Afterward, Part 1
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Konk konk! I knock from the other side of your screen.
"Hi, there," I tell you. "This is Light talking to you folks directly. Trippy, right?
I back away from the screen and indicate the large, white room around me. "Anyway, I thought I'd bring you to this little 'mind space' of mine for a little more fun. You see, even though Sky Lines is finally finished, I imagine a bunch of you will still have your questions. Well, I'd like to answer them."
I snap my fingers, and a set of bleachers appears against the wall behind me. "At the same time, I'd like to let you have the opportunity to interact with your favorite characters. Like I said, I wanted to have a little more fun. So here's how we're gonna do things.
"A lot of you, I've answered questions for in the past. Well, those have always ever been through the private messaging service FFN gives us. As a result, I've had to answer the same questions maybe two or three times since only one person ever gets to see what's in the messages. So I wanted to give you the opportunity to ask questions about the story itself and have the answer put on display for everyone to see. It's a simple setup. For the next two weeks, I will be taking questions that you post to me through either the PMs or in the Reviews section. At the end of the two weeks, I'll sort through all the questions and answer them as best as I can. And, just to put a spin on it, I'll answer them in another Afterward chapter following this one. Why would this be interesting? Because I will include all the characters from Sky Lines here to help me answer and elaborate. Which means that you not only get the chance to ask me questions, but I'll also allow you to address questions to the characters themselves and get an in-character response! Cool yet?
"Okay, well, maybe a little lame, but I'm not done yet. Say you don't have a question, but you'd still like that little piece of interaction with your favorite character. Well, any comments that you readers have will be read out to the character just the same, and you'll still get a response. Now, for this to work smoothly, I'd like to put forward a few rules.
"First, if you send me a PM with a question you'd like answered in the Afterward, I would like to you say as much in the message. Even if it's obviously a question for a character, please tell me so there's no confusion; trust me, I get confused a lot.
"Second. If you want to post to the Reviews section, I'd like you to post it to the Reviews section for this Afterward chapter. One, this helps me keep all the posts collected in a list that's easy to peruse through without having to deal with additional pages. And two, this is to keep it clear which questions are meant to be posted with the second Afterward chapter. If you have something you'd like answered in private, post it to the final chapter of the story itself, and I'll get back to you.
"Third. There are only so many questions that I can answer without losing my mind, so I will ask you to limit yourselves to just one or two questions. This will make covering them a lot easier as well as letting everyone get in the questions they wanna ask. The comments won't be as restricted since they should be easy to address. They should be…
"Fourth. Please make sure you are not asking a question that has already been posted. While this will be difficult if people PM questions, the Reviews section is always available to look at just to make sure someone hasn't stolen it already.
"Fifth. And I won't really say that this is a rule, but I would prefer if people would post to the Reviews rather than PM me. No, it's not an attempt to bolster the number of reviews I have for this story. I mean, c'mon! It's already hit well over five hundred! That's plenty enough for my ego! This has more to do with the rule above, since it would do the other readers a favor if they knew which questions were already asked.
"So, other than that, bring on the questions and the comments. Just keep in mind that this story is still rated T. If you send me anything that would require me to bump that up, it gets ignored."
I begin to walk away. And then I turn back around as I remember something. "Oh, one other thing. I know that many of you will want to ask Link which romantic interest he would choose. I will tell you right here and now that the question is off limits due to forcing me to show bias toward one couple or another. Instead, I will give you this alternative. I want you to tell me which romantic interest you preferred. While I'm not really big into the romantic aspect of this story, I know that a bunch of you have been championing different characters to partner with Link. So after I post this, I will put together a poll on my page. Afterwards, I shall proceed to embarrass characters left and right with the results. All in the name of love, people! And if there was a character you believe I might have left out, let me know so I can put that character on the list."
I clear my throat. "So I think that's it, then. The question period and the poll will close on October 11th, so get your questions in by then because I will not take them after that day." I wave. "Later!"