To Ms. A.K. Yearling,
We here at Hoof Beat Publishing, LLC. have made a commitment to deliver a wide range of reading materials to our fans. Your series, The Adventures of Daring Do, just so happens to be one of our most praised series thus far. However, your progress checks have been below the standards of our company for quite some time, and unfortunately, we are required to deliver an ultimatum. We would like to receive your draft for the next entry of the series by the end of next month, or we will be forced to discontinue the publishing of your books.
Sincerely,
Mr. Press Hoof, Chief Editor
Daring tossed the letter into her fireplace, adding kindle to the already dying flame. The tongues of fire sparked up for a few seconds, before dying back out. She took a heavy glance over at her pile of letters, some reaching up to her flank. Most of them were letters from fans, featuring the same questions and suggestions that they always were. In her younger days, she read every one, doing her best to please everyone reading her books. Each change she made in Daring's life, changed her own in a way. After all, Daring Do and A.K. Yearling were the same pony in the end. Yet, something grew out of this persona, and her storytelling became a much more hollow experience than it was before. No, in fact Daring Do and A.K. Yearling soon grew apart; she became a puppet to her own fame.
Once Hoof Beat picked up her small tales, her life became something more. She was a celebrity, every book store library, and school owning a copy of her books. Her life of sitting and writing alone in a small room, turned into a constant stream of attention. Everybody who was anybody knew her, even getting the opportunity to exchange a few words than her. The letters to her house grew, and grew, and grew, until she had to pick up her mail by herself. All of the letters were filled with messages from fans. Some were a page and half of holy praise, some contained fan art of the mysterious and exciting Daring Do, and the rare few were a raunchy fan fiction, featuring Daring as the main character.
These acts flattered A.K., even having "Daring Do" answer a few fan questions. As time went on, her audience noticed a significant shift in demographics. More and more young kids were picking up a Daring Do book than ever before, and that gave Hoof Beat a perfect opportunity to cash in on the change. they sent a letter to her house, this one wrapped in a pristine crimson envelope with their logo stamped on the front. They delivered a choice to her, either alter the themes of her books to accommodate a younger audience, or be dropped from publication.
Staring face-first at a catastrophic impasse, they left A.K. little choice in the decision. She made the change from adventure thriller, to children's fiction. Daring's experiences were censored heavily, her experiences with guns and fighting were omitted completely. Her romances were squashed, and she could never mention another love interest again. The one that broke her, though, was Auhizotl. He was very much a real entity, but Hoof Beat dumbed him down. A demon from Hell, a rapist, a killer, and a maniac, was now a Saturday morning cartoon villain. "I'll get you Daring Do!" he would shout every time Daring saved the day from his clutches of evil. In actuality, she had lost to him several times, and he did more than "get her".
Daring felt that her life's stories had lost their fidelity. Her own being and person was now just a character to be capitalized on. Her fans were quick to notice. Her oldest, most precious fans were enraged with the changes. Letter after letter was sent to her house, all of them for the same purpose: Daring Do was dead. They belittled and insulted A.K. for selling out to a corporation, effectively killing the series. They threatened to stop reading, and to make sure their friends did too. Soon enough, the answering of letters disappeared. Daring shut herself off from her fans, and locked the door behind her.
In fear of what she had started, A.K. moved from her home in Manehattan, and sought refuge in the woods. An old, makeshift shack sat in the center of the clearing, the previous owners long since gone. She took little with her, only a typewriter and suitcase of clothes. She secluded herself from the world, relishing in her solitude. She wrote with a fervor that she had never had before, every character on the page was stamped with anger. With that typewriter, she smashed out page after page of hate-filled story, all culminating with the death of her "villain". Daring killed Auhizotl, and sent it off to Hoof Beat. The bureaucrats took it with twisted acceptance. At Hoof Beat, they saw this to be a perfect marketing opportunity. Magazine ads were filled, and songs were written to describe the experience the novel would deliver. A few weeks later, Hoof Beat sent a contract to her home in the woods, asking her to sign off on the official "Daring Do" play.
A.K. was ill from the attention. She wrote that last book to finish off her fame, "killing" her series in the only way she knew how, and yet it was all about the money. She waited for the letters to come and bite into her failed novel, but they never came. Instead, they all carried messages of approval, seeing her anger as a new phase in her writing. Sickened, she stopped writing all together. A.K. threw her typewriter in the river, hoping to send the metal instrument of her fame to Hell.
The letters never stopped coming. All praise for her novels. More and more contracts filled the door, more and more fan art lined her floors, and more and more notices from Hoof Beat were cast into her fireplace. The fame was killing her, she had lost her purpose to write all together, so one day, A.K. Yearling took up her pen for one last time, and wrote. And sweet Celestia did she write.
Fans of the Daring Do series,
For years, you have graced me with fame and glory no one pony was deserving of. I took up the pen for Daring Do in an attempt to make something out of my life, and I never foresaw the positive responses I had gotten. This experience was a love of mine, one I intended to keep for a long time, but sometimes fate has other ideas, and things we never see happen.
She sat there for innumerable minutes, staring at the blank page before her. The words on the paper were swimming around her head, and they projected off of the paper. The scrawls of ink were nothing more than that, yet the rocked her entire house, shaking it to its earthly roots. Daring had no idea what to write next, she wanted to hide, curl up and bed and cry. The parchment was choking her, every breath growing shorter and shorter. Tears began to stream down her face, bombing the paper below her in explosions of depression. She didn't want this, she never did, but it was THEM who drove her to this. It was them who changed her life, it was them who hated her, it was them who failed to see her true purpose, and it was them that killed Daring Do.
With an increased anger, she took her pen up once more and wrote,
Daring Do is dead. She passed away from a rare disease in the jungle. It brings me great pain to report this, but her experiences can continue any longer. I hope you loving, talented, wonderful ponies can understand this, and I wish you all the best.
With heartache,
A.K. Yearling
With that, Daring Do died, killed by her fans.
The initial response from Hoof Beat was one of shock. A.K. signed a contract with them, and she had no right to kill off a character without their permission. They sent her a few letters asking her what her intentions were, and A.K. ignored them. Then they took a more aggressive approach, demanding her to visit them and tell them what the Hell she was doing, and A.K. ignored them. Soon they realized that she had no intentions of fixing her mistake, and began to threaten her, and A.K. Yearling, their star author, ignored them.
She had just thrown their last attempt into the flames of her hearth, hoping to stay warm tonight. Since she stopped publishing, her funds were run dry, and one by one, her utilities were stripped from her home. The region of the woods she lived in was infamous for killing by exposure, and Daring's house was not a fortress. Holes in the windows and roof, no insulation in the walls, and a stone floor were not ways to sustain life.
Daring sat in front of the fire, huddled in scraps of her old clothes. She was casting letters into the blaze, hoping she would live through the night. One by one, praise from her fans died to keep her alive, but as the night went on, the letters dwindled, until they ran out. Sitting there, alone and afraid, Daring let out a muffled prayer to live until tomorrow morning.
She didn't.
When the police found her, she was a dried up, frozen husk of a body. The coroner quickly addressed the cause of death as hypothermia through exposure. They lifted her out of her personal dormitory in Hell, and into a truck, where she would be cut open and examined. Hoof Beat would have nothing to say, but will be forced to deliver a statement. All over Equestria, papers read, "A.K. YEARLING, DEAD BY EXPOSURE!". But they'd be lying.
It was the fans that killed Daring Do.
