Basically EK and Utena started out in the exact same way, only with less ladies, and I was way embarrassed and didn't have a lot of the endgame planned, so I just ended up giving up. I would like to find the time to re-write it, but between Knightface and my Xeno endeavors and the FF7 thing I wanna do soon I've just wrapped myself up in my own red tape.
In the case of El Kat-o's 33, who started out as Raditz, he began as me RPing him 1000% out of character that it just made sense to export everyone from the big crossover exchange-diary fic universe to rest in an original series. When I was RPing him, and he started out with almost no personality in the first place, he was little more than an auto-otome character (I'd write scenes between myself and him by myself, for myself to keep my high school confidence from getting shitty). Fallen, who came out of the Hojo space, was the anti-otome figure - instead of saying stuff like "you're awesome, I love you, you're great," like I did with 33/Raditz, Fallen was on the track of "why did you do this like this? I love you but why aren't you like that? Why did you do this like that? I'm saying this for your own good, you idiot!" In the plot of El Kat-o, 33 and Fallen were going to be engaged in a fight over the main character (El Kat-o herself)'s affections, but then I watched Utena, and put El Kat-o on the shelf forever.
I think my first Attempt at filing off serial numbers was when I was writing El Kat-o. Instead of having a gigantic crossover fic starring Raditz and Hojo, it was 33 (with his hair chopped off more and more with various character redesigns) and Fallen (basically just The Way I Draw Hojo with a different occupation and Gaston's attitude).
Back in the day, I was on the edge of writing this very angsty FFX fic centering around Seymour that would have ended up seeming intensely problematic. I'm actually kinda glad that instead of just writing it as a fic, I transferred that energy into creating a series called Greg, which filed off all the serial numbers, allowed me to explore creating my own original cast instead of being chained to trying to explain my story with extraneous canon research. It also started me thinking about designing my own original pantheon of monsters, which have carried through into Knightface. Greg as a webcomic series never got past page 10, but without it, a lot of the stuff I'm doing now wouldn't have happened.
Mainly I've compartmentalized a lot of what I wanted to say about fandom in my current original project as a metaphor for how people used to view faith in the middle ages. I of course stacked on a bunch of my own high fantasy preferences on top of it. Instead of some solitary essay about what my enthusiasm for [redacted series] did to my life, I have this thriving universe that's growing into having a life of its own.


