Chapter Controversy · 8:25am Jan 31st, 2014
First of all, I apologize to Lord of Dorkness for being confused about what they meant in their comment.
But before you go arguing with me about how I should be doing this in the comments section of my story, I need to set something straight. I meant for Chapter 5 to be the best, and all people can do is message me with their lists of problems with it, plus I gained a full three dislikes after its publishing.
And so, I'll resolve your problems that I haven't already altered due to my idiocy, such as spelling and grammar mistakes.
1. Cross would never do that to Soarin. Why are you making her a bitch?
-- If your superior ordered you (female) to let them shower with you, and they were male, you would be pissed. Cross just took out her anger in a way that caused unintended effects on her "future teammates". She intended to embarrass Soarin by having him cause an accident- not to get Vector injured.
2. Spitfire went easy on Cross.
-- I thought I covered this in the chapter, but people seem to like pointing this out. What you should realize is that I'm not in the military, and all my reactions are based off of the episode Wonderbolt Academy. Also, she explicitly states that Updraft is so distant that she has trouble trusting him, mostly because she doesn't know how honest he actually is due to staying as far from him as possible.
3. Cross did a complete 180 in character development in the shower.
-- While I agree that I could have done it better, I thought I wrote that scene well enough that it explained her reaction. Because she didn't know that Soarin was pregnant when they got into their first fight, she didn't believe his "emotions" excuse. Now that she realizes he's actually going through this, she finds that her reactions have been unjustifiably harsh, especially toward a superior officer. Therefore, she apologizes in the only was she knows how.
4. For this one, I'll use a quote: "I get what you're going for but that Grain and Drift thing was forced as hell. Next time you want callbacks do it better or I'll un-favorite."
-- This is my favorite complaint, mostly because it was by a person that was one of the first favorites on the entire story, back when I first published it in July of 2013. First of all, un-favoriting my story may cause me a bit of hurt, but it's something easy to brush off with three people per chapter joining the ranks. Secondly, please don't threaten me like this, as it makes you a rabid fan, which I'm afraid of.
Last but not least, have you never heard of interracial relationships? Sure, their daughter was something I didn't expect to happen until I thought of it halfway through writing the dinner, but it's not as shoehorned in as you seem to think.
5. How did Grain and Drift have a pegasus filly?
-- In case you didn't notice, the Cakes were earth ponies and had a unicorn and a pegasus for children. Therefore, I believe that the specialized pegasus and unicorn genes are dominant compared to those of an earth pony. (No earth pony hate. My OC is one.)
6. The dinner scene is useless and throw-away. Why include it?
-- While I wanted to have the dramatic reveal at the meeting shortly after the dinner scene, that would have made it completely useless. Instead, I tried to write dialogue that flowed well enough to bring up the news that Grain and Drift had received via letter in a more personal setting. I'll still use this later in the next chapter, which is currently at 600 words.
7. "The ending was so abrupt it made me almost puke."
-- Yet another fun quote that I felt like throwing in here. While I agree with you, that's something that I tried doing symbolically- something I feel the need to mention I haven't been very good at since my first story, which sucked worse than anything else I've ever written since.
Anyway... I meant for it to symbolize Soarin's sudden understanding that he's been slowly debilitating his child, which he had yet to comprehend until the latest chapter. As such, it was supposed to translate to his derailed train of thought, and make it seem all the more sudden in the delivery.
In other words, it was stylistic symbolism, and I failed at getting that across.
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And that's it for complaints. Hopefully we all learned something, like the fact that I should never try anything like this again, and that you guys need to calm down with the comments via PM. If you want to point something out, please leave a comment directly on the story so I can view it faster and reply with a preview option.
Yours,
~SoI