Why I write Discord the way I do. · 10:04pm Mar 2nd, 2015
So, I'm going to talk about 3 main points:
1.Tricksters
2. Sexuality
3. Chaos
This is partly because recently I seem to have had some people who start reading the story then get to the chapter about Xolotl and it seems to...break their brain.
Brain-breaking wasn't my intention. I was merely trying to write a story (which hopefully has been entertaining so far) but maybe people start reading it expecting fluff- and while I guess there is a bit of fluff in Wanderlust, it obviously is more about Discord as a "person."
So, to begin:
1.) Tricksters.
Discord is a Trickster. Note the capital letter. If we look at the definition of "trickster" vs. "Trickster" in the dictionary we get:
trickster: 1. One that swindles or plays tricks.
2. often Trickster A mischievous or roguish figure in myth or folklore, often an animal, who typically makes up for weakness with cunning and subversive humor. Often with supernatural powers.
Discord is the latter. Sure, he swindles and plays tricks- but he's no cheap con man. No Trickster is. Rather they are meant to be the opposition to the status quo. It does not matter whether the status quo is perceived as "bad" or "good"- the role of the Trickster is to upset that balance and keep things fresh. In a way, he's almost becoming a mentor to Twilight--whether this is intentional on his part is yet to be revealed, but let's face it--she IS learning new things through Discord's meddling.
Tricksters are often on-the-road. They don't tend to stay in one place often, possibly because they are opportunistic. Who KNOWS where Discord goes when he's not seen with the Main 6. Twilight doesn't even know where he lives. We know he writes to Fluttershy, but from where? In the comics he goes off to play in outer space somewhere, and I quite like this idea; that he has the whole universe to play in, and he will.
2.) Sexuality: I think this is the part I'm writing that people really don't like, and they first come across it in the Xolotl chapter. I write Discord as Pansexual for several reasons:
-Tricksters in mythology are gender swapping, lusty, opportunistic and as I mentioned before love to defy the status quo. What is the status quo when it comes to sexuality? Heterosexuality. Who are the stuffiest denizens of the status quo? Royalty, those in power etc. I imagine Discord would poo poo any sort of restriction on what feels good. Shame is not a barrier to Trickster figures. I would find it hard to write Discord as a straight-laced completely romantic type. That's not to say I think it's wrong if other people do- it's just my interpretation. The comics seem to take this interpretation too (well, as far as they can while still having it rated PG. But the adults among us know Discord had a "thing" with that cat. And it probably broke some of our brains.)
-Sexuality is funny. Come on, it is. Along with scatalogical humour, it's just one of those types of dirt that Tricksters are attracted to.
-Discord is based on the Star Trek character Q, and has the same voice actor. Q was an incurable flirt (especially with Picard and Janeway) and really did not seem to care about either the gender or species of his love interests. Q was even written as intentionally in love with Picard and John de Lancie deliberately played him that way.
On top of all of this, I find it hard to believe a chaos being that has lived for thousands of years would not have had multiple partners and tried various things. (Including comets.)
3.) Chaos- I don't think Discord would ever give up his chaos for anyone. Not for Fluttershy, not for Twilight and definitely not for Celestia and Luna. He's the Spirit of Chaos. Expecting him to do so would be asking him to not be himself, and I sincerely hope such a plot line is never written on the show, especially one that seems to champion individuality. Discord's bigger problem is not being able to relate or take other people's feelings into consideration, possibly because he's never had to before.
Despite his being able to put on a good front most of the time, I write Discord as a very emotional being. Partly this is because I imagine a chaos spirit would have very tumultuous emotions and partly this is because of how he reacts when he realized he has messed up and might be abandoned by his friends. He is in many ways like an overgrown spoilt child, which is very much how Q was written.
Xolotl as the bad boyfriend was written in because I wanted to illustrate how badly someone could mess with Discord's emotions given the chance. I deliberately chose this relationship to be when Discord was "young and stupid" as I doubt it would be a mistake the wiser Discord would make now, but it also shows how tentative he is when it comes to examining his feelings for Fluttershy.
Any thoughts on this would be appreciated, as long as they're constructive. ;)
I for one, am very happy to see a Pansexual Discord. And I agree with what you said about tricksters and chaos. Asking Discord not to make chaos is like asking Rainbow Dash to never fly again.
2844395
Thank you!
I love exploring the personalities and motives of the trickster figure. They are certainly more relatable than regular god figures.
I also really like Alara Roger's take on Discord, and she goes one further and writes him as possibly poly. I suppose my version of Discord could go either way depending on his love interest(s).
Discord sounds rather like Old Man Coyote in the Native American stories.
2844692
Funny you should say that...
*looks at notes for next chapter*
I have to agree on this Discord, he is chaotic and lived a long time. Even comics suggested that while he may have no friends, he might have had sex (he could easily transform and seduce any creature). So him being a pansexual demigod who basically got "bored"out of sex kind of fit. I mean every normal human without powers would probbaly have plenty of wives every 100 years, not to mention 1000 years. However his powers made him more scary and he was never liked as a friend or partner but as a powerful and attractive weapon at most (Baast wanted him just for power).
I guess many readers are mostly used to the stories where Discord and Fluttershy are both virgins and have their first crush on eachother. While I also think that this is romantic I also think that your approach is more realistic with Discord past and is also a fresh look on him (even though i don't believe in Dislestia headcanon because Discord didn't had to sleep with every immortal being, especially one who despised him).
On the other hand i think Fluttershy would be less likely to get a new boyfriend if she was already in love for the first time in Discord. She would probably try to find Discord first and make sure that she is doing a right choice. Having around 20 years old make her less likely to be experienced with love since she have a very shy nature and it unlikely that she had a boyfriend before. However I guess that in "Wanderlust" Fluttershy wasn't really aware how she felt about him so she did what hse thought is right - married a pony like all other ponies should do.
2846103
See, personally, I find this brain-breaking.
A creature who has never had sex in a lifetime spanning over a thousand years, despite being incredibly powerful, is either asexual, or given the lack of other draconequui, is sexually attracted only to his own kind. This isn't unreasonable -- actually almost all animals are less sexual than humans, with the exceptions being some other primates, and dogs, and probably a few others. Cats display mounting behaviors outside of estrus cycles, but if you've ever seen a neutered male cat mounting a spayed female cat, you have never seen any animal look more bored than that female cat. They're obviously not having sex as humans understand it, though they may be expressing affection or something.
Discord has had plenty of opportunity for sex, because he's powerful, and power is attractive. Even if you're terrified of him, the idea of appeasing him by offering him sex would occur to a lot of ponies, and the only reason he wouldn't take them up on it is either a, he's not attracted to ponies, or b, he has a sex life that doesn't involve terrified partners. Neither one allows him to be a virgin who discovers the first sexual attraction of his existence when he meets Fluttershy. I know why people want to write him as a romantic virgin, but it's OOC.
Now, I've read stories where Discord was a virgin until Fluttershy or Pinkie Pie or Twilight turned into a draconequus and then all of a sudden wowza. And I can see that, because biologically, it's quite plausible that he could be attracted only to his own species,and the fact that there aren't any has left him mostly feeling asexual. I've also read a story where Discord was literally asexual -- as in has no genitalia and no concept of a sex drive -- but falls romantically in love with Twilight, and allows her to temporarily magically rewire his brain so he can feel a sex drive. (This was written by an asexual author, so I think he knows what he's talking about.) But I cannot see Discord, the millennia-old spirit of chaos, suddenly discovering sex because he's discovered friendship. Either he has never felt sexual attraction to ponies, in which case he is not going to be attracted to Fluttershy, or he has, in which case he's probably had sex, because it's OOC for Discord to refrain from doing something out of taboos or embarrassment.
So for me, the idea that Discord was a virgin before he fell in love with, and in desire with, Fluttershy is simply incomprehensible. I can't see how anyone can get there without misunderstanding sexuality, generally from being very young and inexperienced themselves, and believing that you have to be in love to want sex and vice versa.
That being said, the notion that Fluttershy was a virgin before falling in love with Discord is totally plausible. I actually write my Fluttershy that way. In my stuff, she's a xenophile, not because she can't be attracted to ponies, but because her social anxieties are keyed to ponies. Discord doesn't trigger her social anxiety, so she can actually feel relaxed around him the way she does with her animals, but he's a sapient being who can talk, so she can perceive him as attractive. There are stallions she's attracted to but she'd never be able to act on it, due to her anxiety; with Discord she's much more likely to be able to open up.
So I have no problem with virginal Fluttershy, or virginal Twilight, or even virginal Pinkie Pie. (I have a serious problem with virginal Celestia for similar reasons to my problems with virginal Discord -- Celestia is way too old to be a virgin unless she doesn't want sex, because she's enormously powerful, beautiful, and very socially adept. People who write Celestia as a virgin are people who slut-shame women for having sex with men they're not married to, or marrying more than one man in a lifetime.) But I literally cannot imagine Discord as a virgin. To me he has to be either asexual (in which case he won't want Fluttershy sexually) or experienced.
2846157
Agreed with all of this. In my head, Celestia is in no way a virgin and has had multiple lovers throughout her reign, though probably secret ones due to her being royalty. I also see her never marrying because BAH to having to acquiesce power to a stallion. Same likely goes with Luna, who is also an ancient immortal being, though probably less experienced due to being younger and trapped in the moon for such a long time.
Another reason Discord being attracted to multiple species makes sense is that he's made up of an amalgamation of animals, and is "part pony" (i.e. Cherilee stating he has the "head of a pony" and his pegasus wing). There seem to be plenty of chimeric magical animals in Equestria such as centaurs and manticores so while Discord may be the only draconequus he's certainly not the only mismatched being hanging about.
In my story dragon/pony relations are taboo in modern day Equestria because they make things like Discord, hence his musings on how "for some reason that sort of thing is frowned upon nowadays." GEE, I WONDER WHY.
The fact that some of these things are taboo would make Discord MORE likely to try them out, not less.
2846103
Or husbands. ;)
In my story Fluttershy is oblivious to Discord's affections. She likely doesn't think of him that way precisely because he isn't a pony, and may have internalized some of the ideas of taboo in Equestrian society even if she doesn't completely believe them herself. But I also find the idea of a virginal Fluttershy waiting her entire life for Discord to return a bit unrealistic too. She had a life while he was away, and he missed out on it.
2846443
In my universe where Discord is Q, there's a segment where he tells Fluttershy and Applejack that Celestia has had multiple lovers from various species, including a friends-with-benefits relationship with Spike's biological father that led to her getting custody of the orphaned egg. In that universe she has married, multiple times, always to totally respectable stallions of impeccable breeding with no skeletons in their closet, and then when they die she mourns them for fifty to a hundred years before moving on to the next one; so the thing the girls find shocking and unbelievable is not that Celestia has sex but that she has secret trysts with lovers of different species (and in fact Applejack finds even this believable, just not the part where one of them was Discord. Technically, in that universe, Discord and Celestia never actually had sex, but this was actually due to the laws of the Q Continuum, not due to lack of desire on either of their parts.)
I don't think Celestia would cede any part of her power to a stallion she married; if it was before she was immortal, assuming there was a time that she was not immortal, then maybe, but there's such an enormous gulf between the Princess of the Sun and the most powerful mortal stallion, I'd see him as having at best ceremonial power. Which might be a reason she's never married, because she wouldn't be willing to doom the kind of stallion she could actually love to that sort of sterile existence, and any stallion who'd be comfortable being her trophy husband, she wouldn't care about. I did, however, have Celestia's father advise her, in my main non-crossover MLP headcanon, that she should take Discord as a lover if she wants to precisely in order to keep her future husband in his place. :-)
2846540
This is a good point. She probably simply wouldn't LET someone seize power, whether she was married to them or not. She's no trembling waif in the corner.
Which I absolutely LOVED, btw. As well as Discord saying (in which story of yours, I can't remember because many of the plotlines overlap) he was "Celestia's bit of rough."
2846157
Actually i do think that there could be an instance where Discord could be a virgin after these many years. Is basically "attraction to the mind" where a person is basically asexual but when attached to the person "mentality" he fell in love for the first time and develop his first physical attraction (and a "boner"). It sometimes happen between heterosexual men or women who become such good friends and soulmates that sometime develop bisexual tendencies that only happen once and only between each other. If we set a story in which Discord really had no friends other than simpler animals and Fluttershy would impress him with her tenderness (or most likely Twilight with her intelligence) then we would really have him for the first time coming out of his emotional shell. Basically like Daryl from Walking Dead who is a 40 old virgin who started to develop first glimpses of emotional attachment to 2 girls in the story and one main guy, (people still argue if he is asexual, straight for Carol, straight for Beth or gay for Rick)
2846960
I've had that "fall in love for someone's mind and the body follows" thing happen. But the thing is, it doesn't happen in a vacuum. You have sexual desires before that happens, you just don't end up acting on them for whatever reason. And Discord isn't autistic, or socially anxious, or repressed, or any other reason why he wouldn't act on a whim as soon as he felt it.
An interesting story could be done where an asexual Discord falls in love with Fluttershy, has sex with her to make her happy, and finds it's not unpleasant and he doesn't have a problem with it, because real asexual people do do that. And then there's things like LickleSoxy's "To Judge A Book", where he's literally a child and draconequui just take a ridiculously long time to grow up, in which case one imagines he'll hit puberty sooner or later. But I just can't see a version of Discord who's a full-grown adult failing to experience enough sexual desire or for that matter just plain curiosity and desire for new experiences to have had sex, being then capable of suddenly falling in lust with someone. I think this is a myth teenagers and very young adults believe because it's true to their experience -- young people can certainly feel no interest in anyone sexually until suddenly the right person and then boom. But Discord's not young.
I suppose I'd buy it if the story gave me some reason to believe it. For instance, if draconequui don't experience interest in sex unless their lives are stable enough and they feel safe with a partner. Such a trait could evolve in a long-lived species whose children are utter hell to raise -- you don't invest in having a child until you're in a good position to do so, because otherwise your attempt won't be successful. And it's doubtful that Discord felt safe and secure while he was running Equestria. Invincible, maybe, but that's not the same thing. There could be other reasons. But the point is, it would be strange and unusual and need to be explained by the story; it couldn't simply be taken as a given. Folks write it because they think it's romantic, but they don't realize how bizarre it would actually be, so they don't bother to explain it.
2847038
If i would give it a reason for his "late bloom" it would be to either
1) Him being a cosmic entity (as he was seen traveling through space in the comics) made him very open to the idea fo meeting countless beings. From mashroom people to aggresive ant-giants. Since he saw every species as something similar as to we see animals and basically "something under his taste" for sexual encounter he could also develop such tendencies when he came to pony Earth, From there he could just "taken over" (which was bascially him having fun with those "animals" that he didn't thought any different than the mushroom people) and then the plot from S4 flashback would happen where he was first time defeated by other creatures. He then could find them interesting when observing them for 1000 years in stone. AND THEN finally having his first emotions appear becasue he find the first race that impressed him and is not a draconequui.
That headcanon require him to be an alien though xD
2) This reason is what about i said earlier. Him basically being too chaotic and disliked by others that he turned into asexual wierdo living for himself. It gave me that idea when Jeremy Whitley (comicbook writer of Discord) compared Discord and Fluttershy to Sherlock and Watson (and also to Doctor and Donna) and since Sherlock is officially asexual (in fandom shipped with either Irene Adler or Watson) it could be taken that Discord is a peculiar that doesn't react with his body but more likely with his brain. And i could personally see Sherlock go for Watson in tv show (if Watson was actually gay) just out of curiosity and only becasue he is the only person he trust and his only friend in entire series
(them being gay was also a recurring joke that other characters noted with Watson being the only one getting annoyed, especially after he got married xD)
2847038 The only way I could really see Discord as a virgin is if he was 'born', found out about magic, took over Equestria, and was turned into stone in the span of 3 years. He'd be so busy with playing around that he wouldn't have time to try to have sex.
2848021
I actually think most of the brain-breaking is not that Discord isn't a virgin, but that he might like guys.
Obviously there are some people who do not want to ship him with anything other than the love-interest of their choice, be it Fluttershy, Celestia or Twilight etc.
But from what I've read about Trickster figures (as well as watching Q's character), I think he'd totally be up for some man-lovin' as well. Honestly, WHY would Discord care about something like that enough to avoid it?
2849199
Ah, homophobia. Will you ever go away?
People who are freaking out that Discord has an interest in males do not comprehend bisexuality/pansexuality, so they think, if Discord likes guys, then he can't like girls, which means all of everyone's favorite ships get destroyed and nooooo! Either that or their masculinity is threatened by the notion of a cartoon chimera who wears French maid outfits being queer. (I mean, seriously, how do you watch the show and not read Discord as queer? Seriously?)
Also noncomprehension of the concept of chaos. And total ignorance of the trickster archetype.
I've actually had to have arguments with people on the Internet who thought that the fact that Q had a "wife" in the Continuum made him straight. (Admittedly that episode did try really, really hard to convince us that Q was straight, which was one of the very many reasons why it was a terrible episode, even though I have come to love the female Q and the story possibilities of the war.) You just have to keep pointing them back to "Had I know sooner, I would have appeared as a woman", over and over. Like, Q flat out admits that he'd be using sex as a weapon against Jean-Luc if he'd only thought of it soon enough.
This particular fandom is actually probably worse for it than most others, while at the same time being overall less misogynistic, because it has vastly more female characters than male characters and a very high proportion of male fans. (Male fans of a show about women come in two varieties: openly and disgustingly misogynistic, which means they reveal themselves obviously and easily, and guys who genuinely like women and want to read and write about them, which is the majority. Female fans of a show about men have a good proportion of fans with internalized misogyny, but the thing is, internalized misogyny doesn't lead to writing graphic rape porn that makes it obvious where the writer is coming from, it leads to gay couples where one of them acts like a horrible stereotype of women, and actual women all being bitches who interfere with the Tru Luv of the gay guys.) The high proportion of straight male fans, unfortunately, means more homophobia in the fandom. In any other fandom, Discord/Tirek would probably have exploded; there's barely any of it. (And considering that Discord threw over the pony that everyone ships him with after Tirek felt him up in a dark alley, betrayed Twilight after Tirek gave him a present, and behaved like a jilted boyfriend begging to know why after Tirek betrayed him, you gotta wonder why not.)