Character Profiles: Shadow Scythe

Atalanta

Appearance after Everywhere and Nowhere

Age Immortal (physically appears 24)
Race Unicorn
Identity Female
Cutie Mark an equine skull over crossed scythes
Voice Carli Mosier

The self-proclaimed Goddess of Death. A cynical reaper mare who first debuted in The Last Sunny Days of Equestria, acting as the secondary antagonist under Grogar... until she usurped the position. After assimilating her fellow reapers' souls, she butchered the old ram and harnessed his power. She also gained access to the Demiurge by (briefly) killing Beatrix. And had she seized control over the Coffin of Light and Darkness, she would have brought death to every world in existence had Sunny (an alternative variation of Sunset Shimmer) not stopped her. Beatrix would banish her to a seemingly desolate asteroid as punishment, promising to one day return in hopes that Shadow Scythe could be redeemed.

Indeed, she returns for the reaper in Forbidden Manor at the End of Time. They take up a temporary alliance to explore the eponymous entity, along with Cerise, Midnight, Sunny, and the mischievous Moxxi. But it doesn't take long for Shadow Scythe to go against her 'allies' and try to kill them using the manor's power. Once more, she is thwarted and reduced to a child-like mental state thanks to Sunny's empathetic powers when it is clear she would never change her ways. Though this was short-lived in Dearly Beloved when Zeloph appears and restores the reaper's mentality in hopes of recruiting her for a revenge plot. She instead opts to take time for herself to try and sort out her awakened empathy, though she would later take up the Fallen One's offer in Everywhere and Nowhere.

Chapters in the Bewitching Hour would dive into Shadow Scythe's origins. She was the daughter of cryptid hunters Quicksilver Bullet and Quiver Bolt, who was born apathetic and only found interest in killing things. Thus earning her cutie mark as a reaper. But a later interaction with her bitter father would reveal that, due to Shadow Scythe's atrocities, her mother took her own life, horrified by what her daughter became.

This was likely the catalyst to her redemption arc in Everywhere and Nowhere, as Shadow Scythe slowly began questioning her own morals when working alongside Zeloph and Doppia. After the Vice Lord betrayed them to continue her own plot, the reaper joined Beatrix's side again. Only this time, she actually pulls through and aids in the defeats of Doppia and the Burning King. This was a terrific feat only possible by the newfound remorse and budding romance she developed. Shadow Scythe seeks repentance for her crimes with a new outlook on life, hoping to redeem herself in her parents' eyes.

Shadow Scythe boasts potent necromancy, keen wisdom, and deadly martial combat through her namesake. She later unlocks the Onoma, Thanatos, named after the Greek God of Death. With it, she can merge with the shadows, travel through them and conjure sickle-armed tendrils.

Tropes

• A-Cup Angst: Played with. Before her empathic awakening, Shadow Scythe saw big boobs as needless weight and didn't understand the appeal. But come the bath scene in Everywhere and Nowhere, where she's surrounded by busty women, it's hinted she has a bit of breast envy.
• Affectionate Nickname: Zeloph sometimes calls her his 'Angel of Death'
• All Women Are Prudes: Shadow Scythe detests the thought of sexual interaction. Though given that she's been in a few scenarios against her will, she's a bit justified in that sense. Everywhere and Nowhere amplifies this hatred when her own sexual urges resurface during her estrus period and traveling with a very handsome lad like Zeloph doesn't make things easier. When the two eventually hook up, she finally gets the appeal and finds it pleasant, so long as it's with the right person.
• Always Someone Better: Sees Beatrix this way, but you'd be hard press to get her to admit it outright.
• Archnemesis: Was this for Beatrix, having been the main threat in a couple of stories while always trying to murder her in cold blood. Come the Bewitching Hour introduces Mortis Solitaire as another undead enemy who seeks to make Shadow Scythe pay for her treachery, setting him up as the central villain in Undeath and Rebirth.
• Battle Couple: With Zeloph, having fought beside him well before they established their romantic interest.
• Bastard Understudy: Grogar, powerful and wise as he is, should have read the signs that his apprentice was always going to betray him, no matter what he promised.
• Because You Were Nice To Me: Despite knowing full well she could turn on him at any sign of weakness, Zeloph remained a very loyal and caring companion, to the point where she felt guilty for abandoning him to go fight Beatrix. While not the main reason she fell in love with him, his charisma and unwavering kindness certainly shined through in winning her over.
• Being Evil Sucks: Learns this the hard way in Everywhere and Nowhere. After suffering many defeats at the hands of Beatrix and friends, getting roped into a doomsday prophecy, and spending enough time with reluctant villain Zeloph
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: Both Shadow Scythe and Zeloph spend a majority of Everywhere and Nowhere bickering at each other, the former often threatening to betray the latter at the drop of a hat. Everyone (even Doppia) can see how badly they want each other. They culminate their relationship with celebratory sex.
• Beneath the Mask: Behind that egotism, power-hungry, sociopathic sadist lies a deeply troubled individual. The mask fully shatters in FMatEnT, where Sunny uses her magic to call forth Shadow Scythe's repressed emotions, which heavily weigh on her psyche. She goes into Everywhere and Nowhere with morals she didn't know existed within her.
• Betrayed by Offspring: Her father and mother were not happy with her descent to darkness, despite knowing how aloof their daughter was. This takes a tragic turn as Quiver Bolt kills herself for raising a criminal.
• Big Bad: The true antagonist of The Last Sunny Days of Equestria and the main antagonist in Forbidden Manor at the End of Time.
• Cannot Spit It Out: Had a very hard time admitting she developed romantic feelings for Zeloph.
• Card-Carrying Villain: Shadow Scythe fully embraced being a monster, taking sadistic glee in reaping souls and backstabbing her way into more power. She often flaunted this status to make Beatrix ashamed of her own wrongdoings. Many defeats later, she starts to question whether she should remain a monster.
• Casting a Shadow: Her Onoma, Thanatos, allows her to slip through shaded surfaces like a phantom and can even shape more scythes to battle with.
• Character Development: Big time. Shadow Scythe started off as a megalomaniac, hellbent on slaughtering every living thing to take their souls and increases her prowess. Her next appearance has her trying to regain said status before being taken down a peg with another humiliating defeat. She spends a good chunk between stories wondering if being evil was the right path and if it's too late for her to change her ways. And by the third battle with Beatrix, it's clear she's struggling even to justify wanting her dead, outside of the latter's anomalous nature. This comes crashing down when Doppia gives the reaper a taste of her own medicine, leaving her and a weakened Zeloph to seek comradery with her former enemies. Everywhere and Nowhere ends with her with a full heel-face turn and wanting to make amends, starting with her estranged father and the childhood she neglected. Undeath and Rebirth shows us what a fully remorseful Shadow Scythe looks like, a long cry of the dispassionate reaper who willing betrayed her fellow reapers and master.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: It's practically her calling card. Zeloph is fully aware of this and playfully anticipates the moment Shadow Scythe holds a blade to his throat. By the time she starts swinging towards heroism, her former adversaries are convinced it's just another ruse with how frequent the reaper has backstabbed people.
• Co-Dragons: Shares this role with Zeloph under Doppia's manipulation and the Burning King's will.
• The Comically Serious: Is this for a lot of the hilarity that ensues by pranksters like Moxxi or Mini-Trix. She can always be quite sarcastic.
• Dark Action Girl: She's the most prominent example in a series full of characters who use dark magic, being a user of necromancy and shadow-based arcane magic.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: It took a certain ray of sunshine to slowly melt Shadow Scythe's black and icy heart over time until she accepted her passionate feelings for Zell.
• De-Power: This is usually how she's defeated in most cases, forcing her to vomit up all the souls she's stolen.
• Don't Fear the Reaper: Reapers in this universe are tasked to deliver death this way, though Shadow Scythe is a subversion as she relishes the consumption of life. Played straight when she mellows out of her megalomania and steadily values life.
• The Dragon: Was this to Grogar in her initial debut. That is, until becoming...
• Dragon Ascendant/Dragon In Chief: Not only does she overtake Grogar, killing him and absorbing his soul, but she also proves to be a more vile threat to Equestria! This extends even after Beatrix banishes her to the asteroid, as she plans to use the mansion inhabiting there to resume her harvest of power.
• Driven to Suicide: Downplayed. She's tried to off herself after realizing how horrible of a person she is but never fully commits.
• Emotionless Girl: Shadow Scythe rarely smiles unless planning something sinister and sadistic. The only outward emotions she does display are often rage. The Bewitching Hour reveals that even as a child, she was very aloof. She didn't even cry when she was born! Thankfully, she grows out of this come her spiritual awakening.
• Enemy Mine: Twice with Beatrix and friends. The first time was out of necessity to survive as she quickly hijacked the manor once the opportunity presented itself. The second is a lot more genuine, having realized the errors of her ways and that if she doesn't side with the travelers, the Burning King will reign fire on everything in existence.
• Enfant Terrible: As mentioned before, she was a very cold child, finding little to no value in life nor her parent's hobbies and careers. The only thing she showed genuine interest in was killing, demonstrated when she used the Vorpal Blade to slay the legendary Jabberwocky with a notable cruel smile.
• Et Tu, Brute?: Ironically applies to Shadow Scythe herself when Doppia disposes of both her and Zeloph the moment they've served their usefulness in her scheme. She suspected the Vice Lord had a hidden ploy but was not prepared to be blindsided by her usurping Cerise's body with Midnight temporarily under her control.
• Ethereal White Dress: Wore a long pale cloak with black fades on her sleeve and skirt, befitting for a death-bringer.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: This doesn't apply until after her second defeat, as she's long since abandoned her family with zero consideration for their wellbeing. This comes back to bite her hard once her emotions resurface, for when her father reveals Quiver Bolt's suicide, Shadow Scythe is devastated.
• Even Evil has Loved Ones: Spending enough time with Zeloph softens her up, and makes her uncharacteristically protective of him when she suspects foul play from Doppia.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: Due to her lack of empathy, she can't fully grasp any good nature demonstrated before her. A good example is when she and Zeloph take shelter in a cave during a snow storm. When he offers to help calm her estrus, she immediately accuses him of taking advantage of her for sex. His magic touch helps open her eyes to why she can't seem to get why she's been beaten a handful of times.
• Exotic Eye Design: Her pupils are pure white, though she isn't blind.
• Fatal Flaw:
  -Her Pride often sets up her downfall. Because she views herself as vastly superior, she's in constant denial that her shortcomings are her own or that an opponent might be slightly stronger than her. It takes getting her ass kicked by Beatrix and a sparing match with Zeloph for her to begrudgingly admit she's not as powerful as she claims to be.
  She can also be quite envious, most notably comparing her life with Beatrix and how she's loved and valued by friends and allies despite committing heinous crimes herself. Meanwhile, Shadow Scythe is alone, bitter, and has given up any opportunity to be social in pursuit of power. It's possible she wants a closed relationship with Zeloph because she's afraid of losing his love to someone more suitable than she is.
• Foil: Is one to both Beatrix and Zeloph:
  -Beatrix is a loving, open, and ecstatic heroine, while Shadow Scythe is a cold, antisocial, and brooding villainess. Both had a start of darkness, but where the witch tried to defy destiny and gained friends, the reaper continued down her deathly path, cutting out all ties to anyone. Beatrix is voluptuously and flirty, always open to rolling in the hay. Shadow Scythe is lithe, awkward, and, for a time, was repulsed by the idea of laying with someone.
  -The contrast with Zeloph is like night and day. Shadow Scythe willingly chose to be evil and nihilistic, whereas Zeloph became evil out of grief, having lost two important people in his life. Both are opposed to sex, but where the reaper can't stomach the thought, the angel is just uninterested, though willing, if both parties consent. Shadow Scythe's Onoma operates through dark silhouettes and hides in places where Zeloph wields immense light and must be out in the open for maximum potency. Naturally, opposites attract.
• Good Costume Change: In the epilogue of Everywhere and Nowhere, she trades her reaper's cloth for a more modern-looking hoodie that shows off her midriff, shorts with a skull buckle, and thigh high boots to better empathize her shapely legs.
• God of the Dead: What she often proclaims herself as.
• Given Name Reveal: She reveals her name as Atalanta to Zeloph after they've culminated their relationship.
• Heel-Face Brainwashing: Sunny enforces this trope when reawakening the suppressed emotions within Shadow Scythe's being. It is undone when Zeloph restores her memories, and she's back to her wicked ways, albeit more aware of her actions and feelings.
• Heel-Face Turn: After being teased with a redemption arc since the end of her debut story, she finally pulls this off during the third act of Everywhere and Nowhere. After going through (literal and metaphorical) hell, and suffering defeats, Shadow Scythe embraces her newfound empathy and decides to join up with her former enemies to defeat Doppia and the Burning King. Granted, she still has a lot to own up to, but its well deserved.
• I Hate Past Me: Really comes to loath herself for carelessly throwing away a perfectly good life and loving family.
• I Have No Daughter!: Quicksilver Bullet disowns her after she shows up on his doorstep again for all her evildoing and adamantly blames her for his wife's death.
• In the Hood: It's a given, being a reaper and all. She often uses it to hide her face when under stress.
• Intangibility: Thanatos allows her to pass through any shadowy object or surface, making her quite unpredictable about where she'll strike next.
• Interspecies Relationship: Is in love with Zeloph, who is a winged humanoid.
• It's Personal with the Dragon: Beatrix holds a lot more resentment for Shadow Scythe than she did Grogar, especially when the latter threatens the livelihood of her friends and family. By the end of FMatEoT, she's abandoned any notion that the reaper can be redeemed and was ready to kill her before Sunny gave an alternative.
• Lack of Empathy: Born with it, in fact!
• Laser-Guided Karma: When Shadow Scythe betrayed her fellow reapers to steal their souls, she unknowingly created her most minacious adversary yet; Mortis. The revenant is a firm reminder of all her misdeeds and is hellbent on giving her her due justice.
• Letmotif: "Bereavment", a funeral-esque melody that gives Shadow Scythe a foreboding, yet gloomy presence.
• Love Redeems: Zeloph is the driving factor that brings Shadow Scythe towards the path of goodness. And while it is a long road for her to walk down, she is thankful to have him by her side.
• Mating Season Mayhem: Suffers through a long overdue estrus period, thanks to Sunny's empathic awakening. Zeloph is able to calm the fire in her loins through his healing touch, though it's visibly clear that she'd much rather go all the way with him despite her resilience to sex. It's heavily implied that Moxxi is responsible for reawakening her sexuality.
• Matricide: Not directly, but her involvement with Grogar and death-dealing took a heavy toll on her mother, leading her to kill herself. Nonetheless, Quicksilver Bullet puts full responsibility on his daughter, who doesn't deny the notion.
• Meaningful Name: In Greek Mythology, Atalanta was a huntress most noted for her resourcefulness, rejection of any suitors who failed to beat her in a footrace, and as a valued worshiper of the Moon Goddess, Artemis (whose sibling is the Sun God, Apollo). Not only that, the name itself means 'of equal weight', which fits perfectly for a character who would bring death to all things regardless of morals.
• My God, What Have I Done?: She has this reaction a bunch of times during her redemption arc, most notably after her father disowns her and when seeing all the needless violence she's wrought during Doppia's raid in the Crystal Empire.
• Mystical White Hair: Even has a bang stylized to look like a scythe!
• Necromancer: Not to the same extent as, say, Mortis, but Shadow Scythe has been able to conjure the dead and use their corpses for her benefit.
• Obviously Evil: Well, what do you expect when you go around calling yourself 'Shadow Scythe'?
• Official Couple: With Zeloph by the end of Everywhere and Nowhere.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Shadow Scythe is a self-chosen alias to reflect her cruel nature better. Her real name is Atalanta.
• Perky Goth: Undeath and Rebirth mildly portrays her as such when she attempts to be more sociable with her allies. She's still reserved and rather shy, which makes her come across as rather adorable at times.
• Red Baron: "The (self professed) Goddess of Death". Mortis gives the fitting moniker of "the Betrayer."
• Sarashi: Underneath her old robs, Shadow Scythe wore bandages that covered up her torso, abdomen, arms, and legs.
• Single Woman Seeks Good Man: While 'good' is certainly a stretch, Zeloph's charisma, well-spokeness, and capacity for kindness eventually win Shadow Scythe over to reconsider her stance on both love and sex. She decides to indulge in both once she considers him the ideal partner.
• Sinister Scythe: Her signature weapon.
• Slap-Slap Kiss: Right after Doppia's defeat, Shadow Scythe chews out Zeloph for 'supposedly' holding back during a dire situation before pulling him into a long-awaited kiss.
• Soul Power: As a reaper, Shadow Scythe can sense and see souls, whether they stile reside in the living or are trapped in the dead. She also empowers herself by absorbing souls, which is her go-to-plan to culminating absolute power.
• Tears of Remorse: She hasn't shed a single tear even as a child. But these come flowing out once Sunny reawakens her suppressed empathy, well before her heel-face turn. Undeath and Rebirth hasn't gone a single chapter where she hasn't stopped crying.
• The Starscream: It doesn't matter if you are a friend or foe. When you align with Shadow Scythe, expect her to throw you under the bus the moment you stop being useful to her plans.
• Unresolved Sexual Tension: After the battle in the Crystal Empire, Shadow Scythe willing gives into her unbridled desires for Zeloph, not wanting to die a virgin. Zell reluctantly refuses her advances, knowing full well that its the heat talking to her and that she would otherwise never show such lewd behavior. Fortunately, they get to resolve this tension after defeating the Burning King.
• Villain Decay: Shadow Scythe becomes less and less menacing with every defeat. By her third skirmish with Beatrix, she's more or less equal with her and hesitates to deliver the killing blow due to her conflicting morals.
• When She Smiles: Very rarely does Shadow Scythe give a genuine smile that isn't out of malice or ill intent. Being around Zeloph changes that.
• White Hair, Black Heart: At least before her eventual heel-face turn.
• You Should Have Died Instead: Spoken to her by her own father when the revelations of her mother's passing comes up. She agrees.

This page will go through continuous edits as the stories go on. If there are any tropes you think should be added, feel free to make suggestions!
Special thanks to Midnight for helping me compose the music!

Comments

[Dr Sharaz Jek]

Fantastic read as always for one of my favorites in the series!

[Shadic Midnight Blitzer]

Realized that if Shadow never captured/screwed Midnight over by turning him into a Awakened Hyper Stallion (cuts half of his life and burns the rest through his soul burning feral form), he wouldn't have caused her to lose her horn and maybe her estrus cycle.

Violence breeds violence, revenge breeds revenge.

I'm happy how things led up to her being with Zeloph. It's nice seeing them interact. I can't wait to see more character interactions. And you're welcome for the theme!

[Dr Sharaz Jek]

5657908
Yep, lots of irony resulting from Shadow's choices!

[Shadic Midnight Blitzer]

5657909
Yeah. This entire universe has been about revenge breeding revenge. Leads to cool moments and lots of character development though!
Can't wait to make more themes!