Ever Feel Like You Dropped the Ball? · 10:16pm Oct 2nd, 2015
The following contains Brotherly Bonding Time spoilers--if you haven't read the Canterlot part of the story but intend to, then I suggest going elsewhere.
I am freaking mad at myself for how disappointing that arc turned out to be.
When I first planned to write the Celestia-Cheese Sandwich switch, I thought that I'd be writing scenes where I'd be drawing parallels to the Royal Sisters and the Sandwich Brothers. I thought I'd be having the sisters basically say to them, "Yo, we understand the whole sibling squabble and being separated for years thing, it's okay, you're moving past it" without even saying much. I thought I'd have Celestia and Luna--knowing that Cheese is having trauma problems from the whole Las Pegasus debacle--would at least warn Tomato to make sure his big bro's okay. I thought I'd at least make it good.
I blew it. I really blew it. I ended up stopping myself with fears of people complaining about me comparing the whole Nightmare Moon incident with some kid breaking his brother's most prized possession or what happened in Las Pegasus. I was afraid that mentioning anything about NMM would end up being hamfisted and . And heaven forbid that the head honcho of Equestria befriends an OC and at least shows concern about his family.
So... what do we get? All we've got is a whole lot of nothing that took way too long to write, a lousily-written Celestia (why can't I write her without banging my head on the wall?), and pointless political crap that I was having trouble wrapping my head around.
The things I'm happy with are:
--The raising the sun scene. I never thought Cheese nearly destroying Equestria could be so fun to write.
--Luna. Seriously, I like the way I wrote Luna here, especially when she was chasing Hatu the Dream Gremlin.
--Twilight. We all know that she'd be stressed out if this actually happened.
--Cheese started a food fight. It needed to happen. XD
--An angry Cheese telling off Quasar Rune about what Kazam did. Yes, the wording was meant to sound like Celestia lamenting what happened in the NMM thing, even though raising her voice like that would not be her (of course, it wasn't her anyway).
--The memory magic scene. I was happy for the opportunity to dive into a piece of Sandwich past again, and to actually write the characters of Beans and Panini (and little Cheese! Precious toddler Cheese...).
--Pinkie recognizing Cheese in Celestia's body. Because Pinkie totally would.
--Some Pinkie and Tomato friendshipping! Makes me think if what it'd be like if they met as foals...
"Hi, I'm Pinkie!" 
"Hi, I'm Tommy!" 8D
But overall, I'm just really disappointed with how I handled the Canterlot arc. I thought it'd be fun to write, but it wasn't. 
I just hope the Our Town story will be better.
Learn from the experience. Don't be afraid to take risks. Don't let your vision be compromised by your fear of negative reactions. That's not to say that every idea you'll ever have will be solid gold, but you don't need to tiptoe around every potential pitfall. One of my greatest joys in fan fiction is seeing someone take a tired trope and breathing new life into it, making it genuinely work. I definitely think you could've pulled it off here.
As far as I'm concerned, if this helps you grow as an author, then you have no need to apologize.
If it makes you feel better, I just loved imagining Cheese in Celestia's body, freaking out about being on fire and randomly knocking things over at the carnival.
Honestly, I actually think the whole Canterlot arc was very entertaining to read, with the discussion between Luna and Cheese being one of the most memorable moments of the entire story so far.