The Trouble with Time Travel

Twilight Sparkle has been feeling a bit... out of sorts, lately, thirty years after becoming the Element of Magic. She's a bit bored with it, but a Discord impostor decides to shake things up a bit, by sending her back to the beginning.

But why is everything so different?

A My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic fanfic, written by SolvableSphinx. It can be found here.

Tropes used in The Trouble with Time Travel include:

• Actor Allusion: the Fake Discord. See "Shout Out" below.
• Alternate Universe: What Twilight gets sent to.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: The oft-reviled Blueblood, surprisingly, manages to take command of the panicked post-Nightmare situation, working with what remains of the government to keep everything working as smoothly as possible.
• Darker and Edgier: A little bit, but not to the point of being off-putting. Rarity and Ditzy Doo are in the militia, which has flak guns, Nightmare Moon attacked Canterlot Castle before appearing in Ponyville, causing several deaths, and Rainbow Dash's Sonic Rainboom wasn't entirely without consequences.
• Genius Bruiser: Big Mac.
• Killer Rabbit: At one point, Fluttershy yells at Angel for hitting carnivorous creatures with a croquet mallet. Yes, you did indeed read that sentence correctly.
  • Nightmare Moon is dumped into a pit of Honey Badgers... who manage to make the goddess scream and try to rip her armor off due to the fact that they are very angry and are burrowing through her armor to get to her.
• Lady of War: Rarity.
• Little Miss Badass: Fluttershy, who has been the Everfree Ranger for years without any sort of supplies or aid other than what she scrounges from the incredibly dangerous forest or has donated to her by Applejack. She's also written seven books on the various animals and creatures of the forest, and has made cartoons about them as well. Let me restate that: Fluttershy has been operating an outpost on the edge of the Everfree forest, full of at least half the beasts from the Dungeons and Dragons Monster Manuel, by scrounging supplies from said nightmare forest, for at least seven years without any pay or formal resupply.
• Obstructive Bureaucrat: Prime Minister Morningstar.
• Peggy Sue: Twilight at first believes that she's this, and the trope is played with, but this is very firmly an alternate universe, with many changes that she can't explain. Still, she's at least thirty years older than she should be...
• Shout-Out: There have been multiple references to the game "Clue."
  • The Discord fake is clearly Q from Star Trek but after Voyager, as he's with his son.
  • The entry above about Fluttershy as a park ranger? Totally a shout out to Ranger Gord from the Red Green Show. The similarities are too striking to not be! The cartoons, gathering their own food, not being paid!
• Trap Door: Pinkie drops Nightmare Moon into one of these, which is filled with honey badgers who are already very not pleased at the loud noise and fire from the fireworks.
• Troll:Twilight and Pinkie