"Fluttershy! Fluttershy, you absolutely must come see this. Right now!"
Fluttershy looked up from her teacup at the manically bouncing draconequus that had appeared without warning in her living room. She took a deep breath, steeling herself. It's not mean. If you don't tell him, he won't learn. He needs to know that actions toward friends have consequences. It's not mean. It's not.
"I'm, um... I'm, uh, mad at you?"
Discord stopped bouncing, which was good because the whole house was shaking every time he did it. "You sound like you're not entirely certain about that."
Fluttershy took another deep breath. "I'm mad at you," she said again, this time more decisively.
He pouted ostentatiously. "Why, whatever for? I put all those animal habitats back together just the way they were before the vines came, exactly as I promised you I would. And I even helped you fix your house! I cannot see a single reason why you should be irate with me."
She set her teacup down and got to her feet. "You, uh, you lied to me, Discord," she said softly. "That's not nice to do to a friend."
Discord looked puzzled, though it was possibly an elaborate put-on. "When did I do that?"
"When you said you were innocent?"
"Oh, but how was that a lie? I hadn't planned for the vines to come out that day; dear me, I hadn't even remembered that I'd planted them until they popped up and reminded me! You can't think I did any of that on purpose. And surely you can't hold it against me that I did something less than socially acceptable a thousand years before you taught me the Magic Of Friendship." He batted extraordinarily large eyes that suddenly had lengthy eyelashes, clasping his paw and talon together in front of him with his hoof kicked up slightly and, inexplicably, a white and blue garment on his body where the top was white, had buttons and short sleeves, and a V-shaped neck with a wide blue collar that extended into something like two ribbons tied in a knot at the base of the V and dangling slightly, and the bottom was a pleated blue skirt.
Fluttershy didn't bother asking him about the costume. "It doesn't matter if you didn't do it on purpose, Discord, it's still, um, it's not right to say you're innocent. If I was visiting Pinkie and I accidentally dropped a tray of cupcakes on the floor, I could say I was sorry and I didn't mean to, and I could offer to help clean up, and Pinkie wouldn't be mad at me. But if I said I hadn't dropped the cupcakes at all and I didn't know who did, and then she found out I did do it, she'd be mad because I lied, and friends don’t lie to friends."
Costume gone, Discord scowled. "Oh, so you're mad at me because I misspoke by a single word? Well, that hardly seems friendly."
"You didn't misspeak, Discord. You know what the word innocent means. Um, I'm sorry, but if you say you're innocent because you did something a long time ago and forgot you did it and you didn't mean for it to be having an effect right now... that's a lie. You could have said it was something you did a long time ago and you didn't mean for it to be hurting anypony right now. You didn't have to say you were innocent."
"And how could I have done that?" he sneered. "If I'd taken any responsibility for those things then and there, your pals would have demanded that the six of you outfit me for a cement overcoat right away. Do you think any of them wanted to listen to any explanations? Or would have believed anything I'd have had to say?"
"It doesn't make it not lying because you were scared of telling the truth," she said, trying to stay firm.
"Scared? Hardly! If you'd used the Elements right then to turn me to stone... you'd have drained the last of their energy. The Tree that powers them was all but dead by then, you know. So you would have guaranteed the death of the Tree, which was my original plan a thousand years before I reformed, and as soon as the Tree died, the Elements would have lost all remnants of power and I'd have gotten free again! I'd have been stuck in stone three days tops. More likely a few hours. No, no, I was concerned for you, Fluttershy! And all of you ponies! Why, if the Tree died, then the Everfree Forest would expand to consume Ponyville. Plus you'd have had no way of rescuing your princesses. Really, was telling the truth so very important as to risk the lives of Princess Celestia and Luna?"
Fluttershy sighed. "You could have trusted me."
Discord's sneer came back full force. "Oh really? My dear friend who can't be bothered to get around to defending me until the rest of her pals are halfway to sentencing me to death already? The mare who responds to the question of whether I'm lying with 'maybe'? Trusted you?"
"But you were lying!"
"But you didn't know that!"
"But I know you! And I promised not to use my Element on you anyway!" She wasn't going to break down. She wasn't going to let herself get so angry she started crying. Or snarling. "You didn't have to worry about getting turned to stone if you told the truth, because I promised you! You could have been honest with me, but you weren't, because you didn't believe my promise! Discord, I thought you trusted me."
"Well, I thought you trusted me."
She scowled at him. "Um, you're the spirit of disharmony and chaos. I trust you not to hurt me. I never said I trusted you not to lie to me. But I never did anything to you to make you think I would break my promise, and I made it to you knowing you tell lies and I kept it even when you told me you'd been lying to me the whole time about being friends. So if I said maybe you were lying and you actually were, that isn't a good reason not to trust that I won't break my promise. My friends can't make me use my Element if I don't want to, and I would never, ever break my promise to you without even letting you explain yourself."
"Oh, really? Then why did it take you so very long to get around to pointing out that possibly I might really be innocent... or at least, undeserving of a stone nap?"
"Because everypony was yelling! I don't talk very loudly, so if everypony is yelling it's hard for me to get a word in... that's why you pretended you forgot my name, wasn't it?"
"Well, it is such a very forgettable name. "
"I'm sorry, Discord, I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. I had to wait until somepony was actually going to hear me to speak up. But even if I'd never said anything at all, I still wasn't going to use my Element on you without giving you a chance to explain, and, um, probably not even then? Because even if you were being evil I would try talking you out of it first? But, um, you didn't trust me to keep my promise, so you lied to me, and, um, that hurts my feelings. Friends should trust each other, and I never did anything to you to make you think you couldn't trust me with the truth."
Discord opened his mouth. Closed it again. Opened it. Closed it. Then he sighed, snapped his talon, and sat down heavily on the puffy orange cloud that appeared suddenly under him. "I have trust issues."
Fluttershy stared at him, wondering what she was supposed to say to that. It sounded like his usual silliness, but his body language seemed to be suggesting that he was actually sincere. If he was sincere, the admission of personal failing was probably the closest she'd get to an apology. And it was in character for Discord to say something serious that he actually meant in a deadpan tone that sounded like he absolutely had to be setting up a joke because he'd never say something serious. She decided to give him the benefit of the doubt, since if he was serious she should take him seriously and if he was joking, playing straight mare to his joke and acting as if she thought he was being serious would probably make him stop. She trotted over to him, reared up, and hugged him. "I can help you work on that, maybe? If that's okay with you? You've been helping me with the things I'm afraid of... I guess it must be very hard to trust when you've spent a long time not doing it?"
"I've trusted before," Discord said, hesitantly putting his paw around her half-heartedly like he didn't quite know what to do with the spontaneous hug. "It doesn't usually work out well for me."
"That's okay. I'm willing to take as much time as you need to help you realize you can trust me. Just... please don't lie to me when I'm trying to defend you, okay? It, it makes me look really dumb to my friends..."
"Oh, and sweet Celestia forfend you look dumb to your friends," he said mockingly.
"Um, you don't want me to look dumb to my friends, Discord. Because I'm the one who trusts you. You want them to be able to think, 'Oh, if Fluttershy trusts him he can't be all bad', not 'Who cares what Fluttershy thinks, Discord has her totally fooled'. "
"Assuming I care what they think."
"Wouldn't you like to have more than one friend?"
"...Maybe, but it seems unlikely to be them."
"Well, it won't be if you never try." She pulled back from him slightly. "I understand, you lied because you were scared and you were scared because you have a hard time trusting."
"I'm not sure that's how I would characterize it..."
"Yes, I know, but I don't have to worry about keeping your gigantic ego propped up," she said teasingly, "so I can say it right. But what I wanted to say is that I forgive you, and I'm not mad at you anymore, but I do want you to try not to do that again?"
Discord sighed. "I suppose. It would probably be easier to manage to not lie to you than to manage to not turn Ponyville into a giant carousel on a regular basis, and I seem to be managing that so far."
Fluttershy looked up into his eyes. "Is it really that hard?" she whispered. "I mean... you do some chaos things with me sometimes, and I know you have that strange little place you made to live in..."
He looked down at her as intently as she had him. "Yes, Fluttershy. It really is that hard," he said in an uncharacteristically serious tone of voice. "You can't even imagine."
And then he sprang to his feet, leaving Fluttershy literally spinning in place for a moment, the somber tone gone from speech and body language. "Which brings me back to my original purpose for being here, before we got sidetracked by all this silliness! I have something to show you!" He was bouncing again, but since he wasn't actually touching the floor at all and appeared to be jumping up and down on something invisible floating in the middle of the living room, it wasn't making the house shake anymore. "Come on, let's go!"
"Um... what is it?"
"Well, that would spoil the surprise, wouldn't it?" He stopped bouncing for a moment. "You did say you trusted me not to hurt you."
"Yes, I do, but... can you promise we'll be back in time for evening? I'll have to feed the animals again by then..."
"Are you sure you're not raising pigs here, Flutters?" Discord rolled his eyes. "These creatures must eat three times their own weight daily."
"Promise me."
"All right, all right, I promise I'll have you back here by evening, in plenty of time to fatten your piggies.”
"Okay then." Fluttershy took a deep breath. She did, in fact, trust Discord not to hurt her, but this had no relationship whatsoever to whether or not whatever he had to show her would terrify her or not, since Fluttershy was well aware that her terrors of virtually everything were mostly irrational and would not budge in response to logic like "but your friends won't let you get hurt." Being Discord's best (and aside from occasional interludes with Pinkie Pie that didn't seem to stop her from wanting him locked up when she thought it was justified, only) friend came with responsibilities, though; reformation was an ongoing process, Princess Celestia had given the task to her, and if she couldn't give Discord what he needed from a friend, there was nopony else he could get it from and nothing to keep him motivated to stay good for friendship's sake. And besides, she hated the thought of him suffering because nopony would give him the time of day if she wouldn't. "You can show me."
They were immediately somewhere else. A wave of dry heat washed over Fluttershy, making her feel like some magical water vampire had just latched onto her and started draining all the fluid in her body. She and Discord were standing on an endless, empty, sandy plain, Celestia's sun burning down on them more intensely than she'd ever felt it. Fluttershy gasped. "It's so hot!"
Discord snapped open a gigantic flower over their heads as if it were a parasol and handed Fluttershy a tall glass of lemonade with ice and a straw. Gratefully she sat down on the fluffy beach towel that had also suddenly appeared right under her, feeling the warmth baking through the towel and soaking into her haunches, and held the glass in her forehooves, sipping at it. Discord himself had some sort of purple fizzy drink that Fluttershy couldn't recognize. "Thank you," she said. "Where are we?"
"We're just outside Saddle Arabia," Discord said. "I wanted to test this someplace that no living animals would see it or be affected by it."
"No living animals? Is this something that would harm animals?" Fluttershy asked, concerned.
Discord chuckled. "Absolutely to the contrary. It'll do nothing but good for any creature it touches, but talking animals get so irate over anything even slightly out of the ordinary, and the ones that don't talk... don't tend to survive in places where talking creatures don't live." He sounded bitter for a moment.
Abruptly Fluttershy remembered that Discord referred to intelligent beings, like ponies, and other animals, interchangeably, rather than reserving the term "animals" for creatures that couldn't speak for themselves. It was actually one of the traits that made Fluttershy feel that this friendship could possibly work, that they might actually have something in common, somehow. Both she and Discord agreed that in general, beings who couldn't talk deserved the same treatment as beings that could, and should be granted the same rights. Admittedly, Fluttershy wanted to take care of and be kind to all the living beings, and Discord wanted to play with them all and torment them for amusement, but at the base of it they agreed that ponies weren't better than non-ponies just because they were ponies, and that talking creatures weren't superior to non-talking creatures. If she could just get him to extend the concern she had seen him show for his friends to other creatures that he didn't know personally, she might be able to get him to treat all living things well instead of treating all living things as fun toys to play with. Someday.
"I see," she said. "So it's something nice, but maybe scary?"
"Well, I've brought you along to answer exactly that question for me." He gestured. "This is called the Plain of Sorrows. Note how empty it is! Nothing whatsoever lives here; it hasn't rained in over three hundred years. Mostly because the pegasi of Saddle Arabia won't allow it to."
"They won't? Why not?"
"Because it is so much, much more important to make sure that ponies can access all the scarce water of this region than that living creatures who are not ponies could possibly be permitted to live in areas that ponies don't. This is far from the only place in the world where pony magic has sucked the land dry, my dear, though it's one of the few where that's literal. All throughout the world there are wide, rocky bands of desolation bordering pony territories, where the earth ponies have drawn the very lifeblood of the world's magic out and pulled it into pony hooves, leaving nothing behind that can live wild and free, and apparently nopony cares but certain bizarre cults of religious fanatics like Pinkie Pie's family."
"Pinkie Pie's family?"
"Rock farmers, my dear, are Earth ponies who try to draw the magic of the world back into the desolate lands. They don't literally grow rocks, but they charge rocks with earth pony magic so that the bones of the world can once more be coated with nature. A noble effort, but futile, considering that they're less than a fraction of a percent of all ponykind and they're up against all the rest of the earth ponies in existence pulling back against them. Also that their lives are studiedly boring and miserable and any pony capable of imagining a better life for herself flees the moment she can; witness your dear pink friend." Discord sighed. "Usually pegasi don't cause the same sorts of problems, because water and air flow more freely than the magic of the earth. Here, though... Saddle Arabia ensured that no rainstorms would ever be wasted, falling on this desolate plain when they could fall on Arabian homes instead."
"That's awful! So... so all the animals died?"
"Well, most probably migrated into pony territory looking for water. At which point they were either domesticated by ponies, or died. You know as well as I do how rare truly wild places like the Everfree are. The alternative strategy, of moving into griffon or dragon territory, would have left them as something's lunch, most likely. So... I suppose, one way or another, they all submitted to the yoke of perfect friendship and harmony, or they died."
"That's so sad. Creatures shouldn't have to depend on ponies to survive. I, um, I take care of a lot of animals because so many animals do depend on ponies, but a lot of the creatures from the Everfree don't need me, I'm just their helper. They come when they're sick or when they can't get by otherwise. I, I wish more of the world was like that, where the creatures could just live on their own without needing pony care, because there's so many ponies who just don't care all that much about animals and it's so sad. There aren't enough of us who do care to take care of them all!"
Discord smiled wryly. "I knew I liked you for a reason. Aside from your willingness to put up with me."
"Really?"
"Aside from my obvious personal preference to have as much of nature engaged in its own chaotic acts of self-interest and self-direction as possible... well, let's just say the world might be a very different place if there had been a pony like you, once upon a time, who'd been willing to give friendship and assistance to a little wild creature without demanding that it either give up its freedom and perform for pony amusement, or starve to death." He looked pensive. "Of course, possibly that would have resulted in all of you being eaten by dragons, so I suppose it all worked out to your benefit..."
"What do you mean?"
"Oh, never mind. Watch this!"
He snapped his talon, and the blazing sun was quickly blotted out by... rainbows?
No, they weren't rainbows, exactly. They were clouds, but clouds that glowed from behind, eerily, in all the colors of a rainbow. The landscape was still brightly lit; the sky was a bit dimmer, but this was actually a good thing given how brutally bright the sun had been. Now the light was scattered, diffused and in all different colors. It was beautiful but frighteningly weird, as if there were alicorns engaged in a terrifying magical duel somewhere so high in the sky that Fluttershy couldn't hear their battle, but only see the light of their magic. She shrank back against Discord.
And then it began to rain in brilliant, shining, sparkling streaks, like liquid stars falling from the sky. It pattered at first, then rained hard, then came down as a torrential downpour, like the sky opened and let buckets fall, except that instead of ordinary rain it was glittering radiance. Like glass or gems falling from the sky. It shone, mostly in the bright yellowish white of sunlight, but in some places there seemed to be rainbow patterns undulating through the rain, colors shifting as the sky poured down.
"What... what is it?" Fluttershy asked, quivering slightly.
"Just a bit of light rain," Discord said casually.
"That's... coming down pretty hard to be light rain, Discord," Fluttershy said softly. She might be a poor flyer, she might live on the ground, she might never have worked on a weather team in her life... but she was still a pegasus. She knew weather. And this was something very, very strange.
Discord laughed. "Oh, no, my dear, you misunderstand. It's not raining lightly. It's raining light."
She stared at it in wonder. He was right. What was falling from the sky was streaks of light. But even though the thirsty ground soaked it in almost the same moment as it hit, it was falling fast and hard enough for her to see that when it struck the ground, it was water.
"But... it's water?"
"Yes, exactly! It's water and it's light! Now she gets it!"
"How?" Fluttershy asked, before remembering that was a pointless question to ask Discord.
He answered her anyway. "Well, I simply took advantage of the fact that light is both a wave and a particle."
That was totally unhelpful, but she hadn't really expected an answer that made sense. "Why?" That probably wasn't going to get a straight answer either, of course.
But Discord surprised her. "Because ponies are always moaning and groaning about how their outing is absolutely ruined by the rain, since heavens forfend they plan something merely a week or two in advance and not overscheduling by a year and a half like some sort of monstrous clockwork avatar of Orderliness and Rigidity, and then by all means the weather teams should bend over backwards because some stupid unicorn wanted to have an outdoor wedding and oh, dear, now it's going to rain and whatever shall we do when the universe doesn't perfectly conform to our hyper-planned expectations? So, since I have been trying to think of a way to create something chaotic that ponies would actually appreciate and enjoy, and for some reason only Pinkie Pie likes the chocolate milk even though you would think chocolate milk rain would be a big hit with everypony , I thought, well, why not make rain into light? Then nopony's outdoor expedition or party will be ruined by a lack of sunshine!"
"Is it... really wet, like rain?"
"Let's find out!" He ran out into it – leaving his flower parasol floating above Fluttershy's head, unsupported by anything-- and tilted his head backward, mouth open, allowing rain to fall in. The light puddled all over his skin, sheening him with a brilliant glow. Then he tipped his head back down and looked at her. "Delicious, if you like fresh water. Which ordinarily I'd find rather dull but in this desert, it's quite refreshing!"
"It's beautiful," she said, almost whispering not from shyness or insecurity this time, but from awe. The rainbow-glowing clouds, the bright streaks throughout the sky, the light forming puddles and rivulets all over the ground and running in lines of brilliance down Discord's body like he was bathing in soft lightning... all of it was stunningly beautiful. Strange beyond belief, but no less beautiful for all that.
Discord smiled at her, and her heart caught in her chest. The expression lit his face up, metaphorically but no less brightly in its own domain of symbolism than the light rain itself was doing literally. Had she ever before seen Discord look happy? Not excited, not amused, not gleeful, but simply happy? Usually he looked somewhat goofy, or more than somewhat menacing, but with joy lighting his eyes and his light rain illuminating his body, he looked...
...no. No, she hadn't just thought Discord was beautiful, had she? She couldn't, she couldn't be thinking such things, he wasn't a pony, it was too strange and weird, he couldn't be beautiful to her... could he?
"Come on out and play, Fluttershy!" he said, a note of pure joy in his voice like she wasn't sure she'd ever heard from him. "The water's great!"
Fluttershy shrank back slightly again, and saw his expression start to shift, to darken. No. She couldn't do that to him. Discord didn't understand her; he knew she was afraid of everything, it was one of the first things he'd said to her, he was a master manipulator with a keen awareness of everypony's weaknesses, but when those weaknesses intersected with his own, it seemed his knowledge failed him and he couldn't make the connections he needed to. Every other pony knew Fluttershy, knew that if she was afraid of something they wanted to show her or wanted her to do with them, it wasn't about them. It was about her and her failings, the total lack of anything like logic or common sense in her overwhelming fears. But when she was afraid of something Discord was trying to give her, he didn't see it as Fluttershy being Fluttershy. He saw it as a pony being just like every other pony had ever been, to him. It didn't matter how many times she told him she trusted him; just as apparently he had issues trusting ponies, he had even greater issues believing that they could possibly trust him, and if she balked at something he said was safe, he didn't seem to recognize that she'd do the same if it was Twilight or Rainbow Dash or anypony else offering it; he saw it as proof that even the only pony who called him friend didn't really trust him.
Rainbow Dash said that that was manipulative, that Discord was pulling the "don't you trust me" card to get his own way, but Fluttershy was pretty sure she understood animal psychology better than Rainbow Dash did, and just like a pony, a draconequus was apparently still an animal. She knew that he genuinely feared that she would fear and mistrust him, she knew that he saw those shadows in almost every interaction and the only reason nopony else could tell was that he was extraordinarily good at putting up a front of caring about nothing. But she knew it was a front, she knew he could really be hurt, and she couldn't do that to him. Not when he depended on her so very much, whether he was ever willing to admit to it or not. Just like she had to be strong and face down her fears when Equestria or her friends needed her because her skills would save the day, she had to face down her fears for Discord because he was also her friend and he needed to know she trusted him. Needed to know it and believe it, not just in his mind but in his heart.
So she took a deep breath and stepped out from under the giant flower, into the rain.
It was wet, but warm, soothing, like a shower on a hot summer day rather than the chilly rain most pegasi enjoyed showering in. The heat of the desert had soaked into her completely, even with the parasol and the towel and the lemonade she'd finished; the rain washed away the sweat that soaked her mane and flank, turning the heat from something brutal to a deep, muscle-relaxing warmth. She tilted her own head back, not far enough to let the water run into her mouth but enough to let it beat down against her forehead and flow down through her mane. Fluttershy laughed. "It's wonderful, Discord!"
"Oh, I'm so glad you like it," he said, and while it sounded like he was trying to put the overdramatic emphases into the sentence that would have made it a joke, they didn't quite work, making him sound more like a colt embarrassed and pleased by praise from a fillyfriend than his usual melodramatic jesting. "Look around!"
She did, and was stunned to see plants shooting out of the ground, almost as fast as the plunder vines had, but these were normal-looking green shoots. Well, some of them were normal. Some of them were thorny or spiny. But none of them seemed to have the malevolent intent of the plunder vines; they were green, and growing up, not out, and some were already blooming into magnificent, beautiful flowers.
"Discord, did you make these?" she asked in wonderment, turning around and around again to stare at the beauty of the rapidly growing plants everywhere.
"That's the wonderful thing! I didn't! Fluttershy, they've been sleeping underground for three hundred years, waiting for this!" He spun around rapidly, the whiplash from his tail flying through the air scattering more water all over her. "Think of it, Fluttershy... trapped here by ponies who begrudged them the tiniest bit of what makes them thrive, immobile in the darkness, with no hope of life and sunlight and the fresh air again, no reason to believe they would ever be free... but they waited, they waited hundreds of years, patiently, they never gave up hope, they waited and waited and finally, finally the rains came again and now they're free! Free to be alive, and grow where they like, and breathe the air and feel the sun and move..."
Plants didn't move much, and they didn't usually have enough of a mind to feel hope or despair with. Fluttershy had a suspicion that whether he quite realized it or not, Discord wasn't actually talking about the plants. "That makes you happy, doesn't it," she said. "See, sometimes chaos can do nice things. Doesn't it make you happy to do nice things with your powers?"
"It always has, Flutters, just... you know, plants aren't ingrates. You give them water, they grow. They don't care if the water glows, or tastes like lemonade, or rains up from the ground. They just care that it's water." He looked around again. "But isn't it beautiful, Fluttershy? So much glorious freedom, so much beautiful chaos! Dead lands, flat, empty, dull, nothing but sand sand sand as far as the eye can see, and now! Now it's like a miniature jungle! Now there's life everywhere! And I didn't even make it happen... I just gave them water and they set themselves free with it!" He sighed happily. "I have no idea what's going to come up where or what color it will be or if it's a cactus or a succulent or a completely transient plant that will bloom for an hour, suck in all the water and all the light it can for its seeds, and then die. No idea at all. Isn't it marvelous?"
"Yes, it is beautiful," Fluttershy said, sincerely. She didn't care about the chaoticness of it, except to the degree that anything that could be chaotic enough to make Discord happy while also being nice enough to make ponies happy was a wonderful thing. But the idea of the plants being trapped as seeds or roots underground, awakening and flowering with the touch of the rain, coming back to life again... that had great appeal to her. And the flowers that were now blooming everywhere were as beautiful and strange as the light rain itself, and there was something wondrous about the idea that things like this really existed, that Discord hadn't made them, that nature had.
Discord went down on all fours and started running around manically through the plants like an overgrown colt, sniffing the flowers, eating things that weren't covered with spines (and occasionally things that were), but mostly just racing around chasing his tail or using the plants as obstacles to slalom through, tail swishing with a strange and alien grace. On two legs, he looked mismatched and chimerical, but on all four, he looked like a small Eastern dragon, like from Neighpon or Chineigh, the kind that were long and thin and snakelike rather than the large, bulky monsters that Fluttershy was still fairly terrified of to this day even if all the ones she'd managed to talk to had turned out to be reasonable creatures, mostly. Fluttershy laughed, watching his antics. Eastern dragons were scary at their full size, but not as scary as normal, Western dragons, and Discord was both smaller than a dragon and had a much friendlier-looking head.
"You know what these flowers need?" he called to her from some distance away.
Fluttershy was well aware her voice wouldn't carry that distance. She took to the air, fluttering through the rain over to him. Normally she really didn't like the feeling of rain falling on her wings while she was trying to fly, but the light rain felt warm and soothing and it felt more like swimming in a sun-drenched pond on a hot summer day than trying to fly through a downpour. When she was close enough, she said, "What do the flowers need?"
"Pollinators!" He snapped his fingers, and the air was filled with butterflies. Very, very strange butterflies, as large as bats, and with wings that looked like they had the leathery consistency of bat wings, but in the brilliant colors and rounded shapes of butterflies. Fluttershy gaped at them for a moment before realizing that real, ordinary butterflies couldn't handle coming out in a rainstorm like this. The light rain felt much nicer on her body than regular rain did, but it was still rain, it was still pelting down hard, and delicate butterflies wouldn't survive it. Discord had filled the desert with butterflies that could live and thrive and fly within his rainstorm.
"Oh!" Fluttershy gasped. "Discord, they're beautiful!" Several of them surrounded her, like they had the day she fell from the cloud. They weren't as delicate, as gentle and fragile, as real butterflies, but they were fuzzy and soft and when they brushed against her she thought she could feel affection from them, the same as she felt from her animals. Fluttershy laughed in delight, and then with an entirely different sensation, squirming and laughing as flying butterflies brushed wings across her sensitive belly and tickled her. "Oh, oh dear, they're tickling me! Oh, stop!"
Discord rolled onto his back, watching her, laughing himself. "Oh no! Tickled to death by the representation of her cutie mark! What a terrible fate for poor Fluttershy! Whatever shall I do?"
Fluttershy tried to get some height to get out of the butterfly swarm, but she was laughing too hard, and her squirming and wriggling was not helping her fly in the slightest. "Discord, help!" she giggled. She wasn't high enough to hurt herself if she fell, but she really didn't want to fall right now with so many cacti sprouting up from the ground.
"Ah, yes! I know just what to do!" He lunged upward onto two legs and then into the air, caught her, and declared, "She can't be tickled to death by her own cutie mark if I tickle her instead!" He then proceeded to use his nose, fluffy tail end, and soft lion paw to nuzzle, goose and otherwise tickle-torture her belly, her neck and the joints of her forelimbs. Fluttershy shrieked with laughter, wings beating frantically as she tried to free herself, kicking (but gently, she didn't want to buck him in the face or something). None of it did her any good; Discord wasn't using his powers, but he was much bigger than her, much more dextrous, and probably had centuries of experience in tickling ponies.
Also she wasn't exactly trying all that hard to genuinely escape.
When she finally felt she really couldn't take it anymore, she grabbed Discord's head with her forehooves. "Okay, okay, stop now, that's too much," she said, still laughing.
She hadn't said "stop" earlier; she'd shrieked, she'd yelled for help, she'd called his name in what would have been a stern tone if she hadn't been laughing so hard, and she'd struggled, but she had never said to stop. Discord stopped, setting her down. It was a parameter she'd set for his chaos, but it applied to tickling as well. She'd let him do what he wanted with permission, and if she was awake and could speak and didn't tell him to stop, he had permission, but the moment she told him to stop he was to do so. The first few times that he hadn't stopped when she said to, she had refused to talk to him afterward for fifteen minutes the first time, half an hour the second, and had eventually had to freeze him out for half a day before he'd stopped ignoring "stop."
She lay on her back on the ground, on top of a huge sprawling plant with fat, juicy-seeming leaves that grew plumper and plumper as more rain fell, panting and occasionally giggling with aftershocks. Discord curled around her, not actually touching her since after that much tickling she was incredibly oversensitive, but his head was resting right next to hers. "Do you really like my butterflies?"
"They're lovely," she said. "I wondered at first why they were so big and strong in comparison to regular butterflies, but then I figured out they had to be like that to fly in the rain. All the flowers will die as soon as the rain stops, won't they?" She felt rather than saw him nod; she was looking at the butterflies, not at him, but his head was lying on the same giant succulent leaf that hers was. "So they have to pollinate now or the flowers won't get to make seeds. What used to do it before all the animals died?"
"Spiders, believe it or not," Discord said.
"Spiders? Really?"
"Really. Big fat hairy spiders that would live in the sand most of the time, but when the flowers bloomed, the spiders would all take shelter from the rain inside the flowers...and then as the flowers would fill up with water, the spiders would jump to new flowers. The weight of the spider hitting the flower would dump any of the water in the flower, so the spider would shelter there until it filled with water, and so on."
"Are you sure you're not making this up to tease me? That's a very silly way to pollinate."
"Fluttershy, Mother Nature and I have always been pretty good pals because she feels no need to make sense, as long as she gets the job done. There were other pollinators, lizards that would feed on the flower nectar if they got a chance, flies that would hatch inside the flowers and then grow and fly to other flowers to mate and lay eggs all within the duration of the rain... but the big spiders were as important here as bees are in Equestria." He sighed. "They're all dead now. All the areas that ponies colonized, they tore up all these strange plants to make room for growing pony food; the only habitats that were left for the spiders were these places, and ponies kept the rain from falling long enough that the spiders didn't make it."
"Wait... Discord?" She rolled over to face him. "Three hundred years ago you were in a statue... how do you know all this?"
He looked at her seriously. "Whenever ponies, or anyone, kill off an entire habitat, drain the earth's resources to nothing, make a desert with rains coming once every two years into a desert where it never, ever rains... that is an expression of disharmony. And I am connected to every expression of disharmony on the planet. Admittedly right now I have no idea what's going on anywhere that I'm not because I have my own senses, right in front of me, to worry about; I only sense disharmony at a distance in my dreams, now. But when I was in that statue... that, and the sounds of ponies talking near me, and sometimes the chaos of pony dreams, were the only things I could sense at all."
"Are you also connected to chaos like that? Or are they the same thing?"
"No and no. Chaos is literally everywhere; on the micro-level, at a level of things so small even Twilight might not be able to create a spell to see it, you and everything else that exists are made of slightly organized chaos. Magic itself is chaos. Harmony itself is in theory a balance of order and chaos... admittedly, rather more heavily skewed to the order side of the equation. But what is in harmony can't be free; disharmony is, by definition, doing whatever you want regardless of what anypony else is doing or wants you to do. And chaos is freedom. So harmony has a bad habit of getting too big for its britches and trying to stomp out, not just disharmony, but chaos itself. Which is fundamentally impossible but that doesn't always stop harmony from trying."
Discord wasn't usually serious enough to get philosophical, but Fluttershy liked it when he did. She wasn't sure she understood everything he was saying, but it was like she was getting to see a different side of him, the part of him that truly was ancient and wise and knowledgeable, not the part that was goofy and immature. He was so interesting like this. When he was silly, he was full of energy and things happened around him, constantly, and it wasn't something she could provide for herself or her animals but it was something she liked to feel when other ponies were making it happen. He was like Pinkie Pie that way. But then sometimes he slowed down and just talked with her, like he was doing now, and the things he said were so fascinating and sometimes weird and it made her feel like she wasn't stupid just because he was willing to tell her these things, because surely if he thought she was too dumb to understand when he got philosophical he wouldn't bother to, right?
His head was so close to hers, and the heat and the warm rain still falling all over her made her feel languid and strange, like this wasn't entirely real, like this was a dream and nothing that happened in this bizarre environment with the rainbow glowing clouds and the weird flowers everywhere and the light rain was actually happening or would have consequences. Fluttershy's heart rate jumped up with quasi-anticipation. Anything might happen and she wasn't sure any of it would matter. She was oversensitive and he was still glowing in the rain and the fact that he was relaxed and peaceful and happy maybe for the first time she'd seen him this way made him so... so...
His face was close enough for her to kiss. If she leaned forward. Just a little.
And then he sat up, breaking the moment, and really had there ever even been a moment? Why was she having ridiculous thoughts like this anyway, about Discord? Of all beings? They were just friends, right? He'd never done or said anything to make her think otherwise; he teased, but when his teasing included innuendo it was usually aimed at Twilight or Rainbow Dash, she suspected because they would splutter the loudest. Discord was a stallion – maybe not a pony, but still a stallion – and he had lived in her house for some time and he'd never made any moves on her at all or any indication he had any interest in her that way and if he had, he would, right? So the whole thing was silly and she should just put it out of her head?
"So," he said cheerfully. "What's the Fluttershy verdict? Harmless, pretty and fun, wouldn't you say?"
She nodded eagerly. "Yes, it really is."
"So... you think it's ready for Ponyville?"
Fluttershy's heart lurched. She got to her feet. "I, um, I don't know..."
"Oh, come on, Fluttershy! You just said it's harmless, and attractive, and you enjoyed it, so why wouldn't other ponies?"
"Um..." She took a deep breath. She hated doing this. Why had he asked? She didn't want to hurt him, but it would hurt him so much more if she let him go ahead with this, and ponies reacted in the way she thought they almost certainly would. "It is nice, but... it's very strange."
"Well, of course it is. That's the point! If chaos isn't strange, how is it chaos?"
"Yes, but... ponies are afraid of strange things?"
Discord looked both angry and frustrated. "If ponies are so stupid as to reject something harmless and beautiful, that was made to help them, because it's strange, then why do I care what ponies think? Do they even deserve my consideration?"
"Discord..." Fluttershy looked up at him, wishing he would sit down so she could reach him. She could fly up to his face, but it was hard to have a serious talk that way. "Um, I'm sorry... but part of the reason ponies are afraid of strange things is because of all the things you did to Ponyville when you first got loose... and then, with the vines..."
"But the vines weren't my fault! Well, they weren't my fault now, I'd totally forgotten about them!"
"I know, I know... but they were strange, and they were chaotic, and they were destructive. They were really, really scary, Discord. So, um, you, well, your old self really, but you just reminded them why they're scared of chaotic things?"
"But that's over. And nopony got seriously hurt!"
"Yes, but when the vines were taking over Ponyville no one knew that? And ponies could have gotten hurt? And anyway it was scary."
"But this isn’t like that!" There was a pleading note to his voice. "This is something they'll like if they just give it a chance! You liked it, and you get scared of everything!"
"Discord... if I hadn't known it was you? I would've been scared. Because... um, strange things are scary? But I trust you? So I, uh, I thought it would be safe because you made it and you told me it was safe and I trusted you. But other ponies don't know you like I do... and you don't even try to get them to trust you. You like to rile them up and get them mad. You don't act with them like you do with me."
"I tried. You weren't having any," he grumbled.
"I wanted to make friends with you, so I tried really hard not to get upset when you tried to get me upset, because that's not the way to make friends. But I don't think anypony else is going to do that for you? Um, you're not very nice to other ponies, even though you're nice to me, so they don't trust you?"
"Well, they're hardly nice to me!"
"Yes, um, but you started it. Now they're scared of you, so you'd have to work extra hard to make them not scared, and... you haven't done that. I don't even think you've tried? So... they aren't going to like strange things that come from you, because they'll be scared."
"But you could explain to them that it's harmless!"
She sighed. "Discord, everypony who doesn't trust you knows that I do. Most of them think that means I'm stupid, or I'm so soft-hearted that I'm letting you take advantage of me and I don't really know what you're like. Some of them think you mind controlled me. Some of them think I'm a weird freak myself because I live near the Everfree and I take care of all the animals? So it's not going to do any good for me to explain. And, um... maybe I could have talked to Twilight and Pinkie and Applejack and Rarity, before the vines, and gotten them to agree to talk to ponies about it? Maybe even Rainbow Dash if you let her play with the clouds? But now they're really kind of mad at you about those vines."
"But I helped!"
"But you lied to them too. You said you were innocent and you said you didn't know what the vines were and we should ask Zecora, and then when it was all over it turned out you knew the whole time? And I know—" She held up a hoof, forestalling the objection she saw starting to form on his lips. "I know you said those things because you were afraid we'd use the Elements and if we did we'd kill the Tree and you must have been worried at least a little bit about us and Ponyville and the Princesses, since you did help even though they were your vines. But they don't, and you never said you were sorry to any of them."
"I never said I was sorry to you, either."
"But I know you meant it anyway. They don't know you like I do. You don't show them all of what you're really like, so how could they? When you're with them all you ever do is make jokes and play pranks and do things to get them mad. You're nice to me, so I trust you, but you aren't nice to them."
"And again, they are hardly nice to me. Well, except Pinkie, when there aren't vines eating her hometown."
"Discord, you messed with all of their minds and you turned them against their Elements and you turned Ponyville into a disaster area. If you never try to be nice to them, after you started out being mean, why would they be nice to you?"
"Why were you? Just because Celestia asked you to reform me?" he asked bitterly.
"Yes, that's why I started being nice," Fluttershy said. "And so then you started being a little bit nice, and I started to see good things in you, and then you gave up being evil to be my friend. No other pony has been through that with you. You never showed them your nice side very much. So they don't trust you. And, um, I'm sorry, but that's on you to fix, Discord, not on them. You'd have to be the one to try."
"Then why should I?" he snapped bitterly. "It's hopeless, you know! Ponies can't possibly comprehend me any more than I can actually comprehend them. You are all so boring! How can you stand your lives, day in, day out, the same things all the time! Why do I care about being good for their sake, when none of them care even slightly about me, or what I'm going through..."
"I care."
"You don't really! If you did you would know how much I need this!"
"Why?" Fluttershy asked. This time she did rear up on her hind legs and take his paw in her hoof, trying to draw him down to sit with her. "Why do you need this so much?"
"Because I'm so bored!"
She shook her head. "You get to do Chaos things to my house. You live in a weird thingy that's not even really a place where everything is Chaos. You can do things like this in places nopony lives, any time you want to. Why is it so important to do something to Ponyville?"
"It doesn't have to be Ponyville. It could be Canterlot. Or Manehattan. Or Appleloosa. Or Neighpon, it doesn't even matter, it could be in the griffon kingdoms, it could be in Zebrica, I don't care. But it has to be somewhere that ponies, or some other animal that can talk to me, can see it. Because if it isn't, how do I even know it's real? How do I know I'm not still in a statue, hallucinating that I'm free and spreading chaos, if nopony's there to react? Bad enough that so many of you are so boring and predictable, the imaginary ponies I made up in my head aren't any different from any of you, but if none of you are there, there isn't even a hope that somepony's going to have a reaction I didn't expect!"
"I'm sorry," Fluttershy whispered, horrified. He never really talked about being a statue except to say that it was boring, uncomfortable and he hated it. A few minutes ago he'd talked about plants waiting for rain and it had sounded like he'd been talking about himself, trapped in stone. But this went farther than the pain of being trapped in darkness. It sounded like his imprisonment might have actually damaged Discord's sanity; he wasn't well known for sanity to begin with, and from all Princess Celestia had said it wasn't as if he'd been any less obsessed with spreading chaos before he'd been imprisoned, but if he was seriously questioning whether reality was real unless he had another observer to share it with... that was probably a very bad condition for a being with the power to warp reality to have.
"And it's more than that even. There are so many rules. Rules rules rules, everywhere there are rules! Gravity is a rule, things fall down. Why don't they fall up? Why don't they fall sideways? Fat ponies have a harder time getting up because gravity pulls on them harder, but in water they float! Why can't fat ponies float in air, too? Grass is green, why is that? Why can't it be orange? Leaves can be orange. But only in fall! Why can't they be orange all the time? Why can't they be made of glass? Why does rain always have to be water? Everything is always the same all the time, always following the rules, and I can't stand it! Fluttershy, it... it hurts, to look at the world being so boring, so the same all the time, and it's going to be that way forever and ever and ever and it will never be different and there's no variety, no spice, and I could fix it! I could just reach out and make a tiny tweak and make it better! And nopony will let me!"
"I didn't know..."
"Of course you didn't. You're fine with the boring world, with the rules that never break. All of you are. You're terrified when anything is different. Can you imagine... okay, can you imagine how Rarity would feel if she was stuck in a country where all the ponies wore uniforms? The exact same uniform? All of them, all the time? And when she tried to make an attractive new outfit that looked different, they screamed in terror or threw things at her or tried to turn her into stone?"
"Discord... I'm so sorry that we make you feel this way. It must be so hard for you."
"It is. It's very hard. You can’t even imagine. Every moment that I look at the world, I see it made of patterns, like webs of rules, tying it into place, and I want to break them. I want to reshape the pattern so it doesn’t always look the same. It is soooo boring. Like what if every single book you read had the exact same plot. I want to change it, I want to change it so much! It hurts to look at it and know I have to leave it that way, that I have to leave it boring and always the same. Because ponies will be scared." His voice took on a mocking note, then grew angry again. "Well, why do I care if ponies are scared? Ponies are scared of everything! Ponies maybe need to grow up some! Stop hiding under your beds, you little foals, and embrace some variety in your existences, it's not going to kill you!"
He sighed heavily and finally sat down. "Chaos is beautiful, Fluttershy. It's freedom. It's creativity. It's art. It is the essence of beauty. Why can't ponies see that? Why don't any of them see beauty in chaos?" His voice cracked. "Why do I have to live in a world where I'm the only one who sees it?"
"I'm sorry," Fluttershy said again. "But... I don't want everypony to hate you... I want them to see what I see." She raised her head and a hoof to the rain, and gestured, before sitting next to him. "It is beautiful. It shouldn't be scary. I want them to see it that way... and they won't if you do it now. You, um, you need to try to... maybe if you don't want to make other friends, at least try not to make enemies? Maybe try to get some ponies to think you're ok? Because... this is beautiful. And it would be so sad if you showed it to them, and they didn't understand and were scared, when all you wanted to do was make something nice for them?"
"That's why it's easier to terrorize ponies with chaos," he said dully. "Because if I make something that's intended to please them, and it terrifies them, their reaction ruins everything. Whereas if I make something that's intended to terrify them, and it works, that's hilarious."
"I know it’s harder this way, but... please? For me?"
"Am I supposed to be winning ponies' trust for me or for you?"
"Well... both! Because you would be happier if ponies appreciated your chaos, and I would be happier if ponies appreciated you. I'm not like you, Discord, I'm not okay with nopony agreeing with me about what should be appreciated... actually I guess you just said you're not really okay with it either... but if I have a friend, I want my friends to be friends with each other. I want other ponies to understand why I'm friends with you. I want them to see what I see in you."
"What do you see in me?" he asked sardonically. "I know perfectly well you took up this 'being my friend' business as a strategy to reform me. If there's something you genuinely like about me, aside from the fact that I don't commit acts of unspeakable evil as long as you claim to like me, I would dearly love to know what."
"Um..."
He laughed sharply. "As I thought. You can't actually think of anything, can you?"
"No! I mean yes, I can! I just... um... that question's kind of embarrassing..."
"Oh, surely not. I can hardly imagine you of all ponies having sordidly embarrassing intentions toward me," he said mockingly. Fluttershy felt like her face might burn off.
"No! I don't, I just..." ...think maybe I do, except you wouldn't care because you don't think of me that way and I shouldn't think of you that way because everypony will think I'm even weirder than I am and besides you're a friend so it's just wrong because that's not how you think of me because who would ever even want me... "okay, um, you're funny..."
"I'm also mean when I'm funny. Which you have said, repeatedly, you don't like."
"But you're funny sometimes in a way that isn't mean! Like, like, when I told you you should stop talking about how great it was that the Elements were gone because the reason you were staying good was our friendship anyway and you made yourself tiny. That wasn't mean! Or you made me a parasol just when we got here and it was a giant flower. That was funny, and it wasn't mean. It was actually really nice."
"So I presume you're friends with every comedian in Equestria then?"
"No. You're also fun. Not just funny. Like the time you turned the inside of my house into a bouncy house. Or when you froze the bird bath and made you and me tiny so we could skate on it because I wasn't going to skate with you when it was hurting the animals but I said it was okay to use the bird bath as long as we put it back to water when we were done? And, and you have a lot of energy, you always make everything seem more lively and when you're gone it's just so quiet and I always used to like it nice and peaceful but sometimes now it just feels dull? Like how you feel when you go to a party and you see all your friends and you have fun but then the party ends, and you go home and you’re all alone again? Even if all you're doing is sitting drinking tea, it's like, being around you is always kind of exciting and if you're not being mean to my friends then it's like a party."
"I'm a free-roving one-draconequus party?" Now he sounded amused. "I believe I actually like the sound of that."
"And you're so confident. Sometimes you're a jerk about it, but sometimes you just seem exactly like I wish I could be, like you can be assertive and stand up for yourself and you're never shy and you're almost never scared and when you are usually I'm the only one who can tell? And you really don't care that ponies think you're weird, it doesn't bother you at all, you just wish they would like the same things you like a little bit but you're never sad that they think you're strange? And you know so much! And you talk to me about it like you expect me to understand you, like I'm like Twilight and not just a dumb little pegasus who can't even fly?"
"Oh, you are not a dumb little pegasus, Fluttershy. Believe me."
"And! You think animals are just as good as ponies, like I do. You're biologically a meat eater, I've seen your teeth, but I've never even see you eat a fish. Even Harry my bear friend eats fish, and you have the same parts in you that griffons have and all of them eat meat but you don't. You drink milk and you eat cheese and eggs and I never see you eat hay or oats or other basic pony food so I think maybe you're more like a bear omnivore than a goat omnivore? But you still don't eat meat, and you could, so that means I think that you don't think it's right."
Now Discord looked slightly embarrassed. He shrugged. "I can't very well taunt something if I've just made it my lunch, now can I? Well, I could, but there's chaos and then there's just plain disgusting."
"And, um, you look interesting, and you are interesting, and... and you challenge me to get over my fears, the rest of my friends do it too but even more with you because so much of what you want to show me or do with me might scare me but I know you'll keep me safe and I know you have the power to, so I just, so I just have to make myself believe I can do it because I trust you..."
And because... because I think maybe... maybe I kind of sort of... love you? A little bit? Maybe?
She couldn't say that. She could never say that. She didn't even know if it was true. She hadn't started having weird thoughts like that until today; true, her heart beat faster and she felt excited and more alive every time she saw Discord and she felt disappointed and lonely after he left, and that was kind of what it felt like to have a crush, she'd had enough of them to know... and his fur was so fluffy and soft where it was brown, and so silky and smooth where it was gray, and he was so strong when she cuddled up against him, he was practically a god and even without his magic he was stronger than almost anypony and if her friends weren't around for him to bait and torment she felt so safe with him, and yet he was so wild and unpredictable and maybe she shouldn't even trust him as much as she did, but she did...
And he was older than her to a ludicrous degree and he wasn't even a pony and there was no way he could possibly want a tiny weak little magic-less mortal like her so it didn't matter. It didn't matter if she had a crush, it didn't matter if he was beautiful when he was actually happy and adorable when he was sleeping, it didn't matter that she'd been having weird thoughts since he brought her here and there was that one moment where she wanted to kiss him... none of it mattered, because he didn't feel the same way and it would make their friendship totally awkward if he knew. It was better to just stay friends, that was all.
Discord sighed. "Well, if you're willing to sing my praises like this, how can I deny you anything?" he said, but he didn't sound happy about it. More like defeated. "I won't bring Ponyville my light rain until you tell me they can appreciate it. And I won't make it rain fish in Canterlot, either. Even though I would really, truly, dearly love to make it rain fish in Canterlot."
Fluttershy blinked at him. "Why fish?"
"Why not fish?" He smirked. "Oh, come on, Fluttershy, can't you see it? Fish swimming in air like it's water, wiggling and squirming their way down from the sky like they're swimming to the ground rather than falling, making detours to swim past ponies or explore buildings or eat other fish... wouldn't that be priceless?"
"Well, it would be kind of funny... but then all the fish would pile up in the streets? And wouldn't they die? And, um, Princess Celestia might get mad..."
"Oh, there was a day, once upon a time, when Celestia would have appreciated a good prank like fish rain," Discord said. He sighed deeply again. "But I suppose those days are long gone."
"Discord?"
"What?"
She hugged him fiercely. "Thank you. Thank you for keeping your chaos under control for ponies, even though it's really hard for you. I know nopony else really understands how hard it is, I know I didn't until you told me, and I appreciate it so much that you're working so hard on it. I promise you it won't be forever. Someday you'll be able to make nice, beautiful chaos like your light rain anytime you want and ponies won't be scared anymore. We can work together to make that happen, okay?"
"Okay," he said in a tone of amused resignation, and hugged her back. "Tell you what, can I bring the light rain by your cottage one of these days? Maybe you could invite Twilight over to see it, she'd probably think it was fascinating."
"Sure!"
The rain was dying down. Plants that had grown enormous, packing themselves full of rainwater, now rolled themselves up, sealing the water away to make it through however many years it would be without water next time. Flowers were wilting, petals falling away in the last rain drips. "I'd better get the butterflies out of here before the sun comes back out," Discord said. "They won't manage very long in desert sunlight."
"Do you think they would be okay in the Everfree Forest?"
"Only one way to find out, isn't there?" He snapped his talon and the butterflies vanished. "Go out and visit them for me tomorrow, see how they're doing."
"Where will you be?"
"Oh, you know. Around. Doing chaos stuff." He grinned cheekily at her, but his eyes slid away when she tried to meet them. "So I suppose there's things you need to be doing?"
"Yes, it's almost evening, I think? I need to feed the animals."
"Well, then. I'll drop you off home, and then I shall be off, on my own travails." He picked her up, held her up to his head and looked her in the eye. "Thank you, Fluttershy. I... don't say that very often to you, do I."
"No, but I know you mean it."
"Well, sometimes I have to say it. So, thank you." He set her back down. "See you in a few days?"
"Sure thing!"
Discord snapped his talon, and she was home again. Alone, in the quiet. Surrounded by her animals, but they weren't Discord.
Fluttershy decided that after she fed them, she would go into town and see Pinkie Pie. If she was feeling a little lonely and down because leaving Discord's presence was like going home from a party, then going to see Pinkie should be exactly what she needed.
It is a nice Fluttercord bit, especially since a lot of the time I read about them, it's a background "It happened behind the scenes" sort of thing.
Now a true test for the little yellow pony, and one will wonder how well she can hold her temper once she finds the state of the one she loves...
or
I really enjoyed this fanfic! Any time I see a fic with real effort put into developing thoughts and feelings of the characters I tend to enjoy. You lightly teased as Fluttershy's feelings without having it dive off a cliff of love and I liked that. It came off much more natural than "What is this feeling LOVE ME!" Great job. ^_^
THIS IS SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO AMAZING
OHMYGOSH OHMYGOSH OHMYGOOOOOSH
i sweeeeaaar i cant wait O______O
i love this SOOOOOOOO MUCH
rrr thannk you so much ^^
i try to not explode while im waiting :DD
This is a fantastic read. I enjoy it a lot. I must now check out some other of your stories. First though one question.
What is. scried?
Just know that every dislike here is just because it's a Fluttercord fic.
They probably haven't even read it!
What a lovely story! I enjoyed it from start to finish!!! Kudos to you.
this is the best story ever
You are the best writer ever! Please write the mane 6 reaction to discord letter as soon as possible
This is a wonderful, charming, <many other superlatives> story interlude. I love the way you build character.
So thanks for that.
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It's misspelled, I should fix it. It's scryed, not scried (the past tense of scry, to use magic to observe, to view or search with magic.)
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Oh, man, I hate rabid shippers. I wonder if that's responsible for the downvotes on my Discord/Celestia stuff too?
I can't really comprehend it because I am not a die-hard shipper of anything; I go where the characters take me. I like Discord with Fluttershy, but I also like him with Celestia, Pinkie Pie, or Twilight, *if* it's well written, which it very often isn't. But even ships that totally don't make sense to me, I would never downvote on the basis of the ship! How can anyone be that rabidly fanatical about fictional characters from a little girls' cartoon hooking up? I mean, it's never going to happen in canon no matter what, so why be an ass about it?
Thanks for the words of encouragement; it's helpful to have a clue where the downvotes are coming from, since it's not like any of them bothered to leave me a comment or anything. :-(
3741350
I haven't read this yet, and I normally reserve my likes and dislikes for after I've read a fic, but if people are downvoting this for shipping war reasons, then I'm going to like this in advance.
Screw those peeps!
The summary alone has me greatly intrigued and is something I could readily see happening. I also like what I've seen of your comments regarding Discord head canon, so I think it's safe to assume I'm going to enjoy this.
Plus, I am open to any pairing where the author put some effort into figuring out how they think the pairing would come together and pan out. I feel that assuming only one pairing for a character is plausible, when no canon pairings are even available, is futile and limiting. Even in the case of a canon pairing, I don't mind, as long as the author took some time to make the non-canon pairing work (although in many cases this can be the off-set of some awkward tension within a fandom, which I prefer to avoid.)
I've been in way too many fandoms to get out of sorts just because someone else likes and/or writes a different pairing. Same for head canon territory, though that can depend on how thoughtful it seems. Besides, if I don't like something, I just don't read it. Although, if I feel as if I should point out some of my views on the subject, I will do so.
Edit: So, I have read this, and I loved it. I should have written a post shortly afterward, while my thoughts were coherent, but instead I read most of the other stuff relating to this one. Upvoted all of those, but was striving to read lots, so didn't stop to comment. May try and comment tomorrow on this, if nothing else. Most of the time I put more effort into leaving a reply when I read something. Sometimes there is nothing to say, but this will definitely need further comment by me, that much is for sure.
If nothing else, you've convinced me to try and read damn near all of your work, so take that as my main commentary, since I won't get one on every fic.
Although, one comment above all others, this needs a cover. I think people may overlook it without one, which is a real shame.
3763748
I can't draw, so almost none of my stuff has a cover.
I'd love to find someone to draw this; I don't want to use a generic Fluttercord image because the imagery of the light rain is so powerful, it seems almost misleading to use a picture that isn't specific to the story. But since I can't draw, little hope of that. :-)
3763761
Ahhh. Yeah, I understand that. I thought I knew of a good candidate to ask permission from. It had such a perfect feel to it that I initially thought it was actually about this story, but the imagery wasn't similar when I looked at it again. I still think it's fitting for the sense of wonder, but if that's what you're after, then it isn't good enough.
If there is a group about getting fanart for fanfiction, then I would recommend shoving this in there and crossing fingers!
(Technically, I can draw, but I couldn't do the imagery justice. At best, I could maybe make a semi-decent sketch of the characters with no background or a crappy one. Maybe. Or else a bad abstract involving the rain of light.)
Okay, so, hopefully all of my thoughts are in order now. I keep getting sidetracked, but that's my fault.
I love this. I was happy that I didn't need to read the other stuff to know what was happening here. You may want to mention that in the description. It can easily stand on its own, though reading the prequels and side-stories adds to it and it adds to them.
The imagery is fantastic. The scene in Saddle Arabia is beyond glorious. I know exactly why you want fanart for the cover and I desperately hope someone provides it. I think not having a cover may be part of why this has been overlooked and it's a real shame. That scene alone should be enough to hook anybody.
I loved the various head canons that you put into this. The lead-up, tying into the Princess Twilight Sparkle premiere was pretty much what I thought as well. You put in some stuff I had already considered, plus a bunch of stuff I'd never thought of!
There's too much to list, honestly, but the memorable highlights include his view on all animals, his diet (in certain respects), and the way ponies treat the world around them (their humanistic oversight handled in what I thought was a realistic way.) I also liked the idea about the rock farming. I've heard a few other ideas, but I loved how that tied into the earth pony magic and your overall concept (while hinting that Pinkie's family are vaguely akin to the Amish? Not sure that was it exactly, but it amused me even if I got the wrong idea.)
I also loved the hint of a crush and it's a real shame that the events in the following stories will ruin that potential. I haven't read them yet, but given what I know from the descriptions, I suspect you're correct and it will be hard, if not impossible, to proceed thereafter. You made her realization incredibly sweet and I loved the imagery that stirred her affection for him.
That said, I think I can see what some people might have disliked about this story. A lot of the beginning is really just exposition. It is necessary and interesting, because it explains a lot about their perspectives and what happened in the episodes, but it goes on for a long time and several sections don't get broken up by a reminder of the world around them. It's a little like talking heads in comics during that time. While I had little trouble reading the dialog, which was well-done, I felt it could have used some editing, maybe, to address those issues. There was also some repetition here and there, but not a lot. The same issue happens again in Saddle Arabia, and while these are all important conversations, and I realize that not a lot would be happening during each discussion, I feel that would help.
I respect that these two characters can be verbose, and in general I loved their dialog, but although Fluttershy naturally hems and haws when nervous, that was also a minor issue. After a certain point, I think her insistence would reaffirm her assertions and her confidence would tighten up some of her overly questioning tone, as well as her hesitancy. You did slide into that a little bit, but not as much as I anticipated. This may just be my personal perspective, but as long as she feels comfortable about her stance and manages to build up some steam, she can become more determined while trying to convince a friend.
I'm also uncertain Fluttershy is necessarily afraid of everything, but that's a minor quibble. She certainly is easily frightened and for that reason she is the perfect pony to explain that kind of reaction, and the reasons behind them, to Discord. Overall, this felt like a really great exploration of both their characters and I loved her analysis of him.
I don't buy that she feels no one would ever love her. We all have our depressive and self-defeating moments, and she does have self-esteem issues. However, I think maybe it could have been hinted at that she knew this was an unrealistic assessment, but she couldn't help thinking that way. As in, she's working on getting rid of that mindset, but it's hard? Otherwise, I would have found this more plausible in season 1 maybe, but not season 4. Fluttershy has had a lot of growth in that direction, and while none of the episodes have expressed this openly, so there's no telling what is truly canon, I feel that she may have realized she's worthy of being cared about. Maybe not utterly, but she at least knows she's good enough to have a number of pony friends who genuinely care about her. She also has the animals, who apparently want to comfort her and help her overcome her shortcomings.
As for Discord, I think my only uncertainty regarding his character is something I picked up on a bit less from this and through-out the other stories. I think it was strongly emphasized here, but maybe more so in the others. I'm not sure how I feel about his view on patterns. It's the aspect of order that he can't stand, and while it makes sense, it would suggest that there is no way for him to really live in the ordinary world. There is also the issue of time... how does it flow for him? I imagine just as unevenly as it does for us (it goes slow we want it to speed up and flies by when we're having fun), but how does this apply to the patterns? Do all the patterns have to be tampered with for his comfort's sake, or can he get by with only some at a time? Is breaking all the patterns like having too much of a good thing or the ultimate relief? Would spreading it out be better, so that he has a few broken patterns for a time that he can savor, then there will be others to go after, before he needs to return to those first new patterns, because they need to be broken again?
I fear this may be a more abstract concept than it initially seems, and while it explains his feelings, it is hard to relate to, in some respects. I'm not sure if that was the intent, but I feel it makes him quite alien, in a way. There is no tangible analogy that I can readily put my finger on, though I suspect it's akin to pegasi flying and unicorns using magic. It's one of those things we can only understand distantly and never truly know, other than how really good writers might be able to envision it. That's not to suggest that your capability is lacking, but I don't think it's a readily available characteristic, unless it's just akin to any given unexplainable compulsion? I'm not sure, and that's why it makes me uncertain how I feel.
I like it as a description, but the more I think about it, the more it seems like a horrifying curse, rather than a natural state of being. Or was that the point? I hate not knowing... I feel like I'm missing something obvious and I probably am.
I really did like your suggestion for how being turned to stone might have potentially driven him insane. I'm normally not a fan of 'crazy' in Discord, because most people use it as a throw-away adjective with no meaning or as a dismissive for his thought processes. I do think being trapped could create some serious problems, but most stories I've looked at haven't really delved into exactly why or how. Here it was presented in such a simple way that was absolutely perfect, traumatic, and fairly accurate. Major kudos for that!
Sorry if I got anything confused with one of the other stories. I hope I didn't make too many mistakes, but these are pretty much my thoughts.
Hrmmm, I think that might be about it. I'm eager to read the other related stories, and at some point I'll read the Q-related series.
3768600
Thank you for the really detailed commentary!
I tend to be really wordy. It is probably my biggest failing as an author. The characters talk and talk and talk. :-) So I can definitely see that. I agree with you in retrospect that Fluttershy should know that her self-assessment isn't rational, and maybe she does; it's the moment of being confronted with "oh my gosh I have a crush on this person and they're right here and I could say something" that I think crushes the life out of her self-esteem and sends her spiraling back into "how could anyone ever want me?" It's not a rational feeling at all, and I'm sure she does know it, but I already have the characters go off on too many side tangents.
Oddly enough, Discord's thing with patterns comes from my personal experience, although not being a near-omnipotent being who draws power and comfort from Chaos, I'm not nearly as bad about it as he is. :-) I get really, really frustrated with repetitive fictional tropes, with political ideas that aren't actually connected to each other being perpetually linked, with concepts in human behavior and culture that keep repeating themselves that I feel don't have to and could link up in very different ways. When confronted with these repetitive ideas I feel an overwhelming urge to re-make them, to twist them into a different shape and broadcast them. I'm a writer, that's within my power, so I extrapolated that to Discord. He doesn't just see repetition and boredom in ideas, but in the structure of reality itself, because he has the power to reshape that the same way I have the power to reshape and rebroadcast an idea.
I don't tend to see Discord as a silly prankster (though he does that, obviously); I see him as someone who wanted to be a revolutionary, but was too disconnected from everyone else around him to succeed at that. Discord would probably be a lot happier, and lot less compelled to try to break everything, if he had an appreciative audience for his limited rewrites of reality, if he felt emotionally connected to the sentient beings he shares his existence with, and if he felt that his ideas were being taken seriously. Fluttershy is his first step toward getting the first two, but he's going to need more than one friend to connect with and share his interests with, and at least one of them needs to be someone he can fully intellectually engage with, someone he can actually have a philosophical argument with. At one point Celestia was that for him, but due to circumstances beyond either of their control, they were separated for some time, and he totally lost his shit while she was gone -- he had no ponies or any sentient beings he cared about or who cared about him, no one understood him or even tried, everyone around him reacted with fear or disgust to both his efforts to change the patterns of reality and his efforts to change the patterns of society... so he became obsessive about breaking and changing *everything*, all the time, in as many different ways as he could, and by the time Celestia found him again he was too far gone to come back. (They sometimes describe it as "he went insane", but it wasn't mwahahaha mine is an evil laugh insane... it was more like severe OCD combined with social alienation, and he's always been somewhat manic but he probably went into full-blown clinical mania at some point.)
So I think he could live more or less happily in the real world, or as happily as anyone who thinks stirring up trouble is fun and who has revolutionary ideas that most people can't even comprehend would ever be able to, but he needs more, and he's not patient. (And I can't blame him; he's been waiting a *long* time.) Eventually, he needs a wider range of friends than just Fluttershy, and probably a position of advisory power (no one should ever give him real political power, and he doesn't even really want it, but if Celestia's smart, she'll co-opt him back into her stable society by giving him a formal high-ranking-but-not-in-chain-of-command advisory position in her government.) I see a number of potential directions he could get these things from, but he has to survive what he's going through first. :-)
3768850
On Discord having political power:
It's interesting that you should mention that. I have been thinking about the time that he ruled the world, and it's occurred to me that he was less a hands-on Evil Overlord than a super-powerful Psychopathic Manchild who played games at random and could not be stopped from doing so. This increases the story possibilities for stuff set in the Age of Discord, because it means that a lot of stuff still went on independent of him, with Discord being more a random force of nature than a strategically-thinking participant from the point of view of others.
3768923
Absolutely. When I get to it, I have a chapter I want to call "Anarchy, That I Run". I think he started out "ruling" by trying to destroy the very concept of political power, except the fact that he had the real power to warp reality and was using it to force ponies to do what he said kind of shot his ideology in the foot, and then at some point he lost interest in even pretending he was trying to run a government of any kind and just let ponies do whatever they wanted, except when he felt like making a rule (for example, in Discord in Hell he says that he used to throw ponies in jail for being stupid, but the jails were made of crackers so they could generally gnaw their way out. So he'd invent stupid, impractical laws that only he ever enforced, and he enforced them very erratically.) Nobody groaned under Discord's tyrannous hoof; it was more like he was so deliberately incompetent at running a government that he made it impossible for anyone else to keep a stable government running, so society descended into anarchy and stayed there (not the kind of anarchy that anarchists approve of, which is self-governing, but the kind of anarchy where usually the situation stablizes into warlords acquiring power and creating islands of semi-stability that they rule brutally, except that Discord would show up and turn the warlord's horn to cheese or make all the pegasus enforcers fly upside down, so in fact no one was ever able to create a stable power base anywhere. Which made it real easy for Celestia and Luna to take back control once they defeated him.)
I think Discord left democratic or semi-anarchic collectives alone unless they got too big. So there would have been villages all over the place where the people were more or less ruling themselves, fairly stably, but they'd have had to defend themselves from other villages or predators or criminals because there was no central government to enforce anything. And approximately half the time you could get what you needed if you begged Discord for it, so ponies didn't generally *starve*, but they couldn't grow crops worth a damn with the sun and the moon and the seasons being totally random, so if Discord decided that all you needed for good nutrition was pie, your entire town would probably be eating nothing but pie for half a year.
3768850
Very fascinating.
I tend to be wordy as well, and have to make a habit of trying to cut back. In general, I love dialog. I love reading it and I love writing it, whether I'm good at it or not.
I seriously think that even if you didn't edit any of their conversations for length, a little break now and then to show their physical reactions/actions might help without destroying the pacing, hopefully. The dialog provides enough tone to get the idea of how they feel and who is talking, but some narrative mention of their existence, beyond the said tag, will keep the 'talking head' syndrome at bay and break up the discussion just enough to keep eyes from glazing over. On the whole, it wasn't a huge issue for me, but it did affect me a bit and I could easily see others becoming impatient, though perhaps I'm only assuming things.
I think this might be a necessary tangent though. Plus, I think tweaking or adding a sentence or two might be enough to get that idea across without breaking the flow or adding too much to an already full narrative. I say that because I love Fluttershy and I love your portrayal of her here, but that part kind of startled me a bit. It has bearing and it feels right when you point that idea out to me, but as it is now, it can play into the cliche if it isn't examined a little closer.
This. All of this. (Sorry, the whole thing really, but I didn't want to quote absolutely everything.)
I agree a hundred percent! I think maybe what you could do is, during his discussion of patterns, try and suggest a few of the more revolutionary-minded ones. I may just need to go back and reread that section, so forgive me if it's there and I should, but I don't feel like doing that at the moment. Feel free to point out anything that I forgot and which applies.
One of the reasons that the patterns felt too abstract was because his examples focused too much on the non-essential possibilities. Having a few that are actually world-changing (as the point about treating all animals the same would do and why he likes the rain of light) and tying it to the pattern-breaking speaks volumes about him and how his actions and thoughts are not only very important to keep safe but to take seriously.
I think you did hint that his little expeditions into chaos with Fluttershy where enough to tide him over, but tying back into that and how he really wants to change the world at large for the greater good would make this downright amazing. He would still face opposition and the ponies aren't entirely wrong about disagreeing with him (grey scale of debate), but it adds whole levels to his character and to pony society in a way that makes me very, very happy.
Of course part of his reasoning is selfish, but that's how this sort of thing works. We want to change things for ourselves, as well as others. It would also explain how he's not really out to change all patterns purely for the sake of rearranging patterns and he can be happy with how a pattern is, at least for some time. For a capricious immortal that may vary, depending on what it is; I assume anything significant he'd leave alone for a lot longer than something as simple as what the grass tastes like.
...Now I want a scene with him and Fluttershy grazing on some delicious, altered grass. He might have some trouble chewing it, but he's chaos... he can alter his teeth or make it turned into a liquid in his mouth when he wants to swallow it or whatever.
Ahem, that tangent aside, this makes him quite easy to relate to. He's scattered but driven, and though he is very different from the ponies in many ways, there is a common ground that they, and the readers quite naturally, can comprehend. Plus, I've always felt the creative analogy (artist, sculptor, writer, dress-maker, anything) worked well for explaining some of his motives. Adding a truly revolutionary side ties the package together in a big, beautiful bow. I've seen a few other writers do it, I think, but it's a lot less common than it should be, and that makes me sad. (Hrmm, probably most of it is expressed as him presenting a living satire about society. I really need to read more fiction, but I'm sure it exists beyond what I've actually read so far. I want to think some descriptions in my 'read later' pile had hints of that.)
I do think he was a villain before, but that's only because he wasn't paying attention to the consequences or outright ignoring them, which is really the only reason the ponies hated him so much.
I'm pretty sure that's also why Pinkie wasn't the one to reform Discord. His actions struck close to home for her and she couldn't understand why he wasn't being conscientious, the way she was. I think she was trying to address that and shame him into understanding her mindset, but Fluttershy being kind about it was the one to get through to him, because she was able to look past her irritation and explain it better to him. Being the one who does take everyone else's feelings into account and knowing how it works is why. Pinkie recognizes this as well, hence her refusal to prank Fluttershy, but I don't think Pinkie can express it properly, because it's not something she has analyzed in the same depth. So Pinkie loved it when his chaos didn't seem to be hurting anyone (hence the gravy boat and the chocolate rain), but she promptly became upset and aligned herself with the perspective of her other friends when it did seem troubling. (Although I think she was using the whip cream as an excuse for why she couldn't condone his actions, because she didn't know how else to explain her opinion.)
Maybe I'm reading too much into that though.
3768923
Though it depends on the author's head canon, I think that's pretty accurate. I doubt that Discord was big on enforcing much of anything, other than his position and his own safety. We don't know exactly how he treated the ponies, but I'm betting that what he did after he was freed, the first time, is pretty much what he did before. The flashback with Celestia and Luna hints at much the same.
Discord's only crime was that anything he did to change reality had repercussions that he may not have been aware of or else he just wasn't interested in examining the consequences, since they so rarely affected him directly. Even a small change can make a huge difference, so every change he made was just going to make their lives harder in some way. He may have unintentionally made some things easier too, since I don't think his goal was to make anyone else suffer. Trying to bargain with him probably depended on what mood he was in and what he thought of their request, but I doubt that he intentionally did more than embarrassment and laughing at their expense. Mostly because he knew that they didn't accept him and he needed some sort of social interaction.
3768987
Indeed, indeed! I can believe that utterly! And I think that probably is how it panned out. I think that's especially intriguing that he was only concerned about someone trying to usurp him, because he was trying to instill anarchy overall. He just went about it wrong and kept them from forming what was necessary in that situation for them to carry on, since there needs to be some structure to their lives, even if his is capable of having none at all (it helps that he didn't view himself as having any dependents. It's the ties that bind which create structure, and without anyone to care about, he had none.)
On the whole, while it's really far more philosophical than I fully comprehend and there's no telling how accurate anything on wikipedia or even within philosophy itself is, I think Discord's rule was very much a case of imposed and fixed liminality. That's not to say his rule followed this idea exactly as presented or that he set out to do that. The concept resonates with me as appropriate because he was formerly a trickster who could not find a way to integrate himself into their society for various reasons beyond the outlining of the archetype mentioned here. (He is by necessity somewhat alien to pony-kind. I think part of that is his species and his capabilities, but even more of it inherently stems from his upbringing and his past, since he has proven that he can interact with them on a deeper level, through friendship.) Of course, his steps towards friendship are his steps away from the traditional trickster figure and his own liminal state. I would for that matter guess that being trapped in stone for a century didn't help in that regard, but trying to make him understand what he was missing certainly did help.
I also think the idea of him as offering charity at times is quite possible. I really think he may have grown to hate them for not accepting him or his ideals in any way, but I don't think he was outright malicious, unless it was clear that they were outright malicious towards him. And even then, I'm pretty sure he didn't act without proof. Discord has very little to fear, so his only concerns would be towards a genuine threat, such as the Elements of Harmony.
I'm curious, btw. I'm sure your opinion is presented within one of your fics or blog-posts somewhere, but how do you rationalize his lack of perception during the end of The Return of Harmony Part 2? His only reason for losing that fight was because he didn't recognize the threat that they had become again. Otherwise, he would have reacted differently, I think.
3770717
Yeah, this is a problem I have in general. I usually end up writing the dialogue and then going back through and trying to add physical actions, but it's hard for me, because most of the time I hear the story rather than seeing it. I have to work to picture what's going on.
I definitely do not like to play into cliches, so I'll look at it and see if there's somewhere I can insert that concept. :-)
I think he's kind of given up in despair about doing anything actually revolutionary anymore. He can snap his fingers and change the laws of physics, but he's learned the hard way over time that in order to change the laws of society, he needs to convince ponies that he's right, and he has never managed to successfully do so. (It probably does not help that the ponies who cared about him, considered him family, and were willing to listen to him without automatically trying to run away in terror or dismissing everything out of hand, were the ones who were most personally invested in the status quo. I have a line in Be Discreet where Celestia and her father are talking about Discord's revolutionary ideals, and Celestia remembers Discord arguing in favor of democracy, in a context where it's obvious she thinks the idea is totally ridiculous and would lead to anarchy. In fact Celestia's father out and out says that he's in favor of Celestia's relationship with Discord because the closer Discord's emotional ties to the ruling family are, the less likely he is to start a revolution and overthrow them all. :-)) He's bitter about what ponies have done and are doing to the world, but I don't think he believes he can change it anymore. This may change in the future, but he's been "reformed", accepted into pony society again in any sense at all, for too short a time for him to have started believing he might be able to have an influence this time.
That, and he genuinely does enjoy messing with heads. Which if he's decided to be a responsible member of society, basically just makes him a troll, but when he's decided that he's going to let absolute power corrupt him absolutely and not restrain his behavior for any reason other than he feels like it, he's quite capable of psychological sadism. I don't think he wants to cause permanent suffering (generally, he doesn't want to cause permanent anything) or physical pain, although he will do stuff to terrorize his enemies completely or destroy their resistance psychologically so that he doesn't actually have to harm them to stop them; but he was totally capable of mind-controlling sweet little doormats into (as he put it) "hilariously cruel jerks" and pompous twits into twitching bundles of inferiority because "when they wake up and realize what they've done, their reactions are just priceless". His personality alteration stunts were never permanent but if he thought it would be funny to make you think you were a tree, you'd probably be standing there with your hooves sticking out like branches for a day or two before you snapped out of it, and your family would probably be hysterical with worry for you by that time.
I don't like to whitewash the guy; based on what we saw in Return of Harmony, he'll commit random body alterations or mental alterations on ponies and non-ponies alike, he thinks upsetting ponies is hilarious, and the things he changes do not have to be for the better in any conceivable way. However, we have no evidence from Return of Harmony that any of those changes accomplished with magic would have been permanent, and the whole concept of "chaos" suggests they wouldn't have been (my theory is that the whole plot against the Elements was a plot against Twilight herself, that he didn't use magic to break her precisely *because* his magic isn't permanent, but turning her friends against her would break her somewhat fragile faith in friendship itself, possibly permanently, and by the time the other Elements recovered Twilight would have given up hope.) So he's a selfish jerk who likes to treat living things as action figures he can play with, and he's desperate for attention and he's learned that negative attention is the only kind he can get... but he's not "evil", per se. Quite capable of malice, but not driven by it. So yeah, he was pretty thoroughly a villain by the time Celestia and Luna took him down, but he was never irredeemable (and if Luna hadn't gone berserk herself, Celestia might have had the "let Discord out and reform him" idea centuries earlier; she probably didn't plan to seal him away for all eternity when she did it, but there would have been no way she could re-seal him if she let him loose after she lost her connection to the Elements.) He was mostly just totally selfish and inconsiderate, with a side order of liking to make ponies mad or upset and to stir up conflict.
I like that. I had planned to write a Pinkie and Discord thing for this universe because I need to set up everyone's relationships all over again; I did it in Next of Kin to Chaos already, but Discord as Q is not quite the same character, and events in Princess Twilight Sparkle don't tie out with what I've been setting up in that arc, so I have to retrace that ground for *this* universe. Kind of annoying but necessary. :-) So this is helpful.
Very interesting passage. I would not personally have identified figures such as Stalin or Hitler as tricksters, and I think the writer of that article has a very negative view of the trickster archetype, but it's true that tricksters are outsiders, that they live in the liminal state, and that it's to their interest to expand that state to others because it's where their comfort zone is, and all of that applies very well to Discord. He's consciously *identified* himself with the concept of disharmony, after all. I think Discord will always be Trickster but that that is not always as negative as the article presents; Coyote generally acted more toward the benefit of humanity than against it, Anansi and Loki had wives and kids, and Prometheus is so closely linked to humanity's benefactor he's not even identified as a trickster half the time, but he stole fire from the gods to give it to humans and tricked the gods into taking really crappy sacrifices from humans so humans could keep the good stuff, which totally puts him in the category of Trickster. He screwed over his own kind repeatedly for the benefit of humanity, and got punished for it very harshly. Discord wants to be Prometheus but I think in the end the best he's gonna do is Coyote.
I haven't worked that out for this universe, as to whether it's any different than in Next of Kin to Chaos. In that one, Discord says the problem was that he was so convinced that his plan would work, it blinded him to the fact that it obviously hadn't because he simply wasn't paying any attention. This is consistent with him being Q, since in that series, Discord's antics in modern Equestria all take place in roughly the same time period as the first three seasons to TNG, where, among other things, Q puts a half-Betazoid and an android on trial for the crimes of humanity, and then sets up a test for humanity that the half-Betazoid is instrumental to solving, using her non-human powers. So Q is canonically being really, really careless during this period of his life, and setting his life in Equestria post-Luna's return during this time period makes it make sense that he underestimated Twilight, he didn't understand how mortals think or how hard she would fight for her friendships, and he was just plain being careless.
In this universe... I don't yet know. Lack of understanding ponies and the concept of friendship plays into it, certainly. (Discord is sincere when he says he's never had a friend. Celestia and Luna were more like family -- he was in love with Celestia from the day they met, but they were kids so it was non-sexual and she got him more or less adopted by her dad -- and he has literally never been close to any pony aside from his quasi-family and his teacher. The idea that you meet someone new, as an adult, and they become someone you care about intensely, but not someone you live with and join your life to as if they are family, is completely alien to him, but he wants it now that he thinks he can have it.) He's not detail-oriented, and I think his own preconceptions of what's supposed to happen can get in his way as much as anyone else's can, but I'd like to not just retread "wasn't paying attention" completely; the fact that the two versions of Discord have different backstories and different motivations means that I'm trying to not just apply the same reasons why they did canonical things to both of them indiscriminately. (Though I have a hard time imagining *any* version of Discord not perceiving "Keep Calm and Flutter On" as a psychological battle with Fluttershy that he lost, except that he won by losing.)
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Ahh, I see. I wish I had a helpful suggestion, but I'm afraid I don't. When in doubt, I tend to add things like idle gestures and facial expressions, though I can't say if that's a good thing. I can't always visualize exactly how they look at certain points, and I fear my additions end up a bit generic at times, which might not be any better than none at all.
Fair enough. I think if you could add a hint of all that into this story, it'd really sing!
Preach it, Sistah! I totally, absolutely, utterly agree with you.
My only problem is that people seem to correlate villain with irredeemable, even if the character is redeemable, so I kind of hate to use the term in discussions about them. At the same time, if I don't use the word villain, people tend to think I'm cutting him too much slack and that I don't understand how awful he was. Of course, I probably do that to a certain extent, I am biased towards Discord, but I realize the ponies had a very good reason for hating him and putting a stop to what he was doing in the past and the present. And while I'm willing to explain it, to understand his POV better, I'm not trying to excuse his actions.
And then there are people who don't seem to understand why anyone is sympathetic towards him, but there's just no pleasing those folks.
Well, it took me by surprise when Pinkie Pie reacted the way that she did in Keep Calm and Princess Twilight, but after mulling it over for a long while, that's what I came up with and I think it makes sense. There's also some possibility that she holds grudges, but I don't think so. I think it's more likely that Pinkie recognized the similarities that she shared with Discord. Sometimes coming from a similar perspective, but responding differently, can be what infuriates us the most. If they can see eye to eye though, I'm sure they'd be good friends too!
Sorry, I don't mean to keep agreeing, but you're right. Many of these tricksters had their shortcomings and their cruel moments, but they had their good moments too. Loki was probably the most sympathetic of the Norse pantheon, in some instances. He was forced to help out in one instance where the gods were flat out jerks, such as tricking the dude who was building their walls, just so they didn't have to pay him, but Loki wasn't always nice either. Baldur, for instance, though really, it's like begging for trouble when mom asks most of the world not to harm you...
Prometheus was probably the nicest one, though I really can't remember anything especially terrible that Anansi did, other than trying to keep all the wisdom of the world and getting called out by his son for being dumb about it.
I think we love trickster characters, but they do get a bad rep, in part because they tend to be so mutable and aren't always the hero. Um, but now I'm rambling, sorry...
I think being overconfident is a valid train of thought though. And it seems to be how the writers handle most of the villains in the show.
I think maybe your idea about his actual plan being to break Twilight, and her friends being unable to bring her around when their discordance wore off, is probably instrumental. The idea that his spell wasn't permanent is about the only thing that can explain why he didn't pay close attention to the fact they weren't grey any more. I think after that, it's less paying attention to details and sheer overconfidence at work. He assumed his ploy had succeeded, based on prior evidence, and he took too long to recognize his mistake.
It's about all I can think of myself. Careless is a good one, but yeah, it's probably better not to repeat the idea exactly at least.
Without the potential for impermanence, which I'll be honest and admit I hadn't considered before (it makes sense, given chaos, but since we never got the chance to see it happen, it never occurred to me), I don't think his downfall made much sense. I just sort of accepted it and moved on, but it was one of those things that kind of bothered me before.
Which is why I asked. Your head canons have mostly aligned with my own, so I was hoping to pick your brain a little.
I think that's because it's an undeniable truth. There is no other way to view that.
Whew! Sorry these are so long.
I feel dumb. Something I forgot to mention in my first comment... it's really more of a nitpick, but it suddenly came back to me.
I think it's better to substitute Neighponese with Eastern, since Neighpon is only one country, but that style of dragon is spread across a much wider area. It's also the most obvious opposite, which is the entire purpose of that paragraph (to illustrate the differences.)
This...is one of the most amazing fics with Discord and 'Shy I have read to date!!! Excellent! If you continued it in a sequel or another one-shot it would be a blast!
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There is actually a sequel. Unfortunately it's an entirely different tone, because shortly after this encounter with Fluttershy, Discord went to another universe to wreak entertaining havoc where he wouldn't upset Fluttershy by doing it, picked the wrong one, and was taken captive by some very, very dark alternate versions of the Element Bearers. Elements of Opposition deals with Fluttershy, Twilight, etc, going to the alternate universe to rescue Discord from their own evil counterparts. So while this story is rather light and fluffy, the continuation... is not.
4126153 I do not really care if it is dark. (I have actually started reading it already ) Thanks for letting me know anyway.
Please, update it soon then!!! I cannot wait for our heroes to face their counterparts!!!
I find your take on Discord very fascinating. You put great detail into so much, and it really makes you think. I really like when Discord can go from a goofball to being serious, and him and Fluttershy are really great here. They talk about so much, and it's nice to see how much their friendship has grown where they can do just that. Also the crush is an adorable touch, just seeing her realize it.
Honestly, I had an idea pop into my head once upon a time about Discord being worried that all of what has happened is nothing more than a manifestation he created while still encased in stone. Because Discord is still the spirit of chaos, so his powers going beyond physical and becoming mental images for his sake isn't an impossible idea. Not to mention how a thousand years in stone can break someone, which is something I feel isn't discussed too often. While he does come across as... "crazy" only in the sense that he's just being Discord, I still don't think people realize how badly effected Discord could actually be. He said it himself, he could hear everything, meaning he lived life for a thousand years in absolute silence and stillness. Surely that's bound to break someone in some way.
Also, just about everything Discord discusses in regards to chaos, especially like this line:
It really puts his thoughts into a frightening perspective, as well as somewhat understandable. He has unlimited powers and a sort of desire he has to perform with them. Not even a desire, more like a need. However, the very idea of change is terrifying to ponies, and they'll dismiss it as something that will create trouble. They didn't have the experience of light rain to see that chaos isn't just trouble or destruction, but also beauty and art.
Without any means to properly release his magic, he's fighting back these temptations that turned him to stone in the first place. And without the ponies respecting chaos, and him not trusting ponies, it's a process that could require slow baby steps where Discord needs to take the first step (well, we're gonna be a while...). He's essentially trapped in a small box - cardboard, always a dull brown cardboard box - struggling and straining for a bit of freedom, but he doesn't know how to open the box without someone shutting it closed again.
If I had a tiny issue to point it, it's just that the way Fluttershy spoke sometimes just didn't flow like one would imagine. She says "umm," and a lot, and while we know she's shy (surprise!), it just felt off. When she was supposed to tell him something straightforward, you'd see this once or twice while she spoke. Then again, it's a fairly small problem, so I'm fine with it.
Great work! Glad I finally decided to take a look at this.
I hope you don't mind; I added this to the text corpus for a story semantics extraction project I am doing (on MLP scripts), because it had some interesting grammar and exposition about mental states. The line starting "She hadn't said "stop" earlier" failed to validate as narration because the 'stop' from "Oh, oh dear, they're tickling me! Oh, stop!" was still in scope. I had to change it to "Oh, oh dear, they're tickling me! Oh, it's too much!". Not a problem for human readers to be sure, but I thought it might amuse you.
...Dang. This is Good Omens. Flutters is Aziraphale and Discord is her Crowley. How did I not see this before? The dynamic's close to perfect! (More levity here, though, obviously, and of course there are differences, but it's so close!)
I know a lot of people are saying a whole lot, but all I have to say is that this is so beautiful.
You want magical girls? Try this.
Celestia: lulu I'm going for a walk be back later
Luna: Kay
* Celestia goes outside and slapped by fish rain *
Celestia: DISCORD
This is the most insightful story about Discord I've come across in a long while!
So many parts of it are in my headcanon too and the rest are very inspiring for my Fluttercord WIP stories!
Thanks for a great story! five out of five
Poor Fluttershy, if only she knew that Discord doesn't make the first move because he expects any pony that loves him to make it clear that they like him...
Mmm…my heart needed warming today. And this does it like not quite anything else.
Wow, that was just so beautiful! I really do love the way you explain things, I understand everything and then I understand the characters. It's amazing. Yet another masterpiece by you now added to my favourites .
I've finally embarked on this 12k+ work fanfic-- admittedly, the word count intimidated me, because although I love reading for extended periods of time, I couldn't make said extended time as of late.
No regrets! ...except for a rushed homework assignment
The way you described the rain of light is indeed very powerful imagery, and I always enjoy your maturer perception on the characters (or at least, mature in comparison to what the show would allow ). I definitely see a "revolutionary Discord" here, what with the way he describes ponies being unchanging, and to be honest, I personally relate to his frustration.
With that said, if you don't mind some critique, one thing that particularly stood out to me (and still does, after reading again) is Fluttershy's voice. I like how you made her try to explain things to Discord as though he was a child (because, admittedly, he can be immature and childlike with empathy), but the way you did so felt off somehow? In the show, whenever Fluttershy does this, especially to Discord, she tends to use "How would you feel if..." phrases. However, in this story, I saw more of a step-by-step description, such as when you had her tell Discord why she thought ponies would find his magic strange. I personally just don't see that as language Fluttershy uses.
There is also the repeated use of "um..." by her when she was scolding Discord at the beginning, because while she certainly is a demure-mannered pony, Fluttershy doesn't get hesitant when she's upset. If this was a Season 1 Fluttershy, I could see her hesitance in being direct, but this is Season 4, right? Fluttershy has grown much more bold since then.
I am aware this is an older fic though, and you've probably become much more aware of this, alongside developing your other writing skills. Still, it doesn't hurt to look back at old work, no?
Sweet alicorns, the comparison Discord makes to those plants trapped under the surface and himself. The sheer joy of him here. Fluttershy getting to see all this. This is a glorious story and I need more of your writing.
Oh, and Discord’s rant and his longing. That chaos is art to him. It’s so beautiful and moving. I love how Fluttershy digs for the things about him that she likes, and I truly hope I see the day where she tells him how she feels in your stories. Gah, I have to read everything. All of it!! ALL THE READING.
Taking a rest on a super high speed nimbus? Okay...
For some reason this made me feel...a little sad inside.
I take after Discord's philosophy, but I also dislike things changing around me that I don't initiate myself.
Things would be so much easier if the abnormal didn't have to hide in the shadows, becoming dark and twisted mocheries of the bewitching light and entropic order.
I really love stories that bring up Discords time of being imprisoned. We know he's aware in canon due to keep calm and flutter on so stories that actually address it tickle my fancy. Him pointing out that he's never quiet sure he's free and Flutters realizing just how utterly damaged his mind is along with just how dangerous that is...