Changelings Can't Breastfeed · 6:54pm Mar 3rd, 2016
(At Least In My Head Canon)
Some stories, like those by Anonymous Pegasus, posit that changelings can give birth, if they stay in pony form the whole time. This raises a litany of questions, like whether the DNA (or similar genetic transcription material) of the offspring belongs entirely to the other parent (and thus technically the foal would be a clone), or what happens to the fetus if the changeling accidentally changes form while pregnant. And can a changeling impregnate a mare?
To me, a much simpler answer is that changelings can't get pregnant (though this wouldn't stop some from faking a miscarriage). And why would they need to? They gather love for their queen to use and produce more eggs with. Pregnancy is an extremely energy-intensive thing to undergo when it's not even going to benefit you. Yes, you'll eventually get the love of your offspring, but if you really wanted that, you could...
Adopt. In ye olden days before ponies knew of the changeling race--or at least knew of it to the degree they do now after the Battle of Canterlot--biologists were somewhat puzzled by the slightly lower pregnancy rate among equestrians as opposed to other similar hooved species. Well, now they know why. So Equestrian society has a fairly robust adoption network/system in place as a result.
In an upcoming story of mine, a pony stallion and a changeling (identifying as a) mare use a surrogate mother to have a foal. This is an area I haven't really seen many--if any--stories explore. I should tell Regidar. He hates is ambivalent about changelings but loves pregnancy.
One of the lesser consequences of my conceptualization of changeling morphology being more magical projection than actual transfiguration is that while changelings can bleed (I'll go ahead and go with Imploding Colon's theory that their blood is green), it isn't going to look like pony blood once it gets outside their range of projection. In fact, in general, changelings cannot replicate bodily fluids that they don't use. So while like non-philovores they also need to drink and expel water to function, and have a rudimentary digestive system for obtaining nutrients difficult to synthesize from love, if a changeling throws up or something, it ain't gonna look like pony puke. Idk, I haven't figured out the details. The point I'm trying to reach though, is that
Changelings can simulate lactation, but it will not be actual milk. it will be a mere illusory facsimile of breast milk. What's all that mean for our changeling adoptive mother? Not much really. Just that more baby bottles are going to listed on the baby shower registry (is that how those work?) than would be for an equestrian mare.
Thanks for reading.
Deciding which bits of a chimera's biology draw from which base species is always interesting, especially when it includes truly alien capacities like emotion consumption. Changelings having a queen-centric reproduction system and all that that implies definitely makes sense.
The way it works/will work in my Bastion fics is that changing shape is a shift in the morphic field, so when they change shape, their whole DNA structure does change. Getting pregnant stops them from changing back into the original shape, because that's a major life form exhibiting pressure. I think the term 'ontological intertia' is what it's called? The thing that enforces normality, that makes things 'poof' back to normal after whatever cursed them dies? That pressure is increased in favour of the changed shape when pregnant.
This also means that changelings who've been sent in deep cover and forget they were changelings (which is a major plot point in one of sequels), can start a new family. And the new family would be regular members of the target species, no traces of changeling origins.
Another potential angle is one of legal abuse: a changeling who is bribed/coerced into taking the form of a noble, then bred, would produce offspring that genetically can appear to be the offspring of that noble. There's a potential political fic in that idea, maybe, but I'm not up for it right now so it's shelved.
3789593 but if the whole changeling itself is well, changing, wouldn't that also change its source of energy from love to traditional food?
Thinking about friendly changling relationships after finishing "Buggy and the Beast," I feel like if changlings are able to marry and form long-term relationships with ponies, they are still a threat to Equestrian society. They're like the robots in Futurama from "Don't Date Robots." If ponies and changlings can't get pregnant, then changlings have to stay below a certain percentage of the pony race, or they could out-compete ponies in the mating race and cause a catastrophic population decline.
My 2c here.
I've always called changeling babies Grubs no matter how they're born. I posit that they're white, fleshy, and ugly until they reach a certain age and develop a carapace.
I also use a friend's sheet for Changeling Rules a little when writing them.
3789684 Including being able to eat pony food. They don't process it into nutrients, but a substance called paraza that's sticky, goopy, and can be molded into tools.
Cool way to look at it.
One slightly different idea could be that even more of their biology is geared toward infiltration to add another wrinkle. Maybe they have internal storage pouches/areas that let them store such things as milk? Drink milk as changeling, shape-shift and now have breastmilk as fake pony. Or a more general case, changelings don' t need to eat physical food but they can process it into various fluids to aid their deception.
3789684
Well, there's physical food, which this kind of changelings can ingest (and need), and there's energetic food, emotional kind. I think I had it described that to them, love is a vitamin and a steroid: they can get a lot more powerful by gorging on it, but they can also become stronger in their own right. They don't actually need to be predators anymore, it's just that they want the power that love gives them for military purposes. There's going to be mention of warring hives and Chrysalis basically being the last one standing because of a Big Bad she wanted to be prepared for, sort of an Itachi Uchiha kind of deal.
A changeling, in the Faux Pas-verse, can survive on ambient love of other species, but they cannot provide that within their own hives. And the reason for this evolution is related to their ancestry, which is a major spoiler point for future stories, but I don't know how much of them I'll be able to write, so...
They started out as a subspecies of Crystal ponies, but one that could absorb and remove negative energies, providing a magical medicine similar to leeches and bleeding in the old days. Over time, they developed a 'love stomach' that could feed on any emotional energy, but they ended up losing the ability to make positive energy, similar to how some mammals lost the ability to make vitamin C, or fish losing the ability to make unsaturated fats. Because they were surrounded by it in their feed, they lost the ability to synthesise it. So they left the Empire on good terms, in the hopes of preventing any more loss of powers.
3790637 interesting! So like the Axolotls of the pony world?
3791182
It's more of a generic thing, really, inspired by my lessons in Aquaculture (one of the few good things to come of that, it seems). Basically, larval fish, or larvae of any kind, aren't born with a functional stomach. The ability to digest food comes from the body digesting itself first, like the yolk.
One good rule to keep in mind when worldbuilding: "As above, so below."
Rules and mechanisms of biology will have their analogues in the spirit world or in magic. Vitamin C deficiency, need to absorb ambient love energy. Antibodies being passed on through mother's milk, pegasus flight being linked to probiotics. Regular lice that adapt to certain habitats on the host body, astral lice that seek out and target specific kinds of magical creatures.
I also had a neat idea for where phoenixes get their immortality, but I think I'll save it for an original story; it's too neat to spoil in fanfic.