Weird Coincidence · 9:38pm Oct 29th, 2015
Next mini-arcs an Applejack one, and I can't have an Applejack arc without friction from two differing views of honesty. I was reviewing the story to see how many times I used the word lie because I wanted to make sure it held up to the way changelings think of lies. Funnily enough, almost every use of the word lie has been by a pony (or draconeques in one case) or a poor translation of the Changeling language.
And the four times Morpheus did use it it was referring to what Applejack might consider a lie three times and one single instance that actually reflected how changelings look at the word lie.
Considering how much I'd expect the word lie to come up in a changeling story, I find that to be an amusing coincidence. I didn't have to actually correct anything.
Im rather curious how much time you had to consider to the whole changeling viewpoint overall in writing what you have so far?
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The short answer is way too much.
Technically what I have is evolving dynamically as I write more, but I have a massive amount of stuff that's labeled changeling culture in the back of my head that shapes most of the story. If I get to an idea I get to it, and if I don't it's subject to change based on how the ideas I get to are presented in story. As to how I got that much baggage on changeling culture... Well... I pretty much thought about it the changeling way, going over multiple plausible paths for how and why they might evolve, using certain biological functions -- like the Hivemind and being an emotivore -- as anchor points for all the other bizarre things they may have evolved. Then once I mapped the basic evolution path I used their innate abilities -- both physical and magical -- to determine multiple plausible paths for how they might approach major pony/human issues using the assumptions that ponies are the rough equivalent of human society if a bit more ideal. In addition to their biological heritage affecting their culture though, I needed to figure out how being a parasite would affect them because other cultures would end up bleeding into their culture since changelings need to interact with other species. Once I have those two out of the way, that tells me how I should describe their behavior -- and is why I favor some terms for changelings and others for ponies.
All three of these are completely interrelated though... So once I had the base of everything done I of course need to constantly update all three basic sections as I plan and write. Their emotional digestive system being tied to the hearts and arteries was completely out of the blue for example, but it fit with what I had and allowed me to convey other ideas.
Probably the biggest reason I know there's too much effort going into thinking about this though is how despite everything I "know" of changeling culture. I'm cannot in good conscience label it my head canon. It is simply a plausible non-canon path for changelings that happens to fit this story's needs. Thus this all only matters to this story and any others in the dc/dt universe should it expand.
3506850 This is an amazing answer, and i LOVE, seeing the viewpoint of why, how, and the interpretation of the means one goes through to get it.