There are plenty of stupid concepts, bad fics and things in the world of fanfiction and fiction that make you go "Oh God, what were they thinking?"

This thread's devoted to your own ideas that made you go "Oh God, what was I thinking?"

I'm pretty sure most of us who started writing had some ideas that, in retrospect, turned out to be really, really stupid. I'll share one for starters.


My first fic submitted to DLP (and subsequently torn to shreds and deleted off ff.net) featured a fem!Harry who would specialize in holy magic. She'd be taught by an angel in disguise who was the new DADA teacher for that year. There was even an idea of God sometimes texting them through a special cell phone.



It's probably good I never got that far. ^^

 

For NaNoWriMo one year, I cranked out 55k words on a Harry Potter crossover with Michael Moorcock's Eternal Champion series (the Elric line), it being a buddy fic after Harry became the ego weapon Stormblade (the sword tried drinking his soul and he turned the tables, destroying the demon within the sword and taking it over). By the end and they'd returned to Hogwarts with Elric fucking up Voldemort's forces in the final battle, it had become a "What was the point again?" sort of thing.

 

Harry Potter crossover with Asimov's Foundation series where Voldemort and Harry are brought to the Foundation universe and Voldemort takes on the role of the mule and Harry has to defeat him to save the galaxy...

 

Hah. I can think of one straight away: magical "power levels". The worst thing about it is that it's a story that I'm currently writing.

Subverting and repurposing cliches was one of the primary motivators behind the fic's conception, so I felt obliged to tackle one of the most pernicious examples head-on. I devised a test that works akin to an automated psychometric test which predicts how well someone (or something like a dragon or Kelpie) could use magic under varying circumstances. No magical cores, no exhaustion, no reserves and no shortcuts. Just a test with a score.

It was a bad idea, and I was a fool for thinking that I could get away with it. And you can't just abandon your ideas when they're out there, either.

Luckily, it can be mostly ignored, and people continue reading despite its existence. Much like IQ tests. That being said, even with all of the socioeconomic and political tangents I wanted to go off on in later instalments, it just wasn't worth it in the end.

I really should just count my blessings with all of the other shit I've gotten away with. XD

 

Marvel semi-crossover.
Harry Potter is injected with Super-Soldier serum, only to learn it has the adverse side effects on his magic.
Basically "was it worth it" kind of story.

 

No Genin Left Behind.

 

Childhood friend Phyrra.

 

EDIT: didn't read original post, disregard.

 

I once wrote a story where Voldemort, upon attempting to kill Harry, wakes up after the fact in Harry's infant body. Of course, he doesn't quite realise he's a Horcrux.

He then proceeds to exploit being an incredibly powerful adult reborn as an infant and attempts to make the wizarding world regard him as the next baby Jesus. While also rounding up his followers and covering how he's actually Harry Potter at the same time.

So Voldemort ends up working both sides of the war: pitting his Death Eater followers against his Harry Potter devotees.

 

I had this idea of Ender from Ender's Game replacing Harry Potter. There really was not point...

 

There are no bad ideas, just poor execution.

...except for the one I wrote back when I was twelve. Akatsuki as a criminal organization in Modern Day AU, with some of the lamest jokes ever made and action scenes that lasted two lines at best.

No natural talent on writing for me, it seems.

 

Sorry I think you meant to post that in the "Your Best Story Ideas" thread.

Ontopic:

Let's see...

I doubt any of these will see the light of day.

A All you need is kill/Looper Mass Effect SI story. SI + Shepard on Torfan was basically the premise and as far as I got in writing.

A Star Trek/EVE/Mass Effect cross. SI=>Capsuleer + Sovereign class cruiser.

A Assassins Creed/Naruto fic with an SI(Are you seeing a pattern yet?)

I think I got as far as planning out the fictional city and its backstory to the actual story and then just lost interest.

 

I wrote about 50k words on one of my first fics.

The story was supposed to subvert the "Harry inherits a noble title and becomes a teenage politician" cliche. Basically Harry would try and fail horribly to be a politician. He couldn't outsmart MOB!Dumbledore, there were no "Ye olde pureblood laws" to evoke and stun everyone with, and Harry wasn't able to band together the "light" side of the Wizengamot and push through all the laws needed to imprison rich Deatheaters.

The story would then lead to Harry deciding the whole system was corrupt and fighting a 3-way war once Voldemort came back.

While I liked to think I could have addressed the Politician!Harry cliche well, I did so with a storm of other horrible cilches.

 

My worst story idea had to be about two young American Aurors infiltrating Britain in order to find out if Voldemort has really returned or not. One would be sent to Hogwarts as a 7th year undercover and the other in a position under Amelia Bones in Magical Law Enforcement. In the end they would manage to prove Voldemort's return, managing to wade through all the bullshit with Fudge and Umbridge and the magical government of the United States would issue a declaration pledging to destroy the Dark Lord.

The whole thing was entirely implausible and unrealistic. But even more so I realized it was pretty arrogant from a national standpoint. It was basically an American exceptionalism story with the basic message "If you can't solve your Dark Lord problem, we will do it for you". Given the fact that the U.S. had little if any involvement with English magical affairs in canon, it wasn't a very well thought out story.

 

The longest unpublished story I have clocked in at 48k, and it involves Harry going to Las Vegas and learning to play poker and using his magic to scam casinos, and he accidentally runs into Daphne Greengrass there, who is doing the same thing, but not having as good of luck because the American security wizards are constantly inventing new surveillance methods.

 

That actually sounds kind of awesome.

 

Angst. Pure unadulterated Frozen angst. An entire.. thing.. devoted to the exploration of Elsa's "dark" past with her family.

I think I read too many Frozen fics and it fucked with my head.

 

You're forgetting that this was written by ME, and in 2009. There was no way it could actually be good.

 

An attempt at a novel where an immortal half-dragon goes back to his old town in New Mexico to discover that things have changed a lot in the sixty/seventy years he's been gone.

Also got his shit slapped by Coyote for littering.