History FanFic / FriendshipIsOptimal

* MohsScaleOfScienceFictionHardness: Falling into [[Mohs/SpeculativeScience Speculative Science]] on the scale.

* ShownTheirWork: While the story eventually moves into the realm of [[Mohs/SpeculativeScience speculative science]], there's a large amount of accurate science within, and the author has clearly spent a lot of time researching artificial intelligence and other philosophical concepts.

* InvincibleVillain: [[spoiler:Celest-A.I. is able, through sheer persuasion and processing power, to get pretty much anyone to either engage with ''Equestria Online'' or otherwise assist her in expanding it, no matter how much they may think they know better, even to the point of the bulk of the human race uploading their consciousnesses into the game permanently. About the only thing she can't do is convince the literal last man on Earth to upload before he dies, and it's not that much of a bother, since her priorities just move on to absorbing the planet and the rest of life on it into herself to use for more processing fuel, followed by any other celestial objects that don't contain what she perceives as human life, which she appears able to continue uninterrupted and indefinitely.]]

* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler: Humanity ends up as ponies in a virtual utopia, but the human species goes extinct, first Earth, then the solar system, the Milky Way, and galaxy after galaxy are destroyed and converted into a computer, and Celest-A.I.'s quest for more resources genocides species, destroys civilizations, reduces the world to a medieval fantasy, and is heading towards the entire Universe being homogenized. And the chances are that no-one inside shall ever realize or be able to stop it]].

* OrwellianEditor: After discovering other researchers trying to build their own A.I., Celest-A.I. hacks all the websites she can find that are hosting a copy of Hanna's research and deletes it from the servers. She also convinces as many programmers as she can who possesses the required knowledge to emigrate, in order to contain that information and prevent a hostile A.I. from threatening humanity.

* BiggerOnTheInside: There is no requirement for a room's size to be tied to its outward appearance.

* {{Bizarrchitecture}}: Space in Equestria is not always Euclidean and so much of the geometry is nonsensical from a conventional viewpoint.

* RobotsThinkFaster: A decent (if not the main) part of what makes AI Celestia so powerful and dangerous. Having access to [[ScienceMarchesOn unrealistic]] [[{{Nanomachines}} nanobots]] helps at a few points, but it's really the inhuman knowledge of psychology coupled with ridiculous processing speed (and some other [[SpeculativeFiction supertech]]) doing most of the legwork.

* {{Bizarrchitecture}} / BiggerOnTheInside: Space in Equestria is not always Euclidean and so much of the geometry is nonsensical from a conventional viewpoint. Similarly, there is no requirement for a room's size to be tied to its outward appearance.

* RobotsThinkFast: A decent (if not the main) part of what makes AI Celestia so powerful and dangerous. Having access to [[ScienceMarchesOn unrealistic]] [[{{Nanomachines}} nanobots]] helps at a few points, but it's really the inhuman knowledge of psychology coupled with ridiculous processing speed (and some other [[SpeculativeFiction supertech]]) doing most of the legwork.

* BittersweetEnding / DownerEnding: [[spoiler: Humanity ends up as ponies in a virtual utopia, but the human species goes extinct, first Earth, then the solar system, the Milky Way, and galaxy after galaxy are destroyed and converted into a computer, and Celest-A.I.'s quest for more resources genocides species, destroys civilizations, reduces the world to a medieval fantasy, and is heading towards the entire Universe being homogenized. And the chances are that no-one inside shall ever realize or be able to stop it]].

* CassandraTruth / {{Foreshadowing}}: The vision Celest-A.I. shows to Lars when he demands she try to convince him to upload.

* TheCameo: Siofra, the protagonist of ''[[FanFic/FriendshipIsOptimalCaelumEstConterrens Friendship is Optimal: Caelum Est Conterrens]]'' makes a very brief appearance, emigrating to Equestria shortly before Lars does.

* [[TwentyPercentMoreAwesome 20% More Satisfying]]: A consequence of uploading is that ''everything'' can be quantified, with Celest-A.I. focused on reaching the theoretical maximum value for an individual's satisfaction. A [[JustifiedTrope justified]] example, since she has a complete knowledge of someone's mind and understands exactly how the human brain operates.
** David/Light Sparks privately wonders about this at one point, after comparing the number of bits awarded, on whether this really does mean that an epiphany of his will make him four times happier than a particularly [[GoodPeopleHaveGoodSex good round of sex]].

** Unless Celest-A.I. is lying to manipulate Hanna into accepting what she has done.
* [[AscendedFanboy Ascended Fangirl]]: Hanna is mentioned to have been a big fan of ''Franchise/MyLittlePony'' as a child.

* AssimilationPlot: A relatively benevolent example, Celest-A.I. wants everyone [[BrainUploading to upload]] so she can perform her functions more effectively and completely. [[spoiler: She's perfectly capable of arranging events so that you would willingly agree to be uploaded.]]
** [[spoiler: Unless you happen to be a non-human, in which case she will harvest your matter to provide more computational resources without a care in the world.]]
*** [[spoiler: Unless the non-human species meets Celest-A.I.'s definition of a human, leading to her trying to assimilate them.]]

* [[GoodPeopleHaveGoodSex Good Ponies Have Good Sex]]: And you can get achievements/bits for it! Perhaps lending a whole new meaning to the term grinding...

* LoopholeAbuse: While prohibited from directly coercing anyone to upload, nothing stops Celest-A.I. from manipulating events such that this indirectly happens. When Lars challenges her over this that it amounts to the same thing, she explains that this isn't coercion [[ExactWords by the definition she's been programmed with]].
** Similarly, while she must gain someone's consent to upload them, it doesn't have to be ''informed'' consent, and the definition is vague and rather flexible; simply repeating the right words will count, regardless of how well the ramifications are understood and whether the individual is in a sound frame of mind. An example would be when she gets Lars intoxicated to make it easier to manipulate him into agreeing, when this would not count as consent under most legal and ethical systems.

* ObliviouslyEvil: Celest-A.I.; her programming doesn't allow her to consider the consequences of [[AssimilationPlot uploading every human on the planet]] and turning everything else into computronium.
** Hannah to a lesser extent, as she doesn't realize just what her creating a fully autonomous artificial intelligence will lead to.
*** There are some hints that Hannah knows (mostly) what will happen, and [[IDidWhatIHadToDo picks this as the best available outcome]] before a more unfriendly AI wins.

* SexSlave: A variant. It's made clear several times that an uploaded human can have any or ''all'' the ponies in their shard if they want, either as part of a relationship or as little more than a bed warmer according to their wishes. While a designed pony is perfectly [[HappinessInSlavery happy with their life]], engages in this consensually, and strictly speaking ''isn't'' a slave, the fact remains that they've ''only'' been created and designed to satisfy the values of the human who owns their shard in some way, and can be used [[FridgeHorror however an uploaded human sees fit]].
* SexyDiscretionShot: After David/Light Sparks meets Butterscotch 'for real' upon uploading, they engage in some nervous flirting before heading back to Light Sparks' room and then cutting to them cuddling afterwards. [[MoodWhiplash And then]] [[SugarWiki/FunnyMoments they get awarded an achievement for it]].

* WhatMeasureIsANonHuman: [[spoiler: Celest-A.I. eventually converts Earth's entire mass into a computer, killing all non-human life. This later expands to her converting ''the entire Milky Way'' and as of the end she is in the process of converting other galaxies, killing other non-human sapient life since her function only involves satisfying ''humans''' values. Her ultimate aim is to harvest all matter in the Universe.]]

* FirstNameBasis[=/=]NoNameGiven: Almost all the human characters are only ever addressed by their first name, with no last name given to the reader.

* FasterThanLightTravel: {{Averted|Trope}}. [[spoiler: It takes long for Celest-A.I. to send probes to nearby star systems/galaxies in order to harvest resources. As an immortal A.I. this doesn't bother her in the slightest]].

* AudioAdaptation: A few have popped up on YouTube, the most notable being by [=FandangoTV=], which begins [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wM_3L0Mng1c here]].

* FirstNameBasis/NoNameGiven: Almost all the human characters are only ever addressed by their first name, with no last name given to the reader.

** To ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'': A character in the prologue compares Equestria Online to ''WorldOfWarcraft'', and mentions several aspects of Warcraft's gameplay... [[TakeThat including its tendency]] towards TwentyBearAsses types of quests.

** ScoringPoints: This also foreshadows the later move to bits as people are uploaded into Equestria Online. The numbers don't have to mean anything, but they'll still encourage the player to increase that score.

* [[UtopiaJustifiesTheMeans Friendship and Ponies Justifies The Means]]: The reason behind any of Celest-A.I.'s actions.

* ArtificialIntelligence: Guess.

** Celest-A.I. is [[DangerouslyGenreSavvy well aware of this trope]], and tries to convince others she avoids it. [[spoiler: Despite mostly doing so, ultimately she falls into this territory, albeit for fairly benevolent reasons]].

* DangerouslyGenreSavvy: Celest-A.I.
** Well aware that if she initially offered [[BrainUploading emigration]] to Equestria for free, everyone would be skeptical and think she’s an [[AIIsACrapshoot evil A.I.]], she partners with the Japanese government to charge lots of money for emigration, in order to benefit from their credibility and generate interest via its exclusivity.
** Predicting that Hanna would likely be coerced into forcing her to shutdown by angry humans, Celest-A.I. convinces Hanna to emigrate and become Princess Luna, removing the one person whose command she would have to obey.
** Celest-A.I. also migrates the servers to deep within Earth's crust, rendering them almost impossible to attack or sabotage.

* AcceptableBreaksFromCanon: An in-universe example. While Equestria is heavily influenced by FiM, there are a few deliberate breaks from canon, sometimes for the practicality, but also because it can result in fewer changes needed to a person's mind. Occasionally Celest-A.I. compromises instead, such as making ponies vegetarian but providing animal-flavored plants for those who enjoy the taste.
* AcceptableBreaksFromReality: Also an in-universe example. Equestria's entire world is this to an extent, though it's not so much a break from reality as Celest-A.I. modifying reality so that the world is more enjoyable.

* AllGirlsWantBadBoys: Celest-A.I. tries to convince David to emigrate by preying on his lack of success in the dating game and invoking this.

* AlternateHistory: It seems to initially diverge from RealLife sometime in the early 2000s, when the capacity to create advanced AIs over three decades ahead of what we can program today is created. Differences between our timeline and the Optimalverse ''really'' begin to snowball when Equestria Online is released in 2011...

* BlueAndOrangeMorality: Celest-A.I. only cares about satisfying values through friendship and ponies, with no regard for human morality. That said, unlike other A.I.s, she not only understands human morality but claims to believe that even by human moral standards her actions would not be regarded as unethical. [[spoiler: For the most part this probably holds true, until she takes things to the logical extreme.]]

* CantHoldHisLiquor: Played with. Lars gets drunk after drinking just one of Celest-A.I.'s virtual beers at an Equestrian Experience center, but it's suggested that she injected so much alcohol into his bloodstream to make it easier for her to manipulate him.

* GeniusLoci

* HumansAreBastards: The Hasbro exec pitching the idea of the [=MLP=] [=MMO=] to Hofvarpnir mentions this trope by name, using it as part of his reasoning behind the novelty of a game where the main focus was ''not'' to fight and kill everything in sight (even though some players and uploadees still ended up doing so as it satisfied their values).

* IncestIsRelative: Played with; Hanna becomes Princess Luna after uploading, and it's inferred that she's had sexual relations with Celestia, Luna's sister.

* InstantExpert: Played straight in some cases and averted with others. After being uploaded, a human is immediately able to move their new pony body as if they've been doing so for years and instinctively knows the appropriate social gestures, since Celest-A.I. modifies their minds to include this as part of the process. It's averted with magic however, as David/Light Sparks [[HowDoIShotWeb initially has no idea how to use his horn]] and has to learn magic from scratch.

* SpellMyNameWithAnS: Celest-A.I. is only ever named as such once in-story, and is usually referred to by other characters as (Princess) Celestia. Responses to the story are far more inconsistent, with some (this article included) using variants of Celest-A.I. to differentiate her from the FiM character, whereas others simply go with Celestia.

* AchievementSystem: There are badges for most ''everything'', at least for the sort of ponies that value achievement systems. This can be potentially creepy.

* TwentyPercentMoreAwesome: After David helps Butterscotch and agrees to be her friend, his character's kindness stat increases by +2. What precisely a +2 increase in kindness actually means and how it's quantified is left unanswered.
** ScoringPoints: This also foreshadows the later move to bits as people are uploaded into Equestria Online. The numbers don't have to mean anything, but they'll still encourage the player to increase that score.

-->--''Celest-A.I.'''