About that ending... · 12:48am Jul 14th, 2016
Okay, so there were some... feelings about the last chapter of The Trials and Tribulations etc., etc. I will admit, they were feelings I largely intended to inspire. Just not quite so strongly.
The ending is supposed to be a bit of a punch in the gut. Everything seems happy and perfect, and then suddenly Celestia finds everyone she loves turned to stone. Then in the epilogue, just as she's mourning them, Nightmare Moon appears and offers her help to save them. Which is of course the opposite of what you'd expect, and in fact isn't even something you'd expect at all, which makes it completely ridiculous and therefore (at least in theory) humorous.
One of my favorite endings to a show ever is from the anime Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt.
Spoilers ahead (obviously):
The main characters are angels, and spend the show fighting ghosts and demons. At the end of the show, they beat the big bad guy, the end. Then, after the credits, one of the main characters chops the other into pieces, reveals she's a demon and that she's working with the big bad guy. They say that if the other characters want the one who was chopped up back, they'll have to follow them and collect all the pieces to put her back together. They then take off to another city, while all of the other characters—including the two demons who were the villains for most of the show—are all standing there going "What the [HORSE NOISES] just happened?!"
(I realize the 'chopping up another character' thing sounds dark, but... it's really not. The whole show's kind of wacky. But if don't watch it if you don't like shows like South Park, the humor's very much along those lines)
That's what I was going here, either consciously or subconsciously (can't quite remember how overt the PSwGB influence was). You get to the end of the story, everything is looking like a happy ending—then boom, huge twist out of nowhere, and suddenly there's another, even bigger adventure waiting ahead.
In a lot of ways, I don't really understand why there was such a strong reaction to this, especially given how the epilogue and sequel title straight out say that everyone's going to be saved. I could understand it if, say, I'd ended it the same way as PSwGB and Celestia had just come out of the teleport to find a pile of bodies. But the Princesses are just turned to stone, it's not like that isn't fairly easy to reverse. Discord's done it twice, Celestia and Luna were both turned to stone in the comics and ended up just fine. Heck, Twilight did it herself in the first season!
(Spoilers for the sequel: Spike sees Twilight, sighs "Again?" and goes to get the wheelbarrow so they can move her inside out of the weather.)
A lot of people are asking for me to change the ending, and I can't.
Not won't, can't. This thing is already planned out for at least three more sequels, with a tentative fourth. Undoing this ending unravels all of that. At the very least, Nightmare Moon needs to be running around, and while I suppose I could completely scrap everything in the sequel and write one in a way that accomplishes that while also not having a large percentage of the cast turned to stone, that is something I won't do, not the least because I already have almost 11k words of it written.
However...
Thinking about it, and tell me if I'm wrong about this, I may have been a bit too harsh with this ending.
I like the idea of an ending that is, as I said before, a gut punch that is quickly turned into something completely ridiculous. I find that amusing, as should be obvious. Clearly, many of you do not share my sense of humor in that regard.
And I may have gotten way too into it. The tone is probably too bleak. It is, in fact, possibly classified as 'heartbreaking'. From the inside, I may not have seen that, since I know everything that's going to come after.
There's also the fact that, while many of you may not know this, I am literally incapable of writing a story with a sad ending. I can appreciate them, but I don't think I could bring myself to write one, and whenever there's the slightest possibility that a story has a good ending I prefer that interpretation (two decades or so later, and I am still 100% sure that the light at the end of 'The Giver' was the main characters finding a town and not them dying). So the 'sadness' in this ending has no effect other than to amuse me, but none of that would be obvious to other people.
And, upon reflection, Celestia's reaction was probably way overboard as well. As pointed out previously, she's seen draconequus and ponies turned to stone before, and they were always fine. She really shouldn't have completely broken down like that.
So, I propose a compromise:
The story is still going to end with all four royal ponies turned to stone, and Nightmare Moon is still going to walk up and offer her help to Celestia.
However, I will rewrite the ending (or at least the canon ending, while keeping the original as an alternate). In this version, Celestia's reaction will not be 'everyone I love is dead and I already wished them back with the dragon balls once so I can't do it again'. Instead, it will be more in keeping with the tone of the rest of the story—specifically, Celestia's reaction will be more along the lines of 'I leave you alone for five minutes and you get turned to stone?! Do you know how long this is going to take to fix!?!' (actual possible dialogue I'm considering).
Does this sound good to everyone upset with the current ending?
I hope it does; I'm trying to do the best I can here. The plot has certain demands, there are things that have to happen. If the issue is the mere fact that they were all turned to stone, then there's nothing I can do. But I can understand if I went too far with what was intended to be a joke, and I don't want that one thing to ruin the story for people.
Trust me, I know what that's like. Here's a fun fact for the entire sequel:
Originally, Nightmare Moon's personality was supposed to be a mixture of Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie; the explanation for this being that Luna was the one who had been jealous and angry, and without her Nightmare Moon was sweet and kind. But I read a story that involved Nightmare Moon and had an ending that rather upset me, and it ended up completely altering her character (by which I mean turning it back to normal) and changed the path she was going to take—which actually brought about the whole plot for the possible fifth story of this series.
(also, Nightmare Celestia was going to be her love interest—DO NOT ASK).
Oh my god. I can't believe you watch that anime. Shame it had only one season.
You seriously planned three sequels ahead?
Maybe the fact that your entire audience was expecting a fairly low-key romantic comedy with a chapter or two of Celestia being adorably bad at flirting, maybe with a subplot about Chrysalis absconding with a crime lord's fortune as a dowry to Luna.
The dramatic shift in tone is only half of the problem. The other half is that you just randomly turned the story's entire supporting cast to stone for what amounts to a cheap gut-punch and an utterly random genre shift to hijinks and adventure.
Personally I had no problem with that ending because I thought it was pretty funny myself but I can understand if you feel you need to change it. I look forward to reading the sequel too as the idea of Celestia and her 'buddy' Nightmare going on an adventure already has my interest.
Unfortunately, the "punch to the gut" was more of a "kick in the crotch" and didn't end up being funny-absurd. I LOVE good absurd humor. In this case it just... I dunno. There's something wrong with the delivery and that's ruining it. It's like, this glorious, lighthearted comedy and then suddenly everyone just dies for no apparent reason. Unlike literally everything else in the fic, this attempt at humor is lost on me and I think it's because it's not really the comedic kind of absurd but just an utterly dark non-sequitur.
Promising to make things better in "the sequel" isn't helping, and I'm really trying to convince myself that it will. It could maybe work if instead of a sequel part 2 was the second half of the story? That way you're not left with the "Complete" flag taunting you that "sorry, that's it" with a sort of finality that's jarring, emotionally. :/
It might be that there really wasn't any precedent beforehand (all of the despair and violence before was overdone and quickly resolved positively), so the sudden downer and abrupt end pulls the rug out from under you. Dunno.
You know, I thought that ending was a little dark. But it didn't bug me too much because of the author's note.
Still, I do have a suggestion. Take the words "Bad End" right out of the chapter. That will help. Personally, that's all I'd do, but if you're really worried about audience reaction you could also add a sentence or two of comedy after that scene to alter the mood the audience goes out on (maybe put Spike sighing and going "again?" at the end of this story instead of the beginning of the next, that shouldn't change your plans too much since you're just moving a scene slightly but would completely alter audience reactions, I be).
I think a lot of the audience reaction is from two things. First, extreme moodswing. People react worse when they think they're getting one thing and get another than they would if just handed the thing without expectations. Second, recency effect. People remember the last part of something better than the rest so ending on something has more impact than if it were in the middle (which is why even a short joke at the end would largely alter reactions).
I trust you. Upload that sequel soon though. I want to see where this goes.
Terrible ending, one of the worst i've read these past 3 months. Look you just can't do that, taking a different direction is hard work and you failed miserably at it, just look at the amount of people saying it's all wrong, this is a time you have to listen to readers because if you don't fix it, you will not have a pretty time on here.
There are rules to writing and you broke the most important one, promising your readings of event eg. Happy Twilestia.
I think the change in Celestia's reaction could be helpful, as long as it still makes sense for her to want to work with Nightmare Moon.
I think, based on what you've said here, that yeah, her reaction was a bit much. I can see her being upset that she put in all this work and effort, psyched herself up and then had the ending happen. But it does seem unlikely that, given everything that happens in that universe, she would be that distraught. Or have her reaction be over the top, but everyone else react more rationally. Or anything. There just wasn't enough explanation or reason given for almost any of the events at the end. Why is Celestia so over the top sad? Why did any of that happen? How are the other characters reacting? Why is Nightmare Moon there? It all sort of compounds itself where each thing, taken individually isn't that big of a deal. But there was just too much.
I rambled a bit. You seem to have a grasp on what frustrated some people, and some ideas for potential changes, so you do what you think you need to do. If nothing else, I trust that you are a better writer than I given my 0 stories.
Honestly, I thought the end of Garterbelt was a massive copout. I'm not saying this was, though I do kind of think it's a really weird if not wrong step. But that ending was sort of a huge copout--like, it's not really funny or even coherent, and it while yeah the show was super wacky it just... like it felt as if they lost the last two pages and then gave up and asked the kid who wrote "Half Life Full Life Consequences" to write the last minute.
I kind of held off after the first chapter cause it was proceeding apace and I figured I could marathon it all in one gulp but... I probably still will but if my impression of where you went from that first chapter is right, I'm not sure it's going to be an experience I'll enjoy. The "twist" ending is a gambit, and it's honestly not one I've seen pulled off well more than once or twice in millions of words. Stephen King even screwed it up. Tonal shift from light to suicide note bleak, having an ending that's disconnected from the beginning, introducing last minute conflicts or anatagonists, killing any character that has a name and a story--these things are all gambits, and every gambit you attach to a piece of fiction is a risk. The more you pile on, the more the story grows unstable and a story can and will break.
I'm reminded of sunnypack's Twilight's Twilight which had a similar situation. There was like six chapters of mostly silly comedy with a little bit of dark humor and a few genuinely heartfelt moments. And then the end involves Twilight having not gone back in time at all, but having created a mini-universe that she visited after forgetting about it, meaning that not only did she never value any of their lives, but that hse never considered any of them real ponies. She then attempts to murder them all without really feeling any remorse about it. The ending was completely different in tone, not open-ended but really more incomplete, and while factually supported (it worked coherently) wasn't really supported by the story itself in any way. It felt like a copout, a cheat.
I say all of this not to say that's what your ending is. I haven't read it yet, and I will and when I do I'll try to offer a more informed opinion of it if you'd like. Whether or not the ending is seriously out of sync or not, whether or not its a misstep, I think you can learn a valuable lesson or three here. If nothing else--every gambit, every risk you take must be taken with calculation or at least with the knowledge that you are in fact taking a risk. Don't let it catch you blindsided. I also think a good takeaway here would be that there's kind of a difference between leading your readers to a place they didn't expect and yanking the rug out from under them, and sometimes the difference is more subtle than we imagine--and abandoning the reader entirely is not good. Fiction is an oath solemn and sacred, and you've a duty to them as they also bound themselves to you and so while you can pull on their emotions, play with their expectations, and even shock them, you can't jerk them around. Hell, you should seriously consider avoiding even the appearance of screwing with readers in the deeper, not-cool way.
I'm surprised you planned out that far, same as Moriarty. Jury is out on the merits of it--I don't plan that far out as much but some do and it works for them.
If thats what you were going for I think you were missing one key element from your example: the confused bystanders going "wtf".
Everyone in the scene you wrote is really into how dramatic what happened was!
But hey, if that will be rectified in the sequel then you dont need to feel obligated to change it: there isnt really any barrier to clicking the link to go read the new story on the exact same free site as the first one (its not like you're leaving a cliffhanger for us to go buy the next book!)
Looking over your blog, I think you are guilty of majorly misreading your audience
1. I'm not sure basing your ending of an MLP fanfic on the humor of South Park and a semi-obscure(I don't watch anime but the first response here is surprise you watch it so it can't be that well known) anime the best idea, especially when there's been no reference to them before. It's not a deal breaker but maybe not that smart
2. Plenty of people here have dealt with cancelled and unfinished fanfic, one of my favorites ever was cancelled with it probably less than half done, so saying this isn't the end is not reassuring. Especially after a bad end after a major moodswing. I bet almost everybody around here remembers A Might Demon Slayer Grooms Some Ponies, after all
3. I think a lot more people subscribe to the idea that Nightmare Moon is a possessing entity than you may realize. So that means you ridiculous ending after the gut punch where Nightmare Moon appears and does the exact opposite of what you'd expect actually appears as Nightmare Moon appears and does exactly what you would expect if she wanted to corrupt Celestia, which is possible after this kind of emotional trauma. And I do think it should be emotionally traumatic because this kind of stuff has a history of lasting thousands of years even if they aren't dead. There should be no "I leave you alone for five minutes" reaction unless it was a state of shock she has to be snapped out of.
I mean, I may be misreading other fans so you can't automatically take my word for it.
Now as for rewriting the epilogue, Celestia acting like it's less of a big deal would be a totally inappropriate reaction. You want to do an alternate ending, my advice do one as if you're not doing sequels and everything worked out fine. It's the only thing I'm interested in reading right now, and I really don't trust your writing for anything more
Buy the way Moonie acting like Shy and Pinkie and claiming it was Luna making her nasty would be totally unbelievable and an obvious lie to manipulate Celestia
4089748 Yeah, have to agree with you there Moriarty. (And as a Sherlock Holmes fan, love the name!) That dramatic shift in tone pretty much ruined the story for me. It was what none of what any of the readers were expecting, and while subverting expections is good and all, you don't do it like that and completely change a story's mood without any prior build-up.
Yeah, the problem here is the complete tonal whiplash. If you had done me I leave you alone for five minutes and this happens, that would have been fun.
Also, citing the Crystal Empire issues of the comic isn't Imo a good move on the grounds that that was textbook Worfing and not really good writing to cite
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Yup. I'm several chapters behind, and this is exactly why, after seeing this blog post, I'm just bailing on the whole thing. I thought I was reading a Changeling Courtship Rituals style demented rom-com, not... whatever the heck this apparently is.
One of my problems with the whole story has been pacing. Your pacing has been completely off through the whole thing. It starts as a light RomCom, then goes to a slapstick adventure with Cel + Cad playing burglars, then it goes dark and tragic at the end. You've never been able to convince me you knew what you were doing chapter to chapter and it always felt like you were just winging it as to what you were going to say in any one chapter. But maybe you were going for that, I don't know.
But, more specific, my problem with the ending you had was it read as if it was FINAL; THAT THERE WOULD BE NO MORE. That's how it felt when I read the penultimate chapters. THEN in the final chapters Nightmare moon walks on stage and I'm going, WTF? It felt forced and bolted on, like it was a cheap way of continuing your story. I honestly didn't think you were serious about a sequel even with the Author's Note saying you were going to do it.
But in an effort to offer something positive out of all of this, if it was me, here's how I would have done the Epilogue:
First, I wouldn't have named it 'Epilogue' - that signifies finality. And you're setting up for a sequel. To me, those don't mix well. So right off the bat, when I start reading, I'm thinking 'last chapter; end of story'. That sets up my mindset for the chapter. I'm assuming I wasn't alone in that thinking either. But there's nothing wrong with ending this story and then continuing in another story for the next 'book' of the series, you did pick a good point for that. But the use of 'Epilogue' just confused things.
Next, I would have seriously changed Celestia's dark, 'my world just ended' drama moment at the end of the chapter. It wasn't funny, rather, it was dramatic. And yes, it was tense, and yes, it delivered a true gut punch. BUT! It didn't fit the rest of the story! It was a flawless delivery for what could be some type of Grecian tragedy where the Universe *IS* out to get you. But that wasn't the rest of the story! The rest of the story was funny. Had it been Celestia going over the top with her crying to the point of being ridiculous with wailing and gnashing of teeth and screaming, "Why, Faust!? WHY!? MY WORLD IS OVER!" only to have Nightmare Moon come on the stage, then it would have fit more like the rest of the story: humorous and unexpected. But you gave us a perfectly executed "kick in the crotch" and gave us nothing to laugh at or, honestly, any reason to believe that there was any reason to expect anything funny.
So there you go. My $0.02.
To me, it had nothing to do with the tonal shift. To me it was the fact that a satisfying conclusion was taken away for the purpose of sequel bating. The title of the story is "The Trials and Tribulations of Trying to Date Twilight Sparkle, implying that they would at least going on a date. If Celestia had confessed to Twilight and Twilight agreed to go on a couple of dates and then the whole turning to stone thing happened before we found out if Twilight reciprocated those feelings, it would've been more satisfying, cause we would've gotten what we were mostly expecting.
You're planning on doing 3 sequels for this story, does that mean we won't get to see what happens between Celestia and Twilight until the final part? If that's the case, then by the time we finally get to that point, nothing that happens will honestly be satisfying enough. Also, planning out 3 sequels before you're even done with the first part is honestly a little ridiculous. I mean, what's gonna happen if you get a great idea with this part or the next part that completely changes story? You're essentially restricting any ideas that you may get on different directions for this story to go. Now, I'm not saying that you shouldn't be thinking of sequels while writing the story, but don't completely plan it out in case of deciding to change the outcome of the previous story(s).
You say you can't change it, but truthfully you don't want to change it
To be honest, it was the epilogue that got to me. Having the rest turned to stone? I felt it fit the story. I could dig that. But suddenly having Nightmare Moon appear out of nowhere when Luna was already turned to stone? That's the bit that irked me. It was just so blatant and sporadic that I didn't find it humorous. It was jarring, and was a bad fit with the rest of the story.
If you didn't end this like that and just write more in that fic (not making sequel) then ppl won't rage over it so much
You know what would have instantly made this a better story? If it had ended on Celestia getting the present for Twilight and the second story started on them being turned to stone, being the inciting incident for the second story. As it stands you've got it organised all wrong and that's what seems to me is causing the problem.
since i didnt get to read the last chapters of the story i have no opinion of my own i can only form a theory of how badly you fucked up this story if it went from only 31 dislikes to 94 dislikes over the course of a couple of days.
the answer
VERY badly fuck up whatever you did never do it again it didnt work the first time and i doubt it will work if you try it again from what ive pieced together you ended a comedy romance on a dark note which is not cool
BUT like i said thats just me putting my opinion on what ive gathered of what im now unable to read for myself
So, your story's Comedy tag is exist for " at least in theory humorous " ?
Well, so we can expect that you will write more " at least in theory humorous " on your sequel?
Nah, everyone should run away now.
Thank you for your reasoned response to readers concern. And i think your view that the readers have a different take since we don't know what will come later is s big part of people issue.
One of the trials of trying to date twilight being that she randomly turned herself and the rest of the ruling class to stone? That fits in perfect on its own. One more thing for celestia to have to deal with on top of the rest. It would disrupt her plan for the picnic, maybe ruin the book in the process of fixing, cause more slapstick mayhem.
While it could have led to great (and still might) interactions wiyh more cast members (element bearers, NM, blueblood, etc) by having it be a jarring end, with a really brutal depressive feel the reader was left feeling completely thrown out of the story. It broke suspension of disbelief and broke emersion leaving the feeling of a forced "rocks fall everyone dies"ending.
And i have to agree with an earlier comment. If book one ended with celestia finding the perfect ribbon and then thinking "today is going to be perfect, just like this ribbon" and then the sequel started with the sad tone and surprise NM it would have also seperated the tones in a manner that didn't leave the reader feeling like everything was dead and they should go home. By being the first chapter the readers would be waiting to see what happens, instead of feeling it was a conclusion. In that case the chapter wouldn't even need any serious alterations, just in case the sad tone was really wanted in the end.
I will be waiting to read the next book, I'm curious where it will go. My main worry now is that the sequels will keep us from dealing with the original story for a long time and feel like several unrelated, tangential works that could have been side stories but we're forced into the work.
I've generally enjoyed your works so I'm going to keep reading for awhile, trust in your abilities and all. But thank you again for addressing or concerns over how the end of this story felt.
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Huh. That would have worked as well. Earlier, I recommended putting some comedy aftermath in this story (namely the one under spoilers with Spike getting a cart and saying "Not again" ) instead of the Nightmare Moon epilogue and moving the Nightmare Moon stuff to the next story, but moving all the dark stuff to the beginning of the next story is another good idea, even if I like my proposal slightly better, I think that's just a matter of taste.
Basically, I now hold the opinion that ultimately the problem was it ended at exactly the wrong time instead of slightly earlier or slightly later.
And on further reflection, I'm going to highly recommend doing one of these two rather than leaving as is.
I spent a surprising amount of today thinking about the end of this story in the shower, at work, driving home, etc and trying to coalesce my thoughts on it. A fair amount of time spent trying to figure out what specifically about the ending made me change an upvote to a downvote for the first time in four years on this website. I'm not a very eloquent person so I can't express my thoughts as well as many people below me already have but I can leave short descriptions of what I can recognize as the largest gripes. I also want to make it clear beforehand that up until this point I've loved every thing you've written including the vast majority of this story.
- The fact there's multiple sequels already planned. Why? The point of a sequel is to add an additional adventure to a preexisting universe. Sequels are what follow a standalone story. This does not feel like a standalone story. You used The Empire Strikes Back as your example of a sequel ending similarly in the authors note but I don't think it works. Celestia's overall goal was to date Twilight Sparkle but no payoff was achieved. Yes, The Empire Strikes back ends on a rather dour note setting up for the next movie but the characters still accomplished goals they set out to achieve within the story. Luke learned of Yoda and received Jedi training, the Rebellion was attacked by the Empire but managed to escape and survive, and Han and Leia were hunted by but managed to escape the empire. I'd have felt infinitely better about this ending if Celestia had at least gotten a chance to talk to Twilight and confess her love before she was turned to stone. Even if we didn't get Twilight's answer I would have felt like some payoff was achieved after nearly forty-thousand words leading to this moment. Additionally, if the sequels were planned from the start and already partially written why mark the story "complete?" Why not just have the sequels be additional chapters since you've said yourself that this is all just one big story?
-You say in this blog that you were going for random humor with the ending. There's nothing wrong with random humor but it's one of the hardest to achieve. There's a fine line between Catch-22 and Son of the Mask. Both rely on random humor quite a bit but one is considered the best novel of the 20th century and the other is one of the most mocked and poorly reviewed films ever made. With that in mind this ending leans pretty hard towards the latter. Usually even bad random humor can still be recognized as an attempt at humor but I honestly didn't even have the slightest clue that this ending was supposed to be humorous. Not for one second did I realize it was supposed to make me laugh. That may be a failing on my part but from my end it seems to be a complete failure of communication between the author and the reader.
-The complete lack of buildup to the tonal shift. For this I'm going to use your example of The Empire Strikes Back again. In Empire the entire story revolves around a group of characters fighting against a brutal dictatorship. The threat of violence and death is ever present hanging in the back of our minds even during the happy scenes so when Luke gets mutilated and Han gets frozen in carbonite it doesn't feel like the movie took a one-eighty because this has always been a potential outcome. When this light-hearted, wacky, romantic comedy set in cartoon horse land turns into a Greek tragedy it doesn't feel so much like the story took a one-eighty as feeling like the theater was doing a reel change and accidentally started showing a different movie partway through. It'd be like if halfway through No Strings Attached a man burst through the door and shot Ashton Kutcher's character repeatedly in the face forcing Natalie Portman's character to go through a Taken style hunt to find his murderer and kill them. If there's no basis for the shift to occur upon than it feels completely artificial and unsatisfying to the audience thereby removing any form of investment in the story they had.
I have a few more gripes I'd like to add but I can't really figure out how to word them and it's six in the morning so instead I'm going to end it on this. I really want to be wrong. I really want you to blow me away with the sequels and restore my faith in this story again but as for now I have almost no interest in reading them after the taste this ending left in my mouth.
I've literally never met anyone who liked the way Panty & Stocking ended. That final minute is almost universally reviled for being a complete asspull. Might be something to reflect on...
That's exactly how it should be from the very beginning. The whole crying and "they all are DEAD" thing kinda derailed me from the first read. Plus two words "The End" gave the feeling of absolute finality and despair.
Just play it in more casual way make Celestia sad that her date is ruined and then let her roll her eyes at petrified Luna along with the line "not this s**t again" or "That's it. I'm going to put a fuse on the elements of harmony." and with that additional element with Spike it will be just absolutely hilarious.
I must admit that I really liked what you did with this story, I fully support the idea "give Celestia as much troubles as possible like in a silly romantic anime" and I am fully supportive of an idea to get Nightmare Moon into this (i still hope you'll give us a generic explanation regarding why is she here and why did the elements misfired). Maybe to avoid this awful feeling of finality, given in the last chapter, you might consider joining together the story and it's sequel as a part of a bigger story? Plus that might help you to avoid some other difficulties.
A description of this story heavily implies that it contains romantic relationships between Twilight and Celestia, but now when you declared about writing five sequels it feels sort of misleading. On what exact point of this long story do you plan to get them together, because waiting for five parts feels a little too much.
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the one time the Elements, which the Rainbow power seems equivalent of, were undone easily it took the willing participation of all six bearers. Otherwise it seems very long term
Changing the tone of the ending will go a long way to fix the problems I have with it.
I'm still mad we never got to the dating part this whole story though. You better have something magnificent planned for these sequels, including one where Twilight and Celestia actually interact for more than a chapter.
Also, why aren't the shenanigans with NM just part of this story? If it is just a direct continuation of this story then it might as well be part of this story.
Also as a side note I find it a little weird and annoying (weirnoying?annoeird?) that everyone is saying that the ending is so off the entire tone of the story when this isn't even the first time you've turned Twilight to stone in this fic, and it fits well into the romance tag. Maybe it's the "The End" that's making those feelings too strong. I dunno, am I weird that I read authors notes? Wasn't the end people.
Two comments here:
First, having Celestia's reaction be shock and exasperation instead of apparent grief and despair would have worked much better, though it still shouldn't be the end of this story. It would be confusing, but the sense of having your heart ripped out and stomped into the ground (which is the primary humor killer here) would be gone.
Second, planning out so many sequels in advance is a bad idea. I cannot stress this enough. It seems perfectly reasonable inside your head, but the very best stories are the ones that take on a life of their own and run away from you. Putting down specific plans too far into the future will only result in those plans having to change. You need to have a point where the story ends, a single overarching plotline to prevent door stopper tendencies, but anything more only gets in the way. This is something I learned from hard experience, and has resulted in more than one abandoned story.
If you have 11k words setting you down a bad path, you toss them out and start over. I've lost track of the number of times I've tried to write a scene, gotten a few paragraphs in, realized what I'd decided to do wasn't working, and scrapped everything I've written. I've cut out entire scenes when they didn't work. That is the nature of writing, and if you can't discard failed text you won't be able to progress. Cutting it up and adapting some fragments into the rewrite is fine, but being overly attached to work you've already done will do nothing but drag you down.
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What are you even talking about with this one?
4091004 Excerpt from Chapter 1
Yes it was a dream sequence but it was still the starting tone of her realizing her love for Twilight
4091015 You are aware that there's a fundamental difference between...
A) a dream sequence the audience knows is both a dream sequence and a starting incident, and
B) turning her to stone for real as the random ending
...right?
4090828
We know it wasn't the end, but the thing is, even when you're doing a multi-part story, each individual part should still complete their story before moving on. Like the Harry Potter series for instance, there was an overarching story, so a lot of things were left unclear till the end, but the stories within each individual part still found a conclusion
4091030 It wasn't played as a known dream sequence and the authors note made it clear that, while not a dream sequence, the end was the beginning of the rest of the story not the end end.
Celestia dreams a nightmare where she finally admits she loves Twilight which turns Twilight to stone. Finally is about to confess to Twilight and Twilight gets turned to stone. Given how much the author planned the rest of the story ahead I'd say that was meant to be foreshadowing.
4091042
As I said before I felt the "The End" was probably a bit much. That incomplete tag still being there as you opened the chapter would have probably been better.
4091056
No, it wouldn't have, because he still would've said "That's the end of this part of the story." Sorcerer's Stone didn't say the end at the end of that, but the story in that part of the series still reached a satisfying conclusion, which this part of this story did not.
4091116 I'm operating on two hours of sleep right now, the way I worded it was weird but I was agreeing that ending it there rather than the next chapter was wrong. Using the analogy you keep using it was like ending Harry Potter on Harry defeating Voldemort and Quirrel.
I was never disagreeing with that criticism, just the one that the way it ended was a tragedy that didn't belong in a Romantic Comedy, and the heated nature and the level to which some (not all) of the criticism was getting (mind you I said I wasn't reading what was already posted here so the comments I saw are on the story itself). Constructive criticism never involves insults and threats, that is destructive criticism.
Playing it for laughs instead of the current serious version would make it much more palatable. It was frankly ridiculous to expect grief over the sudden petrification; even before Nightmare Moon showed up there was no reason to expect they would remain petrified. At first I thought Celestia was supposed to be having a silly Darth Vader Nooooooo moment and then everyone else would roll their eyes and discuss their zany plan to undo things. There is no way having everyone just be petrified when she showed up can be taken seriously; and the attempt to have the ending be briefly serious was what made that chapter so lame.
I don't honestly care what you plan or how others think they are entitled but I'm just saying you should finish this story before you plan sequels and while it's always up to the author as to where a story goes, there is a certain momentum that pushes them along and sometimes the obvious ending is the only good ending.
As a side note I think the tone of the ending just fell flat, celestial throwing a fit about it would be better but Its your story