Fanfic is Crapsack is a duology of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fanfics by RealityCheck that lampoon bad pony fanfiction. Both stories have currently been taken down pending extensive revising. However, they can still be found online, e.g. on the fanfiction archive FiMFetch.
In Fanfic Is Crapsack
, something bizarre starts happening in Equestria, with the ponies' behavior becoming erratic and inexplicable, monsters from nowhere stalking the streets, and the laws of logic and basic moral decency shriveling up and dying. The only one who can save the day is a mysterious arrival from the other side of the mirror, named Pinkamena.
The story might be considered PG-rated, as it makes fun of various specific elements of dark and sexual fanfics, but without anything graphic.
In the sequel, Fanfic is Crapsack II: Electric Boogaloo, Equestria is turned into a bleak, dark land of death and sorrow by a being known just as the Toxic Nihilist, and Pinkamena finds herself forced to save the setting once again from bad fanfic.
Tropes common to both stories:
- Dark Fic: Parodied. Pinkamena has to save a lot of ponies from dark scenarios the writer is putting them through.
- Oh, Crap, There Are Fanfics of Us!: A grim variant where the characters find themselves tormented by a sadistic fanfic writer.
- Writer on Board: Reality Check makes his stance on grimdark and deviant porn fanfiction very clear here.
Tropes in the original Fanfic is Crapsack:
- Basement-Dweller: What the Trollfic turns out to be.
- Brother–Sister Incest: A reference to Applejack/Big Mac fics (and to Applebloom supposedly being their daughter) pops up. Applejack, as you'd expect, is utterly traumatised by the idea (and by Granny Smith insisting on showing her the sex tapes).
- Earn Your Happy Ending: Pinkamena fully expects Princess Luna to ban her from ever making contact with Ponyville again. Instead, Luna thanks her for her efforts by welcoming her into the dream realm and giving her the job of watching over foals' dreams.
- Force Feeding: Bon-Bon suddenly turns out to be a weight fetishist and she force-feeds Lyra into morbid obesity. Twilight is utterly perplexed how could she pull this off within just two hours.
- To make things even more disturbing, both are actually supposed to be heterosexual in the setting, Lyra has a boyfriend and Bon-Bon is married with child.
- Groin Attack: Pinkamena's method of putting Slenderpony out of commission. Celestia also threatens to emasculate Discord before he manages to convince her he's not behind the madness.
- Followed by an attempt by Shining Armor to do the same thing. Why? See next entry.
- Hermaphrodite: Celestia finds herself transformed into one. Both she, as well as Luna and Nightmare Moon, find this extremely traumatising and gross.
- The same thing happens offscreen to Princess Cadance. Neither she nor her husband were amused.
- Heroic BSoD: Understandably, given what they're going through. A high-end visit to the spa helps a lot. Even if they do have to snap Aloe and Lotus out of what the trollfic's making them do, first.
- I Need a Freaking Drink: Both Luna and Nightmare Moon, after witnessing Celestia's transformation, go on a drinking binge in a bar. Nightmare drinks so much that she ends up puking into a castle moat in Luna's dream realm.
- Mind Rape: The antagonist assaults the Mane Six with extremely disturbing (and briefly described) visions in an attempt to stave them off from reaching his hideout.
- Not Me This Time: Celestia's first assumption upon waking up in bed, and seeing the castle transformed into "Celestia's Bondage Playhouse", is that Discord is behind it. He manages to convince her, though, that the party responsible is someone way worse than him.
- Parody Sue: A human
Gary Stu makes a (very) brief appearance in Twilight Sparkle's library and attempts to seduce her. She blasts him, sending his flaming severed head rocketing out of her upstairs window. - Ron the Death Eater: Much to Celestia's shock, the Trollfic's writing paints her as a tyrant who turns ponies to stone and tortures her servants.
- Shout-Out: If you know your way around the fanfics that have been written, you'll recognize a lot of what's going on here.
- With special mention to SHED.MOV. Yeah, the real Fluttershy doesn't take it well...
- Take That!: Oh, and how. Special attention is paid to the more infamous stories to emerge from the fandom, with "Cupcakes" and "Rainbow Factory" all but named.
- Troll Fic: The kind of fanfics lampooned here. Even the villain is named "Trollfic".
- Would Harm a Child: One of the more common themes in the prolific scenarios, from Rarity almost leaving Sweetie Belle Buried Alive in the boutique's non-existent basement to Slender Mane attacking the Cutie Mark Crusaders. And then there's the mentioned "reinterpretation" of Discord who likes to make ponies eat the roasted flesh of their own children.
Tropes in Fanfic is Crapsack II:
- Author Filibuster: Pinkamena ranting about how One More Day sucked.
- Character Derailment: In-universe; it can be actually measured with Pinkamena's "OOC meter". Not being completely out-of-character is actually a bad thing, as it makes it harder to snap the character out of whatever traumatic scenario the fanfic author has them experience.
- Cool Old Lady: Granny Smith doesn't let the gloom take her over, and instead arms herself with a shotgun to fight back against the overwhelming grimdark.
- Crapsack World: The Toxic Nihilist turns Equestria into one of these.
- Diabolus ex Machina: Fluttershy's newly adopted bird gets killed by an 18-wheel truck out of nowhere. Even though Equestria doesn't even have automobiles.
- Goth: Pinkie Pie adopts an over-the-top Goth style in response to Equestria turning gloomy.
- Heroic BSoD: Pinkamena is prepared to deal with four of them after taking Fluttershy, Big Mac, Apple Bloom and Applejack through the gorefic section of the prison. Averted. Fluttershy's a vet and the Apples are farmers. Both jobs entail enough real grue, even in Equestria, that the gorefics' splatterfest just looks ridiculous.
- Mary-Sue Hunter: Part of Pinkamena's new duties since the last installment.
- The Power of Love: Pinkamena saves Big Mac from the overwhelming grimdark by acting as a Shipper on Deck between him and Fluttershy.
- Shout-Out:
- The subtitle is a reference to Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo.
- Old Man Henderson puts in an appearance. Funnily enough, this could just as well be canon with the fate of the original character...
- In a Shout-Out to the prior FiC, apparently Nightmare Moon is still barfing into the castle moat...
- Take That!: Apparently Pinkamena isn't a big fan of H. P. Lovecraft. Neither is the author. But then, neither was H.P. Lovecraft.
- As with the original FiC, there are quite a few. Honorable mentions go to Fall of Equestria, The Conversion Bureau, and even Fifty Shades of Grey. Which, to be fair, was originally a fanfic of Twilight...
- War Fic: Big Macintosh is turned into a dark Warhammer 40,000-style space marine. Subverted, as the (in-universe) fanfic author is apparently too lazy to write an entire war fic and instead just has Big Mac make vague cliched references to an off-screen war.
