Here's how season 4 broke my novel · 12:28pm Nov 30th, 2013
There was a lot of hype for the upcoming season 4 emanating from the fandom, but I mostly just experienced fear. What if it breaks my novel: Sweetie Belle's Search for Immortality. A very small part of me wished, that Hasbro wouldn't make season 4.
Yea, I could tag my story Alternate Universe, but lets be honest. People prefer reading stories, that are not AU.
So, what I'm going to do is, I will try to fix the parts in my novel that the show broke. I will do that by deleting the parts in my stories that clash with the season 4. I will post those parts in my blogs, since they aren't necessarily bad, they're just uncanon. My blogs will be the only place where those parts will exist.
I was wondering if I should attach a spoiler alert to this blog, but since I will only talk about the things, that will be absent from my fic, I don't really see the need for it.
On with the collateral damage that the episode 1 and 2 of the Show has made in my fic:
Luna turned to Nightmare Moon, just because she wanted to be the only princess.
My written head-canon that broke (this is an impression of Celestia performed from the viewpoint of a changeling):
“Stand properly! You’re in the presence of the princess!
Want to know a secret? I’m technically a queen. But I’m sensitive about my age, so I insisted that everybody calls me a princess. And everypony indeed chose to do so.
There were some slips of the tongues, but those ponies were very, very sorry for calling me a queen. And as gracious as I am, I forgave them after seeing them in that sorry state.
There used to be a group called the Progress committee. It consisted entirely of alicorns. Yes, there used to be more of us. They helped me with ruling and writing some boring laws that I couldn’t be bothered with. Now the laws weren’t bad, but the problem was, that they were written in such a way that they included everypony — me included. I tried to reason with them, to exclude me from the law, since half of what I did was against it, but they failed to see my reasoning. I then expanded my argument by threatened to to scorch every living thing in Equestria with eternal day. They backed up a bit after that, but secretly started to raise an army against me. They underestimated my connections, though. All those, that they recruited mysteriously disappeared over night. So did half of the progress committee. The rest managed to escape. Killing an alicorn is not as easy for a mere pony guards as you might think and I could only do so much in one night. I tried to get the rest of them by using the Sun to scorching everything outside of the castle walls. But then Luna, my own sister that I speared, despite being a part of Progress committee escaped her captivity and eclipsed my Sun with her Moon for days. I got her eventually, but by that time the rest of the alicorns were far gone. After I banished her I vilified her among the pony population.
Luna’s sacrifice for the Progress committee was even greater than she realised. She was the only one in that generation, that could change size just by willing it. It took changli — Progress committee half a millennium to progress to that level with artificial selection program. To this day they value her sacrifice, but she will never be accepted back to the hive. She’s part of the obsolete generation now.”
Also:
Bullet point: Luna's connection to changelings explains her absence in the Canterlot wedding.
Tentacles everywhere
This may have actually helped my story a bit. I was trying to introduce tentacles in my novel before I knew they were going to do it in the show. The said part is, that the tentacle chapter will be viewed as a spinoff of other fics that spawned after the show and won't seem that original anymore. Damn Hasbro, you beat me to the punch!
Twilight learns to fly (she's bound to improve even more in the next episodes)
She looked toward the Canterlot and slowly exhaled as her smile grew bigger. Spike jumped in front of her pressing his claw against her neck. "No teleporting this time!"
Twilight turned her head back. "We could just use these then." She flapped her wings.
"Porting — dangerous; those things — lethal! Let's just take the train, like the normal ponies do."
They walked on the town's main road that lead to the train station, leaving me alone at the door of the library. Twilight turned to spike "Are you saying I'm not normal?"
“Of course not, I'd never say that out loud, Twilly.”
Elements of Harmony are no longer at the castle:
Broken Bullet points (luckily I haven't written this part yet):
Discord broke all protection spells protecting the Elements of harmony and is sateing his weird fetishes with them again.
Sweetie Belle uses the lack of protection spells to still the elements. She engages Discord, grabs the elements and uses the back to the past scroll, before Discord had a chance to react. She now not only has the amulet, but also the elements of harmony.
I’m afraid, that for a next 4 months of season 4, I’ll be spending more time fixing my novel, then actually finishing it. It will get finished, though. If not before, then when the season 4 ends.
For those of you, who can’t wait that long, you can always read the most recent version of it in my public Google Doc. If you also decide to honor me with your feedback, you can actually shorten the release date and improve on the quality of the fic.
Do you also have a fic, that was affected with the new season of the show? How did you feel about it? How did you go about fixing the newly formed inconsistencies with the show? Let me know in the comments.
THEIR NOT TENTACLES...THEY ARE PLANTS, WEEDS, SHRUBS, WHATEVER, TENTACLES ARE SLIMEY AND COVERED IN SUCKERS.
You don't have to do that, IMO.
I know, it sucks, but it's the price we paid for writing for an unfinished series; it was only a matter of time before the sisters' backstory was fleshed out further (and who says they're done?).
If you rewrite some backstory elements of your own fic to account for this (which will just confuse your readers), you'll find yourself having to do it again ten episodes down the line. There has to be a cut-off point, my friend.
I chose to slap the AU tag on my story, but I don't believe that it really applies. To me, AU isn't about "a story that deviates from canon" but rather "a story based on a reimagined premise." It has to be done on purpose. In our cases, we've already established in-universe continuity; if canon breaks it, so be it. That doesn't mean we wrote an AU story.
Basically, we didn't choose to deviate from the show; the show chose to deviate from us.
"Twilight sparkle was born a stallion, not a mare" on the other hand is AU, because it reaches right back to the beginning and intentionally tweaks the premise in a precise way.
1556852
You have a point. The things you mention aren't usually that agile, though. To me these vines seem very agile. Almost tentacle like agile.
1556884
I agree with you completely. There should be another tag for stories that are run over by the future episodes of the show.
To me, putting Alternate Universe tag would feel like an overkill for what I want to relate. I will try to accommodate the new canon, but if the show continues to claw at my story I might really be left only with AU option.
1556895 aye, but they are still not tentacles
As 1556884 already wrote, it's not a very good idea to rewrite stories just because the show contradicts them. The show even contradicts itself sometimes!
1557037 Yes, but the alternative is to put Alternate Universe tag on it. And that's just daunting. I'm not writing about shemale ponies (don't google that btw!) or anything of the sorts.
1557141
Haha, don't be silly! I've seen much worse than shemale po-
i1.ytimg.com/vi/n2ZpsbGr7s8/hqdefault.jpg
Just put AT universe tag and your fine.
1692707 Yes, your solution would probably be the easiest and I should probably do that.
But here's the thing, I prejudge Alternate Universe tagged stories. I like MLP canon and when fics go to much against it, it doesn't feel like MLP anymore.
Puting AU on my story would feel like transforming MLP: Fighting is magic game from this
static.giantbomb.com/uploads/original/3/31684/2431405-9544057673-FiM05.jpg
to this:
2.bp.blogspot.com/-HkKrMmkuM5g/UsO3qEyWfDI/AAAAAAAAATM/ZeoEjXR6j50/s0/Vpose1HEAD.png
It feels like pointing a gun on my fic and pressing the trigger.
So, I decided to throw half of my fic out the window and work with what I have left. When I did it it felt like I'm wasting good ideas, but now that I look back on it it was a good idea. It would get to lengthy if I were to include everything I wanted to and nobody would read Lord of the Rings sized fan fiction.
1692984 Ya I get your point. I try to tend to follow the canon even if my story is set on AT universe do to the fact that it takes place during season 2 and 3 but certain episodes of the show will go to a different direction.