The Writing of The Bonds of Love (Chapter Three: Expression)

Ahh, Ch.3(Expression). Or as I like to call it: The chapter where I finally figured out what the heck I was doing.

Look, I was writing a story about Gallus receiving therapy for his trauma, his friends’ reactions to learning about his breakdown, and the blossoming romance between him and Silverstream who was going through her own breakdown, all while trying to work themes of identity, personal growth, paranoia, self-worth, family, and the classic “Coming of age” trope into the narrative.

I reiterate: My newbie-a had no idea what I was doing at first. Thankfully, this chapter is when I properly hit my stride and determined exactly what I wanted for the story going forward. Of course, not everything was smooth sailing.

You can tell I loooooved using ellipses and exclamation marks. And also the word well; seriously, I never realized how often I began dialogue with that word until I re-edited this chapter.

You can also tell this was before I truly began following Aragon’s advice about using dialogue tags more often, especially with the next few scenes.

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~ The Great Griffish Baking Show, Starring: Two Dorky Lovebirds! ~

So, Gallus not knowing how to bake? Originally a consequence of the personality flip-flop idea—Gallus’ drive for survival completely eclipsed his desire to develop his own sense of individuality, even regarding something as mundane as learning how to bake muffins.

That sound stupid? Yep. Yet another reason I cut the concept. Unfortunately, that meant Gallus didn’t know how to bake just… Because.

You’d think Pinkie Pie would have taught him and the other students how to bake, or Gruff or Gilda would have taught him like they did with the Griffonscones, or Gallus would have taught himself since he’s already raised himself to be self-reliant… But no. I didn’t do any of that; I simply had Gallus not know how to bake muffins for no reason.

At least we got a cute Gallus-Stream scene out of it, so it evens out.

I already mentioned Silver asking if Friends and Family Day was a date was initially fan-service, so when I finally began the Gallus-Stream subplot, I decided to make her question more properly relevant by having Gallus be utterly terrified to talk to Silver about it.

There’s the “Lord of All Things Sweet” joke which was an evolution of the “Milord and Milady” joke from Ch.2(Reprieve), and there’s the meta-joke about Gallus’ internal dialogue passing by in in-universe time. And we’ve also got a noticeable lack of dialogue tags here too—Enough you can tell who’s talking but too little than preferable.

Silverstream, for obvious reasons, will be discussed next chapter; although, I will say the Horror monster she dressed as was Nemesis from Resident Evil 3. That game’s remake was released when I wrote these early chapters, and I both love Resident Evil and thought Silverstream cosplaying as Nemesis was a hilarious mental image.

Can you tell I’m great at Comedy? Because I’m, like, so totally great at Comedy, you guys!

There really is nothing more to this scene than that. It’s a short, simple, and sweet Gallus-Stream scene which delved into Gallus’ terrified confusion concerning Silver’s sudden romantic interest in him, further set-up Silverstream’s pessimistic paranoia, and led into our next major section.

I do regret not doing more with the “Silverstream teaches Gallus how to bake” subplot; it could have easily resulted in more Gallus-Stream scenes like this one, but live and learn.

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~ Drama Club ~

Although Gallus was going to have even greater difficulty in expressing his emotions and individuality, I planned to nip this issue in the bud early on with the original Chapter Two. But then halfway through this scene—once I got to Discord’s introduction—I realized the chapter needed to be split.

So, since I was still dead-set on having every chapter discuss some big, important lesson for Gallus to learn, I inserted that Gallus/Starlight scene at the end of Ch.2(Reprieve) along with the “Today was a reprieve for you” junk, relegating the “Express yourself” lesson to this one.

And what better way to have Gallus learn it than to put him into a situation necessitating he channel his feelings into an activity and “expresses himself creatively.” This was still before I backtracked on the personality problem, so I figured I could make it work.

Luckily, even when I did backtrack on it, I still made the scene work!

I adore this entire sequence; I was on my A-game when writing it! It’s not without flaws—The absence of dialogue tags persisted through it in areas; although, that’ll be somewhat mitigated via the re-edit—but I consider this section, the Drama Club arc, and the characters to come from it one of the best parts of T.B.O.L.

I don’t remember if the show established whether the Friendship School had Clubs, let alone a Drama Club, so I had full reign to do whatever I wanted and make any characters I wanted.

However, I didn’t want to make a legitimate OC at the time. Partly because I wanted to work with whatever other students attended the School, and partly because I wasn’t confident with making an entirely original character yet, fearing both I—as a rookie—wouldn’t do it right and some people would be irked I didn’t instead use background ponies.

Sure, it’s silly to think people would care about that, but I know OCs have a mildly negative connotation associated with them, even in this fandom, and I was mildly afraid of incurring that. I thankfully didn’t since I wrote the Drama Club well, and truthfully, I’m glad I used the canon students instead; the Student Six weren’t the only students who attended the Friendship School, after all, and the others who did deserved some extra attention. Speaking of, here’s our first one!

1) Vellum Codex.

Ahh, Vellum. Where to start with this guy?

For obvious reasons, I had to hunt through the MLP Wiki’s Character List to find all these background ponies’ names, and I eventually found a pony whose cutie mark could vaguely connect to the Drama Club itself—In Vellum’s case: A scroll.

Because of that detail, my first impulse was to have him dabble in writing or even be the one who wrote the Club’s scripts. Sadly, I couldn’t give Vellum any more screentime than what he ultimately got, so I scrapped that idea. Whether or not he does canonically write some of the Club’s scripts, I’ll let you decide.

As for what determined his personality? Well, none of these background ponies have—You know?—canon personalities. Out of all of them, I think Shimmy Shake and Peppermint(Patty) Goldylinks are the only two who ever got dialogue in the show. This meant I had to give them personalities, so despite not wanting to make any OCs yet, I effectively did exactly that. I had asked everyone if I should have added the OC Tag to T.B.O.L. as a result of this, but, um, no one ever answered.

Getting back to Vellum—I needed to have some conflict going forward that didn’t consist solely of Gallus being sad, so I opted to make Vellum antagonistic.

However! I abhor characters being antagonists purely to be antagonists. I enjoy Tirek as much as the next guy, but I personally prefer antagonists who have genuine reasons to be antagonists rather than just “LOL, I’m evil!”

I know stories need antagonists; but I was adamantly against Vellum being that stereotypical “Eugh, I hate you and want you to fail despite only having just met you, so I’m gonna be a complete dk to you for no apparent reason!” jerk.

So after thinking my approach over, I settled for making Vellum this annoyingly hyper-critical, over-reactive prat who lacked everything resembling tact. Not some generic bully or petty narcissist—Just a kid who’s passion for acting and lack of social graces made him infuriating to be around.

That’s why I had him compliment everyone else’s acting skills, fully embrace receiving criticism, and take offense to the suggestion he’d bribe his way to success rather than earn it properly. Little moments where he shows that, yeah, he may act high-and-mighty, and yeah, he’s a little too into his precious Club. But behind that annoying attitude of his, Vellum Codex is simply another student of the Friendship School—A young adult with a bright mind who’s too high-strung for his own good but genuinely respects those around him and their talents.

And I think that’s a much better character to write than some one-note loser whose sole purpose is to go, “Whaaaaahhhhh! You’ll never be part of this Club because the plot demand I say that to you!”

2) Strawberry Scoop.

A character I did not expect to do as much with as I did.

With Vellum being antagonistic, I needed a counterbalance; thus, Scoop became the Yang to Vellum’s Yin. Where Vellum is blunt, irritating, and insufferable, Scoop is—at times—tactful, pleasant, and sociable. His opposite in attitude, yet his equal in acting ability.

None of this meant she was flawless, however. While Vellum doesn’t particularly care for gossip, let alone Gallus and Silver’s relationship, Scoop is completely invested in both to the vexation of the pair in question. It’s also abundantly clear that, out of everyone, Scoop is the most annoyed by Vellum’s attitude, and she has no qualms making her displeasure known, often with physicality.

Why do you think I never once implied Vellum and Scoop liked each other, even in the Epilogue(Love)? They were far too argumentative for that to realistically end well, so I completely shut that possibility down.

It’s not like they could only ever fight, however; they are indeed friends. Vellum was always supportive of Scoop and her acting talents, and she always pushed him to be a more friendly pony, going so far as to make him see Starlight to get the counseling he absolutely needed.

In the end, Scoop’s main role was to be Vellum’s foil. So it’s rather odd, then, that at some point she became both that and a primary comic relief character.

In wanting her to be “The sociable one” of the Drama Club, I tried making her a mild gossip-hound, but well? There’s nothing she could really gossip about in T.B.O.L. besides Gallus and Silver’s romance, so I threw her at that, accidentally making Scoop this crazed Gallus-Stream shipper in the process, even indicating she was the Drama Club’s equivalent to Pinkie Pie.

Make no mistake, I love what I did with Scoop; I’m simply surprised how much her role changed as T.B.O.L. progressed. Funny the things you only realize in retrospect.

Lastly, for anyone wondering why she’s referred to as “Scoop” instead of her first name “Strawberry”? It’s because “Scoop” was easier/faster to write and took up less line space than “Strawberry.” Also, there was already another Friendship Student named “Berry,” so I couldn’t name her that either.

3) Peppermint(Patty) Goldylinks.

A character I did not do as much with as I expected I would.

Patty may have been one of the original three Drama Club members we were introduced to, but the truth is she was only introduced alongside Vellum and Scoop to contrast them by being the voice of reason. And since Silverstream’s a bit busy in pessimism land and Yona’s stuck in background character-ville, neither of them could fulfill that role, resulting in Patty getting it.

I wish I didn’t have to say that; I liked writing Patty. Yeah, there’s an overlap in character importance since Scoop does basically everything Patty does plot-wise, but it still would have been nice for Patty to get more than what she got, especially since she was the one who helped ease Gallus’ worries over causing Vellum and Scoop’s bout and the choice issue they later presented him with. Plus, she’s in the same class as Gallus too, so it wasn’t like I didn’t have a good excuse for why she might interact with him and Silver more often. I didn’t even follow up on that “Peppermint Goldylinks, I owe you so much right now,” line Gallus had!

It’s just… Whatever roles Patty might have gotten, other characters got instead. Being irritated with Vellum and calling him out for his unsavory behavior? Scoop’s got that covered. Helping the Student Six out with Smolder or Pinkie Pie with the Nightmare Night party? Shimmy Shake got that. Helping Gallus prepare for The Epoch of Majesty Serendipity Daydream? Well, we didn’t see that specific story-line, but if we had, it would have been Vellum and Yona. The Science Fair? Ocellus and November Rain. Gallus-Stream shipping? Okay, she did participate in that, but it was mostly Scoop again. And that’s even more of a shame because Patty was the one I set up to be the Romance fanatic in Ch.2(Reprieve)!

The worst part? I think I realized I was trapping Patty in the background because I had plans to give her an—ironically enough—background plot where she and November would show a budding interest in each other, properly foreshadowing how they inevitably hooked up.

But no. That plan got tossed aside, and I settled for pairing them up in the Epilogue(Love) with no build-up at all.

I know not everyone could have gotten equal amounts of screentime and plot relevance, but I feel especially bad for Patty.

Interesting fact though: She’s called “Patty” not for the same reasons Scoop was called “Scoop,” but rather, I found conflicting info on whether her name was “Patty Goldylinks” or “Peppermint Goldylinks.” I just turned it into a nickname, but I will admit every time I wrote “Patty” and remembered her real name was “Peppermint,” I snickered to myself a little because that made me think of Peppermint Patty from Peanuts.

I really do have low taste in humor, don’t I?

4) Shimmy Shake.

Like Scoop, I did far more with Shimmy than I expected to.

Full disclosure: I haven’t actually watched “2, 4, 6, Greaaat.” I know the general plot of it, but I have better things to do with my time than watch the show writers muddle Rainbow’s character up even more after the trash-fire that was “Non-Compete Clause.” You know? Like spending all of 2020-2021 writing a 300k+ word long My Little Pony fanfiction.

…

Anywho! I bring this up to acknowledge that I don’t know if I genuinely got Shimmy’s character right from how she was presented in that episode, so if I didn’t? Er, sorry.

But like I said, I did know she and Smolder were both part of the cheerleading team, so I subsequently made Shimmy Shake Smolder’s main friend outside of the Student Six, resulting in Shimmy getting tangled up in that subplot.

Which is why we’ll go over Shimmy’s role in said subplot later.

5) End Zone.

Filler.

When first writing the Drama Club scene, I realized something. There was Vellum, the Club’s leader, Scoop, his foil, and Patty, the middle-ground between them. Then there were Yona and Silverstream. Had I stuck with only those characters, then—not counting Gallus—the Drama Club would consist of a whopping five creatures.

Now, my high school didn’t have clubs, let alone a Drama/Theater Club, so I’m not sure if this is true…? But only five people being in a club seems rather unrealistic.

Yep, my strive for realism made a comeback, and it resulted in both Shimmy Shake and End Zone being added to the Club’s roster.

Now, Shimmy was added because I was already planning her role in Smolder’s subplot at this stage, but what about End Zone? … Eh. Spur of the moment decision. I found several other ponies on the Wiki with scrolls, books, etc. for their cutie marks I could use based solely on that info, but I felt that would also be unrealistic.

Sure, cutie marks represent a pony’s best talents and skills, but it’s not like ponies can’t be interested in other things. Remember, Scoop’s cutie mark is an ice cream cone, and she ends the story as an acting coach. I figured having a pony be interested in acting whose cutie mark implied the opposite would be a nice contrast.

Beyond that, I had nothing planned for End Zone. I tried giving him a smidgen of importance by making him the main peacemaker between Vellum and Scoop and having him suggest the Ponyville Retirement Village to Gallus as a nice date spot, but beyond that, End Zone’s irrelevant.

6) November Rain.

Unlike with Patty, I knew right from the get-go November would be nothing more than a background character, so I naturally made him the most prominent of the background characters, giving him a neat, little arc of his own where he quits Drama Club in favor of pursuing his true interests in weather magic.

Oh, and I also made him the guy everyone low-key picks on—Yona rags on him for his water bottle recycling thing, Patty teases him when he gets called on by Fluttershy, and Vellum chased him away from the Drama Club.

Why? Simple: In “Student Counsel” Trixie prevented a student from seeing Starlight, and they then whimper to themselves. That was November. And since I got to tell a story with him, I took the chance to expand on that moment.

Purely in regards to T.B.O.L.’s canon, November was going to see Starlight that day regarding everything Vellum was putting him through. And Starlight didn’t know anything about Vellum’s issues in Ch.4(Optimism) because November had plucked up the courage to quit Drama Club himself without her counseling.

This is why you see Silver and Scoop occasionally claim Vellum was even worse before Gallus joined the Club—Vellum was worse, but he cooled off somewhat because he knows he’s to blame for November quitting.

So yeah! There’s some background T.B.O.L. lore for ya. I wonder how many caught that; no one ever commented on this particular subplot, so I don’t know. I mean, I know it’s background stuff, but still.

Can you tell I loved reading people’s comments and desperately wish people had commented more? Yeah, this coming from the guy whose story has over 100 comments when most stories are lucky to get a baker’s dozen. Call that “entitled” if you wish, but I like hearing my audience’s thoughts on my story. Sue me.

Getting back on topic—One thing I didn’t want to do with November was turn the others’ teasing him into something comedic. At least, not in the sense November came across as pathetic and whiny. November really was getting crapped on a lot before he quit Drama Club, and he deserved to be free of that, which is why November never rejoins the Club. Sure, Vellum’s no longer as much of a jerk, but he still bullied November, and November’s still hurt by it. And at no point did I want to imply November wasn’t justified in feeling that way.

Yet another thing I realized in retrospect: All of this is a miniature version of what happened between Gallus and Gruff later. I didn’t intend that, but I’m apparently better than I give myself credit for.

Ultimately, I liked what I did with November Rain. He’s cool.

The only other character I considered slipping into the roster was Lighthoof, Shimmy Shake’s partner.

However, I thought it’d be somewhat unbelievable they’d both be interested in the Club, so she didn’t join. Plus, I kept accidentally misspelling “Lighthoof” as “Lighthooves,” and I wanted to avoid that debacle. In exchange, I made her part of the Science Club.

That’s it for the Drama Club characters for now, so let’s get into the scene itself.

After a quick description of the theater hall and an obligatory High School Musical reference, we’re introduced to Vellum. Everything with him proceeds like I said I wanted it to—he’s a jerk but still welcomes Gallus. Also, him being in “Class 1B” was a throwaway line to explain why Gallus had never met him or Scoop before.

We then further establish Silverstream’s paranoia, even having Vellum call it out. Of course, we can’t have Gallus confronting her about what’s going on and we’ve got more characters to introduce, so cue said characters suddenly arriving and interrupting their conversation.

Also cue the “Talking head syndrome” Aragon and Jack of A Few Trades both criticized me for because this is where I relapsed hard into my old tendency of not bothering with dialogue tags. Thank goodness I eventually got over that hang-up—at the cost of a different one, but we’ll get to that.

Speaking of criticisms, let’s talk about the timeline problem!

So, Johnerose126 asked what the timeline for T.B.O.L. was and here’s the answer:

Friends and Family Day, being the holiday Twilight invented to kick-off her School’s grand opening, takes place in the first few weeks of the new school year.

Several weeks later, the Drama Club travel to Canterlot for a weekend to perform The Epoch of Majesty Serendipity Daydream. Ch.5(Normality) takes place on the day immediately after they return to Ponyville, and after another few weeks, the Science Fair happens.

The Nightmare Night incident then occurs, and Gallus and Silverstream postpone all date concerns until Hearth’s Warming when Gallus finalizes and presents the 2^nd date schedule to her.

After Gallus’ soiree in Griffonstone, he and Silverstream go over the schedule together, eventually settling for what transpired in Ch.12-13(Serenity) which occurred during the tail end of winter. Life then returns to normal until Silverstream invites Gallus to Mount Aris for spring break.

Finally, we jump however many years into the future after Luster Dawn has already moved to Ponyville, and we see Gallus and Silverstream are married and have had Glory.

That’s it. That’s the timeline.

You’ll notice this means the first half of T.B.O.L.(Ch.1(Transition) – Ch.9(Fear)) occurs within roughly two months given they start the year in September and Nightmare Night caps off October. Assuming MLP’s calendar is the same as ours, anyway, which the show never clarified. But if it is the same as ours…? Yeah, Gallus had quite the speedy recovery all things considered, didn’t he?

The reason the timeline is so wonky stems from my initial lack of sequel plans and also from me having so many major story beats happen on holidays. If the timeline were more realistic, the Science Fair would most certainly happen after Nightmare Night; it only came before because I wanted Smolder’s chapter to happen after Ocellus’.

Of course, I apparently wanted to have my cake and eat it too because Ocellus states the Science Fair occurs seventy-six days(Roughly two-and-a-half months) after Ch.1(Transition) takes place, meaning Nightmare Night should have happened before the Fair. Needless to say, I fixed that during the re-edit.

I bring this all up now because after Silver preemptively dissuades Vellum from putting Gallus through what he did to November, Vellum teases her back with this line:

“I should have taken into consideration just how desperate you were for Gallus to join us.”

As well as:

“Silver technically has been wanting you to join for the past two-and-a-half months, but—”

And since this chapter takes place at the beginning of the new school year, this means Silver’s wanted Gallus to join Drama Club since the end of the previous one and sat on her interest in him for an entire summer.

I can see that being true—It would certainly be a good in-universe explanation why Silver was so quick to ask the date question—but it’s rather sloppy. Plus, Yona and Scoop both tease Silver about finally asking Gallus to join, implying Silver’s been discussing the issue with all of them for a while as well.

Additionally, this same issue applies to how long the Club has been practicing for The Epoch of Majesty Serendipity Daydream. It seems they’ve been practicing for several weeks, if not months, by the time Gallus joins, yet it’s only the first month of school. And then you have to consider Gallus was practicing for the play while simultaneously helping Ocellus with her teleportation project while also having counseling sessions with Starlight every day! Plus, he’s doing his normal schoolwork and occasionally getting baking lessons from Silver too…

Yeah. You see the problem. Sorry about this timeline snafu.

Still not as bad a mistake as “Cozy Glow.” Speaking of, she was going to appear in this chapter too but was quickly written out after Matthais Unidostres brought to light the Schizophrenia issue. Luckily, I had already planned to diminish her role going forward—She was a manifestation of Gallus’ issues after all, so now that he was amending them, she was bound to vanish.

In fact, she was only going to appear once here.

When Gallus was panicking over worrying Silverstream, “Cozy” would pop us, whisper, “Fix it” to him, and that’d properly launch Gallus into the whole “My friends are worried, and it’s my fault” dilemma he talks to Starlight about later.

But not wanting to perpetuate the Schizophrenia problem, I wiped “Cozy” from the chapter and relocated the “Fix it” line to Ch.2(Reprieve). Although, doing this did have the adverse effect of disappointing Matthais Unidostres for “Retconning” Gallus having Schizophrenia, but I stand by what I said in response to their criticism:

I’d rather change something about the story, even to its detriment, than knowingly misrepresent a problem as serious as Schizophrenia.

That said? Sorry again, Matthais Unidostres. Hope the rest of the story made up for the Schizophrenia slip-up at least.

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~ War and Chaos ~

Several factors determined how this next sequence played out.

#1) After giving Rarity so much prominence in the first half of what was supposed to be a single chapter, I felt it necessary to give her character a break for this section, resulting in Fluttershy becoming the substitute teacher since the other options were Rainbow, AJ, and Pinkie.

#2) Because I decided on Fluttershy, I had the perfect excuse to bring Discord into the fold.

#3) Most importantly of all: I needed a reason why the subject matter in the Drama Club’s parts was what it was since Rarity wouldn’t willingly instruct teenagers to act out the characters of traumatized war veterans. Discord, on the other hand…

Curiously, I don’t have much to say about Discord. He’s a weird character to write, but I think I captured his showboat attitude and desire to “help” Gallus pretty well. And I decided to write the pony students to be terrified of him because, realistically, who wouldn’t be? He rewrites reality on a maddened whim and nearly killed Equestria four times.

As for how he knew about Gallus’ issues and why he decided to “help” at all? Either he’s the Lord of Chaos so he just knew about Gallus’ breakdown and figured ole bluebird needed to confront his issues head-on, or Spike told him about it and Discord wanted to help out a possible O&O buddy. You decide.

Speaking of decisions, we have Vellum and Scoop giving Gallus one: Perform first or last. This was yet another moment pertaining to the personality issue where Gallus would completely freeze up, not knowing which they truly wanted him to do. I kept it in since it was relatively okay, even without the personality issue, and it resulted in a nice moment between Gallus and Patty. Although, it also resulted in Silver feeling bad because of the “I hate having choices sprung up on me out of nowhere” part.

Now, how about the war scenes themselves?

At first, I was going to have them all go backstage to study their parts and then perform them, realizing Discord messed with the papers after reviewing them instead of after Vellum finished, but that idea got cut once I noticed the word count issue. And also because I didn’t want to go through the hassle of sloppily describing the backstage area.

But what decided the whole war thing at all? Well, bear with me again because you’re probably not gonna believe this one.

When writing this chapter, I was watching BrainScratch Commentaries’ Let’s Play of Sonic Forces, and they named the Avatar “Stares the Abyss.” And on top of being a funny joke, it reminded me of that whole “Gaze into the Abyss” expression which inspired me to contemplate why someone would “Stare into the Abyss” knowing “The Abyss gazes back.”

Yeah, I don’t know how my brain works either, but that’s how the idea came to be.

Naturally, Vellum’s speech came first, and halfway through writing it, I decided to make everyone’s performances reflect a part of Gallus’ recovery and the overall themes of the coming chapters.

Vellum’s part revolved around Gallus’s conflicting intent to move on from his trauma despite still desperately wanting to know why he was orphaned—Where Gallus’ story left off at the end of A.D.F.F. and where we pick up in Ch.1(Transition).

Scoop’s was about having time to rest and recuperate from the trauma—such was the lesson in Ch.2(Reprieve)—while acknowledging the fear of worrying one’s friends.

Patty’s focused on the idea of expressing individuality and emotions through creativity. Basically, a repeat of the Generosity lesson, reemphasizing how Gallus shouldn’t bottle up his feelings and needs to find a way to healthily express them—The theme of Ch.3(Expression).

And lastly, Yona’s was meant to showcase the necessity of positivity and optimism in both the face of hardship and the aftermath of heartache. Ch.4(Optimism), anyone?

Not every part could be as long as Vellum’s was, obviously, so I showed the second half of Scoop’s while briefly summarizing Patty’s and Yona’s. I didn’t even bother determining what Silver’s part could have been since I was in “Hurry and finish the chapter before it exceeds 20k words” mode by this point, but if I had shown her part, it would have foreshadowed Ch.5(Normality)’s lesson.

But what about Gallus’ part? Well, rather than reflecting the theme of a future chapter, I wanted his to focus predominantly on where he currently was in his character development: Still wanting to understand why his parents abandoned him and very much wanting them back.

A little touch I added was Gallus getting angry mid-act since he never got angry at them in A.D.F.F. Oh sure, he was mad no one would tell him what happened to his parents, but he never truly seemed angry at them specifically, partly because he clung to the notion there was a legitimate explanation for why they abandoned him.

But here? Discord’s meddling stirred up the fury Gallus was—at this point—not entirely comfortable expressing. Whether that was a good or bad thing is entirely up to you; although, I think it’s clear Gallus, Silver, Starlight, and everycreature else saw it as the latter.

One last thing before we move onto the next scene: Everyone getting criticized was something else I put in for realism’s sake.

The characters all act in their own different way, so they’d naturally have unique acting strengths and weaknesses accordingly. We’re not writing a bunch of Mary Sues here, after all. Thus, we have Vellum getting so into his acting he puts stress on his breathing, Yona’s giant, woolly mane making her physical acting uncoordinated, and Gallus’ current problems enriching his emotional performance but being too close to home for him to finish the part.

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~ All Bottled-Up: The Sequel ~

So, uh? Since I already talked about the personality issue earlier, I don’t have much to say here.

I mean, backtracking on that character flaw did leave me wondering what lesson Gallus would learn here, but I simply defaulted to having Starlight reassert Gallus can’t bottle up his feelings, let alone put everyone else’s emotional and mental well-being above his own.

So rather than go through with that awful personality flip-flop flaw, I instead focused on preemptively stopping him from convincing himself his feelings mattered less than his friends’. Basically, the mindset that led Gallus to hide how he was feeling in A.D.F.F. and caused this whole mess in the first place.

I also tied this into Starlight’s own character development with her equality shtick and the lesson she herself learned in “All Bottled-Up” which is a fantastic episode by the way—and still my personal favorite.

Speaking of that episode, does anyone even remember that rage cloud of hers? I sometimes feel like I’m the only one who does with how little I see that trait used in stories involving Glim-Glam.

Where was I again? Oh, right! Gallus getting therapy!

Unfortunately, I really did mean it this time when I said I’ve nothing much to say. We’ve already discussed what lesson Gallus was going to learn and what lesson he ultimately did learn.

One other thing to mention was, before I backtracked on it, Starlight was going to ask what led Gallus to adopt that personality flip-flop mentality. Afterward, he’d explain to Starlight what I already explained to you: He had to act differently to get on everygriff’s good side, and he never believed he’d survive if he hadn’t kept putting on his various “masks” to appeal to everygriff. We’d even get hints Gallus often had to gamble for food.

So all those references to Gallus knowing how to play poker and hating card counters? Yep, another thing intended to tie into this issue, implying Gallus had lost Bits or a good day’s meal because his opponent cheated via counting cards.

But yeah. That’s about it.

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~ The Ship Sets Sail ~

Remember how I wanted to avoid that stupid “We don’t trust each other” nonsense other Romances fall into? That was why Cadence’s first letter was entirely about beating it upside Gallus’ head that he needs to be completely open, honest, and trusting with Silver about his feelings.

Well, that and because it tied into Ch.3(Expression)’s theme, but that’s obvious. Less obvious is why this part of the letter wasn’t what Gallus read in the Kindness Class scene instead of the generic advice he did read. The reason is I didn’t want Gallus to actually get to this part of the advice then, so I had him get caught reading the letter midway through—more dramatic that way, you know?

And of course, between the advice and Cadence threatening to practically drown Gallus in even more advice, Shining Armor gets a moment to give him some words of encouragement too. And it’s a really nice moment for Shiny; it’s a shame I never let him or Cadence cameo properly and interact with Gallus in person.

Curse you, missed opportunities!

Moving right along, this was a Romance story in the end, and enough was enough. No more low-key “Will they; won’t they?” It was time for Gallus to finally face his fears and talk to Silverstream.

Or rather, read to her.

Gonna be honest: The idea of Gallus writing a letter about the date question and talking to Silverstream through it? Mostly something I came up with on the spot. I mean, if you have trouble speaking your thoughts or feelings on a particular subject, writing them out would probably be easier—That’s something I’ve always personally believed; although, I don’t know if it’s something actually recommended by real world officials.

But yeah, that’s more my personal life experiences influencing my writing decisions than anything else. This factor is more prevalent in this story than you think, but I’ll spare you the specifics for now.

Instead, I’m going to briefly talk about Discord again to reveal he wasn’t going to initially be locked in that chest. Oh-ho-ho, no. No, his fate was gonna be much, much worse. Unfortunately, I can’t say for certain what else the Drama Club would have done to him since the word length issue happened, forcing me to settle for that chest idea, but I can confirm Silverstream hunting him down with a chainsaw was one of the possible scenarios.

As for Silverstream herself? Not much to say here specifically. It was clear she meant it when she asked if Friends and Family Day counted as a date and was interested in Gallus, so nothing more to say there. As for them promising each other to be the best special somegriffs ever…? Well, duh! Of course they’d both say that.

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And that’s a wrap!

Ch.3(Expression) is weird for me. So much of it got completely altered from how I originally envisioned it, yet this was when I truly began taking the sequel seriously, properly planned out most of the subplots, and started falling in love with writing T.B.O.L.

Sadly, it was also when I began staying up till 3 - 4 AM more regularly which is a habit I still haven’t broken. Thanks, The Great Quarantine Arc of 2020, for affording me all that extra writing time I very much needed, but on behalf of humanity, fk you for literally everything else!

Overall, I really enjoy Ch.3(Expression), even if the quality of the chapter isn’t entirely up to the standard of later ones. Nevertheless, it holds a soft spot in my heart, and I’ll always cherish it as the chapter where I properly hit my groove.

And we shall see how well I kept that up when discussing the next chapter next Friday, Saturday, or Sunday, or in the full Google Doc, if you'd prefer not waiting. Until then, have a great day, everyone!

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[Summer Script]

~ Additional Tidbits ~

— 1) Gallus often referring to his issues as “puzzles” was a reference to “What Lies Beneath” where he referred to his test as one. I figured it’d be a neat quirk to give him—Gallus treating every life problem like a puzzle to solve. Especially since it alludes to a fondness for puzzles which subsequently alludes to his intelligence.

— 2) Gallus’ “I’ve heard these things happen to the best of us” line was, naturally, a callback to how Rarity said the exact same thing to him in the previous chapter.

— 3) Vellum’s abyss speech wasn’t going to have dialogue tags at first because I presumed it’d help you, the audience, get absorbed into it. Aragon’s criticisms made me think otherwise, but when I put in the dialogue tags, I made sure they didn’t refer to Vellum by name so as to not break the immersion.

— 4) Gallus being afraid Starlight was angry at him was another thing related to the personality issue. I kept it in because I liked the moment and figured I could—and did—make it work. And now, in retrospect, it almost seems as though a hint toward the nature of his relationship with Gruff.