New chapter for The Last Letter! +pic

The long-awaited next installment has finally been finished!

Lots of things to talk about in this chapter. Just because I can, lets talk about it! First of all, a treat!

Gilda showed up in this chapter! And she has friends!

From left-to-right, there's Desmond, Gilda, and the massive Diesel - or "Big D" as she likes to call him.

A bit out of order, but lets go ahead and talk about the griffons first.

Gilda was included mostly because of a contest I held ages ago, and I ended up really enjoying how I imagined her. Before any of us even knew she was going to get a redemption episode, I kinda figured that Gilda would have never actively sought to rekindle her friendship with Rainbow Dash. Given the evidence of said episode, I think we can all agree that she would never have. So I wanted to place her in a backdrop that would've prevented her from really getting the chance to, even if she eventually got over herself. So I tossed her in a rock band. At first, I was going to make her a bit angsty still, but just a more toned-down version than in the show. After I saw the episode, though, it kind of inspired me to try and push her in a different direction. As we saw in the flashback, Gilda wasn't initially mean-spirited and brutish. Rather, she was pretty timid, and Rainbow Dash is the one that got her out of her shell. Even though it would seem that she was born long after the idol went missing and griffon culture devolved back into its self-loathing state, she was different from all other griffons depicted in the show. I thought, "If she could be different, who's to say there aren't other chill griffons in her age group?"

That's when I decided to give the rest of her friends and bandmates faces and names. Desmond and Diesel. Desmond, as you might have noticed, is the guitarist and lead singer. Diesel does bass and backup, leaving Gilda with drums and percussion. Diesel is the oldest of the group, as well as the most well-rounded. He knows who he is and what he wants, with the patience to let things come and go as they will. While Desmond is the youngest and more reckless of the bunch. He has confidence in excess, but not so much to be considered hubris. His impatience leads him to actively seek out the things that he wants, with some capacity to see the things that come his way.

Lastly, for the griffon group, was their open approach on the subject of sex, as you might have noticed. I largely used it for a bit of humor and as a vehicle for getting Twilight and Flash in the right direction for relationship status - which I'm sure will trigger plenty of you. More on that later. Initially, I did it because I wanted to do something that set them apart from both griffon culture and pony culture. Even here on fimfic, a lot of people like to model pony culture closely after our own, which means that sex isn't something of a casual conversation piece in public - and in some cases is still considered taboo, nevermind interspecies/interracial relations. At first, it was just going to be Desmond to add a lewdness aspect to his haphazard lifestyle, but I decided to make it a group thing because of the fact that Diesel is who he is, and Gilda did a lot of personal growing by him and thus would adopt some of his policies by proxy. Despite pretending to be the leader of the group, she looks up to him a lot for being a good friend and helping her out of a tough spot in life, and I probably should've spent a bit more time emphasizing that in the chapter. I didn't want to go too far, though, because they're just passing by for the moment. Though, I might write up a fun little tidbit detailing Gilda and Diesel's time spent in the spa for Midnight Romps later on, just because it would be fun. Now, mind you, I wanted the ponies to be a little bit open about the subject of sex, but only a tad. Despite being more grown and balanced, they still have that social barrier and I wanted to maintain some of it. Here's to hoping I did it well, lol.

Now that that's out of the way, let us talk about some other things I did in this chapter. One of them being Applejack. I'm a little undecided about what to do with her right now. It's really hard to depict her altered friendship with the rest of the mane six, mostly because I don't have a lot of experience with resolution within my own life, so I don't have much experience to draw on with the after effects and moving on. So her character might start to come off as a little odd or forced, and I'm sorry for that. Just bear with me, I'll try my best. For now, though, she's going to be having some new interaction with this new character that I will be introducing, Crestin Cote. Crestin Cote is actually going to be a throwback to a stage in my life when I was seeing a psychiatrist regularly, and she will be loosely based off of what little I can remember of her. The main obstacle here will be mixing therapy in with the interaction. My own therapy was when I was a wee tot, and I don't really know that much about the practice. Again, I'll try my best, so just hang in there.

I've talked about quite a bit so for, and I don't want this to be a mile long, so I'll just leave off with a bit on RD and Flutters. Rainbow has become something of a complex character for me and has probably gotten the most lime light recently. This chapter, I dove a bit deeper into the past I've given her, and made a mention to a time when Gilda did a solid for her. I actually plan on clearing away some of the fog on the subject in my next addition to Midnight Romps, but suffice it to say that Rainbow Dash was never sexually secure about herself because of the lightly-mentioned event. She did a lot of maturing during her time in the Wonderbolts, thanks to the help of a certain stallion. It was never my intention to paint Rainbow Dash as purely lesbian in the story, but I haven't really grazed on the much yet. To clear that up, RD is bi, with a female preference. At least, as far as the story is concerned, anyways.

And as for Fluttershy? Oh, things are about to get juicy in here~

I'll leave it at that for now. Didn't see anything in here that you wanted me to talk about? Leave a comment! I'll be more than happy to chat below.

That's it for now, folks! Hope you enjoyed this post, and I hope you enjoy your read. Ciao!