Right, so, y'know how in my request thread I have this little note that says "send badly edited stories to me at your own risk"?

Well, turns out there's a reason for that. Who knew? 

Okay, okay, it's not quite as bad as I'm making it seem — I know I've definitely reviewed some stories with more technical errors than this — but man, was this one awkward to read. It's not the grammar errors, not really, but all the sentences are phrased so weirdly that it's really really difficult to read.

Meh, more on that later. On with the story! 

Dilemma of a Changeling follows a captive changeling named Chameleon. He's been taken prisoner by the ponies after getting flung into a tree during the changeling invasion of Canterlot. After the impact, he's left partially blind, with two broken legs. He can't move and can't see clearly, and this is the state we find him in at the beginning of the story. 

The story is so far incomplete, but it consists of various ponies visiting Chameleon and talking with him, including several members of the Main 6 and the Princesses. 

And honestly, as soon as I started reading the story my suspension of disbelief immediately disappeared, because my biggest issue with this story becomes apparent right at the beginning of the plot.

Realism, or the lack thereof

She sighed, before saying further "Um... How do you identify if Changelings are from one clan or another?"

This was an easy one to answer. Wing colour. I think, anyways? "My wings are blue, and so are the rest that was in the invasion... I'm guessing that if you have a different wing colour than you're from a different hive than mine."

The ponies start asking Chameleon questions, and he immediately answers. Under no coercion or stress or anything! I suppose this is because the story’s based on an RP session (as Hydra mentions in the story description), but dude, you’re supposed to resolve these sorts of issues when you convert to story form. One has to wonder how Queen Chrysalis even managed to conduct her invasion of Canterlot in this timeline when even the changelings who’ve grown up indoctrinated by her have no hesitation with cooperating with the enemy.

So far there are only three chapters written, but this issue completely overshadows any other problem I might have with the storytelling so far. Not only does Chameleon not behave realistically, the other ponies don’t either. How unrealistically? Well...

He wasn't expecting an answer. But he got one. "Alright... We are at the hospital inside the headquarters of the Royal Guard." The nerdy voice responded back to him. She seemed like the most possible way of getting answers here.

But now he was curious. Royal Guard? Like the changeling's guard? It made him slightly nervous. "Are you nervous? I'm nervous." Okay, nevermind. Scratch slightly. Just nervous. "Also... Who, or... What... Is the Royal Guard?"

Her answer surprised him. "It's the force of ponies that defends and protects Canterlot Castle, and the Princesses."

Why is Twi sharing information here? And why is Chameleon telling her that he’s nervous? Bear in mind again, this is right after the invasion of Canterlot — the hostility between ponies and changelings should be at its highest point. And after this, the conversation drifts to, of all things, old changeling legends of the Princesses. Like, aren’t there more pertinent things to be discussing here, guys?

Alright, I’ll stop harping on this, I think y’all get the point

Instead, let’s talk technical stuff. Because this fic is riddled with so many weird sentences and odd punctuation that reading through it is a chore.

Technical Errors

I’ll get to listing the most major ones later in the feedback section, but just to get a feel for the extent of it, let’s play a little guessing game.

The story has a problem of overusing ellipses (...), which should usually be a rarely used punctuation mark. With that in mind, Chapter 1 has 2.9k words — have a quick guess how many ellipses there are in it. Fifty? Eighty?

Well, if your guess was anywhere near 120, give yourself a pat on your back and five internet points, because the actual number of ellipses in this chapter is 124. That’s like, one in every sentence. 

But again, more on this and other more specific errors in the feedback section. For now, I think I’m confident enough to give this a score.

Final Score: 2/10
Seems like an okay story in conception, but extremely unrealistic behaviour from all the characters and the abundance of awkward phrasing and technical errors really kill this story for me.

Feedback for Hydra

Characterisation

So, what you really need to work on here are the characters. Importantly, Chameleon and the ponies have no negative feelings towards each other at all. Put yourself in their (horse)shoes and imagine what you'd feel — because right now the way they behave isn't realistic. 

Technical Errors

Ellipses and Other Misused Punctuation

Next, the technical errors cropping up are difficult to ignore. I mentioned overusing ellipses — don't do that. It makes your whole story feel extremely draggy and slow. If it's supposed to be a full stop, use a full stop, don't randomly replace it with ellipses. 

"I can barely see anything... still. Everything's still blurry. ...Did she tell you that, or... is this new?" He started to ramble on and on about stuff. "...Y'know... I'm terrified to think what my queen will do to me if I have to go back... I... told the nerdy sounding one things... Twilight... Twilight Sparkle... The Element of Magic... I told her things about my kind that... I shouldn't have told... Secrets. Even if they were legends, I weren't supposed to tell em'..."

There're about two ellipses in this quote whose use is even justifiable.

"I can barely see anything still. Everything's still blurry. Did she tell you that, or is this new?" He started to ramble on and on about stuff. "Y'know, I'm terrified to think what my queen will do to me if I have to go back. I told the nerdy sounding one things. Twilight. Twilight Sparkle, 
The Element of Magic… I told her things about my kind that I… shouldn't have told. Secrets. Even if they were legends, I weren't supposed to tell em'. "

Redundancy

Next: redundancy. You have several sentences where you tend to repeat things you've already said multiple times. 

...and yes, I do get the irony of having my subtitles repeating the section name, thank you

A short amount of time later, at least to him, it felt that way, they stopped

He didn't know. "I... don't know. I genuinely don't"

A lot of the narration also has this rambling style, and it ends up very messy as a result. It feels more like Stream of Consciousness, where the character’s thoughts are placed unfiltered into text, than actual narration.

Third-/First-Person Alternation

Third: perspective switching. This one is one you shouldn't be making — the narration switches from first- to third-person in the middle of scenes. Sometimes it's even in the middle of a paragraph where this happens. 

She argued with him more, "But if it can be done and if I could help you look for somepony who can help?" I let out a loud sigh. "...Maybe. I... I won't give you a definite answer because I'm... Not exactly certain on it. Just need to think about it, really, and not when my head is buzzing all over the place."

...

"Alright, that sounds good enough." She told him after taking a deep breath. Then, groaning slightly, I admitted to her about my feelings. My fear. My everything. Also that I was tired. "Besides, right now nothing to me is really clear, not even my thoughts. I never thought I'd be alone like this. I know, I've got you near me, but all changelings are supposed to hear their siblings voices over the hivemind. But I just hear... Silence. Have you ever had a really, really bad headache like this?"

This is the sort of thing that should be caught in a reread. 

Formatting Dialogue

Fourth: dialogue. There's one golden rule you should follow, and that's one speaker, one paragraph. There are several times you violate this rule in your story, and the result is very confusing. 

But then, he heard something. He slowly pushed himself up - it sounded like tiny little hoof-steps. He slowly turned around, and came face-to-face with her. The other princess. But she was unarmed. You could kill her right now, Chameleon... A hardly noticeable shake of his head followed that thought. He managed to utter 1 question. One that shook him to the core. he was afraid of the answer. "A-Are you here to s-s-slaughter me?" His very voice made her look at him. A sigh left her. She was disappointed. Surprised, too. "We... I am not here to harm you." He noticed that "we". But her answer surprised him. Terror still filled him, but now he was curious. "What... a-are you here for then?" ... "I had never walked into a Changeling's dream before. But this forest... there is something wrong with it." She stated as a matter of fact. He then informed her with more than his fair share of fear that this was the place. "This... This is the place where they... they said you killed changelings in with a scythe... r-ripping out their organs..." ... "I... I did what?" She sounded appalled. "So... you didn't?" He questioned, an almost quiet but burning hope in him that he was WRONG. "I... I have killed some of your kind, that much is true," and immediately, that hope almost died. "It was more than a thousand years ago, in a battlefield that looked nothing like this... But no, I do not drag those of your kind to a forest to rip their organs out, and you need not fear that I would do that to you." It was back, in full force. He didn't even know he could feel emotions properly, but here he was!

Formatting Thoughts

Lastly, your use of single quotes for thought is very very confusing. A lot of the time I missed seeing the single quote and ended up getting confused by a bit of first person narration that was supposed to be Chameleon's thoughts. There's a reason why people usually use italics for thought! 

This list is not comprehensive. There's a lot more mistakes here, but these are the ones that caught my eye the most. The most useful advice I can give you? Please, get an editor — they'll be able to go into much more specifics than I can in this review.

And that's all for this story. Hope someone finds this useful!

Also, hope you guys enjoy the colours