Ruined FOREVER (Darth Wiki)/Literature


 * Academics tend to whine that whatever books are selling more than the books they want to have people read will ruin literature FOREVER. Usually it's the fault of academia in the first place, when they write and print books only for the wealthy and privileged then complain about the unwashed masses not reading the "True Art" books. Some good examples, look at the reviews of True Art academic literary critics for Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White, often considered now to be a great example of nineteenth century literature, and The Lord of the Rings, whose reviews by the literati were not only absolutely disparaging but in many cases were by people who plainly hadn't read the book.
 * Harry Potter got together with ? Instead of Luna? Instead of Draco? Instead of me? Ruined FOREVER!
 * Ties into Fanon Discontinuity as well: many simply pretend that the Epilogue (or even the last two books) never happened, and instead read Alternate Universe fics focusing mainly on the romance. Rowling has gotten death threats over this, and even has been told that she doesn't know the characters like they do, and that she has to "read between the lines". You know, the lines she wrote.
 * How often does one get Death of the Author literally as well as figuratively, let alone simultaneously?
 * The Elder Scrolls Novels ruined The Elder Scrolls FOREVER! On one level the novels were announced the same day Bethesda said that the next game in the series was a long way away, so it could be Pavlovian, however people complain about things in the book, claiming they ruin the series FOREVER, even though those things were major parts of the games, especially Morrowind.
 * Every time anything happens in the Warrior Cats series (which is all the time), at least a quarter of the fanbase is going to scream this.
 * To be more specific, some "fans" insist the series was Ruined FOREVER at the beginning of the second arc, and some believe it was the middle of the second arc, and some... Ah, forget it. The series has apparently been Ruined FOREVER at the beginning, middle, and end of every arc except for the first one.
 * Twilight. According to some people, the series's existing means vampires (and maybe literature) are ruined FOREVER AND EVER.
 * Note that exactly the same complaints were lodged when Anne Rice's vampire literature became popular as well. Apparently stories based on mythology that's Older Than Print can crumble when a single person writes a book about them.
 * Mightn't it be that Anne Rice Ruined vampires Forever, and Twilight is the proof?
 * Or, Rice pioneered 'caring about vampires as sympathetic protagonists', and this is the only thing that Twilight Ruined FOREVER!
 * An interesting point for non-haters and haters of Twilight alike, they seem to agree that Breaking Dawn ruined the series forever.
 * Vampire mythology is newer than you think, actually.
 * Well, current vampire mythology (burning in sunlight, drinking blood from the throat, etc) is anyways. Vampires predate written language though, so...
 * There were people who were not happy about there being a sixth Hitch Hikers Guide to The Galaxy book by a new author and declared Fanon Discontinuity before it had even come out.
 * Although considering the amount of Negative Continuity and Continuity Snarl the series as a whole suffers from, that probably doesn't matter.
 * The ink was barely dry on the first Kevin J. Anderson - Brian Herbert collaboration before it was declared Dune had forever been ruined.
 * This wasn't entirely unfounded. KJA had been consistently proved to be a horrid writer in every universe he'd attempted before, to the extent that other Star Wars writers retconned his work. Since his Dune novels were published, all opinions were proved true when the books he wrote blatantly contradicted a plot point established in the first book, on the first page, the first paragraph, the first sentence. You can't ruin a franchise any worse than that.
 * It's a specialty du jour in The Hunger Games fandom. Mockingjay sucked, soandso died, Gale got the boot, Jennifer Lawrence looks like a blonde cow. It never ends.