I know you know (of) Ursula Vernon. What you might NOT know is her… umm… passion for? fixation upon? “customized” My Little Ponies. E.g., My Leper Pony, of which she writes:

I think the reason I found this so ungodly fun is because when I was a kid–lo these many moons ago–I loved my My Little Ponies, and used them to act out stories…but probably not the kind that the manufacturers would expect. The minds of children, as Stephen King once wrote, are like deep wells of clear water. And this is true enough, but there are monsters in those wells, and some of ‘em have a bunch of eyes and really big teeth. So my stories were all full of blood and torture and death and forced marriages, sort of Quentin Tarantino meets Marguerite Henry, all acted out via My Little Ponies, and their cohorts, the little scented rubber animals that came with the Strawberry Shortcake dolls. (I had no particular use for the dolls.)

Next to some of those stories, My Leper Pony’s probably pretty tame, but it’s still nice to return in some small way to that well of childhood creative depravity.

Ha!

I have to say…my girls love those My Little Ponys…OMIGOD. They are too much. They have names like HoneyPie Pony and Baby Cotton Candy and Sugarcake and Sugarberry and blahblah other awful names. My husband made me laugh when he suggested the next one will be named Hyperglycemic Shock.

John, I will have a Seabiscuit post for you soon. Seriously.

I’ll take your threat of a giant explosion in Ponyland figuratively, i.e. “in stories about Ponyland,” rather than literally. It must have been tempting, though. *laughing*

P.S. The year she was four, my own daughter insisted on a new My Little Pony story every single night. Luckily, the literary talent she wanted was my husband, not me. I might have resorted to a giant explosion in Ponyland.