Runebook: The Advent of Thebis the Wise

 Another bit of prose that I'm surprised I never posted on here before. I can't remember where I came up with the name "Thebis the Wise," but it always had a nice ring to it. I came up with some basic ideas for a storyline that involved a fictional version of myself getting sucked into a fantasy world and transforming into Thebis the Wise, a prophesied savior of a realm called Brugixia who looked like me except older and with white or gray hair. I remember making a few comics about my Thebis persona and even some Warcraft 3 maps, but I never got too far with it. 

Moon Town: Leonard's Rescue Adventure

 I should probably write a whole post about Moon Town someday, but who knows if I'll get around to it. The short version is that it was probably the most complete Heroes of Might and Magic III map I ever made, and one very dear to my heart. The level was laid out with houses made of rock and told the story of two rivals, Daniel and Leonard. This was apparently a bit of supplemental fiction I wrote in the Moon Town universe from Leonard's point of view. It's pretty funny to see me try to fit in game mechanic references, and to fall into the same trap of talking way too much about food. No idea where the story was going, but I remember enjoying writing it all that time ago, and it may as well see the light of day now.

Relic Project: "Guide"/Legends of Mynn 1: Characters

Alright, something to know about me if you didn't already: I love games. I always have. I always grew up thinking I'd be a video game designer in the future, and I wasted no time in my childhood investing in that future. I would draw screenshots of games I was going to make, complete with UI. I would write Warcraft II-style manuals for games, describing units and abilities and everything without even designing the game first. And then, there were projects like this.

It's a .txt file simply called "Guide," and apparently it's a walkthrough / README for a game I was going to make someday. The date stamp of the file is 2006, which is unfortunate, because that must have been either when I accidentally updated it or moved it from one computer to another and the original date got overwritten, because I wrote it much earlier—I'm guessing around 2000 or 2001. Maybe earlier though.

I'm so glad it's survived up to this point, though. It's such an interesting look at my early child game designer mind. I remember picturing the characters in my head and how they would look (of course in pixely graphics because that's just what I thought computer graphics looked like by definition), but not so much how the game worked, as you'll see in its descriptions. I know it seems to have been inspired by some aspects of Lords of Magic, but the way combat is described in the walkthrough and moves list are confusing.

It's funny how thorough I am in every aspect of it, though I neglected to come up with an actual title for the game. Though some parts are impressive, it's clear that I had no idea how games were created. It's cute how I even came up with cheat codes for it and descriptions for how to use the "Level Editor." I always loved when games came with editors.

Anyway, presenting "Guide," or "Legends of Mynn" or whatever it might have ended up to be. I've restructured things for easier reading here to get a better idea of how I intended it to be red, but I've preserved the wording for the most part. Today I'll just highlight the characters in the game.

Relic Short Story: The Castle on the Hill

My mom recently found an old box of memories, and I was really surprised to find them. The box had been packed away in some corner of our last couple houses, and unlike my existing tablets and things that I had organized and review out of nostalgia every few years, I hadn't laid eyes on any of these documents and drawings for decades. Among them was this short story, dated June 2001, that I must have written as a creative writing assignment. I'm fairly impressed. For a story written by a 12-year-old, it's not half-bad. At least compared to some of my other jokes of attempts at creative prose.

Relic Speech/Essay: Zerzo Seewok

This is a speech I wrote in my speech class way back in 2005. The prompt was to create "Zerzo Seewok," which could be anything. It was a imaginative exercise where basically anything goes, and you would explain what Zerzo Seewok was, how you found it, its characteristics, and so forth. The delivery of this speech didn't go so well, and the prose definitely hasn't aged well (this was back when I thought that talking like an 1800s poet sounded cool) but it was fun to write. I'm also tempted to someday adapt it to an SCP Foundation entry someday.

Relic Document: Redge's Dudes Stats

Here's a document like the one I posted yesterday, but one I made for my brother's team. The lore for it is interesting, and thanks to the note on his signature battlefield, I can tell these were both written in 2002, but I'm not sure if Redge ever even saw this document after it was typed up.

Relic Document: Austin's Veterans Stats

 This is an odd sort of project. I loved the game Worms 2 as a kid, and I seem to have made up a roster for the members of a Worms team I made on my parents' typewriter. I can tell that all the names (except mine) were randomly generated, and then I made up actual military roles for each of them based on what they could do in the game. My knowledge of military jargin has always been shoddy at best (the crap is a "prime navigator"?), but it's fun to see little bits and pieces of my childhood self in this writing.

My favorite thing to do on Worms 2 was to use the Ninja Rope to fling myself to specific places, so it's easy to see why that's my character's specialty. I wish I had a screenshot of "Newt Castle," because though I have no memory of what it looks like, I'm almost positive I made the map on Worms 2 as an actual map. I think my favorite aspect of this document is how I tried to explain away certain Worms 2 weapons that are utterly absurd in a sensible, game-manual-lore sort of way. Also, I think it's funny that I'm publishing this on my blog when I'm actually thirty-one years old. Not sure why I chose that age when I wrote this.

Relic Short Story: "Pain-Ball"

I remember writing this story around sixth grade, but I can't for the life of me remember why I wrote it or how I got the subject material. I was never into pinball, though I guess I was into books where the main kid protagonist got sucked into a video game.
It's funny that I made the main character a fictionalized version of myself, complete with my actual brother's name, but my best friend's name is Yoshi Grendel? Really? At least I got to hand it to my sixth-grade self: the similes are pretty silly, but well written. And I for one wish I had kept going with the story.

Relic Comic: Invasion Aves

My best friend as a teenager, Jason Durfee, gave me the idea for this comic. I planned to make it go even more unnecessarily long, using all kinds of different birds that would have specialties in every aspect of a military regiment, but I think it's probably good it didn't go on much longer.

I think it's funny how it demonstrates my lack of shame of blatantly ripping off existing jokes word for word (Home Alone). It's also funny that I misspelled "aves." "Invasion Avis" would mean "Invasion of the Grandparents," not birds.

Relic Comic: Pie for the Guy

This is a weird one. Especially with that oddly philosophical border around the edges of the paper. Much like the Head of Osiris one I shared earlier, I seemed to start with some kind of idea and then devolved into just wanting to draw something else entirely but not abandon the drawing. Very admirable, actually, considering all the truly unfinished comics I've made. At least it ends somehow.

Relic Comic: The Frost Wyvern

I'm not sure why I was so into monks getting interrupted while writing when I drew comics back then. And I wish that the "lighting effects" I talk about at the end showed up better after scanning. The pencilwork is quite admirable.

Relic Comic: The Tamarisk Tree

I already had this comic uploaded on my computer, but I never put it onto Pretzel Lectern! Funny that this same situation made it into two comics, down to not knowing what the actual tree was called.

Relic Comic: The Head of Osiris

Clearly this comic was inspired by the PC game Age of Mythology, specifically the 18th level in the campaign, "A Long Way from Home." I called it the "Tree-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named" because I forgot it was called the Tamarisk Tree, and I just thought it was funny.

I like the video game elements scattered throughout, like the damage numbers, health pie charts, and the line chart showing the unit populations. And of course, the fact that I got bored and settled halfway through is hilarious. I think it made it so much funnier than an actual full-length comic! 
Another funny thing is, I'm pretty sure I made another comic about the Tamarisk tree that had some Paper Mario jokes in it... I'll have to look for that one too sometime.

Repunzel's [sic] Revenge

I stumbled upon a wealth of relics from my childhood and adolescence this week while vacationing at my parents' house! The first I'd like to showcase is this spin on a classic fairy tale I wrote in February 2000. You can learn a lot about my ten-year-old self from reading this story and seeing how I warped the familiar plot and characters, and the word choice I use that just indicated what I thought was funny back then. True to my nature, I hid a couple of Easter eggs from my interests at the time of writing it (Digimon, in this case).

I've preserved the incorrect spelling of "Rapunzel," but otherwise I've fixed the grammar to read better.

Relic Story: Mr. Arrow

I stumbled upon this as I was looking through my old WordPerfect documents. It's not a bad story for a thirteen-year-old. The actual metaphor for the entire thing being a computer is a tad clumsy, but I like the pacing and flow of the plot. The inspiration from the story comes from my family's computer's tendency of basically never working. The CD Rom was always having issues, and at the time of this piece, we had a virus or Spyware on our computer. The ending is a reference to my brother Redge calling my uncle, a computer wizard, who walked him through the steps of eliminating the virus.

Relic Comic: Adventure of Abel

I'm not sure where I was going with this comic, but I do remember that I had an obsession with monks at the time. For some reason the profession seemed appealing—writing, transcribing, simplicity—so I put myself in a comic about one. Many times, monks in my stories would be the heroes of the stories they were in, as if they were protecting the village without the village even knowing about it. I'm probably digging way too deep into my adolescent mind though. I think I just liked monks because of their robes and Gregorian chants.

Sorry about the size on this browser. Click on the comic for a better zoom. And don't ask me what that monster is... a giant thumb with glow worms coming out of it I guess?

Relic Comic: Revenge of Abelhawk

This comic is full of meaning to me. Drawing has always been my way of escape. I doodled in class to help me stay focused; I drew in my free time; and was always excited to find a new form of drawing or coloring, be it colored pencils, Photoshop, or markers. This drawing shows another way I used drawing—to relieve stress:

As the comic states, this was based on actual circumstances. There was a guy in my physics class in 9th grade who used to bug me and make fun of me a lot, mainly because I was shy and wouldn't defend myself (and of course, everyone in class loved him for his jokes). All I could do was ignore him in real life, but I was able to retreat to my drawing desk and draw a fictionalized version of a stronger, bolder me handling the situation in an epic (and admittedly excessively violent) way. I was also on the yearbook staff at the time, which explains me taking a picture at the end and putting it in the yearbook. A little Easter egg is the heart symbols on the caption of the photo above the beaten-up kid—I think that picture was implied to be a picture of me making out with my crush at the time. Classic junior high mind.

Relic Short Story: Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People's Ears

I found this in a tablet box today. I wrote it in sixth grade—the assignment was to write a myth or legend, and since I couldn't think of anything better, I decided to piggyback off of a title I had seen in the children's section of the library: Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People's Ears. I figured since I didn't know anything about the storyline, it wouldn't be plagiarism, and if the teacher asked I would just play dumb. She did, and actually had a copy in her classroom library, but was impressed with the story overall. It's not bad for an eleven-year-old's work, but I still wonder why the drum was stolen in the first place, and why the three animals who are in on the heist are so adamantly against the justice that should be served them. I guess the moral is "no one likes a tattletale."

Relic Short Story: Journey to the Center of the Earth

Hi! I haven't forgotten Pretzel Lectern, I've just been working hard at updating Knight Guy as often as possible, which is an extension of this blog since it's a project. If you haven't looked at it yet, check it out!

Meanwhile, I've been nostalgically poring through old Wordperfect files on my Ark (that's the name of my external hard drive) and I found this rather funny gem of a story I wrote. The date on the file says 2/20/02 and is stamped as an assignment for my 7th-grade Geology class. I'm not sure what our assignment was, because this is laughably scientifically inaccurate. Enjoy!

Relic Comic: Knight Fight

I've saved the best for last this week of uploading Relic Comics, though I have enjoyed every one of them I've been able to share with you. I hope to be able to find more to post on Pretzel Lectern after future visits to my ancient Tablet Vault. This is another comic with Knight Guy, showing him against his nemesis. This is obviously a much more pseudo-friendly situation than was normal for the two, but the presentation in my opinion is excellent.

I hope you got as big a laugh out of it as I did. It's funny how Knight Guy's cape keeps appearing and disappearing. That was kind of a running gag throughout his lifetime as a character, because I could just never decide if he looked better with or without it.