Quick Wit is the winner. · 6:15am Oct 25th, 2014
Thus, we shall get a short look into what's happening with Celestia and Luna.
So here's the deal:
Changeling is suppose to stay humorous, but the nature of the story has some dark elements. Whoever you guys voted for would have a silly ol' great time. Whoever loss would be successfully found out, interrogated, and probably killed on accident.
In other words, White Lie is screwed.
In a side story with a different genre I will NOT be writing about White Lie. Instead, after the Changeling Doll reaches a certain point, I've decided to let Piercing Sight, my editor and friend, write White lie's story. It will probably still be comedic but focus more on the dark and drama aspects needed.
So to summarize: Quick Wit has fun, White Lie is in trouble. If he dies or not, that's up to Piercing, if it was up to me he would be dead so he's walking on thin ice.
Since it did turn out "Quick Wit fun, White Lie screwed." Lemme tell you what I personally had planned for "Quick Wit screwed, White Lie fun." Since I prepared all four scenarios already.
White Lie's noncanon fun:
Cadence freaks, Shining gets excited and happy and apparently suffered no trauma from the changeling invasion.
Shining turns White Lie into his penguin sidekick.
Cadence fights it at first, but this causes trouble with Shining.
They both agree to try and use the doll (as a penguin,) for getting over her trauma.
Shining gets into a bunch of stupid shenanigans with his penguin buddy.
Cadence keeps accidentally getting hurt, being the punching bag along with Stupid Doll, and ends up looking like a horrible animal abuser despite never hurting White Lie.
At her wits end, she ends up going crazy and uses dark magic to force the truth painfully out of White Lie, who reveals he's real but harmless.
Shining makes it clear that White Lie is not allowed to put the moves on his wife.
White lie makes it clear he's gay and feels Shining up uncomfortably.
Shining freaks.
Quick Wit getting noncanon screwed:
Celestia made a lie detecting spell that she made forbidden because it destroyed friendships and allowed people to learn state secrets when it was in the wrong has.
Decides to try interrogating Quick Wit first before using it.
Weeks later, she gives up and uses it.
Quick Wit feels terrible that she betrayed everyone, even when she was forced, and kills herself.
Celestia feels a little bad on the inside, shrugs it off, and goes after the other dolls.
Celestia in this case is more clinically detached than apathetic. She pretty much just says in much more eloquent way "Well, that was terrible. Moving on..."
Edit: Relax people, This story is going to be happy overall, it has it dark spots, but mostly to make the happy spots brighter in contrast. I personally believe a happy ending is better when worked for. There's a reason Stupid is willing to put up with the abuse he gets. He'll earn his happy ending. I would like to apologize as well, the way it's summarized made Celestia out to be a bit heartless, this is not the case. If you take a peek at the comments you'll get more context for all of this in general.
Wow. Now I feel really sad that someone is getting (potentially) screwed in the end here.
All of a sudden, I'm imagining the Crystal ponies chanting "All hail White Lie! All hail the big talking bird!"
2554579
If it makes you feel better, you guys chose the least destructive path.
Maybe.
Depends on what Piercing Sight does.
I will never understand why some people feel they need to put something dark or edgy into an otherwise carefree setting. It always clashes harshly and often makes the story, as a whole, less enjoyable for it.
But, it's your story and at least you'll be keeping it out of the Changeling Doll entry so at least I won't have to stop following the story to avoid it. Too bad they both can't have fun though, Shining and White the Penguin sound like they would have made a great buddy duo.
Pretty much what AnonponyDASHIE said. I'm glad we're getting the fun version regardless, but I can't say I'm happy to hear about White Lie's potential fate.
Well, looks like if I'll keep following the story will heavily depend on how you write Celestia and Luna. I do not like of what you had planned in the Quick Wit screwed scenario. It is out of canon and character for Celestia to use torture, let alone for three weeks. And her shrugging off driving a living being to suicide, even a changeling? No. White Lie isn't the one on thin ice here, you are.
2554611
Mostly because this was the case as I started the story. The humor comes from my writing style more than what I wanted. Still, The Changeling Doll has a happy ending overall. Sometimes things go wrong along the way, but this isn't a story where things end on a sad note.
2554626
*Shrugs.*
In this case, Celestia and Luna are going to be light hearted pranksters.
Well, as he said, the dark stuff depends on me. I don't plan on making it too dark really, but it will need to turn serious for sure as that is the direction I have been given.
Worry not, fair readers, I shall do it justice!
2554645
I will give you the advice I give myself over this.
I wrote this story expecting no one to really read it at first, thus it was mostly for myself. This is still the case. Don't be cold to people if they give you crap over it, but the most important thing to hold above alllllll else, including what people tell you to do, and you yourself tell you to do...
Is have fun!
2554648
Most certainly! You shall find few who enjoy fun more than I!
..I get the feeling Lulu is going to be hugging the changeling to help(just a little bit) get over her (very extreme) trauma. Lets be honest here, of everything in the entire canon, Luna had it worst. 1000 years on/in the moon, trapped with the demonic form that caused her to get there in the first place?
It's a wonder she can even speak.
I...wow, well the Celestia angle freaks me right the heck out. Definitely not reading that side-fic on White Lie, methinks.
Kinda bummed we don't get to see awesome penguin shenanigans, but dunno I'd really enjoy Cadance being abused. Though you make it pretty hilarious to watch as things currently go...
I am also not terribly impressed with your plans for Celestia there. It feels very out of character for her to do something like that and forces things to go far darker than they have any reason to. The bit with Shiny not caring also strikes me as a bit odd though, so it is sounding like this path not taken really would have just been a mistake overall so it is a good thing you are avoiding it.
There is plenty of room for fun with Celestia and Luna that keeps them both perfectly in character, and it honestly does make sense for Cadence and Shiny to react very badly given their history so it makes sense for that side to get darker. I would still say that killing White Lie is probably excessive and unnecessary when there are deep dark dungeons right there even if it is plausible as a first reaction, and leaving him alive also gives you (or Piercing Sight as the case may be) a lot more material to work with once the others convince Cadence and Shiny that they made a huge mistake. It also gives you room to have some heartwarming scenes between White Lie and a sympathetic guard who can see that his or her rulers are way too emotional to be thinking clearly about the situation and taking it out on the innocent changeling.
2555017
Well, if you want to know my logic on the now non-canon path...
Stating with Shining Armor, the guy is a guard, and a pretty laid back one from what the show shows. I honestly feel any conditioning from being in the guard would make the guy properly paranoid from everything, but sense the guy is so laid back in comparison to all the other stone faced guards, I would say this guy has a huge threshold for emotional trauma and paranoia. The only time he seems upset really is if something is screwing with his wife more than with himself directly.
On the other hand we have Cadence who's known for being the best babysitter ever. During the whole incident with the changelings she gave me the impression she was a bit on her wits end, which makes sense since she was trapped in a cave for who knows how long. She was also out of it for understandable reasons with Sombra's whole shindig as well. During the Cadence/Twilight/Discord episode she was just as irritated as Twilight was. This of course could have just been due to the fact that it was Discord. Point is that all three times see her she's upset, freaked out, stressed out, etc, even for understandable reasons. While Shining, even after freed from mind control is unusually relaxed, just depressed. Also, Cadence is a princess, I have to imagine she hasn't been put in harm's way often, or has been condition for dealing with crazy crap.0
With Celestia on the darker end she's who knows how old. The in the show it seems she always trying to carefully balance out with her ponies "How much can I let them handle that will make them grow but won't actually harm them?" Everything she deals with she comes off either comes off as reserved and relaxed, or reserved and serious. Only time we see her freak is when she had to banish her sister and when see saw a vision of Tirek. I imagine she wouldn't have any ill will towards the changeling, but she certainly isn't going to let it go without making sure it's not causing trouble. Keep it locked up, interrogate it, etc. Eventually, she realizes it's starving to death and she's just going to have to use the lie detecting spell. She finds out what's up, breathes a sigh of relief, is going to tell it everything will be fine and things aren't that big of a deal and sees that it discreetly killed itself.
Whoops.
She gives it a proper burial, plans what to do next and moves on. No matter how hard she tries ponies die sometimes and there's nothing she can do. She's probably trained herself not to feel guilt or think "What if I *Blank*" Because if she did do that she'd be miserable from all the time she's spent being responsible for her country. It is what it is.
That's how I feel, anyway. There's a lot up for interpretation, and the path we're taking follows a more lighthearted Celestia and a more paranoid Shining.
Feel free to tell me your views in depth, I kinda like debating characters to be honest.
2555066 I see where you are coming from with Shiny, although you did bring up a very good point that I think will make him get nasty (or at least as nasty as he can get).
The changeling is screwing with his wife just by being there so I would expect him to do whatever it takes to make it stop bothering her. Given how laid back he is and the fact that Sombra left them a rather impressive dungeon, I would expect him to toss the changeling in there in short order rather than kill him like you seem to be suggesting. He would then have to deal with Cadence's paranoia because she knows that more changelings could easily be hiding in the city and the presence of one does seem to indicate that there are good odds that more are nearby, so that changeling is going to be interrogated by the pair of them to determine if there is a real threat. Shiny will do what he can to keep Cadence under control, but she is the princess so there is not a whole lot he can do about it, especially given that she will not be terribly inclined to believe the truth after what happened to her. This means White Lie is going to stay cooped up in the dungeons for quite a while with very little love to sustain him and a substantial amount of abuse even if they do not directly try to hurt him (that kind of thing is very rough emotionally no matter what). I would also expect Cadence to eventually see what is really going on and try to correct it, but the damage would already be done by that point.
To be perfectly honest, I am with you on both of their characterization, I just do not see how it could play out in such a positive and comedic manner or how it could end with a dead changeling. I would expect Shiny to be at least relatively ok with the situation and Cadence to freak out, but I cannot see any way around a very rough time for poor White Lie.
For Celestia, my problem is how cold you are making her. While I do agree that she needs to be able to insulate herself from bad situations, that does not equate to driving an innocent changeling to suicide. I can see her locking him up assuming she does not have a more modest lie detector to sort things out on the spot, but she would be very up front about what she is able to do in order to try to push him into telling the truth. Assuming she does not believe what he tells her which strikes me as very odd given how much experience she has had with things trying to lie to her over her stupidly long life, she would be forced to use the crazy truth spell which you described. At that point she would realize how badly she fucked up and her very clearly demonstrated compassionate side would come into play. She would stick with the changeling she wrongly hurt until he was feeling better and keep him from killing himself by the simple expedience of being in the room with him the whole time.
That said, the bigger part of my problem with the Canterlot side of things in your proposed plotline is the total lack of Luna. She has no negative memories of changelings as far as we know so there is no reason for her to be suspicious of them besides what Celestia tells her, and there are lots of very clear parallels between her and them which I would expect to draw her attention to it very quickly. At that point she will build her own relationship and views on her own experience and her interactions with Quick Wit which will almost certainly be highly sympathetic. That alone will give the little guy a strong pillar of support in the face of Celestia's suspicions and a strong advocate against the invasive spell which Celestia cannot ignore. Furthermore, given how fresh Nightmare Moon is in Celestia's memory, there is no way she will risk overriding Luna or going behind her back out of fear of loosing her sister again. This means Luna will almost certainly be able to prevent Celestia from using that spell unless Quick Wit explicitly gives permission to prove his innocence, and in either case the result is a relatively happy changeling curled up under Luna's wing.
So, long story short, I think Luna would be far too sympathetic to the changeling to let anything bad happen to him, and even without that Celestia would feel too guilty about what she did to let him kill himself. More realistically, I would expect Celestia to be suspicious at first but realize he is probably telling the truth and give him a substantial amount of liberty in his actions while Luna is completely behind him from day one. I would still expect them to require him to be guarded when he is not with one of them, although that is as much for his protection as anything else (remember what happened to Stupid?) and should not cause any problems, especially because they would pick a guard they could trust to be nice to the changeling.
2555121
Well, his protectiveness of his wife is what makes go south here in the non canon path, if I was writing it. It's one of things that I feel is up to character interpretation. If things went well for White Lie, he would have come to the conclusion that he can keep a sharp eye on the guy (the reason he made it his sidekick, to be at his side at all times.) and maybe use it to help Cadence get over her issues, a little tough love. With things going comedically wrong of course. If things didn't go well for White Lie and I was writing it, he would come to the conclusion that this thing could be dangerous to his wife and he doesn't feel confident enough to keep a close enough eye on it. Lock it up in the dungeon, send a letter while trying to work it out, and it either ends up starving or taking it's own life because it's starving. Shining feels regret that things didn't go better but keeps his calm exterior.
In Celestia's case, Wit ironically dies because of Celestia's beliefs of freedom and because she let her guard down and trusted Quick. She feels forcing the truth out of someone takes away their freedom on a level that's unacceptable. Interrogating for her is convincing that it's worth their safety to tell her what's going on. Her interrogations doesn't consist of abuse really, more of playing nice cop, mean cop and being charismatic and convincing. When she realize it's starving she compromises and uses the spell. She realizes that what it's hiding isn't that bad at all and actually they're probably allies in the matter. She immediately lets her guard down and takes a breather over the issue, prepares a nice room for it to stay and prepares a apology for it, and finds that it killed itself.
Cue Celestia facehoofing, because she didn't expect it to hurt anyone anymore, she didn't take caution towards it hurting itself.
I didn't mention Luna because it wasn't questioned, sorry. Luna isn't okay with the matter but can't override her sister decision's due to lack of confidence, and doesn't try too hard because Celestia assures that this is the best for everyone, including the changeling. She also promises not to hurt it. She chews Celestia out for messing up. Celestia has a night where she feels terrible, forces herself to shrug it off in the morning, and prepares to contact the others.
In the happier version... well, you'll see what happens. Celestia's cautious but doesn't lock it up. Instead she finds a way to make use of it politically while keeping an eye on it. Comedy and Trollestia ensues.
2555121
I'd like to apologize, the way it was summarized made Celestia out to be heartless. In both cases Shining/Celestia have the best interest at heart, things just don't go well.
2555169 I see what you are saying, but it is still coming off as negligence rather than a plausible mistake. They know what a changeling needs to survive and they have guards watching the prison all the time so there is no way this should be a surprise to either of them. The shrug and move on part also makes it seem like they do not really care all that much which makes it worse, although I am more focusing on the stuff leading up to that anyways.
Shining locking the changeling up is perfectly understandable. Letting him starve to death is not. It takes at least a week of no food to starve to death for humans, and many animals can and do go longer. Given the fact that whatever changelings get from love is not physical and how much power Chrysalis was able to gather, I would expect it to take at least a month for a changeling to starve to death. Even if it is just a week, that is not something that happens on its own with no warning so starving a changeling to death cannot come off as anything but criminal negligence by literally everyone involved (that means Shiny, Cadence, and every guard and servant that ever goes near the cell). The only possible way around that is to make them outright evil and have them deliberately starve White Lie to death which is so far out of character for everyone involved I am not even going to consider it a possibility.
Moving on to Celestia, the first part of that is entirely believable. I can definitely see her keeping Quick Wit locked up and trying to play nice, but that does not mean there is no psychological abuse. Quick is still very clearly a powerless prisoner and completely at her mercy which is very bad for his mental state no matter how gentle she is, and Celestia is old enough to know this and be aware of what kind of effects it can have.
Furthermore, leaving Quick Wit alone after she uses the spell is more clear abuse and neglect. She knows full well that he is starving and knows that she owes him food as well an apology for her actions, but instead you have her ignore him and wander off instead of calling out to a nearby guard to go take care of the setup while she takes care of the changeling.
Moving on to Luna, that is sounding like exactly the same kind of shit that triggered Nightmare Moon in the first place which means Celestia has learned absolutely nothing from her thousand year long ordeal. She should really be making sure Luna is at least an equal in this, although this is a perfect opportunity to give her the lead and build up her confidence while simultaneously giving the changeling the best possible chance with a very sympathetic handler which is a very Celestia way to handle the situation. Given this logic, I would really expect Luna to be the one befriending and learning about the changeling while Celestia sits back and watches. I would also expect Luna to either bring the changeling into her room or move into his cell at least part time to make him feel more like a friend than a prisoner, and she will also give him all the love he could ever need in the process so starvation is a non-issue.
So in conclusion, Celestia is abusing both the changeling and Luna while ignoring her extensive experience and very strong specific reason to be watching out for exactly this kind of thing on top of the widespread criminal negligence that seems to be a fixture in your kill schemes.
Really, just stop trying to kill the changelings. It is transforming what could otherwise be reasonable scenarios into painful criminal stupidity and negligence from entire groups of characters who really should know better by any reasoning.
2555300
Well first off, I'm not in charge of White Lie anymore, if he lives or not isn't really up to me. I could say to Piercing "Hey, no killing aloud." But I trust him to make the story interesting and end it a way fitting, no matter which way it goes.
As for the rest those are things I personally believe they wouldn't handle well. I think Celestia wouldn't do better with her sister because she wasn't the one who fixed the situation, Twilight was. I think people who are high authority figures can easily place ideals above emotions and do things so mechanically that they don't realize what they're doing wrong. It happens. I can see Celestia screwing up and growing up from the experience, not from White Lie dying but her sister getting mad. "Wow, Luna is really upset, maybe this wasn't just a slip up."
In Shining's case, he's not an all wise ruler, even if he is aware the thing is starving, he doesn't really know how to give it food besides being affectionate. It's a little hard for anyone who's not a saint to have loving feelings towards a creature from a species that tried to hypnotize you, most likely murder your wife, and now the creature in front of you is deliberately keeping a secret it feels is worth to rot in jail for. If I was Shining I'd be scared and uncertain, you can't trust it, you can't help the poor thing, you're far away from support from family and friends in a kingdom you just moved into, and not sure what to do. Is it really unreasonable for him not to handle the situation perfectly?
As for people dying, I seen a lot of deaths and after the third one you kinda just accept it as a part of life and move on. Sometimes you try not to think about the death because it hurts to just focus on it and you already know from being in this situation grieving or feeling guilty does nothing but cause yourself pain, it doesn't help at all. I think it's reasonable for Celestia and Shining to not want to think about it, but then become driven to help make the situation better, perhaps become protective of the other changelings to make up for their mistakes.
I'm not hellbent on killing them, I was just telling you what was going through my head as I planned this. Sorry I upset you so much dude. My life experiences, what I thought would make for an interesting story, and how I interpreted these characters lead me to these conclusions. I can easily see it going another way in a more idealistic setting, but I don't think what I had planned is too unreasonable.
Goodness, what happened here? I didn't read everything, but let's remember that it will be me writing it, and as much as dark and such is the direction, I do not plan on killing any characters unless it absolutely works with the situation. I don't think it will.
So, please, it is useless to discuss something that does not yet exist. As I said, I will do the story justice to the best of my ability.
-PiercingSight
2555562 Ah, that is very good to hear and should take care of my concerns.
Now onto wasting time with Pickleless.
2555442 I was kind of under the assumption that Celestia figured out she fucked up when she was forced to banish her sister to the moon for a thousand years. That far outweighs Luna getting mad over Celestia fucking this situation up and should be more than enough of a hint that she needs to do better this time. Heck, we even saw some of that in the pilot when Celestia said they were meant to rule together so she really should have already learned that lesson.
As for Shiny, while he is not an expert, he has a lot of support to call on for help. Even if Cadence is totally useless, he can almost certainly find a sympathetic pony to send in somewhere. There are a lot of servants at the castle so one of them should work even if none of the guards feel any sympathy for the starving changeling they spend all day around somehow, and if none of the castle staff work by some freak chance there are a lot more ponies in the surrounding city to call on because he has the authority to at least send out a help wanted message that explains the situation and asks for volunteers.
As for death, there is a huge difference between experiencing death and causing it. When an older relative dies from old age there is really nothing you can do so it is relatively easy to move on, but that is nothing like screwing up and getting someone killed or making the deliberate decision to kill someone. I have done a fair amount of poking around military psychology so I have a decent understanding of that side of things, although the biggest thing I have found is that it is very hard to grasp that the cost of taking a life unless you have actually experienced it yourself. Now, it is entirely possible that you have that kind of experience which would change things, but in my experience it is fairly rare to meet people who actually made a decision that got people killed outside combat veterans.
Also, I kind of doubt that Shiny has experienced much death in his lifetime because the guard seems to be largely ceremonial and Equestria seems to be generally very peaceful so there are very good odds that he has no real personal experience with death to draw on.
Lastly, you didn't upset me. It takes a lot to bother me so no worries there.
2555728
"He makes a good point, someone considerate in the castle."
"Considerate, kind, wouldn't judge a cover by it's book..."
"FLASH SENTRY, OF COURSE!"
"WELP, GUESS I'M PUTTING FLASH INTO THE CHANGELING DOLL!"
2555762
Well, it sounds like this was a productive conversation then, and Flash should be especially fun because he adds much more ambiguity to how the romantic relationships will fall out. Prior to this it was sounding like the only real possibility was Stupid/Twilight with Rainbow as a running gag, but with Flash added to the mix there are a lot of ways it could fall out. Hell, you could even go for Stupid/Flash if you really wanted to screw with people.
I'm probably being stupid, but... who is White Lie?
2556149
A changeling. Don't worry, you'll see.