The first fic's cover
New Beginnings is a My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fanfiction by the author Hiver, following the life of former human Blank Page as he adjusts to life in the magical land of Equestria. Despite the rather cliche description, it is a well-written Slice of Life, with short 1 to 2 thousand word chapters. It is written in a fusion Scrapbook Story format and regular prose, though the sequels use prose exclusively.
The sequels are called Normal Life, Consequences, Secret of Flying, Responsibilities, Duties, Complications, Repercussions, Welcome to the Jungle, A Very Batty Hearth's Warming, Looking Glass, Eclipse, and Other Duties As Required, respectively.
The whole series can be found here
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Nothing to do with the similarly-named Smallville fanfiction.
New Beginnings provides examples of:
- Adaptation Deviation: Happens in-universe, due to Page rewriting some of the stories he remembers, (like Star Wars), in a completely different world.
- The Death Star is written to be a floating island,
- The main character roles in a classic James Bond novel are gender-flipped,
- The Terminator is a magical golem.
- Awesome, but Impractical: Page's warmage chakram is unwieldy, but looks awesome.
- Badass Boast: Page gives one before fighting Tirek.“I am Blank Page. Consort of Princess Luna, Warmage and negotiator with the Hive. Take one more step towards them and I will fucking murder you. And mark my words, it will be a murder not a fight.”
- Badass Normal: Blank Page is a unicorn of average magical power, but he still manages to take out Tirek without the help of anything but a pre-cast spell by Sunset Shimmer and some weapons from the armory. He doesn't stay normal for long afterwards, though.
- Calling the Old Man Out: A couple of good examples.
- When Page learns that God-Tier-Menace Tirek has escaped, he calls Celestia on the apparent Cardboard Prison level of security he has thus far detected.
- After Skitter become a changeling princess, she tears into her mother Chrysalis about how every bad thing that has happened to the hive has been her fault and that she'll never be like her. Chrysalis was proud of her for it
- Cardboard Prison: Page starts to think Equestria's enemies are contained in these.
- Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Some characters seem to have been forgotten by the author, like Moondancer.
- Combat Pragmatist: Page is one.
- Crack Pairing: In-universe: Celestia claims to have a crush on Rainbow Dash. She's just messing with Luna.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Tirek gets stabbed from the inside by the contents of the Royal Guard's Armory, which creates a giant magical explosion that either atomized him, or WAS him.
- Cutting the Knot: Several knots get sliced and diced in this series. A few standouts:
- Twilight wants to recover the Element of Magic by winning the Fall Formal. Page just waits till nightfall and then steals it.
- In Complications, Ch 23, rather than fight the Storm King and his Mooks, Page combines a sleep spell with Luna's raw magical power and puts everybody in Canterlot to sleep.
- The Dark Side: Averted. Page tries Dark Magic, but decides that it isn't any stronger or more powerful than the normal kind.
- Deadpan Snarker: Any sufficiently developed character could be, and probably already is one.
- Death by Adaptation: Tirek.
- Demoted to Extra: Several characters that used to appear often early on are rarely mentioned in later chapters / stories.
- Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: In Normal Life, Ch 32, Page comes face to face with Discord. Then punches him.Page: ...Did I just punch a chaos god in the face?
- Don't Call Me "Sir": Page's view on his title of Lord. He wants to hide his alicorn status for the same reason.
- Double Entendre: Celestia is fond of these."I tend to go for Earth ponies. They are usually larger.""...Larger?""Mhmm. You know, taller. So they are not so much shorter than me."
- Dream Land: Luna teaches Page how to navigate this. He becomes the supreme ruler of this after he becomes an alicorn.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: The first story started as a combination of Scrapbook Story and regular prose. The format was abandoned for the next story.
- Earn Your Title: Blank Page receives his title of Lord by Helping defeat Queen Chrysalis, and forming a peace treaty with the changelings. Later on he's Prince Blank Page alicorn of stories for taking out Tirek.
- Eldritch Location: Page basically assigns this trope to Pinkie Pie's dreamscape.Spotting Pinkie Pie's portal, I just gave it a quick look to check for signs of a nightmare but quickly moved past. Considering what she was out in reality, through there was madness.
- Everybody Hates Mathematics: Luna rather dislikes them. Page is worse.
- Fluffy the Terrible: In chapter 25 of Complications, Page goes walking through a sleep-spelled Tempest Shadow's dreams. He learns her real name and promptly hangs a lapshade on it.Hmh. Her name isn’t really Tempest Shadow.Her name is Fizzlepop Berrytwist.I suppose I would have picked something else too if I was trying to be intimidating. Difficult to be the dark enforcer of an evil tyrant with a name like that.Fluffles, the terrible!
- Good-Looking Privates: What Luna thinks about Page in his warmage outfit.
- Heel–Race Turn: Queen Chrysalis is persuaded to ally with Equestria by Page.
- Reformed, but Not Tamed: Changelings are still viewed as the bad guys by many, and Page himself trusts Chrysalis as far as he can throw her. Without magic.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Tirek's magic eating is what kills him.
- Holy Hand Grenade: When Tirek is attacking, Page has Sunset take an armory's worth of military grade sharp, pointy steel, and magically compress all of them. He then ties the resulting magic grenade to his Lunar necklace and feeds it to Mr Magic Eater.
- Informed Ability: Downplayed. Page has mentioned being a network technician previously. This has not been mentioned since, and has not affected the story at all.
- Instant Home Delivery: The castle maids apparently break causality by leaving breakfast and disappearing so that the food is still hot when Page leaves Luna's bedroom.
- Lampshade Hanging: Page spends a good ten seconds during Shining and Cadence's wedding wondering why there are no guards.
- Long-Distance Relationship: Page is in one with Luna in "Welcome to the Jungle".
- MacGuffin: In Normal Life chapter 45, Page hangs a lampshade on Twilight's crown as he assigns it this status.Page: ...Now let's go get your McGuffin back.”
- Magic Knight: Page receives training as a warmage. He is only an Apprentice-level, however.
- McNinja: Page ascribes this trope to the Canterlot Castle maids. He always finds a hot pot of tea and a fresh sandwich waiting for him when he gets out of bed each day.I’m going to stop worrying about it and just go with the flow on these things. We have the best staff in the world and that’s all there is to it. They all dual class as ninjas.
- Meaningful Name: Blank Page, as usual in the setting. He is new to Equestria and starting a new life, and he is also an author.
- Mugging the Monster: A mugger interrupted Page and a disguised Princess Luna on their date. Subverted; their guards took him out before they did.
- Must Have Caffeine: Some characters can occasionally get like this.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: It's quite possible that Page's actions in derailing canon might have some serious consequences.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: This is Page's reaction at receiving the title of Lord. His reaction to becoming a prince is even worse.
- Oh, Crap!: The inevitable reaction to some powerful enemy returning.
- Only Sane Man: Blank Page comes off as this sometimes. Often.
- Plot Magnet: Averted at first.
- Relationship Upgrade: Page and Luna.
- Utility Magic: Several days were apparently spent on learning a spell to make the bed.
