The Writing of The Bonds of Love (Chapter Five: Normality) · 4:46am Apr 9th, 2023
Alternate title: Normalcy — Went with “Normality” since it sounded better at the time. I lean more toward Normalcy presently, but it doesn’t matter since they’re synonyms.
Ah, Ch.5(Normality), you will always stand out for being the only chapter to actually follow the original character-specific chapter plan.
I’m not exaggerating when I see this is the only chapter where everything—literally everything!—in it was what I initially wanted. No significant narrative overhauls, or panicked over-corrections in sight. Every other chapter has at least something in it that got drastically altered, be it as major as the Chapter Two split and Ch.7(Pride)’s original theme being changed, or as minor as Edith being cut from Ch.4(Optimism) and various scenes throughout T.B.O.L. being reduced due to the word count.
Though not devoid of cut content, Ch.5(Normality) is the most unaffected by it, and I will forever love this chapter for that. So, how about we get into it?
~ Flashbacks and Therapy ~
The train ride scene mostly serves as both a means to show the Club returning to Ponyville after acing their performance and Silver confessing her woes to Gallus.
We see Vellum was paranoid the play wouldn’t go well, either because one of them would have stage fright—a nod to Ch.4(Optimism)’s alternate script—or Discord would interfere—Again, he’s a reality-bending monstrosity; most non-protagonist Equestrians would realistically be afraid of him. Luckily, Starlight’s there to assure him Discord ain’t going anywhere near the Club anytime soon.
Patty doesn’t really do anything, as usual, nor does Shimmy for that matter. Zone, meanwhile, gets his only chance to shine here by standing up for himself when Vellum suggests he’d forget his lines and not “letting it go” when Shimmy tells him too. As Zone himself said, he worked hard to learn his role, and he doesn’t appreciate Vellum disregarding that.
Rarity swiftly reassures him he did perform well—partly because she suspects Vellum won’t. Starlight compliments them also, and we then get a joke about her possibly joining the Club—something Scoop is rather excited for and Gallus uses to tease Vellum about his “spiel.”
But while Starlight doesn’t know what Gallus means, Scoop and Yona both join in on the fun, the latter taking the chance to pressure Vellum into never doing it again. Sadly, since I never had any genuine plans of following through on it, we never get confirmation Starlight did/didn’t join the Club. Whether or not she did join off-screen, I’ll leave to your interpretation.
After confirming with Scoop that he accounted for his own previously established shortcomings regarding audience eye contact, Vellum finally does his “thoughts and criticisms” thing, and knowing he’ll go on a while, Silverstream seizes the chance to sneak away with Gallus to apologize to him after first sharing one last look with Starlight.
I don’t have much to say here other than noting how Silver did the letter thing too and that Gallus interrupted her less than she did him. Also, this line:
Silverstream expected everything from Gallus angrily breaking up with her due to her lack of trust in him, to questioning why she, the optimistic one, could ever be so terrified and paranoid.
Is both another acknowledgment of Silver’s paranoia being a flaw she ordinarily wouldn’t have and a reference to the terrible “I don’t trust you for arbitrary reasons, so let’s stupidly break up instead of working on it” trope. Although, it’s weird to think about this line after Ch.12-13(Serenity) since it’s now ironic foreshadowing to how Silver tries breaking up with Gallus. I didn’t intend that when I first wrote this line, but wow, that worked out nicely!
I had planned for this scene to go on longer with Gallus apologizing for accidentally scaring her and Silver panicking and fearing he was blaming himself again. Unfortunately, I couldn’t figure out how to write that, so I settled for Gallus summarizing it to Starlight, and since I wanted to spice things up, I had this chapter’s counseling scene at the beginning rather than the end.
On that note, we have yet another blink-and-you’ll-miss-it detail here: Starlight being mildly worried of the same thing Silver was—that Gallus was blaming himself for scaring Silver. To Starlight’s relief, that truly wasn’t the case; instead, he now views mistakes as opportunities to learn rather than demean himself. It’s gonna be awhile before he properly internalizes that, sadly.
We then have a continuation of the issues from Ch.2(Reprieve) with Gallus, despite knowing he’s doing far better than he was, wondering if his growth is too minimal to be noticeable. This, of course, leads into this chapter’s main theme of Gallus wanting everything to return to the way it was before his breakdown. It isn’t some grandiose “lesson” like the previous ones, but it was still an important part of Gallus’ journey I wanted to show.
We then get a reminder Smolder is still giving Gallus the silent treatment, followed by Gallus jokingly comparing his situation to Luna—another unintentional bit of foreshadowing—and Starlight acknowledging how quickly Gallus is healing, especially compared to how he was back in the first two chapters.
We then properly begin the “Gallus’ Future” subplot with Starlight also acknowledging how good an actor Gallus would likely be and him shutting the idea down, not believing he could/wants to be one since Gruff didn’t show up to their play.
Thankfully, Gallus has legitimately accepted he can’t bottle up his emotions and admits he’s disappointed Gruff didn’t show. Unfortunately, Starlight has no advice on the matter because her relationship with her own father prevents her from having any clue what advice to give. And while this was predominantly because I didn’t want the Gruff situation to be addressed yet and remembered FanficReader920’s criticisms regarding Starlight being too wise, I like that I made her unable to help Gallus here. Starlight may effectively be Gallus’ therapist, but she isn’t perfect and doesn’t have the answer to all of his problems. It would be nice if she did, but that just isn’t realistic.
What is realistic is how the Drama Club got swarmed by reporters and whatnot for giving such a great performance in Canterlot. … Okay, maybe not that realistic, but you get what I mean.
I wanted to show some of that reporter aftermath—and we’d definitely get a glimpse of Sky Beak and Terramar if I had—but I decided to open this chapter with the train ride home instead since I didn’t think Silverstream would realistically tell Gallus about her paranoia while they’re all basking in the praise of performing so well. Another thing I wanted to show was Gallus asking Spike to send the letter to Gruff, but I didn’t since:
#1) Ch.4(Optimism) was from Silver’s perspective.
And #2) The scene would have been superfluous since Gallus needed to tell Starlight about it anyway.
The topic of Gruff truly brings out the worst in Gallus mentally, as we first see here, and while he may stop himself mid-self-demean, Gallus can’t help but lament how he’s still not entirely better yet. This particular story beat is something I’ll discuss more in the next chapter for obvious reasons.
But I’ve got a whole chapter to tell, so Gallus decides to move things along by heading off to meet with Sandbar but not without first bumping into Vellum and Scoop.
So, Starlight counseling Vellum too was something I put in both for realism’s sake—Obviously if Starlight spent time with the Club, she’d notice how high-strung he is—and because I didn’t think it was fair Gallus and Silverstream received therapy but not others, like Vellum or Smolder. Which is why they do receive counseling from Glim-Glam; it’s just off-screen since we’re following the lovebirds’ perspectives. And as I have Scoop acknowledge in-universe, she’s here to make sure Vellum followed through on getting counseling.
Gallus then remembers Scoop’s words about Vellum only doing something if he thinks it’ll affect his acting chops and pokes fun at Vellum’s temper and ego, and Starlight wastes no time getting the shell-shocked stallion into her office and wishing the other two farewell.
Tossing aside all pretense, Scoop swan dives into Gallus-Stream shipper-dom, but Gallus, having none of it, offers details of the 2nd date before hitting her with the—
—and running off.
And while this scene is mostly for comedy, it’s also to show again how Gallus genuinely is improving by showing his snarky prankster side beginning to resurface.
This entire sequence between Vellum, Scoop, and Gallus was also the only part of this chapter that even remotely changed.
Originally, Gallus would leave, head to the library and meet up with Sandbar—who had gotten roped into helping [Insert teacher here] sort stuff—and this was where we’d first learn about the Psychology section being almost entirely barren. The two would then go to Dance Class.
This sequence was frustratingly boring, so it got cut, the Psychology section issue got shoehorned into Ch.4(Optimism), Gallus met Sandbar off-screen, and Vellum and Scoop entered the picture.
~ Dresses, Dances, and Dates, Oh My! ~
After an entire chapter focused on Silver’s perspective, I felt it best to continue forward by giving her one or two relatively short scenes, gradually lengthening them as we progressed through the story. To quote my own Author Note:
That being said however, Silverstream will have a few scenes focus on her perspective going forward. They'll be brief as Gallus is still technically the main character, but no way am I letting Silver be left in the dust this time.
Hence the scene of Silverstream trying her dress on and Yona comforting Silver regarding her paranoia. As for the dress itself, I wanted to leave its appearance a complete mystery, saving the description for when Gallus finally saw it.
Scoop then comes in, geeks out over it, gets Yona to promise to make her and the others dresses—which Yonadid follow through on off-screen—and laments not getting any details about Gallus’ 2nd date plans.
On that note, other than wanting to choose something Gallus and Silverstream could do together and weren’t stereotypical dating stuff(I.E. generic candlelit dinners), bowling and the aquarium were date activities I chose randomly.
After bringing them up though, I had to handle how the characters would react, so Scoop(And later Smolder and Shimmy) loathes the bowling idea while Silverstream hopes Gallus will take her bowling since she enjoys it. Silver also hopes to visit the aquarium, to Scoop and Yona’s confusion, and learn all the differences between Equestria’s and Seaquestria’s understandings of the ocean—A detail I included to explain why Silver would be interested in an aquarium and thought was rather realistic from a world-building perspective. And also to help support a particular character trait I gave Silver that I’ll discuss much later.
But as Silver herself says, it doesn’t really matter what they do so long as they do it together.
Scoop then puts marriage on the table, much to Silver’s shock, and follows it up with referencing Cadence’s Sixty-eighth and Sixty-ninth letters. As for what’s in those letters, Sixty-eight is on marriage itself. Sixty-nine, meanwhile, discusses a certain something married couples do. Nothing explicit obviously—Cadence knows she’s talking to children—just a general discussion on the matter.
Either way, Yona ends the conversation before Silver can panic even more, and the girls all take one last moment to rejoice over how beautiful a dress she has and how Gallus will absolutely love it.
Following this, we go see how Gallus’ 2nd date preparations are coming along, discovering he paid attention back in Ch.2(Reprieve) when Silver listed her favorite ways to express herself. And since he already liked reading and flying and has started baking, acting, and drawing/painting with her, only one thing was left: Learning how to dance.
I honestly couldn’t remember if Ponyville canonically had a dancing school, so for a while I feared I’d have to leave the teacher nameless; however, I eventually remembered Tender Taps existed and immediately hunted through the MLP Wiki once again to learn his and Applebloom’s instructor’s name: Ms. Hoofer Steps. And that’s the story behind that particular character.
Rarity is obviously there because I needed an excuse for why she wasn’t present in the last scene and settled for her wanting to let Yona handle things—showing her growing fondness for having Yona as an apprentice. Actually, for a while I contemplated having Gallus go to Rarity for dance lessons, but I found Hoofer Steps before I fully indulged that idea.
And since this was his chapter, Sandbar’s here to be Gallus’ dance partner and help him plan the 2nd Date.
Regarding Sandbar, the Youtuber, Silverquill, made a video discussing the episode “Uprooted”:
And in it, he said this about Sandbar:
That doesn’t mean he’s clueless; it just means he can’t appreciate a situation unless the consequences are more immediate.
As you can tell, that observation really colored how I perceived good ole Sandy, so whenever he appeared in T.B.O.L., I wrote him according to it, especially this chapter.
Sandbar acts amiable toward Smolder in Ch.2(Reprieve) even though Silver and Yona are mad at her for being mad at Gallus? It’s because he doesn’t think anything is significantly wrong between them all.
Sandbar is told to shut up and does so rather than getting angry? It’s because he’s relaxed enough to not take offense and perceptive enough to realize maybe he is talking too much anyway.
Sandbar brings up his family and Gruff to Gallus and doesn’t realize Gallus might be uncomfortable talking about either? It’s not because he’s insensitive or malicious; he just genuinely never considered Gallus wasn’t okay enough to talk about them.
As Cadence wrote to Gallus way back in Ch.2(Reprieve): Ignorance is often innocent, and Sandbar emboldens that premise.
That was my intention with writing Sandbar anyway, and I think I succeeded quite well.
Unlike everycreature else, he’s the only one who—as Gallus himself points out—acts like everything is normal. Sandbar isn’t paranoid like Smolder and Silver, nor is he constantly trying to figure out how best to help the others like Ocellus or even Yona to an extent. Sandbar is the only one who acts like everything is fine from the get-go because he genuinely believes everything is fine, and even if it’s not, he trusts things will get better given time.
This makes even more sense once you consider Sandbar grew up in Equestria where everything from shape-shifting supervillains to reality-warping demigods have tried taking over, only to be defeated half an hour later through rainbow lasers and friendship speeches.
Sandbar may not have as interesting a subplot as Smolder or Ocellus, but I think what he provides to the story is equally significant. Gallus needed a friend like Sandbar at this point in his recovery: Someone who’d wholeheartedly support and trust him no matter how well or how poorly he was doing.
In other words: Sandbar is an absolute bro.
I mean, he even invited Gallus over to watch a movie and play video games; you can’t really ask for much more out of a best friend, can you? Though truthfully, it was because I figured they’d both want to relax after Dance Class; Gallus certainly did, considering he was nodding off after all that exertion.
Next, we set up Gallus eventually joining the Royal Guard through both him enjoying war stories and being mildly enthralled by Sandbar’s dad’s recollection of what being a Guard was like. Regarding that recollection, I added an extra touch with Sandy’s dad using it to teach him to not care about differences between creatures—an implied reason, though not the only one, Sandbar was so quick to befriend the others. Oh, and I also sneaked in an Undertale reference too, so that’s cool.
Speaking of references, the entire “September Tempest” bit is a reference to TeamFourStar, specifically the clip of Trunks slaying Zamasu from Dragon Ball: Super they dubbed over. And while I obviously did this for some fun comedy, it was also to show November does like acting despite quitting the Drama Club. If nothing else, at least Sandbar’s sister enjoyed the show. Shame she doesn’t have an official name; if she had, I would have properly named her rather than referring to her as merely “Sandbar’s sister.”
After that overplayed gag, Sandbar making a Pinkie Promise, and one last joke with Gallus’ super long scroll—which I absolutely should have noted was one of those Crystal Empire scrolls Shining warned him about!—Gallus and Sandbar have no choice but to follow the plot and go plan the 2nd Date.
Laser Tag was obviously a callback to A.D.F.F.
The bowling alley—which I would have given a proper name if the Wiki showed it had one—was already set up earlier with Silver; plus, Gallus checking it out further proves he’s paying attention to Silver’s interests and knows her well enough to know she’d want to go there despite Silver only telling Scoop and Yona she did.
The Ponyville Retirement Village was only there to give End Zone some last minute plot relevance since I felt bad he had none. Also, it has a paintball course purely because that retirement place featured in “The Point of No Return” had one. … Or so I thought. I double-checked that episode while writing this and it turns out Dusty Pages’ retirement home had a fruit-throwing course, not a paintball one. Ah well, even if I hadn’t mis-remembered things, I would have probably changed it to paintball anyway so Ponyville’s Retirement Village would have its own unique activities.
Since I didn’t want to bog down the chapter’s pace too terribly with all the date location scouting, I had Sandbar get an accidental paint-based makeover, resulting in the duo taking a break.
Gallus gets another chance to show off his brilliance by talking about Cleanse Alpha which was originally going to be called “Skurge” to reference the spell of the same name from the Harry Potter games, but I figured no one would get that, so I settled for “Cleanse Alpha” instead. We also have another rare opportunity to acknowledge Gallus joined Chess Club and use it as a means to further foreshadow Ocellus’ “scientist” rant(s).
Sandbar then reveals to Gallus that Ocellus—
—knows how to play poker! Gallus does too as a matter of fact. I may have cut the personality issue, but several things remained, and once we get to the Griffonstone chapters, we’ll go more in-depth about them.
Afterward, Sandbar spouts some self-improvement mumbo-jumbo I may or may not personally believe myself that his father taught him. Gallus, meanwhile, tries to avoid talking about Gruff, knowing it’s a trigger, but Sandbar doesn’t help. Well, at least until he reveals Gallus’ Roadside Attraction idea brought attention to the Tree of Harmony.
I never thought it was realistic no one but the Mane and Student Six visited the Tree of Harmony. I know it’s at the heart of the Everfree Forest, but if six teenagers can find their way to it without a guide, surely adults could too, and surely they’d want to, given the Tree is practically an Equestrian World Wonder, not to mention a deity. So I had Gallus’ Roadside Attraction idea bear some fruit and get ponies to visit the Tree’s original cave and pay their respects to it.
I somewhat wish I had found an excuse for Gallus to visit the cave himself and see all the memorials there, but I suppose such a scene would have been superfluous since we talk about said memorials here.
And since I had no proper foreshadowing to this particular reveal, I couldn’t help but make a joke about it taking place “off-screen.” Also couldn’t help but acknowledge Sandbar’s sapling totally got crushed when the Tree expanded into the Treehouse. And with his sapling being brought up, Sandbar uses it to jump into asking about him possibly being a botanist—an idea inspired by his cutie mark.
Though I scrapped it, I consideredhaving Sandbar talk about his cutie mark and its meaning—something I’m shocked the show never did with him since it did for everypony else—and showing Gallus internally lament not having one since it would make figuring out his future easier.
While we never got that cutie mark discussion, a remnant of it was what I decided for the meaning of Sandbar’s cutie mark and subsequently his career path.
Sandbar’s cutie mark is a group of turtles, and although I’ve seen people theorize it reflects his easy going personality or perhaps a love of surfing/swimming, I went a different route. His cutie mark symbolizes a love of caring for life, and as Sandbar tells Gallus, he wants a job where he can do exactly that. Thankfully, he gets one in the Epilogue(Love), and even better, it’s in Ponyville, so he never did have to leave Yona behind to go study.
Gallus, meanwhile, knows squat about what he wants for his life and future, but Sandbar asks, so he defaults to Wonderbolt since I’m pretty sure most of the fandom expected him and Silver to go that route, especially since the latter dreamed about it in “Uprooted.” But no matter how much he lies or tries to comfort himself, this particular subplot is getting to him.
Luckily, Sandbar helps this time by convincing Gallus to not scrap the aquarium idea and resume date location scouting.
The Ponyville Clock Tower was another thing inspired by the Resident Evil 3 remake coming out during T.B.O.L. However, that stuff about it having complex architectural history was completely original and meant to give the place some kind of a reason why Gallus considered going there.
Obviously, not every place Gallus inspected could be a good place to go, so the Antiquities shop makes a comeback from “Shadow Play” and triggers Gallus’ claustrophobia, something fierce.
The restaurants, tragically, aren’t exactly great either, being huge drains on whatever little savings Gallus has or, according to Sandbar, being generally trashy. One of them would apparently even throw Gallus out just for being a griffon—a fact that played into a certain subplot we’ll discuss later.
Not all the restaurants are terrible though, and Sandbar even offers Gallus more coupons, even if he doesn’t want to accept them and come across as greedy.
Gabby then shows up since there’s a lull in the conversation and I didn’t have any better times in the previous chapters to introduce her.
After some light jabs at the Spike-Gabby ship(And just Spike ships in general) for how ridiculous it is on account of Spike being a child and Gabby an adult, Gallus tries acting cool and like Gabby totally didn’t jumpscare him and Sandbar. Sadly, that facade quickly falls away—not that Gabby believed it anyway—once he remembers Gabby’s appearance means only one thing: Talking about Gruff.
And talk about Gruff we do, but first, we establish the Griffonstone Restoration Project and how Chancellor Neighsay aided it, set up Gavin’s eventual introduction to the story—he and Gallus exchanging letters was yet another thing I wish I had shown more often—and his admiration for Gallus, foreshadow the Griffonstone Library’s reconstruction and the holiday those chapters got stuck to, and even show that, despite all the heartache Gruff inadvertently causes him, Gallus can’t help but reflexively acknowledge Gilda’s scones use Gruff’s recipe.
Once that’s all done, we finally talk about the buzzard in question and how he refused to attend the play, despite Gallus’ pleas. Wanting to remain positive, Gabby opts to bottle things up herself by giving Gallus the “He was busy” excuse that he doesn’t buy at all. But that doesn’t stop Gallus from begging Gabby to get Gruff to attend the Science Fair—something he knows she’ll fail to do regardless of her promise to try.
And with Gabby’s departure, Gallus backslides right back into rampant self-deprecation, but thankfully, Sandbar’s there to snap him out of it purely by trusting Gallus.
Sooo…? About Gallus’ whole “How can you believe me when I say I’m fine even though no one else does” thing? Another remnant of the personality issue. Originally, Sandbar trusting him meant so much to Gallus because he was still overcoming that issue—Knowing Sandbar still trusted him helped Gallus internalize that his friends genuinely love him for who he really is, not whatever façade he put on around them.
When the personality issue got scrapped, I simply had Gallus be utterly relieved to know that despite his breakdown some things remained normal—In this case: Sandbar still trusted Gallus, wasn’t throwing himself into a paranoid frenzy worrying about him, and even acquired some Yak wisdom, courtesy of his girlfriend.
Since I already talked about how I wrote Sandbar earlier, I don’t have much else to talk about here. Sandbar’s “Have we been here before?” joke was another DBZA reference—I discovered that series during Quarantine and couldn’t help but reference it—and Gallus acknowledging he was putting his present woes on Sandbar out of nowhere was me acknowledging how I was writing a scene of Gallus doing exactly that with no specific foreshadowing, minus the lunch break scene.
Speaking of, you know how Gallus makes that weird comment about feeling like he’s been talking to Sandbar for hours? That was me making fun of myself. This scene really did take me a good 5+ hours to write out and edit. But since that context would be missing, I turned it into a random relativity joke.
For future reference: Anytime the characters arbitrarily acknowledge things taking a long time, that’s usually me cracking a joke about how slow a writer I am. Another example is Gallus joking about how it took half an hour to write up that Friendship Report he sent to Twilight at the end of A.D.F.F.
Gallus’ room being bare was another tie-in to the personality issue—Him not having any personal knick-knacks decorating his room reflected a lack of individuality, and his newfound disgust with having such an empty room would be a sign of character development. Thankfully, this wasn’t too badly affected by the personality issue getting cut; plus, it even arguably tied into Gallus’ monetary issues later, so it worked out even better!
In all honesty though, Sandbar giving Gallus his mirror was entirely inspired by the mirror Twilight gifted Starlight in “Celestial Advice.” I even acknowledged that in-story. That said, there’s another reason why Sandbar did this.
Before I fully nixed the character-specific chapter idea, an element of it was each of the Student Six giving Gallus something at the end of their chapters. Said something would serve as both a checkmark for Gallus’ development and a memento to how much his friends love him.
Silverstream’s gift would be the flower painting, Sandbar’s was the mirror, Yona’s was the suit, Ocellus’ was the Science Fair medal; and Smolder’s was the engagement ring. Silver’s painting sadly got sidelined, but at least I followed through with the others’ gifts. That said? Silver did give Gallus a certain something later in their lives, and those who read the Epilogue(Love) already know what it was. And I’m not talking about Glory.
Moving on, Sandbar was only part of Yearbook to explain why he had those pictures. I considered having Sandbar get the pictures from Silverstream since she’s the one who’s canonically shown to own a camera, but I figured that:
#1) Sandbar being part of Yearbook added more to his character since it meant he had extracurricular activities too.
And #2) It would be too clunky and time-consuming to unnecessarily explain Sandbar got the pictures from Silver.
Either way, I prefer Sandbar being the one to have the pictures. And although it’s never properly stated, Silverstream is part of Yearbook too; this fact was just never plot-relevant, so it was never brought up.
Speaking of Silver, she pops up, hugs Gallus, confirms the aquarium and bowling alley would be good date spots, and reveals their play was recorded.
Fun fact: Silverstream jokingly asking for details about the 2nd Date and the play being recorded were both things I only put in due to realism. Of course Silver would want to know how Gallus’ date plans were going, especially since Scoop didn’t get any info. And of course Twilight/Rarity/Etc. would have recorded the Club’s performance and given them all copies of the tape.
Not-so-fun fact: I briefly considered having Gallus send his tape to Gruff only for it to be immediately sent back without even a letter attached. Obviously, this made Gruff seem way too horrible, so I nixed the idea; plus, no way would Gilda or Gabby let Gruff do something like that.
All that movie night establishment finally pays off, and after some extremely clunky foreshadowing toward Ocellus’ spell, Gallus fetches Smolder so they all can assemble for an impromptu movie night.
So, Smolder… I’m still going over her role once we reach her chapters, but we might as well talk about this sequence now.
Up until this point, Smolder had been giving Gallus the silent treatment, and it was not painting her in a positive light. That was clearly intentional, but I knew it wouldn’t be good for Smolder to only be treating Gallus that way, for both story’s and realism’s sake.
Smolder is Gallus’ friend, after all, and though things were currently rocky between them, she realistically wouldn’t be that furious with him, especially since by now her anger had boiled over into everything else that came in Ch.9(Fear).
And on a more a meta level, I knew most of you, the audience, were likely miffed at Smolder, much like Silver and Yona were. She wasn’t treating Gallus fairly, and while she had her reasons, those reasons weren’t yet revealed. So I slipped in this scene, as well as the one in Ch.7(Pride), to show Smolder in a better light. That although she was still upset, she’s not nearly as hostile toward Gallus as she was earlier and she actually does want to spend time with him and the others. Not to mention the whole book hoard of hers being a clear indicator something else was going on…
Think about how terrible it would have been if Smolder never had any scenes between her still being angry at Gallus in Ch.2(Reprieve) and the revelations we receive in Ch.9(Fear). It would have felt cheap, not showing Smolder trying to work through her own paranoia and be friendly toward Gallus again—Doubly so considering Silverstream was trying to overcome her own paranoia; why couldn’t Smolder do the same?
Plus, it would have seriously damaged Ch.9(Fear) as a whole because all of Smolder’s fears would have felt like an excuse to justify her silent treatment and anger rather than a reason to explain it. And considering the subject matter of Ch.9(Fear), you can bet your a
I did not want to screw up.
Like Gallus said himself: He and Smolder are still friends. Things may be awkward, and neither of them handled the situation and their emotions particularly well, but they are still friends. They are still family. And they do still love each other.
Not romantically though; there was no way I would even joke about that notion. 
And that was Ch.5(Normality)! For a while, I held this as my personal favorite chapter of The Bonds of Love. Not because it was the best, but because it was—and still is—the only chapter that fully followed the original premise of T.B.O.L. Nowadays, I prefer Ch.14-15(Family), but I still have a soft spot for this chapter nonetheless.
We got several great character interactions, more development for almost every subplot, Sandbar being an awesome friend, and Smolder coming back around.
Overall, I love Ch.5(Normality); it’s one of the few chapters I truly have no genuine regrets for.
And that's a wrap for now. Here's the obligatory full Google Doc Link for the entire "Writing of..." I hope you all enjoyed the latest installment in my unnecessarily long author's commentary, and may you all have a Happy Easter!
~ Additional Tidbits ~
— 1) Scoop using “butter-biscuits” as a swear was a reference to one of Shadow759’s videos where it’s also used as a swear.
— 2) When Gallus was learning how to dance, I wanted to show he wasn’t automatically perfect at it, but since I know nothing about dancing itself, I defaulted to his main hang-up being looking down rather than at his partner.
— 3) Hoofer Steps canonically has an accent, but I didn’t know how to write it correctly, so I didn’t bother.
— 4) Sandbar being a movie geek was a holdover from the story I was writing before A.D.F.F. and T.B.O.L.
— 5) Sandbar’s remark about looking like one of Lighthoof’s OCs was a retroactive mistake on my part. At the time, I didn’t think I would re-use the edgy OC joke, but when I did, it was with Shimmy Shake, not Lighthoof. That error is fixed now, sorry about that.
— 6) Gallus’ Roadside Attraction being successful was another thing I had meant to somewhat tie in to the personality issue—That despite despising his own culture to a degree, Gallus did something extremely stereotypically griffon-like and it had a positive outcome. As such, his learning of said positive outcome was supposed to be an even more moving moment since it would be one of the first steps he’d take to accepting/loving the griffon side of himself.
— 7) Another little touch I added at the end of Ch.5(Normality) and adore was Gallus and Silver waving goodbye to each other before they gathered their other friends for the movie night.
— 8) Smolder interrupted herself before she said “Well enough” because she remembered that had been Gallus’ answer when they had asked how he was doing, and she feared it was a trigger for him. Basically, another version of the “Why can’t I say ‘I’m fine’?” issue.