Altered Visage Chapter 16

Finally, I have finished rewriting this chapter. It took me way too long to do this, as I had initially hoped to have not only rewritten this chapter by my Birthday in the middle of the month, but to have finished the entire story. A long bout of not writing much of anything put a stop to that plan, but oh well. Anyway, more stuff after the break, which will include spoilers.

I am glad to have regained what I had lost from my computer crashing. There are a few modifications here and there from what it was before, but all changes are minor and/or superficial ones. I obviously couldn't have written an exact duplicate of what I had the first time around. I think what I have this time may be a little bit better overall, but it's not by much.

So, in this chapter we get to see what Jade Flare was up to when he so quickly surrendered. As many predicted, he had a trick up his sleeve. He connected to Shining Armor through his mind, and then used a form of mind control to set him on a path to attack and kill Chrysalis and Chance. This naturally resulted in Shining Armor coming in at the end and magically sucker punching Chrysalis and very nearly killing her right then and there. Fortunately, Drymanid was nearby to interrupt his spell, which prevented Chance from coming to any serious harm. At least his accomplice was caught fairly quickly, though I do have some fears that it was resolved too easily in that case.

The climax of the story is this chapter, the attack on Canterlot. The climax of this chapter is the battle between Chrysalis and Celestia and Luna. Part of me worries that it's not right to have the ultimate climax not actually involving the protagonist of the story, but its what I chose to go with. I didn't think that Chance would make for the most effective of grand fight scenes. I suppose I could have tried to not use a fight for the climax, but it seemed fitting to have it be one when the overall climax does involve a battle. I suppose from a personal perspective, Chance's climax was right as Chrysalis was about to kill Celestia, so I guess that it's not completely devoid of a climax revolving around the protagonist.

I am well aware of the perception that Celestia and Luna just simply don't do anything in the show whenever a threat comes along, and I wanted to change that for this story. They get directly involved by confronting Chrysalis, even if it is after Twilight and her friends do so first. Additionally, I wanted to show that they are incredibly powerful and competent fighters, or at least as competent as my writing skills allow for. Chrysalis, while certainly powerful and I'd like to think not completely stupid, was simply outmatched in that two on one fight. Fighting the mane six before then certainly didn't help matters. By the time she had managed to reduce her opponents to just Celestia, she was far too badly injured and drained to compete with the incredibly furious and unrestrained Celestia. If it weren't for her army saving her, it's unlikely that she would have survived the fight, let alone won.

I don't honestly know if I'm even the least bit capable of writing a decent fight scene. I find that I've always struggled with such things. How can I make it interesting? How can I avoid having it just be a repetitive "he punched him, the other guy punched him back, so the first guy did it again" and such. Obviously I wouldn't and didn't actually go for something that extreme in the monotony department, but the base worry is still there. All I can really do is try to get it to something I think may be respectable and hope for the best.

I think that's enough of this blog for now. The next chapter shouldn't take months to complete this time. Hope you guys enjoyed the chapter, and goodbye.