The Making of Fluttershy's Garden: Character Reactions · 9:16am Jan 8th, 2015
This is one of a series of blog posts about the making of Fluttershy's Garden, and contains unmarked spoilers. If you haven't yet read Fluttershy's Garden and its sequel, I would recommend reading them first.
0. Introduction
1. Inspiration
2. Character Design
3. Storyboard
4. Mechanics
5. Character Reactions
6. Ending
7. Loose Ends
8. Sequel
“A variety of fanfic in which the plotline is focused around the reactions of the cast to the death of one of their number.”
Fluttershy's Garden is not about a casual walk in the park in a sunny Sunday morning. It's about one of the main characters dying. It's the kind of thing that can completely change somepony's life.
Each character will have her own reaction to such an event. I have no idea how the show writers would do each character's reaction, but I tried to make their reactions as believable as I could. I humbly hope I succeeded.
Applejack
Applejack was the easiest one. She has already gone through that before, with her parents. She misses Fluttershy, but that doesn't affect her as much. And given how badly the rest reacts, she downplays what little reaction she has to help her friends cope, trying to be an island of stability for them.
The same applies to Apple Bloom, though the story doesn't focus on her and her friends.
Twilight Sparkle
In contrast with Applejack, Twilight was the most affected. The five were her first true friends.
She didn't sleep at all after the funeral and before meeting Spring Egg, crying the whole time. Even after she got to sleep, she had recurring nightmares. She blamed herself for not saving Fluttershy, even though there was nothing she could do.
Even after Flora was born, she still blamed herself. Out of guilt, she hid everything about Fluttershy from Flora, not knowing that Flora was Fluttershy reborn.
Rarity
Her first reaction was to create dresses for the five to wear at the funeral.
At the funeral, she made as much drama as possible, going as far as fainting dramatically a few times (to the annoyance of Nurse Redheart and her sister).
She lost all her inspiration, but recovered with the help of Spring Egg. Even then, her dresses still reminded her of her lost friend.
She was also the only one to feel, for a small instant, the presence of Fluttershy, before they knew she was dead.
Rainbow Dash
I made Rainbow Dash's reaction one of bottling up her feelings, and pushing away everypony else. That included Spring Egg, who (to Rainbow Dash's annoyance) only wanted to help.
Pinkie Pie
Writing Pinkie Pie is always hard, since she's so unpredictable. Different writers can come up with different reactions to the same situation. Even when you are writing her, she sometimes acts on her own (the "last chapter party" was her idea, and I had to make it be about Script Letter's novel's last chapter to keep the fourth wall intact).
I'm sure the symptoms she was having in the story have a name, but I don't know what it is. Compulsively moving objects around, staring at the wall silently, pausing in the middle of a sentence and continuing as if nothing had happened in the middle of a different sentence...
The worst is that nopony noticed. Spring Egg didn't try to help her, because she didn't notice that Pinkie needed help. She only got better after Fluttershy was reborn as Flora, because somehow she knew they were the same pony... and then Twilight forced her to deny it. She finally is healed after Discord confirms that she was right.
The rest of the town
Everypony in the whole town felt guilty for the times they had treated her badly.
They overcompensated by treating Spring Egg's daughter as they would had liked to have treated Fluttershy.
Fluttershy
At first, an odd sort of detachment (she felt the same, even though she was separated from her body). Then she realized she can't interact with anything, and it hit her hard. Her jealousy at being replaced by a stranger, plus losing the one she had a crush on, made things worse. Finding that her friends still remembered and loved her, and that the stranger was only trying to help, made her heal. At the end, she didn't have any negative feelings anymore, and had grown fond of Spring Egg.
And then she forgot everything and was reborn.
Spring Egg
Even though she's the one who had never met Fluttershy, she was also hit hard by the events.
She was just living her life, when out of nowhere, Celestia came and ordered her to transfer immediately and permanently to a small town in the middle of nowhere.
Once there, she has to deal with a mob of unruly animals, and gets hurt; has to play therapist to several ponies, one of them not wanting her help at all; one of the animals, a small fluffy bunny, insists on being a problem; another of the animals she's supposed to care for dies in her hooves; and she's living in the shadow of Fluttershy, a pony who in all aspects is better than her.
Her only consolation was the love she found there, and later her daughter. That bunny is still a bit of a problem, but he loves her daughter and behaves himself when she is nearby.
Next post: Ending
