My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic - Season 1, Episode 0: Friendship is Dead

Hello, I am John Larson, a young man in his teens currently living in the town of Seattle. It probably sounds silly, but I am a huge fan of the show "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic". No, I'm not a pedophile, and no, I'm not gay. I'm also not alone. These days there are thousands of fans of this show outside its demographic, referred to as "bronies". The show is completely abolishing stereotypes of media geared towards girls. It shows it doesn't have to be a bunch of pink sparkly nonsense about girls having tea parties, shopping, and worrying about boys, and that it CAN be appealing outside of its target demographic. Who says boys aren't allowed to watch girls' shows? I mean, c'mon, that's just silly gender role crap. Best of all, the show's made by Lauren Faust. Yep, the same Lauren Faust who brought us the Powerpuff Girls and Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends. Therefore it makes it automatically awesome. Of course, the show doesn't appeal to everyone. No show does, it's utterly impossible. So if you don't like it, that's fine, but don't go saying "OMG IT'S GAY BECAUSE UNICORNS".

Okay, now that I got that out of the way, let's get down to business. So, you see, I was up late surfing through clips of the show on YouTube, from Kyrospawn and Mlprandom. Oh, I just love reading the comments of those videos. There's always an avalanche of sex jokes from the tinyiest little things (that's what she said-\*shot\*) and I always love laughing at how stupid it is, having a comments page full of the same unoriginal joke(s) over and over again. If I removed every sex joke from those guys' comments, several of the pages would be empty. Anyhow, so I was watching one video, and I glanced in the related videos section. There was a video titled "MLP:FiM - Lost Episode From Season 1". I clicked the link, but instead of taking me to the video, it prompted me to download a file titled "MLP:FiM\_Ep0.avi". This was very strange. YouTube video links never do that. I also found it odd that the episode number was 0. But, curiosity got the best of me, and I let the file download, despite how weird it was a video link would do that. It downloaded into Firefox's "downloads" folder, like any other file would, and opened the "downloads" window, and of course at the top was the .avi I had just downloaded. I double clicked it to open it, and like any other .avi, Windows Media Player launched and began to play the video.

It was your generic 1080p .avi encode of an MLP episode. The first thing I found unusual about the episode was that instead of it playing a short scene at the beginning then going to the intro, it just skipped straight to the intro. I found it slightly odd, but I disregarded it and kept watching. The intro played as always, and I decided to hum along with it until it ended. After fading out from the "developed for television by Lauren Faust" screen, the episode started. It seemed just like any ordinary episode. According to the beginning credits, the episode was written by Meghan McCarthy. *Cool!* I thought. *That's the same writer as Party of One and Lesson Zero. Maybe I'll get to see some ponies go insane like in those episodes.* The name of the episode was "Friendship is Dead". It sounded rather morbid and dark, and I got a bad feeling about it, but I kept watching anyways. It began with Twilight Sparkle trotting down the street humming the MLP Theme Song as she went along. Fairly normal so far. She stopped when she came to Applejack's Apple Stand, where she was giving a bushel to Lyra. Lyra gave a few bits to Applejack, thanked her, then left. Applejack then turned to Twilight.

"Howdy, partner," said Applejack. "What can I do 'ya for?"

"Oh hi Applejack," replied Twilight. "I was wondering if you've seen Pinkie Pie anywhere. Usually I'll see her at least once a day, even if she's just hopping down the street and I happen to walk by and see her. But these past couple days I haven't seen her at all."

"Come to think of it, I haven't seen 'er either," Applejack admitted. "Why don't 'ya check Sugarcube Corner?"

"Okie dokie," said Twilight, and she trotted off. So far it's pretty normal, right? The scene cut to Twilight Sparkle entering Sugarcube Corner. But something was different in this scene. The animation seemed more....realistic. More.... 3rd dimensional. Something wasn't right, something was different, and this bothered me. But I kept watching anyways.

Mr. and Mrs. Cake did not seem to be around. Twilight trotted up the stairs to Pinkie's apartment and knocked on the door. No answer. After a few moments she knocked again. Still no answer. This kept up until Twilight broke down the door with her magic out of frustration. In the middle of the floor sat Pinkie Pie, with her back facing away from the screen. But her hair was deflated, and her color tone was more dull, much like in Party of One.

"Um... Pinkie?" asked Twilight.

Then Pinkie's head did something that should have been impossible. It turned around a full 180 degrees to face Twilight. But hey, it's a cartoon, and Pinkie's a fourth wall breaker, so I didn't care much...that is...until I saw her face. When I saw her face, I knew something was horribly wrong. First of all, her eyeballs were gone. I mean, completely gone, leaving nothing but hollow sockets where they would have been. Twilight acted as if that was completely normal. She was smiling dementedly, and if she had eyes, they probably would have been derped and dilated like a maniac.

"Hi Twilight!" Pinkie said in a disturbing voice, a lot like Twilight when she said "Hi girls!" to the Cutie Mark Crusaders in Lesson Zero.

"Um... hi?" replied Twilight.

"Is there a point in parties?" asked Pinkie. "Is there a point to joy? Or happiness? Because it never... never... lasts..."

"Pinkie, what's gotten into you?!" Twilight said frantically.

"Hm! I just wanted to tell you how happy I am you could make it to Gummy's party!" exclaimed Pinkie out of nowhere, as if they were still at the party she threw in Party of One.

"Uh... Pinkie, we're not at Gummy's party. That was a while back," responded a confused Twilight.

"Aw, just a boring old apple!" said Pinkie.

"Um..."

"I can't tell you that silly! Then it wouldn't be a surprise! Oh wait, sorry, I was thinking back to the... the... happy...times..." Pinkie then turned her head back the right way and burst into tears. I'm not sure how that was possible, considering she had no eyes, but apparently it was. She held her head in her hooves, and sobbed, a very real, human sounding sob. It was heart-breaking. Twilight tried to comfort her, asking what was wrong, but Pinkie would not answer.

Pinkie reached for a handgun. She held it to her head, and before Twilight could stop her, she shot, splattering very realistic blood and brain matter everywhere. Twilight gazed upon this scene in horror. The scene abruptly cut to Twilight standing in the streets of Ponyville, with every citizen laying dead around her. She held a handgun to her mouth.

"What's the point?" she asked herself. "It's all gone. My friends, my mentor... what's the point?" With that, Twilight pulled the trigger, blasting blood and brains everywhere. After this, the credits rolled as usual. That hadn't even come close to being 22 minutes like a regular episode, and the rest of the .avi was a black screen.

I was horrified. This wasn't the Friendship is Magic I knew and loved. This was... something horribly morbid and sick. My mind raced with questions. How did this get on YouTube? Why did it download a .avi instead of going to a video page? How was this leaked? Why would Meghan McCarthy write such a morbid episode? And further more, why did the animators *actually agree to animate it*? How is Meghan not fired? So many questions, but no answers. I knew it wasn't just some sick fanmade video. Everything seemed too much like an actual creation of the MLP team for it to be fanmade. The voices weren't off in the slightest, it just... all of it was too real to be fake, if that makes sense. I had to figure this out.

I closed Media Player, and sent the .avi file to Lauren Faust. She denied that such an episode was ever produced. Furthermore, when I clicked the video link that downloaded the episode onto my computer, I was directed to a video with a running horse. This was all so strange, and I was so tired, I just deleted the .avi, shut off my computer and went to sleep.