Ruby Lied and a Project Died. Many People are Saying This. · 5:44pm Jun 30th, 2022

As the title implies, I'm a liar. A fibber of sorts. A little miscreant and dealer of mistruths. Around three years ago I promised you dear readers of the Rubydubious show that I would write a masterpiece about Starlight Glimmer leading an uprising against Princess Celestia in an epic to be titled: War Against the Sun. It was meant to be an extremely realistically written piece, and to accomplish that, I would read over two hundred books or so to fill my mind with the knowledge needed to write such a tale. It is today that I cast the veil covering my face and reveal my forked, silver tongue. War Against the Sun is a project I will no longer be pursuing. It's hereby canceled. (It had some PRETTY #problematic content in its twitter likes >:c and I just couldn't stan)

However, to the like three or four people who are despairing, weeping even, there is a glimmer of light at the edge of the tunnel. While WAtS is put to rest, a new titan of a story emerges to take its place.

Imagine if you will, Sunset Shimmer. Sure you all know her, sure ~~most~~ of you think of her to be the single hottest character in the show. But, while most of you are thinking about her reformed, highly polished character. One that's humble, understanding, endlessly empathetic, but also very funny and unique. I, however, am not thinking of the reformed Sunset. I'm thinking of the cunning, ruthless, manipulative, and selfish villain who stops at nothing to achieve her aims. In the show, we see her travel across dimensions and raise a hypnotized zombie army to conquer Equestria and Whatever-The-World-Is-Called-in-Equestria-Girls.

This will be the protagonist of our intrepid tale.

So you're picturing this villainous Sunset, and you're saying, "Let me guess Ruby, you're gonna have the story start before she goes through the mirror, and the world's gonna be totally different from EqG when she does step through it." Good guess! That's exactly what I'm gonna do. (I'm bad at segues, leave me alone!) The world that our Objectivist Sunset enters into is going to be a pokemon world, which isn't very original. This has been done before, but here's the kicker: It's going to be an Anarcho-Capitalist pokemon world.

I've always been fascinated with the world of pokemon, it's a special interest of mine and has been for literally most of my entire life, so naturally, I do a lot of thinking about it. Now that I'm very read in philosophy and theory, my thinking tends to stray to how the world, and its economy and politics, function. Pokemon has always seemed to me to be an agrarian society, one where the environment and mankind are joined at the hip and respect one another. The world is mostly these beautiful, open landscapes broken up only by well-worn roads that lead to small towns or the rare bustling city. Everyone seems to be happy and free from want. There's an abundance of food owing to pokemon and humans working together in agriculture, industry thrives for the same reason. It seems that Pokemon and people have a mutually beneficial relationship. Whether or not such a society is socialist, democratic-socialist, or simply a mirror of what most countries have in the real world, that is a liberal democracy, is unknown.

However, I've always thought it'd be fun to explore the idea of Anarcho-Capitalism within the pokemon world. If you had to pay to use the Pokemon Center, if instead of a government-regulated Pokemon League which drives the economy (and whom the Champion wields tremendous influence in government affairs) there were only companies that carved up the land like borders of their own countries. Where no government but the mandate of a CEO and/or their Board of Directors held sway, and used whatever means they could to enforce them. Instead of villainous teams, there'd be companies like the Magma Corporation or Aqua Logistics, Rocket Industric Inc., you get the idea.

I wanted to take an unreformed Sunset, one that callously disregards all other ponies to achieve her ambitions, and put her in this world. See, the world of Equestria to me has always been a Socialist Monarchy, with a ruler that reigned benevolently (and had to lest the windigos came back) that was chosen by Harmony itself to rule. A world like this wouldn't have a place for selfish ponies who exploit other ponies for their own gain. It has no place for a world where they run a company like a tyrant of their own serfdom. But the Pokemon world is a place for ponies like that in this fic.

To recap: Sunset Shimmer's a figure who is every bit as cunning as she is selfish, and she feels stifled by the world around her that won't let her execute her 'individualist ambitions'. So she absconds to the world in the mirror, one that she sees as a place for 'ponies like her.'

Now, am I going to write a glowing piece of media for one of the most backward and diluted ideologies around? No... Or, at least not really. Sunset is going to come into the world believing this is the best possible world of all worlds, but she will develop throughout the story, through having to execute and enforce the policies of this world as a Private Mercenary, called a Freelancer. And it's through her work as a Freelancer, that she comes to understand this world is terrible and cruel, that it's practically no different from serfdom. She's horrified at the lengths such a system will go to in order to preserve itself. She then seeks to tear it all down using the system against itself.

It's going to be a long one, and I probably explained it poorly as I often do. But I hope you'll stick with me as I write it. I aim to commission a lot of artwork for this piece as well, and while I'd love to tell you that I have plenty just raring to go... I really don't. Moreover, I still need to do a lot of reading in order to be able to write such a fic. I need to understand how these industries work, and how these industries understand themselves. I need to understand people like Egoists and Ayn Rand, and how they understand themselves (I've already read Ayn Rand, and it was fucking torture. I do this for you, dear reader). I need to understand the alternatives to such systems, like socialism, and how they understand themselves. Moreover, just the scope and the planning required for this fic will take a long time, but I'm working every day at it. I won't have you waiting like, years, though.

Suffice to say, I'll have Sunset make friends, like Guzma, like Wally, like Maud, and they'll explore this wonderful world together. I'll take you to a city in the sky, a city completely underground connected via tunnels, a city underwater. I'll take you to the dense jungles that magically seem to resist all deforestation, to ancient temples of what the world was like before the industrialists took over, to volcanos and glaciers, deserts and oceans, shantytowns and metropolises, landfills and open plains. The world will not be empty. I mean it when I say I've been busting my ass on this fic.

So, stay tuned, stay hyped, there's a lot of moving parts to this and work is being done every day to create this story. I hope you enjoy the premise, and I hope you enjoy it when it comes out!

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