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"Dash, you've gotta stay still, or I'll keep missing."
Pinkie Pie

Cupcakes is a dark and extremely gory Dark Fic of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic by Sergeant Sprinkles.

Plot synopsis: Pinkie Pie invites Rainbow Dash to her bakery and offers her a cupcake. Rainbow Dash discovers too late that the cupcake was drugged; she wakes up some time later strapped to a table in a darkened room decorated up like a party, but in place of streamers and balloons are blood, bones and body parts. Pinkie Pie appears wearing a dress made from pony flesh and a necklace of unicorn horns. She reveals that she has killed many other ponies and then tells Rainbow Dash that "her number came up". She then proceeds to slowly and brutally mutilate Rainbow Dash as described in graphic detail, eventually killing her.

Perhaps what makes this story so disturbing is that, throughout the entire story, Pinkie Pie keeps up her bubbly, cheery personality, cracking jokes and insisting that she and Rainbow Dash are having a party, even as Dash pleads and begs for her life. Not surprisingly, the fic is notorious among the fanbase, to the point where it inspired several pieces of artwork and multiple alternate endings.

In fact, the fic is so notorious that Equestria Daily deleted its post about it, but there's still an archived version on its Wordpress site. Both the original and grammar-corrected versions can be found there, but you should know what you're getting yourself into, first.

A Dramatic Reading of the story can be found here and here. A graphic novelization of the story can be found here, and we mean graphic. The sporking of this story from the continuum by the PPC can be found here, if you'd like to sleep a bit easier tonight.

For those of you who don't want to be mentally scarred for life, this intentional bastardization will basically tell you everything you need to know. It's also good for if you have read "Cupcakes" and need some Nightmare Retardant.note 

An alleged (former) Hasbro animator worked on this beauty in his spare time. If you need a version to giggle at the ghosties with, this would probably be the one for you, though still easily graphic and on the disturbitude scale of Invader Zim and Ren & Stimpy put together.

There have also been several musical works dedicated to the Fan Fiction: Including a Portal 2 "Want You Gone" cross-over/cover (and a "Still Alive" cover) and two tribute albums; by Futret and Tarby, respectively.

This fic has also caused an ever growing amount of related fanfictions by other authors. Prequels, parodies, and sequels.


Cupcakes contains examples of:

  • Adaptational Villainy: In the official series, Pinkie is a cute bubbly comic relief character. Here, she's a cannibalistic psychotic murderer.
  • Asshole Victim: Pinkie had already killed Gilda the Griffon by the time she decided to go after Rainbow Dash. There's also the resident Jerkass filly, Diamond Tiara, amongst the victims.
    • In one of the animated adaptations, along with Gilda, other victims are The Great and Powerful Trixie and Angel. As one of the more popular comments notes, "Let's be honest, Angel bunny had it coming..."
  • The Bad Guy Wins: Frankly, it's not likely anypony has had any luck trying to escape Pinkie's games.
  • Beware the Silly Ones: Pinkie Pie, a bubbly, somewhat ditzy pony, brutally murders her friend with a smile on her face and acts just that way the whole time.
  • Black Comedy: Due to Pinkie's attitude to the whole deal, and how Purple Prosey the murder is described, some people found it hilarious.
  • Bloodier and Gorier: This has WAY more blood than My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic would EVER have.
  • Bring My Brown Pants: Rainbow wets herself when Pinkie snaps her right wing off, and again when Pinkie electrocutes her.
  • Cannibal Larder: Pinkie Pie adorns her room with painted skulls, disembodied pony heads and streamers made from dried-up intestines, among other things.
  • Cerebus Syndrome: It starts out simple and friendly enough... then it gets uneasy.
  • Characteristic Trope: Almost all Dark Fics in this fandom are in some way connected to this story.
  • Cold-Blooded Torture: Pinkie Pie does this to Rainbow Dash for the entirety of the fic.
  • Cruel and Unusual Death: A good friend of yours strapping you down, mutilating your body, and having you later made into cupcakes is the last thing anyone would ever want.
  • Cute and Psycho: The most disturbing thing about the fic is that, despite all the murder, evisceration and evil cooking, Pinkie's outer self is just as happy, cute and casual as ever.
  • Darker and Edgier: Clearly very different from the cutesy, light-hearted cartoon it's inspired by.
  • Dark Fic: Well-known fanblog "Equestria Daily" has many darkfics hosted, which are sorted under the "Grimdark" tag. Cupcakes is the only fic on the site with the "GRIMDARK AS FUCK" tag. Unless Equestria Daily ever starts allowing gorefics (Cupcakes was the exception because people kept pestering the site owner about it), it will be the only one with that tag.
  • Dead Guy Puppet: Pinkie does this with Gilda's skull.
  • Death by Irony: Rainbow Dash, representing the Element of Loyalty to one's friends, was betrayed and murdered by one of them.
  • Defiant to the End: Gilda, to the point where Pinkie Pie shoved a Parasprite down her throat. Unlike Rainbow Dash, Gilda was so badass she badmouthed Pinkie Pie until she died.
  • Desperate Plea for Home: Rainbow Dash weakly sobs to Pinkie Pie that she wants to go home before the mutilations even start.
  • Disproportionate Retribution: Based on the victims we see, this could be interpreted as a Revenge Fic. However, the worst any of the victims have done is be petty Jerkasses.
  • Downer Ending: After fifty minutes of Cold-Blooded Torture, Rainbow Dash finally expires from blood loss. While Pinkie Pie is sad that her friend is gone, it's made clear that she fully intends to do the same to the rest of her friends eventually, and there's no indication that she'll be stopped any time soon.
  • Electric Torture: Pinkie hammers hot nails into Rainbow's hooves, then connects the nails to a battery.
  • Enfant Terrible: In The Stinger, Apple Bloom reveals herself to be helping Pinkie with her torture, about to target Silver Spoon next. And that's how the fanfic ends.
  • Et Tu, Brute?: Rainbow Dash had this realization when she finds out that Pinkie Pie was a mass-murderer, and was planning to kill her too.
  • Fallen Hero: The same pony representing the Element of Laughter, who helped to defeat Nightmare Moon and Discord, is now a homicidal maniac with cannibalistic intentions.
  • Fan Verse: The fanfic has been receiving an ever growing number of Spin-Offs, Spiritual Successors, Fan Sequels and Prequels, Ask Blogs and Fan Web Comics based on or is set in Cupcake's (sometimes in conjunction with another popular Dark Fic) universe (even the spin-off Dark Fics themselves are crossing over each other) that a Bloodier and Gorier version of Equestria is beginning to form where everyone has gone insane and the victims are somehow resurrected Back from the Dead (or have somehow survived the ordeal) to experience their torture and suffering all over again or to seek revenge on their killers.
  • Faux Affably Evil: Pinkie retains her cheerful attitude while committing her atrocities.
  • Flanderization: Although the original story uses a happy, curly-haired pony who behaves upbeat and is called "Pinkie Pie", references to this fan fiction written or drawn after "Party of One" aired will often call her "Pinkamena" instead (during a 'depressed' part of her childhood she went by her full name of Pinkamena Diane Pie), and represent the character with the straight hair and morose attitude she displayed during that episode.
  • Force Feeding: It's briefly mentioned that Pinkie forced a live Parasprite down Gilda's throat.
  • Genuine Human Hide: Pinkie's "dress" is made out of cutie marks of the other ponies.
  • Hero Killer: Technically, one hero is the killer of another, but still.
  • Heroic BSoD: Poor Rainbow Dash. Tried so hard to make it out, but in the end, simply gave up and ended up being made into a cupcake.
  • Human Resources: Pinkie takes everything, organs, bones, and the such, from victims.
  • Hurricane of Puns: All of them organ-related, happens when Pinkie begins disemboweling Rainbow Dash.
    She started pulling out the rest of the organs, stopping at each one. “I know I can be a real painaceas, but you know I’m just kidney with you. You really got to learn to liver it up. Boy, these jokes are getting bladder. Guess ya gotta develop a stomach for them.”
  • I'm a Humanitarian: Pinkie Pie bakes Rainbow Dash into cupcakes, and it's implied she has done the same with others.
  • Instant Sedation: Pinkie's knockout cupcakes.
  • Lethal Chef: Apparently, Rainbow Dash isn't very good at making cupcakes.
  • Lottery of Doom: Pinkie chooses her victims like this.
  • MacGyvering: Pinkie is quite creative with what's left of her victims. The necklace of unicorn horns, the dress made out of cutie marks, painting skulls for crafts, and many more disturbing ideas.
  • Mugging the Monster: Turns out Gilda screwed with a mass-murderer.
  • No Dead Body Poops: Averted. Rainbow's guts are removed and emptied out while she is being mutilated.
  • Nothing Nice About Sugar and Spice: Pinkie Pie is a serial killer and cannibal who not only uses pieces of her victims in her cupcake recipe but also takes cutie marks, pegasus wings and unicorn horns and adds them to the dress she wears when torturing somebody.
  • Police Are Useless: It's a miracle how Pinkie is able to do all this without any legal comeuppance, or even notice by the Cakes (who own Sugarcube Corner and would certainly go in their basement from time to time). However, it's safe to assume that somepony has reported the missing ponies and Pinkie's just slipped under the radar.
  • Precision F-Strike: This from the original text:
    Rainbow Dash: Oh god, no.
  • Put the "Laughter" in "Slaughter": The Element of Laughter is ironically a coincidence of this trope.
  • Reminiscing About Your Victims: Before the torture begins proper, Pinkie shows Dash the brightly-painted skull of Gilda, detailing how she was a jerk and what Pinkie did to her.
  • "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Pinkie gives one to Rainbow Dash after the latter has an Angst Coma.
    Stomping her hooves, the frustrated Pinkie lashed out. “Didn’t anybody teach you any manners? It’s very rude to fall asleep when somebody invites you over to spend time with them. How would like if I came over to your house and went to sleep. “Oh I’m sorry Dash, you’re boring, I think I’ll take a nap.” You think I like always doing this by myself. I told you how excited I got when I found you were next. I was excited to have to a friend be here with me while I worked. But NOOOOO! You’ve got to be inconsiderate. You know, I thought you were tough, I thought you could handle anything. I’ve had foals stand up better than you. Do I have to baby you? Huh? Is that how you want me to remember you, as a baby?” She stopped to catch her breath.
  • The Reveal: Twist was apparently one of Pinkie's victims as is Silver Spoon at The Stinger; Turns out, however, that both of them are Apple Bloom's victims.
  • Room Full of Crazy: The reveal of Pinkie's basement is this in full, and is the moment when things start taking a turn for the disturbing. See Scenery Gorn below.
  • Rouge Angles of Satin: There are a noticeable amount of grammar and spelling mistakes. They are (largely) cleaned up in the version hosted on Equestria Daily (although the Apple Bloom part of the fic is also inexplicably deleted as well).
  • Scenery Gorn: Whether you like it or dislike it, the author is awesome at "show, don't tell." For example, the part where the lights turn on and all those horrific decorations appear isn't done by telling that. Instead:
    “‘Oh god, no’ Dash reeled in horror at the image presented to her. The room was decorated with a typical but twisted Pinkie Pie flair. Colorful streamers of dried entrails danced around the ceiling, brightly painted skulls of all sizes were stuck on the walls, and organs done up in pastels filled with helium tied to the backs of chairs. The tables and chairs were made of bones and flesh of past ponies. Dash cringed at the center piece on the table nearest to her. The heads of four foals, their eyes closed like they were sleeping, wearing party hats made from their own skin. She recognized one of them as Apple Bloom’s classmate. Her eyes darted back and forth and then gazed up at the patchwork banner hanging from the rafters. Made from several pony hides, the words ‘Life is a party’ were scrawled in red.”
  • Serial Killer: Pinkie is revealed to have murdered many ponies and baked them into her cupcakes.
  • Shout-Out:
    • Serial killer Pinkie Pie wears a dress made of the flesh of her own kind and forces insects down the throats of her victims, just like Buffalo Bill.
    • The whole story is pretty much a very grisly retelling of Sweeney Todd, except with the barbershop removed, Pinkie Pie taking on the roles of both Sweeney Todd and Mrs. Lovett.
  • The Stinger: In the original version, Pinkie Pie is about to murder Silver Spoon, only for Apple Bloom to suddenly show up. Silver Spoon is relieved, believing that Apple Bloom is there to save her. And then it turns out that Apple Bloom wanted to kill Silver Spoon herself and has already done in Diamond Tiara; the story ends with Apple Bloom about to murder Silver Spoon while happily declaring that she's "gonna be a blank flank". For some reason, the revised version leaves this part out.
  • Team Killer: The Element of Laughter butchering the Element of Loyalty. It seems unlikely either element will be much use come the next major villain who requires the elements for containment.
  • Torture Cellar: Pinkie Pie imprisons Rainbow Dash in the basement of Sugarcube Corner, which is decorated with the bodies of Pinkie's previous victims. It is here where Pinkie brutally mutilates Dash.
  • Tongue Trauma: Pinkie said that she had cut out Gilda the Griffin's tongue as punishment for mouthing off to her.
  • Troll Fic: Sort of; Sergeant Sprinkles wrote it mostly on a whim and posted it to see if it would actually get any views. He was quite surprised by the reaction that came after.
  • Vasquez Always Dies: Of course the most tomboyish pony was the first on-screen victim...
  • Vile Villain, Saccharine Show: Pinkie Pie herself, brutally murdering Rainbow Dash and baking her organs into cupcakes. This, of course, is a fanfic based on My Little Pony.
  • Wham Line: The story starts off as lighthearted fare in the same vein as the original show until Pinkie says "Now, you take a nap.", and Dash loses conciousness.
  • Would Hurt a Child: Diamond Tiara and Twist were two of Pinkie's victims.

All you have to do is take a cup of flour...

Alternative Title(s): Cupcakes

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