He was a simple stallion, with a simple life in Equestria. That's all he really wanted out of his early retirement after he was laid off during the economic downturn. But, when unfinished business brings him back to Earth after nearly 20 years, he'll learn what happened to humanity while he was living the life of his dreams...

Written for the Friendship is Optimal Writing Contest. Also, it's a horror story, as promised, for my annual Nightmare Night in April Writeoff.

Special thanks to the Optimalverse Community Discord for help with getting and building the initial idea, and for proofreading the story. Please come by there if you want to talk about and read more stuff like this!

I tried a slightly different interpretation of CelestAI here, as having those emotions that people like to give her, but still being a cold and uncaring paperclipper AI on the inside. It's the one I've been using for my community-based rewrite of the original (based off our RP on the Discord), so I hope people like it. Be on the lookout for more FiO related stuff from me, as I've been getting ready to post a flood of updates qnd new stuff!

No star lives forever. Starlight Glimmer knows this. Daybreaker haunts her dreams with visions of the fate that awaits Princess Celestia after surrendering power to Twilight. Can Starlight use her knowledge of astrophysics to defeat her nightmare and prevent Equestria being consumed by a chasm of infinite darkness?

Written to mark the award of the Nobel Prize in Physics 2020 to Roger Penrose, Reinhard Genzel, and Andrea Ghez for their work on black holes.

Forty years after the first Hearth's Warming and the founding of Equestria, a unicorn filly discovers a magical secret that will change the world.

But her sister worries that's not all that will change.

*Entry in Fanofmosteverything's Imposing Sovereigns II: Once and Future contest. For Coronation: Celestia
Edit: Won a Honorable Mention!

*Set in the distant past, but background details are helped by having seen S2E11- Hearth's Warming Eve, S3E13 - Magical Mystery Cure, and S8E07 - Horse Play

*Editing by ClanCrusher
*Cover done by Wolfmask

Highly Recommended - Presentperfect

*Cleverpun’s Review
*Featured on Seattle's Angels!
*Featured on Equestria Daily's 2020 Luna Day Fic list! 🌙
*Featured on Equestria Daily's 2021 Celestia Day Fic list!🌞
*Featured on Equestria Daily's Spotlight!

In the far-off Frozen North, a mysterious, long-lost empire reasserts its hold over Equestrian magic. Tasked with securing it for the betterment of Equestria, Princess Cadance will be forced to overcome not one, but two of its overthrown monarchs.

Part of FanOfMostEverything's Imposing Sovereigns II contest. Set immediately prior to Season 3, no relationships to any previous Cadance tale outside the show / comic / chapterbook canon. Special thanks to horizon and my beloved spouse for their pre-reading help.

Now with a Spanish translation by the gracious SPANIARD KIWI!

Fluttershy is dying of cancer. Twilight has to stay strong, and to keep Discord from falling apart, because there's no one else who can.

Decades after the founding of Equestria, the nation faces an existential threat -- a war with the dragons.

The dragons have proposed a truce. Luna and Discord are uncertain, but Celestia insists that they must give the dragons the benefit of the doubt, and accept the truce.

This turns out to be a mistake.

Cover art is "The Chaos" by Zhoid.

Princess Fluttershy, Princess of Kindness and sole ruler of Equestria, has a visit she must make. A visit to an old friend, and an even older enemy. A visit that will leave her questioning the very meaning of Kindness itself.

Review by Present Perfect here!

An entry in FanOfMostEverything's Imposing Soverigns II contest. The prompt was "Fluttershy: The Princess Herself."
Preread by Chinchillax, Cosmic Cowboy, and Matt.
Peaked at #2 on the featured box!

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful Princess who sacrificed herself to save all of Equestria from a terrible fate. Now it is time for those who were saved by her actions to repay that debt, and bring back the Sun. If they can.

Cover art by GroaningGreyAgony
Audiobook reading by the incredible Illya Leonov
Winner of second place in the Through Fire writeoff
And now on Equestria Daily

To Elaine Torkleson, an attorney working in West Los Angeles, the name "My Little Pony" conjures up nothing but vague memories of these half-hour toy commercials she heard about while in college during the 1980s.

But when a scientist from Pasadena's Jet Propulsion Laboratory comes into her office one afternoon in the summer of 2019 with a device that he claims can utilize the properties of quantum tunneling to let people enter cartoons, Elaine finds herself forced to reassess pretty much everything she ever thought she knew.

The cover image is a still from this animation by DeannArt on Deviantart.

A Cutie Mark amplifies potential. It makes a pony formidable — but it makes a human a god.

When humans started visiting Equestria and returning with Cutie Marks on their hips, Earth changed overnight. Now a young man with an unwritten future is about to discover the true consequences of that change … and his choice of Marks will forever alter the fate of two worlds.

** CONTENT WARNING: Offscreen rape, mind control.** Earns its Dark tag.

* * *

Highly Recommended by Present Perfect! "Completely memorable ... I've never read anything like it. Also perfectly terrifying."

"It went on my Favorites shelf, and I really don't do dark." –iisaw

Third-place winner in the September 2014 Writeoff Association competition! Newly edited for FIMFiction!

Praise for the Writeoff version:
"What in the hell. … This is a really remarkable and surprising piece, one of the best HiE’s I’ve ever read, and the best Friendship Is Optimal-style sci-fi I’ve read since FiO itself." –Present Perfect

"F**k you for writing an HiE that I actually thoroughly enjoyed. Just f**k you." –Golden Vision