I don't understand the new changelings. · 1:19am Apr 13th, 2017
I don’t understand the new changelings. Like, at all. And I mean that literally. I don’t understand why they were introduced, I don’t understand what their purpose is, I don’t understand why they are.
What really prompted me to write all this was watching that preview of the season premiere. Afterwards, I was thinking about it, and I realized, wow, it's like they knew exactly what I wanted to happen with the changelings. It's like they had a list that detailed every single thing I'd been hoping to see when the changelings finally came back to the show, and they sat down and went through every single aspect of that list... and then very carefully did the exact opposite in every possible way.
Obviously the number of posts I've made on this subject, as well as their... enthusiasm... might make it seem like I'm really upset about this. And I kind of am, but mostly I just have to laugh at this point. To quote Ron Burgundy: "I'm not even mad. That's amazing." To get things so 'wrong'? (wrong in this case meaning 'not what I thought should happen') I'm not mad; I'm impressed. Like I said, it almost makes me laugh more than anything.
I was struggling to articulate my feelings on exactly why I hate the finale and this whole outcome so much, and I think I finally managed to do it. It involves a comparison between The Times They Are a Changeling and To Where and Back Again.
In The Times They Are a Changeling, Thorax just wants to make friends. He's desperate to, not just to eat, but because he simply wants to make friends. The culmination of the episode is basically him and Spike saying "Look, we know he's a changeling. We know they've been our enemies in the past. But that doesn't mean they can't be friends. You just need to give him a chance, just have a little bit of trust, and you'll see what a difference it can make." The whole episode is the best of what this show can be.
In To Where and Back Again, the culmination of the episode is "I don't know, give her your love, I guess?" And then with no further explanation, all the changelings instantly become 'good', everything blows up, and the day is saved. The whole episode is the worst of what the show can be.
That is my ultimate objection here. It's everything good about MLP vs. everything bad about it. It's about genuine understanding and giving someone a chance to prove themselves vs. magical friendship lasers that turn enemies into friends. I kind of thought Starlight Glimmer's reformation had moved us past that, and instead we got the worst example of it so far.
Quick note: I am not opposed to magical friendship lasers in general. The Tirek fight is, in my opinion, one of the highlights of the show so far. I only object to them when they're used in such a heavy-handed manner.
It really does come down to these two episodes against each other.
Thorax, in The Times Etc., says, "Why would someone that looks like this [turns into a crystal pony] want to be friends with someone that looks like this [turns back into a changeling]." Spike then says something along the lines of "It doesn't matter what you look like, they just need to get to know the real you!"
In To Where and Back Again, the changelings all turn into brightly-colored bugs, and now suddenly they're good and everyone likes them.
The lesson goes from literally 'love and tolerance' to 'only magic can make enemies your friends'. It goes from a real world lesson to magical bullshit transformation. And it overwrites the previous lesson. Everything from The Times Etc.? Gone. Never happened. Ignore it. Changelings can only be friends if magic.
Not to mention, Thorax is afraid his appearance is why ponies don't want to be friends with him. That's ultimately proven to not be true... except then all the changelings transform into pony clones anyway so the entire lesson was pointless. Remember kids, change everything about how you look so you can fit in.
I just find the whole thing completely baffling. There was already a perfect 'solution' to the changelings in place—they can just be friends. There was no need to go through this whole ridiculous transformation nonsense. I mean, FFS, they walked things back from 'it doesn't matter what you look like or who you are'. They replaced a perfect, meaningful, realistic outcome with the literal definition of a deus ex machina. They went from complex and mature to the simplest, blandest, most clichéd ending possible.
That's why I don't understand anything about the new changelings. That's why I hate pretty much everything about them.
And that's why I hope they're going to be the villains this season.
It would be the ultimate lesson in 'just because someone looks pretty doesn't mean they're nice'. The ultimate lesson in 'don't judge someone by the way they look'. And it would be the ultimate lesson the show should have: that friendship isn't magic. You can't just shove friendship into somebody no matter how many lasers you have. It takes kindness, loyalty, laughter, honesty and generosity. You need tolerance and understanding to make someone your friend; there's no simple solution, no magic that can just spontaneously create friendship.
I'm not too optimistic that's going to happen, though. As I said in the previous blog, I think the writers are writing too much like it's a 'kids' show. To clarify that, I mean they don't seem interested in anything that isn't black and white. They lean too much on the way a lot of kids' shows are written, which always seems to be 'do whatever you want, they're kids, it doesn't have to make sense'. Which, frankly, is doing a disservice to children, and it's the reason why so many kids' shows are considered crap designed to sell toys—aside from the fact that, let's be honest, that's exactly what kids' shows are. That doesn't mean the shows can't be good, we've all seen that they can, but too often it seems like there's a... lack of effort, for lack of a better term, put into something that's 'only a kids' show'.
So that's why I'm not really expecting anything amazing to come out of all this. "High hopes, low expectations", as I've said. I fully expect to see the blandest, laziest outcome of all this, which is that everything is exactly as it seems: the new changelings are good because they're brightly colored, and the original changelings are bad because they're dark. And if that is how it plays out... I don't know. That would be the first time the show's ever really let me down. I'd just be disappointed. And, frankly, a bit depressed.
All that said, I am really liking the narrative that's being established in the premiere:
Season Six Finale
Queen Chrysalis: "Whatever idea of revenge you have, it is nothing compare to what I will do to you, Starlight Glimmer!"
Season Seven Premiere
Twilight Sparkle: "Soooooo Starlight... get the f
k out of my house."
What, you're saying you don't like the Technicolor moose?
In all seriousness, I'm not sure how I feel about them or the lesson, but at least there's still some old school ones still around along with Chryssi
The answer to "why" is easy, friend.
It's the exact same reason that Nvidia released the Titan X, and then refreshed it six months later.
Hasbro, like Nvidia, is run by a team of dogs wearing lab coats.
It's hardly the 'worst' nor does anything in the finale undermine anything at all about the earlier episode.
At no point ever was it stated they needed to change to be 'good', nopony made that clear, it was never an actual thing. Correlation=\= causation. We do not KNOW the underlying causes at work that created this. We don't enough about what Changelings are to know why this happened. Which is kind of an issue in and of itself.
Was it poorly foreshadowed, with just Thorax's wings to even hint? Oh yeah. Was just having EVERY changeling going that route with little explanation going to far? Pretty much. There were flaws with how it was handled, but they were ones of execution, not the underlying idea.
ok first do you follow the comics?
as it is laid out their(to be honest for forgot witch one).
wait we are seeing in the show is really how a changeling looked before they ware cursed to become the changeling we know from the show.
you can also find them at the tale end of G1 1985 / 1986 or a version of. the comic is ware the changelings are referred to as flutter pony's.
wiki flutter pony's
I hope this helps at lest a little bit as my knowledge of G1 is a bit rusty, yes I watched it (I am that old I got out of school in 82.
and I own all of G1 on DVD.
the were introduced to sell toys
To me, the whole concept of changedlings was laughable. With Thorax we actually had the reformed changeling storyline that literally every story involving changelings seemed to want. We had the lone traitor, the return of the enemy and the battle of wills of the queen and her traitorous subject! That was good!
And then... instead of assuring his brothers that there is a place to go where they will not go hungry, where love permeates the very air.... they instead turn all the lions into sheep.
Because we can't have predators with prey, right? I mean, that could never work— Oh, wait.
Yeah, griffons are composed of various predators, and somehow Gilda never ate Rainbow— Okay bad example moving on.
Spike seems to be fine too. It's almost like this whole conflict is false drama and no one at Hasbro can conceptualize of the idea of a predator living amongst prey and not consuming it.
Oh, and I too look forward to Starlight graduating and getting the fuck out.
You know, I never noticed that issue. My takeaway from that episode in terms of confusing new elements was something else entirely: Chrysalis' stupidity. She had an enchanted throne which completely negated all magic, except for that of changelings, at a large radius sitting in her palace the entire time. So why did she even bother with the whole 'replace Cadance' bit for her initial invasion when she could have just plopped the throne into a wagon and march with her horde into Canterlot completely unopposed? I mean, I'm no military tactician and I thought of that in like two seconds.
4494543 Simple answer there: it didn't exist before that episode.
But narratively, I'm gonna guess the throne is not something you can move. Maybe it grew there, and taking bits of it with you doesn't work. I imagine they tried it and found it only worked as a whole and only in that one location. Makes it the perfect home defense but won't let you attack.
They needed something to negate the fact that we have an alicorn level unicorn with a complete willingness to use any spell to get the job done and a literal god of chaos, both of whom had loved ones they wanted to retrieve and otherwise would have torn that hive apart to get to them.
This is a good lesson and one they should have kept with. On a similar note several friends have remarked in regards to romantic relationships, that after 2 weeks looks don't matter. Appearance may play into whether or not people will try to form a friendship, but it's personality, the real you, that keeps it going.
The Changeling transformation crap is just that... crap.
It's like the ugly duckling, which sounds like a good moral story from a child's perspective, but when you look at it again as an adult, it's horrible.
On lazy kids show writing just designed to sell stuff to kids, via them begging their parents to buy it for them...
This is the difference between a good show and shameless commercial garbage.
If both parents and children can sit down and enjoy the show because it's well written and entertains all of them, you have a commercial success that will be remembered fondly for years by everyone involved.. Mom and Dad will be FAR more likely to buy related merchandise for their kids since they're fans too.
Poorly written drek that kids are too stupid to notice how bad it is? Once you grow up and watch it again through hopefully wiser and more knowledgeable eyes you will question the quality of parenting you were provided with growing up.
I know. I was once one of those idiot kids who LOVED a horribly written show (M.A.S.K.) and I thought it was great. 12 years later I broke out the VHS recordings I had made of many episodes and a bunch of my friends and I, who all loved this show growing up gathered to watch it. ... ... Doing so destroyed all our fond childhood memories. The story lines, jokes, everything was just SO poorly done that we all wondered how we had once found this entertaining. To top it off we all wondered how the hell our parents let us watch this crap.
*sigh* OK... Think I'm done ranting for now.
Anyway... Gotta love how a show that's supposed to be all about the magic of friendship started that Changeling arc with "It's what's inside that truly counts" and ended with the infantile "Pretty things are good and ugly things are evil trope."
derpicdn.net/img/view/2017/4/11/1409328__safe_artist-colon-tsitra360_thorax_to+where+and+back+again_spoiler-colon-s06e25_spoiler-colon-s06e26_burp_changedling_changeling_comic_crayon_.jpeg
And truth to be told its show to promote toys not moral lessons, with each next season its more toys than anything more
cdn.meme.am/instances/500x/63228251/spaceballs-yogurt-merchandising.jpg
4494495 the comics are not canon to the show though and never have been.
Not to mention tje comics showed when the Changelings were born it was from a magic bog thing Starswirled found full of bones from ponies. That was one of the early comics so if they changed that that means the comics are now contradicting themsevles.
I love seasons 1-4 for the lessons they teach and it made it a go to show I'd let my daughters watch.
Now... now it just kind of rambles on. Any time they have something important happen, aka CMC cutey marks, they don't develop it and just kinda leave it in the air.
What i found intriguing is that thorax doesn't speak after he transforms... at all. He nods and ... that's it. They don't address him as the new changeling leader. They don't talk about who's going to birth new changelings with the queen gone. They don't anything. They once more leave so much of the story a blank slate that it stops being a story and more of a commercial for new products...
They real REALLY need to hire some of the authors from this site and get back to story telling and friendship lessons because right now i'm not sure what they trying to tell.
I hope ponies are a little slower to adopt them just because of what they've done in the past. It would make for a good episode about how you don't to the right thing to be rewarded for it, yoi do it because it's the right thing to do.
Oh come on, you missed the true message: if you're a good boy, you'll no longer be black! :D
Edit: watched the promo, teaser and sneak peek and lost all interest in the new season. Baby crayon barf originalcharacterdonotsteallings are still here and now they're pretty much slightly different ponies. Yay.
4494845 No, there's no reason other than selling toys. There are plenty of dark or black insects and prior to this ass pull the changelings really had no similarities to beetles.
All it does is reinforce that you should indeed judge the book by its cover.
And what makes you say Chryssie even knew that changelings could do that? And even if she taught then that, really, over the years not a single one tried that, even by accident?
I saw the whole thing as more of a larva-turning-into-butterfly thing myself. It showed that Chrysalis was selfishly keeping her children from reaching their final form of life out of a need to control them for her ambitions of world domination. In order to keep them loyal, she needed a reason to make them depend on her, and so she taught them that they needed to steal the love of others to sustain themselves, and that only she could provide that for them. And just like that, she had an entire army that she could use to conquer Equestria with. But it all depended on the fact that none of them were to find out that sharing love was a better alternative.
The original Changelings look a lot to me like insect nymphs, while the new ones look more like fully developed beetles. While the new designs may look a bit jarring, there is a reason for it other than to sell toys...more or less.
How rushed it all felt I blame more on the show's need to have exactly 22 minute episodes, therefore forcing the solution down the viewer's throats.
Not an ideal solution by any merit, but at least it makes a bit more sense to me.
Wait, I think I figured it out!
The changelings suddenly adopting new, brightly colored and kind of oddly shaped forms is obviously the writers laying the groundwork for the season 7 crossover over with Transformers.
Yeah, well who asked you?! That's my reality and I'm substituting it for yours!
my only issue is that the queen is screwed no matter what. she is now alone , hunted by both the ponies and her own former children( that was just too convenient ) . I just hope they find a why to bring her back as something like a anti-hero. like she makes a deal with someone so that she can rebuild her hive without having to hide. I have read over a dozen stories here that give ways she could be convinced to work with the ponies. and all of them could be done in just one or two eposodes.
I honestly think that friendship makes magic would have been better to say. Kindness, laughter, honesty, loyalty, and generosity make up friendship and helping every pony learn a kind of magic. I agree, you can't just blast lasers and make friends. Rather, it's make friends then you could blast lasers.
Short answer?: BUY OUR TOYS!!
long answer?: the target market is still young children, especially girls. Marketing runs on stereotypes. Stereotypically, little girls clearly prefer bright cute looking toys to black, menacing ones.
4494845
I've had the same thought that she was keeping them that way on purpose. It would actually make the outcome of this episode mean something, but there's no proof of that and actually things that contradict it.
For example, the changelings are born hissing and fighting with each other. It's not like Queen Chrysalis made them act that way. Thorax just happened to be born different. I think if she had been keeping them mean, she would have instantly killed Thorax. She definitely wouldn't have let him just go wandering off on his own. Then too, there's her argument with Starlight. She seemed utterly convinced that all the changelings, herself included, would always need to feed on love.
As for the episode being rushed, sure, I get that they only have 22 minutes. But so much of that episode was just Trixie and Discord screwing around. If they'd cut just 60 seconds of that, maybe even 30, and spent that time on any kind of plot development at all, it would have made a huge difference.
On a similar but unrelated note, I've never understood why Magical Mystery Cure was a single episode. Not only did it have something huge like Twilight becoming a Princess, they actually thought it was going to be the series finale. I get that it was a half season, but if I remember correctly there were two Spike episodes that season. You're really telling me one of those couldn't have been cut?
4494543
I think the main reason she didn't do that is simply that changelings aren't fighters. They're infiltrators. Remember, the Mane Six fought off like thirty of them, and they generally went down in a single hit. The changelings only beat them because after that fight, when the Mane Six were all exhausted, another fifty or so changelings swarmed them.
One on one, a changeling doesn't beat a pony. I actually kind of think what we saw in A Canterlot Wedding was like plan G, something Chrysalis only did because complications kept cropping up; i.e., Shining Armor putting up the shield, Twilight revealing her, etc. I think one of my favorite things about that episode is that while everyone is stunned when Celestia gets knocked out, Chrysalis is utterly shocked. Even she didn't think she could defeat Celestia in a straight fight, that was a pure desperation move.
So if they tried just walking in with the throne, they'd most likely get overwhelmed by the Royal Guard, not to mention just regular ponies trying to defend themselves.
That throne was also massive. Chrysalis is roughly the size of Celestia, and that throne was several times bigger than her. That really makes the throne better as a static defense. Which is exactly what she was using it for—Thorax's description is "She carved it out of an ancient dark stone to keep the hive safe."
I think that's actually one of the things that's stuck out most to me about all the episodes with Queen Chrysalis. Every time Thorax describes a feature of the hive, it's 'to keep the hive safe'. Every time someone asks Chrysalis what she's doing, the response is she's trying to feed the hive. The changelings sure turned on her awful fast considering that everything she was doing was for their benefit.
4494713
Yeah, that's what I said is the main problem with the show when they try to do big things like this. They just don't seem to put the effort in, which is a problem a lot of kid's shows have.
The thing is, the normal episodes are great. They can do some amazing, heartfelt things. It's just that when they try to go big for the season premieres and finales, they just can't get there. It seems like they get so obsessed with trying to get to this big confrontation that they skip actually building it up and just rush to it. And then it's like they finish it, and they're bored now so they just end things.
The entire point of this finale was Starlight's "We're not so different, you and I" speech at the end, and everything else was just secondary to that, to the point where they didn't bother explaining anything. They actually just had Starlight tell everyone what happened, rather than actually explain any of it.
"This is what happens when a changeling gives love." Really Starlight? how would have any idea how changelings work, considering the first time you even saw one was like two weeks ago? "The changelings have a new leader now." That's funny, considering none of them have even said a single word.
The show actually resembles the comics in that way, specifically Katie Cook's issues. She did some amazing slice of life stuff. The gazebo arc and the story of how Cadance and Shining Armor met are still my favorite issues out of all, what, one hundred plus issues across all the different comics? But when she did the big four-part adventure arcs... well, they seemed to get worse as time went on.
4496772
You know, the fact that they lost to the Mane Six completely slipped my mind. I mean, they couldn't even beat Fluttershy in a hoof-fight. But that just raises a different set of questions. If they're supposed to be master infiltrators, why was Chrysalis so terrible at acting like Cadance? If she was out of practice, couldn't she have sent a more experienced drone instead? And why do they ever bother trying to intimidate ponies with their true forms if they're as strong as anemic kittens? Honestly, we're both probably putting way too much thought into this. I watch MLP because it's funny, not to see the ponies overcome supremely cunning foes.
And yeah, I kinda feel bad for Chrysalis. She tries to care for her children by stealing love for food, but we know Fluttershy keeps multiple birds of prey, and you don't see them getting blasted into the stratosphere for hunting prey animals to feed their chicks.
4494553
Really, the whole point of the throne was probably Discord, considering he breaks any story you put him in. Working around Starlight and Trixie's magic would have been simple enough, but Discord effectively needs to be neutralized whenever he shows up in a big adventure episode. At this point they pretty much just have to stop putting him in the finales and premieres. Tirek stole his magic and the throne blocked it, fine. You get two. If they keep trying to fit him into finales like this and he gets Samus'd every time, it'll start getting ridiculous pretty fast.
4495830
See, I actually find that really weird now that I think about it.
I mean, the whole idea behind Equestria Girls was that it was supposed to compete with Monster High, right? That fairly popular series for little girls where all the characters are classic monsters? You would think that would be sign that there's a bit of a market for scary/evil/dark/etc. characters marketed towards little girls.
And instead, they took the one race that would fit that mold and turned them into copies of all the other brightly colored equines. It kind of feels like they shot themselves in the foot there a bit.
4499075
It's Hasbro.
They bought the original X-COM IP/MicroProse, back when they had just released X-COM: Apocalypse, which (while not amazing) managed to bring the series forward with a decent mix of new mechanics, and an interesting story, developed lore, a really excellent dark tone, and just maing a good game, Hasbro decided that the only thing to do with the X-COM franchise was rapidly release three shoestring budget titles that completely departed from the fan-favourite intelligent strategy formula, and instead were campy schlocky sci-fi games that ran on pop-culture, and required as little thought as possible.
Enforcer got decent reviews, but they were either bought, or it was people willing pulling the wool over their own eyes, because evry single retrospective that touches it has some variant of the phrase "what were they smoking back then?" in it.
This should explain so much.