In terms of literary works, how many can be described as "infamous"? Perhaps your hatefilled screeds like Mein Kamph or The Protocols of Zion could be considered. But what about in terms of simply lacking in talent, skill, and ability?

The Eye of Argon is such a piece. Published in a small-time science-fiction magazine, it (in a way that was incredibly difficult in those pre-internet days) spread across the globe to amaze and astonish yet more and more fans of science fiction, fantasy, and crap writing. What Uwe Boll did for filmmaking, poor 16-year old Jim Thies was doing for writing, three decades prior, and worse.

There are several ways to enjoy the Eye of Argon. The MiSTing is here, and a PDF of the original published version (with illustrations!) is here.

Flush from my earlier successes, I decided to make the full on leap to having my own version. I made this leap slowly, but leap I did. This battle was one of four (and a half, though the half will be explained later) that were on the site when I submitted it.

Battle #1: Critical Error - November 24, 2000
This means Chill Version began when I was little over 13 years old, putting me in eighth grade. By the way, the 24th was a Friday.
Location: Shawn's House, Blue Version
Player: Shawn [no record]

SHAWN turned on COMPUTER!
SHAWN WENT to POKéBATTLES.COM!
SHAWN saw BLUE VERSION is CLOSED!
Wait, doesn't that mean I don't exist anymore?
That seriously stinks!
A master of understatement, that's me.
COMPUTER used SHUT DOWN!
COMPUTER SHUT DOWN!
Hey! What the...
No.... It couldn't be.....
Watching me abuse ellipses like that makes me feel kind of foolish, frankly.
COMPUTER BEEPS hapilly!
YOU!
We can't BATTLE. BLUE VERSION is SHUT DOWN.
I think I overused capitalization. You capitalized most nouns in Pokébattles, I capitalized darn near everything. Keep in mind, I didn't even have a Game Boy at this point.
COMPUTER explains that since BLUE VERSION is CLOSED, it can do WHATEVER it WANTS!
COMPUTER wants to FIGHT!
But what if I don't want to FIGHT?
100 angry ELECTRODES are rolling torwards your HOUSE, ready to use EXPLOSION on COMMAND!
In a bit of long term planning, the 100 angry Electrodes were supposed to make more appearances, but they never did.
From who?
As I recall, they were going to be captured by a character that would be named something like Butch Kaloogacoogie, or some such name. The last name, whatever it was, was an actual name belonging to an actual human being.
FROM the NARRATOR!
Eek. Ummm.. Well. Okay... Go SPEAKERS then.
GO! SPEAKERS!
COMPUTER sent out MOUSE!
SPEAKERS use your VOLUME attack!
SPEAKERS used VOLUME!
SPEAKERS VOLUME greatly rose!
If I was more clever, this attack should have made the Speakers larger over time. Still, this is much better than my last one.
MOUSE used DOUBLECLICK!
MOUSE CLICKED AWAY!
Alright. SPEAKERS! Use your PLAY attack!
SPEAKERS used PLAY!
SPEAKERS played a FAMILY GAME with MOUSE!
I think I saw that in LIFE once...
LIFE CEREAL! In STORES right now!
I meant the GAME LIFE!
The LIFE GAME! From MILTON BRADLEY!
You're sick.
This whole section is amateur to the max. But I was only 13.
The ELECTRODE....
AHHHH!!! PLEASE NO!!!!
MOUSE used CORD WHIP!
MOUSE becomes UNPLUGGED!
MOUSE fainted!
Great!
SPEAKERS gained 12 exp. points!
SPEAKERS grew to level 16!
COMPUTER is about to send out PRINTER!
Will SHAWN change POKEMON?
Yeah. I'll send myself out.
Return SPEAKERS!
GO! SHAWN!
COMPUTER sent out PRINTER!
I'll use my ... uh... what attacks do I have?
SHAWN knows SCREECH, PUNT, PUNCH and UNPLUG!
Remembering continuity, I did use all those attacks in the Blue Version battle.
Then I'll use my UNPLUG attack!
SHAWN used UNPLUG!
SHAWN'S attack failed!
PRINTER used LOADS-OF-PRINTER-PAPER-SHOT!
SHAWN got PAPERCUT!
It's SUPER PAINFUL!
OWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!
Too many w's, too many exclamation points.
SHAWN used SCREECH!
I'm BLEEDING! That PRINTERS gonna PAY!
PRINTER is RELOADING with paper.
Me, UNPLUG!
SHAWN used UNPLUG!
SHAWN UNPLUGGED PRINTER!
PRINTER FAINTED!
Unplug was the Guillotine of the fighting electronics set. Left unexplained is how they could faint from being unplugged yet roam around in the wild.
SHAWN gained 11 exp. points!
COMPUTER is about to use COMPUTER!
Use next POKEMON?
Nope.
COMPUTER sent out COMPUTER!
I'll use my UNPLUG attack!
SHAWN used UNPLUG!
SHAWN couln't find the WIRE to UNPLUG!
SHAWN'S attack failed!
Ah, foiled by the nest of wires! It rings of reality, no?
Dang It!
SHAWN used PUNCH!
SHAWN HURT his HAND!
ARRRGGGG!
SHAWN tries to lift up the COMPUTER to use PUNT!
SHAWN'S attack failed!
Interestingly, both this author avatar, and my later author avatar both had attacks that were utterly ineffectual and led to their defeats. One of the problems I think I had with Chill Version is that winners kept winning and losers kept losing.
NOOOOOO!!!!!!
SHAWN tried to RUN!
Got away safely!
Someday COMPUTER! SOMEDAY!
SHAWN is RUNNING AWAY!
for a semi-contemporary joke, just add in: with the WIND in his FACE! It's like FLYING!
SHAWN flew up high! (or however the phrasing went)
That would probably be the first Polyphonic Spree joke in Pokebattles. And it wouldn't have been the last, the Polyphonic Spree are so weird they'd be great here.
COMPUTER is FOLLOWING SHAWN!
ELECTRODE are following COMPUTER!
COMPUTER WINS!

Last year I tried to take part in NaBloPoMo, but failed miserably. This year, I'm going to give it a second shot, but this time I'm hoping to guarantee success by reposting junk I've already done before. I'm feeling confident this time around.

So here is something I wrote when I was thirteen: my very first pokébattle. In order to make it more interesting, I'm adding in Director's Commentary! The "player," Shawn in this case, will be in this shade of light blue (I like to think of it as "Chill Version blue," as that was the color that Chill was designated), the Narrator will be in red, and my notes will be in whatever default color is set. Since this is from the actual Blue Version archives, I'm going to include Jason Ross' (the guy who runs Pokébattles) comments.



The speakers allowed Shawn to hear the computer's angry voice.

This battle is another take on one of the Blue Version clichés (known as the Blue Cliché Triad: Trees, Star Wars, and Computers - though I should point out that Red Version is guilty of using all three of those as well). This one is based on the computer, and like the other battles before it, a frustrated user (Shawn) battles against the frustrating machine. This time, however, the mouse pad and the printer join the fray.

Battle: 52: Mad Machine January 26, 2000
I remember sitting down and writing this in one single go, and then being incredibly surprised to see it on the site. I was so proud, and so shock. I figured it wouldn't make it past the cut. Though, looking back on it, I guess there was no cut at all.
Setting: Game 20% / Reality 80% / Anime 0%
Player: Shawn [No Record]
For a beginning writer, they say write what you know. Like an idiot beginning writer, I knew myself the best, so there I sort of am.
Written by jester@bwave.com New Author
Hey, it's our first e-mail address! We got two-plus years of internet for free from them, in exchange for services rendered. We gave them some shelves. Not sure how that deal happened, but it was the internet, for free.

Ahhh... Here we go. The Computer, Internet. This is the life.
This was probably shortly after we got the internet in the first place.
COMPUTER doesn't want to be used.
WHAT!!!!!!
Abusing exclamation points. In my defense, I was 13.
COMPUTER wants to fight.
This isn't a POKéMON game. Oh ****, now look, It's doing that capital thing!
Ah, the domain of the immature writer, indicating the presense of curses but blanking it out. Also, I was unclear on when I should be capitalizing. I think I wrote it and immediatly sent it in without proofreading. Let that be a lesson, kids!
COMPUTER sent out MOUSE PAD.
Okay, fine. GO! SPEAKERS!
MOUSE PAD used TACKLE!
It has no effect!
Since mouse pads are so floppy and stuff. That was before the advent of the laser mouse, rendering mouse pads useless.
SPEAKERS! Use PLAY!
Speakers PLAYED!
It's Super effective!
MOUSE PAD fainted!
COMPUTER used MOUSE!
Go, FOOTBALL!
MOUSE used CLICK!
FOOTBALL! use THROW!
Attack failed!
WHAT!!!
MOUSE Used WRAP!
Figures, FOOTBALL! Use... THROW again!
There's me being super creative, huh?
FOOTBALL uses THROW!
MOUSE uses CORD WHIP!
MOUSE becomes UNPLUGGED!
MOUSE faints!
That's really stupid.
I'm right. That is really stupid.
SHAWN thinks that MOUSE's fainting is STUPID!
I hate this COMPUTER.
COMPUTER sends out PRINTER!
PRINTER uses LOADS OF PRINTER PAPER SHOT!
SHAWN is now PAPER CUT!
That dumb black and white PRINTER. Owwww!
At the time we had a dot-matrix printer. Seriously old-school stuff there.
It was SUPER EFFECTIVE!
On me yeah. Look I'm BLEEDING!
SHAWN CONSIDERS!
Shawn here should have lost a turn, but whatever.
SHAWN goes into KITCHEN! He gets a KNIFE!
That's IT! I'm now really P.O.ed.
SHAWN is P.O.ed!
That is really ANNOYING!
At some level it's funny how the narrator is reiterating my characters stupid lines, but if you don't have the self-awareness to realize when you're doing something creative, is it actually funny?
I'm going to use AIR GUST!
SHAWN stabs FOOTBALL with KNIFE!
FOOTBALL uses AIR GUST!
PRINTER FAINTED!
SHAWN WINS!
YEESSS! Now can I use the COM, ::ahem:: puter. Thank you.
COMPUTER uses ERROR!
NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
ERROR 789: General Default. Buy Jumbohard's DOOR 2000 to fix it.
Instead of Microsoft, it was Jumbohard. Instead of Windows it was Door.
WAIT A MINUTE! You want me to buy a whole new software program costing over 200 POKéDOLLARS!
Pokédollars?
I didn't know what to call the P-yen sign the games used for money, so Pokédollars it was.
SHAWN SCREECHES!
END
Yeah, not sure why END is in there, but there you are.

This twitter update was the first time I had heard that Geocities was going away. The glorious days of free web space I guess are gone for good. What a darn shame.

And what a danger! I still had stuff on Geocities I wanted to keep. Let's set the stage.

It's 1999. I'm 11. Long time ago. My biggest interests, in no particular order, are Animorphs, Pokémon, and Digimon. The first two are the real relevant parts here.

In a wonderful combination of interests, I discovered "Pokémorphs." This was and is much better than the only "Pokémorphs" you'll see today. Instead of the half-human/half-Pikachu or whatever masturbatory fodder you'll be finding in Google Image Search today, this was a series of stories combining both Pokémon and Animorphs (i.e. teenagers transforming fully in pokemon and then back in two-hours or less). I found all this riveting. Also, the Pokémorphs community had a pretty active message board. This is probably one of the first internet community I was ever part of, and I guess I reached some level of sorta big-name-ness. I certainly wasn't a n00b anymore, I suppose.

The other thing I was into at the same time was "Pokébattles." Pokébattles was a comedy site/series thing using that used something like the Pokemon narration system. There was a active community there as well, which took the form of many, many people starting their own fan versions of the original Pokebattles site. (Red Version, in the parlance. Fan battles submitted to the main site went to Blue Version). I had the 70th fan site, which I picked the name Chill Version for, mostly because I was guaranteed a really sweet-looking logo for it. (All the fan versions had different "colors" in their names. Color was a bit of a nebulous concept at some times.) When Chill Version joined the official fan version network, it was called the best of my "class" of new joiners. That was a proud moment for me.

Anyways, this explains my dismay over Geocities shutting down. Like any good internet denizen of the time, I had a geocities website. My sister and I both did. We both took a keen interest in embryonic web design, and we devoured HTML guides and put them to fair-to-middling work. I had to use all my HTML skills for the Chill Version site, and it holds up...semi well. Nothing to write home about, but it wasn't half bad for the time.

I told you the first story and the story after that to tell you this story. Even though I liked Chill Version, I later came to the conclusion that I would rather have had a different name: Radioactive Version. Yes, my interest in radioactivity motifs came at an early age.

So, I had a slight fear that the name I really wished I'd picked would be swiped. (I don't know why I worried any other human being would come up with that. But whatever). Also, the rising trend were co-managed versions, where people with one version would be part of a second version. I decided this was a good idea, even if I couldn't keep a decent update schedule on my first website.

So, I went on the Pokémorphs message board and casted about for a co-writer. I think it was "first respondant got it," more or less, and a board regular by the handle Super Hurricane got the nod.

Radioactive Version died a pretty quick death. I think five battles were posted, three by me and two by Super Hurricane. I also promptly lost the old battles, they died with one of our family's old computers. Shame that. Pokémorphs went away when the author of the series was, I think, shut down by her parents. The website went away soon after. Pokébattles was updated less and less and I was less and less involved until the whole thing was no more.

Bringing all this full circle, I hear today that Geocities is closing down, and I decide to go and gather all the stuff I could recover. Got to save a bit of my past, yeah?

I find all my Chill Version stuff pretty easily. But remembering Chill Version makes me remember Radioactive Version. So I go to Google and search for "Radioactive Version" pokebattles. The first link leads me here.




This surprised me greatly. For one since he had his history wrong. Second, I hadn't heard any of this at the time. I really must have been mentally checking out of both sites to miss that. As I recall, the battles he'd written were, I dunno, were a bit weird, but it certainly wasn't like I was a better writer. It might have been content based.

All this set me off, trying to find Super Hurricane. He was still using the screenname, obviously, There was a person on fanfiction.net with the same name, but heck if I'm registering there. I ended up finding a Super Hurricane on a Anime RP message board that seems inoculous enough that I registered and PMed that Super Hurricane if he's the Super Hurricane I'm thinking of.

I guess what I want to do is thank him. It's well late for it, but I'm not sure I ever said "Thanks for the work you put in." It isn't important, but I think he should know he wasn't some guy volunteering, but my partner in the whole half-hearted endevour. Also, I'd like to apologize for the rough treatment. He deserved better than the reaction he got.

So, Super Hurricane. This is ArticOne 2k from the Pokémorphs message board back in the day, writer of Chill Version, and your partner in Radioactive Version. Drop me a line.