Chapter 11: Dissy's Youth Remembered
Discord
Deep in the Everfree Forest there was a rise in the floor of a valley running between two mountains. On the top of this rise, near the edge where it fell away to the valley floor, there was a smaller rise -- a sort of hillock. A hypothetical archaeologist, noting the flattened top and regular outlines of this hillock, would have termed it a "tell" -- the characteristic pile of debris and piled garbage left behind by a structure occupied by sapients over a long period of time.
The archaeologist would have been correct. And she was not even all that hypothetical -- Daring Do, to be specific, had been to this very spot, and had recognized the general nature of what she had seen. She had only the time for a very quick sample, but it had made its way into one of her private notebooks.
"Old building, probably a large steading or small village, pre-Discordian, inhabited from at least the early Cataclysm on, abandoned just before or right after the Coming of Discord. Estimated occupancy between around 2000 and 1000 years BTH. Probably of Pony origin.
She'd been rather busy on another errand, and hadn't been able to stop to do any real archaeology. She didn't consider the tell interesting enough to mention in any of her published works.
Which was a shame, really, because this place was even older, and its history more spectacular, than even any of her exploits.
Discord twisted himself through the paths of least resistance through spacetime and emerged on a hillside overlooking the tell. There had once been a big old oak tree here he had loved; not because he had any particular fondness for plants -- That was more Posey's thing -- but because it was the perfect place for a picnic. It had been frequently used for exactly that purpose, most particularly by two strange sisters and an even stranger only child, who were strange in that none of them were of any previously known Kind. Three strange children who were the best of friends, which was good because they were the only children in their microcosmic social world.
His memories conjured their ghosts -- not true ghosts, since all three of them were alive and well, but traces in his mind, which his powers animated as half-tangible energy forms. A lovely white filly, whose pink mane seemed to gather in and shine with sunlight, illuminating an otherwise gloomy world with her grace and kindness. A cute blue one; a wonderful pal, who was brave and always game for any adventure,. And an awkward little draconequus, who was happy to be with his boon companions.
His mind flickered through the memories. Early picnics here -- they were just foals, tumbling and playing around their mothers. The mother of the two fillies -- a figure who had always filled him with fear -- a green Unicorn whose mane was a a swirl of dark green and blue and red, whose colors seemed to shift unpredictably, and whose hooves were shod with twists of energy that pained his own eyes to look too long upon, and whose own eyes seemed to regard young Dissy with cold suspicion -- Mimic.
Why did you distrust me even then?, full-grown Discord wondered. I was just a foal then, I hadn't done anything to you, yet. Did you always somehow know what I was, or suspect it by the power of what you wore on your hooves? The left side of his jaw hurt when he thought too long about that, as if the wound had been dealt him yesterday instead of over two and a half millennia ago.
And another one -- a pink Earth Pony with a greenish-brown streaked mane and a somewhat unfocused expression in her green eyes, except when she looked at little Dissy. Then, her eyes shone with love. Shady, he thought. Then, Mother ... Adult Discord felt a strange tugging at his heart when he looked at her. She was only the mother of this Incarnation, of course. But she was the only mother he'd ever really loved ...
By the time he was a few years older than this, he had understood that she was weak and timid, but he only loved her the more for it, for it meant that he had to protect her. In those days, he'd been very protective. In recent days, he'd started to want to protect somepony weak and timid, too -- until she'd turned on him.
It hurt him to look at Shady as well, but for entirely different reasons. For she'd turned on him in her own way too, at the very last, at the end of his thousand-year reign. Turned on him and fought him. And done so to far greater effect, for she'd done so with the scythe he himself had made for her, and he had been unable to defend himself against her, though he could have destroyed her in an instant. A colt should not strike his own mother ...
And she'd still loved him, even then, even as she helped his former two best friends defeat him. That was the irony of it. At the end, he'd been struck down by the three Ponies he cared for most. Perhaps they were the only ones who could have defeated him. Perhaps he could only, really, be hurt by those he loved.
But this was more than a thousand years before the day he was defeated, and there was no conflict in this scene beyond the rough and tumble of healthy young foals, nothing but love. Young Dissy romped with little Celly and Lulu, chasing after a giggling Celly who looked merrily back at him, then squeaked as he nipped her small tail. An even smaller Lulu, wearing an expression of comically-fierce concentration, rammed him from the side, knocking him over and standing atop his long serpentine body, glaring down at him and biting him with her little foal-teeth, gripping one of his coils and growling like a small dog, holding on as he squirmed, laughed and caught her in his coils.
Adult Discord watched and smiled to himself, an smile of pure joy, a smile that was utterly free of any trace of malice. For he'd never hated the Sisters, never really wanted to harm them -- he'd only ever wanted to play with them, it was just that his definition of "play" had changed somewhat after his twentieth year of life. He'd wished that they could appreciate his new outlook on life, but they'd never been sufficiently flexible. They'd never really understood.
In his current strange mental state, strange even for him, torn between his older and younger Selves, all his actions had a unity to them that they often lacked, almost as if his personality was whole and boring like those of most other beings. And he knew that he still thought of them as his friends, even if they no longer thought of him in such a fashion. That he would think of them as his friends until the day he permanently discarnated from this Aspect -- and maybe even after.
Other picnics flashed through his mind. They grew older and older -- itself unusual, for in Paradise Estate all maturation was very greatly slowed. It was as if their own development was following a plan laid more deeply and mightily than that of the ancient Eldren scientist-mages who had created this place, driven by a power as far beyond them as they had been beyond ordinary Ponies. Which was, of couse, exactly what was happening. At the time, they were just glad that they wouldn't have to be eternal foals.
Now they were no longer foals, but a colt and two fillies, growing bigger and stronger with every passing year. The sunlight gathered more about the white filly, the shadows about the midnight-blue. In some lights it seemed as if the rainbow sparkled in Celly's pink mane; little twinking lights like stars began to glisten in Lulu's. Power was beginning to gather around them as well, though they still knew nothing of what it meant.
And his own younger self? He was growing even faster, becoming ever larger than his two best friends, though still much smaller than he was today. He was starting to look at the other Ponies, at the pictures of the long-vanished Big Brothers and the forms of the occasional visitors from the outside world, and he was starting to realize that he was not truly of their species, that he was something unlike anything the Ponies had ever seen before, had powers unlike anything they had ever seen before.
Some of the other Ponies were growing suspicious of him. Mimic had never trusted him, of course, and the others were beginning to grow afraid. His mother Shady still loved him of course, and Posey and Surprise, who were themselves childlike in many ways, were almost like older playmates, constantly amused by the strange things he made and did with his emerging, ever-growing magical powers. They would hear no ill of him.
Mimic, Galaxy the fire-mage; and Star-Reacher, the mysterious housekeeper who had come from the wilderness just before Celly and Luna had been born: they had never truly trusted him. They began to eye Dissy more and more uneasily as his powers grew, as the monsters came out of the woods to fawn before him and lick his mismatched hands.
And Wind Whistler, wise and scholarly, who had always been the teacher to the three strange children, began to give him very curious looks. He knew that she was constantly bargaining with the occasional outsiders, offering them valuable artifacts in return for certain rare books, ones which it was said dated back not only back before the Cataclysm but before Paradise Estate, to a mythical time at the start of history when it was said that two beings -- a white goddess and a strange chimeric dragon-thing, had come down from the stars to contest -- or play -- for the destiny of Ponykind. But Wind Whistler could never obtain them.
And sometimes when Wind Whistler's eyes narrowed upon him, he remembered that she had another side than the gentle scholar they all knew. That she had been Wind Whistler the War Leader, the one who along with spunky, funny Firefly had been the first Ponies to take up arms against the forces of Tirek, had borne The Megan herself into battle, had led Ponykind in the Reclamation of the Earth from the Monsters. That according to the records of those days, she had been the most dangerous warrior ever born to mortal Ponies, mind and body united in perfect harmony, moving with economy and grace and utter lethality, like a reaper harvesting the foe.
Adult-Discord watched the children growing older, their play becoming more complex.
He remembered how Celly had invented the Princess Game, which became their favorite. Celly would be the Princess and she would send Lulu and Dissy on quests to slay monsters. Lulu always wanted to be her big sister's War-Leader, and Dissy would sometimes be a brave Knight who was her Companion, and sometimes the Monster Lulu had to slay. Celly didn't care which Dissy was, but Lulu really liked it when Dissy was her Knight-Companion. Sometimes they got Spike into the game, to be either a Knight-Companion or Monster.
Celly was always good at looking beautiful and regal, making a very convincing Princess, whether she was sitting on some chair she had pressed into the role of her throne, or being the captive of the Monster. She would always be very cunning and crafty, and sometimes she would escape the Monster by trickery before Lulu and her Companions could get there. One time when Dissy and Spike were both playing Monsters, she tricked them into fighting each other and escaped while they were arguing.
They talked about what they wanted to do with their lives. As young fillies and a colt, their ambitions were of course exactly like the games they played.
Celly, of course, wanted to be a Princess. "I'll rule the land wisely and fairly and bring justice to all and I'll be really beautiful and everypony will love me!" she explained. And Dissy and Lulu could see no flaw with this plan.
"I'll be the War-Leader, fearsome to the foe but beloved by my friends, commander of the war-host, who will defend your realm and keep our Ponies safe from the Monsters!" Lulu declared, a fierce light shining in her innocent blue eyes.
"And I'll be the brave Knight, who fights with honor against the Monsters and wins the day for my Princess!" said Dissy.
"And you'll be my Companion," said Lulu.
"Well yes, I'll serve my Princess," said Dissy.
"No, you'll be my Companion," insisted Lulu.
"I'll be Companion to you both," replied Dissy, trying to placate her. But it never seemed to fully work.
She'd been so possessive, even as a small filly! She was a great friend, but often hard to understand.
Now they went up the hill and picnicked beneath the tree together, sometimes with Spike but increasingly just the three of them. Things were starting to change within them, and between them. Celly's legs grew long and her gait increasingly graceful, and sometimes her mane would flow about her in a manner that took Dissy's breath away, or her tail would twitch with a curious insistence when she walked that Dissy found very distracting.
It became dangerous to look at her face, for one risked drowning in her luminous purple eyes. It was even more dangerous to look at any other part of her. The very scent of her was becoming intoxicating, and if that long pink mane, which increasingly sparkled with all the colors of the rainbow, happened to pass across his own face, his breath would catch, his heart seem to stop beating for a painfully magical moment. It was like nothing he'd known before.
Wind Whistler had taught them all basic biology, Dissy had read the love stories of a hundred cultures in the Estate's copious libraries; he understood theoretically what was happening to both of them; but no theory, no tale could be as frightening and mysterious and wonderful as the reality. All the firm ground of their friendship seemed to be shifting -- sometimes he felt as if he was sinking into a swamp, sometimes soaring into the air without even having to use his wings.
Lulu was changing, too. She was gaining a loveliness of her own, a dark mysterious marehood that was like the cool of moonlight dappling shadows in some hidden garden. Nothing like her sister's, of course, but that was all right. She was still his friend, and he found himself more comfortable with the cooler presence of Lulu than he was with the incandescent blaze of beauty that was her elder sister. Only even there the ground was unstable.
Sometimes she would be eager to go places with him; happy to share adventures with her friend, and it would be just like the good old days. If anything she'd be even friendlier than she used to be, hanging on his every word, those big blue eyes shining with fellowship and good cheer, fixed on his own face. She'd pay him all sorts of compliments, too, calling him "mine own dearest friend" and "sweet Dissy," pleasant nonsense of that sort.
Sometimes, though, she'd be all moody and hard to please, and it seemed as if she would become unpredictably angry at the most harmless things he said. And he soon learned not to try to confide to Lulu the strange sensations he was having around Celly -- that seemed to get her angriest of all. He had always known that she could be very possessive, and figured that she didn't like the idea of someone being attracted to her sister, even if it was their mutual best friend..
More years passed. The time came when two figures went up to picnic: Dissy and Celly, and Lulu nowhere to be seen. She'd come to realize that they had very private matters to discuss, and Dissy thought she was very nice about giving them time alone together, though Celly grew sad when he mentioned this, so he did not mention it again. They had sat and talked long that day, while the Sun made its rounds and made of Celly's mane a glory, he in awe of her beauty.
And before that day had ended they had spoken words, and exchanged pledges, which had meant so much to them then, though they had of course been revealed for the worthless drivel they were when he had Awakened. Or had they been worthless? They had been both so happy as they came down from the hill that evening, the Sun setting in the west and the twilight settling on Dream Valley, as the crepuscular creatures came out to prowl, and his heart felt so light despite it being bonded to hers.
They had met like this several times before the nightmares came back, the final bout of nightmares that had ended it all. And it had been sweet, so sweet that the memory now pained him. For in the thousand years that he had ruled the planet, nothing -- nothing -- had made him so happy as the adoration that shone in a pair of purple eyes, the look of the world around him as seen through a long pink mane falling around his face as he lay twined in love with its owner.
And if a pair of blue eyes had noted their comings and goings: once-admiring blue eyes now being clouded by jealousy and unrequited longing -- neither of them had noticed.
Or thought it important -- at the time.
Not that it mattered much anyway. For the dreams got worse and worse, and within a few days he Awoke.
And after that, nothing was ever the same again.
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4565528
I'm glad you liked it. I was afraid you wouldn't, since Bulk's chapter with Claire consists mostly of conversation, exposition and brief flashbacks. This is a "Slice of Life" rather than "Adventure" story, but I still sometimes worry I'm being too "slicey."
Woah are you implying what i think your implying. If so then dang, first discord (Who according to luna was her fault) then the dimension thing with good king sombra and luna befriending the soon to be evil one, it like something out of Shakespeare. good work on that man.
4565626
Young Discord was best friends with young Celestia and Luna. As they matured toward physical adulthood in the Incarnation, Discord fell in love with Celestia, but never regarded Luna as more than a friend. Luna was not happy about this. Her jealousy led her to do something stupid, which she is afraid to reveal to Twilight because she now loves Twilight, but which she feels she must reveal because it contains an important insight into Discord's character. Luna believes that this stupid thing lost Paradise Estate its last chance to reform, contain or kill Discord before he conquered the world. Plus, Luna's a very honest Pony, especially with her close friends, so she's not happy with Twilight not knowing about this, even though she fears rejection when she tells Twilight about it.
4565658 Ahh i see.
I love it
I see what you did there.
As for this chapter... Well, it now makes sense. I don't know if Luna is objectively to blame, but I can certainly see why she blames herself. Dreams are her realm, and by dreams did Discord Awaken. (Appropriately contradictory, that.)
Looking forward to more.
4565626
Luna actually gets the "Horrible Judge of Character" trope on my Characters list on the Shadow Wars for her love for Discord and King Sombra. Though in both cases she fell in love with them before they were evil.
It may be notable here that Celestia and Luna both tend to fall in love with the same sort of Ponies. Sometimes the same Ponies. More often than Luna realizes, because Celestia's reaction when she notices this sort of thing happening is usually to back off. Luna's passions are actually the stronger of the two Sisters, though she comes off to most Ponies as the colder one.
4565830
I almost didn't include this story, because it's the very last post on that blog, and the writer may take the blog in another direction. But then I decided that I was only going to be inspired by Ask the Pie Sisters (particularly in my portrayal of the personalties of Limestone and Marble Pie, who Bulk will meet in a later chapter).
I was also inspired by that blog to come up with the story of the Dragon Attack of 1493, which resulted in Jasper's death and Marble getting her Cutie Mark. Here's the page. Note particularly the scene where Igneous is fighting the Dragon. Tell me he's not a Hidden Badass. And of the Papa Wolf variety to boot.
Jasper Quartz is my own OC, so he's not part of that blog. Nor is Maud (who was introduced well after the blog started and hasn't yet been folded into its continuity) nor Claire (who is also my OC).
4566081
So, both go for powerful, ambitious beings of rather fragile sanity. No wonder Twilight's so popular.
(And the whole reincarnation thing, of course.)
4567215
Yes. Though the "fragile sanity" often goes with power and ambition. Celestia, note, loved Discord from before their current incarnation -- Celestia and Discord (though not under those names in the current tongue) were the deities referred to in the ancient legend for which Wind Whistler was looking to find the details, and the game they were playing with the Ponies had romantic overtones -- until Celestia came to care for the Ponies too much to sacrifice them to such games any more. This is really why Lulu was destined to be the Unlucky Childhood Friend in that Love Triangle.
In Twilight's case, Celestia loves her as if Twilight were her adoptive daughter. Sundreamer loved Dusk Skyshine as a best friend -- though, if Moondreamer hadn't fallen for him first, Sundreamer might have loved him in a more romantic manner.
Which is actually why Luna and Twilight are attracted to one another. Both of them are normally heterosexual.
4569236
When I was writing that chapter, I actually didn't know which way things would go. Bulk is actually a very conventional Pegasus in his extreme-outlier sort of way, and Claire is several different kinds of weirdo (she was sired by a god-machine from another dimension, she's invisible, huge and multi-headed, and she's married to five Byakhee). Though note that Claire's also a fairly conventional Earth Pony in some important ways -- but they're not that obvious until one gets to know her. Luckily, Claire is a very nice Pony.
¡Discord gets nostalgic!
4569574
In point of fact this story focuses on a Love Triangle between Bulk, Discord and Fluttershy, which also theoretically includes Rainbow Dash. This is the shippingest thing I've ever written, to the point that my joke-title (first for a chapter, then for the whole tale) was "Shipping, Shipping Everywhere."
In order, we see:
(1) Bulk Biceps / Fluttershy: Consummated, active.
(2) Discord / Fluttershy: Unconsummated, potential, possibly Unrequited.
(3) Rainbow Dash / Fluttershy: Partially consummated, past, inactive and potential.
(4) Pinkie Pie / Cheese Sandwich: Unconsummated but active.
(5) Spike / Rarity: Teased, unconsummated and undeclared, potential.
(6) Twilight / Luna: Unconsummated and undeclared but very much active.
(7) Discord / Celestia: Consummated but very long past.
(8) Discord / Luna: Unconsummated, unrequited (Discord fails to return her sentiments), very long past.
(9) Claire / Five Byakhee: Consummated and active marriage (we'll count her whole little Flock as one entity for the point of this exercise).
Am I forgetting anypony? Or anyone? I haven't shown Igneous and Cloudy (the parents of the Pie Sisters) on stage yet, but of course they would be
(10) Igneous / Cloudy: Consummated, active, married with children.
Is that enough shipping for you?
4569263
Discord was happy at Paradise Estate. He had a lover, a best friend and several other friends. Ponies who cared about him for himself, instead of trembling to please him lest he destroy their towns. He spent a thousand years ruling the world with only poor mad Shady (his mother, and she loved him, but wasn't very sane) and the ghost of Wind Whistler for company and then fifteen hundred years with nopony but the ghost of Wind Whistler. And Wind Whistler doesn't actually like him very much (she's come to pity him a bit, but that's not the same thing).
This is why Fluttershy's friendship had started to tame him. He emotionally yearns for the way things once were, when he had friends and dreamed of being a hero, rather than being a friendless monster.
4570821
Well i just hope that Discord will find happy ending with either present Fluttershy or her future reincarnation. I wish to cheer for both Discord and Bulk but the second one is just so well maybe "less interesting" that his death woudnt left me with much emotions really. Maybe if it was Big Mac or Flim or someone with more personality than Pokey Pierce it would work then. For now his character is just him being pitiful and useless. Love out of pity doesnt really work on me. Maybe this is intentional since Discord is a main focus here and we suppose to cheer only for him?
I also started to predict the future based by some well known tropes. When someone is saying such things like "maybe she doesnt love me" or "she woudnt marry such ugly pony as me" they usually end up together in the end of every story "for good ending sake". Its like when someone say "it cant be any worse than now" and you know that something bad is going to happen.
Chapter 11
Daring Do, to be specific,
AK Yearling.
emerged o a hillside overlooking the tell.
emerged on a hillside overlooking the tell.
There is something sad knowing Equestria's greatest secret treasure hunter herself had missed this vital piece of history.
and an even stranger only child,
I wonde what Baby Shady thinks of him. Considering in the pony pov verse she was SUPPOSED to be born before him chronologically (since she appeared in the original cartoon). But the thread of fate for her got twisted. This was purely my own fault for having incomplete research at the time.
It would have been interesting to see a world where Discord had Baby Shady as his big sister.
Applejack the first and Surprise were friends of Dissy as well ironically.
ANd yeah, Discord was decidedly falling in love with Celly the RIGHT WAY in their foalhood here.
4572177
My Equestria in general has higher standards of sexual morality than does the modern West or than did in practice the Victorian/Edwardian West and/or idealized benevolent Oriental Despotism on which the society appeared to have been based by the writers. This doesn't mean that Ponies don't anticipate weddings, or even betrothals. They're not perfect. Some of them are a heck of a lot less moral than is Fluttershy.
Fluttershy is particularly timid toward stallions based both on her personality and her unpleasant experience at 16. She's also, however, both sometimes rather lonely and extremely loving by nature. And she's far from conventional -- she's basically invented her own morality, based on a combination of her aristocratic Pegasus values and her focus on life and love in general. It's not a bad moral code, though it's a slightly naive one, like its author.
She's not promiscuous. Aside from her single experience with Nosey, she's had a mostly-sentimental romance with Rainbow Dash that has gone on-and-off for years. Bulk's the first stallion she's been with since Nosey. She's also the second oldest of the Mane Six, at 24 by my chronology at this point. She's healed a long way from the emotional harm Nosey inflicted on her, and she's becoming more self-confident.
She found Bulk annoying and a bit frightening when she was first forced into his close proximity, in "Rainbow Falls." She quickly learned that he was absolutely harmless, save by accident (he fell on her a couple of times); mostly a kind and sweet sort of stallion, who tended to cover up his social awkwardness by shouting enthusiastically. She relates to him on a higher level but similar fashion to the way she does her larger and more potentialy dangerous animal friends.
They got to know each other over three months of regular training for the Games, and they came to like each other more and more, starting to see each other as friends off the training fields. Their relationship became explicitly romantic (though still unconsummated) shortly before "Filli Vanilli" (which is one reason she was so happy at the start of that episode -- Bulk had admitted that he had feelings for her).
Bulk would never hurt her, as I think is obvious from the scenes from his viewpoint. He practically worships Fluttershy as a higher and nobler being than himself -- he is culturally-primed to respond not only to her physical and spiritual beauty, but also to the clear signs she gives of being high-born. He's astonished that she loves him, and fears that he won't wind up with her in the end because she's so much his superior.
Not that Bulk really could ever do anything to her against her will, even were he so minded. Fluttershy is one of the most powerful psychics on the planet. Did you notice how quickly she was able to control him when she felt it necessary to save his life? Fluttershy is safe around far scarier beings than Bulk Biceps -- case in point, the other main male character of the story, Discord.
At the same time, Fluttershy was also getting closer to Discord, but she assumed that he was only interested in her as a friend, despite their increasing displays of physical affection. She knows, after all, that he's an immortal mad Chaos God, not a Pony. And Celestia never told her to seduce Discord, just to try to be his friend.
Fluttershy and Bulk have only been lovers in the full physical sense of the term for about a week at the point of this story. Needless to say, a complication has just been introduced, which is the subject of this very tale.
I thought long and hard about this. Claire doesn't deflect visible light; she's truly transparent in the spectra Ponies (and Humans) use to see. It takes time for that which she eats to be sufficiently assimilated into her body to benefit from this effect. Hence, she's sometimes visible as floating half-digested food. Though this is a small thing compared to her own body.
Same effect as Wilbur's Twin (The Dunwich Horror), on whom she was physically based.
Earth Ponies in general seem to be able to telekinese things through their hooves and hair (both of which are composed of dead but recently-living material attached to living material, which may be signficant in this regard). I also postulate that all Ponies have gecko-like suckers on their feet, which helps them perform cruder manipulations.
Applejack, for instance, can manipulate a lasso with considerable accuracy in her tail. This isn't possible barring telekinesis because she grips the lasso with her tail hair -- a horse-tail is composed of a fairly short bony tail to which is attached a lot of hair. (This is why Rarity could "cut off her tail" to give to Steven Magnet without horribly mutiliating herself, and in the knowledge that it would grow back -- she gave him the hair, not the actual end of her spine!)
Pinkie Pie is the master of this sort of manipulation, having been shown to be able to (either, take your pick) extend her mane something like 6-12 feet to manipulate a CAMERA to take a group photo including herself, or alternately extend it through a wormhole like one of Claire's Gates). Pinkie's mane is the physical mark that most shows her to be a Daughter of Paradise; what she lacks is the same fluffy hair all over her body.
Claire is huge -- the size of a small elephant -- and she has eight demi-graviportal feet which half-fold up when she takes a step to absorb the stress of her great weight (barrel feet that half-shut up when she walks, to paraphrase Lovecraft). No way no how can she pick those hooves up off the ground to grab anything with them, like a normal Pony. So she's limited to her eight prehensile muscular tongues and her fluffy hair as means of manipulation. She's very dextrous with both, but the tongues can reach further than the hair. Yes, she's an invisible Tentacle Monster!
I'm also wondering just how the ceremony was devised. Was it Earth Pony, Byakhee or a mixture of both? I suspect that Goldie did a lot of the research to help her grand-daughter plan her wedding.
To be fair to Maud, it had killed her beloved grandfather, an uncle, an aunt and a couple of cousins by that point, was in the process of killing her beloved stepfather when she intervened, and had come there to kill Pinkie -- the one entity to whose protection she is most dedicated. And the Nightdrake probably bargained with the Shadows for power -- though it may not have fully grasped that it would become their slave. I still have to work out the Dragon's characterization -- you'll have noticed that in my writings I don't treat Dragons as "just monsters"? -- and original motives.
Maud was also only around 17 back then, in 1493.
Heh ... well, the danger wasn't "constant" -- Claire's cherry-picking the interesting parts. And some of them happened after Pinkie was no longer regularly there. And remember, Pinkie requires a lot of entertainment.
Claire's an old-fashioned sort of mare, a moral idealist, and has a high opinion of Fluttershy from the things that Pinkie and Marble have told him about her. Actually, Claire's standards of morals are probably similar to yours (and most of mine), except that she's become persuaded to polyandry. She doesn't think that pre-marital sex is good -- I actually gave her a throwaway comment that says that almost explicitly -- and she assumes that Fluttershy must be deeply in love with Bulk to mate with him.
Good point. The wards are actually around the whole structure of Goldie's farm house and barn-laboratory, not just the barn-laboratory; the bath is in the farm house which is part of that structure. I should have made that clearer -- thanks for catching that. Will hopefully remember to fix.
I wanted to fold some of the Winningverse fanon into my own, and this was my explanation: Cloud Kicker and her friends are a "fast set" of the sort that have existed in most human civilizations in most times and places, who deliberately reject the prevailing sexual morality and act in defiance of such codes. The main things I changed were:
(1) Fluttershy was never seduced by Cloud Kicker as a child. Rainbow, not Cloud Kicker, was the one to rescue her, and that reinforced their Romantic Two-Filly Friendship that has been one of the pillars of Fluttershy's life ever since. Rainbow, unlike Cloud Kicker, isn't a selfish, exploitative Pony who plays games with the hearts of her closest friends -- which is good for Fluttershy, considering all the other crap I unloaded on her in her backstory.
(2) Cloud Kicker is nowhere near as popular as she is in the Winningverse -- a lot of Ponies deeply despise her for her behavior. But then, they implicitly did in the Winningverse as well -- it's just that she can't always impress them to see the error of their ways by displaying her mysteriously charismatic awesomeness. (Seriously, if you read the Winningverse stories, you'll be amazed at how everypony cuts her enough slack to bind Tirek the Annihilator).
(3) Pinkie Pie fended Cloud Kicker off, and was never promiscuous to begin with. The Pies are in general rather sexually-conservative Ponies, as one would logically surmise from their portrayal in canon. Though she is in love, now. As she happily admits, complete with little red cartoon hearts.
(4) In general, Cloud Kicker lies like a rug, especially about her sexual conquests. Though she is incredibly promiscuous -- it's just that she's not as widely desired as she imagines. And bisexuality and lesbianism are much less common that in the Winningverse (where they are more or less standard).
Pretty much, yes. Featherweight has long since recovered to the point of being able to speak, but he's still not a happy colt. Especially with his parents divorcing and all that. And yes, I do see the potential massive character conflict here ... it's just not yet time to bring that out.
Oh, plus one of Featherweight's best friends is Snails, as per the same Ask a Pony blogs from which I got the idea of Bulk being FW's dad from. And yes, Snails is hiding a rather major personality trait, as per the one involving Snails Not an evil trait -- just a very eccentric one.
Fluttershy's not actively manipulative. What she is very good at, however, is controlling events so that anyone at least half-decent sympathizes with her and wants to please her. She does this subconsciously. Mostly.
It only works on those with significantly good sides to their personality. And it works on Discord, interestingly enough.
Yes. I inferred this from the fact that he's among the Wonderbolts fighting Tirek in the Season Four finale. Which I guess makes it obvious he survives this story!
You're quite correct, objectively speaking. Also, she doesn't give a damn what any member of the Wind Clan -- save perhaps her mother Sweetwing -- thinks of her choice of lover or husband.
That was, however, Bulk's perception. And Bulk fears he's not good enough for her. Bulk has a very high opinion of Fluttershy and a rather humble opinion of himself.
Mind you, many Pegasi as highborn as Fluttershy would see things just as Bulk fears. The only other Pegasus almost as highborn as Fluttershy who Bulk has ever known well is Cloud Kicker, who is not an advertisement for the moral rectitude of the Pegasus aristocracy in general.
Of course, Windvane and Ill Wind, who Bulk has never met, are far, far morally worse than the merely nymphomaniacal and egotistical Cloud Kicker. Sweetwing's pretty nice, though, when she's not raving mad.
Fluttershy was seduced by Nosey at 16. She never went all that far with Rainbow Dash. In the full physical sense of the term, Bulk is Fluttershy's first lover. Thus, Bulk's impression is pretty much accurate.
At this point in time in my fanon, three members of the Mane Six are actually still virgins. The other three have had backstory inflicted on them. None are promiscuous. The least experienced of them all is Twilight Sparkle. She's also the youngest, at 21. AJ is the oldest, at 26. They were 17-22 at Luna's Return (I go for roughly 1 year per season).
Yes. Though this isn't a full-strength Sombra. Or even close to it. And I haven't yet decided to what extent Claire was kidding about this.
Then again, Claire's a pretty honest Pony. Not the type to lie.
In birth order, Morion Quartz (psychopathic Caligula type, killed in direct combat by Crimson Quartz and the LadyTourmaline the Loyal), Rose Quartz (not the same one shown in canon, different Pony, a rather harmless socialite who managed to survive the oppression of Crimson and the period in stasis, and lives in the Crystal City today), Aventurine Quartz (friendly but a bit impractical-minded, assassinated by a Pony or Ponies unknown after taking the throne), Iolite Quartz (fled Morion, who wanted to marry her, and spent the rest of her life in Equestria), and Crimson Quartz (mage, scientist, inventor, reformer, went mad, summoned the Shadows and became King Sombra). So that's the Quartz siblings from the disastrous 6th century YOH, which saw the Fall of the Crystal Empire and the Madness of Princess Luna.
She was just a little Invisible Tentacle Monster then, and she Gated at the moment of crisis:
(From Pinkie Sense and Sensibility, chapter 2: "Foals")
He's not.
Claire should be worried by the implications of this. But then, she's a firm believer in "treat Ponies nice and they may turn out to be good in the end." She's also a bit naive in many ways.
Some of it, though, is that the Pies are the most identifiable direct descendants of Crimson's favorite sister. Pinkie's the only one who actually fought him, and indirectly at that. So he's inclined toward (relative) mercy towards them.
Goldie teaching her ancient mystic secrets and helping her hone her elemental magic (as opposed to her illusions) gave her intellectual stimulation. And the Pies in general treated her well -- Igneous is stern but fair, and quite willing to reward productivity with a generous cut. This is where she got the money to buy the Alicorn Amulet (Hmm, I wonder what brought Sombra to the rock farm in the first place?). Trixie is just a prima donna, and resented the notion of having to do "common labor" for Ponies who were not all that impressed with her claims to Great Power.
It is by some. Of course, it has by some even in eras when this was the common opinion. Equestrian sexual morality is in practice comparable to that of American sexual morality in the late 19th / early 20th century, though with some differences owing to a different cultural history and influences. Sex is generally considered to be tied to marriage or at least betrothal, and sex between couples not at least seriously courting would be seen as dicey.
In connection with Fluttershy, don't discount the fact that she's extremely naive. She tends to assume that trust is unitary, which is to say that if she feels that she can trust somepony she assumes they won't hurt her emotionally. Her main social experience has been with Rainbow Dash and Rarity, both of whom are extremely protective toward her in different ways. Most of the rest of it has been with her other three friends: Twilight, Applejack and Pinkie Pie.
She learned (from her experience with Nosey as explained four years later by Rarity) not to assume that a stallion who wanted to have sex with her and merely acted nicely toward her really loved her. She literally didn't know this before, because she did not grow up around older mares who explained the facts of courtship to her (her mother, Sweetwing, was too busy warning her against Dragons to focus on warning her against pushy colts). She gave Bulk almost three whole months of rather frequent social contact, and decided that he did really love her.
She has had no experience of a relationship with any Pony who both loved her and was really interested in having sex with her turning out badly for her. This is the first time she's been with a Pony matching this description. It's the first time she's ever been with a stallion who actually loved her. She's not a sly seductress -- quite the opposite. She's incredibly naive about how love works.
This is the Winningverse. Here is the (very very long) core story, The Life and Times of a Winning Pony. Prepare to be horrified. I was.
It's not so much Cosmic Horror as Social Horror, as you watch the whole of Equestria collide with Cloud Kicker and gradually conform itself to her warped personality.
You may imagine me a libertine, but my values are actually much closer to those of Twilight Sparkle (or, when depressed, Princess Luna in one of her more sarcastic and cynical moods). or Claire Pie than they are to the Winningverse Cloud Kicker. Or even most characters in the Winningverse.
4572185
Well, they're more or less the same Pony!
The irony is that she pretty much stumbled across the place ("Hello, that looks like a tell over there!") and utterly-missed its significance. The worse irony is that she probably has read some of the legends about it, and might have recognized it for what it was had she done a dig.
He still remembers this love, and wishes he could get it back. He never actually stopped considering the Sisters his best friends -- that's why they survived opposing him for a thousand years. They were on the very short list of Ponies he didn't want to harm.
So I take it all of Claire's heads have the same awareness?
4572951
Yes, she is a single entity with multiple brains connected by a neural net. She uses most of this vast processing power to sense and remember the shape of spacetime so as to precisely place her portals.
4572979
Ironically, Tiamat IS and is NOT one entity, at the same time with her five heads. Ask your wife about the mystery of the trinity.
So Tiamat is and isn't like Claire at the same time in that regard.
An irony BTW? If the Hooviets had just wanted to KILL dragons, Tiamat would have let them unless it became a threat to the survival of the entire species (she can't go hunting down every little dragon slayer on the planet). But the moment they DARED claim to OWN her children, AS A MATTER OF COURSE, well, that was over the line, and when they signed their death warrant.
Clover getting a dragon to call her master was completely different circumstances that Tiamat was willing to tolerate.
I wonder if Celestia keeps as Dragon Bane seeds in her vault.
4573032
The whole "simultaneously one entity and several" is actually how I believe humans work. It's just, we have only one ego, which wanders around several different brain-modules/entities while they are active (and sometimes screws them up; ego suddenly trying to run the part of your brain that knows how to play piano generally results in missed notes.)
An entity who is simultaneously one and several is probably an entity where the separate brain functions/thought clusters have separate egos attached to them, but there is a shared superego/id that influences all to the same goals and similar desires. It's like multiple entities working in *perfect* harmony of interest, with shared thoughts. Not actually that different from how humans function, we just have no insight into the "thoughts" of the parts of our brain that are not accessible to our consciousness.
I tend to see the Q Continuum from Star Trek as working much the same way. But then I was also raised Catholic, so the concept of many who are one isn't all that alien to me. :-)
4572177
I have a problem with this logic.
"Sex before marriage" = "impurity" is human logic and comes largely from religion and from the state interest in controlling marriage. It stems, at origin, from the desire by human males to have a reliable means of transmitting power and property, while cutting human females out of the power/property transmission. In a matriarchal society, girls inherit from mothers, men share the status of their mothers or, if marriage exists, their wives, and the need to control female fertility so it is solely tied to a single male does not exist because inheritance is based on the motherline, which is biologically knowable.
Jordan's made some good arguments why a society which is bordering matriarchy might highly value marriage anyway, and given the role of marriage in assigning non-biological kin to the same "family" and thus cementing alliances between families, I can see why marriage could be important in a true matriarchy. In a society that is quasi-matriarchal but striving toward egalitarianism, marriage would be equally valuable to males and females -- marriage would signal to a male that his mate respects and loves him enough to include him in her children's lives and let him behave as a father, and to a female that her mate wants to *be* a father to her children.
But marriage is a social contract. It's a statement that the state has ratified your relationship, no more. The idea that your relationship is impure if you haven't had the state ratify it is inherently nonsensical. Christianity puts a strong emphasis on the indissolubility of marriage because Jesus Christ was actually trying to make life better for women, in a society where men were allowed to divorce their wives for no reason whatsoever and women were entirely economically dependent on their husbands, but in fact for most of history marriage was about male ownership of women, and even Jesus' strong efforts to ensure that men could not easily cast women aside were brushed off by supposed proponents of his religion because one man, God or not, cannot fight a planet's worth of misogyny (same deal with Islam: Mohammed explicitly married powerful, wealthy women and they had the same rights in marriage that they had later, but the extreme misogyny of the culture warped the religion so in many regions of the world they feel comfortable treating women as chattel slaves of their husbands and claiming it's their religion, despite the religion itself being generally more positive toward women than that.) There is nothing inherent about marriage that says that sex outside it is wrong.
The natural moral argument is that sex without love is wrong, that people who are having sex should be prepared to link their lives together and raise children together should children result of the union. I am absolutely certain that if Fluttershy got pregnant by Bulk, she would be willing to marry him and let him serve as a father to her children, and he would be willing to marry her and so serve. That's the biological basis of sexual "morality". Adding marriage into it just requires that the state sign off on and ratify that agreement. Which makes logical sense from the perspective of contract law -- if both parties must explicitly agree to a contract that the state can enforce, you don't get situations where one party thinks the agreement has happened and the other is just a user -- but we don't assume that selling your car to your friend on a handshake is immoral just because you *could* be screwing your friend by selling a clunker, and we don't call going into business together on a gentleman's agreement "immoral", just dumb.
There is nothing immoral about having premarital/extramarital sex with someone you love, who loves you, who you'd be prepared to raise children with if needed. It may not be the smartest thing to do, because you could be wrong about them... but then, one can make a good argument that requiring marriage before sex cheapens marriage by generating a lot of lust-based marriages where the parties are just getting married to get laid, and either the marriage will break up or it will turn miserable very quickly.
The Pony world is not pure and innocent, in the sense that there are no users -- the Flim Flam brothers prove that there are ponies who are capable of cheating other ponies. But then, marriage exists to protect against users; a society that was truly pure and innocent wouldn't *need* marriage or understand its purpose. The only relevance that "pure and innocent" has to "no sex before marriage" is in the minds of humans raised in a Judeo-Christian mindset. Which, admittedly, most of the population of the US fall into, and MLP is a show made by those humans for the consumption of children, so certainly Hasbro won't show us sex out of wedlock. But for writers who do worldbuilding to assume that ponies don't have sex out of wedlock because that would be impure and disgusting is for writers to put their own personal moral beliefs onto a society that doesn't necessarily have any reason to have such beliefs.
Ponies may have a strong belief in sex with marriage and not outside because they have strong ideals about the power of love and friendship, and may have recognized that users can exploit those ideals and cause great emotional harm by doing so, and requiring the state to ratify a relationship excludes at least some of those users and provides a means for punishing others. But that doesn't make a mare who loves a stallion and chooses to sleep with him on that basis immoral. It may make her naive, overly trusting, or it may indicate that she is totally confident in her own ability to judge character, but it doesn't make her immoral. The immorality comes in when she sleeps with whoever she feels like and doesn't care if anypony gets their hearts broken as a result.
4574538
For what it's worth, Claire's own mental processes aren't all that much more transparent to herself than ours are to ourselves. She perceives herself as having a unitary consciousness even though her physical processing centers are split between her eight brains and mediated by the connecting neural network, just as we perceive ourselves as having unitary consciousness even though <i>our</i> physical processing centers are split between two hemispheres mediated by the communication link through the corpus callosum.
4561062
Now you make me want to write a story with a Battle Royale between Discord and various ponies. :-) I don't have anywhere lined up I can do that, though (aside from one fight which consists of Discord trying as hard as he can to lose). Maybe something in World Without Harmony, though since I happen to know he wasn't taken down there with a fight but with a honey trap (that's the story of the Oppositionverse, where he lost because he underestimated Twilight's intelligence and desperation, and where his enemy with benefits did exactly what he should always have assumed she would do if his own emotions didn't have a habit of betraying him and making him assume that enemies behave like friends if you really like your enemies and find them entertaining), it would be less fun than if I wrote a scenario where he could actually lose. On the other hand, outside of World Without Harmony or stuff set in the past, I don't really like writing Discord as a bad guy.
But yeah, there are a lot of ways Discord can be defeated, most of them revolving around his incredible overconfidence, and despite that overconfidence he must know, having lost to the Elements of Harmony twice, that he's not invulnerable, and that if he can be blindsided once it's possible it could happen again.
4574618
I observe Equestria through the limited window of the (censored) TV series and what I see is a quasi-matriarchy technologically around a century behind our own civilization, which appears to have primarily companionate and sentimental (rather than casual or purely reproductive) romantic relationships, ultimately supporting an institution of marriage rather like that of our own society. And I try to figure out what causes produce these observed similar effects.
Sexual morality exists essentially to protect those who attempt to form emotional, political and reproductive ties, at the expense of those who view sex in purely recreational terms. Sexual moralities exist in all cultures, because from both a biological and cultural evolutionary viewpoint, sex is primarily for reproductive purposes, with emotional and political purposes secondary and purely-recreational ones distinctly last. From an individual POV, emotional and recreational purposes probably predominate, with political and reproductive ones secondary. This creates a certain fundamental tension on which much romantic drama can hang.
Societies always use religion to reinforce whatever sexual morality they want to support for other reasons, though the causative process is bi-directional -- religions also influence the sort of sexual morality that societies develop. This is true even when the "religion" is secular -- Exhibit A being the irrational condom-worship visible in so many Public Service Annoucements, which falsely claim that sex with a condom is so safe that one need not be concerned about any ensuing consequences (in fact, condoms aren't even 100% effective against conception, let alone diseases mediated by objects far smaller than a human sperm).
Now, Equestrian religion is very different from that of the West during its technologically-analogous period -- c. 1900. I doubt that there is a male creator-God (or if there he is probably conceived of as being very distant). There may be some sort of churches, chapels or shrines; there may even be some sort of formal priesthood. But given the matriarchal nature of Equestrian culture, and its strong focus on Harmony, its doctrines must be very different in detail from that of any modern Western culture.
What Equestria actually reminds me strongly of in some spiritual manners is the modern Orient -- East Asia, particularly an idealized and egalitarian version of medieval China or c. 1900 Japan. You have benevolent despotism, spirituality and superstition without an overarching coherent pantheonic structure, and a philosophical obsession with Harmony. This may not be accidental, as this is essentially the world of fantasy anime, including its manifestations in more recent Western animation (Avatar) and computer games (such as the Final Fantasy series).
It's also in some respects -- with the existence of Physical Gods and Goddesses, some of whom one might encounter on a Manehattan taxi line -- very much like the world of Classical Greek mythology (the Alicorns are nicer than Greek Classical goddesses, but entities like Discord and Tirek are right up there with the nastier of the Titans). Indeed, a lot of MLP:FIM's mythos is clearly based directly on Greek mythology -- the hydras, chimeras, Tartarus and the entity Cerberus are all directly taken from those tales).
Equestria of course has its notions of dishonor, sin and shame (every culture does, and has to in order to enable its participants to internalize its codes of conduct). The support structure for these beliefs may differ in detail, though, which may have important effects down the line.
I practically guarantee you that the way that an (intellectual) Equestrian (such as Twilight Sparkle) would consider the issue of sexual morality and immorality would sound something like this.
"Harmony is the basis of society. Both Friendship and Love are important for the Harmony: Friendship because it binds us all together in day-to-day life, and Love because it lets us form couples to reproduce and raise the next generation properly, so that they too respect the Harmony and society can continue.
"Mere Desire is felt by all creatures who must have sex to reproduce. But Desire is not by itself the same as Love. Friendship as well is required to form the basis of Love, and even that is not always enough. Desire without Friendship is dangerous, for it can lead one to behave irrationally and in ways which harm both oneself and the object of Desire.
"Love in all its forms is precious and should be respected by all who feel or witness it (corollary: this is why Equestrian culture is comfortable with non-standard expression of love, such as homosexuality or polygamous marriage). Love is one of the things which distinguishes Ponies from the brute beasts (corollary: this is one of the bases for Equestrian national and racial pride and sometimes bigotry, as some Equestrians may extend the concept of "brute beasts" to include actual sapients who do not think as they do in this matter).
"Love is most stable when it takes the form of Marriage. Thus, those in Love will naturally wish to marry, and one of the virtues of Marriage is that the young will be raised surrounded by Love, so that they too shall be attuned to the Harmony."
Viewed this way, one's own personal Honor comprises behaving in furtherance of the Harmony, the Sin of non-marital sex is that it fosters Disharmony (most direclty and obviously in the case of adultery), and one feels Shame when one realizes that one has damaged Harmony.
If this all has an East Asian, part-Confucian and part Taoist tinge to it, then good -- I intended it that way.
Note that a lot of the behavior produced by such a moral system will be similar to that of our Judeo-Christian based morality. For instance, most sex will be between either married couples or courting couples who are at least considering marriage; most Equestrians (especially mares, due to the biological asymmetry of mating strategies) will be unwilling to have sex with a Pony who is completely uninterested in marriage. The usual stages of an Equestrian romance would be acquainatance, friendship, courtship, betrothal and marriage, though some of the steps might be run together. Full physical intercourse will normally occur in one of the three last-named stages.
This is exactly how Western Humans behaved during the late 19th / early 20th century. Yes, including the pre-marital sex. It is a statistically-provable fact that courting or betrothed couples often have sex even in cultures which consider pre-marital sex to be morally wrong. It is also true that in such cultures, marriage is held to obliterate any real dishonor or shame resulting from such behavior.
I know this not only from my studies of social history, but because I am a middle-aged man who was adopted by a nearly-middle-aged couple (they were born in 1917 and 1924). My adoptive grandmother was born in 1900, and much of my own early socialization was to 1950's and earlier norms, even though I myself was born in 1964. I deeply understand how people thought before the Sexual Revolution.
The fact that Equestria is matriarchal has one very important effect on sexual morality. The Equestrians go relatively harder on males and softer on females who violate the moral codes (though due to biology, females still have one major incentive, both internal and external, to be choosy about sexual partners). The term which I translate as "cad" to describe a promiscuous male is much more perjorative in Equestria than it was in America or Britain c. 1900. Conversely, the Equestrians are not relatively as cruel to "sluts" as were Americans in 1900 -- though they still consider such behavior dishonorable. (Remember, their culture is becoming increasingly egalitarian where the sexes are concerned).
The ultimate reason why the moral code endures is that it is pro-survival. Stallions who egregiously-violate it find it difficult to make or maintain marriages, and hence lack informal social support (the families of their birth get disgusted by their behavior and become increasingly unwilling to aid them, and they either do not acquire in-laws, or alienate them through their emotional cruelty to their wives). Mares have similar problems, plus the possiblity of becoming unwed mothers (in my fanon, both Ditzy Doo and Berryshine suffer this status) which while not as impugned as was the case in our culture c. 1900, still has the major problem that you have a child and no stallion to help raise it!
Equestria, which has some of the bureaucratic attitudes characteristic of Oriental cultures and much of the belief in the primacy of the individual characteristic of Western ones, also has a concept of "common-law" marriage -- a couple who has lived together as if married for long enough can be construed as married, though this is less legally-secure from the POV of inheritance, etc., than a formally-registered marriage. This was also true in most of the Human West until fairly recently, and is still true in some of it.
Yep. Fluttershy loves Bulk, and Bulk basically worships her.
Heh -- that's because we (and the Ponies) are much more emotionally invested in sex and love and marriage and babies than we (normally) are in car sales. At least, most of us are -- there are some people who are awfully casual about sex and awfully serious about cars!
What often happens in current Equestrian culture is that a couple will court, they will start seriously thinking about having sex, and this will in turn lead them to think about marriage. A breakup or betrothal often then ensues, based on the results of these cogitations. When they actually start having sex is up to them. Needless to say, the thoughts they have regarding this matter are not wholly intellectual and dispassionate!
Precisely. One big point of sexual morals is to make it less likely for Ponies like Fluttershy to get their hearts broken by users like "Nosey," and even more so for mares to avoid ending up unwed mothers having to support their children by themselves. In a truly pure and innocent society, a linkage between sexual morality and marriage would be entirely unnecessary.
There are, of course, other moral codes that can serve similar purposes under different circumstances. Wind Whistler practiced one such code, during her life on Earth -- she did not formally marry, but loved romantically, sexually, and in serial-monogamy with the Big Brothers of the herds connected with her own. Due to the harshness of life in her youth, most of them simply died by violence -- due to her own emmortality resulting from the Rainbow and the fact that Paradise Estate kept to the ideal of separate male and female herds (and I don't know if males not born to the Estate would have been attuned to the Rainbow anyway), even afterward she outlived all her mates.
At least one commentator on the Tropes pages had the idea that Wind Whistler is promiscuous. She isn't. She's immortal, and her potential mates weren't. Serial monogamy was actually her most chaste possible choice. Well, actually she's been mostly or completely celibate since she became merely a spirit in Discord's brain, but I'm talking about when she had her own body.
Yes! You've got it exactly.
Equestrians do also prize pre-marital virginity, but their formulation of this sentiment would be more along the lines of "It is ideal for a couple to first give themselves sexually, when they choose to give themselves sexually to anypony, to each other in love and for this love to be ultimately expressed in the form of marriage, for that is the most Harmonious outcome"
Or to put it another way, they don't think that Sex is dirty.
They think that Love is clean.
A subtle difference, but an important one -- it's at the core of why they are more tolerant of variant sexualities.
Where does the "fast set" of Cloud Kicker and others fit into this? They are, for the most part, rich younger Ponies who have the resources to carry off the lifestyle, and poorer satellites who hang around them for the party. They are extreme individualists, in both some good and bad senses of the term, and they don't give a fig for the Harmony, or any of the morality surrounding the philosophical concept.
Or at least they claim not to do so -- when push comes to shove, they are often more conventional than they pretend.
4574884
This reminds me of the Aurons from Blake's 7, who had the expression "One who trusts is never betrayed, only mistaken."
An Equestrian who has sex before marriage with a partner that they love is not seen as doing something dirty or immoral; they're seen as doing something potentially dangerous, emotionally (akin to how we feel about humans who are getting married on the basis of knowing each other for one week.) As long as your intent wasn't to be a user, as long as you acted out of sincere love, you did nothing morally wrong. Maybe you made a mistake, maybe you misunderstood the character of your lover and as a result, marriage doesn't happen or doesn't work out, but that didn't make it immoral to have sex any more than we consider it immoral to marry someone who we eventually have to divorce.
The greatest ideal is to share sex, love, marriage and parenthood (I suspect this is true for homosexual couples as well, and that adoption is alive and well; the Pony world is more inherently dangerous than our world, because even though Ponies are less likely to murder each other than Humans are, they are more likely to be attacked by predators than Humans are. Foals don't have much problem ending up in homes because there's no stigma against gay couples as long as they love each other, and the emphasis on harmonious families leads to couples adopting if they can't directly reproduce.) But if it doesn't work out that way, the fault doesn't lie with those who acted with integrity and love; it's placed on those whose intent was always bad.
Derpy/Ditzy wouldn't be seen as immoral for having a foal out of wedlock, though she would probably be seen as foolish and pitied for her poor choices (her eye condition and general clumsiness don't help here). An abandoned mare is no more immoral than a widow, though she'd probably be seen as someone who made a foolish mistake and the widow would be someone who was simply ill-served by fate.
And it's actually probably thought of as a more moral act to break up if sex reveals incompatibilities, before there is a foal, than to go on and get married just because you lost your virginity. While it may be an ideal to save sex for marriage, it's also an ideal for marriages to be long-term and to work out well; foals don't do well in marriages of parents who hate each other, after all. I suspect that young Ponies overly romanticize the notion of giving their virginity to The One, probably after marriage, but that older, more pragmatic Ponies would actually advise having sex with birth control first, to see if you're compatible, and to make sure you can tolerate living with each other, before choosing to make a life and foals together, because the most important thing is that once there are foals, they should have happy, harmonious parents who love each other. Since in your universe estrus suppressants are relatively recent, like the past hundred years or so, this would be behavior that hasn't entered the cultural lexicon of The Right Thing To Do yet, and most of the novels and plays still center around older notions based on a world where Ponies were generally likely to get pregnant when they had sex because estrus was when they *wanted* sex, and therefore the cultural ideal of no sex until marriage was stronger.
(In my universe this isn't the case, estrus suppressants were around when Celestia was a teenager and for a good bit longer than that, at least for unicorns. Possibly earth ponies as well, who'd have had herbal lore. So in my universe the ideal has always been, have sex and live together first, then decide to get married, because you can choose when you will be ready to have foals and if that's the case, the pattern that makes sense is to make sure foals are born into stable families. I base this on the fact that we see an awful lot of young mares, and relatively few of them are married, and many of the married ones don't have foals. That's the pattern of our world, where people tend to marry in their late 20's or early 30's and use birth control to avoid premarital childbearing, or marital childbearing before they're financially ready, at least in the middle classes.)
4575326
Pretty much, yes. Love and Harmony good, Hate and Disharmony bad. Stable, loving marriage is good because it promotes Harmony, both among those in the marriage and among their children. Quarrelsome, hateful marriage and promiscuity are both bad because they promote Disharmony, and this is deemed much worse if there are children involved, because children are innocents who are not at all responsible for their parents' foolish and irresponsible behavior.
It's only semi-canon to my universe, but in An Epistolary Legal Consultation Between Princesses, both Luna and Twilight Sparkle respect Derpy for her basic decency and her love for Dinky. Twilight is horrified, not so much by the fact that Derpy is an overly-trusting, horrible judge of character when seeking love, but by the willingness of others to exploit this trait in her. (Luna's sentiments are similar, she is just less shocked by it because, well, she's been 1500 years incarnate on Earth, and she's pretty much seen it all, several times -- and worse). And Twilight Sparkle is a bit of a prude by Equestrian standards.
Their condemnation is not directed at Derpy. It's directed at the Pony father of her child, at the Human Charlie Yu -- and at Cloud Kicker, for this story was in part inspired by the Winningverse. Both Luna and Twilight see Derpy as having acted in good -- though terribly naive and misguided -- faith romantically, and these others as having acted in very bad faith.
Yes ... though given that pride is at stake here, I'm sure there are unhappy marriages made.
Sometimes, yes. Though things can get complicated with courtship games, and young Ponies are often naive romantics. And sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't.
Certainly, the older and wiser Ponies would at least recommend longer courtships -- to make sure that the couple really know one another. And sometimes this advice is taken, and sometimes it isn't.
One the reasons why Fluttershy doesn't have much of a handle on this sort of thing is that she doesn't have older mares to advise her. She's getting her advice from Rarity -- which isn't bad, as Rarity both cares for Fluttershy and is an intelligent, basically-decent Pony, and she certainly understands how to play social games. Asking for advice from this on Rainbow Dash is of limited use: Rainbow's wisdom on the matter boils down to "If he gets too fresh, hit him!" Plus by this point in their lives, Rainbow can't think objectively about this matter where Fluttershy is concerned.
The estrus suppressants are only partial fertility suppressants -- they are not reliable contraceptives (though a mare trying to conceive would deliberately miss her doses). Their real importance is that they (1) make mares less likely to be overwhelmed by their own hormones, and (2) make stallions less likely to be overwhelmed by mare pheromones. Before estrus suppressants, couples (especially courting couples) had to be very careful of their behavior when the mare was in estrus, because there was a great temptation to have sex even if not ready for marriage; also stallions were frequently distracted by mares in estrus around them and hence were effectively less intelligent than mares (since a mare is only in estrus for at most 1/7 of the time, while a stallion in a town might encounter a mare in estrus close to all the time).
Equestria also has contraceptive devices such as condoms, of course. They are approaching the point of being able to make cheap, mass-produced IUD's and are also close to developing true biochemical female contraceptives. Celestia remembers what happened in the Age of Wonders when this technology first appeared, over four millennia ago -- it's one of the ones she expects to massively change society in the immediate future. Not exactly a threat, but she knows it will take generations for the effects to subside (it was just about starting to subside in the Age of Wonders when the Cataclysm made "how far will I go on the first date?" a less relevant question than "how shall I find food and avoid monsters?").
Ponies in modern Equestria often do have sex and cohabit before marriage. This is made more practical by greater personal wealth. In pre-Industrial times, most young couples couldn't afford to live on their own; they would have to go to one of their families (usually the mare's) and if they were going to do that, they were basically getting married. Today, food and housing are much relatively cheaper, thanks to mass production under the factory system -- so the couples can afford to experiment on their own.
The usual assumption on all parts is that this is a "trial marriage," though it's not formalized until the couple is actually wed. Most cohabiting couples are either betrothed soon before or soon afterward, unless they break up first.
I like Dissey's little trip down Nostalgia Lane here. I also especially like this particular line:
They began to eye Dissy more and more uneasily as his powers grew, as the monsters came out of the woods to fawn before him and lick his mismatched hands.
From Bloch's 'Shadow from the Steeple' right? Or inspired by, anyway.