The future of warfare in UC.
- cringe and cue anxiety*
Not to say Fan Fic is bad. I just don't write fanfic. I love reading it, don't get me wrong, I just can never write it very well. Just, Fan Fic isn't my calling in writing and-uh...
- sits in corner muttering about how he always says stupid things*
Unless you were literally doing "Harry Potter in America", "derivative" would have been a better term anyway.
edited 19th Jan '14 6:15:35 PM by nrjxll
Blowout soon fellow Stalker
Eh, my first written piece was an awful fanfic.
Forgot where it is actually, probably lurking in the forgotten corners of Fanfiction.net somewheres
Oh really when?
I've noticed before that there does seem to be a very common pattern among writers on this forum of having originally come to the craft by writing a stereotypically-terrible fanfic. I didn't, but that's mostly because I've never had much interest in fanfiction to begin with.
Personally, I don't really believe in the concept of an "Old Shame". I tend to cringe to some degree at everything I've written that dates back more than two or three years, but I still learned positive lessons from all of those works and have no real regrets about creating them.
edited 19th Jan '14 6:24:08 PM by nrjxll
I recall having ideas for what most would call fanfic long before I even knew what fanfic was. (I was eight.) I also remember thinking I was the first one to come up with the whole concept of fanfic before finding out that people have been writing it as long as there has been fiction.
That being said, for much of my writing 'career', I wasn't one for actually writing anything until I came here, to Writer's Block. Unless you count my entry for one of the TV Tropes Writing Contests (which got third-to-last place), I still haven't written a complete work.
In fact, in roughly a month, I will have been here for four years. How time flies, heh.
"Jack, you have debauched my sloth."
Wrote it when I was like 9. It was saved on an old 2003 Windows XP PC and I had no desire to keep it alive any longer than it had to be.
It was about a boat race on the Nile River and good God was it awful.
ok boomer
For the record, the first fiction I'm aware of having created was a series of drawings I did when I was five that I called "Ant Wars", which were basically World War II with technicolor anthropomorphic ants.
Hell no.
Apparition in the Woods
I have a habit of cannibalising good ideas from my most embarrassing early work when I figure that I can do them justice later, but a lot of it was indeed thinly-veiled low-quality fanfic... before I actually knew that fanfic was a thing, in some cases. I did write actual fanfic, too, which was a lot better.
I also have some really angsty middle school poetry lying around from back when I was really obsessed with Ligotti's verse work yet lacked the technical skill and self-awareness to emulate that style successfully.
I'll hide your name inside a word and paint your eyes with false perception.
Well, my first story I wrote when I was seven years old.
"Raaaagh!" At the Planet Of Darkness Black roared in rage, "I can't believe I was defeated again! Raaagh! But this time I will not fail no this time I will win! Troops of darkness arise!"
Black piloted his spaceship to Earth S. On Earth S people were minding their own business, when suddenly a laser beam shot out killing one hundred people. Then out of the sky came Black's army and Black himself. Black and his army started to attack, killing every person that they saw. Suddenly a blue laser beam came out of nowhere killing twenty of Black's troops, and then Ader appeared, destroying two hundred more of his troops.
Suddenly there stood Super Shae and his team.
"Hey guys! You get Black's Army. Ader and I will fight Black and Red" said Super Shae.
"Okay" said Soder.
(*Cue Power Rangers Theme*)
(Sorry, couldn't resist 
)
Super Shae jumped off the roof and ran right towards Black and Red with Ader right behind him.
"So," Black said. "Now I can destroy you!" And suddenly they were at the Planet of Darkness. Black slashed at Super Shae but Ader blocked the attack, and turned and slashed Red. Red was angry and started to fight Ader. Super Shae started to fight Black, but Black slashed Super Shae injuring him badly and held up his stag sword of darkness ready to destroy him.
Meanwhile Ader was in trouble. Red had knocked him off a cliff and was ready to destroy him. But Ader jumped up and slashed Red destroying him. Black slashed at Super Shae. But Super Shae blocked the attack and shouted "Super turbo power!" And jumped behind Black. Black turned around but he was too late. Super Shae slashed Black in the neck destroying him.
Back at Earth S all of Black's troops had been destroyed. Suddenly Super Shae and Ader appeared. Super Shae and his team went back too their base. They had destroyed Black for now.
THE END.
edited 20th Jan '14 3:52:52 AM by Lunacorva
The best and the worst.
I would post mine, but it has been wiped from the face of the Internet.
Me and my friend's collaborative webcomic: Forged Men
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
That's a fair bit better than my prose was at seven. More complete sentences, at least.
Anyway, the first bad thing I remember writing for the internet - at about ten or eleven, I think - was a crappy Cadfael fanfic. The dialogue and prose were awful and I had absolutely no idea what the plot was going to be, except that it had something to do with a dead body on a horse. Luckily, it never got online. It's still somewhere on my hard drive, but I don't know if I'm brave enough to post it.
edited 20th Jan '14 8:47:52 AM by NolanRBurke
Mine involved a four-man group of swordsmen with powers based on the classical elements. Yes, it was painfully generic.
The future of warfare in UC.
Ironically, I'm actually quite proud of my oldest remaining story, Letting Go.
Anything earlier is lost to the ages and I don't remember it very well either.
Nous restons ici.
Making Unicorns Cool Again Since 2010
I once wrote a story where the main character finds out he's the long-lost heir to the throne of a kingdom of fire elementals. It didn't go very well, though. It had more pop culture references than even Seth MacFarlane could handle, and it had an embarrassingly large number of angry moments; it was written during my “moody ungrateful teenager” phase. One of these days I'm going to rewrite that story.
Princess Aurora is underrated, pass it on.
Drummer Boy
Oh boy, I haven't had a chance to torture anyone with these excerpts in ages! Most of my earliest writing was destroyed when my computer crashed in seventh grade. This is from eighth grade. But you'll still need medical attention when you're done.
I was walking in the woods, even though I didn't know them well yet. Soon enough, I was lost and it was raining. I saw the cave that had been dug in the side of the large hill near the village years ago for a reason that no one remembered. I ducked inside, curled up on the floor, and fell asleep.
In the dream, I was in a large garden full of flowers and trees, the sort of place that should be nice but it gave me the same feeling I got when I walked around the village cemetery. I stood next to a willow tree and a brook with a rosebush growing in front of me. Nearby was a huge castle. I had to look up so far to see the tallest tower that I almost fell over into the brook. A raindrop fell into my eye. More came, and within a few minutes there was a raging storm. It should've been very cold, but cold made me feel good. I didn't know why at the time.
I heard someone crying. A boy. I peeked around the rosebush and saw him, curled in a ball on the grass, sobbing. I wasn't sure if I should feel sorry for him or be ticked off. A kid that looks so well-off and still has a reason to cry must either be extremely spoiled or has a heck of a lot of trouble on his mind.
"Why are you crying?" I asked.
He sniffed a few times before he could answer with an attempt at an angry voice. It came out more like he was frightened out of his skin. "Why do you want to know?"
That got me really mad for some reason. Sure, the poor kid was crying, but I didn't give him much mercy. I kicked him and screamed, "I DON'T KNOW, MAYBE I CARE! AND LOOK AT ME WHEN I'M TALKING TO YOU!"
He lifted his head up, looked at me for one second, curled back in a ball, and started crying again, only a lot harder. Was I that scary?
"All right, I'm sorry," I muttered as I drop to my knees and try to get his face out of the mud. He shrank when I touched him. "Come on. Don't get yourself dirty, because then you'll have to clean yourself up."
"I'm filth anyway!"
"Who said that? What told you that you were filth?"
"My—my sister.”
"And what made her say that?"
"It was when I was born… my mother died a few minutes after… and my siblings hate me for taking her away—“
And of course, mean little me had to pound his head in. "You—freaking—idiot! That wasn't your fault! Get a grip on yourself! If they call you filth for that, then they're the filth! You got that, stupid?"
I grabbed his collar and yanked him up. He forced himself to look into my eyes. Tears were still streaming, but his breath had steadied.
"Great. See you around." I dropped him and woke up back in the cave.
The next day, I tried to go back, but that stupid hill never seemed to get any nearer. Probably because life is strange that way and I was actually aiming for it this time. This time, I ran into my mother. She was tracking some animal, with an arrow notched to the string of her bow. She looked depressed, like she usually did when she thought no one was looking. The funny thing is, she never knows if someone else is staring. I'm the only one that ever gets caught.
"What are you doing so far in the woods?" she asked me wearily.
I pointed to the far-off hill. "I'm going there."
"Why?"
I pretended I didn't hear her, but I had a funny feeling she knew.
Finally, I did make it there. I closed my eyes. The garden came back. I was standing in the same place. I could see the boy napping under the shade of the willow tree, so I sat down next to him and waited for him to wake up. It only took a few minutes.
"Oh. It's you again." He stretched and propped himself up against the trunk of the tree. "Mind you, I'm going to keep those bruises a while."
"Are you trying to make me feel guilty?"
"Maybe."
"You won't."
"Who are you anyway?" he demanded. "I never seen you anywhere around before, and commoners can't get in through the gate. Are you a servant that just got hired yesterday or something? Because if you are, I could fire you right now for hitting me like that. Besides, you dress funny."
"None of the above," I said smugly. "I live on a farm in Daretsford. It's way up north. You must have heard of it. After all, you tax it."
"I don't do any of the taxing," the boy yawned. "The snotty old people in the court do it. And my brother and two sisters are learning how. So there. And I'll never have to do any of the taxing, because I'm the youngest and I'll never succeed anybody. I'll probably buy an estate far away from here so nobody can bother me, grow a garden just as nice as this one, and avoid going to court as much as possible. It sounds horrible, you know. And I don't know if I can live with the guilt of taxing people. I don't understand it. Why do people have to be taxed?"
"Because the government is a pile of fat pigs?" I suggested.
"I hope I'm not going end up like that, because I'm technically part of it," he said unhappily. "Still, like I said, I probably won't get around to doing very much."
"That's nice."
We sat in silence for a little while. Then, he asked the question that I wanted answered myself, except I wasn't the one that could. "How do you get here?"
"I don't know. I just fall asleep or close my eyes or something in this cave that's been carved out of this big hill. It's really strange. Nobody knows why it's there anymore."
I saw it in my head for a second and the boy shrieked. "You just faded away! What was that for?"
I shrugged. "It means I'm waking up, I think. See you tomorrow?"
"Uh… sure."
After that, I went to see him almost every day. It was odd. A few days later, we tried to sneak around the palace, but, as it turned out, we didn't need to. Nobody else could see me. I was able to watch him take lessons from a governess and I learned to read and write. I enjoyed those visits. We talked for hours on end sometimes. For some reason, we never asked each other for our names. It didn't seem important. And after six years, I saw him no more.
That girl would suddenly appear in the garden sometimes. She usually surprised me. A few times, I would check the place and find her yawning under the willow tree. She always stayed under that willow tree, unless she snuck into the palace to look over my shoulder as I did lessons. It was all right, nobody else saw her for some reason. She said she needed the cold, and in the summer, she would randomly pass out and went back to the village she said she came from. Sometimes I wondered if I was losing the sanity no one ever thought I had. But I felt her hit me that first time. I was sure of it. Even my siblings could see the bruises. To tell the truth, I was jealous of her. I was jealous of anyone that had a mother. I didn't care that she was just a farmer's girl. If poverty were happiness, I'd renounce my wealth any day.
I dropped the theory when we were about thirteen. She hadn't come in a week, and I was getting worried. Finally, she did, but she didn't look too well. The left side of her face was swelled up and she had plenty of bruises on her arms and legs.
"What happened?"
"Pop died. Some dumbass in the village got a hold of my uncle. He's beating us, especially my brother. I couldn't escape the house until today.”
She was the cutest little girl I had ever known. I wanted to protect her, but there wasn't anything I could really do. I had some sort of a plan to bring her to the palace and adopt her into my family or something. I tried going to her village, but it never worked. And nobody in the palace had ever heard of Daretsford.
"When was your village established or whatever you call it when it gets built?" I asked her.
"About fifty years ago.”
“Then why has nobody ever heard of it?”
“How should I know?”
After two months of watching her try to smile with some bruise or cut on her face, trying to drag herself here with her body banged up by her uncle to talk to me, I couldn’t take it anymore. I told her that if she couldn't come, that was fine. She didn't have to force herself. But she insisted, saying she would be too lonely.
When she told me that, I realized that I'd be pretty lonely too. My two sisters resented me. My brother was busy with combat training and had no more time for me. Even when he did, I preferred the time I spent with that girl. I could deny it no longer. I liked her more than I would admit, and in a different way that I probably never could admit. Sure, we were just kids, but somehow, it happened. It just did.
But I eventually did admit it. She came on a hot summer's day, stumbling around with a red face and a fresh cut on her forehead. Before I could lose my resolve, I grabbed her shoulders.
"Listen, we're going to make a promise."
"Uh-huh," she mumbled.
"When I turn eighteen, you come here to Argon and meet me right here. I just said you're going to, so you can open the gate by yourself. I'll convince everyone to let us get married even though I'm out of your league, because I wouldn't care if you were a street beggar! I love you!"
"Sure," she groaned, and lost consciousness. A few seconds later, she was gone. And that was the last time I ever saw her.
The day after that, my siblings told me we were leaving the palace. We went to the forest where the elves lived, and told the Resistance against the king the truth: it wasn't the king's fault. There were hell demons on the loose.
Two years later, I thought I saw her again. I was positive. She was even wearing the same style of clothes. The same black hair and grey-green eyes, but older and sadder and she never braided her hair over the shoulder like this person did.
My eldest sister had ended up leading the Resistance, and we were in her command tent when the person entered.
"Do you have an appointment?" my sister said coldly.
"Appointment?" the person sneered. Her voice was cynical, jaded, and weary. She gave no indication that she recognized me. "Since when did anyone need an actual appointment to see Little Miss 'I welcome your opinions'? Or have you dropped that?”
"Since you're here, get on with your business. Brother, please leave."
I left, but I stayed nearby to try to hear. Unfortunately, they spoke quietly. I heard nothing. When the visitor stormed out, I stopped her.
"I know what you're thinking," she said shortly. "But I am not the person you seek."
"Will I see her again?" I asked, my mouth dry.
"Yes. A little nap for you, fifty years for the world."
She disappeared in a swirl of snow.
I know it's all but pointless, but like I did every day for the past (nearly) three years, I wake up early so I can get to the cave before I waste time that I could have used hunting.
My little brother snuck in my bed again. Little pervert. Then again, he's only nine, so I can make some allowances for now. I pry his arms from my midsection and get out of bed without disturbing him. He still has about another hour of sleep left before I have to take forceful action, lucky bastard. I pull my pillow over his face, change clothes, remove the pillow, take my mother's old bow and quiver of arrows off my table, restring the bow, and jump out the open window.
Yes, I can do stuff like jumping off the second level of my house without killing myself, not to mention walking around in the middle of the winter with just a silk tunic and a jacket. I'm strange that way. I don't know why. My mother could do crazy things at a more extreme level, but she's dead now.
Not officially dead. Just missing. But probably dead.
It's so early, the sun hasn't risen yet. It might be close by the time I go to the cave and back, but I'm not really counting on it. The path is so familiar, I could probably close my eyes and get there without bumping into a single tree.
I must be really taking my time, because the sky had gotten a good bit lighter by the time I ducked inside the cave. It hasn't changed at all. It's dark, smells like dirt, and if I stick my fist in a wall I could probably grab a worm.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see the passageway that had been there as long as this cave had, but I had never gone down it. Oh, what the hell. I've got time. I might as well use it. I squeeze through the narrow opening and look around.
If it’s possible, it's probably even darker in here. I could kind of sense open space where there were other passages. I wonder how bad it would be if I got lost. I guess if I keep my hand on the wall, I could probably make it back out, so I trail my fingers across it as I walk straight ahead. Even though my eyes are somewhat adjusted to the dark now, it's still hard to tell where I'm going.
My hand feels emptiness, which means there's on an opening on my left. I turn and sigh. Maybe I should just leave, get a lantern, and come back. For a few more minutes, I aimlessly wander until I bump into a dirt wall, causing a bit to fall on my head. Brushing it off impatiently, I glance around.
There's light at the end of the passageway to the right. It seems to come from inside another little cave and flickers, like a fire. Torchlight?
Well, that means someone must have been here recently. I notch an arrow to my bow. There have been rumors going around that a psycho was moving north, towards here. What if it's him that's hiding in there? Call me stupid for walking into potential danger, but I have an advantage because I can hit him from far away, maybe before he can see me first. And I can outrun almost anyone I’ve bothered to race with. Still, I won’t rule out the possibility of a little mule-headed recklessness.
I flatten myself against the right wall and slowly make my way towards the light. I can't hear a thing except my breathing. When I get to the opening, I look inside.
Two torches stuck in the wall are burning, but there isn't much else, except a small alcove and a dark, shapeless lump on it. I guess it's about the size of a person. Would that be a sleeping, psychopathic, ax-crazy murderer?
I pull back the bowstring and aim, but a thought occurs to me: what if that isn't him?
So I put the arrow back in the quiver and pull my skinning knife out of my belt, thinking that if it really is a murderer there, well, I just hope he doesn't wake up.
Yes, that's a huge problem with me. In case you haven’t noticed, I do things that I could potentially regret a whole lot without thinking. They usually end up with me either saving the day or being treated as the local idiot for about a month before it blows over. It usually does, except for the time I set fire to Horton's barn, but that's another story. Also, once I get into something and get out of it unfinished, it drives me out of my mind wondering what would've happened if I stuck to it. Some people call it stupid. Sometimes, I agree.
I take one of the torches and walk across the small cavern, taking care not to make a single sound. Then, standing over the body in the alcove, I get the shock of my life.
The same guy I came here to try and see is right here. No mistake about it. Straight, light brown hair covering his neck. Thin and sickly. Habit of leaning his head to the left. Except he looks about my age now.
I find this highly disturbing, but I guess I’m a little happy too.
“Hey! Wake up!”
edited 21st Jan '14 4:05:55 PM by SnowyFoxes
The last battle's curtains will open on stage!
Reading tropes such as You Know What You Did
Oh god, thankfully I don't have them anymore but I would write one shameless Self-Insert Fic after another with Cammy from Street Fighter, a film or game I played I would write a blatant copy of, people I don't like would be killed off. Thank god I've improved, these days it's getting ideas from any source and seeing how they can be made my own for the big project I'm hoping to get published.
Currently reading up My Rule Fu Is Stronger than Yours
positively shocking
A story about a man who went into some sort of cryostasis in a time capsule for humans, only to get dug up much later than he was supposed to without anyone realizing it.
The concept is salvageable, I guess, but the writing was awful. I might see if I can find it and post it.
The story was called Flashback. Or maybe Flashforward? The latter would make more sense.
edited 20th Jan '14 8:52:47 PM by Lyra.
"This is awful. I'm inventing electricity and you look like an asshole." - Nikola Tesla
MY EYES
Amazingly, a good chunk of my work has stood the test of time. For example, a story known as Aridius serves as a tragic deconstruction of the mythological hero's journey. However, the one big turd in the petri dish has to be Desolation. What defined the previous works was the sense of direction. Desolation was just writing for the sake of writing. While this isn't too bad, it's extremely easy for a work to lose steam. Or in this case, to completely run out of rail and roll off into a ditch.
The protagonists consist of someone so bland that I can't even remember his name so I'll just call him Blando, an uneducated hillbilly named Drit who was part of a few gags involving him being inbred or something, a mysterious warrior monk who undergoes a lot of character derailment and a bit of wangst here and there, and a somehow even more mysterious zombie cyborg samurai cowboy who only goes by the name of Dead Man Walkin'. I'm not making this up. He somehow manages to be my favorite character despite sounding like something made by a bored middle school student.
The story starts (and incidentally ended) on Desolation, a generic Wild West themed desert world with (not making this up) a skull-shaped moon populated by pirates. There, the three natives are introduced to the warrior monk (who's named Zephyr, not making this up) who's on a mission to find an ancient biomechanical construct taking the form of a beautiful woman with immense power but a tragic past, unusual hair and eye color, so beautiful it's a curse, you know the drill. Unfortunately, I didn't.
The prose was a gritty hue of purple, the plot was meandering and padded, the characters have a terrifically overpowered mech that they spend most of their time either trying to get back to, having some contrived reason for not using, or use it to improbable effectiveness, and nothing happened for a logical reason and only happened because the plot said so. In fact, this is the reason I put effort in making things have a logical purpose in the story, even if the logical purpose is because it's cool.
In retrospect, this isn't as much of an Old Shame as it should be. In fact, I'm glad it happened. I had the benefit of sending this work one chapter at a time through a close-knit writing community who unanimously declared it was shit, but in a very nice way. I'm pretty sure my work is an inside joke for them by now. They may even do dramatic readings of it for shits and giggles.
INSIDE OF YOU THERE ARE TWO WOLVES. BOTH OF THEM WANT YOU TO SHOOT ELVIS.
Trans Siberian Anarchestra (it/they)
My first story was basically "Jason brings the Argonauts back together to stop Alexander the Great from conquering the world".
I'm not sure whether that counts as fanfic or not, but it was pretty terrible - the Argonauts failed at every turn because I felt a bizarre urge to stay true to Alexander's historical route, the sirens played jazz, the Argo was a sandalpunk AI, the Symplegades were magnetic and were sensitive to the compasses in homing pigeons' brains even though no one in the story knew that, Jason never abandoned Medea because he was the best hero ever and the Greeks made that up because it wasn't a proper tragedy and Medea never killed their children in revenge because she was an awesome magic witch and they settled in Colchis and lived happily ever after... okay, I guess that probably does count as fanfic. But at least my fanfic stage was purely mythological. ![[lol]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/lol2v12_4863.png "[lol]"){kind=small}
When I was first starting out as a writer I literally sat down and rewrote Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone starring "Old Nigel". It wasn't even fanfic - I thought I was being "original". Suffice it to say, I quickly learned to be a better writer than that.
Also, a lot of the crap I wrote in high school was hypersexed drivel with very little in the way of plot.
Level 3 Social Justice Necromancer. Chaotic Good.
That's not fanfic - that's straightup awesome - as a matter of fact that could be a really great manga/anime series (but I have to admit I had a steampunk flash rather than sandalpunk one).
First I started to write a sci-fi novel, with no understanding how a book is built up. All the characters were some kind of Mary Sue (with the protagonist taking it Up To Eleven), at least I made sure there's no plot hole in the story.
After a very-very long silence I wrote a sci-fi short story for a following up novel-series. Which never happened as the short story sucked, and were a total ClichéStorm.
But I think I had some horrible poems before. And one comic which still wasn't as bad as Sonichu, but the art were similar (the horrible art education in Hungary showed it's effects, I had to basically relearn everything).
Hopefully nothing of these remained to the present.
https://soundcloud.com/shapeshiftinglizard My only shared and SFW works are these music demos, my Pixiv profile contains images that cause irreversible damage in children under 18.
Figure this'd be a very funny conversation to have; posting your 'baby pictures' as it were of your first attempts at writing.
My first attempt at writing was, to put it simply, Harry Potter in America or what a wizarding school in America would be like.
Thank god I've moved forward to much better and more original/less-fanfic stories. XD
I'm a critical person but I'm a nice guy when you get to know me. Now, I should be writing.