After Planet Aether has been brought to peace and stabilized, Samus Aran doesn't get much rest when she's sent to reconnoiter a nameless planet on the edge of Galactic Federation space. Ostensibly, she was supposed to determine the size of a Space Pirate operation that was mining Phazon on this planet... and mark the place for a quick strike by Federation forces if it came down to it.

But when things become much more complicated beyond what her mission brief had stated, she may find that her fate and those of some unlikely allies may be intertwined. The battle that rages on the ground in a fight for survival and duty may have Samus questioning herself when a new front in an undeclared, nameless war is opened... in her mind.

-This is in no way related to Metroid Equis. No required reading, no relation, nothing. Pretend it does not exist.
-Takes place between Metroid Prime 2 and Metroid Prime 3. Metroid Timeline can be found here.
-Art by Pridark, sourced to her DA. Full picture is there.
-Story assumes very basic knowledge of Metroid universe, but I'll be doing my damndest to make this as accessible as possible.

3/14/24 Still Alive Edition

There's only one pony in Ponyville that the Mane Six have never met. Pinkie Pie has never thrown him a party, Applejack has never sold him a mug of cider, and Twilight has never seen him check out any books. And as far as that unicorn, Lapis Print, is concerned, that's exactly how it should be.

Lapis can't risk them knowing where he lives, what he does for a living, or even what his name is - if he gets his way, the Mane Six won't even know he exists, and nopony in Ponyville will miss him once he's gone.

It should be a piece of cake - after all, it's not like the biggest magical power in Equestria is about making sure everypony looks out for each other, right?

(Rated Teen for language - mental cursing mostly.)

My name is Luke. Once upon a time, I was just a 32 year old guy on regular old Earth. That all changed one night during a blizzard with a strange light from my neighbors’ house.

Suddenly, I found myself in a world I don’t know, in a body I only know from Super Smash Brothers and bits of a movie my neighbor Leo was watching when I was helping them with a ceiling fan.

If that wasn’t enough, I also found myself taking care of a dragon lady named Ember after she went and got herself injured.

Also, why the hell does she look familiar?

This story takes place in the same universe as Symphonicdysonince's story Equestrian Eeveelution. While you don't need to have read that to be able to follow this, I would still recommend reading the first two chapters at least, as there's a lot of information in those that won't be in this. Plus, it's just a really good story.

A cynical and distrustful man has a drunken conversation at a bar with someone and finds himself waking up in a land of talking ponies the next day. The catch? He's now a Ninetales. "Great...where's the bar?"

Here I am, thrown in as a changling Queen far before the Canterlot invasion, watch as I- A: make my whole race terrified of me B: overthrow a changeling god! C: die, a lot. D: all of the above.

What do you think?

.....wait a minute.

(Open for new cover art)

Given a unique perspective on negative emotion, less than a foal's knowledge of ordinary magic, a healthy schadenfreude, and danger bearing down on all sides, the self-proclaimed "Weiss Noir" makes no plans accounting for his death, and plans to keep it that way, even after being torn away from earth, turned into a unicorn, and dumped into one of the most inhospitable locations and times in all of Equestria.

Stranded in the Frozen North, a place where biting cold ends lives, and one thousand years in the past, in a time when peril is the norm, rather than the exception, Weiss decides to indulge in sorcery most foul, stolen ideas, and human ingenuity to survive.

Given the choice between a mad slaver and a mad sage, however, there is no avoiding an inevitable tide of ponies escaping the conquered Crystal Empire to bask in the warmth of his well-stoked hate. Something which draws attention, enemies, and most worryingly, the rivalry of his "peers".

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[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.