There was this kid I knew in middle school. He spent a lot of his time trying to convince anyone who would listen that he was really a dragon and not a human, and that he wished he could fly, or have scales, or breathe fire. Naturally, few people took him seriously. It was a miracle he had friends at times, in my opinion.

But when "FYIAD" fails to bring their peers around to their strange viewpoints, they retreat deeper into themselves, and into their delusions, and they're all the more convinced that someone out there must accept the truth of who they are. In the meantime, they find peripheral pursuits to vent their frustrations--often, this leads to experimental writing or drawings, and, inevitably, to the internet.

These are the otherkin--wretched, incoherent souls far beyond the depths of even the furry fandom, for they profess to be creatures that never were.

You speak with a survivor of that strange cadre. I'm sure you pieced together who that hypothetical kid in my story was at once.

Why do I say this? Because I bear insights into the kind of mind that would write something like the story you all have before you.

What do we have here? We have a story where Twilight Sparkle gets into a cultural misunderstanding with Spike that leaves bad air between them when he leaves to speak before the dragon council (why a baby dragon need report to a flight of seven great wyrms, I have no idea). Since Couch has been told to let go of his tight-assed hold on story premises in the interest of the greater work, I shall move on.

I could not shake the feeling that the author wrote this story with the intent of fulfilling some deep-seated personal wish. Really, of all the literature for Twilight to dig up while searching for books on dragon culture, one tells her how to turn into a dragon? I've read enough of these stories on FA to know how they go:

- The transformation is carried out without a hitch or moment of disorientation, as if the transformed were merely swapping outfits from their wardrobe.
- Then comes the paragraphs of painfully detailed descriptions of what they look like, since writing != art and 1000 words make a picture.
- A trivial problem arises -- Twilight Sparkle is hungry because she just turned into a dragon, duh. So a good part of the ensuing story goes to shoveling things into her mouth. Feeding a dragon, especially a growing one like Twilight (the reason for her growth withheld), is certainly a logistical curiosity but as far as interesting problems go, there are better options.
- At some point, the transformed will wish to return to their normal selves--only to find they are trapped in their new form! Guess the dragonification spell didn't have a counterspell written down, lolol
- The transformed then set out to find the cure to their transformation, but their search ends in vain. Not even Celestia could reverse the dragon spell because adult dragons are immune to magic, which Twilight should've known from Dragonshy (in which, well, I don't remember Twilight trying to fight the dragon with magic. 6_9). The giveaway that the spell doesn't work is the scrollbar, which said something to the effect of "Ten more pages to go, suckaa!"
- So the transformed give the search for the cure one final, token shot--Twilight sees the dragon council, and her petition is denied ere the cock crows. Why? Get this: there are no girl dragons anywhere and the dragons need eggs!

It's about at that point that the uncomfortable feeling sets in that the author really likes the idea of Twilight as a dragon (and I will even >imply the REALLY part there). and it ceases to be a story of correcting a magical mishap as much as it is an indulgence of a personal fantasy. I've written this kind of thing before. I'm glad none of it ever saw the light of day.

- In the end, Status Quo throws a tantrum, and here the author does a good job of cashing in on plot points heretofore unexplained -- the senior dragon on the council overrules the other members because he wrote the book containing the dragon transformation spell, and that he was once a unicorn pony, too! It also turns out that the gemstones were the catalyst behind Twilight's explosive growth, since she kept eating them. Cool--but how does that explain Spike still remaining baby sized? You can't say it helps adults grow and not babies with a straight face--that's not how development works, aaaaaaa

- This story diverges significantly from the rest of the transformation-type stories I've read on FA and other places in that the transformed DOES end up regaining their original body. Where it remains the same, though, are the extremely sudden, anti-characterized moments when Twilight suddenly has a hard time accepting the MacGuffin that'll turn her into a pony. Show!Twilight would've taken her hooves back in a heartbeat; author!Twilight laments suddenly losing out on the great things about being a dragon, when she spent the entire story preferring her old way of life. Sudden turnaround is sudden.

As I said earlier, I dislike this story on personal grounds, not technical ones, although I saw plenty of missed punctuation errors. My TL;DR summary is that I disliked it for its predictability (disclaimer: to me) as well as the squicky vibe that came over me as Twilight continued to run into difficulties over becoming a pony again at the author's apparent whim. Certain scenes definitely got more love over others to prove this point: An entire page devoted to pampering and cleaning dragon!Twilight up as if she were at the spa, but her initial audience with the dragon council barely spanned a paragraph.

I read "Dragoning Your Hooves" sometime back--that was another story that turned Twilight into a dragon. Suffered the same metatextual issues I found here. Maybe I just need to step away from stories like these and let saner, less biased ponies handle them.

3.75 on solid writing, minus 3 points on transparent authorial intention. I cannot provide a recommendation on what to do with this piece.