cks you designed to be ~exotic~ or whatever, and those rabid jerks at Disney can only grit their teeth now!
Another rewrite incoming, for chapter 06 · 1:14pm May 31st, 2015
I'd really hoped not to have to do this two times in a row, but I've gotten quite a few complaints about the latest chapter.
I'd also hoped not having to spell it out into the outright text (yet), but apparently I fucked up. Instead of Dresden running at less then 100% mentally right now, to many it came off as the story itself being mangled and distracted.
A reminder, this is what Flutterbat was acting like in the episode proper.
So, yeah, by that standard Dresden is currently amazingly lucid and clear-headed.
Still, it was not my intention to have her come of as cold and uncaring, but genuinely distracted by too many hurdles being thrown her way at the same time while not at her best.
So I'm going to take a few parts I'd originally intended for the next chapter —Dresden noticing how distracted she currently is and doing her best to refocus mainly, and hopefully that should make things slightly smoother without costing the effect I was originally going for.
So yeah, might be a bit bigger this time than a few word changes and a couple of new passages, but I'll make another one of those 'Patch notes' blogs once done.
I'm sorry I have to make so many tweaks like this, but —not to sound like an excuse but as an explanation at least, I'm pushing my skills as a writer with this story, and it's sadly showing a bit where these skills simply aren't quite keeping up.
So thank you for your patience, it means a lot for me. 
Maybe you could rework the Luna encounter a bit while you're at it? Not that I didn't like Harry's beatdown speech, but considering that you did practically the same one in Horse Feathers, it feels a bit rehashed.
Can't really say I noticed any difference about Harry, though. This may or may not be a flattering thing to say, all things considered.
Nothing unusual here. He has will of steel so to say. He successfully resisted influence of winter coat, shadow of fallen angel, temptation of flesh, vampire poison. He ignores, pain, exhaustion, sure he can resist to some foreign insticts.
You're a fanfic author. You have the right to revamp a story as many times as you want. If you were a published author, on the other hand, you'd have issues. Go for it.
It is very, very hard to pull off a first person altered state of consciousness, and also have it be fun to read. If Dresden is missing things then the audience is missing them too. If you decide to risk it, you need to spell it out quite a bit. In the books when Harry has a concussion, you damn well know it. Butcher uses a combination of Harry explicitly stating his mental condition, and the reactions of other characters. At no point does the audience say, 'huh?' and reread a section because they are confused. Harry might be confused but the audience never is. That was this chapter's biggest failing.
(The only exception I can think of was the no blasting rod thing in Small Favor, and that was subtle enough that most of the audience didn't pick up on it until after the reveal, and very cleverly foreshadowed.)
On the plus side I took another look at that dream sequence after my reread, and decided it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought, in fact I kind of like the way you have Luna wanting to believe Harry is something possessing Fluttershy, yet not quite buying it herself. It is only after Harry wakes up that things get... weird.
Since you will be rewriting it anyway should I save my edit read for after the rewrite?
3111557
I actually meant that as something of a bonus for readers of Horse Feathers.
'Here's almost the same scene, but with the real Harry and the gloves off,' more or less. Creating some contrast between Björn and the 'actual' Dresden for those that have read both.
Still, a fair enough point. I'll see if I can add something more to it to spice things up a bit without ruining the flow.
3111753
To be fair, 'real' authors need to revise their stuff all the time. It (with rare exception like Asimov updating the science in some of his stories years later) just happens to take place all before publication.
3112016
Yeah, I rolled the dice on that, and this time it unfortunately came up snake-eyes. Still, I think I have a fix in mind, I just need to have the time to write it.
Glad to hear it. I always get a bit nervous when somebody that's been following one of my stories for quite a while starts using 'hate' to describe a scene or character.
But especially for that scene with Luna, since I have a rather specific arc in mind for her, and this chapter was meant as the last bits of the foundation for that.
Guess that's the best way to do it since there's going to be so many small tweaks this time around.
3113222
I didn't really think of that, but then again, as a general thing I don't really like author injokes all that much anyway, so I'd appreciate that. I think they're just kinda fanservice-y and always take me out of the story a bit.
The only thing that seemed off about chapter 6 was the intro of it, given the what it starts with. Other than that. I think, most of it fits reasonably well through the rest of it after the tweaks and edits so far.
3112016
I think Butcher has run into the same problems. Not on quite as large a scale, but there was a bit of a kerfuffle around the release of Cold Days, which was mostly made of people not realizing that Harry was being strongly influenced by the mantle of the Winter Knight.
3115453 Fair point, even Butcher sometimes struggles with pulling off altered first person mental states. He lampshaded that one so hard he had Butters overtly state that Harry was acting like the Fay, he had Harry say multiple times that the mantle twists the user, he had obviously foreign thoughts from the mantle, all Harry's companions commented on it either subtly or overtly, and many readers still didn't pick up on it / or didn't like it.
Butcher did make it more obvious and under control for Skin game, likely because of that reaction.
3115453
That was more because of people being oblivious idiots and not paying attention when they were repeatedly told "mantles make you an asshole" in only just about every single situation the fairies were so much as casually mentioned at all in the previous few books. It's not really Butcher's fault if his reader base can't pick up on that even when someone slaps them in the face with it. He didn't actually do it badly.
A bigger problem, in most cases, is that there is really no clear statement about what is going on with the sudden shift in behaviour until afterwards, or even at all. There's no easy way to tell bad characterization from intentionally uncharacteristic behaviour without that, unless you really hammer it home by also using stream-of-consciousness style writing for that section, or something like that.