Well, now what... · 5:21am Jul 5th, 2015
Spoiler alert: This post mentions a certain pony from today's episode, as well as some talk about my What Didn't Happen series.
So, I knew from the beginning that since MLP:FiM was still airing new episodes, that eventually something might be revealed in an episode that directly conflicts with something that I've written. I was a little surprised when a certain pony that was only mentioned by name in the very first episode happened to show up over 100 episodes later and we not only get to see what she looks like, but also got some background info on her history with Twilight.
Thing is, I'd already included her in my stories, and now I'm faced with the fact that the Moondancer that is in the What Didn't Happen stories is quite different from the Moondancer that is now canon to the series.
When I came up with the Moondancer for my stories, I based her off of a bit of both the G1 and the G3 Moondancer since there was nothing else to go off of. G1 Moondancer was a unicorn with a white coat and dual color red and violet mane. G3 Moondancer was an earth pony, but I just thought her blond hair on grey coat would fit better as a guard, so the Moondancer in What Didn't Happen became a blond headed, grey coated unicorn, sort of a cross between the two past generation Moondancers.
Seems I should have just gone with the G1 version. If only Future Twilight had stopped by to let me know that little detail, but I guess she was busy with other things.
So, the way I see it I basically have two options to pick from.
Option One is to go back and make some edits, and bring my older writing in line with the new canon information so I can use the canon Moondancer in my future chapters of the sequel. Changing her looks in the story would be a fairly easy change as most the time she was under her guard uniform disguise. I'd also have to consider the details about her past and how that might change Twilight and Moondancer's initial confrontation in the story, but that probably wouldn't be too hard to fix and to be honest, might make their interactions a bit more interesting going forward since they actually had somewhat of a history with each other.
Option Two is... well, do nothing. Continue on with my version of Moondancer in the story (and yes, she will be showing up in the on going sequel). I wouldn't be adding an 'alternate universe' tag to the story if I left her as is. The What Didn't Happen story is meant to follow the canon as closely as it can. I see that tag as something you use when you want to fundamentally change the world that the characters live in. That's not what I'm aiming to do.
Question is which one of those two should I do. I'm sort of on the fence about it right now (kinda leaning toward going back and doing the edits), but I'd appreciate hearing a few opinions.
Id say either just leave it, accept you cant match cannon perfectly and point anyone silly enough to try and call you out on it to the fact that you started writing long before the episode aired.
If you want to match up with cannon though you might find that a bit difficult to do as the Moon dancer you wrote was significantly different from the one we saw today. Unless you did a complete rewrite, I'm not sure how you would be able to make that work. I would love to see you try and take a look at what you come up with, but I'm wondering if it would be practical.
maybe instead of re-writing and replacing the scenes, you could add on a new chapter or two that contain your new edits. that way you wouldnt have to rewrite EVERYTHING concerning your moondancer, just the more important scenes. because, honestly, it's fanfiction. it's never going to perfectly match canon. in any case, I'm excited to see what you come up with in the future :)