Leaving home meant losing many of Orson's old friends, separated by time and distance. But they weren't willing to give up one thing: their old tabletop game. After trying and rejecting each of the online tools for roleplaying games, they stumbled on a novel solution: Equestria Online.

The game was unlike everything else on the market, an entire procedural generated world ran by a mysterious curator artificial intelligence. But Orson and the others didn't care about any of that--they just needed somewhere with a game table and some dice. The AI happily obliged, and soon they transitioned all their games to E.O. Equestria Online had its own host of benefits, bringing the GM's images to realistic life before their eyes, and even letting them visit and interact with the characters between sessions.

That was only the beginning...

A Friendship is Optimal story. I suggest any readers who are unfamiliar with that universe read the Original first, or FiO: Futile Resistance before reading this one. None of my other optimalverse stories are required to understand this one.

Written as a Patreon reward for Sparktail, though we stole the idea from Silver Wing.

Edited by Two Bit and Sparktail, cover by Zutcha.

Updates weekly on Wednesdays.

The release of Equestria Online and the incredible capabilities of its central Celestia AI led to ferocious debates among ethicists, computer science experts, every religious community on the globe, and more besides.

In hindsight, I probably should've been paying more attention to the news. In my defense, I was reading a lot of fan fiction at the time.

An entry in the Friendship is Optimal contest. Names have been changed to protect the variably innocent.

Cover image by Chatoyance, used with permission. Prereading provided by Speckle.

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.

Tracy Maxwell is in a desperate situation: find somewhere to live, or lose the internship he needs to survive. After exhausting every property in the city, one last option appears the day before his deadline. Sure the agent selling the place is a little weird, and more than a little overeager to get the property signed off. At the worst, maybe there's a little mold in the bathroom somewhere, and he has to make do until the lease is up.

But then he steps inside and discovers things can be much worse. The property is in another universe, and while he's there he'll have to play by its rules. He's free to continue working his dream job, so long as he keeps to the contract. Even worse, he's got a roommate who has no intention of leaving him alone.

If he ever wants to escape, he'll have to read the Fine Print.

This story now has a hardcover! If you'd like one of your own, you can grab it here: https://starscribe.net/

This story is a commission by _Kenzu_!

Fluttershy and friends gain access to this website, but quickly find themselves trapped within a paradoxical situation.

Check out the comic where the cover art comes from!

Posted with approval from the staff.

Update 3/19/2021: _{A couple days after publishing this story, and after Fluttershy injected a hacking payload into the mainframe utilizing a quantum subspace frequency modulation algorithm, we were able to access hidden meta-data for this data endpoint and successfully remove ourselves from the causality loop. I am writing this message to preserve our efforts before we sever the connection, in the off chance that something like this ever happens again. With Love and Friendship, Twilight Sparkle.}

Why do they keep coming back? Maybe it's wounded pride: they were humiliated once, and so they have to get one con over on Ponyville to heal their egos. Or a lot more than one, given all of the successive embarrassments. But either way, the brothers have returned to the scene of their crime(s) so often as to give Pinkie a tail twitch configuration just for their presence. Something which leads her and Twilight to a huge tent in the Everfree, one which has free drinks, slot machines, and happy ponies who haven't lost so much as a tenth-bit.

They can't lose.

As far as the latest con goes, that's just part of the setup.

(Now with author Patreon and Ko-Fi pages.)

Cover art taken from an image created by DrXFizzle.

After twenty five years, Rarity returns to Canterlot and anxiously awaits the arrival of Twilight Sparkle.

Quills and Sofas Speedwriting entry that won third place with the prompt of Foggy Mornings. Thanks to Rice, Gara, Salen, Bill, Seer, Speccer, Pearl, Yoshi, and Shirlendra for reading during the contest and thanks to dawn for hosting.

Twilight Sparkle was banished from Equestria a long time ago for a crime she didn't commit. The rest of the Mane 6 have been searching for her to tell her that she can return. When they do find Twilight, they realize that the trials of surviving outside Equestria have changed their old friend. Not all the changes are necessarily good.

As they return to Equestria, they must figure out who is opposing them. Shadows lurk in every corner, enemies watching for a single misstep. Not to mention, Twilight's shadows are creeping up on her. But even if they do manage to face the trials and troubles, do they have what it takes to face what awaits them back home?

If you want to chat to me, we have a discord server here!

Editing team: Stinium_Ruide
People who've helped me before:
Ex-coauthor: computerneek
Ex-editor: Holtinater

Rainbow Dash and Twilight Sparkle visit the Cloudsdale Weather Factory seeking to understand the extreme cold weather across Equestria. Town weather ponies are tired of receiving complaints, and frustrated by the lack of answers from higher up. Rumours circulate that a mysterious monster—a polar vortex—has seized control of the North and threatens Equestria. They get passed from office to office, as each branch of the Weather Factory denies responsibility, as they pursue their quest to understand the mechanisms controlling the Equestrian climate.

While Caramel Peel's parents are away for a conference, she hears something breaking in the house. But she's all alone...right?

A quick one-shot that I wrote for a panic contest in the Quills and Sofa group, prompt being 'Alone'.