Post Your Funniest Old Shame

For the sake of humor. We all know we don't write like we did as kids anymore.

I'll go look for some now.

I remember a gigantic fight scene between various CN cartoons and South Park characters.

I was nine.

Do the math.

=P I have a terrible LOTR high-fantasy thing floating around somewhere from around third grade. I'll type it out if I get the chance, but it's not so much funny as it is eragon-style narm.

My funny old shame, which remains a euphemism among my family for "Really bad writing" was about a squirrel. Informally titled "The Squirrel Story," I'm pretty sure I disposed of it in a fit of shame several years ago.

At around fifth grade, I had a rambling, Mary Sue and Deus ex Machina filled wreck of a military fiction novel set in the future (that got to three hundred pages), with an Author Avatar and a lot of Author Filibuster s. Fortunately, i had the good sense to delete it, and it certainly taught me a lot about writing.

Funnily enough, the thing I'm working on now is also military fiction, though far closer to present and far better written. Or at least, I hope it is.

edited 9th May '10 6:04:40 PM by Morgulion

Ok, this is incomplete without the illustrations, but I took a look around for my Squirrel Story and found this instead.

The Three Tigers

5/29/02 (I was eight at the time, in second grade)

I dedicate this book to my family.

Once upon a time there lived three tigers. There was a bright orange one, a dark orange one, and a white one. The bright orange one was the only girl. Her name was Sun. The dark orange one was a boy. His name was Sunset. The white one was a boy too. His name was Moon.

They had no home because their mother had been taken away by the hunter to the castle. Their home had been destroyed also. The hunter had caught all the other animals in the forest. One day the tigers became lonely. They went looking for the castle. In a little while they came to a patch of leaves. Sun stepped on it. There was a crunch. The hunter came running. But Sun was too light for the tiger trap. Instead the hunter fell in and died. They ate him. After that they continued their journey to the castle.

Finally they found the castle. But there was a moat so they could not get into the castle. And there was no draw bridge. They found an under ground passageway. They didn't know where it went but they climbed in anyway.

They ended up in a dark dark dungeon with all the other animals. But some of the animals were too big so the alligator went with them because he could swim. The three tigers got on the alligator's back and went into the castle. They found the dungeon door but it was locked. It could only be opened by three wands that the king and queen had eaten. The tigers ate the king and queen and found the wands. They unlocked the dungeon and all the animals lived in the castle happily ever after.

They had a party and the animals were undisturbed for the rest of their lives.

It reads like a Zelda game with a plot by Calvin... I read plenty of Calvin And Hobbes as a kid, but I had never played a Zelda game or similar when I wrote it. Mysterious.

It was a school assignment (hence the corrected spelling) so I think that post happily-ever-after party was when I realized I needed one more page.

edited 9th May '10 6:01:00 PM by DaeBrayk

lol I think I just started this thread ^^

In fourth grade for English class, I wrote something like Tony Montana fighting the entire police force on the streets featuring a little cameo by Pikachu. Needless to say, it didn't go that well.

edited 9th May '10 6:52:24 PM by QQQQQ

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, the epic of Sammy the Seal.

FEAR MY DICK SNOUTS AND POINTY WATER

Lots of God Mode Sues back then in my fanfiction writing career. I realized it was badly written after re-reading them before removing them permanently. I will never see them again, in the depths of the black hole called the Old Shame Ghetto. Glad I improved over the years.

It's extremely embarrassing to think it out, so don't count on it.

edited 9th May '10 7:17:22 PM by Red-P

Is there a name for something you're sure is going to turn into an old shame, but you can't at present bring yourself to dislike it? Cuz I've got a ridiculous half-finished fanfic about the illigitimate son of an ensemble darkhorse who becomes best friends with the hero's girl, but whenever I think about it I don't get that trademark stab of embarrassment, but a vaguely reminiscent feeling and the urge to dig it up and finish it. Maybe I'll post what I've got in the Serious Business Critiques thread and see if the rest of the world can set me right.

@Dae Brayk - I'm quite sure that given the confidence and proper feedback, it won't turn into an old shame, but rather have a decent work come out of it all. Would you mind if I had a look at it, and see what I make of it actually?

I save all of mine.

Here; I swear I actually did write this in the 6th grade:

Morning on Etwin.

The outrageously loud, earsplitting beeping of a certain alarm clock on her nightstand once again rudely awakened Mina Stevens. It made her wonder why the fifteen year old had begged for it from her mother that day at the mall, anyway.

“I was insane to even look at this thing, and definitely to spend twenty dollars on it. Waste of money.” She thought, and as usual, flung it out the window. It was not worth twenty dollars at all. Not even ten cents. If she had known how annoying it was, she wouldn’t even take it for free. It wasn’t worth free. It was so irritating that it would be worth negative dollars, if such a thing were possible.

Like, if someone told her, “This alarm clock is selling for negative three billion dollars.”

She’d be like, “Seriously?”

“Of course.”

“Forget about it.”

Moments later, when Mina came downstairs in her pajamas, her mother asked her, “Mina, how in the world does your alarm clock, every morning, end up in the back yard?”

“I dunno. Strange, isn’t it?”

She tried to, in front of a nearby mirror, try to fix her brown, straight beyond all reason hair into something remotely resembling a style, but it was hopeless. Gravity, she suspected, must work harder on her hair than anything else. Of course, how obvious.

She glanced at the clock. It was exactly seven o’clock. She had so overslept. In practically seconds she had on her school uniform, had packed her lunch, and was ready to leave. One last thing. Mina dialed a few numbers on her walkie-talkie.

“Izzy? Are you there?”

After some static, the high-pitched voice of an eighteen-year-old astrophysicist answered. “Mina. It’s seven o’clock on Etwin. You’re awake. What’s wrong?”

“I need to get to school. Isn’t it Friday, according to our calendars?”

“Saturday. Sorry to disappoint you with this terrible news.”

“Not terrible. Great. Except I’m ready for school.”

“Isn’t that nice? Whatever. I was just about to call you. It’s hard to believe these things work all the way from Etwin to Ariel. Nebula and Kiara have once again appeared on the locator.”

“Serious?”

“Serious enough for you. I shall further inform you about it later. Signing off.”

Don't you want to put it out of its misery?

^^That would be great, but it's on another computer, so it might take a while. (Also, I'm not sure it's possible to have decent works come out of fanfics, but that's just me.) Have your read the Harry Potter books?

^That's not too terrible. The narrator's tone made me smile.

edited 9th May '10 8:17:05 PM by DaeBrayk

^Yes, I've read through the whole series. Really enjoy it.

(0.0) My dad might have gotten rid of the computer it was on. It was an old computer, but still. I had stuff on it.

;.;

Well, here's another. Not one of the worst, but the story was very, very silly.

This particular abyss was so long it ran over the horizon on either side.

“There is no way to cross this chasm, but there are more ways to leave it behind if the need is present than crossing it…first we must be sure that you have actually been found.” Lucas Black handed Pigeon a magnifying glass.

“I don’t think they help see things far away—“

“Except for this one.”

Pigeon took his word for it and looked through it in the direction from which he had come. Sure enough, he could clearly see a large black shape moving this way from the distance. As it came closer, it appeared that while Ygra was nowhere in sight, some other higher officers had brought at least a third of the wraiths that he had not yet sent away. Lucas softly chuckled at how comical Pip’s magnified eye looked through the other end of the glass.

“I have been found.” said Pigeon. “How am I to get by the chasm? It will do no good to go around it with what little time I have left.” “Is there not always a shortage of time when one most needs it?” “Yes.” he said without thinking. “When Ygra (one of the ones after me) was about to use oclulide poison too perfect a horrid creature she was trying to make come alive—“

“Neither is there time for your full account of it, as interesting a story as it may be. But speaking of time—“ Lucas Black did not finish his sentence, for at that moment, over the horizon came countless arrows, narrowly missing the two of them, though one was so close that Pigeon felt it fly through the top of his hair. The rest went straight into the sand, sticking up around their feet like deranged flowers. “—we have far less than I thought.” muttered Lucas. Pigeon did not know how much less he spoke of, but considering the arrows, did not much care either, as it was probably to little to matter. Oh, but it did matter. Or it would. Or it had. Well, for now it did. Then it would. Or how about it just is. Or did.

The onslaught was followed by a hundred wraiths, led by four higher officers, all four of them carrying torches and yelling “AFTER THEM!” as they cascaded over the dunes.

“Immediately!” yelled Lucas Black. “Into the time fissure! It is the only way!”

“Where?” responded Pigeon, hardly caring at this point what a time fissure was.

“Down there!” answered Lucas Black, pointing into the chasm.

“There?” Pigeon cried in horror.

“There! It is either that or them!” Lucas Black pointed to the wraiths. Pigeon ran back toward the edge.

“NO! Not there!”

Pigeon came to a screeching stop, almost falling off the edge of the chasm again. The mob came ever closer, and the wraith army readied their bows.

“There! By the red rock! The red one! Redder than that one…no, that’s green…there!”

“What if I miss it?” Pigeon yelled back.

“Trust me, you won’t!”

“What about you?”

“I’ll be fine! Just go!”

Many things then happened very quickly. Pigeon nearly stepped off the cliff, but his common notion of them caused him to automatically leap back, as he heard the sound of a hundred arrows being released from a hundred bows. But they all missed, for suddenly someone shoved him forward over the edge of the chasm, and be it Lucas Black or a higher officer thinking it would be the end of him.

He only fell for less than a second before landing painfully in the middle of a blue lit room of people he did not recognize.

The desert and Black were gone, and all eyes were on him.

And where does the chasm lead? Back in time. Yes, the whole idea of this story is "There's a bunch of time tunnels scattered around for no important reason. Some people and nebulous evil beings have fun with them." Back with more silliness soon.

[Sigh.]

Terrible Naruto fanfiction. I think if you search for an author called "Ruby Blade" or something with those words in it on fanfiction.net, you'll find my old shame.

But please don't. Please.

Schmuck Bait.

Actually, it seems as if mine isn't on there anymore.

How fortunate.

Most of my oldest stuff was acted out with twist tye people rather than written down - I recall a pretty blatant Mary Sue Self-Insert where I became a new member of the Animorphs, for example, but I never wrote that story down.

By the time I started voluntarily writing my stuff down, it had gotten fairly good, but I didn't know how to end a story so most of it's unfinished. (I'm planning to dig up my old stuff and try to finish it eventually.) So the only true OldShames I wrote would have been class assignments, which I knew were awful even as I wrote them. When I try to force writing, especially to an assigned topic, I get junk. But if I voluntarily write something down, then the basic idea is actually worth the effort even if I can't pull it off.

Some of my oldest shame date back to second or third grade I think ... Our class had a "writers in the making" project, which I gladly took part in.

The results: First a Pokémon fanfic about a girl finding an abandoned Pikachu egg, the plot mainly evolving around her dressing up the little yellow thing and accidentally evolving it into a Raichu. Yeah. I think it died in the end. The pokémon, that is.

The second was a thinly vieled rip off of a book I'd read about whales encountering the dangers of the sea. My main character wasn't a whale though, but a dragon, and his friends woodland creatures, but otherwise the stories were practically identical. Only mine was barely two pages long, compared to a full length novel. I remember, after reading the original book, telling my teacher that I liked that the whale was reunited with his friends in the end, only for her to point out that they weren't actually reunited - he died. Then I had the exact same conversation about my story with my new teacher, only the roles were reversed.

Huh. I guess I had a prefence for downer endings already back then.

edited 10th May '10 7:59:47 AM by Tjatter

harmattane's actually doesn't seem too bad for someone in 6th grade. I wrote a "novel" based on Super Mario at roughly the same age, and I'm sure it was considerably worse. (It has been lost, thankfully).

I wrote a fantasy novel in high school that's a mind-numbingly awful Marty Stu-saves the universe-gets the redheaded girl type of deal. Excerpts will not be posted.

Heh, this seems fun..

Well it's not like it counts as a old shame, I'm not ashamed of it at all. It was my first comic, had like 6 or 7 years when I made it. It was a stick figures comic called "The aventures of Starman", wich is Exactly What It Says on the Tin... And well, because I was really young, the plot was basicaly "Good guy beat the bad guys for no reason at all", and the bad guys wich where based in the elements. There wasn't any justification of why the hero was considered good or why the villians where considered evl, hell I don't remember making them want to destroy the world or something, just fight Starman for no reason at all... but well, that was my humble begining and I'm not ashamed of it...

I think my funniest old shame was about a kid who was adopted by these whale spirits, became a shapeshifting whale, fought an android version of himself, then defeated the evilest thing ever. It contained copious amounts of suck, but the funny thing about it is that the character has kind of evolved since then. For a while he was in a pretty blatant The Dark Tower rip-off, but I'm currently seeing if there's some way I can tinker with him yet again and figure out just what he's supposed to be doing. The story around him keeps changing, and his abilities have changed once or twice, but he kind of sticks around anyway.

Hmmm... I remember I once wrote a poem about a Naruto character who's Narmtastic echoes still haunt me to this day. 0_0