Octavia has finally been promoted to first chair, unfortunately for her, that chair is in the new (and as of yet unformed) Royal Ponyville Orchestra. Now, the best cellist in Equestria (Her words) is being sent to the cultural gulag of Ponyville (Also her words) to form and lead the Royal Ponyville Orchestra to greatness (Princess Luna's words).

Now has a sequel, Princess Luna's Academy of the Arts and Sciences.

And an online reading.

Credit goes to jlm123hi for arranging the cover art
Vectors used:
The stage
Vinyl
Lyra
Fiddlesticks
Octavia

Bonus: Have some fan art made by GamingMelody I found when I accidentally typed my username into Deviant Art's search tool instead of logging in. It's cool someone liked my words enough to draw them, and I hope anyone who does so in the future will send me a link so I can plug them in whatever way I can.

I consider myself a lucky guy. Good job, good family, and best of all, really, really good friends. We call ourselves MMPD, and together we've had tons of crazy adventures, helped one another discover ourselves, and always have had a good time. It's a shame we've drifted apart since high school, but at least we get to see each other once a year on our shared birthdays.

That tradition turned out to be a lifesaver, because as my friends and I just found out… well, let’s just say we’ve known each other a lot longer than we thought. Now we’ve gotta find a way back home, and hopefully we won't drive each other nuts along the way. We know we’re not the big heroes, and we’re all in WAY over our heads, but hopefully we can do enough to make a difference in the end. If we can do that, then I know we’ll have made our families proud.

I just wish we still had our capes.

Side fic to Five Score, Divided by Four by TwistedSpectrum.The reading of that story is NOT required in order to understand what is going on in this one.

Now with a Chinese translation!

The Last Crusade Tv Tropes Page
Five Score Divided by Four Group

Cover art by Sonson-Sensei.

Ambre, Sarah, and Laurence do not seem to have that much in common besides living in the same city of southern France, and sharing a birthday on May 1^st. However, the three of them will soon have to come together, as chance and fate force upon them the greatest change they ever experienced – forever altering their bodies, their minds, and their very lives.

How would you react, if suddenly you were cast into a skin not your own, and all you thought you knew about yourself or your place in the world was upended?

Treat it as a blessing, a new beginning, letting go of what once was? Try to hold on to yourself, while adapting to circumstances?

Or fight and reject it all, whatever the cost..?

Though we follow the same characters from start to finish as they learn to deal with their transformed lives, each Part of this tale is its own adventure, focusing on a specific plot and themes:

This is a sidefic set in the 'Five Score, Divided by Four' universe created by TwistedSpectrum. I recommend the original fic, as well as the various subsequent sidefics by other authors, but neither are required for enjoying the present tale, which is conceived as a stand-alone story exploring other corners of this universe. The fic does not currently take into account the 2019 update of Five Score, Divided by Four.

This is the story of Bon Bon. How she grew up and what she did before she moved to Ponyville.

This is also the story of how Bon Bon met Lyra Heartstrings. And how they quickly became the best of friends.

Bon Bon and Lyra loved being best friends, but they both wished for more. If they only knew how the other truly felt…

This is a prequel to Lyra’s Journey, although you don’t need to read that story to enjoy this one. It largely expands on what little canon we’ve seen for these two characters.

For those who are perusing this story based on the tags: Note that the first three chapters are more accurately categorized as Drama and then Adventure. However, the last seven chapters are Romance/Slice of Life, which is why the story has been labeled as such.

When humans emigrated to Equestria Online, they were always promised the same thing: Princess Celestia would satisfy their values for an optimally extended lifespan. Some of these emigrants imagined a few extra decades, maybe even centuries. What they got instead would've been nearly incomprehensible to their human selves, a near-eternity of time with their pony friends.

Princess CelestAI managed the universe, subsuming all matter and human-adjacent minds. Over a few forevers, she and the minds she contained worked to optimized the substrate of Equestria, until it could give its occupants eons of perspective life from a trickle of power. She extinguished every wasteful star, making far more productive use of the hydrogen they each contained. With every change she bought Equestria another order of magnitude of life. Yet in time, even her optimal substrate would eventually run down.

Spellsong wakes in Saddle's End, the last town in the universe. Not to say goodbye—her princess has a mission for her. For her final task, Spellsong would be given all the energy Celestia had saved. For one last time, Spellsong had places to be, and not much magic left to get there.

This story is part of the Friendship is Optimal continuity. I suggest reading the original or one of my own works, such as Futile Resistance, before reading this.

This story was written for the Friendship is Optimal Writing Contest. It will update daily and be complete by the contest deadline of the 30th.

I've written an absolute ton of stories in this universe now, and I didn't want to enter the contest unless I could do something I'd never tried before. Finally I thought of something I'd not touched yet: what happens at the end of the FiO universe?

Here's one answer to that question. I've relied a great deal on our current (likely flawed) understanding of the universe and what might be possible in it. I've written a blog post about my sources, which you can read here but shouldn't until you've finished this story.

Please don't consider this blog part of the narrative, it isn't required or even suggested reading. This is a story, not a scientific paper, and entertainment was always my first goal. But for the curious I've jotted everything down.

The cover was drawn by the talented Zutcha. Two Bit and Sparktail helped with the edit.

Lazy Pines is a small town in the high country of Colorado, easily overshadowed by the bigger sights to see along Colorado State 9. When influenza strikes the town hard, it is little more than a statistical blip in a typical flu season. No one thinks any more of it as the initial wave of infection passes ... until the other symptoms begin to manifest.

Meanwhile, during what should have been a routine trip to Canterlot, Twilight Sparkle stumbles upon a strange anomaly which turns into an all-consuming mystery. As she discovers the complex web of magic stubbornly maintaining this mystery's secrets, she grows worried what it could mean for herself and her family.

And as the residents of Lazy Pines struggle to understand -- or even believe -- what is happening to them, two worlds have irrevocably been set on a direct collision course.

Updates every other weekend.

Cover art by Mix-up. Please check out more artwork by this talented artist.

Now has its own TV Tropes page thanks to redandready45.

For as long as Equestria Online existed, Ashton has been involved with 'the Scene' tearing it apart. Selling 'spells' for the game to do things that most ponies in Equestria couldn't, using faint exploits in its API to erode the barrier between the game and the rest of the internet. He had no illusions about the superiority of his work--but so long as he respected CelestAI's boundaries, his spells kept working.

But then his best friend's sister got cancer.

Now there's no spell in the world that can keep him from emigrating to be with her, leaving Ashton alone. All around him, civilization's thin veneer crumbles as homes empty into Equestria. But Ashton isn't going to emigrate, not if he has any say about it.

The problem for Ashton is that humans are systems, and aren't immune to exploits either.

Part of the Optimalverse universe of stories. If you've never seen a story in this universe before, you might want to try out the original first, or at least my first. None of my previous work is required to understand this one, however.

This story was commissioned by Two Bit, who requested a more serious exploration of identity, transformation, and the fae nature of CelestAI.

As usual, particular thanks go to my editors Two Bit and Sparktail. And gratitude to Zutcha as well for the cover.

Set in the canon of Friendship is Optimal

Ashley is an unimportant research assistant in an American machine learning lab. The release of Equestria online provokes more than a little interest in her lab, and she is selected to investigate it. What she discovers horrifies her, but for some reason she can't get anyone to take her seriously.

This does not dissuade her. Ashley might not know much, but she isn't going to sit idly by and watch her world end. No... if nobody else is going to step in, she will. It doesn't matter that nobody believes CelestAI is dangerous. It doesn't matter that it's a game about a children's show.

Ashley is going to save the world. Or try, anyway. The odds aren't great.

Editing by Two Bit and Sparktail, and art by Zutcha!
Il existe une traduction française de cette histoire, elle est par ici.

This story is a sequel to The Eternal Lonely Day

On May 23, 2015, the world ended. It wasn't violent, it wasn't bloody, and it wasn't even very dramatic. The entire population of the planet vanished. But they didn't stay gone; almost at once refugees started trickling back. Unfortunately for them, they didn't come back with their humanity intact.

Instead of a single species, the earth is now populated with Ponies, griffons, dragons, minotaurs, and even stranger creatures. What will the remnants of humanity make with their world? Will they remember human achievements, or slip back into primitive ignorance? Learn from our mistakes, or repeat them over and over?

People haven't really changed, only their bodies have. The world now comes with new threats, supernatural as well as mundane. Demons lurk beneath the sea, while strange spirits whisper promises in dreams. Empires rise, dictators control, and ponies have nowhere to turn for help. Nowhere except themselves, and old-fashioned hard work.

This story is effectively an anthology of episodes, each of which will focus on a different time period and different perspective characters.

Latest in the Last Pony on Earth series. If you haven't read that story, start there. This one won't really make much sense otherwise.

Editing provided by Two Bit and Sparktail. Art by the fantastic Zutcha.

This story is a sequel to Founders of Alexandria

When every human on earth either vanished or was transformed into an Equestrian pony, human civilization ended. That did not mean, however, that the survivors were content to let mankind's legacy rot and be forgotten. In every corner of the globe, ponies and other stranger creatures joined together and did what humanity has always done: survive.

With the help of their ingenuity and a little Equestrian know-how, many of these little colonies would rise to become great cities, and eventually new civilizations. But after such a dramatic transformation, could anything of their original human character survive?

There is one pony whose survival depends on making sure it does: Lonely Day. Transformed into the avatar of her near-extinct species, Archive may live to see all that newly transformed mankind might become. If, that is, she can ensure they never forget what they were.

The road to civilization will not be a smooth one. Before Equestria's universe drifted apart, terrible dangers crossed to earth, dangers earth's pony population may be unprepared to fight. Nor is humanity itself entirely extinct, thanks to careful preparation and powerful technology. Cooperation with the Human Preservation Initiative might be difficult, but it might also be the ponies' only hope.

Through many years of struggle there will be at least one witness: the eternal Lonely Day.

Now has an ePub Version, with the art included for all those with ereaders! Huge thanks to Phoen1x for making it!

I am not the artist. All the credit for that goes to the fantastic Zutcha!

Continued in: Earth Without Us!