The instant she appears in this world, things go wrong for Twilight Sparkle. Fortunately, Anon the veterinarian is there to save her, and during the recovery process, they find they quite enjoy each other's company. Eventually Twilight wants to make her way back home and Anon has a decision to make.

Meanwhile Celestia, thinking Twilight is in danger, ventures to earth to rescue her, only to encounter dangers of her own. Princess Luna has to figure out how to rescue both of them without abandoning Equestrian rule.

No pony is the same after witnessing a work-related death, no matter who they are. The victim was young, eager, fresh-faced, and recently hired. In his last breaths, he let out a scream so heart-rending that the employees who heard it had difficulty sleeping that night. And Rainbow Dash was no exception.

But she's not losing sleep over that. What disturbs her is something far worse—something she said afterwards.

The very much unauthorized re-write of Jonny Bench's story called The Crippling Secret. I thought it would be fun to re-write it, but Jonny himself hasn't been on since half a year ago, so-

I did some reverse-image-searching, and I think the cover image comes from sjui00. Hopefully they don't mind my use.

Story was released 10/22/22, but I really, really rushed writing it. Usually, my stories take about five drafts before I'm happy with it. This one, I only did two then published it. On 10/24/22, I re-edited the story to flow better.

Formal Premise: The inventors of the Mirror wanted to create a device that could channel infinite magic and grant wishes. The hard part was making sure those wishes would never destroy the world. Showing a person their heart's desire is a sensible precaution to put into a wish-granting machine designed NOT to go horribly wrong.

The Atlanteans got close, even managing to imbue some amount of intelligence and morality into the Mirror. But they never finished their work; the Mirror never DID get to the point where it could grant wishes... at least, nobody believes it ever got to that point. But then, nobody has ever been trapped inside the Mirror and returned to tell the tale.

When the Mirror traps someone inside itself and outside of Time, that person and their consequences can no longer affect the world. In that circumstance, with a person fully under its power, the Mirror isn't limited in what it can do. Sometimes, it can even grant seemingly incompatible wishes.

But complex problems require complex solutions. In this case, the Mirror takes a few massive liberties about how, exactly, it satisfies the wishes of both Harry Potter and Lord Voldemort. Namely, it sends them to a world of ponies.

Informal Premise: This is a crossover between MLP and Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, not just Harry Potter. No matter how accessible I try to make it to those who haven't read HPMoR, those who HAVE read it will undeniably have an easier experience reading this story.

HPMoR is the second most popular fanfiction of Harry Potter, at least according to fanfiction stats. It involves Harry studying & dissecting the wizarding world with science. Not with technology, with actual science. That is, he uses the experimental method, generates and tests hypotheses, and in the words of his Occlumency instructor, "wants to discover the underlying rules of magic to become all-poweful".

THIS fanfic brings THAT version of Harry Potter to Equestria. It also brings that story's version of Voldemort.

If you want the best reading experience, please go read HPMoR first. It can be found on fanfiction dot net, or on its own website, or even on any podcast app, as it has its own fan-made audiobook with 30+ contributing voice actors, production quality, sound effects, music, etc. (which is more than can be said for most PROFESSIONAL audiobooks).

Link to HPMoR on fanfiction: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/5782108/1/Harry-Potter-and-the-Methods-of-Rationality
Link to HPMoR on its own website: http://www.hpmor.com/chapter/1
Link to audiobook (though the website isn't nearly as good as podcast apps): https://hpmorpodcast.com/?page_id=56

All forms of HPMoR that I've encountered are high quality, but that doesn't mean it's for everyone. You can probably read the first few chapters of HPMoR in thirty minutes or so. If it doesn't appeal to you, this story probably won't appeal to you either.

For those who haven't read Methods and want to read this story anyway, the first two chapters are going to be the most confusing. They're mostly housekeeping and stage-setting, barely touching the MLP universe beyond the new setting.

And I think the same advice Yudkowsky gave for HPMoR applies here. The story starts hitting its strides around Chapter 5, if not sooner. If you don't like it by Chapter 10, best just to give up and read something else.

This story is a sequel to On Getting to the Bottom of this "Equestrian" Business

A magical accident causes the personalities of the future Mane Six at the moment of getting their cutie marks to be swapped with those of their human counterparts during the Freshman Fair. They have only three days to figure out what’s going on and find the right individuals to help them: Princess Celestia in Equestria and the newly-arrived Sunset Shimmer on Earth. In three days the mirror portal will close, and anyone not swapped back will be trapped in the wrong dimension and body for thirty moons.

Edited by Hope.

Note #1: This story is set in the same universe as my earlier novel On Getting to the Bottom of this “Equestrian” Business. I’m using the rules I established in that story for how the Equestria Girls setting works, but nothing from the plot, and since it’s twenty-five years later, you might as well start over with the characters anyway. That’s why I think you can read this story without having to read that earlier fan-novel first. Therefore, I’ll be including author notes as necessary to catch you up on those rules.

Note #2: I use “H” for “Human” or “P” for “Pony” before a character name to refer to the mind, not the body. So “P. Rarity” is the character that starts out in a pony body, suddenly finds herself in a human body, and struggles to get back into her pony body by the end of the story.

Note #3: For the human parts of this story, I refer to the “Freshman Fair”, an event that happened in the comics. All you have to know is that it was an event held during school hours at Canterlot High when Applejack, Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie and Rarity were freshmen. It existed in order for the various school clubs to advertise themselves and gain new members, and it was at this event that Applejack and company all met for the first time and decided to become best friends. (Oh, and Sunset Shimmer as president of the yearbook committee later interviewed each of them about the event, gathering the facts she would later use to tear their friendships apart.)

They called themselves "Markists", and they lived together in scattered towns and cities throughout America. They were distinguished from their neighbors by their colorful skin and hair colors, their doting affection for equines and equine puns in an era where the horse had almost completely disappeared from the popular imagination, and for an ability, verging on the supernatural, of always being able to find peaceful solutions to any conflict, no matter how intractable.

In the year 1985, the world's most popular living physicist and the best-known historian on network television teamed up to uncover the secrets behind this group, before the current standoff between the superpowers disintegrated into all-out atomic warfare. In the center of it all stood two women, living in two different eras, both named Celestia.

Queen Novo does not forgive or forget easily. When her niece seemed to prefer a school in the middle of a continent run by a would-be thief to Mount Aris, that didn't sit well with her.

The good news is that Twilight's managed to resolve that situation already.

The bad news is that there's another coming down the pike.

An entry in Bicyclette's Crackship Contest. Rated Teen for strong language and the love that dare not speak its name on a TV-Y series.

The real reason Twilight and Moondancer had a sudden falling out.

Written for Telly Vision for Jinglemas 2021

It now has an audio reading!

SAT. GMAT. LSAT. FAFSA.

The other universe had many strange words, but these had to be the strangest that Sunset Shimmer had ever seen! Consumed with panic, she knows she only has one way to solve this problem and pass this test:

She's going to have to kidnap Sunset Shimmer.

Written for the Sunset Shimmer x Sunset Shimmer Contest!

With the Rainbow Festival a resounding success, the Mane Six relish in a job well done. They have helped bring joy and smiles back to Hope Hollow, and they look forward to hearing about many more successful Rainbow Festivals to come.

However, one of the townsponies interests them. The designer pony Kerfuffle is missing the lower half of her left hind leg.

Why is that, they wonder?

Rated Highly Recommended by Present Perfect
Featured on EQD 05/07/2020