The Writing of The Bonds of Love (Chapter Two: Reprieve)

*Alternate chapter titles: Respite, Recovery — Didn’t name it either because “Reprieve” sounded better at the time. In hindsight, I prefer Recovery instead.

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Okay, folks, we're back with the next installment of this commentary, and for today's topic: Chapter Two(Reprieve)! …Oh boy.

To start I want to reemphasize that every chapter was supposed to be its own self-contained story wherein Gallus would spend time with and learn a life lesson from each of his friends.

We’ll talk about those lessons Gallus would learn as we go along, but this was the order for these Character-specific chapters:

Chapter Two would be Silverstream’s chapter.

Chapter Three would be Yona’s.

Four would be Sandbar’s.

Five would be Ocellus’.

Six would be Smolder’s.

Seven, the penultimate chapter, would be the Griffonstone/Grandpa Gruff chapter.

Lastly, Eight would be the grand finale: Gallus and Silverstream’s second date.

And although I was undecided on it at the time, an epilogue would be when we visited Mount Aris.

As I’ve also mentioned, this got sidelined, and this chapter is to blame because…!

~ Sweet Celestia! It Just Won’t End! ~

Miller Minus’ contest included a 12k word limit for its entries, and it was both a curse and a blessing. On one hand, it forced me to shrink down A Day for Family to fit that limit, resulting in the story’s latter half being completely overhauled. This, naturally, meant I had to pick and choose what was most important for A.D.F.F. and remove any unnecessary fluff, bettering it in the process.

I had no such word limit when writing T.B.O.L. and you can tell I reveled in that. For better and worse.

Did you think I wanted every chapter to be over 10k words? Ha-ha, no. No. I didn’t even realize Ch.1(Transition) was 18k until after I had finished and checked the word count. And I still kept underestimating how much I was writing after that.

This was largely due to my inexperience but also partly because, until Ch.12-13(Serenity),I wrote T.B.O.L. on my personal computer in a single document file, so I only ever saw the story’s entire word count. It was only when I was finished and ready to copy/past the chapters to Fimfiction would I finally check their true word count.

Why didn’t I separate each chapter into their own file from the get-go? Because I didn’t want to open over five different files whenever I had to double-check/edit something in a previous chapter. And also, I was an idiot.

As to why I thought such huge chapter lengths were okay at all? Firstly, Background Pony did it, so I figured I could get away with it too. But mostly because of some advice I got from Czar_Yoshi.

When they announced The Immortal Dream they mentioned the chapters would likely hover around the 20k range, and I expressed relief that chapter lengths like that were okay. They commented back, saying it depended on the type of story I was telling and what was more important was consistency between the chapter lengths. So yeah. Thanks again for the advice, Czar_Yoshi!

But let’s be honest… The chapters got so lengthy primarily because I didn’t know when to shut up. There are so many instances where I wouldn’t stop over-explaining something or flew into paragraph-long tangents that could have easily been reduced to a few simple sentences.

One particular aspect, however, unquestionably warranted the extra wordiness: The dialogue.

Pardon my boasting, but I absolutely nailed this part of the story! I still believe the best part of T.B.O.L. is Gallus-Stream, yet personally, I am most proud of the character interactions. The dialogue’s not remotely subtle and can be rather cringeworthy sometimes, but I succeeded at making the conversations both realistic and true to each character’s personalities.

Plus, thanks to some well-deserved criticism from Aragon on A.D.F.F. I actually bothered to use dialogue tags! Although, considering how often I used the same verbs for said dialogue tags, it’s clear I need to expand my general vocabulary. Seriously, count how many times I used variations of “Mutter,” “Mumble,” and “Murmur” throughout the story. I dare you.

~ Even After Tragedy, Life Goes On ~

I’ve talked enough about “Cozy Glow,” and you guys already know what subplot that “Consult Silver about future careers” letter was setting up, so let’s skip past that and talk about Ocellus.

From the beginning, I wanted the Student Six to each have their own unique reactions to Gallus’ breakdown beyond basic concern and sorrow. Regarding Ocellus, I wanted her to endeavor to “solve” the problem. Why her? She’s a changeling, duh. If one of her best friends was having an emotional crisis, of course she’d use her skills as a changeling to try to help them.

That left me with the question of “If Ocellus could sense his emotions, why didn’t she sense them back in A.D.F.F.?” The obvious answer is she wasn’t around; in fact, I removed her from A.D.F.F. because I would have felt compelled to have her catch on to Gallus’ woes. However, I had to re-face this question here, so I turned it into a plot point by having Ocellus be ashamed she didn’t sense his emotions.

This happened often when writing T.B.O.L. Whenever I was frustrated with something or made a mistake, I would turn said issue into a plot point. For instance: The show annoyingly never clarified if changelings’ magic effected other emotions besides love, so I made it a thing in-universe that they couldn’t, but Ocellus found a work-around. This is why Ocellus never explaining how it works to the others became a recurring gag as well.

This wasn’t what I initially planned to do.

When first writing this chapter, I intended to make it that changelings could sense all emotions but intentionally blotted them out to avoid sensory overload. Thus, Ocellus got sick because she opened herself up to everycreature’s emotions and was physically overwhelmed as a result; this was also why she didn’t get sick until after other students and a certain dragon came to the cafeteria.

I ended up changing this though, hence that throwaway “My spell wasn’t working right, so it made me violently ill” line in Ch.9(Fear). Low-key retcon right there, sorry.

Regardless, I’m happy I changed this plot point. Ocellus personally crafting the emotion-reading spell added way more depth to her character—That she was not only smart enough to figure it out, but she was willing to do so for even the slightest chance at helping Gallus.

Really makes me hate how this subplot got shoved into the background until Ch.7(Pride), but hey! For now at least, we had a really good Gallus/Ocellus scene—The first of many to come, in regard to both Gallus/Ocellus scenes and good character interactions in general.

I wish I had written more scenes involving all of the Student Six though; there’s not many of them and they’re all relatively short. I like those scenes for what they are, however, and for this one in particular, it’s another preview into each of the Student Six’s reactions.

We’ve got Gallus hung up on his issues—that’s a given. Our first hint something’s wrong with Silverstream. Smolder being mad, but not so mad as to do the whole “Avoid my best friend because drama” cliché. Silverstream and Yona being angry at Smolder for seemingly being angry at Gallus. And Sandbar casually going about his day like nothing’s wrong.

Somehow, I made it all work. Woo-hoo!

Moving on—One thing I wanted to do in this chapter was showcase Gallus having a relatively normal day to contrast the horrible one he had in A.D.F.F. Thankfully, T.B.O.L. started directly after a holiday, so I already had to address everyone returning to their daily routine, including Gallus. Plus, it gave me the chance to showcase the Mane Six being competent teachers.

Hey, the show sucked at that, so someone had to pick up the slack.

Regarding the Mane Six, I wish I had done more with them too. Not much more, mind you; this story is about the Student Six, but I don’t like how the Mane Six got no prominent roles in the story.

Twilight may be stuck in Canterlot, but she could have sent Gallus more letters. And sure, Rarity is responsible for the Canterlot trip, but after that, she vanishes. Poor Rainbow, AJ, Pinkie, and Sunburst are nowhere to be seen, and Trixie just… Exists. Shame. I can totally see Gallus, Silver, and even Smolder asking them for advice, and if they had, it would have made them all showing up in Ch.9(Fear) far more impactful.

I’m glad for what spotlight I did give Fluttershy, Rarity, and Starlight; I merely wish I had given all of the main cast the same degree of it. Ah well. I guess history really does repeat itself.

So many wasted opportunities in these earlier chapters, goodness gracious! And yet, they’re still outnumbered by grammar mistakes and awful attempts at comedy.

Did anyone find November’s rambling, the shipping war, Sugar Belle’s pie poisoning, or the tie-dyed toilet paper gag funny? And, for the record, there was going to be more to those last two, but I am far too ashamed of them to disclose that information. I know I said I’d discuss everything about this story, but that info is something I’m taking to my grave.

Thank you again to Jack of a Few Trades for criticizing me for that dumb cutaway gag in A.D.F.F. because otherwise…? Ergh. You don’t want to know.

I won’t apologize for the “Can You Feel the Sunshine” reference though; I love Sonic the Hedgehog, and “Can You Feel the Sunshine” is godly!

Oh, and remember that aetheric headache thing Gallus and Ocellus talked about? Yet another reference, specifically to—you guessed it—Aetheric Headaches, a fun, little one-shot I found a few years back and liked.

For the Kindness class scene, everything you see is what you get. We’ve got Fluttershy incorporating her assertiveness lessons into her teaching, some other friendship students being introduced, Gallus confronting his fear and reading some of Cadence’s letter; and him and Silver still unnecessarily recapping A.D.F.F.

~ Express Yourself Creatively! ~

Oh boy, here we go. This is where the chapter split truly started impacting things.

The Generosity class scene was initially far longer with Rarity dragging the lesson on for a good 3-4 more paragraphs and Gallus having even less of a clue what to do, but I obviously shortened it due to the chapter length issue. I suppose I could have shortened it even more, but I really did love showcasing what a proper Friendship Lesson is like in the School.

That Friendship Lesson being on expressing emotions—The main theme for the original Chapter Two and the primary lesson Gallus would learn. We’ll get to why shortly, but for now, this scene was meant to properly set that theme up.

On that note, Smolder’s poem! … Will be discussed once we finally reach Ch.9(Fear).

What we will discuss here, however, is the “Sir Gallus and Lady Silverstream” thing. It only exists as a quick dash of comedy and some fun Gallus-Stream banter; I had no intentions of this being a recurring gag.

Yeah, Ocellus smelling like explosives was the joke I wanted to keep using, but not Gallus and Silverstream playfully calling each other “Milady” and “Milord.” But I had them do it again and again, and at some point it stuck. And I’m glad it did because, sure, it’s a pretty silly joke, but Gallus and Silver know that and don’t care. They like doing it, and it gets a chuckle out of both of them, so they keep doing it no matter how silly it sounds.

A similar thing happened with Gallus using “Peck” as a swear word. That legitimately started as nothing more than a reference to A Hat in Time, but I kept using it and later expanded the griffon swear word vocabulary with “Grover’s Treasure.” Then I switched to Silver’s perspective, meaning she needed a hippogriff/seapony swear of her own, resulting in “Sea kelp” becoming a thing, and I obviously couldn’t not steal recycle the “language” joke from Avengers: Age of Ultron, so that became a recurring joke too…

I’m surprised this detail was one I got complimented for, multiple times at that! Of all the details I put into this story, Gallus and Silver using species-specific swears was one people liked? Well, whatever. Better for people to like it than not, I guess. Thanks, everyone.

Alternatively, something I intended to have more prominence but swiftly dropped was Silverstream’s flower painting.

I had planned for her to gift it to Gallus at the end of T.B.O.L. as this grandiose display of affection that commemorated both their blossoming romance and his emotional recovery while tying into the story’s main themes… Somehow.

There is a reason why I wanted this—a stupid one, but a reason nonetheless—but I’ll explain that later.

As for Gallus’ painting? Eh. I left what he painted purposefully ambiguous so you could all theorize what it was. Sooo…? What do you all think he painted? No one ever commented anything about it.

But, the time has finally come. Let’s get into the next therapy scene and talk about what chapter two was truly going to be about…

~ Beneath the Mask Lies the True Self~

Starlight may be the guidance counselor, but neither she nor the Mane Six are therapists. But with Twilight locked away in Canterlot, Glim-Glam was the only one available for the job. Also? I’m a massive Starlight fan, so any chance to give her some extra spotlight was fine by me. Luckily, her background includes abandonment issues, identity crises, and emotional rehabilitation, so she was mildly qualified to help Gallus manage his own version of those problems.

That, combined with my desire to prominently show Gallus’ recovery, led me to decide early-on for every chapter to have a Starlight/Gallus therapy scene. But FanficReader920 later acknowledged Starlight sounded a tad too wise than was accurate to her character, so I subsequently toned her role down rather than try forcing her into every chapter.

However, before FanficReader920 made that comment, I was still gung-ho about every chapter having a therapy scene, resulting in a particular issue pertaining to Gallus’ character development. Since he was going to learn a lesson on how to handle his problems and have a therapy session regarding said problem, every chapter was going to focus on a particular flaw Gallus had as a result of his trauma.

Bear with me for a moment—Do you remember how in “Hurricane Fluttershy” Fluttershy struggled to overcome her fear of working/flying in front of other ponies? Then in “Filli Vanilli” she learned something similar concerning how to manage her stage fright, and in “Putting Your Hoof Down” she learned the danger of being too assertive to the point of toxicity? Basically, she had to learn similar-yet-different lessons to tackle individual problems stemming from one central issue: Her social anxiety?

That’s essentially what I was going for with Gallus—His trauma left him with several issues which all needed to be individually addressed. Heck, that whole “Your old worldview is bleeding into your new one” was me spelling that out in the most un-subtle(And stupid) manner possible.

This is where things get… Icky.

What I am about to tell you is the absolute worst idea I ever had for T.B.O.L. I am beyond grateful I didn’t do it, and I’d rather not admit to even considering it… But I promised I’d talk about all of the cut story concepts, so? Here we go.

Gallus’ life in Griffonstone wasn’t the best. That’s a given. So why wasn’t his life there talked about more in T.B.O.L.? Well, it was going to be, and it would start here in this chapter.

Gallus was going to discuss how hard it was growing up as a homeless orphan in a nation caught up in a self-perpetuated societal collapse; more specifically, he’d reveal he was lucky to even be alive.

Don’t get me wrong, there wasn’t some nameless nutjob actively gunning for his head or anything, but neither was there anygriff willing to care for him in the slightest.

Griffonstone was going to be so bad off it wouldn’t have an orphanage, homeless shelter, or anything similar. Gallus had to live on the streets, scoring his own meals and sleeping in the gutters. So if he couldn’t find anygriff willing to toss him some leftover bread, he’d either have to go to bed hungry or try his luck at hunting down the odd(Sometimes diseased) rat or two.

But what about Grandpa Gruff, you might ask? Why wasn’t Gallus living with him? Your answer is this line from A.D.F.F.:

I didn’t exactly live with him, but he always had a spare room if I needed it.

Which shows Gruff was a possible option but not an ideal one. Gallus grew up homeless, family-less, and penniless, and almost every day was a constant struggle for him to survive.

This obviously would have affected his personality.

Gallus had to survive after all, so how could he best improve his odds of surviving in a society that didn’t care one iota whether he lived or died? Simple: He’d make them care. By doing whatever it took to convince other griffons he was worth caring about. By getting on everygriff’s good side. By making evergriff happy. By doing whatever and acting however he needed to in order to earn the trust and good will of everygriff he came across.

What he liked, what he disliked, what he thought, how he acted, what he believed, who he cared for, what he had; what he wanted…

Gallus would mask every single aspect of his true personality, including his emotions, if he thought doing so would give him even the slightest edge in convincing somegriff to help him. To give him the oldest morsel of food, the smallest cup of water, a single, worn Bit, an hour—a minute!—spent with a roof over his head; the fleeting hope of proper, paid work…!

If doing so would earn Gallus any of these things, he’d flip his personality on a dime. Because he could. Because he needed to.

This was going to be a major reason why Grandpa Gruff meant so much to Gallus; unlike every other griffon, Gruff genuinely cared about him and would help him out if need be, and even if it was out of pity, it was still more care and concern than Gallus’ own parents had ever bothered to show him.

Gallus was going to have effectively raised himself from fledglinghood to be a perpetual emotional con artist because if he hadn’t…?

He’d have died.

I loved this concept at first! It’s dark, it’s grim, it’s horrifying! Gallus is just a teenager, yet he’s trained himself to mask everything about who he really is, even from himself, because of that nagging paranoia that he had to. That the real him was someone nogriff would have willingly helped. That what others wanted from him was more important than what he wanted for himself. He grew up doing this since day one, and it screwed him up so badly, he can’t even bring himself to express his emotions truthfully without fearing backlash.

Originally, during the Generosity lesson, Gallus was going to vehemently disagree with everything Rarity said because he had ingrained the mentality of “Express only what others want you to express” so deeply into his mind that expressing purely his own emotions was completely alien to him. So much would Gallus’ sense of individualism and his very identity be tainted by this, that he wouldn’t even know what to do when not spending time in school or with his friends because he couldn’t think of anything else he personally wanted to do.

Remember this line:

“I’m shocked, Ocellus. I thought you’d know me better than to think I have hobbies.”

Yep. That was going to be a hint to this issue, and said issue absolutely would have played a significant role in the “Gallus’ Future” subplot and provided more insight about why in A.D.F.F. he had this to say:

“Isn’t it always? Who’s the strongest? The fastest? The best? Doesn’t matter at what, so long as you’re better at something than everyone else. If you’re not the best, then what worth are you?”

This concept was so intriguing, and I was extremely excited to tackle it and all the sweet, juicy character development it would have entailed…

But then Jack of A Few Trades happened.

I think my final verdict on this story is that you were trying to make a statement on loneliness and the unhealthy mindset that comes with it, but in pursuing that, you washed out all of the other qualities of Gallus as a character and just made him a depressed, lonely wreck whose entire life is consumed with feelings of inadequacy and isolation. It loses a lot of its punch because he turns from this wonderful, well-rounded character with strengths and flaws that we all know and love and becomes a walking pile of personality disorders. The ham-fisted flanderization of his character subtracts a lot of the punch from what you were trying to deliver, and the result is that the payoff of the story falls flat.

Even now, this hurts, but I can’t deny it’s true.

I amplified Gallus’ orphanhood and trauma at the cost of his every other established character trait. They’re not gone obviously; he had the smarts to go ask the Tree of Harmony about his parents and tell Twilight and Starlight about his problems, but these traits are so thoroughly irrelevant in contrast to his orphanhood that they don’t even matter. And Gallus’ trademark snark? Nowhere to be seen.

I still like A.D.F.F. for what it is, but yeesh, it’s rough. And unluckily for me, Jack of A Few Trades didn’t comment until after I had already posted Ch.1(Transition), finished Ch.2(Reprieve), and written most of Ch.3(Expression). So those things I got criticized for? I couldn’t immediately fix them, and I obviously couldn’t retcon anything. All I could do was perform damage control and continue writing the story with those criticisms in mind, improving anywhere I could. One such improvement was this personality thing.

A character who grew up feeling the need to constantly change their personality on a whim to survive to the point their true personality had been all but forgotten…? That is an awesome concept for a character, and one I do hope to properly tackle one day.

But it does! Not! Work! For! Gallus!

Yes, this is a fanfiction, so I could do whatever I wanted with the characters and no one could stop me, but I wasn’t changing everything about their backstories and personalities! I was telling a story with the characters from the main canon, and—aside from some liberties—I tried adhering to said main canon as best I could, not churn out a disgruntled AU! Why do you think Glorious Pearl was the only legitimate OC in this story?

Thankfully, the chapter split happened, so I was forced to postpone discussing the personality issue until Ch.3(Expression) anyway, hence that chapter’s name. And with Jack of A Few Trades’ criticisms in mind, the more I mulled over the Gallus/Starlight scene pertaining to the personality issue, the more I realized it was a stupid idea that would have tarnished Gallus’ character even further.

So I nixed it.

“Oh, but it would have been good for his character,” some might argue. “Gallus only acting cool and tough in front of Smolder to earn her respect or acting smart and nerdy around Ocellus to get on her good side adds such an interesting dynamic to his friendship with them! Plus, it’d make his relationship with Silverstream more compelling because she’d be the only one he felt he could drop the act around which would be such a cool thing to—”

No. No.

Gallus flip-flopping his personality to best appeal to others sounds like an interesting idea, sure. But you wanna know what it’d mean for all of his friendships and especially his relationship with Silver?

It’d imply all of those bonds were forged on lies. That Silverstream, Smolder, Sandbar, Ocellus, and Yona all came to know, not the “Real Gallus,” but whatever façade he put up around them. Whatever mask he put on to best appeal to them.

Gallus wasn’t being Honest with his friends, much less himself; his Loyalty was questionable at best and situational at worst; he was only acting friendly to better ensure he’d receive the most Kindness and Generosity he could; his every joyful, Magical, or Laughter-filled moment with his friends could be rendered meaningless easily… And this would have been true for the entire time T.B.O.L.’s Gallus had been attending the Friendship School.

If I had gone through with giving Gallus this character flaw, he would never have been their friend. Gallus would have just been… A griffon. Nothing more.

An expert writer could have easily taken this idea and worked it into the story flawlessly, but I’m a newbie; I know I would have failed if I had tried. Maybe that’s too defeatist of me, but… Knowing me and how terribly inexperienced I was during this story’s early half? I likely would have handled this even worse than what I’ve described.

Unfortunately, while I’m glad I went back on this idea, it did come with some nasty consequences. The “Gallus’ Future” subplot and Ch.7(Pride)’s original theme both relied on this personality issue being a thing. So when I removed it, they both suffered tremendously.

But we’ll get to them when we get to them.

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Ughhh, Chapter Two… For the longest time, I genuinely considered this to be both the worst chapter of T.B.O.L. and my personal least favorite. But I found myself enjoying it far more than I remembered when I re-read/re-edited it; plus, I rediscovered how awful Ch.1(Transition) ultimately was, so that, uh, “helped”?

That said, I can’t shake the lingering embarrassment and shame I feel toward Ch.2(Reprieve), and again, it’s one of the early chapters, meaning people had to slog through this junk and wait almost a month before the story actually “got good” as some would say.

Luckily, that happened in the very next chapter. Which of course, is the one we shall be discussing next Friday, Saturday, or Sunday depending on my IRL schedule.

For those who wish to read the rest of this commentary, here's the Google Doc link for it.

Thank you, everyone, for reading the latest installment in "The Writing of The Bonds of Love", and may you all have a great day!

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[Summer Script]

~ Additional Tidbits ~

— 1) November Rain being interested in weather magic was entirely determined by his cutie mark being a rain cloud.

As an aside, don't get too used to how small these "Additional Tidbit" sections are; there's a reason, I'm including them in the comments rather than the Post itself. That being: More than one of the later chapters has thirty of the things.