Regarding Lovestruck · 10:28pm Apr 27th, 2014
Sadistic manipulation is in the air!
In case you couldn't tell, I love Lovestruck. She might be my favorite pony.
. . . Well, no, Maud Pie is now my favorite pony. But Lovestruck might be a close second. I have used her twice, once in Mating Customs of Species Equus parvus, and once in The Mixed-Up Life of Brad. I actually created her for Life of Brad first, many moons ago, and originally intended to have Brad meet Lovestruck at King Leo's wild party, but other sublots ended up getting in the way, so I moved Lovestruck's introductory scene to the late-night meeting of Twilight and her friends.
My original conception of Lovestruck was not quite so crazy, but when she started talking like a Bond villainess in Mating Customs, I was having so much fun writing her dialogue that I decided to roll with it.
This has apparently let to some confusion: a few readers have speculated that Mating Customs must be a sequel to Life of Brad that takes place after Twilight and Brad have broken up. That's an interesting idea, so interesting I wish I'd thought of it, but it's not actually what I have in mind. The two stories are independent of each other, and the allusions in Mating Customs to Twilight's human boyfriend refer only to the events of Equestria Girls.
Lovestruck fascinates me because she shows up out of nowhere in the Gameloft game as the mistress of all things Hearts and Hooves Day-related. She is apparently Gameloft's own creation. To my knowledge, she has had no appearance in any other media, except she has shown up as a blind bag figurine, where Hasbro apparently missed the point:
You should totally see her fantasy football lineup. Get it? Fantasy football? It's, like, because My Little Pony is fantasy, and, um . . . never mind.
She loves sports. Well, I suppose there's nothing contradictory in Gameloft's and the blind bag's depictions of this enigmatic character, so whenever I have Lovestruck appear, I make it a point to emphasize her lithe muscularity and confident bearing.
Source
Nobody named "Dead Pants" has a right to be wishing anybody a happy anything.
My ideas about Lovestruck's character are teased out of the Gameloft game and then beaten into submission. When Lovestruck first showed up a couple of years ago, she appeared along with three or four other ponies, including Applejack's relative Apple Fritter and a pegasus named Crescent Pony, who we are told, is the manager of the Wonderbolts. The mini-quests on which Lovestruck orders the player involve getting Crescent Pony out of his shell and getting him a date, apparently with Apple Fritter. Maybe it's just me, but Lovestruck comes across as very pushy and nosey in these quests.
Blueblood is right now reconsidering the way he snubbed that hot chick.
They've subsequently added a little animation: Lovestruck always has hearts floating around her, and other ponies sometimes have them as well, apparently getting them after talking to her. This implies that Lovestruck has some kind of love magic similar to that of Princess Cadance, and the animation suggests that she uses it freely.
Of course, we don't know exactly what Princess Cadance does. So far, we've only seen her put the whammy on Wild Fire and Lucky Clover while they're fighting about the family budget—
Seriously, Cadance, this is creepy.
—which, it seems to me, only delays rather than solves their problem, but oh well. G. M. Berrow offers an enigmatic hint of Cadance's role in Equestria in Twilight Sparkle and the Crystal Heart Spell:
Princess Cadance's special talent had always been her amazing ability to spread love wherever she went—settling conflicts and bringing ponies of all kinds together. In her final exam at Celestia's school of magic, Cadance was even able to make two known rival pony families of Canterlot become friends for life.
"So I spent a long time in Canterlot just resolving conflicts whenever I was needed and helping other ponies find love. I never really experienced it for myself." Cadance blushed a little and giggled. "Even though I did have a crush on your brother."
Twilight made a disgusted face. "Yuck."
Later, the conversation continues,
"One day, I was sitting by the lake just outside Canterlot, reflecting on the situation," Cadance recalled. "I thought about how all I had ever done was listen to the suggestions or commands of other ponies."
"Like the way they would always ask you to help them fall in love?" Twilight asked.
We get another hint from the comic book miniseries "Neigh Anything," which places Cadance not in Celestia's school, but in a different institution called Canterlot Academy. But whatever. In "Neigh Anything," young Twilight Sparkle indicates that Cadance cannot be considered worthy of Shining Armor until she runs some sort of calculations that will reveal her compatibility with him or lack thereof:
This is why you don't let small children play with pie charts.
We might assume Cadance is merely humoring Twilight, but later in the story Cadance takes these calculations entirely seriously. The indication is that these are calculations neither Twilight nor Cadance invented, but the authority and veracity of which they both accept.
So it would seem that Cadance can match ponies by calculating their compatibility, and can also dose them with love magic. She therefore seems to be a magically enhanced matchmaker and marriage counselor, as well as an all-around peacemaker. And since this is a big job, it is plausible that other ponies might have similar magical talents and do similar work. Certainly, that appears to be Lovestruck's role.
But such a job would require discretion and probably some training, and thus my supposition that Princess Cadance trains other matchmakers, and that Lovestruck is one of her students. Since Gameloft places Lovestruck in Ponyville, it may be that she is Ponyville's official matchmaker.
A pony with Lovestruck's talents might not get along as well in a small town as she might in a big city. Although in Canterlot Cadance had ponies asking her to "help them fall in love," in Ponyville, the Cutie Mark Crusaders reach the conclusion that "it's up to everypony to choose that very special somepony for herself."
In a small town where all the ponies know each other already, a matchmaker might look like little more than a meddler. Especially if Lovestruck really is aggressive, I can imagine that a lot of ponies might not like her very much.
Plus, dating is, like, expensive.
I only care if Brad and Twi are gonna stay together. They better...
2054297
We may not have the numbers, but we have Brad's hawtness, which is all we need.
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All praise and glory goes to the Hawtness! May the Hawtness forever be with us in its most wonderful radiance!
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Having read the latest Equestria Girls novel, I feel confident in saying that Twilight x Flash Sentry is a canon ship.
Of course, it already was to begin with. The same shippers who see things that aren't there at all at other times all of a sudden couldn't see what was right in front of their faces during that first movie.
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I was more talking about your story. Brad and Twi have so many obstacles in their way. I hope true love can win.
Funniness aside, I really hope you keep them together. Just something warm n' fuzzy about a love so strong it can conquer all.
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Although I like the cutesy bubblegum preteen love story in Equestria Girls, even I have to admit it could have been better. The scene in which Flash rescues Twilight from Sunset Shimmer's backstabbing should have been expanded and rendered both more plausible and more heroic. Sunset should have actually been jealous of Twilight's relationship with Flash, so that her own prior relationship with him would have a point. Flash, not nearly as underdeveloped a character as he's made out to be, nonetheless needed a flaw or quirk to round him out.
Further, I want to see something I don't think is actually going to happen: I want to see Twilight at least a little uneasy with having similar relationships with similar people in two different worlds. Berrow hints at this in the first Equestria Girls novel, but quickly drops it. Perdita Finn erases it entirely and has Twilight reminiscing about the "handsome" human Flash Sentry shortly before blushing at the pony Flash Sentry, without any sign of unease or confusion or guilt whatsoever.
Well reasoned on all counts. Your ability to bring together disparate bits of canon and get them to behave continues to amaze me. Until now, I thought you came up with the compatibility equations as a dig at dating websites.
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I wouldn't be surprised if Cook and Price came up with them as a dig at dating websites, but no, they're not my own idea.
This is brilliant, I hope you write a story starring Lovestruck in the future. Lovestruck is ordered to make Blueblood settle down, Lovestruck is kidnapped by changlings for rather obvious reasons, Lovestruck discovers Shining Armor is under one of Cadance's spells and uses this to blackmail Candybutt into letting her expand her matchmaking program, the possibilities are endless.
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Spoilers! They stay together, get married in a spectacular ceremony, and have lots of mixed-up hybrid human/pony children, none of which are capable of surviving outside the womb.
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I actually thought Mixed-up Life of Brad would have a "good" and "bad" ending, and Mating Custom was the sequel of the "bad" one.
derpicdn.net/img/view/2013/7/23/382213__safe_vector_artist-colon-chainchomp2_lovestruck_crescent+moon_love+poison_crescent+pony.png
Here's a visual representation of the time Lovestruck used love potion to play matchmaker for the shy Crescent Pony...