
Damselfly is a standalone My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic Fanfic written by RB_
and published on Fimfiction.net.
Many years after her graduation from the School of Friendship, Ocellus now works as a teacher at the School of Friendship alongside her friend-turned-partner Smolder. While not without a few bumps along the way, the future for the married couple was looking smooth until one fateful day in class. When a stray dispelling spell strikes her, Ocellus' biggest secret is revealed to the world- even to her beloved spouse. With this new relevation about her wife, Smolder find herself at an impasse. Now, it's up to her to hear Ocellus' side of things and gain a new understanding of her.
The fic can be found here
.
Damselfly provides examples of:
- Adaptational Gender Identity: The main crux of the story is Ocellus being a transgender doenote, who had managed to keep this a secret from everyone else. While ultimately left open-ended, it could be presumed the canon Friendship is Magic version was cisgender.
- Adaptation Name Change: Downplayed. Smolder's name is spelled "Smoulder" within the fic, as in the British counterpart of the verb Smolder.
- Adaptational Sexuality: Smolder is all but outright stated to be lesbian, going by Ocellus stating the former was "not into guys". Not that
- Affectionate Nickname: Smolder calls Ocellus her "cuddlebug", a fairly accurate one given the latter's penchant for hugs.
- Call-Back: Smolder reveals her love of "girly stuff" to Ocellus in detail, including showing her a trunk of her dresses. This was first enstablished in "What Lies Beneath", back in Friendship is Magic Season 8.
- Commonality Connection: What Smolder attempts by revealing her collection of dresses and love of girly things to Ocellus. She likens her secret like of more feminine stuff to Ocellus being trans, in order to relate to her a fair bit. After all, since Smolder knew her secret, it was only fair for her to share hers.
- A Day in the Limelight: Ocellus and Smolder are the main characters of the fic, with Ocellus serving as the plot-focused deuteragonist while Smolder is the POV protagonist.
- Double-Meaning Title: A "Damselfly" is a dragonfly-like insect that has females that disguise themselves as malesNote. While both interpretations would refer to Ocellus, there are two ways to interpret how it would so. The first would be that Ocellus is an inversion of it, being AMAB but opting to shapeshift into a preferred femine form. However, it could be interpreted as playing it straight in a roundabout way; with Ocellus being a female changeling stuck in a male body and thus essentially being forced to "disguise as a male".
- A Form You Are Comfortable With: Well, a form that Ocellus herself is comfortable with. After being "assigned" a male body by the Changeling Reformation, the dysphoria eventually get too much to handle until she first transforms into her current feminine form. Her base form might not be eldritch, but it evokes displeasure in Ocellus nonetheless.
- Intro-Only Point of View: While Ocellus remains a vital character throughout the fic, things are only told from her perspective during the brief intro. Afterwards, it switches over to Smolder's point of view in third-person limited and stays that way until the end.
- Next Sunday A.D.: The events of the fic are set around the era that "The Last Problem" take places during, which is set decades after the main events of the show. Both Ocellus and Smolder are older, being married to boot.
- One-Word Title: While many fanfics tend to have lengthy titles, this one opts for just one word.
- Prefers the True Form: Briefly attempted by Smolder, only to be quickly shot down by Ocellus due to her discomfort with it.
- Promoted to Love Interest: While there was a fair bit of Ship Tease for the pair in the show itself, their ultimate relationship status in "The Last Problem" is left open-ended. Here, the two are explicitly a married couple.
- Shapeshifter Default Form: Ocellus' feminine "base" changeling form is revealed to be another disguise as well, with her true base form being more masculine. However, Oclellus' feminine changeling form is much closer to her ideal form and is used by her all the time, ultimately making it her default form anyway.
- Trans Relationship Troubles: Ultimately Subverted. Ocellus and Smolder got married with the latter under the impression that she was cisgender, but then Ocellus gets outed via the spell. While Smolder ponders over it a fair bit, she decides that her wife "having used to be a guy" wasn't a dealbreaker for her- after all, her "male form" wasn't who Ocellus truly was inside. For that reason, she does not love her any less than she did before.
- Trans Tribulations: Ocellus being trans did not make her life easy. When she was young, pre-reformed Changelings lacked any real gender dimorphism, and Ocellus managed to come to terms with her gender identity via preferring her female disguises on missions. But this changed with the Reformation, which gave her a male body that she absolutely loathed. One day, she came out as her true self to the Hive- adopting her new name, pronouns and form. Unfortunately some of the other Changelings were not understanding and ended up teasing her about it. Then decades later, she would get outed to both her wife and an entire class of students. Thankfully, she works things out with the former.
