Today’s story explores the dance of love.

Pas de Deux
[Drama] [Romance] [Slice of Life] • 3,734 words

Fancy Pants and Fleur Dis Lee were made for each-other: the perpetual playcolt and the sultry supermodel. Now, they’ve been going out for over a month. Has she fallen for this stallion? Is he finally ready to settle down? Can true love blossom in the high-pressure world of Canterlot’s social elite?

FROM THE CURATORS: A “pas de deux” is a dance for two people, and Pas de Deux is not only a study of the dance of intimacy between two ponies but also their social dance as they define themselves against the expectations that confine them.  What first caught our eye is that it’s “a good character study of two good characters,” as AugieDog put it, but this also breathes life into an often poorly explored relationship. “I’ve always found FleurPants shipping to be a weak explanation for why they hang around together, but this story shows their relationship is anything but weak,” Present Perfect said.

The same was true for the story’s portrayal of its protagonists.  Chris was impressed that they were so relatable despite (or perhaps because of) their upper-class background: “Their concerns are familiar,” he said.  “Here, we see a look at pretensions and the need to hide our true selves in the name of social demands, which is about as universal a conflict as there is — but at the same time, Fancy and Fleur’s richness keeps them far enough removed from reality to explore issues more frankly and directly than suspension of disbelief might otherwise allow.”  And AugieDog was impressed by how they became more than the sum of their parts: “In the stories I’ve read about Fleur, she always seems to be struggling against her inclinations … that’s always a powerful story to tell, and when you add Fancy Pants as the outsider on the inside who triggers this desire in her, you get two characters who see their own missing pieces in each other. I’m a sucker for that sort of thing.”

That was enhanced by the excellent framing of the story, which multiple curators praised. “Setting the scene with Fancy and Fleur before zooming out to resolve it was a good strategy,” Present Perfect said, and Horizon agreed: “Marriage counselors say there are three people in a marriage — the first partner, the second partner, and the two of them together.  This explicitly is structured to show how the relationship benefits all three of those, and it’s much stronger for the decision.”

Read on for our author interview, in which Dafaddah discusses Kirin mothers, vulnerable moments, and the pushing of ships.
Continue reading →