Fanfic / My Little Planeswalker

My Little Planeswalker is a My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic/Magic: The Gathering crossover series written by Zennistrad.

In the first story, Twilight's Spark, Starlight Glimmer's adventure beyond the Magic Mirror prompts Princess Twilight Sparkle to develop an alternative means of interplanar travel, in the hopes of preventing further leakage of Equestrian magic into the human world. Her research inadvertently leads her to discovering a truth that has remained hidden from her for nearly her entire life: that the "spark" that awakened the Element of Magic is far more than it seems, and that Twilight herself is a planeswalker.

The second entry in the series, Shattered Sunset, follows Sunset Shimmer as she discovers the nature of her own planeswalker spark. Upon arriving in a world where the cycle of day and night transforms the soul, Sunset Shimmer's identity is split in two, leaving Equestria to deal with her greatest enemy: herself.

The third entry, Glimmering Oil, follows Sunset's return to the human world as she finds the entirety of Canterlot City transformed into a grotesque parody of its former self. Led by the human counterpart to Starlight Glimmer, the forces of Phyrexia loom omnipresent over all, and Sunset must work with her six closest friends to save everything that they hold dear.

The fourth entry Shards of Concordia, delves further into the connection between Ungula and Athropia with the discovery of an alicorn fossil in the latter world after the failed Phyrexian invasion awakened the dormant magic of the plane and its humans, while Equestria's own magic mysteriously fades. And all the while, the dark plots of an elder dragon for both worlds continues...

In addition to the main series entries above, there also exist various other spinoff stories set within the same continuity:

• Sideboard Stories, an anthology of short stories set during the six months that occur between Twilight's Spark and Shattered Sunset.
• Chromatic Chronomancy, a short crossover with The Oversaturated World.

For other stories by the same writer, see An Anomaly In The Underground, She Might Be Giant, and A Song of Silk and Saplings.

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My Little Planeswalker provides examples of:

Main Series

• A God I Am Not: The Gatewatch, especially Gideon, are reminded of the gods of Theros by Celestia and Luna, but they vehemently deny that they're divine, with Gideon noting that he's never heard of a true god denying their own worship. Twilight is also rather uncomfortable with the idea that Celestia and Luna are gods, since that could mean that she is technically a deity.
• And This Is for...: In chapter 5 of Glimmering Oil, Twilight screams that her attack is for Timber Spruce before she swings a giant magical hard-light axe into Gaea's head.
• Arc Villain: Sunset the Exiled, Sunset Shimmer's Enemy Without, is this for Shattered Sunset, while Starlight Glimmer's human counterpart is this for Glimmering Oil. Bolas is seemingly the villain for Shards of Concordia.
• Bare-Handed Blade Block: In chapter 5 of Gimmering Oil. Gaea Everfree No Sells Twilight's attempt to cut off her head with a giant axe woven from magical hard-light by catching it between her palms.
• Big Bad: Nicol Bolas. He's ultimately the one pulling the strings behind the Phyrexian invasion of Anthropia, and is responsible both directly and indirectly for all of the conflicts from Shattered Sunset onwards.
• Big Good:
  • Time Turner, an ancient, powerful, and eccentric planeswalker who is just slightly older than Princess Celestia herself, and was personally mentored by Teferi. While he doesn't usually involve himself directly in the series' main conflicts, he does show up periodically to offer advice and guidance to the heroes. It's implied that he's doing something important behind the scenes, but it's never exactly clear what that is.
  • On an even greater scale, Harmony is this.
• Body Horror: Anthropia, the Equestria Girls plane, is invaded by the Phyrexians. Naturally, they begin transforming its native life into grotesque, mutilated, cyborg horrors.
• Broken Pedestal:
  • Downplayed. Twilight is clearly upset by the revelation that Celestia kept her true nature as a planeswalker hidden from her, in part because she feared losing her, even having made her a princess in part so her responsibilities would keep her from leaving Ungula behind forever, but she ultimately continues to hold her mentor in high regard. By the end of Twilight's Spark, the two reconcile with each other easily.
  • Sunset Shimmer has a much worse version of this after merging with her Enemy Without, and realizing she was right about how much Celestia hurt them both. While she still loves Princess Celestia deeply, it's clear that she came out of being turned away by her mentor with significant trauma, to the point where she flinches away from Celestia's first attempt to show any physical affection. Celestia is thankfully understanding, but it's clear that Sunset simply isn't ready to return to her side and will likely never see her in the same way again.
• Darker and Edgier: Glimmering Oil is much bleaker than the previous stories, since it involves the Equestria Girls plane being invaded by the Phyrexians. Then there's The Reveal that not only is Gaea Everfree real, she's killed Timber Spruce and Gloriosa Daisy.
• Death by Adaptation:
  • In canon Starswirl is alive, having simply sealed himself away to stop the Pony of Shadows. Here he's dead, killed by Urza when the latter tried to steal the Elements of Harmony.
  • Timber and Gloriosa are killed by the real Gaea Everfree (who is enraged by the invasion and unable to discern friend from foe, though they're potentially resurrected when Sunset channels Harmony and "turns back the clock" for Anthropia.
• Die or Fly:
  • Every single one of the Humane Six have gained new magic abilities following the Phyrexian invasion in Glimmering Oil, but only after suffering a near-death experience at the hands of the Phyrexians.
  • It's repeatedly suggested that Sunset herself would have a similar "awakening" in the same circumstance, but she's not willing to go through with the risk of being almost killed. She ends up doing so anyway when Human Starlight attacks her in space when she's trying to send a signal to a satellite to stop the Phyrexian infection, and ends up channeling Harmony herself to hit the Reset Button and awaken Anthropia's dormant magic.
• Enemy Within: Sunset the Exiled, the personification of Sunset's repressed rage and egotism, is this to Sunset Shimmer as a whole. Later she becomes an Enemy Without, trapping Sunset's good side in a small statue and taking full control of her body.
• Gaia's Vengeance: In Glimmering Oil, the true Gaea Everfree is understandably pissed that the Phyrexian contagion has threatened her forest. Unfortunately, she can't differentiate between normal humans and corrupted ones, and kills Timber Spruce and Gloriosa Daisy, and tries to do the same to the Humane Seven.
• Killed Off for Real: Timber Spruce and Gloriosa Daisy were killed off by the true Gaea Everfree after the Phyrexians arrived and spread their corruptive glistening oil on her world. Sunset and the HuMane Six discover their corpses in chapter 3, before Gaea manifests herself.They're presumably revived when Harmony unleashes a World-Healing Wave through Sunset.
• Magic Feather: Celestia explains that Twilight's Planar Amulet isn't actually what grants her the ability to travel between planes, and that her true planeswalking ability has existed within her since the day she obtained her cutie mark. That said, the Planar Amulet still does still protect its wearer from the Blind Eternities' chaotic energies, so it's not completely without a power of its own. This comes back to bite Anthropia when the New Phyrexians find it and use it to invade the plane when combined with their planar portal technology.
• New Powers as the Plot Demands: In addition to their geode powers, each of the HuMane Six gain new abilities as a result of their "awakenings," as described above.
  • Twilight Sparkle: Hard Light constructs.
  • Rarity: Sangromancy.
  • Fluttershy: Healing wind.
  • Rainbow Dash: Razor Wind.
  • Applejack: Plant control.
  • Pinkie Pie: Toon Physics... somehow even more than before.
  • At the climax of the story, Sunset manages to channel the power of Harmony herself, purging the Phyrexian corruption from Anthropia and awakening the plane's dormant magic.
• No-Sell:
  • Gaea Everfree manages to effortlessly shrug off every single attack thrown at her. At least until Sunset learns she can channel her magic through Twilight.
  • The Harmonic magic the Humane Seven have renders them immune to Phyrexian corruption. After the invasion is foiled, all life on the plane is immunized.
• Real After All: The true Gaea Everfree in Glimmering Oil.
• Ship Tease:
  • Applejack/Rarity and Sunset/Twilight are both teased at various points in the stories. Especially as Timber Spruce, HuMane Twilight's canonical crush, is revealed to have been killed off.
  • Lyra and Bon-Bon are, as usual, implied to be a couple.
  • Starlight Glimmer and Trixie are less "implied to be a couple" and more "an unspoken yet explicit couple", as Twilight accidentally interrupts them when they're making out in the throne room.
  • In Glimmering Oil, it's revealed that HuMane Rainbow Dash has a crush on her world's Fluttershy.
• Shoo Out the Clowns: Shards of Concordia opens with Tezzeret using an enchanted note on orders from Bolas to send Discord away so he can't interfere in the elder dragon's plans.
• Shout-Out: Numerous.
  • Twilight Sparkle's planeswalker origin story is extremely similar to Jace Beleren's: she unknowingly became a planeswalker after her spark's ignition briefly dipped her into the Blind Eternities, which her mentor kept hidden from her throughout her entire tutelage. Thankfully, Celestia turned out to be far less of a manipulative jerk than Alhammarret.
  • In one chapter of Twilight's Spark, Twilight is shown to know several Dungeons & Dragons spells by name. The chapter title is even called "Legends and Libraries," and the chapter's card is an MtG version of the D&D spell legend lore.
  • Time Turner remarks to Ditzy Doo that there's probably at least one alternate timeline where she's a planeswalker instead of him.
  • When Time Turner uses a time stop spell, Ditzy's immediate reaction evokes the stand of another famous time-stopper.
  Ditzy: What in the world!?
  • When Time Turner casually boasts about his doctoral degrees:
  Twilight: Hold on, you don't actually expect me to believe you have eleven doctorates, do you? That's ridiculous. It's not even funny!^note Also doubles as a shout-out to the experimental music group Negativland, like in Kingdom of Loathing itself.
  • In Shattered Sunset, when Twilight writes to explain her absence to Sunset, and her rationale for researching alternative means of traveling to the human world (a.k.a. Anthropia):
  Twilight: Several months ago, shortly after Starlight Glimmer came to your world, I conducted some preliminary research on the Mirror's impact on Anthropia. I'd discovered that forcing the mirror open more than it was originally intended to had caused magic to leak through it, like a permanent planar gateway for mana. If left unchecked, I feared that the Mirror would cause your world to become... well, the best word I can think of would be oversaturated, but it's a little bit more complicated than that.
  • Evil!Sunset's duel with Celestia in Shattered Sunset quickly turns into a pastiche of Dragon Ball Z. The end of the chapter even has the author's notes mimicking Kyle Hebert's infamous On the Next segments in the English dub.
• Split-Personality Merge: When the two halves of Sunset Shimmer reconcile with each other at the end of Shattered Sunset, they both merge back together into a single being. Sunset also gets a fancy new pair of wings out of it, too. Apparently the only reason that she hadn't ascended earlier was because she couldn't until she'd stopped repressing her negative emotions.
• Stable Time Loop: Shards of Concordia reveals that Time Turner travelled back in time to ignite his past self's spark.
• They Call Me MISTER Tibbs!: Doctor Time Turner would very much like you to remember his doctoral degrees and address him appropriately, thank you very much.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Sunset's Enemy Without delivers one to her, one that also doubles as a Motive Rant:
  Sunset the Exiled: Ever since we became separate at the Fall Formal, you've been saddling me with all of your emotional baggage just so you wouldn't have to deal with it yourself! But we didn't have to stay separate! I could have known what it was like to feel love, or joy, or compassion, or empathy, if only you just let me in! Instead, I've never known anything but anger and resentment and... and spite, because that's the only thing you've ever allowed me to feel!
  Sunset the Redeemed: I... What?
  Sunset the Exiled: Do you have any idea- any idea just how much pain and resentment I've been having to deal with while you were out frolicking with your friends? I had to be the one to remember how Celestia turned us away, and left us all alone in a world we didn't even know how to survive in! I had to be the one to remember all of the times we nearly froze to death sleeping outside in the slums! How many times we had to go hungry because we were too young to find work, and too unimportant for anyone else to care! I had to be the one to remember how Twilight robbed us of any chance we had left of returning and becoming Celestia's student again, how she replaced us in the eyes of the only family we've ever had! I had to be the one to remember how she stumbled upon her wings by accident, when we'd worked so hard just to be good enough to earn Celestia's attention in the first place! Because instead of learning to cope with any of these feelings, you passed them onto me, and then kept me imprisoned in the back of your mind so you could pretend I didn't even exist! How was I supposed to feel about that, huh!?
• Time Master: Time Turner, natch. As a pre-Mending planeswalker, tutored by Teferi, he's had over a millennium to practice time magic. He admits that he might be the most powerful time magic user in the entire multiverse when confronting Starlight over what she did with her time travel mess.
• Unperson: After Urza murdered Starswirl in an attempt to steal the Elements of Harmony, the Elements banishing him from Ungula permanently in reaction, Celestia erased any knowledge of them from the history books in anger and grief.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Poor Twilight manages to do this twice. The first is when she loses the Planar Amulet in the Blind Eternities, where eventually winds up in New Phyrexia, allowing them Phyrexians to successfully develop interplanar travel technology. The second time is when her presence on Ravnica attracts the attention of Ral Zarek, through which Nicol Bolas learns of Ungula and sets the plane within his sights.

Other Stories

• All Your Colors Combined: Arzakon, despite everything about him screaming that he's solely Black, is somehow able to use every color of mana with seemingly no effort. Twilight has to call in the Gatewatch so they can use their own, more specialized mana, to counter him long enough to seal him back away in Limbo.
• Chekhov's Gun: In part one of the Golden Sun's Zenith chapter of Sideboard Stories, Celestia leaves to establish diplomatic contact with a nation on the other side of the world. As she leaves Luna to take care of raising the sun while she's away, Celestia also teaches her a spell that will instantly teleport her to Luna's location, no matter where she is. In part four of Golden Sun's Zenith, Luna uses the spell, allowing Celestia to escape her imprisonment.
• Friendly Neighborhood Vampire: Rarity is revealed to be this in one Sideboard Stories chapter, having been turned as a filly shortly after she got her cutie mark when she was accidentally run over.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Twilight's comments on why it's rare to go full All Your Colors Combined like Arzakon does, with most sticking with two or three colors of mana at most, parallels how playing with all five colors in the actual card game is hard to do well.
• Point of Divergence: Time Turner stopped Stygian from making his deal that turned him into the Pony of Shadows, so he took the deceased Starswirl's place sealing Arzakon away, who was in his natural form.
• Sealed Evil in a Can:
  • The ancient, demonic planeswalker Arzakon, revealed to be the true force behind the Pony of Shadows in Shadows over Equestria chapter of Sideboard Stories.
  • Also the ultimate fate of Ahuizotl, who is imprisoned within the sun by the titular artifact of Golden Sun's Zenith.
• This Cannot Be!: Having been sealed away before the Mending, Arzakon is caught off-guard by how weak he suddenly is, and his reaction to learning about the consequences of the Mending is shocked disbelief. He quickly shakes it off though, choosing to focus on his dark designs.
• Willfully Weak: It becomes apparent that Princess Celestia is this in Golden Sun's Zenith, upon being captured by the Cuetzpali Empire. While she could blast her way out of her restraints, to do so would not only create excessive collateral damage, but also destroy whatever slim chance of diplomacy exists between Equestria and a much more militarily powerful nation.

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