The Writing of The Bonds of Love (Chapter Six: Stagnation)

From one of my favorite chapters to my absolute least favorite…

I’m not gonna mix words here: I hate Ch.6(Stagnation). I have no qualms admitting Ch.1(Transition) and Ch.2(Reprieve) are worse written, but this chapter in particular was the one I had the worst time actually writing, and it was for one specific reason…

But let’s go through the chapter itself before we get into that. And how about we listen to some more tunes while we do so—I know I’m gonna need something calming to listen to while discussing this chapter…

~ Stitching Suits and Splitting Hairs. And Chapters. Again. ~

With Ch.4(Optimism) being from Silverstream’s perspective, Yona never got her own scene with Gallus like the other Student Six did. Naturally, I wanted to rectify this, and with Silver commissioning a dress from her, I had the perfect excuse to do so by having Gallus get a suit from her as well.

But that left the question of what exactly Yona would help Gallus with. We obviously got the expression stuff sorted out, and both the personality issue and stage fright were cut. So I opted to kickstart the Gruff subplot sooner than I intended, but I ended up getting carried away again, in more ways than one.

For one thing: I let my desire for realism take complete control for this entire scene. Gallus not knowing how to tie a tie was inspired by the personality issue, and I figured it would add an interesting touch to the Gruff situation—That Gruff taught him a lot of things, but some stuff he left Gallus completely in the dark on.

Buuut! I thought it’d also be realistic Gallus would be embarrassed to not know how to do something as simple as tying a tie—An idea partly influenced by Jack of a Few Trades’ previous criticisms. And then! There was the fact Gallus, now having some proper character development, would be more aware of how these issues were affecting him emotionally—hence, he immediately admits his tie-related frustrations to Yona—and would likely be frustrated he’s frustrated at all.

What all this realism nonsense led to was me juggling three different subplots at once, and I did so rather well. I may still wish I had done more with Yona, but I love what I gave her here, I love this conversation between her and Gallus, and I love her “Love doesn’t need to be earned” line.

You know what I don’t love? How long this scene is.

It’s over 3k+ words long. That might not sound like much when the chapter itself is a good 18k+ but this was when I finally started paying more attention to how exponentially wordy individual scenes were. In other stories, 3k+ words would be enough for a single chapter, but in T.B.O.L., that’s one of the lower word counts for a single scene! And when you take that 3k+ and combine it with the 2.5k word-long Review scene coming up…? And then you realize you have a good 6-7 more scenes you intend to write afterward, most of which you know are gonna be even longer than these two…?

You take all of this into account and then remember you promised you wouldn’t let a chapter exceed 20k words again…? And what you’ve got is a recipe for another chapter split.

Yep. Ch.6(Stagnation) and Ch.7(Pride) were originally meant to be one, but thankfully, I realized I’d need to split them immediately after I checked how long the Yona scene was.

You’ve no idea how much I fing loathed having to split chapters again…

All that to say Ch.6(Stagnation) wasn’t going to exist at all. The Gallus/Yona scene, Review scene, Gallus/Ocellus scene, and Gallus/Silverstream scenes were the only parts of Ch.6(Stagnation) I intended from the get-go. Everything else, including the Silverstream/Smolder scene and the nightmare sequence were put in to fill the rest of the chapter out.

Which… As much as I hated doing this chapter split nonsense again, I can’t deny it benefited T.B.O.L. as a whole.

At first, I kicked around the idea of shortening the Gallus/Yona and Review scenes and keeping the other scenes brief so I wouldn’t have to split everything again, but…? I couldn’t do it. Literally. I literally couldn’t figure out how to shorten the Gallus/Yona scene anymore than it already was. So my only choice was to go the opposite direction and make a whole new chapter from scratch.

As for the Gallus/Yona scene, I don’t have much more to say other than I like when Yona fawns over Sandbar being a great kisser. Like I said in a previous part, I didn’t do much with their relationship, but what I did do, I like.

And of course, Gallus tries to discuss his “Gallus’ Future” subplot woes, but it wasn’t Yona I wanted him to discuss them with, so Scoop shows up, is livid she didn’t get to see Gallus in his suit and subsequently spoil it for Silverstream, and drags us off to the Review scene.

~ The Club’s Conclusion ~

I thought it realistic the Club’s performance would get reviewed and they’d subsequently react to it. And since the Drama Club wasn’t going to be particularly plot-important for the rest of the story, minus Ch.9(Fear), this scene functioned as a sort of sendoff for them.

In fact, Silver, Shimmy, and Zone were all supposed to be part of this scene. But then the chapter split happened, and since I wasn’t yet ready to tackle a scene with that many characters at once, I sent them all elsewhere. Sadly, this meant Zone got squat, as usual. At least Shimmy and Silver got something in the next scene.

Unfortunately, Patty also gets practically squat. That background romance I had planned for her and November was why I had her be the one to spot him and call him over, but once November does show up, all eyes are on him and Vellum who’s no longer subjecting November to his self-righteous fury, not how Patty may or may not have feelings for November.

Vellum shows he’s gotten some character development too, now being more accepting of his own imperfections and no longer holding a grudge against November for quitting.

Scoop’s here just to acknowledge Vellum’s character development and tease him about the whole November situation.

Poor Yona and Gallus are only there to sit and nod along while the Club characters have center stage. Seriously, those few lines of internal dialogue Gallus has and the moment he urges Vellum to keep seeing Starlight, I added specifically so he’d have some dialogue beyond teasing November about his “September Tempest” act. The same goes for that joke about the show’s episode run-times being how long the Mane Six take to solve problems in-universe.

The “Luna pops out of the moon” joke is obviously set-up for when she does so later.

November, meanwhile, is in complete shock that the bully who made his life so terrible for so long is being kind to him for once. He also accidentally foreshadows Ch.12-13(Serenity), but after seeing how irked Gallus gets, November quickly gets off that subject to re-establish the Science Fair subplot by discussing his project on weather magic and how he wants to be a meteorologist upon graduating.

The next stretch of dialogue is to further continue the “Gallus’ Future” subplot, and I also sneaked in a line setting up Lighthoof having a project too. We also get the “For a griffon…” line which I’ll discuss more in the next chapter. And Yona, now more attentive to Gallus’ emotional state, catches on to his discomfort regarding all of this and gets the attention off of him, but unlike her attempt in Kindness Class, she succeeds here.

A brief acknowledgment of where the others are, a reminder the flower painting was a thing, and Gallus heading off to meet with Ocellus and continue the Science Fair subplot… And that’s about it for this scene. It’s not quite the “Sendoff” for the Club I had wanted, but at least we got the November/Vellum conflict sorted out. Unfortunately for Gallus, the “Gallus’ Future” subplot ain’t going anywhere yet. Luckily for us, we get a diversion in the form of the next scene.

~ It Happened Again... ~

I was still anxious about my portrayal of Silverstream. Although I was confident I was handling it well so far, I was worried I was over-selling her anger toward Smolder.

Naturally, she would be somewhat angry at Smolder, but at this point, Silverstream had met with Starlight. And not only did Silver come to realize how badly her paranoia had been affecting her—Don’t forget Silver was about to rant about Smolder before stopping and asking herself, “Where did that come from?”—but she also learned there was more going on with Smolder than she knew, so it wouldn’t make sense for Silver to still be as angry at Smolder as she was prior. It would make even less sense now that Smolder was beginning to come around and hang out with them again.

Most importantly, however, Silverstream isn’t the kind of character to actively hold a grudge without a proper reason, so having her still be furious with Smolder would be extremely out of character anyway.

Luckily, with Ch.6(Stagnation) becoming its own standalone chapter, I needed some extra scenes to pad it out, and what better way to do so than with another Silverstream scene where she gathers her courage and confronts Smolder?

Cadence’s letter about bottling emotions made a comeback here because obviously her advice would be useful here—Not to mention I thought it a nice touch that her advice worked for both normal and romantic relationships.

Shimmy’s there because, again, I made her Smolder’s main friend outside the Student Six, and I, again, thought it’d be realistic that others, not just the Student Six, were concerned for Smolder too. Also, I didn’t like the idea of letting Smolder stew in her own paranoia all alone when both Gallus and Silverstream got help from others.

Shimmy couldn’t get through because that’d be underwhelming from a plot perspective, but I wanted her to fail not because she was stupid or something, but because Smolder, so caught up in her own head-space, shut Shimmy out. And believe me, it took a good 15-30 minutes before I figured out how to have Smolder drive Shimmy off without either making Shimmy look like an insensitive, two-faced jerk or Smolder an absolute a.

So, knowing she isn’t making any headway with Smolder and isn’t Smolder’s “Best” friend(s), Shimmy leaves Silverstream to help Smolder rather than waste everyone’s time. Unfortunately, Silver doesn’t help Smolder much either because, once again, plot needed to happen.

I had already planned out the Nightmare Night confrontation by this stage, so I couldn’t let Silver truly solve Smolder’s issues, but I could still let her try. So I did, using the scene as a chance to show more of Smolder coming around, realizing that perhaps Gallus was okay, and to have Silver impress upon Smolder the same lesson about not succumbing to paranoia she learned two chapters ago.

And for a brief moment, Silver’s words seem to stick, and the two have a proper conversation for once, even if Silver still isn’t happy with Smolder and Smolder’s clearly still worried about Gallus. But of course, Silver’s “What if I make things worse?” character flaw roars back to life, and even though she knows not to bottle things up now, she tries to leave, just in case.

Sadly, Smolder stops her and inquires about Gallus, asking this particular line:

“H-He’s not doing anything, er, reckless, or…? Or dangerous, or…?”

You guys know exactly what this was alluding to, and while Silver doesn’t yet, she still comforts Smolder, assuring her Gallus is doing better and once more urging her to be optimistic, lest her fear overshadow her love.

That particular line is still one of my favorites. While it’s clearly an evolution of the theme from Ch.4(Optimism), it was also to show Silver interpreting it in her own, unique way—gives her a bit more agency as a free-thinking character, ya know?

Unfortunately, Silver saying that line has the unintended consequence of revealing to Smolder she was indeed paranoid.

Smolder wastes no time acknowledging it’d be completely out of character for Silver to be paranoid before relapsing hard into fretting over Gallus’ well-being. And because of plot, Silver has as much luck getting Smolder back out of it as Shimmy and Starlight both did. Which is to say: None at all.

And fun fact: For this part of the Smolder/Silver scene I considered having Silver lose her temper and rip into Smolder about her treatment of Gallus, rather than leave. But since that would definitely be out of character for Silver, I settled for a different, arguably worse (As far as Silver’s concerned) idea: Paralleling Smolder’s behavior with Gallus’ in A.D.F.F.

Once again, Silver is forced to sit and watch as one of her best friends collapses into a loop of self-isolation and emotional turmoil, unable to help whatsoever at the present time. One last, feeble attempt to stay and help Smolder who sadly rejects the offer later, Silver trudges back out into the hallway to summarize the parallels and have a small breakdown herself.

Also, for whatever reason I was going to have her pull out the pocket mirror Gallus gave her in this scene. Not really sure why. Maybe because it reminds her of Gallus and that helps calm herself down…? Honestly though, I think I was only going to do this just to show Silver still had the mirror, so I cut that idea.

Silverstream does still have that pocket mirror though, and while writing this section of the “Writing of…” I just now realized I could have had her pull it out in Ch.13(Serenity, Part Two) to check her makeup or something! Ugh, why do I keep finding missed opportunities in retrospect!?

~ Failing Perfection but Succeeding Romantically ~

The Gallus/Ocellus scene’s primary purpose is to further develop the “Gallus’ Future” subplot, show the two making the final preparations before the Science Fair truly began, and hint one last time to Ocellus’ spell. It also, due to the chapter split, acquired an additional purpose: Establishing Gallus’ perfectionism problem.

I’ll properly go over this once I finally let loose that rant I’ve been hyping up, but suffice it to say, Gallus being perfectionistic was not a flaw I originally had planned for him but became one due to the chapter split.

That said, Ocellus being perfectionistic as well, fretting over the spell and even fearing the “Drowning” issues it had back in Ch.1(Transition) still persisted in the final model, was initially planned. Mostly so she’d further the “Gallus’ Future” subplot via incurring Gallus’ anger over not wanting to be a scientist, but also to parallel her panicked, pessimistic behavior against Gallus’ calm, confident one—to show Gallus was genuinely healing once more. Thankfully, this factor wasn’t too badly affected by Gallus suddenly having perfectionism almost as bad as Ocellus.

One last note before moving on: The “maximum passenger capacity” thing was something I threw in there randomly as an additional aspect of the teleport spell just because I enjoy talking about the subtle details and rules of magic, but also for irony’s sake with the E.E.A. questioning them about it later, despite Gallus assuring they wouldn’t.

After leaving Ocellus to her therapeutic book-sorting, Gallus has his brief internal rant about not being better yet, and, again, I’ll discuss this soon. But since I didn’t feel comfortable jumping from this scene to the nightmare sequence, I opted to include another Gallus-Stream scene.

This scene was something I initially hoped to do but considered cutting it in order to avoid the chapter split; however, once I conceded the chapter split would happen regardless, I put it in. And I’m glad I did; it fully highlights how good Gallus and Silver are for each other.

Yeah, Silver doesn’t talk to him about the Smolder situation, and yeah, Gallus doesn’t press her further about what happened despite noticing she’s obviously upset. And yet, even at their worst, they both immediately do their best to help the other feel better.

We finally get Silver involved in the “Gallus’ Future” subplot, and she wastes no time helping ease his pain. And while Gruff may take issue with that later, for now, Silverstream is happy to help someone feel better, especially her boyfriend.

Of course, we need to realistically lean into that part of the conversation, so we open up on the two first discussing the Science Fair in general, acknowledging that other creatures have projects too, and since I never got a chance to properly show those other projects, Gallus laments not checking them out himself.

Also, Gallus referred to the other projects as “competition” specifically to address those previous criticisms again. I didn’t initially plan to have Gallus think of the Fair as a competition of any kind, but upon reflection, I realized Canon Gallus would likely feel a bit competitive about it, even if good-natured, so I opted to add that minor detail.

More set up for the E.E.A. later, and Gallus decides to not bottle anything up with Silver anymore and finally goes off on how Ocellus’ “exam week” behavior is grating on his nerves, especially the scientist part since he doesn’t know what he wants for his future.

I had planned the “Gallus’ Future” subplot from the get-go. The final version isn’t quite what I initially intended—I’ll get into that in the next chapter—but about this particular part? Gallus being so utterly frustrated he doesn’t know what he wants to do for his future? Well, um? Do you remember when I said I occasionally channeled my own frustrations with writing into plot points? Yeah, that happened here.

I won’t go into detail—for obvious reasons—but let’s just say I personally have had issues like this, and I might have projected a tad which is true for a lot of what I put into this chapter, actually. Once again, I’m saving that for the rant at the end, but keep this part in mind for when I finally cut loose.

In the meantime, we adamantly shy away from giving Silverstream her own “Future” subplot because I both didn’t think Silver would have as much problem with this as Gallus did, and also because I didn’t want to write effectively the same subplot for both of them, aside from the “Don’t bottle your emotions up” lesson.

While we’re doing that, Gallus is once more showing he’s one smooth talking sweetie and even setting up the “Like an angel” comment that crops up more throughout the story. I completely forgot I set that up here, but I did. Same goes for Gallus cupping Silver’s cheeks; I completely forgot he did that in this scene until the re-edit. Yet another instance of things working out wonderfully!

But while she loves the adoration, Silverstream isn’t one to let it distract her from her sweetie being in distress, so she gets the conversation back on the “Gallus’ Future” subplot, making sure to hammer it into Gallus’ head that they live in a fictional reality entirely controlled by an author who wants a happy ending, so crap like networking and racism won’taffect their potential careers whatsoever.

A joke about Dashie saying “Awesome!” all the time and an acknowledgment of how odd it is for Gallus to have difficulty in choosing a career path later, Silver finally seizes her chance to praise how adorable Gallus would look in a lab coat, eliciting that blush of his she loves so much.

After recovering from that, Gallus has a brief existential crisis in his “Years and years…” bit before backsliding on his character development again and self-deprecating himself again, and Silver, being as tired of this routine as I am, swiftly gets on him for it, heartbroken to still see him this way.

Luckily, they’ve both had character development, so Gallus hastily promises to stop invalidating his own accomplishments, and Silverstream naturally trusts he’ll keep that promise rather than go back down the rabbit hole of paranoia.

Whether or not Gallus would have kept his promise here had Luna not intervened, I’ll leave for you guys to decide. On a related note, Silver’s “Please don’t promise that for my sake. If anything, you should be doing that for your own,” line is, well? True. Gallus should be wanting to better for his own sake, not just her and the others’. Otherwise, it’s mostly set-up for what Gruff says to her later.

Speaking of Luna, it’s time for the next scene, so we rather abruptly conclude with Silverstream promising to help Gallus sort out the “Gallus’ Future” subplot alongside him, and we launch into…

~ A Rough Night with a Round of Therapy ~

So, um? I might have accidentally said almost all I needed to talk about regarding Gallus’ nightmare before now.

In Ch.9(Fear)’s comment section, Daemon Wolf 22 and I talked about this scene, more specifically about it being far too gruesome for T.B.O.L.’s original E-rating. And while it was a very insightful conversation, I said some things there about Gallus’ nightmare that I intended to say here. Those being:

1) Concerning why Cozy’s transformation included blood-stained armor and bloody horn growth:

I'm gonna fully admit that the "blood-stained" line should have been "blood-colored," considering that entire sequence was supposed to convey that Cozy had morphed into her something akin to her "Chaos Form" from The Ending of the Ending. The horn growth aspect was added for some extra flare, but I suppose it was somewhat unnecessary.

2) Concerning the “Melted” appendage that attacked Gallus:

Yeah, that was a random adjective I threw in there. "Shadowy" would have been better.

3) Concerning Smolder having a nightmare as well:

I regret so much. What makes this even worse is that I did consider giving Luna a line that alluded to Smolder having a nightmare too, but I couldn't figure out how to do it right and ended up cutting it. Dang, what a missed opportunity!

4)Concerning Daemon Wolf 22’s criticisms regarding the unnecessary corpse-like descriptions that appear throughout the nightmare:

But to put it simply, when I got to this scene, I tried using it as practice for if/when I ever decided to write Horror. As such, I fully confess that that mentality is what drove me to recklessly amp up the gore factor.

Nonetheless, upon further reflection, you are unquestionably correct. The blood and corpse motifs were unnecessary and rather thoughtless in the grand scheme of the dream sequence. And while I suppose they might make sense under some contexts, I cannot deny that I either:
A) Should have toned it down.
Or B) More thoroughly plotted out/explained those elements for them to make better sense narratively.
I did neither of these things, and it ultimately detracted away from the dream sequence.
For that, I apologize.

Still. I am happy with how it ultimately turned out - heck! Matthais Unidostres compared it to freaking Undertale! I don't care what anyone says, I take that as a source of pride!
Could it have been better? Absolutely. I refuse to deny that. But I am still proud of it.

So, yeah. That’s that. The only other things I had to say about Gallus’ nightmare were:

#1) The beginning where Gallus is wandering in the darkness, not yet realizing it’s a nightmare, was inspired by a short gameplay segment in Alice: Madness Returns where the titular character—you guessed it—wanders around in a dark, foggy, park-like area, guided only by the faint light of street lamps. Because of that last fact in particular, I considered making Gallus have to follow some sort of light source as well to find “Silverstream” and “Cozy,” but I didn’t want to be that blatant in ripping things off, so I nixed the idea and simply had Gallus acknowledge how completely lost he was without a light to follow.

I have no idea why that particular segment of Alice: Madness Returns sticks out so vividly in my mind, but yeah. Go check that game out by the way; it’s great!

#2) I considered describing how, in the beginning, Gallus was wandering around a nightmare version of Ponyville, but I opted against specifics.

#3) The whole “ash” billowing around Gallus thing was inspired by the Upside Down from Stranger Things, Silent Hill, and a certain part in the latter half of Czar_Yoshi’s The Olden World. What can I say? Ash, snow, etc. randomly billowing about is a neat aesthetic for a Horror scene, I feel.

#4) That voice in the beginning that responds to Gallus’ questions with vague things like “Anywhere” or “Anyone” was supposed to play into the original theme of Ch.7(Pride). That theme got changed though, so it’s vague for vagueness’ sake.

#5) The “river of black tears” aesthetic “Silverstream” had going on was inspired by bothBendy and the Ink Machine—if you’ve seen that game, you know why—and also Alice: Madness Returns again, specifically the appearance of the game’s final boss.

#6) Gallus recognizing he was dreaming once he saw “Cozy” wasn’t solely to avoid dragging the scene out for longer than necessary. It was also because I despise the “Characters never realize they’re dreaming even when it’s blatantly obvious” trope. I mean, the trope is effective which is why I had Gallus immediately forget he was dreaming once “Cozy” begins her assault, but still. In the beginning, it wouldn’t make any sense for Gallus, as smart as he is, to not realize it was a dream.

#7) The “You don’t know who you are” part of the nightmare relates to something we’ll discuss next chapter. The same goes for both “Gruff” and “Ocellus” ragging on Gallus for being a “filthy griffon” and “Cozy Glow” zeroing in on Gallus’ insecurity about not knowing who he was or wanted to be.

#8) Regarding “Ocellus,” something I wanted to describe but didn’t for whatever reason was that she was in her old, hole-riddled form during the nightmare, hence the “Snapping her fangs at him” line.

#9) I referred to “Cozy” toward the end of the nightmare as “Princess Cozy Glow” to make it clear she was in her alicorn form, but I absolutely should have called her “Empress Cozy Glow”!

And with the subject brought back to that brat, the moon appears behind her to signal Luna’s arrival. Yet another fun fact: Luna was going to appear through the same door she leaves through later, but I ultimately remembered she always spawned from the moon in canon.

Nightmare or no, however, Gallus is not the kind of character to let “Cozy” incinerate him without making at least one final snappy quip—thanks again for those criticisms, Jack of A Few Trades! Although, given the circumstances, I thought it best not for Gallus to make some dumb joke, but rather, to finally answer the “Who are you?” question she kept hitting him with. Again, I’ll discuss this particular aspect in the next chapter, but Gallus’ answer being himself was basically the resolution to that debacle, even if it wasn’t meant to be.

And with that answer comes Best Princess, finally breaking through the nightmare and shutting it down by turning “Cozy” to stone because of course.

Also, because I hate how the show had Luna quit ruling Equestria when not ruling Equestria on equal footing with her sister was the entire reason she became Nightmare Moon, Luna explains she’s still watching over everypony’s dreams and the true reason she willingly retired was her wish to spend more time with Celestia, living life together as sisters rather than princesses.

Well, that. And I needed an explanation for why Luna was available to help Gallus in the first place, despite being retired, and I didn’t like the idea of having his nightmare be so bad she sensed it and felt obligated to stop it. After all? Surely, if Gallus had a nightmare that bad, other creatures could as well, so why wouldn’t Luna help them too?

We then get a joke about Celestia not knowing Luna’s—to quote Sky Ash—moonlighting as the dream-realm guardian in her retirement and how Luna’s saving that particular argument for when she has suitable protection against Celestia’s Royal Canterlot Voice.

And after all of that is said and done, Luna sits Gallus down and gives him a therapy session.

This wasn’t supposed to happen at all. Luna getting a cameo was an idea I considered for a while since:

#1) I like Luna. And since Cadence got a cameo via her letters, what was the harm in letting Luna get one via dreamworld shenanigans?

And #2) Gallus’ issues with abandonment, inferiority, and guilt could be paralleled well with Luna’s own issues, much like Starlight’s.

However, I had ultimately decided against Luna showing up. I just… Didn’t want to write the scene. I felt it was unnecessary since Gallus was already getting counseling from Starlight, and it would be too long to include in the chapter and too time-consuming to warrant writing it at all.

Then came the chapter split…

And now comes that long-awaited rant I’ve been hyping up!

~ The Part Where I Rant Incessantly! ~

I’ve already talked about how woefully unprepared I was for the workload T.B.O.L. mandated and how anxious I was about getting the chapters done on time. This chapter, however? This chapter is where all of that anxiety hit a breaking point. Because once I started Ch.6(Stagnation), I got hit HAAARRRDDD with burnout!

For context, T.B.O.L. is the biggest project I’ve ever personally worked on(So far), so in the beginning, I treated it as such. I gave myself those super strict deadlines, spent most of my free-time ironing out plot details, worked myself down to the bone to make sure everything was good…

Well, no. “Good” isn’t the right word. “Perfect” is. Please bear with me because I’m about to get personal, and this isn’t exactly easy to articulate properly.

When I do anything, no matter how mundane or simple a task, I try to put everything I have into it. I said this earlier too, but when it came to T.B.O.L., especially this chapter, that mentality quickly turned into something…nasty.

I obviously wanted The Bonds of Love to be good, and I obviously wanted everyone to love it. I strove for excellence and pushed myself in ways I hadn’t yet done before—another reason I set those deadlines: I wanted to see if I could do that for myself and follow through—but it all rapidly devolved into a desire—desperation, really—for perfection. Not excellence. Perfection.

I couldn’t allow any mistakes or flaws to slip through the cracks; if I had, I would have failed to meet the standard all of you were surely holding me too. I would have failed to meet the standard I held myself too. I would have just…failed. All the effort I put into the story, all the great qualities I knew it had; all the compliments I received, urging me to go on and continue the story…? None of it would have mattered.

If I had failed to make the story as amazing as I could, or meet the deadlines, or however else I could have screwed up… Then? The Bonds of Love wouldn’t have been perfect anymore. And all that time and energy and effort I put into it would have felt wasted. Who the fk cares about how “good” the story was or how “great” the dialogue was or how “healthy” the romance was!? The story wasn’t perfect; I wasn’t perfect. Nothing else would matter but the fact that I. Failed.

Sound familiar?

Perfectionism is a complete and total bh, I tell you what. So, having said that, I ask you this: How angry with myself do you think I was when I realized I needed to split the chapters again?

BECAUSE I WAS PRETTY FING MAD!

The Chapter Two Split, I could tolerate because I recognized my mistake was underestimating how many words I was actually writing, but more importantly, I had written so many words that the split was easy. Here? With Ch.6(Stagnation) and Ch.7(Pride)? Ha! No! No, I had to write an entire chapter I didn’t intend nor want to write, but I had to anyway! Even though I wanted to finish the darn story before January 2021 because I had other things in my life I wanted to get sorted out and other stories to tell!

So yeah! I failed to learn from my mistake with the original Chapter Two and strive for shorter word lengths. I failed to follow the original, character-specific chapter plan for T.B.O.L. because this stupid split screwed that up too, and I failed to meet the deadline I had set for myself for finishing T.B.O.L. itself, and as is evident from how long it ultimately took me, I missed that deadline by over three-and-a-half months! MONTHS!

And why!? Why did I fail so hard, so fast; so easily!? Why was all of this happening to me!? Oh yeah! Because I couldn’t figure out how to shorten that stupid Gallus/Yona scene! Because I couldn’t stop myself from adhering to some arbitrary sense of “realism”! Because I couldn’t—I! Just! Couldn’t!—help but keep hurting Gallus and Silverstream!

And you know what!? THIS! This is what truly hurt me the most! The chapter split was definitely part of the problem, but do you want to know what the real issue was!? Why I really got burnt out midway through writing The Bonds of Love?

I was getting sick of writing “Sad Gallus” and “Sad Silverstream” all the dang time, and worse still, I was bat-st terrified all of you were getting sick of reading “Sad Gallus” and “Sad Silverstream!”

I wanted… So. Much. To stop making these two have massive emotional problems they had to keep sorting through. I hated constantly writing them to keep needing therapy and needing help. I had already screwed with them both, and the others too for that matter, so much already, so why couldn’t I just let them finally be okay? Why couldn’t I just let them… Be better.

This sound familiar too?

The answer to the question is something Hello Future Me discussed in that video concerning mental illness I linked previously. There’s a segment in it where he discusses a topic he dubbed “The Good Story Problem.”

To summarize: Sometimes, when mental illness is being tackled by authors, they tend not to treat it like the actual illness in question and more like mere character development following the traditional three-act structure. The result is a character in such a story may have an issue as serious as depression or even suicidal tendencies, but by the end they magically get “cured” because blah, blah, blah, character development. Or worse, they succumb to their issues because that’s a much more “tragic” ending.

From how T.B.O.L. ended, you can tell I wasn’t concerned with falling into the second pit-trap. But the first one? Oh yeah. Yeah…

The type of healing Gallus needs to through will take years, since he has been thoroughly messed up for his entire life.

This is a comment from Kevin Lee, and it caused me to panic even more. Because they were right. The amount of issues and trauma I gave Gallus and the severity of how they effected him—There was absolutely no way they would be realistically resolved as fast as they were.

It appeared that, once again, for all my talk about wanting to portray Gallus receiving genuine therapy and wanting to show respect to the mental scars he had received… At this point, I was basically speedrunning Gallus’ therapy. Why? Character development.

Circling back to the “Good Story Problem,” like it or not, Gallus’ issues were effectively character flaws for him to overcome, much like Silver and Smolder’s paranoia. BUT! They weren’t ordinary character flaws like Rainbow Dash’s ego or Starlight’s temper.

Gallus’ “Character Flaws” were all consequences of literal psychological trauma received from growing up in Griffonstone as an orphan. It would be completely disingenuous and horrendous of me to act like issues as severe as his could be solved in a matter of months! This would be true even if I hadn’t oversold the issues in A.D.F.F.

Except his issues still needed to be resolved by the end of the story because that’s, well, how stories work! Or at least, how I wanted this story to work. I wanted a happy ending for everycreature, and that meant Gallus needed to ultimately overcome his issues. Except he couldn’t overcome his issues entirely because that wouldn’t be realistic given how severe I presented them to be!

Do you see the paradox I had to deal with?

This was another reason I slipped in that stupid “tie” issue into the Gallus/Yona scene; it wasn’t just to set up the Gruff subplot, it was to show that while Gallus has certainly made progress, he did still have some lingering issues that hadn’t been addressed yet.

Except the “tie” issue itself didn’t even fit with the overall story or Ch.7(Pride)’s original theme, so I needed to fix that too. And since I didn’t know how to stop myself, the whole Gallus/Yona scene went on for so long I inevitably realized I needed to split the chapters! And I was just— I was sick of it!

I was sick of failing to meet my own stupid standards. I was sick of fretting over every single detail to make sure it was “Perfect” and “Realistic.” I was sick of dealing with the anxiety of whether or not you guys would like the chapter or completely rip into me for it. I was sick of putting so much extra work on myself when I already had enough going on as it is. I was sick of constantly writing Gallus and Silverstream to always be in severe emotional distress…

I was sick of all of it.

Writing The Bonds of Lovewasn’t fun anymore. Writing in general wasn’t fun anymore. I can’t even say it felt like work because at least with work I get the satisfaction of knowing I did a good job! But here? I didn’t have that; I couldn’t have that.

All I could tell myself was that I failed. That I forced more work upon myself than necessary becauseI failed. That no one would like the chapter because Gallus was stillsuffering from his issues despite having already received substantial character development by this point.

I couldn’t get any of that out of my head, and it made the whole process of writing Ch.6(Stagnation) a massive drain on my mental health.

But…? I still had a deadline hanging over my head. So, without much choice, I pushed through the burnout to complete the chapter, and I did what I always do when I get frustrated with my writing: I turned my frustrations into plot points.

This is why Gallus suddenly has a perfectionism complex and why he spends the entire chapter seething at how little progress he’s making and how he’s “not better yet.” This is why the chapter is named “Stagnation” in the first place. This is even why Luna’s therapy session was about what it was about and why she has lines like these:

“You expect too much of yourself.”

“Flawlessness is far too lofty an expectation to hold, Gallus,”

“However, it is not right to expect yourself to be flawless, especially when you subsequently judge yourself for not being so.”

That entire scene was as much Luna giving Gallus therapy as it was me trying to give myself some. And honestly, that perfectly summarizes this entire chapter. While I obviously made sure everything worked in-universe(I.E. Gallus’ perfectionism, we later learn, is implicitly a result of his need for Gruff’s validation despite never receiving it), almost everything that happened in Ch.6(Stagnation) resulted from me venting about my own personal problems at the time.

I did thankfully overcome the burnout later, but nevertheless, I still hate this chapter; I’ll likely always hate this chapter, even on my deathbed.

Admittedly, that’s not quite fair to Ch.6(Stagnation). Objectively speaking it’s one of the best chapters of The Bonds of Love. Of this, I’ve no doubt. It’s certainly better than Chapters 1, 2, 7, and arguably 5.

But? Even now, I can’t separate the chapter itself from the feelings and burnout I experienced when writing it. Just thinking about this chapter for more than a few minutes at a time makes me genuinely ill; so much so I actually started getting burnt out again while discussing this chapter(It took me nearly the whole month of September to discuss this one chapter).

I’ve no qualms saying Ch.6(Stagnation) is a good chapter. And as much as it pains me to say this, I’m glad this chapter happened; The Bonds of Love absolutely benefited from it in every possible way.

I just wish it didn’t come at the cost of my own health and psyche…

If nothing else, I hope you're all having much better days than I had when dealing with all of that mess.

Obligatory Google Doc Link.

Comments

[Summer Script]

~ Additional Tidbits ~

— 1) Gallus’ suit was supposed to have blue/indigo highlights to match his natural colors. Unfortunately, the sentence always felt clunky whenever I included that detail, so it got cut. During the re-edit, however, I managed to slip this detail back in.

— 2) After Yona got a taste of what her own bone-crushing hugs feel like, courtesy of Scoop in the last chapter, I tried to make it a point to show Yona being gentler with how she hugged creatures from then-on. I didn’t really do it every time she hugged somecreature, but yeah. That’s a thing I did.

— 3) Gallus only got the role of “secondary protagonist” in the Club’s play since obviously Vellum and Scoop would get the primary roles, having been acting far longer than Gallus.

— 4) Something I was unsure of was Silverstream seeing all of Smolder’s books herself, but since I was going to reveal it later anyway and there was no natural way to keep Silver out of Smolder’s room, I decided not to worry about it and showed a preview of Smolder’s book hoard.

— 5) The reasons Smolder insisted she was worried about “A ‘friend’ in the Dragonlands” instead of Gallus were:

#5.1) Smolder didn’t want to discuss Gallus’ personal, private issues with anyone but their main friends and Starlight.

And #5.2) Smolder was subconsciously trying to distance herself from the reality that it was Gallus who was suffering these issues. Though she obviously knew it was Gallus, writing off her worry by claiming it was for some random, non-existent “friend” helped Smolder, however little, deal with everything.

— 6) Gallus’ “It’s a lot of little things” rant was going to be longer and include more things he was upset about, but I settled for the “less is more” approach. I also included this here to further explain why Gallus was still having issues, since, you know, the “Good Story Problem” happened.

— 7) Ocellus wishing Gallus “Sweet dreams” was a clear telegraph the nightmare was coming, as if Luna being brought up earlier wasn’t enough of a dead giveaway.

— 8) When Gallus’ fledgling self appeared in the mirror, it was going to be described as “flea-ridden” too, but I instead saved that adjective for the mirror “Gruff.” Though, I’ll let you come to your own conclusions on whether or not Gallus ever had fleas at some point when living in Griffonstone.

— 9) I wish I had done more with Luna reshaping Gallus’ dream world without any fanfare, but I unfortunately had to settle for the picnic blanket and the tea suddenly appearing.

— 10) Luna’s line: “We are not always who we think we are. Oftentimes, we are who others think we are” came from something the Youtuber, Implicitly Pretentious, quoted in one of their videos.

— 11) Luna’s line about not wanting to “Compare or quantify” her or Gallus’ sins exists because I didn’t want Luna to come across like she was saying, “I turned into an eternal-night bringing, raging she-demon; I’m worse than you!” Just because that happened to Luna doesn’t mean Gallus somehow has it easy, and the last thing I wanted to do was have Luna imply that. Not to mention it would make Luna sound like she’s still holding an unhealthy amount of guilt and shame despite “Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep.” As such, I made sure Luna clarified such wasn’t the case and that Gallus’ issues are as equally valid as her own.