The Deletions from "Grief" · 4:12am Feb 10th, 2019
A WARNING: The following blog post features many key SPOILERS for "Grief is the Price We Pay," and would SPOIL many major plot points of the fic. If you have not yet read the fic and wish to avoid these SPOILERS, turn back now!
AGAIN, there are major SPOILERS ahead! You have been warned!
I had wanted to wait and do this blog after I had gone through and given "Grief" one last final edit from start to finish, in case there was anything major I decided I wanted to cut out in the process that could be included in this, but it's taking longer than I expected and will probably take even longer still to finish, so I decided instead to not wait on this any longer. So, the following blog post will discuss some of the more major sequences that got cut from the story...a sort of "deleted scenes" segment for the fic.
Since I imagine some readers might be getting a little fuzzy on some of the finer details of the fic, I will attempt to recap any and all relevant details to serve as a refresher if needed.
We'll start by going back to the very early days of writing "Grief," back when I was still working out how this fic was going to go with one of the more novel and major lost ideas:
The Lost Changeling
You remember back when Thorax had fallen gravely ill during Vanhoover's rainy season with what ultimately proved to be mutatum aegritudo, a sort of changeling-only disease? It was later speculated by visiting Fluttershy that ponies could possibly be unknowing carriers of the disease and that was how Thorax had caught it despite being so isolated from the other changelings. But until that was stated in the fic, there were a lot of readers speculating that there had to be another changeling in hiding somewhere in Vanhoover, close enough for Thorax to have come into contact with--how else could he caught a disease that only changelings could have gotten?
Well, at one time, that was planned to ultimately reveal that this was precisely to have been the case. "Grief" made occasional reference to a number of regular customers to Fly Leaf's shop that the group becomes friendly with. Of these, one was planned to be a relatively young mare who made regular, but passing, appearances throughout the story as a reoccurring customer, and became fast friends with all of the shop's staff, but with particular focus on Thorax. Eventually, relatively late in the story but still well before Twilight finding Spike and Thorax there, this mare's attention on Thorax catches Fly Leaf's attention (who at the time was going to be a much older, more grandmotherly and oblivious, mare), and cheekily surmises that she fancied Thorax and starts urging Thorax to make a move. Thorax, knowing that he was an outcast changeling in hiding, refuses to do so, though, thinking it unwise, and tells Fly Leaf as such. Nevertheless, Fly attempts to meddle in various ways and eventually gets Thorax to run and deliver an order to this mare at her house.
Despite knowing full well Fly's intentions, Thorax agrees with the intent of settling the matter, and goes and meets with the mare at her house, giving her the requested order. Then, at the mare's insistence, he stays for a cup of lemonade (or something) and they briefly chat, bonding a little. Thorax still does not wish to pursue any sort of relationship with this mare for obvious reasons, but he starts to think there's no reason they can't still be friends. But at the end of the conversation, wishing to be helpful, Thorax picks up the hefty order and asks if there was a particular place she wanted it put, and seeing a door leading to what he thinks is a closest, he goes to open it despite the mare objecting a second too late. Thorax then finds that the "closest" is no closest at all, but a mini changeling-made little hideaway, complete with caught prey in cocoons, and Thorax is just turning around, shocked, to confront the mare when she knocks him out. Thorax then awakens later, out of disguise and in a cocoon of his own now, with the mare, now revealed to be a changeling herself, looming darkly over him. It's quickly revealed that this changeling, however, had once hailed not from Chrysalis's hive like Thorax, but rather from another, rival hive, but as Thorax quickly notes, she bears the brand of an outcast on her body, and learns she was banished from said hive for "promoting anarchy"--it turns out she didn't care too much for how her queen was ruling their hive either.
Thorax soon realizes that they might actually have more in common than thought, but the new changeling, thinking Thorax was an operative sent from her hive to find her, doesn't want to trust Thorax and quickly preps to flee Vanhoover, leaving Thorax trapped in his cocoon. Meanwhile, back at Fly's shop, Spike has realized that Thorax is overdue to return, and getting worried, goes to the mare's house to try and find him. He arrives in time to see the new changeling, back in disguise, make a hasty departure and grows suspicious. He sneaks into the house to search for clues and eventually finds the changeling's hideout and Thorax in a cocoon within, which Spike quickly helps free. Thorax then talks him into helping him catch up with the changeling before she leaves town, seeing her as potentially a very valuable ally they'd be fools to let slip away, and they do, catching up with her at the train station and telling her their own backstory, and convincing her to stay.
Afterwards, she would make appearances in the story more frequently, and with past barriers now gone, soon finds herself slowly becoming romantically friendly with Thorax, as does Thorax. Nevertheless, she's got her quirks--turns out she's a bit short-tempered, and prone to react physically when angered, and as she's well skilled in a form of changeling martial art, she could whip your butt good and quickly if she did. It overall gave her an almost unstable appearance, so much so that Spike was to comment to Thorax once: "You realize she's crazy, right?" to which a uncaring Thorax dreamily responds "Yeah." She has Spike and Thorax's backs, though, and originally it was to be her, not Fly Leaf, that was to help them escape Vanhoover by taking out the operators in the control tower, giving them instructions to seek shelter at her old hive, who she'd figure would be eager to harbor any dissenters from Chrysalis's hive, their longtime rivals.
All of this ultimately didn't make into the story though, simply because plans changed. I had started writing "Grief" almost immediately after "The Times They're A Changeling" had aired, but well before "To Where and Back Again" had premiered (leaked or otherwise), so I was for a time devising some plot points without the events of that season finale in mind. After I had seen that finale though, I realized that the show seemed to be stressing that there were no other changeling hives besides Chrysalis's, bringing a conflict of lore canon that I didn't want, so I removed any plans for this "rival hive" in the story, and since this other changeling gal (who I never settled on a name for) hinged so much on that rival hive, she got dropped as well, my thinking that it'd at least help speed along the plot and I wasn't sure I wanted to get any shipping involved in the story anyway. As that meant I needed someone to replace her role in assisting Thorax and Spike flee from Vanhoover, Fly Leaf was tweaked to fill the role instead--this is why Fly Leaf knows martial arts, and settling on that detail helped define the rest of her character as we know it now, and seeing it was well received with readers, that at least seemed to work out well.
When I dropped that character, though, I had no plans at first to replace her with any other characters or to pursue any serious shipping with Thorax, especially as by then I knew Thorax was going to die, and I figured there wouldn't be much point. Trixie, who had up until then been almost totally absent from the story, didn't start to feature as a replacement until her role popped up in the ending chapters. At first, she was just going to fill in her relevant roles during the "To Where And Back Again" parts of the story, but then realizing I was greatly underutilizing her, I sought other ways to make use of her, and figured I could have her swing through Vanhoover sometime prior and interact with the gang, use it to flesh out her character a bit more. Initially, I planned to have her interact with both Spike and Thorax, but upon realizing she'd almost certainly recognize Spike, disguised or not, I kept it to just her and Thorax. And...one thing lead to another sort of without meaning it to and those two got shipped instead. In fact, I actively fought doing this at first, determined to just keep them friends, but the story kept going in ways where I found it logical to take that relationship...further. So I did, even though I knew fully well it would end in tragedy.
It wasn't always going to be that way, though. In fact, I deliberately started off with this deleted sequence as it sets the scene nicely for the next major deleted sequence, where:
Thorax Doesn't Die
But before all you naysayers all start shouting "I KNEW IT! I KNEW YOU DEVISED THAT DETAIL AFTER THE FACT!" there's actually a catch to it. Thorax did not die originally...but all the same things setting up for it still were, though, to the point that Thorax was still put on death's door, and so we were already a hop, skip, and a jump away from that.
But I'm getting ahead of myself--earlier I mentioned that when Thorax's changeling friend helps them escape Vanhoover, she directs them to seek asylum at her own hive. This was originally where Spike and Thorax would've flown the Vergilius (not yet named as such) to, and would've flown directly to it. There would've been no sidetracking, no encounters with characters such as Ember (who was totally absent in this version), Starlight, or Trixie, and so on--just a straight and fairly uneventful flight to this rival hive, where, once there, Thorax would seek audience with the ruling queen and beg asylum, which she, being a more benevolent than Chrysalis, grants, so long as Thorax and Spike did not cause trouble. There would've followed maybe a chapter, possibly two, of Spike and Thorax staying at this hive, with me using the chance to explore how I had figured the changeling hive operated at the time (all plans for which became defunct after "To Where and Back Again" portrayed a very different sort of hive) before the hive's queen comes to Thorax and Spike and reveals they had received word that Chrysalis was staging another invasion of Equestria, and this time the odds might be on her side. As letting Chrysalis succeed was potentially dangerous for them too, the rival queen wished to stop her and asked for Spike and Thorax's help.
Spike initially and bitterly refuses to get involved though, leading to Thorax having to talk him into agreeing, all pretty much exactly how it transpires in the final story. Once that's done, they and the rival hive's forces go and join forces with the reluctant and distrusting Equestria and work to fight back on Chrysalis's invasion. This quickly leads to a climatic final battle between the two opposing sides in an empty field between Canterlot and Ponyville, and ultimately ends in Equestria's favor, with Chrysalis and her forces, again, being driven off. But right at the final moments of the battle, an attacking changeling manages to land a lucky blow on Thorax, stabbing him in the chest and leaving him for dead. Thorax is found shortly thereafter, and the rival hive takes immediate action to try and save his life, but the wound is very serious, and its anybody's guess if he'll actually survive. With Thorax potentially at death's door and having no idea if he'll live, a frightened Spike is then met with Twilight looking to talk, a talk that quickly devolves into a falling out pretty much exactly to how it goes in the final story. As you can see, a lot of parallel with the directions the final story takes all around.
What happened after that was still largely up in the air--accurately predicting that the season finale would revisit Thorax and the changelings and that could potentially mess with my story plans, I avoided finalizing too much about how I wanted the story to end in case I needed to make changes in response to said finale. The only real thing I had nailed down for the ending was what ultimately became the final chapter of the story, where Twilight receives Spike's book. I had no serious plans to kill of Thorax, though...but I was already thinking that taking Thorax to the brink of death and putting the cast through all that emotional turmoil over it, only to allow him to recover, felt like it cheapened all that emotional turmoil, and even then I was already thinking I might need to do something to better solidify just how, exactly, I wanted to handle this. After I saw "To Where and Back Again" and was revising the story's ending to run parallel to that instead, I wanted to keep Thorax getting stabbed, and figured I could have Chrysalis do that during the confrontation scene in the throne room. But I promptly found that the tone for this sequence felt decidedly different, and that was when I first started getting the idea to seriously consider killing Thorax. At first I resisted the temptation--I liked Thorax, loved writing for him, and was loathe to kill him off, to say nothing that I knew how that might go over with readers. But once I had gotten the idea, everything else just felt...subpar. Like the alternatives just lacked the same amount of punch, and I quickly realized that "Grief" needed that extra punch to drive home its points. Otherwise, I feared both the story cast and the readers could brush them aside in light of a happy ending. I quickly saw I needed to give the readers no way out of that, so I committed to killing off Thorax. The rest is history.
For the record, though, I had settled on doing all of this well before I had posted anything of "Grief" online, so yes, everything of the final story was still set and written knowing Thorax would die in the end. Never at any time after that point was that not the case.
However, I did toy with an alternative take to the idea:
Spike Dies
About around the halfway point in writing or posting the story (or at least what I had, at that time, figured was the halfway point, right about where Thorax fell ill and Fluttershy appeared on the scene), looking at readers comments to attempt to determine how the eventual plan of killing Thorax might go over, I realized I did have an alternative that might achieve the same goals--kill off Spike instead. At the time, though, I didn't give the idea too much serious thought because I had already dropped hints to Thorax biting it in the story by that point, had plans for plenty more further ahead, and figured I was already past the point of no return and was committed to Thorax's demise. Later on in the story, though, a little closer to the two-thirds mark, I noticed some readers speculating in the comments about where the story might be going, and a couple speculated that maybe this would all end with Spike dying in some fashion.
Realizing, then, that this might be the reader's expectation and thus might go over better with readers in general, I revisited the idea of killing off Spike, this time more seriously looking at how I would need to change my plans to work this in instead. I decided that the story could continue on exactly as already planned up until that confrontation scene with Chrysalis in the hive throne room, and instead stage things so that its Spike who is in position to get stabbed instead of Thorax. Things would then go on a bit as they did in the final story and the changelings reform, including Thorax. At that point, I envisioned Spike surviving long enough to see Thorax's new reformed state, make a wisecrack about it, before very seriously stating "I think I'm dying," tells Twilight she's an idiot, then solemnly admits that he had been one too, before passing in Thorax's hooves.
After that, though, things started falling apart, because I realized what appealed to me about Thorax's death was that, yes, it was tragic, BUT it allowed for a whole lot of good to come from it, most importantly in the form of Twilight and Spike growing and learning from the experience, in a sort of "trial by fire" manner. Above all, they still had the chance to make amends, ending the story on a higher note. But with Spike dying, you didn't get that. With Spike dead, this robs Twilight of her chance of making any amends with him, and leaves her with no resolution except to wallow in her guilt. Worse, I could only see Thorax taking Spike's passing very hard, and despite still being civil with them, I just couldn't see him being able to forgive the ponies and would instead retreat in upon himself. At one point I even had plans for him to forfeit the throne as changeling king and leave the hive entirely and run off with Trixie, except even that ends gloomily as Thorax can't bring himself to commit to any sort of relationship with her. He's basically left listless. A lot of characters were.
Ultimately, I just wasn't as satisfied with that ending. It felt too much of a downer, and not enough of a chance to show that things could recover from the loss. And I just wasn't seeing a way to achieve some of those things without Spike being there to play his part. Maybe it was because I was already too set on Thorax dying by that time, but I ultimately decided I needed Spike to live. So I stuck with the original plan of Thorax dying.
The Heartstrings Inquiry
By this point, "Grief" had largely settled into the plotline you see know in the final posting, but there were still a few chapters that were devised but ultimately cut from the line up and were never posted. The first of these continued with the same idea as Trixie as I looked to see if there were any other established MLP characters that I could have pop up in Vanhoover and interact with Spike and Thorax. Upon recalling Twilight's Canterlot friends and how it wouldn't be too hard to justify how they wouldn't have heard about Spike's outcasting yet, I thought that might be a good route to go...especially once I realized this meant I could get Lyra Heartstrings in the mix, a character I've long wanted to try my hand at. In fact, though Minuette played a large role in the initial draft of this chapter, it was admittedly much more about Lyra than anyone else leaving Minuette as kind of extra baggage, so if I had continued writing the chapter, I'd like to think I would've eventually dropped Minuette and just focused on Lyra...but I digress!
This chapter was to take place immediately following the "Frequencies" chapter, and would've began with a routine day of Spike and Thorax, in their proper disguises, going out to run some errands about town. To speed things along, they split up. After Spike finishes his end of the list and is heading back to meet up with Thorax, he stops to clean the false eyeglasses he wears as part of his disguise as Spark for a moment, and is, in that moment, recognized by Lyra Heartstrings, who just happened to be passing by. Unaware of Spike's situation and just pleased to see a friend to the point Spike can barely get a word in edgewise, Lyra immediately engages in happy but mostly one-sided conversation with him, telling him why she was in Vanhoover (she's on tour for a paranormal group she's starting, called the "Heartstrings Inquiry") and so on, and even drags him off to a restaurant for lunch, her treat.
Finally, Spike gets his chance to speak, and starts to explain the situation as clearly Lyra doesn't already know, but before he can get far, Thorax, who had gone looking for him, intervenes, so he instead settles in telling her that no one was to know he was here, and gets her promise to keep it secret that she had seen him here. But now Lyra's thinking that something's up and wants to get to the bottom of it. She attempts to follow them, but Thorax notices and they're able to give her the slip and sneak back to Fly's shop. They think that's the end of the matter until Lyra, having found the shop anyway, waltz in wearing Groucho glasses (apparently understanding the need for secrecy) as an unconvincing disguise and speaking in a painfully fake accent that is one part Swedish Chef, one part Don Karnage, and one part bad French. Some examples of this include:
“We iz look-zing forz ze dragon andz ze dark-grey stallion uni-corni we waz told work here”
“Yes. We iz their friendzees. Are zhey here?”
Youz cannot tell…but we iz undercover-zing our identiteezees.”
“Miz? Who is ze miz? I am not a miz! You zee ze mustachio on ze lip here? Do ze mizzez have mustachios, hmm?”
“Zhen perhapz youz zhould be a-consider-zing expand-zing your zhop to include my particular tastez, yes-no?”
“Lyra? Who iz Lyra? My name iz Mare Incognito!”
(This was all a hoot to write, in case you couldn't tell 
)
Anyway, Lyra's in Fly's shop looking for Spike and Thorax while Spike and Thorax try their hardest to avoid her, and this goes on until it causes such a disruption that Fly Leaf, in one of the rare moments where she gets truly angry, declares to Spike and Thorax that she didn't care what they did to do it, but she wanted Lyra out of her shop. So Spike and Thorax break down and lead Lyra aside to explain the full truth to her, including Thorax's true nature and their banishment. Lyra takes it well (in fact, she's immediately fascinated by Thorax and spends awhile trying to examine him, to Thorax's discomfort), and after they talk it over, she agrees to keep the secret.
Now this all probably seems like a fun chapter, right? Lots of fun moments, lots of fun gags, some fun references, including one referencing an Anthropology! There was also going to be cryptic references to then upcoming chapter in past dream sequences like I did for numerous other moments in the story. So...why did it not make in? A number of reasons, actually, but basically while the premise seemed fun, in practice, the chapter was quickly proving ambling and unfocused. Further, I realized that nothing in it would have any real bearing on the rest of the story, and I had no plans at the time for Lyra to reappear later on, nor any good idea of how I might set it up for that. So at best it would've just been an unneeded diversion. It didn't even really accomplish anything that the story hadn't already explored by that point, as the scene convincing Lyra to keep the secret ran basically the same as how it did with Fluttershy just a few chapters earlier.
So ultimately, frustrated at how the chapter wasn't going how I expected and feeling pressed to move on to other chapters, I dropped it entirely from the story, the first chapter to have this happen...but not the last:
Chapbook
After introducing Trixie for the first time in the story, I didn't want to revisit her too quickly--give her and Thorax some time to bond some more behind the scenes first. So I had a couple of chapters squeezed in there to space out the chapters "Contact Information" and "Ache". Ironically, though, only two of those four chapters made in, the other two getting cut for various reasons.
The first of those two dealt directly with Fly Leaf, and uniquely was to be told mostly from Fly's perspetive. Not long after first introducing her, I made mention that she had siblings, an older brother named First Edition, and a younger sister named Chapbook, and no sooner than I had done so, I thought it might be fun to bring in those siblings for a visit, get to know them better. Unfortunately, I shot myself in the foot and cut off the obvious method of doing this by also saying Fly had joined them for a family reunion earlier in the year, leaving it illogical for them to have another such reunion so soon after the other. So instead I thought one of them could come to her for a surprise visit. Because I had established Chapbook still lived relatively nearby to Vanhoover, she seemed like the most obvious choice, so the chapter started out with her popping into Fly's shop unexpectedly for a visit one evening, having been already in town on business and thought she'd say hi, and she stays for dinner. Simple enough.
However, Chapbook also meets Fly's two employees Spark and Thornton for the first time, and throughout the events of the whole evening, starts noting with increasing frequency things she finds...odd about them. Discrepancies in Spark's backstory, a weird cyan flash while Thornton was in the bathroom, and she overhears parts of a whispered and peculiar conversation between the two. And soon, Chapbook starts getting suspicious with the two, and starts to wonder if maybe they were in reality trouble, and were trying to keep it from Fly. So, when dessert is brought out (Spike and Thorax are not present for this, as dessert is cherry pie, and nobody wanted a repeat of "Made With Love" so Spike talks the reluctant Thorax into retiring early for the evening), Chapbook privately brings her concerns up with Fly Leaf, thinking Fly should look into this.
Fly, however, won't hear of it, and instead makes a passionate argument defending her two employees and stating with confidence that they were trustworthy and not trying to deceive her (implying, naturally, that she believed they were who they said they were), and backs them up so passionately that she manages to sway Chapbook over, who apologizes and drops the matter, figuring to herself that maybe she was overreacting. Nevertheless, after bidding Fly a friendly farewell and leaving for the night, Chapbook's conscious leads to her swinging past the police station anyway, asking to look at their wanted posters as a precaution, which, as luck would have it, one officer had just finished reorganizing. Chapbook looks them all over...but doesn't see any matching Thorax or Spike's description, and satisfied at last, Chapbook leaves, certain now there was no concern.
It's only after she left that the police officer realizes that, during his reorganizing of the wanted poster, he had missed putting one back up--the one of Spike that was distributed throughout Vanhoover in "Wanted".
Obviously this chapter was an attempt to both give Spike and Thorax yet another very close call at getting caught, while also an attempt at trying to shake readers off the (correct) assumption that Fly knew more about them than she let on. But it was also an attempt to demonstrate Fly's side of the story for a change, and to demonstrate that, no matter what she did know or not know about the two, she trusted them completely, showing just how attached to the pair she had become and just how strong of friends they had become for her.
Unfortunately, while I still like to think I could've made this chapter work, the attempt I did try felt bloated and the whole set-up for the scene forced. As I was already falling behind on my buffer of completed chapters by that time and was falling further behind the more I wasted time trying to figure this chapter out, I decided it wasn't worth pursuing the matter further and dropped it. Oh well.
Nightmare Night
Immediately following the Chapbook chapter would've been a Nightmare Night chapter. By this point in time in the story, you may notice that there was increasing references establishing that the seasons were transitioning into autumn, and that was all done purely to set up (and justify, more on that in a second) for this chapter on Nightmare Night. It also would've been the first time that the oft-mentioned Fly's rival shop owner, Letterpress, played a more direct role in the story.
It would've began with Fly Leaf, Thorax, and Spike all working to help decorate the shop for the Nightmare Night festivities when Letterpress comes to check out and critique her competitions decorations, as the two have had a long standing rivalry trying to outdo the other's holiday decorations. Letterpress, being a very stuck-up pony, quickly finds a great deal to critique and to gloat about how her shop's decorations were better, and nobody but her is really enjoying her presence. At one point, though, the conversation falls upon a display of Nightmare Night costumes Fly was selling for the holiday, Letterpress noting that it was a changeling costume, and that she didn't find it convincing. In the ensuing conversation, it is revealed that Letterpress had happened to be in Canterlot at the time of the changeling invasion, and had, ever since then, been terrified of changelings, but also could tell the real thing from the fake. This abruptly gives Spike an idea, as he happens to know a real changeling, and, getting real fed up with Letterpress and wanting to get even, goes to Thorax with the idea that they use him to prank her. Thorax, wisely, sees all the different ways that could end badly for them, and rejects the idea immediately...until Spike, as part of the continuing conversation, mentions to Letterpress that he thought Thornton (Thorax) could make a good changeling, an idea Letterpress immediately starts to mock in such a way that it offends Thorax's pride as a changeling, and suddenly he's singing a different song now, all too eager to do the prank Spike proposes. So they get to work.
Meanwhile, Fly Leaf reluctantly gets roped into joining Letterpress in returning to her own shop, so to see Letterpress's "superior" decorations, Fly leaving Spike and Thorax in charge of the shop in the meantime. When the two mares come back to Fly's shop later that evening, they find the shop unexpectedly quiet and dark save for an eerie green glow in the front room, giving the shop the appearance that it had closed for the evening. This surprises Fly, as Spike and Thorax were supposed to keep it open late so to hand out candy. Going to investigate then, they enter through the front door and find, inside, a series of changeling cocoons hanging from the ceiling containing caught Nightmare Night trick-or-treaters, with the foremost one containing an implied freshly caught Spike, as his cocoon is receiving some finishing touches from a totally undisguised Thorax who, playing the part, sees the two mares enter and aggressively jumps down and approaches menacingly, hissing at Letterpress in the changeling language, "valde crassa es" (being translated, "you are very fat").
Well, sufficing to say, Letterpress absolutely flips out at this, and, completely buying it hook, line, and sinker, she flees in terror, accidentally shoving Fly Leaf into a nearby shrub in the process, and goes galloping on up the street, screaming her head off. Fly then liberates herself from the shrub and pokes her head back into the shop to see Thorax has already restored his disguise as Thornton, and he and Spike and cheekily waving at her. Fly, understanding, declares "I don't know how you did this, but you two are so getting raises!" before running, amused, after Letterpress, to make sure she doesn't do anything rash. A little while later, Letterpress comes back with the highly skeptical police in tow to Fly's shop, to show them the changeling that had supposedly taken it over, but when entering the shop this time, find everything had been restored back to the way it was before, with Spike trying to help Thorax (disguised as Thornton) into one of the changeling costumes Letterpress had been criticizing just earlier that same evening.
Obviously, the police are not amused by all of this, thinking Letterpress had just wasted their time, and won't listen to her further. Letterpress, meanwhile, realizes she's just been pranked, and, outraged, swears to sue Fly and crew...a threat that never comes to pass, as Letterpress shortly finds there's no lawyer in town willing to take her case. So she instead decides to "punish" Fly and crew by not coming to visit Fly's shop anymore, which, of course, is only an added bonus for Fly and company. Meanwhile, Fly, not interested in knowing how Spike and Thorax pulled it all off, as she didn't want the "intrigue" of it all ruined, makes good on her promise and gives the two a raise.
This chapter got cut because, fun as it was, it wasn't important to the overall story in any way, but also because I just couldn't justify it in my mind. I was probably thinking too hard about it, but as there is no point in the space of time between "The Times They're a Changeling" and "To Where and Back Again" where it is established a Nightmare Night could've taken place, or even if autumn had rolled around during that time. And despite bending over backwards to find ways to justify it and having the fact that it was an AU story anyway, granting me a little wiggle room, I was certain someone was going to call me out on it. So at last, I decided it was a chapter that wasn't worth the trouble doing.
Still, it's the cut chapter I look back on the most, the one I still would've liked to do the most. This past Halloween, I thought about adapting it into a separate one-shot to do instead, but only didn't because I couldn't keep it in the "Grief" universe as that required too much backstory first, but separating it from it also felt like it ruined some the appeal.
After this point, all the remaining deleted scenes are comparatively much more minor, composed of only a few paragraphs of lost text or less, so as this blog has already gotten waaaay long and having doubts that many of you would really be that interested in the littler stuff, we'll end it there.
But hopefully you enjoyed this long-winded, but insightful, look at a few ideas that got cut out from "Grief is the Price We Pay." 
That Nightmare Night one would have been a fun addition. LOVE this story!!!
Warning, guys. Apparently this post has spoilers.
Are you kidding? I would've loved to see some of these! Justified or not. A lot of your alternate ideas sound like they could be really intriguing if they had been the final versions, but I also see your justifications in not sticking with them, and they're good ones. One the other hand, not everyone will agree with me on this, but I think sometimes it's nice to have a little fluff or filler, so that Nightmare Night chapter would've been really fun to read. Either way, I really enjoyed "Grief," so I have no complaints.
Uuuuuuugggghhhh. You put so much work into it and I feel guilty for not finishing the last 6 chapters!
I have to ask, is Spike under a mind-spell by Luna or some other pony? Because his actions in the end of the story don't entirely make sense.
She orders him ti give up his emotions and forgive twilight because he apparently has bo right to be upset Thorax is dead, and if he doesn't he's as bad qs Nightmare Moon. And later he not only apologized to Twilight, he admitted she was right. Why would he forsake Thorax? It's confusing, contradictory, and feels like a forced resolution. Aside from that I loved the story but I have no idea what the hell is up with Spike in the end because it looks like he just gives up on Thorax.
5011013
The answer is not a simple one, and I've already attempted to explain points like this over in the comments of the story itself before, and I'd probably just end up repeating myself there. Either way, I feel this probably isn't the best place to get too in depth in it again.
I will say that if that's the interpretation you got out of that scene, then it looks to me you're only looking at it in a very basic, and maybe somewhat too literal, face-value, as that was not what Luna was attempting to say at all, nor was it the message I, the writer, was trying to convey at any time in the story.
Further, Spike absolutely does not "give up" on Thorax, and would be extremely offended at anyone even hinting that he had.
All I choose to take away from this post is that you had the opportunity of not ruining the story by opting against not going through will killing Thorax, and yet you did it anyway. You willingly admitted to making the story shit. Good hustle.
5021774
Well, I never made you read it--the blog post or the story. So... *shrugs*
Man, if you'd had Spike die instead, I would have been all like...
Seriously, that would have been an amazing way for him to prove his sincere friendship to Thorax. Dying to save his friend. What an amazing, gut punchy way to prove that to Twilight.
Of course, given how much of a Joseph McCarthy she'd been up to that point, I get the feeling she'd just go, "Oh, evil thorax made him throw himself in front of him as a shield! He evil!"
See, that's why I have a love/hate relationship with that story. It's a beautiful, masterfully written story, one of the best this fandom has ever produced...but it made me hate Twilight and everyone in her family. I love Twilight. She's my second favorite pony on the whole show. I love Twi. I don't want to hate her.
And you wrote her in such a way that I couldn't help it.
Every time I read this story and saw how far she was descending...it burned me up. I really felt grief that this nerdy, fun-loving bookworm was turning into a paranoid witch-hunter, and there was nothing anypony could do to stop her. I wanted to tear a hole in the fourth wall and tell her "Stop. This isn't right."
It hurt. It really did.
Do you know how many authors can actually make me hurt? It's a real feat, given all the books and movies I've seen. I've watched the most beautiful ship in Sci-Fi history get blasted to pieces. I've seen the King of the Monsters die from a nuclear meltdown, the only one of his kind, totally alone. I've seen a mother send her youngest son down a river to save him from death, never knowing if he'll even live to maybe see her again.
These are some of the saddest moments I have ever seen in fiction...and you managed to write something that goes right up there along with them.
And I don't hate you for that. It means you did a good job of writing.
Thanks for sharing these ideas.
5056667
First of all: You're darn right the TMP refit Enterprise is the most beautiful ship in sci-fi history, and don't you forget it!
Precisely a large part of why I even considered the idea in the first place. But as I note in the blog, I felt it'd be an unrecoverable blow to Twilight, because how can you make amends to someone if that someone is dead? Granted, she still faced that issue with Thorax dying, but in "Grief," she never really gave herself the chance to know him. Spike, however, is family to her, so the blow would've been extremely more personal, and I just couldn't see a way for her to overcome that, no way for her to have any hope of forgiving herself for letting it happen, and I felt that was just too much of a downer an ending for a story I knew was already going to be a bit of a downer no matter what anyway. To say nothing of how Thorax would've dealt with it (I just can't picturing him taking it well).
Still...I do look at that idea and think "what if?" from time to time. It's interesting to think about some of the possibilities.
5056880
*realizes there's another Trek watcher on this site*
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Yeah, the refit Enterprise really is a thing of beauty. She was my earliest memory of Star Trek, as a matter of fact. I still remember watching The Motion Picture with my parents when I was just three years old. People can criticize that movie's slow pace all the want, but I was blown away when I first saw it. Especially by Enterprise. TOS may have created her, but it was TMP that made her truly gave her a place in my heart.
I just can't find that same feeling for the other Enterprises. Not even the A. It just feels like a cheap knockoff, for some reason.
The only one that comes close to giving me that feeling–and I'm probably gonna sound like an absolute heretic when I say this–is the Kelvin Timeline Enterprise from the reboot trilogy. A lot of Trekkies like to criticize that design, but I've always had a soft spot for it. There's just something about it that reminds me of that beautiful ship I saw all those years ago. The white aztec hull, the shape of the saucer, the phaser turrets, the impulse engines, even the slants on the nacelle hoods–they all remind me of the TMP refit. There's a reassuring familiarity that I get whenever I look at it. Like it's saying that the TMP refit I fell in love with may be gone...but not forgotten. Not so long as we remember her.
Boy, this went on a lot longer than I had intended.
5056911
What, all the constant references to a certain "Sky Trek" that had entries that all seemed to fairly accurately parallel actual episodes of Star Trek, scattered almost all throughout "Grief," didn't clue you in?
I will give the Motion Picture props for its special effects. Even by today's standards (maybe especially by today's standards, considering they didn't have the benefits of CGI back then), some of those special effects are pretty wowing.
Pity the plot they chose to go with them was a little...lacking. 
But at least they made up for it in Wrath of Khan (my personal favorite).
I actually don't mind the Kelvin timeline Enterprise (or the reboots themselves, for that matter) much either. My really only real gripe about it is how the warp nacelles always felt like they're too close together.