osprey_archer: (writing)
osprey_archer ([personal profile] osprey_archer) wrote2011-01-03 10:00 pm

Axy

I just found the best thing ever: the epic tale a friend and I wrote together in sixth grade. At least I remembered it being epic, so it's a bit of a come-down to discover that it's a mere fifteen pages long.

I have excerpted the first couple paragraphs for your delectation.

Worm and Juniper raced after Shakespeare, closely followed by four sheep. Dorcus, the evil wizard, was in hot pursuit, shrieking curses and trying to push his red hair out of his swarthy face. Worm and Juniper sprinted forward, trying to keep out of range of Dorcus’s trident –

CRASH!

Page Perfect, the boy who bunnies followed, had knocked into the sheep and Dorcus...


This beginning may raise questions in your mind. Why is an evil wizard chasing Juniper and Worm? How did the sheep get involved? Why do bunnies follow Page Perfect? What does Shakespeare have to do with anything?

Reader, these questions will never be answered. Except the one about Shakespeare. Eight pages on, it is revealed that he is a golden retriever. And, while we will never learn why the bunnies follow Page Perfect, we will discover that there are three and they are called Leaper, Harper, and Wolf the attack bunny.

But never mind! These aren't the main characters anyway. We won't meet our heroes for another half page, when Athena turns two of the sheep into black cats by setting them on fire with her magical torch. After that Juniper and Worm lie down for a nap and the cats go on a quest.

The cats never quite manage to settle on a gender. Every few paragraphs their pronouns inexplicably switch.

But anyway. The cats meet the great and terrible Zeus, (who later changes his catch phrase to "Never fear, Zeus is here!"), a steam engine who thinks he's a sea turtle, and Zila, who looks like a panda except she can hypnotize people by rotating her puffy purple ears. Also, every few paragraphs they get transported to another world by poisonous purple puffballs (experiencing, on the way, a flipping/spinning/somersaulting/twisting (sickening) sensation).

Somewhere in between the somersaulting sensations they defeat the evil Hercules II, who lives on the Twisted Stair, who is so evil that in the end his evil wizards (Dorcus, Dimmius, and Hypocrites - pronounced Hypocriteez) abandon him en masse. But fear not! Hercules II has an evilizing machine, thus setting up the grounds for the sequel.

Which never got written. Even though we left the cats literally hanging by their paws off a cliff. But don't worry! Wolf the attack bunny was still free to save them!

...Okay, on a purely sentence level the tale is kind of awful. But I'm totally proud that we recorded our ridiculously awesome crazy for posterity.

[identity profile] konstantya.livejournal.com 2011-01-04 04:28 am (UTC)(link)
...Is it bad that I kind of want to read this craziness? (And is it even worse that I genuinely LOVE the idea of a boy who has bunnies inexplicably follow him?) XD

This reminds me of a story my friends and I wrote when we were of a similar age. I think it was something around 30 pages when we abandoned it, and I still have it somewhere around here because it was, and still is, so WTFLOLtastic. It's like the crackiest, most OOC, most epic crossover EVER.

[identity profile] osprey-archer.livejournal.com 2011-01-04 04:26 pm (UTC)(link)
I think after a few pages the prose would drive you to distraction. Every few years we discuss rewriting it - keeping the same ideas but making the sentences flow more smoothly - but I think it might be impossible.

Do you still have that story????? What is it a crossover of?

[identity profile] konstantya.livejournal.com 2011-01-04 05:37 pm (UTC)(link)
I still have it, yes. XD I guess in hindsight you'd call it a crossover, but it was more like we simply wrote a story and threw in characters from everywhere. If I recall correctly, the main ones were Marcia Brady, George Washington, James Bond, and this possibly-French, hockey-loving character from local radio commercials. And something about Mickey and Minnie Mouse trying to take over the world, and having a secret base in Canada. It was also surprisingly meta, from what I remember.

[identity profile] entwashian.livejournal.com 2011-01-04 05:34 am (UTC)(link)
SWARTHY FACE

A++++

[identity profile] osprey-archer.livejournal.com 2011-01-04 04:16 pm (UTC)(link)
Isn't it amazing? But he also has floppy red hair! I am not sure how he manages both!

Sometime in the early 1900s the New York Times published an article about how "The Future is Swarthy". Because there were so many immigrants coming from Italy and Slavic countries that they were going to ruin the American skin tone and also possibly destroy democracy and The American Way with their overwhelming swarthiness.

Also, swarthy is fun to say. Perhaps I should describe the heroine of my new magnum opus as swarthy.

[identity profile] entwashian.livejournal.com 2011-01-05 12:34 am (UTC)(link)
Hehe! I vote for swarthy heroines!

[identity profile] asakiyume.livejournal.com 2011-01-04 06:35 am (UTC)(link)
I love it! I adore the names you guys chose and made up: Hypocrites is *wonderful*, and so is Dimmius, and I love the detail about the mushrooms making you experience a flipping/spinning/somersaulting sensation.

[identity profile] osprey-archer.livejournal.com 2011-01-04 04:23 pm (UTC)(link)
The names were so fun! We were doing a unit on the ancient Greeks, and they gave us a list of names and IIRC Hypocrites was actually on it. And we weren't exactly subtle. Although I don't think he ever does anything blazingly hypocritical. What a missed opportunity!

[identity profile] amanen.livejournal.com 2011-01-04 09:28 am (UTC)(link)
I like that this story doesn't waste anytime getting straight to the action. The most significant thing in my memory about the fantasy short story I wrote in sixth grade is that it was 19 pages long, but all of the action took place essentially within the last few pages.

Honestly, that story sounds kind of brilliant. xD I *love* the names, and just... "a steam engine who thinks he's a sea turtle," that's so awesome. I almost want to illustrate it.

[identity profile] osprey-archer.livejournal.com 2011-01-04 04:19 pm (UTC)(link)
What happened for the first 17 pages of your story?

I remember that we made our friends listen to us read this to them on the playground. I don't know if they were appropriately impressed but they were quiet.

DO IT. DO IT. A picture of the steam engine who thinks he's a sea turtle could not help but be awesome.

[identity profile] exuberantself.livejournal.com 2011-01-07 01:17 am (UTC)(link)
It's possible that "closely followed by four sheep" is the phrase of the day. Also, that was a lot of surreal/crazy going on in one place.

I had an English teacher in high school who used to say that stream of consciousness is the sure sign of a diseased mind--clearly she'd never seen anything like this!

[identity profile] osprey-archer.livejournal.com 2011-01-07 04:34 am (UTC)(link)
The sheep are just so random. How did they get involved in this procession? And why do they keep running, given that they are apparently right beside Dorcus-the-evil-wizard - Page Perfect knocks the Dorcus and the sheep down together, after all.

Even assuming Page Perfect's bunnies are helping him out, that's a lot of things to knock down all at once.

Maybe the sheep are in league with Dorcus. That would certainly throw the rest of the story into a new light.