Changeling by Deceased Review

I know this is probably unrelated to anything this season or anything I'm doing right now, but I felt I had to share something that I had almost forgotten about until just today.

Changeling
By Deceased

Changeling is by far one of, if not the, most psychologically engaging thing I have ever been engaged with. It follows the story of Luna after the Canterlot Invasion, which she was out of the city on a diplomatic mission and missed it. Wracked with guilt and aware that Chrysalis is hiding out in the wastelands, Luna takes it upon herself to eliminate the problem before it comes back.

Now the story itself is very psychological and philosophical at the same time, and it wouldn't be too hard to see why it can be a tough read some times. But those philosophies are probably its most defining feature. Changeling employs the teachings of German philosopher Arthur totally-not-Schopenhauer.

Do all 19th Century Germans have the creepiest stares? Beethoven be damned.

Schopenhauer's most famous work, The World as Will and Representation, claimed that the world is driven by a dissatisfied will continuing to seek satisfaction. There are other smaller philosophies sprinkled in throughout the story, mostly through a brilliant use of a pony's red journal entries, but that is the most prominent. Or at least the one that is most obvious to me so that I don't Google it just to make myself sound smart.

It'd be cheating.

It's sort of difficult to talk about the story itself because it gets more complicated with each chapter. The first few mainly focus on Luna's journey to the wasteland. She ambushes a Changeling drone, forces it to take her to the nest until it kills itself one night..... yeah imagine if theycallmejub was more philosophical and less brutally violent. Most of the time.

But when Luna finally confronts Chrysalis things get much more complex with a battle of the minds. In the mind. Think Inception, but darker. I won't spoil anything past this because the majority does seem to be left up to audience interpretation, even if Chrysalis's motivations are spelled out for the reader at the end. But to be fair, there's nothing wrong with making something complex a little bit easier for the average reader to understand it.

If I had to pick my favorite moment it would be the chapter "Truth of the Recorder". Not to give too much away but it uses one of my favorite kind of scenes for a narrative; the hero and villain sit down. I always love it when the hero and villain confront with their words. From Batman's intense interrogation with the Joker to President's Snows demands of a contrived romance from Katniss, these moments for me generally have the best writing and character interaction.

Now, I do have to bring some bad news. This story is emotionally draining. It's only 16 chapters long and around 42,000 words in total, it feels like Fallout Equestria lengths. Although surprisingly even more depressing. In fact it was so much of a burden that Deceased actually cancelled it before coming back to finish it. Unfortunately, Changeling is no longer available on this site, along with the rest of the stories he posted on the site. Deceased has since erased his stories and has quit writing.

But the good news is that I discovered that someone posted a Googledocs download for the story in the comments of its EQD page. So if you are interested in stories that bring up fascinating ideas and philosophies, I encourage you to download it. I won't put the link to the download itself here so as to avoid any lawsuit over.... something I'm sure, but check out the story and discover something dark, empty and very thoughtful.

*****

Now that that's out of the way, how about a Christmas story?