I HAVE been watching · 9:45pm March 16th
Hello, anyone who followed me ever since I started my fic, and anyone who was here before that... for whatever reason.
I’m just writing this to explain a little, promise a little more, and shed some context that I can see the comments have been craving.
I’ll start with the fic itself. “Chryssie, Equestria’s best ‘Harmonic’ Monarch” was born, like most things I put some effort in, in a fit of obsessive writing. You know how it is. Sometimes, an idea slams itself into your head and you decide to spend a week focusing on literally nothing else, and while you do so, you don’t notice any deficiencies along the way. That was how I started, and when I cooled off, I noticed the amount of people reading it and commenting on it and, honestly, it took me aback. The idea that people cared not only to read it, but enough that it hit FEATURED, if I remember correctly, to the point of having thousands of views, and then they had the audacity to leave nice comments and speculate and such things? That was a wonderful feeling.
It was also absolutely terrifying; seeing that the words I that clawed themselves out of my head in a spree of eager writing and little thought gained some semblance of an audience that actually came back for subsequent chapters. I could say that the story was left dormant for ‘personal reasons’ and stuff like that, and it wouldn’t be untrue, but the chief factor was my own fear. It’s a silly, unfounded, and complete overreaction, I know.
Now then, onto the actually important things: the question that I feel was most prevalent in the comments - why no background on pre-Chrysalis Chryssie?
This might be because of the way the fic came into existence, but the simple reason why nothing has been said of Chryssie’s past other than maybe some throwaway lines - I recall Chryssie mentioning how she could relate to nymphs (children) gambling from her own childhood - was simply because I didn’t deem it as relevant or important. The person ‘Chryssie’ was before becoming a Changeling Queen to me was irrelevant; my namesake: Redundant. Chryssie’s purpose in the story is to be a changing force, obviously, and I didn’t want to bog that with the usual reflection and angst that may come from human-in-Equestria stories approaching semi-seriousness or above.
That is not to say that Chryssie isn’t a person in my mind. She does have defined tastes, likes and dislikes, opinions, attributes and flaws, in my mind. It was merely intended for such things to be discovered and unveiled as the fic progressed, and Chryssie had less pressing matters to focus on and could showcase some personality beyond trying to remain calm while being in self-imposed crisis mode.
And, of course, the direction of the fic. That, too, needs to be addressed, spoiler free of course, but I think I owe something to get people’s minds thinking since you all are following this little universe I’m writing.
At the home stretch, The Hive (ponies not included), the Drones, and Chryssie. This is where the story began, and of course, is a major location in it. A source of characters, a visible and changing thing to showcase the progress undertaken, and, certainly, something filled with breathing characters, even if unnamed, with their own goals and ambitions and fears - when I write, I like to imagine that I’m not using ‘characters’ to make something happen, but that I’m having ‘people’ interact with the world and changing it, even to the disadvantage of other characters and even my original intention. Chryssie is Queen, naturally, and Queen Chrysalis as her predecessor very much enshrined a culture of total obedience and reverence towards a possibly unhinged Queen: this is the source of Chryssie’s initial grace period and breathing room, and in an abstract sense, the ‘currency’ she is spending in the early portions of the story. The Drones won’t question Chryssie, she’s ‘Chrysalis’ after all, the Queen that just sent a lot of them to a lost fight with the ponies in Canterlot; Equestria, And is very likely annoyed and looking for an excuse to lash out and take it out on her underlings that ‘failed her’ - this is not the truth of how things are, we know that, but the Drones don’t. Chryssie doing things the way she is is strange, sure, but who is going to question ‘Chrysalis’ and potentially earn her ire?
The Drones will naturally lose their fear over time, not only because ‘Chrysalis’ is acting weird, but also because she is radically changing the inner workings of the Hive. Sure, the Queen is still VERY, much on top, but everything under her is suddenly a lot less defined and more of a question mark. “Why did the Queen stop rationing?”, “Why is the Queen letting some maintenance drone requisition us infiltrators?”, “Why does the Queen want us to play ‘nice’ with ponies?”, “Since when are we inviting ponies near our Hive instead if podding them!? The Queen is just letting Love go around unharvested!” - questions, of course, that will steadily build up and need to be answered eventually, either by results or by Chryssie herself (or Heralds on her behalf).
The Hive ponies - as already shown in the story, and seen by some comments, the ponies Chryssie’s ‘Grand Economic Plan (plan pending)’ targeted are the ones that wouldn’t be missed. We have an example of a pony that was spurned by the society she lived in in Feather Duster, the Maid that got fired because the noble she served may-or-may-not have got in trouble with the government and needed to downsize their staff. We have an example of a disgruntled guard that stayed loyal to Equestrian and rejected the offer to join Chryssie, Stalwart I think his name was, as an example that the Hive isn’t something that any pony down on their luck will simply throw themselves at without any thought. We have Tarnished Silver, a criminal, who was unwittingly already working with a Changeling Infiltrator for some time before the Canterlot Wedding, broken out of jail by his old associate and offered a new deal.
These are just three examples, a pony that Equestrian society left behind for whatever reason, a pony that stayed loyal despite the changes in their life, and a pony that had no issue harming Equestria for their own gain even before the changelings showed up - another example, I like to think, of how I populate the world with ‘people’. It would have been easy to have Chryssie’s efforts be 100% effective and Equestria to actually be a terrible place... but it’s not. Chryssie is literally only getting the desperate or the criminal: the ones who either slipped through the cracks of a genuinely decent society or who were already wilfully working against it, albeit on a minor scale, for their own benefit.
Equestria, and the ponies there - this is... Equestria. It says what it is on the tin. Celestia rules, Princess Luna is Also there doing her thing, the main six are off doing who-know-What as usual. On less important scale: the nobles in Canterlot are doing their business dealings and the like, socialites in Las Pegasus are probably doing something, and some Earth Pony on some frontier somewhere is likely working on a farm in their village or town.
Now, it’s not all perfect sunshine and rainbows. The problems are still there. The soft racism between the various Pony types. Maybe some rural-urban divide. Of course, as so many stories like to include, the ‘Thestral issue’, servant’s Of Nightmare Moon or loyal bat-ponies to Princess Luna? I’m sure some obscure newspaper in Canterlot is doing no favours for the fourth pony type, and they likely have their own internal issues too, just as anyone else. Loyalists and the disillusioned, the honest and the not, the self-interested and the selfless. Their existence is a fact of society, not some secret hint at a grand conspiracy or the like.
Outside of the Hive or Equestria - Yep. Things exist beyond Equestria. Griffons (how do you spell that anyway, there’s around four spellings I think) have their own thing across the ocean, struggling economy is still better than the Changelings’ ‘no economy’. Maybe other species and nations too. Honestly, that’s far in the future, and isn’t thought out too deeply at this point.
Miscellaneous - as someone pointed out in a comment, the changelings can still be antagonists of the world, and they very much still are even with Chryssie in charge. The Canterlot Wedding happened recently in the timeline, Chryssie probably doesn’t want HER changelings turned into skittlebugs and turned into some dominion or ‘overseen nation’ of Equestria, she’s aware that being friendship-blasted is likely a possibility of she does something too sketchy too. This isn’t about Changelings becoming the ‘good guys’, this is the Changelings being a pain and rivalling the rest of the world in a different manner than Chrysalis’ purely belligerent methods.
Also, Discord is retconned, because trying to write around him hurts my head. Dude won’t be leaving his statue, ever, and nobody will miss him.
Closing - So Yeah, That’s all for now I think. I’m not dead, the fic isn’t dead, and actually, it’s undergoing a rewrite up to this point, so I can get a better idea of it rather than carrying on from such a big pause. I promise not to get scared off from writing again, but forewarn that periods of inactivity may come back - I do obsess heavily over random things, as stated earlier.
I think this is a good Fic. Definitely worth exploring more and reading more.
Can't say I'm entirely thrilled with a rewrite, but you do what you feel is best for your story. I am glad it isn't dead and neither are you. Eager to get back into the story when you are ready for us.
Keep up the good work.
Btw, that story has more likes than (I think) ALL of mine combined!
Update: I was wrong. Cumulatively over all of my stories I have 552 likes. Still!