The short duology is finished. Afterthoughts.

Well, the last chapter and epilogue of The Sons of Barricade. Part 2. Chisel is up. Time for me to post the mostly usual afterthought blog.

Warning if you have not read the story yet, there are spoilers after the break.

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When I first started writing this two-parter, I really only had one goal in mind. Touch a little on the two children of Barricade I had so far only alluded to or name-dropped. I implied heavily first that Barricade only had daughters, Cara, Coal and Dinky, however, I always knew Barricade had a lot more children than that, that guy did go around and he would at the very least have two more confirmed children. I finally confirmed the official number in the story In Old Manehattan, but it's quite possible he has more, but the mothers have just not had the nerve to approach him about that or demand child support.

In chronological age, Cara was always meant to be the oldest, Coal and Dinky being around the same age with only a few months between them, so I had to consider where to put Cooper and Chisel. Cooper was actually easy to place, he like Cara was a direct result of the days when Barricade was going bad, living it wild, using mares and tossing them aside once he was done with them. That's why Junebug isn't as badly scarred from her relationship as Sunny is.

Now Coal was actually the only foal born from a relationship where Barricade was genuinely in love with the mother, Foxy and wanted to stay with her. However he was still feeling entitled, still working for Caballeron and in the end, was the one tossed out, by his brother Private after he got tired of how Barricade was treating Foxy. At this point, Barricade is really and truly angry at just about everyone, his brother, his parents, and life in general. He briefly goes to Ponyville, has that relationship with Derpy that leads to Dinky, who is thus born from that angry period in Barricade's life. I figured, he probably had one more foal during that time, thus Chisel got placed there and thus became the youngest of the foals, the last one. Because it's how Barricade ended up treating Sunny, that he decided to cool down as he himself realized he was going a little off the deep end. Hooks back up with Barbell and Blue (old friends he's known before his descent to jerkdom) and moves to Manehattan to start the gang he now runs. We meet that Barricade in The Time Keeper.

So, considering all that, I just knew Sunny would be one of Barricade's heaviest baggage of guilt, the one thing from his many relationships he's the absolute most ashamed of having done. So naturally, I kill her off in the first chapter. Actually I considered having her survive but become even more crippled to the point that she is forced to give the custody of Chisel to Barricade because she's simply unable to care for him anymore. However, I wanted a little darker reflection between Chisel and Cara. The youngest and the oldest.

Cara was abandoned by her mother, because her mother, Fuzzy Cloud so hated Barricade that she didn't want anything to do with him, including the daughter she bore him. So she dumped her in an orphanage at the first opportunity and just ran off. Sunny despite her fear of Barricade, absolutely loved and adored her son and tried her best to give him a good life with the limited means she had. She would never give up Chisel. So in a cruel twist of fate, she dies during the magic drain at the end of season 8 and Chisel has to be given over to Barricade.

Sharp Spear, a character that briefly appears in two whole chapters in Possession in the Crystal Empire, was used because Sunny was living in Vanhoover and Sharp Spear is from there, I figured I might as well use her as someone who knew Sunny, instead of creating yet another character. I did need an adult who was against Barricade getting Chisel, since at that point, Barricade is fully reformed and with full support of ponies that previously had seriously disliked him. Although her contribution to that happens only early by trying to get Chisel to the Crystal Empire and is then locked up in the barracks. I wasn't writing a long story and having her being constantly a foil would have stretched the story longer than I had any plans to do. The main focus of the story was Barricade and Chisel, Barricade now can't make peace with what he considers one of his greatest shame and Chisel lost basically his whole world, his mother.

Granted I initially wished I had been writing a longer story, there were several points where I stopped and went, "you know I could explore that bit more" but I had given myself a set amount of chapters, plus I didn't want this story to be longer than the first part that deals with Cooper. Granted Cooper's story is far more just a mild drama, while this was a tragedy that dealt quite a bit more with death and regret.

So, no I am not one hundred percent as happy with this story as I was with Cooper. This was supposed to be the final chapter in Barricade's redemption arc and it feels weak. Not as weak as In Old Manehattan which really kick-started Barricade making apologies and peace with the ponies he's harmed in the past, but still I think I could have done better.

Quite honestly this probably should have just been an independent story, focusing more on the various points I make in it, Chisel coming to terms with his mother's death, Sharp Spear's guilt over Sunny's death, Barricade's guilt of how he treated Sunny and just his entire past.

I'm not scrapping it though, I am going to stand by what has been written but with the acknowledgment that I could have done better. I did enjoy writing it, much better than I did when I wrote In Old Manehattan. I could of course always re-write it, but I just do not have the time to commit to that, I'm currently in the process of writing The Last of the Dark Ponies sequel, Rage of a Queen. Wrath of a Mother. It's currently the only story I'm writing and right now I want to focus on that so it can be completed hopefully around the new year. I had plans to have it fully completed last month, so I am quite a bit behind.

If you enjoyed the story, that's good enough for me. I hope people at least still enjoyed this short little tragedy.

That's all for now.