Full Life Consequences

By Shamus Posted Saturday Nov 7, 2009

Filed under: Movies 38 comments

Here is a Saturday morning meme for you:

Back in 2006, fanfic writer Squirrelking authored a Half-Life story about John Freeman, brother of Gordon. Squirrelking had only recently learned [a bit of] English and so the writing was perhaps a bit… unpolished. (The other problems with the story we can probably attribute to youth, although his age isn’t known.) It’s generally not nice to laugh at people struggling to learn a new language, and it’s even worse to laugh at young people who are trying to learn to be creative, but the internet is a cruel place and Squirrelking’s unfortunate writing was wickedly, unintentionally, hilarious. It achieved a sort of Ed Wood-esqe following of people who were intrigued by the perfect awfulness of the work and celebrated it through collaboration.

From there, a very minor and short-lived meme was spawned. Someone did a dramatic reading of the thing. Then someone else did an animation of it using Garry’s Mod:


Link (YouTube)

I sincerely hope Squirrelking is a ten year old from (say) Zimbabwe and not (as we fear) an eighteen year old from the United States.

“And the pants were dead.”

Indeed, Squirrelking, indeed.

 


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38 thoughts on “Full Life Consequences

  1. Commjedi says:

    That was hilarious. It’s interesting that we find something that bad so funny, though we don’t laugh through a Uwe Boll movie. Maybe it’s a “Man I’m so glad that wasn’t me” reflex.

  2. UtopiaV1 says:

    Ow, my brain… Well, i was going to get started on my mini-paper today, but i think you lowered my IQ to the point where I’ve forgotten everything I learned in English. Thankyou.

    OW.

  3. ehlijen says:

    This should show the importance of proofreading before releasing things.

    Funny though it is, it’s apparent to me it was a young writer who wrote it all in one go as he went, rather than following a plan. And let’s face it, we’ve all been there.

  4. Floomi says:

    Full-Life Consequences is (are?) amazing. There are four of them in total, although in the middle of the final one the animator stops the voiceover for five minutes and does an extended “look what I can do in Garry’s Mod!” sequence, which I would recommend you skip, because it’s Squirrelking’s words that really drive the story.

    The saga in full:
    Full Life Consequences
    What Has Tobe Done
    Hero Begginning
    Free Man

    The music is all from Ren and Stimpy – there are a couple of albums of their Production Music floating around if you know where to look.

  5. Joshua says:

    Oh…..dear.

    Funny, but really, really sad.

    I assume the insertion of “Gordon Frohman” was not the idea of the original author?

  6. Ell Jay says:

    “Short-lived”? That team’s animation of the 4th “fanfic” just came out a few months ago. Should be in the related videos section.

  7. Jenx says:

    Well uuh…it’s still not as bad as the Doom one? Right….right?

  8. Inquisitor says:

    Another guy also made a video of the fourth episode of this fanfiction series, which in many ways is better than the one by DJY1991.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBJkGwfZvrU

  9. Gahazakul says:

    Actually, the squirrelking fanfic was written as a bit of joke. Recently he came forward on the SomethingAwful forums and admitted it. His story on his experience is logged here in his “coming out” post. We were all trolled.
    http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3196540&pagenumber=1&perpage=40#post365354256

    1. Shamus says:

      I’m not a member of SA so I can’t read that post. Anyway, if that was a troll, it was a pretty funny one, I’ll give him that.

      Of course, it’s also possible the coming out was a troll. (Unless they were both posted by the same acct.)

  10. Gahazakul says:

    He provided proof, along the lines of the original account and what not. Also you should be able to see it, SA allows viewing of public boards.

  11. MadTinkerer says:

    Hey wait! Don’t forget the prologue to the saga! Quarter-Life: Halfway to Destruction.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOvglodUIcA&feature=channel

    Well even if Squirrelking is a troll, the videos are an example of the best Half Life / Garry’s Mod comedy around.

  12. Nyaz says:

    Oh, that takes me back to the first time I watched that. I laughed so hard I couldn’t sit up :P

    Now… not quite THAT fun, but still worth a look for old times sake.

  13. Varil says:

    I…I am speaking unable broken words. The brains are dead.

  14. Sigma says:

    Cool thing about John Freeman’s wepon: did you notice that the bullets don’t hit the final boss’s eye, they shoot it?
    Every time I read that I have this mental image of some little arms popping out of the bullets mid-flight armed with little mini pistols of their own.

  15. Yar Kramer says:

    Man, you have to really work hard to write this badly.

    But the real question is, has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like? (sorry)

  16. Rutskarn says:

    Gazakhul: Not that page, no. It’s locked.

  17. Eldiran says:

    As Floomi said, this has been a huge (awesome) saga, so I hope you watch them all. (I personally enjoyed the “look at my Gary’s mod skills!” section as well.) I am actually rather surprised these aren’t common knowledge.

    Now here’s a totally unrelated funny video that came out recently (it’s quite long but worth it): “The Horribly Slow Murderer with the Extremely Inefficient Weapon”

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VDvgL58h_Y

  18. pneuma08 says:

    I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that this wasn’t a trolling.

    Firstly, I don’t see how it could have been foreseen that a single poorly-written fanfic could explode into a meme of any scope. There are many, many poorly-written fanfics that pop up on teh interwebs every day, nearly all of which don’t get any recognition. In order for it to be a trolling, there has to be more involved. While possible, it seems unlikely, barring further evidence.

    Taking a look at the writing itself, it does have several trademarks of a young child: stream-of-consciousness writing, matter-of-fact statements, lack of synonyms, and not a physical descriptor in sight. The need to explain specific things and not others (why John Freeman has a motorcycle is not explained, but in another writing, Jake Snake has cigars “becaus he didnt smoke cigarets” – the latter of which needs explanation because it runs contrary to the established character).

    Eh, I could be wrong, though.

    Oh, and it is quite hilarious to read out loud.

  19. bbot says:

    Quarter Life is another troll, and the better one, since Dallas was the target of where they was, and is nice place, and my friend lives there.

    @19: It’s older than the youtube video, and was written to troll fanfiction.net reviewers.

  20. Steve Burnap says:

    It sounds exactly like to sort of story a bright eight year old would write after watching his dad play Half Life 2. If this is fake, kudos to the author.

  21. GeneralBob says:

    Boy I’m glad I watched that after taking the SAT.

    I heard this a while ago and thought it was his style of talking funny-like (hey it works) and not a poor English speaker, could be wrong though.

  22. Davie says:

    Ah…Full Life Consequences. Concentrated retarded brilliance. The words themselves are great, but the awkward animation that fits so well with the awkward writing is really what makes it great. And the literal interpretation of everything.
    “And gave them hop.” *Cue mass hopping*

  23. Gahazakul says:

    Hmm, seems you can only public view so far back. Sorry.

  24. Groundhog says:

    Scrap this post.
    I shouldn’t write when sleep deprived.

  25. Vladius says:

    I’m cooler than all of you because I had seen this a few years previously. So there.

  26. midget0nstilts says:

    Hey! That’s uncalled for! English is the official language of Zimbabwe! :P

    edit: I know it’s the wrong thread, but I forgot to congratulate you on your 4 years of blogging. Congrats, and thank *you*!

  27. xbolt says:

    Full Life Consequences is one of my top 5 favorite videos EVER. I can recite the entire thing on demand. :D

    ZOMBIE GOASTS

  28. Zaxares says:

    @xbolt: For a moment there, I thought you said “ZOMBIE GOATSE”. Possibly the only thing that could be more cringe-inducing. XD

    In any case, that was one hilarious animation. If it WAS a cleverly written troll piece, it got quite a good laugh out of me.

  29. rofltehcat says:

    It is even funnier if you’ve read the Gordon Frohman comics. That skin model looks so damn funny in some poses :D

  30. Zygmunt says:

    Uh, whoever wrote this is obviously an English speaker.

  31. Dix says:

    I have never played Half-Life, I may never play Half-Life, and yet every time I see this I laugh myself to tears.

  32. A Reader says:

    That was awful but hilarious, captain butterwolf style.

  33. Groboclown says:

    Fortunately, this is a bar above My Immortal. Unfortunately, as a 10-year old kid, I wrote stuff on this level, but my spelling was worse.

  34. HeadHunter says:

    I think that squirrelking is probably not one person.
    He’s a gestalt entity comprised of people in any World of Warcraft server’s Trade channel. It’s the new Barrens Chat!

  35. HeadHunter says:

    Wasn’t this the same guy who wrote the dialogue for Zero Wing? :)

  36. Xpovos says:

    Reminds me of The Eye of Argon.

    People did dramatic readings of that one too. And I’m pretty sure there were live productions at some point. It was also a common drinking game. Read until you burst out laughing. Then take a drink.

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