One year after her coronation, Princess Twilight Sparkle is dead, killed by her own subjects out of fear and jealously. After the funeral, Princess Celestia isolated herself from the world, mourning the loss of her brightest student and daughter figure.

But she cannot weep forever. She must take control of her duties once more. Haunted by the memories of the assassination, and its aftermath, Celestia slowly makes her way to Twilight's resting place to find some closure.

Now With its own TV Tropes Page!

Sequel is up

Captured by your enemy. It's something that no soldier wants to think about, much less experience. Unfortunately for one U.S. soldier fighting in Equestria, that's exactly what happens. At the mercy of the ponies, he will have to resist their attempts to extract information from him, and hope that he'll see freedom again.
(Language warning for those who care.)

Many thanks to my prereader, Cosmic Cowboy, for letting me bounce ideas off him, and not letting me upload garbage.
Cover art by the awesome (and patient) Erindor.
Appeared in the feature box for a brief time on 10/11/2015. I have no words...

It's been a couple of weeks and way more than a couple of games since Pinkie Pie introduced the Mane Six to the joys of playing the classic real-time strategy title, Age of Empires II. Unanswered questions surround this mysterious game: where did it come from? Who made it? Why is there so much killing?

Never mind all that - Twilight Sparkle and her friends have a game to play!

NOTE: Though I've tried to make the story more about the relationships between the four gamers (no Rarity or Fluttershy, sorry!) than about the game itself, some rudimentary knowledge about Age of Empires II is required if you want to understand what is going on. I wrote this as a short-ish story so I'm not really going to go into technical details much.

=====INFO AFTER BREAK=====
References consulted while writing story:
ZeroEmpires (Commentary on Competitive AoE II matches)
wikiHow (5 Ways to Make Your Economy Boom in Age of Empires II)
Wikipedia (for info on Byzantines, Moon & Vikings)
Luttwak, E. "The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire" (Harvard University Press, USA), 2009 (Byzantine military strategy)

Youtube links:
Prologue - PakAttack95 (Youtube Channel)
Main Menu and Victory Music - mikec1000 Civilization Themes

Cover Image:
Wikipedia
Age of Empires II
Cutie Mark Vectors by Hawk9mm (deviantART page)

Once upon a time, on the not-so-magical planet Earth, there was a US Marine who signed up to defend his country. He was assigned to a fire team, the fire team assigned to a squad and the squad assigned to a platoon. Together they defended the area surrounding a Forward Operating Base in Afghanistan from insurgents. If only it were that simple.

When lone Marine is transported to Equestria he finds a post-apocalyptic wasteland. With no orders, no resupply and seemingly no hope of return, he sets out to find what brought him here, and why.

Strong Language Warning: He swears like a Marine.
Disclaimer: I'm not a Marine

What do readers have to say about this story?

"[T]his has to be the dumbest sounding plot I've ever heard of. But my god do you take that and fuck it in its ass ... Its just so real and witty and genuine that the whole premise actually works!" ComprehensiveBrony

"Yes, it's human-in-Equestria, but it's good. ... the action scenes had me sitting on the edge of my seat" Tebee

Cover by me, background stock by DarkDragon774

Daniel Habbuck, UN ambassador to Equestria, hates his job.

Sure it pays well, but it's hardly worth having to put up with flank-kissing politicians and the stomach twisting anxiety of knowing that he represents all of humanity.
One night, after a particularly tense meeting leaves him wound up, Daniel is desperate for somepony to talk to. With his friends either busy or too far away, he hires a batpony prostitute, just so he can have some company.

As he soon learns, there's much more to this streetwalker than meets the eye...

Rated T for sexual references, but no clop.

Special thanks to WingmanRed, Georg, and Kraken Hatchling for proofreading and editing

EDIT: Special, special thanks to Comrade Pony for the suggestions
EDIT: Deleted cover art.

"And here you'll see the statue of the Lord of Chaos, Discord, imprisoned in stone..."

A group of students from the School for Gifted Unicorns are given a chance to visit Celestia's royal garden and a curious filly decides to ask about a statue that's in their tour, where they all hear the story of how the spirit of chaos fell into a stone imprisonment for the third and final time.

Art by: Kabudragon

Anon is a cheap bastard, and hates paying to stay at places. Ergo, when Twilight threatens him with either paying rent or writing weekly friendship letters for room and board, Anon takes the free route. Too bad the free route is filled with frustration, confusion, and autism. Otherwise known as interacting with the local populace of Ponyville at least once a week.

>topkek

TRIGGER WARNINGS: this fic includes racial, homophobic, and equine slurs that are used purely for comedy's sake and are not meant to offend or cause a problem in the community... mostly.

"For some reason I've chosen to write more letters to that stupid Princess. Let me know who you want me to write about for future chapters." –Anonymous

PROFESSIONAL REVIEWS

–Okter

"Thank you for confirming my suspicion that Anon is gay." –Uniame

"So, did they get sexual harassment cutie marks?" –DRaily

"What the fuck anon" –Qaz223

"ANON DID NOTHING WRONG" –nothingtoseehere

"So majestic" –Xzaves

Herbert Wilkinson, an experienced government drone, makes the mistake of putting on a strange hat that a loony shopkeeper gives him.

Now, he is the Greengrocer, a villain with awesome powers over fruit and vegetables that he plans to use for his new-found goal:

The complete, and economical, subjugation of the new land he finds himself in.

The most villainous League of Humans Acting Villainous fic you'll ever read, I swear on me mum.

"My handsome little cherub, close your eyes.
Mommy's going to give you clear blue skies.
So you’ll laugh and dance and play in the air.
And sing the song of angels everywhere."

Diamond Tiara is used to getting her way, from everyone. Tutors, parents, merchants, she can make anypony do whatever she likes. Anything with a penis is pretty much a slave to her whims. So why wont that stupid monkey do what she wants!

Partially inspired by "How to Handle Grown-Ups" Characters are aged up slightly.

First attempt at putting aside my hatred and complaining for this character and actually doing something with her. Expect in-frequent updates.

Rating may subject to change.

as of 1/31, title has been changed to "What do you mean "No"!?"