The Party Never Ended

Party in Pinkie Pie! According to Pinkie, there's always been a great party inside her, and that's why she's always ready to spread the joy all the time!

...Only lately, she hasn't felt quite like herself. She's been keeping a very important secret from all her friends -- especially Rainbow Dash! -- and though she's found ways to cope, they're starting to not work as well as they used to. And as she struggles with her unrequited crush, she can't help but worry if the party inside her is coming to an end...

The Party Never Ended is, at its core, a My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic Shipping Fanfic centered around Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash. But around that blossoms an even greater crisis -- a storm is coming to Ponyville, and an old enemy with it!

Tropes used in The Party Never Ended include:

• Action Mom: Derpy Hooves/Ditzy Doo becomes a pure Determinator during the storm, all for the sake of her daughter Dinky.
• All Love Is Unrequited: Pinkie isn't the only one with a crush on somepony; Lyra also has feelings for her best friend Bon-Bon, but is afraid of ruining their friendship. And other instances pop up as the story progresses, like Caramel and Twilight towards Big Mac and Cloudkicker for Fluttershy.
• Answering Echo: Appears in Part 11, after Pinkie learns how Loneliness was created.
• Arc Words: Yo dawg, we heard you like arc words, so we gave your arc words their own arc words. The arc words are "I love you, Pinkie! Please wake up!", but those words are not revealed to the reader until near the end. Every time Pinkie hears them, the reader is greeted with "It said seven simple words to her..."
• Battle in the Center of the Mind: Conflicts rage both inside...
• Battle in the Rain: ...and out.
• Break the Cutie: Nightmare attempts this several times, on both Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie. By the end, this backfires epically when it comes to Pinkie.
• Cassandra Truth: Pinkie attempting to warn Dash that she's in the middle of a nightmare.
• Curb Stomp Battle: Pinkie's final battle with Nightmare; she never falls for his attempts to break her.
• Crap Saccharine World: Invoked by Nightmare; Pinkie's dream is a dream come true, where Rainbow Dash has agreed to go steady with her, and she's holding the titular party that's never going to end. The dream is shaped by her denial, which will end once she and Rainbow Dash dies.
• Cry for the Devil: Turns out Nightmare didn't start as a nightmare -- but as Loneliness.
• Dark Reprise: After Dash rejects her confession, Pinkie sings part of her 'cleaning up/cheering up Dash' song again.
• Despair Event Horizon: Nightmare's tactic of choice: pushing its victims to this point so that they can't resist its Demonic Possession.
• Determinator: Derpy Hooves. Yes, her.
  • Pinkie Pie, when it comes to fighting Nightmare. She will NOT give in to despair.
  • All the pegasi working to the point of exhaustion to try to hold back the storm. Fluttershy deserves special mention because she is not a good flyer and not skilled in weather manipulation, but will protect her friends to the point of incapacitation.
• Disney Death: Pinkie Pie after Taking the Bullet.
• Dream Ponies: Amusingly enough, the dream versions of Pinkie and Twilight's friends attending her Lotus Eater Party stand up to their own creator.
• Earn Your Happy Ending
• Empathic Environment: As the mood darkens, clouds start rolling in and thunder rumbles dangerously...
• Everyone Is Gay: Lampshaded by the ending, where Applejack notices Big Mac and Caramel are among those coupling up after the storm clears and comments that it's apparently up to her to continue the Apple family line. ...And Rarity takes offense to that.
• Fighting From the Inside
• Freudian Slip: While singing to cheer Rainbow Dash up, Pinkie's off-the-cuff lyrics end with "For don't you see that you've got me/A little pony who loves you?"
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Appropriately enough, Nightmare itself turns out to be the spirit of an abandoned foal that was completely consumed by its own loneliness.
• Groundhog Day Loop: Rainbow Dash has committed suicide twenty-four times in a row in her dream, before finally being rescued by Pinkie.
• It Got Worse/Wham! Episode
• Lotus Eater Machine: Pinkie gets trapped in one, and Twilight almost falls victim while trying to get her out.
• Love Confession: Pinkie staged parties where she could pretend to confess her feelings as a way to blow off steam. Her actual confession doesn't go the way she hoped at first...
  • This is also eventually revealed to be why Rainbow Dash rejected her: it reminded her of another confession that she violently rejected.
• Mama Bear: This is what keeps Derpy going during the long fight against the storm.
• My Greatest Failure: Dash's deepest regret is how she rejected her best friend Star Catcher's very public confession despite actually returning her feelings.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Nightmare claims to have been summoned by Rainbow Dash's guilt over betraying her friend. (Actually, it was Pinkie Pie who accidentally caused it.)
• No Ontological Inertia: Averted and lampshaded.
• The Power of Love
• Pronoun Trouble: Nightmare takes on various forms of both genders, and is described as both 'she' and 'he'. Even when its origin is revealed, its gender remains a mystery.
• Shout-Out: Star Catcher is the name of a G3 pegasus pony.
  • Rainbow Dash mentions the "Swayback Mountains" at one point. This is a nod to a previous Applejack/Rarity fan fic Butterscotch Sundae wrote.
  • Chapter 11 opens up with what can only be described as a Take That parody of Cupcakes, and later, Rocket To Insanity. Made awesome by the fact that it's Nightmare's Mind Rape...which Pinkie subverts by lucid dreaming.
• Song Fic: The title comes from a song called "You Don't Have A Clue" by Röyksopp, and the song is quoted at the beginning and end of the story.
• Spell My Fanfic With a Hasn't: On Butterscotch's deviantArt profile the story is titled "The Party Hasn't Ended", but the Equestria Daily entry spells it as "The Party Never Ended"
• Take That: The whole concepts of Cupcakes and Rocket To Insanity are roundly mocked.
• Taking the Bullet: Or rather, taking the full force of Nightmare's possession attempt.
• Talking the Monster to Death: Or rather, laughing the Nightmare away. Played with in that it doesn't entirely vanquish it, and veers back and forth with its effectiveness.
• Title Drop:

Spike: So I guess friendship really is magic!
Applejack: And jus' what is that supposta mean?

• When All You Have Is a Hammer: Pinkie's primary way of coping with her crush before the plot gets rolling? Throwing a secret party for one every month where she pours out her heart to an imaginary Rainbow Dash.
• Xanatos Gambit: or, close enough, set up by Pinkie of all ponies. When she and Dash are in Dash's heart, she takes Nightmare's possession attempt meant for Dash. Turns out that she knows that nightmare will win in Dash's heart but has no chance against her in her own heart. If she fails, at least Dash will be safe.
• You Make Me Sic: While transcribing a letter for Twilight, Spike stumbles over the spelling for typhoon and writes down everything Twilight says.
• You Monster!: Rainbow Dash says this to Nightmare after he revealed to her the carnage he's supposedly unleashing on Ponyville.