Afterthoughts on Cake Thieving

Spoilers for the story will probably be spilled below, so beware if you haven't read the whole and don't want to spoil the ending. It is a mystery after all

This will be mostly stream of thought, with maybe some structure thrown in, so beware. Murky waters ahead.

I can't rightly remember what it was that inspired me to write this story. I believe it was something to do with filling a gap in knowledge about what happened before Twilight discovered that Nightmare Moon was coming back, and how she came to pursue that line of knowledge. Originally, there was supposed to be an actual thief, but that got scrapped rather early on, about the same time that I lost the thread of the story and disappeared for two years. I had pushed and pushed to get over the hump, to the point that writing was no longer fun for me. Well, that, work, and personal matters, and politics, but I've settled with that part of my brain for now and come back to an even keel.

Originally, Twilight was going to visit her parents in a long and protracted scene that would lead her to a clockmaker's shop who knew something about the myth of the Cake Thief, and would throw Twilight down another twisty path, but the writing of how she got there twisted against my grasp, and I kept taking it off on other tangents unrelated to the main story for the purposes of pure world building, which kept leading me deeper into that warren and farther from the story.

Shining Armor was also supposed to arrive, and talk with the guards on her behalf, but that would have thrown the story down an entirely different track... and then there was the nebulous time limit of so many days before the thief was supposed to strike. I don't think I ever nailed down in the early story or my drafts exactly how long it was until Hearth's Warming Eve, which definitely hurt me in planning.

So, when I came back, I threw out the original plans for a semi-adventure through Canterlot and had Twilight oopsie with the trunk, set a solid time for the day as two days, which also allowed me to bring Shining Armor to her, instead of haring off away from the plot. It also kept Twilight close to the physical core of the plot, and let me make use of Crunchy and Muffins more readily, and then equally as readily, with Hearth's Warming Eve literally tomorrow, get them out of the picture.

With the time limit, I now had limited area to work in, and that made it paradoxically easier to fill in that area instead of trying to find my way through a tangle of unlimited possibilities. Everything I thought of would have to work in that time frame, and be mostly improvised on Twilight's part, throwing out an earlier plan I had for an elaborate trap to catch the thief and be more of an amateur hour stakeout.

Luna... Was half a surprise. I knew I wanted her to be a part of it from the beginning, and for her presence to be a melancholic one, befitting a fallen sister, but having her be corporeal and in full possession of her faculties instead of a whispering ghost kinda snuck up on me, but I think it worked out better in the long run, with actual things happening, and concepts and places being explored, rather than Twilight silently following a plate of cupcakes around the castle.

Protip for writers: If nothing is happening in your story, and you're bored with it, your readers probably will be too. Action!

Anywho... The resurgence of the Shadow thing was also somewhat of a surprise, but also tacked with a plan I had (after including her) for Luna's memories to come back slowly through the course of their conversations in the time slip, building up to her butting up against the fight with her sister, and realizing what it was she had thrown away, and what the shadow had coerced her into being a willing partner for, ending with her fleeing back to the numb sanctuary of nothingness for another five years, not returning to haunt the castle until Twilight 'graduated'.

As for the epilogue... I thought Twilight's return to Canterlot, alone save Spike, was a perfect opportunity for her to reunite with Luna on a personal level, and just happened to coincide with roughly a thousand nights between the Season two "Luna Eclipsed" and the season 5 "Amending Fences", if you take the seasons to be years (as I did for the purposes of having a time passage happening). Twilight, having only the one lost memory in the time slip, recovered first, before either Celestia or Luna could.

It should also be noted that the next episode after Amending Fences was the one featuring Luna and the Tantabus, "Do Princesses Dream of Electric Magic Sheep" (I have to correct myself every time I type that). That, too, was an opportunity that I fully suborned for my own purposes of deepening the story, even if no one's commented on it yet. It was still fun to have the reference there for myself.

And I think that's about all the thoughts I have accumulated for the story thus far. Feel free to prod me with questions or comments. I'm much more sociable than I was when I was not being sociable.

Addendum: My editor has reminded me of how it actually all started: That Celestia was indeed going to be the thief, that Twilight was going to be much younger, fillial age in fact, and she was going to Puppy Dog Eye Celestia into apologizing for the thefts. It grew quite considerably from that rather humble, cute beginning.