So Bad It's Horrible/Literature: Difference between revisions

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* Pacione, Nickolaus. He is a horror writer known for self-publishing unreadable, barely literate, mistake-riddled prose, but even better known for picking fights with everyone on the Internet that dislikes his work (up to and including threatening murder, the rape of their children and the like). Read any sentence of his writings, if you dare.

* The ''[[Doctor Who]] [[Virgin New Adventures|New Adventures]]'' story ''The Pit'' by Neil Penswick is commonly regarded as the worst ''Doctor Who'' novel of all time, not least because of the tedious nature of the story, which is written entirely in [[Beige Prose]] to boot. The Doctor is completely useless and does virtually nothing throughout—which to be fair was part of a larger ''New Adventures'' [[Story Arc]], but is taken WAY overboard in this novel—and Bernice Summerfield acts completely out of character, coming across as cold-hearted and irritable. Legendary poet William Blake appears as one of the main characters, but is completely wasted and just spends most of his time complaining about the situation he's in. Worst of all, the whole thing ends up being one giant [[Shaggy Dog Story]], making it even more infuriating to have to sit through the bland and confusing storyline. Fortunately, you don't have to read through the whole thing; [http://www.drwhoguide.com/whona12p.htm this prologue] (originally published in ''[[Doctor Who Magazine]]'' illustrates its main problems well enough.

* After the runaway success of [[The Hunger Games]], one Victoria Foyt decided to release her own take on dystopic YA fiction, ''Save the Pearls: Revealing Eden''. Too bad that her book, who portrayed a case of [[Persecution Flip]], was in truth both horribly racist and atrociously written. One important part of the plot is that the heroine must disguise her whiteness with hair dye and makeup and is forced to get a "mate", which is translated in the promotional video as the hired actress essentially asking for a boyfriendv while in [[Blackface]]. Amont the most notorious setting fails: the allegedly opressed people had a prettiest group name than the opressors, the black people are despited as either animalistic or bad Afro-American clichés, and one of the heroine interest is apparently a were-feline of some sort. The writting itself was atrociously bad even not acounting for the racism.

* ''The Sacred Seven'' by Amy Stout is a deservedly obscure fantasy "epic" which is nevertheless only novella-length. The plot's a [[Cliché Storm]] in which a [[Big Bad]] [[Evil Sorcerer]] is trying to take over the world and playing [[MacGuffin]] [[Gotta Catch Them All]]. The attempts at "originality" are things like forest dwarves and the [[Big Bad]] being a female elf leading a troll army instead of the traditional orc army. But what makes this book special is that it has over two dozen point-of-view characters over its meager pagecount in a large font. Most ''pages'' have at least one POV switch, which can be to a character in a completely different geographic location having completely different adventures. As you might expect, none of the [[Loads and Loads of Characters]] have [[Flat Character|much of a detectable personality]]. The whole thing reads like an internet round robin written by a bunch of teenagers. Oh, and there's a sequel called ''The Royal Four''.

* The written sequel to [[George Lucas]]' fantasy movie ''[[Willow]]'', ''Shadow Moon'' (No, not [[Kamen Rider Black|that one]]) by [[Chris Claremont]], is a [[Doorstopper]] written in such a mind-numbing style that enduring the lengthy bland descriptions to get to the mind-numbing plot about the new adventures of Willow requires endurance few readers possess. The rest of the trilogy is supposed to be even worse, but confirming this is difficult for obvious reasons.

* A book that would've barely been a blip if not for the internet — Janine Cross' ''[[Touched By Venom]]'' (aka ''The "Venom Cock" Book''). "''[[Dragonriders of Pern]]'', ''[[Gor]]'', and ''[[Clan of the Cave Bear]]'' get thrown into a blender and topped off with extra helpings of pain and suffering (and bestiality)" is the closest one can come up with as a thumbnail sketch for the plot. To the author's credit, she creates a [[Crapsack World]] and never tries to pretend it's anything but. No [[Writer on Board]] here. And the two sequels are markedly improved (not ''good'', mind you, but not Horrible) and explain many of the baffling plot points in ''Venom'' (like why a society that worships dragons as divine would use them as pack animals, routinely amputate their wings, and eat their eggs as a staple food). The problem here, aside from this book not standing alone, is that Cross takes [[It Got Worse]] to [[Diabolus Ex Machina|ludicrous degrees]] — the Dragon Temple screws Zarq's serf enclave out of all their worldly possessions on a technicality? Sell Zarq's sister into [[A Fate Worse Than Death|sex slavery]] to buy food and supplies. Mom schemes to get her back? Scheme backfires, resulting in Dad's execution and Mom and Zarq's banishment. (Did we mention Mom's pregnant, and they're kicked out immediately after she gives birth to a son she's not even allowed to hold?) They find refuge in a convent that houses old dragons? Just in time for Mom to drop dead! Then Zarq has to undergo [[Gorn|"circumcision"]] to be considered "clean and holy". The nuns hold bestiality rites with the old dragons. And all that occurs in the ''first half of the book''. (And yes, [[It Got Worse|it does get worse]] — the damage finally spreads to those around Zarq.)

** According to a [[Live Journal]] entry on the book's awfulness, there are whole sections full of loving descriptions of Zarq "touching her sex" ''[[You Fail Biology Forever|after she's undergone ~~female~~ ~~circumcision~~]]''. She magically grows functioning genitals on Pages 204, 271, 303, 346, and probably more.

** According to a [[Live Journal]] entry on the book's awfulness, there are whole sections full of loving descriptions of Zarq "touching her sex" ''[[You Fail Biology Forever|after she's undergone a complete clitoris extirpation]]''. She magically grows functioning genitals on Pages 204, 271, 303, 346, and probably more.

** Double bonus — the dragon venom that's getting everyone off like rockets? It's described as being an ''[[Artistic License: Biology|anesthetic]]''.

* Believe it or not, Jacqueline Susann wrote a science fiction novel — the proto-[[Paranormal Romance]] ''Yargo''. It concerns a young woman who's [[Alien Abduction|pulled up into a UFO]] and taken to planet Yargo, [[Egopolis|which is named after its Yul-Brynner-lookalike emperor]]. Emperor Yargo doesn't want an inferior Earthling on his nice shiny planet, but for some reason won't send her back where she came from. After many tedious arguments, [[Strangled by the Red String|they fall in love]] and Yargo admits that the human customs of romance, marriage, religion, and shopping are superior to the Yargonian way of life, which seems to consist mostly of emperor-worship. The heroine is whiny, self-righteous, and grating; Emperor Yargo is so massively conceited [[Narm|that the reader can only laugh at him]]. There's also a few dull sub-plots concerning the [[The Reptilians|Lizard-Men]] of Mars and the [[Bee People|Bee-Men]] of Venus, both of which Miss Earthling finds [[Beauty Equals Goodness|revoltingly ugly]]; she never stops to think that they might feel the same way about ''her''. But what really makes this book a pain to read is its hidebound 1950s provincialism. In Susann's universe, [[Unfortunate Implications|anything different is bad, and any creature that doesn't look human is a monster]].