NOT a hiatus announcement · 5:28am Aug 7th, 2014
Before I say anything else, I want to make absolutely certain this comes across: none of this is anyone's fault but mine. I'm not blaming anyone, and I'm thankful for all the critique I received. I promise not to turn into one of those authors who throws a hissy fit when criticized, and whenever there's a flaw in my stories, I encourage you all to point it out and help me improve.
With that said, I'm starting to realize I simply didn't think Little Red through well enough. His behavior departs wildly from how Fluttershy acts in canon, and I haven't laid enough groundwork to explain how he diverges. The various criticisms of chapter 2 have made me realize that I'll need to show his nature and reasons for existence sooner rather than later, and that means a fair amount of rewriting and reorganizing.
Because I screwed up in chapter 2, I was really nervous about doing rewrites, afraid of screwing up further or even compounding the problem. This led to a situation where I flat out stopped working on the story because it scared me too much. I know it's silly, but if there's one thing these blog posts make obvious, it's that I'm pretty much a bundle of nerves.
(Perhaps I have way too much in common with Fluttershy for my own good . . .)
Anyway, I should have chapter 4 out relatively soon. Chapter 5 may take a while, and I won't post it until I'm certain it works and explains what's going on. I'm not announcing a hiatus because I don't intend to cease work on it--I'll bull straight ahead, and try to get it finished in a reasonable amount of time.
(And just to prove that I haven't learned from my mistakes: even after two editors went over it, I still made last-minute changes to chapter 3 because I was afraid Applejack was out of character. I hope that turned out okay . . .)
Anyway, I don't want to sound ungrateful for all the attention this story has received. Even the folks who've offered criticism have been pretty nice about it, and again, I'm thankful you've all helped me make the story better.
Well, I didn't notice a problem with Chapter 3. Some people in the comments think that the way you've described changeling anatomy so far is problematic, which I might agree with... if they were restricted to using Earth physics, which they're not.
I was a bit surprised by you having them unable to walk on clouds, but I imagine that changeling magic will be gone into in more depth once the immediate crisis is over. There are going to be a lot of people wanting to know about their new bodies, if nothing else.
I'll be a little more vigilant in my editing if it helps.