Essays Index
Canon series: Story archival | Story chronology | Primary canon

Writing fanfiction of an ongoing series is an inherently risky process, as canon will constantly evolve as the series progresses, as it did for Friendship is Magic. Fanfiction may be contradicted after the fact, as it often is, and while this does not necessarily decrease a fic's value as a story, it does mean that it will no longer compliant with canon, but rather become AU by default. The Borderworld, as a whole, was originally intended to be compliant rather than AU, and so its lore often changed with canon. In the case of the various worldbuilding essays found in this forum, regular revisions took place to keep the world up to date.

For stories, however, such major revisions were very rarely if ever made. Such a thing would have been disrespectful to readers who invested themselves in the previous version of the story, and so unless the necessary changes were minor, stories which were unintentionally rendered non-canon after the fact were preserved in their original state, but removed from Borderworld lore and placed in the jossed folder. In such cases, the events and implications of such stories may still impact the Borderworld, and if so, that is what this thread is to note.

Find below a record of jossed Borderworld stories, their cause of removal, and their current place in the lore. Be aware that by the nature of the topic, this thread will contain unmarked spoilers for the stories discussed.

Story archival:
Decomposition:
Decomposition is the story of Sombra's final moments before his death, following the events of Crystal Empire, and thus contains a lot of rumination on his past life.

The backstory of this version of Sombra was contradicted later on with the advent of Reflections, an arc of the IDW comics. While it was only implied rather than stated in the story's text, the subtext of the ending of Decomposition was that Sombra was a fallen Star Swirl the Bearded, corrupted by dark magic in his belief that only power had value. At the time of writing, it was a plausible reveal. However, Reflections made extremely clear that Star Swirl and Sombra were separate characters, and besides which, Star Swirl's characterisation in that depiction was incompatible with Sombra's personality in Decomposition. The later Fiendship is Magic comic series further added that Sombra did not even die, but rather survived through his horn.

Between the myriad contradictions, Decomposition has been removed from Borderworld lore in its entirety, and has no implications for it currently.

Discord - End of Empires:
End of Empires told the story of how the Queen of the Dragons once attempted to raid Equestria, only to arrive to find a dominion of Discord instead. In the final scene, set in the present day, it is revealed that not only did Discord end the Dragon Empire because of her actions, but that dragon society never recovered from what he did. In End of Empires, as described in a book passage in that scene, modern dragons now find it an inherently absurd idea that there could ever be a monarch powerful enough to rule their entire species in the way that Queen Teneblight did. This was contradicted by the season six episode Gauntlet of Fire, wherein we saw that dragons do indeed have a monarch of sorts in the present day, the Dragon Lord.

The place of End of Empires in the Borderworld is no longer absolute, but neither is its removal. All the scenes taking place in the past occurred exactly as depicted, and most of the present scene went the same as well. However, because we do know that there is a Dragon Lord now, the passage from the book in that scene must be disregarded. We can assume that the Dragon Empire was still destroyed by Discord, and that he still implied as much to Twilight, but dragon society evidently recovered enough to establish the line of the Dragon Lords.