In other news, Equestria Daily is having a best pony vote.

Twilight is strongly in the lead, Applejack rock-bottom. As an Applejack fanboy, this does not please me.

Pagetopper!

edited 24th Apr '12 11:43:04 AM by Kayeka

Insectoid doesn't really make them a hive mind. They displayed individual consciousness during the fight - They were fooled by RD and Fluttershy, and exasperated by Pinkie Pie. Plus they have rankings beyond queen/soldier(At least one of the changelings shown on-screen looks like a captain). They also likely wouldn't look ugly to themselves, as it would make it hard to mate. Besides, they seem to be largely endoskeletal(The mamalian mouth and teeth, the 'soft' looking ears and possibly tail, not to mention Chrysalis's mane), so they probably aren't as insectoid as they seem. For all we know those weren't even their true forms, just something adopted to intimidate.

Again with the hive mind stuff? The Changelings showed quite a bit of independence and even personality. There's no way that they have a hive mind.

Ninja'd by Kegi with details.

edited 24th Apr '12 11:45:05 AM by PerpetualLurker

Their true form is actually really, really attractive.

Do we have any of those OBEY posters of Chrysalis yet?

Edit: She reminds me a little bit of Queen Bee.

edited 24th Apr '12 11:48:29 AM by Chadaman99

I know I've seen one when I was doing one of my picdumps, but I didn't bother to save it.

Oh, that's very interesting.

I didn't notice any Changeling captains though.

@Moe Dantes's question: I probably would be very surprised if Cadance or Pinkie popped out of my laptop's computer screen. And possibly squished, depending on whether or not they would be life-size, although if they were doll-size the "squished by a pony" issue wouldn't be there. If I survived the initial encounter without being squished (if they were life-size, perhaps they could give me enough warning so I could position the computer so they wouldn't be climbing on top of me), I would probably ask them about how they were able to come to my world, too, and about their own world. I'm not sure how Cadance would react to the human real world, but I bet both she and Pinkie would be surprised to see a human. Pinkie would probably want to just make friends and would probably also coo over my dogs and think they're cute, especially little Luna. Diana would probably growl at her or anything that suddenly came into the house and put up her fierce barking mask (because she's actually really scared of unfamiliar people and objects and tries to deal with her fear by acting scary herself). Cadance would probably be polite enough to ask before touching my things, but I'd be worried that Pinkie might break something accidentally if she got curious about my stuff like she did with Cranky.

edited 24th Apr '12 11:50:59 AM by Rainbow

Find it. Plz.

LOL, hey you're right. That's pretty gross.

edited 24th Apr '12 11:54:36 AM by Chadaman99

I just looked up Queen Chrysalis on Google Images. Default moderate Safe Search, and there's Rule 34 in the first row of pics. *facehoof* Where is my brain bleach?

No. You want it, you go find it. It's on Ponibooru somewhere. G'wan, git!

Why exactly are we assuming that the changelings are perpetually in a form other than their natural one? Wouldn't it make more sense for them to be in their natural form most of the time and only change form when it benefits them? I seriously doubt that Chrysalis keeps up her Cadence form when she's just lounging around the house. Even the drones only took on pony forms for strategic reasons.

Here's one

During S2 cloning become smaller and smaller (or I just imagnining it?)

Changeling started regrouping into army from last episode).

I've seen a couple FEED!. I wanna an OBEY!

@Purple: there was one in a crowd shot, like this◊. The rest were unarmored, so I assume him to be important.

Plus, when you think about it, it would be really hard for them to effectively imitate somepony as a hive-mind.

@Jteeth: Well, they'd need to imitate another pony pretty much constantly to feed in most cases. So when they have a host they'd be perpetually in another form. I don't know how long they can go without feeding, so it's a fair bet their 'real' face doesn't get much mileage.

edited 24th Apr '12 11:58:25 AM by kegisak

Does that make him... Captain of the Blackguard?

@keg Huh, he kinda looks like a Roman Centurion or something. Cool.

Alright, alright the Hive Mind theory was stupid.

@Keg: I think that's assuming a bit much about how their feeding cycle works, but it does make sense. I'm not quite sure that they need to be in disguise to feed; if they did it wouldn't have attacked Canterlot in their native forms.

Yeah, but it's stated in episode that they imitate a pony and feed off the love given to them by the loved ones of the pony they're impersonating. I still hold that attacking Canterlot was only to cause chaos so that they could transform and slip into their hosts lives.

Hmm, but she yelled out "feed!" when she sent them to attack.

I just assumed that the attack would make things extremely easy for the changelings to capture and replace ponies in the chaos. The Queen's part of it would be to take care of the Princesses and replace them, leaving the common ponies none the wiser when "Celestia" "defeats" the changelings and "drives them away".

Ninja'd by Kegi again

edited 24th Apr '12 12:05:44 PM by PerpetualLurker

Good point. It seems quite inefficient though; you'd have to oust a pretty good chunk of the pony population to replace with changlings. Maybe that's only one method that they use that has greater efficiency or something.

Then again, my headcanon on how they function is a bit different from yours so it could go either way. They can feed directly, but doing the "replacing a loved one" thing is more efficient and gives them a larger power boost. But of course, it's also a lot harder to pull off.

edited 24th Apr '12 12:07:36 PM by JapaneseTeeth

Mental image: In the scramble, a couple gets separated. Let's call them Aerith and Bob. They both encounter a changeling disguised as the other. More chaos ensues, everyone gets separated again, except Aerith and Bob find each other for real this time. the disguised changelings also find each other, but since both are still in disguise, neither of them realizes the other is just another changeling.