Thread by @dandock

When I was in middle school, I had a crush on a girl whose favorite movie was Titanic. So, to impress her, I wrote an outline for a sequel called Titanic 2. And for every like this tweet gets, I will reveal another awful detail of this story.

I had never seen Titanic before writing Titanic 2. I had read the plot synopsis, and learned the two main characters' names. I figured that was enough.

I had spoken to this girl twice. Once to learn her name, and once, during gym class, to learn her favorite movie. That seemed like plenty of time to establish a solid relationship and then throw fan fiction at her.

The name of the boat in Titanic 2 was Titanic 2. This went through a number of revisions, including calling it just "Titanic" and "Goliath," but in the end, the producers (me) went with "Titanic 2."

I knew that Rose was telling the story, but because I'd just read a brief synopsis, I had know idea of her exact age. So, I made this a time travel story as well.

In Titanic 2, Rose travels to the future, where they have a procedure that makes people young again. She undergoes it, and then finds out that there's a procedure that brings people back to life. And so she resurrects Jack.

They find Jack's intact corpse at the bottom of the ocean near the Titanic 1 and dredge it up along with the boat.

Jack is back. Again, due to never seeing the movie, I didn't know what his old self was like. His only attribute was that he loved Rose. This was fitting, because my only attribute at the time was devising awful stories to impress women who didn't know my name.

For drama, I invented a thing where you're given two "life packs" to survive in this new world. Lose both of them, and you die, somehow.

They decide, despite it being historically and ridiculously unsafe, to ride the Titanic 2 up and down the coast of North Carolina, my home state.

Now, I knew what the Titanic looked like. As a kid, I was obsessed with anything that could be considered largest or heaviest in the world. My fave animal at the time was the Saltwater Crocodile, and my fave building was whichever one was tallest in 2002.

But if you're thinking that the Titanic 2 is a futuristic ship with sci-fi doodads and such, you'd be disappointed. It was the same ol' boat.

And here's where the villain of the story enters: The unscrupulous dude who wants to steal Rose from Jack! His name was a subtle homage to my favorite Star Wars character: Bob Fett.

Now, due to the immense creative pressure that writing the outline of Titanic 2 put on me, I wasn't able to really devote any energy into talking to my crush. I did tell her once that I liked her t-shirt, and she responded by not hearing me.

So Rose drops one of her life packs off the side of the boat. Why? 'Cause I'm dumb and bad at writing.

Then, in a confrontation with Bob Fett, Jack gets one of his life packs ripped off. OOOOOH. DRAMA.

OH SHIT. I totally forgot to mention that Bob Fett has a knife for a hand. That will come up again later.

I had Bob Fett gain a knife hand because I'd seen something similar in the cinematic masterpiece The Wild Wild West.

When Jack and Rose aren't dueling a man with a knife for his fuckin' hand, they're mostly just making out in different areas of the boat. The Titanic 2 was Make Out Central and that was all there was to do.

Now, I'm sure you're thinking "Daniel, you probably had the boat sink again, didn't you?" And you are too correct, my friends.

The Titanic 2 (which to remind you, is sailing off the coast of North Carolina) strikes another iceberg.

I shared this story with my friend named Nick. And I've never seen a person that i considered my best friend look so amazingly uninterested in something.

The boat begins to sink. I knew that the Titanic split in half, but in a stroke of inspiration, I had it crack in THREE PLACES.

Rose was on one section, Bob Fett was on another (He killed the captain, by the way, for reasons that I didn't bother to invent), and Jack was on the last one.

So, Jack manages to run into Bob Fett and they have a long, drawn out fight on a section of the boat. Jack knows many martial arts, but Bob Fett has a knife for a hand, so the fight is pretty even.

Eventually, Jack manages to knock Bob Fett off the side of the ship, and thinks he's dead. BUT WAIT. Bob Fett stuck his knife hand in the side of the boat and survived!

Jack reunites with Rose, and they make out some more. But Bob Fett RISES FROM BEHIND THEM AND SLASHES ROSE'S LAST LIFE PACK.

I had planned to deliver this story to the girl I had a crush on in actual book form. But, because I had no means of making that happen, I simply decided to hand her the legal pad that I took from my Dad that I was writing this on.

Jack knocks Bob Fett off the boat again, but Bob Fett sticks his knife in the side of the boat again. But Jack kicks him off, leaving the knife hand stuck in the boat. I thought that would make a cool visual.

So Rose is bleeding out of her life pack. She doesn't have much time to live. This is also due to the fact that a giant boat has know been divided into three pieces, but ehhh. Logic can wait.

Jack and Rose manage to find a doctor, and Jack, making the ultimate sacrifice, says "Give my last life pack to Rose."

Jack gives Rose his last life pack, and she is revived. Despite losing both life packs, Jack still has time to deliver a monologue about love to Rose.

Jack dies and Rose pushes his corpse off the Titanic. Looking back on it, this is kind of a funny choice.

I don't remember how Rose makes it back to the shores of North Carolina. Did the Titanic 2 totally sink? Or did she make it back on a piece of the ship? I'd just seen JAWS, and considering my obsession with that movie and its end, I imagine she probably just paddled her way back.

Credits. That's the end of Titanic 2. Now, to actually deliver the story to my crush.

I remember it clearly. It was the day that we were supposed to pay for yearbook photos. I was armed with with a few dollars from Mom and a legal pad with Titanic 2. I was ready.

I opened the conversation with the delightfully tact "Hey, umm, do you remember Titanic?"

After some chit chat, where I told her that I wanted to make movies when I grew up (or be a pro wrestler, whichever happened first), I told her that I had written Titanic 2.

I should've just handed her the legal pad. I should've done that. But instead, I decided to tell her the plot, starting with the life pack stuff and focusing only on the life pack stuff.

I told her also about the "Give my last life pack to Rose" thing, and I expected tears, tears over the beautiful work that I had conceived. She, on the other hand, was concerned about how there would be a second Titanic in the first place.

Sorry for the brief delay. Had to poop the dog.

So, I ended up just handing her the legal pad. She immediately asked me if I wanted it back, and I said "No, read it." And then I walked away.

Ya know, like James Bond would've done.

I waited two whole weeks for her to finish what was a three page story. What did she think? Was she enamored? Was she reading it over and over again? Did she want to....keep it?

Eventually, though, I decided to ask her what her thoughts were. Let's brainstorm, ya know? Give me writing tips and then I can ask you out for Taco Bell.

I asked her where the story was and if she liked it? Her response?

"Oh, I left it on the bus."

I know. Me, too.

She did say that she'd read it, though, and found that she couldn't tell what was really going on sometimes. Still, she'd read it, so two thumbs up.

Years later, I met her in a pizza restaurant and we had some drinks and laughed about old times. I asked her if she really read Titanic 2, and then that I'd done it because I had a crush on her.

Her response was a firm "Oh, I never would've gone out with you, but that's funny."

The end.

I DIDN'T EXPECT THIS RESPONSE.

Later tonight, I'll update with more stories about my old fan fiction. Trust me, I have enough of them.

A lot of people are asking me about this Titanic 2 Homecoming episode, and I've never seen it. But I did see the 80s movie RAISE THE TITANIC 2 or 3 years ago, and man, do I not recommend it.

Okay, since I have roughly 2000 more tweets to put out until I fulfill my promise in the original one, I'll tell more fan fiction stories.

So, I was in my honors 10th grade English class and we had just stumbled our way through Oedipus Rex. After finishing Their Eyes Were Watching God, it was a slog.

Until our teacher paired us into groups and asked us to write a sequel.

I wrote that I took the knife hand idea from Wild Wild West, but that wasn't the only "borrowing" that I did for my fan fiction. Hell, I was so enamored with the villain line up in The Mummy Returns that I used that as the basis for every antagonist team that I wrote for 4 years.

And "Oedipus 2: Prophecy" was no different. In fact, one could say that I stole the entire plot of a movie for that 10th grade sequel and turned it into a teacher.

And you could because I did that. I did just that.

And the movie that I based my Oedipus Rex sequel around?

Die Another Day.

In a tale that is only loosely connected to the first Oedipus Rex, Oedipus Rex 2: Prophecy stars Bastion, the son of Oedipus Rex who wants to ascend to the throne. He has gotten his face reconstructed (How, Daniel? This is ancient Greece?) and now infiltrates the ranks.

Now, why did I do this? It was a class project to write a few bad lines of dialogue and call it a day. I could've turned in something less stupid but more perfunctory, and gotten a quick A.

It's because I had to use one line.

See, in Die Another Day, before he gets sucked into a plane engine, the villain Gustave Graves says "YOU SEE, MR. BOND, YOU CAN'T KILL MY DREAMS, BUT MY DREAMS CAN KILL YOU."

This line was my "Rosebud." My "I'll make him an offer he can't refuse."

To me, it was the coolest line ever said in cinema history. And I had to find a way to work it into the story.

And so, to add intrigue, I built the whole thing about Bastion facing down his father, a father who, in the original Oedipus Rex, had torn his own eyes out.

In my mind, I was writing a very intense scene where Bastion taunted his father. I would later be proven very wrong, as the teacher asked us to perform our short scenes in front of the class.

Me? An ACTOR? Well, if I must.

So, when the time came, my indifferent partner and I walked to the front of the class where he sat in a chair, pretending to be blind and pretending not to have this entire thing, and I circled him, spitting my best Post 1995 James Bond dialogue.

And then I got to the line, the line that would drop my class in shock, the line that I had stolen from Pierce Brosnan's last turn as James Bond.

"YOU SEE, OEDIPUS REX, YOU CAN'T KILL MY DREAMS, BUT MY DREAMS CAN KILL YOU."

My class was not as enthusiastic as I'd hoped. I did not get applause, or any kind of recognition. In fact, the only review I got was from my friend Ben, which stated "Hey, that's from Die Another Day."

Luckily, my teacher had not seen Die Another Day, and wrote "Creative!" on the top of my paper when she gave it back to me.

Yes. Creative. That's certainly a way to describe it.