History Narm / Literature

** There's no excuse for a [[spoiler: [[http://alicia-chan.deviantart.com/art/HP-DH-SPOILERS-Snape-shaped-60539637 Snape-shaped hole in the window]].]]
*** Oh come on, that was definitely ''supposed'' to be funny.
**** Second this, it was supposed to be funny and then the reader can easily return to the action without detraction.

* ''TheChroniclesOfNarnia'' (or [[IncrediblyLamePun Narm-ia]]) has several of these, but one of the best is after Puddleglum's ShutUpHannibal. What do the others do? Do they stand in awed silence? Come up with their own arguments? Draw their swords? No, they say this:

** JKR often overdoes it with [[spoiler: Snape's various [[CrowningMomentOfAwesome Crowning Moments of Awesome.]]]] Remember "I, THE HALF BLOOD PRINCE?" or "Look... at... me..."
** Sirius's death, as well as Harry's angst, was also overdone.
--->''[[ThisIsSPARTA "HE! IS! NOT! DEAD!"]]''

*** Even better is the line "'We're not going to use magic?' Ron ejaculated loudly." The way it's written in the book, with a question mark followed by a capitalized word, has [[http://mentalhealthlife.blogspot.com/2007/09/lesson-in-vocabulary.html led some fans to read it as two separate sentences.]]
** The [[ItsNotYouItsMyEnemies 'Spider-Man Breakup']] at the end of ''Half Blood Prince''.
** The narrative paragraph following [[spoiler:Fred's]] death in ''Deathly Hallows''. Thankfully, a chapter break intervenes, so the reader has a chance to emote before the moment is ruined.

** "The suddenness and completeness of death was with them like a presence". That sentence is bad enough, but then you realise it's referring to the death of Mad-Eye Moody, a minor character whose largest appearance was in fact a psychotic Death Eater in disguise and it becomes impossible to take seriously the book's "YOU WILL FEEL SAD ABOUT THIS PROFOUND DEATH!" message.

** Sirius's death was also overdone.

** [[spoiler:The death of Dumbledore]] at the end of ''Half-Blood Prince,'' meant to be serious and heartbreaking, was [[YourMileageMarVary overdone and melodramatic]].

* There is a book about an alien sent to Earth to find love. (The book was clearly counting on attracting the readers of {{Twilight}}). It includes the line, "[[MarsNeedsWomen I am here to find a female]]".

** [[spoiler:The death of Dumbledore]] at the end of ''Half-Blood Prince,'' meant to be serious and heartbreaking, was overdone and melodramatic.

** Even better, in Exile (book two of the Dark Elf trilogy): "Who are you? You are not my father!" "No. I am your... mother!"

*** Almost everything Gratiano says in that scene is [[CaptainObvious entirely obvious]], such as "He's gone, but his wife's killed" (describing an event that happened approximately one second ago in front of everyone).

** "O, I am slain!" is also uttered by Polonius in ''Hamlet''. The final scene of ''Hamlet'' also features "I am poison'd."
*** Many of the Shakespearean examples are in the plays because they announce deaths and, without them, either the actors wouldn't know when to die or the audience in the nosebleed seats wouldn't know if someone had truly died. (That goes for the broken leg as well.)

** The narrative paragraph immediately following [[spoiler:Fred's]] death in ''Deathly Hallows''. Thankfully, a chapter break intervenes, so the reader has a chance to emote before the moment is ruined.
** The death of [[spoiler:Dumbledore]] at the end of ''Half-Blood Prince,'' while certainly meant to be serious and heartbreaking, was so overdone and melodramatic as to inspire tears of laughter in this troper.

** In fairness to the series, it's been established that being mentally linked to a creature while it dies in this {Verse} is [[Understatement rather unpleasant]] in the mildest of cases, and we've yet to see Eragon's reaction to feeling the death of a human being.

* Stephen King's ''It'' -- specifically, that scene at the very end of the book. You know the one. The one where [[spoiler: 12-year-old Beverly has sex with her six same-age friends, one by one]] to help them escape the sewers. It's best left unexplained.... [[hottip:* :Why is this book legal?]]
* Stephen Hand's novelizations of ''TheTexasChainsawMassacre'' and ''FreddyVsJason'', as well as his original novel ''[[FridayThe13th Friday the 13th]]: Carnival of Maniacs'', while decent, occasionally descended into... really weird PurpleProse.
* The death of Anji's boyfriend Dave in the DoctorWho EighthDoctorAdventures novel ''Escape Velocity'', a [[SoBadItsHorrible horrible]] installment of an otherwise [[GushingAboutShowsYouLike great series]]:

** The screams of laughter from the readers reached the novel which then exploded.
* The {{Redwall}} series always has a [[NarmCharm dash of narm]] spicing every book, but the title character in ''Mariel of Redwall'' acts like she has some kind of mood disorder. After a mean old squirrel refuses to travel with her:

Five seconds later, she's back and [[AngstWhatAngst everything's fine]]. She does this repeatedly.
* In the AlanDeanFoster SpaceOpera ''The End of the Matter'' the heroes encounter a primitive race of sapients on the planet Alaspin called the Otoids. Much is made of the fact that the Otoids...[[EyeScream remove the eyes of those they kill]] and ''no one knows why they do this!'' Oooooh! Scary! Cue inner monologues of characters grimly musing to themselves "What do the Otoids do with dead men's eyes?" Except that...once you've gotten past the fact that the Otoids gouge out the eyes of their victims (and for what it's worth, it's pretty clear they do this ''post''-mortem), which EVERYONE on this planet knows, there can't possibly be anything terriby mysterious, horrific, or eldritch about what they DO with them afterwards. Do they...[[spoiler: ''eat'' them]]?!? Do they [[{{Squick}} smush them up into a gooey paste and rub them all over their bodies]]? Do they give them to the little Otoid babies to make little bouncy ball toys out of? Who freaking ''cares''? A. You're dead. B. Your eyes have been removed from your (already dead) skull. Anything else beyond those two facts has got to be pretty anti-climactic.
* The first six ''NightmareOnElmStreet'' films had extremely rare hardcover novelizations. As they appear to have been written for very young readers ([[MisaimedMarketing for some reason...]]) they contain a lot of this.
* TheSagaofSevenSuns, anyone? From the AIs being called Compies, to the Gypsy-In-Space Roamers referring to their enemy (named Basil Wenceslas) as "The Big Goose", it's hard to shake the impression that you're reading a transplanted bedtime story. And that's before you realise the entire series is an Earth/Air/Fire/Water elemental battles plot.
* Ten pages or so into William Forstchen's CosyCatastrophe novel ''One Second After'', the reader learns that one of the rugged widower hero's two adorable girls is [[spoiler: a diabetic]]. From that moment on, you know ''exactly'' what's coming, and it takes the - whole -entire - novel to finally get there. Just to layer on another layer of angst, they have to [[spoiler: kill the [[ShootTheDog family dog]] immediately after]] as well.

**** Titinus (or some soldier) immediately kills himself out of sorrow for his beloved commander Cassius. Like ''Hamlet'', ''JuliusCaesar'' is overly scrupulous about obeying the idea that tragedy means "everyone's dead by the end of the play".

* The first six ''NightmareOnElmStreet'' films had extremely rare hardcover novelizations. As they appear to have been written for very young readers (for some reason...) they are overflowing with this.

* ''She Said Yes''. The whole book is riddled with hindsight-based "insight" from the subject's parents (the book's authors) about [[WhatDoYouMeanItsNotSymbolic how every little thing she did was part of an elaborate path towards the end of her life]], repeatedly describing in [[DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment repetitive]], [[WhatDoYouMeanItsNotDidactic overblown]] verbosity the girl's "[[WhatDoYouMeanItsNotHeinous shocking]]" lifestyle, which almost any other parent or teenager--or anyone who's seen stories about truly shocking teenage behavior--would recognize as normal adolescence. The only '''real''' gravitas comes from [[ForegoneConclusion knowing the ending in advance]] (it's the biography of a girl who died in the Columbine High School shootings).

* ''LatawnyaTheNaughtyHorseLearnsToSayNoToDrugs'' is made of this. It becomes impossible to absorb the moral of the story when smoking and drinking horses (of the non-anthropomorphic variety) looks hilarious. The intended {{Tearjerker}} moment involving an OD'd horse lying dead with a joint by his mouth is the icing on the cake.

** Considering Mr. J's probably actually done that at some point...
* It's really funny to read the AlexRider novel ''Point Blank.'' The villain's plot is called Project Gemini. There was a famous RealLife space program called Project Gemini back in the 1960s. So, this novel has lines like these:

**And we wonder why the American space program has stalled out...

* The end of ''MySistersKeeper'', when [[spoiler: Anna is killed in a car accident]]. After everything, it's so obviously designed to be a tearjerker that it becomes pure Narm. The blatant DebateAndSwitch doesn't help.
* The book ''Notes on a Scandal'' gives us the classic line "Miss, miss, can I come in you miss?" whilst [[HotForStudent Bathsheba and Steven]] are having sex for the first time. This is an interesting case, because while the line was intentionally meant to be unnatural (emphasizing Stephen's awkwardness in their relationship and the formalities between teacher and student), the line (for [[{{Theenglishman}} this troper anyway]]) came across as funny rather than [[{{Squick}} Squicky]].
* ''The Ruins'' is one creepy book in which a group of tourists end up trapped on a hill with a maneating plant. For most of the book, the plant is downright scary, especially as its revealed that the plant is actually sentient and enjoys screwing with them. This troper found it all very creepy, until it starts speaking in German, which just killed the serious mood for this troper.
* From the Dutch novella ''Onmacht'': "In een genadeloze opeenvolging valt haar huwelijk uit elkaar. De sokken maken het definitief." (In a merciless consecution her marriage falls to pieces. The socks make it final.) ItMakesSenseInContext, but even then it sounds ridiculous.
* Stephen King's ''It''. Leeeeet's talk about that scene at the very end of the book. You know the one. The one where [[spoiler: 12-year-old Beverly has sex with her six same-age friends, one by one]] in order to help them escape the sewers. Trust me, it wouldn't be any better if I explained it.