A series of notes sent to a young changeling in the field by her superior, and a glimpse into the minds of a race whose views on friendship and love are at once totally alien and disturbingly easy to recognize in ourselves and those around us.
Anyway, those of you wondering what my own writing looks like now have a chance to see for yourselves. And in the unlikely event that anyone who frequents this site belongs to the "If you don't like it, let's see you write something better!" school of literary criticism, now's your chance to determine what stories I am or am not qualified to have an opinion about!
Okay, snarking aside, I hope you'll give this story a look if it tickles your interests. And if you do decide to read it, I hope you'll enjoy. Many thanks to Pascoite for his exhaustive editing/pre-reading/reviewing/whatever-the-fandom-is-calling-it-these-days, and to Nelvakre for letting me use the image above as cover art. And if you want to comment on the story, feel free to do so here or on FIMFic; either way, I'd love to hear what you think.
You picked a good time to upload this. Today I planned to start reading fanfics on a regular basis again. Yours is getting bumped to the top of my queue, beating out Worst Bakers
ReplyDeletexposted from fimfiction:
ReplyDeleteHee. That was fun!
It was a little odd that the changelings had managed to build up such an intricate and detailed repertoire of emotional manipulation against ponies, but failed to understand love, friendship or altruism, even intellectually. To clarify, I don't find it incomprehensibly alien that they cannot love the way other people can. I find it incomprehensibly alien that they are incapable of building a working model of love.
I'm not sure if you're familiar with Richard Dawkin's nonfiction, The Selfish Gene, but it manages to codify most human (and animal) relationships on a very cynical, utterly sociopathic and self-serving level. To summarize the whole book into a couple of sentences: seemingly-irrational kindness, mercy, love and all those sorts of things, as t'were, are apparently long-term strategies for improving the chances of survival (genetic/species survival, not individual survival). The things we usually see as selfishness and cruelty are because of their easily-calculable advantage in the short term for the individual rather than the genes*. Changelings may be wholly focused on the latter, with all their feeding strategies and whatnot, but as an (apparently) eusocial species, it's a little odd they ain't at least figured out how the whole pony schtick is supposed to work.
So my problem here is not that they have different values and beliefs, but that they are so short-sighted!
All in all, though, this was a thoroughly entertaining read, and now I kinda want a story of all of Maxilla's horrible exploits as a younger changeling, plus more stories from the changeling hive with its awesomely awesome legal system!
* Yer yer yer. I know all the problems that book has with shit like genotype not being phenotype and blah blah, passive recorders of what worked, but I'm not here to debate genetics. Just sociopathy! :D
So, Dawkins discovered economics?
DeleteWell you know the saying. All's fair in love and business! :D
DeleteI thoroughly enjoyed this, so much so that it's going on my recommended reading list. Whatever quibbles I had were very minor - your use of "among" instead of "amongst" in the first letter was correct, though my expectation of the latter created a sense of dissonance - or quickly resolved before the story's end. It hit a little close to home, though I'm sure that will be the case for most readers and is part of what makes this such a great fic. I'd also like to point out, in case anyone else enjoys listening to music while they read, that PonyVisation's Sounds of Equestria album complemented (not "complimented", Chris :P) it nicely
ReplyDeleteI'm not familiar with The Screwtape Letter, but this reminded me of Kierkegaard's Either/Or
Rant: How the Hay is "amongst" alien to Americans? I'm neither British nor an Anglophile, yet I've been using it for years! Seriously, it's getting frustrating how many spellings and word choices I use are considered non-American variants -_-
A bit odd I'd go on about that, but use "while" instead of "whilst." They both sound natural to my ears, but the latter seems a bit more quaint. Funny how that works, eh?
Almost forgot: thanks for introducing me to a new word! Even if I don't end up using "paroxysms" much, if ever, I'm glad to know it now
DeleteWords, amirite? Pascoite actually helped me standardize some of my word choices--I have a distressing tendency to throw the odd Britishism into my writing, all the more distressing because I'll often end up using the American spelling later in the same story.
DeleteYou just pushed me over 200 on the to-read list. c.c
ReplyDeleteAnd stories with no tags! Unpossible!
Seriously, 2000? You have a problem
DeleteAnyone who enjoyed this taste of Chris's writing should also check out the shorts he entered here:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.fimfiction.net/story/38855/MINIFIC-MAYHEM
Specifically, chapters 13 (Forever Dummy) and 32 (The Play's the Thing). The latter beat me out for the win, and deservedly so.
Keep on writing, Chris! It's another great way to add to the fandom, albeit one that gets very little attention from anyone actually involved with the show. :/
Thanks for the shoutout, Pascoite! And, you know, for the whole helping-with-the-story thing.
DeleteAlso, since you're apparently to polite to do so, I'll mention for anyone interested that if you follow the link to the minifics, #s 22 and 24 were both also among the winning stories. Not coincidentally, both were written by Pasco. Fun contest, that; lots of interesting stuff came out of it.
...And lots of subpar TavixScratch, but let's not speak of that.
My thoughts on the above fict can seen through this link, plus some other things.
ReplyDeleteSorry to see you go. I've always looked forward to your comments here, so those will certainly be something to miss. Good luck with grad school. You're a braver man than I (getting my B.A. was hard enough!) I suppose there's a silver lining to all this, as I'll finally be able to catch up on watching those cartoons you've recommended
DeleteOh, and does this mean I've won the war by default? Mmm...
Best of luck, you rascally rabbit
Oh, and you misspelled my name, though I can see how one would make that mistake considering my marvelous singing and writing prowess ;D
DeleteI don't have a FiMFiction account, and have a tendency of not making accounts unless I feel I absolutely have to (hence my posting here as Anonymous for the longest time), so I'll have to reply to Soge's comment here instead
ReplyDeleteI am absolutely thrilled that Chris didn't go with a Shyamalanesque ending! Not that I ever thought he would - Chris is too good for that - but Soge's mention of such a possibility filled me with so much bile as I read it. I sincerely hope to never read a pony fic with such an ending. Chris, should you ever review one like that, even if you'd rate it 5-stars, I would appreciate some advance warning
I request you resubmit this with all intended haste!
ReplyDeleteVery enjoyable. All the more fun for those of us who have read The Screwtape Letters, I suspect.
ReplyDelete