Pie goes great with Cake

As folks who've already looked at my blog might have noticed, I've got a fondness for running at the mouth when it comes to stories of mine. Why would this one be any different?

I am glad to see that most of my feedback so far has been positive. For the moment, I think I'm going to mark the story "Complete;" if I do decide to write anything more on it, I'll change that and make the changes, but right now the story works pretty well as-is (I think.)

One recurring theme I've spotted is that the relationship between the Cakes and Pinkie is a weird one. I would contest that any relationship featuring Pinkie would, by nature, be weird.

Honestly, the relationship between Pinkie and the Cakes was what came to me first. This story came out of two ideas; first, I was wondering why the Cakes keep Pinkie around. From a business perspective, she's a disaster. Sure, she's enthusiastic, but she eats half the stock, isn't the most reliable pony, and the Baked Bads incident had to have their legal counsel quaking in his horseshoes for months (though, admittedly, that was more AJ's fault than Pinkie's )

But if their relationship is more of a romantic one than a business one, that quickly becomes less important. Like I mentioned in my first blog post, I tend to write non-monogamous relationships a lot, and Pinkie is the perfect pony to put in one. Honestly, I'd just intended to keep it as an element to bring up in some other story (Friends, Family, and Those Between, probably), without writing a full story about it on its own.

But then I started thinking about the fallout of the Discord incident. The Mane 6 had been completely reversed in their attitudes. Applejack got off easy; she just sat around and strung whizzers while nobody was listening, so no harm done. Rainbow sat around in "Cloudsdale" and hung out. Again, no real harm done, especially since she couldn't control the weather even if she wanted to. Rarity had the materials to start a brand new rock garden, but if anypony was hurt it was her (and Twilight, who had already forgiven them all). Twilight didn't have long enough to really do any damage to her life. Flutterbitch... well, okay, she probably had some trouble waiting for her at home. At the very least, I'm sure Angel gave her a very, very stern glaring to.

Then I wondered what had happened to Pinkie, and an interesting thing happened. Pinkie clammed up on me. Now, I'm sure we can all imagine what it would take to make Pinkie stop talking (probably slightly more than it would take to make me stop typing right now!) So I started poking and prodding and trying to figure it out. That was when she let on that the real problem was simply one of tact. When you're being all Grumpy-Pie, you just want to stew. If anybody tries to help, you're likely to lash out at them just to make them leave you alone. And if you've got any built up resentments... boom.

Well, Pinkie had plenty of built-up resentments. She was feeling kind of left out of the whole "relationship" end of their relationship; she felt like Cup and Carrot were married, and she was a handy playmate for when one of them was feeling randy and the other wasn't. This was reinforced by trips that Cup and Carrot would take without her, that sort of thing.

Now, of course, the Cakes thought that everything was hunky-dory; their impression was that Pinkie (who would always put on a smile and eagerly agree to watch the shop or do whatever it was they wanted) enjoyed having the time to herself to throw parties. They weren't entirely wrong, but... well, Pinkie just wasn't taking it as well as they thought. It was a perfectly natural set of feelings on both ends. Pinkie was jealous, but hiding it and trying to irrationalize her feelings. The Cakes were completely oblivious, buying Pinkie's surface feelings.

But, as we see in Party of One, Pinkie's surface feelings aren't necessarily what she really feels, until the top pops. That's where this story came from; a relationship in crisis because of horrible things said in a moment of anger, and the regret and fear that comes with it.

Of course, once Pinkie started talking, she didn't want to stop, and I churned this thing out in about two days. Honestly, I don't blame her. In her place, I'd want to get it all fixed up as fast as I could too.

In the end, it all works out, and Pinkie and the Cakes head off to Burning Colt to enjoy themselves. The image of Cup and Carrot in full hippie regalia was thoroughly amusing as well, I'll admit. I know, I know, Burning Man post-dates the hippie movement, but hippies and that sort of party get along nicely. Besides, that way next time I'll have them head off to La Tomatina or somesuch. :pinkiegrin:

What does the future hold for our baker's triad?

Ultimately, I found that I like Pinkie and the Cakes as a group; I suppose that makes them my OTT - One True Triad. I hope you all like them too, because I'm sure they're going to show up more often in the future. Certainly in FFaTB, once I get the danged things published. Who knows? Maybe I'll get around to detailing how this rather odd relationship formed in the first place, if I can get them to start talking about it. If anybody would like, I could start prodding them about the subject.

wtl;dr Weird as they may be, I think Pie and Cakes go great together, and you can expect to see a lot more of them in the future.

It's gonna be a wild ride.