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Description
Blissey1 bought you a Coffee:Does your Tiny Sapient Ungulates series count for this? Because I would LOVE to to see how you think changelings work on a societal level. What does the queen do, how independent are the drones, etc
Changelings are eusocial pseudo-insects with 3 distinct life stages and 2 distinct sociobiological roles.
They start their lives upon hatching as black and white larva with blue compound eyes. Then after reaching a certain weight, they pupate in a cocoon and emerge as colorful subadults about the size of a pony toddler. After about 20 molts they reach their adult size. Though there is lots of color and body variation among changelings, there only appears to be two biological roles, queen and worker. The role of queen seems to be acquired by the most authoritative worker in a given queenless group, or by deposing the old queen (like Thorax did). This means Changelings are sorta both a clownfish AND honeybee scenario, in terms of sex determination. Drones are never mentioned, so I’m assuming they either don’t exist and Changelings are a single sex clonal society (where only queens have active reproductive systems), or drones are short lived and fly off to neighboring hives to mate shortly after pupation. Drones could possibly exist within the hive and function as workers, but for mating they would still need to fly out and visit other hives to prevent inbreeding.
Changeling diet is mostly energy based, and they evolved mimicry to feed off the extremely magically energetic pony races. Normally the process is pretty benign, since ponies produce way more magic than their bodies actually need. A regular Changeling can survive off of regular social contact with ponies and other Changelings, with the occasional realmeal thrown in.
Buuuuut, Changelings can’t live a healthy life off pure energy… they need physical food to supplement their diet. Queen Chrysalis was convinced this wasn’t true, and forced her whole brood onto the same terrible diet as her. And like her, they never matured right during pupation… they retained their neotenic grubby features and had horribly malformed legs and wings. Their constant hunger left them aggressive and desperate creatures. They only had the energy to fully mature after deposing Chrysalis and sharing magical energy among their hive-mates as they would in normal circumstances… MAGIC being FRIENDSHIP and all, positive social connection amplified the stored energy.
I’m sure as the franchise progresses it’ll come back and blat me in the face on these theories, but I’m not a fortune teller and TSU isn’t strictly canon so (jazz hands) eusocial bug gender/sex system weirdness!
Thorax can be male or female if he wants, as can all changelings. X3
@Charzoid
The Future is Wild, yeah. Not the most realistic thing ever, but it certainly had its moments. My favorite bit was the segment in the far future with the termite descendants with hyperspecialized castes and the autotrophic algae-worm symbiotes.
@Perteks
Lemme explain this
“Changelings can’t live a healthy life off pure energy… they need physical food to supplement their diet. Queen Chrysalis was convinced this wasn’t true”
Okay, so they are feeding off of magic energy but being denied other types of food and Chrysalis isn’t allowing it and her soldiers are simply following orders.
“They only had the energy to fully mature after deposing Chrysalis and sharing magical energy among their hive-mates as they would in normal circumstances… MAGIC being FRIENDSHIP and all, positive social connection amplified the stored energy.”
And here is the thorn; in that what’s assumed is that after Chrysalis is removed they… consume more energy?
I actually understand what the artist is saying, so let me elaborate.
Ok, so Changelings need a diet that is 90% magic and 10% food. Simple enough. Chrysalis says “you don’t need food” and thus, 10% is cut out of it. However, she doesn’t stop there and enforces seclusion and greed instead of the sharing the species needs among their own kind. This makes the 90% more like 40% or even 20%, resulting in malnutrition and perpetual starvation despite all the love and magic they absorb.
Thorax deposing Chrysalis spurs on the proper molting and social interaction, raising that 20% back up to the 90% before also indulging in actual meals.
Make sense now?
That said, the idea of malformed growth really fits well.
You really arent getting it. They need physical food like how some people need vitamin supplements. An IRL person living off of literally one food group would be quite malnurished in certain areas due to lack of essential vitamins and minerals.
Yes read more carefully
Changelings can’t live a healthy life off pure energy… they need physical food to supplement their diet. Queen Chrysalis was convinced this wasn’t true
They only had the energy to fully mature after deposing Chrysalis and sharing magical energy among their hive-mates as they would in normal circumstances… MAGIC being FRIENDSHIP and all, positive social connection amplified the stored energy
they ate more energy, chrysalis was right they can live only from energy and dont need physical food
“Buuuuut, Changelings can’t live a healthy life off pure energy… they need physical food to supplement their diet. Queen Chrysalis was convinced this wasn’t true, and forced her whole brood onto the same terrible diet as her. And like her, they never matured right during pupation… they retained their neotenic grubby features and had horribly malformed legs and wings. Their constant hunger left them aggressive and desperate creatures. They only had the energy to fully mature after deposing Chrysalis and sharing magical energy among their hive-mates as they would in normal circumstances… MAGIC being FRIENDSHIP and all, positive social connection amplified the stored energy.”
Might want to read the description next time more carefully.
@WinterDominus
Gender identity and reproductive systems are loosely related at best for shapeshifters.
They could be conditionally hermaphroditic, like west African reed frogs.