In the interest of clearing my mind: I am going to crack

Yes, it's that time of the year again. Exams are coming up, course material I should have memorised by now seems more distant than ever, group works and presentations abound (because heaven forbid students should get time to study), and the stress is about to crush what little sanity I had left. It is with this context that I'm bringing you this message:

I give.

I don't mean I'm giving up, no. I mean I'm going to throw my previous statements to the wind and publish the sequel to Trial of Faux Pas. Instead of putting up a 3D rendered picture of both Apple Bloom and Bastion as cover art, I'm just going to pluck a screenshot and slap a caption on it.

Edit: did not even do this, just grabbed something funny off imgur.

Will this hurt its feature chances? Possibly, but I doubt it. It's not as feature-aiming as the other thing I've got planned (if you don't know what it is, do not go looking for it), or even the CMC/Octavia thing, which I promise I will finish eventually.

As for Quorum Sensing and its sequel, Foal in Any Other Skin? This publication won't affect those stories, despite being about changelings. Keep in mind, like this one, the nature of the sequel demands I don't try to post chapters as they're written. Trust me, backtracking would suck, especially at this point.

Also, I'll be doing thesis work again for the next two weeks, and after that it's exams for four weeks, so I won't be able to write much pony anyway.

So why publish? Why give?

Because it's been too freaking long since I've published anything. I feel cut off. The last complete story I uploaded was in September, last year. I can't justify having something finished that some people have asked for and looked forward to -- and some pre-readers really enjoyed-- and keeping it in storage just because my 3D project isn't going as quick as I wanted to. (Incidentally, pony eyes are tricky, but pony eyelids are demonic.) And since people seem to like my changeling fics so far, I figured I'd just throw this message out to those who liked any of my changeling stories.

And if I'm totally honest... this is sort of a return to form for me. Rarity and Little Waiwai wasn't bad, but it was too short and formulaic, and it didn't have anything that made it stand out like the other stories I have. That's why it's my least popular story, I get that.

Changeling Blood is... a little more like Flight Camp, but more accessible. It's still got the young male protagonist with some weird past and it's still got the female protagonists... but the similarities end there. It's not laden with grownup speeches to the boy that give him a life-changing lesson (see Flight Camp, Waiwai, Upside), it's not the same formula, despite having the same ingredients. It's not even a story with a clear cut right and wrong. It's me trying to make something different while keeping to my comfort zone.

And it's also me trying to write about lesbian motherhood.

Okay, I never said I wouldn't step out of my comfort zone when the situation demanded it. Maybe it's just this anxiousness that's kept me from submitting. I put a very clear message in the story, as well as a metric ton of 'blink and you miss it' clues as to the true nature of the antagonist, and the past few blogs I've put up told me that people don't really get my messages sometimes. And that's depressing, because I put a lot of thought and effort into them. But maybe if the message doesn't get through, people can still enjoy a fun little take on 'The Faculty' and 'Soylent Green'.

Hmm... do you suppose that was a spoiler?

So yeah, anyone with the password: don't bother trying to get to it anymore. I may make some final tweaks here and there, still, but expect the submission to come up by the weekend, at the latest. After the initial chapter, I'll release one chapter every day I go supply my algae.