Honest Question: How Many F#%ks do You Give? · 5:18am Dec 15th, 2013
Second blog post in a row to feature profanity in the title. Huh.
So, today's ep more or less killed off the idea that Scootaloo is a homeless orphan. She's not living under a bridge, and frankly, I'm totally okay with that. But I'm caught in this awkward limbo where if I write a sequel to Taste I have to pretend she was.
Not sure how to feel about that. So, I'm asking y'all, does any potential sequel to Taste require the AU tag? Should I not bother to write it, because canon's made it obsolete? Should I try to reconcile what we have from Taste with what we know is canon?
Leave your thoughts in the comments.
Oh! Check out Birds of a Feather, too. It hasn't violated canon, yet.
Edit: Alright you guys have sold me. A sequel will happen, eventually. Very eventually, I'm suffering from a surplus of inspiration right now.
Call it an AU. Taste is too good not to have a followup.
Forget what the show does. You can make your story however you want it. Might need to use the AU tag based on a technicality but that shouldn't matter.
Yeah, it would require one. Technically, so would Taste. But I don't think it matters if the story was proven to be uncanon while the show was going on.
The homeless side of Scoots being an orphan never made sense to me. It'd never work without her being skinnier than an insect.
Still, I think her house is a repurposed orphanage of sorts (at least, a place where kids can go to for support and Scoots is just a long-time resident). Ponyville doesn't seem big enough to warrant a proper orphanage.
Slapping an AU tag on your story is probably for the best. I doubt anyone's gonna care much if it's AU or not, 'cause they know you're a good writer regardless.
The AU tag is usually reserved for stories which are seriously out-of-sync with cannon, so you probably don't need it here. You can add it if you want, though.
Also, I'd just write it without regards to this little bit of cannon. It'd be one less constraint to work under, and it probably wouldn't add much at all to the story should you do so.
The only cannon that matters in Fan Fiction is the canon that existed when you start the story.
You're free to start a sequel right where Taste left off with no issues. Even if you tried, there wouldn't really be a way to include new canon without ratconning most of the first story.
Just say her house burned down...
well what if the room in the episode was post adoption or the orphanage...?
1608695
That's what I was going to suggest.
It's called an AU tag.
But really, who cares? Write it anyway!
~Skeeter The Lurker
I would like a sequel to Taste. And you can ignore canon if you can tell a good story by being different. And I need to go to bed, so I don't know if that makes any sense?
1608700 reallly the fact that she practiced all night and nopony came looking for her their was no parent in the house concerned about her behavior...
Go ahead and write it! Ignore canon if it interferes with your story!
And, I get the feeling that the AU tag is for stories that veer away from the basic premise of FiM, not just ones that contradict canon.
Scootaloo is still an orphan in my eyes; that "house" was just the ponyville orphanage. Who has columns as a part of their house?
The only headcanon killing thing about that episode is that they all know that she's an orphan.
Headcanon is not dead until we actually see her parents.
Maybe I missed it, but did the episode show Scootaloo's parents? All I remember is her room. I suppose that eliminates the homeless possibility, unless she was only found out recently.
Still plenty of room for interpretation.
Of course the important thing is writing the story you want, not trying to fit a mould. I say write it, don't bother with the AU tag (unless the approvers demand it I guess)
PS, loved Hard Reset!
Some of the best stories I've read have been AU, so there's no shame in it.
Obviously, the new episode merely occurs after the point that Scootaloo gained a home and room to sleep in and stuff.
want sequal. do whatever you need for the story.
I'm sorry, but I must have missed the part where the qualities that make a 'good' or 'bad' story are attached to other stories. Your story is going to be good, regardless of what any of the main writers say.
Though you should probably tag it AU. Maybe. It's possible most of your readers just didn't realize she must have place to live to have her own room.
I say don't call it AU. All fanfiction is to some extent alternate universe... It's not canon!
No way! If you think you could write a good sequel, then do it by all means. Just Alternate Universe tag it, and you'll be good to go.
Good luck with your future writing endeavors!
It'd be an AU buddy old pal. We basically saw her house in the episode (if you want to argue it was an orphanage, then I want to argue that Sugarcube Corner is actually a sex dungeon).
Let me answer your first question.
mylittlefacewhen.com/media/f/img/mlfw909_MLP_Celestia_giving.gif
and let me add this i.imgur.com/XzNBv2h.gif
It's fanfiction. It doesn't have to stick strictly to canon; that's why we watch the show ;P
So, yes, please write a sequel! :D
To answer your question, I actually lost count after the numbers started hitting the negatives
Well of course she's not an orphan. She lives with Main Course now!
You can just say that's the restaurant/home that we saw, and it doesn't have to contradict canon. That should work just fine. That just means Taste took place before this episode.
I hadn't realized that it showed her home until I read this. I don't think it deserves and AU tag. A lot of stories will ignore one or two little bits of canon and still remain true to the rest. Honestly if anyone were to notice, they would probably either mark it as one of those things that isn't talked about, or would do so after their comment is replied to. A lot of people also just work on pre-season X canon, so there's all sorts loop holes around AU. I think AU only really applies to things that change canon in really big ways: like if Trixie were to be a successful magician in present time. (this being an example of the smallest uses of AU)
You wrote a story where Twilight rips out the beating heart of spike in order to turn herself into a changeling and rule the world, has a dungeon with the soulless husks of her former friends and luna turned beaten and broken sex slave, and its scoots not being an orphan that makes you worry about tagging AU?
I'm going to go with...
Seriously. Who cares? Do your thing, and don't care so much about what the show does. Don't just use canon simply because it's canon.
Use what show canon you want/need to use, and leave out what doesn't fit.
Fanfiction is AU.
They just use the tag to say if it is really out there.
Yes.
You should bother to write it if you want to, not because of whether or not it follows canon.
It's not worth the effort to change a story any time canon updates. Sometimes the quality may even deteriorate after changing it.
1608782 Here, here. I second your vote. (although I'm going to go wash my hands now)
I actually got my arm twisted when I wrote "Monster" until I gave up and marked it AU.
I really need to find time to read Taste of a Good Life (hopefully, the holidays will provide). But I'm of the opinion that if you've already got a story or a world, there's no reason to end it just because it gets jossed. Sadly, I've seen many excellent stories discontinued (such as Luna's Goodwill Tour that I doubt anyone has heard of at this point) simply because the author lost inspiration when canon contradicted with his story.
And really, aren't most fics pretty much stories running under certain assumptions? "What if Twilight was immortal and outlives her friends?", "What if Scootaloo never flies?", "What if Nightmare Moon won and they never did acquire the Elements?".
So long as you have a good story to give and that you still want to tell that story, there's no reason to stop.
As for the AU tag... I think it should be used only in the extreme differences, such as if Nightmare Moon or Discord had won. Or if Twilight was Dusk. Otherwise, the inherent nature of fics makes it so that pretty much all fics are AUs, especially the shipping ones.
Granted, I don't know just how badly your story's Scootaloo contradicts canon, so cannot say for sure.
Honestly all my crap has the AU tag already because they very rarely ever follow canon as it is, so... yea. Can't say I've ever had this dilemma.
Don't bother with the AU tag. She was in *a* room. She could be an orphan who was adopted, or maybe it's a kick-ass orphanage or a half-way house. There's a lot of room to work with that (heck, it could be the room someone gave her, tho tbh taste is top of my list to read so I don't know exactly how bad this affects it. It's not like Twilicorn though, where people go 'nuh-uh! Twilicorn should be tagged AU!)
You mean that wasn't Main Course and Ebby's house? But that doesn't make any sense!
Just ignore the canon. This blog post explains why:
www.fimfiction.net/blog/255317/another-person-is-smart
I think Taste definitely doesn't require an AU tag: While the one scene in the new episode suggests she's not orphaned, and completely invalidates the idea that she hides where she lives, its also a short little scene, wheras when I see the AU tag I expect something more drastic like Nightmare Moon winning in episode 2 or Twilight not being Celestia's student or something.
... The entire cast being Griffons maybe.
I guess the question is that now that you're spinning it off into the future... well it runs the same problem every single "it's in the future" fic ever has: while its canon (or at least mostly canon) when you write it, canon frequently changes and can invalidate what you wrote. Specifically in this case (since the case could be easily made that the room she's staying in is her room in The Knoll) most likely the big departure would be if she ever actually winds up earning her Cutie Mark in canon, because at that point the departure would begin to move from 'slight' to 'drastic'.
As far as whether you want to keep writing it: can only be answered if you still feel like the idea is strong enough to carry a new story, AU or not if you think it'll be fantastic go for it.
You really could just give something about the house burning down or something, like what John the dragon said. But yes, a AU tag should be there.
Wait a sec... YOUR WRITING A SEQUEL?!
As long as we're talking about whether she's an orphan or not, just cause she has her own room doesn't mean she's not in an orphanage, it just means that Ponyville has less orphans than the orphanage has rooms.
The room itself was very small and plain, we get to see Sweetie and Applebloom's in One Bad Apple and they are not only bigger, they also have much more elaborate decorations and a lot of stuff in them. Scoot's is tiny and just has solid plain paint on the walls and only has a few posters and a teddy bear and no or pictures of anypony else other than Rainbow Dash, parents would probably think that's creepy.
The house from the outside looks more like a public building than a private house. Seriously, check the part when they come bursting out of it, that facade spells institution.
Then RD and the others drop by and it looks like they didn't have to go through any member of her family to get her back on the road.
Also she apparently spent two days on the street and no seemed to care either.
I say her being an orphan is still quite feasible.
1608887
More 'planning to write' than 'writing.' But yeah.
Really quick question: why does it matter whether or not a hypothetical sequel for Taste needs an AU tag? I mean, adding the tag's not exactly going to make the story drop in quality or anything, is it? As far as I'm concerned, it shouldn't have one, but the story being set in a canon that's ever-so-slightly different to to the show's canon shouldn't make a different on whether or not you're able to write it, at least from my perspective.
1608928
YUS!
Just want to throw this out there. We still have yet to see her parents and that could have been an orphanage.
1608948
Sometimes I feel insecure, okay?
But I getting that the AU tag doesn't really make a difference here.
FK canon. Your story is better.
Write a followup, but don't call it AU. The story started before the development, so it's technically not breaking canon. Never try to retroactively adjust for canon changes, that way lies madness (and shitty story edits).
The only canon you should care about is the canon at the time of publishing the story, or in this case, the first story in the (apparent) series of stories.
But I read Birds of a Feather a very long time ago! Back in June, actually. I even edited it!
Who says she's not an orphan? For all we know, that house she made a bedroom in was abandoned.