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“Uhm, Gentle Caring? Are you here?”
“Oh, is that you Thoughtful?” The muffled voice came distantly from the other side of the unusually irregular, resin-coated door.
However, when Thoughtful Curiosity thought “open” at the door, it didn't budge. Eye-ridges furrowed, she realized that it was an outdated model, though none she could recognize.
“Caring? Did you unlock your door yet? Wait, do I need to emote a one-time pass-phrase or something?”
“Oh, sorry about that... Little Irving can get a bit cranky around changelings he hasn't met.”
“Little... Irving...?” Thoughtful poked the door tentatively with a hoof. It emitted an angry buzz in response, and a short burst of slime spattered from a small hole near eye-level – completely missing the changeling, and quickly petering out into a trickle that ran down its frame ineffectively.
“Was that... a defense mechanism?” Thoughtful tilted her head, feelings of skepticism rising to the forefront of her mind.
Hoof-steps could be heard approaching from the other side. “Now now, Irving, I know it's been a while since I had any-ling over, but Thoughtful Curiosity is a dear friend. And what have I told you about spraying my guests?”
The door gave a petulant gurgle in response.
“She did? Oh my...” A pause. The sound of chitin rubbing on hard resin. “You're a good security door, Irving, I'm sure she didn't mean it.” Another pause. “Now, please let her in? Please?” Another pause. “I'll even feed you extra for an hour. A whole fifty milliwedds, yummy!”
The door slid open so fast Thoughtful could taste the eagerness.
“Sorry about that. I picked him up when I was cultivating a security system for the Dhaundax Bank. They wanted to just replace the poor thing with a younger model!”
“I wonder why they would do something like that.” Thoughtful thought in the private section of her mind, rolling her eyes.
“Anyway, can I get you something to feed on? Old love? Young love? Young Love Light?”
“No, thanks.” Thoughtful waved the offer off with a dismissive smile.
Not even three steps into the home proper, Thoughtful Curiosity was struck speechless.
Tools and organic machines were everywhere.
Gentle Caring had access to no less than five high-end genetic computing engines side-by-side, each of different make and model, and fully stocked with mutation-scanner, DNA-printer, and targeted gene editing system. The chromatophore display the size of a wall was merely an afterthought.
Thoughtful's mouth watered at the mere sight.
The disembodied spare parts, on the other hoof, made her feel a bit squeamish.
Thoughtful Curiosity had to tread carefully – an entire colony's worth of cleaning-spiders were scuttling about, fuzzy furry bodies rubbing against floor and walls as they went on their hunt for dust-mites and the occasional bit of detritus for their nests.
“Oh, that reminds me...” Thoughtful pondered. “Have you finished repairing my PDA?“ She stepped around several more cleaning spiders and... something else, only for a tickling sensation to scuttle up her left foreleg.
She looked down to see a thin, rectangular slab of chitin, with full chromatophore display – and eight tiny legs that firmly grasped at the holes in her own leg to climb it.
“Even better! I upgraded him!” Gentle Caring's cheery smile was a bit too strong for Thoughtful's taste. “Aww, he missed you!”
“Guh...” Thoughtful kept staring down at the device, as it rubbed against her foreleg affectionately.
“Why... does my PDA have legs?”
“Oh, the little one just wanted to be more helpful!”
“But... It doesn't need to have legs, I just need it to send messages, and keep track of my checklists,” Thoughtful pointed out. “Oh, and the organizing apps. To help me... sort... things...” She trailed off. The device had finished its climb and was now nestling on Thoughtful's backplate, right between her wings.
It was a particularly sore spot – she had been flying around all day.
And the tiny, spindly legs were just the right size to reach into the cracks in between plates and apply just the right amount of pressure.
It was the perfect spot.
Thoughtful couldn't stop a flicker of relaxed calm from escaping at the unexpected massage.
Gentle Caring's slowly widening grin made it clear it hadn't escaped her notice. “Very helpful.”
“I don't know...” Thoughful glanced back at the PDA apprehensively.
“Oh, don't be like that...” Gentle stroked the PDA across the screen, somehow without accidentally selecting anything.
“I also expanded his memory. I just so happened to have the... right parts.” Gentle smiled sadly.
Sensing the shift in emotion, the PDA buzzed and trilled, grasping Gentle Caring's foreleg with its own tiny appendages.
Gentle's mood shifted, as the small device struggled to climb her foreleg.
“Aww...” Gentle cooed. “You're right, let's show Thoughtful what you can do!”
It took some false starts, but eventually, the device found its place quite firmly latched on her right foreleg. Demonstratively, Gentle took a couple small steps, the PDA still attached to her leg.
“Oh, that's... useful.” Thoughtful suppressed any uncertainties she still felt about Gentle's little “upgrade”.
“Here, why don't you take him?”
With a sigh equal parts amusement, bewilderment, and mild irritation, Thoughtful Curiosity held out her foreleg and let her Personal Dictyopteric Assistant latch onto it.
She looked up, just in time to see another device waddle up to the bioengineer on unsteady legs.
The thing looked like it might once have been a basic broadcasting station, but had been modified into Chrysalis-knew-what, complete with eyestalks. Thoughtful wondered if all of Gentle's home appliances had mobility enhancements.
“Oh dear, is it the legs again?” Gentle Caring frowned down at the blinking apparatus. “I know you aren't used to them, but if you want to keep them, you have to use them every day, or else they won't get proper bloodflow.”
The device blinked and chirped, then flopped upside down.
“Awwww...” Gentle cooed. “Alright, I'll see if I can reprogram your genome to make it easier for you. But right now, I've got a friend over, so... just wait a bit, okay?”
Thoughtful's mix of confusion and curiosity did not go unnoticed by the other changeling.
“Oh, I've memorized the genomes of all my little friends...”
Thoughtful opened her mouth to comment on the impossibility of the statement. Then she closed it.
Entering the other room, Thoughtful Curiosity's questions got pushed back in the queue by her next observation.
A series of toy train-capsules were running along a complex web of wall- and ceiling-mounted tracks, dropping off little chunks of different types of food to food-bowls and countertops, or straight into the fuel-line for some of the machines that didn't have legs. There were at least four dozen train-capsules running all at once, perhaps more, sometimes passing each other by just by mere inches in a complicated dance.
As she watched, several of the toy trains changed directions mid-sequence, arranging themselves on the tracks in a way that... resembled a smiley-face?
Gentle walked over to the other side of the room, to a somewhat slimy, irregularly shaped wall.
No, not a wall, Thoughtful realized, just something occupying the entire height and width of one of the walls. And about half of the room, now that she'd done a quick estimate of the home's dimensions.
“Oh, isn't she just the cutest?” Gentle beamed and lovingly patted the wall-sized irregular growth of carapace and slime-secretions on its side. “She loves playing with her trains.”
A few more trains joined in on the formation, displaying a wider smile.
Idly, Thoughtful took note that the remaining trains had increased speed to compensate for the loss in food-delivery efficiency. Just looking at the blur of activity made her eyes hurt.
“So...” Thoughtful ventured slowly. “You've got an industrial-grade free-learning organization engine in your home.”
“I'm... I'm just holding on to her until I can find her a new home.” Gentle Caring fidgeted nervously. “I... I wouldn't want to keep her for myself, o-of course not, that wouldn't be fair for the Hive!”
Thoughtful's understandably still dumbstruck silence was mistaken for something else.
“M-maybe I can find a charity that can take her? I-I-I mean, maybe they need an intelligence to make sure all the funds really go to the right places...”
“No no no, it's fine! It's fine.” Thoughtful cut off what might have become a panic-attack. “I was just... wondering, is all.” A pause, in which Thoughtful's face scrunched up in a futile attempt to overcome her confusion. “How...?”
“Oh...” Gentle Caring drooped. “They shut down her old home... I was called to uninstall the old equipment...”
“AaaaAAAAaaaAAAh! It secreted on my mane! My beautiful mane!” The shrill transmission cut off whatever Gentle had been about to tell her.
Gentle Caring was gone so quickly, weaving through and around all of the equipment shuffling, scuttling, walking, lying, flying about everywhere, Thoughtful had to wonder if the bio-engineer had augmented herself, as well.
“Reminder to self,” Thoughtful absentmindedly thought at her PDA, which twitched to life on her foreleg. “Ask Gentle Caring about her qualifications and certificates later.”
Flying indoors was out – too many small things in the air, too many cramped corridors filled to the ceiling with bio-machinery – so it took Thoughtful a bit to make her way to the front door.
The scene she walked in on was one showing averted disaster:
Faithful Bravery was emoting something rotten at the door, who bleeped indignantly.
Both Boundless Cheer and Reassurance were covered in slime-secretions – one of them more upset than the other, who was adding her own secretions to make the slime into a rubbery ball.
Then Laevigata walked in, blinked, and burst out laughing.
They spend the rest of the evening just chatting, and playing a few games. Boundless Cheer found an even match in the industrial superintelligence Gentle kept insisting she wasn't keeping for herself.
Eventually, Laevigata brought over her saddlebags, clinking with cans and bottles.
“Organic Love, only harvested from free-roaming animals?” Thoughtful read out loud. “Laevigata, all love is organic.”
“Oh, Ih azzure you, zis very vell dezerves zee label. Just give iht a try.” Laevigata gave her a lopsided fang-toothed grin. “Nozhing like vhat zee love factories churn out.”
With a shrug, Thoughtful accepted the container, and fed.
Her senses were assaulted with a plethora of flavors, too many to count, each nuance of emotion ever so subtly different. Wild, animalistic emotions mixed with calm and careless feelings of happiness and contentment, blended together into a cocktail of varying nuances of love from many different sources. There was also some flavor of adoration she couldn't quite place.
Gentle was simply radiating happiness. “Can I... visit sometime? It tastes beautiful.”
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“But, dear, you simply must let me help you redesign your home, these walls-cavities are simply atrocious!” Reassurance dramatically raised a foreleg to her head. “Simply atrocious! And so last-cycle!”
Forelegs extending to match the contours of the wall, she instantly began doing measurements.
“A little hard-resin here, a little raw-resin there...”
“Raw-resin?” Laevigata interjected into the exchange.
“Yes, dear, it's all the rage these days in Plectricona!”
“Izn't zat just ze unfinished spittle zat comes outta ze –”
“Who's hungry?!?” Boundless Cheer broadcasted openly. “Cause I brought snaaa-aaacks!~”
Boundless Cheer wasn't the only one who had developed an appetite.
Soon, Laevigata, Boundless Cheer, and Gentle Caring had all brought out a large spread of different emotions, ranging from Delight to Joy to Exuberance. Faithful's contribution was half a six-pack of “Tripple-X” love energy.
Boundless was already stuffing her face, and Thoughtful had just taken a sip from Laevigata's special brand of “Organic Love”, when Faithful Bravery submitted the feeling of disapproval. “Hey, aren't you all forgetting something?”
“Oh?” Boundless Cheer looked up from playing with Thoughtful's Personal Dictyopteric Assistant – which was odd, since Thoughtful didn't have any games on it.
“What'zzat?” Laevigata inquired, about to take a sip herself.
“Our thanks to the Queen, duh!”
“Gah!” Thoughtful did a perfect spit take, splattering the intangible concept of love all over the table – and her friends.
Boundless Cheer giggled.
Reassurance shrieked.
Laevigata and Faithful Bravery just rolled their eyes.
Gentle Caring gasped – though not at her friends' antics.
A single, very small cleaning spider skittered onto the table and began vigorously absorbing what little it could, scuttle off to its nest, only to almost instantly rush back to continue its sworn duty.
“Oh, Jenny!” Gentle Caring scooped up the tiny spider. “You can't clean all this on your own, it's too much!”
The mini-sized cleaning spider waved its barely hair-thin legs around wildly, standing straight to its full height of about two-and-a-half centi-hooves.
Gentle Caring sighed. “Please, will you at least let me help you this time?”
A hasty apology drenched in embarrassment, an argument with overeager household equipment, handling a PDA trying to help with physical tasks, and an impromptu game of shapeshift-hide-and-seek later, in which Boundless Cheer somehow managed to replace the table while it was still being cleaned, every-ling had calmed and sat down again.
They all closed their eyes, and opened their minds to share thoughts.
“Thank you, Queen Chrysalis, hive-mother, great protector, and love-bringer, for providing us with this feast to feed upon.”
Several variations of “Thank Chrysalis” were broadcasted between the six friends, and into the larger hive-mind, where, if they all thought just hard enough, maybe the Queen would hear them.
Thoughtful couldn't help but smile.
8981719
Don't mind if I do!
Thank you again for helping out, and providing the inspiration for this in the first place.
Omnifaria doesn't usually do much with the wildlife, but Kindness comes in many shades. Or flavors, as the locals might put it.
8981784
What? Nooooo, what makes you say that?
I wonder if Chrysalis showed her how the ponies lived before the war. If she showed them what actually happened to them - I don't buy the "they left" thing. Or is it explained in A Crazed Gleam? Either way, no being worthy of wielding the elements would ever be OK with exterminating an entire species, imprisoning their immortal rulers and the survivors to act like food dispensers.
There is no kindness there. No laughter, generosity or friendship either. Nor honesty in how it was done.
The only virtue is Loyalty to one's species. But then again, Gentle Caring doesn't seem to mind much, or if she does, well... could she wield Kindness against Nightmare Cadence if she knew she was no villain?
It is so STRANGE to see the changeling reincarnations of the Mane 6 interacting exactly like their pony counterparts.
EXACTLY. LIKE. THEIR COUNTERPARTS.
8981813
That is indeed a euphemism - she was still a nymph at the time, so her caretaker very decidedly didn't mention the "less than noble" details of how Omnifaria was founded.
Yes. Except that had happened 200 years before she was even born.
And of course that upsets her.
This one will become more clear in an upcoming chapter.
She showed her that Cadence was happy now.
Is it right to live a false dream of happiness? Probably not. But she had become a Nightmare - rampaging and spreading fear. As sad as it is... It's still better than being turned to stone or banished to the moon, at least.
That doesn't mean it's the last we saw of her, though.
I'm liking the Bug Six that we're seeing here.
Interesting and I look forward to more.
Oh, that changelings names!
I think the "Bug Six" may discover some, side effects from using the elements. Ones that might change everything.
8981840
Interesting. You made me wonder how would they react to knowing the Queen they thank for their love would be just as much of a target for their "Equestrian Artifacts" as the nightmarish pony princess was.
And now I'm oh so waiting for the new chapters, you tease!
This universe is f***** up. I LOVE IT! and hate it.. But mostly love it. yay! :D
7 different stories in 3 chapters
Following.
"What would it be like if Fluttershy was a changeling and a bio-engineer?"
This is a question I never realized I needed answering until now.
This is an interesting story. It pitches the changelings as the heroes, but even in this slice-of-life chapter, there's this sort of bittersweet feel underlying it all, suggesting that it's not all sunshine and daisies as it seems...probably because it's not. There's a shoe hanging around here somewhere, just waiting to drop...I can feel it...
I remember reading a particularly interesting piece of science fiction where all technology had essentially become biological in nature. This is off to a nice start exploring the concept. As long as they don’t need to share their knowledge with Korrock...
Oh, and “Tripple-X Love” is all the lulz these days.
This has so much potential ,continue please.
Still I can feel where this going to go
This is really quite fascinating to read, especially after reading the story it was based on. Eagerly awaiting more
Funny story, but while I was reading through the summary, lines from a certain History of the Soviet Union popped into my head:
~The rule of the game
Is we all are the same:
A collective regime of peace and love~
*Alondro eyenarrows* Cherngelerngs... ermahgerd...*he, once again, prepares to summon Sigourney Weaver to take care of a bunch of disgusting monstrous parasitic giant bug monsters and their grotesque queen*
Utility bugs! Yay!
Not-Fluttershy is AMAZING. Also, all this organic tech is so cool! A little creepy, but cool! And I guess this means instead of Spike, Thoughtful Curiosity's got a walking PDA? That's...yeah, basically what Spike was anyway.
I wonder if the Bug Six are the actual Mane 6 but 'rebirthed?' Wouldn't surprise me.
This story is FUN. Yes, there's the undercurrent of genocide and exploitation, but FUN.
i pray to every god (including the great big bug in the sky) that this is finished, it is great and i don't want it to be left unfinished
One of the things I'm most giddy about is waiting for the "happy ending" promised. Because right now, this story is distinctly utopian with a Soylent Green undertone. I cannot help but eagerly await what happens when the veil of lies is lifted and the changelings of this lovely utopian city learn the real source of their precious love, and what is being done to it to keep their city utopian.
8983220
Seriously. The only way this can end is genocide. either the ponies break free and extinct the changelings, or the changelings accept the processing of sentient life to fuel their parasitic nature.
Congratulations, you got featured and I am happy for you and want to read more.
This is ambitious and unique. I like it! Another! Please?
I feel like at this point, there's no way the Elements of Harmony could harm Chrysalis. They're sources of Harmony, which is not a pony-specific thing, so since killing/imprisoning Chrysalis would cause incredible disharmony at this point-- 200 years later-- the Elements can't do that. After all, imagine how disharmonious the Hivemind would be if their closest equivalent to a god died.
8983462
Yet at the same time, this entire society is a source of disharmony for the ponies.
8981847
Hah! Somehow, in all this time, that name did not occur to me. It's a perfect fit.
8981867
The naming conventions are derived from FanOfMostEverything's "A Crazed Gleam".
Laevigata, by contrast, hails from a different corner of the land, hence the accent.
I imagine "Kevin" is probably still a legible name in some regions also.
8981981
If there is a net-positive of love, then I have done my job well.
Especially if you consider that the setting originated from a horror story.
8982108
Thanking you.
8982995
Yay indeed. Yay, indeed.
There's even some in the cover art, too.
8981869 8982121 8982275 8982443 8982970 8983220 8983313
Ah, I see......
The truth may be ... well, still horrifying, though perhaps in a different way than you might think.
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It's called "bio-engineering" for a reason; alternatively, you could say they "grow" the factories.
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Not... quite.
Don't worry. It'll make more sense as time goes on.
8983313
Not exactly a good ending though, just one in which one side suffers. Then again.... 8983569 suggest that 'happy' might not include everyone.
What even is this story? Is this like, The Matrix if the machines started getting sympathetic towards the humans enslavement? That would be pretty cool actually. Someone should write that.
8983486
If this story holds as true to A Crazed Gleam (the story with the line that inspired it) as I think, then the ponies literally don't have free will, complex thought, or any other function besides loving, loving, and loving. The Nightmare that the Elements were used on last chapter killed a "factory", which is a building that houses genetically modified ponies that essentially are just blobs which feel love.
8983729
Said Nightmare still seemed to be fully functional though, if driven insane by the state of her people.
Congratulations on making the feature box, by the way. :)
8983820
I think that's more because she was born before Chrysalis took over. The only reason other ponies aren't like the Nightmare (and probably also Celestia except that Celestia didn't break out) is that normal ponies would have died of old age by now, 200 years have passed, after all.
It is interesting to see an that an empire such as this could still give rise to legitimately good people. They don’t have any idea that their actions might be wrong, or even any reason to think so. Therefore, they go on with the evil.
I would actually hope to see this empire collapse, not so I can see things get better, but to see just how things could get WORSE. I want to see these characters put into horrible positions and choices, and then trying to say they are good and right.
I hope to see somebody break in the horrors of what they’ve really done. Have them succumb to evil ways while knowing they are evil and having no idea what else to do.
I also hope to see somebody know EVERYTHING, have no qualms about it, and I ironically state it all to be good.
I basically hope to see the evil in this world kill ITSELF before good has a real chance.
I just read your comment that started this. I’m impressed to see how your idea grew into this. I really hope to see where this goes!
Also, I would say that instead of GrimDark, this is either GrimBright or NobelDark.
I am now wondering what happened to all the other nations and species that existed in and around Equestria. We don’t know about The Dragons, griffons, Sea Ponies, yaks, or even the Crystal Empire!
How did they respond to Sombra and his evil mind-controlled army? Did they ever get their hooves on the Crystal Heart? Could it be that the Crystal Heart is the main reason they can use this ‘love’ infrastructure?
I highly doubt that real ponies are extinct in this world, but I would also doubt that the changelings would even recognize a pony if they met one outside of them having similar emotions to their love producers. Also, those love producers mean that the Changelings have no reason to go after real ponies at all. They aren’t needed.
Unless Chrysalis is still a power mad Dictatorial Tyrant. But even then her nation has become MUCH too big to control in any direct way.
8981840
So... since you brought it up in the stone comment... Discord.
He'd probably have broken out in the chaos of... ya know, Canterlot being overtaken by war, Equestria falling and... whatever happened to the ponies.
And at the time there'd be no Changeling to wield the elements and seeing as those are the only things that can reliably stop him so...
Also I take it this is ignoring the whole sharing love thing Thorax discovered? Cause... I mean I think you mention them giving each other love in this chapter, or did Chrysalis alter their genetics so she could keep the love factories or whatever as a punishment for the ponies in whatever form they are?
8984610
Discord broke out before the Changelings came, so he is a bit of a non-issue in this world.
Thorax also only discovered the ability to share love with the help of ponies, so that means in this timeline he was likely only able to say that he believed that there was a better way to do everything instead of leeching off what ponies did. There might be a small sector of changelings following his example.
8983648
Huh, you're right, that might be interesting. Never actually looked into Matrix fanfiction - outside some not-too-interestingly written MLP-crossovers, anyway.
Speaking of the Matrix, I've always wondered - what do the events of the Matrix-movies look like from the perspective of an average person living inside it?
Neo and his gang do shoot up an awful lot of cops, blow up skyscrapers, and leave a trail of destroyed cars - be that on a highway, or in the wind shadow of Neo flying through the city.
If anything, your average person would probably think Neo is one of the bad guys! Imagine the awkward situation if one of the people they free from the Matrix is, like, the kid of one of the cops Neo killed when storming a building to save Morpheus.
8983333
8983916
I know!
The funny thing is, when I came home from work yesterday, I was sorta tired, and just started checking the featured box out of habbit, the large number of notifications already out of mind after checking on new chapter updates. Then my own story pops up while scrolling through the featured box.
8984610
Yeah, in the form of love-flavored energy drinks. I don't think that counts.
Well, for starters, this story is derived from FanOfMostEverything's "A Crazed Gleam", a season 5-fic, which - time travel not withstanding (I am aware of the irony) - couldn't yet have acknowledged the colorful changelings.
Besides, I've never been a fan of it being "that easy" to change like Thorax did. Otherwise, every single "friendly changeling protagonist" in any fanfiction ever published would have turned crayon-colored within the first chapter. Especially those romantically involved with a pony. It doesn't work, on a narrative level. At least I haven't seen anypony make it work - and there's been time. And I've been looking for it.
Plus, even by the show's own logic, nice changelings aren't automatically transformed changelings - otherwise, Thorax would've transformed when he met Spike the first time... perhaps even before that, since he was always "nice".
So I won't exclude the possiblity, but I'd say the circumstances that lead to it would have to be significantly rarer than "just share love".
It's too bad - I even came up with a possible explanation to justify black and colored changelings to exist side-by-side... yet the show pulled the rug out from under me with Pharanx's episode.
orig00.deviantart.net/e43d/f/2016/313/8/1/neon_changeling_consequences_by_ultrathehedgetoaster-danmaun.png
[comic - full view]
Otherwise it'd be like... if becoming an alicorn was as easy as "just sing as many songs as you can in 20 minutes". Makes it seem silly how they'd never have figured that out ages ago.
8985632
There is actually a good explanation for how Thorax never discovered the ‘share love’ ability in this timeline.
He became legitimate friends with ponies only AFTER the invasion failed, and that was because he saw HOW the invasion failed. Since it didn’t, he just continued on in the shadows like he had his entire life.
However, his access to free love lead to his sparkly wings, which lead to his ability to share the love now that he hungered no longer. But THAT only happened because of a ‘fight or die’ reaction which inspired other changelings to try the same action.
With all the access of love combined with the apparent safety the changelings hold, including the ability to access the Elements, it is likely that every changeling is on the brink of transforming without ever having need nor want to do so.
8985026
That's actually the only real complaint I have so far. What exactly causes the Elements of Harmony to assist bug creatures that, while purging a "Nightmare," are in fact building more lies on top of lies to keep a species enslaved one step above genocide? Cadance wouldn't have been in such grief if it weren't for the bearers of the Elements blindly worshiping their tyrant ruler. The Elements or Friendship or whatever powers magic in this world has been shown to be pretty aware of what it's specifically being used for and who's using it—and also they have never once been used by non-ponies.
Otherwise, I love this whole Soylent Green take on changelings.
The bit with the elements is simultaneously deliciously ironic and very, very much stretching the suspension of disbelief. It doesn't, not entirely, because I can think of a few arguments for why the elements worked in that situation, but... it's close. One that comes to mind is that Cadance in that moment, even if she's honestly pretty justified in her fury, is arguably committing an evil act in that changelings who had no part in any of the atrocities could starve. It's a very weak argument, but it's there. Alternatively, the Elements could work on anyone in a non-harmonic state of mind, and a Cadance given over to furious vengeance would certainly qualify. I'm not *convinced*, but I'm also not going to stop reading because it's arguable enough for me to plunge ahead.
There's a lot of worldbuilding, and I like it. What I'm less sure of is the pacing. It's fast. It's actually way too fast, and we've been introduced to like a whole bag of characters with minimal interactions and minimal background. In small doses this is actually great. We're four thousand words in and honestly it's confusing as to who is who and what is what in a way that doesn't encourage me to keep going and find out. IS this a dream? A vision of a possible future? The bit with Cadence suggests so, but then we have those unexplained changelings. Is this just a case of two alternate timelines? I could see that being developed well, but it would have to involve legwork so that we have two universes in tandem (which I think you could pull off). As it is, it's a weird throwaway that breaks immersion.
While it's true that a lot of authors, and a lot of fanfic writers, are way overindulgent in ridiculously dense/ornamented prose, the opposite problem is also pretty prevalent in fanfiction and I see it here. One-two sentence paragraphs are incredibly useful and I always recommend taking advantage of them for dynamic changes and controlling narrative flow in important scenes. But entire scenes of one to two sentence paragraphs is really bad for comprehension. The human eye does not read every single word. We skip and skim kinda naturally, and our writing has to acknowledge that. You have the bones here, but you need meat on them or their just bones. Bones do not a body make. Flesh out your scenes. Elaborate. Give us action and reaction, and not just. "X did Y." But chew the scenery just a little. This last chapter does a much better job of that, and the prologue gets a pass because it is a different generic thing and it's absolutely swell.
Tell us where people are, and don't be afraid to have a nice 5-7 sentence paragraph at some point in a scene's early stages that's kinda just blabbing about where they are. Let the story breathe. You're doing a good job of invoking this world in your head, but let us see it in more than just the absolute briefest spasm-flashes. Let it breathe.
I'm putting this tracking so I can follow it. Hope to see some more! Looks like it'll be a fun read.
8985026
Is there any reason to think the Elements are smart enough to know what kind of society they're aiding, though? If the six individuals wielding the Elements genuinely have the appropriate qualities, I'm not sure it matters what their overall society is like.
8984110
Thanks! Heh, what can I say - I really liked that one line.
It's certainly "brighter" than the story that inspired it.
8984245
Ooof! So much speculation in the comments section! So many things I am tempted to reply to, but can't, because... spoilers! ;-)
All I can say: Some of speculation in the comments are based on wrong assumptions. Wait and see.
8983070
Eyupp.
...I kinda feel bad for that, bad at the same time I can't stop laughing at the idea.
If you don't release another chapter soon I'm crawling through my screen to slap you lightly while you sleep. It's so good! Absolutely eye candy.
8987528
Is there an app that lets it breathe fire?