My Little Pony: Friendship is Betrayal

My Little Pony: Friendship is Betrayal is a webcomic by Dewdee. It updates irregularly, with several pages per update. Chapter 2 was completed on March 6, 2012. An RSS feed is available.

Style
Much like Friendship is Dragons, the comic uses screenshots with altered captions and dialogue to retell episodes of ; occasionally, a panel is digitally altered.

The thoughts of the main characters are expressed via differently-styled captions; Twilight's, for instance, are yellow and rectange-shaped, Pinkie's are purple and jagged. There is no verbal narration. The first chapter, which covers Friendship is Magic, parts 1 and 2, follows Twilight Sparkle exclusively, and the majority of the thought captions are hers. The following chapters utilize images from more episodes and also uses more original material, but the narrative concept remains the same; chapter 2 is told mostly from Pinkie Pie's point of view, and chapter 3 from Rarity's.

Act 1: The Mare in the Moon
The comic starts with an abridged but otherwise mostly unaltered quote of the prologue of the show's first episode, briefly summarizing Luna's rebellion and banishment. The narrative diverges from there: Twilight is still Celestia's pupil, but believes that the Princess, who she secretly likes to call a mule, is much less benign than she seems. Her interest in the Nightmare Moon tale is less in preventing her return than in finding out how Celestia rose to power.

Celestia sends her to Ponyville to oversee preparations for the Summer Sun Celebration, which serves as an introduction to the other main characters. Twilight is paranoid that Celestia intends to have her killed, suspecting Rainbow Dash, Rarity, Fluttershy, and Pinkie Pie of being her agents. Her suspicions prove almost correct; Pinkie drugs her drink, and the ponies take the unconscious Twilight off to their employer: Nightmare Moon.

The next scene takes its screenshots from the confrontation scene in Friendship is Magic, part 2 and Twilight's flashback in The Cutie Mark Chronicles. Twilight tries to explain her opposition of Celestia's rule, but Nightmare Moon does not believe her. She stuns Twilight and uses a spell to read her memories; specifically, the memory of the day Twilight hatched Spike. It turns out that the spell triggered by the sonic rainboom essentially killed Twilight's parents, because Celestia refused to turn them back into ponies. So not only did Twilight become Celestia's pupil on that day, it was also the first time Twilight started to suspect something was wrong with Celestia's public image.

Nightmare Moon tells Twilight she is likely a pony spoken of in prophecy, destined to "bring about harmony between day and night". She essentially offers the unicorn a chance to join her and defeat Celestia, but when the other ponies come into the room, Twilight declines: she intends to use the Elements of Harmony to defeat both Celestia and Nightmare Moon. Pinkie and the others quickly agree to her plan and unleash the magic, turning Nightmare Moon back into Luna.

Celestia arrives and punishes her sister for her rebellion by killing her. Back in Ponyville, Twilight continues to plot Celestia's downfall, intending to bide her time until she knows she's powerful enough to defeat Equestria's ruler and take her place on the throne. In the final page of the chapter, Celestia reveals she had a mole among Twilight's new "friends" all along, leaving Twilight to wonder who that might be and why she has apparently not informed Celestia of Twi's intended betrayal.

Act 2: Griffon the Brush-off
Like the episode it is based on, this chapter starts with Pinkie Pie annoying Twilight, who is sitting on a park bench and just wants to be left alone to read. Pinkie gets distracted when she sees Rainbow Dash flying overhead; she starts to follow her to see where the pegasus is going, much to Rainbow's dismay. She is meeting with Gilda, whom she introduces to Pinkie as a member of Celestia's guard who wants to join the conspiracy to overthrow Celestia. Pinkie suspects that something else is going on, but doesn't get very far before Gilda threatens her not to poke her nose where it doesn't belong and causes her flying contraption to crash.

This leads into a flashback, once again using screencaps from The Cutie Mark Chronicles. It reveals that shortly before Rainbow Dash's first sonic rainboom, Pinkie was disowned by her very religious family for the sin of trying to make them laugh. Thoughts of suicide haunted her until a rainbow explosion literally showed her the light. She returned to her family's house and surprised them with a party, like in the original episode; however, in this version of the story, the party ends in bloodshed, with Pinkie drugging and killing her parents, thus earning her her cutie mark.

Back in the present, Pinkie starts to suspect that Rainbow Dash is conspiring with Gilda to betray the other ponies. Upon witnessing Gilda scaring Granny Smith with her tail and complaining about the lack of amusing lethal consequences, Pinkie looks directly at the reader and relays her outrage that Gilda is "even stealing [her] favourite hobbies now". Gilda appears to believe that Pinkie Pie is dead, and mutters to herself that the other conspirators will soon follow suit. Pinkie thinks she will go after Fluttershy next, and enlists Twilight, Spike, and eventually Applejack to save the Pegasus from Gilda.

They arrive at Froggy Bottom Bog (for which the comic segues to screenshots from Feeling Pinkie Keen), only to find Fluttershy safe and sound. Twilight accuses Pinkie Pie of being the traitor and having made up the story about Rainbow Dash and Gilda, not noticing a hydra rising out of the swamp and rearing its heads behind her. Twilight barely manages to kill the beast by slicing its belly open with her horn. The incident has convinced Twilight that Pinkie is not the traitor. Pinkie volunteers to interrogate Rainbow Dash, who is now the group's prime suspect.

The interrogation scene uses - in part heavily altered - screenshots from Party of One. Pinkie is successful: Rainbow confesses that she was trying to gain Gilda's trust in order to become a double agent for the conspirators, but had nothing to do with trying to kill Pinkie and Fluttershy. Remembering that the Pegasus' Sonic Rainboom once saved her life, Pinkie chooses to believe her friend.

The comic then returns to using material from Griffon the Brush-off: During a party Gilda has been lured to, Pinkie injects her with tranquilizer and "take[s] her somewhere she can rest in peace". She kills her and, it is implied, turns Gilda into cupcakes she can feed Gummy. Those same cupcakes are apparently later eaten by Spike, who is not aware of the special recipe.

Meanwhile, Twilight sends Celestia a letter, telling her about a "renegade guardsm[a]n" whose evil plans were foiled by Twilight and her friends. She also wonders aloud how Gilda was able to summon a hydra to kill Fluttershy. Celestia writes back that she is glad Gilda has been punished, and that she has no idea who could possibly have the power to control a hydra. All while remarking to herself - and thus revealing to the audience - that she is well aware that Twilight is plotting against her.

In the final scene, using screenshots from the show's first episode, Twilight stares out a window in the library, uncertain of the future and whether she is fighting a war she cannot win. In a darkly humorous postscript, Spike comes in, asking her to partake in "the most delicious cupcakes ever", which Pinkie Pie has brought to the post-victory afterparty Twilight isn't in the mood for.

Act 3: A Dog and Pony Show
Starting off with screenshots from Sweet and Elite - the first season-two episode used in the comic -, Celestia gifts Rarity a penthouse in Canterlot, as a reward for accepting the job of designing a Gala dress for the Princess. To avoid the implication that she is Celestia's spy, however, Rarity insists that she cannot spend all her time in Canterlot, and must return to Ponyville at some point.

External link

 * The comic's archive page The comic features occasional bloody and violent content