Director's cut: Caught and Punished, chapters 7 & 8

As I said in the chapter 6 director's cut, 2 chapters will be talked about in the same blog, instead of one per blog. If a chapter has a lot of changes and edits, I may make it a blog on its own.

Anyway, I'll start with chapter 7.

First, chapter 7 is something of a momentous chapter. This is where I start entering uncharted territory, as far as this story goes. Chapters 5 and 6 were primarily finishing what the first chapters Donnnnn started: Starlight getting the rest of the mane 6 to forgive her and get the magic suppression ring off her horn. Now with it off, and Starlight's now a free mare, the story enters a new "arc" so to speak. In fact, chapter 6 could have even potentially been the last chapter, and chapter 7 could have been the first chapter of a sequel. I would have been more likely to do it, if not for the fact that I would have only written two new chapters for this story if I did.

But more on chapter 7. I thought this was a good place to bring up some stuff about Sam. The prologue and chapters 1-6 didn't really do this too much. Now, because Sam is an OC created by Don, I run anything that I come up for Sam, especially anything that happened before the events of the story (I.E. his backstory) to Don. This also presents a challenge for me that I don't have in stories with my human OC Eric Reed, since I created him. I've written a couple of chapters of Don's "Romantic Mischief" story and even helped co-write his "A Day in the Life" story, both use another human OC he created, Jake Taylor, so I already have some experience writing an OC I didn't create: I even used a first-person narration with Jake too.

But moving on, dealing with Spike's crush on Starlight. Now, say or think "Oh, I gotta deal with this now" in a deadpan voice. That will be a surprisingly accurate reaction to what my reaction was when that realization sank in; it happened sometime when I was still working on chapter 6. I could have just let it play out similar to how the show handles his crush on Rarity -- they don't and it just stays a little side thing. But I elected to actually address it, which started in chapter 7 with Sam and Spike's conversation, and it also addressed his crush on Rarity at the same time. He's ready to move on.

As far as edits go, there were no noteworthy edits done in chapter 7 during editing...that's in the final version. The little scene with Starlight showing off her magic to Sam was taken out for a brief time, but I later put it back in.

Now, chapter 8. As you may be noticed, nothing too big happened overall. That is partly because this, and even chapter 7, is more to help hint and set up the bigger things that are coming, but I couldn't just jump it to it right away. This is stuff I really should have did in my "When Dating a Sunset..." story more, and especially in my "A Giant Adventure to Equestria". The latter I really rushed through, partly because of inexperience in writing. Even after I later added two chapters in-between the existing chapters to help, it still feels like it went too fast.

About Sam's reaction to Starlight asking for a hayburger. I've read HiE stories where ponies react to humans eating meat (one guess how they tend to more or less be like) but it seems far less common to see the humans react to the ponies eating like...ponies or even remark on it. In many ways, the ponies in MLP:FIM are like humans. That made me think to have a "furry reminder" moment here and have Sam comment on it.

As for changes in editing, unlike chapter 7, there are some noteworthy edits.

First is the one-week time skip. Sometime after this chapter was written (but not edited yet) I truly noticed that only 2 days had passed from the prologue to chapter 8. That made me feel it was time for a time skip, so I later edited chapter 8 to have a time skip happen early in it.

Second, Sam having a new table. This was an edit change that I did around the same time I added the time skip. This is a little embarrassing to admit, but I actually forgot that he asked Applejack to build him a new one in chapter 3. This is more of a side effect of this being a story I didn't start.

Third, Rainbow telling Sam to warn her when he's about to snap his fingers. This was something added in editing: Don had the idea for that.

Fourth, Sam saying that he got Twilight to tell him what happened when she was trying to learn about how Pinkie's "Pinkie Sense" work. This was added during editing and that was something I almost forgot, but this time I can't use the same excuse as I did for forgetting about Sam's table. The Pinkie Sense situation being brought up was an idea of mine. I didn't think it was necessary to "show" the scene, so I just had it summarized.

There's one more noteworthy edit, but it's too soon to say what it is: it'll be in a future director's cut.

Comments

[TheHardie-Boy]

Jake Locker? Really? And you called me Dan, too!

[ThePinkedWonder]

5210942

Corrected, and I don't know where Locker came from. I did know that something didn't feel right about it.