The Day the Darkness Died

by lunabrony

Afterword -Lunabrony

I can't believe how big this story got. I know in comparison it's not all that large compared to the epics that span 100,000+ words, but for me, it's a personal achievement. I never expected the story to get as far as it did, in fact my original skeleton only covered the first day of the story. Originally the story was just going to end with the introduction of a villain, and set up a sequel, but I realized something after doing that, that I hadn't realized before.

People really hate cliffhangers.

I had maybe 2 dislikes by the time I finished the story the first time, which increased to 8 within hours of posting the cliffhanger. It was then that I seriously entered mental negotiations to rewrite the ending, and the change of pace is evident with the start of Part Two. I never even planned on that section happening, it just sort of took off on its own. It was difficult, coming up with an entirely new direction to take the story on such short notice, but I'm pleased with how it turned out.

All things considered, what started just as a simple project to challenge myself with providing a complex continuity throughout Part One has evolved into my most popular story. I never in a million years would have seen that coming.

Thank you everypony, for all your love and support, and most of all for all the constructive criticism.

I wouldn't have gotten this far without it.

Lunabrony

Comments

[Perteks]

No wait duuh, Cliffhangers are great stuff to hold attention to story.

[brony323]

2711983
I hear you

[Screw]

People hate cliffhangers if the author doesn't make a sequel or say that there will be one. It's good that you noticed. I've met some authors who left their readers with cliffhangers without any plan for a sequel. It did enraged a number of commentors and readers that such authors did that on purpose.

[Themaskedferret]

*Grins* Bravo a thousand times over. Fantasticly funny and sweet.

[ssokolow]

I have to give this a downvote but not for whatever cliffhanger people are talking about.

The problem is that, by the time I got to what I'm assuming is "the cliffhanger", the story had already become such a letdown that I didn't really care.

1. I got interested in the beginning because it felt like the story might be gearing up for a semi-SliceOfLife "changelings learning to live among ponies" story.
2. When you had them "sneak off to conspire about something not yet revealed", my only reaction was to groan inwardly at yet another story where the author didn't recognize what they had and wrecked it by throwing in some uninteresting, cliché, cardboard cut-out antagonistic drama.
3. I continued reading to see if you might save it but I read right up to the end, still waiting for the story to rev up and get going.
4. Your characters feel like flat, unbelievable puppets, yanked by the whims of the plot because their behaviour and emotion don't feel internally consistent enough. (ie. They do things because the story calls for it, not because it feels like they have internal drives pushing them to do them.)

Also, the fourth-wall breaking was just irritating. The point of a story is to immerse the reader in a setting in their mind's eye and it really doesn't help when you keep explicitly reminding the reader that it's just words on a fanfic site with things like having Pinkie mention users on the site by name.

[lunabrony]

6647443 I respect your decision and I'm sorry you didn't like it, I have written some okay stories but some I'm more ashamed of, this might be more towards the latter

[Masquerade_Malek]

I for one rather enjoyed this story. There we're many points I laughed so hard it hurt. Look forward to more stories in the future, and hopefully this time the changelings might talk so as to be able to give their characters more depth. Keep up the good work.

[Twilight_Shimmer]

This was quite an enjoyable read for me!

[KvAT]

11077513
The inspiration is most likely from super formal Japanese where certain occasions requires you to say "jibun" (this one) instead of "watashi" (Polite version of "I" or "me").