This morning, Shining Armor thought that his daughter's goth phase was his biggest worry. Now, he has to deal with a retired stage magician, a smoke monster that refuses to stay dead, the dumbest possible parallel universe, AND his daughter's goth phase.

Nothing about this makes any sense... and why does King Sombra seem oddly afraid of Trixie...?

Quite possibly the crackiest of all crack fics I have ever written for any fandom to date. I wrote this in about a week and had an absolute BLAST writing it. Contains...

• Trixie's verbal tic maxed out to the point where it becomes a plot point of sorts
• brooding goth Flurry Heart, complete with goth name
• card tricks
• the Crystal Empire having quite possibly worse security protocols than it does in canon
• nopony taking anything quite as seriously as they probably should
• Shining Armor making a few rather questionable choices involving his daughter's safety
• card tricks
• a magic mirror portal that ought to be yeeted into the sun or moved to the SCP Foundation HQ
• trace amounts of Applejack
• an homage to the best Mumbo and Grian comedy skit from the Last Life series on YouTube
• card tricks

Inspired by TWO contests!

Entering this into the Portal Transformations Contest I.

Also, after some consideration and checking with Muggonny, entering this into the Shining Armor is a Terrible Dad 2024 Competition. It blasted WAY past the max word count, but I'll just have to live with the wordcount penalty.

It's been a little over a year since Princess Flurry Heart founded the settlement of Winter's Hearth deep in the unclaimed territory of the Frozen North, and in that time she and her subjects have faced many dangers. But whether through grit or sheer equine spirit, they've survived every one of them.

So when the yaks of the Northwestern Tribes decide to declare war on them, it feels like just another Tuesday.

The yaks feel differently.

This story was originally conceived as an entry to Imposing Sovereigns IV, but I didn't end up writing it until several months after the contest closed. You can read the actual entrants to that contest here! The intended prompt was Flurry Heart/Strength.

Have you ever just been having a regular day, then suddenly, BAM, you're dead? Well, no, of course you haven't. But what do you expect to happen after you die? If the answer was getting shoved into an overly pink copy of a pony princess, you'd be lying. Worse yet, she made me an alicorn just like her, which causes a whole new set of problems.

Unfortunately, she was adamant that I stay and become her twin sister. I ditched her immediately in my bumbling confusion and fear, and who could blame me? The last thing on my mind was being here! Ponies, princesses, and twin sisters? What kind of fantasy story was that? I was on the run, hiding from guard patrols, and fighting for my next meal. However, my own hubris caught up to me in the end, and her super powerful mother, Cadance, found me and made me see how stupid I was being. And Cadance, is an absolutely crazy powerful pony, with an even more powerful maternal instinct. So when it came down to her word against mine, she was really hard to convince, and she wasn't taking no for an answer.

(AKA, Super wholesome, fluffy, found family. And me having fun tugging on heartstrings.)
(Cover image by: me)

On Flurry Heart's twelfth birthday, Cadance tells her daughter she will never die.

Haunted by the loneliness of her young immortality, Flurry Heart finds unexpected solace in the only other pony who could possibly understand her — the filly preserved for eternity within the Gardens of Canterlot.

Flurry could not have forseen that an apparition of that filly would appear before her, and only her.

Something brought them together. Flurry intends to uncover what.

Under Captain Rainbow Dash, the Wonderbolts have expanded to include members from races allied to Equestria.

Now she's confronted with a problem at the Academy: a changeling cadet who's decided the best way to succeed as a Wonderbolt is to literally be Rainbow Dash.

The solution is obvious for anypony who knows Rainbow Dash: a race.

Featured 9/26/2023 - 9/30/2023!

And featured on Equestria Daily on 10/2/2023, and as part of 30 Of The Best Fanfics To Read For Rainbow Dash Day on 2/1/2024!

The plan, he thought, was perfect. Instead of returning to the mortal world as a shade of his former self, King Sombra would transmute his soul into the body of his greatest foe, using her influence and power to destroy Equestria from the inside and take vengeance on the Princesses that stole his beloved empire.

There's just one problem: after her fight with Tirek, Twilight Sparkle changed her address. This turns out to be a much bigger problem than Sombra thought. A Dinky-Doo-sized problem, to be precise.

5th-place finalist in the More Most Dangerous Game contest.

Cover art crudely Photoshopped by me from this and this. I am art and so can you.

Reading by Neighrator Pony

This story is a sequel to Honey Pie II: The Wrath of Chrysalis

Sweetcake has come far in life. From a defeated drone, stranded alone in Canterlot, he's become the queen of a large and powerful changeling hive. And he's doing a surprisingly good job at it. He even has time left over from his royal duties to help Pinkie Pie with her parties. Unfortunately for Sweetcake, Pinkie, and the entire hive, his hive is not the only hive out there, and the others don't approve of allying with ponies. Caught between betraying his friends and the welfare of his subjects, any choice may spell disaster.

Cover art by AnticularPony. Cover text design by Jordanis.

This story is a sequel to Honey Pie

Pinkie Pie and Sweetcake ought to be able to live happily ever after. After all, he helped save Ponyville, and Celestia herself publicly acknowledged him as her subject, despite the fact that he's a changeling. The ponies of Ponyville should welcome him with open arms. It turns out, however, that the fact that some of them don't is going to be the least of his problems.

Cover art by dreamingnoctis.

The changelings are banished, the day is saved! Yet a victory for one must be a defeat for another, and this particular victory has left one changeling stranded in Canterlot, alone and broken. A certain pink party pony is also alone in the Canterlot night, hiding her depression from her friends. She cannot, however, hide her feelings from a changeling. What will become of this unlikely pair?

As featured in Twilight's Library.

Cover picture by Ruirik

Longdesc

There's nothing left that can save Equestria. Not Discord, not Celestia, not Luna, not Cadance, not Princess Flurry Heart. But their presence can at least buy Starlight Glimmer time to escape. She just needs to convince Trixie to come with her.

Info

An entry into the Pride and Positivity event.
The first draft of this fic was the third-place winner in the Quills and Sofas Speedwriting T is for Trans contest.
The first draft of this fic was a submission for a prompt from Bean's Writing Group Discord server, "Five Minutes Too Late". Thanks to Bean and RanOutOfIdeas for their feedback.

Thanks to The Sleepless Beholder for prereading on the second draft.