The road to Hell
Based on an idea by BluePaladin42
Twilight was off in the bushes beside the path, investigating an unexpected autumn flower, when Rarity gave a little gasp and Applejack said, "Well, look who it is."
"Oh." Twilight glanced at Rarity and Applejack. "Fluttershy. And Discord. How nice."
The three ponies had been hurrying home from an evening stroll around the lake. They had lost track of time, and the wind was already picking up, building towards the storm scheduled for later tonight. The other pair had just come into view around a bend in the forest path, coming in the opposite direction. As they drew near, the wind shifted, and a scent stronger than that of the wet leaves decaying along the path drifted over the ponies, as if Froggy Bottom Bog were just around the bend.
"Oh, Fluttershy," Rarity said. The corner of Fluttershy's mouth turned upwards at Rarity's words, tearing tiny cracks in the unbending lips. "Out in this damp wind, without so much as a scarf? Aren't you...." She trailed off. Fluttershy looked down and slowly shook her head.
"Cold?" Discord asked. "Not a problem, I assure you! My Fluttershy is an all-weather pony now. Aren't you, dear?" He blew a cloud of mist down the back of her neck, and a few small icicles sprouted off the end of her mane. She shook it out slowly, and the bits of ice tinkled onto the path at her hooves. She smiled again, her lips rising higher than before, and the cloudiness in her eyes cleared slightly as she leaned up against the draconequus' scaly brown shoulder.
"Just a little game we play," Discord said, patting her on the head. "We've had to find some new ways to play together since ... the accident." He paused uncharacteristically, his usually-animated features drooping like soft clay into a stare molded by an amateur potter. He lifted his claw from Fluttershy's head and clenched it absently. For just a moment his face betrayed the centuries behind it.
"But I must say," he resumed, his eyes lighting up again, "I think we're coming along quite well, quite well. That is what you were going to ask, isn't it?"
Twilight shut her mouth, which had fallen open as she stared at Fluttershy. "Yes, of course!" she said hastily. "You took the words right out of my mouth."
One of Discord's eyebrows went up and his long neck went down, peering into Twilight's face. "Why are you wrinkling your nose like that, Twily? Brimstone on my breath again? You know you can tell me. We're friends now!"
"Nothing!" Twilight said, jumping back. "I wasn't wrinkling, I was sniffing!" She snorted in a noseful of air. "I love the smell of autumn leaves! After we've shaken them from the trees and they lay in the lanes, moulder—um, changing color—I mean—" She stopped, smiled widely, took another deep breath, and gagged.
"Forgive me, dear. You are so right." Discord took a deep breath, seemingly oblivious to the smell, and sighed contentedly. "Fluttershy has taught me to love the fall! A time for digging burrows, stocking up food. Fattening up." He grasped his waist with both arms and began to draw in a huge breath. As he did his midline began to balloon out, pushing the ponies away, until he looked like a zeppelin with a dragon's head on top. Then he bent over unceremoniously and the air burst out the other end, sending him whipping around the ponies like a balloon until he drifted back to the ground next to Fluttershy.
He put an arm around her and continued as if nothing at all had happened. "Fluttershy calls it the cozy season. I like that." He turned to look down and wink at the pegasus. "Let's go get cozy, my dear."
Fluttershy turned her head slowly and looked up at Discord with unblinking eyes. He offered her his arm, and she draped one stiff wing over it.
"Toodle-loo!" Discord called. The pair walked off, Fluttershy's slow, jerky gait matched to his usual ungainly waddle.
The three ponies watched wordlessly until Twilight quietly said, "I can't take this much longer."
"Know what you mean." Applejack frowned and lowered her voice. "It ain't the least bit natural."
Out of nowhere, Pinkie's head popped up between the three mares, who seemed only mildly startled at this flaunting of the laws of time and space. "But they make such a cute couple!" She turned to watch their silhouettes shrink. "See how she leans up against his neck?"
The other ponies looked at each other silently.
"Pinkie, dear," Rarity said. "If she didn't, you see, she'd ... she'd...."
"She'd fall like a rotten apple," Applejack finished.
"Don't be silly!" Pinkie said. "How can she be rotten when she's so sweet?"
Applejack shook her head. "All we're saying, honey," she replied, "is she just ain't the same since she died."
* * * *
"We can't let this go on any longer," Twilight told them. "Fluttershy has suffered enough all these years for our sakes."
They were gathered in the library: Twilight, Applejack, Rainbow Dash, and Rarity. Twilight hadn't invited Pinkie.
Rarity raised a hoof to her chin. "She didn't act like she was suffering when we had our weekly visits to the spa. Back before Aloe asked her not to come anymore." She shuddered. "The poor dear. I could barely stand just the sounds it made when she tried to give Fluttershy a massage."
"Of course Fluttershy didn't say she was suffering!" Rainbow shouted. "You know her!"
"She'd take anything on herself without complaining, for anyone," Twilight agreed. "Only her closest friends know how she must feel inside. So who'll stop it after we're gone? How long will it go on if we don't end it now?" She looked around at her friend's faces. Their eyes grew wider as the implications of that sunk in. "Forever?"
"I just think we maybe oughta ask the Princesses for some help here," Applejack said.
Twilight shook her head firmly. "Losing Fluttershy might drive Discord insane...er. And there'd be be no holding him back with the Elements of Harmony."
"Yeah," Applejack said, "that's sorta why you oughta ask them."
Rainbow darted in between the two and hovered in front of Applejack's face. "And what if they say no? You gonna just let the dragon play with its Fluttershy doll?"
"She did choose this for herself, dear," Rarity said.
"Til death do them part! And it shoulda done that by now!"
"Rainbow's right," Twilight said. "What could the Princesses do except say no?"
The other ponies stared at her, open-mouthed. "You'd go against Celestia?" Applejack asked.
Twilight drew her head back defensively as she met their eyes. She turned away and began pacing a tight circle in the center of the room without answering.
"Just tell us, darling," Rarity said.
Twilight walked to the edge of the room and stopped and sat down next to a bookshelf in the reference section. She reached out and pulled a thin black volume from the shelf. It had the royal seal on its binding, inlaid in gold—the first bound volume of her friendship reports.
"I've been studying the magic of friendship for years now. It's not just a sweet notion. It's real. Friendship is the magic that makes Equestria possible."
"Yeah, we know," Rainbow said. "We're all elements of Harmony here. We saw the flashy lights."
Twilight shook her head. "It isn't just the elements, Rainbow. They're just one manifestation of it. Haven't you noticed that we get in terrible trouble time and time again, but everything always seems to work out for the best?"
Rainbow shrugged. "I don't want to take too much credit, but, we are kind of awesome."
Twilight chuckled. "Oh, Rainbow. No, that's not it. It's ... a deep magic, the binding force that turns love and emotion into actions, things." She looked up at the ceiling, but her eyes focused on something far beyond it. "Things work out for the best because we're faithful to each other. As long as friends care about each other, as long as they have open hearts and work to see each other's point of view, Equestria will survive and flourish."
She pushed the book back into its place on the shelf, tapping it carefully into place until it looked like it hadn't been disturbed, then looked away from it. "That's the true answer. Even if Celestia felt obligated to say otherwise. Celestia wouldn't want me to ask her. She'd want me to make my own decision."
"So what you're saying," Applejack said slowly, "is you're not gonna tell the Princesses, and you got no plan what to do after."
Twilight shifted her focus back to Applejack, stood, and drew herself up to her full height. For a moment she seemed more like her mentor than the nervous mare who'd washed up on the boarding platform of the Ponyville depot just a few short years ago. "If we do what's right for Fluttershy, things will work out in the end." She smiled at Applejack. "That's how Equestria is made. I know this is hard, but I need you to trust me on this."
The library was silent except for a few brief, anxious snorts.
"Twilight," Rarity finally said, "I trust you."
"Me too," Rainbow added. "This is way above my head."
Applejack finally looked up, turned her head toward everypony in turn, and nodded glumly.
"All right," Twilight said. "Rarity, you invite her to visit you at Carousel Boutique again, just like you used to."
"Or possibly ... you could invite her to the library?" Rarity suggested.
"No," Twilight said. "Me inviting her now, after all this time, would be too suspicious. I want to make this as comfortable for her as I can, so have your parlor sofa downstairs when she comes."
Rarity's eyelids fluttered. "But ... it's my best sofa! Fluttershy is a little ... oozy these days."
Twilight stared back at her until Rarity dropped her head, shamefaced.
"Applejack, Rainbow, you might have to hold her down."
Applejack and Rainbow glanced at each other, then looked down at the floor and nodded almost imperceptibly.
"I'll bring the spell components. Everypony but Rarity will be hiding in the back. And don't tell Pinkie!"
"She'll know," Rainbow Dash said.
Twilight wrinkled her brow in concentration. "Okay. Rainbow, you distract Pinkie. We'll handle Fluttershy."
"Lotta secrets here," Applejack said. "First Fluttershy, then the Princesses, now Pinkie. I don't like it."
"There's nothing to like," Twilight said. "Nothing in this whole sordid affair since the day they married."
"So how soon after we do this thing is Discord gonna know about it?" Applejack asked.
"Approximately immediately," Twilight said.
No one said anything after that.
"Well," Twilight said. "We all know what needs to be done."
Everypony looked away and said nothing, until they had passed that interval after which silence implies consent. Then they all looked at each other at the same time. They turned and, one after another, all but Twilight trod slowly out the door.
* * * *
Even the lingering odors of years of perfumes and powders, and the smoke from a dozen candles, some ceremonial, some functional, could not suppress the fetid odor inside the Carousel Boutique. It seemed all the more oppressive with the curtains drawn.
Fluttershy lay on her back, sinking into the deep cushions of Rarity's best sofa, her rear legs and neck tied down with Applejack's lariat. The rope was not very tight; the skin and feathers had pulled away from her bones when Applejack had tried to cinch it up. It was tight enough to hold the sluggish Fluttershy. She stared up at her friends with wide, wondering eyes.
"We're going to set you free, Fluttershy," Twilight said.
Just next to the sofa, between Twilight and Fluttershy, a crude wooden figurine of Discord stood on a nightstand, an open book behind it.
"It's time for you to move on," Twilight continued. "Discord's magic is keeping you here. I'm going to fool the lines of power holding you to Discord into attaching themselves to this carving of him that you see between us. And then I'm going to cut them."
Fluttershy's eyes widened. They still didn't focus on Twilight, but they began to fill with tears. She reached out in Twilight's direction with one foreleg, sending a wave of foul and moldy odors across the nightstand.
"Shh," Twilight said, reaching across the nightstand and pushing Fluttershy's foreleg back down onto the cushion. "Just relax. Soon it will all be over." She looked down at the book, which was covered with the special symbols that indicated not sounds, but twists and surges of magic. Her horn began to glow, and a humming filled the room.
Faintly glowing lines appeared, growing out from Fluttershy like the tendrils of a newly-sprouted vine, reaching across the center room of the Carousel Boutique and in the direction of her cottage at the edge of town. They wavered, blown on some unfelt wind, then twisted, confused.
Fluttershy made a hoarse whimper, dry, like the rustling of leaves, and reached out again. Again, Twilight pushed the leg back down.
The lines turned questioningly toward the figurine on the nightstand, then reached out for it, wrapping themselves around it, tracing a many-sided pyramid in the air between it and Fluttershy's body.
"I can't look," Twilight said. She turned away from the nightstand and took a deep breath. Behind her, on the sofa, Fluttershy groaned, and Twilight again smelled the dead foreleg drawing near. She closed her eyes, gritted her teeth, and grimaced.
There was a snapping sound. Then, a wet rustling of dirty feathers, a gasp, and a brief clattering like a pile of dry sticks falling to the ground. Then silence.
Twilight finally looked up.
A pony's skeleton lay on its back on the red velvet-lined sofa, white and dusty. A few long, narrow bones stretching out from its sides indicated it had once been a pegasus.
Twilight's eyes fixed immediately on the skull that now lay fallen to one side on the velvet cushion. She stepped forward and touched her nose softly to its cheekbones. "You're free, Fluttershy," she said through her tears. "Wherever you are, whatever happens now, you're free of him."
The other two ponies said nothing. Twilight looked up at them. They were both staring at the torso of the now finally motionless skeleton. She looked to her side, down along the length of the sofa. Something brown, that had not been there before, stood out against the chalky white of the skeleton's chest.
Twilight stepped forward for a closer look, and froze. Her grim expression went slack and her pupils expanded across her eyes like two rapidly-approaching dark tunnels. The absurdly-thin foreleg bones, which lay crossed at the fetlocks, were now clutching the little wooden figurine of Discord up tightly against its ribcage.
Outside, the sky began to burn.
Also LikedSimilarAuthor
- Bad Horse · 3.8k words · 306 25 · 5.5k views
- Alexandrite Ward · 1.7k words · 114 5 · 5.9k views
- Bad Horse · 3.7k words · 188 8 · 4.4k views
- fluttercord45 · 4.9k words · 53 2 · 3k views
- Bad Horse · 2.7k words · 116 8 · 2.1k views
- GarfieldThePony · 1k words · 24 4 · 1.3k views
- Inkarus · 2.2k words · 88 5 · 3.5k views
Stats
Page generated in 0.191 seconds
Total duration
955 users online
19,599 hits today, 2,454,720 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
Hey, thumbs-downers, leave a comment or I'll assume you're morons who can't read tags.
To those whom the last sentence didn't hurt: Notice it has the "tragedy" tag, not the "sad" tag. Sad is when something bad happens. Tragedy is when someone good makes something bad happen. Fluttershy did not make anything bad happen.
1994658
Sometimes it logs your own views as separate views. I have no idea why.
Ahh, true love will find a way. (Although sometimes that way involves shovels, midnight trips to the graveyard, and arcane rituals to hold back the inevitable decay that comes with death, it's a small price to pay for an eternity with your beloved)
Hi. Bad Horse, I've considered what to say for a while--I'm pretty sure I got the point of your story--and it finally came down to this:
You monster.
I could say more, but it would just be elaborating on the central concept of you being a monster.
1997926 I'm glad someone understands!
Here's my guess, but I'm not sure if I should just say it so, it's hidden.
The point is that Fluttershy was happy with the way things were and she is still 'alive'.
Okay, i don't get totally what happend on end. Did she move as skeleton to grab that figure or She was with that figure after spell ?
This.
This is a great story.
Not sure where you got that definition of tragedy, but I definitely got the point of the story.
And it makes me want to cry. *thumbs-up*
Awww please write more
Wow, love how her friends missed her crying, and the fact that she totally wouldn't...y'know...try to off herself if she really wanted to...
I have a feeling your twilight just overly hates Discord...
1997950 Yes. But make that "was".
1997960 She reached for it when Twilight looked away. I wonder how I can make that clear.
1998171
Ah, I see my mistake. When I read it I attributed the sounds the effects of the spell instead of Fluttershy's movement. Separating the two somehow might solve the problem, but I'm not sure how to do it.
As much as I hate sad stories, I love tragedies. Sad stories can teach a lesson, but tragedies make others wake up.
My only compliant is that this was short.
1998171
I think the biggest thing is that you don't describe Twilight looking away.
(Twilight is apparently facing Fluttershy's skeleton because she nuzzled it--you don't describe her turning away.)
(Yet here in the next paragraph, she has to turn around to look at Fluttershy again? I wouldn't have got it if I didn't read the comments.)
Otherwise, good story.
Well, that's going to be awkward what with trying to "kill" her and accused her beloved of mind-necrophilia. (which he was apparently innocent of...)
And if you thought getting the stare from Fluttershy was scary before
1998672 It's just before that, just before Twilight finishes the spell:
So, the tragedy is Twilight is projecting her own feelings on Fluttershy, and is completely blind to what Fluttershy really wants?
1998101 A tragedy is a story in which a tragic hero causes something terrible to happen, usually by making a mistake. Twilight is the tragic hero of this story.
1998928 Yes! I just realized I should have added "Twilight" as a main character to the story, to clarify that.
Also, Twilight pursues her misunderstanding like Capt.Ahab chasing his white whale; against all advice. It reminds me a bit of the horror story "The Monkey's Paw."
The only thing that wasn't clear to me was whether Twilight actually succeeded in killing Fluttershy, or whether she's still alive as some sort of animated skeleton. But that's an okay ambiguity, its creepy either way.
I'm not sure 'by mistake' is needed in your definition of tragedy. I mean, Hamlet certainly didn't happen 'by mistake'. A lot of the classic tragedies are the result of everything going pear-shaped because of a gambit pile-up. (Nor does the person need to be good. We just need to empathize with them, which i suppose nudges them in the direction of good in the 'in my moral circle' sort of way, but even a monster could be good by that definition, so long as there's something the reader perceives as a worse monster.)
1998806
Now I'm not being clear... The problem is that the way it is currently reads as if Twilight doesn't see Fluttershy move (since she was surprised to see Fluttershy hugging the figurine), which is nonsense as she is facing Fluttershy since she just nuzzled her skull. There is nothing about Twilight turning her head away from Fluttershy, or even just closing her eyes for a moment, during which Fluttershy moved without Twilight seeing.
I would say this was a nice short piece but it is ruined for me due to a single reason: Twilight's complete disregard for the ramifications of her actions and her lack of any sort of plan to deal with it. She won't ask Celestia for help because she might say no because Discord would end the world...so she (Twi) provokes Discord into ending the world anyway; she doesn't care about inflicting unimaginable suffering upon everyone and everything because a single individual's (lack of) suffering is so much more important to her. Introducing what, knowing Discord, one can only assume would be an apocalypse or something very close to one (and one that would be impossible to prevent, no less, since they've lost their only defense against him) introduces a level of scale that can't simply be brushed under the rug like that, whether through the emotions of the story (Twi's blindness to Fluttershy's true feelings cannot address this because she brings it up herself and pays it no mind. What's baffling is that none of her friends called her out on it) or the event simply not being the focus of the story because it is of immense importance. It is inconceivable that Twilight would make a choice like this no matter how much she hated Fluttershy being a zombie.
i0.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/012/073/7686178464_fdc8ea66c7.jpg
) I'll say it again. You Magnificent BASTARD.
I have, difficulty, reading a story that involves the death of one our little ponies, especially one of the mane 6. (And especially Twilight, but that's a bit moot here.) I am a little too emotionally invested in them I think.
So you can all imagine how I feel after reading this. (HINT:
1998043
I don't think my feels could take it. They could barely take this one.
1999015
To the point she wouldn't even consult Celestia before she offs one of her closest friends.
We all know what the road to hell is paved in...
1999036>>1998806
I think what happened here, and what isn't getting across, isn't that Fluttershy is still moving. It is that she isn't, and that her last act was to grab onto the Discord figurine. Twilight apparently didn't notice this fact when she first looked up from the spell completion. That is what is throwing everyone.
1999541
I think, Twi, and the others, aren't thinking clearly. It's implied that this has been going on for several years now. Worse, Fluttershy can no longer effectively communicate with her friends. That would be beyond painful to watch, especially if you think your friend is suffering. Twilight wanted to help Fluttershy, the rest of the world be damned. The problem, is that Twilight, and to a lesser extent AJ, Rarity and RD are projecting their own distrust and hatred of Discord onto Fluttershy, without knowing that Flutters is ACTUALLY happy. Poor communication kills indeed. Actually, it was Pinkie who had it right all along. Not surprising really. Twilight and the others should have known (and AJ did, really) that if they had to hide this from Pinkie, and Celestia, it probably wasn't a good idea, but Twilight was too desperate to save Fluttershy from an assumedhell. Hence the tragedy, Twilight basically doomed the world, and didn't even save Fluttershy to do it. Just murdered her.
1999587
Twilight is stated as going up to the sofa (that much is clear) to nuzzle the skull, so unless Twilight is hallucinating the skeleton being on the sofa (admittedly not entirely out of the realm of possibility for Twilight), then this doesn't make sense, either.
My opinion is Fluttershy truly loved Discord but twilight would not accept that and thought she was being controlled by Discord so she set her "free" but then realized her mistake when she saw her holding the statue.
I came here with the hopes that you wouldn't let me down, looks like my fears were unfounded. Well played, Evil One.
It's too bad Discord didn't consult Evening Glory, I'm pretty sure she'd have had some advice. (Let's see if anyone knows what I'm talking about.)
1999018
He is using Classical Tragedy, as in ancient Greek.
1999628 I do realize that they weren't thinking correctly and the rest I understood in the reading, but I just can't look past this one element given the sheer scale of it. The tragedy would have been just as powerful and emotional had the impending end of the world never been brought up.
1999655
I think the "Lounge" and "Sofa" are the same object in this case.
...also, did she pull her foreleg bones out of their meat-sheaths? I missed that before.
1999702
It's the fact that the upcoming apocalypse was in vain I think. That's the crux of it all. The whole world could burn and it would have been worth it to save Fluttershy. But she didn't. And the whole world is gonna burn anyway.
1999710
I realize that, but:
...
Given this setup, there is no way for Twilight to mistake the position of the skeleton without hallucinating.
1999541 It is inconceivable that Twilight would make a choice like this no matter how much she hated Fluttershy being a zombie.
I do not think that word means what you think it means. Twilight often jumps to ridiculous conclusions and hides things from Celestia. It's even canon that she considered risking dooming the Crystal Empire to eternal slavery under Sombra in order to pass a test.
1999655 I will go through and fix the story to use only "lounge" and never "sofa". They are the same object. Hopefully I can also make it clear how Twilight could walk to the head without noticing the torso. This stuff is difficult with text.
1998101 ...that is LITERALLY the classic definition of a tragedy. A tale that isn't sad throughout, but ends with the heoes failing. Kind of why it doesn't let you put both the "sad" and the "tragedy" tag on the same story anymore.
People seriously should be required to read Wanderer D's how-tos before posting stories to this site.
1999805
Uhm... You are correct, but I do not think you realize exactly the definition of tragedy that I am talking about. As Bad Horse describes it in the author's notes, "Tragedy is when someone good makes something bad happen by mistake." I've never seen this definition of tragedy before. It is not a requiring factor of tragedy that the bad thing that happens happens at the hands of a good person.
1999879
Well, it does usually happen at the hands of the main character/s though. But you're right, they don't have to be a good guy.
I'm sorry, it just frustrates me how little users on this site actually know what a tragedy is and why it doesn't mix with the sad tag.
1999783
There's a difference. Twilight in The Crystal Empire wanted to avoid Sombra succeeding at all costs; her contemplation as to whether or not to risk the worst-case scenario (which wasn't really that bad as Celestia and Luna could have simply zapped him into a shadow again) was reasonable. Which is not to say that this work required a moment of conflict in Twilight; as I said to Blue Paladin, the tragedy would have been just as emotional and powerful had it not resulted in an eventual apocalypse.
1999805
Link for teh guide, please?
1999905
idk, sad + tragedy not being allowed makes me sad, because you *can* have a tragedy which is also sad throughout. There's obviously tragedies which don't deserve the sad tag and vice versa, but to say the two are completely incompatible boggles the mind.
(And that's before we even get into stuff like frame stories. I can easily imagine a sad frame story in which a tragedy is told/recalled. That's not even hard.)
BTW, the proper definition of tragedy is a story in which a hero is foiled by their own actions. MacBeth causes his own tragedy by ignoring the child who actually loves him. Romeo causes the tragedy in Romeo and Juliet by killing himself when he thinks Juliet is actually dead (and at a couple other points beside). Hamlet's plotting ultimately results in his (and everyone else's) death. And not to restrict myself to Shakespeare, Oedipus Rex causes his tragedy in a number of ways, not least of which is a lack of curiosity about his own past (but his active conduct during the story also contributes, so it isn't just that). Orpheus causes his own tragedy by being unable to trust the gods and looking back before he reaches the surface. Basically, its not enough for the protagonist to 'lose', they must lose because of a 'tragic flaw', that is, a character defect of some sort which is the root of their failure.
It has nothing to do with good or bad, really. Main character of a tragedy could be an evil bastard, so long as the reader can sympathize with him it'll work. Tragedy is all about the character ruining things for himself.
Personally, I think the only reason a person would hate this story is because they have their priorities out of order. Fluttershy will be completely alive and okay in any other story; it's not like her death is permanent or anything. This story is well-written, and without Fluttershy's death there would be no story.
So really I'm trying to say that haters are idiots.
2001874
http://www.fimfiction.net/blog/38998
Here you go.
2002057
From the Fimfiction FAQ
I am no expert when it comes to literature (no shit you're not shut up, brain), so that may be so. But rules are rules, so what can you do *shrug*. It's just a pet peeve of mine when people obviously don't even read the FAQ, and then are surprised some rule exists (and here on Fimfiction, MANY users never read the FAQ. It makes me pissy and unpleasant.)
Pretty sure we've already established that.
2002642
The FAQ writer doesn't really know what a tragedy is. C'est la vie. (I'm pretty sure you could write a tragedy that was sad throughout, I'm just not sure you'd really want to).
But even if you grant its implicit definition of tragedy, the FAQ provides no way to deal with frame stories and other complicated literary structures. A sad frame story around a tragedy is a natural and complimentary situation, since typically the frame happens after the interior story and thus in the aftermath of the tragedy. And its not like a story within a story is an unusual literary device, everyone from 1001 Nights to the Decameron to Canterbury Tales was doing it. (Those are all actual frame stories on the outside, too, not just story-within-a-story situations).
Unfortunately, the people they have policing this have no interest in listening to why both tags might make sense. Tragedy and Sad are exclusive is taken as word of god. They probably don't even know what a frame story is.
Kinda macabre, right there.
That's horrible.
I'm... gonna have to agree with Ghost.
1997944... I just realized...
Does this have spoilers for the latest episode? 'Cause if it does, I'm going to have to flip s**t, yell at you, and actually publish the crazy idea kicking around in my head just now (rather than fake-publish it, probably to my blog or something).
Dark and sad, but well done. The comments from others confuse me as to wether or not Twilight cut the lines and Fluttershy moved on; but before them that was what I assumed happened. I liked the ending in particular as Twilight realized how much she just screwed up.
2004234 Oh, man. I'm really sorry. I thought everybody knew by now that Fluttershy died in the last episode.