I love love love this epilogue. It nicely ties up a lot of Scarlet's characterization, it's a smooth lead in to her next adventure, and it even allows us to have a bit of reconciliation with Redheart, which I hadn't expected but was honestly pretty touched by. A wonderful debut.

See you in Mareami Vice!

So many things about Scarlet make sense now and i love her even more.

Ah, Gruntilda. She was never the same after she decided zebras were cool and started speaking only in rhyming sentences. And then there were the incidents with the bears...
Well, we don't talk about the incidents with the bears. Especially not the third one.

In any case, congratulations on the completion of your first story. Fantastic stuff from start to finish; I'm looking forward to the next one whenever it may come.

8452521
What are you talking about? There was never a third incident with the bears. You dreamed that.

Well, you just pulled me into the mystery genre. For the first time in a long while, decided to revisit Agatha Christie's works since you said you derived some inspiration from it, and now I think I'm hooked.

So thank you for writing a wonderful story that I not only enjoyed, but that also opened up my eyes to a genre I had long forgotten. I eagerly await your next story, and I look forward to seeing another side of Scarlet with her other belle.

(Also, thank you for writing Scarlet with all her idiosyncrasies. It's nice to know I'm not the only one who feels these sorts of things.)

Thank you for the story, i found it interesting and i look forward to seeing what you do with these characters in the future

"Floral.. 'Til yesterday"
"Floral... 'Til yesterday"?

Congratulations on finishing your first story here, and on drawing an audience. :)

Any chance of you writing more mysteries? I really liked this one.

8452765
100% chance! Scarlet Letter will be returning in a future mystery.

8452772
Great! You seem to a a love of mystery, and I can't wait to read more of it. Honestly not usually my genre, but you write it well.

Congrats on finishing your first story! Can't wait to read more of Scarlet's adventures!

I like the whole dynamic of this story it fit plot and smut nicely together which other stories seem to have trouble doing.
This is my favorite story I have ever read and I am happy to hear you are making more.

8452568
Never really thought about it before, but you're right; the only explanation for bears driving cars is that it's just a bad dream.

I read this from start to finish and I'm still unclear as to whodunnit and why?

8453870
I feel like the answer to both of those questions is in chapter five, when Scarlet explicitly declares who the culprit was. And has a long conversation with them as to why she thinks they did it. Which they do not dispute.

Like, she literally points at the culprit and says "you're the culprit." Because they're the culprit.

If what you're saying is less "I missed the part where anything was revealed" and more "I read Scarlet's logic and I still don't understand it", I mean, that's potentially my bad and I'll do whatever I can to help ease your confusion, and take that into account for the next story. But there is an explicit "aha! it was YOU!" moment in the text.

8453870

You'll find the answer in the previous chapter.

"Simple Syrup, I'm here to tell you that you're a liar and a criminal," Scarlet spat back at her. "And tomorrow morning, everyone in the Society is going to know it."

Start from here and work forward.

Really nice epilogue! Scarlet being trans explains quite a bit of her personality. I look forward to seeing her next adventure. Thank you for this story! :)

Okay, well...

I am doing my best not to be too brutal here, as it wasn't bad, but...

First, the good. Technically it was well done. A few hiccups here and there, and the asides were nicely handled. Dialog felt fairly natural, not forced or stilted, and the pacing was brisk and reasonably even throughout.

The play/sex scenes were also very well handled.

Overall, it did show promise.

That said... (I do seem to be overusing the ellipses today.)

First, the tags. Adventure did not apply in the slightest, romance was only a sub-plot, not the main plot, so only Mystery really applied. Anytime you're using more than one genre tag, you should re-think, and anytime you're using more than two, you're doing it wrong.

Next, the entire thing was far too short to do the story any justice. Events were glossed over, a lot of details missing, not enough time to build up any real sense of suspense. It read more like a juvenile/YA mystery than anything actually geared at adults. A sort of smutty "Encyclopedia Brown". It needed at least twice the build-up that it got in order to have a significant impact. Character development also suffered accordingly, as we never get a real sense of who most of them are. For the most part they barely rise above straight or inverted tropes, and some never do. There's just not enough time or immersion for me to care about either the world or the characters, which is unfortunate, because I really did want to. And the sex/play scenes felt too long by comparison, even though they were fine in and of themselves.

On top of that, it read like a crossover, without having been tagged as one. I get from the commentary that it's probably a shared-world fic, but because I'm not familiar with that world, a lot of it didn't make sense. The descriptions of the Clocktower Society in the beginning were clear without being overwhelming, and helped to create the immersion necessary ; but the constant references without adequate explanation broke that immersion and just left me confused about some of the details. As did the author aside before the reveal, but that's just a personal dislike of a particular a stylistic device, not necessarily a flaw.

My biggest complaint is that it didn't feel like a MLP story, there was practically nothing there that really needed to be in Equestria. Change a few names and anatomical references, and it's just a garden-variety mystery, albeit a furry one. An argument could be made for an Alternate Universe (especially given the aforementioned CTS), but it wasn't tagged as one.

I did not dislike it, but I would have enjoyed it far more had it been developed more thoroughly, with more detail and better build-up, more character development, more explanation of the shared/crossover world for those not familiar with it, and better adherence to canon Equestria, or a more clearly-related alternate universe version of the canon world.

Despite all that, I'm looking forward to the next story in the series.

8466728
It's not a crossover with anything though, and a shared universe within fanfictions has never denoted needing a crossover tag.

8500735

Which entirely misses the point of the comment.

8500906
Specifically, I was replying to the point that:

 it read like a crossover, without having been tagged as one

I see the point you were trying to make there, that being the fact that the references rely on a user having knowledge of the original clocktower society fic, however the way you wrote the comment, specifically criticizing tags, implies that a solution would be better tagging. In that specific scenario though, it would've been wrong. The point was valid, the implied solution was not. It's not an issue that it's not tagged as a crossover fic, it's an issue that the author didn't do a very good job of elaborating on specific devices in the story which came from the CTS fanfiction in the first place. You shouldn't need to have prior knowledge, I agree, but criticizing it on the fact that it wasn't tagged as a crossover irked me, cause it would've been wrong to do so.

Yes, it's completely pointless to have even pointed it out, but just the way that specific bit was worded made me feel like I needed to interject.

8501072

Amazing what you can "prove" if you take quotes out of context. Read the rest of the paragraph and you'll see how far off you are in your assertion of my intention.

8501885
As I said, I'm quite aware of the intent, but my assertion was that the entire statement that it read like a crossover even considering the rest of the paragraph where you go in detail on how it's personal preference is fallacious, because it's not really a crossover. The entire reason I posted that first comment was semantics around it's crossover-ness, not to take an out of context quote and attack it. Look, I'm not here to start a flame war, but you're certainly not helping anything.

8506668

Oh FFS, of course it's not a crossover, that's why I said it read like a crossover, not that it was a crossover, and then went on to qualify that statement. You really need to work on your English comprehension.

For someone who is claiming to not want to start a flame war, you're engaging in an awful lot of ridiculous cherry-picking and distortion here.

8506668

8506849
Hey, y'all, I'd appreciate it if you guys would take this to PM if either of you feel the need to continue. I appreciate the relevant feedback and all, but this is turning into a back and forth in comments I'd rather keep focused on telling me how people feel about my story. ^^;

Excellent tale. I'm curious about Scarlet's relationship to Gilda. Does Gilda also have a relationship with Perique? Do they all "play" together?

8519713
They're a poly relationship with Scarlet as the center. And yes, all three of them do full on scenes together, and cuddle.

Gah!
Best mystery and ending!!💟😄💟💟😄😄😀😃😃💙💙💙
Fav.
Like.
Love!
Can't wait for the sequel.

Huzzah! Excellent golden age style mystery. I didn't manage to guess the culprit, but honestly I'm pretty terrible at actually solving mysteries ahead of time.

Scarlet's fears and anxieties felt very authentic. It's not a struggle I face myself, but it echoes the sentiments I've heard from friends that do.

Do you have any new writing projects you're working on? I'd love to see what else you can do.

This was flipping amazing.

8702971
omgwaityoujustread-

ahhhh, thank you ;;

8703196
Hee. Seriously, it was cute, clever, and very sexy! I sometimes have to sort of wade through parts of a story--even quite good stories--to get to the parts that really capture my attention, but this one pulled me along all the way through.

Interesting story. Very compelling. I actually got a little annoyed at the sex scene because I was so wrapped up in finding out who did it. But it was fun to read anyway.

I didn't figure out the culprit until someone's comment tipped me off. Even then, I didn't make the connection or figure out the motive. Maybe next time, I'll reread previous chapters and/or take notes. Even so, the start of chapter five threw me off a little, perhaps because I was so fixated on the one crime that it didn't occur to me that something sketchy might be going on beside it. More so because it was partly related to the main mystery, and implicated one of the other suspects.

But it was still fun to read. Kinda inspired my own idea, though I doubt I'll ever use it. Kinda on the fence about the CTS myself, though it does lend itself to some interesting and kinky stories. And I did already have an idea for a reformed King Sombra joining it to explore one of my stranger kinks I don't quite know what to do with. Which when combined with this story and its characters led me to the idea of The Bleeding Knife, a mystery involving one of Sombra's harmless inventions being altered for more sinister purposes. Again, doubt I'd do anything with it, but it does intrigue me so.

Thank you for the good read and the inspiration, even if I'm not sure what to do with the latter. Hope you write more good mysteries.

11094537
Hey! It's been forever since someone's commented on this story, and I was surprised to see it. I'm glad you ended up enjoying the whole thing!

Not sure what you mean about the beginning of chapter five implicating another character - what's going on there is that Scarlet is experiencing a stress nightmare, relating to the events of the previous chapter. Reading between the lines, what's going on is she's experiencing a dysphoria nightmare which has been heightened and made worse because she used a really powerful disgust mental trigger to break the spell cast on her in the previous chapter.

As for CTS, I haven't been active in the community for some time now, but I've met several lovely people there and I hope they're all doing well. That said, I'm all for striking out and working on your own mystery stories! I actually had a planned sequel to this story plotted out (well, partially) at one point and never wrote it - maybe if I ever drift back into MLP as a fandom more actively, I'll try it out.

11096865
I may have gotten my chapters mixed up. I apologize. Was trying to avoid spoilers for new readers, and didn't check my work. Pretty sure it was after Scarlett issues her challenge to the reader. The next chapter, she approaches two guards, so I thought maybe it was the guard captain, whose name just slipped my mind. Again, not really your fault since it's easy to doubt one's own guesses, especially if it's really a guess and not a thought out, solid theory on whodunnit. =P Which mine really was.

11097444
Ahhh, no, that makes sense. Yeah, the conversation with the guards was intentional. It's meant to be a bit of a red herring before the ending, with the reveal being that Praiseworthy is bad but not the culprit. Praiseworthy's entire motivation throughout the story is that she tends to let first impressions be her only impressions, so she gets scum vibes from High Tide and gets so hyperfocused on them that she goes out of her way to sidetrack or ignore anyone who doesn't play into her preconceived ideas of who the culprit would be.

Meanwhile the actual culprit is, as Scarlet admits in her response to the reader, absolutely not satisfying on some narrative levels - but if I did my job right, she makes more sense emotionally as a culprit when you think about why the crime was actually committed.

if I have one regret about this story, I wish I'd written it as a stand-alone mystery rather than a CTS tie-in, just so I could more easily recommend it to others, and that I'd found a more satisfying way to present some of the breadcrumbs Scarlet uses as part of her investigation. I modeled some of my approach to the story on Five Little Pigs, which I think is a better example of the trope I used here - multiple characters are introduced and all of them are lying about something in terms of their relationship to each other, but only one is a murderer.