The following paragraph is to be read in your most IMPROBABLY EPIC tone of voice.
We all know it can be fun to read terrible fanfiction of any type or disturbing Dark Fics, but what about having them read to you in a dramatic, booming voice, just so that all of the Narm can be fully appreciated? This is where the Dramatic Reading comes in. You can expect almost every bad fanfic that becomes infamous to have at least one dramatic reading, and often other media such as published books can get dramatic readings if they're sufficiently infamous.
A subtrope of Audio Adaptation.
EXAMPLES!:
- A YouTuber going by 'Raizaiel' performed, of all things, a dramatic reading of Totino's Pizza ingredients
. Complete with subtitles. There are over a hundred of them, mostly in chemical format. The reciter actually has to stop at one point just to figure out how to pronounce one.
- My Immortal has had dozens of dramatic readings. Here's one. It's brilliant.
- And here's another. Complete with a Deadpan Snarker for a narrator and Visual Puns aplenty, all 44 chapters are now up.
- This YouTuber has concocted an ingeniously hilarious series of Dramatic Readings, which is currently still in the works.
- And now a (sadly short) version read by Cecil.
- And here's
- The first chapter of Twilight badfic Forbiden Fruit: The Temptation of Edward Cullen can be found here.
- Light and Dark The Adventures of Dark Yagami has a few so far (links on its page), although only two (here and here) of them are finished.
- THE HUEMN CENIPED 2: THE HUMEN MILIPEDE has also had this treatment given to it.
- manwithoutabody has done a hilarious hammed up dramatic reading of Atlanta Nights, which can be found here.
- From the same reader, My Inner Life can be heard right here.
- And here is a machinima production of DOOM: Repercussions of Evil. Or the Re Make right here.
- And the Three Wolf Moon review, and Olimar Fucks a Pikmin, and a version of Digimon Savez The Wrold.
- He has also done a reading/spork of Midnight Sun (2020). And really, many others. This guy has been uploading dramatic readings since 2008, on a pretty consistent schedule.
- He has also created a reading of Master Of The Universe, the Twilight fanfic that was infamously turned into Fifty Shades of Grey.
- From the same reader, My Inner Life can be heard right here.
- The Dramatic Readings team painfully blatant Mary Sue story "The Hero and the Wolf" can be found here.
- The same team took on Celebrian. Yes, the one and same. You can find the reading here. The Celebrian reading is epic hilarious on part six, when the reader resorts to NyQuil to get through the story.
- The same team took on Celebrian. Yes, the one and same.
- The Trope Codifier is arguably A Dramatic Reading of a Real Breakup Letter from a Real Person.
- Latawnya, the Naughty Horse, Learns to Say "No" to Drugs has two.
- Half-Life: Full Life Consequences has its Dramatic Reading combined with Machinima, right here.
- Sprint Communications has produced a series of commercials of phone calls and SMS conversations read by James Earl Jones and Malcolm McDowell, such as Lizzy & Kim's Call. Just hearing two acting legends piling on hamminess while reading such inane and insipid speech is downright hilarious.
- William Shatner reading Sarah Palin's speech as poetry. Can be found here. It goes further: he reads her Twitter posts.
- Edwyn Tiong's (of "Trapped" fame) reading of blog entries of Matthew "MDickie", known egomaniac and creator of The You Testament, using his best Smug Snake voice.
- The Eye of Argon was seemingly tailor-made for dramatic readings, the challenge being to get through even a single page without laughing. Here is one dramatic reading of it.
- Here is a group reading of legolas by laura by contributors to the Protectors of the Plot Continuum.
- And here's one by the aforementioned manwithoutabody, now in motion picture format.
- And here's one
- Here's a dramatic reading of the infamous Harry Potter fanfic, HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. Here's another.
- Trope Maker in YTMND has boomaga's dramatic reading of the Cease and Desist emails from eBaum's World. It even made it onto the YTMND Soundtrack, as did its PTKFGS counterpart.
- The creators of Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series did a Dramatic Reading of an issue Yu-Gi-Oh! R ("the Dungeons & Dragons one").
- According to Doctor Who Magazine, there was a brief fad for reading random excerpts from The Eight Doctors and War of the Daleks, interspersed with the readers' own improvisations of deliberately bad, Fanwanky Purple Prose, and challenging others to identify which bits were genuine.
- David Langford describes a dramatic reading of Lionel Fanthorpe's March of the Robots being too much for a "Vogon Poetry" competition.
- The entire point of Bennett the Sage's Masterpiece Fanfic Theater.
- Peta People Smart! was read in December 2005 in YTMND.
- During one of the Dean Martin celebrity roasts, Orson Welles did this to "That's Amore".
- The Zero Wing intro got one. Believe it or not, this predates the music video you've already seen.
- Subverted by the one for Code Geass: Mao of the Deliverance, a fanfic which has generally received positive support from fandom. Nonetheless, someone made a media-enhanced Dramatic Reading for it.
- Someone on CAPSLOCK_ATLA put together some dramatic readings for How I Became Yours. The first is quite funny, but the later installments can cause abdominal ruptures from laughing too hard (especially Zuko's voice, which sounds like Milhouse Van Houten).
- CrazyGoggs and friends did dramatic readings of this very wiki, consisted of the long axed Troper Tales and several miscellaneous videos related to the forums. The original uploads are long gone due to Youtube's copyright system, meaning that only reuploads exist now.
- Fifty Shades of Grey:
- Gilbert Gottfried reads Fifty Shades of Grey. The Internet is over, we can go home.
- A drunken YouTuber reads it too.
- Watch George Takei do it, too. Oh my!
- Gilbert Gottfried reads Fifty Shades of Grey.
- Hellfire Commentaries did a Dramatic Reading of Total Justice, a Merchandise-Driven line of toys that revolved around superheroes getting "Fractal Tech Gear" to fight Darkseid, who is searching for "The Ultimate Weapon". The first and second parts being able to be seen.
- Troper and YouTube-user Lord Starfish has a channel for dramatic readings. Here is a video with the summaries of all the stuff he has currently read, and links to these readings.
- Sexy and I know it: The Dramatic Reading.
- Gary Oldman reads from R. Kelly's memoir, Soulacoaster.
- And here's Gary reading a Jersey Shore recap.
- And here's Gary reading a Jersey Shore recap.
- A retired YouTube user, CheatsythePimp2, had done dramatic readings of fanfictions by THE PETE PETERSON EXPERIENCE and ComicsNix.
- A YouTube user called Monkfishification has done one of a VGcats self-insert fic called "Burning Heart." Can be seen here.
- A YouTube user has done a dramatic reading of the United Nations member states... alphabetically.
- Stevo the Human makes dramatic readings of Touhou Project badly-written fanfics, like The attrack of th eyokai and Reimu fights the bad guys of ardkness.
- Mr. Mendo does a reading of the guidebook to The Simpsons: Bart vs. the Space Mutants.
- Mass Effect 3: Generations has one that can be watched here.
- Pretentious Internet Theatre is an audio podcast in which the host reads fanfiction in a dramatic manner, including My Immortal and Cupcakes.
- One author turned an episode, which featured a dramatic reading of a story his wrote "Joker Save the Ponies", into a machina video.
- One author turned an episode, which featured a dramatic reading of a story his wrote "Joker Save the Ponies", into a machina video.
- Retsupurae's Crappy Pasta videos, where slowbeef reads bad Creepypastas accompanied by video game footage. He and Diabetus are prone to Corpsing during some of the more ridiculous parts.
- BZPower members Hahli Husky and Janus gave BIONICLE issues one through eight this treatment. (For issues #2-7, look no further than the sidebar of either link.)
- The most popular dramatic reading of the Warrior Cats Troll Fic Star Kits Prophecy can be found here. This particular installment is considered to be the best.
- The YouTube channel Dead Parrot does dramatic readings of arguments found in YouTube video comments using British gentlemen. For example, an argument from the video of the fireman saving a kitten.
- My Brave Pony: Starfleet Magic:
- Here's a Dramatic Reading of Evva: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., the So Bad, It's Good Avengers fanfic by the same author as Moon Daughter.
- Here's another one, with an epic "Nick Furry" impression.
- Here's
- The Big Fat Quiz of the Year regularly features classically-trained actors, such as Charles Dance, giving dramatic readings from the autobiographies of borderline illiterate celebrities (the teams being tasked with identifying the author, or the person who hired the ghostwriter as the case may be).
- Kung Pow! Enter the Fist had a "dramatic reading" as one of its dub tracks.
- Benedict Cumberbatch does a reading of R. Kelly's "Genius."
- This is the entire point of the YouTube channel Jack Reads Stuff.
- Watch Raymond Cruz (Tuco from Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul) read a Nissan warranty.
- Harry Potter Becomes a Communist has this one that goes up to chapter 32 and this one that covers all 191 chapters.
- When the comics podcast House to Astonish reviews a book with particularly bad dialogue, they sometimes act them out as House to Astonish Theatre. In House to Astonish Live! they roped in members of the audience for their dramatic reading of the final issue of Nightwing Vol 3.
- Youtuber Regretful Reads specializes in Slash Fic involving rather unusual shippings.
Non-derisive dramatic readings
Closer to Audio Adaptation, but usually based on (Web)comics, so they still need the pictures.- Let's Read Homestuck! An in-progress dramatic reading of the wildly popular webcomic. Though due to the extremely meta nature of the comic, they've had to change some jokes here and there.
- Around Halloween 2014, the same group also did a reading or Ruby Quest.
- Ian McKellen reading instructions to changing a flat tire "in your most theatrical voice."
Examples from fiction:
- In A Clockwork Orange, Alex and his goons break into a writer's house. Alex mocks the writer by reading his work-in-progress in a "sort of very high type preaching voice".
- Endo and Kobayashi Live! The Latest on Tsundere Villainess Lieselotte: when the anime adapted Chapter 2B of the second novel, the Broadcasting Club's School Festival activity of a Radio Drama is modified to a "Dramatic Reading drama," which is effectively doing the same thing, but in front of an audience.
- In the aptly named Harry Potter story A Dramatic Reading, this is done when Umbridge finds the Harry Potter book series in the Requeriment Room by some of the professors.
- Done repeatedly in-universe in Skyhold Academy Yearbook, when Varric Tethras performs readings of stories written by either himself or his students.
