TDFheads, want your opinions.
So the map from the game I think was using a more vague model of Neopia before Brightvale was added to the world map. TDF came out in 2005 and the Neopia map was updated in 2006.
In the game, Sophie lives in the Werelupe Woods, despite her title literally being Swamp Witch, so you would expect her to be closer to Bogshot.
In Tale of Woe, Sophie is pretty explicitly placed in a swamp somewhere in Haunted Woods.
Now, assuming that the TDF map is SOMEWHAT accurate though maybe not exact, do we think it is possible that Werelupe Woods/Bogshot are actually part of Haunted Woods territory even though the map is explicitly labeled "Kingdoms of Brightvale and Meridell"?
In the official canon map, Brightvale is close-ish to Haunted Woods, so it could be that Werelupe Woods and Bogshot are somewhere between Brightvale and Haunted Woods?
All of this is to ask: do we think that Sophie could possibly exist anywhere near Bogshot swamp?
I remember seeing a post recently where it was being discussed that she was immune to the Darkest Faerie's influence because she was in Werelupe Woods. Because she is somewhat of a neutral character, do we think it's possible that she relocated to Werelupe Woods temporarily because she somehow caught wind of the Werelupe King's deal with TDF and wanted to take advantage of it, but would normally be found somewhere out in the swamp?
We know from Neopedia that she definitely lives in a swamp *in Haunted Woods*, so if we consider Bogshot to be part of Brightvale and not Haunted Woods, then I don't think it would be possible for this to be canon. But as far as I can tell, Bogshot is already not really canon, and the in-game map is DEFINITELY not canon when compared to the live map. The official game lore says Bogshot is "north of Brightvale" but it also implies that Brightvale is east of Meridell and that appears to not be officially true, so we could maybe conclude that the residents just misdrew their maps based on a limited amount of information and misjudged the cardinal directions? 🤔 (or just consider it retconned since it's pretty inaccurate)
But yeah, feel free to weigh in. I really like Bogshot, I think it's a quaint little swamp town, and I like the idea of Sophie's home being somewhere in the Bogshot Swamp even if not in the village of Bogshot itself (I think she would be too much of a loner to live that close to other people)
Edit: To be clear, I can choose to believe this and headcanon it all I want of course, but if suddenly Bogshot were turned into a real location and were placed near Haunted Woods and Sophie's lore were updated to claim that she lived near Bogshot in the Haunted Woods, would that be TOO retconny based on what we know about Bogshot's lore from the game that it is closer to Brightvale?