Flash Fog: Revision 1 · 1:22am Nov 13th, 2014
I've posted the first of my planned revisions to the ending of Flash Fog. Since it's not particularly long, I'll also post it in the quotebox below for those who have already read the original version.
As Celestia’s sun beat down upon her face, Apple Bloom smiled broadly. She’d completely forgotten that it had been a warm day before the fog rolled in. Nearby, she could see Rainbow Dash transporting Scootaloo in a similar fashion. The fog slid beneath them, though it was a brilliant white now that they were above it. To the east, a great column of white rose over the Everfree forest, expanding outwards like a great vertical fan as the sun’s heat warmed and evaporated the newly reborn clouds, the whiteness gradually blending into the bold, bright blue of the cloudless sky. And to the northwest, the peaks of the Unicorn Range jutted out of the last vestiges of the fog, free to once again bask in the late-summer sunlight.
If you're wondering why it took so long for me to finish this paragraph, there's two reasons. First, I decided to take a little break from writing after finishing Flash Fog, and second, one of my prereaders wasn't certain whether the description of the dissipating fog was meteorologically feasible. To be honest, I'm not certain myself, so I let it sit for a day or two while I decided whether the allusion to Dante's Paradiso was worth the potential use of artistic license.* As you can tell, I decided that it was.
* This was a particularly vexing decision since I'm fairly certain that Dante himself didn't bother to point out that he has arranged Heaven in the shape of a fan, since all of his original readers already shared his geocentric worldview. Still, this aspect of the Paradiso was one of the most memorable details in the lecture one of my professors gave on the Divine Comedy, and it still holds a lot of meaning for me.
I like it!
It's short and sweet, but it really does say, "yeah, the fog's movin' on out".
It still leaves other questions and unresolved side plots, but it DEFINITELY makes the fog plot feel closed.
If that "1" is any indication, I whole heartedly approve!
I'm sorry if we were insistent and annoying in our requests for this tidbit. We had been waiting the entirety of the story for a resolution to the fog itself, and without something like this, it just didn't feel complete.
I know the feeling of finally finishing a story or other project, only for the audience to say, "Glad you're finished, but...." - it kinda feels like being a balloon with a leak. It sucks. It hurts. You just want to wash your hands of the whole mess, and it robs you of that sense of accomplishment. Understand that we're not aiming to make you feel that way. We don't feel the complete resolution of the story, so we don't realize you are done. Fini. Caput.
If you feel that way again, look at all the likes and the faves, and your subscriber count. This story, the Petriculture Cycle, and your more comedic works are all a lot of fun to read, and I'm not alone in saying so. We only clamor because we care, and because we've come to expect a satisfying and complete resolution to each of your stories; we simply didn't expect "The End" quite so soon.