Origin and Brief History of Fluttershy in the Shadow Wars Universe · 5:59am Jun 22nd, 2014
Sweetwing Wind (Fluttershy's mother) was the direct female and matrilineal descendant of Commander Hurricane Wind the First, the leader of the Pegasi during the Great Migration around 1500 BTH, some three millennia ago. This meant that if there were an independent Pegasus Mandate any more, she'd have had a claim to be of the royal family. (If Pegasus leadership had actually worked like that during the period before the Unification, which it actually didn't, but only serious historians like Twilight Sparkle and -- oddly enough -- Cloud Kicker, actually get that).
Sweetwing was weak-willed and under the domination of her brother Windvane, who has become an adherent of a radical ideology under which Pegasi are the rightful masters of all Equestria and the Alicorns are evil chimerae from outer space taking Pony form to trick the Ponies into submitting to their rule (which, oddly enough, has a germ of truth in it -- though a very tiny one -- it's based on information from the Seven Cryptical Books of Hsoof which Wind Whistler -- ironically, Hurricane's direct matrilineal ancestor -- had been researching to try to comprehend the mysterious triple immaculate conception at Paradise Estate).
Windvane manipulated Sweetwing into marrying a rich Pegasus for money which he used to create the New Pegasus Mandate Flock, a radical political party ostensibly organized as a legitimate interest group, but actually devoted to fomenting a rebellion against the Realm. Sweetwing neither loved her husband nor was particularly sane, and she decided to pursue old legends and seek out the Flutter Ponies in hopes of finding a happier realm. The legends led her (in YOH 1479) right to the ring of menhirs possibly older than Ponykind overlooked by a tunnel-riddled mesa in the Badlands -- the same one that Thermal Soar had visited almost twenty years ago, beginning (though he did not know it), Thermal's long and ultimately disastrous love for Princess Ceymi as outlined in Collateral Damage.
There, Sweetwing thought she met her true love, the one she had abandoned to wed her rich husband. She swiftly realized he was not whom he appeared to be, but went along with it anyway because she was -- really -- not all that strong or sane to begin with, as outlined in Fluttershy Is Free. She mated with this strange stallion, then afterward realized that she was surrounded by unknown creatures -- the mythical "Buzzies" -- and barely managed to escape capture.
A year later (YOH 1480), Futtershy was born.
Sweetwing's husband knew from the timing that he was not the father. Enraged, he divorced her. Sweetwing, who had become crazier but stronger-willed, took charge of her own life and stopped listening to Windvane. Sweetwing raised her daughter Fluttershy alone for around ten years.
Sweetwing was paranoid, her mind distracted by enemies real (Windvane, the Buzzies) and imagined (random brigands, Dragons attacking Cloudsdale). She was a loving mother, but not the best influence on the little filly's sanity. It wasn't until Fluttershy started going to school around 1485, for instance, that Fluttershy first began to grasp that Cloudsdale wasn't being regularly attacked by Dragons, nor was it surrounded and infiltrated by marauding brigands.
Sweetwing's paranoia had done its damage -- Fluttershy had been made very timid. The Pegasi are no longer very warlike, but they conceive of themselves as fearless warriors and bold athletes. Though Fluttershy's clan affiliations should have protected her, Sweetwing was on the outs with most of her own clan and Fluttershy acted in a manner which the other children perceived as cowardly. In consequence, she faced much derision and scorn as a filly.
In 1489 Fluttershy went off to Flight Camp, and something very good happened to her: she met Rainbow Dash, who -- despite being two years younger than Fluttershy -- was far more physically capable and became her protector. Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy became lifelong best friends. In 1490, something else very good happened to Fluttershy -- she fell from the clouds, experienced the paramagnetic surge from Rainbow Dash's sonic rainboom, and discovered her Talent of dealing with animals.
Fluttershy finally broke with her own family in 1492 when -- while staying with her uncle Windvane, who hoped to influence her in his favor (Sweetwing was becoming really obviously insane and he hoped to get her committed soon), suffered an attempted rape by her second cousin Ill Wind. Fluttershy manifested a new ability, The Stare, and ordered Ill Wind "Don't bother fillies that way ever again." She didn't realize she'd put him under a permanent geas that was not to be broken until 1508, when Ill Wind met Metal Shriek (who was so badly disfigured that he didn't subconsciously think of her as a "filly" at all) and was finally able to fall in love and marry. Ill Wind worked off his energies by rediscovering Crimson Quartz's lost technology that enabled the creation of the Pegasus Device to power Windvane's evil schemes with the life forces of victims sacrificed on an industrial scale: he is better known to history as "Doctor Atmosphere."
In 1494, Sweetwing revealed to Fluttershy the secret of her conception (as much of it as Sweetwing knew anyway). Fluttershy flew into the Badlands, saw the proof of her mother's claims, and fled for her freedom from a voice that whispered in her mind, promising dark glories in return for unquestioning allegiance, and called itself "Chrysalis." She began to realize that the reason why she had some of the powers of the mythical Buzzies was because her sire had been a Buzzy; she was only half-Pegasus. Soon after this, Sweetwing became even madder, and was committed to an insane asylum.
By 1496, Fluttershy was living full time on the ground in Ponyville. However, she was very lonely because both of her only real friends -- Rainbow Dash and Rarity -- were gone from town (Rainbow had flown off with Gilda, and Rarity was going to a fashion technical college in Fillydelphia). It was then that -- seeking friendship -- she encountered Nosey, as described in A Robust Solution, and was seduced and abandoned by him.
Devastated, isolated, close to Lone-Mad and convinced that she was inherently unlovable (not just because of that event, but because of the trend of her entire life), Fluttershy spent much of the next four years hiding in her house and occasionally contemplating suicide, well on the path to becoming the town's resident Crazy Animal Lady. Fortunately for her, the memory of the love that Rainbow Dash held for her kept her from killing herself, and eventually both Rainbow Dash and Rarity came back to Ponyville and she was no longer so alone. She began to tentatively befriend Rainbow Dash's friends Applejack and Pinkie Pie (it was kind of difficult to avoid Pinkie Pie) and Rarity gently eased her into wider social events.
The entire game changed in 1500 when Fluttershy was chosen as one of the Element Bearers. Events followed the path shown in the TV series. Over the next few years she would not only share in the successful Return of Luna, but also fight beside her friends against Red Haze the Dragon (1500) and Discord (1501). She did not at this time realize that Discord had essentially immaculately fathered a child upon her in 1501, and Fluttercruel would remain dormant for years.
In 1503, she confronted Chrysalis again at Canterlot. Chrysalis recognized her, and fully intended to begin the long process of breaking her to the service of her Hive, but was instead defeated. Immediately afterward, she was overcome by guilt at her failure to warn everypony of this threat, which she had wrongly imagined safely-confined to the Badlands, and confessed to the Princesses and her friends that she was half-Changeling.
To her happy surprise, they neither regarded her as a foe nor rejected her as a liar when they found this out. It helped that, around this time, Equestrians became aware of the fact that there were friendlier Changelings, who did not want any part of Chrysalis' crusade against Equestria, including both stragglers from the army of invasion, long-time defectors from Hive Chrysalis, and even a whole non-hostile colony (Hive Vespid) that had lived under Canterlot for centuries without harming the Ponies. Celestia made it her deliberate policy to ally with friendly Changelings and Hives, both as a counter to Chrysalis, and because she recognized the Changelings as the survivors of the lost Flutter Pony Kind.
Fluttershy, however, did not want her half-Changeling status to be generally revealed, and both the Ruling Princesses and her friends co-operated with the concealment of her nature. This was both out of kindness to her -- and a means of keeping a significant asset's true powers partially hidden.
Later in 1503, Queen Chrysalis raided Ponyville, and Twilight and her Companions, including Fluttershy, counterattacked to rescue the kidnapped Cutie Mark Crusaders. The version of the ensuing events popularly released to the Equestrian press concealed crucial details, most importantly that it was primarly Fluttershy (rather than Twilight Sparkle) who defeated Chrysalis the second time, and that in the process, Fluttershy learned the true name and nature of her Changeling sire -- and something about her own powers. That same eventful year, Fluttershy would participate in the battle against the Nightmare-ridden Rarity (which revealed that the Night Shadows were actively and directly attacking Equestria), and the return of the Crystal Empire and defeat of King Sombra. Toward the end of that year, Fluttershy volunteered to befriend the paroled Discord.
Over the next year, Fluttershy and Discord were to become good and genuine friends. In addition, something very important happened to Fluttershy in 1504 -- she made another friend outside of the Companions -- Bulk Biceps -- a friendship that grew into romantic love between them. This was the first time since her disastrous night with Nosey that she had allowed herself to love a stallion, and the first time that a stallion had ever returned her love. And, she discovered (in a very upsetting manner) that Discord was in love with her.
Which is where things are at the end of Season Four. Fluttershy and Bulk Biceps are lovers. Discord has learned that he can only have true friendship with those who are truly friendly -- such as Fluttershy -- and decided to be a firmer ally to Equestria. And things may develop from there.
It's interesting to see that you're integrating some of the comic storylines. I don't expect you to include all of them, though. Your Celestia, for example, probably has enough common sense to put multiversal integrity over her boyfriend.
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I haven't yet read the end of that arc, so I don't know whether or not it will work out in a manner plausible and possible to integrate with my continuity.
Celestia is brilliant and highly moral -- but she is also fallible. She was also very lonely during the millennium without Luna. Understand: she'd lost the last member of her own kind, her beloved sister, and the last living friendly entity who remembered Paradise Estate and their childhood. In the Shadow Wars universe, she often goes Lone-Mad during this time, showing all sorts of odd behavior (especially alternating extremes of hedonism and asceticism) and sometimes ignoring her duties as Ruling Princess (which from time to time produces serious real-world consequences). All the vile legends surrounding her, from Tyrantlestia to Trollestia to Molestia, originate from (much milder) aberrant behavior she actually manifested due to this loneliness.
If she had found somepony she could love. she would have done almost anything to at least visit him. She might have convinced herself that it was harmless -- even if it wasn't.
There are however some serious problems with the whole notion of a Mirrorverse: does this mean that whenever a character is morally redeemed in one Universe they must be corrupted in the other? (That seems to have happened with the Lunas and the Sombras, especially given that my Sombra, Prince Crimson Quartz, was originally a good guy who fell into his Despair Event Horizon -- does that mean that the Mirrorverse Crimson Quartz was originally a monster like my main universe's version of his elder brother Morion, who in the Mirrorverse was good, evilly murdered Good Morion, and then decided to become a hero rather than a villain?)