Mar
10th
2017
I just had a scary thought. · 7:02am Mar 10th, 2017
So I saw a few images of the new changelings recently(yes I know that happened a while ago and most people are over that drama) and while looking at it I had a thought. Thorax is male as far as we know, he stole Chrysalis's hive. Since many stories have queens being the ones to lay eggs, that means his hive has no way to replenish their numbers.
I'm already writing something based off of this. If I say anything more I'll give it away. Will most likely only be a single chapter, maybe two or three.
I was thinking about it since the finale, never fails to make me smile.
So either he's doomed the species and it's a dark/sad piece, or (as happens in some species of insect colonies) he now becomes a queen and it's a comedy story. I guess we'll wait and find out.
What stops him from ordering several females to "evolve" and make harem?
There was a story not so long ago where Chrissie mentioned these colorful forms are unable ot feed themselves, cus they are basically giving away their love, and thus slowly dying.
You are not the first blog post with this idea.
4450219
"Why Are You Here, Your Majesty?"
I like that story because it has so much sequel potential. Chrysalis on her Canterlot vacation, the life and times of the Shinelings, the slow crushing realisation that Starlight essentially doomed almost an entire species, and how her greatest victory will result in the slow death of one of her friends.
Lots of things.
I don't want to spoil thing for the readers but I do know the answer to this as it was discussed in one of the live author chats.
I forget witch comic it is but the answer is their if you look at the back issues.
But a new queen evolves if there is no current queen to suppress the regular females.
Not to mention that applying that much RL logic to a magical species of shape shifters isn't very smart. Feels more like trying to be dark and edgy just for the sake of it.
Same for the "the species is starving now" thing. They could just as easily be absorbing it faster than they use it, because they are actually earning it and investing in earning more.
Hi there!
I received a notification to say you'd added my story to your favourites (the aforementioned Why Are You Here, Your Majesty? - thanks, 4450219 and 4450234
), and now I see the backstory that led there!
To throw my own thoughts into the discussion:
Everything's a bit murky with changelings. Chrysalis is unveiled for about fifteen minutes of one episode in season two, and the other changelings for less time than that. She and Cadence give out just enough information for the plot to hang together, but her interactions have to be kept very tight for pacing reasons (and she still manages a reprise of her song!), so only the barest minimum about the changelings is revealed. And that was all we got, for a long time. Three changeling appearances through season five, three years later, but I don't think any of them told us anything new. It wasn't until the two appearances in season six that we actually learned a few more specifics about changeling biology and society. And in the intervening four years between their first appearance and when we finally saw inside their hive, the changelings were so popular in the fandom that everyone came up with their own answers instead. And with no official answers, general trends became agreed upon. The dialogue in A Canterlot Wedding, for example, does not include the word 'hive.' Nor is there much of an implication that 'Queen of the Changelings' also means Chrysalis is mother of the changelings, any more than Princess Celestia is mother of the ponies. With regard to the below comment from 4450162 about some other changelings changing sex to lay more eggs, I think I'm right in saying that Chrysalis and Thorax are the only changelings we've ever heard speak - for all we know, many or indeed all of the swarm are female anyway, with no obvious clues of sexual dimorphism.
I think we've become so used to changelings being here, there and everywhere in the fandom that we forget how little of them we'd actually seen before season six rolled around. The canvas, even after all that time, was still canonically very much blank, which allowed the season six writers to pick and choose whatever they thought best for the three changeling episodes (though why they chose some of the things they did is beyond me). So, as you say in your post, for the stories where the changeling queen lays the eggs, this causes problems. But for the show itself, that detail has never been confirmed, and I would hope that there are some reasonable alternative explanations. I should also point out that it doesn't seem Thorax's intention was to remove Chrysalis entirely; he was acting to save himself and perhaps trying to offer a happier life for the other changelings, possibly even Chrysalis herself. But there's nothing in his actions (if I remember rightly) that says he's trying to usurp her as king or queen. But then, he doesn't exactly look sorry about it after she's overthrown, or try to stop her from fleeing, so if the hive does need her to do the egg laying, then he either hasn't thought that far ahead, or his pride is overriding his genes' will to survive (the latter of which certainly doesn't come across in his mannerisms; he's anything but proud).
For me, there were some much bigger problems with the season finale. It had its good moments (Derpy at the beginning, the villain team-up, the cave of Fluttershies), but the last fifteen minutes of part two were, I felt, a real letdown, and I rather loathed them. Mainly: how the changelings can survive on sharing love between themselves with no external input, and how, in however long the species has been in existence, none of them have thought of sharing love before.
To address the first bit - the sharing love thing? It's a lovely metaphor for a healthy relationship versus an abusive one, and it works with people and ponies, but it falls apart completely with changelings. If changelings feed on love to survive*, then they must be using that love to fuel their bodies, just as we do with the food we eat. Where else could they be getting energy from, after all? They live underground, so photosynthesis is out, and nothing is ever said about them eating normal food - but, again, they live underground, so farming's not really an option). The problem is that you're now talking about resource generation, in a closed loop. Energy is being used up by changeling bodies just by living, and while they can generate love to share with other changelings, the act of generating it would in turn use up some of their own energy supply. And while the comment below (4450728) is right that the processes could have different efficiencies, some pretty fundamental laws of physics say that you can't get more energy out of a closed loop than what you put in.
For what it's worth, my story did have numerous possible solutions suggested in the comments, such as changelings living near ponies and keeping their numbers down, in order to feast on the excess love pony settlements would radiate like light pollution. These, however, would have their own negative implications for changeling society, as I explored in my story and shall not spoil here.
And the other thing, of how no changeling had ever thought of sharing love before?
Or, as another commenter on my story pointed out:
All I can say is that my in-story answer to that question proved the character I really like right, and the one I really don't like very very wrong.
/
However, by far the most interesting thoughts on the turns of events in the season six finale, and what they mean for the future of the changeling race, come from Codex Ex Equus, the guy behind the best damn changeling story on this whole site, and I would highly recommend reading them.
I can only hope that his assessment of things proves to be correct, although I think it's very, very unlikely to. It would solve the problems of the only MLP season finale I haven't liked, fix everyones' favourite race and lead villain, restore a lot of confidence in the new writing team after their lacklustre first season, teach some important life lessons to children and adults, and generally be brilliant in every conceivable way.
*And this is an if. I had assumed it was more concrete, given the strength of fan opinion on the matter, but again, rereading the dialogue in A Canterlot Wedding Part II, it talks more about power than food:
Sorry about the annoying bolding, I just wanted to point out that it's not completely impossible that the changelings want love for other reasons, such as to fuel their magic. I think Chrysalis' line about needing to find food for her subjects is enough confirmation for me that the love sustains and nourishes the changelings as food does for animals and sunlight does for plants, but twice it does mention them doing so to become more powerful. So it could be closer to (what I think is the most reasonable explanation for) the sirens' gems in Rainbow Rocks; that the changelings get their physical energy from elsewhere, such as normal food (although please see my above point about their lack of farming), and that they need love just to fuel their magic.
4450981
I agree with almost everything except that you're treating it like a closed loop in physics when you are dealing with emotions.
You can get uneven reactions, particularly if external factors - which are impossible to remove in this particular case - interfere. You can get someone incredibly angry and frustrated for something as little as a minor prank, specially if he or she has been having a hard time up until then; conversely, you can make a minor gesture of Goodwill and make said person tear up and hug you.
This is more evident if you assume that ponies (and other non-changelings) generate emotion, while a changeling only consumes it or redirects it. The generators outnumber the consumers, and the generators also affect one another and generate even more emotions.
It's not a simple numbers game. The closest analogy I could think of to turn it into something relating to physics is that you have a few thousand clockwork robots in... New York, or something, and they must be wound up to move; they do stuff for you, and there are thousands and thousands of other people also winding the robots, so you save energy yourself, and so are more inclined to wind the robots to help someone else as well.
4451805 That's a very interesting point, I hadn't thought of it like that, thanks for raising it.
I think that makes a lot of sense if transferring love between each other in the traditional sense, the way humans would do it. You're right, a small gesture can provoke a large response (although I suspect this would yield diminishing returns after a while, as that behaviour becomes the norm, and individuals have to continually reinvent the way they show such things, probably driven towards ever-larger gestures), but the way it's shown in the episode is a literal beam of energy travelling from one heart to another, which to me suggests more of an equal transfer, with the recipient receiving the same amount of love that the sender transmitted.
The New York analogy isn't a bad one, I don't think, but it very much relies on the people being there to do the windings (I think I'm right in understanding your metaphor that people would be ponies and robots changelings?). Which is ok, if the changelings are always surrounded by loving ponies. But it doesn't do much for their independence, in fact making them completely reliant on ponies and other love-giving species for their survival. Given the history of racial tensions between ponies and changelings, that seems a very big gamble to take. It would only take one future Sombra to realise how easily he could enslave changelings to do whatever he wished simply by having his populace withhold love from the changelings if they refused. Whereas the changelings couldn't respond in kind, even if they've fully integrated into pony society, with jobs and so on, as they don't have anything the ponies need and can't get elsewhere.
One possible get-around I can think of is that Equestria naturally has magic in the air, and that's what's providing the energy input into the changeling loop, rather than food or sunlight. I've spent enough years of my life immersed in Kokiri Forest, with the air so thick with ambient fairies that they're like dust motes in sunbeams, that that's how I think of Equestria anyway (that's my explanation for how multiple ponies can spontaneously burst into the same never-heard-before song), but I don't think there's anything in the canon that actually backs that up. And of course, if that were the case, why would the changelings have ever needed to invade?