While dealing with post traumatic stress brought on by the events surrounding his wedding, Shining armor is awoken in the middle of the night by a call requesting his presence. An unmasked changeling has appeared at the gates to Canterlot requesting to speak with Shining armor, and he's not speaking to anypony else. What does he want? And is there something sinister behind this, or is it all in Shining's head?
(Inspired by and created with permission from the Mod of the Audio blog shiningarmorreports.tumblr.com )
Chapters (13)
This is top quality, and you have captured my interest!
Please do go on!
Edit: Your writing is very good, and could not detect any grammar mistakes. The pace is flawless. I can only assume you have prepared in advance.
The emotion and stress is very well captured and communicated. I like very much what you did with Shinning and Cadence relationship, it will be interesting were that leads.
The changeling is at least very interesting, a real hook to your story.
The night guards "freakiness" is a nice touch, so I assume you are going with the head-cannon that they got completely transformed, not just using some sort of "temporal glamour".
Also: FIRST POST
Anxiously expecting the rest!
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I can't take all the credit. the initial inspiration came from another fan's work.
Again, i wholeheartedly reccomend you go to shiningarmorreports.tumblr.com and take a listen to his amazing voice acting work. the guy sounds JUST like the show's voice actor when he wants to!
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Man, inspiration is 1% of a good creation. The rest is hard work, and your quality writing has nothing to do with inspiration! Be proud!
1048237 Your image does not load. Any ponibooru images you may have bookmarked most likely no longer exist. If you can still see them, then they are cached.
Yes new chapter
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This gon Be Good
YOU ARE A GENIUS! I'm loving this story, but please, oh please, update more often! It's a great premise that I want to see fulfilled. Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeease!
This is really well written. Shining struggles with his prejudice whilst the Changeling meets his bogeyman. Fantastic stuff, looking forward to the next chapter, hope Shining doesn't screw up, one misstep with Maxillus and the entire Changeling species might decide peace isn't possible.
I know maxillus only represents one hive, but if Ponies are hostile to an attacking hive and one proffering peace. Well I can't say I'd blame the Changelings if they went to war.
I be liking this one alot....
So much suspence! Hrnggh! I cannot await the next installment O_o!
ALSO, I found this...
“Eggs, sunny side up. Waffles with strawberry topping and whipped cream.”
“Eggs, sunny side up."
"Eggs."
Ponies eat not-herbivorous things D:?
Umm...what just happened? Did Max shapeshift accidentally or something?
So he goes from ambassador to prince of the changelings.... lol
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See "Sisterhooves social".
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Why do you think they raise pigs?
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Great chapter, Maxillus is best Changeling ambassador.
What inspired me to read this was the "interview with a Vampire" reference in the title.
But i must say that this really doesnt look like dark to me. For now more like sad because of the shaky relationship happening in the story.
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Hmmm... perhaps a classification change is in order... I'll think about it.
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There is the explanations from the FAQ:
Any word on an update?
Yes! It hast updated!
*celebrates for the great chapter*
Now to hope this universe's Twilight isn't as biased towards changelings as most other ones are :|
... Also, doesn't 'Twiley' have an 'e' in it? Took me a moment to realize you weren't saying 'Twill-e' :c
W00T! Update!
Oh shining you bigot you!
Wonder where this will go...
Yippee..... More racist ponies....
Yeah, that makes sense. After facing Chrysalis's hoardes and losing, Twilight has been on a research binge that means she probably knows as much about Changelings and what facts are known about their culture, biology, combat tactics and political structure as any pony alive. Of course, this is likely to make poor Shining even more paranoid. As well as protecting Celestia during the negotiations, he has to protect Twilight too! I've got a feeling, meanwhile, that Blueblood might take matters into his own hooves in a way that just causes trouble.
I wonder... is Maxillius a 'king', a high-status male Changeling that exists to be mates to the Queen? It might explain why he is close to Chrysalis's size and why he has more intelligence than the worker- and solider-caste Changelings that made up the bulk of the assault.
An interesting and challenging story; I'll be looking for more in the future!
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Actually, Maxillus is only about Shining's size, rather than mare-sized like the drones that ganged up on the mane 6 were. he is notably more solidly built though.
As for the rest of your post... well, you'll just have to wait and see.
Hm... I thought he sounded a bit too cultured for a mere hive drone... This has my interest.
Any news on an update?
1286073 I wouldn't say King, just a member of the royal family. Makes sense - if you have hives and implied castes, the politicans are royals. All of them.
chapter 5 finally up. For a relatively short chapter this one proved very difficult. i constantly had to go over scenes that just didn't work with me. however, in the end i think it came out pretty well.
Oh, and the end there's a pretty big ref to the inspiration of this whole thing. :P
HRNGH.
At first I thought this was the other "Interview with a Changeling" and I was all meh but then I clicked on the link and it was this
Tears of joy were shed. Chapter was read.
My anticipation is boundless! Great work thusly far! :D
Well done sir, a fascinating angle on changelings and plenty of places the plot could go from here. Not to mention good flow, even pacing, and startlingly few errors... Have a mustache:
speciesism continues!!
What no-one seems to be willing to address here is that Shining Armour's skepticism is based on fear. It isn't unjustified; after all, Chrysalis brainwashed and possibly raped him so he is justified in having a strong phobic reaction to Changelings. However, until he and others are willing to address this, he is not going to be able to deal with his negative instincts and deal with Maxillus realistically and logically.
Still, its clear that the whole Changeling crisis is acting as a catalyst for other changes in Equestria's international relations. I'm not sure if the griffin ambassador thinks he's seeing a growing revolt or instability in Shining Armour's insubordination but it could cause problems, especially as they clearly have decided that the Love Shield is some kind of WMD.
I particularly liked your characterisation of Twilight Sparkle here. Shining has one obvious reason for concern - Twilight often perceives things in academic terms and forgets the real things at stake. She can get so excited about the prospect of discovery that she forgets she's dealing with real people.
Please... Please tell me that Twilight hasn't got a crush on Roid Rage... or worse Blueblood!
1218544 naturally.
They're shwon to use eggs in baking in the show.
and in the real world, equines are actually ommnivores with a vegetarian bend, polar opposite of us humans, who are omnivores that prefer meat.
I've seen horses and ponies chow down on live chickens before and not get sick at all.
'tis nature, my friend.
so good, s-s-so good. please, take my mustaches, I'm not worthy..
If there's one thing a Changeling ambassador and an overly paranoid Captain of the Royal Guard can find in common, it's that Twilight Sparkle on the hunt for knowledge is a terrifying thing indeed.
Frikking Twilight.....LOL!
Read chapter 1. Liked and faved.
Grats on the feature box btw.
That dream, with this being tagged Dark before i feared it did actually deserve the tag, but would have pretty much killed all i liked about this story.
it being a world building one about changelings and ponies trying to get along.
As soon as I saw the title my mind emmediately went to the movie interview with a vampire xD I'll put this in my read later can't wait to start this!
In addition to the incisors, premolars and molars, some, but not all, horses may also have canine and wolf teeth.
Well I'll be damned...
This pleases me.
Hmmm... Love converted to magic? That probably explains why Chrysalis was so powerful at first - she'd been charging up from Shining for days, maybe weeks. However, as she didn't have any personal reserves of her own, she burnt out most of her power fighting Celestia and really had nothing left with which to fight Shining Armour and Cadence.
There is a sudden weird 'Matrix' vibe about the Changelings' reasons for trying to conquer Equestria, isn't there?
Meanwhile. Damn! Shining has PTSD! I wonder if the ponies have anything resembling psychiatric medicine?
Poor Maxillus! I don't think he knew what he was getting into when he volunteered to help Twilight, did he? FWIW, I still think that the Changelings might be one of Discord's perversions that has broken free of his control but that doesn't mean they are inherently evil, only biologically programmed to prey on ponies. If the Griffins could get over similar biological programming, so can they.
I am loving this but the systemic capitalization errors are killing me.
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Damn, thought i got those... *goes to edit again*
Just finished chugging the whole thing.
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even*?
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Fixed, thanks.
needs a cover of Shining Armour in fear and a confused changeling next to him :P