Wednesday, May 11, 2005

A waltz down memory lane...

I spent the night going through a stack of about thirty of my old floppy disks. It's been a while since I'd even thought about them beyond a "What are these doing on my desk?" and they brought back a few memories.

Group Fics from two messageboards I used to hang out at were on there. I found a copy of _Friends without Faces_, a poem that one of the people over at the Breeding Ground wrote a few years ago. I still like it, look for it in a future entry. I found a copy of _Out of Exile_ from right before we started the latest round of revisions. [I also found and old copy of Milcha's character description, it may be one of the oldest. It was last modified in Febuary of 2002, which was about the time that I started writing in it. She started life as a manuscript illustrator. Although I notice that, if this document is really as old as I think it is, M&M's father had always been K.I.A.]

I found a Ronin Warriors fanfic that I wrote sometime in middle school. It's incompleate, and well on its way to Mary-Sue-dom, but there are elements of the character and the transition I was using to go from scene to scene was kind of cool. Wayani may be making an appearance in my original work soon. Maybe I can put her somewhere on Nariell.

There was a smatering of old school projects, including my summer reading project from my sophmore year of high school. I guess I'm saving it in case it might be useful someday. I also have at least two copies of the Evil Overlord List. You know, just in case something horrible happens and everyone else on the Internet looses their copy. Or something.

The real gem however was on a disk with a yellowing label. "[MY REAL NAME]'s Disk" is written on it in my Dad's handwriting. Underneath it, in my best 5th grade handwriting is the word "script". I remember thinking at the time that it was so cool that I had *my own 3.5 inch floppy disk* because it was a *computer thing* and Dad was letting me *use the computer*. This document was written in an old version of Word Perfect, which means that to open it I have to use notepad, and at the begining there is a good chunck of what appears to be wingdings before my writing occurs. More gobbeldy gook and random spacing follow (or I may have discovered the TAB key, who knows) throughout. But if you bear with it, this file, over a decade old now, is the oldest attempt at writing a story that I still have. I remember at least one older one (from fourth grade possibly?) but if any copies still exist, my Mom's the only person who would have them. It's certinaly not in any sort of digital format.

As I said above, I wrote it in 5th grade. I got the ideas from my friends -- we'd sit at lunch and talk about it -- but I was the one who did the actual writing. The plot was something like this: aliens bent on world domination (and aren't they all) land at our school and start with the making of the chaos. The heros, who were thinly disguissed versions of ourselfs, when on to defeat them. I can't remember how exactly they were going to do this; like so many of my writings, it is incomplete. It was going to be a movie script, and I was going to be the next George Lucas. Here's an excerept:

Alien Teachers From Outer Space
Prologue: Exterior school: a giant spaceship wrapped in "Kevlar'lands on the roof of the school. The words "Alien Teachers FromOuter Space" appear on the screen.

Opening Scene:
Interior front office: Lester and Stephen are inthe office on the way to detention, when Mrs. Reval walksin,:"I'm here to cheek out."
She chechs out, and leaves the school.
When she walks out the front door she sees a shadow andlooks up. An alien spaceship wrapped in "Kevlar" hovers overhead. A light shines on her and she turns into an alien.
Einstein(from the side):"I always knew she was an alien."
Inside the space ship:
Alien 1:"Take a look at the gasmeter, and tell me what you see."
Alien 2 looks at the gas meter which reads empty.
Alien 2(screaming): AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!WE'RE GOING DOWN! WE'RE GOING DOWN! ABANDON SHIP! ABANDONSHIP! BAIL OUT! BAIL OUT!"

The only thing I've changed to this was rentroducing line breaks that were lost when I changed formats. Everything else, painful typos and all, is the original document. If I ever get around to relaunching my website, look for this thing in its entirty. Wow, "Alien Teachers from Outer Space" what a name.

Till later,
Yami

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