When I first write a story, I have what I call the 0th draft or the mental draft... the planning I do in my head before I ever set it to paper. This mental first draft can either go on for weeks, especially if that story is based off events that I just need to put to paper (the DragonClan and Hearts Of Gold trilogies), or months (the initial concept of Extraordinary, The Cities Have Fallen) to years (Double Rainbow, lategame events for Broken Souls, etc.). In the time this takes the entire story can change radically and the final product is often unidentifiable with the original concept.

For good reason to, especially because these first drafts are usually... less than polished, especially with The Cities Have Fallen, which was a story I wrote to get over some personal issues (that REALLY tainted the book at first). Others were just plain bizarre, especially Double Rainbow, which was basically the last stretch of Dreamland canon that I roleplayed out in real life with close friends (no seriously I basically lived Dreamland for eight years). 

Before I get to the actual art, here's some trivia on mental drafts and things I changed over the years. If you aren't familiar with these stories, feel free to just scroll down, but those of you familiar with my works will probably get a kick out of this.

Hearts of Gold trilogy

-Lilly's Y Nuzlocke was originally a Black Nuzlocke. 

-There have been 5 if not more separate HeartGold and SoulSilver runs I played for Broken Souls but either failed or gave up on. 

-There were several more heavily reference-y characters that I cut because I realized that reference characters are gimmicky and sound juvenile.

-Reginae's original names included Salad and Basil. I could not decide on what to name the Chikorita.

-I've caught multiple shinies in my nuzlocking career (a Woobat and a Drowzee). One was reset over and the other was never used and thus never mentioned. 

-I had to cut several characters out of Second Chances because five filler Pokemon died in a row. Yeah... that's why Lilly kept not filling that sixth slot in...

-The original worldbuilding from Hearts of Gold has been written over too many times to count mainly because Ashley was a petty mary sue and the concept was just recycled from other nuzlockes.

-Toxis and Dill were not a couple in the original story. In fact, they were just incredibly boring and spent most of their time in the background grinding. Or were they?

-Chrona actually died to the last Pokemon of the Elite Four.

-Nico also died in-game.

-I cut the entire Elite Four because it was going to be incredibly tedious and boring to write and read. 

Double Rainbow Universe

-Gash was originally Torch's dad and Dark Rainbow murdered him.

-Dark Rainbow originally was slowly converted over to the good guys mainly because she wanted Torch to like her and kept stalking him.

-The wolf world was originally had cats instead. Cats with powers. No it wasn't the Activity we literally had five different cat-based worlds and all five of them were connected due to interdimensional rifts, several apocalypses, and animal control. Let's be serious here, the original Dreamland canon is a fanfiction clusterfuck. 

-Dark Rainbow also killed Marcecee (you might remember her from the last chapter but she was also a lot more important once upon a time) because Marcecee knew about her origins in said cat world and kept urging her to go back. She threatened to tell Torch as well.

-In a later mental draft when Dark Rainbow was considering staying in that world she ends up going back to Dreamland not because the future has her friends dying but because Torch ends up with Avery.

-The original also had no clear ending. It just went on and on and on and on basically forever with small missions and several important side characters who will probably never be in anything now, namingly Petal, the renegade squad, Marcecee, and Calypseleen. 

-Dark Rainbow also had several children with Torch.

-Avery and Spritz do nothing, unsurprisingly.

-In the original The Cities Have Fallen, there are no Lira City Defenders and no apocalypse. It was really just a story all based around building up to a climax where Rena murders Gale. That was it.

-Later once the concept for the LCD and the actual book was better established both Kairu and Blossom had more significant roles. Blossom also died.

-Verhamera's Horns were originally only a thing the Princess had. 

-Lotus and Vivian were not planned to be a couple. They just really, really worked.

-The last bit of the book with the dimension travelling was basically the whole legend that is mentioned in canon to Avery and the others because The Princess and Natrina had to lie about so much of the rest to keep it under wraps. This was originally also almost the whole book but the other dimensions were more interesting. God I regret everything.

DragonClan Trilogy

-A lot of characters and details were cut from the plot because they made no sense or derailed the story. This is because of the nature of RP, so I'll just be listing the bigger ones.

-The original Ashleap's Fall went through Rushcall's whole life  with her kits and her eventual death in the tunnels. All of that was pointless and added nothing to the moral or the plot. 

-In Thin Ice Icestar went on to have three different mates, although this was cut because I ended at her leadership. Make of that what you will. 

-Phoenixstar canonically dies the same way Moonstar did, by flipping off her deputy and charging into a life threatening situation. In her case this was fire. I couldn't fit this into the book.

-The original prophecy was changed in Vengeance five times because we couldn't find anyone on clash to be the second guy. Hence Ripplefoot.

-The fox is canonically real in Vengeance and Thin Ice but not in Ashleap's Fall. The former two are technically set in a different dimension from the third and all three are on a different timeline than canon, where demons still go around and murder babies because plox. 

-There wasn't just one break off clan in the roleplay Thin Ice was based off of. There were at least five. They all died within five days so I saw no reason to mention them.

Now, onto some art... a lot of characters of mine get cut or changed radically (what if I told you that Marie used to be a dragon?) so I thought I'd mention some older ones who never made it back into anything.

Stripes was one of my oldest OCs. I mean really, really, really old. Kindergarten, actually. He was my only cat besides Snapper for about three years when I got into Warriors and his whole personality was basically the street-smart bad boy. He would usually appear in stories I had based off dreams or just kind of pop in and out of books in the background because he could. I'm guessing if I fit him into current canon he would be a Felis who lives on the streets, will eat anything, and uses his extremely enhanced senses and physical abilities to jump into/sleep in unconventional places to spite Canis-centric society.

Asha and Avata are both basically two sides of the same coin, but I decided to draw Asha because she has more of a personality. Her story is basically that in sixth grade a friend of mine wrote this fantasy story that was really zany and at times hilarious but the real kicker was that he just nonchalantly threw in the names of people we knew and the result was enough to make you scream internally (another terrible inside joke). So my friends would conduct readings of it like it was a holy text and eventually we made a story called Something Else which was a Dreamland crossover which was basically just us... BUT WITH DOGS! The real twist was that the villain was being manipulated by the person everyone THOUGHT was the villain who was being manipulated by the first person, the whole school library blows up, there's an entire chapter detailing the history of certain internet memes, and it ends with almost everyone dead or in a coma. It was really just the dumbest project I ever worked on but we had fun and I ended up with a really cool design for "my" key partner (they're called auspexes now but whatever), Asha. It's funny because I actually already had a character to fill this role but Rena didn't want her name on this. 

Solar Flare was one of the characters from The Cities Have Fallen who got cut just because we literally had another Canira named Flare and she did nothing anyways. Her only real personality was a ton of floof.

Calypseleen is in the middle age where she's kind of old but isn't really ancient yet, seeing as she became relevant around the end of Dreamland's second canon (new Dreamland). She was originally Nethera's second-in-command and later an escaped experiment who travels between worlds, but I can guarantee she doesn't give a damn about her backstory. Think of her like a proto-Orcafin- while she had no companions she did her thing before Orcafin even was a thing and thus deserves some sort of credit.

A lot of her backstory in detail revolves around the angels-seraph battle and some questions tied to where an artificial creature really belongs in the multiverse at large, seeing as she's not obligated to fight for any side. However, she mainly sides with the seraphs because like them she is chaotic by default. Where life exists, chaos and impossibility naturally spring up. The mere existence of life creates basically infinite possibilities and not all of them can really be considered 'good'. How much chaos should be accepted in a society, given that a totally ordered life (such as that of the Obsidians, which is controlled by a methodical hivemind) isn't really life at all, but merely existing? Is life defaultly good or evil, given that if we didn't exist the universe at large would remain basically unchanged? Angels also contradictorily owe their existence to life, which often creates the paradoxical scenarios that create them to begin with, although their only job is to restore order. Given that, are angels really living? What about after they're free?

Well that was something :V

Do any of you have any characters who got cut or you don't use anymore? How do you envision their stories have changed since you last worked with them? Leave a comment because my crippling loneliness insists so!