Headcanon Thoughts - Changelings · 4:31am Aug 30th, 2013
So as I've been working on the next chapter of What Didn't Happen (yes, I'm working on it, Pinkie Promise!), I've found myself having to sit back and explore some of my headcanon a bit more. I've found myself having to come up with quite a few answers to so many unanswered questions just to make sure my story is going to make sense.
Mostly, I've had to do a lot of thinking on changelings. The only things we truly know as canon when it comes to changelings is they can draw some sort of power from emotions (love specifically being the only one mentioned), they can make themselves look like someone else with seemingly very little effort, that the drones pretty much all look alike (copy/paste is probably a big part of that), and that at least their queen, Chrysalis, has the ability to do some mind manipulation which we see her use on her bride's maids and Shining Armor.
But, that doesn't really give us a good idea of what they really are as a race, or where they come from, or if what we saw happen in the only two episodes that they ever showed up in was even typical of how a changeling would act. There's really a lot of huge, gaping holes left there to fill.
Of course, I do have my own personal headcanon that I'm using to fill in those gaps with as I write my story, and I thought I'd share a few of those thoughts with you.
The Hive Mind - Honestly, this is one that I read about in other fics before I adopted it as my own, that the mind magic we see Chrysalis perform actually goes quite a bit further than just some mind control. Specifically, changelings can be connected to one another through this strange magic, allowing them to communicate very quickly over long distances with one another, which would make them even more effective at spying and infiltration than they already would be with their ability to mimic how anyone looks. It's a very powerful ability, but one that I think has limits. The further apart the changelings are, the more difficult it is for them to mentally connect, and doing so requires the use of more energy.
Dependent on Emotional Energy - So the above kind of leads into this one, that changelings have a dependency on emotional energy, needing it as a source of power. My thought is that while most magical beings in the world that Equestria exists within can most likely regenerate their own power over time by simply resting, changelings can not, and must replenish their power from an outside source. The easiest way for them to do this is to draw off of the emotional energy of other beings. I don't believe that a changeling would 'starve to death' if they depleted all of their reserve power that they had stored up. Instead, I believe that they simply wouldn't be able to connect to the hive mind, wouldn't be able to change their form, wouldn't be able to do anything that required them to use magic, which would leave them very vulnerable. At the other extreme, if they stored up power for a long time without using it, they could end up being very powerful, at least for a short period of time.
Drones, Queens, and Others - I'm not going to go into every detail on my headcanon for the drones, as that would actually be giving something away I haven't gotten to in my story quite yet, but I do see them as being a specific kind of changeling, different from changelings like Chrysalis. Chrysalis is, of course, a special changeling in my headcanon, being the High Queen, which means every single changeling answers to her. However, she can't very well command every single changeling on her own directly (attempting to do so using her magic would simply drain her, leaving her weak), and so I believe there are other changelings like herself that are responsible for helping her lead the swarm. You might find yourself wanting to ask, 'Well, why haven't we ever seen these other changelings?' They're changelings, hiding in plain view is what they do... which actually brings me to another headcanon thing.
The Secret Society - I believe changelings have been around for quite a while, and until recently, simply kept themselves hidden in plain sight. I also believe that for most of this time, their secret coexistence with others in society was completely harmless to non-changelings around them. I chalk up Chrysalis suddenly deciding to toss a perfectly good working system aside in favor for an open invasion as one of the biggest mistakes of her life. After getting hopped up on some of the crazy powerful love energy in Canterlot, her greed got the best of her and she decided that she was no longer satisfied with the secret symbiotic relationship that her kind had with the ponies of Equestria. We all know the end result of that, of course, and I believe that the failed invasion will have a lingering effect on the lives of changelings everywhere. Now that Equestria knows about them, it will be much harder for them to hide in plain sight like before.
So that's a few of the big ones in my changeling headcanon that I use to guide my writing. I actually find them quite fascinating as an author, because their race is mostly a blank slate that I can work with, with just a few hints as to what they are to guide me.
Well, one interesting thing about Chrysalis' invasion that might back up your "it's a mistake and not their normal operating procedure" idea is that we have no real proof a direct invasion was Chrysalis' plan prior to being revealed during the wedding. There's only the circumstantial evidence from her having troops in the area for back up and then calling them in after being revealed. She may not have been originally going to invade by force at all but was unwilling to give up Shining Armor's love after the real Cadence showed up.
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Gonna hide my response in case someone else stumbles on this and hasn't read through my story yet.
I think the reason you give would work pretty good for a possible canon reason. Back when I wrote this I hadn't gotten to this part in my story yet, but I can say now that the reason actually ended up being that one of the many visions Chrysalis received was one of her invading Canterlot and succeeding. That would explain why she appeared to be overconfident, because she was. She was sure she would win because she had already seen it. She mistakenly believed her visions to be some sort of guarantee of success because before then they had never failed to come true for her. She believed Twilight's interference was the reason why it failed to come true. Turns out Twilight was responsible in a way, because her far future self was the one who created all of the visions in the first place.
The thing is, the invasion wasn't ever meant to succeed. It was meant to fail so it would drive Chrysalis toward making the choices that would one day lead her to stealing Twilight's time travel magic and heading into the past to attempt to change it all.