Detective Pony

by sonnetstuck

Summary:

"And then there's a customized copy of PONY PALS, a gift to you on your 14th birthday from the slippery Mr. Strider. Each page contains lovingly hand-written commentary on the deeds of this intrepid young horse. Later, about halfway through the book, rather than see the gag through to the bitter end, Strider began pasting over entire pages of original text with his own completely rewritten version of the story, while keeping all the chapter titles. His revision is a tough, emotionally draining read. But it's cathartic, in all the worst ways possible.
He tends to get carried away with his projects."

Note: this work is an altered book, and it plays on the physical relationship between the original pages and the edited text. As such, it's presented as a series of images. Reading the images is the only way to get the full experience, but I'm aware that some people can't/don't want to read it that way. So if that's the case, you can skip to chapter 13, which is a text-only version of the story, including rough descriptions of the most important illustrations.
Originally posted on detective-pony.tumblr.com

Notes:

Dirk doesn't like to cite his sources, but I do. I've compiled a complete list of all the allusions, quotations, references, etc. on this page of my blog, both to give them due credit and for the benefit of the curious reader (or the frustrated reader, since many of the references are intentionally opaque/oblique/obscure). Most of the drawings throughout the book are adapted from Andrew Hussie's old comics. The Dirk font I use was made by k8thescout.

Chapter 1: A Visitor (and foreword)