • Never Say "Die": Believe it or not, played straight at the end of Diamond Tiara's and Silver Spoon's torture.
    “Both of the fillies looked up as they heard a rumbling noise coming from a pipe above them, and as they saw a familiar clear liquid gush down they realized they wouldn’t get to see anything else, ever again.”
  • Precision F-Strike: Apple Bloom gets one out during her torture.
    ‘“B...buck...y-you...’ the Cutie Mark Crusader managed to stammer."
  • Sadistic Choice: Silver Spoon is given one in the form of a button that she can press to temporarily stop her torture device, but pours acid into Diamond Tiara's trap.
  • Serial Killer: Cheerilee - who else? She paints herself as a Mission-Based killer to herself and her victims, but gradually reveals herself to be Hedonistic.
  • Ship Tease: Twilight ponders whether or not Pinkie Pie helped Rainbow Dash get through Scootaloo's death.
  • Start of Darkness: For Princess Celestia.
  • Stripped to the Bone: The ultimate fate of both Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon, via Hollywood Acid.
  • "Take That!" Kiss: Done twice by Cheerilee to Twilight. The first is relatively standard, but the second occurs during the final moments of Twilight's life, during which Cheerilee kisses Twilight more and more deeply as she feels Twilight's life ebbing away; as if that wasn't enough, the story implies that Cheerilee is brought to orgasm by the sensation of Twilight's death.
  • This Is Unforgivable!: Twilight flat-out tells Cheerilee that she has to die for what she did.
  • Together in Death: Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon die in each other's arms.
  • Tongue Trauma: Another method Cheerilee uses to "punish" Silver Spoon.
    • Applejack gets this later.
  • Torture Porn: What the whole fanfic is.
  • Torture Technician: Cheerilee.
  • Troll Fic: Unahim admits in an author's note that this story was done just for the hell of it, and none of it reflects Unahim's actual perception of the characters.
  • Unstoppable Rage: Twilight is in a state of utter murderous rage when she comes back to life and gets Cheerilee alone, after the death of all her friends. She literally tears her to shreds.
  • Villains Want Mercy: Cheerilee is reduced to begging for her life when Twilight overpowers her. She receives no mercy.
  • Weeding Out Imperfections: Cheerilee becomes fed up with her students because they always get into trouble, never seem to learn anything, and won't listen to her. While looking at her garden, she realizes she hasn't taken care of it for a while, allowing it to be overrun with vines and weeds that are choking the flowers. This causes her to see her students as weeds that she needs to prune in order for the flowers to grow...and by "prune," we mean "murder."
  • Would Hurt a Child: Or in Cheerilee's case, slowly and painfully torture them to death.
  • You Monster!: Applejack tells this to Cheerilee before being forced to cut her own hind leg off.
  • Zorro Mark: Cheerilee carves the word "Weed" into Apple Bloom's torso.

"I, Cheerilee, will never let any tropes take over my life, ever again."

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