- Angst? What Angst?: Apple Bloom. She does a reasonable amount of angsting on Granny Smith's death, her role in the castle robbery, and being dissatisfied with her cutie mark, so it might be hard to notice that she doesn't angst about nearly being molested. It's not until Part Three that she finally reveals she's carrying some baggage from that.
- Archive Panic: Comparatively mild. 110 chapters, over 250,000 words, and many more to come if the final note of Part Two is to be believed.Part Three has been planned out beat-by-beat, every step of the way to its conclusion. I try not to think any further ahead than that, but doing so is inevitable, so I have a fairly clear picture of Part Four, and what I know from those thoughts is that there will definitely be a Part Five. And since I still haven't given any thought to a full-story conclusion, I'd say we're looking at about a 50-50 chance of a Part Six—hey, where are you going?
- Crack Pairing: Apart from the always-popular Fluttermac, the official long-term relationships of the Mane Six—Twilight/Joe, Pinkie/Fancypants, and Rainbow/Derpy—are, not as absurd as this trope usually gets, but very much unorthodox.
- Harsher in Hindsight: The death of Granny Smith. Mostly because of the author's own relationship with his Grandmother and her sudden death in 2014.
- Hilarious in Hindsight
- Annihilara is a Living Shadow with glowing eyes who resides in the ancient castle of the two sisters. The author claims he discovered the press release revealing the plot of "Castle Mane-ia" the day after he debuted Annihilara in the story.
- Happens a lot with Discord's arc in the story, which contains a lot of similarities to his roles in "Keep Calm and Flutter On" and "Twilight's Kingdom".
I guess what we can take away from my previous notes is that great minds think alike. Is it arrogant to refer to myself as a great mind? Probably. But it's either "great minds think alike" or "Hasbro steals ideas directly from my brain", and I find the former far more likely.- Discord expresses distaste that Gilda and Silver Spoon are good guys now, saying "You just can't find a good old-fashioned antagonist anymore." Come the end of Season 5, when there have been so many Heel Face Turns (including Gilda and Silver Spoon) that reformed antagonists now have their own character page, and this has become a fairly common sentiment.
- Les Yay: All over the place, as is par for the course in this fandom. Most of it unintentional, some not:
- More than one reviewer has commented that the adoring pet names Celestia heaps upon Twilight sound more like the words of a lover than a motherly figure.
- One of the earliest, and most obvious, is the oft-overlooked moment in Chapter 12 when a very drunk Twilight outright expresses a desire to sleep with Cadance (and they do, albeit in the purely literal sense).
- The teasing and giggling between Rainbow and Twilight in Chapter 43.
- Drunk and depressed Fluttershy in Chapter 46 plants full-on passionate kisses on Rarity and Twilight. Rarity is described as almost about to reciprocate.
- DJ P0n-3 and Octavia get this a lot, most prominently in Chapter 65, dampened only somewhat by their addressing each other as "sister".
- Silver Spoon gets pretty flirty with Apple Bloom in Chapter 77. The author identifies this as the point where he realized his attempts at avoiding Les Yay throughout the story had failed miserably; Apple Bloom lampshades the sexual tension, and Silver Spoon criticizes her for seeing it at all.
- In Chapter 88, Fluttershy comforts Rainbow Dash by kissing all over her face, much to the latter's bewilderment. Note that later in the same chapter, she gives Big Mac the exact same series of kisses.
- Applejack and Rarity in Chapter 117 seem to have something else on their minds when they make a deal to go out looking for dates together. Really, by Part Three, all of the friendships of the Mane Six have been Flanderized into Les Yay. The entire group are constantly physically affectionate with one another, up to and including kissing.
- Luna and Snowdrop (2013) in Legend of the Goddesses are similarly affectionate.
- Love to Hate: Every member of the Terrible Trio has their own quirks that make them unforgivable but chillingly cool.
- Signature Scene: The sleepover scene of the first chapter.
- Strangled by the Red String
- Of several possible examples, the biggest is probably Rainbow and Derpy. While Rainbow's crush was implied as early as Chapter 40 and made explicit in Chapter 76, the Four Lines, All Waiting nature of the story means the attraction was exhibited in no more than three chapters before Rainbow's Love Confession in Chapter 98. The Wham Line that the feelings are mutual, to quote the moment itself, came way outta left field, especially since there was only Word of God to even imply that they were of compatible orientation.
- Earlier, Twilight and Snicker-Snack. Readers found him not nearly as charming as he was supposed to be, when they weren't finding him Obviously Evil, making the fast-paced and passionate relationship unconvincing.
- Later, Twilight and Donut Joe. They go to bed together in the first chapter of the story in which he appears, with scarcely an earlier hint of their pre-existing relationship. Despite arguably being more sudden than either of the other examples, it received the most positive response.
- The Un-Twist
- Some readers saw Snicker-Snack/Vorpal Blade as a Devil in Plain Sight.
- Sørmur dï Mitgaeard being Discord's mother receives a great deal of foreshadowing, so out of all the things that happen in the chapter in which it's finally revealed, it ends up being the least surprising.
- The Woobie: Princess Annihilara, in spades. Would be Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds, but the "destroyer of worlds" part is mostly in her head.
