>>RogerDodger
That's an unfortunate shame!

Thanks for getting back on the issue, though. Guess nothing will beat pure diligence in any situation.

>>horizon
Well, them's the breaks. I'll just need to polish it up and maybe have it ready to post by 2018! Yeeey~

Hi, everyone.

I'm gonna go into a bit of a long thing here, so I do want to get the short-stuff out of the way first and foremost. Thank you to everyone who has read and commented on this story and sent their feedback. I'm not sure if I'm going to go anywhere with this, however (maybe, depending) because this entire ordeal had been quite frustrating for me, and it's something that I feel I need to address (nothing bad, though!)

There have been quite a number of thoughts on this story, a lot of which are due to my writing, and a some of which are contradictory, so I might not really know how to address them all. This does not mean I do not find your feedback valuable. I'll try to clarify certain points and get to the meat of things, all in due time. But first, there's an issue that I want to bring up.


OPEN LETTER TO ROGERDODGER

I don't join this competition often. This is my 2nd time only, and while it's been fun, it's usually just on a 'whim' kind of deal for me. I haven't written at all for the past 5 months due to issues that some of you are aware of, and mainly, I was using this as kind of a way to force me back into writing.

So what happened was that I booted up a tab on my browser and left it open, using the timer as an indication to how much time I had left, and I went about my business.

It would be many days later when I take a glance at the clock and was happy that there was still always enough time left. But then, I started to realize that the clock wasn't moving.

The clock stops.

After refreshing the browser, it turned from 2 days 13 hours to 11 hours left, and I had to pump out the fic in its entirety in the small remaining time I had left. Due to timezone differences, I started at about 11 pm and wrote straight up until 6 am, and I had no time in the morning to give it a proper edit or even do more than call my friends at the last minute to take cursory glances (to which I am extremely grateful).

Now, not to get the tone wrong, but I realise this comes off as the ramblings of a petulant child, but I'm not actually trying to bitch about it or say omg this was the fault of everything. I should definitely have kept better awareness of the situation, and the blame was entirely my own. I am of course also very happy and grateful to your work on this site and for organizing it, and for, well, everything that you do on behalf of the competition, which is very very cool.

However, I think it's important that if you're going to use a timer as a reminder or a notification for users, it really shouldn't stop half-way through its run, especially when people are relying on it as indication of progress. It's a good tool, a useful tool, but it should work so that people CAN rely on it faithfully.

As a manner of testing, I opened it up on another computer and it also stops there after a while (tested using the prelims clock) so unless both of my computers are busted, this is a thing. I used chrome and MSIE for testing, and I don't know how long it takes before it stops but it is somewhere between 6 and 18 hours.

If this issue is already known, I'm also sorry for bringing it up again.

Right, now that's done, let me address the comments.

Delicious, tasty comments.

The story above also is used to highlight another thing. I'm fully aware that this story is a bit of a mess. if you didn't bother to read, the tl;dr version is that I wasn't paying attention to time, and I forced everything out scant hours before the contest ended, which resulted in a rushed and horribly composed piece of work. You guys have literally read my first draft, and I'm honestly terribly embarrassed by it.

So before anything, I'd like to apologize for this.

Since everyone seems to have their own ideas and interpretation of the story, and a lot of points have been repeated, I'd like to address the story idea itself rather than talk to individual people.


Firstly, the burning question:

Pinkie traded away her knowledge of her love for Twilight in exchange for a cake recipe. This is definitely what happened.

I thought I was more concrete with the ending, but it seems I need to point to it more. I'll fully put my hand up for this one. Some people got it, some didn't, but I'd like for everyone to get it. This was not meant to be as ambiguous as it turned out.

There was one little thing that made a big difference that as a mistake I noticed as soon as the entry closed. I'd forgotten to italicize one single word, which I believe would have changed the reading quite dramatically.

Pinkie's last line in the shop : "I'm taking nothing", had the wrong stress. The stress was supposed to be on the word 'taking' rather than 'nothing', but I had forgotten to italicize it.

"I'm taking nothing" was meant to put the emphasis that it was more of the sacrifice that she had to make in order to preserve their friendship, in line with the repeated use of 'sacrifice' in the previous few exchanges with The Shopkeeper.

Of course, there could be other ways to point to it, but I am much for a fan of subtlety in my writing, so if anyone else has any ideas on how I can gently poke at it without painting it red, I'd love to hear thoughts.


On the subject of POV

I also realize the weirdness of the POV jumps in the intro and outro. Not gonna make excuses here, I'm just going to have to fix it. I'm wondering, however, how to frame it from Pinkie's side without being overly dramatic. Any thoughts on this?

However, to address the comments that they're unnecessary, I'm afraid I respectfully disagree with that.The whole point was to show the difference in Pinkie's character from before and after, when she was burdened and when she was then later lifted from her burdens. She acted heavily in the intro because she felt heavy, and she was back to 'normal' in the end because she was no longer weighed down. The bookends were just meant to be perspective juxtapositions.


The Shopkeeper's accent

It definitely could have been made more apparent earlier. Thank you to those who mentioned this!


On excessive back and forths between Pinkie and the Shopkeeper

I'm not sure about this one. Not because I don't see the point, but because some people have told me it wasn't enough for the point I was trying to make, and then there are some telling me it's too much for the point I was trying to make.

If anything, I think it's about how I presented the idea, which was awkwardly done. What the idea in my mind was, was that I was going to keep it open for interpretation, but writer's direction was that the shop, on a mystical level, serves as an path to help people make the decisions that they want to be are too afraid to. Pinkie went there because on some subconscious level she wanted to. The shop was just a tool for her to help herself. Thinking back, perhaps I should have left all the ideas of 'I have to do this' and the 'you already know what you want' to the very end, right before the final drop, leaving the earlier scenes open for reminiscing. I don't know. Thoughts would be appreciated, on the heels of this being what I was trying to accomplish.


On Pinkie GETTING nothing

The idea was that what she got, symbolically, was her relationship back to steady shores rather than the rocky mess of an unrequited love. What she got physically was the cake recipe because, well, it's something, and also it's that symbol that conforms to the friendship.

I know that something was throwing a lot of people off, and I think it was the mishandling of the final line, but if anyone else has any reasons why they got the vibe that Pinkie got nothing out of the exchange, please let me know what it was.


have I missed anything?

Please! Ask a question. I will send you a pizza roll.


Final word

Once again, I do have to apologize to the readers. I'm terribly upset at myself, a little bit angry (not going to lie) and this was really messily done. Having explained myself and the ideals, I would definitely love any thoughts in which I could strengthen this, and perhaps any noise about maybe even if it were worth it at this point, because I kind of feel like it's just full of cracks. Maybe I'm just tired, but either way. Regardless of what happens, all your feedback has been and certainly will be invaluable to me learning from my mistakes and working my way to throwing a story together better.

Thank you to everyone who read it, and thank you to everyone who voted for it, and thank you to everyone who took the time to comment. Thank you all for liking the OC and setting! I do enjoy having fun with them. I appreciate your time very much, readers, so thank you, and once again thanks to RogerDodger for putting all of this together.

Peace,
KR