Re-editing Complete · 12:00am Apr 8th, 2015
I am happy to announce that after a few months, Level Dasher and myself have finally finished the re-editing and slight revisions of chapters 1 - 9.
Thank you to all who left comments that let me see some of the mistakes I had. While I did not take the advice from all, some did make sense which prompted this re-edit and slight revision. It should read a little less clunky now.
For those that do re-read it, I do hope the experience is better than the first time, but for those that just want the highlights of what changed I will be stating them below. Fear not if you don't wish to go back and re-read it all. Like I mentioned in a previous blog post, I didn't want anything to change that would overall effect the story. That is exactly what has been accomplished.
The largest changes are as follows:
-- In chapter 2, Discord no longer gets pulverized into dust. He is still alive and well in his statue form. This in turn changes a charge listed on the wanted poster. His death was removed due to a future problem with it as a legal charge in the trial.
-- Instances of the ponies (Mostly Twilight) and their misconception on Cassie's (Rings to them) sapience has been cleaned up... I hope. Now they lean a lot more towards sapience, with the trained pet thing as an option. However, it is the nurses that begin to think she is not due to her actions towards them.
-- Lots of grammatical clean ups.
Even though I really like writing and reading descriptive scenes, it seems not many share that. While I will still add them in, I have strived to make them not as... large/telly, though they still exist and will continue to do so.
As always, I am welcome to comments and suggestions, but that does not mean I will change what I already have or already have planned. 
As for chapter 10. Well... its just a collection of notes and an outline. Sorry. I keep setting time aside to work on it, but... then I play FFXIV longer than I should, or start watching some anime, or work messes up my day. I do however plan on getting it done in the near future now that I am done re-editing the other 9 chapters. Hopefully sooner than later. Not much of a sneak peek, but it starts off with snow.
Have a wonderful day or night,
-Topaz ^-^
Oh, I'm glad you actually stuck with the story. I was afraid some of the negativity put you off from continuing it, especially after Admiral Biscuit's signal boost. Here's hoping you continue it.
Exactly how extensive are these edits? Just a few lines per chapter, or...?
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Nah, none of the negativity put me off. Some made good points, some was ignored, and others well... I am not a perfect writer even with an editor so they are still there.
Hard to say how many edits happened. Everything was re-edited as if it had never been edited line by line. If you recall 2 of the chapters (5 I believe and 9) had been completely unedited too. Most of the bigger, I guess changes happened in chapters 1-5. Though that's only because we had to fix my screw up of the ponies misconception on her sapience or trained pet.
Thankfully most of the framework was there, so in some cases it was just be one line or one part of a line of text to help clean it up. It is now more how I originally intended (but messed up) with making the ponies leaning towards the sapience (with the pet thing still a secondary idea) then slowly shift to leaning towards the pet idea based on her actions in the hospital. That's how it was supposed to be originally, I just messed up the representation of it.
Example: from Chapter 4
and
A lot o the scene descriptions had a pass through to make them less telly. I like them to much to take them out, but I think my editor helped me make them better with the constraints I put on him.
A lot of the places where the ponies were still calling her an 'It' when it was know Cassie was a she or the name Rings that had been given to her were fixed. A few remain based on how I believe that pony would refer to her in that situation.
While it was already there in chapter 3, I don't think I had it portrayed good enough. But, it should be a little more clear that she (and Kozlov at the time) notice the similarities between the ponies world and Earth. However, she has more important things to do (like figure out how to not starve) than spend a lot of time at the moment going on about it.
As the blog above states, Nothing plot/story wise (other than discord not being dead which is only to fix a problem I realized that would pop up at her trial) was changed so a re-reading is not required by those that have read it before.
Shame, I kind of hoped for a re-reading when you mentioned revisions.
Honestly I don't quite understand the need to reverse your original decision to kill Discord (beyond the few commenters who complained about it), unless he is important to the story later. You said it would be a problem at the trial, but I don't think so -- it's one of those things that would probably be dropped due to lack of evidence of Cassie's culpability as she had no control over what happened.
Not that I would have agreed with the decision to cause his death unless it had some meaning later. If it was a random thing, it would feel petty and out of place -- just for shock value, no other reason. So in the end, I'm glad you did reverse it if you didn't intend to really go anywhere with his death.
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Sorry about that. I never intended the revision to be a sweeping change of the story, just a slight fixing of some of the bigger problem areas. I am happy with the small changes made, though.
True, his death could have been legal jargoned away, but it still would have been an unneeded problem to deal with at the trial (there are enough problems as is). The entire reason I originally killed him was just as a way to point out that Discord wouldn't be showing up to poke his finger into things. Since it served no other purpose, I took it out. And as you said, it was kind of random and out of place.
The charge listed on the wanted poster in chapter 7 was changed from 'death of an imprisoned enemy of the crown' to '1 count destruction of royal property' since now just a random statue was demolished.
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Funny, Knight Breeze has the same opinion of Discord as you do, seeking to always place his stories in such a way that Discord can't interfere with the story, especially when it was unimaginable that Discord wouldn't stick his nose into it and could easily break what should be dramatic issues that couldn't be easily solved otherwise.
The problem of course is that you can't have Alicorn Twilight Sparkle without Discord around, unless it's AU. Though some stories have been better at others in not having Discord be the Deus Ex Machina / Diablos Ex Machina that he is, while others have him make cameos but staying out of things because he enjoys how chaotic events are playing out, though that feels cheap if deaths are involved.
Glad you got it done. I'll be reading.