Oops · 1:05am Mar 4th, 2016
From the wiki
Y'all remember a week or so back when I blogged about writers intentionally having their characters make mistakes?
Because sometimes it's frustrating to see the same comment again and again when it's something that you (the author) know, but maybe Snails doesn't. Actually, and no offense to people who like Snails, it's a pretty safe bet that anything he says has a high probability of being wrong. Not all unicorns are Twilight Sparkle.
Anyhow, I digress.
One of my sharp-eyed readers sent me a PM this morning, saying that he was kind of confused about the timeline between A Morning at the Farrier's and Onto the Pony Planet, since Dale going to the farrier happened in Chapter 23, and Shoeshine went to the hospital with an abscessed hoof in Chapter 22.
Now, nobody else has noticed that little mistake, or perhaps other readers assumed that was why she was limping (she just had her hoof operated on the night before; of course she's limping). I could even probably make a vague hand hoof gesture and claim it was because magic.
From the wiki
Or, I could do what I'm sure a lot of writers would do; retconned in a correction in Chapter 22, thanked the sharp-eyed reader for pointing it out, and assumed that any other reader who noticed later would go back and check, and then assume that their memory was wrong.
As you can see here, I am not doing that.
I don't have an objection to going back and correcting a spelling error, or where the wrong pronoun got used; there's nothing wrong with that, and no reasonable reader is going to get mad at the author for doing that.
And Shoeshine's abscessed hoof really isn't a major plot point in OPP [spoiler alert]. Just one of those little background details that's nice and helps flesh out the setting. So there really isn't any consequence to changing it in the grand scheme of things.
But earlier we talked about trusting an author, and in my opinion there's something just a little bit scummy about changing a detail and not telling people about it. (Mind you, I'm not talking about a little typo here, or the three incorrect dialogue tags I also had to change in this side story, because those were cases where I meant one thing but then did something else, probably because I'm an idiot.) That would be like a mystery writer misdirecting you by changing a vital detail in the story and hoping you wouldn't notice. Which, I should mention, you can't get away with in published fiction, but you totally could on a fan site.
So that's why I'm telling you this. I misremembered a detail, and like a fool, rather than check back and verify it, I blindly assumed and . . . well, here we are.* The only thing that makes it slightly better is that I'd forgotten by the time I wrote Chapter 23, and then I just built upon that faulty assumption.
This is one of the pitfalls to publishing serially. I would imagine that if I had written all of OPP and then sent it off to a paid editor, that mistake would not have gone unnoticed. (Although I believe I once blogged about a Ridley Pearson novel that was so full of technical errors that you could have driven a train locomotive through them, so maybe not.)
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*Speaking of blind assumptions, I'm working on a Ford truck in the shop, and just today I discovered that I'd guessed at the model year and never verified it. I also discovered that between 1992 and 1994, Ford changed the firing order of the 5.0L engine.
There are basically two ways to fix this continuity error. The one which would be truer to what I had had in mind would involve a significant rewriting of Chapter 23 and the side story. And, if it was an essential plot point, that is what I would have to do.
However, since it isn't, I can take the lazier approach and just change which pony who should have known better let a hoof problem go untreated until she got an abscess in one of her hooves.
Source (I couldn't find it any other way; if anyone knows of the original source, I'll put it in)
. . . sorry, Lotus.
Was she working at the spa when Dale went there?
There's nothing to say there wasn't an abscess on a *different* hoof too. Much like not doing surgery on both feet at once so you can still use a crutch, then switch when the first one gets healed up.
3790152
I just described the spa pony who Dale saw as 'the blue and pink mare,' which (luckily) could apply to either of them.
3790161
True; the problem was that if she was at the hospital late being operated on, she's unlikely to have been home early the very next day, and she probably would have had her hoof bandaged both in the side story and in Chapter 23.
3790188 Got it. Also, I remembered the side story calling it copper while Twilight called it something else in the main story. Are they both terms used for the metal, or is Shoeshine's just translated better?
NOOOOOOOO!!! This site needs more Shoeshine/Linky!
This is some serious class. It had been long enough I had forgotten about that and even if I had remembered I'd have written it off as an honest mistake because we all make those, so props to you to fessing up and fixing things.
High Five for not going the retcon route, especially unannounced. Nothing and I mean nothing causes me to stop caring about a story as much as when an author starts going back and changing details willy-nilly.
3790201
She called it 'chalkos,' which is the Greek term for copper (χαλκός). She was reading out of a very old spellbook.
3790202
Shoeshine still figures in OPP and the side story; the only change is that she no longer suffers an abscessed hoof in the story arc.
3790217
t and hoped I didn't notice.
I'll confess that I did consider making the change and not saying anything, especially since the reader who pointed out the mistake did it via PM. But to have done so wouldn't be fair to my readers--I know I'd hate it if an author pulled that s
3790236
Me, too. I think any author who's serious about the craft should notify their readers of changes.
It's not the only continuity error in the story, either; there are a few other fairly minor ones that have cropped up (and not all of them have been fixed), but I thought this was a particularly serious mistake, even if it has no effect on the overall plot of the story.
Does this means that twilight make's more mistakes than any other unicorn? I guess that is a fairly correct statement.
3790192 Outpatient.
3790323
It could work, but it potentially conflicts with canon (RD being kept with a broken wing until she was mostly healed), and still doesn't address the issue that they probably would use bandages, which Dale is sure to have noticed.
3790292
I don't know if she makes more mistakes, but they are often more spectacular.
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I took it as the ponies mis remembering the circumstances especially due to the characters searing that what they heard third hoof i.e. " Carrot top told me, who heard it from applejack, who was told by twilight sparkle so its got to be true !"
3790329 please at least 4 out of 7 times when Twilight casts a spell it goes horribly wrong. I think rainbow might crash less than Twilight's spell's go wrong. That was one of the few time's a spell of her's actually did what she intended it to do.
That feel when an Infiniti M35x is manufactured 1/05 and they didn't actually have a 2005 model year. It's an 06 lol. Also, we have in the past worked on some little Japanese car (I want to say Nissan Versa) that was legit... I dunno, say 2006 because I don't remember, legit 2006, manufactured in '06, and the 10th of the VIN is 6. And there was no '06 model year.
Also, fucking Ford.
Now I am wondering how many times before the 90s the 5.0's firing order was changed. I can't help but think the answer might be zero
Oh no, Lotus, not the hooficure hoof
, anything but the hooficure! 
I still have to catch up with this. Been out of reading fanfics for a while now.