Time I uploaded an OC I wrote quite a lot of lore for, and one that plays a large role in my own internal headcanon: Mirthful; the Demon of Laughter.

In case you’re wondering, no he’s not actually a demon. Though some do believe he might have been possessed by one, he was simply a particularly infamous character back in his time and one that travellers would dread to be caught by on the open road. It would take the Pillars of Equestria to bring him down, and even then his legacy lived on a millennium past his own death. Both in the form of his own branch of magic, known as “Gigglemancy”, and the disciples he left behind to continue his work as a proud tradition, passed down the generations.

My main inspiration for Mirthful (apart from the fact that jesters look great and that I wanted to make a tickle-magic based character) is that I wanted to take the "Evil Clown" archetype in a different direction. Most examples in media are just sadistic creeps that torture or murder people because they find it funny, an overplayed trope and one that doesn’t really fit into the world of MLP.

I wanted to make a variant of that archetype that would work within the more light-hearted nature of the show. If Mirthful looks rather silly and non-threatening, that’s by design. I wanted him to still recognisable as a silly clown, but one that believes he has a higher purpose then himself. An end goal that he strives to attain by any means necessary, and it’s those four key words that serve as the root of his villainous behaviour. I believe the term for this kind of villain is a Well-Intentioned Extremist.

When drawing Mirthful, the main rule is that he should look and act goofy and fun, not threatening and sadistic. Even after losing his marbles, he still sees himself as a jester and his mission in life is to make ponies laugh, to make everypony laugh. He does this mostly by tickling them against their will, but hey…it works~

I’ll upload the story in parts on each picture.

Part One: An Unwanted Child

Mirthful was born from earth pony parents, which might not seem like such a big deal if not for the time. See, he was around in the ancient world, back before the Sisters and before Equestria When the tribes where separated, and hostile to each other. So a unicorn born of earther parents raised some eyebrows, for both tribes in question.

The village in which he was born suspected some fraternisation with the enemy from the family-there where even claims that his mother had committed adultery and he was somepony else's foal. Because of the stigma, Mirthful couldn't stay there long, and he was taken by his father to Unicornia along with that month's tribute for raising the sun. Dropped off like a sack of grain, the foal was disowned by his family.

Thankfully, one of Queen Majesty's serving mares couldn't stand to watch a foal be left to die like that, and pleaded with her liege to take care of him. With an accord struck that he would be sworn to her as another servant of house, the Queen agreed. Years passed, and ponies noted that Mirthful was quite a chipper and comical colt, unusual given the circumstances of his family and the hardship he had growing up. The disdain and suspicion he earned from his own tribe was nothing compared to the attitude of the unicorns. For his earther blood, many of his peers considered him utterly beneath contempt, lower then even a peasant. A mongrel pony of impure birth.

And yet, he persevered, seeming to take those jabs at his character and make jokes out of them. More to the point, his jokes where quite funny. He earned his cutie mark at the age of ten, when he made a group of injured and dour soldiers laugh, not an easy feat. And thus he discovered his special talent: Making ponies laugh!

Rest of the story is in the alternative version uploads, please let me know what you think.