Trivia / Pony POV Series

• Ascended Fanon:
  • Apparently, Word of God states that the story is actively influenced by reader interpretations, hence the abundance of tropes.
  • Dragon Of Twilght's Coffee Swirl Trilogy and Knight Mysterio's Discorded/Reharmonized Derpy story were both originally simply Recursive Fanfiction but Word of God has since declared them canon.
  • While the story hasn't be declared yet, Discorded Celestia: Not Loved gave Discord the middle name Apophis and last name Typhon. "Different From Everypony Else" had this made his official full name. Also both a bit of Genius Bonus and Nightmare Fuel to fans of mythology who know just what those names mean.
  • Discord: Not One Of A Kind was declared an Alternate Universe by Word of God, but the latest chapter, "Modern Major Evil Overlord", sets up a scene that's the exact scene that the alternate Discord sees when he looks into the truth.
  • This piece of fanart (a sequel to a certain scene in Dark World) was eventually inserted into the fic.
  • Alex Warlorn noted that despite describing Pandora with a fox's tail, fanart kept showing her with a lion's tail instead. Eventually, he had Discord comment that Pandora went through a phase where she replaced her lion tail with a fox's for a while before going back.
  • The Nameless Passenger in Dark World is eventually revealed to be an evolution of Nightmare Purgatory from the "Fading Futures" Recursive Fanfiction.
  • The full extent of Shining Armor's origin reveal in the last chapter's opening paragraph was inspired by a recursive fan work that had impressed Alexwarlorn so much that he actually went through the trouble of asking a friend to finish it when it was abandoned before making it canon in the main story.
• Ascended Meme: Cutie Mark Failure Insanity Syndrome gets a shout out in Shining Armor's 10th chapter.
• Creative Differences: Between Alex Warlorn and LZ0291, given their comments, as a number of their arguments seem centered around the directions the story is going in. While neither side has parted ways, LZ has come close on a number of occasions and the two fight from time to time in the comments. The fighting between the two eventually got to the point Godzillawolf left the project altogether rather than be forced to choose sides, and eventually, that the disagreements between the two have practically turned into outright hatred and the grudge is threatening the story as a whole.
• Creator Backlash: Alex really regrets "quantifying" the Pantheon. He's also expressed regret over some of the Darker and Edgier elements in earlier story arcs, in which the latter's regret would be demonstrated by Applebloom's "End of the World" Special Cosmic Retcon in the climax of the Rumors Arc.
• Creator Breakdown:
  • Alex Warlorn has had several over the course of the story, though thankfully he's managed to recover each time and it hasn't affected the story much.
  • LZ0291, the writer of the Shining Armor arc, suffered one, feeling that no one cared about his arc and was seriously considering quitting the project. Fortunately, the fans let him know that they did care, and he recovered. It was later revealed this was in part due to clinical depression.
  • Godzillawolf has also had minor one due to Real Life events (including the death of a family member) putting tremendous stress on him combined with various Troubled Production related issues. He managed to recover, thankfully, and the story wasn't affected.
• Executive Meddling:
  • Alex Warlorn originally wanted the Pantheon to remain mysterious and vague, but "peer pressure" (as he usually describes it) forced him to "quantify" (again, as he usually describes it) the Pantheon and essentially give full bios of what Concepts they represent and their personalities. He's gone on record multiple times that he hated having to do this.
  • Additionally, the other members of Misfit Actual were originally not going to appear at all because Alex feared that any attempt to include them would incite another argument with LZ. However, his editors convinced him that it would've been MORE disrespectful to LZ to leave the characters out and not give them a chance to help save the ponies they grew so close to during the Shining Armor arc.
• God Never Said That: It was commonly believed that D___t was the White Sheep of his family, but neither Word of God nor the story ever said that, it merely implied he was well liked by his siblings. It turns out he was a Well-Intentioned Extremist who may have been a Cool Big Bro, but also intended to wipe out all the Alicorns.
• Outdated by Canon: VERY prevalent for a fic that started mid Season 2 and finished around Season 7. It was even discussed in regards to The Stations of the Canon.
• Passing the Torch: After concluding the Finale Arc, Alex Warlorn declared his retirement from writing fanfiction in general. He passed the role of the POV series' head writer to Kendell2, who has shown interest in continuing the series.
• Production Posse: At its biggest, it consisted of Alexwarlorn, Kendell2, Louis, and LZ. Sadly, Kendell2 left the project to avoid being caught in the middle of a feud between Alexwarlorn and LZ, LZ ultimately leaving on relatively civil terms with Alex, and Louis falling off the radar, leaving just Alex. Though, Louis returned later on.
• Promoted Fanboy:
  • Kendell2/Godzillawolf started out as simply a fan, then became a beta reader before actually getting to write some scenes and finally even three chapters, including a Shining Armor arc chapter written to supplied notes, and co-writing the chapters from 14 onwards. He refers to himself as this trope in the description. He also wrote the original lyrics for the original Reharmonized audio adaptation's theme song, though they were altered somewhat for the final version.
  • Knight Mysterio and Dragon Of Twilght also qualify, as several of their stories have been declared optional canon by the author as well.
  • Same with ItsfromPeople's story, Discord: Not One Of A Kind has been declared an official Alternate Universe.
• Serendipity Writes the Plot: By Alexwarlorn's own admissions, his dark moments in real life have greatly influenced a number of things in the story.
• Troubled Production: Due to the sheer size and scope of this fic, combined with issues in outsourcing for the G2 Dreams/Nightmares arc, this fic has been in some rocky situations behind the scenes.
  • Alex Warlorn and LZ's relationship became heavily strained over the years, leading to disagreements between the two that ultimately caused the SA arc to be frozen in Development Hell for a time. On top of this, LZ developed clinical depression at some point in production (which contributed some part for the fighting) and the fighting between the two led to Godzillawolf departing from the project. Thankfully, the two were finally able to make amends enough to finish the SA Arc together so they could both finally move on.
  • And then the wedding started and the feud erupted again, resulting in LZ trying to have his contributions to the story removed. It seems the two of them just can't seem to put their grudge behind them and move on.
  • Louis also seems to have vanished as well but returned in time to help some with the final chapter of the SA Arc.
  • The Queen Majesty side story has been announced to be on what could very well be a permanent Hiatus. Averted when it resumed and was completed in late January 2018, which was ten months later.
• Universe Bible: According to Alex Warlorn, while he is leaving after finishing the Finale Arc, he set some ground rules for the POV series should anyone be willing to write Seasons 9 and beyond to correspond with the events of FIM Seasons 3 and onward:
  • "Animated canon villains level up in proportion with the heroes." Adaptational Badass goes to both sides.
  • "There are no background characters." The Main Characters Do Everything is fully averted here. Can't let the main heroes carry all that workload now, do we?
    • Regarding the two rules above, while it's true that the alicorn princesses can no longer be the divine force as they were in previous seasons after Applebloom's "End of the World" Special Cosmic Retcon, it is no excuse to just start re-enacting all their canonical defeats in FIM Season 3 onwards. Give them better roles and if they actually have to lose, try to make it so that the drama from The Worf Effect is actually believable instead of being a blatant example of plot convenience. Same goes for the Equestrian military.
  • "No 'I don't remember' secondary side effects of mind magic."
  • "Discord and Celestia's families already had Ragnarok, they don't need a second one."
  • "No character bashing."
• What Could Have Been:
  • Originally, Dark World!Twilight's Halflight Noon form was intended to debut in a Free-Fall Fight with Fluttercruel.
  • Alexwarlorn wasn't originally supposed to write any of the 7 Dreams/Nightmares chapters, but ultimately had to write Bright Eyes' story due to losing contact with the original writer.
  • Chapter 36 of Dark World originally had scenes of Amicita restoring Neo Stream to existence and healing/redeeming the Emperor of Man. However, complaints from Neo Stream's owner in the former case and pressure from critics in the latter case forced Alexwarlorn to remove both scenes.
  • According to Word of God, Makarov was originally only going to be in the SA arc for half a chapter, but somehow spun out to be Big Bad of a whole saga. Reviewers have commented that he seems to have done his job as a Parody Sue a little too well.
    • Actually, it's a little more complicated. The original original idea was a regular parody sue existing for half a chapter... that became Makarov. Bugger.
  • One of the possible names for Diamond's Nightmare self was Nightmare Discord.
  • According to Word of God, the planned finale of the Dark World was intended have a completely different final battle. It was meant to be a Fusion Dance between the Discords of the Light World and Dark World, necessitating a Crisis Crossover between the two sets of the Mane Six to beat him in both timelines. However, a combination of real life issues of being demonised and called a bad guy while watching the readers call for Discord's blood for the evil he has done, he decided to imagine what that fury would be like if taken to its natural conclusion.
  • Word of God stated that if the Season 9 premiere aired before the Finale Arc finished drafting, the Rumors and Last Battle arcs would have been replaced with a recreation of Sombra's attack by Nightmare Nhilis instead.
• Word of God:
  • According to the author, the pony and human world Alicorn Amulets function very differently in how they effect their user: the pony one behaves similarly to the One Ring while the human world one behaves similar to Hallow!Ichigo.
  • Mention of Twilight and her friends having learned to fake their own deaths if needed in the Distant Epilogue was to defy Outdated by Canon by providing an out of canon implied Twilight would outlive her friends. The finale implied this, so it was useful.
  • Should the POV series reach the events of FIM Season 9, the final villain would be the REAL Grogar.
  • Even if the Wish Spell actually worked instead of destroying society, it would still have resulted in the world of G3 as it was the conclusion that came from fulfilling all of ponykind's desires to be better at once.