My Little Alternate Equestria · 1:46pm Jan 14th, 2015
The aspect of my writing MLP fan fiction that excites me the most is being free to tweak things as necessary to fit my story. That is why I originally utilized the "Alternate Universe" tag.
As I've worked through the draft I've been building a larger wedge between what the stories and comics portray and the direction I'm going. I'm pretty eager to share but I'll be disciplined enough to reveal the story in time. Thus far my changes have been pretty subtle but, as the story progresses, the differences will be exceedingly obvious (especially once MLP: FiM season 5 starts).
I do occasionally get questions about what has been changed and I don't want to spoil too much but thus far the major ones are:
Cadence and Twilight Sparkle are both unicorns. This is by design and necessary for later plans.
Bat ponies do not appear to exist.
I'll let you all think those things over! If you're curious about my version of Equestria or anything about Silent Knight he is more than happy to answer your questions on Tumblr (or here). You can head over to Memoirs of a Royal Guard and Ask.
I'm also stoked to share that Silent Knight has been featured in another fan fiction. This one is by Juntao112 and is a "what if" type story. What if Silent Knight went to Jump School? Please check it out! I think it is great.
Finally, I'm planning on running a contest soon. I have to figure out the FIM rules on that sort of thing but the general idea is that the winner will have their OC written into an extended cameo. More details to follow. And now... art!
Winterspear and Iridescence. Both by WildSoulWS.
Those were awesome pictures. Did you draw them yourself or who did?
2722123 I wish I did! When it comes to the visual medium I have zero talent. Those were done by the excellent WildSoulWS. He is a vector genius. You can find him on Deviant Art.
Iridescence is sooooooooooo edgy.
Yeah, that's the ting about writing your own stories. You can start going right along with cannon, but the longer you write, the more it departs, until you're pretty much completely in your own writing. That's what I did for my story The Mixer Chronicles. After a while, I just ended up touching on cannon at some important bits, but it ended being mostly original stuff.
I'm always just a little tiny bit nervous about someone making a change to the baseline setting like that Cadance change, if only because I wonder where it comes from. I've run into a number of people who consider everything after season two to be of lesser canon status because it was made entirely without Faust, which I think is just a little bit insulting to everyone else who also worked on seasons one and two and are still working on the show as of now. Cadance has a similar issue since she was originally an unicorn and not an alicorn until executive meddling gave her a horn.
That said, since you're specifically stating that the differences will really rack up hard once season five starts I have a certain amount of faith that that isn't where you are coming from.
Holy cow! Irid looks like a porn actress. Yes, it's a very good thing. ;)
The big question I do wonder, is how much the characters have deviated from what you originally intended for this story?
2722629 That is an excellent question. To answer it I have to share a little bit about my process. The draft for this story is pretty far ahead of what I've published at this point. Prior to starting on FIM I had pretty good idea of the first few arcs. With that said, as I've written further, when I "finish" a chapter for publishing I change things to line up with the future.
Silent Knight has largely kept to what I intended. Shining Armor ended up being a better character than I thought he'd be and I have been stoked to work on him. Runic Phial also grew a ton from just a single cameo to an eccentric companion.
Most of the others are fairly on target.
2722641 Thanks, its always interesting to ask that question. Every author seems to have such different things happen. So that the answers are a blast to read through.