The year is 1019, and the scars of the Great War are finally starting to fade from Equus. Queen Chrysalis of the Changeling Hegemony was defeated by a last, desperate alliance of free creatures from across the continent. The All-Ponies Front pushed into the heart of her empire in Vesalipolis after years of daring tank maneuvers beyond muddy trenches while planes dueled above. The Stalliongrad Soviet fought beside the Principality of Equestria it once shunned. The Crystal Empire modernized and stood with the Yaks across the northern mountains. The penguins and bears of the north resisted in the bitter cold. The deer of Olenia rose up under their rightful queen. The Republic of Nova Griffonia mostly made money selling guns to all the little ponies.

The war, and what came afterward, was a time of great upheaval and change. Princess Celestia and Luna abdicated their titles to Twilight Sparkle; the Princess of Friendship rules beside Prime Minister Sunset Shimmer and the Council of Friendship. The Crystal Empire, being a time displaced feudal state, did not change that much. Princess Mi Amore Cadenza and Prince Shining Armor rule as a universally beloved sovereign and a war hero. As the world changes around it, the eternal Crystal City stands still.

Princess Flurry Heart, currently going through "a phase," would like to change this.

By summoning the Ghost of Communism Past as her new political science tutor while her mother is away.

It is up to Shining Armor to avert the dictatorship of the poneletariat and the downfall of the bourneighsie.

May Harmony help them all.

It has been more than one hundred years since Celestia banished Nightmare Moon. While Equestria has enjoyed a century of relative peace and prosperity, there are still lingering tensions between the three pony tribes.

Shadow Kicker, a proud warrior of Pegasopolis, must navigate the treacherous noble court of Canterlot and address the concerns and wounded pride of her own tribe in a desperate effort to prevent matters from coming to open warfare.

[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.