Altered Visage Chapter 6

Happy New Year's (Eve) people! Have another chapter of Altered Visage: "Nutcase", the chapter where things start going from bad to worse. As always, this blog shall have spoilers of this chapter.

Say hello to the longest chapter up to this point, clocking in at 7954 words according to FIMFiction or 7685 according to Microsoft Word. I'm not sure why there's such a big difference between the two word counters, but FIMFiction consistently counts higher than MS Word. Maybe one counts actual words while the other counts every so many typed characters as a word like in a typing speed test. That's neither here nor there, though. Let's talk about the chapter.

Here is the chapter where we say farewell to the mane six for a little bit. They play a pretty well non-existent role for a few chapters after this. I suppose that could lead to one of my concerns: how will people react when the mane six aren't involved? I'm not too horribly concerned yet, as they are present for all but the very end of this chapter, and it's not the mane six's absence that makes me nervous about the chapter after this one. Calling it now, chapter 7 is where I see a sudden spike in dislikes and less than pleasant comments. I'll worry about that in a week's time, though.

This chapter has had the most changes out of all currently uploaded chapters since I started posting this story in late November, though not as much as some chapters yet to be posted. One particular change added five hundred or so words to it and was a direct result of a comment left by somebody that made me realize I missed something pretty obvious, specifically that Victor/Chance Victory should be able to list off several human inventions that aren't in Equestria that Twilight Sparkle should recognize from her trip to Canterlot High. I also took a piece from a later chapter and put it in here. Surprisingly, at least to me anyway, I found it actually fit better here than it did in it's original place. Feel free to speculate on what that piece may be, I shall not say what it is until later, even if it probably isn't too hard to figure out what it may be.

Late in the chapter, you get to see an extreme version of outside emotion affecting our unfortunate protagonist, as well as a new concept that I added in that an area can be more or less infused with a powerful emotion if it's exposed to it long enough, though I don't explicitly state that's what it is until a later chapter. I doubt many people haven't at least suspected that the MC as a changeling could detect emotions up to this point, so I'm not too concerned with saying so here. Detecting others' emotions without knowing what was happening helps to explain the somewhat extreme emotions he had felt at times. In particular, it is one of the biggest reasons for his overreaction with his first encounter with Bon Bon. One of them. There's another, but it's not too horribly relevant to the story outside of a couple moments where it affects his/her actions or thoughts and I don't actually mention it outright at any point in the story. It is part of his background and is at most hinted at every now and then.

Now for Nutcase herself. Introduction of a new original character, woo! Introduction of a character who turns out to be a bit of a monster. Though details changed or solidified (name changed from Nut Job and I decided to make her female instead of male), this character was another that I had always intended to have in the story, and I don't think I'm spoiling much when I say that she is responsible for Victor's transportation into Equestria. Before I decided to expand upon the story, she was to be the primary antagonist, though now she has taken a bit of a backseat in the grand scheme of things. Not that she is any less of a monster for her demotion from big bad. If anything, I've made her even worse after doing so, though that would primarily be because I had to expand on the story overall. I'm not sure what exactly I would have done with the old plans as I had intended to decide more or less when I got there, which I obviously didn't until my plans completely changed. Also, I don't think I had intended to have the other two changelings in her captivity before the change in direction. I can't say that with certainty, mind you, but seeing a lack of mention of either of them in my early notes indicates to me that it's likely.

Nutcase happens to reveal a new, third (or fourth if you count Chancey as different) name for our protagonist. They are now named Victor Mills, Chance Victory and Visage. With the addition of the name Visage, we have now attained the intended triple meaning of the story's title. Altered Visage refers firstly to how Victor's appearance was altered when he was brought into Equestria, secondly to how changelings are capable of altering their visage with transformation magic, and thirdly to the altering to the character of Visage due to what Nutcase did to her. Who was this Visage? What was her past? Is it just a neat sounding name I used because I like double meanings an All will be revealed. Eventually.

A minor thing I suppose I'll touch upon is how I made it completely unnecessary for changelings to eat and that they can't even taste things. Obviously they can feel the texture, temperature and other such things when it comes to food, but I imagine that they don't have any taste buds. They're still capable of eating, though it won't do them any good. I figured it would be left in as a relic of their evolutionary history. At one point in the past, their ancestors ate food like any other creature did. Eventually, those ancestors evolved to feed off of the magic inherent in love and over time as physical food became less and less important, they gradually lost their ability to taste and digest things. Though the basic structures of a digestive system are present, they are very much vestigial.

I had realized as I was writing this chapter that I had made Rainbow Dash a real bitch up to. I wanted to show a bit more humanity (for lack of a better term) from everybody's favourite rainbow maned equine. As a result, you get to see her feel regret for her extreme attitudes and actions, as well as getting a bit of a peek into just why RD is so freaked out by the MC. She was the only one of them to come face to face with Chance when s/he was impersonating one of the mane six, and she had been fooled into thinking they were Pinkie Pie. She was ashamed of the idea that she had failed to realize that her friend had been an impostor, and absolutely terrified at the thought of her friend being replaced. I'd say it was just an overactive demonstration of her element: loyalty. Does it justify what she did? No, I'd say not. It does however make her more sympathetic. One thing I didn't want to do with this story was turn the mane six into completely OOC assholes.

Part of me wishes I had actually written the story so that it turns out "Victor" never actually existed, that he was never a human at all. It was all a delusion inspired by some sort of traumatic event that instilled amnesia and the changeling had latched onto something she had recently learned about as a way to fill the gaps in her broken mind. To not actually have a human would have been quite the twist on a HIE, wouldn't it? Oh well, perhaps a future story.

One last thing before I end this. In this chapter, a certain contradiction would have been made apparent to those who are rather observant of small details if I hadn't found the problem and fixed it. Specifically, being unable to taste things is what caused the contradiction. In chapter two, I had initially had the taste of dirt making Victor nearly gag when Dash shoved her hoof into his mouth while he was disguised as Pinkie Pie. It's only a minor thing, but I'm still glad I caught it before it became an issue.

Anyway, that's more than enough rambling from me. If I do anymore, then this'll end up as long as the chapter I'm discussing. Hope you guys enjoy the latest chapter.