//------------------------------// // Final Apology--Author's Notes // Story: Kiss of the Dark // by Soothing Stone //------------------------------// Let me answer your first question. No, I'm still not aiming to continue the story. There would have been two more chapters to close out the story. That out of the way... Where do you begin with this? I dont really know. It's been three months and I still haven't fully recovered. I really don't want to whine all the time, so let's begin with how and why the ending fiasco happened. In short, the good ending was the planned ending since the beginning. After the climax, I planned to have Twilight wake up at Celestia's castle, free of Sombra's influence but still loving him. Tia would arrive, and Twilight would grow ashamed over her actions. But Tia would push those fears aside and said she still loves Twilight, knowing that Sombra deceived her. She promises to help Twilight heal from her mental scars. Then three months later, Twilight has now recovered a bit, but its later discovered she's pregnant with Sombra's child. She swears her child will not grow up to be like his father, and rather be more like his mother. But that was my game plan all along, and I'll explain why this all happened for those who don't know yet or haven't read my blog posts. If you have, skip down a while. So I wrote along to what I was planning to do and such, until I read a comment explaining in great detail why my original ending was not a good idea, and why doing a darker turn would have been better. And then I realized I had nothing to argue. I don't think I realized it as peer pressure for a long while, because I certainly didn't see it that way. It was more like wondering how I missed that and feeling dumb for not seeing it this way. So in my head, I wrestled with the two endings, and ultimately felt like the bad ending was the better choice solely because the sequel plan sounded awesome to me. But once it was uploaded, I felt guilty about it for two reasons. One, while I don't think dark fiction is bad, I realized quickly that i don't like to do dark endings. I like happier endings, even if the good ending would leave Twilight scarred for life. And two, I realized it wasn't really my ending that I just wrote. It wasn't my intention to just switch endings like I did, it was a quick change of heart. And I knew some wanted the dark ending to stay. That's why the final version happened. I figured that if I kept the dark ending up but wrote the finish my way, it would make everyone happy. And yeah...didn't turn out like I thought it would. I think the thing that pushed me to cancel the story wasn't only the backlash, but how the guys who supported me were getting six to ten down votes. I didn't want anyone else to go through a backlash I caused. And in retrospect, when I think about what that experience did to me, it broke me for two months. By July "a walking zombie" described me well, and I had to fight just to be sane for a while. Writing was pretty much the only thing keeping me up, and the reactions to it and the fanbase i was getting. I want it to be made clear that I blame myself for what happened. The ending fiasco was my fault in the end, and if I had stuck to my original plans, this could have been avoided. And I paid the price for it big time. Do I plan to write again? I already have, but its nothing pony related for the most part. I got a virus on my PC that's forced me to stick with a tablet to this day, so even if I did write, I couldn't really upload it here for the time being. I don't think I'm going to write pony fan fiction for a while, but you never know... I just hope to God, above all, that I'm forgiven one day for this, and that writing this apology of sorts can put this story behind me forever.