(no subject)
So I was thinking about potential endings for "Flyer Farmer Seamstress Spy." Rarity is probably the closest Bill Haydon equivalent, which would make her a bit too obvious as the mole to anyone who's familiar with the Le Carre side of the source material. I actually want her to be the red herring - she is passing stuff on to the Ponies' Republic of Equistan cultural attache in secret, but it all turns out to be fashion designs or something. (Couture in the PRE is in a dreadful state, darling. Rarity considers it an equinitarian effort.) My first two potential resolutions were: there is a real mole, but she's not one of the Mane Six; or there was no mole in the first place, just a lot of top-secret projects tripping over each other and intra-office intrigue gone wrong, and everybody learns an aesop about the importance of communication.
I got another, admittedly far-fetched, idea this afternoon. The mole turns out to be Fluttershy, but not because she's secretly allied with the PRE. She actually got sick of the callousness and moral ambiguity of the whole spy game years ago, and as a double agent has been doing her best to send both services chasing their own tails, in ways that will throw sand in the works without (at least in principle) putting any individual agents at risk. Unfortunately, while Fluttershy in this scenario is an implausibly good chessmaster, she's not a perfect chessmaster, and the mission-gone-wrong that kicks off the plot (the rough equivalent of Operation Testify with Rainbow Dash in the Prideaux role) was the indirect unintended consequence of her shenanigans. She, of course, feels horrible about this, but nobody considered anything suspicious about her distress when Operation Oh Celestia Why went down, because Fluttershy was known to be a sensitive soul and she and Dash were old friends.
I'm not sure how it would all end after this, except that it won't involve any of the Mane Six murdering each other or an ending montage with La Mare playing in the background.
I got another, admittedly far-fetched, idea this afternoon. The mole turns out to be Fluttershy, but not because she's secretly allied with the PRE. She actually got sick of the callousness and moral ambiguity of the whole spy game years ago, and as a double agent has been doing her best to send both services chasing their own tails, in ways that will throw sand in the works without (at least in principle) putting any individual agents at risk. Unfortunately, while Fluttershy in this scenario is an implausibly good chessmaster, she's not a perfect chessmaster, and the mission-gone-wrong that kicks off the plot (the rough equivalent of Operation Testify with Rainbow Dash in the Prideaux role) was the indirect unintended consequence of her shenanigans. She, of course, feels horrible about this, but nobody considered anything suspicious about her distress when Operation Oh Celestia Why went down, because Fluttershy was known to be a sensitive soul and she and Dash were old friends.
I'm not sure how it would all end after this, except that it won't involve any of the Mane Six murdering each other or an ending montage with La Mare playing in the background.