- Member Since 13th Oct, 2013
- offline last seen Apr 20th, 2021
Jordan179
I'm a long time science fiction and animation fan who stumbled into My Little Pony fandom and got caught -- I guess I'm a Brony Forever now.
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Jordan179 Presents Cupcakes 2: Grandma's Recipe
Fast forward several centuries and change the diction, and I can't help but think that Cheese Sandwich would echo these very sentiments. Including the "more than a hundred years together" part, though Pinkie's means of ensuring that are far kinder.
Ingredients, Preparation, Spoilage... Such is the power of euphemism, helping Adventurine pretend these aren't living, feeling beings but just cobblestones on the road to immortality. At least, that's probably how it started. By this point, he probably doesn't need them for that purpose, just perpetuating them out of habit.
I can only describe that third section heading as "disturbingly jaunty."
And that final scene... Yeah, that isn't side effect of the motion of ethereal essences, that's just sadism. Ew.
A shame this was a bit late, but it was still an excellent Halloween story. Thank you for it.
Horrible idea from your footnote...
... Wolves are naturally carnivores. What if they'd captured the Cupcake-Bakers and somehow gotten their secret out of them? I think it would have fit quite well into their culture.
(Or, suppose that even if a life-force of the baker's own kind is best, another sapient life force is still usable? Imagine a tribe of sapient immortal wolves living off the flesh of tortured ponies...)
6590186
Several times great grandma, but yes!
Perhaps the key theme of this story, which I lampshade with the title and the bookended erotic scenes, is that Love Makes You Loyal. Not necessarily Redeems You, or makes you Evil, but that it makes you Loyal to the Beloved. Aventurine Miter truly loves Harmonia in every way (and has very strong fraternal love for his sister Honesty), but because Harmonia is a ruthless former Well Intentioned Extremist who has clearly drifted far into deliberate evil, and Honesty's basically a Blood Knight ; they've all had to become inured to committing the most dreadful tortures on their victims because it's part of their immortality technique.
Aventurine loves Harmonia heart and soul, he loves Honesty as much in a different way. He'd do anything for them. Which is the problem.
That they genuinely both love him back makes the problem insoluble, because even if Aventurine had a moral epiphany, he could never abandon his wife and sister. The cognitive dissonance which would be produced is one of the reasons he's trapped in the evil of the Cupcake Bakers. On his own, he's a good stallion and general nice guy who never would have become a serial killer. He's been drawn into it by his love for Harmonia and Honesty.
Harmonia, for her part, dreamed of bringing eternal life to all Ponykind. Unfortunately for her, her moral compass did not extend to avoiding destructive animal testing, and the method she discovered necessarily involved the death by extreme pain of the donor. And she can't figure out any other means, and the deeper her guilt the more difficult it is for her to admit that what she's doing is morally wrong.
Honesty is intelligent and educated, but she's not a deep thinker. On her own she would never have been worse than bitchy, but the two Ponies she loves and admires most -- her brother and her best friend / sister-in-law -- have led her into this and she's committed far past the point of return. Also, she's discovered that she very much LIKES violence, and has become a sadist in many ways. She's not an ancestor of Foidolite or Limestone Pie, though she's their many-times great-aunt, but some of the personality traits are recognizable, and probably inherited from Aventurine and Honesty's parents.
They've all become dreadful sadists. It helps keep them from going even crazier. What's worse, they've become emotionally-addicted to the thrill of the final kill, and have attached that in their minds to sex (Honesty's currently lonely; for obvious reasons one could only enjoy what Aventurine and Harmonia can with a lover one trusts deeply enough to admit into the secret of the Cupcake Bakers, and she can't just have sex at random with her fellow Bakers because they are all Ponies very important in her life).
They have to think of it this way to avoid going mad. Or madder than they are already. If they saw murder with slow torture as something it was okay to do to Ponies they hadn't conceptually de-equinized, their little alchemical coven would tear itself apart in an orgy of death the moment that somepony annoyed somepony else.
Note how Aventurine reacts when he realizes that he rather hates Flare Northstar (in part because he loves his niece Ambrosia Miter, her nicknames in their group include "Honey" and "Sweetie," which pretty much describes her personality -- Flare is courting a very bad end by taking advantage of her). He realizes how easy it would be, given his experience, to just use him as a Source of Ingredient -- and then he recoils from the thought, because it would disrupt the Harmony of their group. Which it would, of course.
My model, of course, for this, is the history of totalitarianism.
They are also, of course, adrenaline junkies. They encountered some particularly tough foes this time around -- low numbers but high skills, which is dangerous because their tactics are oriented around confusing and frightening and disrupting their enemies rather than winning closely-matched duels -- but even when they're facing routine highwayponies, there's the risk that something will go wrong and somepony will get killed. They have taken losses in the past -- but fortunately not from among their core trio. To keep on doing this sort of thing, they have to rather enjoy it.
A bit of both. But yes, Aventurine and Harmonia being badly-corrupted by what they do; it's even corrupting the finest and purest emotion they feel -- their love for each other.
Understand -- these are Ponies who if they had made better decisions would have become Science Heroes. Indeed, that's what they thought they were going to do when they went off to Canterlot to study and live together as a family. They made certain very bad choices, and are now far beyond the point of backing away from them.
6590390
The problem is that they're a low-tech culture. Though they might have been able to figure out workarounds, given time or an especially brilliant Wolf. They're not stupider than Ponies, they're just hunters rather than town-dwellers.
6590186
Oh, one more thing ... the echoes betwen Harmonia and Pinkie (especially as shown in Her Special Gift) are deliberate. They're both brilliant, charismatic Ponies with a very great capacity for love and for evoking love in return. The difference is what they do with it.
Cheese Sandwich is almost certainly too decent to become a serial killer. But he's fortunate that he's never had to face nor will have to face the need to do so to be loyal to her. He would kill to protect Pinkie, even though he's less of a natural killer than Aventurine was even when Aventurine was still innocent of anything other than loving Harmonia.
Pinkie, of course, isn't a natural killer at all. She's one of the least violent members of the Mane Six. Her powers enable her to win fights non-lethally, or snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. The other relatively non-violent memer of the Mane Six is Fluttershy, but she's more tempted to violence than is Pinkie, as Fluttershy has an explosive temper and the ability to kill in exactly the same manner as Chrysalis does, through explosive love-drainnig. Fluttershy however -- very much unlike the sadistic Chrysalis -- is Kind.
I just had another horrible thought: Suppose that, in an alternate universe, Pinkie Pie is possessed by one of the Shadows. Perhaps it's the same one that possessed Cloud Kicker and encountered her before she fully came into her powers, or perhaps it happened while Starlight had taken away her Cutie Mark and most of her defenses. Now, Pinkie almost certainly knows the general outlines of Harmonia's story. So, the Shadow sends her to search out more of the details...
... I think I've just made a backstory for the original Cupcakes.
Considering that I was out with the wee goblin on hallows eve I don't mind this being late. I do appreciate the story.
This....is the most horrifying piece of literature I have ever read. At first, the story was an overly poetic monologue about Aventurine's love and admiration for Harmonia, and that her Discovery, the “Food of Life”, has allowed them to surmount death. If taken at face value, this would be a spectacular achievement, but when hunting for the ingredients is synonymous with kidnapping people, you know there's something twisted going on. The last three sections were the most nightmarish words I have ever read, not just for the utter blasphemy against life and soul, (They had sex in the archer's vivisected corpse! What kind of sick bastards do that?!), but because of the Cupcake Bakers' complete disrespect towards their victims' right to live. This story was a masterpiece because it showed us the true nature of Aventurine Miter, in spite of the inherent bias of his narration. I can say with complete sincerity that I hated every character involved, and I think you're a great author for being able to invoke this feeling in me. Happy Halloween Jordan179!
6590504 This points to the basic problem with Cupcakes. Simply put, we're not only being told "that innocent child is actually a monster", we're being told that someone who has a distinct aversion to inflicting pain because of her sense of empathy is actually Ilsa Koch.
6592244
YES!!! You totally got the point of the story!!! THANK YOU!!!
6592740
Indeed. That's why the original "Cupcakes" story and most of the sequels based off it are unbelievable. Pinkie Pie would never do anything like that, and somepony who would do something like that would probably reveal it by behavioral signs (even if observers weren't aware that this is what was being revealed). If I ever return to the Cupcake Bakers, which I may because I have a lot of background on them, I may show some of them from the POV of characters who are neither in on their secret nor whom the CB's regard as legitimate Prey (meaning that the CB's might be guardedly friendly toward them), and the POV character would probably notice that there was something "off" about the CB's. (*cue Humanoid Pinkie Pie regarding the Dazzlings*)
Their friendship is dangerous, though, as they have a secret worth killing for, and a temptation to kill one in the most horrible manner possible.
6592814 This getting bad vibes almost instantly puts her way ahead of most of the lead characters of police procedurals. Most of those shmucks couldn't ID their own grannies in a police line-up.
6590390 Sounds like a creepy version of the Aztecs (I once had the idea of doing sorta-Aztecs as animal folk with the predators consuming the herbivores by way of sacrifice as ritualized predation).
Very,, very well done and creepy. I like the deliberately archaic tone of the writing, it reminds me of how Lovecraft did many of his earlier stories. I assume that to be deliberate. And the sex scenes -- well, the first one is very well done. But the second works far, far better as horror (I'd sure hate to know someone who found that one erotic!) than as erotica. Though maybe someone like Hannibal Lecter would like it.
Also let me say that this is one of the best and most scarily believable fictional 'cannibal clans' I've ever read about. It leaves behind every single cheesy B-movie version I've seen, aside from maybe the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the original The Hills Have Eyes. I imagine that if you met Aventurine and the rest outside of one of their little 'hunting expeditions' they'd be perfectly mannerly hosts, provided you didn't stumble on anything, ah, untoward. Of course to do that you'd have to be sneaking around where you didn't belong, and is it really their fault if you proved ill-mannered?
The cold stars stare down upon us, and from the forests we hear the howl of Wolves, sometimes seeming to be rich and complex Communications, though such is of course merely Fanciful.
I can imagine my Ardi sniffing at this.
Obviously, Aventurine's speculations about the wolves near Stalliongrad are truer than he imagines. Though he doesn't know, which is good for both his Company and the Wolves, as those particular wolves have more than a passing resemblance to Whitley Strieber's Wolfen, who could smell the knowledge of their existence on you if you saw one of them. Bolts, explosions, fire, growling, ripping and sorrow all around would doubtless have ensued, if the Wolves believed they needed to protect the secret of their existence and thus attacked the heavily-armed Cupcake Bakers. Ardishir's Wolves would make formidable foes, especially in their own home country.
I now wonder if maybe, especially as time went on and these cannibals' minds twisted more and more, they may have stripped and eaten some of their captives 'in the field', especially when they already had enough for the ritual? If those remains were found by the Stalliongrad ponies they could have easily seen the Wolves as responsible, encouraging them in their hunting of them. And sometimes, my Wolves have killed and eaten ponies in the past when desperation or madness drove them.
Great and a truly creepy and gory Halloween fic, thanks for sharing!
6595057
Your praise means a lot to me, especially since I know you've read a lot of classic horror and dark fantasy so you know my inspirations.
The archaicism is deliberate, yes. Both because I like the tone, and because it reminds the audience (and me) that this is pre-industrial Equestria, and consequently something of a different world. It helped that I have been reading Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, which is partly set in exactly the analogous era (and partly a bit after it).
The sex scenes bookend the story and are meant to convey a darkening tone. I deliberately make them mirror one another, to the point that I literally cut-and-pasted a whole paragraph at one point. The first scene is sweetly-sentimental; it's all about how deeply and madly in love Aventurine is with Harmonia; if it were a filmed sequence it would have been shot through a vaselined lens to soft-focus it. Then we learn of Harmonia's Great Work. Then we realize that it involves hunting and kidnapping other Ponies. I do the battle scene specifically to build sympathy and identification with the characters; showing brave and ingenious fighters from their own point of view always has that effect. Then we learn that they are not merely killing their captives, but doing so by horrible slow torture. Then comes the final sex scene, which presents the exact same sort of emotions on their part, but it's all rather different when you realize that they're having sex on top of the mutilated corpse of their victim and becoming aroused by what they've just done.
The whole point of the story is to get the reader to experience identification for and sympathy with characters who turn out to be monstrously evil. Thats incidentally, almost the opposite of what I usually write -- I more normally do stories in which characters of types normally considered monstrously evil turn out to be basically good; as in the case of Claire Pie, an approach I call "anti-horror." Here, I was aiming for psychological horror, and I think I achieved it.
Well, I wanted them to be a plausibly functional cannibal clan. For one thing, they mostly love each other (so they won't easily dissolve in an orgy of mutual murder), and for another thing they use a strategy of not fouling their own nest. They go to places where life is cheap, and take some. Far away from home. The one weakness in their plan is that it's not that easy for them to actually get the Ingredient in the field, because they need a sound prison equipped with laboratory and oven to do it, and that's a sizable physical plant. I can, however, see ways they could work this out (a ship or a really big wagon train with heavily-constructed wagons, maybe), and might someday hang a story on it.
My main inspirations for Harmonia Pie, aside from (obviously) the version of Pinkie Pie in "Cupcakes", was Joseph Curwen from The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, a combination of various Whateleys from The Dunwich Horror, and Israel Bishop from "The Picture in the House." All, of course, H. P. Lovecraft, though at least one of the names I listed there (Israel Bishop) was invented by Chaosium.
I like your idea that some of the Cupcake Bakers' depredations might have been blamed on the Wolves. They certainly don't have the taboo against cannibalism that most Ponies (and indeed most sapient beings in that world) have. And though they normally are cannibals only in the consumption of their Cupcakes of Life (most of their diet is quite normal, though Harmonia -- like her distant descendant Pinkie Pie -- is a truly good cook and baker), if they were really hungry, they'd be far more likely to eat other Ponies than would most Ponies.
6599302 This is good.
Really good.
I hope I get to be as great a writer as you!!
6639060
I'm glad you liked it. I think not a lot of people did, because it fell into the gap between being erotic, adventurous and horrific.
6650806
I'm very glad you liked this story. You were one of my inspirations for writing it.
6652055
Reading your stories made me want to do something explicitly erotic. The fact that it was approaching Halloween made me want to do a horror story, and I'd already created Harmonia Pie and the two other core members of her merry little band. And I already had the idea that Harmonia and Aventurine were very much in love.
I'm thinking of doing a (not very explicit) prequel set when Aventurine 21, Harmonia 14 and Honesty 7, about how Harmonia originally wins Aventurine's love. It involves Honesty non-lethally poisoning Aventurine's current fillyfriend because Honesty really likes Harmonia and wants her to become her sister in law. (Harmonia is the one who convinces her that lethally poisoning her rival would be a bad idea ... Honesty as a filly is most definitely a bit of a Bad Seed).
6652076 I can't wait!
quadrivium <- you misspelled this as a hydrogen isotope.
Very well done and erotically Lovecraftian in its execution. This was a fantastic read, though if this is an excerpt from the diaries that Celestia mentions on Post Traumatic it is indeed reasonable that she sheltered young Twilight from it - I'm fully grown and currently feel like I need to take a shower and watch some Disney for Mind Bleach. This is intended as a compliment, I assure you.
As much as I cannot stand Horror movies, I adore a well done Horror story. Thank you very much for sharing this.
7059075
Thank you! H. P. Lovecraft is one of my favorite writers of all time, and I really appreciate that you compared me to him!
Yes, this would have upset a young Twilight Sparkle for many reasons. It upsets Celestia when she thinks back on it, and Celestia's seen a lot of dreadful things in her very long life.