Director's cut: Today's his BIRTHDAY?!

First off, I’ve been wanting to write a birthday story with my OC Eric Reed, and it has been overdue. 

However, I had trouble thinking of anything interesting outside of your generic birthday party. The closest to something that I thought was interesting was one where Eric thought the ponies forgot his birthday, just for them to catch him off-guard with a surprise party. The other factor was, nowadays, that I want my stories to not center around just him, since I generally try to have the canon characters have (at least) close to as much of the spotlight, if not more so. The forgotten birthday story would have given Eric a little too much of the spotlight if I went with this story with what I was thinking about at the time.

But, a few months ago, the idea for the “Today’s His BIRTHDAY?!” story came to mind, and is even a heavily rewritten version of a story that I struggled with and eventually scrapped; more on this will be on a blog I will make right after this one. As I said in chapter 2’s author’s notes, it was partly inspired by the trouble I had (and at the time of this blog, still am) with finding a PS5. In fact, some of the things that prevented Twilight, Starlight, and Spike from finding an arcade game happened to me during my Playstation 5 hunt, such as people buying several PS5s at a time or, to my ANNOYANCE, some people buying them just so they can resell them for twice its price or more on Ebay.

Anyway, back to the story. I had started on chapter 1 of this story about 4 months ago, but I stopped for a couple of months to focus on the other stories I was writing at the time.

The price for the arcade games wasn't a random number. I looked up the price for, as I call, arcade-style games, and (from what I found) the average price is between $500-$7,500. At least in my Eric Reed stories, the formula for how much  bits are worth is that 1 bit=$0.60, so 2,800 bits=$4,600. This number was changed as I was editing the story. In fact, the cheapest games the Flim Flam Brothers sold were originally 20,000 bits, or in dollars, $30,000!

As for noteworthy cuts & edits, there are a few.

The first was a cut that happened in chapter 1. After Twilight decided to buy Eric an arcade game, Spike originally joked about how she was happily going to pay up for a game, yet she refused to buy Eric & Spike a new bed that she thought “weren’t worth the bits” (but eventually did). This was a call-back to my older story “Twilight's Bookless Week (Celestia Help Us!!)” story.

But since I try to keep direct references to my other spin-off stories with Eric at a bare minimum, unless it makes too much sense for the characters to not do it, I took it out.

The second notable cut/edit is about Minuette. In the early drafts, she was just an unnamed random salepony, but I later thought it would be nice to use a canon background character, so I edited the character to be Minuette. If you’re not sure who Minuette is, she is one of Twilight’s old friends that she went to Canterlot to see in the season 5 “Amending Fences” episode. She also, initially, didn’t mispronounce “human” but I edited the mistake in. I thought it was a little funny.

While I’m at it, this isn’t an edit, but I thought about bringing in Moondancer, and came close to editing her in, but I changed my mind at the last second.

A third cut also happened a little later in chapter 2. After Twilight told Starlight and Spike about the Flim Flam brothers, Spike brought up an idea for Twilight to talk to her mom and dad about borrowing the bits she would need. She thought about it, but told Spike that their parents aren’t nearly as close to Eric as she, Spike, and Starlight are and thus might not offer the bits Twi would have needed. This could have stayed, but I didn’t think it was really needed.

The next edit was much bigger and happened in chapter 3.  Initially, Twilight, Spike, and Starlight just simply got to Great Buy in time, barely, and the drawing at Great Buy was something I added in during editing. If you have seen the movie’ Jingle All The Way” you know where I got the idea for the drawing at Great Buy from. I was hesitant to make this change, but I felt it was too good to not do. On a side note, it should be obvious, but I did mean to have the stores have names very similar to other, real-life stories, like Walmart or Best Buy.

Something that’s fitting to bring up here is how Twilight made Starlight apologize, and how Starlight herself did. It’s in the story’s comments about where I got the idea from, but it’s from a MLP comic dub, and this is the one.

Chapter 4 has the most overall edits of all the four chapters.

First, Discord wasn't in Twilight’s castle in the first and second draft, but added him in during the 3rd or so draft. This, by extension, brought in the roast Discord made of Twilight and Starlight when they said they don’t “freak out bad”. Twilight, Starlight, the earlier seasons of the show called, and they said you do.

Now, another edit I did was to how some of the other characters interacted with Eric as he was trying to “solve the case”. Originally, only Fluttershy and Apple Bloom made any comments. However, I wanted some of the other characters to be more than background characters at this point, so I edited things to have characters like Sweetie Belle and Pinkie make comments about something they noticed. In fact, the part with Rarity was added in late, but I thought her getting out of shape over thinking that Eric was talking like she’s an old mare was too good. As a bonus, I really like being able to have moments like this between the characters. It makes them more fun and somewhat more real. On another side note, I got a kick out of Twilight’s reaction when she saw Trixie got Eric a gift. When it comes to the brother-sister friendship Twilight and Eric have, I try not to characterize Twilight as a clingy or a big sister that’s too prone to being jealous (even if she has that trait a little) but if Trixie DID remember Eric’s birthday on her own...poor Twilight wouldn’t have handled the shame well!

One last edit is to what happened after Eric reminded Twilight & Starlight of what they had done for him and he knows they care a lot for him.

Spike originally pointed out how Starlight was willing to spend all the bits she had, and Eric was amazed, but more so at Starlight. Because I felt this weakened some of the feels somewhat regarding Twilight, I edited some of what was said. Below was in the second or third draft before the edit was made.

“Wait, you thought you were the worst?” Eric shook his head, both from bewilderment and amusement. “You were REALLY losing it bad this time to think that, Princess of Panicking! Just like my two human big sisters, you and Starlight are the best!”

“I agree,” Fluttershy said with a nod. “You two couldn’t do more for Eric if you tried.”

“Yep. Even most of Ponyville know how much y’all care about Eric,” Applejack agreed.

“You all should have seen how Twilight was running like a madmare trying to find that ‘perfect’ gift. Starlight was even willing to spend all the bits she had.”

“They did?” Eric asked, momentarily covering his mouth from amazement. “Starie, you were really willing to be broke for the rest of the month, for me?”

Starlight smiled bashfully. “Yeaaah. But you know me. I’ve done even more...drastic things than that is the past.”

“I’m not a pony to be...passive either.” Twilight’s lips curled into a bashful grin of her own.

“Aw!” Eric waved his hand toward himself. “Come here, big sises!”

Twilight and Starlight ran to Eric, and the three embraced in a group hug. Eric seemed to be uncaring about the punch on Twilight’s and Starlight’s coats by not flinching from it during the hug.

Lastly, this has nothing to do with edits, but Sunset Shimmer running in at the end was something I planned from the start. I wondered about writing a side story showing what Sunset was going to, but denied. If this story did better and had more interest in a sister story with Sunset, I might have gone on to write it.