Now’s a good a time as any. I present to you, my friends, the first attempt at a novel I ever wrote, beginning at age 13, untouched except for the formatting since 2005.

We’ll be going chapter by chapter, with the full text in the images and my own commentary up here. Enjoy?

A few notes:

1) All the text in the images will also be in alt text for screen readers.

2) I did not finish this novel - I don’t think it broke even 100 pages. Don’t worry, you won’t be invested in anything that happens.

3) It sucks. But that’s okay. I was a kid at the time.

Chapter 1 begins with baby-me showing my hand.

The main character with a very made up first name definitely bears no resemblance to myself at the time. And the other main character, who “will be mentioned later”, definitely bears no resemblance to any other fictional character.

See? Zero resemblance to any popular fictional boy hero who always carries a sword.

Incidentally, please do not ask me about what video games I wrote fanfiction about at the time. It’s completely unrelated to this.

Oh SHIT there’s the title of the dang book!! That’s how you know it’s the theme of the thing.

Also I just front-loaded that tragic past right in the first chapter.

‘“I’m sorry,” he apologized.’ I was concerned pretty heavily that I shouldn’t use the word “said” so much but the critical thinking ends about there.

I like to think that this gal put the eggs straight onto a stove without a pan or anything.

finally: ELEMENTAL MAGIC, YAY

Things that are important: the name of this family’s cow that gets mentioned once and never again. And outfits.

Things that are not important: researching how people cooked in medieval times, or like describing why everybody can do magic if they just wanna.

Hey is it obvious yet that I watched a ton of anime as a teen? Just checking.

Baby-me makes an acceptable attempt at humor.

Something you’ll notice in this text are very thinly-veiled attempts to make sure the reader knows the main character is NOT an overpowered self-insert, and even if she was, she has to like, TRY HARD at new things she does.

Now, is she courageous or just sorta complacent with whatever the mysterious pretty boy says?

Anyway, that’s it for chapter 1 of the epic fantasy novel Emerald Gaze, and the last snippet for this evening. I’m glad I spent zero time before getting to the foreshadowing.

Chapter 2: You Know What the Fuck You Came Here For Now Let’s Get That Shit Goin’.

Our main character reflects a lot of what I was struggling with at the time I wrote it. As such, it tends to project like a goddamn IMAX.

Oh, uh, shit, that escalated quickly. In the matter of a single misused semicolon, in fact.

“Arithne, this will be a sneaking mission. You will procure all supplies and weaponry on-sight. Everything you need to know about the enemies is in your DnD 3rd edition Monster Manual.”

Here’s the part which you take all the stuff you learned from the tutorial and implement it in baby steps.

The idea of a random teen peasant just running around and razzle-dazzling a monster into submission is more funny than inspiring here, but hey, it worked for X-Men.

Ok. I don’t really know what’s going on in this bit. I think I’d started reading Game of Thrones or one of the edgier Forgotten Realms books, decided that Arithne needed like random intrusive thoughts of bloodlust, and went back and threw this in later. It doesn’t come up again.

Pictured here: my impeccable proofreading skills, and expert use of descriptive language. Just jumps off the page, don’t it? It’s like I’m there.

“Fuck, they took the world-destroying weapon! ... oh, and my mommy!”

I think every young author’s favorite part of writing a fantasy novel is drawing a cool map like you see in Lord of the Rings, and also making up names for places. I sure went buckwild with it at the time.

More plot-vital outfit lore.

I also want to call myself out, here - I know exactly where I got the description for this Small Sword which is the size of a Large Dagger. And that would be... my garbage flipped copy of Magic Knight Rayearth volume 1 from Waldenbooks.

Genuinely in love with my reckless eschewing of realism here. Medieval peasants not only owning a shitton of books, but books for fun, and “trashy foreign romance novels”, whatever the hell that means (probably something I borrowed from a school friend).

Research? Pshaw.

Mm, tasty unspecified “medicines”.

I really had the same concept of “adventure” as Flapjack at this point in my life. I took no lessons from Lord of the Rings other than “swords cool” and “elves hot”.

Anyway that concludes chapter 2, where we barrel straight into the plot.

OK it’s time let’s get into Chapter 3 - more made up names I’m sure I spent lots of time researching, and perhaps telling on myself vis á vis how I felt about the outdoors.

Also, big fan of the phrase “a quite possibly better place than this”. I think it’s gonna catch on soon.

Cannot emphasize enough how funny I thought I was as a child. I was also writing “comedy” scripts for the internet at the time which also were bad.

Anyway the MacGuffin’s been stolen and we have to go to a seedy bar for info, obviously, where else would you go?

Buckle up, babycakes, we gotta brand new principal character. This dude was based on someone I knew and hung out with and thought was kinda annoying at the time.

I also talked about this book with him at the time and I don’t think he ever caught on to that fact. Sorry, bruh.

“Hey here’s my name, since you asked.”

“Oh uh. Sounds kinda familiar. Care to elaborate?”

“Lol no I’m not telling you SHIT”

“But you just—“

“Bye!”

Additionally - ha-HA. An old rich dude! With several wives! Such a fresh and unique wit.

“The next forest”, good lord, could I show my hand any more obviously on how many video games I was playing at this time?

We’ve got a second spell lesson for the main character which I bet woulda looked fuckin sweet rendered on my N64.

[90s X-men Gambit voice] Teeve’s guild.

More implying that Cyrus is pretty much just Link with the name crossed out and a different eye color.

Who also says stuff like “I’d rather not fight but I never pass up the opportunity to fight!”

Ohh shit a thief but he does a healing magic?? My idea of flipping the script at the time was basically just chaotic multiclassing.

I think by this point I was not quite into R.A. Salvatore so my battle descriptions were fairly rote and turn-based. This would soon change.

Yeesh, well that’s a concept I just threw around casually. That’s what happens when you read fantasy novels and play DnD only with rowdy teenage dudes.

Anyway that’s the end of chapter 3. I did grasp the concept and basic execution of a cliffhanger at the very least.

Before we end for the evening, why not peek at the next chapter name—

Okaaaayyy here we go... I was a weeb of the highest order and I have to live with that every day.

I did love my thesaurus, didn’t I? And enough adverbs to make Hemingway roll about in his grave.

Can baby-me come back from a cliffhanger or WHAT?

Annnnd our protagonist has officially just fucking killed several people, I guess. Forgot how okay with murder this story was, but you know, all the fantasy stories I’d been reading were mainly about war and swordfights.

Also: Cyrus can summon mini volcanoes. Good for you, pal.

“Now the real battle begins!” -ends the scene less than a page later-

I like to imagine a “swordsman stance” is just Link’s taunt pose in Super Smash Brothers 64.

Anyway, this fight to the death? It was getting pretty serious. Serious enough for another cliffhanger oh shit!

Ah yes, the main antagonist! He’s so evil that he has a tragic past, too! That tragic past being... spousal murder. What a cock.

His description is super reminiscent of the influence that damn boy wizard book had on my creativity, before I knew The Implications (tm).

SO let’s talk about that MacGuffin sword. I was very into Soul Calibur II at the time, so ridiculous weaponry was fresh on my mind. I wish I still had the MS Paint drawing I’d made of this but I have attempted to recreate it below.

Imagine staring down your boss, who has this.

We’ve got mook murder! A mook murder over here! That’s how you know he’s evil, he kills his own guys.

Sorry, Bodil. Shoulda been prettier. Then young teen me would’ve given you cool powers like Sotuth, I guess. I think he was supposed to be a brunette Siegfried Soulcalibur.

He’s also evil because he wants to kidnap a princess to marry her, classic fuckin villain move, Arthos is a real old-school kinda dude.

Also I’m disappointed in the baby me who was very into DnD - I mixed up dragons and wyverns. Such a rookie mistake.

And we’re back with the protagonists, where Cyrus’ fatal flaw is he’s just TOO nice.

I think, at that age, I just wanted a guy to be nice to me for once, damn.

Also despite the life threatening wounds they’re gonna be better within one chapter cuz...... bandages.

All right now, here Cyrus is attempting a defeat into friendship, or the Goku-Vegeta gambit, let’s see if he can pull it off...

Yes! He’s done it! THIEF joins the party.

Man. All you need to turn good is a pretty dude being nice and lookin’ right into your eyes.

Ohhh shit, before we (finally) finish chapter four, we got a new mystery. A shadowy figure saying the most basic bitch threats and lightly prodding Cyrus with an invisible blade.

Does this pay off in any way?? Nah, not really.

Next time, I bring you.... a filler chapter.

Chapter five: what.

I’ll note that this chapter was added late in the “development” of this project. My shit-idiot boyfriend at the time had critique for it that I cried about but also implemented: a filler chapter.

TW for abuse by a parent character against her child

In hindsight, it was probably a mistake on my part to have a character as important as the protagonist’s mother, who is also a major plot device, first appear and be described in chapter five when she’s already been kidnapped.

You can imagine my process was not very structured.

Cw illustrated blood, wounds in the second photo.

Once again I drag out my shitty flipped childhood copies of Magic Knight Rayearth to call out my baby self. Stole that line directly, didja? Adorable.

And WOW SURPRISE it was a dream. I’m sure at the time I thought this was a suspenseful way to start the chapter and nobody would realize what was happening until the paragraph break.

I wonder if I intended Arithne to be this insufferably childish.

I think I tried to put extremely subtle foreshadowing into this bit. Tried.

Also here’s a team dynamic that definitely doesn’t get tiring really fast: the triangle of mutual exasperation.

Congratulations, baby self. Not a single joke in here was funny. It’s impressive, honestly.

Having recently rewatched some episodes of InuYasha, there were like. Some jokes that worked and were funny. Why couldn’t I have jacked those for this?

Lol random... and speaking of random, we have some casual whorephobia thrown in. I need y’all to understand that I, 14 year old Guts, was NOT LIKE OTHER GIRLS. And neither was the main character of my book that definitely wasn’t anything like me.

On the one hand, this is the least realistic thing I ever decided made sense in this garbage. On the other hand, I wanna live in the sorta society that has libraries open 24/7 to the public. That’s praxis

Not praxis: cribbing only the grosser aspects of Monty Python’s deal. Ick.

I wonder if she’s read the other magic book she brought with her, as noted in chapter two. Or if she, like many of us child nerds, had an incurable addiction to grabbing a thing at Borders bookstores even though there were five other things I’d barely touched yet.

Yahoo, babby’s first heroics. Which is called out specifically by the main character as heroics. Brilliant.

This was written at a time when I craved any morsel of respect or acceptance from people I thought were cool, and so here’s a power fantasy about being scary to people.

Maybe I’m easily amused and trying to cut myself a break, but I think this page is almost funny. Maybe with the right delivery (not pictured).

Just to map out the logic here: Obviously, books were rarer and more expensive in medieval times. But there’s no need to keep em behind locked doors or guarded or anything. And in this capitalist-socialist utopia, there’s police who give a shit about this kinda thing.

Got it.

Arithne reflects my worldview at the time. Anyway, it turns out I have depression.

Well, with that side quest over, we move out of filler territory into the main story again.

Next time, in chapter six, we round out our adventuring party with the fourth main character.

All right, I’m only doing the first half of chapter 6 tonight because a) this one is kinda stupid long compared to the others and b) there’s extra content I can share when we get to the halfway point.

We start with the best kind of character interaction: pointless bickering.

Pictured here: the way people talk, in real life, realistically.

Cyrus very briefly gets stalked by his mysterious invisible stabbin’ buddy (or stabbuddy) for all of thirty seconds before he hears another kerfuffle and the villain just. Leaves, I guess. To be polite.

Mm, comedy... wish there was any of it here.

However, I do find it super funny that I set up Cyrus to be the most handsome and hypercompetent badass in the group, only to have him look like the biggest dweeb on the earth compared to a tall, muscular, red headed warrior lady.

I.

Once again Cyrus hypmotizes somebody into joining his adventuring party, this time by cajoling a woman he doesn’t know into opening up to him. Classy, Cyrus.

So anyway we have ANOTHER tragic backstory because I was the littlest hack.

So that’s part one of chapter 6. We’ve obtained our final party member, who is infinitely cooler than Cyrus, who just sorta stares at people a lot and isn’t quite as nice as he’s made out to be.

I’ll continue the rest of this chapter for another day. Because for now we have...

That’s right. We have fucking character portraits done by yours truly around 2004/2005. Because I was also a giant anime nerd, this is all I knew how to draw.

Gotta wonder if I’d done these for my own reference or if I thought I could convince others to draw these dorks, too.

And if this art style seems somewhat familiar to you, I expect that you also are a connoisseur of the classics.

‘Til next time.

Just one more thing. In poking around my super old file folders, I found a version of one of these chapters that I made to post somewhere, which has a quick explanation note.

This is something I'd forgotten. The villain's name was revised at some point to "Arthos" from... this.