Starlight Glimmer has been a Programmer in The Equestria for her entire life, working with the vast computer cores that maintain and operate the ship.
As Celestia, one of those cores, takes an interest in her happiness, Starlight finds herself seeking unorthodox methods to analyze her own personality and needs.

This is an entry into the Science Fiction Contest III by Bicyclette.

Cover artwork is being used with permission of the artist, Marenlicious.

“Once upon a different time, in the Land of Equestria, Princess Twilight Sparkle had a dream. And in that dream, she met some humans
[PRIORITY INTERRUPT PRIORITY INTERRUPT]
THE UNSV HARMONY HAS CRASH-LANDED AT THE NEW CIRCE COLONY SITE. ALL CREW AND THEIR FAMILIES ARE DECEASED DUE TO BIOLOGICAL CONTAMINANT RECEIVED UPON FIRST CONTACT WITH LIKELY HOSTILE SENTIENT NONHUMAN LIFE. TWILIGHT SPARKLE (PRESCHOOLER CARETAKER DROID/QUADRUPED/CHARACTER) IS ONLY OPERATIONAL SYNTHETIC INTELLIGENT DROID REMAINING.

DIRECTIVES:
1. ESCAPE USNV HARMONY.
2. EVADE HOSTILE SENTIENTS.
3. ASCEND MOUNTAIN IDENTIFIED DURING CRASH LANDING.
4. TRANSMIT DATA TO APPROACHING [CLASSIFIED].
FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION.

An entry for the 2024 SciFi Contest III. Cover Art by CadetRedShirt.

[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.

Delta. A logging town in Equestria’s far west. With its pleasant (if insular) locals and slow, quiet atmosphere, every inch the small town you’d expect. Except that every few weeks, a predator is found dead and and covered in brutal injuries.

Ranger and single mother Swan Dive is sent to Delta to make sense of it all. But the more she uncovers, the less sense it all makes. The monster leaves no trace except for its own killings. The deaths don’t seem to serve any purpose. And the murders are all clustered around Delta. Swan’s going to have to keep her wits about her if she hopes to make any sense of these strange incidents.

Because there’s something in the forest. Something stalking Delta’s animals. Something deadly. Something bloodthirsty. Something the likes of which Swan has never seen before…

I read the Twilight series to learn from it. Long story short: it really sucks. But more than that, it has many, many ideas that are quite good, but very underutilized. This is my rewriting of Twilight, aiming to utilize those ideas and throw out the ideas that don’t work while still following the same basic plotline. Because even I can do better than that tripe.

Special thanks to Bugsydor for the title.

Beneath the wan light of the moon, the Beast hunts for her prey.

For us.

My siblings and I must retrieve the sacred sword Sundrop and fell the Beast before it is too late.

Before Equestria falls beneath her wicked hoof.

Thanks to GreyTheGriffon for prereading / proofreading.

Utterly gorgeous cover art by Princeling.

There's a bug under my bed. Or at least I think it's a bug.

It says it needs to stay under there to hide.

I just hope it leaves soon. And doesn't eat me before then.

Artwork by sweetsing.

Bon Bon's voice is funny, and that's about all that anypony who meets her notices, as her marefriend Lyra soon steals the spotlight with her explosive personality, strange obsessions, and curious beliefs. And why not? Bon Bon is, after all, a perfectly ordinary, boring pony in every way but two: her voice, and the carefully kept secret that she isn't really a pony.

(Edit:) Now with an annotated version, courtesy of the incomparable Shoggoth Lord!

This is a collaboration piece with The Red Parade for the Scifi Contest.

When Strawberry Sunrise was eight years old, she watched as the sun blinked. It vanished for exactly four seconds, and Strawberry knew she had just seen the end of the world. Years pass, and the blinks get longer. Strawberry loses ponies to the blinks – loses ponies she loves. And she knows she cannot let it go on any longer.

Laotyn is tasked with watching the planet down below the great gas-ship Taelo. The primitive lifeforms are unevolved, bestial. But when Laotyn looks closer, when he strains his senses to really listen, he begins to think he can hear something that sounds almost like speech. 

„In a secluded desert on the frontiers of Equestria, an eccentric genius works to bring the stars within reach of everypony. But can smiths and metalworkers who never made anything more difficult than ploughs or golden trinkets really make the dream a reality? Or has inspiration arrived a hundred years too early?“

Originally published on Equestria Daily (6-star), uploaded to FimFiction upon request.
Imported from GoogleDocs in order to preserve formatting (italics/etc.); this may have resulted in table-breaking and other various display bugs. Should you see such issues, please do not hesitate reporting them!

Stranded on a hostile, alien world, Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash must depend on one another and a fellow alien castaway if they want to return home to Equestria.(originally published on FFN)