Rage Review: Resist and Bite (Chapter 11, Part B) · 7:18am Apr 8th, 2020
Chapter 11: Rough negotiations in the Changeling Kingdom (Part B)
After walking for about an hour 
through the Everfree Forest, Our Nominal Heroes Charlie Lam and Luster Dawn reach the Changeling Kingdom.
I call foul on this. 
Other episodes featuring the Changelings (especially the Season Six finale, To Where and Back Again) portray the Changeling Hive as being located to the southwest of Canterlot (and Ponyville), in the Badlands beyond the Palomino Desert. There is no particular reason for Thorax to move this Hive; though it's of course possible that he did so in the intervening decades.
Now, Thorax is at peace with Twilight Sparkle, and thus he might have wanted to move his Hive closer to Canterlot, both for reasons of mutual defense and of economic convenience. But the Everfree is a dangerous environment: remember that most individual Changelings are weak and vulnerable by the standards of many of the monsters in there. That forest would be a strange choice of home for them.
I also wonder if Author realizes just how difficult it is walking through forested hills, especially if any of this is off-road or (worse) off-{i]trail. One cannot make more than a few miles an hour, unless one is running on a decent road (running on an unknown trail is decidedly dangerous, as trails have a nasty habit of sudden and unannounced climbs, dives, and curves; slides and potholes are also distinctly possible).
Luster Dawn looked in front of her and saw the gates of the Changeling Kingdom. But to Charlie, it was a giant beehive.
Having seen Changeling architecture on the Show, I understand exactly what Author means. Changelings like to use biotechnology: they dig tunnels for security and climate control, and festoon their dwellings with structures made from their own spittles and silks combined with various other materials. It's quite creepy and insectoid by the standards of most other races.
Author is trying to say that it reminded Charlie of a giant beehive (though personally I find Changeling structures more akin to impossibly-huge termite mounds), and I get the reference.
A better technique would be to describe what the Hive looks like. It's weird and alien and creepy-beautiful enough (like the Changelings themselves) that it deserves a detailed description. The "beehive" reference could still be used, as some sort of preface or summation.
This fascinating reaction ensues:
"Well here we are, the changeling kingdom." Said Luster Dawn.
"Now this is what I call a fancy apartment." Said Charlie.
"Um Charlie, this is not an apartment, it's a Kingdom." Luster Dawn corrected him.
"I know but, I'm just saying that it looks almost as tall as an apartment back in my world."
(1) Does Charlie mean "apartment building? Because the Hive is a lot bigger than any single "apartment!" In point of fact, it's functionally a town.
(2) Actually, Luster, it's a Hive. And the capital of the Kingdom, which embraces many Changelings and presumably enough territory to support the Hive. You should know this.
(3) There is probably more of it underground. Quite possibly most of it is underground. My Changelings would put most of it underground.
Charlie and Luster approach the main gates. To their surprise, there are no guards on duty. From the outside, the Hive looks abandoned.
"Have these species been arrested and enslaved by the Chinese as well?" He asked.
The word "arrested" here is very bad form, as it implies that Red China had a valid territorial claim to the Changeling Kingdom and the Changelings were just rioters, rather than an actual political entity. This is bad form because if repeated it would give the PRC exactly the justification they wanted for their war crimes.
Also, the Changelings are at most a single species, not multiple ones. In my storyverse (based on Alex Warlorn's on this point) they're just highly derived Flutter Ponies, and hence a "Kind" (variant) rather than "species," though I realize that this opinion is far from universal in our fandom.
"Some of them yeah." Luster Dawn replied with a nod "But, the King Thorax and a couple of his kind were not, I assume they must be hiding in here somewhere." She said.
By definition, when one "hides" one does not let one's location be known. Given that the Hive is a maze -- possibly even a shifting maze, as in To Where and Back Again -- the Hive would be a very good place to hide.
I wonder how the small Red Chinese force could possibly have captured most of the Changelings so quickly? These are creatures who can shapeshift, the more talented ones into inanimate objects. Hunting them through the maze of the Hive, while being frequently ambushed by Changeling Soldier-castes, does not sound like much fun!
(See Iwo Jima, Okinawa, and the Iron Triangle!)
"So, should we bust through instead?" He asked.
"That is a very violent act but, we have no choice." Luster Dawn said with a shrug.
Okay, what's wrong with this?
If they break the gate, they're acting like invaders. In the midst of an actual invasion, this could be a fatal error on their part.
Why "fatal?"
Well, think of wasps. Think of a nest of them.
Now imagine that the wasps are shapeshifting sapient tool-users the size of small horses, and can fly, in many cases shoot energy beams from their horns, and in some cases teleport,. Oh, and mimic both of you.
That is why just "busting" into a Changeling Hive is a very BAD idea!
Anyway, their cunning plan is to charge the gate and hope to break through by brute force. I'd call this plan impossible if Charlie wasn't an Alicorn, though he doesn't seem to realize that his new form is considerably stronger than his old one.
Given that Charlie's an Alicorn, I'd simply call the plan stupid.
Luckily for them, before they can do this dumb thing, Pharynx sneaks up behind them and scoops them both up in a "giant bag," which I would say was impossible if it wasn't for the fact that -- being a very talented Changeling indeed -- Pharynx could simply have Shifted from whatever inanimate camoflague form he had taken into a gigantic combat form, large enough to wield a very large net.
Why "luckily?" Because by subduing them so quickly, Pharynx doesn't have to actually hurt them, and what he says makes it obvious that the Changelings are taking prisoners.
The mysterious specie has been dragging Charlie and Luster Dawn for five minutes now. Luster Dawn tried to activate her horn and blast her and Charlie free, but every time she tried to stand she falls over because of the force of the drag.
Luster Dawn has once again forgotten that she can teleport.
I'm also not sure why or how "the force of the drag" prevents her from orienting herself well enough to blast out of the bag.
The following conversation between the prisoners now ensues:
"Luster Dawn." Charlie called her.
"What?" Luster Dawn asked.
"Would you mind?"
Luster Dawn then looked down and saw that she was sitting on Charlie. She immediately blushed as red as a tomato and got off.
"Oh! I'm so sorry!" She exclaimed with a huge blush.
"It's alright, it's a little presumptuous but, I can tolerate it." He assured her with a chuckle.
Charlie Lam, gentlecolt.
She didn't mean to sit on you, Charlie. You're being dragged off together in a large bag. Her control over her anatomical position is limited, as you should realize given that you are in the SAME BAG WITH HER!.
So what do you do? Pointlessly embarass a mare whom you must have noticed by now is rather physically-shy. Then "forgive" her for her "presumptuous" action (which she can't prevent) while laughing condescendingly.
In a sane world, Luster would seriously resent Charlie's behavior.
This is not a sane world.
Pharynx tumbles them out of the bag, and they stand (or sit) before King Thorax.
The rage reviews... they live!!!!
Especially when Charlie's in the universe.
A biological iceberg of sorts. In the post-Chrysalis era, I imagine more and more buildings sprouting up at surface level like the fruiting bodies of a fungus.
Vietnam: Charlie's in the trees.
The changeling hive: Charlie is the trees.
This story: Charlie manages to offend the trees.
We knew that when General Jin elbowed his way into Canterville/Ponylot.
Hey man! It's nice to see you around again!
5238504
"Be very careful, larvae! Charlie is in the universe!"
,
This is one of the things that bother me about this story. Charlie is just like Alara Rogers' "Anon," in that the whole Universe, friends and foes alike, gets Nerfed to make Charlie look better.
Now in Not the Hero, this is deliberate on Alara's part; Anon is explicitly channeling some sort of hostile metaphysical narrative force. And Alara makes this obvious, by telling it from the viewpoint of a Discord who is Not The Hero, reforming in the process of assembling his Elements of Disharmony to fight Anon, who thinks he himself is the Hero, but is in fact Not The Hero either.
In Resist and Bite, this is unintentional on the part of the Author, probably because he doesn't know how warfare actually works. The enemy needs to be present only in small numbers, to make it even remotely plausible that one eighteen-year-old engineering student, even a ludicrously competent one transformed into a (small and naive) Alicorn, stands a chance against them. And, of course, the enemy still needs to employ inept tactics, or they'd kill him anyway.
The problem is that, once the Red Chinese Army has been nerfed to such an extent, Author runs into the problem that a battalion to brigade (let alone platoon!!!) sized force, even from a Great Power, is wholly inadequate to the task of conquering Equestria. The only way it could even survive a while would be by guerilla warfare, and that would look heroic from the POV of the militarily naive (*), so we can't have them doing that.
So the way Author makes the Chinese raider-sized force look like the standard Evil Empire's Army of Occupation is by making everyone they fight so ludicrously inept at warfare that no one they attack mobilizes until they have (somehow) been overrun (despite the fact that their numbers are too small to credibly "overrun" anything bigger than a regiment to brigade sized foe). Canon abilities (such as Dragon body armor, agile Griffon flight, or Changeling shapeshifting) are taken away, and the natives panic at the sight of personal firearms being used in battle, when they also canonically are either used to cannons, or have better natural weaponry (Dragon firebreathing).
Nerf both sides in a war this badly, and we do not get the impression of Our Hero nobly struggling to save a beleagured noble empire from aggressors. Instead, we get the impression of a world in which everyone is incompetent, and the Hero is just a little bit less incompetent than everyone else.
I have a harsher Fall of Chrysalis in the Shadow Wars Story Verse, in that instead of stopping Chrysalis when she's still relatively weak (as in To Where and Back Again), the problem festers and the power of Chrysalis (now the High Queen Nightmare Hunger) grows until she can credibly challenge Equestria. Her armies are depicted as being something in between the Japanese in China and the Germans on the Eastern Front: large-scale industrialized warfare on both sides,
To make things even more epic and nastier, Nightmare Hunger has first conquered numerous neutral Changeling Hives, and the surviving ones flock to Equestria and the leadership of Fluttershy (High Queen Kindness) in a grand alliance against evil. Also, both sides are ramping-up their technology, and by the end of the war Equestria has atomic weapons, and Chrysalis is working on even nastier "wonder weapons" in secret chambers beneath her last Hive as the Equestrian army surrounds her to prepare for the final battle.
Oh ... and one of the stories I had projected for this?
Ermine Lightning (from Fools and Drunks), now in her early twenties, is caught in the wrong place at the wrong time when the armies of Nightmare Hunger drive northward. Trapped in the White Tail Woods, she attaches herself to a platoon of Night Watch Rangers who were doing exercises in the forest when war broke out, and the Ponies try to fight their way northeast out of the trap. In the process, they put a crimp into the Changeling supply lines, and have their own small effect on the big war.
My working title for this story?
Resist and Bite. Based directly not only on the Sabaton song, but also on the historical incident that inspired the song, the stand of the Chasseurs Ardennais against the German Drive through the Ardennes Forest in 1940.
Am I bitter?
Nah, I'm just doing a Rage Review.
(*) I could write a long dissertation on just how Vietnam War era Communist propganda, reinforced by equivalent anti-war propaganda in every US war since, has led to an absurd romanticization of guerilla soldiers, starting with the popular idea that they're only Mildly Military. The truth is that guerilla warfare is often atrocious in practice, and that to the extent that guerillas are not soldiers, it's generally because a better term for them might be "bloodthirsty bandits."
5238728
Thank you!
I'm sheltering-in-place in the Oakland Hills, and am bored.
5238768
Hey, no one said you couldn't still write the story. The best revenge is doing it better.
Somehow that seemed to slip my notice. There's almost too much of this to keep up with. I think I'm usually more attentive when I'm reading good stuff? I'll have to test that one out later.
(Oh, as I'm typing this, looking back, I probably figured out precisely why I didn't notice it when I probably should've: the author didn't capitalize "Everfree Forest," and mentioned it exactly once. To self-demonstrate a bit, the words that are everfree forest don't really do much to stand out when you don't make much of an effort to distinguish them from the rest, do they? Easier to read it over as if it's any other two words, and not dedicate more thought, because that's just how your brain is trained; what stands out is noticed more)
It's like somehow, the author got the idea that "oh it seems that the area surrounding Thorax' Kingdom is part of a forest/has trees around it, therefore it's the Everfree Forest" (and quite possibly also didn't look at an Equestrian map with any coherency in that regard, if they even looked at one, ever before, which, y'know, would probably be at least tangentially relevant when you're writing "traveling to X place" in a story); I think "possibly changed locations" is probably giving them too much credit, but thinking about it is fun, in a way.
Especially when something called "verticality" is a factor, for those who consider those concerns, which defenders undoubtedly would exploit it ruthlessly.
In a sane world, Charlie would've been told to shut up by Not Lackluster Dawn, and he would've apologized to Luster Dawn for being an inconsiderate moron, if it got through to whatever minuscule amount that qualifies as gray matter inside his skull that he did something wrong.
The word "arrested" here is very bad form, as it implies that Red China had a valid territorial claim to the Changeling Kingdom and the Changelings were just rioters, rather than an actual political entity. This is bad form because if repeated it would give the PRC exactly the justification they wanted for their war crimes.
Unless the Chinese have dug into their history and dredged up the old stories of the 'Legendary Peoples' like cynocephali, people with their faces in their chests, and other oddities to argue that old China knew about places like Equestria and therefor they're not 'invading' so much as they are 'reclaiming traditional Chinese territory'. Sorry, my mind just went off on a very odd tangent there.
5239006
I like that notion! One might especially imagine the Chinese to have some special knowledge of Equestria, given the importance of semi-divine Dragons in Chinese mythology.