PP vs. Change · 1:27am Dec 21st, 2024
Change.
Change is the one true constant in the universe.
Change is inevitable.
Change, some say, is God.
Change is also a 2016 My Little Pony Fanfiction written by tom117z and narrated by Skijaramaz! :D Spoilers, his channel is the next one I'm going through. :B The one that put me over 700 audiobooks, remember?
Change isn't exactly a name I'd heard before coming to it, but it has tons of views, tons of votes and comments, starts off a lengthy series, and well? I have a lot I want to say about it, so a vs. post it is. Hope you like changelings!
So who's up for a "Twilight is secretly a changeling" story? Can't say I've read too many of those, but they're usually fun, right? Especially when we learn pretty early on that Twilight isn't just a changeling, but the long-lost daughter of Queen Chrysalis herself. Surely that's going to be a source of lots of drama and tension, right?
Well… It is, I'm not trying to lead you on here. But also, if you go into this story with that expectation, you're going to leave disappointed. Because whether or not tom117z intended to from the start or not, it feels like partway through, he suddenly realized that what he really wanted to write was a modern military epic, with lots of fighting and stoic badass military ponies and helicopters.
Fucking helicopters.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. We begin with a very well-conceived story whereby Chrysalis left her infant daughter on the doorstep of a family of Canterlot nobles about twenty years ago. Her hive was undergoing a love shortage that had already claimed her husband, and when changeling princesses start to mature, they need tons of love or will die. And how better to ensure a young changeling is full up on love than by giving her to a family who will love and cherish her the whole time she's growing up?
What's great about this setup is actually that Twilight has always known she's adopted. No one knows who her birth parents might have been, but the story goes to great pains to let us know that she knows that her adoptive parents love her no matter what. Like, if there is one thing I can praise Change for, it's a really, really positive depiction of adoptive parenting and how good adoption can be for all those involved. I know there are some adopted kids out there who will absolutely feel seen by this.
This brings us to the first main issue I had with this story: it really wants you to know that changelings aren't evil and Chrysalis is a good person, actually. She gave up her only daughter in order to save her life! She's not a monster or a dictator, she's a good leader who cares deeply about her subjects and just made a mistake with the wedding because she figured ponies wouldn't want to talk with her kind!
This story asks a lot of the reader when it comes to Chrysalis. And to be sure, it never sat right with me. I've read plenty of stories where she was, in fact, a loving mother to her changelings, but rarely is she ever shown to have regrets about the invasion. It's a desperate ploy, usually as a last-ditch effort to save a dying race, and if she's ever portrayed as sympathetic, it's always with a hefty side of tragedy.
The reason I bring up nebulous other stories to compare this to is the approach this takes with changeling society. It's very much the sort of "they're just like us" respectability politics that stood in for good diversity and representation in 80's and 90's media, i.e., what I grew up watching. Which isn't to say there's not some cool world-building here, there definitely is, it's just that when changelings are so dissimilar from ponies, and when their society isn't based the slightest bit around being insectoid creatures that feed off of love and can readily change form, one has to wonder why all the effort was put in to make them separate from ponies in the first place.
To put a point on this, there's a scene much later in the story where a changeling queen is revealed to have been a drone, actually, as a fake-out death. This irked me quite a bit, because it raises the question: If a society of shape-changers has no limits on what its members can turn into, how can they function without constant inter-hive sabotage? How can you ever be sure that your queen or commander or neighbor is who they say they are? This is perhaps addressed by the 'egregor' — a fancy term for the changeling hivemind, points for that — which we're shown prevents changelings from communicating directly with members of other hives, though only if they're paying attention to that aspect of their physiology. This is never brought up explicitly, however.. I mean, the hives are scattered and disconnected enough that finding all the queens in order to call a formal council is a seriously difficult task! That was a good idea, I just felt the rest was a massive oversight that put the lie to the world-building in this story.
So. Change is divided into three books. The first sets up the premise and lays out the stakes, the second introduces us further to changeling politics and the third brings everything to a massive showdown conclusion. If you're looking for a 'changeling Twilight' story? Stick with Act I. It takes us from the pre-wedding status quo to Twilight's big reveal — one other cool aspect of the story is that she knows she has another form, she just doesn't know anything about it — meeting Chrysalis, starting to reconcile her identity with her lived life, and the start of some diplomatic relations between Equestria and the Badlands Hive, which are interrupted by an attempt on Twilight's life. We're also introduced to major side characters, including Shining Armor's counterpart in the Night Guard — and yes, this story uses the T-word, points off for that — the first bad guy, Broadsword, who just so happens to be Shining Armor's second in command, and an EUP soldier (because the EUP is a completely separate military from the Royal Guard, you see) who is quite clearly the author's favorite OC, except that, spoilers, he dies rather early on, which I had not seen coming! Very pleasing to see an author kill their darlings so literally. :)
And speaking of twists, Act I gives us one of the best twists I have ever seen. Maybe it was just that I hadn't been thinking too deeply about it; when it happened, I screamed, and I felt absolutely hooked! I am not even going to hint at what it was, it was so good, and if you read Act I, you'll want to come at it fresh.
Granted, that hook did not last very long. So let's talk about the… everything else.
I've already hinted at it a couple of times, but the author very clearly wanted to write a military story. And not just any military story — because I've certainly read some that were great — a real-world military story. The EUP being separate from the Royal Guard is one of those details that really did not change or affect anything in the story, and would only really be of interest to people who are really into military facts. Same with "Captain of the Royal Guard" being a traditional, ceremonial title, and Shining actually being a colonel before he's married off to a princess. (Captain as a rank in the US military is either lower than colonel — in the Army — or from the Navy. Again, not relevant, but the kind of thing military buffs would want to be very clear about.)
And then there are the fucking helicopters.
Okay, so. There's precedent here. Many of you are no doubt thinking about Pinkie Pie's pedal copter from season one, and that is in fact mentioned in the story. As being a military test project. But there's also another, more advanced helicopter that appears as a split-second visual gag in, I believe, Testing, Testing, 1, 2, 3. Cherry Berry flies it. And so, from these two very minor canon gags, we're given a series of mechanical contraptions the EUP use to carry troops, do reconnaissance, and lest we forget, shoot things with heavy repeating crossbows. America.
My god does tom117z like helicopters.
I'm calling him out on this because it does reach egregious levels by the end of the story. Several fight scenes are prefaced by a helicopter ride, in which the non-military occupants tend to complain about how scary the helicopters are. Helicopters are used, as I said, for recon, in a memorable scene featuring an enemy changeling swarm. They take ponies places, even ponies who can fly, because I guess they're faster? Certainly better for transporting mixed companies, of course. But where they get silly is at around the two-thirds mark, when they show up over the horizon to provide support at the end of one of the major epic battle scenes. As an astute reader in the comments pointed out, it's like the end of an 80's action movie. Helicopters might exist in some form in Equestria, but this use of them was very silly.
And that leads me into an issue I'm not sure I can fully put words to: tone. This is a problem an author is likely to have when they're trying to A) stick to canon — the wedding scene in fact hews so closely, I was wishing it had been abbreviated — B) write a story with awesome epic military battles. tom117z did a lot of wanting to have his cake and eat it too when it came to tone, and you can probably imagine why. You'd get a scene like the one at the start of the chapter titled "Ponyville" which was just pitch-perfect, wall-to-wall Pinkie Pie shenanigans. It was a lot of fun! And then you'd have something like this incident happening in the final battle, which I'll quote my notes on:
halfway through the fight, a helicopter crashes into town hall and the narration laments that its occupants wouldn't be the first nor the last to die, and I just think that sucks
If there's a reason I was less than enthusiastic about this story, this was it, and I'm sorry it took me so long to realize that that was what the problem even was. I actually made the observation partway through that if this had been more grim, it would have felt more cohesive. Imagine that, wanting a story to be grimmer!
So let's talk about action scenes! There are, by my faulty recollection, four major ones, and the first one is the best. That's the one where the bad guys are trying to take out Twilight and the changeling diplomats in order to foment war between Equestria and the hive. What makes it great is that it's very personal. I mean, we get to see things like two changelings beheaded at the same time, it's still violent as hell, but that's not what I'm talking about. Everything that happens takes place in a very short amount of time, we get an up-close and personal look at what Twilight's going through. Later on, she relives the trauma with inner monologue, so we can really see what all was happening. It's like we, the readers, are looking those turncoat ponies right in the eyes, and it's pretty powerful.
Oh yeah, also it's the shortest of the four. Each consecutive battle scene gets longer and longer, until the final climactic showdown, which takes up, I want to say two and a half chapters? And very long chapters, at that! That one in particular, it felt like such a foregone conclusion. Like, who's gonna die? Twilight's guard? Okay, that was unexpected. And he said something poignant as his final words, about how she was his friend, that just rams home how battered the tone is, because it would have been significantly more poignant in a story where friendship was actually the focus. I definitely zoned out during large swaths of it and felt like I had missed nothing. It gets better for the final, final showdown between Twilight and the evil changeling queen — because, again, it's zoomed in and personal, and the combatants are monologuing about their motivations and ideals, and that's pretty cool — and then the fucking helicopters show up and ruin the moment.
I've been watching a lot of hbomberguy videos lately and I can hear him screaming in the back of my head.
There's one other major writing misstep I want to bring up before we move on. Actually, maybe I should address the writing as a whole first. It was… fine? Workmanlike? The action in that first fight scene was significantly easier to follow than that of the longer ones, it was a distinct highlight. The author has a problem with head-hopping — to be expected in a story this long with this many characters — and the thing that really got to me was the saidisms. I'm not sure if they crept in over the course of the story or if it was just me noticing after a certain amount of time had passed, but oh boy, every single way to avoid using "said" is at play here. Characters do things, often with adverbs (like asking questioningly), the narrative fills us in on what speech act they just used, it's all there, it's all unnecessary.
Anway, you know how I said it's worth reading to the end of Act I? That's because Act II commits what I would say is the worst sin in this story: A two-year time skip. If you wanted a story about Twilight being a changeling, well too fucking bad, because all of that story happens off-screen in between the end of one chapter and the beginning of the next. Want to see how hive society works? Too bad. How Twilight bonds with her birth mother? Too bad! How Twilight's friends and family adapt to her living in the hive full-time? What Spike was like growing up? You get the idea.
And it's not as though we can't fill those blanks in given how the characters react over the course of the story. They just aren't given any real focus. I wanted to see these things, see the shape they took, especially Twilight's bond with Chrysalis. Hearing her call Chrysalis 'mother' was just so weird, and it's because we never got to see the events that got her to that place. It's hard enough seeing Chrysalis as a good person in the first place; at least let me see the emotional connection she forms with her daughter who she loves so very much!
Which brings us, I think, to one final point. And let me preface this by saying this section is not meant as any sort of callout. I've been watching a lot of Youtube video essays, so many of them are mired in drama, that's not what I'm going for. Sometimes, we just write what we know, and all we know is what other people have told us. I don't think tom117z really means anything untoward by this.
But in Change, mares are definitely from Mars while stallions are from Venus. <_<
Yes, there are some pretty rigid, traditional gender roles in this here story about shapeshifting bug horses! Suffice to say, I got tired of them right quick. Now, on the one hand, I've seen way worse along these lines; this is no Nyx's Family. Also to the story's benefit, all the main show characters, all but two of whom are mares, were written well in character, another definite strong point of the writing.
But after a while, I started noticing that all the female characters shared the trait of being really emotional, some of them irrationally so. And that all the male characters had a tendency to be stoic and unflappable. Well, except for Shining Armor, but I think we had canon characterization for him by that point which the author didn't want to ignore. And his emotions are used as a punchline here, too.
But the very specific thing that got to me, and it's definitely because of my own preferences, is the story's approach to motherhood. Because whether they're a stay-at-home mom or the princess of an entire goddamn kingdom, every single mare who plays any sort of role in this story — with the exception, I believe, of Luna as well as Twilight's friends, and I could argue about their roles being particularly notable — is defined by her motherhood.
Chrysalis, of course, is the ur-example. And if anything, there's nothing wrong with this, it's a way to add depth to her character and it's sort of a foundation to the story itself. But once she's reunited with Twilight, Chrysalis sort of stops being any sort of force on the story beyond supporting her daughter. I was honestly surprised when she had a moment of taking command of the hive and giving orders and stuff. Like, she's a leader of a whole people! And I had forgotten that because it just hadn't been all that important between the wedding and that scene! Chrysalis gets a, "Not my daughter, you bitch!" moment, and spoilers, ultimately ends up sacrificing herself to save Twilight. Her death, I was surprised by, but in hindsight? Maybe I shouldn't have been.
Goddammit, Chrysalis, if you loved your goddamn daughter so fucking much, and you were able to leave her the occasional surreptitious Hearth's Warming present, surely you could have taken on an assumed pony guise and introduced yourself at some point, made up a backstory and been more of a presence in Twilight's life. >:| I don't know why that irked me, maybe it was because she gave Twilight Smarty Pants and her first Daring Do book (signed!), who can say.
And she of course isn't Twilight's only mother. There's Twilight Velvet, who raised her, and her lacking in characterization I won't actually complain about, since she had no canon character at this point in time. Honestly, Twilight's adoptive parents are just fine as they are. But she's also got Celestia, whose motherly feelings towards Twilight make her do some really rash, crazy shit, and put the lie to my claim that characterization was a strong point of this story. Celestia is, if anything, the standout exception to that rule, but she stood out in spades. I like a story where Celestia gets pissed off and brings the full might of the sun down on the pitiful mortals who dared invoke her wrath, but not like this. Maybe it was because it happened one too many times; maybe because the first time, it was against her own subjects; or maybe it was because she started out at a 10 when she needed to be a 2. She spent too much time intervening directly in events, leading military efforts and so forth, so that there was no escalation in her use of force. She starts with "might of the sun" and never changes her tune, not when Twilight's safety is on the line, and despite a very good bit of characterization where she laments the need to wear the armor in which she originally defeated King Sombra.
There are just so many mothers in this story! That guard of Twilight's I mentioned before has a wife who's a nurse, and also a mother, and that's basically all there is to her character. In fact, she takes part in one of the most cliche scenes in the whole story, when her husband comes home in one piece after some skirmish or other, she slaps him and then kisses him. How many times have we seen that before? I was so mad.
There's a changeling we're introduced to much later in the story, a teenager who is the last survivor of a decimated hive, along with her little sister, and her role in the story is to be a mother to that sister. Flurry Heart happens at some point, meaning Cadence can be a mother now.
(As an aside, Flurry specifically confused the hell out of me. Way late in the story, Sunburst is mentioned by name. Apparently he did in fact help them out when Flurry broke the Crystal Heart, so all of that happened in the canon of this story… Except that Starlight Glimmer is never mentioned once. In fact, there's a scene where several of the major plot events from seasons 3 through 6 are mentioned as having happened, but Starlight and Our Town aren't among them. Normally, I'd be highly amused by egregious Starlight slander, but in this case she just seems an odd omission for no particular reason.)
But the worst offender out of all these characters is an OC we're introduced to at the end of Act I. Her name is Scarlet Snow and she's an EUP guard. She's basically retconned into having been part of the rescue effort at the end of that act, saving a military OC who becomes a major side character later from the bad guys. This despite her never having been mentioned or even described in the scene immediately preceding the chapter where she at last is. They meet in the hospital because she got injured, hit it off, and then succumb to the two-year time skip, which consumes not only their relationship, but their marriage and honeymoon as well. Interestingly, I noted that she takes over the place of that author's pet OC who got unexpectedly killed, becoming the snarky sidekick character.
But from there, her role simply becomes "pregnant wife who is in the way". She spends several chapters knowing that she's pregnant and either being unable to figure out the words to say to tell her husband, or being interrupted by comic coincidences. She's made to stay out of at least one battle because of her condition. And ultimately she's just a weak spot for her husband while he's out militaring, causing him no amount of stress and worry. She eventually gives birth to a healthy son, and this adds precisely nothing to the story overall. (I was at least pleased to see that not only did the author use my personal headcanon when it comes to parents naming their foals, but also not having them just name him after the dead OC. Restraint!)
Like I said, this all isn't meant as a callout. It's just that this kind of approach to writing female characters is as tired as it is reductive. Even Twilight ultimately ends up being defined by her motherhood, as the epilogue reveals this was all actually a story she was telling to her daughter, the next princess of the hive. I'm not mad about that, per se — the epilogue also reveals that the great changeling change happened, gradually, between the end of the main story and this future time, which I think is not only the best canon-skip used in this story, but the best way to treat that specific event if you want to avoid the overly dramatic cartoon version (also, I was mad about Discord showing up in the final scene to declare he'd just come back from vacation, talk about egregious) — it was just the plasticky cherry on top of a very, very tired sundae. I just wanted something better for these characters.
Okay, here's the point in the review at which I just look through my notes to see what all I forgot to talk about. This thing has gotten really long and I've been writing it over the course of several days, argh.
- I've always had problems with the wedding episode, but I'm honestly not sure how I feel about Chrysalis being discovered only because she reveals herself at the altar (because it would be weird to get married to her daughter's adoptive brother, I guess?) She is shown as being considerably more competent at the disguise and infiltration than in the show, which I do appreciate if nothing else.
- Along with "changelings are just like us, no really", they're shown to use non-lethal tactics only during the invasion, to really rub home that any ponies who thought they were marauding monsters were just being racist, actually!
- I made vague mention to one before, but there are a pair of changeling nymphs who slot smoothly into the "adorable kid character" role, the daughter of Twilight's guard and the younger sister of that hive survivor. In both cases, the play for feels came off as extremely forced, and I don't believe either one added anything to the overall story beyond "changelings can have loving families too!"
- Oh yeah, the Night Guard captain is named Vlad. Just gonna let that one sit there.
- One detail that I really liked is that there's actually nothing particularly special about Chrysalis when it comes to being a changeling queen. Her hive is on the smaller side. It's hidden in the desert with a non-detection spell. Also, she's best friends with another queen, which is the kind of delight you can only get when she's actually, y'know, a decent person at heart.
- There's a Fallout: Equestria reference.
- Oh yeah, the episode titles exist in-universe, as the titles of military reports on the goings-on of the princess's student in Ponyville. Think of that what you will!
- A major subplot I skipped completely over is Shining's reaction to Twilight's form reveal. Because he does not take it well, and says some hurtful things. Stories where he and/or Twilight have major trauma from the wedding are pretty common, all told — and in this one, he remembers everything she forced him to do while mind-controlling him! — but chalk this one up as handling the subject with depth, nuance and care. I believe their tiff is resolved by the end of Act I, but it was a good B story.
- There is a fearmongering news outlet in this story whose name abbreviates to CNN, I believe the Canterlot News Network? It had originally been Fox News, but some commenter got the author to change it. <_<
- As hard as I found it to accept Chrysalis being good, actually, the scenes of her and Celestia becoming allies and friends over the shared grief of the attempt on Twilight's life were delightful and a highlight of the story.
- There are a lot of very short chapters that involve flashbacks which rarely add much to the plot.
- There's a Phoenix Wright reference.
- I can but wonder why the author took the time to let us know that changelings don't really like taking disguises of the opposite gender…
- I made mention earlier of emotional burdens, but you know what? At the very least, Twilight and Shining are allowed to have complex emotional states and given room to deal with some of the hardest things they have to. I was very pleased to get a scene of Twilight crying on Celestia's shoulder after she'd been bottling up some feelings behind a mask of dutifulness.
- At one point, Rainbow Dash gets severely pissed off at a discovered changeling infiltrator in Ponyville, and what's the last word she says right before she breaks his fucking arm? "Military." The author wanted to write about one thing.
- Vinyl Scratch and Octavia show up very late in the story and get a lot more word count dedicated to them than I would have expected for a late-game cameo. Also, we're told specifically that they are not a couple, though Lyra and Bon-Bon are.
- I appreciated that in the final climactic showdown, Twilight was willing to offer her opponent mercy and the chance to redeem herself while also being ready for betrayal.
Change is either a story that doesn't know what it wants to be, or that its author didn't know how to market the right way. What seems to be a classic what-if story about a changeling Twilight is instead a military drama, and there's nothing wrong with that, really. I just like my expectations to line up with what I'm getting into ahead of time. I don't expect to read the sequels (mostly because I can take them off my audiobook list and shrink it a good chunk), and I may have checked out of it now and then, but overall? It could have been far, far worse.
3/5
Come for the changelings, stay for the fighting.
And once again, a vs. post took me several days to write, so I forgot how I wanted to end it. x_x; Apologies if this doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but that's why.
I ran across this one when I was looking at all the x is a changeling group stories. I think. Maybe it was “also liked” on some of those. I never read more than the first chapter it seems.
Hats it. I don’t have anything more to say. End of the year stress and finally having some time off means my brain has shut down
Huh. I honestly do not remember anything about this story, but Fimfic shows that I've read up to Chapter 12 before abandoning it.
I just skimmed through Chapter 12, and seeing the name Vladimir for a pony was so jarring that it was like a slap to the face.
Perhaps that's where the shift in focus became apparent and I lost my interest.
I can't say I am interested in this fic, but what exactly wrong with 'Vladimir'? Disregarding the obvious appropriation from another culture, it is I believe a canon name of Prince Blueblood for whatever reason.
Personally I think it sounds snappy.
I've read through chapter 5, so I didn't get to much of the conflict, but I do remember thinking it was really front-loaded with exposition when there would have been plenty of opportunity to work it in later at a more relevant time. I found it odd that Twilight's parents would just take her in without ever trying to find out if she belonged to anyone. It rehashes significant amounts of canon events most people around here would already know. And it engages in a fair amount of head-hopping. It definitely didn't start out as a warfic, so I guess I'm glad I missed the part where it became one, since I thought it being a more personal tale about Twilight was at least enjoyable.
5822165
that name apparently comes from a French MLP magazine, per the wiki, so not exactly canon, if you ask me
but seriously, the bat pony <_< is named Vladimir
it's so goofy!
5822172
yeah, the amount of canon rehashing -- with no meaningful change -- was a serious detriment for me c_c outside of keeping us caught up on where, exactly, the story falls on the timeline and what all has actually happened, it doesn't serve a lot of purpose! the rundown of which villains they'd defeated, for instance, is far more helpful than the wedding run-through
5822191
Ah, the bat pony 😋
Now I see it, it's hilarious.
Yeah, the name is more semi-canon, but still.
This is one fic I'd had on my RiL list for ages. Doesn't sound like I'd enjoy it on the whole enough to bother now, though, because those issues and especially the tonal and narrative lurches feel pretty major. This reads more like a 2/5 review, being honest. Maybe if I had the wherewithal to partially read fics, I'd cover the first act, then quit, but alas, I do not.
Still, that's why we reviewers are here: both to discover new things for others, but also to provide enough details on mixed effort to allow others to ascertain whether it's worth it. So, mission still accomplished, bud!
Yikes! Thanks for the heads-up!
Just give it a million googol years, it'll stop soon.