Adventures in the Psychology of Sexuality (with Ponies)

by Kodiologist

Fear (Fluttershy)

Fluttershy was not quite as naive to the dark side of life as many ponies believed. She couldn't be: she had comforted a mortally wounded bluebird in its final hours, seen wasp larvae eat their way out of a dead caterpillar, and helped a doe rabbit painfully give birth to a litter of eight blind, hairless red kits. Hence, she knew to be thankful that she and her five friends had avoided death, permanent injury, and serious mental trauma in their many adventures. She was afraid of many things, and sometimes embarrassed at her own fear, which made it worse—but fear wasn't all bad. Fear, after all, was an important feeling that kept her alert for dangers, and careful to protect herself and the many other ponies and animals she loved.

But maybe the most trying times of all were when she was afraid without being sure whether she ought to be afraid, and even what, exactly, she was afraid of. So it seemed to be with sex. She loved her boyfriend of two years dearly, and he was always patient, gentle, and caring with her, especially in matters of sex. After a period of reluctance and struggle, she had learned to enjoy sex, and even assert her own interests apart from his. And yet… something was not right with the whole business. Something was, she had to admit, subtly terrifying; and this latent fear, far from being extinguished as she grew more sexually confident, seemed to only poke at the corners of her mind more insistently as she lay beside her beloved stallion in ostensibly blissful postcoital reverie.

Fluttershy talked to her friends about this Fear, whatever it was, and read a few books that Twilight recommended to her. She heard lots of reasons why ponies might be uncomfortable with sex, but none seemed to apply to her. She had never been abused. Nobody had filled her head with dangerous falsehoods about sex or her own body. Her relationship with her boyfriend was, to all appearances, amicable and equitable. She was under serious stress sometimes, but wasn't everypony else, too?

"Isn't there something about it that just… makes you want to hide, or run away?" she asked Rarity in hushed tones one afternoon in the steam room.

Rarity frowned, and was quiet for a while. "My dear," she said finally, "I think I can remember such things… when I was younger. But between the two of us, Fluttershy, I used to be afraid of a lot of things. My future was so exciting, dazzling with possibilities, but also fraught with uncertainty. I had a cutie mark, but that was no guarantee I could make my own mark in the fast-moving world of the elite, of high culture, fashion, and design. The boutique struggled for so long. It was years until I felt sure that I was who I wanted to be, or at least that I could become her."

"And did that help you with…?" said Fluttershy.

"With lovemaking?" said Rarity. "It helped me make a few choice catches." she went on with a giggle. "But no, in all seriousness, darling, it helped with a multitude of things. When I had more of a sense of my value, my identity, my special qualities, my place in society, I had more confidence, and with that, I was no longer so afraid of big things."

"I see." said Fluttershy, although she wasn't sure that she really saw.

She posed similar questions to her other friends, and even her parents, and many of them admitted to experiencing a similar inexplicable sexual anxiety, at least sometimes. Thinking of Rarity, she prodded whether achieving some kind of self-discovery had helped them overcome the Fear, and the ponies she spoke to said that sounded reasonable, even if it was hard to judge in their own case.

"Maybe that's it, then." she said to herself. "I just have to focus on what makes me a good pony, and that will make me braver."

That evening, she was feeding some pigs, and her thoughts turned to the prospect of sex with her boyfriend later that night. She felt a familiar prickle in her thoughts, the telltale sign of the Fear looming over her consciousness. She resisted the impulse to shiver, and turned her attention to the pigs. How sweet they were, how smart and funny, and how she loved them. These were among the hundreds of animals she had helped keep healthy and happy. Was that not a noble and praiseworthy endeavor? She was proud of herself. She recalled, with a small smile, that pigs seemed perfectly happy to have sex—why should she be any more reluctant? Why should anypony?

She turned with particular tenderness to Chuck, a sickly runt who she was, with infinite patience, slowly nursing to health. It looked like Chuck was balled up in the corner with his favorite blanket, like he always was. She refilled the little bottle of formula which he depended on (being denied milk by his own mother), straightened his blanket, and lay down an ear on him to listen to his tiny heart. But… what was this? She heard no heartbeat. With a sharp intake of breath, she tore off the blanket, picked up the piglet, and held him close, talking to him, petting him, listening to him, trying to coax some sign of life out of the tiny body. But it was no use. Chuck was dead. Despite her best efforts, he hadn't made it.

Fluttershy was full of a horrible gloom, a dread. This was far from the first animal who had died under her care, and surely would not be the last, yet somehow it never got easier. Involuntarily, Fluttershy dropped the body. She backed away, then turned to the other pigs. And there was Chuck's mother, lying in the same mud in which she had given birth to Chuck and his brothers and sisters, as a male mounted her. Fluttershy gulped. She blinked, and for a moment, in the dim moonlight, that thrusting, grunting boar resembled the intelligent stallion who she knew and loved and yet thrusted and grunted in the same rhythm.

It was then that the scales fell from Fluttershy's eyes, the Fear that had merely whispered at her before burst terrifically into her mind, and she saw how the basic animal facts of birth, feeding, and—especially—the bestial ecstasies of sex that ponies shared with all other animals were the stamp of the same mortality, the same implacable guarantee that she and he and all other living things would someday be ground into the very same mud. All her kindness, her hopes and fears, her pride, and her personhood would be primal mud. Ashes to ashes, mud to mud. The Fear that she had never recognized before had revealed itself it all its infinite power and terror as Death!

Fluttershy blinked again, and the feeling subsided. Over the rest of her life, the Fear, now back to its normal size, drifted in and out of her mind, but she never forgot what it was, and she knew it had no less a permanent home in the hearts of all ponies than the sexuality that provoked it.

Author's Note:

This chapter is an exposition of terror-management theory, which is described at length in ESA.