Author's Notes For Rarity Reveals · 9:17pm May 15th, 2017
AUTHOR'S NOTES FOR RARITY REVEALS...
Hello and thank you for reading this story, the antepenultimate entry in Sunset's Recovery Arc. Like always I appreciate your reading this blog post. As I write this post, waiting for the story to go public, I wonder how it will be received. I hope readers like it. No matter how many stories one has written and/or posted, one still worries, y'know?
If you've come here from the general feed and saw this before I linked it within the story itself, please click the friendly green button for my thoughts on, because I have more than a few.
Anyone who reads my posts regularly (all two of you) knows that this story has been in the works for a long time. I've been hinting at Rarity's proclivities toward Sunset since the very first story in this arc a year and a half ago, and I've been dropping little nuggets since then in many of the arc's stories since. Some readers noticed and pointed out the potential. I told them to "wait until Sunny feels better", since it really is a very bad idea to try a romance with someone in a bad place mentally. But also, it was because I had this story planned already and didn't want to spoil it.
This was a tough story for me to write, because I really wanted to do the setup justice. That's why I turned to CoffeeMinion, as he had just finished a wonderful romance story that I helped proof (Heavy Rock - read it!!), so when he offered his services upon my request for another pair of eyes, I gladly took him up on it. His editing suggestions and advice made the story at least 20% better. Probably more.
He even helped me come up with the final title. We went back and forth several times on the name -- originally it was simply "Rarity's Photoshoot", which I admitted I didn't like. Then he suggested something to do with the envelope on the table, which I tried but felt was lacking. I briefly considered "The Gift", but that's way too cliché for a fic title and I'm pretty sure it's been done at least three times here. Then he suggested "Revealing Rarity". I liked it a lot, but I came back with "Rarity Reveals..." with the ellipses adding some ambiguity and also better couching the double meaning. We both agreed that that was it.
Dusk Melody also offered his services, though regretfully for both of us his schedule prevented him from aiding me as much as he wanted. I'm still grateful for his encouragement throughout the process.
Even with help proofreading, I'm the type who always insists on doing the final edit myself, which I did last night after finishing some preliminary work on Sunset's next arc. A tweak here, a tweak there; I wound up adding many words to the story, to the point that by FimFic reckoning, it's exactly 4,000 words (3,922 by Word's count).
I'll level with you; I choked up while editing Rarity's scene on the moped. It's just absolutely heartbreaking to me. I haven't felt this emotional about a story since Night of Faded Sun -- that one and Lows & Highs are still hard for me to read aloud because the emotions in them are so raw and personal.
I've waffled back and forth on whether or not to keep the "Romance" tag, since the romance is very obviously one-sided. Rarity obviously makes an attempt at romance, even if it fails. As I write this, I'm still not sure whether or not it'll be there when the story goes live. In fact, I put it in and removed it while it was in the post queue. By the way, this is probably as close as you're going to get to romance from me, dear readers. All love is unrequited in my universe, and I don't write clop.
Rarity's proclamation at the end where she insists she's not giving up came as a real shock to me when I wrote it. It wasn't planned at all; she was just supposed to walk home sobbing, but she obviously had other ideas. I actually really love it when characters get away from me like that because it shows that their personalities are developed enough in my mind that it's more than just sticking words in their mouths; they have a voice and will use it. That sort of dynamic almost always makes a story better.
Fun Fact: I finished this story and sent it off to Coffee and Dusk before I even started Spider Queen. That meant I had to go back later and add in some call-backs to SSSQ so things wouldn't seem too anachronistic, especially since I wrote SSSQ in part to more explicitly set up events in this story.
So, as of now, I've already begun outlining the next (penultimate) story in the arc. Given that my pace is about on par with that of a snail, no word on when it will be ready, but I'll try to have it out as soon as I can; I've had a strong desire lately to work on this arc rather than side stories. I can't even get a Burritoverse fic off the ground… not for lack of trying.
Anyway, I appreciate you reading this far, and I thank everyone who has followed me and encouraged me at any point over the last two years. I hope you'll continue to support me as I bring the Recovery Arc to its conclusion.
Peace out!
I like the final round of tweaks. I think changing the one line to mention spider silk was a great callback to SSSQ! Overall I think there's no denying that it packs an emotional punch.
4534376 - Then I did my job.
Yeah, the spider-silk thing was one of several last-minute changes I made last night when going through the text with my proverbial flea comb, and it just made sense to alter the line to put in another reference to SSSQ (there was already one near the end).
I know I already said in the story description and this blog, but thank you so much for your help! This story wouldn't have been nearly as tight without your suggestions.
4534389 Most welcome.
4534402 - Oh! Just thought you (and anyone else who reads this blog) might like to know I've just started on a new Sunset + Rarity story. It's been marinating in my brain for a while, but I wanted to get some of it down before I lost the zeal.
While I will give those two a proper romance fic eventually™ (after Recovery, and not canon to it), this story takes place immediately after EQG1's Fall Formal and involves Sunset buying a new leather jacket. Depending on how it turns out, it may become Entry #0 of the Recovery Arc.
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Sounds perfect. Really the main thing Recovery could benefit from is a clearer set of bridges back to canon, IMO. Like I know EQG1 and Rainbow Rocks happen somewhere in there but spelling it out a little more clearly would be great. And I know the guide has it, but... "show don't tell," right?
I'm obviously the poor sap reading them in-yet-out of published order, and I've made it here from the chronological beginning!
So I'm no longer sure how late or early I am to the party 
Loved this arc, and definitely looking forward to what else you are able to get out there!
On a more shallow note, I'm envious of sunsets position relative to being able to see those photos
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You know if you go to AmpersandXYZ's deviantART (or Derpibooru image #1347957), you'll find the original art that inspired me to write this story, although I did my best to accurately describe the piece down to the small details.
The harder part was describing photos that didn't already exist. For those, I thought about what my classmates and I did for senior photos a million years ago, and I added Sunset's running commentary to keep it from getting boring.
I mentioned in my last two blogposts that I'm having technical problems keeping me from being able to do much on this site. The last two Recovery Arc stories are complete on my end and have been for about a month. I wrote the non-canon Sunset×Rarity "Happy End" teased in this post a couple weeks ago. I've also completed one Burrito story and started another yesterday. All that while I've been slowly working on my big project -- a non-Sunset story that'll probably near or surpass 20k words once it's completed.
That's all well and good, getting all this writing out done, but I have a problem.
The problem is that Gdocs no longer works on my old computer at all, so I can't share any of these stories with Coffee or Dusk or whoever else would be crazy enough to work with me in order to get feedback, which I really need for both The Rejected and Recovery, because even with all the tweaks I've made to them since finishing, a second or third pair of eyes can be a good thing. "Rarity Reveals…" is a better story because of Coffee's input, and I like to believe that "Heavy Rock" was improved at least a little bit due to mine.
But I promise I will be at 100% soon. I want to get the last two stories out probably even more than my readers want to read them.