So for a long while the fans have depicted this location as the home of bat ponies surrounded by trees so thick that they block out the sun.

Now while I have nothing against this depiction of this location, there is, well... This.

This is what little canon information we have from the show depicting Hollow Shades outside of the Well of Shadows, and it looks a bit different from the fan depiction (granted there could be a workaround that I don't know about, in which case feel free to share it).

So my question is, when it comes to depicting Hollow Shades in stories, which do you prefer? The old fan depiction or something that is more in line with the show's depiction?

Perhaps the bigger issue with it is the one even the show felt the need to reference.

Applejack: The Hollow Shades. I think a branch of the Apple family lives there.
Sunburst: They'd have to be pretty distant. The Hollow Shades was abandoned eons ago.

7294670 That's actually something I didn't notice. That raises a few inquiries.

Could there be two different Hollow Shades? Perhaps the original that is now in ruins and a newer area nearby that is technically New Hollow Shades, but the locals just refer to it as Hollow Shades.

I go with the there are two Hollow Shades. One the abandoned one shown in the image the other where Applejack kin lives at.

This happens in many nations where a town shares it name with another town.
Would fit too Sunburst being a shut in scholar would have read about the abandoned town, but might not know about a newer town.

7294674
Quite possible. Although I still don't believe in batponies.

7294661
Considering I never read any stories involving the fan depiction, and I don't know anything about it, I'd say I'd have to go with the canon depiction.

7294682
But they are in the show.

7294682 I like to believe that it is a magical mutation that sometimes occurs in pegasi. Possibly linking back to the times when the three tribe's were isolating themselves from each other and the windigos flourished.

7294693
They only appear once in the Nightmare Night episode, so the exact details of their canon is dubious at best.

7294661
I'm fairly new to the fandom, so I missed the whole batpony train. That being said, batponies are clearly (whenever I write them) a subrace of pony created through alchemy in the distant past.

The show is the show. Applejack's family branch is probably from some other Hollow Shades, and Sunburst was just pointing out how it was different in an obtuse, nerdy/academic sort of way you'd expect from him.

I say they are compatible. Have it largely abandoned, with the bat ponies that are still there only coming out at night. The ponies showed up there during the day, so what few bat ponies who were there would have been asleep. Imagine their surprise when they find a massive sinkhole in the middle of their town leading to some crazy old temple.

7294693
Are they? Where?

7294695
Not impossible, I guess... but if it doesn't breed true, would they really have their own society?

7294722
Nightmare night episode, you literally see them.
It's like Halloween episode

7294661
Whichever one works best for the story I'm currently writing, of course.

7294661
Problem is, Bat ponies were never once said to be a distinct thing in the show. Or even to properly exist. We only saw two with Luna in Luna Eclipsed, and that was that.

Two does not make a population. I've seen stories (don't ask me to name any), where they were nothing more than regular Pegasi, but their armor was enchanted to give them that appearance, and they would return to normal once they took it off. A way for Luna to put her own mark on the Royal Guard.

As for Hollow Shades. I stand by what the show said. Chiroptera, as I much prefer to call that kind of pony, if they exist at all as a distinct kind in one of my stories, will have it fleshed out to suit that universe.

I took the Headcanon that Batponies were normal ponies affected by the same magic that turned Luna into Nightmare Moon. Just not with the personality.

Reasons
1.) the eyes are similar to NMM
2.) both have fangs
3.) if a race of Ponies existed living during the Night why did Luna feel so alone to become Nightmare in the first place?
4.) Luna’s guilt was so strong she tortured herself with nightmares via the Tantabus. Why she only was Nightmare Moon a short time. However if she learned her spell changed thousands (enough for a stable bloodline) of others upending their lives and forcing them to suffer like she was being a nocturnal pony. That would explain the guilt.

7294729
Exactly - and who goes out looking like themsleves on Halloween?

7294742
Um lots of people, they were lunas personal guard, royal guards dont dress up.

7294744
Really? I'd say they dress up every day - unless you think all of Celestia's come that white naturally.

7294747
I'm mean the royal guard wear their standard issue armour they dont wear shorts on duty.

7294752
But their appearance is as uniform as their outfits.

Guys, stop discussing batponies, it's not their thread.

7294680
Or Sunburst or Applejack may not know the exact situation. Hoofields and Mccolts missed Twilight's ascendance and coronation, so there are some horribly isolated villages across Equestria, and if their residents don't know what is otside, then nopony knows what actually happens there. Hollow Shades might be not completely abandoned, or repopulated in waves considering the Apples' love to seeking new lands like with Ponyville and Appleloosa.

7294885
The existence of batponies is kind of relevant to the question, no?

7294885
Got it mate.
No more discussing for me

7294885
This is about a town draped in shadow, and the fan version is all about bat ponies. This is their thread.

7294754
Yes, day guard tend to look exactly alike, but they don't bring this up in cannon, and they even break it a few times, so it might not be a thing in-universe. They show a few guards that don't look alike like flash sentry, spearhead, and the group that arrested cozy.

So the cloned guards don't have a reason in cannon. They are just like whenever there is a crowd in mlp, they will copy and paste the ponies so you can find the same one 5-6 times if you look.

Now on to bat ponies.
They are an interesting case. We only see them once during nightmare night. But at the same time, we sorta see them in The Cutie Re-Mark - Part 2. Every guard is dressed like a bat pony with unmoving metal wings. They even have the hair tufts and strange cat-like eyes. The only one who doesn't have ear tufts RD, though she still has the metal wings and her eyes are cat-like until she takes off the helmet seemingly proving that there is an enchantment to make them look different.

So it seems like they are proven to not be real by that scene, but at the same time, those guards couldn't move their wings, and their eyes look like Nightmare moon's. If luna made her guards dress up, then I doubt she would pick something that is supposed to look like her evil side when she is ashamed of it.

So Nightmare moon may make her guards dress up like them because they were a tribe that was loyal to her? The wings were too fake for them to be real, but the original ones we see in Luna Eclipsed were real, those wings even bend as they fly, so we know they aren't the same as the unmoving metal ones in the other episode.

Plus, ponies are a strange species altogether.
Here is a list of confirmed pony types.
Warning, I count comics. As they are considered level two canon, so they count unless the show directly disproves them as it did with Sombra's arc.

Crystal Ponies- normal ponies but with a crystal sheen so this one isn't so strange.

Kirin- they count as there own pony tribe and not as another species.

Shadow ponies- I wasn't going to count this one because Sombra's comic was made non-canon, but as it turns out, they are mentioned again in the MLP movie prequel comic which is 100% cannon because it was a tie in with the movie. So they are cannon, Sombra's story isn't.

Seaponies and mermares- this one is odd. They were transformed from something else but why at the same time they are called sea ponies, and in the comics, there is a second type that was never a hippogriff.

Breezies- Possibly the missing link between ponies and changelings? I have no idea what is up with them, but they are too ponylike to not count on this list.

With all of this seeing bat ponies really wouldn't be that strange.

7294996
It is confusing, but that's why we have to make our own interpretations. And mine is that guards have appearance-standardising enchantments (relaxed in recent years because they make changelings jobs way too easy) and the only kinds of ponies are those in the Hearth's Warming story.

7294969
Well, if people want to use this fanon Hollow Shades with bat ponies, then they assume they exist. Otherwise thid topic would not be posted. And if OP wants to write about bat ponies, then by doubting in their existence you're convincing him not to because his headcanon is wrong and yours is better... sort of.

7295073
And if bat ponies don't exist, it would be rather hard for them to live at Hollow Shades.

7295004
This is the episode description.

Fluttershy and Applejack journey to the edge of the map on a Friendship Quest to help a group of ponies who are so afraid of hurting each other's feelings, they've taken a potion of silence.

They are just as much ponies as unicorns or pegasi. Holy crap I never internalized how big that is. I mean this is the lost tribe of pony kind, crystal ponies are just normal ponies that were exposed to a magic heart that makes them look crystal, but these are an entire distinct tribe with new powers. This is the type of thing fanfic writers think of and it changes the entire MLP world with that being the main point of the fic. But here they appear for one episode and never get another speaking roll.

I get you not counting the rest because comics canon is uncertain at times and the breezes are never called ponies directly, but kirin are 100% ponies.

7295073 I was asking partially because I was planning on doing a story that takes place in Hollow Shades (and while their might be bat ponies there it is more of a mutation then an actual separate tribe that lives there) and remembered that some older fics had a different interpretation of the location and I was curious as to what people thought of the two.

7294885 Indeed, this was supposed to just be about Hollow Shades not about whither or not bat ponies exist (in canon or fandom).

So for everyone who left the original topic and decided to go down the bat pony rabbit hole, here is a gif.

7295166
Episode descrptions are even vaguer canon than comics. Are kirin ever called ponies in show?

7295179
You left it open for us.

7295179
Well, hollow shades in fanon were all about bat ponies. That seemed to be the general fan interpretation of where they lived so the discussion was inevitable.
https://batponies.fandom.com/wiki/Hollow_Shades#:~:text=The%20Hollow%20Shades%20is%20a,relative%20shadiness%20of%20the%20forest.

7295200 Yes, and that is why I wanted to talk and discuss the location. Not as to whither or not bat ponies do/don't exist.

In my honest opinion the show is over, so unless Hasbro decides to come out with something stating otherwise, the fans are welcome to think what they wish, when it comes to matters like bat ponies existing and what not (especially when they are the ones writing), when it comes to their setting.

7295201
Well, when talking about a place so associated with a hotly debated topic, this is inevitable.
And for the record, I prefer the show's canon version. It is abandoned, but it is such a tainted land that it is interesting. If it were just a shadowy forest, then it would just that, a place that is dark all the time, possibly full of luna lovers. But now it looks like a scar on the land, it is less useable as the main location for a story, but it is an interesting place to visit and speculate about. The actual land looks poisoned, nothing is growing, and the town was built on an ancient temple that held pure darkness.

Though it might have been a forest before, they say it looks different and that the only of shadows twisted it... but what does that mean? There are a few dead trees left, but he would have been better off with the trees, which suggests that they were dead before. The only thing that would help him are the giant spikes from the ground.

There are a lot of questions surrounding it, and that makes it better in my eyes than just a town where bat ponies live.

7295213

Though it might have been a forest before, they say it looks different and that the only of shadows twisted it... but what does that mean? There are a few dead trees left, but he would have been better off with the trees, which suggests that they were dead before. The only thing that would help him are the giant spikes from the ground.

There are a lot of questions surrounding it, and that makes it better in my eyes than just a town where bat ponies live.

And that was kind of my thought, that the location is like a blast radius with the Well of Shadows in the center and Hollow Shades is now a town at the outer perimeter. Strange creatures are drawn to the area due to the magic emitted from the Well of Shadows.

While their might be bat ponies here, it is basically just a genetic mutation caused by the close proximity to the Well of Shadows that affects pegasi inutero.

7295179
Ok, I get it now.

Then the image you should use must be based on the fic's plot. If nothing forbids usage of the sinister abandoned village with weird stone houses and temple of darkness, then why not?

7294885
OBJECTION!

Bat Ponies are still real no matter what. My Female Bat Pony Self IS LIVING PROOF OF THAT.