Fluttershy feels like she's being left behind when all of her friends find special someponies except her. In a fit of embarrassment, she hires an anonymous escort. But then that escort turns out to be someone surprising.
5940463 Romance is tied to drama, which often entails sadness. Knowing you love someone, but not having the nerve to act, is sad, but that does not mean the story will end sadly. We see Fluttershy in her low, here, but it will make us feel that much better when the high comes.
5947062 The part where Fluttershy is so emotionally and socially crippled, and so insecure about and desperate for her friends' approval, that hiring a prostitute just so she can tell them she lost her virginity and finally belong again seems like an idea even worth considering to her - and now she's lost hope so completely, she thinks it's the only option she has left and is about to actually do it. The idea that someone could be that forlorn and despondent over the direction their life is taking is just horribly tragic and depressing to even think about.
It just makes me pity her horribly. What she needs is gentle, professional psychological help and a better social support network, not an ill-conceived intimate encounter with a sex worker. That can only make things worse.
5947101 hmmm, I see your point, but I don't really see that as depressing, per se. Fluttershy is depicted as being horribly repressed, and is having a sexual awakening, but doesn't know what to do about it. She knows what she wants to do, but is not comfortable expressing that to Rarity.
5947187 I don't really know how one could see it as anything else. She's desperately unhappy and feels completely abandoned and like she can't talk to anyone. She's so convinced of her own inability to ever have a normal relationship, she thinks she'll never have her first sexual experience unless she pays for it. Hiring a prostitute is one thing, but this just isn't healthy.
5947212 Probably not, but remember, this is Fluttershy. It wouldn't exactly be in character for her to be anything but full of enough emotional issues to be the basis of somepony's thesis. You're not exactly saying anything new about her, and more or less implying that anything written about her should have a sad tag.
5947623 Depending on how they're written, a lot of them honestly are, to me. There's quite a difference between being shy and being so cripplingly unable to cope with social interaction that it becomes a mental disorder of its own. I suppose it's subjective whether this situation counts - although I'd really consider having your first time with a literal whore, that you actually had to pay for it, a pretty sad kind of thing all by itself.
5948717 Well, the story is implying heavily that Rarity is in fact our mare of the evening. I think she'll manage to break poor Shy in without screwing her up too badly.
Of course it was Rarity. It would have been obvious to anypony else.
It was certainly obvious enough to the reader!
Fluttershy, weak and pitiful, naive and childish. Maybe that was why she was strange, why she was still a foal, why she didn’t understand her feelings or how to act on them. She didn’t have courage, and she never would.
Or maybe she didn't care? Why must we place sinister or pathological reasons on people who aren't having sex? My greatest fears are being realized with this story. Okay Fluttershy, you're broken — I guess. What are you going to do?
If all Fluttershy needed was courage, she had it. She wasn’t a child, and she would show everypony, and she would show Rarity.
I'm strong and independent, RAWR! Now I really need to go show Rarity because I desperately crave validation from others! Um... rawr? Down the rabbit hole we go...
I actually have to agree with something wlam posted. Fluttershy is so unable to cope with the outside world that's she's picking up an escort, and this is really, really sad.
> "It just makes me pity her horribly. What she needs is gentle, professional psychological help and a better social support network, not an ill-conceived intimate encounter with a sex worker. That can only make things worse."
What you write may be true for females, but the instinct to have sex is so strong in males, that the stress of not having sex will force male virgins to have psychotic breaks in their 20s. All of the people the Unabomber killed would still be alive if someone would have taken him to the bordello before his psychotic break (the psychotic break would never have happened under those circumstances).
7529910 Not all of us here are desperate virgins, you know. You being so upset about your creepy personality making nobody want to touch you that you come up with pseudo-psychological reasons for why they have to for their own safety? Says a lot more about you than about anyone else. Get a grip (and preferably a good therapist, you creepy, creepy person.)
I have had sex. As stated, men have strong instinct to reproduce, but some are homely and inarticulate (if they would at least be attractive or articulate, they could get a women to give them a chance). This urge is like watertorture:
1 drop of tapwater on the forehead minutely does not sound bad, but after someteen hours, one has a psychotic break. With men, the urge to reproduce is easy to resist initially, but after someteen year after puberty, if a man has not yet had sex yet (his 20s), he is in real danger of having a psychotic break. Whether you accept reality or not makes no difference to reality.
I would have expected Fluttershy to take the dogpill before hiring a professional. If any of the ponies is going to get the brilliant idea, "what if my first doesn't have to be a pony at all?" it would be Fluttershy. Of course, then the story would have to play out as a comedy with a very grown up-feeling Fluttershy at her friends' next gossip session proudly recounting her romantic evening with Mr. Woofers before using her newly won self-confidence to confess her feelings to a horrified Rarity.
Well this is a nice "Welcome Back to Fimfic" present - just as brilliant as I remember it to be.
Maybe this should have a Sad tag or something, because so far this is really just depressing to read and shaping up to get worse.
This is really making me reconsider a pairing that I have quite frankly never liked. Awesome job.
5940463 yeah, i feel so sorry for fluttershy. This chapter is like watching a mental trainwreck in action.
Oh Fluttershy. These feels. I'd quote a specific bit to say how much I loved it, but really, the entire inner monologue here is just perfectly voiced.
I can't wait for more.
Yes! It got updated! I was afraid you had thought or had cancelled the story. Thank you so much!
5940463 Romance is tied to drama, which often entails sadness. Knowing you love someone, but not having the nerve to act, is sad, but that does not mean the story will end sadly. We see Fluttershy in her low, here, but it will make us feel that much better when the high comes.
5946955
That isn't really the part of it that I was talking about.
5946987 I see, then what did you mean?
5947062
The part where Fluttershy is so emotionally and socially crippled, and so insecure about and desperate for her friends' approval, that hiring a prostitute just so she can tell them she lost her virginity and finally belong again seems like an idea even worth considering to her - and now she's lost hope so completely, she thinks it's the only option she has left and is about to actually do it. The idea that someone could be that forlorn and despondent over the direction their life is taking is just horribly tragic and depressing to even think about.
It just makes me pity her horribly. What she needs is gentle, professional psychological help and a better social support network, not an ill-conceived intimate encounter with a sex worker. That can only make things worse.
5947101 hmmm, I see your point, but I don't really see that as depressing, per se. Fluttershy is depicted as being horribly repressed, and is having a sexual awakening, but doesn't know what to do about it. She knows what she wants to do, but is not comfortable expressing that to Rarity.
5947187
I don't really know how one could see it as anything else. She's desperately unhappy and feels completely abandoned and like she can't talk to anyone. She's so convinced of her own inability to ever have a normal relationship, she thinks she'll never have her first sexual experience unless she pays for it. Hiring a prostitute is one thing, but this just isn't healthy.
5947212 Probably not, but remember, this is Fluttershy. It wouldn't exactly be in character for her to be anything but full of enough emotional issues to be the basis of somepony's thesis. You're not exactly saying anything new about her, and more or less implying that anything written about her should have a sad tag.
5947623
Depending on how they're written, a lot of them honestly are, to me. There's quite a difference between being shy and being so cripplingly unable to cope with social interaction that it becomes a mental disorder of its own. I suppose it's subjective whether this situation counts - although I'd really consider having your first time with a literal whore, that you actually had to pay for it, a pretty sad kind of thing all by itself.
5948717 Well, the story is implying heavily that Rarity is in fact our mare of the evening. I think she'll manage to break poor Shy in without screwing her up too badly.
Sigh!!!! Fluttershy likes Rarity, but Rarity is making Fluttershy feel so bad that she'll never want to approach Rarity. I hope it turns out okay.
It was certainly obvious enough to the reader!
Or maybe she didn't care? Why must we place sinister or pathological reasons on people who aren't having sex? My greatest fears are being realized with this story. Okay Fluttershy, you're broken — I guess. What are you going to do?
I'm strong and independent, RAWR! Now I really need to go show Rarity because I desperately crave validation from others! Um... rawr? Down the rabbit hole we go...
I actually have to agree with something wlam posted. Fluttershy is so unable to cope with the outside world that's she's picking up an escort, and this is really, really sad.
5947101
What you write may be true for females, but the instinct to have sex is so strong in males, that the stress of not having sex will force male virgins to have psychotic breaks in their 20s. All of the people the Unabomber killed would still be alive if someone would have taken him to the bordello before his psychotic break (the psychotic break would never have happened under those circumstances).
7529095
Reality does not care whether you accept it or not.
¡Ooh! ¡An ad hominem! 2 can play that game:
Your mother mates out of season.
7529910
Not all of us here are desperate virgins, you know. You being so upset about your creepy personality making nobody want to touch you that you come up with pseudo-psychological reasons for why they have to for their own safety? Says a lot more about you than about anyone else. Get a grip (and preferably a good therapist, you creepy, creepy person.)
7531913
I have had sex. As stated, men have strong instinct to reproduce, but some are homely and inarticulate (if they would at least be attractive or articulate, they could get a women to give them a chance). This urge is like watertorture:
1 drop of tapwater on the forehead minutely does not sound bad, but after someteen hours, one has a psychotic break. With men, the urge to reproduce is easy to resist initially, but after someteen year after puberty, if a man has not yet had sex yet (his 20s), he is in real danger of having a psychotic break. Whether you accept reality or not makes no difference to reality.
7532859
Clearly not with a woman, or you wouldn't buy that retardation about a lower sex drive.
I would have expected Fluttershy to take the dogpill before hiring a professional. If any of the ponies is going to get the brilliant idea, "what if my first doesn't have to be a pony at all?" it would be Fluttershy. Of course, then the story would have to play out as a comedy with a very grown up-feeling Fluttershy at her friends' next gossip session proudly recounting her romantic evening with Mr. Woofers before using her newly won self-confidence to confess her feelings to a horrified Rarity.