After the reformation of Discord, the Equestrian changeling Midnight Masquerade is given the responsibility of reforming as many of his fellow shapeshifters as possible. His first real rescue in weeks of error finally comes along, only to be followed by a voracious foe bent on their demise. The changelings will need to rally every possible ally they can if they want to survive.
*This story was in the works for almost 4 entire years (99% of this was done before Thorax showed up). See my blog if you're curious as to how in the wide world of Equestria this comes even close to canon.
Chapters (16)
Don't change your headcanon because of that horrific episode.
Just finished (mostly) reading your story and thought you should get some feedback, and it looks pretty quiet around here.
You've got a good premise here, the descriptions are good and there's a lot of potential.
But it was hard to follow along with everything. I like that you're tying together a couple storylines (I think) but it bounces around so much it's had to keep track. I'd recommend picking one character as your point of view and sticking with it- you can always change to another character but best to keep it to a minimum.
I also couldn't connect with the characters- they seemed interesting but just weren't engaging. In some ways, start slower and build the character- give your reader enough info to get them interested, and then build on that. The changeling aspect also made it hard to follow who was who, which is understandable but good to keep in mind for your reader.
Your descriptions and narration are pretty good, only thing I might recommend is to make the action snappier- I kept wanting to skim because it just felt like it slowed down the action. I mean, it is already quick- you've got short sentences, direct actions- but it needs a bit more.
Best of luck!
7603912
Thanks for the feedback! I'll be keeping a lot of this in mind as I'm writing my next story, but unfortunately my hands are tied when it comes to the progress of this one. You hit the nail on the head though, Project DYES unites several OCs that I've been using in a lot of my other stories, so the exposition tries to cover the bare minimum required... I'm getting the sense that it didn't help the storytelling overall.
And unfortunately the jumping around on perspectives will only intensify as additional parties are introduced; there's nothing I can do about it without hitting the old "hiatus" button and spending months of rewriting and editing, so for better or worse I'm going to keep with it to stick to schedule.
I'll see what I can do about the flow of things in the upcoming chapters. I know that the pace will start picking up here soon once the antagonists actually start doing something. Hopefully the action and pacing of the next chapters will make up for this somewhat rough start.
7581837 Witch episode?
"Midnight Masquerade"? Don't you mean Thorax?
7640298
This story (or at least the second draft of it) was written before Thorax came along (and takes place well before Thorax comes along, for that matter). That episode basically destroyed any semblance of canon that this story had in it. Thorax and Midnight are two very different characters, and if I decide to write a sequel you can bet I'll be coming up with some crazy excuse as to why Thorax's "Changeling Kingdom" is so very different from Midnight's "Hive." It can be difficult to finesse around my own story arcs to favor the show's canon, and I feel like sometime here soon (depending on how much of a coup-de-grace the finale gives it) I might just have to cut off this whole world I've made and start fresh when I go to write my next story.