Fanfic Continuity Correction: #Fan@tic · 5:40pm Oct 31st, 2022
Blog Number 203: "Writers Can't Do Math" Edition
It turns out I made a couple of errors - one of them a whopper - when I wrote one of my fics this year. Here's a record of those errors, in the hopes I might avoid making them twice. 🤞
Problem Detected
Inconsistent age depiction for Sunflower
Details
According to My Little Pony Annual 2013, Sunflower should be around the same age as the Main Six, while (judging from her general character design and role in "Rollercoaster of Friendship") Vignette shouldn't be far off either. This is consistent with how most of the fic portrays them.
Yet even allowing the unlikely premise that Vignette is much younger than she looks and is therefore closer to Babs Seed's age bracket (implied to be the same as the main CMCs in the Annual too), the early part of #Fan@tic depicts Sunflower as old enough to babysit her when she was barely into her first year.
That would require Sunflower to be at least in her teenage years while Vignette's only a baby, which is too big an age gap and flat-out incompatible with the prior observation.
Potential Fix?
Just have the Oranges babysit, with Sunflower merely a proud bystander. It doesn't fix the obvious years-wide gap between Vignette and Sunflower for the next few scenes, but it at least reduces the size of the age gap significantly.
Problem Detected
Sunflower's missing chihuahua
Details
Also according to the Annual, Sunflower owns a pet chihuahua. While not a deal-breaker (the comic shows she's negligent towards it), I think it's an oversight not to have mentioned the pet at some point in the fic.
Potential Fix?
Sprinkle a few mentions during the later parts of the fic. Especially after the epiphany, as before then the chihuahua's absence in Sunflower's comments would be somewhat in-character for her.
In case you're wondering what this is all about, I'm trying something new here: spotting major oversights or errors in fics of mine and then posting corresponding corrections.
See, the first error bugged me as soon as I noticed it, but for a while I wasn't sure whether to leave it and invoke artistic licence, or to devote already-distracted brainpower onto an old fic that's already had its moment and been read. So I hit upon the "leave it but add an official error notification" idea as a compromise.
It helps to keep track of mistakes, if only to remind myself of the Douglas Adams maxim on experience: "You know that thing you just did? Don't do that."
For now, Impossible Numbers out.
Also, why not:
I can't look at Sunflower without thinking, "Holy carp, what a horrible sunburn!"
This rant perfectly summes up why I ignore most of the supplemental writing for MLP, unless I'm trying to adapt certain concepts for myself.
On a unrelated note, I like Sunflower's fashion sense.
Plus Babs singing her own song is adorable.
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I'm just wondering what happens when she gets angry.
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Whoops! I meant these are errors I made when writing a fic based on that comic. I'll go back and make that clearer with a header explicitly spelling out my intentions.
EDIT: And to explain properly what I'm doing in the penultimate subsection of the OP. In hindsight, I could have been clearer there too.
Apparently, "Tony Fleecs based Sunflower's design on Taylor Swift.[4][5][dubious – discuss]". Don't know if the wiki subsection I just quoted sheds any light on her fashion sense or not?
How's this for a headcanon brainwave: in the Equestria Girls universe, these two are teen singing sensations, and Babs wrote this song to prop up her bad girl image.
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Fair enough. The comics still had some really lackluster takes though.
Well I do like what I have seen of Taylor's Swift (which isn't much).
I think she's worn basic sweaters similar to this before in various advertising, but I could be wrong.
I'm just wondering what her Cutie Marks role would be in that case. It would be a interesting idea to play around with though.