Pinkie Pie and the Cupcake Calamity is a 2018 book, it is the fortieth entry in a book series set in the My Little Pony: Equestria Girls universe.
Canterlot High Stories – Pinkie Pie and the Cupcake Calamity provides examples of:
- Black Comedy: There's an old man that always eats alone in the bakery, and Rainbow Dash says that probably most of his friends are dead — though Sunset interrupts Rainbow before she mentions the word "dead".
- Break the Cutie: Downplayed compared to most examples, but after trying and failing to make the bakery cooler and attract more clients by doing events, Pinkie ends up being genuinely desperate and sad.
- Captain Oblivious: Pinkie has a hard time noticing the obvious, or understanding why people would dislike her ideas. For example, Pinkie puts a cupcake hat on Rainbow Dash's head and thinks the latter looks cute in it, but doesn't notice that Rainbow is embarrassed by it and consequently doesn't understand why she took it off.
- Character Development: By Pinkie's standards, noticing that her tastes and ideas are not considered "cool" after many failures can be considered as "maturing".
- Colon Cancer: The full title on the cover: My Little Pony: Equestria Girls: Canterlot High Stories: Pinkie Pie and the Cupcake Calamity
- Covers Always Lie: The happy and girly cover of the book does not show how bad Pinkie gets in the story.
- Didn't Think This Through: A lot of Pinkie's failed plans fall into this.
- When Pinkie decides to do a "decorate your cake event", it starts great... and ends up backfiring when people start leaving the store and leave behind a bunch of ugly-looking cakes, giving a bad image of the bakery to people who weren't aware of the event.
- With the karaoke event, Pinkie doesn't count on people with terrible singing voices wanting to participate.
- Fangirl: Pinkie describes Twilight as this towards Red Forest, a member of the comeback kids.
- Implied Love Interest: Red Forest flirts with Pinkie, but nothing comes out of it.
- Manchild: Pinkie is seen as this in-universe, thanks to her parties and ideas being perceived as childish.
- Trauma Conga Line: Through the story, all of Pinkie's ideas and events end in failures. Making this worse, Rarity has more success than Pinkie at making the bakery seem cooler, and she generally has a better understanding of what's trendy/popular, causing Pinkie to feel challenged. After enough failures, the Cakes decide to do Rarity's ideas rather than even considering Pinkie's ones, and Pinkie says that she never felt more embarrassed in her whole life.
- Unknown Rival: Pinkie starts seeing Rarity as a rival, while Rarity doesn't even notice it.
