Elements Of Opposition Series -- What Has Come Before · 6:00am Jun 22nd, 2015
I promised that I'd begin Chapter 7 with a catch-up synopsis for the sake of the people coming in late, and the people who skipped chapters 4 and/or 6 because they contain rape and torture. So here it is. Because this synopsizes content that contains rape and torture, it does discuss those things, so those with severe triggers may just want to skip this entire story, as I can't avoid talking about those things entirely.
But first, for those who don't want spoilers, a gratuitous adorable picture of Equestria Girls Fluttershy hugging a Discord plushie to give you a chance to jump off this blog post before you spoil yourselves:
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What has come before:
Détente (safe): As Discord cleans up the Everfree forest after the plunder vines incident, Zecora comes to him as an ambassador from the Tree of Harmony, telling him that the Tree seeks to make peace with him, now that he has proven his truthfulness about being Fluttershy’s friend by helping Twilight figure out how to destroy his own vines. Discord is highly reluctant to believe this. To demonstrate that the offer is sincere, Zecora gives Discord a warning of something she has seen in his future: if he continues to indiscriminately pursue chaos, something terrible will happen to him, and he may die. Discord doesn’t fully believe in the warning, or the offer of peace, but he’s shaken badly enough that he tables his current plans (which were to increase the birth rate in Ponyville by ruining everypony’s birth control spells and getting all of the Mane 6 except Fluttershy hooked up with boyfriends and pregnant, thus crippling their ability to seriously fight him), and decides instead to pursue trying to create harmless chaos that ponies might actually like.
Light Rain (safe): Shortly after the plunder vines incident, Discord goes to Fluttershy, wanting her to see what he’s created. They have a short conversation where Fluttershy chastises him for lying about being innocent regarding the vines, and Discord admits, without coming out and saying it, that trusting ponies is hard for him and he claimed to be innocent because he didn’t believe Fluttershy would protect him from being turned to stone before he could explain. Fluttershy promises him that she will never do that to him and that she wants to help him learn to trust.
As part of helping him learn to trust, she must show that she trusts him, so she agrees to go with him to see what he’s made. He takes them to an apparently lifeless desert outside Saddle Arabia and creates “light rain” – rain that is simultaneously water and light. The rains bring desert plants out to rapidly grow and spontaneously bloom. Fluttershy thinks the rain, and the plants, are beautiful, and recognizes for the first time that she’s attracted to Discord, but is too insecure to tell him so. When Discord asks for her permission to bring the light rain to Ponyville, however, Fluttershy tells him it would be a bad idea, and that his own actions have made ponies mistrust him and his chaos, so even harmless, beautiful chaos will frighten them, and he needs to make friends besides her before he can even do that much. Discord takes her words to heart, but clearly resents having to continue to hold himself back. He admits to Fluttershy that it’s emotionally agonizing for him to not change the world around him, and that he has to have an audience for his chaos because his time in stone has made him fear that reality might be a hallucination and he can’t believe his life is real unless sapient beings are observing him. He then tells her that he’ll come by in a few days to see her, and brings her back to Ponyville.
Two months later, that’s still the last time anypony has seen him. Fluttershy fears something terrible has happened to him, though her friends fear more that he’s planning something terrible. And then Twilight’s owl brings Fluttershy a letter that confirms her worst fears.
Discord in Hell (Not Literally) (torture and rape described, but not graphically): Discord writes a letter to Twilight, even though he doesn’t believe she will help him, because he has no other hope. He admits that he went to an alternate universe, a timeline branching from their own where his own counterpart is dead, to wreak some havoc for a few days someplace Fluttershy wouldn’t find out about it. Unfortunately, the reason his counterpart is dead turns out to be that his counterpart corrupted the Elements, and their Bearers, by forcing the Elements to absorb their opposite traits, turning them evil, and after Twilight found a way to corrupt herself and thus harmonize with the other elements, allowing them to turn that world’s Discord to stone, the Spike of that world was so distressed that he killed the stone Discord with a sledgehammer of Celestia’s that supposedly destroys gods. When Discord showed up, the Bearers assumed it meant their own Discord was back from apparent death, and Twilight channeled some very sophisticated and dark spells through the corrupted Elements to cast them on Discord and enslave him.
He is now bound with spells of obedience, honesty, and “loyalty”, meaning that he cannot harm the Bearers or even touch them without their permission. A collar that he isn’t permitted to remove prevents him from using any magic except what he’s been granted permission to use, plus some very low-level transformation magic he’s been using to heal his injuries. The obedience spell requires him to do anything a Bearer orders him to do, and if he doesn’t do it within five seconds, the spell will make him a puppet and simply make his body or his magic do it against his will. The honesty spell prevents him from telling a lie, and makes him nauseous if he withholds the truth or tries to mislead.
In the letter, he confesses that he is being tortured by the Bearers. Twilight “interrogates” him, Pinkie Pie apparently cut off some of his limbs because she thought it was funny, Rarity and Applejack use him as a slave, and Fluttershy, who he refers to as Fluttercruel, is holding him prisoner in her basement, torturing him for pleasure and raping him. He goes into few details, but one thing he admits to is that she sometimes forces him to use his shapechanging magic to make himself physically compatible with a rabbit and then has Angel Bunny assault him.
The letter explains that he’s found a way to store up just enough Chaos magic that he can cast a spell on this world’s Spike, to redirect a dragonfire transmission to the Spike of his universe, and that’s how he plans to send the letter. Although he doesn’t believe Twilight will help him, he pleads with her anyway for help, admitting that he fears he will be broken into “voluntary” obedience and that then he expects his captors to make him do something terrible, perhaps help them conquer other universes, though he doesn’t really know what they want him to do.
Twilight Sparkle’s Report on Fluctuations of the Local Entropic Gradient and a Proposed Solution (safe): Technically this takes place before Discord in Hell. The corrupted Twilight sends a letter to Princess Celestia, stating that she believes the Discord they have captured is not the original one from their own universe, and proposing that rather than turn him to stone, they break him to obedience and then use him. In the letter, the uses she mentions putting him to are controlling the sun and moon to let Celestia recover from the death of Luna, shoring up Equestria’s defenses, and experimenting on him to identify how to convert chaos magic to harmonic magic and forcing him to redress the entropic imbalance caused by the original Discord’s death, perhaps even ending entropy so that ponies can become immortal. We also learn that in order to harmonize herself with her friends after the original Discord forced the Elements to absorb their opposites, she found a magical artifact called the Diadem of Order and combined it with her Element, because Order opposes Magic, which is inherently based on Chaos.
Dragonfire and Sympathy (mostly safe: off-screen torture and allusions to rape, but nothing explicit): As Discord is being tortured during Twilight’s experiments, Spike tries to convince himself that Discord deserves this treatment and he doesn’t care about Discord’s suffering. He also tries to convince himself that he’s not scared of Twilight, though he obviously is.
After the experiments are over, Twilight asks Spike to clean up, and bandage Discord’s wounds from the experimental protocol. While he is doing this, and Twilight is absent, Discord confesses to Spike that he’s from an alternate universe, that he isn’t the one who corrupted the Bearers, that the Discord Spike killed is still dead, and alludes to what Fluttershy is actually doing to him. Spike, feeling guilty over killing this world’s original Discord and allowing this one to be tortured, agrees to send a letter, mainly because Discord misleads him into thinking it’s a letter to Celestia to explain a way that the corruption of the Bearers can be undone. After Fluttershy comes to take Discord back to his prison, Spike sends a letter to Celestia asking her if she got the letter. Celestia’s response comes back that she never received any such thing.
Chapter One: In the middle of the night, Spike receives Discord’s letter. Because Discord didn’t address it, number the pages, or pay attention to capitalization or writing in a straight line, it’s difficult to decipher it and at first Spike has no idea who sent it or why. He fears it might be some sort of document-based magical attack on Twilight, and decodes it by copying it out. By the time he realizes it’s from Discord, he’s glued to the story with horrified fascination.
Spike wakes Twilight up early in the morning, feeds her breakfast and tea, and has her read the letter. Twilight is horrified, both by the description of what Discord’s endured and the fact that he seems to think that she will be amused by his suffering rather than moved by it. She and Spike agree that he should be rescued and that they need to tell Princess Celestia. They send her the original letter, and receive her response, that the Bearers and Spike should come to Canterlot.
Chapter Two: In the Oppositionverse, Discord is in the basement of the evil Fluttershy, who he refers to in his mind as Fluttercruel, chained to the floor by his collar. As he thinks about sending the letter last night and feels despair at how low he thinks the chances are that Twilight will respond and rescue him, Fluttercruel comes into his cell, feeds him, leashes him and takes him out to bring him to Applejack’s farm, speaking to him the whole time as if she’s still a kind animal caretaker. Discord tries to convince himself that today won’t be so terrible, but is fully aware that he's lying to himself.
In the Harmonyverse, the Mane 6 gather, summoned by letters from Twilight. Twilight gives them the Cliffs Notes of Discord’s letter, telling them that Discord is in an alternate universe being tortured by evil versions of themselves, but giving none of the details. Applejack insists on reading the letter to assess its honesty, and comes to the conclusion that Discord is telling the truth as far as she can see. Then the six mares and Spike go to Canterlot.
In Canterlot, Princess Celestia asks them to go to the alternate universe to rescue Discord, bringing Spike because only his dragonfire transmissions will be able to send messages back home if they need help. Rainbow Dash questions whether rescuing Discord is really worth putting her friends’ lives in danger. Celestia says that quite aside from the morality of it, Equestria owes Discord a debt, because he lost his sanity overusing his Chaos powers to protect Equestria from invading dragons. She also admits that Discord was her first love, and while the centuries of enmity have ended the love between them, she still cares about him and has personal reasons to want him rescued. This brings Rainbow fully on board.
While the group make plans, Fluttershy takes the opportunity to privately confess to Princess Celestia that she’s attracted to Discord, and asks if it’s okay to be romantically interested in a non-pony and if Discord could possibly return her feelings. Celestia, sadly, has to tell her that her counterpart is Discord’s chief torturer and has raped him, so she thinks it’s unlikely that Discord will be able to accept romantic love from anyone anytime soon. Fluttershy is heartbroken and deeply ashamed that it’s her alternate doing such terrible things to her friend, and she agrees not to bring up her romantic feelings to Discord, but simply offer him support as a close friend.
Chapter Three: In the Oppositionverse, Twilight meets with Princess Celestia, who is drunk and grieving over Luna’s death. We learn that Celestia is now a barely competent basket case in her grief, and that Twilight has taken over many of her duties, as her advisor. We also learn that Twilight hates her friends, is very disappointed with Spike, and resents Shining Armor because he is romantically involved with Chrysalis (an ally of Equestria now, though not fully trusted by Twilight) since Cadance’s death (which Chrysalis has blamed on Discord, but knowing that Discord preferred not to kill, Twilight thinks it was probably Nightmare Moon’s fault.) Princess Celestia is the only being Twilight loves anymore, and she will do anything to protect her and care for her. Twilight promises Celestia that once Discord has been broken to obedience, they will be able to use him to take care of the sun and moon so Celestia can take a vacation and recover from her grief. She also believes she can use Discord to make ponies immortal, so Celestia need never lose anypony she loves ever again.
In the Harmonyverse, Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie and Rarity get mane/tail dye jobs, so that Discord will be easily able to tell them apart from their counterparts. Applejack collects Fluttershy’s pets to be taken to Sweet Apple Acres, to be cared for in Fluttershy’s absence. Spike completes the packing checklist, and packs some gems to possibly bribe the other Spike with, if needed. While his dragon instincts are against it, the thought of how proud Rarity will be of him inspires him. Twilight and Rainbow proceed at full speed to the Everfree Forest, where they plan to meet with Applejack to take a cutting from the Tree of Harmony, which they hope to use to reharmonize the Oppositionverse’s Tree and Elements, and restore the corrupted Bearers to themselves.
In the Oppositionverse, Discord is beaten by Applejack for failing to fill baskets of apples evenly. He’s well aware that they’re choosing tasks he literally can’t do so they have the opportunity to beat him for failure, and thus condition him to be terrified of failing them, but unfortunately his awareness doesn’t keep it from working. Applejack refuses to stop the beating until he can demonstrate honest remorse for his failure, but since it’s against the nature of the Spirit of Chaos to be able to fill baskets evenly, Discord can’t honestly feel remorse… until he cracks temporarily under the torture and feels self-loathing and a desire not to be tied to Chaos as he is, whereupon he is able to genuinely feel remorse and the honesty spell will allow him to say so. Applejack rewards him for cracking with fresh apples, and because he’s starving, Discord can’t refuse them, even though he realizes afterward that taking a reward for breaking weakens him and makes him more likely to break again in the future. He is ashamed that he did briefly feel remorse, and fears that he’s close to being broken permanently, but after Applejack leaves he steals three rotten apples off the ground and eats them to defy Applejack and prove to himself that he’s still rebellious. Then he waits fearfully for Fluttercruel to come get him.
Chapter Four: Fluttercruel treats Discord’s wounds, brings him home and does not immediately put him in his cell. Instead she makes sexual advances on him, which he hates but cannot stop feeling pleasure from, and then orders him to perform oral sex on her. Afterward, she offers him oral sex as a “reward”, and when he attempts to refuse, reminds him that he has no rights and that he doesn’t want to make her mad. Discord can’t stop himself from responding physically to the assault and doesn’t dare to try anyway, so he takes refuge in his chaos perceptions, letting the world turn into a meaningless blur of patterns and dissociating from what’s happening, as Fluttercruel engages in intercourse with him. He returns to himself after orgasm, and realizes that if Fluttercruel asks him if he enjoyed the sex, the honesty spell will force him to say no, and she will punish him. To protect himself, he offers to perform more sexual activities for Fluttercruel’s pleasure. She takes him to her bedroom before taking him up on it.
During the act, it occurs to Discord that if he can pleasure her to exhaustion and make her fall asleep, she hasn’t bound him or given him orders, so he’ll be free to roam her house, steal food and use a real bathroom, and sleep in a bed, not on an earth floor. Once his plan succeeds and she falls asleep, he realizes that he could use the opportunity to escape. But because she’s sleeping on the wing that Applejack injured, he can’t pull free. He has a panic attack, and in his desperation to escape, accidentally knocks Fluttercruel off the bed, waking her.
Fluttercruel uses the obedience spell to force him to stay still, and when he begs for mercy makes him use his magic to gag himself. She then threatens him with an extremely sharp whip. Discord thinks he knows what she’s talking about, and believes the whip will kill him. He resigns himself to death, considering it an escape from his captivity. But it turns out the whip isn’t quite as sharp as he thought, and will mutilate him and destroy his wings but will not kill him. Suicidally desperate to escape the torture by any means possible, he tries to throw his neck into the whip’s path. Instead, it cuts his face and eye, and the shock makes him faint. A panicked Fluttercruel wakes him with cold water and demands that he heal himself. Once he does, she apologizes to him profusely, promises not to hurt him like this again, and comforts him as he breaks down and cries in reaction to what he’s endured.
Chapter Five: In the Harmonyverse, Twilight, Rainbow and Applejack travel through the Everfree to the Tree of Harmony. On the way, they meet Zecora and tell her the situation. She is dismayed to hear that Discord didn’t take her warning seriously and has suffered the fate she foresaw. When the mares ask her why, she explains that the balance of magic is maintained by three entities – the Tree of Harmony, representing Harmony; a crystal mountain called Matrisse, which was shattered by Discord in the past, representing Order; and a living being who wields the power of Chaos. Discord is not the first Chaos Avatar, and if he dies or is lost in another universe forever, his power will go to someone else, who might be far crueler and more dangerous than Discord himself was. Only some races, those “aligned with Chaos” rather than Harmony, are capable of wielding the power without going completely insane; Zecora tells a cautionary tale of a mare who tried to become the Chaos Avatar and attempted to destroy the world in a magical rite that would have opened the gates to ancient entities that would have eaten the universe. But the draconequus race died out when Discord was a small child, leaving him the sole survivor, and other races known to have had Chaos avatars in the past have either become less chaotic or less likely to use magic. So it might be that the power would end up going to a pony, or member of another Harmonic race, who would then go completely insane; thus, the fate of the world might depend on them rescuing Discord.
At the Tree, the mares are able to tune themselves to Harmony enough to take their cutting. The branch they removed speaks to them in their minds, telling them that to enact their plan to reharmonize the “sister”, “chaos must smash chaos” so that the “song” can be heard by both ponies and “the sister.” When they ask for further explanation, the branch claims it is only a baby tree and needs its sleep, and stops talking. The mares hope that Discord will know what the tree is talking about, because they don’t, and that he will be able to do it, whatever it is.
In the Oppositionverse, Discord is woken by Fluttercruel, who tells him she has been ordered to take him to Twilight. We learn that he fears Twilight’s experiments more than any other torture he suffers, because she doesn’t care at all about his reaction and he has no influence whatsoever over what she does to him. He’s been tracking the days of his sessions with Twilight because she is a slave to schedules, and since she had him last night, he hadn’t expected to have to go back for three days. Discord falls into hysterics, begging Fluttercruel not to take him, trying to persuade her that it’s the wrong day and Twilight can’t possibly want him today, but Fluttercruel insists. With no way to escape it, Discord then begs Fluttercruel to stay with him during the torture. His logical reason for this is that Fluttercruel might cut his torment short, either by being moved by his pain and asking Twilight to stop to spare him, or becoming aroused by it and asking Twilight to stop so she can make him satisfy her lust. But he realizes that emotionally, he genuinely wants her there, because he needs a friend with him to help him deal with the torture, and she’s the closest thing he has. He recognizes that this means he’s teetering on the edge of breaking completely, but can’t make himself care as much as he thinks he should.
Chapter Six: In the Oppositionverse, Twilight hooks Discord up to her experimental apparatus, but only partially, and then interrogates him, demanding to know where the letter he had Spike send actually went. When he tells the truth -- he is from another universe, which as it turns out Twilight already knew, and he sent the letter to his version of Twilight asking for her to rescue him because she claims to be his friend -- she considers this implausible, and tortures him to prove that the honesty spell is still holding. She demands that he tell her a lie, a contradiction he can't resolve because the honesty spell won't let him lie and the obedience spell won't let him disobey. To get around it, he pretends that Fluttercruel is Fluttershy and tells her he loves her -- because it's true that he loves Fluttershy, but it's a lie that he loves Fluttercruel, who he actually said it to. The contradiction causes him to have a seizure, but Fluttercruel revives him and Twilight finishes the interrogation, learning exactly why Discord came to this world in the first place, why he was released from stone to be reformed in his own, and so forth.
Twilight gathers the Bearers of the Opposition Elements, despite it being very late at night, to tell them of her findings and get them to help her fight the Bearers from Discord's universe when they come. This is made almost impossible by the corrupted personalities of the Bearers -- Applejack is sarcastic and keeps making snide comments; Rarity is even more demanding than the one from our world; Fluttercruel insults the others with incredible viciousness whenever they bring up her sexual relationship with Discord, which they keep bringing up; Rainbow Dash is arrogant and insulting; and Pinkie Pie is downright psychopathic, being creepily cheerful about things like "eating bad ponies". Twilight admits to herself that she can't pull rank on them; their friendship is barely holding together as it is, and she's terrified that if she loses them as friends, the Elements will no longer harmonize and Discord will be freed from the spells on him. Nonetheless, she manages to rally them, reluctantly, to be prepared to go up against their counterparts the moment the Changeling scouts she requested from Chrysalis see them cross over. Discord couldn't tell her exactly where the portal was, but she assumes they will go to Fluttercruel's house because that's where they think Discord is. She also requests that Fluttercruel feed Discord more, because he's become so weak that he can't withstand much of her experiments. Fluttercruel consults with Pinkie Pie, who has something to offer her. Fluttercruel also demands the right to stay with Discord through the night; Twilight agrees reluctantly, and goes and hides in her room after the meeting is over so she won't have to hear or think about Fluttercruel having sex with Discord in her workroom.
Discord is woken by Fluttercruel, who gives him his favorite drink, chocolate milk, and then offers him a dead pony to eat from Pinkie Pie's larder. Discord is completely freaked out by this; he takes his refusal to eat like a predator very, very seriously, and is utterly horrified at the thought of eating a pony, but when Fluttercruel threatens to torture him if he refuses, he cracks and agrees to do it. Because he's chronically starved, he can't stop himself from hungrily devouring the dead pony once he starts, but he hates himself for doing it and feels as if this is the final straw that has broken him; if he can't keep from violating one of the few morals he actually has, just because he's afraid of torture and not even because it's being inflicted on him, he's lost his defiance and by that his identity.
Fluttercruel cleans him and begins preparing him for sex. Discord is resigned to being raped again and at first even considers giving in and pretending it's Fluttershy touching him, because he feels that he's broken and therefore has nothing left to lose... until he sees the carcass of the dead pony again and is reminded of how much he hates Fluttercruel. He tries to challenge her enough to prove to himself that he's not really broken after all, asking how she could do such a horrible thing as to make him eat a pony. But he makes the mistake of speaking of her as if she's not the real Fluttershy. Fluttercruel zeroes in on his claim from earlier that he loves his friend, and convinces Discord that his Fluttershy is not truly his friend, that she was lying to him to control him and win his trust, and that she truly secretly hates him because he's a cruel bully. Discord tries to argue against this, knowing that Fluttercruel likes to torment him emotionally, but his insecurities run too deep, and he becomes convinced that it's true and his one friend isn't a friend at all. Once he breaks down crying, Fluttercruel rapes him.
Afterward she falls asleep, and Discord starts laughing to himself. He feels that he's finally broken, but not in the way Fluttercruel was aiming for; he wants to die now, and he clearly has a plan in mind for how to make that happen while simultaneously bringing his tormentors down with him.
You know, in the view on your page, I see the title of this and the cutesie innocent loving Fluttershy, which is almost nightmarish considering just how twisted, corrupt and hateful is the Opposition Fluttershy. But that really is a cute Fluttershy.
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She's sort of an emotional fortification against what's coming next. :-) Also I needed an image because Fimfic doesn't support cuts in your blog posts, so the only way to keep people from being able to see extensive spoilers of more than one paragraph (spoiler tags don't work across paragraphs) is to give them a warning and an image that will take up enough room that they can't read the text without scrolling past the image.
I love this picture because the EQG short with Twilight holding the Discord plushie and Fluttershy whacking it with her whack-a-mole hammer made me sad. So now my headcanon is that after she whacked the plushie she apologized because she was startled and didn't really mean to hit Twilight's plushie, and then Twilight says she won it for Fluttershy (because of course this is Equestria Twilight, not EQG Twilight, and she knows who Discord is and who he is to Fluttershy) and gives her the plushie. So now Fluttershy's very attached to it because it's a personal gift from Twilight. (Twilight probably got presents for the rest of her friends, too. She would totally get Rarity a hand-crafted sculpted and painted purple dragon if she can find one. :-))