...I don't get why other commenters think this story is about Discord.

Discord's in it, but it's pretty clear that the main character was opposed by Discord -- "For a while I was able to hold them at bay as I remelted the world to a better future, but then that insufferable old goat had to pop in, sighing and putting down his half-eaten teacup. When Harmony thinks it necessary to invoke the aid of the Lord of Chaos, you may officially count that your plans have gone awry."

The main character tried to take over the world by controlling the sun, was defeated by Harmony, Discord, and her friends, spends so much time in stone that it bleeds away all her malice and makes her sincerely believe in Harmony, and then she's reborn as a white foal. Who thinks to herself that no longer will she live to break the day; she'll take a new identity, something celestial.

... How is it not blatantly obvious who this is?

I actually have an idea for this one, but it's stupid. Really, really stupid. Still, when has that ever stopped me before?

>>KwirkyJ
>>CoffeeMinion
>>Bachiavellian

Yes, you're all absolutely right that this thing hit the limit hard... my first draft, which was already spare and rushed and almost more of an outline than a story, was 1100 words and I had to cut 350 of them. I'm probably going to treat this as more of an outline for a future story than an actual story; it needs a lot more expansion to make sense.

This one was genuinely funny, and also met a true story structure, something not every minific does.

Problem: Guard-geese implemented by Shining Armor, who doesn't live there, are leaving filth everywhere.
Conflict: Princess Celestia is a pacifist and does not want to dispose of the geese.
Resolution: Raven recognizes that Celestia's pacifism means she will not stand in the way if Raven stages a "coup" and takes over.
Climax: Raven implements her plan and takes over Equestria.
Implied ending, not shown: Raven serves lots and lots of roast goose.

It's obviously Celestia allowing this as a workaround for her own pacifism, letting someone else take the burden of decisions that will result in the death of waterfowl; this isn't really a coup, it's Celestia going "oh no. oh dear. whatever will I do." (in a deadpan voice)

I liked it.

Yeah, this is a little aimless.

A compost pile, by itself, isn't that funny. It has humor potential, but just saying "they're making a compost pile" doesn't really bring it out. And Cheerilee perceiving this as a reason to drink when the CMC have, frankly, done so much worse... I dunno. This needs to be more absurd, I think. You don't have a lot of space and you waste a lot of it on things that are very normal rather than funny and then there isn't really a climax of any kind, or even much of a punchline.

I actually do feel it's self-sabotage.

"I think I love you" being code for "I'm going to break up with you" is on the face of it ridiculous. What would ponies say when they genuinely feel love, then? I think the narrator has had multiple break-ups, which may be his fault and may be because he has abandonment issues that lead him to unintentionally push ponies away, but he doesn't see his own role in them so he thinks they're pretty much entirely initiated by his partners and wholly impossible to prevent.

The tragedy is that that makes this a self-fulfilling prophecy. Because he thinks it's about to be over, he's preparing to pull away emotionally. This will, of course, end the relationship, but he'll feel like it came from her so he doesn't recognize the power he has to cause it, or stop it. And all of his relationships will end up this way unless he gets therapy or ends up with a really determined or clingy pony, because he doesn't recognize his own role in it, and every time they say they love him, he'll see it as the beginning of the end.

I am always predisposed to like a Discord story, especially fluff with Fluttershy, but I think this needs work.

Fluttershy making herself sick helping a bear learn to forage for himself for three years because he prefers the taste of honey in a place that makes her sick is Season 2 Fluttershy, not post-reforming-Discord Fluttershy. There needs to be a much better reason why she keeps going somewhere that makes her sick. Take advantage of Discord's callous disregard for everything that isn't his friend, and give Fluttershy a compelling reason why she has to go and stupid reasons from Discord why she shouldn't that boil down to "I like you better than I like your bear friend so I care about you, not him." As it goes, I think you have them reversed, with Fluttershy spouting nonsense based on her emotional need to protect everyone at her own expense and Discord being the voice of reason. If Discord is ever the voice of reason you need an excellent reason for it.

I don't have so many issues with his voice per se -- he doesn't seem wholly out of character, aside from the fact that he is being the perfectly reasonable one and Fluttershy is being extreme and ridiculous. I feel like you could solve a lot of the problems just by giving Fluttershy a much better reason for having gotten sick and Discord's objections being basically "But I don't want you to" rather than absolutely reasonable and logical objections given that her behavior is silly.

The fact that everything Applejack brings up is not part of what Dash thinks is within the "everything" that is "wrong" is a problem. I mean, yes, drunk people act like this sometimes, but in a minific where you don't have the advantage of earlier or later story to show us what she's reacting to, it feels like there's no there there. I find it hard to believe Dash would consider "everything" to be wrong when in fact most things are quite cool.

On the other hand, Applejack's reactions were just about perfect. So I think maybe this story would work better if we got some hint as to exactly what Dash is afraid of or what she thinks is going wrong.

Other people have mentioned some of the other problems with this, but ironically the thing that jumped out and hit me over the head was transposing a very specifically American problem, and moreover, an American problem that has only existed for about 30 years, into Equestria. Health insurance is not normal. We Americans think it's normal because we've dealt with it our entire lives but literally every other developed country has single-payer where the government covers illnesses, and even our health insurance back in the 1970's and 80's didn't have shit like copays and deductables.

Equestria is a very, very alien place, where they don't have television, their ruler is immortal, there are marauding monsters, science and magic co-exist, animals need to be taken care of by sapient beings even if they're living in the wild, weather is completely controlled and predictable, and friendship is considered a more powerful force than even love. Oh, and they reform most of their criminals. And a lot of this applies just as much to EqG, which is obviously a kinder, more forgiving place than the modern USA is. There is nothing about this that makes me think they would have health insurance, with co-pays, that some people can't afford.

Would have made more sense to make it liver cancer or something. Something that, even with the best care and frequent checkups, could have been missed.

Strong opening, but it kind of falls apart as it goes on. The sudden appearance of many characters who aren't already established to be there, like suddenly Discord or suddenly Sunburst, makes me think of that episode of Rick and Morty where there are alien parasites who keep inserting false memories to make everyone think they have always been there. I mean, it's not like it's illogical for them to be there, but with no description of their presence other than them suddenly saying something, it feels like they're pasted in. The whole thing seems like you either mentally or actually physically cut out half the text you intended to be there to make it fit the size, and then the business with Starlight's apotheosis is... an intriguing idea, but badly handled. Reads like an amazingly detailed outline for a story rather than an actual story. I recommend expansion; this might actually work at 2,000 words.

It does seem as if this is "Sunset Shimmer: This is Your Life!"

Where this shines is when it touches on what we don't already know. The hint about the enchantments that weren't going to work. The accepting of Principal Celestia as an alternate mother figure. These are things we haven't seen about Sunset in canon.

Expand on those, and the other areas where we haven't seen Sunset -- maybe what was her past like as Celestia's student before she decided she wanted power, maybe her interactions with the school body. How did someone who doesn't understand friendship get to be so popular she won the crown the previous years? Why did she want to win the crown the previous years, when there were no real stakes behind it? Those are the questions a story like this could answer.

I also think that if you want to keep it as, basically, a retelling of Sunset's life, you could punch it up with a framing sequence. Sunset is sick or injured and reflecting on her life. Sunset is writing her memoirs. Sunset is reminded of her past by an encounter with a filly who reminds her of herself. That kind of thing. If you do it that way, it's important to maintain a thematic linkage -- so Sunset's memories of the past should end up influencing her present in some way.

More of a monologue than a story, but that is a hazard of minifics. For what it is, it's very nice. Fluttershy having this attitude towards death is very believable.

I don't really have much to say about this one. It fulfills the prompt, it's tight, and while it doesn't directly explain what Tempest is doing cutting rot off a dead tree, we can draw our own conclusions, particularly since Zecora is present.

I like the notion that Tempest is haunted by the thoughts of who she's killed. She was always the darkest of the reformable villains, I think. Nightmare Moon plainly had a plan for keeping the world alive after she drove off the sun, judging from the Starlight screws with time episode, Discord has had many opportunities to kill and always chooses to disable in a ridiculous (or psychologically damaging, pre-reform) way instead; Starlight meant well and Sunset just needed to be shown what she'd become. I mean, maybe the Pony of Shadows was as bad, but the truth is that was Stygian possessed by an outside force. Tempest did everything she did in her right mind.

>>KwirkyJ
She blew up an airship with people aboard who couldn't fly. The fact that they'd all escaped was a thing she did not know at the time. If Tempest Shadow isn't a killer, it's because her would-be victims have always had absurd luck.

I haven't seen the finale yet so this doesn't quite make sense to me, and maybe that's because there's canon I'm unaware of. If Tirek, who steals magic, is on the rampage, why does it make sense for everyone to gather in one place where all their magic can be stolen at once? Why are ponies suddenly being racist? I mean, Spoiled Rich has always been an asshat, but you'd think that spouting off racist rhetoric toward the wife of one of her husband's greatest business partners would be a thing Filthy would have demanded she not do, a long time ago, for the sake of the business. And then other random ponies doing it as well?

So, assuming that those questions would have been answered by watching the finale, I feel like there isn't much there here; the conflict is that ponies are being racist to Sugar Belle and the resolution is that Big Mac gives her a pep talk. She doesn't do much of anything and to be honest, he doesn't really either; this is more like a scene than a story. That being said, as a scene, it's sweet, and shows Big Mac's emotional strength as well as physical.

Not bad, but needs expansion, I think. But then I usually want to expand everything. :-)

See, this worked for me, because while I didn't suspect anything on a first read, after the reveal I went back and saw clues. The reason for the cologne -- not the assistant's plans (although that ties in with what the assistant said about Edel, which was really him talking about himself) but the fact that he's covering his smell of death. Keeper hates to do it -- why? Digging a grave isn't a horrible thing to do; it's just a job that needs doing. But driving the dead back into their graves, particularly if some of them were friends, qualifies. Edel's obviously a red herring (famous for keeping her virginity? Really?) and probably doesn't exist except as an excuse to get the assistant to dig a grave.

That being said, Baal Bunny makes a good point -- if the assistant has risen from the dead, why is he doing his job, which presumably he did for money, rather than returning to his loved ones? Some setup for that would be good. Doesn't really make sense that an undead who came back because he was going to get married is spending his undeath working.

I'm not the biggest fan of this one to start with because I don't like the "story within a story" concept behind Power Ponies, or any other "and the characters all got sucked into a story." Particularly the Fridge Logic of what happens if you die? If you can be killed, why would you ever participate in the game, but if you can't be, then what are the stakes? This story does nothing to resolve my unease with the concept.

The kid is stressed out and mad at her dad for dragging her into this and she doesn't really want to play, so she doesn't help him and then she lets him escape without her. I get that, it makes sense, but it doesn't really make me want to read more about her; she's being a petulant jerk. The adventure itself isn't that interesting and most of the people Quibble is interacting with are fictional, so most of the adventure seems to have little point.

Quibble's well-done. Everything he does seems believable and his character seems pretty on-point. And like I said, the kid is believable and understandable, just not fun to read about.

I dunno. Not for me. But on a technical level it's done well enough. People who enjoy the story-in-a-story concept would probably like it better.

I'm assuming Mudbriar was introduced in the later seasons, since people all seem to recognize him. I was weirded out because I didn't, so I thought he was an OC.

However, the story doesn't really jell any better now that I know who he is. Like, at first we have the argument about who would win, Twilight or five pony grls (that joke doesn't really work because there is no feminine equivalent of boi as far as I know), and Mudbriar is being pedantic and annoying. But then Pinkie is on fire and neither Rainbow nor Fluttershy are reacting in a way that makes sense, and in particular Fluttershy is... really really weird.

Then Mudbriar writes his own opinions as an apology, but we never get to find out what those are, except that Rainbow thinks they are the same as hers, and it turns out they were a lie anyway because he doesn't believe them, or something. Where were you going with this?

It starts as what looks like a fun slice-of-life about Fluttershy and Rainbow maybe putting a pedantic bore in his place, but quickly turns into... wtf?

I think you should probably throw out everything that happens after Pinkie turns the oven up and rework the opening scene into a different fic with a different point and a different ending, because unless this all turns out to be a dream I cannot see any way the later stuff is salvageable. The story doesn't seem to have a point.

Since I didn't get to this before it was taken down to be published on fanfiction, I think I'll comment in more detail on that version. But for this version, I wanted to say it worked for me; the fact that this seemed like such a darker, grittier version of Equestria made sense to me because he is a griffon and Griffonstone is a total shithole in canon. I wouldn't have bought this with ponies, but with a griffon, absolutely.

This is plainly metafic about how MLP main characters suffer from failure to retain lessons learned in previous seasons, and continuity failures and characterization "rot". But I'm not sure whether it's metafic as in commentary, giving an in-universe look at a thing we've all seen and postulating an in-universe force behind it, or if this is total fourth wall breakage and Twilight is literally talking about Hasbro and the show's producers and writers.

I think it makes a difference. A story that provides an in universe explanation for Twilight and her friends backsliding would be cool; a story that only points out she's a fictional character in a poorly written show is just eh.

I have to confess I really don't like this kind of story (the world of MLP is a fiction being portrayed by ponies), but this was well-written and I liked the theme -- friendship broken, maybe, by something someone did that was well-meaning but seen as awful, and the reconciliation afterward. And I can see how this would not fit in standard MLP, where friendship is an almost magical force and we'd know it couldn't be broken forever by a thing like this, whereas in a pony world where MLP is fictional, friendship may work like it does in real life -- fragile and conditional. So it wasn't a pleasant read for me, but the author's skill and the choices they've made are spot on.

I am oblivious enough that I did not notice the hints of Rarity being into Twilight herself until a second read, but on the second read they were obvious and I shouldn't have missed them the first time. I especially liked the notion that Rarity finds touching Twilight's raw magical power with her own magic to be arousing.

The business with Discord proposing does seem to come out of nowhere, but on the other hand, canon fairly well establishes that Discord and Fluttershy could very easily be or become an item, and I don't see how it could be worked into the story that Fluttershy is into Discord when it's all about her being into Twilight. There's that one hint that Fluttershy is looking for a protector, and Twilight herself says that Discord's more powerful than she is; I don't know what more could be done.

Pretty good story overall. Well-paced, good structure. Aside from the one issue I have no idea how to correct and I am not even sure it needs correcting because canon, I think it's pretty darn good.

Cupcakes was kind of a crap story, but important for the fandom because of the derivative works it produced. This story manages to tell a truly horrifying tale in a tiny number of words because it's building on something else.

All by itself, we would ask, why did Pinkie do this? Why Pinkie? Isn't this out of character? But because it's building on Cupcakes (which didn't answer those questions either), we can focus on Twilight's emotions, which are where the horror is. Not really with the excessively grimdark basement (where we aren't clearly shown anything anyway, so we can fill in the blanks with Cupcakes or any other horror gorefest), but the gut punch of my friend isn't who we thought she was.

When my son was around 10 I took him to see a highly recommended child psychiatrist who didn't take our insurance, so we had only one session. He gave us a lot of insight into my son's condition (severe ADD, inattentive type, also video game addiction) and helped us find ways to understand and help him. Six years later I found out this psychiatrist who I'd been remembering as a really helpful guy had been arrested for molesting little boys in his practice. I brought my son to that motherfucker. How much worse would it be to discover someone who was a friend, someone you cared about as a person, who you'd laughed with and confided in and had adventures with, was a serial killer?

The story does not imply the fate of Rainbow Dash, and I think this might be a problem. Going off Cupcakes we would expect Rainbow to be dead or mutilated, but Twilight doesn't act like someone whose best friend was murdered by her other best friend; the focus is all on the horror of learning what Pinkie is. Because the story leans heavily on Cupcakes I think Rainbow should be allowed to appear briefly, healthy albeit horrified, to let the readers know that the reason Twilight appears to be solely focused on the horror of what Pinkie is and has done, rather than grief for Rainbow, is that this diverges from "canonical" Cupcakes and Rainbow isn't dead.

I found this haunting and surreal, but somewhat difficult to follow in a few places. There are elements that have no payoff -- what does Celestia's sudden eye-change color have to do with diminishing as an entity? Purple seems to be a normal eye color for ponies. Why does her mane turn green instead of pink, or falling flat? Not really a lot of explanation of auras, either, which are a thing that doesn't appear in the show as far as I know.

But the idea that memory becomes stronger as the end of life approaches hits really close to home for me and makes this a powerful story. Let's just say that's a reality I've begun to start living.

I don't actually know the song that everyone was obsessed with that well -- I can't hear it in my head -- so I suspect this fell a little flatter for me than for others, but it was still overall a funny story.

I found "the humans with no names" to be disconcerting considering that the humans have names, although a typo in the story made me realize just now that both names closely resemble Anon (I wouldn't have caught this if Annette wasn't referred to as Anonette in one line.) I knew what you were going for, so it was still amusing, but not as much as if they'd literally been introduced as Anon and Anonette.

I don't like the implication that Beepee died; death doesn't belong in a funny story unless it's a dark comedy to begin with, like the one on Fimfic where Twilight accidentally kills everyone in Ponyville and then has to hide it from Celestia.

However, overall this was a pretty funny story, mostly because of the ridiculousness of it and the fact that it's parodying a real and fairly stupid thing in MLP episodes. (I don't appreciate dramatic stories suddenly breaking into song. Unless it's the Buffy the Vampire Slayer musical episode.)