Hot off the tail of indirectly causing an Ursa Minor attack on Ponyville, as well as insulting and humiliating Twilight Sparkle and her friends, Trixie is dragged into the royal palace to stand trial before the Princesses. They find her guilty. Her sentence? To be their plaything until she sees the error of her ways.
The 3rd MLP fetish fic by author Pablote, this story serves as a prequel to Sombra's Game, detailing how Trixie ended up in the Princess' dungeon in the first place.
Can be read on Deviantart
, Furaffinity, or Pastebin.
This fanfic contains the following tropes:
- Amusing Injuries: suffered, constantly, by Trixie. Like the preceding story, Sombra's Game, this story nearly doubles as a checklist of every unfortunate thing that can happen to a cartoon character. Things like:
- Agony of the Hooves: After burning herself on the stove, Trixie gets not one, but both of her forehooves clamped inside hot, castiron waffle irons.
- Be the Ball: And subsequently played with by the Princesses.
- Comedic Spanking: She's dragged down a staircase, hitting every step butt-first on the way down.
- Circling Birdies: Trixie sees little wands and moons when hit in the head hard enough.
- The Door Slams You: A doorway she's flying towards slams shut just before she crosses the threshold. It's fine, the rope just pulls her through the tiny little gap at the bottom of the door.
- Elongating Arm Gag: The result of Trixie desperately trying to grab onto something al halt herself during the big climax.
- Face Plant: She gets dragged up the stairs, hitting each step on the way up with her face, and is thrown flat onto her face several times after that.
- Goomba Stomp: Trixie gets scrunched down by Celestia, and Luna squashes her flat with her bare hooves.
- Groin Attack: She smacks into a candle stand, right between the legs, during the climax.
- Harmless Electrocution: Unfortunately for her, the royal palace recently switched to electrical chandaliers.
- Harmless Freezing: Flies into an ice box and comes out encased in a solid block of ice.
- Inflating Body Gag: Trixie dreams about taking the place of the Ursa Minor, and inflating like a balloon as Twilight makes her drink a whole water tower full of milk. Happens again in the waking world, when she lands mouth-first on the business end of a magically-powered leaf blower.
- Mouse Trap: A minefield of them, and of course Trixie gets snapped by each and every one on her way through it.
- The Pratfall: Trixie is slammed onto her butt several times during the climax.
- Rump Roast: On a hot stove.
- Stuffed into a Locker: Exaggerated. The Princesses stuff Trixie into a tiny jar.
- Squashed Flat: By the Princesses, during the climax, and to the Princesses during Trixie's one bit of revenge that actually goes right.
- What a Drag: Trixie's complex, carefully-laid trap: getting pulled through a Death Course of escalating cartoon violence by a rope. She'd intended for the Princesses to fall victim to it while she watched and laughed, but, alas...
- Antimagic: Trixie has an antimagic collar put on her to keep her from escaping or exacting revenge on the Princesses.
- Black Comedy: Has the same focus on Slapstick and cartoon violence as Sombra's Game, but centers on the Plucky Comic Relief from that story being imprisoned, abused, tortured, and humiliated by the two cheerful, sadistic Rogue Deuteragonists with no-one around this time to make them sympathetic by comparison. Played for Laughs, naturally.
- Call-Forward: Since this story takes place in the past, chronologically, there are a few humorous ones:
- Trixie halts and perks her ears up as the Princesses mention ordering the stained glass window depicting her punishment. In Sombra's Game, the windows depicting her punishments at the hooves of the Princesses are her pride and joy.
- There's a rather subtle and funny one when Trixie first gets the antimagic collar put on her. She lunges at Celestia, who then shortens her chain as a precautionary measure. The first line of dialogue Trixie has in Sombra's Game is her rushing to the bars and getting yanked to a halt as the chain comes short.
- Cerebus Retcon: In Sombra's Game, Trixie was a cheerful prisoner who wouldn't leave and begged the Princesses to punish her for her crimes. This story reveals that her first imprisonment and punishment were very much against her will. On the other hoof, we can see exactly why Sombra was so hellbent on revenge, and the Princess' struggle becomes a lot more like Karma Houdini Warranty.
- Cold-Blooded Torture:
B-But don't worry, kids, it's played for laughs! Ahem. Mostly. The Princesses are trying to get Trixie to see the error of her ways, but everything they do to Trixie could qualify. Nonstop abuse during the day followed by introspective nightmares at night. - Didn't See That Coming: Trixie might not be the most powerful unicorn in all of Equestria, but when she animates a rope to tie up Celestia and Luna and stuff them into a laundry wringer, neither Princess even considers that Trixie might be doing it. by the time they do it's too late.
- Disproportionate Retribution: How harsh the Princess' sentence is hinges almost entirely on how much you, personally, find Trixie at fault for what happened in her debut episode. The general consensus seems to be that Trixie is practically innocent.
- Downer Ending: Yes, the Princesses let her go in the end, but not before subjecting her to one last, humiliating, off-screen punishment. They get virtually no comeuppance for everything they put Trixie through, release her back into the world bitter, angry, and not even close to reformed, and despite having all but spelled out her domineering plans for revenge, they don't seem to notice or care at all. As if that wasn't bad enough, her angry rant and the sack of gold she "earns" implies that the end of this story directly precedes Magic Duel, which means that Trixie's reign of terror over Ponyville and all its inhabitants, as well as her ending right back up in the dungeons as a result, can all be indirectly traced back to the Princess' careless treatment of her. Turns out Sombra wasn't too far off about them being just as bad as him.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: Although the story ends on a downer, a more positive way of looking at it is seeing this as the rocky beginning of Trixie's overall character arc:
- Starting with Magic Duel, Trixie is still angry and vengeful, and lets the power of the Alicorn Amulet consume her as she lords over the other ponies the same way the Princesses did to her. However, she makes her Heel Realization towards the end of that episode, and leaves Twilight on amicable terms.
- At this point, the Humble and Apologetic Trixie has seen the error of her ways and would likely have been far more cooperative with the Princesses, which leads directly to her voluntary internment in Sombra's Game.
- And seeing as how she's generally a much happier pony in that story, leaves the Princesses on good terms, and even gets the Crowning Moment of Awesome, things eventually turn out just fine for her.
- Foregone Conclusion: As a prequel, not only do we know how Trixie eventually ends up, but the story also doubles as a setup for the season 3 episode Magic Duel.
- Hero Antagonist: The villainous, amoral Trixie is imprisoned and systematically tortured for the amusement of the fair and virtuous Princesses Celestia and Luna.
- Hoist By Her Own Petard: Trixie manages to shove the Princesses through the laundry wringer they were about to insert her into, and Trixie falls victim to the elaborate trap that she laid out for the Princesses.
- Humiliation Conga: The entire climax. You see all the tropes bulleted under Amusing Injuries above? Most of those happen in this one scene alone. And then some.
- Never My Fault: Trixie's Fatal Flaw here. Celestia and Luna would end her sentence the instant she shows that she was willing to just consider changing her ways but Trixie is too utterly full of herself and unwilling to even think that anything she's going through could possibly be a result of her own actions. In the end she makes the completely idiotic choice to try and get even with the sisters rather than accept she needs to set things right and pays for it, all because of her own ego making her believe she's beyond consequences for what she's done.
- Pet the Dog: Both sisters indulge in toying with Trixie equally, but while Luna is shown to be the more draconian of the two sisters, Celestia is shown to be more merciful. She comes, alone, on the second day to complement Trixie on her magic abilities, even after defying and squishing them in a laundry wringer. She gives Trixie a heartfelt speech about how she's no different from her sister Luna, and wants to prevent her from going down the same path that her sister did. The following night, she gets Luna to dial it back during Trixie's nightmare to give her a chance to prove she's changed. On top of all that, the sisters' reaction when Trixie decides to take revenge over atonement implies that Celestia honestly believed Trixie would make the right choice.
- Both sisters taking her antimagic collar off after she volunteers to do chores around the palace counts.
- Trash the Set: Inverted. Trixie spends her free time setting up an elaborate trap instead of cleaning the palace like she's supposed to. But when she gets whipped around the whole palace on a rope, hitting every painful obstacle on the way, by some miracle she ends up leaving the place cleaner than when she started. The Princesses confirm that she technically completed all the chores on the list in the process.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Celestia and Luna's methods can best be summed up as Cold-Blooded Torture but they are towards the end goal of getting Trixie to see the error of her ways and aren't just for laughs. Celestia in particular tries to reach out to Trixie with encouragement and concern for what might happen to Trixie if she doesn't change her life.
