Queen Chrysalis believes that she has tasted every kind of love, and that it cannot stir her heart.
One day, a visitor brings her a love that is new, unique, and powerful. And in that moment, she feels something awaken within her.
But even at its strongest, love is not so simple; and the love that now sustains her may yet have the power to break her.
This story was expanded from its original appearance as a finalist in the March 2016 Writeoff ("It's Your Funeral") with the assistance of Icenrose and the late, great Miranda Laufeyson!
Chapters (1)
Love freely given is bound to be stronger than taken, kinda like unicorn blood in Harry Potter I guess.
Source for pic?
Makes a-one pone weep, makes another pone sing...
That won't stop him from coming back.
Nice. The veneration of the pony (who I believe is unnamed) gives off a very eerie atmosphere—his idolatry is creepy and scary at the same time, and I certainly felt this when reading. There are very solid descriptions in when Chrysalis first feeds on the worshipper that add to the sheer grotesque-ness of it all.
And Chrysalis’s order at the end is… well… tragic. From the story tags, I was half-expecting the ending to involve the cliché ‘sacrificing herself for the pony whom she loves’, but instead Chrysalis acts in callousness instead. She simply chooses to simply forget ever meeting him by having her drones remove him from her sight, bt she gives him a shred of mercy by having him placed in a hospital. Maybe this hint of mercy means that she’s beginning to reciprocate? Maybe she knows that continuing to experience the sensation of true love is in vain, and she vows internally to banish him from her sight so she doesn’t yearn for him?
Either way, it shows the power of love. (title drop!)
7443730 I’ve found the image on EQD (Source 19) and Derpibooru, but the original artist has regrettably deactivated their dA account.
Better hope his brain's too broken for dreamwalking, because it sounds like they didn't blindfold him...
Anyway, good stuff.
7443729 That was my going theory. Stolen love isn't really love, right? At least not compared to the real thing...
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But IMO, the order at the end isn't sheer callous forgetfulness; it's Chrysalis growing enough in love that she wants a better life for the prisoner than what she can offer, but she knows his mind is broken, and that he'll come back to her by any means necessary if he can. She's also not the sweetest person on the inside, and this is about the best that she can think to do. I'm glad he came off as creepy too, though; he certainly isn't a model of healthy affection. (And no, he's never named, and he's not really a show character; he's just a pony who's been through an experience.)
7445936 Thank you so much for finding that! I found it somewhere random and wasn't able to track down its source. I guess that's because the artist closed up shop.
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7444398 That's possible, but it ought to at least slow him down a bit.
7445968 Thanks!
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I always figured that Chrysalis was like the faeries of old. With their ridiculously long lifespans and complete removal from "standard" values, they can seem cold or capricious. Mortal beings can usually only hope to achieve "pet" status in the mind of such an entity. I felt this read as her own twisted way of returning said love. For she knows that to keep him would mean his death.
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her own twisted way of returning said love. For she knows that to keep him would mean his death.
Exactly.
7446198 Intriguing. Faerie mythology is a subject I’m not familiar with, so your interpretation’s certainly a fascinating one.
That was a fun little story around the closest thing we're going to get regarding faeries. Seriously, they are some pretty messed up little buggers depending on the legends or stories you look at. Love can make you crazy. Then again, is it really love? I mean for the story of course it is but this also reads like when love turns toxic and into obsession and in the end nobody ends up winning. In a way both sides end up losing more then they'd reckon.
Sometimes it takes years after the fact for someone to realize it. This story (and various media around Changelings) does raise a question. How can one draw love if all you do is kidnap folks but not give them anything or anyone to love that you can draw off of? That is to say if you kidnap someone from their family they may love their family still but the fear, despair etc. would probably overrule the love as the most prominent emotion. Wouldn't it make more sense to kidnap entire families who will still feel fear and all but would huddle together and have said love be more prominent? Heck threatening to hurt various members of said family might bring forth an over abundance of said emotion along with other feelings as well.
I dunno. Just something I thought about.
She look stoned out of her mind on the cover image.
Aww, that was sweet.
I like this Chryssie, she simply doesn't work on the same logic and morality as we do.
I've often wondered why the Sirens and the Changelings don't work with each other, they eat different emotions, they could both feed off the same pony. But that speculated I like this Chryssi, she avoids obvious sentimentality and smarm, yet has a suggestion of, well, vulnerability about her. Hard to explain, but it avoids making her a stereotypically one dimensional villain.
And so here we are fleshing out a bad girl from what's meant as a cartoon for children. Is it because that in our own weird brony way we love her too? But ponies can lose a leg and still function because they are quadrupeds, can I plead being bipedal and ask that they only remove my tongue?
We need a Chrysalis emoji thingy...
Tom Lehrer's Masochism Tango comes to mind:
Honestly this ends too abruptly.