Fanfic / Anchor Foal

Coax and manipulate, until it is done.

Full title: Anchor Foal: A Romantic Cringe Comedy.

Although Discord has been apparently reformed, it has not gone unnoticed that his bonds of friendship consist of a single kind-hearted pony. One solitary individual. What would become of Equestria if Discord remains reformed only so long as Fluttershy lives? In recognition of that potential disaster, Princess Celestia summons Fleur Dis Lee and charges her with a single goal: use all of her talents in the seductive arts to ensure that Fluttershy gains a true lover and produces at least one foal, in hopes that this will ensure Discord remains interested in staying nice to Equestria after Fluttershy herself passes.

Of course, this also serves as a way to kill two birds with one stone, as it lets her deal with the third-most feared mare in Canterlot by removing a notorious blackmailer from her city.

Written by Estee, as an Alternate Continuity tale of their Triptych Continuum. Read it here. It is complete, running a total of 50 chapters and published from August 2016 to August 2021. It has two sequels:

• Daily Equestria Life with Monster Girl (complete)
• Anchor Foal II: Return of the Cringe (in progress)

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Tropes found in this story include:

• Abusive Parents:
  • Invoked, as Fleur clearly believes that Fluttershy's parents had to do something to result in Fluttershy being so messed up. However, in chapter 18, Snowflake is adamant that Fluttershy and her parents love each other, implying that whatever pain they caused her, it was unintentional rather than deliberate malice. It's eventually revealed that it wasn't anything to do with her parents, but rather some particularly cruel and persistent schoolyard teasing.
  • There's a subtle implication in chapter 18 that Fleur was raised by griffons... an upbringing that, amongst other things, saw her forced to consume Putaverunt Dolore ("Thought Pain"). The first half of this is confirmed in chapter 43 (though her adoptive family loved her), and the second half in chapter 45 (as part of a gang initiation).
• Adaptational Sexuality: Two cases of "straight in the source material, asexual or close to it in the fanfic".
  • Fluttershy is something like asexual, but much darker in nature. According to Fleur, her talent allows her to find what even asexuals want; Fluttershy, on the other hand, has no wants, something she could only possibly have if she has spent her entire life deliberately rejecting the idea that she could or should be allowed to want anything. This doesn't render her immune to Fleur's talent: the "solved" puzzle displays a blank white slate — but Fleur finds the image so discomforting that she begins to habitually (and eventually, instinctively) shut down her talent when she's near Fluttershy, just so she doesn't have to directly sense that again.
  • By the end of the story, Fluttershy's puzzle has become a picture of Fleur, or as Fleur perceives it, "like looking in a mirror". Which means that as far as things to do in the bedroom go, her puzzle is still no help in figuring out what she wants.
  • In chapter 44, Fleur reveals to Miranda Rights that Fancy Pants is asexual. He keeps it a secret by hiring escorts to accompany him in public, but he's never slept with any of them.
• Alliterative Title: Some chapters:
  • "Talk of The Town".
  • "Chekov's Collision Course".
• Alternate Continuity:
  • Officially^note from Word of God in a comment on the first chapter; http://www.fimfiction.net/story/342886/1/anchor-foal-a-romantic-cringe-comedy/lie-back-and-think-of-equestria#comment/7491734, this story takes place in a "splinter" timeline to the Continuum proper; in the canon, Fancy Pants has undertaken Fleur's redemption by taking her on as a student, but in this timeline, he considered her to be "too far gone" and left her.
  • Another difference from the main Continuum ^note from this blog post; https://www.fimfiction.net/blog/992670/patreon-blog-takeover-triptych-tosh-or-the-ins-and-outs-of-cyclical-transformation-and-magic-use-pseudosapien is Discord's capacity for empathy developing more slowly; in this timeline he held no concern for the hybrids and the mission was exclusively for revenge against Gentle Arrival. This resulted in Tish not living in the palace, amongst other ways that the mission "ended more badly than it did in the mainline." Discord's relationship with Harem Fantasy is what pushes him into developing empathy and personal responsibility in this timeline.
• Ambition Is Evil: Fleur clearly has a touch and go relation with morality, but her worse traits seem to stem from her desire to move up in the world however she can.
• Animate Inanimate Object: After his first meeting with Fleur, Discord sneaks into the Canterlot Archives to learn about dating, doing so through bringing the books in the relevant section to life and having them lecture him on the subject. This quickly turns frustrating: while the books agree on what dating is, none of them can reach a consensus on how to do it, and he soon restores them to normal — with the exception of a harem fantasy novel which wasn't even supposed to be in that section. (One of the junior Archivists had been reading it on the sly.) He winds up taking that book with him as a declared "research assistant." It's capable of speech and getting headaches without the benefit of having an actual head, it's a female, and as of Chapter 10, he's named her Harem Fantasy.
• Bad Date: How Fluttershy's date with Caramel goes, thanks to Discord's intervention, but Fleur already set it up to fail.
• Bait-and-Switch: Throughout the story, the reader is led to believe that the titular "anchor foal" will be a child eventually born to Fluttershy and whatever mate Fleur finds for her. The last chapter reveals it to actually be the reincarnation of Harem Fantasy.
• Becoming the Mask: Chapter 21 suggests that, despite Fleur's intentions otherwise, she may genuinely be starting to befriend both Fluttershy and Caramel. Her inadvertent outburst in chapter 46 reveals that she's fallen in love with Fluttershy.
• Belief Makes You Stupid: Invoked. In chapter 21, it's established that there are lots of ponies in Ponyville who have figured out Sweetbark's scam of only seeing the healthiest, most low-risk pets in town and thusly hate her... but the ponies she does see have thusly been conned into believing she's a genuine miracle worker, and they won't hear a word against her despite the evidence. It all comes crashing down on Sweetbark's head in Chapter 37, when she is presented with a critically injured pet and instead flees rather than try to treat it. In public.
• Berserk Button: Pedophiles, for Fleur, as seen in chapter 42. When she comes across a stallion whom she suspects of having molested foals, she lures him away from a party and calmly starts using her field to shake him to death. And she does all of this without a single scrap of hard evidence, relying only on what she learned from her talent. Only a slap on the horn by Miranda Rights stops her from killing him.
• Blackmail: It's almost second-nature for Fleur to seek this out, and her talent can provide ample material. After all, once you know what a pony really wants — and would rather not have everypony else find out...
• Blessed with Suck: As discussed in the author's notes, Fleur's talent was a survival manifestation. While it kept her safe in the moment, it also left her stuck for the rest of her life with a talent that didn't reflect who and what she truly was, and which would always remind her of the worst day of her life.
• Book Dumb: Part of Harem Fantasy's description of Passionate Sports Girls:
  They may not be too bright.
• Born in the Wrong Century: A reply from Estee in the comments section states that Flankington could be a Founder — the pony whose breakthrough creates a whole new category of Talents — but Equestrian science and magic just aren't advanced enough yet to support his natural Talent for food chemistry; all he can do is make anything edible, without making it tasty.
• Boxed Crook: As part of her "informal" prison sentence, Fleur is outfitted with a titanium bracelet that comes with a built-in tracking spell, allowing the palace to know exactly where she is at all times. Add to this Fleur's escort license having been formally revoked, with most of her assets seized (Celestia allowed her to keep what she would have earned on her standard salary), and she's not going anywhere. However, the palace is being practical about this: a trip to Canterlot in order to scout a date would be understood, and because Fleur needs to survive while in Ponyville, she's earning her typical salary while the task proceeds.
• Boyfriend-Blocking Dad: Anypony who wants to date the reincarnated Harem Fantasy or her sister will have to get past Discord's screening process first.
• Breakout Character: According to Word of God, Harem Fantasy's creation was a snap decision by the author.
• Bullying a Dragon: In the first chapter, Fleur is revealed to have come to Celestia's attention by trying her usual blackmailing antics on Fancy Pants, the stallion Celestia considers her most trusted and closest friend. It backfires on her because he turns out to be asexual.
• The Bus Came Back: Chapter 12 establishes that the extremely pretty pegasus mentioned six chapters earlier is Joyous Release, who's briefly spotted in attendance at Fleur's welcoming party. All we currently know is that she's now living in Ponyville, along with her parents — and that Fleur develops an instant 'I. Want. That.' desire for her without Joyous' talent being involved: that first sighting establishes Fleur as being upwind.
• Call-Back:
  • In chapter 10, a reference is made to the recent removal of Ponyville's very unpopular local plumber on criminal charges. This is an oblique comment on the fate of Pipe Fitter, from 360 Degrees of Saturation.
  • In chapter 18, the ugly reality that Fluttershy often has to euthanize animals that are beyond help, something revealed in 500 Little Murders, is made use of when Fleur has to do that same ugly task for a mortally wounded groundhog.
  • Celestia's ineptitude at providing financial support for the Bearers, something brought up throughout the Continuum, is referred to several times in Anchor Foal.
  • In chapter 38, Fluttershy recommends Bluestocking to have her cockatiel sent to Audu Bontemps from Auk-ward for healing and rehabilitation after the bird was critically injured by Blueblood. Bluestocking agrees.
• Cast from Stamina: All magic costs energy, but shown true even for Discord, only in Chapter 48, when he uses enough energy to be barely able to speak and walk after taking Harem's soul from her book body and gives her a chance to truly live by incarnating her as a pony:
  "Oh, would you relax," he muttered, and had just enough left to make sure they heard all of it.
• Celibate Hero: Invoked, Zigzagged, and Played for Drama. Fluttershy is a celibate hero, but the whole plot of the story is about getting her laid, and the reason she can't do that without help is because of a childhood that was so traumatic that she's artificially restrained herself into being asexual, with neither the confidence to pursue a mate on her own or any internalized desires to help her define what a mate is.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: Played with and gender-flipped. Discord isn't particularly offended at the idea of Fluttershy dating, other than that it's more competition for her attention. In fact, he seizes onto the idea that she finally wants something, and that he might be able to provide for that want. However, as far as he's concerned, if she's going to have a mate, then she's going to have the best mate possible — and so he begins interfering with her dates, to make sure Fluttershy's future mate is worthy of her. Harem Fantasy lampshades this in chapter 17, noting that Discord is acting in many ways like a stock archetype from her stories, but confusing the issue by not overtly doing what he does out of romantic attraction or lust.
  • Taken to its logical extreme in chapter 46. Discord releases a herd of enormous monsters from Tartarus and sends them in (claimed) romantic pursuit of Fluttershy. His plan is that one or more of them will scare Fleur off upon being rejected as a suitor — but that plan backfires when she gives them a king-sized tongue-lashing.
• Comically Missing the Point: When Caramel takes Fluttershy to a horror movie called The Beast with Five Fingers (a horror movie built around some vague concept of a centaur), he's expecting her to be scared so he can cuddle with her in the name of comforting her. However, he's dealing with Fluttershy: a professional biologist/vet in everything but title, who also happens to be a Fluffy Tamer and, when it comes to animals, nearly borders on Nightmare Fetishist. Her reaction to the "centaur" isn't fear, but a near-instinctive questioning of how its biology operates — which leads to her quickly diagnosing it with bowel torsion (which extincted the rest of the species), breathing issues from a shortened airway, knee issues, and chronic joint pain.
• Complexity Addiction: Downplayed. Celestia's plan is actually pretty straightforward (get Fluttershy to start a family so that Discord chooses to stay nice towards them after her death in memory of their friendship) and the method chosen isn't complicated so much as a bit roundabout in getting the desired result. But it does get pointed out there are simpler methods to use that would sidestep several of the problems that are inherent to Celestia's chosen method. This is justified however because Celestia's plan accounts for issues the simpler methods do not. (Namely that Fluttershy getting a mate to have a foal with is meant to ensure she has help as a parent because she's busy enough with her animals)
• Crazy Enough to Work: Celestia's plan isn't that much of a longshot but it does rely on factors she can't reliably know for certain will be in effect (Fleur actually doing the job effectively, Fluttershy overcoming her crippling timidity, the "transfer of affection" concept that is the cornerstone of the plan actually applying to Discord, etc.) Despite that it seems to not just be on track but having yields Celestia wasn't even expecting. Fleur is actually dedicated to doing the job she's been given and is going well above what Celestia herself dictated, Fluttershy has seen her lot in life improving because of Fleur's efforts, and Discord's response to her looking for a mate been not only support but actually going out of his way to provide assistance to ensure she gets the best matchup possible, albeit in his own distinctly chaotic manner.
• Cringe Comedy: It's in the title. Fleur's attitude isn't going to go well with mixing into Ponyville, and that's before she has to actually try and get Fluttershy, of all ponies, a soul mate.
• Cross Cultural Kerfuffle:
  • When discussing Protoceran ponies in chapter 10, Harem Fantasy states outright that they are essentially "griffons with hooves".
  • In chapter 20, having spent the last day or so trying to "make friends" with Ponyville's natives, when a pegasus enters Fluttershy's clinic, Fleur unthinkingly reveals she's preparing Protoceran Pony Cuisine^note vegetables prepared alongside meat, so they take on meaty flavors but remain digestible to pony digestive systems — and then she offers to share. She's morbidly impressed that the pegasus manages to simultaneously fly out of the cottage whilst projectile vomiting in disgust.
  • It's interesting to speculate how much of Fleur's perceived sociopathy stems from her being a migrant from Protocera — a place with a far more predatorial culture than Equestria — as opposed to her Dark and Troubled Past.
• Cruel to Be Kind: Fluttershy mentions that Celestia partially sold her on accepting Fleur's "help", despite the latter's reputation for being "not nice", by persuading her that said lack of niceness could be an asset. And evidence so far suggests that Celestia had a point; by chapter 21 Fleur's ruthlessness and assertiveness have gone a long way to counteracting the poverty that Fluttershy was living in due to her Extreme Doormat nature, as Fleur has no problems either forcing ponies to cough up to pay their medical bills or stripping the palace of every last Bit that Fluttershy is owed due its disruption of her finances.
• Cute Bookworm: Mentioned in Chapter 10 by self-aware genre novel Harem Fantasy as a common character type, and one who frequently wins the battle to be the last mare standing. Any resemblance to Twilight is probably coincidental.
• Cute Monster Girl: In chapter 40, Harem Fantasy notes that "monster mares", the pony equivalent to this trope, are a rising genre in romance novels.
• Dark and Troubled Past: There are hints that the childhoods of both Fleur and Fluttershy were very, very much wrong.
  • Fleur has the ability to recognize whether tearstains are old or new by sight and makes comments implying she was effectively forced into developing her Cutie Mark (later confirmed in chapter 44). She later reveals that she was forced to consume Thought Pain as a filly (further elaborated in chapter 45; part of a gang initiation), and she has an instinctive paranoia about letting adult ponies be around foals without making sure they're not pedophiles first.
  • Fluttershy, meanwhile, was so traumatized by something in her childhood that she's never allowed herself to believe she's allowed to want something for herself. Weirdly, in chapter 18, Snowflake insists that Fluttershy and her parents actually get on pretty well, implying that, if they were Abusive Parents, it was an unintentional kind of abuse.
  • Chapter 44 brings it all into the light for Fleur. Her mother died after a long illness, leaving her an orphan. She was adopted by a griffon family that raised monsters for food, one of which inflicted severe brain damage on her sister. Fleur gave her a dose of Thought Pain, hoping that it would revive her mind, but it instead killed her because she had lost the ability to think. Leaving the family home, Fleur happened across a stallion with a long history of molesting foals and realized that he planned to do the same to her. She maimed him, left a note for the local sheriff detailing his crimes, and fled Protocera.
• Dark Shepherd: Celestia is not above blackmailing Fleur Dis Lee to make her do what she needs her to do.
  • Fleur herself seems to be shaping up to be this to Fluttershy; no matter how malevolent she can be, she is determined to do what it takes to succeed at her task, and she considers the idea of arranging for a romantic mismatch in general to be absolutely unthinkable.
• Defense Mechanism Superpower: In a sufficiently desperate situation, an unmarked pony foal can sometimes manifest in self-defense, ending up with whatever talent they need to survive the situation at hand. It rarely happens in the modern era, but Fleur's was such a manifestation.
• Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: In chapter 7, despite being close to pissing herself in terror at Discord's stunts, Fleur manages to scold Discord into introducing himself like a normal being, bluntly tells him that she's not here to "be his friend" and in fact has no interest in him at all, then asks him if he actually understands what the term "dating" means. However, it's partially deconstructed later on: she didn't negate the fear so much as postpone it. His departure leaves her trembling in the pasture for several minutes, and she easily recognizes that she's going to be having severe nightmares as soon as she falls asleep.
  • She does it again when presented with the 'suitors' Discord has dragged from Tartarus in order to court Fluttershy.
• Disabled in the Adaptation: Snowflake (Bulk Biceps in canon)'s wing size is here explained as having had his wings partially amputated. He's overcome it through sheer strength, somehow (Fluttershy wouldn't say any more on the subject). ^note It's actually explained in Triptych Continuum main canon: in short, his Cutie Mark/special talent basically lets him fly through sheer force of will, although Snowflake spent most of his life attributing it to the muscle-building strength training he undertook.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: For both Fleur and Fluttershy. Fleur doesn't have to worry about any criminal charges in either the death of her sister or the attempted murder of Mr. Sweet. She and Fluttershy begin a relationship, and her adoptive parents are eager for her to come for a visit. And she learns that she was absolutely not to blame for the accident that left her sister brain-damaged. Fluttershy, meanwhile, can look forward to having her veterinary workload reduced and receiving compensation from the palace for all the missions she's been sent on, and has started to explore her sexual desires with Fleur.
• The Empath: As explained in chapter 4, Fleur's talent is a very specific and narrow superlative of this which means she overlaps with The Pornomancer; she can, through spending some time in a pony's vicinity, reach deep into their emotional state and tease out what they most strongly desire in terms of both sexual appeal and the type of sexual activity that pony wishes to engage in. Essentially, she can quickly recognize their deepest fetishes, the various things they want in a partner, and understand both intimately. (This counts as normal casting (with no visible corona) and can be countered, but the subtlety of mark magic means it's almost impossible to pick up on Fleur's efforts.)
• Even Evil Has Standards: Fleur is utterly aghast when she learns that, despite the obvious poverty Fluttershy lives in, she receives no official salary for being a Bearer of Harmony and only recently started receiving financial compensation for her missions at all (an indignation that grows stronger the more she sees how impoverished Fluttershy is). She also considers things like deliberately mismatching a couple or striking an employer through their employees to be wrong, albeit with some shades of Pragmatic Villainy for the latter.
  Sun and Moon, what kind of monster kicks somepony into a fight with Nightmare and doesn't even pay...
  • It's become very clear that regardless of how much she hates her assignment, she intends to take it seriously right up until the moment she finds a way out of it. Fluttershy (who may not know the exact circumstances of Fleur's arrival) just about apologizes for hijacking the escort's life during Chapter 12, and Fleur immediately places all mental blame on Celestia.
  • It's been noted in the Comments section that Fleur seems to have something of a protective streak. She often thinks of Fluttershy as being "her charge" and actively moves to prevent the pegasus from being harmed — but if she doesn't care about somepony, then she has no concerns about what happens to them. For the lesson in rejecting somepony after a date, Caramel was chosen as her designated victim — and he still thinks Fleur is his friend.
  • In chapter 18, it's established that Fleur may insult others for "voluntary ugliness", such as excessive weight^note ironically, often not actually voluntary, improperly applied makeup or poorly chosen clothing, but she won't do the same thing for ponies who have legitimate physical afflictions, such as Dulcinea's crooked eye.
• Evil vs. Evil: Fleur, the abrasive, aggressive, manipulative, self-centered blackmailer vs. Mr. Sweet, a pedophile who has raped at least one previous filly.
• Extreme Omnisexual: According to Fleur's talent, Pinkie Pie is one of the incredibly rare "trysexuals" — individuals who will happily try anything relating to sex, as long as it sounds like it might be fun. While the narrative is vague on just how far "anything" goes, invokedWord of God says it essentially means a bisexual who will indulge in any sexual kink or act their partners want to try.
• Fantastic Drug: Putaverunt Dolore, which, translated from Protoceran, means "Thought Pain". It's a deadly concoction made from three different parts of three different plants; black velvet leaves, red petals and blue flowers. It causes agonizing pain when taken by sapient creatures, and a quick and painless death in non-sapient ones. As such, Equestrian vets use it to euthanize animals.
  • The poison only remains stable for about five minutes, and has to be mixed fresh every time. (Once that time limit expires, the corpse can be safely eaten by other animals — but there's an aftertaste.) Fleur has indicated that it's very easy to learn the mix. Remember ten minutes of instruction and you can kill forever...
• Fetish: Fleur's Talent basically includes the ability to work out every last one of a sapient's sexual interests, along with how strong those interests are and whether they're currently being satisfied. In Chapter 6, she absently takes note of all the fetishes she senses from those waiting to get breakfast at Sugarcube Corner, including multiple hoof fetishes, a horn fetishist, a mare who likes both Fleur's horn and her hindquarters, a pegasus who likes a well-turned and unshorn stallion fetlock, and Mr. Cake, who turns out to be a Chubby Chaser.
• Fluffy Tamer: Fluttershy's ability to "tame" Discord, and the hope that this trait will pass itself on to her children, drives the story. Especially since those other ponies who've outright tried to befriend Discord (admittedly from implied selfish motivations) have all failed miserably.
  • Fleur herself manages to terrify Fluttershy's notorious bunny bully, Angel, into backing down by sweetly informing him that she cares about his life exactly as much as he cares about hers and giving him a grin. One which displays teeth.
• For Halloween, I Am Going as Myself: Discord pulls this off in Chapter 26, pretending to be two ponies in a poorly-constructed costume of himself.
• Fridge Horror:
  • The entire plot of this story is born out of this trope applying In-Universe; if Fluttershy was the one who reformed Discord, and seems to be the only pony he actually cares about, what's to stop him from going back to his old ways after she dies?
  • Applies In-Universe again in chapter 19, where Fleur wonders just how Discord will react if Fluttershy gets killed on a mission.
• Friend to All Children: Fleur's central positive quality. She's very gentle in her interactions with the young, has displayed protective aspects — and because she knows when somepony is developing a crush on her, does everything she can not to encourage it. Adults are fair game: innocence is to be cherished and allowed to live for as long as possible, even if it eventually has to die.
  • This also extends to Harem Fantasy, as Fleur immediately picks up on the living book's innocence and begins speaking to her as if she were a child.
  • Fancy Pants as well. He's opened up his estate to take in a number of school-age foals who don't have anywhere else to live, and he regards them as a sort of family.
• Generation Xerox: Discussed and invoked; Celestia's plan hinges on the possibility that, even if he's too crazy still to make further friends on his own, Discord will transfer his friendship to Fluttershy's child or children in order to continue honoring his friendship with her, and that over generations this will eventually tame him sufficiently that he can make further friends on his own. Averted in the last chapter; Fluttershy isn't pregnant yet, but Discord has found a foal to dote on — the reincarnation of Harem Fantasy.
• Go Mad from the Revelation: In chapter 4, it's revealed that seeing the magicked parasprites eat everything in his old bank save the stone has driven Ponyville's bank manager, Mr. Croesus, a little loopy. As a result, he now makes everything out of stone, up to and including using stone tablets for ledgers.
• Good Is Not Nice: Inverted. When talking with Fluttershy in chapter 5, Fluttershy explains that all she really knows about Fleur is that she's "not nice" — however, Celestia told her that, in this case, that lack of niceness was probably an asset. Given just how emotionally crippled Fluttershy has been shown to be, that may actually be the case.
• Hands Play In Theater: In Chapter 17, Fleur thinks about how minotaurs do it, since they have hands, and ponies don't:
  Fleur briefly thought about a minotaur couple she'd seen once, reaching into the same container at the same time. It had been vaguely interesting, come across as slightly romantic and for ponies, was completely impossible without benefit of popcorn trough.
• Happily Married: Fleur notes that Mr. Cake's puzzle has "the special glow to the piece which indicated that his desire had found lasting fulfillment."
• Hate Sink:
  • In-Universe, Photo Finish is quite despised by Fleur, and implicitly by every other pony who she's tricked. Fluttershy also mentions having had to actually hold back one of her friends to keep them from assaulting Photo Finish when she revealed that Fluttershy would not get so much as one bit for her work as a model.
  • In-Universe, Blueblood becomes this as of chapter 37. Between verbally denigrating Fluttershy in front of most of Ponyville and nearly killing a harmless pet cockatiel, everypony comes to despise him. So much so that when Fluttershy kicks him into his massive tower of junk for harming the cockatiel and it collapses on him, the assembled ponies leave him there because they consider it more important to try and save the wounded cockatiel's life.
  • In-Universe, Sweetbark becomes this after her mountain of lies comes crashing down. Unlike the other examples, Fluttershy shows her some sympathy.
• Heart Is an Awesome Power: Fleur's talent is, in many ways, a simple one: it's a very limited form of empathy which allows her to quickly deduce any sapient being's sexual interests, including those they may not be consciously aware of. (She describes the process as being like solving a puzzle, reaching out to gather in pieces so she can assemble the whole.) As an active escort, this allowed her to fulfill a few fantasies by doing exactly what her clients wanted without their ever having to ask for it. But when this talent is pressed between her hooves, it's also an incredible blackmail tool, rooting out the desires which ponies keep hidden. It gives her incredible insight into quite a bit of psychology — she's noted that if she wasn't trying to keep her talent hidden, she could easily rewrite books — and as her talent counts for an extra sense, she can track ponies with it: simply memorize their puzzles and she'll be able to feel when they're in her vicinity. Word Of Fanfic Author is that she's meant to be an example of what can happen when a pony truly explores their mark's subtle magic and starts pushing that talent to its logical limits: Fleur's talent is somewhat stronger than the average, but it's her willingness to experiment with all the possibilities which makes her dangerous.
• Here We Go Again!: Implied. Discord plans on screening any potential suitors for Harem and her sister.
• Heroic Willpower: Not only have we seen Fleur stand her ground in the face of Discord, but Chapter 33 has her become the first pony to outright resist Joyous with no warning as to what the metallic was capable of.
  • "Is that all you've got?"
• Hidden Depths: Fleur starts showing she's more than just some blackmailing escort during the chapters in Ponyville. She's one of the few ponies to be nice to the Crusaders, reveals she can actually fight off an ostrich, terrifies Angel Bunny into leaving her alone, she's horrified to hear that Fluttershy receives no salary for being a Bearer of Harmony despite her obvious poverty, is outraged when she believes Celestia is forcing Fluttershy to have children, is aghast when she realizes that Fluttershy is completely devoid of desire given she realizes what that entails, is determined to do a good job with pairing up Fluttershy because it is a job and her hatred of Celestia doesn't trump that, and she just hates the idea of setting somepony up with a mate they don't care for.
  • Also, it turns out that Fluttershy came up with the idea of her having children to help prevent Discord for going rogue when she dies, and deliberately asked Celestia for help in making it happen.
  • In chapter 10, Fleur helps Fluttershy out with a particularly horrific injury to a cat's leg, a process that involves realigning a broken bone that's thrust itself through the skin, and unthinkingly confesses that it's something she's helped with before.
  • In chapter 17, towards the end of the chapter, Fleur thinks over the disaster at the restaurant and recalls that, to her own surprise, Fluttershy's first response was to try and shield Caramel. As she puts it, "(You) move towards flame", when every other pony tends to flee from it.
  • Chapter 18 reveals she knows how to brew Thought Pain, a toxic compound that vets use to painlessly euthanize animals, and that she's used it twice before coming to Ponyville. Once on her brain-damaged adoptive sister as a Mercy Kill, once on herself as a gang initiation.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: When Blueblood attacks and critically injures Kori the cockatiel in chapter 37, Fleur uses the incident to pull this on Sweetbark. While invisibly using her magic to hold Fluttershy back, she calls on the vet to help Kori. Knowing that she doesn't have a chance of saving the bird, Sweetbark runs for the hills.
• Homosexual Reproduction: As noted in the first chapter, The existence of The Most Special Spell, which allows lesbian mares to have their own biological fillies, is brought up in reference to how Fluttershy's sexuality is of no concern to Fleur's mission.
• Hypocrite: In chapter 18, despite it being well-established that she hates how others judge her on sight for her crooked eye, Dulcinea (aka "Derpy") is described as hating Fleur on sight just because she's beautiful, with Fleur's internal montage noting that ponies have been judging her as a brainless, sex-craved bimbo for her beauty all of her life.
  • Could be a case of Unreliable Narrator. Unnoticed established the Dulci doesn't like most adult ponies on principle.
• The Illegal: Maybe. The current belief is that Fleur isn't Equestrian: however, we don't know if she crossed the border legally, or when. Celestia didn't openly add it to the list of crimes in Chapter 1 — but at the same time, Fleur isn't attending citizenship classes.
  • Revealed in more detail during chapters 43 and 44. Born in Protocera; adopted by a griffon family after her mother died; euthanized her adoptive sister, who had suffered irreversible brain damage; put out the eye of a stallion who tried to sexually assault her; fled Protocera for Equestria. She has paperwork designating her as a natural-born Equestrian citizen from Drayton.
• An Immigrant's Tale: Multiple hints placed throughout the story suggest that Fleur isn't actually Equestrian, with chapter 43 finally confirming that she's originally from Protocera. As Harem Fantasy states when analyzing her own tropes, there are ponies out there who are just griffons with hooves...
• Intelligence Equals Isolation: Part of Harem Fantasy's description of Cute Bookworms:
  She studies and puts herself into her classes, she probably doesn't date at all, and the main character is the first pony she's ever really noticed.
• Intimacy Via Horror: Caramel attempts to invoke this in Chapter 17; he takes Fluttershy to a horror movie at the local cinema, feeling she'll be scared enough to snuggle against him for comfort. Subverted in that, thanks to Fluttershy's finding monster biology fascinating, the movie he chose doesn't scare her in the slightest, and she ends up more interested in diagnosing the creature's obvious medical issues.
• Ironic Name: Referenced in the first chapter, itself in reference to the typical trend of pony names being Meaningful Names, when Celestia gives Fluttershy's name:
  Fleur whistled again, no more consciously aware of the second than the first. "What's her name?"
  "Fluttershy."
  Uh-oh.
  "And from what you were saying, it's not one of those ironic names."
  "Hardly."
• Irony: As it turns out, simply getting Fluttershy a sperm donor would probably have been not just the easiest option, but also the one she would have most readily settled for: her desires are so artificially stunted that she doesn't have any subconscious attractions to other ponies, she just knows she wants a foal.
  • Celestia also firmly puts a hoof down against this in the first chapter. She wants Fluttershy happily married, raising the foal with somepony. In her opinion, the pegasus already has enough dependents: single motherhood would be pushing things too far.
• It's All About Me:
  • Fleur's attitude in a nutshell; at the end of the first chapter, she can only instinctively whimper a question about what she's done to deserve this punishment, despite the considerable chewing out she just got from Celestia.
  • Fleur's opinion of Rainbow Dash, to the point that she actually feels a moment of self-acknowledged uncharacteristic pity for anyone who tries having sex with her.
• It's All My Fault: Towards the end, it's revealed that Fleur Dis Lee has a severe complex regarding this, stemming from three incidents in their childhood.
  • Her birth mother was chronically ill, and so she would rush home from school every day to try and care for her. When she got home one day and found her mother's body being prepared to be taken to the morgue, she blamed herself for not doing a good enough job. While it's not discussed much in the present day, it's mentioned that her foster family spent a lot of time trying to steer her away from this line of thinking.
  • When a local unicorn seemingly charges one of her foster family's Devices much faster than usual, she goes down to investigate. When she tries poking it with her magic, the battery indicator goes from nearly full to nearly empty almost immediately, right before a particularly dangerous monster charges the door the battery is connected to, resulting in Fleur's sister performing a Heroic Sacrifice to protect her. The idea that somebody else might have been at fault never occurs to Fleur until the final chapter, when Twilight and Rarity sit her down and explain what an illusion is, how easily they can be broken, and why there would be one at that time.
  • With her sister reduced to a vegetable following her Heroic Sacrifice, Fleur tries giving her a dose of Thought Pain, in the hopes it would reawaken anything left of her mind. When it kills her instead, she becomes convinced that she's effectively murdered her sister, and runs away out of belief she'll be arrested if she stays. At the end, when Celestia informs her that no criminal charge was ever filed against her, Fleur breaks down crying.
• Jerkass Realization: By the end of the story, Celestia finally realizes the Bearers should be compensated with something more tangible than just a title. In her defense, there wasn't an economy the last time Bearers were chosen, and when she thinks about it she admits she had been stuck in an old habit of thought and needs to move with the times. She's caught up on Fluttershy's backpay and is mulling over how to approach the others by the time of the epilogue.
• Like Brother and Sister: In chapter 11, Fluttershy explains that she and Snowflake are this.
  "We're not from the same family, not by blood. But we're... just about brother and sister. It's... hard to explain... I can't really even..."
  • Fleur was adopted by a griffon couple when she was young, and their daughter instantly bonded with her — to the point that the two wound up sharing a nest when they slept at night.
• Loophole Abuse: Fleur is viciously invoicing the palace for every expense associated with Fluttershy's social training, and making sure to get the most expensive items available.
• Lucky Charms Title: The second chapter, Ponyville: ↓, which is also a play on One-Word Title, because it only has one actual word.
• Mandatory Motherhood: Played with. Fluttershy wouldn't necessarily be unwilling, probably, but A: Celestia needs her to have children, and B: she's going to get a soul mate so she can have those children, no matter that she's too shy to get them on her own. Then it turns out in Chapter 4 that the whole plan was actually Fluttershy's idea, and she asked Celestia to help make it happen.
• Meaningful Echo: "Details, always (details)", it's how Fluttershy knows when Discord's doing things. He doesn't get them all the way right, as seen in Chapter 26, and referenced in Chapter 36, when he uses it to explain why he's not doing anything near her.
• Meaningful Name: Mr. Sweet's first name is eventually revealed to be Aspartame.
• Master of Illusion: Chapter 17 seems to indicate that Discord can create masterful illusions; he ultimately ends Fluttershy & Caramel's date by enchanting Caramel's prototype 3D Glasses so that, to his eyes, the monster in the movie suddenly springs out of the movie screen and charges directly at him, causing Caramel to flee in terror. However, this may have also been direct manipulation of perceptions.
• Mercy Kill: Fleur performed one on her adoptive sister when she was young. The sister had been impaled through the eye and suffered severe brain damage while saving her from a monster. Fleur gave her a dose of Thought Pain in the hope that it might revive her mind, but it killed her because she'd lost her higher brain functions.
• Mind Rape: Fleur suffers a form of this at the hooves of Joyous Release, who utterly despises her for using her sex appeal to manipulate and exploit ponies, and for thinking she's cheating on her girlfriend. The full force of Joyous's mark magic drives Fleur out of her mind with uncontrollable desire. Fleur barely manages to regain the shreds of her self-control by sheer force of will - earning Joyous's grudging respect - but the experience leaves her as shaken and distressed as a confrontation with Discord.
• Mortality Phobia: One of Fleur's defining traits. When she is thinking over what Celestia did to her, it is the effective loss of the time she spent in Canterlot that she fixes on, and she instantly and categorically rejects Time Turner upon seeing that his mark is an hourglass, a rejection only enforced by finding out his name.
  • Also confirmed to be the case for Sweetbark in chapter 19, and really driven home in chapter 37. Her office is stocked with instruments that she's used only rarely or not at all, and her actual medical supplies are woefully inadequate to deal with a real emergency (as Fluttershy and Fleur discover when one occurs). In chapter 38, she admits to Fluttershy that her uncle let her work at his veterinary practice and do only routine checkups in order to fulfill the practical requirement of her training.
• Mundane Utility: It's mentioned in chapter 17 that pegasi wings are very useful for pulling the old Yawn and Reach trick, although, the narration says "stretch", instead of "yawn".
• The Napoleon: Fleur's assessment of Angel Bunny in a nutshell:
  I know you.
  You're the dominant one. Or at least you want everyone and everypony to believe that. But you know you're not. You're small and weak and can be beaten by just about anything that makes even a casual effort. You know that. And you think that if you're angry and stomp around and do what little damage you can while counting on someone else to protect you when things get bad, you'll get away with it. If you're furious all the time, maybe it'll look like strength, enough to keep from being pushed away. Except that you're the weakest thing here, and that's why you have to pretend so hard.
  I've seen so many like you.
  I hated them too.
• Neural Implanting: It appears that Discord's Animate Inanimate Objects, at least when they're books, get a certain amount of base information, such as how to speak, what their own contents are, and some knowledge of their history, such as in Chapter 8 when a book knows who've they inspired to write another animated book:
  "I'm a harem fantasy which one of the junior Archivists was reading on the sly," the text apologetically admitted. "Sorry."
  "Ah. Hardly your fault." Which was followed by a spin on his single hoof, one which left him facing a different volume entirely. "Then what's your excuse?"
  "I inspired her author," the volume reluctantly confessed. "Sorry..."
• Obliviously Beautiful: Fluttershy's problem in one half of a nutshell — the other half being Shrinking Violet. As Fleur realizes after seeing a picture, Fluttershy is incredibly attractive.. she just doesn't understand that she is. Her impression is only deepened when she actually does meet Fluttershy in person.
  • This gets worse in Chapter 16: Fleur takes time to tell Fluttershy just how beautiful she is — and Fluttershy tells Fleur to stop lying.
• An Offer You Can't Refuse: Celestia gives Fleur a choice; either go and help Fluttershy find a lifemate to produce children with, or be taken to court, formally charged with all of her many, many abuses of her position, and sentenced accordingly.
• Oh, Crap!: In chapter 19, Fleur is horrified when she realizes she just let Snowflake take Zipporwhill away without using her Talent to make sure he wasn't a pedophile. The first thing she does after Snowflake returns is use her Talent to specifically look for any puzzle pieces that would indicate an attraction to foals.
• Oh, My Gods!: Discord doesn't have anything to swear by, due to being the highest power being known:
  • From chapter 8, when Discord wants to swear, but can't:
    "Oh, for..." and as usual, could find nothing to swear by, although at was seldom a problem.
  • From chapter 48:
    Forgive a chaos entity for having nothing to swear by..."
• One-Word Title: Sort of, in Chapter 2, Ponyville: ↓, where "Ponyville" is the only actual word, and the "↓" makes it a Lucky Charms Title. Played straight with Chapter 40 ("Intercrude") and Chapter 43 ("Heartwood").
• The Pardon: In chapter 49, Fleur receives one from Celestia after pleading guilty to the attempted murder of Mr. Sweet. While he was laid up in the hospital, Miranda Rights searched his house and found enough evidence of sexual assault to earn him a very long prison sentence. The pardon carries a lot of terms, including working for the palace to track down other pedophiles in Equestria. Fleur also learns that she won't face any charges for euthanizing her sister, because the Protoceran government views it as an act of mercy.
• Passionate Sports Girl: Another frequent character in the harem fantasy genre, mentioned in Chapter 10 by living novel Harem Fantasy. This could indicate Rainbow, or it could just mean there's a lot of that type spread across the realm of harem stories.
• Pet the Dog:
  • Fleur's interactions with the Cutie Mark Crusaders in Chapter 3 are surprisingly sweet.
  • Fleur's outrage on Fluttershy's behalf when she believes Celestia is deliberately not paying her and forcing her to go through with her Mandatory Motherhood in Chapter 4.
• Primal Fear: Invoked by Discord for the first of his two "pranks" on Caramel during his date with Fluttershy in chapter 17. By subtly tweaking the written order for Caramel's meal, he causes the chef to serve him Mélangés Grán Flambé^note Mixed-Grain Flambe... which is one of those dramatic dishes that are serve with a flamboyant eruption of fire: one which looks startling, but has no actual danger attached. Of course, the mere sight of a sudden burst of flame causes practically the entire restaurant to take off in terror; the only exceptions are Caramel (too scared to move), Fleur (trying to protect Fluttershy), and Fluttershy (trying to protect Caramel).
• Punch-Clock Villain: According to Chapter 4, Fleur considers her potential plan of finding ways to blackmail and exploit the Bearers to try and rebuild her web of power to be "just work". At the same time, she's also a consummate professional who, as much as she's angry with Celestia, never even considered the idea of doing anything other than sincerely working to solve Fluttershy's problems — right up until she finds a way out of her sentence.
• Pyrrhic Victory: In chapter 37, Fleur succeeds in utterly humiliating Blueblood, ensuring he will never try to "court" Fluttershy again, and even manages to expose Sweetbark as the Know-Nothing Know-It-All she really is. And all at the low price of Blueblood verbally lashing out at Fluttershy, doing who knows what to her fragile self-esteem, and physically lashing out at the bookseller's pet cockatiel Kori, forcing Fleur and Fluttershy to scramble to perform emergency surgery. They save the bird's life, but it faces a long and potentially expensive recovery. Sweetbark is so humiliated that she departs Ponyville, leaving a crushing workload of clients for Fluttershy.
• Raised by Orcs: Evidence in chapters 18 and 19 suggest that Fleur was raised by griffons, which explains her more... predatorial nature compared to the average pony. Pretty much confirmed in chapter 20: Fleur enjoys the taste of meat. Well, vegetables soaked in meat stock and marrow, which is a pony adaptation to griffon cuisine. That's something only a Protoceran pony would eat. Explicitly confirmed in-universe in chapter 43, when Fleur tells Miranda Rights that she's from Protocera; and in chapter 44, when she recalls being adopted by a griffon family after the death of her mother.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: In chapter 19, Fleur gives Sweetbark a well-deserved chewing out for her behavior towards Fluttershy. After having her failings exposed to the whole town in Chapter 37, Sweetbark privately explains the situation to Fluttershy, leaves Ponyville, and turns all the equipment at the practice over to her.
• The Reveal: Fleur reveals in chapter 7 that Photo Finish actually has a long history of using fine print to swindle her models out of receiving their proper pay, and also bribes myriad judges to keep getting away with it. Photo Finish deeply hates Fleur for the fact that Fleur managed to evade this fate, and because Fleur knows that her real name is Lens Cap.
• Revolving Door Revolution: In chapter 50, Fleur gets a letter from her adoptive parents in Protocera, asking her to come and visit. It's covered with postage stamps showing six consecutive presidents who served for a combined total of four years.
• Shout-Out:
  • Chapter 7 is titled "She's from the Ministry of Sexy Walks", a clear reference to the "Ministry of Silly Walks" sketch from Monty Python's Flying Circus.
  • As the author mentions at the end of chapter 17, The Beast with Five Fingers is an actual 1946 horror movie. The Earth version revolves around a murderous severed undead hand, whilst the Equestria version is a standard monster movie with a centaur.
  • Chapter 16, Date A Dead, is a reference to Date A Live, which is part of the Harem Genre.
  • In Chapter 45, Fleur quotes a certain Kelis song almost word for word when she tells Miranda Rights her "milkshake brings all the reeves^note male griffons to the hideout."
  • The title of chapter 50, "They Took the Long Way Home," is a nod to the Supertramp song "Take the Long Way Home."
• Snow Means Death: As mentioned in an aside in chapter 17, Fleur hates winter and snow because she finds them unpleasant and completely unnecessary.
  The world would be manipulated until it turned against its residents, for there were fools who said winter was necessary. Death had to come before renewal could truly begin. That you couldn't be warm again without first being cold.
  (Fleur didn't understand that belief. If you had the power to control the weather, to make your environment, your life better, and you just made ponies suffer anyway because ponies had always suffered on schedule, and so there was clearly no need to make any of that change...)
  • Her Protoceran home had date palms, indicating she's originally from a much warmer area.
• Spoiled Brat: Fluttershy's "miraculous" brother, Zephyr Breeze. Snowflake describes him, as per the description he received from Fluttershy, as "a 5 year old colt who will never stop being 5 years old until somepony forces him to grow up", as well as being the kind of pony who believes the world owes them, and thus sees everything in the world as belonging to them. He's such an asshole that Fluttershy literally drove him out of her house and will never be in the same room as him. (She left him alone in the cottage for a time and came back to find him taking some of her possessions.) Of course, in typical Fluttershy fashion, she's described as still loving him, and hating herself for being unable to trust him despite the fact he has proven he can't be trusted.
• Stalker with a Test Tube: Averted. Fleur is told in no uncertain terms that just getting Fluttershy knocked up from a one-night stand is absolutely not an option. Celestia knows Fluttershy's life is too busy already to add the burden of being a single mother to that, so it's imperative that Fluttershy has a spouse to help take care of the foal(s) as well.
• Take That!: Downplayed, but in chapter 10, Harem Fantasy notes that the tsundere archetype doesn't fare very well in Equestrian romance stories; such characters almost never win. Which turns out to be Foreshadowing, as Fleur wins Fluttershy's heart despite being a Tsundere, albeit a rather unusual and well-developed one... she's even from Protocera, the most stereotypical place for a pony tsundere to come from in-universe.
• Toxic Friend Influence: Fleur becomes this to both Fluttershy and Caramel, in different ways, by the end of chapter 17:
  • For Fluttershy, Fleur is determined to sincerely help Fluttershy get into the dating circuit. However, she believes that one of Fluttershy's many problems in that area is that she's too nice; therefore, her early focus in the project is teaching Fluttershy that necessary level (in Fleur's opinion) of cruelty and selfishness, so she can learn to put her own interests first for a change. This doubles as Toxic Friend Influence.
  • For Caramel, he sincerely believes Fleur is his friend because she not only tries to help him get a date, she sets him up on a date with Fluttershy, whom he has been crushing on from afar for a while. Even after it all goes horribly wrong by the end of chapter 17, he sincerely thanks her for being his friend and trying to help. And then it's revealed that Fleur was expecting Caramel to strike out with Fluttershy all along; she chose him to be Fluttershy's first date only because she was positive he'd be a good example to teach Fluttershy the importance of rejection. (She also didn't want to waste the probable uncomfortable mess of Fluttershy's first date ever on a likely candidate, and wanted to make sure the entire town knew Fluttershy was now dateable and her standards were low enough to include Caramel... but neither of these is really any better.)
  • Interestingly, by chapter 42, the "friend" portion of the trope seems to be more in evidence. Fleur actively tries to help Caramel out with his latest crush at the party, first by shutting down any misconceptions that she might be a romantic rival, then by preventing Caramel from repeating his iconic "pushing too hard" dating mistakes, and then finally offering him both some encouragement that his attraction to the green pegasus mare is reciprocated and some advice on what she'd like in the bedroom.
• Tsundere: The first type of harem character brought up in Chapter 10 by Harem Fantasy, who's in a position to know. It's mentioned that for Equestrian literature, such characters tend to hail from Protocera, as it gives them an excuse for a more forceful personality — one which frequently attempts to dominate its environment. This all turns out to be Foreshadowing that our main character herself is just one such pony, and IS from Protocera.
• Villain Protagonist: Fleur isn't... nice. It's just that most of that not-niceness is currently being directed towards promoting Fluttershy's welfare and long-term happiness.
• Wham Line:
  Fleur: "— what kind of Equestrian? None, because ponies don't understand how to do what has to be done! But my people would, and we act! To save the very last link, so it has a chance to become the first! I'm from Protocera!"
• Wrong Genre Savvy: Fleur, full stop:
  • To put things into perspective, initially, she believes she's been summoned to the Solar Throne Room to arrange for her to have sex with Celestia. (This is partially ego: she's the most popular escort in Canterlot, so if the Princess is going to call for anypony...) And when she's shown a picture, she assumes the depicted party is the real reason for her hire — which means finding some way of having sex with Discord.
  • In chapter 7, after her first meeting with Discord, she wishes she could go back in time and slap herself upside the head for thinking the latter thought. And was very grateful that for unrelated reasons she had shut down her talent and so didn't have to learn what Discord wanted.
• Yawn and Reach: Invoked and subverted in chapter 17; Caramel wants to do this, but is foiled because Fluttershy is so distracted by the movie he can't reasonably get close to her. Also, they're both facing forward on a twin bench, legs only move in so many directions, and earth ponies don't have wings to stretch.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Downplayed example. In chapter 40, when Harem Fantasy tries to talk Discord out of setting Fluttershy up on a date with a creature from Tartarus, she points out that the creatures down there are monsters because they lack the fundamental ability to care, and that's why Discord isn't a monster, because he does care. Discord's jaw literally drops when Harem Fantasy says this, so it evidently took him quite by surprise.
• The X of Y: A few chapters:
  • Chapter 5: A Bit of a Fixer-Upper, on its face, referring to Fleur's house, but also Fluttershy's.
  • Chapter 21: Talk of the Town, referring to Fleur and Fluttershy's trip to Canterlot, where they make a splash. But also what appears to be Discord's machinations, drumming up talk about Fluttershy.