Twilight is the new Princess of Equestria, and she's hosting her first Grand Galloping Gala. Celestia joins her, and Twilight asks her why she and Luna stepped down as Princesses. Celestia decides she's ready to answer.

Technology has come to Ponyville, and with it all kinds of complications. The School of Friendship in particular has too many students using AI to cheat on their homework. Not to worry, though. A simple, no-exemptions ban on electronics will solve the problem for everyone.

Everyone except the robot employed in the tutoring lounge.

This is an entry in the Snippet Series, an anthology of old oneshots that I (and my good buddy Str8aura) wrote based around interesting pics I found. New ones will be posted every Thursday for the foreseeable future.

New York City's a good place for a pony to start over. There are plenty of opportunities available, such as pulling a carriage around Central Park. it's not that different from pulling a carriage in Equestria, after all.

Except for the regulations. So many regulations. The law is complicated, and it's not really set up for an Equestrian pony.

Pre-read by AlwaysDressesInStyle

Six years after her return to Equestria, Mage Meadowbrook still grapples with the loss of her partner from 1000 years ago.

Winner of the 2023 lesbian speedwriting contest.

The Seventh Company of the solar guard should have left the town Grimbush to its own devices, but when a letter asking them to clear out a pest invasion lands in their possession, they have no choice but to oblige.

Disgruntled and annoyed, the soldiers march into the mire only to find something far deadlier than they expected.

Rainbow Dash was beautiful, the most beautiful pony to be born in a century — and so her fate was sealed. Beauty must be sacrificed, and so Rainbow Dash must die.

Winner of the 2023 EFNW Iron Author Contest. I think I beat out about 40 other writers, and it was hugely exciting to win. Hope you enjoy the read!

Prompts were: vibrant vestigial, vexing volcano, verdant vegetable. Pretty insane for prompts, but Xepher had to pronounce all the Aztec words in my story so I think we're even.

Princess Flurry's dates are not up to Imperial standards.

With thanks to various Discords for brainstorming and Samey90 and RDT for pre-reading.

College is easy, most of the time. As long as you keep yourself fed, show up to classes every once in a while, and don't help your former best friend through a rough night of over-indulgence and then accidentally imply you're exactly as much of a party animal as she is, you're good to go.

But if you're like Button Mash, and you're dumb enough to do the third thing, you can get through it no problem. All you have to do is go out for fraternity rush week, pretend you're not a socially stunted dork in front of the hardest-partying guys on campus, and keep faking it until you make a girl you've had a crush on since middle school think you're interesting enough to actually be interested in.

It'll probably work out fine. And it definitely won't teach Button exactly who he really is, or who Sweetie Belle has always been, or what both of them could maybe be for each other. Because that would be complicated, and college is supposed to be easy.

A romantic comedy about college, identity, and discovering the second thing through the first one.

The summer season was just about over at Stella Lacus adventure summer camp. Amie and her younger brother Wes were eager to return home. Unfortunately for them, their adventures had only just begun.

All at once, the entire summer camp and the mountain it was built upon shifted universes, leaving Earth behind for a far stranger world. In the same moment, every camper, counselor, and staff-member transformed into strange insectoid creatures, with unknown powers and incomprehensible needs.

Instead of returning to nursing school, Amie has a new goal: keep her little brother alive. If only the other campers didn't look at him like food...

Updates every Saturday. Editing by Two Bit and Sparktail.

Awesome cover by SimonDrawsStuff.

This story was sponsored by Canary in the Coal Mine on my Patreon. Thanks so much for your support!

A thousand year absence from the world would be disorienting for anyone, but when your job is Head of State, understanding how society has changed during your interregnum is vital. Princess Luna, banished in the age of the longboat and the longbow, has returned just in time for the launch of the tablet computer. With the help of her sister, she undertakes to understand the history she's missed and the people she finds herself among, in order to resume the duties of her title.

This story takes the form of a series of conversations between Celestia and Luna that take place months and years apart. It is openly concerned with political ideas and how societies are organised, and not at all concerned with monsters and magic beyond the conceit of immortal monarchs. The Alternate Universe tag is there because I will be ignoring every single one of the thousand year catastrophes that occur in the show after the Nightmare Moon crisis, the retirement of the Princesses, probably the presence of any other Princesses, and anything else in the show I feel like ignoring, because I find them irrelevant to the themes I want to cover.

In short, if you wanted The Audience with ponies, I got you covered.

This story can be considered canon to my comic works such as The Sunjackers, and my other associated worldbuilding projects, and uses the same date system as them (ie. roughly matching our own, with the return of Nightmare Moon happening the same year as the episode aired, 2010). May also be your jam if you like Equestria At War, but not affiliated at all.