The Making of Fluttershy's Garden: Loose Ends · 9:16am Jan 10th, 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
“"What happened to the mouse?" occurs when a minor character, action, or very minor plotline is suddenly dropped from the story for no apparent reason, without any real explanation about what happened to it, and without a resolution.”
Every story, no matter how well written, will have a few loose ends. Sometimes they are inconsequential details, left on the cutting room floor to make the story flow better. Sometimes they are formerly important plot points, left out because they did not fit the story as written. Sometimes, they are just things the author forgot, or didn't want to think about.
What happened to the ferret?
As you may recall, what led Fluttershy to the Everfree Forest, kickstarting the whole plot, was a sick ferret. After the story started, the ferret was forgotten; nopony but Fluttershy knew about him, and she couldn't do anything about it now that she was dead. He was getting worse, and wasn't going to get any better on his own.
I could have left his end ambiguous. Instead, I decided to have Spring Egg find him. Not knowing about the book where Fluttershy had found a cure, and many days having already passed without any treatment, she had no chance of curing him. The ferret died soon after being found.
That led to what ended up being my favorite scene of the whole story, the final scene of the third chapter. In only two short sentences, I brought closure to the ferret subplot, and gave more depth to Spring Egg's character, foreshadowing her breakdown in the penultimate chapter.
What was Discord doing all this time?
Discord's role in the story had been planned since the beginning.
Sadly, his role was “not appearing in this fic”.
I had decided that, in this story, it would not be possible to have any interaction between the dead and the living. Discord would be the only one who knew that Fluttershy would eventually be reborn. But he would be unable to do anything about that, other than waiting until that happened.
So as soon as he hears the sad news, he goes away, lying in wait until he finds a pony who could be Fluttershy reborn, and then monitoring that pony until he was certain.
Unfortunately, the fanfic ends immediately after Fluttershy is reborn, so he doesn't get the chance to appear.
At least, until the sequel.
In the sequel, Discord puts his plan into action. He manipulates the young reborn Fluttershy (now called Flora), so that in the end, he achieves his objective: to become friends with her again.
I didn't have the same strong inspiration while writing the sequel. And I believe I overcompensated while trying to avoid being too laconic, so the story ended with too much filler.
To make things worse, the whole town was also overcompensating for their guilt over Fluttershy's death, and everypony was pampering her (while hiding from her the ugly truth). Add to that Fluttershy's special abilities, and she ended up looking too much like a Mary Sue.
The writing on the sequel is not as strong as the writing on the original story was, but it can be worth reading if you want to know what happened after Fluttershy's rebirth.
How much did Celestia know?
Unlike Discord, Celestia didn't know for sure that ponies would come back as other ponies after their death. But having lived for as long as she had lived, she had seen enough to at least suspect it. What she said to Twilight during the funeral was an allusion to that.
Where are Fluttershy's parents?
Fluttershy's parents aren't mentioned in the story. This omission was intentional.
As far as I know, there are no canon references to Fluttershy's parents. Any mention of them would risk the readers focusing on them, since they would be a new element.
So I decided to omit them. If their absence bothers you, consider that they might have been present at the funeral; their presence might have just been glossed over.
Is Twilight an alicorn?
This was another intentional omission.
The story was written while “Alicorn Twilight” was still a new thing. To avoid any controversy, I carefully wrote the story so that there would be no mention of Twilight being an alicorn or not. That distinction is irrelevant to this story.
What was the creature which killed Fluttershy?
Since it would happen in the Everfree Forest, the obvious choice for a dangerous creature would be a Timberwolf. I decided to do something different.
Think of an Onix (the Pokémon). Remove the eyes and mouth. Make each boulder of its body able to move independently, instead of staying in a line. Make it change its shape all the time to random shapes.
What was that creature after all? At the end of the chapter, Fluttershy describes the possibilities. And as she concludes at the end, it doesn't matter. The creature goes away to never appear again, its role in the plot fulfilled.
Many months had passed since the last time I could hug my father.
All the sadness I had been feeling was dumped into this story.
I don't feel as sad anymore.
Thank you for reading.
Next post: Sequel
