After the Friendship Games, Sunset feels it's time to return home.

Only when she gets there, Twilight's castle is nowhere to be found, Cadance just got her horn, and Princess Celestia is still calling the bacon-haired pony her prized student rather than a failed one. And just reliving her past isn't on the table thanks to a pair of wings Sunset seems to have sprouted upon her return to Equestria.

With Sunset being back before she's supposed to, will the world stay as harmonious and on track, or will everything go down in flames as Sunset has to deal with allegations that she's really a changeling in disguise, a nerdy stallion with blue hair that wants to be her coltfriend, a pretty pink princess in need of remedial magic lessons, and an annoying purple pre-teen pony that will absolutely not go to bed without first being read Starswirl's Complete Mystical Mysteries Compendium?

Only time will tell

'Sweetie Belle, you've been acting strange all week. I'm worried about you.'

'Don't be. I'm brand new.'

Sequel: The Changing of Sweet Apple Acres

(This story is set in Season 3)

The product of hours of lurking around DeviantArt.

Link to the beautiful yet oddly disturbing cover art by montag451: https://batjorge.deviantart.com/art/Arcimboldo-XLIII-738870312

[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.

All her life, Twilight Sparkle has tried to be good, hard-working, and well-behaved. She's been told that's what she should strive to be, but what if she's missing out on the secret delights of being a rebel? A punk? A bad girl?

Following this train of thought, she concludes there's only one thing to do: an experiment.

And since she knows very little about rebelling, she'll need to find an expert to learn from...

Story idea pitched by Hopeful_Ink_Hoof in the Uncommon Dazzling Ships group.
Cover picture by rileyav
Proofread by NaiadSagaIotaOar

Pinocchio wasn't the only wooden puppet to become a real person.

There are other puppets out there, animal-like beings controlled by quasi-intelligent trees. Ponies call them timberwolves and know them as nothing but beasts. But what happens if one of those beasts were to gain the intelligence and ambition of one of the most successful hunters in the universe, a human?

This story loosely shares continuity from Split Second: An Eternity Divided. Reading that is not required at all.

Has a Tv Tropes page.
Featured on EQD: 10/2/2015

This story is a sequel to Split Second

Twelve years ago, she broke time. Two alternate timelines exist, each with a different version of Twilight Sparkle. Both versions of her are able to see the other. In this timeline, Sparkle is a Necromancer.

Or rather, she was. Sparkle is dead now, not that she cares. She's got a new body. With Thorn (her undead dragon son) and Cobalt (her apprentice and an assassin for hire) at her side, she's ready to take on the world. Again.

(Spoilers in the comments. Read at your own risk.)

Featured on EQD.
The Tv Tropes page
The Ask Blog

This story is a sequel to Split Second and won't make sense without it.
This story also loosely shares continuity with Lupine Tree. Reading that is not required.

Cover art by Swirling Line.

Twilight Sparkle broke time when she got her cutie mark. Now Twilight and Sparkle are sisters from another time. Twilight is hailed as the potentially greatest light magician of all time, and already has a reputation as a hero by the time she goes to Ponyville. This isn't her story, not primarily.

Sparkle is an orphan - her dark magic killed her parents. She lives with her brother in Canterlot's industrial sector because they can't afford anything better. She can't leave either. She's a natural dark mage; while Sparkle won't go mad like Sombra, her reputation is hardly any better. Worse, the law doesn't see her as a good pony.

The fact that the dead don't stay dead around her, or that Thorn - Spike's double - is an undead, soul-eating abomination, are other matters altogether.

(Also has some Slice-of-Life, but fimfiction tags won't let me put it with Adventure.)

Has an ask blog to go with it: Ask Sparkle and Thorn.
Also has a TvTropes page: Split Second Tropes.

Featured on EQD.

Cover art by Swirling Line.

This story is a sequel to If You Came to Conquer

Princess Nightmare Moon had tried to keep it secret. She had suppressed her power, feigned ignorance, played the outdated fool at every opportunity. She should have known that something like this would happen. A threat that would reveal her, whether she played dumb or not.

If she had to reveal herself, then at least she could protect Equestria in the process. She nocked the arrow. The bow felt so flimsy, but she could not risk him absorbing a spell. She laced magic across the arrow and the string and the air, enough to make it fly faster and aim smoother. She sighted him easily; Tirek was a large target. Now he only had to turn around. An arrow to the spine would kill him simply and instantly, no matter how much magic he had absorbed.

Once he was dead, the hard part would come: explaining herself to Celestia.

Prereading thanks; Meta Four, Blank!, Yami Vizzini, and especially Craine

Russian translation by Doof
Chinese Translation by Dreams Set Free

Comments contain spoilers.

Nightmare Moon won. She defeated Celestia, broke the Elements, banished the sun. This all happened a very long time ago. So long ago, that she has had plenty of time to change her mind.

Of course, fixing our mistakes is never so simple, and never without consequences. Even with particularly potent help.

"If you came to conquer, you'll be king for a day. / But you too will deteriorate and quickly fade away."
— "No Control" by Bad Religion

A big thanks to Craine, Sorren, and Idylia for prereading and editing. If you enjoyed the story, don't forget to check out their pages.

Equestria Daily
Royal Canterlot Library (FIMfic version)
Russian translation by Doof
Chinese translation by Dreams Set Free

Kitsune Heart has done a dramatic reading of this story! Find it over here.
ObabScribbler has done a dramatic reading of this story! It includes a full cast of voice actors. Find it over here.

Comments contain spoilers.

Alternate ending to EQG: Friendship Games if SciTwi were a responsible scientist.