Let me explain how I'm going to disappoint you · 1:52am Aug 31st, 2012
First and foremost, by necessity this post will contain spoilers for my current ending for Everypony Loves Rainbow. If you'd much prefer to continue on with no knowledge of what I have planned (and you should prefer that), then leave now. You can always pop back and read this once ELR's finished, and see what might have been should I change my mind.
We shall continue after this short break which may or may not be connected to chapter 5.
Alright, so here's my dilemma.
Since its inception [OBLIGATORY BWAAAAAAAH SOUND], I've had a basic idea of where this story was going to go. It's a silly, simple and unsatisfying ending—which is kind of the point. You see, this fic was never intended to be a complete package. The whole point of it is that it's a day-in-the-life of Rainbow Dash in this world. We're not there at the beginning of the problem, and we certainly won't be there for any kind of conclusion (though I'll do my darnedest to make sure it's clear that Dash is happy). The narrative will simply end at the culmination of Rainbow's day, and we will all move on with our lives. There will be no resolution.
I've done my best to make that clear. The end of chapter 2 almost blatantly states this fact (since Dash can't find an answer herself, and a huge hint is dropped as to the true origins of the issue), and the EQD pre-reader's quote hits the nail on the head. The problem is that, despite this, i've been getting an awful lot of comments from people who want to see a resolution. It seems that my readers crave a catharsis; they're looking forward to finding out how Rainbow will sort everything out, and return her world to normal.
If I continue down my path, this won't happen. This is causing me a problem, because I want to be entertaining people with a goofy story about over-shipping RD, not upsetting or angering those same people. I could probably knock something together that will allow RD to fix everything up, and return the status quo. I won't, however, because I'm writing for myself first and an audience second, and I really don't want to change my intentions to better suit the audience.
Once this tale is finished, I'll do a more detailed explanation about my reasoning behind all this, but suffice to say that I don't want to change the ending. And yet, it's what my readers want. Hell, there are even some people who feel this is more of a tragedy than a comedy, since Rainbow's entire life is being taken from her - chapter 4 shows that aspect particularly clearly. I respect their interpretation, regardless of how much I disagree with it, and I know that my current ending will make this all the more tragic for them.
That's still not enough to make me change my mind, though.
Right now, I'm set on finishing it the way I intended from the beginning, and then including an optional epilogue that will link my overly-shipped world with the "real world" of Equestria, in a way that is overdone and corny but still better than "it was all a dream."
This post was really for my own purposes. I just wanted to write everything down and take a look at it. Still, i'm putting this up for you to look at anyway; those of you who are adamant to partially-spoil the ending for yourselves will get a quick look into my thought process. Feel free to throw in your two pence, too (I have no use for cents since I am an Englishman). Alternate interpretations are always welcome here!
Anyway, I'm done here. For sitting through this onslaught of mish-mash thoughts, here's a treat. Have some random YouTube Poop that is vaguely related to MLP.
I probably would've waited 'til you completed your fic to spoil the ending, but it's your story I guess.
324407 I was just getting a little annoyed with myself over this, and I wanted it vented somewhere. Where better than publicly?
324435
Seems legit
"It seems that my readers crave a catharsis"
Now that you mention it, yeah, that's totally true.
But to be honest, it's not the lack of resolution (I would phrase it as evolution) that's getting at me, it's that... It doesn't feel like it's going anywhere. There is a recent Braeburn story with almost exactly the same idea as this story here, but it went from somewhere to somewhere else. It didn't have a proper resolution, but there were conversations, and (most) characters ended different than they began, even if only slightly (well, Rarity's change wasn't slight at all, but that wasn't important to the story).
What I'm seeing here is Rainbow just trying to pretend the problem doesn't exist. And no way to change anything about it. No strategy. No nothing. And, most importantly, no interaction. I feel like I'm reading a survival horror and I used to think I hated that genre because of gore, and now I'm realizing it's not that at all...