PB Sandwich also struggles with bouts of depression and anxiety. Having been subject to his parents' "Smile Smile Smile!" brand of relentless cheer, he's been suppressing all less-than-chipper feelings for most of his life. It is only in adulthood, and after befriending Midnight, that he learns that sometimes it's okay to not be okay.

As with mama Pinkie Pie, PB's hair loses its bouncy curls when he's feeling down. He used to anxiously wash and blowdry his mane to disguise his somber mood (Pinkie and Cheese love their youngest child dearly and panic at the slightest hint of a frown), but he has slowly stopped doing this. He's most certainly not going to pressure Cloudy to turn her frown upside-down or try to cheer her up with a single bubbly musical number. Unless, of course, that's what she wants. PB has an accordion and can whip it out fast enough to break the sound barrier. More likely though, he'll just quietly keep her company as they watch the sun set together- and maybe they'll both come out of the day maybe not quite feeling happy, per say, but maybe just a little more supported, a little less lost....a lot less alone. And sometimes, that's enough.

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Meet Sebastian and Carmella Sweet, otherwise known as the Sensational Sweets! They're a married pair of sugar gliders, and also Cupcake's parents!

1.) Sebastian and Carmella have been best friends since secondary school, and married the moment they were legally able to. They remain stupidly in love to this day and have a million pet names for each other. Sebastian is the more boastful and eccentric of the pair (he's prone to odd exclamations like Egads! Cripes! Gadzooks, my mustache is on fire again!!), while Carmella is soft-spoken, loving, and gentle....though she has the occasional moment that hints at a secret shady past. She is curiously talented at picking locks and throwing knives, and sometimes jokes that lye is as good at scrubbing out tough stains as it is at dissolving bodies. I'm not saying she and Sebastian have a sordid criminal history, but I am implying it very strongly.

Ultimately though, the Sweets are legendary acrobats and ringmasters of a successful circus. As sugar gliders they both possess a gliding membrane and prehensile tails. Carmella has a marsupial pouch in which she keeps performance props- fire-twirling sticks, swallowing swords, magic cards, etc- and also snacks. Carmella is a talented cook, and as such both her and her hubby have gotten a little pudgy in their golden years.

-The Sweets were pretty consumed by their circus careers until they hit their mid-thirties and remembered oh cripes, we oughta have some kids (small mammals tend to have big, BIG families). Unfortunately, they struggled to conceive. Undeterred, they decided to go adopt a couple of teeny babies to drown in their particular brand of loud, syrupy-sweet affection

-This plan went out the window when they were taken on a tour through the orphanage and spotted a young bear cub sitting in the corner away from the other children, playing by herself. The adoption agent brushed over the cub, trying to herd Carmella and Sebastian into the small mammals wing, but the Sweets just couldn't help their curiosity.

They ask the cub if she'd like to play with them. The bear hesitates before perking up a little, grabbing her ball- but they're not five minutes into a game when a careless swat of the cub's paw sends Sebastian flying, injuring him. The cub runs over to help, reaching out with her giant clawed paws- and Sebastian and Carmella both instinctively flinch.

That's enough to get the cub lurching backward- but looking down at the tiny couple she hurt- the latest in a long list of others she'd hurt- she fists her paws to her face and begins to bawl, blubbering apologies, desperately trying to scramble back to the safety of her corner.

Well, the Sweets aren't going to stand for this. With the same fearlessness they apply to their death-defying circus routines, they scramble up the bear to rub at her shoulders and pet her cheeks. It was just an accident, everything's alright. Sebastian boasts that her little swat was nothing compared to a scuffle he once got into with a one-eyed bandit cat, and asks if the little bear would like to hear the story. The distraction succeeds in stopping the tears, and the cub curls up and listens, spellbound, occasionally giggling, while Carmella gently corrects her husband's theatrical exaggerations ("No dear, he didn't actually swallow you, remember? I stabbed him with a sewing needle before he could gulp you down proper-")

The adoption agent clears their throat, trying to get the tour moving again. There are other children to meet, he reminds the Sweets. So the Sweets bid a reluctant farewell to the bear cub and move along.

They're allllllmost out of the room when Carmella gives one last look over her shoulder- and sees the cub slumping back down in her corner, hugging her knees. In an instant Carmella has scurried back across the room and has flung herself at the bear. Carmella doesn't need to see any other babies. She wants this one.

The adoption agent sputters, reminding of the far more appropriate children available- smaller, easier to manage children- he brings up the utter insanity of two creatures weighing less than a pound each attempting to raise one of the largest land carnivores on the planet. From their perch on Cupcake's shoulders, the Sweets level a flat look at the agent- before Sebastian folds his arms and says now see here, whatever his wife wants, she gets, and that's all there is to that.

-It actually was insane- suicidal, even- for two tiny sugar gliders to attempt raising a bear cub. Despite her best efforts, Cupcake broke a lot of furniture- it was necessary for the Sweets to expand their small home hundreds of times over to properly accommodate the growing bear. Even making her lunch every day was an exhausting ordeal, with each sandwich being larger than the Sweet's own bed. But eventually, everyone adjusts. With tutoring and diligent practice, Cupcake learns to be control her immense strength, and as an adult she can scoop and handle her parents with no fear. The Sweets fuss over their daughter an awful lot, and although Cupcake may grumble and growl, she secretly loves it. She knows she lucked out with her parents, and she loves them more than anything else in the world.

-The Sweets end up adopting yet again a couple years after Cupcake, this time a mischievous pair of twins. Cupcake will maul you if you look at her little sibbies wrong.

-Cupcake's real name (the one given to her by her adoptive parents) is Charlotte Sweet. "Cupcake" is a pet name that stuck. Her birth name was Gertrude Bruin, which she abandoned with little fanfare. There is no information available on the whereabouts of Cupcake's birth parents, but she finds she doesn't care.



2.) lil doodle so y'all can see the drastic size difference between Cupcake and her parents. I decided to "upgrade" Cupcake from grizzly bear to Kodiak bear, which are big enough to rival polar bears in size and weight. They can weigh over 1,000 pounds! And yet, for some reason, Carmella and Sebastian have trouble acknowledging their daughter's size and competence. To them, she will forever be babie. Even if she's all grown up now and apparently moving in with some lemur to run a boarding house in the big city (wat??)

i'm blanking on more context for this so have some notes:

Mixed-species adoptions are definitely frowned upon in the world of Fuzzbutts. A carnivore adopting a herbivore child is immediately seen as suspicious, and the prospective predator parent(s) may face unfair discrimination and additional screening. A herbivore adopting a carnivore is seen as less dangerous, but still suspicious. Carnivores feel that herbivores just want to deny the child their culture and may have a "savior" attitude in mind about taking in a poor little savage beast. Besides varying social opinion on the ethics of it, mixed adoptions can be outright dangerous for the herbivore (or omnivore, as the Sweets are) parent. Carnivore children play rough and have often not yet learned to control their strength or instincts. Cupcake struggled with this.


In the beginning, the Sweets were unknowingly underfeeding her (tbf, they were giving her the recommended food intake, it's just that Cupcake was about to hit a growth spurt and was therefore ravenous most of the day), which led to her hunting instincts getting sharper and harder to ignore. She didn't know why Sebastian and Carmella's quick darting movements fascinated her so much, and made her absently wonder if she could catch one of them in her claws. One night she sleep-walks into the kitchen and ends up ripping the sweets shelf right off the wall, because her bear brain went "sweets? honey? honeycomb? bee's nest maybe? TEAR IT OPEN". And so the Sweets awake to a frightful sound, and find the little bear in the kitchen surrounded by splintered wood and splattered with jam and biscuit crumbs, sniffling miserably.

Fortunately sugar gliders are no stranger to powerful sweets cravings, and had jam and biscuits with Cupcake until she'd calmed down. Later they took her to a ursine specialist, and figured out a more filling, nutritious meal plan- and like that, Cupcake stopped having secret dreams about eating her parents, and started running home after school to help Mama in the kitchen. As an adult Cupcake is perfectly capable of keeping herself fed (berries and fish are her main diet), but her parents can't help their worrying. They've got lingering guilt over leaving their little bear cub hungry, all those years ago....and with them both being so tiny, they worry that they won't be able to protect their daughter from the big bad world. Cupcake assures them she's probably fine.....again, she's a goddamn bear. An apex predator. Feared by most animals, even other carnivores. She can handle life in the big city just fine.



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more fuzzbutts stuff:

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"Just pick up the shovel, drama queen."

Chrysalis is assigned to the care and tutelage of Maud Pie, to learn the value of family, friendship, and most importantly, humility. Twilight figured that smashing rocks into rubble would do wonders for Chrysalis' rage issues. It did not. Without her magic, Chrysalis is not particularly strong. Lugging around a heavy sledge hammer makes her ancient back ache. The dust irritates her eyes. And worst of all, her awful little pony "friend" is completely unresponsive to her shouting and goading. The dull little thing isn't even good for a conversation! At least all this work busting rocks into dust gives her plenty of time to think about how she'll soon do the same thing to the Mane Six and the princesses. Maybe with the very same sledgehammer.

Still....perhaps a tiny part of her can admit it feels nice to retire after a hard days work. It feels....grounding, to hold a piece of rock that she carved with her very own hands. There's a tiny wonder in discovering the occasional gem- most recently, she found a fragment of emerald that reminded her of the eyes of her newly hatched grubs. Chrysalis' sense of taste is greatly atrophied and dulled, so she even somewhat appreciates the rancid, pungent, archaic meals (eg. onion sandwiches, vinegar pie) that come from the Pie family's kitchen. The rocks in the soup provide a very satisfying crunch. And maybe there's something nice about that purple rock farmer offering to massage her exoskeleton after a day's hard labor. And listening patiently while Chrysalis vents and rages about her trials and tribulations and failures and future REVENGE. There's something nice about this "Maud" running Chrysalis a hot bath, cleaning out all the nooks and crannies of her carapace....rubbing shampoo into her tattered mane until it sparkles like it did centuries ago......Chrysalis hasn't been treated like this since she lost her hive. Hmm. Maud's monotonous droning about rock varieties is the perfect white noise for Chrys to fall asleep to. And even an evil splindly insect like Chrysalis can appreciate those boulder-destroying biceps, good grub almighty...

She's still going to destroy Equestria. She's going to get off this swarm-forsaken rock farm. But maybe, for now.....it's not the worst arrangement. Hmph.


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