Lets All Make Preemptive Continuity References!

Okay. I understand it is canon. Or will be, at any rate.... But this has been getting pretty dang annoying! It hasn't happened yet, and you have no idea how it will affect the series:

The Crystal Empire The place, the event, the ponies there and the mountains that surround the empire. Any of it.

The events that take place in the S3 premiere have been touted and referenced a lot in recent stories. It's even been shoehorned into some older, ongoing stories. Now, this would be fine but for the fact that you have no idea what actually happened! They're minds could be wiped of the event, it could end up really traumatic, they might not save it at all... Rarity could die!

Okay, this is still Friendship is magic, and it will probably be storybook, perhaps even cliche, but that's not the point. The point is writers have been frivolously using this unborn reference like it's the next Rainboom. My problem with this is that it seems like a cop-out. You are essentially doing the fanfiction equivalent of shout FIRST from the forum hilltops! You are putting in a reference that has no real meaning yet! When S3 finally comes out your intended meaning may actually get bashed to bits, unless you are crazy careful how you go about it.

Another problem is that this is just lazy writing. When you could be exercising your skills as a writer and finding the right event(one that has actually happened!) or place(one that we actually know about!) or perhaps being a little creative and making an original event/place for your story, you use the Crystal Ponies! All it gives you is a weak, meaningless connection to canon and a throwaway line.

No offense to any authors who do reference The Crystal Empire. I have read some very good stories that make that tiny little mistake, and liked them very much. But what I'm noticing is that it is a little detail that is wholly unnecessary and could in the future weak suspension of disbelief. I guess we'll see when S3 finally comes out...

conanthecanon