Something Sweet to Bite

"...a similar, horrible fate, yet different in ways too terrible to image. For those children...would shortly die, unable to live on candy alone. But...with her heart so full of love for life, did not. She lived, and lived, and lived..."

h̵̨̛̤̤̠̩̬̻̥u͕͠n̶̢̜̪̪ģ̭̞̞͈̥̞̞͜r͙̲̘̼͔ͅy̰̘̕͡͞ ̘͕͚͇͝h̴̛̦̙͞ͅe̝̺͝h̡͏͙̯͕̦̺͓̱e̸͙̗h̨̙̮̖̲͙͈͇̰ͅe̵̤̯͇̪͕̯͖h̯̭̮̩͚͘e͏̢͓̺͓H̪̤̝́A͏҉̶̫̮͕H̷̛̘̣̮͔̤A̯̻̻͙͚͙͝͞ͅḨ̶̸͓̙͎̩̤Ą͓̫͍̘͕͞Ḩ̩́Á͠͏̯̜̩̲̳̬̰̯H̢͏̢͍̗̞̜̗̦̮̼͈A̶̲͞H҉̦̭͎̘̘̳̱̜͡ͅÀ̧͍͙̯̹̞̼̬̯̹!̷̨̣̬̖̻̟͖̖̀

I am doing a "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic" fanfiction audio reading. Why am I doing this instead of some movie or another tv series?

I just watched STONEHENGE APOCALYPSE for this blog, I'm allowed to listen to something where colorful ponies are put into the cannibal version of Saw with a Halloween Nightmare Night theme and a monster made of candy. And also something that actually scares me.

"Something Sweet to Bite" by Knackerman, and the two sequels plus one side story, can be found here on FIMFiction. (***1/2 for each story - yes, I've read them all)

"Something Sweet to Bite" fanfiction audio reading by Emogak can be started here on Youtube (five parts at about 30 minutes each). (***3/4) (only the first story has an audio reading so far)

Some quick notes before you go in: "Nightmare Night" is basically Halloween, but with some twists because of course there's twists. The story we hear in the episode it first appears in, "Luna Eclipsed" (s2e4), explains that in order to not get 'eaten' by a being called Nightmare Moon, the kids leave some candy before a statue of said being. Also said being is actually one of the princesses of the kingdom that our mane (get it?) six characters healed because the rainbow does that now, instead of causing explodey death like it did in the original show.

80's cartoons DOES NOT FUCK AROUND. 

And in Friendship is Magic, we get...

KAMEHAME FRIENDSHIP!

Because one character causes issues throughout the whole episode, another ends up a bit depressed, but in the end there is still fun times. It does still hang over Luna's head because she went Evil and that resulted in her becoming basically a Halloween Nightmare Night monster. 

The author of this fic, as a fan of horror films and older Halloween tales, wonders if there's a similar story for Equestria - as in why would they give their treats to Nightmare Moon? Why create a statue in a far-off and usually dangerous area of what should be a dangerous villain? 

Second definition is about the classification of the story - Grimdark is a title that comes from Warhammer 40k, and which basically describes "the grim darkness" of the work. In this case we can say that a grimdark fantasy would be A Song of Ice and Fire as compared to The Lord of the Rings. It's a type of story in fandom now, describing stories that tend to go for torture, death, and relatively no happy endings. Oddly I've seen most grimdarks for stuff in things like MLP, though already darker fandoms can have these, but with MLP, it always feels weird, even if there are enough 'dark' things for you to play with.

So we have a story based on something that results in no saving of people who die, about a scary time of year, and also magical and colorful ponies! MLP Grimdarks tend to be disturbing in their own way, with some being more notorious or well-liked than others due to not only keeping everyone in character for the most part, but also making the happy land feel more like a dangerous place, or at least more dangerous. In the case of this Halloween Nightmare Night horror, the audio reading is better because you not only get some great fanart for the different points (all free of gore, for the most part) but also hear the horrible sounds that the readings add in.

I said it was cannibalistic for a reason, they kill two ponies and eat one by the fifteen minute mark in this story. One is horribly burned and traumatized by the ten-minute mark. And they have the sound of someone being burned. This is before horrible death and candy murder. 

I'm not joking about that last one.

The only thing to cause some confusion is the flashbacks. The events basically take place over the week before Halloween Nightmare Night. One part that a few have issues with (as it's basically sequel-bait) comes in mid-part 2. It's a bit harder to justify it being in, though it's as scary as the rest of the parts, and overall the story doesn't suffer too badly for it, but it does feel out of place. The rest is fairly gore-filled and not only scary, but atmospheric, though I will also add that I don't believe (as some reviewers of this do) that it was the fault of 'non-belief' that resulted in the attacks, but rather that a) not all the candy had been collected, and b) the ones who made the candy weren't the ones who offered it. Old myths being reborn do have people failing to completely counter them because traditions are easily changed or lost, which tends to be why that trope exists and is normally very deadly in horror movies, books, or fiction. 

The audio reading is better in some cases than the original writing because of the soundtrack and vocal actors and actresses who add in their voices as narrators or as the characters. The sounds and music also do a great job of building up the atmosphere, enough that anytime I listen to this at night, I tend to get very easily scared by small sounds. It's a great story for Halloween, and equally great if you want to get into the wonderful and terrifying world of scary MLP fanfiction. Or go and listen to The Lost Narrator, she mostly does scary MLP readings or creepypasta stories. It's great, and she's responsible for the editing, music, and sound effects in this story. 

I love this audio reading. The whole thing is scary and makes you shiver all throughout, not to mention that the ending and some of the ways that others are killed never quite comes off the same. The stories are great for the same creep factor, but if you want the best result with this, I highly suggest the dark and creepy stories involving magical ponies. Because a lot of these are great.