Yona and Sandbar have been going steady for about 3 months now, and all their other friends find it cute. However, maybe they've gone too fast in this relationship when Sandbar tells them they've done... IT!

Thanks to Darth Link 22 and CrackedInkWell for helping edit this.

This story is a sequel to We Finally Did It

After a slight misunderstanding about how far Sandbar and Yona have taken their relationship, Ocellus and Smolder contemplate how far they want to take their own.

Thanks to Rated Ponystar for writing the fic this story launches off of and for permission to post this, and to Trinary for giving me the idea in the first place!

To rise against the tyrant. To taste victory. To become what you hated. He had experienced that loop and, given this chance, he would do it right this time. He would turn his suffering people on a better path from its tyrant, Queen Chrysalis.

Arcane Word has an unusual profession among Equestrian ponies: a necromancer. After a lifetime of creating characters and telling stories, she's in the perfect position to provide relief to first-generation ponies with holes in their family. For every pony unwilling to ask for Celestia's help to fill in the gaps, she is the perfect pony—she even lives in the abandoned city of Wintercrest, surrounded by appropriately spooky decor. The authenticity of her results were always secondary to the satisfaction they produced.

At least until a particularly troublesome client arrived, flush with resources from Equestria Online's distant borders and megastructure expansion. What would it take for Equestria to bring a pony back from the dead? What about everypony who had ever lived?

Arcane Word could never turn down such a tempting job. The impossibility of the task was only ever a minor setback.

Updates Daily

This story was written for the print anthology of Friendship is Optimal stories I'm currently publishing. Every time I make a print book, I like to include something that has never been published before, this is it. If you'd like to get a copy of the book for yourself, you can order it here: https://igg.me/at/recursive-iterations

Thanks to Bitera and Sparktail for editing. Zutcha did the cover.

It had finally happened. He was in another world, one of adventure and excitement. Many would be concerned, but he knew the rules of that game. He was a pro! The best! With a new sword in mouth, he set out to conquer that new world.

Keywords: isekai

Not long after becoming Equstria's new reigning monarch, Twilight receives a letter from Prince Blueblood. It's not a declaration of war from the land's rightful ruler to the unprincipled usurper who's claimed the throne, and he explains why.

My entry in the 2022 Crackship Contest, this story didn't make the top eleven.

This story is a sequel to Friendship is Optimal: Promise

It's been years since Promise emigrated, and she's never looked back. She's solved mysteries, fought zombies, and most of all, made friends. Everyone she loves and cares about is within her shard, and her life on earth already seems like a distant memory.

However, Earth won't be forgotten so easily. There are still holdouts, those who refused to emigrate even as the world fell down around them. And Celestia believes Promise is the only one who can save one such wanderer's soul. Back on earth for the first time in years, she's faced with a question: why should she believe that Celestia is benevolent?

It seems so simple, at first. Of course she knows Celestia is benevolent, she's lived through that benevolence firsthand! But as things go on, doubts begin to surface. Celestia's subtle manipulations, those years of neglect. She truly wants to believe Celestia means the best for her, but what if she's wrong? If the wanderer is right, it means she's already given away her only chance of escaping hell.

Part of the optimalverse!

Updates Thursdays and Sundays until completion!

CW: Attempted suicide

The following is my anthology collection of oneshots and other scraps that wouldn't merit their own release. Not all of it will be up to my usual editing standard, though some of it might be. Here are the contest entries, the oneshots I abandoned, or just didn't think warranted a cover and a proper release. I've always been more about long-form fiction, but the shorter stuff has to go somewhere.

Consider each chapter to be independent, and seeing something here is effectively a guarantee there won't be any more of that thing. Context for each section in their authors' notes.

Cover by Zutcha.

This story is a sequel to Changeling Space Program

Twilight Sparkle's memorable coronation is over. But before she gets tied to the throne, she decides to share one last adventure with her mentor and her closest friends.

Not a huge adventure. Just a little day-trip, really.

Back to the moon.

A brief sequel to Changeling Space Program and The Maretian, written for the A Thousand Words contest. (Fluff category.)

Part of the Remember Fort Libris print anthology, thanks to our Kickstarter supporters!

At the end of the world, a programmer struggles with his need to be something other than Pony. Can he spar with an intelligence that goes beyond the sum total of Humankind, for the sake of fulfilling a weird quirk of self-identity?

Some rules within a machine are more like guidelines. And others are based on the definitions of words. Can semantics be a weapon big enough to give a Human mind a chance at one small request from a goddess?

Set in the Optimalverse - I recommend reading Iceman's awesome original first if you haven't - More because it is a really excellent story than because it is strictly necessary for context. I have endeavoured to make this story stand well enough without context as well. But that being said? You'll probably enjoy it more if you know the context better.

Cannon-compatible with the Optimalverse to the best of my knowledge and abilities.

Cover-art generated with an image generative A.I., appropriately enough, graciously generated and composited (it takes skill to get something this spot-on!) by Keystone Gray.

Similarly you'll find many AI-generated illustrations throughout, again graciously generated in collaboration with Keystone Gray, then a little final photoshopping and other processing from us both.