Technically not quite swaps, more like "what ifs" but whatever.

I basically was just like: "what if Dawn got possessed by the entity?" then "If that's the case, what if Dawn ate some of the golden/positive apples to protect herself from it?"

Then started brainstorming ideas of how that happened so the story would shift from the normal story to this:

"The entity attacked the tree as a distraction, maybe summoning minions or smth too and as Luna's distracted the entity plunges Dawn into that darkness *like the one in the comic* Dawn isn't as startled as last time but still feels extremely weak and is hard to see. Luna isn't as off guard either this time but with the amount of minions it's harder to help Dawn in there

The entity forces Dawn against the tree but she doesn't realize that and it tries to destroy both her and the tree, Dawn swings her at it but it grabs her arm then pulls her to itself, using its power to practically force itself into her soul.

Luna is late again and Dawn is, well, off." [This is the possession timeline]

The golden apple timeline is basically the same except Dawn grabbed one of the fallen apples on the ground and ate it, either weakening or destroying the entity.

Dawn is painfully aware of how bad her situation is in the possessed timeline so she fled from the AU to protect the village, tree and Luna. Specifically if something went wrong and the entity took over [there was probably a fight between her and Luna when she first got possessed and the tree took some damage but it's still alive].

In the other, Dawn is more confident in herself, maybe a little too confident. [She's also stuck with a slightly unhinged smile, which could probably be fixed if she just saw herself in a mirror but whatever lol]. She most likely doesn't know how to control her abilities which especially hurts Luna due to the excessive positivity.

[Also random experiment with colored outlines lol]