Deleted Scenes: Love, sunshine and unicorns... · 9:38am Aug 18th, 2015
You should probably read the actual chapter before reading this post.
The following was how I had originally planned Artemis' first encounter with Shining Armor:
I sensed his panic beginning to emerge. "Oh! Don't worry, she already knows about changelings!" I assured him. "I mean, she did kind of kidnap me from the hive while everyone was gone, but she's not a bad person! I swear! Though, she was kind of lonely..."
I was levitated off of him by a light-blue aura and gently set on the nearby floor, at which point he quickly managed to get back on his feet.
He just stood there and blankly stared at me.
...
He continued staring at me.
...
...And then he stared some more.
"...Are you alright?" Cadance and I both asked at the same time in our respective languages, simultaneously taking steps towards him.
He backpedaled until he hit a wall, his worry increasing alongside mine as he clutched his head and shook it, quietly mumbling to himself. "(No, no, no, no, stop!)"
The pink alicorn approached further with a concerned expression. "(Shiny?)"
"(These... not my feelings, n-not mine...)"
Panic "(Snap out of it!)" Cadance exclai--
*Thwack*
...
...
She... she slapped him.
She hit my brother!
"HEY!!" I angrily hissed; an odd sight considering my current appearance--
Rage "(WHAT WAS THAT FOR!?)" roared my brother at Cadance, his anger matching mine as his nostrils flared with his rapid, heavy breathing.
She was rightfully startled by the shout, having leapt a few feet backwards while her wings outstretched themselves. I guessed the 'fight or flight response' was a literal thing with winged ponies.
Cadance began radiating hurt in the silence that ensued, though.
My brother's eyes widened—shockregretguilt—as I calmed down, realizing that my pink friend didn't actually mean to cause any harm.
Rewrote the scene afterwards because it just didn't feel right and messed up the mood of the story. That scene was actually one of the parts where I felt 'blocked' due to not knowing how to properly continue from there.
This next one isn't really a 'cut' as much as it was my first draft of the scene where, right after Shining Armor and Cadance left, Lara gets doubts concerning her ability to become a caretaker:
She fidgeted with her forehooves while she sat on her haunches, averting eye contact as she stared at the ground between us. "Artemis?" she asked with a quieter, softer voice than I had ever heard from her. "(Do you, think, that... that I... am I a... would I be a good... a g-good...?)" she stammered, her voice laced with hope, though at the same time she was feeling an increasing amount of anxiety.
Well, I didn't know about answering whatever she asked, but I did know about the usual easy cure for her distress.
I walked up to her, sat on my rump, brought my forelegs up, chirped, smiled and tilted my head.
She grabbed me into a tender embrace before I could even get to the chirping part.
'Works efrytim.'
It didn't completely get rid of whatever was making her feel worried though, but what mattered was that it at least helped.
She chuckled. "(Of course you want a hug. This is what I get for trying to talk with a foal...)"
While she was squeezing me a bit more than usual with her desperate hug, I noticed that the book that she was previously going to read to me was nearby.
I flailed one of my forelegs in its general direction, letting out a nondescript chirp that caught Lara's attention.
I was getting the impression that, ever since the chapter preceding this one, all I had been doing was throwing hugs left and right, and everything was happy right afterwards no matter what. Thus, I rewrote the scene, but instead of making 'Lara' immediately happy, I put in a bit more character development in there.
The following cut occurred during the 'Lunch' scene:
I brought my muzzle out of Cadance's fur to look up at her with a tilted head. "What 'hungry' mean?"
The alicorn pondered how to answer me, gaining a smile. "'Hungry' means when your (cute) little (tummy) is asking for food!" she cooed while poking my barrel, miming eating something.
Oh. Okay.
"Are you hungry?" Sparkles asked, staring at me intently as if only one answer existed for that simple question.
...Was I hungry? I still felt nowhere near full, though I wasn't too close to being empty at the same time...
"...Little," I ended up answering, forming a 'c' with my finge— oh wait, I can't do that with hooves...
Cadance stared at my outstretched foreleg in confusion before she brightened up to a whole new level. "It's okay! I'll give you all the (love) you need!" she proclaimed, tightening her hug on me with a happy nuzzle as her horn started glowing—
Whoa. That's a... lot of... love...
...Nnrgh... too... too much...!
"Uh, Cadance?"
...stop...
"Cadance!?"
Sto... p...
"CADANCE!" Sparkles shouted.
Cadance stopped doing whatever she was doing, startled as she was by the outcry.
'Mmphfgh, I can't...'
She looked down at me, noticing my grimace and how I was shaking.
'...I can't...'
Her eyes widened in worry and panic, moving her face closer to mine as she seemingly tried to figure out what went wrong—
*BLEURGH*
Cadance's entire face was suddenly covered in rainbow-tinted slime.
The entire scene was born out of an idea to essentially have Artemis 'puke rainbows' at Cadance's face, however if I had kept that scene, I'm pretty sure people would end up liking Cadance a lot less considering that what she just did maybe, probably could have fatally hurt Artemis. I was also not sure how to continue the story from there, so after hours of blankly staring at my screen, I scrapped it and started over.
This next one also occurred during the lunch scene, right after Artemis spat the glob of gel and Twilight was trying to get a sample of it:
"(Can't you just blast it like you did to release me that one time?)" Cadance asked.
"(I want to get a sample, not vaporize the entire thing!)"
"(Just ask Artemis to make more, perhaps?)" Lara suggested in-between chews.
Sparkles blinked. "Oh. (I guess that works too.)"
Her horn began charging up...
Lara's eyes widened. "Wait!"
...until Sparkles released a purple laser beam at the gel, disintegrating the sticky substance almost immediately.
She literally vaporized something in front of me. With magic. Without breaking a sweat.
I suddenly became aware of the fact that both Cadance and Sparkles were practically armed at all times and could do that to me. Anytime.
Needless to say, I didn't feel so safe anymore, and I think Sparkles noticed that once she turned to face me, only to see that I was quickly backpedalling away from her.
The sudden mood transition was just... terrible. I had to redo the scene somehow.
And, finally, I had begun writing about Twilight overreacting to the fact that changelings could 'eat emotions' sometime during the lunch scene, but I felt that she was a smart unicorn and that she had already learned her lesson (to a certain extent) from earlier adventures about trying to fully understand something 'impossible' or that 'made no sense'.
Huh. Cool.
The third one seems interesting thought, but the "official" story is going way better and i like it.