If Zap apples make such phenomenal jam, why aren’t they used for the Apple family’s other famed delicacy: cider? Apple Bloom wants to know, and dooms all of Ponyville into finding out.

Featured on Equestria Daily
Pre-read by bookplayer

Three dark comedy finalists from The Writeoff Association's "It's Your Funeral" contest.

Dying for Attention: Trixie is late to her own funeral.

Celestia's Vacation: Luna covers for her sister's absence.

A Deal to Die For: Applejack goes coffin shopping.

Ten years is a long time, so Sunset Shimmer thinks. Ten years since she was last a pony. Ten years since she started her life anew as a citizen of Canterlot City. Ten years since making a group of wonderful friends. Ten years of absence from Equestria.

She's perfectly fine with that absence continuing for many years to come.

Twilight Sparkle doesn't appreciate Sunset's reluctance to talk about the past. She's been studying the strange activities surrounding Shimmer since they were teenagers, and has only found further questions. But a murder with ties to Equestria gives Twilight the chance to learn the truth about magic. To stop a terrible enemy from rising again, they must both journey through the mirror. Enlightenment is at Twilight's fingertips.

She doesn't quite know what to think when she meets Princess Twilight Sparkle.

Written before Friendship Games was released.

From one barren wasteland to another, less barren wasteland, an Australian Information Technology worker finds himself stuck in the snow with nowhere to go. Armed with nothing but a cheap tool set and a three metre Ethernet cable, he must find a way to survive his new location. At least it can't get any worse... right?

Oh of course it can, it's a HIE.

Warning: Contains Australian, Changelings (of course), snow, occasional IT speak, less-than-stellar HIE satire, and shoddy humour not fit for a backyard comedy club.

The nefarious supervillain Lex Luthor has escaped to Equestria, and has even found a way to combine Kryptonite and magic to build the ultimate Superman-killing weapon. Before Superman can arrive to meet his maker, however, he realizes he hasn't had anything to eat in a while. And those cakes look awfully delicious...

Little does he know that Equestria has its own solar-powered protector, and she doesn't like it when you steal her dessert...

A stranger from the distant future appears in Twilight's library. They have a conversation.

Every schoolfilly has heard of the Federation - the tall, mysterious, magicless beings from another world, who visit only rarely and briefly; waiting, they say, for 'stable planetary political unity'.

This is the story of when they first visited Equestria; of early contact between the Princesses and the Federation. It is also the tale of how Princess Luna, with some help from the House of Sparkle, managed the first fully Equestrian warp jump; and of how Spike became the first dragon in space.

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Additional note: There is an alternate ending for this story, which can be found over here. It follows on directly after the chapter titled Further Communications (and there is a note in the author's notes for that chapter to that effect, with another link).

The reasons for the split are contained in the comments to this story. (Note: Said reasons contain spoilers)

Everyone knows how fairy tales go: We meet a dumb protagonist who does something foolish. Things go wrong. We learn a moral.

Clearly, fairy tale authors have never met Clyde Pie.

In this collaboration, a number of your favorite ponyfic authors take a fresh look at classic fairy tales, and what we can learn from the wisdom of an eminently sensible earth pony. (This is an open collection; submission rules can be found here.)

List of authors:

Salivanth
Horizon
Cloud Wander
Benman
DJ TR33
SirTruffles
Meta Four
chankl2
Nonagon
Quixotic Enigma
Caffeinated Pinkie
Farsan
SoothingCoffee
Thomas Hunter
TheLevelHeadedBrony
Goldfinch142
Kandagger
Ghost Pikachu
SwiftStroke
GroaningGreyAgony
The Iguana Man
DaeCat
JumpingShinyFrogs

Cover art by Veggie55

Idol Hooves holds a special place in Equestria. He's probably the only exiled changeling to serve in the Royal Guard, or at least, that's what he expects, as exiles don't really broadcast that fact. However, it's well known that Princess Celestia loves all of her little ponies, and her guards perhaps more so, and that makes it one of the best ways for a changeling to discreetly feed.

But how does a changeling even get there, let alone get exiled in the first place? For that matter, why would it ever go to Canterlot? Set a number of years before the series proper, before Luna’s redemption, Idol details how he was exiled, the ponies he’s met, and the series of misadventures that led him to joining the Royal Guard, and should continue a good ways into the series, as something of an alternate perspective.

Soon, he’ll have to deal with a boisterous new princess to serve and a royal wedding in the works bringing a third to power. Will his old instincts bring this new life crashing down around him? What precipitates Chrysalis’s ill-fated assault on Canterlot? Is it really so wrong for a changeling to enjoy good craftsmanship to an obsessive degree?

New cover art provided by the fantastic Carnifex

And a TVTropes page here.

And an Ask Blog of questionable canonity!
Out of Idol Curiosity

Fanart by Norad2! Major thanks! Short For a Royal Guard

Art by Egophiliac of Idol and his Daring Duckie Please don't tell him what that brush is meant for.

Rating updated to (T), it's a bit darker than (E)
Comedy Tag added as well
And changed the character tags a bit.

Celestia had a problem. Somepony wrote a novel about Nightmare Moon's rebellion. This made Luna quite unhappy, and unfortunately for her sister, Luna has not yet gotten the hang of modern traditions like freedom of speech, the abolition of the death penalty, and not bothering Princess Celestia when she's trying to sleep.

Fortunately, Celestia also had a faithful student, one who is now a Princess with an ill-defined portfolio and perfectly capable of dispensing justice by the laws of both today and one thousand years ago.

Now Twilight Sparkle has a problem.

(Title image hacked together from vectors by Martinnus1, Hawk9mm, and Paulie15.)