This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Dan: Why remove Left Behind? The main entry for that series makes no bones about the quality.
Grimace: I hate to sound cynical, but I suspect it may be due to an editor's personal feelings/beliefs on the matter. I for one am too dull witted to figure out how to retrieve deleted stuff from the archives: any other kind tropers care to lend a hand?
Durazno: I don't know. While it may be horrible, it at least succeeds in appealing to its niche. It pains me to admit it, but maybe LB doesn't belong here?
Peteman: Yeah, I think we're supposed to remove it, if only because it was successful in its niche market.
Mac Phisto: You want to know what the central message of Left Behind was? "No matter how good of a person you are, unless you are an evangelical Christian, you ARE going to Hell." Ignoring the fact that the Bible never says anything about the Rapture, being an invention of 20th Century American Baptists.
Darktalon: When did The Eye Of Argon appear in the mainstream media? I'm sure I'd have remembered if I'd seen it - I found it via USENET, and most people I know hadn't heard of it at all before we went to a reading.
Anonymous Mc Cartneyfan: Cut this and put it here. If "many" people think that work is So Bad, It's Good, it probably is.
- The Eye Of Argon. Readings are often held at cons; the aim is to get through a full page - preferably in as dramatic a tone as possible - without bursting into laughter. Most normal people can take between one half and two paragraphs. This editor has read it through twice. It kind of stops hurting after a while. The MSTed version here
eases the pain a bit.
- Unfortunately, the media tend to hold The Eye of Argon up as an example of Why All Sci-Fi is Bad, and no amount of argument can dissuade them, despite the fact that it was never published professionally. (The author wrote it as a teenager for a local club newsletter.)
- Many, though, would say that this one's So Bad, It's Good.
Getty Le Fou: I read some of a book of horoscopes which was one of the worst things I've ever read; unfortunately, I can't find it to corroborate my memories. I think it was Linda Goodman's Star Signs, which I found on a website intended for Korean-speakers learning English, but I forgot to bookmark it and can't find it now. The writing was hilariously bizarre, and depending on the section might even move into So Bad, It's Good - often, it would say something like, "people of this sign often have large feet like a washer-woman, or small feet, or not," and I seem to recall it saying that a particular star sign "...needs a man who can bring home potatoes." I'll look for it to see if it holds up to my memories of So Bad Its Horrible. I have a distinct feeling that it would, as Wikipedia reveals that she's also written an epic poem entitled Gooberz.
Anonymous Mc Cartneyfan: Cut this, for now, and put it here because of the cult following. If the people who actually read Twilight like it, and the people who think it's So Bad Its Horrible know it only from hearsay, it might just be Values Dissonance...
- Seems to be the reaction of many aspiring writers to the Twilight books. Not having read them, this editor can tell you there are sparkly vampires and apparently every character is a Mary Sue. Also, Plot? What Plot? Plot seems to consist of setting up angsty vampire sex, from what fans and haters alike tell me. Overuse of the thesaurus and Purple Prose are also in the list of things the bashers cite. All in all? Seems best to not even find out for yourself.
- Actually, as the author is a Mormon, it sets up angsty vampire not-sex. ...Or So I Heard.
- It's actually so cliched it may loop back around again to So Bad, It's Good because it's that predictable. The cult following implies this might be the case.
- So Bad Its Horrible books are bad, bad to the point where it's impossible to derive any entertainment from it, comedy or otherwise. I enjoy reading Twilight, and judging by it's fandom, so do other people. It doesn't belong in this section if at least a few people can enjoy the book.
- What about this? "However, note that no matter how many people generally agree a work is So Bad It's Horrible, there will always be someone who will be willing to defend it.". That basically says that even though something has a fandom, it can still be So Bad Its Horrible.
- Yeah, but this has such a solid fanbase that they rip people to shreds. This isn't a fringe fandom, this is people actually liking the book. I'm not saying the book is high literature. It's just well-liked and fun to read. We can't say it's So Bad Its Horrible, because all it is is mind-numbing brain candy.
- Look, guys. The series had its own movie. Almost all of the detractors are people who have never read a syllable of the books. It's just a fad to hate on this series; that doesn't make it So Bad Its Horrible.
- Mac Phisto DID read the books. Aside from being a glorified Mary Sue Fan Fic, it suffers from poor story structure and weak character development. Not to mention the overt racism (it was written by a Mormon, afterall) and sexism.
[Much later] Cut this and put it here, for now, until someone explains why this is the worst poem in the English language. It appears that some of us see this author's writing like we do Ed Wood's directing, so...
- And Theophilus Marzials's poem, "A Tragedy", which is considered the worst poem in the English language. Read it out loud in your most Shakespearean voice.
- Aaawwww come on... this poem is absolutely hilarious.
- This troper doesn't find it bad at all. He feels that it's just like any other poem he ever read in English class.
[Much later] Cut this and moved it here. Not that I want to read this, but all this demonstrates is extreme Squick. Is it really So Bad Its Horrible? (If yes, go ahead and put it back.)
- 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. Did I mention there's two sequels?
- To the author's credit, though the book is indeed very bad, she creates a Sick Sad World and never even tries to pretend it's anything but. No Writer on Board here. Also, the characters are at least plausible. Unpleasant, but plausible.
. I have a follow-up for the other two books here. Though the first book is the only one that truly belongs. The other two are merely bad.
[Much later] Cut this and put it here. It looks like Your Mileage May Vary.
- The readers of the Baldurs Gate novelizations by Philip Athens tend to polarise into two camps; the ones who love it because it's got a lot of blood and gore and a Conan-like protagonist who cuts a bloody swath through the entire plot, and the ones who hate it because the Designated Hero protagonist is a sociopathic butcher, idiot balls abound, not a single established character gets within a mile of their original personality, and the story doesn't more than pay the barest of lip service to the original. It should be noted this troper belongs in the latter camp.
Ethereal Mutation: Cut the Twilight example due to it reading like flamebait while not describing anything about it.
Lale: Goosebumps is So Bad Its Horrible? Since when?
Anonymous Mc Cartneyfan: Cut this and put it here. Whatever True Art is, it's not So Bad Its Horrible.
- Nova Express by William Burroughs. The book is entirely incoherent in every sense of the word, made up of nothing but random strings of words (it would be too much to call them "phrases" because that implies meaning) with no punctuation whatsoever besides dashes. One section of a book is a T.S. Elliot poem that the author literally chopped up and rearranged.
- Many disagree and find the book fascinating and hilarious.
Amadaun: There was a book I read in high school that I think would fit in this, but for the life of me I can't remember the title or author. It's about this group of psychic kids and their caretakers, and in the very first chapter it has this far too vivid description of one of the caretakers using his own psychic powers to sexually assault a child into helpless vomiting. Also includes threatened anal rape by some sort of Egyptian spirit guide, and vivid description of the deaths of all the caretakers. This is supposed to be a Young Adult book. If I can force myself to find it again, I'll post it here. In the meantime, I hesitate to ask, but does it sound familiar to anyone?
Ethereal Mutation: More cuts.
- This is the entire point of the online novel Atlanta Nights, which is a collaborative attempt of various sci-fi writers to discredit PublishAmerica, a famed vanity publisher who famously denigrated both science fiction and fantasy genres. Grammar is nonstandard, a chapter is missing (but there are two different Chapter 12's to make up for it), character descriptions change frequently, the Reset Button is used frequently, and one chapter is generated entirely by a random string generator... the faults are endless.
- Its working title was "Naked Came the Badfic", in honor of Naked Came The Stranger, a similar collaborative hoax from The '70s that set out to - and eventually did - prove that you can make a book a #1 bestseller if you load it with enough sex, regardless of the actual literary quality.
- Its working title was "Naked Came the Badfic", in honor of Naked Came The Stranger
Being an intentionally bad Stealth Parody isn't an automatic reason. It has to fail to even get its point across and the way this is described, both did that in shades.
- The second, third, and fourth novelizations of Doom (there are four...four, people!). We get everything from an alien named Sears & Roebuck to a teen supergenius and a sex-starved female marine.
- The first book wasn't nearly as horrible, merely the victim of decay or Pragmatic Adaptation in trying to turn a game without any dialogue into something resembling a sci-fi novel. Then the second book happened, and bizarre metaphysical philosophy got crammed in, and the already mediocre affair went downhill DAMN fast from there.
- "I was born at an early age, in a log cabin I helped my father build."
- Say what you will, all four books are still better than The Movie.
Both contested and non-descriptive.
- Rendezvous With Rama acquired its sequel trilogy more-or-less by accident, and, despite Arthur Clarke's name appearing prominently on the cover, was mostly written by Gentry Lee. (This troper thinks he should have stuck to his job at NASA). This troper remembers the final entry as the book that introduced him to anal beads and possibly the most unintentionally pathetic conception of god ever.
- Any of Amanda McKittrick Ros' novels. She is listed in In Search of the World's Worst Writers as the worst of the worst.
Non-descriptive and offensive material =/= automatically bad.
- 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. Did I mention there's two sequels?
- To the author's credit, though the book is indeed very bad, she creates a Sick Sad World and never even tries to pretend it's anything but. No Writer on Board here. Also, the characters are at least plausible. Unpleasant, but plausible.
- Plausible?! A woman who had FGM still being able to masturbate?!
- ... with the exception of Kavarria, Zarq's mother. She was more plot device than character.
- I read "Touched by Venom" just for the trainwreck, and I was disappointed. It's not a book I'd recommend but it's not even close to So Bad Its Horrible. It's a depressing place but ... I've read sf/fantasy 100 times worse.
- This troper would love to see examples that would even qualify as twice as bad.
- To the author's credit, though the book is indeed very bad, she creates a Sick Sad World and never even tries to pretend it's anything but. No Writer on Board here. Also, the characters are at least plausible. Unpleasant, but plausible.
Non-descriptive, contested, offensive material is not automatically bad, etc.
Anonymous Mc Cartneyfan: Cut this and put it here. That so-called biography is actually a novel!
- Wired. This so called "biography" of the late John Belushi was an utter insult. time=1228897065
Anonymous Mc Cartneyfan: Cut this (after some editing) and put it here. I'll cut it again it it's restored. The nature of the Newbery/Newberry Medal is such that, while a book that wins one might be later seen as bad, it almost certainly is not Horrible. Also, from the looks of things, the person who posted it may have been complaining about subtlety he didn't like.
- James Ramsey Ullman's Banner In The Sky proved the Newberry Award counts for crap. It's a story of a boy who tries to climb a mountain that killed his father. It could be interesting, but the author manages to create totally dull characters and a confusing description of the settings, which themselves create the only conflict in the book. The author was a mountaineer and used the correct words for everything. Unfortunately, since it's a children's book this just means the reader never has any idea what the setting is. The main character fails, and the mountain is instead climbed by an equally uninteresting mountaineer instead. All in all it could have actually made a heartwarmingly good tale... except for an utter lack of emotion. Mountains are cold, this book is colder. It's like a robot was programmed to write a sweeping character drama, and then what little emotion that accidentally wound up in it was vacuumed out in editorial. It doesn't help that there's no conflict in the entire thing. It may as well have been a book about walking from one end of limbo to the other, but without the interesting setting.
Anonymous Mc Cartneyfan: Cut these and put them here. We've already discussed Atlanta Nights. Since Ethan Frome is apparently on some publishers' lists of Western literary canon, we cannot list it without a good reason. And we definitely cannot list it if there's a real chance of Love It or Hate It - that is, if a sufficient number of people who have read that book still think it's a classic (whether we know them personally or not). This is not the first time I've cut a book over "complaining about subtlety you don't like," so...
- Atlanta Nights was deliberately written as a terrible book, as a Take That! to a certain publisher. The tale behind this book can be found on the other wiki
- And who could forget the bane of high school literature classes across the English-speaking world, Edith Wharton's dubious masterpiece Ethan Frome? Your Mileage May Vary on this one, since the book must presumably have defenders who hold to the belief that the book deserves its status as a literary classic, however this troper has never met even a single such individual.
Anonymous Mc Cartneyfan: The good news is, the new description of The Shadow God is informative. The bad news is, it makes it sound like a So Bad, It's Good book. Narm in quantity is a marker for So Bad, It's Good and Guilty Pleasures: it spoils a truly good work, but it redeems a bad one. Not going so far as to cut, but this entry needs finessing.
Anonymous Mc Cartneyfan: Cut this and put it here. There must be something about this book, or there would be a lot fewer Objectivists out there.
Shrikesnest: As a non-objectivist who genuinely enjoyed the book, I have to concur. Ayn Rand is a very popular author, even if she's not your cup of tea.
Anonymous Mc Cartneyfan: Cut this and put it here. This book would not be in print if it was truly So Bad Its Horrible. Not only did the publisher like it, but a lot of people who visited the Baen Books website liked at least part of it, so it's probably a Guilty Pleasure. When the entry for the work all but says it was published by popular demand, and since this was the Baen Books website — if there was that big a sincere demand for "OH JOHN RINGO NO," then it definitely doesn't go here.
- Four words: OH JOHN RINGO NO. John Ringo himself linked to this review of his novel Ghost and agreed with everything therein. (As the series progresses, the reviewer moves his estimation of the series as a whole from So Bad Its Horrible to Guilty Pleasures, but the first book still has to be seen to be believed. Preferably with protective eyewear.)
- Or just skip the middle third of the book, where the most squicky stuff happens.
Peteman: Twilight does not belong here because whatever problems it has, it still has a substantial fanbase with young women. The fact that it is so successful with its intended fanbase means it is not So Bad Its Horrible.
Kuruni: And I must point out that So Bad Its Horrible main page suggest Hype Backlash for popular works which you found suck.
Antwan: If anybody finds Sign Of The Dead continuing to make silly edits because we won't accept Twilight, let us know so we can properly ban him.
Anonymous Mc Cartneyfan: Permission to restore the Unreal novelizations? This is more than just a publishing error. This is two books reduced to incomprehensibility because someone gave the manuscripts a perfect shuffle.
Peteman: I remember hearing about this manuscript for a novel that was deliberately created to be as terrible as possible, because the writers wanted to see how stringent the quality control was after the publishers stated that they thought science fiction was universally terrible.
Anonymous Mc Cartneyfan: A couple of novels with similar motivations for existing have been listed — and then unlisted. Those aren't failed novels — they're successful TrollFics.
Anonymous Mc Cartneyfan: The one you were thinking of was Atlanta Nights.
Anonymous Mc Cartneyfan: Why was Miss Furr and Miss Skeene cut?
