Ah, Nightmare Night is once again upon us and just as with last year, we celebrated Nightmare Moon, we will be looking at another MLP villain. One, that has not had that many appearances in the show. Sure, there was her debut episode and we saw it again in last year's Nightmare Night episode and in Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep but this blog will focus on her first appearance only.
Did I decide to do this just because of that pun? Partly but also because as I have stated Fluttershy is my favorite character and she is perhaps the character that wishes to have the least to do with Nightmare Night but she has also given us one of the most memorable creatures from the recent seasons of MLP in terms of Flutterbat. Now, here is what we will be looking at during this event, we will start with a Villains Profile on Flutterbat, a look at the comic two parter, Night of The Living Apples, which featured the return of Flutterbat along with the rest of the Mane 6 becoming vampire ponies, and finally, Scare Master, which featured the animated return of Flutterbat.
Now for my Disney readers, do not fret as Month of The Mansion will resume on the 19th as The Creature and I countdown our Top 6 Haunted Mansion Moments. And speaking of things resuming, Party with Pinkie will resume in November as we are so close to the homestretch in terms of episodes left to review. And for those wondering why I'm not reviewing the episode, Bats in which Flutterbat debuted, I already looked at it with The Second Opinion. Weird times, as I was turned into a vampire during that review, granted, that was around the same time that I was also turned into Diamond Tiara as well.
Here is what we will be looking, How, First Appearance, Personality, Grand Desire/Most Evil Deed, Defeat, & finally is Is Flutterbat A Good Villain? You may have noticed that I combined Grand Desire and Most Evil Deed as they both go hand in hand and also because Flutterbat unlike any other villain that I've covered is an unaware villain. As she is unaware of her actions and when she is Flutterbat (at least in the episode, she is not acting as Fluttershy because Fluttershy is gone and has been replaced by Flutterbat, a mindless drone). I also will not be looking at Voice Actress as Flutterbat doesn't really do much in terms of talking. I'm pretty sure that it's still Andrea Libman but that seems like a moot point.
With this long winded introduction out of the way, let's begin.
How
Twilight Sparkle gives a pretty good explanation as to how this happens. With a chart fueled by Alicorn magic
Sweet Apple Acres, the farm of the Apple family is having a vampire bat infestation problem and everyone shut down Fluttershy's idea of building a sanctuary for the bats on the farm as they could help Applejack's trees. So, instead they decide to have Flutters use her infamous stare on the bats, while Twilight would remove their desire to be vampire bats. However it didn't seem to work.
But that is not the case as Bats have no interest in the apples. Rather, when Twily performed the spell, she somehow transferred the vampire bats' desire to be vampire bats to Fluttershy. Thus creating Flutterbat.
So, yeah Fluttershy becoming Flutterbat is kinda on the rest of the girls. You'd think after the whole Parasprite incident with Pinkie Pie, they'd learn to listen to one another more but nope, this was kinda a one sided argument as heard in the the song of the episode.
But hey, they didn't listen to one Andrea Libman character back in season one, why not be fair and ignore her other character as well.
First Appearance
I'll give the episode this much as it makes the audience wait for Flutterbat's arrival but it does give us some foreshadowing before her appearance.
But when we see Flutterbat in her full glory, it is a sight to behold as Flutterbat is pretty cool looking.
As I mentioned in the introduction, Fluttershy is gone and has been replaced with Flutterbat, she now has two fangs, vampire wings & her cutie mark has changed to that of three vampire bats.
Some have wondered why Fluttershy's cutie mark changed, when she became Flutterbat but i think it helps to show that once again, the girls aren't dealing with Fluttershy because by the point that they discover she has become Flutterbat, Fluttershy is gone and Flutterbat has become the only personality there. This isn't like when I talked about Nightmare Rarity last Nightmare Night as there were still traces of Rarity and she was fighting Nightmare Moon for control of her body nd mind, Fluttershy is 100 percent gone and it is up to the girls' to figure out how to get Fluttershy back.
It is interesting to see how differently two characters becoming villainous creatures is handled because Rarity in the Nightmare Rarity arc was aware of what was going on to her and she tried to fight it but ultimately gave in but Fluttershy didn't know about being Flutterbat until the very end of the episode.
Personality
As we've observed all throughout this blog, Fluttershy is gone and when we have Flutterbat, we are left with a creature that is a bit more animalistic in nature. For comparison's sake (and slight spoilers), for those that have seen Zootopia, think back to how the predators are regressed to their old predatory states in the movie and how they become vicious animals that attack anyone in their sight.
With Flutterbat, you are dealing with something similar but obviously on a much smaller scale than what that movie presented but the point still stands that during her entire time as Flutterbat, Fluttershy was nowhere to be found. To paraphrase one of my favorite movies to watch at this time of year (and I was partly inspired by the MLP wiki for this line)
There is no Fluttershy, only Flutterbat
I think that perfectly captures what is going on with Flutterbat. And as Flutterbat, she is an animalistic creature that has a one track mind sucking all the juice out of the apples on Sweet Apple Acres.Which serves as the stand-in for vanting to suck your blood. I mean wanting to suck your blood. Which she's pretty good at as Flutterbat is quite stealthy and can move at a rapid pace.
Grand Desire/Most Evil Deed
As we observed in the last category, her Grand Desire is to suck the juice out of all the apples on Sweet Apple Acres and she's pretty good at that as she does get quite a few of them. Even before we see her as Flutterbat
But I don't know if that's fair to put on Fluttershy or rather Flutterbat in this case as being truly evil because she is unaware of what she is doing and is thinking like all the vampire bats at the beginning of the episode, all they thought about was sucking the juice out of the apples. And when that desire was transferred to Fluttershy, she inherited those traits and was acting less like the pony that is my favorite MLP character and more like the vampire bats. So, I don't really think that we can put all of the blame on Fluttershy/Flutterbat for this because as Flutterbat, she was just doing what vampire bats do and what she assumed it was in her nature.
Defeat
The girls trick Flutterbat into defeating herself as Applejack sacrifices her prized apple, that we saw at the beginning of the episode and the smell lures Flutterbat and they surround her with mirrors and trick Flutterbat into doing The Stare on herself. And this does the trick as Flutterbat is turned back into Fluttershy.
It was a team effort to turn Flutterbat back into Fluttershy but in the end, it worked.
Is Flutterbat A Good Villain?
I'm honestly not sure, I like Flutterbat and no, it's not just because of Fluttershy but this goes to what I've been saying throughout, it doesn't feel right to judge Flutterbat based on her actions because during Fluttershy's time as Flutterbat, she was unaware of what she was doing. There isn't a whole lot of depth to Flutterbat but unlike other villains that I've covered, there doesn't need to be as she is less a villain and more a creature. Yes, she is working against our heroines but again, she is acting in an animalistic state because that is how her mind as Flutterbat functions. I really do like Flutterbat and I am happy that we've seen more of her. I want to address her appearance in season 5.
In the shared dream between the residents of Ponyville and Princess Luna fighting against the Tantibus, Fluttershy willingly turned herself into Flutterbat. This shows how far Fluttershy has come as a character because she is willingly to embrace something from her past that was frightening to fight a bigger threat. In earlier seasons, Fluttershy would have run away from danger and never thought of doing anything like this but seeing that Fluttershy isn't the same scared mare that we met at the beginning of the series is highlighted by her decision to embrace becoming Flutterbat. And as we will observe in the next blog, this wasn't the only time that she decided to embrace Flutterbat. Join me next time as we look at Pt. 1 of...
Night of The Living Apples
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