Fanfic / Twilight Gets A Puppy

The Sparkles as depicted in Puppyverse

Twilight Gets a Puppy is a My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fanfic about the question: What If? Twilight Sparkle also got a puppy at her entrance exam? And that puppy was a member of a sapient Diamond-Dog-like species called Moon Dogs? And he was her adopted brother and moved to Ponyville with her?

Season 1 can be found hereSeason 2Season 3Season 4Season 5Season 6Season 7

---

Twilight Gets a Puppy provides examples of the following tropes:

• Abdicate the Throne: Sombra never really wanted to rule, and thus abdicates the throne of the Crystal Empire as part of his parole.
• Absurd Phobia: Similarly to canon, Twilight has a crippling case of turophobia regarding quesadillas. Moreover, Luna also has molluscophobia, the fear of snails.
• Accidental Kiss: Doubles as The Big Damn Kiss. Apple Bloom (as several dozen times her normal size thanks to Poison Joke) slipped on a banana peel and landed kissing her crush, Spike, who was also much larger than normal due to greed growth.
• Accidentally Broke the MacGuffin: Just like in canon, Flurry Heart inadvertently shatters the Crystal Heart. Unlike in canon, this isn't much of a problem, as Shining and Cadance could potentially keep a shield up for months between them and with Jynx, the goddess of gemstones, nearby the problem was solved in under an hour.
• Accidental Murder: Chrysalis accidentally induced a heart attack in Celestia's father.
• Adaptational Backstory Change: Several older characters' backstories are updated to be more in line with the tone of the fic and the setting's emphasis on the gods.
  • Celestia and Luna are far older than they are in canon and are only half-sisters, sharing their mother, Law. Celestia has a grudge against Chrysalis due to the latter accidentally murdering her father several thousand years ago, and Luna was Nightmare Moon for nearly three hundred years. The Equestrian Civil War that occurred during that time was also far, far bloodier than the small skirmish in canon.
  • Sombra is the son of Nightmare Moon and Solomon and inherited the Crystal Empire. He had nothing to do with the curse on the Empire and, in fact, was attempting to deescalate the war when the trap sprung, pulling him and the Empire 1300 years into the future.
  • Discord is given an excuse for his madness and anger at Celestia, that being the loss of his daughters, his divorce from his wife of several thousand years, and his rebound girl, Celestia, dumping him.
• Adaptational Badass: The entire cast. Most characters that were merely godlike in canon (Twilight, Celestia, Luna, Cadance, and Discord) are full-on immortal gods here. The mortals get in on the badassery too, including but not limited to Rarity becoming one with a living nightmare, Applejack becoming a magic-eating witch wolf, and Spike being able to keep up with his siblings despite two of them being gods. The Crusaders have also reached the point that they are feared more than most gods. Even Angel Bunny isn't a regular rabbit and is instead the grandson of White, the god of time.
• Adaptational Early Appearance: Zephyr Breeze makes a cameo during Season Two.
• Adaptational Heroism: Many villains that did not reform in canon are given second chances here and become heroes in their own right. This is particularly noticeable during the Storm King's invasion.
  • Chrysalis directs the changelings to infiltrate and weaken the Storm King's forces. Only the fact that she is pregnant keeps her from joining the counter-invasion herself. She also was far less villainous from the start, as her plans involved winning Cadance's affection back, not taking over Equestria.
  • Sombra borrows his mother's axe and joins the forces traveling to the Storm King's island despite being ordered to stay in Canterlot. He ends up saving Comet Trail's life and taking down the Storm King's son, Squall.
  • Sonata and Aria of the Sirens have a few moments as well. Aria broke the gem Adagio was using to control most of Griffonstone and both Sonata and Aria joined the forces attacking the Storm King in order to help break his troops' morale.
• Adaptational Villainy: This happens to a few characters.
  • Diamond Tiara. She continually gets worse and worse than she did in canon until she snaps in Season Five. She murders both her parents and most of the servants, gets away with it scot-free, takes all of their money, and flees, joining Solomon.
  • Celestia is far more manipulative here than in canon, and while not exactly villainous she has made some questionable decisions in the past that come back to haunt her in the present day. In particular, she was prepared to kill Applejack and, if it came to it, all of Ponyville to prevent the possible spread of a witch wolf epidemic. Thankfully, cooler heads prevailed when Spike talked her down, and since then she has been becoming more and more like her canon self.
• Adopted into Royalty: Inverted and played straight.
  • By adopting Rahs and Spike, the other Sparkles became minor royals in the eyes of the law, as Luna also adopted Rahs as her grandson and Spike is the son of Bleu, the goddess of dragons. Celestia is able to use this to stop the nobles from complaining that a commoner is marrying into royalty during Shining and Cadance's wedding.
  • Luna adopts Sweetie Belle at the end of Season 1, putting her in line for the throne, which becomes a plot point during the plunder-vine incident and during the Storm King's attack.
• Aliens Steal Cattle: Granny Smith, being an old farmer who at least pretends to be a senile old coot, believes this trope, as shown when part of the Crystal Palace lands on her farm.
  “Durn aliens here tah steal tha cows again. Where's ma pappy's gun?” Granny Smith snapped.
• Amicable Exes: Discord and Aqua, at least nowadays. They've had a few thousand years to get over themselves and Discord has considerably mellowed out. The two at least seem to get along by now and are still able to have family gatherings with their daughters Aria and Sonata.
• Amplifier Artifact: The Alicorn Amulets, similarly to canon. Unlike canon, however, there are many different kind of Alicorn Amulets, some of which simply open up unused mana pathways in the user, and others that allow for things they never would be able to do without it.
• Anthropomorphic Personification: The gods can have portfolios that lend them towards being this trope, but the Three Primes in particular take the cake, enough that their very names are what they represent: Law, Harmony, and Discord.
• Apocalypse How: A few of the timelines the Sparkles visit while stopping Starlight are apocalyptic. The final one they visit (where they traumatize Starlight into stopping) is a Class 2, and nearly a Class 3 for ponies in particular.
• Asshole Victim: Given how badly the Yak delegation treated everyone, it's hard to feel bad for Prince Rutherford when Twilight and Rahs responded to his declaration of war by telekinetically grabbing him, dragging him through the Oneiroi's worst nightmares for seven hours, and using him as a sledgehammer against Yakyakistan itself.
• Back from the Dead: Solomon is a proficient necromancer and therefore doesn't stay dead. So far he has died at least twice and has a collection of bodies ready to use as vessels.
• Badass Boast: There are quite a few of these, particularly from Spike.
  Spike: "If I decide to do something, you'll be awake, you'll be facing me, and you'll be armed. You'll also have already lost ten steps before that point."
• Barrier Warrior: Shining Armor. His shields are strong enough to nullify Tirek's ability to eat magic, he can use them as swords by making them thin enough, and he once killed a Dreadnought (a dragon enhanced and controlled by dark magic) by crushing it to the size of a marble with one.
• Beware the Quiet Ones: Fluttershy is rather meek and quiet, but a member of an ecoterrorist group, well known by other ecoterrorist groups (and several pirates), and downright murderous regarding her brother.
• Beware the Silly Ones: Likewise, Sonata is the ditziest of the three Sirens, to the extent that in "Three's a Cod" in Season 4, she goes to a dog fighting ring thinking it's like a real-life Pokemon battle, but when she does get provoked into violence, she is extremely violent:
  “What in Tartarus are you!” The griffon screeched.
  “Pecking order.” Sonata grinned.
  “That doesn't make any GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!”
  There was a scream and a snap and the dog fighting ring was silent save the sound of dripping blood and the whimpers of the dogs still in their cages.
• Big Bad: Solomon. So far he has been directly responsible for the issues caused by Nightmare Moon, Sombra, and the Storm King. It is also implied that he works for Grogar.
• Big Bad Ensemble: Solomon has been gathering allies and so far has quite the team together. As of Season Six, it consists of himself, Diamond Tiara, Adagio, and the reanimated Squall.
• Big Brother Instinct: All of the Sparkles feel this towards all of their siblings. Harm one of them, and the other three will descend on you with overwhelming force.
• The Big Damn Kiss: Happens between Apple Bloom and Spike. It also serves as a visual gag because Spike has grown huge due a greed growth and Apple Bloom growing herself as large with Poison Joke to stop him. The kiss allows for Spike to revert to normal while Apple Bloom runs to the farm in embarrassment because it was in front of just about the entire town.
• Big Little Brother: Rahs is significantly taller than Shining. Given that Twilight is a goddess and Spike is a dragon, it is fairly likely that Shining will wind up the smallest of the four siblings.
• Birdcaged: When Twilight and Big Mac are foalnapped by Twilight's gang of evil exes, they stick her in a birdcage.
• Bloodier and Gorier: While any amount of blood and/or gore is more than canon, there are a few places where this is taken to the extreme.
  • The War of the Night and the Equestrian Civil War were international conflicts that resulted in extreme loss of life on all sides. Due to the Crystal Empire's (and later Nightmare Moon's) forces incorporating witch wolves and juggernauts (corrupted buffalo), dismemberment was a common way to go for the Equestrian military. It's so bad that the author added a gore warning to the beginning of a flashback chapter to the Battle of Whinnyshire.
  • By the time Tirek becomes a major problem, him, Twilight, and Rahs were all extremely powerful gods. All three of them died several times during the fight in incredibly brutal ways, and the surrounding landscape is described as being littered with meat chunks, blood, and viscera.
  • In order to traumatize Starlight into submission, the Sparkles rip into the forces of the final timeline's villains. The narration only focuses on Starlight's reaction, but it includes the tidbit that the battle was so fierce the blood was flowing uphill.
• Bluff Worked Too Well: Some members of the Thieves' Guild were once caught by Princess Luna investigating what was going on in her night, but they managed to bluff their way out of it by claiming that they were setting up a new nightclub. When they did set up the club to keep up appearances, it became one of Luna's favorites in Canterlot and several members of the Guild had to go legit to keep it running.
• Bodyguarding a Badass: By the nature of the setting, this is the case for nearly all of the Royal Guard. All of Equestria's leaders are immortal gods, so the guards are less there to protect them and more there to protect civilians from them. This goes double for the CMC, who are assigned a guard unit whenever they leave Ponyville in order to contain the collateral damage.
• Bookworm: Twilight. She's so much of a bookworm that when she ascended to godhood, one of her portfolios was books.
• Born as an Adult: Seshat came into the world fully formed and sapient, as she was deliberately created by Harmony.
• Bottomless Magazines: The Storm King's troops seem to have an infinite supply of ammunition when they invade Canterlot.
• Boy Band: A few of Cadance's Heart Guard formed one of these; Sweetie Belle is a fan of them.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: Solomon developed a spell around 1300 years ago to enthrall gods and make them his slaves. The first god he tested this on successfully was Princess Luna, creating Nightmare Moon in the process.
• Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: In "Loup Before You Sleep", Twilight's slumber party book starts with the canon activities and ends with "Solve mysteries with a large dog" and "Overthrow the government".
  “Reasonable enough. What else did she skip? Gossip,ehh, spin tah bottle, ain't that a mixed party game?Solve mysteries with a large dog, well Rahs ain't here I ken see why that was skipped. Overthrow tha government?” Applejack read surprised.
• Brilliant, but Lazy: Rahs is a lot smarter than he usually lets on, but prefers to laze about and bicker with his siblings.
• Bring It: Twilight's response to Prince Rutherford's declaration of war on Equestria.
  Twilight: "Right... War... You declared war... You know what?" (Her hair catches fire and her coat turns white in a magical explosion) "Bring it!"
• Bullying a Dragon: Despite the Crusaders being far more dangerous and far more connected to powerful individuals than in canon, Diamond Tiara still insists on bullying them. And with Spike being part of the group, she's quite literally bullying a dragon. Spike eventually spells it out for her why this is a bad idea.
  Spike: "I don't know what your problem is with the Crusaders, but you need to get over it. It takes a special kind of stupid to antagonize a trio that can bring down the Wonderbolts, The Element Bearers, a couple of random demigods, probably Discord, and most, if not all of, the Princesses on your head. And that's before I would get involved and bring in even more gods. You're not bullying a trio of fillies, you're bullying something that can call a HK class, world ending, legion of pain on your stupid crown painted flank."
• Canary in a Coal Mine: Ponyville has learned to look to the Flower Sisters to see if the current event is worth fretting about. If those three haven't retreated to their bunker, there's nothing dangerous going on.
• Captain's Log: Deliberately mentioned by name by Sunset to reference Star Trek, though she is rather disappointed that no one will understand that joke but her.
• Cats Are Lazy: Rahs has several feline features and sleeps away large portions of the day. As Twilight tells Trixie:
  "Rahs is still asleep, wake his butt up around eight or he will literally sleep until eight tonight then go to bed tired at nine."
• Ceiling Cling: While Cadance was foalsitting the Sparkles for the first time, Twilight used a wall-climbing spell to hide on the ceiling in order to avoid taking a bath. Cadance found her, though.
• Chair Reveal: Due to the magical link between the Sparkle siblings, a magical affect on Rahs affects all four of them. This includes Poison Joke, which turns Rahs into a pony, Twilight into a dragon, Spike into a dog, and Shining into a mare. In order to cast the cloud-walking spell on Rahs so he could attend the Best Young Fliers Competition, Twilight used Poison Joke on him and had the cure ready for herself and Spike, but when they got back every book in the library had mysteriously disappeared. Cue the reveal:
  "Hello, Twily..." (Chair spins around to reveal a female Shining Armor) "I think perhaps you might have forgotten to tell your brother something?"
• Cheshire Cat Grin: At several points in the series, a character is described as having a grin "most commonly seen accompanied by a fin splitting the water, or on lawyers with personal injury cases."
• Chewing the Scenery: Most characters have some hammy moments, but Rahs, being the god of theater, is particularly of note when it comes to this. He doesn't have many understandable lines, but when he does speak, it's either an amazing "The Reason You Suck" Speech or him being an absolute Large Ham. Even nonverbally, he'll act out elaborate three-part death scenes when he's mildly inconvenienced and have over-the-top reactions to his siblings' sarcastic insults.
• Chick Magnet: Rahs, much to the bafflement of his sister, has six females of various species after him (Trixie, a pony who's great grandfather is a dragon; Jynx, the goddess of diamond dogs; Saturnia, the demigod half-changeling daughter of Cadance and Chrysalis; Applejack, a witch wolf; Sunset, the demigod daughter of Celestia; and Aria, a demigod daughter of Discord and Aqua). He has absolutely no clue why any of them want him and seems more concerned with if he can write a play about it.
• Childhood Friend Romance: Rahs's and Trixie's relationship is one of these.
• Child of Two Worlds: Saturnia is the daughter of Princess (now Empress) Cadance and Queen Chrysalis (due to a polymorph spell that allowed Cadance to impregnate Chrysalis). Granted, her sire was unaware she existed until several decades after her birth.
• Cloning Gambit: Solomon has several clones of himself with no consciousness in his lab. This is so he can transfer his mind into one of them should his current body die.
• Cluster Bleep-Bomb: One of the potions Twilight uses to view history during the Plunder Vines incident leads her to see the Pillars discover the Tree of Harmony, along with a unicorn named Lily and a dragon named Drusy. The latter is not subtle about how much they dislike Star Swirl.
  Drusy: "You're just [CENSORED] mad that they fixed the problem first and no one's [CENSORED] the [CENSORED] with you [CENSORED] and a couple of [CENSORED][CENSORED][CENSORED][CENSORED][CENSORED] drag my claws though your burnt stubble ... And Lily take [CENSORED][CENSORED][CENSORED][CENSORED] spell off of me!!"
• Code Name: While much of Ponyville is conspiring to prevent Cadance and Celestia from ruining Rainbow Dash and Blueblood's date, Spike insists that they all use call signs. The only one who bothers to remember them is Bon Bon.
• Cold Ham: Any of the Sparkles can become this if pushed past what their patience allows.
• Colony Drop: Luna's response to Forgescale escaping his banishment to the human world and returning to Equus was to drop the Moon on him. Fifteen times. Luckily the god of the earth was around to stop the shockwaves from actually destroying anything.
• Combat Pragmatist: Most characters have shades of this, but two in particular stand out:
  • Sunset is more than willing to use blood magic in combat (something generally frowned upon by other magic users) should her usual pyromania fail her. And her response to a baleful polymorph spell Adagio cast to restrict her to her human form speaks for itself.
    Sunset: "I never did learn how to do magic like this, so I CAST CHAIR!" (hits Adagio with a chair)
  • Sombra is able to exploit Squall's insistence on a fair fight to kill him.
    Sombra: "To progress as I am, I will not defeat you, but it seems I have discovered a glaring weakness in your combat style."
    Squall: "Oh? And what might that be?"
    Sombra: "You are too noble to cheat." (impales Squall with a crystal from behind)
• Complete Immortality: The Physical Gods of this setting can only be killed if all of their portfolios are destroyed or they give up being a god, which means many of the gods will be there for all of eternity. Only a few gods are known to have been killed while they were still gods and only two have been directly mentioned: the predecessor to Fledge, the god of harpies, and Forthe, the god of diamond dogs until his refusal to share a portfolio with Luna forced him into a half-dead state, which left him vulnerable to Tirek eating him.
• Compound-Interest Time Travel Gambit: During Starlight's time travel incident, the Sparkle siblings wound up looting a massive amount of wealth from some pirates on the main timeline. In one of their other escapades on the timeline, Shining dumped his share into a bank account to pay for his children's college tuitions in the future.
• Concussions Get You High: Twilight fights Sombra while severely concussed, but acts more like she's rather buzzed.
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: Twilight "misplaces" the petrified Storm King's head while on her way back to Equestria, and we later learn that Rahs is using it as a holder for a tragedy mask decoration in his theater, unable to move and forced to watch every one of his plays.
• Covered in Kisses: After Rahs comes back from one of his dates with Trixie, it is clear how it ended by the amount of blue lipstick on him.
• Creator Cameo: TDR shows up from time to time, usually limited to fighting with Discord in (and over) the chapter headers.
• Creepy Good: Rarity, once she merges with a tantabus and can become a nightmare made flesh at will.
• Crossover Punchline:
  • When White conscripted the Sparkles to fix time, they get shunted into several alternate universes, including, but not limited to:
    • Pokémon
    • Scooby-Doo
    • Past Sins
    • Hazy Days and Magical Ways
  • Defied in Season 3 episode "Surveyor 1, at your service", when Twilight demands to know if the CMC have adopted a baby timberwolf named Fern:
    Apple Bloom: No.... but if ah was gonna have a plant puppy, ah'd ah named it Sprout.
• Cultured Badass: Once Rainbow Dash starts dating Prince Blueblood, she picks up quite a bit of cultural knowledge of the arts while maintaining her badassery.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Most of the villains in the series have to plan to actively keep the Sparkles away from the action as long as possible, lest they be on the receiving end of one of these. Once Twilight escaped from the Storm King's petrification orb, for example, he couldn't even land a hit on her as she vented some anger and killed him over and over for ten minutes.
• Cursed with Awesome: Midway through Season Three, Applejack became the first known witch wolf in centuries after being bitten by a timberwolf possessed by the spirit of Managarmr. She was rather annoyed by it at first (especially when Celestia tried to kill her because of it), but eventually she grew to appreciate her alternate form.
• Cuteness Overload: When the Sparkles were young, Celestia had to have cardiac teams on standby in the castle because the three youngest Sparkles together were so cute that they were dangerous.
• Cutting the Knot: Twilight spent a while fretting over how to disarm the traps around the Crystal Heart. When Rahs took a look at it, he just ate the spell matrices.
• Daddy's Girl: Sonata. She very much takes after Discord and, of his three daughters, she's the only one that actively wanted to see him again. She was delighted to properly reunite with him.
• Damage Control: Anytime the Crusaders leave Ponyville, the Royal Guard has to assign a contingent to make sure they don't break anything important. Oftentimes, it doesn't work and they're just there to clean up the CMC's messes.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Several heroic characters (most notably Luna, Rarity, and Sombra) make use of darkness and shadows in their magic.
• Deadly Force Field: During the Crystal Empire incident, Shining successfully crushed a dreadnought to death with one of his shields. It started out as nearly the size of the palace, but what was left of it was only a sphere the size of a marble.
• Deadpan Snarker: Fitting the World of Snark writing style, nearly every single character can retort with witty comebacks on demand. Hell, even Seshat, who was only a week old at the time, said her first line sarcastically.
  Sunset (speaking to herself): "Twilight said the Tree of Harmony could talk, but would its offspring have that ability? And if so, how would one go around talking to it?"
  Seshat: "Well, you could ask."
• Dead Serious: Up until Season Five, the only characters that had permanently died were OCs. Come the adaptation of Crusaders of the Lost Mark, the tone dramatically shifted for the episode when Diamond Tiara murdered both of her parents and proved that Solomon's group is a genuine threat even to canon characters.
• Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: Solomon tends to die quite a bit, but as a very powerful necromancer, he has a terrible tendency to not stay dead. In fact, he seems to plan to die in order to evade capture and has a host of spare bodies ready to use as his own.
• Decapitation Presentation: Downplayed. Chrysalis presented Celestia's decapitated head to the wedding audience to everyone's horror, but was immediately undercut by Celestia talking back at her and the first example of how the gods in this universe don't stay dead.
• Decisive Battle: The Battle of Whinnyshire at the end of the Equestrian Civil War was the bloodiest battle in Equestrian history and the one where Nightmare Moon was banished to the Moon. The Equestrian forces were under siege and losing when a desperate Celestia used the Elements, forcing the Lunar forces to fall back and effectively ending the war.
• Deface of the Moon: Played for Laughs twice.
  • First by Discord and Sonata while they were hiding on the Moon to avoid Tirek. The two of them rearranged several of the rocks to spell out "Moonbutt is an emu," to which Luna spun the Moon around so the message was not facing the planet.
  • Taken to an extreme during Season Six's prank war, when in retaliation for Luna rearranging the stars to insult them, the Sparkles drew a mocking image of Luna on the Moon with an equally mocking caption. When she spun it around, there was yet another message from Discord and Sonata. Spinning it again revealed the massive dragon-shaped crater from when she hit Forgescale with it and it took another spin for her to find an unblemished section.
• Defeat Means Friendship: Happens even more than in canon, with villains like Chyrsalis and Sombra undergoing Heel-Face Turns where their canon counterparts didn't.
• Deliberately Cute Child: In their early years, the Sparkles quickly figured out that they could get adults to do whatever they wanted if the three of them sat there and acted cute (it helped that one was literally a puppy). Cadance having been exposed to their cuteness so much as their foalsitter immunized her from the CMC trying it on her years later.
• Delicious Distraction: Sombra attempts to invoke this on Rarity by offering her chocolate to avoid a difficult conversation. It doesn't work, but she keeps the chocolate.
• Desperately Craves Affection: Sombra spent his entire childhood with parents who didn't care about him, and when he thought he could get some small praise from his mother for it he assassinated his father before he was even twelve. As soon as Solomon was dead, Nightmare Moon declared that any promises she made under his control were invalid and promptly left to gather her forces and wage war on Equestria. He spent the next ten years ruling an Empire on the losing side of a war and just when he thought he could end the war with favorable surrender terms by ransoming off some hostages, the whole Empire (or what was left of it) was launched 1300 years into the future. All of this has left Sombra craving the affection he never got from his parents but unable to properly express emotions other than anger. It took him a year of therapy and nearly two years of living in Ponyville before he was even comfortable with calling Luna his mother again, and while he's still gruff and standoffish, he's slowly healing and opening up to friendship, mostly due to the efforts of Rarity, the Crusaders, and Sunset.
• Determinator: Any of the Sparkles, really, but Twilight stands out from the rest. Upon learning that Spike had been kidnapped by PETA and left at the Twin Peaks Nature Reserve with only Owlowiscious to watch him, for example, she made her way over there, blasted the 30-foot iron gates off their hinges and into the rock, and used any dragons that came down to investigate as giant bushwhackers to clear a path to the mountain.
• Dig Attack: This is the primary way diamond dogs will attack their targets; dig up from beneath or near them and attack while they're surprised.
• Disintegrator Ray: Celestia, when properly pissed off, can very much summon the wrath of the sun on her enemies with pinpoint-accuracy magical lasers. During the Storm King's attack, she took out nearly all of the invading airships at once, and a second sweep removed any collateral damage by simply vaporizing them.
  • This is also her preferred method for dealing with witch wolves, and only timely intervention by the Sparkles saved Applejack from vaporization.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Played for Laughs. The Sparkles will often react to any problem with overwhelming force and a lot of shouting (mostly at each other, since whatever drew their ire in the first place no longer exists).
• Divine Parentage: Given how many characters are gods, there's a lot of this.
  • Spike's mother is Bleu, the goddess of dragons.
  • Saturnia's parents are Cadance, the goddess of love, and Chrysalis, the goddess of change.
  • Sombra is the son of Princess Luna, the goddess of the Moon.
  • Sunset's sire is Princess Celestia, the goddess of the Sun.
  • The Dazzlings are the daughters of Discord, the god of chaos, and Aqua, the goddess of the sea.
  • Squall is the son of the Storm King, the god of yetis.
  • Seabreeze's father is Teacup, the former god of war.
  • Prince Rutherford is the son of Shaka, the god of yaks.
  • Seshat is the daughter of Harmony, the god of harmony.
  • Celestia and Luna's mother is Law, the goddess of law.
  • Flurry Heart's mother is Cadance, the goddess of love.
  • Shintasha is the son of Chrysalis, the goddess of change.
  • Bleu's father is Forgescale, the god of volcanoes.
  • Angel Bunny's grandfather is White, the god of time.
  • Thunderbolt's grandmother was Southern Cross, the former goddess of griffons.
• Does Not Speak Common: Played With. Rahs is fully capable of speaking in Equish, but simply choses not to most of the time unless the situation calls for it or he can mess with his siblings more.
• Dragged Off to Hell: Tirek is quite literally dragged back to Tartarus by an irate Troph. The god of rage was not happy with the god of thieves stealing his wife's magic.
• Drama Queen: Rahs and Rarity both qualify, and often wind up competing with each other for who can have the most overdramatic response to something. Occasionally Chrysalis gets in on it too.
• Dramatic Thunder: Played for Laughs on four separate occasions.
  • Two are Thunderlane's fault and happen as Chrysalis is opening a door, once in Ponyville and once in the Crystal Empire. Both times it frightens Chrysalis into diving behind a counter.
  • Two are deliberately invoked by the gang of Twilight's evil exes, though the first failed to play on cue and they had to press the button again to get the thunderclap.
• Dream Land: The Oneiroi is the realm of dreams and home of the moon dogs. It is made up of the dreams and nightmares of the the population of the waking world, and those dreams serve as the moon dogs' prey. It can be used as a fast travel of sorts if one knows how to navigate it as well as long as one stays vigilant in the thick wilds between settlements.
• Drunk on Milk: Caffeine gets changelings drunk much more effectively than alcohol, so most changelings have to be careful to avoid coffee and tea.
• Drunk with Power: Downplayed. Twilight begins to show shades of this when she's put in charge of dragging Sombra and Sunset to Ponyville, but Spike and Rahs shoot her down quickly.
  Twilight: "...because I'm your parole officer in Ponyville, and I said so."
  (Rahs cuffs her on the back of the head)
  Rahs: "Bork"
  Twilight: "I am not letting the power go to my head! I am asserting dominance over a thief and a tyrant."
  Spike: "Nah, that sounded like power tripping."
• Dungeonmaster's Girlfriend: Averted. Despite Spike and Apple Bloom's relationship, Spike is a completely fair GM when running O&O games (and given Apple Bloom's personality, she'd probably take offense to Spike trying to bias things in her favor).
• Dysfunctional Family: Oh boy, is there a lot of this.
  • Among the gods, it's easiest to list those that have a good relationship with their children. It's just Chrysalis (and maybe Teacup). That's it. All the other deities have relationships with their children ranging from "didn't know they existed until they were told" (Cadance towards Saturnia) to a non-interference ideology (Bleu and Shaka towards Spike and Rutherford, respectively) to the child actively despising their parent (Sombra and Sunset's thoughts towards Luna and Celestia, respectively). The last four are slowly working through their differences.
  • Discord and Aqua's family is of particular note. The two coddled their daughters excessively, until the three of them stole some chaos magic gems Discord was planning on giving them for their birthdays and ran away from home and got themselves banished to the human world after running afoul of Star Swirl. Then Discord refused to give up the search, even after decades, and the two of them got divorced. Then Discord started dating Celestia for a time before she dumped him, he broke and let some chaos loose, and got himself sealed in stone for a millennium. Even after his release, Discord refused to stop searching for his daughters. When they eventually returned to Equus he was able to patch things up with Aqua, Sonata, and Aria, but at this point Adagio despises the rest of her family and has joined up with Solomon.
  • Whenever Zephyr Breeze is brought up around Fluttershy, her attitude shifts drastically and she seems quite willing to murder her brother should she see him again.
  • The Sparkle siblings' relationship with their parents was strained for years after Twilight's tenth birthday, but over time they have begun patching things up.
• Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: Almost all of Ponyville has one when they realize that the CMC could be Crusading on a Tuesday.
• Hero Secret Service: Starting in late Season 1 or early Season 2, the Element Bearers, apparently meant to also be kept secret from the Bearers:
  “Oh yeah, I met the one watching me. She wasn't too happy when I offered her some cupcakes. She was even less thrilled when I suggested we get matching t-shirts. Mine would have said 'Pinkie Pie' and hers would have said 'Secret guard watching pinkie Pie, SHHHHHHH, don't pay attention to me'.”
• History with Celebrity: Adagio had a relationship with Freddie Mercury. It is also implied that he was a siren who called Earth his home.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Puns
  • Season 1: Dog puns
  • Season 2: Cat puns
  • Season 3: Moon puns
  • Season 4: Fish puns
  • Season 5: Magic puns
  • Season 6: Dragon puns
• Missing Reflection: During the vampirism outbreak in Season 4's "BASS!", the Flower Trio look at a mirror in a store window and conclude that they're vampires. As they run off, however:
  “Go ahead and put the trick mirrors back in storage until Nightmare Night. “ Filthy Rich sighed.” I guess we can't sell them out of season.”
• Pity the Kidnapper: Hilariously this happens to a bunch of animal rights activists who kidnap both Spike, Rahs, Angel Bunny, and a few of the other pets. Spike is let out with other dragons and they take Rahs to their headquarters. During the trip, Rahs makes his kidnappers' lives difficult, but he takes it up to eleven it after seeing how they are treating other animals they have “freed”. Both Rahs and Angel Bunny make those that kidnapped then regret their life choices.
• Precision F-Strike: Usually, ponies use ponified curses like "buck" or "pony feathers", making normal vulgarities stand out:
  Rainbow Dash: I'd have the sky cleared by now, but he's still out there struggling with the cumulonimbus. Like seriously just break it up or put it over the Everfree stop playing with it, it's not your dick.
• Prematurely Grey-Haired: This allegedly happens to Scootaloo's passengers:
  "Caught a ride with Scootaloo, huh?"
  "You would think I'd learn after that rocket jump last time." Spike shuddered.
  "It wasn't that bad....." Scootaloo huffed.
  "Then why is he white?" Applebloom offered worriedly.
  "By Celestia, Applebloom you can't just ask somepony why they're white...." Scootaloo rolled her eyes.
  "He's a dragon." Applebloom protested.
  "Ehm whatever." Scootaloo shrugged.
  "Oh, that's normal anyway, riding with Scoots scares the color right out of you. I used to be pink like my mother."
  Sweetie Belle claimed.
  "It does not!" Scootaloo protested.
• Purpose-Driven Immortality: This is how alicorns, gods, and Discord work in this story. They are tied to concepts (often called portfolios) like the Sun, Moon, Chaos, Time, Friendship, and Magic. Or they are tied to Ponies as a whole or any of the other species that populate the world. The only way to kill the associated being is to remove what empowers them.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: During the third season when Applejack’s family farm is attacked by timberwolves. Celestia has them when she thinks they have seriously hurt Applejack. Celestia let’s out a simple phrase before she destroys them, Burn.
• Related in the Adaptation: The Dazzlings, who are the daughters of Discord. Sunset Shimmer is also revealed to be the half sister of Granny Smith.
• Roman à Clef: The disclaimer is parodied in the epilogue of Too Many Pinkie/Moon Pies in Season 3.
  Discord: The names and faces were changed to protect the innocent, but everyone got upset and made me put them back.
• Running Gag: They tend to pop up throughout the story.
  • Celestia and Chrysalis repeatedly “kill” one another and do so often humorously.
  • One funny one is when Chrysalis gets pregnant Shining Armor, Cadance, Twilight Velvet, Nightlight, and finally Twilight with Spike and Rahs all independently approach Celestia and politely threaten her into not killing Chrysalis until after her foals birth.
• Sdrawkcab Name: Rahs's birth name was Shar, and it is mentioned in Swarm of 456 Years that someone theorised that dream names were waking-world names spelled backwards. This was apparently quietly dropped sometime after Season 1.
• Sibling Rivalry: Twilight, Rahs, and Spike all have one with each other. They argue with each other and often engage in Snark-to-Snark Combat with each other. Shining Armor also gets in on it when he can but only when something affects him.
• Sibling Yin-Yang: At the start of Season 6 Shining Armor becomes a father and both of his children look to be going this route.
• Side Bet: A major running gag, with both the main characters and the background ponies wantonly betting on all that transpires, eg:
  • In Dog Eat Dog, they bet on the outcome of Twilight's date:
    “ You know we're not getting out of this unscathed right?” Spike shuddered. “ Either Twilight of Shining is gonna get us.”
    Rahs shrugged. “Woof.”
    “Oh yeah good point, let me check.” Spike stated waddling over to his bed and pulling out a scroll opening it up to look it over. “ Let's see. Mom had ten bits on Dad screwing up the date, so she loses. None of us screwed it up so Twinkleshine, Moon Dancer, and Minuette lost out. Clearly they didn't hook up so Cadence loses her bits.....”
    “Woof.”
    “ Hey you knew that was a long shot when you placed your bet. Seriously, 'meets another pony and falls in love mid date?' Sounds like some sort of romantic comedy.” Spike snorted. “ And my catastrophic failure option didn't pay out. Lets see Shining Lights said she would do something dumb and he would run.... Ahh, Lemon Hearts gets the pot she said neither would like each other and that's the closest.”
    “Bark.”
    “Yeah okay, Lyra's interrupted by a invasion of bug ponies was a bit more out there than yours, but still.” Spike rolled his eyes.
  • In The Return of Har-meow-ny, all of the betting they do seriously tempts fate:
    “Pfft, Princess Celestia wouldn't put something as important as the Elements of Harmony some where they could be taken.” Dash scoffed.
    “Bet?”
    “Ten bits, you're on.” Dash responded.
    “Will you two stop trying to jinx us!?” Twilight growled.
    Celestia ignored them placing her horn in the lock and letting her magic flow through it before drawing her head back as the tumblers whirled and the door lit up before opening revealing a heavily jeweled case.
    “Ooh.... keep the Element's but I’ll happily take that case off your hooves.” Rarity cood.
    “Hah pay up!” Dash grinned.
    “Pfft all I see is a box some one glued lunch to.” Spike scoffed.” Bet stands until that's opened.”
    Rahs took that moment to cuff the pair of them in the back of their heads glaring down at the pegasus and dragon.
    “Woof!”
    “I'm not jinxing it I’m trying to win back my bits for who the villain was.” Spike growled.
  • In Mitchell Duel, Lyra's insane bets pay off:
    “HAHAHA suck it !. 'Stop making stupid bets Lyra.' 'Where do you come up with these ideas Lyra?' ' Here to waste more of your bits Lyra?' Who just won the TRIXIE POOL SUCKERS!!!” Lyra cackled dancing past with a very large bag of bits floating in her magic and a clearly long suffering Bon Bon walking beside her as Lyra kept yelling back at the main crowd of the Ponyville betting pool.
  • In Magical Mystery Chibiusa, the Princesses move to calm the townspeople after Twilight explodes, only to find that they just want to know who won the betting pool:
    “Yeah where just here to see who wins the Sparkle Shenanigan pot this time.” another voice called.
    Princess Celestia blinked a little before leaning over to her sister. “ I think this town might have a small gambling problem.” She muttered.
    “Is it a pool or a percentage chance of something?” Luna asked.
    “A pool Princess.” Another voice called.
    “What pray tell are some of the bets?” Luna asked curiously.
    “Pot's at six hundred bits, we've got everything from died horrible, turned into a dragon again, to became an alicorn.” The voice called back.
    The two alicorn's eyes widened at the last bit. Something not missed from the sharp eyed ponies close by.
    “DANG IT!” shouted a good dozen voices.
    “Who won that one?” asked another.
    “Bon Bon had it.” a third voice chimed in.
    “Why are we still letting her bet in these things?” Another voice called.
• The Social Darwinist: Scooaloo’s maternal grandmother had views that where along these lines from a group that was seen as completely wrong by modern Pegasi. She believed that if a pegasus couldn’t fly by a certain point they should be killed. She managed to keep her views to herself until she was left with an infant Scootaloo and she decided to throw her out of Cloudsdale to see if she could fly. Scootaloo was saved by an family member who happened to be near by and her grandmother was quietly disowned by the family. In the end she became sick and was banished to a ground bound retirement home and almost completely forgotten about by the family.
• The Stations of the Canon: So far, every episode of the show happens in some form, with three provisos.
  • Not necessarily on screen (eg, Green Isn't Your Color/Collar, which opens with Trixie reading about the canon events), and
  • Not necessarily in a form resembling the canon event (eg, Lesson/Litten Zero, which becomes "what Twilight does on her days off" because she is no longer Celestia's student and a bit of a Recap Episode).
  • Not necessarily in order (eg, the Movie, the one with Tempest Shadow invading Canterlot that takes place after Season 7 in canon, is in late Season 5 in TGaP).
• Talking Weapon: Parodied. Luna's axe, Dr Choppy, isn't seen talking, but it somehow has a legitimate doctorate. In Season 3, Queen Chrysalis claims to have read its PhD thesis.
• The Unintelligible:
  • Rahs usually speaks in "woof"s and "bork"s, though Twilight and Spike and Luna, Pinkie (of course) and Fluttershy, and eventually Shining Armor, Applejack, and Rarity can understand him. And he can speak more-or-less normally sometimes, as well as in Fancy, which consists of him "meow"ing.
  • His biological sister Bri also speaks in Moon Dog after being pulled into the waking world, but Twilight and Spike cannot understand her.
• Villainous BSoD: Starlight Glimmer goes into one after the Sparkle’s grab her during her temporal shenanigans and they work out their anger on a timeline where they were not around to stop several villains from succeeding in taking over Equestria. It takes her several chapters into the next season before she is able to carry a conversation.
• Weirdness Magnet: Tuesday’s in Ponyville and Friday’s in Canterlot are when both cities experience unusual events that the locals plan around.

---