Fwelin 
"[@OtherFritz":](/images/2444392#comment_9487540
)
It's growing increasingly clear that neither seem to be likely to convince the other, so this will be my last post here. Feel free to respond if you disagree, though I might not read it if I've lost further interest by then.
[bq]
> You allude to statements, but they don't cancel out the ones I've presented. It is a fact that changelings consume love for sustenance. Whenever the question of motive comes up, the answer, straight from the horse's mouth, is the need for love to devour. As the statement from To Where and Back Again confirms, Chrysalis is just as affected by changeling hunger as any of her drones. Even from a selfish perspective, the love motive makes perfect sense. To suggest that she would prioritise a vague conception of power over feeding her subjects and herself is absurd.[/bq]
They do cancel out the ones you've presented because the quotes you mentioned are all about Chrysalis's immediate goal, not her motive. Her goal is to feed herself and her army to keep them (and especially her) powerful, which is a stepping stone towards her goal of conquering all of Equestria. A would-be conquerer can't conquer without soldiers that are powerful; she's feed them so they can serve her, not because their being fed is a goal worth pursuing to her by itself. The emphasis and amount she talks about what she wants makes that clear. She herself is in literally the least amount of danger of going hungry out of everyone, because as Queen she'd get as much priority as she wishes, so it's unlikely to be much of a personal concern to her outside of her desire for more power.
[bq]
> This only makes the comparison more flawed. An army is not comparable to a whole civilisation, however militaristic it might be.[/bq]
An army absolutely is comparable to a whole civilization in cases where they're specifically presented as one and the same, which is not an unusual type of culture in fiction. Sparta is pretty darn close to a real-life example, and many civilizations in fiction go even beyond them.
[bq]
> Attractive or not, why would it merit consideration? Desperation is no substitute for common sense and the idea of sharing love as a solution to love starvation is troll logic levels of counterintuitive on its own. She'd have no reason to believe it from anyone, let alone the two hostile infiltrators she just caught attempting to destroy her throne.
>
> Additionally, even if she were as selfish as you suggest, she would still have plenty of reason to want to end her love hunger. As mentioned above, it affects her too.
>
> Also, remember that you said this while reading the second point down from this one.[/bq]
It would merit consideration because Thorax was an explicit example of it in action. He was cut off from other Changelings and was clearly not unknown to the ponies he was with, but he was, as acknowledged by Queen Chrysalis (when she decided to steal all the love she could tell he had), still full of love and not starving at all. Instead, she had a vested interest in keeping them enslaved to their hunger, because it kept them enslaved to her, who could feed their hunger in the process of using them for her goals.
[bq]
> It's nowhere near as clear as you seem to think and the point about Luna is of dubious relevance, but I'd rather not waste time arguing over a tangential subject.[/bq]
It's exactly clear as I think, because Starlight_*literally_* stated that she could still be their leader if she accepted. This isn't even interpretation, it's just explicitly stated.
[bq]
> I already addressed the point about plans for conquest, but you have yet to address my point. If Chrysalis were truly concerned only with herself, why wouldn't she accept an offer that lets her keep her position of power and frees her from the endless hunger inherent to changelings? Why would she choose to abandon her home, her title and however many supporters she still has for a life on the run?[/bq]
Because she would no longer have the lure of satisfying their hunger to get the Changelings to obey her every whim when it comes to her goals of conquering Equestria. She had nearly unchallenged rule because she was the only one that could sate their hunger; with that gone, she loses a lot of her ability to make unilateral decisions. In addition, even if she had accepted, it would still be in a new world situation of the ponies knowing where their main hive was and having disabled its main defensive mechanism, so there's little chance of her succeeding in further conquest even if she still had unquestioning obedience. If she had actually cared about the well-being of her subjects instead of desiring conquest, there would have been no reason to decline; Starlight and Thorax just SOLVED their hunger problem, greatly improving her subjects' lives, and it would have been easier than ever before for her to provide for them had she cared about that.
[bq]
> You are clearly making assumptions based on what she could have said, but didn't. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. A Hive of ponies was the end goal of her plan at the time, but that doesn't preclude a future goal of reconquering (though I'm sure she'd say liberating) her original hive.[/bq]
The only assumptions being made here are you. Her scene was being used as exposition by the writers to give her entire plan at the moment; there was literally nothing pointing her her even caring one whit about her previous subjects when it would have been trivial for the writers to instead have her talk about regaining them instead of somehow stating an intermediate step as if it was her final step. If she cared about them, why would she not talk about using the elements to regain her old hive instead of creating a new one from scratch? There's no reason. That's not even counting that fact that when she DID have ultimate power for a bit in The Ending of the End, she still did not spare a single line about regaining her hive, just ruling over her new territory.
[bq]
> Wasn't it you who called it a "momentary feeling of friendship"? In any case, watch that scene again. She was about to agree with Cozy's statement about "When you use your power to help others…".[/bq]
She was, but the "feeling familiar" part was about the aspect of others being there for her (which she did have even if it wasn't actually friendship, just her subjects serving her because she was their way to get food). The part she rejected was genuine friendship, something she hadn't felt before but immediately rejected out of pure spite for the concept.
[bq]
> Both of these speeches, I notice, are coming from Starlight Glimmer. The first was given during her infiltration of the Hive, which couldn't have been more than a day. The second comes during what is apparently her visit to the Hive under Thorax. I see no reason to assume she discussed the subject with any changelings in the intervening time. She has, at most, a days worth of experience with Chrysalis' rule and possibly Thorax's account of it. Why should I assume she knows what she's talking about?
>
> Even if we accept everything Starlight says as fact, why is it relevant? Whether or not Chrysalis' regime was authoritarian has nothing to do with her motive for invading Equestria.[/bq]
You should assume that she knows what she's talking about because she's being used as an authorial mouthpiece to give exposition about the Changelings. It doesn't matter how she knows what she does (though there are good opportunities, like Thorax for the first case and any number of ways for the second), only that there's no reason to doubt her because the story portrays her as speaking the truth. MLP isn't complex enough to make one of their characters mistaken when they're literally speaking about a major moral of the episode.
It's relevant because someone that had their motives be about the life quality of their subjects would be incredibly unlikely to have such a strongly authoritarian rule; it takes a very "it's all about me" point of view to rule with such an iron fist that Chrysalis did.
[bq]
> You're making assumptions again. It was never stated whether or not the renegade changelings wanted Chrysalis back or not. Pharynx was the only one we actually saw and his views on the matter weren't touched upon outside of preferring what he called "the old ways". However, most changelings we saw during her reign seemed quite enthusiastic in their support for her.[/bq]
I'm not making assumptions, I'm making inferences. The fact that not a single one of them showed a preference for her as leader, defended her, or was shown wanting her back doesn't mean that not a single one did, but it DOES mean that the_*incredible_* majority didn't, which would not happen if she was actually a ruler that had their best interests in mind or was good to live under. The only changelings we saw be enthusiastic (the ones in the throne room of To Where and Back Again) were ones that were actively being fed by her plan with no knowledge of an alternate path to getting food, and could easily be just as power-hungry as Chrysalis was (made more likely by them being her apparent lieutenants, and thus more likely to have her personal favor). Thorax explicitly calls her an evil queen, and he's the pre-transformed changeling that had the morals and viewpoints closest to that of our own.
There is
>a (very small) amount of wiggle room to give Chrysalis the benefit of the doubt in each individual example, but when taken as a whole, the wiggle room disappears, showing conclusively what her actual motivations and goals were; personal power and conquest, not the well-being of her people.
[bq]Do you realise how presumptuous it is to assume you know so much about thought processes of others? I can't say I appreciate your ascribing of biases to me and others like me, especially when you write as if I somehow no longer exist.
>
> In any case, the reason the Chrysalis and Sombra are perceived differently is because they are different. Sombra was a shameless tyrant who ruled a slave empire and wanted to go back to ruling said slave empire, as well as expand it. He was more or less a monster in his debut and his few lines were mostly dedicated to his desire for slaves. He's easily a contender for the most evil character in the series. To say they're just as bad is to significantly oversell Chrysalis and undersell Sombra.
>
> I'd compare her to Tirek as well, but I can't agree that nobody wanted him to reform since both underwent what easily could've been a redemption arc in Season 9. Even so, I know I've seen at least some people who wanted Sombra reformed.[/bq]
I am not ascribing anything to you in particular, because I don't know you. However, it is a well-established scientific fact that people in general DO more easily forgive and form emotional attachments to those that are cute, sexually attractive, or otherwise aesthetically pleasing, as an evolutionary tactic to encourage the caretaking of children (for the former) and the taking of healthy mates (for the latter two). This manifests in countless ways, such as ugly monsters being much more casually killed off than handsome ones, blatantly evil characters getting redeemed more often in fiction if they're seen as handsome or beautiful, and more. It's a statistical truth, not something I put on specific people unless they make it clear.
There are countless examples in many parts of the fandom where this is made clear by people regarding Chrysalis, stating things like she's too elegant/sexy/beautiful to be evil, or that it would be a "waste" to not redeem someone as good looking as her. There are far less examples of this regarding King Sombra (though they exist), and even less than that regarding Tirek.
No, they're quite comparable, which is made clear by the final season which puts at least Tirek and Chrysalis on similar footing in their portrayals (since Sombra got killed off immediately). Queen Chrysalis was ruling just as much of a slave empire as King Sombra, just with her method of choice being essential need-based blackmail (the type of "only I can keep you fed, so you have to serve me no matter what I ask of you") instead of mind-control like Sombra.
There is a (very small) amount of wiggle room to give Chrysalis the benefit of the doubt in each individual example, but when every occasion is taken as a whole, that wiggle room completely disappears, showing conclusively what her actual motivations and goals were; personal power and conquest, not the well-being of her people.
She's sadistic, petty, vengeful, power-hungry, and desires nothing more than personal power, even if said personal power required her to keep her people fed so they were able to help her attain (and then keep) it.
It's growing increasingly clear that neither seem to be likely to convince the other, so this will be my last post here. Feel free to respond if you disagree, though I might not read it if I've lost further interest by then.
[bq]
> You allude to statements, but they don't cancel out the ones I've presented. It is a fact that changelings consume love for sustenance. Whenever the question of motive comes up, the answer, straight from the horse's mouth, is the need for love to devour. As the statement from To Where and Back Again confirms, Chrysalis is just as affected by changeling hunger as any of her drones. Even from a selfish perspective, the love motive makes perfect sense. To suggest that she would prioritise a vague conception of power over feeding her subjects and herself is absurd.
They do cancel out the ones you've presented because the quotes you mentioned are all about Chrysalis's immediate goal, not her motive. Her goal is to feed herself and her army to keep them (and especially her) powerful, which is a stepping stone towards her goal of conquering all of Equestria. A would-be conquerer can't conquer without soldiers that are powerful; she's feed them so they can serve her, not because their being fed is a goal worth pursuing to her by itself. The emphasis and amount she talks about what she wants makes that clear. She herself is in literally the least amount of danger of going hungry out of everyone, because as Queen she'd get as much priority as she wishes, so it's unlikely to be much of a personal concern to her outside of her desire for more power.
[bq]
> This only makes the comparison more flawed. An army is not comparable to a whole civilisation, however militaristic it might be.
An army absolutely is comparable to a whole civilization in cases where they're specifically presented as one and the same, which is not an unusual type of culture in fiction. Sparta is pretty darn close to a real-life example, and many civilizations in fiction go even beyond them.
[bq]
> Attractive or not, why would it merit consideration? Desperation is no substitute for common sense and the idea of sharing love as a solution to love starvation is troll logic levels of counterintuitive on its own. She'd have no reason to believe it from anyone, let alone the two hostile infiltrators she just caught attempting to destroy her throne.
>
> Additionally, even if she were as selfish as you suggest, she would still have plenty of reason to want to end her love hunger. As mentioned above, it affects her too.
>
> Also, remember that you said this while reading the second point down from this one.
It would merit consideration because Thorax was an explicit example of it in action. He was cut off from other Changelings and was clearly not unknown to the ponies he was with, but he was, as acknowledged by Queen Chrysalis (when she decided to steal all the love she could tell he had), still full of love and not starving at all. Instead, she had a vested interest in keeping them enslaved to their hunger, because it kept them enslaved to her, who could feed their hunger in the process of using them for her goals.
[bq]
> It's nowhere near as clear as you seem to think and the point about Luna is of dubious relevance, but I'd rather not waste time arguing over a tangential subject.
It's exactly clear as I think, because Starlight
[bq]
> I already addressed the point about plans for conquest, but you have yet to address my point. If Chrysalis were truly concerned only with herself, why wouldn't she accept an offer that lets her keep her position of power and frees her from the endless hunger inherent to changelings? Why would she choose to abandon her home, her title and however many supporters she still has for a life on the run?
Because she would no longer have the lure of satisfying their hunger to get the Changelings to obey her every whim when it comes to her goals of conquering Equestria. She had nearly unchallenged rule because she was the only one that could sate their hunger; with that gone, she loses a lot of her ability to make unilateral decisions. In addition, even if she had accepted, it would still be in a new world situation of the ponies knowing where their main hive was and having disabled its main defensive mechanism, so there's little chance of her succeeding in further conquest even if she still had unquestioning obedience. If she had actually cared about the well-being of her subjects instead of desiring conquest, there would have been no reason to decline; Starlight and Thorax just SOLVED their hunger problem, greatly improving her subjects' lives, and it would have been easier than ever before for her to provide for them had she cared about that.
[bq]
> You are clearly making assumptions based on what she could have said, but didn't. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. A Hive of ponies was the end goal of her plan at the time, but that doesn't preclude a future goal of reconquering (though I'm sure she'd say liberating) her original hive.
The only assumptions being made here are you. Her scene was being used as exposition by the writers to give her entire plan at the moment; there was literally nothing pointing her her even caring one whit about her previous subjects when it would have been trivial for the writers to instead have her talk about regaining them instead of somehow stating an intermediate step as if it was her final step. If she cared about them, why would she not talk about using the elements to regain her old hive instead of creating a new one from scratch? There's no reason. That's not even counting that fact that when she DID have ultimate power for a bit in The Ending of the End, she still did not spare a single line about regaining her hive, just ruling over her new territory.
[bq]
> Wasn't it you who called it a "momentary feeling of friendship"? In any case, watch that scene again. She was about to agree with Cozy's statement about "When you use your power to help others…".
She was, but the "feeling familiar" part was about the aspect of others being there for her (which she did have even if it wasn't actually friendship, just her subjects serving her because she was their way to get food). The part she rejected was genuine friendship, something she hadn't felt before but immediately rejected out of pure spite for the concept.
[bq]
> Both of these speeches, I notice, are coming from Starlight Glimmer. The first was given during her infiltration of the Hive, which couldn't have been more than a day. The second comes during what is apparently her visit to the Hive under Thorax. I see no reason to assume she discussed the subject with any changelings in the intervening time. She has, at most, a days worth of experience with Chrysalis' rule and possibly Thorax's account of it. Why should I assume she knows what she's talking about?
>
> Even if we accept everything Starlight says as fact, why is it relevant? Whether or not Chrysalis' regime was authoritarian has nothing to do with her motive for invading Equestria.
You should assume that she knows what she's talking about because she's being used as an authorial mouthpiece to give exposition about the Changelings. It doesn't matter how she knows what she does (though there are good opportunities, like Thorax for the first case and any number of ways for the second), only that there's no reason to doubt her because the story portrays her as speaking the truth. MLP isn't complex enough to make one of their characters mistaken when they're literally speaking about a major moral of the episode.
It's relevant because someone that had their motives be about the life quality of their subjects would be incredibly unlikely to have such a strongly authoritarian rule; it takes a very "it's all about me" point of view to rule with such an iron fist that Chrysalis did.
[bq]
> You're making assumptions again. It was never stated whether or not the renegade changelings wanted Chrysalis back or not. Pharynx was the only one we actually saw and his views on the matter weren't touched upon outside of preferring what he called "the old ways". However, most changelings we saw during her reign seemed quite enthusiastic in their support for her.
I'm not making assumptions, I'm making inferences. The fact that not a single one of them showed a preference for her as leader, defended her, or was shown wanting her back doesn't mean that not a single one did, but it DOES mean that the
There
>
[bq]
>
> In any case, the reason the Chrysalis and Sombra are perceived differently is because they are different. Sombra was a shameless tyrant who ruled a slave empire and wanted to go back to ruling said slave empire, as well as expand it. He was more or less a monster in his debut and his few lines were mostly dedicated to his desire for slaves. He's easily a contender for the most evil character in the series. To say they're just as bad is to significantly oversell Chrysalis and undersell Sombra.
>
> I'd compare her to Tirek as well, but I can't agree that nobody wanted him to reform since both underwent what easily could've been a redemption arc in Season 9. Even so, I know I've seen at least some people who wanted Sombra reformed.
I am not ascribing anything to you in particular, because I don't know you. However, it is a well-established scientific fact that people in general DO more easily forgive and form emotional attachments to those that are cute, sexually attractive, or otherwise aesthetically pleasing, as an evolutionary tactic to encourage the caretaking of children (for the former) and the taking of healthy mates (for the latter two). This manifests in countless ways, such as ugly monsters being much more casually killed off than handsome ones, blatantly evil characters getting redeemed more often in fiction if they're seen as handsome or beautiful, and more. It's a statistical truth, not something I put on specific people unless they make it clear.
There are countless examples in many parts of the fandom where this is made clear by people regarding Chrysalis, stating things like she's too elegant/sexy/beautiful to be evil, or that it would be a "waste" to not redeem someone as good looking as her. There are far less examples of this regarding King Sombra (though they exist), and even less than that regarding Tirek.
No, they're quite comparable, which is made clear by the final season which puts at least Tirek and Chrysalis on similar footing in their portrayals (since Sombra got killed off immediately). Queen Chrysalis was ruling just as much of a slave empire as King Sombra, just with her method of choice being essential need-based blackmail (the type of "only I can keep you fed, so you have to serve me no matter what I ask of you") instead of mind-control like Sombra.
There is a (very small) amount of wiggle room to give Chrysalis the benefit of the doubt in each individual example, but when every occasion is taken as a whole, that wiggle room completely disappears, showing conclusively what her actual motivations and goals were; personal power and conquest, not the well-being of her people.
She's sadistic, petty, vengeful, power-hungry, and desires nothing more than personal power, even if said personal power required her to keep her people fed so they were able to help her attain (and then keep) it.