elodieunderglass:

rachelhaimowitz:

theprettynerdie:

downtroddendeity:

cameoappearance:

ceescedasticity:

barbaricyip:

crunchbuttsteak:

missdangerpudding:

myimmortalseries:

bophtelophti:

timemachineyeah:

Were there any books or plays famous for being badly written almost to an archetypal hilarity before My Immortal? Like were there any 19th century memetic gothic romances or?

Even just within SF fandom, The Eye of Argon (1970) is a classic viral example of hilariously bad writing from pre-Internet days; there were contests at cons to see who could get the farthest reading it without cracking up.

William Topaz McGonagall’s poetry was considered hilariously bad in his day (late 19th century); according to Wikipedia, “He found lucrative work performing his poetry at a local circus. He read his poems while the crowd was permitted to pelt him with eggs, flour, herrings, potatoes and stale bread. For this, he received fifteen shillings a night.”

I don’t know much more about the history of memetically bad literature than these two examples, but hopefully people can add more!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_was_a_dark_and_stormy_night

don’t forget “English as She Is Spoke”, a guide to speaking English written by a man who spoke no English. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_As_She_Is_Spoke

There’s also “Naked Came the Stranger” which was a collaborative effort to write the worst novel possible and still get it published. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naked_Came_the_Stranger

Also, “A Tragedy” by Theophile-Jule-Henri “Theo” Marzials, considered by some to be the worst poem ever written in the English language. (Obviously I am in love with it and intend to somehow incorporate it into my wedding vows.)  http://homepages.wmich.edu/~cooneys/poems/bad/Marzials.Tragedy.html

There’s also Atlanta Nights, collaboratively written by a group of science fiction writers.

The primary purpose of the exercise was to test PublishAmerica’s claims to be a “traditional publisher” that would only accept high-quality manuscripts. Critics have long claimed that PublishAmerica is actually a vanity press that pays no special attention to the sales potential of the books they publish since most of their revenue comes from the authors rather than book buyers. PublishAmerica had previously made some highly derogatory public remarks about science fiction and fantasy writers, because many of their critics came from those communities; those derogatory remarks influenced the decision to make such a public test of PublishAmerica’s claims.

One chapter was written by a predictive text emulator.

I’d like to nominate Julia A. Moore, another awful poet of the late 19th century. A lot of her awful poems are about tragedy and disaster, but described in such a shallow way (and either bluntly matter-of-fact or super maudlin) that it does not exactly bring a tear to the eye.

The literary club J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis were members of held competitions to see who could read the farthest into something by Amanda McKittrick Ros without laughing. She’s famous for incoherently purple prose, and Mark Twain called her first book
“one of the greatest unintentionally humorous novels of all time.” Sample:

“Speak! Irene! Wife! Woman! Do not sit in silence and allow the blood
that now boils in my veins to ooze through cavities of unrestrained
passion and trickle down to drench me with its crimson hue!”

I think my favorite is how she reacted to preps nd flamerz people criticizing her work; she called critics stuff like “clay-crab of corruption” and “bastard donkey-headed mite.”

@imperfectkreis @milkdromeduh

I’ve read Atlanta Nights cover to cover and it. is. glorious.

I’M GOING TO READ ALL OF THESE