After the weekends events and the day that followed, Fluttershy questions Discord's rather peculiar actions in an attempt to understand him better.
Based on Season 5 Episode 22
Can be perceived as Fluttercord or simply Platonic~
Edited by the wonderful cucharrador!
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This is great! It's going to my favorites, which means it will be on my front page for a short while!
I definitely enjoyed this. It was short, but sometimes simple just works. Why change what works?
I really liked this, and I enjoy how its still up for interpretation as to why he did what he did. Nice little slice of life fic. And you did excellent with characterization and I'm of COURSE going to interpret it as fluttercord because I must.
And since you're super nice about asking for feedback, I'll go ahead and say that grammatically, there are two or three places where you have a question mark next to a period when the period isn't needed. A little tiny mistake. Didn't affect my enjoyment at all though.
And perhaps the ending was a little abrupt. I thought there would be more, I'll admit. I still enjoyed it a lot and I'm sure others will disagree, I just didn't see it coming.
But it was still a fun read and I'd definitely read more fluttercord from you! :D Oh, and I'll up vote this!
I am a big fan of discord and fluttershy's platonic relationship and highly appreciate, that you give me a chance to enjoy this fanfic, allthough I am not a fan of the pairing.
It would have been a shame if I wouldn't have liked this fic,
simply because I don't like the ship
Oh boy, this is going to be a rant and I apologize for that in advance. You wanted honest feedback though so here goes.
The end of the episode isn't odd, it makes perfect sense when you face one simple reality, Discord is an absolute jerk and the sooner he gets stoned again the better. "That whole jealousy thing was just a happy accident", does anyone really buy that, even for a second!?
Some grief? And you shouldn't be proud of him.
Mistake, Ha! Mistake, my eye.
Yes, he was trying to get her upset. Why, cause he's a jerk, that's why.
Well, lets see shall we. He drove all her friends insane and pushed into a deep depression (I know, pre-'reformation'). Upon being released, he caused all kinds of chaos and got Fluttershy so mad she seriously threatened to end her newfound friendship with him. He ruined her day with Cadence at the Starswirl exhibit, on purpose (c'mon it's obvious 'friendship test' my eye). He betrayed her and all her friends to Tirek. He ruined her first gala as a Princess by bringing the freaking Smooze. And now this load of horseapples! Which, as stated above, was CLEARLY his intention from the start. I can't imagine why Twilight wouldn't get on with him. (Can you hear the sarcasm, cause I meant it.)
If they are on good terms then Twilight is an idiot. Seriously, she should be trying to figure out if that Rainbow Power of theirs can stone him cause they're going to have to use it sooner or later.
No, he's just a jerk, and it wasn't nice at all.
What? No seriously, what's that got to do with anything?
Anyway, that's my feedback. I don't mean to rip on your story, it is well written. It just annoys me so much that the girls just don't seem to see the glaringly obvious fact that Discord is a selfish jerk who enjoys causing suffering to others. He even said so in this episode for pony's sake! Seriously, the only good thing, that I can think of, that he ever did for Twilight was to point out the important passages in their journal. Of course that was right before he stabbed them in the back!
I know right!?!?! I was squeeing in every other scene! They're just so cute!!!!!!!
6707686
You can't actually condemn people to a hellish fate worse than death because they are huge jerks, you know.
Aside from the Tirek incident, Discord hasn't done anything to justify a life sentence in prison, let alone being turned to stone for eternity. And the Tirek incident, while it certainly warranted a worse punishment than he got, didn't warrant turning him to stone because they wouldn't have gotten the Rainbow Power had Discord not been sincerely remorseful and genuinely learned the lesson about why he doesn't want to do that again.
His crime at the Gala incident wasn't bringing the Smooze -- Princess Celestia was actually hoping he'd do something like that, and while the Smooze was very disruptive, by the end it was behaving itself and getting along with everypony. It's what he threatened to do to Tree Hugger. Had he gone through with that, he'd have deserved to be turned to stone, or something at least -- but they talked him down. Again, he deserved some kind of punishment, but not being turned to stone. Ruining Twilight's day by pretending to be sick isn't even a crime, though deliberately getting Rarity and Applejack sick might have been considered such, and he paid for that by actually getting sick.
Even though I am a fan of the character, I agree with people who think that Discord is a jerk who hasn't really learned empathy with ponies yet and will probably continue to be an asshole for some time. However, it appalls me that people who don't like Discord keep declaring that he should be turned to stone for stunts like making Twilight feel bad. Really? Really?
Being unable to move but conscious, unable to speak but able to hear, is horrible. Humans have suffered from this -- it's called Locked-In Syndrome or Korsikoff's Syndrome, and it is hellish. Humans, at least, can count on the disease causing them to die younger than they otherwise would have, and in any case we're all mortal, so sooner or later the torment will stop. Discord would have no guarantee that it would ever stop. Death would be kinder, but the last time I checked, no one gives out death sentences for being a rude jerk.
If they had the ability to turn him into stone for a finite period of time -- say, give him a sentence of five or ten years -- that might have been a fair punishment for his treason, given that he showed genuine remorse and helped them in correcting the situation. Jailhouse snitches can get their sentences knocked down lower than that. But if they didn't do that, then nothing he has actually done since then warrants any length of time in stone, because it is simply not a jailable offense to ruin a party or make a friend jealous. And it is pretty obvious that emotional punishments work well on him -- Fluttershy yelling at him or his "friends" laughing at him rather than with him obviously cause him emotional pain and are probably much more effective than turning him to stone, which, as we have seen, did jack-all to reform him or make him change his behavior in any way.
6842627 You make some good points there. I wrote that comment while angry, something I should not do. You are correct, he shouldn't be turned to stone. However I think you trivialize his actions a bit too much. In the episode What About Discord, he wasn't trying to make Twilight feel bad. No, he was trying to drive her insane, and admitted to enjoying it. I say again, you are correct that he shouldn't be stoned, but what punishment he did get was very litttle compared with his intent.
What I'm saying is, he's more than just a jerk, he's one wrong move away from hurting everyone. The Tirek incident proves that. Perhaps punishment is not the answer, but some other kind of rehabilitation. I don't know, all I know is he's a time bomb waiting to go off.
6842667
Where are you getting that he was trying to drive her insane? (Literally, as opposed to "Oooh, that Discord! He drives me insane!") He said that her jealousy was a "happy accident", that he wanted her to learn that "even she can feel jealousy", and that he felt "glee" at seeing her try to recreate their weekend. He never said or even implied that he was trying to drive her crazy -- the implication was, he was trying to make her feel jealous, and then rubbing her face in it -- unless you're talking about the hyperbole of his illustration of her getting angry, but that's a character who exaggerates things drawing a funny picture, in a cartoon, which exaggerates things to begin with. The vibe I got was Discord was trying to "teach a lesson", but not benevolently -- he was trying to bring her down to his level, to make sure she knew that she wasn't a perfect paragon of friendship but that she can have dark emotions too. After all, the last time they met so far as we know was the Gala, which Discord almost wrecked with his own jealousy over a friend.
I agree that he could very easily hurt somebody. What he tried to do to Tree Hugger was unconscionable. At the same time, he's obviously learning, because the prior Discord couldn't have had a fun weekend with five of the Mane 6 if he'd wanted to. Since they ruled out mind control, it was pretty clear that Discord managed to win them over by being genuinely friendly and goofy, not making the jokes all about him or about mocking them, and actually joining in with them on their activities. That's... a huge improvement.
Personally I don't think he did it to make her jealous simply because I don't think he could possibly have known he'd succeed at winning them over; I think he talked them into leaving her out because he felt like she'd ruin things if she was there, and then after that had the "brilliant" idea to make her jealous about it, because I don't think he plans ahead that far and I do think he's adaptable and makes and carries out plans very quickly based on the circumstances. But that would mean that he really was genuine over the weekend, and then basically backslid because he wanted to rub Twilight's nose in how he was awesome and won over all her friends and they had a great time without her, nyaah nyaah nyaah. Which means he is actually getting better at being a friend. Unfortunately what MLP showed us was the part about him being a jerkass as usual.
I do think they need more than Fluttershy tsk-tsking him for him to grasp genuinely moral behavior before he does something really awful, but if he's improved to the point where the rest of the Mane 6 can actually enjoy his company when he tries, that's additional leverage they can use in rehabilitating him. Part of the problem with Discord is the vicious cycle where he's a total jerk, no one likes him because he's a total jerk, he desperately wants to be liked but no one will like him so he retaliates by being a total jerk, rinse and repeat. He needs more ponies to actually care about him, because that's the only leverage that works on him and the only thing that stops him from being a total jerk -- but who's going to care about him when he's a jerk? I'm not one of the Discord fans who's all like "waah waah they should have been better friends to him!" He's a jerk, except to Fluttershy, how can you be better friends to a guy who likes to torment you?
But now that he's figured out how to not be a jerk when he wants not to be, and they've shown him that when he's not a jerk they'll laugh at his jokes and accept him as a friend, now there's some positive reinforcement in the mix. Be a good friend to the Mane 5, get accepted as a friend. Be a jerk to Twilight, get mocked and made fun of and no one thinks your jokes are funny anymore. That kind of thing has the potential to get through to him faster than Fluttershy alone could.
6842899 Hmm, interesting, yes he said i was a happy accident. The thing is I believe that was a bold faced lie. Yeah alright, maybe 'driving her insane' is a bit much, but his intentions were far darker than just teaching her a lesson. He knew full well Twilight would over-react and go a bit crazy, and he just sat back and enjoyed it. I'm not saying his intentions were totally bad, but he enjoyed hurting her, he even said as such, and they hardly did anything to him.
6842952
I think it was a bold-faced lie too. He wanted her to be jealous. (I think it was an accident in the sense that he didn't convince them to exclude her so that she would be jealous; I think he convinced them to exclude her because if he was actually succeeding at getting them to be friendly with him, adding Twilight to the mix could have felt threatening, like she would ruin it. After the fact, though, once he realized it was bugging her, he totally wanted her to feel jealous and left out and frustrated and unhappy.) And yes, he totally enjoyed her confusion and frustration. He's still the Spirit of Disharmony, after all.
About all I can say is that the ponies are as aware of the following fact as I am: if putting Discord in stone would be morally reprehensible because he hasn't done anything nearly bad enough to warrant it, then they don't really have a lot of punishments available to them, and shunning him as a friend and rejecting him will pretty much ensure that they won't be able to control him at all. He only responds to the threat of affection being taken away. When they threatened to stone him in Princess Twilight Sparkle, while they were accusing him of having created the vines (correctly, as it turned out), he showed no sign of being afraid or even cowed; he continued to clown around, pretend he didn't know Fluttershy's name or identity, and generally act like he was totally in control. But when Fluttershy reminded him, after the Elements were taken away, that he still needed to be good because their friendship was on the line, he did that shrinking thing, which seems to convey a genuine sense of being "cut down to size".
If Discord could never have been controlled by fear of being stoned (and he never showed any evidence that he would reform out of fear of that fate; mostly he demonstrated that he'd fight back viciously to prevent it, but not that he'd moderate his behavior to avoid it), but he can be controlled by fear of losing affection... then they have to offer him affection, to punish him only mildly for his transgressions, because if they all turn on him and reject him permanently, they have no leverage anymore. And Twilight, at least, knows this. So I don't think they make up with him or give him slaps on the wrist because they feel like aw, he didn't really do anything bad... they're doing it because it's the only way to minimize the chaos without turning him to stone. Which he doesn't deserve, yet. But he might do something to deserve it, if he feels really hurt and rejected. And none of them want the situation to go there. He's a slightly more mature version of Anthony, the omnipotent six-year-old from the Twilight Zone episode "It's A Good Life".
6843031 Yeah, I see what your saying. It just bugs me that they didn't even get slighty angry at him, that wouldn't have hurt anything. They could have chastised him, given him a disapproving glare and then moved on. Something like that. I just think he got off way too lightly. Still overall, he could be a good friend, maybe ,one day.
I love this story because it is another little look into the life of Fluttershy and Discord.