Miss Pie's Monsters
is a Tumblr webcomic and Ask Blog by Heir of Rick, based on My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic.
The comic takes place in an alternate Equestria where there are two different subgroups of ponies: Equestrian ponies (the 'normal' ponies seen in the show) and Everfree ponies, a diverse group of ponies that have traits of fantasy creatures and monsters.
In this universe, Pinkie Pie is a psychic Equestrian pony who is on a mission to make friends with Everfree ponies, and attempt to reconcile the two groups. The rest of the Mane Six appear as Everfree pony counterparts of their canon selves, each with the traits of a different creature from the show:
- Applejack's counterpart is Tatzlpony, a pony with Tatzlwurm traits, most notably a very long tongue.
- Fluttershy's counterpart is Flutterbat, a vampire bat pony.
- Rainbow Dash's counterpart is Aurora Dash, a windigo.
- Rarity's counterpart is Clarity, a crystal golem pony.
- Twilight Sparkle's counterpart is Twilight Breezie, a breezie.
The comic is deliberately lighthearted in tone with a cartoonish atmosphere, and doesn't take itself too seriously. Pinkie Pie can receive questions from the Tumblr audience through her Crystal Ball, and the Monsters are also usually happy to answer if they're near it.
There are also some non-canon fanworks based on the comic:
- Twilight Breezie and the Big Dumb Smelly: A short story featuring Twilight and Aurora Dash, about a secret that Twilight is trying to keep from everypony.
- Miss Pie's Prankster: A short story by FillyD featuring Pinkie Pie and Aurora Dash, in which Pinkie discovers the surprising answer to why Aurora is always pranking everypony.
Tropes
- All There in the Manual: Some characters aren't named directly in the comic, but their names appear in the Tumblr tags for strips they feature in. Additional behind-the-scenes information can also be found in the creator's modblog.
- In particular, the modblog explains how to find the Hidden Cane easter eggs.
- Anti-Magic: Smooze ponies are said to be immune to almost all pony magic. Whether this immunity extends to other kinds of magic is unknown.
- Author Avatar: A photo of Sapphire Lollipop (Heir-of-Rick's OC pony) can be seen in Pinkie's scrapbook at one point.
- Avengers Assemble: As Pinkie explains at some length, her mission is to assemble a diverse group of Everfree ponies.
- Bait-and-Switch Comment: When Pinkie Pie meets Lemon Hearts (a giantess), it looks like Pinkie is about to tactlessly mention their obvious height difference, but in fact Pinkie is just complimenting her looks.
- Behind the Black: When Tatzlpony is in danger of being spotted by Lyra, she appears to be trying to hide by slowly backing off-panel.
- Boisterous Weakling: Twilight is hot-tempered and aggressive, but her tiny stature makes her completely ineffectual in a physical fight. Aurora Dash is able to keep her at bay with barely any effort.
- Break the Haughty: Twilight's combination of diminutive size and heightened arrogance tends to puts her on the receiving end of this.
- Buffy Speak: Pinkie uses a few made-up words during her Infodump regarding her mission in the Everfree ("wondernessfullness", "terrificness").
- Casting a Shadow: Perytons can wield shadow magic, a nod to the mythological peryton's association with shadows. Judging by the illustration and Twilight's research, they also appear to be made of shadow.
- Cloud Cuckoo Lander: Pinkie Pie, as per canon.
- Cheshire Cat Grin: Aurora Dash pulls one off in the final panel of this strip.
- Color-Coded for Your Convenience: In the alternate Them's Fightin' Herds universe, the Mystical Orb of Fate's Destiny has red-hued magic instead of green.
- Crystal Ball: Pinkie owns the Mystical Orb of Fate's Destiny (M.O.O.F'd for short), a supposedly priceless Pie family heirloom. It's her standard device for information gathering and for receiving communications from the Tumblr audience.
- Cute Little Fangs: Flutterbat has them.
- Cute Monster Girl: Flutterbat, a vampire bat pony who still has the gentle demeanor of canon Fluttershy. Tatzlpony is also surprisingly cute in spite of her monstrous heritage.
- Dark Reprise: When we first meet Pinkie, she's singing "Giggle at the Ghostly", although she doesn't seem able to muster the enthusiastic cheer of her canon counterpart.
- Didn't Think This Through: Pinkie Pie brings a group of Everfree monsters into Ponyville, in the presence of a royal guard whose specific duty is to prevent Everfree monsters entering the town. Even her Tumblr followers call her on it.
- A Dog Named "Dog": Tatzlpony is named after her species.
- Dumb Muscle: Tatzlpony appears to be physically the strongest of the group, able to lift Pinkie in the air with no apparent effort. However, she isn't very bright.
- Easter Eggs: many strips contain a 'Hidden Cane': a tiny stylized cane concealed somewhere within the picture. All such strips are tagged so that followers know when to look for them.
- Emerald Power: Pinkie's crystal ball gives off an eerie green radiance.
- Emotion Eater: Aurora Dash is a windigo and thus feeds on negative emotions; this is one reason why she pranks other Everfree ponies.
- Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": So far, the Captain has only been referred to by her rank, and is named as such in the Tumblr tags for strips in which she appears. Pinkie has also called her "Cappy" on one occasion. This being Equestria, it's not implausible that "Captain" is actually her name.
- Flat "What": Clarity reacts this way to one particularly baffling piece of audience advice.
- Food Porn: Due to Twilight's small size, the panel of her chewing on a cookie is zoomed in so close that you can see every last delicious detail of it, right down to the rugged texture of the cookie dough and the individual chocolate chips.
- For Halloween, I Am Going as Myself: The Monsters are able to enter Ponyville because it's Nightmare Night, so everypony mistakes them for costumed ponies.
- For Science!: Twilight's justification for spying on Pinkie.
- Friendless Background: Tatzlpony appears to have suffered from this in the past due to her monstrous appearance.
- Friendly Neighbourhood Vampire: Flutterbat. She even apologizes for being scary. To other monsters.
- Friend to All Living Things: Flutterbat shares this quality with her canon counterpart.
- Genki Girl: Tatzlpony.
- Gentle Giant:
- Lemon Hearts is twice the height of a normal pony, but blushes at being complimented on her looks.
- Tatzlpony may also qualify. She is slightly larger than the average pony and, with her strange wurmlike features can appear somewhat imposing at a glance - but she's the warmest and most friendly of all the Monsters, and probably wouldn't hurt a fly.
- Golem: Clarity is a crystal golem. She also implies at one point that she's related to stone golems.
- Gorgeous Gorgon: For all her monstrous traits, Tatzlpony is actually quite pretty.
- Gravity Is a Harsh Mistress: Clarity walks off a cliff and gravity doesn't kick in until she notices.
- Headbutting Heroes: Twilight and Aurora Dash know each other from before the Monsters all met, and Twilight doesn't like Aurora much. Apparently because Aurora enjoys pranking her a lot.
- Holographic Disguise: Twilight casts an illusion spell on Clarity to make her appear like a flesh-and-blood unicorn pony, although she is still a solid crystal golem underneath.
- Horrifying the Horror:
- Flutterbat is scared of pretty much everything, despite the fact that she believes herself to be a terrifying monster.
- Tatzlpony is afraid of twittermites, as seen in this panel. It's also suggested that she's afraid of lightning too.
- Hypocritical Humor: Twilight assures Clarity that her spell is safe... while surrounding herself in a forcefield to protect herself in case anything goes wrong. Of course, this could be justified — Twilight is notably the weakest and most frail of all the monsters, so if anyone could be endangered, it would be her.
- An Ice Person: Aurora Dash is a windigo, and thus has ice powers.
- I Just Want to Have Friends: This seems to be Tatzlpony's main desire.
- Innocent Inaccurate: When asked about her family, Tatzlpony happily talks about the family she imagines she has.
- Insane Troll Logic: Pinkie's attempt to solve a quadratic equation is this. It's so insane that Twilight can't stand it, causing her to accidentally reveal herself.
- Ironic Fear: Flutterbat is scared of all the monster costumes in the Nightmare Night festivities (although if she's anything like Fluttershy, she's probably afraid of everything).
- Irony: Pinkie Pie is a psychic, but completely fails to notice that a sentient creature has been living in her mane for quite a while.
- Living Crashpad: Flutterbat inadvertently becomes one for Clarity after the latter falls off a cliff.
- Losing Your Head: Clarity's title card suggests that she can detach her head at will, although this ability has never been seen in-comic.
- Luck-Based Search Technique: Pinkie has no apparent plan for recruiting Everfree monsters; in Tatzlpony's case, they found her because they got lost, and they only found Clarity because she happened to fall on them.
- Mathematician's Answer:Tumblr follower: Hey Tatzlpony, how do you talk so clearly with your tongue taking up most of your mouth?Tatzlpony: Like this! See?
- Mission from God: Apparently, the entire reason Pinkie started her mission is she got a psychic message from Celestia telling her to bring together the Everfree ponies with those in Equestria.
- Mix-and-Match Critters: Tatzlpony is a Tatzlwurm/pony hybrid.
- Monster Compendium: Twilight is compiling a field guide to Everfree ponies as part of her research. Naturally, this is something that never occurred to Pinkie, despite how useful it would be to her mission.
- Monster Mash: Essentially the theme of the comic.
- Multipurpose Tongue: Tatzlpony frequently uses her tongues as extra limbs for manipulating and carrying items (and occasionally other ponies, too).
- Mundane Made Awesome: Eating cookies.
- Mundane Utility: In one of her title cards, Tatzlpony is using Aurora Dash as an ice-pack to cool off.
- Mythology Gag:
- The very first line of the comic is Pinkie reprising her "Giggle at the Ghostly" song from the show's pilot two-parter.
- The notion of Pinkie being a psychic, the outfit that she wears, and the Mystical Orb of Fate's Destiny, all originated in the show episode "It's About Time".
- All of the titular monsters have been seen in the show:
- Flutterbat is almost identical to Fluttershy's accidental bat pony transformation in the show episode "Bats!"
- Aurora Dash is a windigo, a wind spirit first seen in "Hearth's Warming Eve"
- Tatzlpony is based on the Tatzlwurm from "Three's a Crowd".
- Clarity is a crystal golem, which resembles (and may be the same as) a crystal pony, first seen in "The Crystal Empire".
- Twilight is a breezie, first seen in "It Ain't Easy Being Breezies".
- The moon has the alicorn-head-shaped marking seen in the pilot episode, indicating that Nightmare Moon is still inhabiting it. A later strip shows that Princess Luna has a mythical status in this universe, suggesting that the events of Nightmare Moon's banishment did indeed occur one thousand years ago.
- Clarity occasionally uses Rarity's "the worst possible thing" line from "Lesson Zero".
- Flutterbat's excitement at meeting a breezie for the first time mirrors Fluttershy's reaction to Spike in the pilot episode.
- The Equestrian holiday of Nightmare Night was first seen in the show episode "Luna Eclipsed", and Pinkie appears to be just as enthusiastic about trick-or-treating as her canon counterpart.
- Aurora Dash lazes in a tree at one point, just like Rainbow Dash.
- Pinkie sports her "Pinkamena" manestyle while explaining cookies to the Monsters.
- King Sombra appears in Flutterbat's Imagine Spot about the dangers faced by breezies. The only breezie who isn't flying away in terror is Shining Armor. Twilight later reveals that, as in the show, Shining Armor is her BBBFF, and also the Prince of the Breezie Realm.
- In one panel, Twilight can be seen reading a book titled "Predictions and Prophecies" - this was the book Twilight consulted in the first episode of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic to find out that Nightmare Moon's return was imminent.
- Clarity sings a modified version of "Art of the Dress" while styling Tatzlpony's mane.
- The Napoleon: The tiny breezie Twilight seems to have a bit of a Napoleon complex going on.
- Neat Freak: Clarity hates getting dirty so much that she places disposable tissues wherever her hooves are about to tread, so that they don't touch the ground. At least until she runs out of tissues.
- Never Bareheaded: According to Pinkie, the Captain never takes her helmet off.
- Nonsense Classification: The atomic weight of a cookie is "delicious", according to Pinkie. This trope is pretty much the reason why you should never ask Pinkie to explain anything.
- No Social Skills: Tatzlpony seems to have difficulties with simple social concepts such as making conversation, and personal space. Although she seems comfortable talking to the crystal ball, her interactions with other ponies almost always go awry.
- Oh, Crap!: Twilight's face on realising that not only has she given herself away unnecessarily, but she's done it right in front of one of her old enemies.
- Out-of-Genre Experience:
- Pinkie appears to be trying to invoke one in this strip with the pretense of being a psychic detective. It doesn't work.
- When Rarity is discovered by Lyra, the comic suddenly turns into an audience-participation Telltale's game as she asks the spirits for help.
- Pinkie appears to be trying to invoke one in this strip
- Overly-Long Tongue: Tatzlpony's defining feature. She has two tongues which she can control independently; each one is longer than her whole body, prehensile, and strong enough to hold up its own weight even whilst carrying something as heavy as a pony. (Possibly this is also the reason why she has a reptilian tail; for counterbalancing). Since she's related to the Tatzlwurm, it's possible she could have a third tongue, although she's only ever been seen with two. Despite their bulk, both tongues are completely retractable.
- Painting the Medium: In one panel when Tatzlpony demonstrates the length of her tongue, it extends into the next comic.
- Parental Abandonment: Heavily implied; Tatzlpony seems to have absolutely no idea who or where her family is. Given that she's part wurm, this may be natural for her species.
- Perpetual-Motion Monster: It's likely that Clarity is one, as she's mentioned that she doesn't eat, and that she can repair damage to her own body.
- Planimal: Timberponies.
- The Power of Love: One strip suggests that Aurora Dash could actually get vastly more energy from consuming positive emotions instead of negative ones.
- The Prankster: Aurora Dash. (Although, as we learn, there's actually a reason for this).
- Production Throwback: One of the things that Clarity cannot eat is Boulder, the star of Ask Boulder.
- Punny Name: Clarity (a crystal pony version of Rarity).
- Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: Pinkie Pie literally just recruited whoever she happened to run into.
- Screen Tap: Tatzlpony licks the screen in one of her title cards.
- Shaped Like Itself: According to Pinkie, the two main components of chocolate chip cookies are 'chocolate' and 'cookie'.
- Shoulder Teammate: Twilight rides in Pinkie's mane.
- Shout-Out:
- Doctor Whooves makes a brief cameo as a Doctor Who-themed monster - specifically, a Weeping Angel.
- Tatzlpony can be heard reading from The Very Hungry Caterpillar in the flashback to her early attempts at speech.
- Pinkie Pie's attempt to solve a mathematical equation makes references to both Pokémon and Hearthstone.
- At one point Pinkie poses with the Captain for a faux marketing poster parodying the TV series Psych.
- Twilight mentions a creature called an "R.O.U.S", presumably referring to a Rodent Of Unusual Size.
- Rarity's request to the spirits for help is presented in the style of a Telltale Games multiple-choice scenario.
- Slime Girl: A slime pony features as one of the Everfree ponies studied by Twilight.
- Starfish Aliens: Although Tatzlpony is clearly more pony than not, it's implied that her Tatzlwurm heritage is a bit on the starfish side.
- Straight Man: The Captain is practically the complete opposite of Pinkie — she always adopts a stiff guardsmare posture, never cracks a smile, and never responds to Pinkie's gags with anything but disdain or sarcasm.
- Superior Species: Breezies appear to be this, looking down on Equestrian ponies for some reason. It's later suggested that breezies have a rather insular society due to the dangers that they face from beings who might exploit them.
- The Team Normal: Pinkie Pie is the only regular (Equestrian) pony in the group. She does have psychic powers, but otherwise is just an ordinary earth pony - well, as ordinary as Pinkie can get, anyway.
- Tempting Fate:
- Aurora Dash gloats that Pinkie will never see her coming when she sneaks up to scare her. Unfortunately for Dash, Pinkie is a psychic, and manages to sneak up on Dash instead. And it turns out she's not even scared of Dash anyway.
- Clarity muses that this couldn't be an adventure without a tiny bit of peril... and then realises that during her musing, she's walked off a cliff.
- Tragic Ice Character: Aurora Dash is a windigo and therefore has to feed on negative emotions, which forces her to hurt and annoy others just to stay alive. When seen outside of the company of others, she is almost never happy.
- Unreliable Expositor: Pinkie Pie's Cloud Cuckoo Lander tendencies often make it difficult to tell if what she's saying is true, accurate, or even based in reality. Her exposition has been directly challenged at least once by the Captain.
- Unwitting Test Subject: Twilight is secretly studying Pinkie, at least until she gets discovered.
- Wall of Text: Happens twice - once with Pinkie's explanation of her mission, and once with Tatzlpony's attempt to make friends with a merpony. Both of them have the most energetic personalities of the six, so this is to be expected.
- Webcomic Time: Discussed during the blog's return in October 2022 after a years-long hiatus. A reader asks Flutterbat how she's doing during this year's Halloween season, but for Flutterbat, Nightmare Night was a few weeks ago. She is not thrilled by the prospect of there being another one.
- Wide Eyes and Shrunken Irises: Accompanies Twilight's Oh, Crap! moment upon her discovery.
- The X of Y: The Mystical Orb of Fate's Destiny.
- Zombie Advocate: The role that Pinkie Pie has assumed.
