@Draco Dei
Not intentional, though it could certainly serve symbolic purposes, like Chrysalis wrecking her own body thanks to her arrogance. I should have made it more clear that the holes that appear can be fully repaired. This happens over time, and can be helped along by general healthy practices and restraining one’s transformations to simpler, smaller changes for a while. The amount of punishment a changeling’s body can go through before they start to suffer differs from changeling to changeling, just like unicorns differ in how much magic they can cast before running out of energy. Changelings do have it a bit more brutal than ponies, but egh, I like em that way. They’re more intense creatures to start off with so it feels right to give them an appropriate trade-off.

This punishment for overuse is simply a means of adding balance to an overpowered ability like shapeshifting. If a ling can turn into whatever they want, what’s to stop them from turning into something insanely dangerous? What stops them from swapping out their chitin for the hardest material in the world, or giving themselves prehensile sword-tentacles? A large part of that is simply because those kinds of transformations are simply beyond the skill of the average changeling, but it’s also because of the repercussions they would suffer upon their base form.

So in short, your standard, everyday transformations are still a thing, just don’t go taking on a new identity too often and you’ll be fine.

@Parallel Black
That seems a bit… tragic. Shapeshifting is their racial thing. It would be like flying being bad for a Pegasus’s health, or casting spells beyond basic levitation bad for a Unicorn’s health.

Was that intentional? If I had to guess I would say it isn’t but it could be.

@Draco Dei
I do understand the symbolism of the holes, and I am a big Bleach fan myself.

The way I handle changelings goes something like this:
The holes in a changeling’s body are entirely based on how often that particular changeling uses their transformation powers. The more often they use it and the more extreme the transformations, the quicker their “base form” deteriorates. Changeling Queens, like Chrysalis and Thorax, are not exempt from this, but it takes, far, far more punishment for their bodies to start suffering in the same way, so they appear without those imperfections. We’ll assume Chrysalis in the show was reckless and didn’t take care of herself in this regard.

As an extra note, I would wager that if I pony had access to the same freedom of transformation, then their body would undergo the same process and suffer much quicker since they simply aren’t meant to be able to do that. Ponies that have gone through changelingfication tend to be very limited in this ability, and suffer less as a result.

@Parallel Black
Her horn is less “jagged” amd more “wavy”* compared to the show, and her mane is short and doesn’t have any holes in it… pretty sure the canonical mane has logic-defying holes in it, and it DEFINITELY looks ragged. The most obvious interpritation of Changelings in the show is that they are “incomplete” creatures who need Love to fill in their emptiness even after reforming, (and pre-reform are a sucking void that returns nothing, a black-hole for positive regard). Their visual appearance symbolically represents that. Your Chrysalis is merely weird, rather than “tragic” let alone “horrific”.
*The interior curves might be circular, but even if they are it is with sharp edges where they holes they suggest meet the surface that would form if you loosely “shrinkwrapped” the horn( IE not sucking most of the air out). It isn’t a softness like Baymax has outside his armor, in its connotations it is a HOLE.

I don’t know if you are at all familiar with “Bleach” but the holes where the hearts of Hollows (and the name too) are would be thematically similar. Literally “heartless” in that case.

And yeah, the crown is also missing compared to the canonical version.

Again, could be seen as just a different art style.

@Draco Dei
Hm, a bit of an odd problem to bring up, but I guess I never draw Chrysalis with her wierd little fungal crown thingy, so it’s understandable here since you can only see her head. In hindsight her horn is also a bit smaller than I usually draw it.

@kapitantorrenton
She is a bit “off model”… in as much as that term can apply to a shapeshifter.

This is not really a “show accurate” art style, it is its own interpretation I think. For example, note that Celestia’s horn is thicker, and has a curve to it.

@Draco Dei
@Background Pony #A1B1
Correct, hence why Chrysalis
@kapitantorrenton

looks so smug as she walks away.

Am I the only one who can’t find Chrysalis among the characters?

@Draco Dei
Changeling slime, guessing from the tags

What did Princess Celestia step in?