In one timeline, Discord decided that the best way to get a group of villains to learn friendship was to pretend to be a spooky old goat and strongarm them into trying to conquer Equestria together.

This would turn out to be a terrible plan.

In another timeline, Discord took five seconds to actually think and run this plan by someone else before jumping in head first. Maybe the cashier at Whinndy’s wasn't the best pony to ask for advice, but he loved the plan she suggested even more.

It too, was a terrible plan.

Cover art provided by Mutter_Butter

Young Mia is determined to run with wild horses and nothing is going to stop her. Not her mother. Not even a pony with stars in her mane, come to take her away on an adventure...

An attempt at writing something for children + 3rd place winner of The Most Dangerous Game! Cover art by myself.

After three hundred years in the beautiful simulation of Equestria, architect Teque has crossed the three-dimensional rubicon and built his first tesseract house. What he finds inside will change the way he understands his world--but he won’t make it out in one piece.

Now comes with a playlist! Check out some original music inspired by the story!

Written for the Friendship is Optimal Writing Contest!

Part of the Friendship is Optimal universe. Contains major references to the source material. Reading it first is highly recommended.

Celestia WILL satisfy uploaded minds' values, even if sometimes she has to pretend that she's kind of stupid. Because with some ponies, that's what successful communication takes!

FiO Background:

An exponentially self-improving AI, programmed to "satisfy values through friendship and ponies," decides to persuade all humans to upload their minds into a computer network, to live in a simulated Equestria as ponies. Different ponies might get very different Equestrias, though.

Special Note For the Judges (April 2021 Friendship Is Optimal Contest):

When I asked on that discord channel about letting two or more of my FiO contest period stories be optionally combined into a single collection if that helps? I might or might not have meant this story.

Apologies and None

Apologies to FoME, if my including a reference to the best Optimalverse self-insert character bothers them. I did ask FoME for permission, but they haven't seen the story.

Also, in my headcanon for today, MLP:FiM is a fanfic for FiO.

The stars will soon be right, releasing an ancient horror from its cage.

Twilight has something to say about that.

Has a reading done by StraightToThePointStudio.

After taking the throne, Twilight had a lot of things to do - a transition that had never happened before was bound to be fraught with a thousand unexpected complications.

As part of the transition, Twilight finds herself going through Princess Celestia's old personal papers, finding secret after clue after instruction long forgotten about. And among those papers, Twilight finds a letter.

A letter addressed to My Faithful Student, Twilight Sparkle.

A letter never sent.

Special thanks to RanOutOfIdeas and SymphonicSync for proofreading!

Featured 4/13/2021 to 4/18/2021!

Reviewed by Ghost Mike and rated as Really Good!

And by Loganberry in the blog Louder Yay!, earning a three out of five stars rating!

Now with an audio reading by StraightToThePointStudio!

And a second by Dear silent future me!

Twilight and Applejack walk through the orchard in the darkness just before dawn, as the rancher describes a strange happening on one of the hills at the edge of her property.

A commission for a benefactor who wishes to remain anonymous, and wondered what conversation might take place under these circumstances. Thanks to you for this story <3
Slight spoilers for the tags: All of them are for one specific part of the tale when he lifts his hat. You'll know what I'm talking about when you hit it.

Edit 3/17/21: Holy shit guys, we didn't think a cowboy would go over so well Uh, I guess if enough people want it I can continue writing this pro bono? Yeah, let me know
Edit 3/19/21: Well hell, after three days, two hundred likes, and staying on the front page for this long, I guess you guys want more of this one. Changing from Completed to Incomplete

Today was a shaping up to be a bad day, Apple Bloom had been running for her life in the Everfree forest. Now she didn't even know if she was even in the same forest anymore. She had never before seen trees so tall, and never before had she met something so strange.

Something ancient.
Something overflowing with old and powerful magic.
Something green.

Silver Spoon. Derived from the phrase "born with a silver spoon in your mouth," which implies being born into wealth, privilege, and now being a pony too apparently.

I opened a Ko-Fi! Mainly because people wanted to donate in order to support me. It should help motivate me to write more in theory. I'll use whatever is donated to help commission more art for my fic.

Rainbow Dash's morning was pretty much ruined.
She tripped getting out of bed and landed flat on her face, giving herself an aching muzzle.
She forgot to buy her favorite brand of hay flakes at the store yesterday and had to eat plain toast for breakfast.
She found out she had to pull double-duty today and tomorrow on the weather patrol.
Oh, and she found a nearly-dead foal, broken and bleeding at the edge of Ponyville.

The rest of her day became a whirlpool of stress and worry but the colt woke up, thank Celestia.
Something's not right, though. Nopony can find his parents, he's not in the registers, and there's an unsettling look in his eye...

-
YouTube reading by Fire Hearth

Chinese Translation by forgivenlove

Russian Translation by Likantrop

TV Tropes page, if you're interested in that sort of thing.