Schrodinger’s Bat or Why Batty is now both an AU and not an AU, and what this means for readers. · 8:43pm Oct 11th, 2021
Alright, so, the last chapter of the current arc is almost done, and seeing as it’s a family arc and that Tempered and Morning accidentally birthed a mistake that has nothing to do with Night, I felt now would be a good time to address something that my readers may or may not have realized. Namely, some of the weirder things to result from the five year time skip.
I was careful when I wrote the first story to keep things so that it could be viewed as all occurring during or after season 5, as far as I’m aware, I did not violate canon for anything before that point in time, and Night’s sheer existence wasn’t enough to merit the AU tag. She barely interacted with the mane 6 and everything Cutie Mark Crusader related could still happen without much deviation. Her existence was not the sort of thing that defines AUs. AUs are generally defined by either world changing shifts in canon or butterfly effects such as the Luna-verses role swap of Celestia and Luna when determining who banished whom.
Why does this matter? It matters because in the five year gap between Just a Little Batty and She Drives Me Batty, a minor change to canon I made should definitely have very large effects on all the canon stuff that happened after season 5 that I never needed to worry about in Just a Little Batty.
That change is namely, the existence of the Dawn Guard.
The Dawn Guard meshed relatively seamlessly with the existence of the crystal table in my head when I made Night’s parents the captains. I knew any events I referenced in season 6 and 7 (I cant remember when I started, but Im pretty sure it was before I saw any of season 8) might easily be different, but they would be manageably different, and I would still be able to reference them. Season’s 8 and 9 though, I literally cannot work with from a narrative stand point. Twilight and her friends thought taking on a third life as teachers on top of their day to day lives and their lives as Equestria’s protectors and heroes was apparently logistically possible for the sake of Hasbro’s mission to sell toys.
To put it bluntly, those two seasons basically take a few sharp narrative turns that would be stupid for my story to follow just for the sake of canon staying canon. The Dawn Guard exists. Twilights role in Equestria and how she manages things are very different because of that one little change.
And I won’t bore you with all the details here, but it’s important to realize that means at this point Batty is both AU and not AU. I’m not stupid enough to go changing tags just because the show went a different direction from when I started writing. That’s not what the AU tag is for.
It is, however, very important to realize everything beyond season 5 potentially either happened differently in Batty or it never happened at all. Twilight still rules from Ponyville, while Celestia and Luna never retired. The school of friendship never happened, though there is a new school system in place from Ponyville growing and needing more than a one room schoolhouse. I have mentioned and hinted at all this in story, still refering to Celestia and Luna as Princess, for example, but I apparently can’t assume people will pick up on, remember, or properly interpret little details like that if these last few chapters are any indication, so I’m making this blog post here to point to just in case anything comes up in the future.
I already know a few things that might crop up and get readers agitatedly talking about show canon, and I’m sure there’s more I haven’t considered. Let this be those readers warning. Once the first story ended, we passed the point where it was worth me clinging to show canon as if it was Word of God. Season 5 and earlier is all I can guarantee to put effort into following based on how the first story was written, and a lot can change in five years.
My favourite sort of AU is the one that's technically compatible with canon, in that nothing is directly contradicted, but it's still a clear departure from what the show writers ever intended. That's why I have two Equestria Girls AUs: one in which the world of EqG is Earth, which is 85 light years away from Equestria, and Sunset Shimmer is immortal now; and another where it's literally Tartarus. Both fit the evidence, and I'm certain neither of them are what was meant to be.
The show does some very odd things in the later seasons. The fact that Twilight doesn't have any guards is weird. The fact that they all became teachers without scaling back their day jobs is nonsensical. So a lot of soft AUs like yours just make more sense than the show.
Thinking about it, after the final episode, and Twilight has the five of them as advisers, are they doing four jobs?
I am the last person to complain that a series doesn't match cannon. Love da bats. You keep writing, we'll keep reading.