Oct
6th
2016
Points of Canon: S6x25-26 - To Where and Back Again · 1:50pm Oct 6th, 2016
We have ponies out of order. Again.
I was worried the finale would involve Sombra. It doesn’t, howard035 was right, it’s been Chrysalis all along. Which, given the direction they’ve taken with the changelings, is kind of worse, but on well.
- I question Twilight’s rationale for moving old books to the reference section. I was pretty sure that’s not what the reference section is for.
- Derpy’s approach trajectory precludes the existence of a sorting center within Ponyville, or, well, anywhere, unless she derped so hard that she got lost. Considering that the letter is from Starlight’s old village, I really wonder what sort of track did it pass through. Also note the complete absence of a postage stamp, as well as Derpy’s uniform – while it has turned up before, this does not look like the regular mail uniforms shown before that, they were blue. In fact, it looks suspiciously like the UPS brand colors.
- So Starlight’s old village has an “annual Sunset Festival.” No known relation to Summer Sun Celebration or clear positioning within the year, we just know it lasts “a whole week”. Which is a relatively rare mention of weeks.
- New addition to Starlight’s room: A crystal. That looks like it’s growing in a pot. See rock farming.
- I do wonder just how fast Trixie is capable of covering distance with that wagon of hers. Can she hook it up to a train or something? Also, considering how she just drops it in the middle of the road, she hadn’t become any more considerate than she was before.
- The enthusiasm of the village dwellers appears about as sincere as it gets, which raises a lot of interesting questions. Even assuming the general tolerance of ponies touched upon many times before, they are incredibly forgiving and understanding of her actions, which offend one of the cornerstones of pony society, i.e. the cutie marks. We’ve seen this before in the montage, but this time it’s front and center. The way they pester her with organizational questions regarding the festival makes me suspect she was vital to keeping the village running, and her ponies have not really had time to adapt to living without her yet.
- Starlight uses a new variation of a shield spell, which tosses everypony apart but leaves Trixie standing where she was.
- Well, now that we see a known changeling imitating Pinkie, we can definitely say that they do not get access to the memories of the victim they’re replacing. To pull off a successful impersonation with that handicap requires extensive observation. I wonder how many innocent objects in the past episodes were supposed to be transformed changelings?
- So Luna is capable of dream communication even while captured by changelings and presumably heavily restrained.
- Trixie’s campfire mysteriously uses a pile of stones or crystals for some unknown, nefarious purpose. This is the second time I see crystals in a fireplace – the first time was in Fluttershy’s parents’ house.
- Starlight can also levitate objects she can’t see.
- Changelings are required to use magical communication devices for distances as short as the distance between Ponyville and wherever Chrysalis resides, which is probably the fabled “Changeling Kingdom.” Notably, ponies have never been shown to use such devices. If The Times They Are A Changeling wasn’t enough to rule out the hard hive mind theory, this scene does, since it presents definitely normal changelings in verbal communication with their queen-mother. It does not exclude the softer hive mind theories though.
- Starlight actually can turn invisible and turn others invisible. The fact that it’s not Trixie doing it in this scene is quite disappointing.
- The particular mechanic by which Thorax’s wings change color remains unexplained as of now.
- Discord’s quip about “secondary characters” hints of him being metafictionally aware. Also, the fact that he wasn’t aware of the replacement already raises some interesting questions.
- The way Starlight talks about “the Changeling Kingdom” establishes it as a known territory, rather than some secret location. Also, it’s not at all hidden.
Onto the second half!
- The existence of magic nullifier shield over the hive establishes some clear limits on Discord’s power: Discord’s power counts as magic, for one. Chrysalis’ throne “is carved from ancient darkstone that soaks up outside magic the same way changelings soak up love.” I’m not sure what to make of the “the same way” quip, but I think Thorax is just using metaphors for effect, because otherwise, changelings would be able to feed on ambient love and none of that would be necessary. It seems likely that the throne itself is responsible for the sorry state of the land around the hive – i.e. that ambient magic is required for most Equestrian species of plants (and possibly ponies) to exist, and draining it will eventually cause them to wither and die. It does not entirely explain why nobody destroyed the hive yet, even though they knew where it is – I can think of numerous ways to do it anyway – but at least it brings it back into the realm of plausibility somewhat.
- “Gate” guard changelings wear actual armor, even more elaborate than the changeling armor we saw previously in The Cutie Re-Mark.
1. Well, I can think of darker ones, but not many.
There are glowing pods hanging everywhere. The last time we saw one of those on screen, it contained Celestia. In the end of the episode, we see the Mane 6 and Discord in them. This basically means that changelings must survive by draining kidnapped victims slowly over time. That’s rather a lot of disappearances, the hive must contain hundreds of pods. There is, of course, no telling how long can one survive in a pod, but that essentially canonizes one of the darkest fanon takes on changelings.1
- There is no plausible reason I can see for the hive to constantly rearrange itself other than to create problems for the cast, whose appearance is unexpected. Why is it doing that?
- Thorax says that once he had friends, his hunger dissipated entirely, and Starlight connects this to the change in his wings.
- The sequence with Thorax posing as Trixie and using her smoke bombs is not possible unless he can teleport or has accomplices.
- Trixie’s saddlebag contains a condenser microphone. With a built-in amplifier, perfect echo separation, which keeps working under a magic nullifier shield. This settles it: ponies have actual solid state electronics, rather than a magical equivalent. Pretty good solid state electronics too, but not necessarily high-frequency components.
- The fact that the changelings were able to set up an anti-Discord trick on the spot implies they were expecting him and that Chrysalis knew that her throne is effective against his magic.
- A regular-sized changeling transforms into Discord. If this is not just a visual illusion, that’s probably the upper mass limit a changeling can emulate.
- The range of motion on Chrysalis’ limbs is insane and she is capable of crawling over walls.
- Chrysalis’ villainous speech declares that changelings are capable of transferring the love they have accumulated.
- Chrysalis never details how she plans to move celestial objects, or even if she does. Unless she can take care of the day/night cycle by herself already, that’s a rather glaring omission.
- There’s yet another stage of changeling life cycle that a typical changeling never reached before. I kind of theorized this might exist, before, but I discarded this idea because it was too silly. And the fact that they never reach it is because they’re incapable of any forward thinking and imagination whatsoever, because the idea just never occurred to them, but was put into practice immediately upon seeing one example.
What is this I don’t even.
All the new statements about changelings introduced in this episode create a rather big, glaring hole in canon. I don’t exactly see a puzzle piece that would fill it just yet. Thoughts?
P.S. Starlight dances very dangerously close to the Mary Sue line for the entire first half of the two-parter. It dissipates somewhat in the second half, where every member of her team gets to show off, but the whole changeling-canon-pileup and the final ass pull transformation into toys severely damages the summary experience. It will take me a lot of reconstruction to make it not suck…
Starlight used the repulsive shield spell before, in the second half of her debut.
I think this is the first time we've seen the back side of Twilight's castle.
Starlight also is able to cast a shield that stops sound, and for my money, Trixie's silent freak-out is the best thing I've seen this season.
4242821
Looks like it. It’s predictably uninteresting though…
If anything saves this two-parter from Starlight, it will be Trixie. :)
4242849
Personally, I'm counting on Discord to save it.
4242888
Knowing how he gets downplayed most of the time... We'll see tomorrow, I suppose.
Loved it so far, but.... Ugh. Why Chrysalis? I mean, I understand why but I've always found her show self to be a really watered down version of Roodaka from Bionicle. {Same voice actress, ruler of insectoid race, uses subterfuge to get what she wants.} It always feels like her 'victories' are more forced with the plot. Maybe that's just me, and I know that's not a popular opinion of her, but eh. Maybe she'll act up more like her comic counterpart... again, not a popular opinion but eh.
As for Starlight, I don't think she's anywhere close to an MS, which has lost all meaning with how much I've seen it thrown around. She's my favorite character of the show thus far so yeah. We'll see how it goes. I honestly thought they'd go for someone other then Discord, given how powerful he is.
4242924
The Crystalling improved my opinion of her a lot. It gave her a fitting role and cast enough of a shadow to give her some depth in interpretation, enough that even Every Little Thing She Does didn’t seem bad. However, this particular episode… Mary Sue is a character for which the world bends, and this time, you can almost see the creases:
The alicorn princess who held up the world for a thousand years? She gets kidnapped off screen. Her much more proactive and impulsive sister? Her only role in the plot is to warn the heroine.
Every character in the vicinity who could do anything – all fan favorites, the titular heroines for most of the run – also get kidnapped off screen. It’s not their adventure anymore.
The heroine angsts about things most sane people, let alone ponies, would not think particularly serious, and uses that as justification to commit atrocities. She is instantly forgiven by everyone, including those whom she wronged. And in this episode this goes into fueling yet more angst.
Another fan favorite, an accomplished illusionist? Well, the heroine is so much better than her, that she even casts the invisibility spell most of the fandom imagined the illusionist would be better at.
The world conspires to make her the only star, the brightest star, and that is the Mary Sue story pattern right there.
There are, admittedly, a few ways this could turn out well. However, the brilliant execution – those faces! – does not entirely excuse the plot, to me. And yes, I can spin a Starlight that isn’t a Mary Sue, myself. (In fact, I probably will, eventually.) But that isn’t what the author of this particular episode is doing. Instead of finding a place in the world for her, they push her in with a hydraulic press and create a Starlight-shaped hole, distorting everything else. If the first three seasons didn’t exist, it wouldn’t even look so bad.
Only, you know, they do. :)
4243018
1 & 2: That's happened to Celestia and Luna before, so I'm not surprised by this. As well, it shakes up the usual formula without the main six because I was really hoping for a change up instead of something that could rehash particular elements we've seen before.
3: I might be 'crazy' but I could reasonably see how it would progress to that fact since it happened as a child and she had no one to help correct wrong behavior or ideologies. People seem to forget that it happened during her childhood and that can and does lead to problems we wouldn't see if it happened during adulthood. She basically had no family or really anyone to help her through her depression. So yeah, that's why I thought it worked. {And why the fifth finale was my favorite.}
4: It's funny since most of her 'powers' are things that come up with the fandom rather then the show. An invisibility spell would be a rather tricky and more advanced spell and while she can create illusions, they aren't that strong. She's not a strong magic user so this feels more like a 'fan' complaint then a character one.
In all honesty, the only time I've ever felt 'mary sue' in the show was with Twilight in A Canterlot Wedding. {Thankfully The Crystal Empire happened because I was not a fan of Twilight beforehand, especially with season 2} But that's more my own opinion on the matter.
4243061
What, in particular, caused you to decide that she had no family or anyone to help her? There is no canonical information on Starlight’s family or lack thereof, at all. Sunburst clearly has a family, but when he gets a cutie mark, they don’t go in, and ignore Starlight entirely. Which makes it more likely that it was Starlight’s home than Sunburst’s. I.e. this is weak fanon inference, just as much as most of Trixie’s supposed skills are inference.
I also remind you that somehow she did acquire her own cutie mark. Now that is a story I would love to see…
4243088 It's a hypothesis, not a confirmed fact. I can infer she either has no family and what we saw was an orphanage or the alternative is that she had rather neglectful and just plain bad parents. Starlight's anti-social behavior and how she doesn't seem to understand some moral principles readily stems from what seems to be a lack of proper parental care. The way she spoke of Sunburst was as if he was the only bright spot in her early childhood, that he was the only pony who seemed to really care for her so it would have hurt that just more for her. It could be either and until the show confirms or denies this, I can infer she mayhaps be an orphan. This isn't a 'I think this is a genuine fact' more so I'm making an observed idea.
As for Trixie's powers, the show's showed us that she isn't strong. She's versatile, but she relies on small spells to play off each other, and even has to rely on powder and fireworks to impress and use her show. This doesn't make her a bad character, she's just not as powerful as many would portray in fiction.
And yes, that would be great to see. I would also like to apologize if I worded myself wrong or seemed confrontational. I had.... a stressful day today.
Yeah, not even Discord could save it.
4244186
Amen. See my notes for the second half above.
I'm just staring at my computer, asking myself why I tried to watch this one.
Because every time canon expands things in a two-partner, they do it so inelegantly.
The production cycle for MLP forcing certain episodes to be aired as they're shipped rather than completing a season in advance and airing episodes in a strict order has never helped these two-parters, because every single thing in them needs to get jammed into the space of two episodes. Spreading some hints out over a series would have helped.
And actually, you know what scares me more than anything? Throrax is just ruler of the changelings now. They just unilaterally accept him. Because he's shiny and looks pretty.
I mean... and the thing is they don't even explicitly say yeah sure he's our leader. Celestia makes the assumption. This is the world's most adorable puppet state. Somewhere a fan is going to twist Celestia's last line before departing into a very dark irony.
I'm all for a universe governed by the power of emotions over logic but this isn't even emotions trump logic so much as it is really dumb. Hey, why didn't Thorax reach apotheosis already? He was already sharing his love! Is it just needing to learn how to broadcast it like the world's weirdest subwoofer?
4244277
I think it’s more the fact that networks they work with won’t keep episode ordering. Case in point – the channel that we got this whole early airing from? They did that on their own, unilaterally. But they moved Episode 23 to after the end at the last minute. Why?
Because it contains cider.
They’re European, so cider is an alcoholic drink. But they’re the only channel that thinks children are not supposed to know alcoholic drinks exist.
And because the writer is of two hive minds about whether the changelings have a hive mind. :)
Let’s just think of how we can twist it back into making sense with the least amount of aftermarket parts…
4244318 They think kids don't know alcohol exists in Europe?
4244370
They're British.
4244386 This is a public service announcement to the UK:
Your kids know what booze is.
4244394
Oh, they know that too. But being British, they don't talk about it. :)
4244277
Oh, and speaking of plugging the hole…
…the only way this episode works that I can see so far is that the strong hive mind theory (changelings are not people at all, only Chrysalis is) is wrong, but the weak hive mind theory (changelings remain in telepathic-empathic communication with each other over short distances at all times and Chrysalis has dominant influence on it) is true.
Here’s what actually happens in this case:
Thorax has a borked connection to the hive mind. Always had, he’s a mutant, as has been described during his introduction. But given the mystical epiphany of sharing the love, he ascends to an alicorn-like state in place. The only reason it’s possible for him in the first place is his extended exposure to the Crystal Heart and assimilation of cultural and emotional patterns from this exposure. I.e. he has been in the Crystal Empire while the Heart was fired at least once and went crystal. (we know that it’s possible for non-crystal ponies to go crystal, it is not beyond reason that this is possible for changelings as well) I expect, that’s when his wings changed.
When he calls upon this memory, he sends a resonant effect across the entire hive mind, tossing Chrysalis out of the equation – she’s no longer on the same wavelength with the rest of the swarm, so to speak. As Chrysalis no longer has any direct influence on the changelings, they immediately look to the strongest voice in the hive mind, Thorax, and begin to imitate him.
Basically, what we see is actually a simulated firing of the Crystal Heart straight into the emphatic hive mind link. Changelings could never possibly do that without Thorax. Starlight’s contribution is in prompting him to look for a solution when none appears to be rationally available. Celestia addresses him as the new leader of the changelings because de-facto, he is, and through mysterious means available to her she is capable of perceiving it.
4244449 The question then becomes why Chrysalis was ousted when - implicitly - Thorax directed that wavelength at her in particular. How many puppies has she kicked that she can't understand (UNDERSTAND) the concept of love?
Or assuming a tragic backstory, how many puppies kicked her?
4244529
She was born this way. (BORN THIS WAY) To be more precise, if FIENDship is Magic #5 is to be believed, she is a magical abomination, an accident resulting from a highly unlikely mix of sources. While she might not be incapable of understanding the concept of love in theory, she lacks the motivation to learn to do it in the first place.
4244218
Oh, I will.
That castle in Return of Chrysalis was also made confusing to navigate, so I'm inclined to believe that variations on this technique are the standard changeling M.O.
But it's gotta be a defensive measure, because you're right: it doesn't serve any obvious purpose other than to confuse unwanted visitors. But if you think about it in a wider context than Starlight Glimmer and pals, it does kinda make sense. If an army rolled up on this hive and decided to go in and start killing changelings, then these tunnels would ruin their day. The invading force would be separated from each other, and we all know how the changelings excel at divide-and-conquer strategies. And then, even if two disparate remnants of the army were able to reunite by chance, their immediate instinct would be to distrust one another.
This also fits with what we saw of changeling behaviour in the episode. The guards didn't stand at attention out in the open, nor did they start active patrols until Discord got them noticed. Instead, they were all lying in ambush, as they would while waiting for stragglers of a larger invasion.
Chrysalis in this very episode was planning to harvest love by impersonating Equestria's most beloved figures, so we know that changelings are more than just conquerors, and actually do use their powers for the obvious purpose. Given that, this line has some odd implications; there's no reason I can see that a changeling doing a passable immitation of someone who was loved would not receive just as much love as they would from a genuine friendship. Chrysalis and her terrible impersonation of Cadance got enough love out of Shining Armor to overpower Celestia, whose magic comes from the sun itself, and apparently even that didn't sate her hunger, because she still believed that such a thing was impossible.
What I surmise from this is that the changeling hunger is not physical, and doesn't actually have anything to do with how much they've fed. It may feel physical, because they're emotivores, but I suspect that it's actually a psychological hunger, and what they hunger for is a true and genuine friendship like what Thorax had. The changelings may not have even understood this themselves, but I believe that the reason they always felt starving is not because they always needed to feed more, but because what they wanted, on some level, was a kind of friendship that they simply couldn't have had under Chrysalis. They yearn to be symbiotes rather than parasites.
Not necessarily. We know from Twilight early on in season one that magic comes from within, and this has been reinforced by later episodes. Spellcasters can exhaust themselves after intense magic, Tirek drained magic from within ponies, and we know that a pony with no magic loses their cutie marks and eye colour.
Starlight Glimmer and Trixie didn't become like Tirek's victims, so clearly the Throne doesn't just suck all the magic out of someone once they're in its radius. Or maybe it does, but it's a more gradual process than that. The point is, what it interfered with was active spellwork, but innate magic was not visibly affected. It's still possible that the microphone was some kind of enchanted object; we can't account for how the Throne would affect a spell already cast, because the magic would be imbued into the object similarly to how magic resides within a pony's body.
We're just going to have to presume that Chrysalis does have that power. It doesn't make sense otherwise. And hey, her form is alicorn-ish, so maybe she'd be able to tap into the same mystic bullshit as the princesses.
I found this dumb too, but I really like the explanation you came up with here 4244449. I think that Chrysalis must have used the low-level hivemind to enforce some level of sociopathy on all her subjects. If changelings feeling love for others drains energy from them, then that would only make sense as a survival mechanism, and it would account for how none of them ever made this discovery that reciprocal love cures their hunger. It may also explain how the hive as a whole would be able to harvest love and share it around without actually loving one another, as they presumably did at the end there.
Though I guess that this would joss the fanon idea of the hive as a family and Chrysalis at least loving her children. They were always evil, all the time, all along. :/
Doesn't explain those hideous transformations, though. I guess that must've also been Thorax's mutant power.
4244753
That does sound like a very good explanation.
My one quibble with that idea is that it would be trivial to give yourself a literal edge by creating an enchanted weapon if that were the case. That shouldn’t be outside Discord’s capabilities, and Discord would be motivated to produce at least, say, a bike to charge the gates with. Actual solid state electronics is simply an explanation with less aftermarket parts, because that only involves reinterpreting visual evidence already observed into the direction that is more obvious anyway.
Fanon evolved multiple wildly contradictory interpretations of changelings because the evidence presented in the show and supplementary materials is rather contrived from the start, at least half of them would necessarily be jossed whenever any more detail on changelings turned up. For example, one other popular idea is that Chrysalis is just one of the possible changeling queens, and yet another one is that they have families and small children with no larval stage… And given the peculiar state of affairs changelings find themselves in, both would make more sense, at least ecologically.
They’re imitating him. And he’s kinda crazy for a changeling in the first place. :)
4244529
Chrysalis totally had a moment where she could have said yes.
Then, because she's a giant jerkface, she rejected it hardcore. Which was awesome.
4244799
Considering that she'd probably have to look like Thorax after that, I think I can understand her completely. :)
4244409 4244394
Quite.
On a more serious note, that throne is a problem. First, it is clearly guilty of the no limits fallacy; apparently, within its area of effect (the only limit apparently placed upon it) it can near instantly disrupt and destroy any and all magic, from any and all beings (regardless of how powerful said beings are individually or collectively), and any number of beings.
That is ridiculously, insanely over powered. It additionally remains unexplained what becomes of the magic it absorbs.
To be honest, the writers are just being lazy here; if I can see this (others will have independently reached these conclusions as well) then the writers will have. The "They're kids, they won't notice or care" attitude is beginning to creep in more and more.
One final gripe: it is becoming painfully obvious, at a glance, which designs were and were not imposed on the show by the toy designers. The changeling hive looks awesome. Compare and contrast with Twilight's castle (really a palace; it apparently affords no magical or mundane protection), which is still a eyesore after two seasons.
The castle was clearly designed to accommodate playsets whereas the hive had no restrictions. The new shiny colourful changelings themselves are clearly heading to a store near us soon, as well.
Oh well, it's the price we pay for the show, I suppose; without those play sets, it would not survive.
4244799 Not it wasn't.
It was... ugh. Okay, For me, it should've been all or nothing here. Ignoring Oliver's proffered explanation of her for now because I haven't actually read Fiendship is Magic, that moment was probably my least favorite bit in the episode because it showcases in my mind exactly how awkward Chrysalis just getting displaced by Thorax was. Really? Chrysalis is such an uber-jerk that either nobody else in the hive is willing to stay by her, or just magically too dense to deal?
Gahhh.
4244808
Notice that it also leaves changeling magic untouched, and also, that upon disruption of the shape of the throne, it ceases to function completely. There’s no end of places to dump excess energy to, really. That’s not a super-artifact, just a powerful object that requires unobtainium (“darkstone”) to build. I think it is within the realm of plausibility, – of course it’s possible to overload it, but if it takes three Discords to do it, it makes no difference – though I would love the story of how the thing came about and when and where exactly did Chrysalis acquire enough “ancient darkstone” to produce it.
Looking at the bright side, we can now use smaller scale magic nullifier objects for our plot purposes, I’ll take what I can get. :)
It probably would survive, but without those it would not be born. Takes a lot of money for a TV animated series to be born and most of the money in the world belongs to or is in control of rather clueless people for some reason.
4244778
There are three theories of how Discord creates his props: summoning an object, transforming one, or literally creating it out of magic. And there's no reason to believe that he doesn't variously do all three at different times, because they'd all be easy for him. Now, I could easily see the anti-magic field interfering with the latter two. A transformed object could revert to a previous state, and a magical construct may dissipate. But for summoning, it's just a teleport spell, and then the spell is over and the object is present. Using that method, Discord in the episode totally could have stolen a non-magical bike from somewhere to charge the gates with (if he could find one in Equestria), and the anti-magic field wouldn't have been able to do anything about it.
And what I mean to illustrate by this is that yes, you're right, Discord could've cheesed the anti-magic field with an enchanted weapon if enchanted objects still worked within it... but he could've cheesed the anti-magic field anyway even if they didn't, and he probably would've if he hadn't been holding an idiot ball. So the fact that he didn't bring a magical weapon really indicates nothing.
That said, I agree with your reasoning for assuming solid state electronics. I'm merely pointing out that it's not an ironclad certainty.
Edited for clarity.
4244840
Hardly anything is, with these people. I should find a picture of a grain of salt to put into every blog post like that, I suppose. :)
4244848
Yeah... Well, at least it gives fanfic writers more wiggle room.
4244808
Oh, and here’s a semi-abstract left field idea:
The Wasteland Timeline in The Cutie Re-Mark is the result of a darkstone bomb detonation. Somepony was a madder scientist than usual.
4244840
To be fair to the writers, it is not unreasonable to expect Discord to have problems in this situation; his is accustomed to being able to overpower any and all problems with his magic. He likely has little to no experience with thinking creativity to overcome a limited power or skill set.
It might have been Trixie who would do well here. It appears that it is now canon that Trixie has limited magic and has to think outside of the box to overcome this, through either props or illusions.
4244888
Yeah, sure, the Spirit of Chaos is too uncreative.
No, I get where you're coming from, but I am not giving Haber a pass on this.
4244817
I totally think a bunch of the Lings should have held back and the two get fractured and so on. But Bughorse going good? Bleh! She's the hammiest most evil-loving villain there is so far
Dang it Oliver, you give me a shout-out, but no one private messages me on anything, I just open up my feed the next day after a busy night and find the fandom upside down and all the good analyzing has already happened.
Muffin's business in Slice of Life also prints wedding invitations for you, which the Post Office won't do but UPS will. I think Muffins is supposed to run/work for the pony equivalent of UPS, a private company that competes with the post office.
Should have been moonual Sunset Festival, IMHO.
Reminds me, you should check out that Rockapalooza book by Berrow sometime. It's the one book that's been explicitly referenced by the show, and apparently has a lot of good material on how the rock farm works.
People who join a cult are almost always huge followers lacking any initiative or direction of their own. Of course they need Starlight for decisions. I wish she would just move back there as mayor for good. Also, did you hear Trixie say "Where you came from," like Starlight was born in Our Town? Possible, but conflicts with a lot of other stuff.
Employee discount from the rock farm. Probably gave that potted crystal to Starlight too.
Something else I noted: No changling except Chrysalis can do any kind of magic, other than change themselves and shoot blasts with their horns. Both episodes, good and evil changlings, about 500 times a shield or just a levitating grab on someone to slow them down would have been useful, nothing. It looks like taking on someone's form doesn't give them the abilities of that form, though changlings keep their old magic (so they can fly as Pegasi, for example).
Also, this scene reinforces the idea that Joe Drone is an evil sociopath, and Thorax is the neuroatypical mutant. The changling drones on their own take time to be cruel to each other while on a mission.
That really pissed me off.
They look crystally, like full of crystal pony magic.
He's not automatically ominscient, he has to look for things to know them. I suspect he's still semi-Omniscient thanks to all the stuff he learned while he was in statue form.
True. On the other hand, everyone seems to agree that without the throne Discord could beat the changling army by sneezing at them, so he hasn't gotten Warfed the Way Luna and Celestia have.
Also possible changlings want to keep all plants clear of the hive as possible cover for an advancing army, castles cut down nearby trees deliberately for this purpose.
I was thinking almost immediately "Discord should use his magic to levitate a giant rock about the castle." But there are probably pony hostages in there, there probably have been a continous number of ponies in cocoons for centuries in there, hard to imagine ways to beat the throne without getting ponies killed, or even just all the changlings, including the eggs.
Does raise the question of, how the heck were ponies so surprised to see Chrysalis in season 2?
I figured Thorax was 1st and 3rd Trixie, and he can dive in and out of the walls as a changling to switch spots.
Does it actually keep working, or do they just shout into it? Discord and Trixie would totally do that even if it didn't work. If you're right though, once again we see that audio equipment is the apparently the focus of Equestria's entire R&D budget for the last 50 years.
If it's been around long enough (my guess is since a comet made of darkstonium crashed into the badlands), it could have kept Discord away during his original reign of chaos. And yes, he would absolutely have forgotten about that by now.
We see ponies have replaced the Mane 6 during the day, and it's night when Luna tells Starlight they've been captured.
When they teleport to the Changling Kingdom, it's day there. Changlings are on a different hemisphere!
Yeah, everyone seems to think this means the changling drones weren't so bad because they started sharing love immediately, or they have a semi-hive link. Here's another theory: Chrysalis has taught them Rule #1 is do whatever it takes to gain the most power, the strong rule and the week submit, etc. Thorax proved his method of gathering love is stronger and makes him more powerful, as a collection of self-interested sociopaths of course the changlings will immediately turn on Chrysalis now that Thorax is the new changling technicolor alicorn king (who's gonna lay the eggs now?). It doesn't mean the average drone is a nice guy, just that their individual lust for love is stronger than their loyalty to their Queen.
Second post responding to fantastic comments.
4243018
Oh, she's a Mary Sue alright, to a T. It's like a how-to manual. Rey would call her unrealistic. I am willing to accept all of this, as long as it ends with Starlight moving to Our Town in the end. A Mary Sue that is out of site is out of mind. Fingers crossed on that.
I like your explanation, it fits really well.
4244529
Because it proved to the rest of the hive that Thorax was a better collector of love than Chrysalis, and thus a stronger ruler.
4244539
I love that comic, but it's been Jossed pretty hard. The giant open changling kingdom really conflicts with pretty much the entire changling comic saga, including issues #1-4.
4244753
I was hoping other people noticed this. Once again, suggests the idea that changelings don't drain a pony's love for others, they drain the love of others for the pony. So all the love flowing to Equestria's beloved Princesses shoots like a beam to their bodies, which are in love-capturing cocoons. Feeding on Shining Armor and Flurry Heart may get you the love of the Princess of Love, which is strong indeed. But the collective love of all of Equestria is even better, even if the ponies in cocoons are themselves no longer able to emit love.
Well, changlings actually suck at the behavior form of infiltration. And if changlings are a bunch of sociopaths, they'll act like jerks to the loved ones of the pony they've kidnapped, the loved ones stop loving that pony eventually, love stops being broadcast to the pony in the cocoon, no more incoming love to feed on. Changlings gotta keep kidnapping new ponies when everyone stops feeling love for the old pony who turned into a jerk recently.
Thanks for reminding me! So Celestia and Luna got beaten for like the 8th time (not counting alternate universes) and it wasn't Chrysalis, just some random drones who kidnapped them and sent word to Chryalis when the deed was done. The power differential between an alicorn and say, Starlight Glimmer or Sunset is looking fairly small. Like, I would give pretty good odds to Starlight and Sunset teaming up in a 2 on 1 battle versus Celestia. Yeah, she gets her power from the sun, but so does a houseplant. It looks like she doesn't get much power from the sun.
Or they yearn for more magical power/more love to devour, and under Thorax they will get it. Chrysalis is more megalomaniacal than practical, her drones not so much. The thing about the right thing being the smart thing to do is, if someone does it, you don't know if they're right, smart or both.
Didn't Discord create those packs on Trixie and Starlight when he teleported them? I suspect every object in there was a magical Discord creation.
The "Princesses" claim their magic doesn't work anymore, say a bunch of unicorns have to do it now?
4244778
One fanon theory that fits is that a hives changlings physically change to resemble their queen. Everyone wants to put on the new uniform to back the winning side of a violent coup.
4244808
Yup, this is problematic. I think there are some limits we can infer: First, Thorax is probably repeating hive propaganda on the mighty defenses of the darkstone throne. It doesn't seem like it absorbs any magic, just nullifies it within a field. As to why the changlings didn't carry that thing to Canterlot to help with their invasion: Like I said earlier, no one but Chrysalis seems capable of telekinesis, so it's very hard to transport. And if darkstone is incredibly rare (like only from outer-space meteors rare) then Chryalis might have wanted to preserve their greatest defense to protect the kingdom, rather than gamble it in a bid to conquer a mountain city.
Thinking about it, remember how Nightmare Moon was able to escape from the Moon when "the stars will aid her escape?" What if that wasn't a metaphor for the stars on Twilight's butt helping Luna escape NMM, but rather a quartet of darkstone stars/meteors (prophets aren't always the best at proper astronomical terminology) getting close enough to the moon to nullify the spell trapping her there?
4244834
I suspect darkstone is fairly rare, or we'ed have seen such a fantastically useful material used before. But that was in the past. Now that Equestria is friends with the changlings and the throne is shattered to pieces, Thorax could bring in a lot of bits by selling enough darkstone to make several thousand horn-rings...
4244840
You gotta give the writers some slack on giving a nigh-omnipotent being the idiot ball, it's almost impossible for them to challenge Discord without it. I think "darkstone" is a much better attempt than "tatzylwyrm germs."
4244888
We saw from Trixie's very first appearance that she's actually a pretty powerful unicorn, summoning clouds, reshaping fabrics, deft telekinesis of ropes, etc. It's just compared to Starlight and the others that she's not that powerful. Although now that Trixie's going to have chaos magic added into her shows...
What about the dozen changlings who were out impersonating famous ponies during the coup? We've just established no strong hive mind, so how awkward is it when Celestia and Luna walk into court just as the other Celestia is holding court? Or did everyone forget about them during the Sunset festival?
Also, Spike is now close buddies with A King, a Queen and 2 Colonial Governors, he's a better candidate for head of diplomacy than Twilight.
4245490
He definitely has some method of learning information that he really shouldn't be privy to. Not just learning about Twilight and friends despite being a statue, but also things like knowing the contents of conversations that he wasn't around for.
For fanfic purposes, the explanation that I go by is that he can sense chaos in all its forms anywhere that it might occur, like how he sensed Tirek, or how he sensed the princesses transferring their magic to Twilight. But he doesn't actually know details unless he focuses on it. So if he's not paying attention, and there's some big magical event somewhere, he'll feel it but may not know what it is. But if he's actively trying to spy on someone, he'll be able to if there's sufficient ambient chaos. This way, it makes sense for Discord to be so well-informed most of the time, but it also allows for the possibility of things slipping beneath his notice. Like, perhaps Fluttershy was taken because the changelings got her in her sleep, but if she'd woken, crying and screaming, Discord might've sensed it and come to the rescue.
I'm glad we can all agree on this.
It... doesn't, really, though... In fact, there was a nice moment of synergy with the comics when Chrysalis was draining Thorax. Her horn was glowing, and she was absorbing the power by mouth, exactly how she and her followers did it in Fiendship. Changelings being able to imitate any creature, no matter the size and shape, was also an idea that first popped up in Return of Chrysalis. The changelings became animals to attack the Crusaders.
The only real contradiction is that the Changeling Kingdom in this episode is not the same as the Changeling Kingdom that Chrysalis established at the nameless castle. But there could be numerous explanations for that. Personally, I'm going with the castle having been retrofitted to become an enclave of the main kingdom as a temporary base while Chrysalis was running that one particular scheme.
4245588
Seems logical.
All true. What I was getting at, though, was more just that it's clearly not about quantity of love absorbed. It's about the nature of it. Chrysalis gained an incredible amount of love from Shining and Cadance, but her hunger remained. Thorax's hunger went away from just having real friendships instead of fake ones.
I wasn't talking about their betrayal of Chrysalis at the end. I was more thinking about the psychological cause of their hunger. What I think is that they were born with the capability to feel and share love rather than just consume it, but that Chrysalis enforced sociopathy through the weak hivemind, and in doing so this caused them their hunger pains because they were emotivores being deprived the ability to feel emotion. They were still sociopaths, but on a deeper level, their nature was to feel. They could sense that something was wrong with them, and the hunger was a manifestation of that yearning to become who they were supposed to be.
Maybe. Maybe not. I don't think it matters too much, honestly. We only ever saw the anti-magic field negate spells that were in the process of being cast. One could argue that a magical construct may dissipate because it's not a real object, but one could also argue that it's a spell already cast, and so would keep its shape and functionality under the same logic that an enchanted microphone would. It doesn't matter because, either way, Discord still didn't think to create or summon something useful outside the field and carry it in.
That would be a pretty terrible idea if Journal of the Two Sisters is any indication. Even the Unicorn Kingdom eventually ran out of unicorns, and their citizens weren't being routinely drained into husks to feed a swarm of insectoid monsters. And they had Star Swirl the Bearded.
Well, I appreciate the lore of darkstone more than I do Tatzlwurm diseases, but at least the Tatzlwurm disease hit Discord suddenly while he was caught off-guard. Once he was already infected, it's completely logical that there's little he can do about it, if it really hinders his magic that much. The darkstone anti-magic field, on the other hand, is a problem that he had time to think his way around, which he should have attempted to do. And if the goal of the writers is for him to remain handicapped and not think of a way to cheese it, then they don't need to make Discord an idiot to do that. They just need to clarify the darkstone's capabilities.
It wouldn't have even taken much. Here's one scenario. Discord steps back from the field. He snaps once, some dynamite or whatever appears, he throws it into the anti-magic field, and it just turns to dust. Done. We've established that Discord can't bring created objects in from outside. For a kids' show, that would've been enough. Even better, he could do this two or three times, and then obsessive nerds like myself could read into that, and say that he tried both creating and summoning but that neither worked for some reason.
Or hell, maybe Discord successfully cheats, and we could have some comedic shenanigans where he still has no magic but is carrying a massive can of bugspray through the whole adventure. It doesn't stop him from being challenged, because he still can't steamroll the changeling army with magic, but at least he's proactive and in-character that way. The point is, the darkstone by itself should've easily been enough to preserve dramatic tension with Discord; the idiot ball was entirely unnecessary, and I will not forgive it.
4245739
That makes perfect sense to me, and fits with what we've seen.
In Fiendship and the original arc, Chrysalis and the swarm are presented as a roving band of raiders with no home base. Heck, they're locked up in a volcano for centuries. In this episode the Changling Kingdom has apparently been around for long enough that Chrysalis carved her throne out of "ancient darkstone." No one siezed the world's most valuable artifact in that time?
The other thing is in issue 3# of the comic, they show Chrysalis and her horde landing smack right after the blast. Her general goes on about how they need to regain her strength and regroup before they launch another attack. Does the horde return to their home base, presumably stocked with emergency rations and the world's strongest defensive artifact (I'd rather have the darkstone throne against a pony army than the Crystal Heart)? No they suck down the wuveyduvey cats and then launch into another detailed elaborate scheme in the nearest castle they randomly landed in, when it would have worked just as well if Chrysalis had lured Twilight to the Changling Kingdom.
4245739
Agreed.
Not that terrible. The drain rate on unicorns wasn't normally that bad, before the Windigos. It's just that after the Windigos (and presumably a massive famine) there were literally not enough unicorns to share the balance of raising the sun and moon without getting rapidly drained, leading to a vicious cycle. The unicorn population is probably 20 times higher than it was at the height of old Unicornia, so the population could sustain it indefinitely. Not that it would be pleasant for the unicorns, but I doubt Chrysalis cares.
I thought of something like that, but Chrysalis was smart enough to keep the VIP cocoons right next to her throne. It's hard to think of something Discord could have done that wouldn't have endangered Fluttershy.
That would have been cool, and made for a better episode. I'm not sure if you could have kept up the scary feel of the hive and the underdog elements though, with Discord just blasting people. I mean, I would have liked that better, but that's a very different episode and a lot less scary.
4245790
Bear in mind that we don't know the timeframe for any of that story. We don't know when the changelings were banished, and we also don't know when they got out. Chrysalis could have been free for centuries before her grand re-entrance in Canterlot. There's plenty of time to fit in finding/creating the Darkstone Throne and building the Changeling Kingdom we saw in the episode.
Chrysalis just lost a large part of her army. The Changeling Kingdom is potentially in a different hemisphere, if the day-night transitions in the episode are any indication, meaning it could be a long trip back. The location where they landed has ample love to feed from, and a pretty swank castle. And Chrysalis's plan, which she seemingly started concocting on the spot, was also time-specific, so having a base closer to Ponyville makes strategic sense. If she'd thrown down her gauntlet to Twilight any earlier, say to give her two weeks to cross the world and come to the main kingdom, then Celestia wouldn't have been occupied with all the other villains, and Twilight may have arrived too soon for their confrontation to coincide with Secreteriat's passing.
4245797
But if the unicorns used to be able to handle it fine, and then the windigoes are what made the drain terrible, then why is the drain still terrible after they're gone? What exactly did the windigoes do to the sun that caused all those problems and lasted all this time?
He doesn't need to drop a meteor from space on the hive or anything. I'm just thinking of tools or weapons he could've taken along. Like, for a completely random example that would totally never actually happen on the show, what if he'd just summoned a machine gun and shot anything that got in their way? My bugspray idea is just a more show-friendly version of that exact concept. But again, if that's not the direction they wanted to go, then they could've just shown him trying that and it not working.
4245490
We need something more structured to deal with this kind of conversation…
Actually, no. In Canterlot Wedding, they attack the Mane 6 by dive-bombing with their own bodies. I.e. they drop down at high speed, projecting a shield in front of themselves, and impact the pavement, leaving a rather large hole but remaining unharmed. It might be a specially trained squad, because they never repeat that, but it remains possible for their magic to be more versatile.
Judging by the reverberation effect that isn’t present when they’re not using this device – yes, I’m pretty sure it’s working.
To quote my version of Lyra, “Of course I can sing, I’m a pony!” Even completely regular citizens will, on occasion, burst into song just because they feel like it. Of course capturing these improvisations as they occur is as important to them as photography.
Also, magic, particularly the presumed earth pony magic related to rock farming, and unicorn magic related to transformation and mental projection of images, permits ponies to shortcut lots of technological chains involved in manufacturing electronics. It’s probably easier for ponies to produce an analog IC on a single crystal than an individually packaged transistor. This, on one hand, permits them feats of technology “out of order,” and on another hand, limits experimentation, because a pony has to keep the entire IC in their head to produce it as a single unit, so new designs don’t turn up anywhere as often as ours.
That can lead to very cute schizotech patterns. :)
Nice catch!
The technical term is Canon Sue. :)
As DannyJ elaborated, I don’t think it does.
In fact, it has been my impression that changelings don’t live long lives, and I think we talked about this. The entire hive and the “kingdom” might be a very new thing. Thorax might actually turn out to be the oldest changeling alive. There’s the darkstone throne, of course, but while the darkstone itself is ancient, that does not mean that the throne is.
Thorax asks Trixie if she has smoke bombs. If Discord outright created those packs, Trixie wouldn’t know if she does or not, since, even presuming bags on bodies invisible due to cartoon resolution, she was basically plucked right out of the bed. It follows that Discord packed them.
I think everyone forgot about them. And I think there’s a story in what happens when everyone comes back home to find changelings who were out of communication with the hive for so long and the changelings try to weasel their way out of it. :)
4245835
You might have a point there. Chrysalis sucks at being subtle, at least in the comics. One thing this episode has shown that kind of conflicts with the fandom (and probably common sense a bit) is the idea that changlings routinely kidnap ponies and replace them, and have been doing so for centuries. It boggles the mind to imagine Chrysalis and her slavering horde, who we now know have an unquenchable hunger, were quietly stealing hundreds or thousands of ponies, replacing them with changlings doubles until... what, the could fake the pony's death a few years later? Sooner or later those 3rd rate improv class rejects would have been caught, and some drone would have panicked and transformed to fly off, and then Celestia would know the changlings had escaped. Equestria is a nation that has had a top secret monster hunting agency, I think they could spot a wide-spread changling infiltration operation. If we're going with the comics route then, I'd rather say the castle/throne were built first, and Chrysalis just broke out of that volcano a few years ago.
On the other hand, Luna did say this was "worse than the last time," and if the comics are canon that's confusing. Is the last time the Canterlot invasion, or one of the events that happened in the comics?
Yeah, and the comet gave Chrysalis a boost. Compared to fighting Twilight in the presence of an artifact that nullifies everyone else's magic though, and the comet is small potatoes. To be fair, Chrysalis does make dumb, overly-aggressive plans.
Given that the drain is more severe the fewer the number of unicorns raising the sun, It seems likely that raising the sun has a fixed, permanent cost of magic. Every time a unicorn helps raise the sun, their magic is permanently depleted just a little. With a million unicorns doing it, they can do it every day of their lives and notice maybe a small dropoff in power output as they get older, but nothing too bad.
But the book says there are fewer unicorns after the Windigos. Mass famine from the cold suggests that frankly, a huge portion of the unicorns died off, maybe more than half. The remaining number of unicorns were below a sustainable number, so that they lost more magic per unicorn every day than normal. And once some unicorns lost all their magic, they could no longer assist in raising the sun, so the burden was greater on the remaining unicorns, who lost their magic and so forth, until only Starswirl the Bearded was left with his magic, and then he lost it too.
That's a good point. They did kind of do that with the flying pig that Discord tried to ride in to battle, but actual tools as well would have been cool to see. Heck, Discord should have briefly made himself look like Captain Wuzz with a magic longbow!
4245860
I dunno if I'd call that a shield. It looks like they just super-charge their horns with their magic, which makes the horn invulnerable, and then throw themselves horn-first at the ground. That might be a small point, but it does explain why they never try to use that technique again, when Applejack is pounding the crap out of them for example.
Ok, convinced. But it's hard to imagine those kind of devices working near the throne.
Hmmm. the discovery of the giant hunk of darkstone might have precipitated the Canterlot Wedding. One of the reasons Chrysalis was so bold in attacking Canterlot was, if she failed, she was practically immune to retaliation.
Would Trixie be equally likely not to know if she had smoke bombs if Discord packed them for her as if he had created them with his magic? I assumed during one of the scene changes a smart operator like Trixie took inventory of her equipment.
Sure, how many laws did changling Celestia pass to get Blueblood to leave her alone for the day? This will generate almost half as many stories as the shipping ones between a new male giant alicorn-type and Celestia/Luna.
4245893
Speaking of male giant alicorn-type…
Male giant alicorn-type. I don’t expect the show will be permitted to introduce gender-changing creatures, which means that those colorful bug-eyed monsters are going to die out eventually. Probably, not within the lifespan of the show, but in political timeline, soon.
4245896
Thought about this. Possibilities:
A) You're right, Thorax'es hive will die off. Chrysalis on the other hand could just breed a new hive somewhere else, either on her own or if she can convince even a single changling drone to side with her. Depending on life cycles, that could be a problem in 3 years or 20 years.
B)Changlings can change physical gender just as they can change their own coloration and physical shape. Either all changlings are physically genderfluid (lots of that in fanons), or Thorax changed as part of his alichangling transformation. All hail Queen Thorax.
C)Changlings don't rely on the Queen to lay their eggs, drones split off and form families and each lays a couple of eggs, they're just all gathered in the hatchery once they are laid. Doesn't really fit with a lot of changling culture/psychology/biology we've seen so far.
You know what I'm peeved about? Where's the Sunburst! I like Trixie, but is she really more of the best friend to Starlight than the childhood friend who forgave you for everything you've done, even though you implied you did it all to get over him? I'm really mad Sunburst wasn't part of the mission into the changling kingdom.
4246313
B can happen in fanfic, but I think it's unlikely to be permitted on TV-Y. And C contradicts the scenes shown when Thorax was introduced. So I'm betting they're just going to ignore that Thorax's tribe is going to die off. Alternatively, they will make them live forever. :) Since they're not thinking that long term, I expect we're up for a reset no later than season 10...
In one of those pods, not shown on screen for time. Why: They took Flurry Heart. Remember, he is the one hauling her crib around.
4246337 I thought Sunburst sent Thorax because the CE Royal family had already been kidnapped?
4246337 Thorax might now be at least semi-immortal. This does put a lot of pressure on them to find and convert Chrysalis, doesn't it? She holds the future of their race in her ovipositor.
Or maybe they slather an existing egg in royal jelly, it's what happens in real life.
4245883
Chrysalis has always sucked at being subtle. The comics were just being faithful to their source material.
Yeah, probably. But again, the matter is null because the characters are holding idiot balls anyway. I mean, forget Canterlot Wedding. Let's talk about after the invasion. If these ponies previously had no idea that Chrysalis existed, or at least they didn't know that she was free, then an event like that would be the mother of all wake-up calls. Holy shit! There's an entire army of malicious shape-shifters out there who can become anything, and they were able to kidnap and replace an alicorn princess! So, faced with this insidious new threat, it's up to the wise princesses and the diligent Equestrian government to make up for this huge embarassment, tighten up security, and make sure that this never happens again.
What do they do? Absolutely fucking nothing. Four seasons later, they still don't even have a changeling-detector spell. They took Thorax at his word that he was friendly just because Spike vouched for him, even knowing that changelings are deceptive by nature and can use mind control, and they were lucky as hell that he really was on the level. Then there's this episode, in which Chrysalis didn't just kidnap and replace the very same alicorn princess again, but kidnapped and replaced all the princesses, at once.
The only conclusion to reach from all this data is that Equestrian national security sucks. It sucks so hard that not even light can escape its pull. Therefore, if the changelings did get themselves caught and accidentally alerted Celestia (which they probably did), I don't think it would make a smidge of difference. If Celestia doesn't have anti-changeling measures in place for a real and present threat that previously attacked Equestria in the past year, then why would she have had them for some random group of monsters that she trounced by herself centuries ago and which are now hiding from her rather than fighting?
"Last time" could refer to any of their previous appearances, depending on what we say Luna meant. The last time that Chrysalis tried kidnapping and replacing a princess would indeed be Canterlot Wedding. But the last time Chrysalis made a major move in general would be Siege of the Crystal Empire. And the last time she made a major move of her own rather than acting as support would be Return of Chrysalis.
Source on that please? I skim-read JOTTS again, but I can't find it myself.
That isn't how it worked, though. Journal says that the ritual used six unicorns, including Star Swirl, for every transition, meaning him plus ten others a day. They were very clear on this. The unicorns weren't collectively raising the sun and all taking a hit. They were doing the equivalent of offering up ten sacrifices every [indeterminate period of time] until they ran out of people.
4245896
Good. Their appearance is an abomination before God and man.