The Alternate Universe genre of fanfiction is usually held in a rather low regard. Far too many writers use the tag as a means of escaping things like keeping characters true to their canon selves and adhering to everything the plot presents, even if it's something they personally didn't like. (And I'm not including fics that were made AU because of significant changes in the canon. There's a rather large difference between the two ideas.) The same tends to be true in a lot of pony fiction, although there are stories that try to get around these issues and instead present clever “What If?” scenarios.
But what we're looking at today are two universes, the Lunaverse and the Dashverse, and looking at the way they break away from the canon and explore their own beliefs and alternate interpretations. Also note that I am mostly focusing on comparing Rainbooms and Royalty to Longest Night, Longest Day, since both are alternate versions of the pilot. (I will be including Boast Busted later on, though, to compare the handling of Twilight.)
TV Tropes has a pair of tropes that really sum the two universes up. The Lunaverse is very much a For Want of a Nail AU, where one thing is changed and everything changes with it. Celestia turned evil instead of Luna, got banished, and as a result everything in Equestria is completely different a thousand years later. We have a new cast, the old main characters have had their negative attributes magnified and been relegated to background status (save for one), and the setting is functionally not the same Equestria we know. The emphasis is on the differences between the show and the AU.
Conversely, the Dashverse is an In Spite of a Nail AU, where things mostly line up the same, but the situations surrounding the events and the characters have been switched around. Dash is still herself, but has a changed background. Twilight is still herself, but has different reasons for behaving that way. The only significant changes are made when the universe has to cover for Dash not being in Ponyville, and those are few and far between. The emphasis is on the similarities between the show and the AU.
So which of these approaches is a superior one?
RaR keeps the same pieces, but scrambles a few of them. And honestly, I did pick up on some differences in the dynamics of the group. The show had Twilight as the clear leader, and she demonstrated those qualities throughout the pilot and beyond. Here, Dash was placed in an automatic position of leadership because she was Celestia's student, Twilight lacked the real confidence to be effective in her old role, and the ponies needed help fast. Also, Dash requires a lot more guidance from the others due to her hotheadedness, especially in the case of Zecora, and her role as the main character is reinforced time and again through the stories about the Sonic Rainboom and how it affected everypony's lives.
LNLD is a much harder story to sell. RaR benefits in some ways from being close to the canon, as it makes it easier to become acclimated to the characters and the small changes in the setting. LNLD doesn't have that luxury. It has to sell us on new characters, a new setting, a new conflict, and convince us to drop any previously-held beliefs about the show and its characters while reading. And to its credit, it does introduce the new cast fairly well, but that does not change the fact that it has an uphill battle to fight if you aren't automatically on board with the idea of Celestia being evil and Trixie taking the Twilight role.
So that's the individual strengths of their approach, but there are also quite a few weaknesses with each. RaR suffers from the concept of its story (Rainbow Dash becoming Celestia's student) not seriously altering the events of the canon. Dash could have remained her usual surefire, cocky, overconfident self while still changing somewhat under Celestia's tutelage. She was also made a lot more petty and whiny at several sections of the story, especially towards the beginning and end, which ended up being so sudden a change that it came close to violating the story's premise. Twilight's past, meanwhile, is brought up a couple times, and is used effectively in the early-middle parts of the story during an emotional meltdown, but her character still leaves exactly the same. There were opportunities to expand on the idea that were missed because of the emphasis on keeping things the same, but with a rook swapped for a queen. (Because Dash ain't no pawn.)
The Lunaverse has the opposite problem, as it tends to be inconsistent with how much this one change has affected things. Somehow, the exact same ponies were born in the exact same places to the exact same parents, lived almost identical lives for the most part, and were all in Ponyville (which shouldn't exist thanks to changes in the universe) for Celestia to show up. At the same time, a lot of the changes feel less like they extend logically from the narrative, but are instead there for the sake of being different. Things like Zecora being a villain, Spike being with her, and Celestia not being redeemed so that RDD could turn that into a story arc come to mind. And that's not getting into the changes to the Mane 6, where Twilight's character begins and ends with “Lesson Zero” and Dash has had her loyalty and any sort of positive attributes stripped away in order to make the new Loyalty pony look better by comparison.
But what can be drawn from this? Well, there's a lot of ways to make an Alternate Universe story, and strengths and weaknesses are inherent in both approaches. On the one end, you have the Lunaverse's style, where the two are compared side-by-side to show how making a single significant change can snowball into an entirely different universe. And on the other, you have the Dashverse, which is about how even if you move one brick in a wall, it will still be the same structure with a slightly different composition. I can't judge whether or not one is superior to another, since this is an open subject and everyone can feel the way they wish about it.
On a personal note, though, I enjoyed RaR far more than I did LNLD and BB. But I still looked at the Lunaverse and saw what it had to offer, while I currently have no pressing need to go back to the Dashverse. Make of that what you will.
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