The Writing of The Bonds of Love Progress Update 6 · 3:47am Feb 5th, 2022
Hello, everyone, and yes, I am posting yet another update concerning the “Writing of…” Mercifully, I’ll keep this one brief.
So, January decided to take a leaf out of December’s book and pass by as if on fast forward. I thankfully still managed to accomplish my goal of finishing the discussion for Ch.11(Closure) by the end of the month. By which I mean, I finished literally on the last day of January. I mean? I’ll take it, but I hope 2022 starts slowing down soon…
On the bright side, I wrote over 23k words on this one chapter alone and just shy of 3k words worth of additional tidbits which means, yes, the chapter’s discussion is longer than the chapter itself. So yeah. Hope you’re all looking forward to that. 
Also with that new discussion, the full “Writing of…” has now exceeded 100k words total. How on earth I initially expected to post this thing in my Blog is a mystery; I should absolutely know by this point that I just can’t help myself and don’t know when to stop talking.
Jokes aside, the next chapters I plan to discuss are naturally the 2nd Date chapters, so once I finish discussing both of them, I’ll update you guys again. Afterward, I’ll have only the Mount Aris arc and the Epilogue left, and then I will finally, finally be able to post this dang thing once and for all and start working on something new! 
Even better, the 2nd Date chapters were some of the shorter chapters of the story, so it should take me less time to discuss them individually. Maybe? Possibly? Hopefully…?
Ugh, where do I even begin to talk about the Silverstream/Gruff scene? 
In other news, I recently bought both Celeste and Octopath Traveler, both of which are absolutely fantastic and you should definitely check them out for yourself when you get a chance. Though, in hindsight, I probably should have waited until after I finished the “Writing of…” before buying them; I might have finished discussing Ch.11(Closure) sooner if I had.
Other than, nothing else new to share for me IRL.
Now, how about that regularly scheduled excerpt? Well? Unfortunately—or fortunately, dependent on how you look at it—everything I discussed in Ch.11(Closure) deserves to be saved for when the “Writing of…” is posted properly, so I won’t be providing a preview from that part here. Instead, I’ll give you guys something completely different:
As mentioned before, these excerpts will naturally be included in the final version of the “Writing of…” and might also be subject to change should I edit them. This one is from all the way back in Ch.4(Optimism), concerning the opening scene between Gallus, Silver, and Ocellus:
I wish I had done more with Gallus joining Chess Club. I was going to, and we’d even see more of November Rain as a result, but Chess Club was yet another thing related to something I’ll discuss in the full “Writing of…” which prevented me from doing more with that particular Club.
Initially, this chapter would start with a Gallus vs. Ocellus chess match and Silverstream being sent to retrieve Gallus for Drama Club, but since I had to de-prioritize the Chess Club’s existence, we instead opened the chapter with them discussing their teleportation project and Silverstream watching on with Shimmy being the one sent to get them.
All things considered, I prefer this opening; it adds more to the project subplot by showing how difficult it is to actually create the spell correctly, gives Gallus some time to flaunt his intellect, grants extra foreshadowing to Ocellus’ emotion-reading spell, and begins laying the groundwork for the “Gallus’ future” subplot.
Oh, and we also get hit pointblank with how bad Silver’s paranoia is.
You know? I was tempted to cut the excerpt off right there and apologize for how short an excerpt it was. 
Believe it or not, it’s hard to find excerpts that don’t require spoiling major talking points from the “Writing of…” to provide context for said excerpts. However, I might as well include this part as well:
Shimmy then shows up to beckon them to the theater hall and acknowledge/compliment Gallus-Stream finally being a thing with Gallus being uncharacteristically open about it.
Yeah, that was something I wanted to eliminate immediately—Gallus being shy/embarrassed about dating Silverstream. That’s a common Romance trope I despise, and while Canon Gallus probably would be a tad embarrassed about dating somecreature, I did not want T.B.O.L.’s Gallus doing that.
“He loves her; she loves him; don’t bother making them pretend otherwise, have them be proud of being together, in fact!” I said to myself. Hence Cadence’s letter about the issue, and Gallus quickly following the advice. Of course, with something else I’m saving for the full “Writing of…” in mind, I had others acknowledge how surprising it was Gallus would be so open/comfortable about his and Silver’s relationship as well as sharing Cadence’s letters.
Two of my personal favorite details I put in are here too:
But sadly, that is where I’m going to cut off. 
I originally wanted to save all parts to the Gallus-Stream discussion for the “Writing of…” but I figured since the 2nd Date chapters are next on the discussion block and Valentine’s Day is fast-approaching…? Why not slip in a little bit of the romance talks. 
But don’t worry, for as you’ve probably already guessed, that’s far from the only time I’ll be discussing our favorite lovebirds.
Anywho, that’s it for now. So if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to go play more Octopath Traveler edit and discuss the 2nd Date chapters. Until next time, I hope you all have a pleasant day! 
