I heard the news that published versions have many difference. But I haven't got my own published version so far. I'm guessing many others are feeling the same. Since there will always be someone who didn't got their own book. So I'm asking the readers of published 'Five score divided by four'. What difference is made between online version and the published version?

The diff lists 10862 insertions and 7813 deletions. It wasn't a particularly pre-read story.

I hadn't read the online version in years but I did finish the published one a few days ago, and I think at least some of those changes have been implemented for the online version through the edit feature, but I didn't notice much worth thinking of.

They changed the year from 2020 to 2024 so they could make the show within the story have lasted 9 seasons like in real life rather than the five years it initially said. They likely made a lot of small changes to make it match the change in year. This did make for a bit of a harder time thinking about what counts as canon for the show within the story compared to the real show. Clearly at least some of it is meant to match up, but equally clearly there are divergences. Before we could have just tossed aside anything after season 3 as non canon to the story because of when it was written, but no more.

I noticed a few references to things that were relevant in seasons from after the original story was written, the biggest one being that Flurry Heart is mentioned a few times as a "wait, doesn't this mean you had a kid with Cadance?" situation to Shining Armor, but it's repeatedly said by everybody that they assume it was just a creation of human writers that were running out of things that were told to them were true (and confirmed later to be not real). I think maybe another one was that they said Chrysalis tried to take over Equestria multiple times instead of the once that it likely would have said in the original, but that could be wrong since it could have just been assumed that she'd be back in later seasons when the original story was written.

I would guess a lot of the changes from before were just fixing typos, awkward wording and whatnot, basic proofreading/editing. The actual substantial changes seemed pretty minor and didn't take away from my enjoyment reading through it.

Yeah. There were a few changes. Some actually made more discrepancies and the calendar changes broke a lot of side fics slightly. Especially if five years did pass since the last episode in the update and there were nine seasons meaning 2024 like you said. I thought the story being a product of its time was charming. A friend of mine pointed out the "five seasons" works as a great ominous "something's not quite right. What happened?" And I strongly agree.

The original nsfw is probably my preferred now. I haven't sat down to read my physical copy (it's beautiful) but I did read the edited and updated nsfw version which if I remember right matches the book.

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Thank you all for answering! That solves my confusion.

There are 1907 insertions and 1392 deletions between the original and updated online version; most of them are actual rewriting. Pretty substantial changes when compared directly.

7410054
The discrepancies are due to changes from the published version not having been ported to the online version. A great deal of effort was put into making everything consistent, both internally and with real-world setpieces most of the story is set in; my favorite examples are rewriting all of chapter 5 in present tense to match the rest of them, and the artist, being an aviasim fan, recreating the interior of the plane featured in one of the scenes from the official 3D tour footage.

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Ah. The immediate discrepancy I worried about was Twilight going to the lab and stating they were deserted on the weekend but May 1st, 2024 is a Wednesday. Why it's not busy isn't given anymore.

I'm overdue to read the physical copy then I guess. I was thinking all the changes were put into the NSFW version online now. Or maybe they were and I reread too early.