The Dead Chapter · 3:07am Jul 8th, 2018
Writing is hard. The worst part in my opinion (other than writer's block) is putting time and effort into something only to scrap it in the end. However, this can be a good thing. Sometimes you make something better to replacement or the story would be better without it (lots of cut stuff from the first story). However, this was the only time I cut an entire chapter. I'm not too happy to abandon it, but the replacement chapter is far better. I still have the google doc and will link it. It's incomplete and a rough draft, emphasis on rough, but there's enough for you to know what happens.
Why it was cut
I suggest reading it first for context.
Nymph screws up badly. Twice.
Nymph is a flawed character, from writing garbage romancing novels to snatching crowns to making immoral deals with one of Equestria's most dangerous foes. At least she has her reasons for her less than noble choices. The first seven chapters have the purpose of explaining why Nymph ends up making her very risky deal with the Dazzlings, showing how badly she wants Chrysalis to come home, how much she's banging her head against a wall to make that happen, finding the ring, etc. In this chapter, she just does something stupid twice. The first is leaving the Dazzlings alone for some minutes. While she believes that they wouldn't run off because they want their drinks that she is buying for them (which they got really excited for) and are enjoying the audience they have made so far, it's still a bad idea to lose sight of them. Basically one plot in this chapter is caused by Nymph making a obvious mistake that she never should have.
The other thing is her blowing up at Spike for his terrible speech. This is more villain Chrysalis's territory, although Nymph does get pissed time to time. The fact she does it to Spike and brings him to tears is too much. My initial justification was that she was too stressed out with the Dazzlings being on the loose and she immediately realizes she made an error, but it just makes her look bad anyway. The chapter overall hurts her character more than develops it.
Nymph and Thorax are separated for most of it.
It's obvious Thorax has a big role in the story, so it's important to have the two of them together. They are separated for most of the chapter, so they don't do anything to really bond other than briefly at the end. The idea was Nymph would be impressed that she could trust him with handling the crucial task of locating the Dazzlings, but that's not much from a whole chapter. Even Thorax alone doesn't change much other than seeing that Spike isn't as perfect as he believed.
The Dazzlings are mostly absent.
I love the Dazzlings. They're my second favorite villains of FIM (you can guess the first). Having them just disappear for a whole chapter and not really do anything feels like a waste, especially since they are a massive part of the story. In this chapter, they get zero development other than Sonata being nice to Spike for a moment, although that's mainly she thinks of him as a cute pet/child she wants to hug nonstop. The revised chapter will have more screen time for them with some interesting moments about their character sprinkled in if you look hard enough (like with Aria so far).
In a nutshell, plot happens for dumb reasons and characters barely grow.
And that's pretty much why I canned it. Hopefully this will be the only chapter that gets this fate.
