Chrysalis: SoT Chapter 10

Hey, everybody! Here I come with the next chapter of Chrysalis: Saviour of Time. This one is titled "A Changeling in Ponyville" and is based off of the episode "Bridle Gossip". More discussion with spoilers and such after the break.

Here we go with the third chapter in about a month, go me! This one was initially going to be titled "That's Not Funny", clearly referring to the effects of the poison joke flower. Clearly I decided to change it, partly because I think that the new title sounds better as a chapter title, and partly because I didn't really want it to be the same as the Joker's last words after being shot by Robin in Return of the Joker.

This chapter is considerably lighter than the last, which I think is quite welcome all things considered. Why, I think there might even be bits and pieces that are actually meant to be comedic in nature. Add to it that nobody is seriously maimed, nobody is assaulted (well, except for Zecora by the ineffectual and tiny Applejack), no relationships are seriously damaged and the newly introduced character gets to be on reasonable terms with Chrysalis by the end of the chapter and we've got what is comparatively a light hearted romp.

While many details of this chapter either were not decided on earlier or had been straight up changed, one thing that I knew right from the start of writing this story is that Chrysalis would get stuck as a normal changeling because of the poison joke, unable to transform at all. I thought that it would be kind of funny to have the mostly haughty Chrysalis demoted to a nobody in such a fashion while also introducing the potential for actual threat at the same time. I didn't play up the haughty side of her that was upset over that demotion as much as I thought I would, but I guess that was at least in part because it seemed like she would be more concerned with being discovered and then later the safety of Apple Bloom. A lost opportunity, perhaps, but that's how it went. Perhaps somebody better with comedic writing could have done it more like I had at first envisioned. Oh well.

Having Time Keeper show up in the middle of the story...part of me feels that it was a little clunky, but it needed to happen at some point and I couldn't really come up with a good reason why he would have waited much longer to go to the library now that Shining Armor was gone. God, there are so many characters to juggle, even without adding new ones to the mix. What have I gotten myself into? I'm already leaving out Spike more than I feel is warranted, and now I've got Time Keeper added to the mix. I suspect that most of the time I'll just end up ignoring him, having him pushed off to the side so that he doesn't interfere too much with the other stuff that's going on. I'll try to get him involved in at least some of the stories, but knowing the next couple of episodes I'm going to be covering makes it seem like he won't be around much there, either,even if it is for reasons that make sense in context.

Anyway, ignoring him for a bit, much of the story remains mostly unchanged from the episode. The details are different, but it's very similar overall, at least until after they are cured of the poison joke where I go beyond the episode. I have the introduction of that vaguely worded method of finding changelings that I had mentioned back in chapter 2. I'll admit that I wasn't sure what exactly that method was going to entail at the time I had written it in, but I like what I came up with in how it is a kind of ointment that can be created by Zecora, presumably from some plant found in the Everfree Forest. Though I haven't stated in the chapter itself, my assumption would be that it reacts to the presence of magic created through the consumption of love, which is naturally flowing through changelings at all times.

I have also deviated from the show by having Zecora know what a changeling is, though it is only a minor deviation. There is no indication that she doesn't know in the show, though that is naturally because changelings were completely irrelevant to the story at the time and likely not even invented yet by the writers. it does give a little bit of reason for why it was Zecora of all characters leading the rebellion against Chrysalis in the alternate timeline from the season 5 finale, though.

We get to have a nice little confrontation between Chrysalis and Zecora over the ointment and, as I mentioned earlier, we have the first instance of an introduced character after the series premier that Chrysalis doesn't completely freak out. Chrysalis is, even if she wouldn't admit it, learning from her experiences to be a little less violent. As was pointed out by a rather insightful commenter, she was acting like a hammer that treated every problem she ran across like a nail, and ruining pretty well everything as a result. It was a very nice analysis, I thought. Regardless, she is beginning to veer away from that mentality. She even sends what seems to be a legitimate, and meaningful friendship report to Celestia. She tells herself that she's making up what she has learned to appease Celestia, but I don't think she's fooling anybody, she has actually learned something. Hurrah for character development!

And of course, there's the last piece I added onto this chapter: past Queen Chrysalis getting news of future Chrysalis' presence in Ponyville. Yeah. Hero Chrysalis' attempts to not be discovered by her past self for awhile didn't last very long, did it? Here's hoping it doesn't cause our hero too many problems.

Anyway, that's enough rambling. next chapter, whenever it gets done, is going to be based on Swarm of the Century. I may wait and release it as a double header, though, combined with the chapter after it in relatively quick succession. Or maybe not. Only time will tell, I suppose.