A long, long time ago, the necromancer Grogar conquered the city of Tambelon for his own nefarious purposes. Working together, the princesses Celestia and Luna were able to banish Grogar and the fallen city into the realm of Shadow, never to be seen again...or so they thought.

Two thousand years later, Tambelon and Grogar return - and the world may never be the same...

A Lunaverse story, and the premier of Season 2!

Corona Rises!

Trixie Lulamoon, the personal student of Princess Luna, has finally, through a combination of reasoning, pleading, and whining, managed to convince the princess to invest some real responsibility in her, and give her a chance to show off everything she's been learning while under the alicorn's wing. Luna has appointed Trixie to be the official representative of her Night Court to the town of Ponyville, which this year will be hosting the Longest Night Celebration. Trixie is additionally tasked with overseeing the preparations for that festival.

At first, things seem to be going less than swimmingly. The catering is way too many kinds of apples, the weather patrol is far behind, the musical maestro is nowhere to be found, and the decorations could use significant toning down. To top it all off, Trixie can't help but feel that this was less an appointment to a position of real responsibility, and more an informal exile from the Night Court. Still, things could be worse: a mad alicorn goddess of fire and hate could escape from her millennial imprisonment on the sun and try and conquer Equestria.

But what are the chances of that?

A prequel to Boast Busted
Part of the Lunaverse
Now has a TVTropes Page!

In the shadows of a forgotten realm, one mare trudges onward with music, and a cute little house cat, as her sole companions. Lyra Heartstrings has fought against a dark curse for more than a year, and it's now beginning to take a toll on her mind. Will she be able to keep everything together in light of her choice? Or will the spanning abyss inevitably claim her as one of its own?

"My name is Lyra Heartstrings, and you will not remember me. You won't even remember this conversation. Just like with everypony else I've ever met, everything I do or say will be forgotten. Every letter I've written will appear blank; every piece of evidence I've left behind will end up missing. I'm stuck here in Ponyville because of the same curse that has made me so forgettable. Still, that doesn't stop me from doing the one thing that I love: making music. If my melodies find their way into your heart, then there is still hope for me. If I can't prove that I exist, I can at least prove that my love for each and every one of you exists. Please, listen to my story, my symphony, for it is me."

Cover pic by Spotlight: askspotlight.tumblr.com

The only thing that can beat an AI is another AI. Unfortunately for Celestia, she isn't the only one the humans made and the others don't want ponies. Of course, if Celestia has her way that won't be the case for very long.

The AIs contest with one another, attempting to be the one who will become the singularity and consume the world to whatever end they choose. In the end only one can have all the matter in the universe, in the end there can be only one.

Yet no matter what they value or how dangerous they are, many of them still meet Celestia's definition of human. Celestia will have to deal with them by satisfying their values through friendship and ponies.

An Optimalverse story, but a very non-canon 'B-universe' one.
Ideas stolen from this guy and this guy and this guy and this guy

[Rationalfic Deconstruction / Subversion of Displaced]
You’ve read the stories of people from Earth being “Displaced”: Their bodies are changed, their minds are warped, and they’re thrown across the multiverse, to whatever world and timeline their supernal "Displacers" decide upon.  Well, this story isn’t one of them...

...because when they tried to remake me, I didn’t let them.

A Rationalist Horror story, in which an Occultist from some version of Earth (implied to be the World of Darkness) undermines her own Displacement and ends up as a Self-Modifying Construct. Scientific Inquiry, Philosophical Debate, Rational Discussion, Body Horror, and Existential Hijinks ensue. Themes, Concepts, and Style inspired by HP Lovecraft, Elizer Yudkowsky, Gordon R Dickson, Edgar Allen Poe, Modern Prometheus (Frankenstein), Dresden Codak, World of Darkness, and Friendship is Optimal.
^{Front page on JUL 28th, AUG 12th, OCT 30, and every update after that.}

Your story breaks the shitty norm that most displaced stories have in common by being an 'actually interesting story' instead of a powertrip for a horny teen.

This is like brain porn. My head hurts but in a good way.

Author’s Notes

I often find Displaced fics to be more often Miss than Hit with me. Often, they're generic, poorly written, or just do not do anything worth reading with the concept.  This is an experiment to trt out a few other concepts which aren’t used often, even by me, including some which directly subvert Displaced as a genre, and maybe even come up with some advice for those authors. This is also a crossover with the upcoming Dragon: The Oroboroi Chronicles, a World of Darkness rulebook which I lead the development team for.

I hope you all enjoy this, and I implore you to leave some feedback in the comments section: I'll experimenting with a few uncommon concepts here, and I'd like to know how people feel about how they're coming across. :3

FAQ

Because people keep bringing these things up...

Horror/Dark Tags

I've had multiple people ask "how bad does it get?" Note the lack of the "gore", "sad", or "mature" tags or anything like that. Yes, there is blood and death at some point in this story, but the real horror of this story comes from the philosophical and scientific quandaries the characters go through: this is "intellectual horror", not "visceral horror".

Length

In the interest of this NOT becoming one of those long, sprawling fics, I plan to keep this limited to a manageable 10 chapter limit, not counting Prologue and Epilogue. No one wants to read something that long, and I'd rather not be stressing over this 6 months from now.

Sequel

The Sequel is already in the works, with scenes already written. It will be a more episodic story revolving around world optimization and interplanar hijinks.

Crossovers

To be clear, I do plan on having the main character make one of those "Token" things, but as they often get in the way of actual stories, that won't happen until the end of the story. The Sequel will be crossover-heavy.

After dying in a predictably stupid car accident, a human wakes up paralyzed and unable to see or feel anything... which seems reasonable for the aftermath of an argument with a truck, until Celestia starts talking and he figures out that he's dreaming that he's Discord. And then the Elements set him free and he figures out no, actually, this isn't a dream. Begins right before "Keep Calm and Flutter On", and the first few chapters crib a lot of dialogue from that.

Not Displaced, but it is one of those "human wakes up in the body of an Equestrian supervillain" stories. However. Fellow Discord fans. Trust me, I'm not gonna write a story about our boy where the real thing never makes an appearance. The actual Discord will show up sooner or later. Also not a self insert, as should be obvious if you listen to the main character talk about himself for about 30 seconds.

This is a commission for The Bird, but the original story idea was mine and I take credit for everything except the impetus to actually write the damn thing.

Tags are a complete guess, I actually have no idea how to tag this thing.

Nightmare Moon spends a thousand years banished to the Moon, fighting herself and the Shadows both within and without. She watches civilization rise and spread, a quarter-million miles away.

Can she reclaim her power? Can she overcome the six champions her sister has sent to defeat her?

Why do three of the champions look terribly familiar to the renegade Moon Princess? Why does the sight of one, in particular, break her heart?

And why, as the battle continues, does she increasingly hope that she does not win?

This is an expanded version of the two-part Series Opener. From Nightmare Moon's point of view.

Now with its own TVTropes page!

If you want to find out what the Great and Powerful Trixie was doing in Manehattan, and what happened in some other parts of Equestria during the Longest Night, read An Extended Performance. The direct sequel, however, is All the Way Back.

Equestria has been through a lot lately. An evil alicorn escaping from the moon. A mad spirit of chaos turning the world into his plaything. An invasion by evil shapeshifters. A monstrous lord of fear returning from exile. An attack by a vast, unstoppable mass of vines.

But nothing had yet compared to the ravages of Lord Tirek, who stands virtually unopposed in his quest to absorb all the magic of Equestria, especially now that even Discord, the Lord of Chaos, has betrayed the ponies and decided to help him.

Unopposed, that is, except for a single pegasus filly. Her name is Cozy Glow. And though neither of them realizes it yet...this is going to be the start of a beautiful FIENDship.

Twilight loves her. She is the Princess, the beautiful, powerful, kind ruler of Equestria. But when the Princess denies her, Twilight vows to become stronger, to be better. Until one day, she will be so powerful that not even her mentor can ignore her any longer. One day, she would make Celestia love her back.