Director's cut: How To Frustrate Your Adorkable Alicorn · 6:20pm Jul 25th, 2020
If you have read Alicorns and Beards you know how bad Twilight Sparkle got carried away when she pretended to be learning why Eric Reed's beard stopped growing in Equestria. She started off truly trying to learn, but after she did, she kept the act going to mess with Eric, which was revealed at the story's end.
Now, I thought the twist was funny at the time, but not as much now, and a few in the comments simply hated it. After some debating, I decided to write How To Frustrate Your Adorkable Alicorn, or "HTFYAA" for short to try to fix it in a sequel, not try to see if I could edit the end of Alicorns and Beards or leave things alone.
In short, HTFYAA is pretty much a fix-fic to one of my own stories so I could give Twilight what she had coming to her. However, fix-fic or not, I wrote it as I would any other story, so its overall theme is light-hearted, as are most of my stories with my OC Eric Reed. There are some more serious ones, though, such as A Giant Adventure to Equestrla and The BSBFFs and LBBFF, especially the latter.
Now, I wanted to do something that I hadn't done yet for this story, so I quickly thought up the idea to have Eric use Mentalism tricks to mess with Twilight. As a bonus, these tricks can work in real life, so if you didn't know about them and want to try them out on your friends, your welcome
Before I get to the cuts and edits, if you've seen the season 1 MLP:FIM episode "Feeling Pinkie Keen" (Which I'm PRETTY sure you did if you're here), then you've already seen how the machine in chapter 4 looks: it's the same kind as the one Twilight hooked Pinkie Pie to in "Feeling Pinkie Keen".
Now for notable cuts and edits.
Chapter 1 had two edits. The first is a big edit: the second group of equations wasn't there in the early drafts. That was there to help sell it (to Twilight) that Eric was predicting the future. Of course, once she sat down and thought about it, she quickly figured out how he did it.
The second, much smaller edit was to Twilight's line about how she's the last pony to tell Eric he can't do something he really thinks he can. Originally, she added that if someone did, they'd answer to her. This was there to show the big sister in her, but I later thought it wasn't necessary. I'm now wondering if it really needed to be taken out at all. Oh well.
As for chapter 2, there's only one change worth saying. After Eric told Twilight that he counted how many questions she asked him on their first night together, he said in narration that he and Twilight did NOT "do" anything as a joke line. I liked the line, but it felt somewhat forced for some reason, so I took it during editing.
Now, chapter 3. Before I get to the edits, I STILL can't believe I accidentally published chapter 3 before it was ready! The few that got to see it before I caught what was happening and unpublished it got a peek on how my stories might look during the late stages of editing.
Okay, now for the changes in chapter 3 during editing.
The first edit is about Twilight apologizing again, or "again" in-universe, since her first one wasn't shown even in the prequel Alicorns and Beards, but was brought up at the end of the prequel. This apology was a late add-on. Considering HTFYAA is a fix-fic due to that incident Twilight was saying "sorry" for, why it wasn't there in the first draft is beyond me!
The second edit is about when Twilight teleported books to her while still in Eric's bedroom. She didn't do this at first, but after being tricked twice, it made sense for her to think she might need books on mentalism again, so she prepared for it. Since it didn't seem too unusual for Equestria to not know about the "carrot trick", I had it be something that no book Twilight had would know about. This also let the chapter end the same way before editing -- with Twilight running out of Eric's room about to lose it.
Chapter 4 has the biggest "edit" of all, depending on how you look at it. I wasn't planning to write it at all and only thought about writing this chapter after my screw-up with releasing chapter 3 too early. If you don't count that as an "edit", then chapter 4 actually has just one notable edit. Twilight wasn't in a chair during editing, but I added it in later.
It's not an edit, but it's fitting to mention here that bringing in Sunset Shimmer was done as an extra-punchline to the chapter. I wondered about bringing in other characters too, like Trixie, but didn't. I also wondered about having someone suggest to bring in other characters to help with Twilight's tests, so they could get a free dinner too, but have Twilight frantically say it was okay. She wouldn't have wanted to pay for more dinners. I was close to adding this, but I chose not to.
