(no subject)

[skygiants]

vivien529 asked me for my top five "fandom wtf!?!?" moments, which is a question that could be interpreted two ways!

The first way - and the way I think Viv probably meant it - is the top five times that fandom made me spit my diet coke out at the screen, but to be honest there are SO MANY of these moments that narrowing them down would be simultaneously well-nigh impossible and almost pointless, seeing as for lo these several years I have reached the kind of zen state re: fandom in which I can't even be shocked anymore, just laugh. Of course there is Care Bears BDSM fic! IT'S INEVITABLE. Certainly SGA needs a girl scout cookies AU! WHY NOT. There are so many points of similarity between Giles and a weretiger? WELL OBVIOUSLY. This is just what fandom does.

What is far more likely to make me go WTF!?!?! is when an actual for-profit piece of fiction seems to think that it is in fact cracktastic fanfic, and this is how I have chosen to compile my list!

1. RETURN TO THE SECRET GARDEN

fire_and_a_rose was so kind as to not only discover this book, but mail me a copy. Someday I will be able to thank her properly - and yes, you should be hearing that in tones of faint menace.

I have yet to be brave enough to do more than flip through it. Someday, perhaps, I will feel both masochistic and sadistic enough to read fully and review. For now, I will summarize with a brief list of the plot points I know the book to contain:

1. Mary and Colin are both in love with Dickon
2. Mary marries Colin, but has a torrid affair with Dickon
3. Meanwhile, Colin is bringing rentboys to the garden
4. And Dickon is sleeping with prostitutes and calling them by Mary's name. So romantic!
5. Eventually Dickon commits suicide. IN THE GARDEN.
6. But it's okay because of their magical miracle somehow-the-child-of-all-three-of-them baby???

2. MOHINDERFLY

All right, there was plenty of WTF to be found in season 2 of Heroes but season 3. OH SEASON 3. Mohinder's development of random fly-webbing powers was just the icing on the cake, honestly, but it's nicely symptomatic and also totally hilarious so we'll go with it. shati and genarti and I even wrote a song!

he's got some friends and neighbors
and he keeps them glued to the wall with a creepy web
SCIENCESQUE
CREEPY WEB

. . . I don't actually remember how the rest of it goes, but it was a work of genius, you can be assured of that.

3. Tealiel the Littlest Cannibal Angel

Okay, so anyone remember the part in Angel Sanctuary when Katan, upright and beautiful angel boy, had turned into a zombie tentacle monster kept in a box, and then he made friends with Tealiel the littlest angel who was outcast because another angel had been like "eat of my flesh to keep yourself alive!" and then they were going to run away together and be cannibal outcast bffs except then Tealiel got killed dramatically somehow and Katan went back to lonely zombie tentacledom?

This is actually not at all unusual for Angel Sanctuary. The whole manga is like this, that's just how Kaori Yuki rolls. But I mark this plot development as the point where I just, you know, accepted it. Nay, embraced it. BRING ON THE ZOMBIE CANNIBAL TENTACLES, KAORU YUKI, I AM PREPARED.

(I am not sure I was prepared for the rain of angry angel fetuses, but you know.)

4. THE UTENACAR

Honestly, I don't think the Utena movie would have rated a slot on here by itself - I mean, yes, Utena going through a carwash and turning into a magical car that Anthy could then race out of the school was pretty hallucinogenic, but I guess not all that much moreso than most of the actual series - if dopplegl and I hadn't decided to watch it in a double billing with End of Evangelion. I very much recommend this course of action . . . for anyone who is looking to induce a mind-altering state without the inconvenience of drugs, anyway.

Seriously, don't even ask me what actually happened in either of those movies, because other than the Utenacar I DON'T REMEMBER ANYTHING. By the end of that day, my brains had officially leaked out my ears, and I'm pretty sure I never got all of them back.

5. LOVE NEVER DIES

This slot was actually a battle in my heart; I almost put one of the major plot developments in the last of Kage Baker's Company books, but that plot development is SO SPOILERY (and so full of WTF) that I would not have felt right talking about it (and anyway, I prefer to ignore it as much as possible and pretend the whole book is about Lewis the fanfic-writing cyborg and his adopted daughter Princess Tiana Parakeet.)

So instead, let us talk about PHANTOM 2: LOVE NEVER DIES. Let us indeed talk about Andrew Lloyd Webber's SECRET BABY SEQUEL to Phantom of the Opera, i.e. his own hilariously terrible fanfic.

(Let's talk about how desperately I want to see it on Broadway, and how drunk I will have to be beforehand.)

. . . actually, I think I've pretty much said all I need to.

Honorable Mention 6. Two to the OMGWTF

This is an honorable mention because I like to pretend that year when I was thirteen and devouring Piers Anthony books like candy never happened. Also because I have never read the book in question and I never ever ever ever intend to. On the other hand, sometimes you just have to scream anyway. The thing is, a month or so ago, I somehow found myself on TVTropes (I know) reading the Xanth page (I KNOW), which is when I found out that the plot of one of the most recent Xanth books just straight-up focuses on the relationship between a dude and an occasionally-magically-aged-up TWELVE-YEAR-OLD GIRL.

OH PIERS ANTHONY NO FOREVER.

OKAY, GUYS, YOUR TURN. I will be disappointed if I don't spend today shrieking either because of things I tragically forgot to include, or because of things I was probably much happier not knowing!

Comments

[bookblather.livejournal.com]

IT IS OKAY. I ALSO SPENT A YEAR READING PIERS ANTHONY LIKE CANDY. And now whenever I see things about his books I'm just all "OH PIERS ANTHONY NO." At least John Ringo owns up to his "NO"ness and is generally good-natured about the whole thing.

Except Imbri. Imbri was pretty cool.

Hmm. WTFs. The latest Jane Austen mystery is sending me in a tizzy. I love those books so much, I love them like candy, and then suddenly it is like Stephanie Barron is parodying herself. I AM SAD. *woeface*

OH AND THE END OF CRYOBURN. But that was a good WTF. And adequately foreshadowed. Even if it made me gnash my teeth and wail at the heavens. Likewise the end of Changes.

[skygiants]

SO MUCH NO. I still think one of the worst things I ever did was get my little brother's social circle hooked on Piers Anthony. WHY DID I DO THAT. I MAY HAVE BEEN DOOMED MYSELF, BUT DIDN'T I KNOW BETTER THAN TO CORRUPT THE YOUTH. ;___;

I am like fourteenth in the waitlist for Cryoburn at the library! That's okay though because I still have to reread Diplomatic Immunity before I get to it, which I have been putting off.

[gramarye1971]

If you wanted to split it up into my 'reactions of unmitigated and probably unholy glee!' and 'reactions of KILL EVERYTHING WITH FIRE!' I can safely say that as far as I'm concerned, That Movie falls into the latter category and Legend of Koizumi falls into the former.

(No one can get me drunk enough to watch That Movie. The prospect of lulz are not strong enough to get back the two hours of my life I will waste in watching it.)

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

That Movie doesn't exist. Therefore it doesn't count.

[skygiants]

That is indeed the thing, that sheer WTF can go either way! If we're going for WTF that brings me unmitigated and unholy glee, I would probably have had to include Joan Aiken, She Of The Zombie Wolves and Tragic Whale/Sea Captain Romance.

(I could be gotten drunk enough to watch That Movie, but much as I love TDiR, it is not as much a part of my heart as it is yours; also someone else would have to buy the alcohol as a bribe.)

[agonistes]

I still think judicious application of Deadwood would help with That Movie...

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

As you know I am with you on the Kage Baker alternate #5, although in the volume in my head, besides Lewis and Princess Tiara Parakeet there is also a scene where Victor organizes a dinner party!

Piers Anthony is just too easy for a list like this. We're talking about a man who *started* the Xanth series with a female character who is either beautiful, sweet and incredibly stupid or intelligent, ugly and nasty *depending on where she is in her menstrual cycle*. This moment is *not* Anthony's all-time low in objectification of women.

Let's see. For gratuitous Mary Sues in print, you can't beat the one in Mercedes Lackey's Alberich duology, where Herald-Chronicler Misty (!), despite her enormous glasses and inability to fight, ends up having lots of sex with the hot Karsite weaponsmaster.

Honorable mention on authorial self-insert is GGK's Crispin in the Byzantine I mean Sarantine books. He ends up in a relationship with (SPOILER), which, given the circumstances, is even more hubristic than Misty/Alberich.

[skygiants]

Oh that is true, how could I forget Victor's dinner party! WITH OBLIGATORY DISCWORLD REFERENCE. Also immortal cyborg William Randolph Hearst can stay. Because, I mean, he is immortal cyborg William Randolph Hearst.

That's why Piers Anthony is only an honorable mention! The really terrifying part is that none of this particularly hit me as WTF when I was thirteen. WHERE WAS MY BRAIN AND WHY WAS IT NOT IN MY HEAD.

People keep trying to talk me into reading the Alberich books! I may have to do it just to experience Herald Misty for myself. The Sarantine books are also I think the only GGK I have not read . . . people tell me they're good though???

[zumie-ashlen.livejournal.com]

I remember reading somewhere about ANOTHER, DIFFERENT sequel to Phantom of the Opera--don't know if it has any relation to yours. But I know it was like a BDSM erotica book where Christine ends up with the phantom.

Also, that one time you're reading an over-four-hundred-year-old book that has canon mpreg it. I'm not joking. A bunch of dudes drink from a spring of pregnation, and then have to go on a quest to get the water from a spring of abortion. Journey to the West is GLORIOUS, I tell you.

The Outcast of Redwall gave me some serious wtf at the end, but that's more ragey than anything.

There was also hearing some stuff Astro Boy comics, which, uh... okay I admit I haven't read it, so I don't know true all of this it, but--the robots in this world have to drink oil and stuff to keep functioning. Except, the one designed like an eight-year-old boy has to have it stuck up his butt. And apparently Osamu Tezua wrote the book in response to losing a son or something? Yeah. Uh. Mindscarring.

[skygiants]

I suspect you are talking about Susan Kay's Phantom, which is the book I am pretty sure has influenced 90% of the Phantom of the Opera fanfiction out there. THE PHANTOM IS SO TRAGIC AND MISUNDERSTOOD.

. . . which doesn't even shock me, because, again, of course people have been woobifying the Phantom since time immemorial. Of course. The really hilarious part is when it's set on Coney Island, and comes to Broadway!

ahahaha I knew I had to read Journey to the West! (From what I know from the medieval scholars around here, The Mabinogian has some similarly cracktastic plot twists. Because if these guys acted like jerks, clearly the best way to punish them is to turn them into animals and force them into incestuous bestiality mpreg!)

I've only read the bits of Astro Boy that were the direct inspiration of Naoki Urasawa's Pluto, but I feel like I should call in the Tezuka scholar on my flist . . . *laughing*

[futuresoon.livejournal.com]

Ahahahaha Mohinderfly. BEST PART OF THE SEASON, OBV. As for my own choices--there is a Second Doctor episode called The Mind Robber where the characters save the day by 1) a 14-year-old girl summoning her favorite comic book hero and 2) writing RPF. So yeah. Can't beat the classics, guys. Honorable mention goes to that episode of Monster where everyone just went around saying 'Domo' all the time. I'm still not sure if that might have been Urasawa trolling everybody in a fit of work-induced madness.

[skygiants]

If it had all been as wildly out of nowhere as the Mohinderfly, it might even have been worth watching for the crack value! It is a shame that it went on to be terrible in more boring ways. :(

Also: HAHAHAHA AWESOME. I am always so pleased by stories where characters write their own internal fanfiction, especially if they save the day thereby; it fills me with hilarity every time.

. . . really? The TV version had a full episode of that? I mean, I remember that in the manga, but it went by pretty fast . . . so my guess is that someone on the animation staff was really easily entertained.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I almost put one of the major plot developments in the last of Kage Baker's Company books, but that plot development is SO SPOILERY (and so full of WTF) that I would not have felt right talking about it

Spoiler-code? I never read it, due to the collective shriek of fannish horror resonating to the stratosphere.

I nominate several startling plot turns from mainstream YA:

1. Susan Whitcher's The Fool Reversed (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0374324468?ie=UTF8&tag=racmanbro-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0374324468) is a well-written, emotionally painful contemporary YA novel about a naive teenage girl having an affair with an adult male poet who is using her... until her takes her to a masked ball of SEXUAL ABUSE inhabited by small-press poets, forces her to sleep with his editor to get his small-press book of poems published, and then she is randomly attacked by a street gang and her alternate love interest, a teenage boy, loses an eye.

2. Hannah Moskowitz's Break (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1416982752?ie=UTF8&tag=racmanbro-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1416982752), in which the hero is on a quest to break every bone in his body so they'll "grow back stronger." Despite breaking something like 30 bones over a one-year period, he carries on going to school and breaking more bones in "skateboarding accidents," has no trouble paying medical bills, and no one - not the doctors, not the school, not his parents - notices that anything is wrong. Until he ends up in a mental hospital, where he becomes an inspirational figure to the other patients and they break their bones too. This might have worked as a satire, but it's actually a problem novel.

3. This is really the least of the problems with Crazy Beautiful (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0547403100?ie=UTF8&tag=racmanbro-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0547403100), aka HOOKS FOR HANDS, but I love that the villain's evil plot to separate the high school lovers, Lucius Wolfe and Aurora Belle, is to frame Aurora Belle's father for sexual harassment and then spread rumors that Lucius Wolfe was the one who framed him. The reason this plot is awesomely nuts rather than just convoluted is that there was a much better mechanism to separate them, which was the fact, easily guessable and verifiable, that the reason Lucius has HOOKS is that he tried to blow up his former school.

I also refer you to this: http://rachelmanija.livejournal.com/tag/genre%3A%20implausible%20plots

KAGE BAKER SPOILERS IN COMMENTS

[skygiants]

I knew I could count on you! EVIL ABUSIVE BALL OF SMALL-PRESS POETS may however be the candidate to beat, because WHAT.

(I have read all the reviews of Crazy Beautiful and I am torn between a great desire to read it for myself, and a feeling that it can never be quite as amazingly ridiculous as the reviews portray.)

For some reason I can't figure out how to make normal gray-on-gray spoiler code work on my journal, so I'm just going to white-text this and hope the warning is enough: In the books leading up to the finale, all three of protagonist-cyborg Mendoza's creepily identical human lovers across the centuries have turned out to be clones of each other, and now all three are independent and distinct personalities sharing the same body due to a complicated downloaded-memories plot twist. All three are still in love with Mendoza, who has lost most of her own memories in a PTSD-related incident, and therefore has no idea that her boyfriend is in fact three of her boyfriends constantly fighting for control of one body. The most morally bankrupt of the three decides to solve this dilemma by impregnating Mendoza with twin clones and shoving his two rivals into the heads of the clones, without Mendoza's consent. All parties retreat to happy family life on a desert island. The twins grow up with all memories intact and fully aware that their identical clone rival is their father and their love interest is their mother; the victorious clone, in what may be the weirdest development of all, settles down to write a seventeen-volume Victorian monograph on child-rearing. When the twins grow up, the family settles into a polyamorous foursome, highly symbolic of the Holy Trinity and the Virgin Mary, and use their super cyborg powers, intelligence and immortality to overthrow the corrupt regime and impose an era of harmony on the world while everyone else boggles. AS WELL THEY SHOULD.

[skylilies.livejournal.com]

hi, as i was in middle school when they first started coming out and CAN BE EXCUSED FOR READING ONE OF THEM AND THEN GOOGLING IN HORROR THIS SNIPPET WHEN I HEARD ABOUT IT, it just needs to be said: bella's demon baby who likes to eat uterus? ...all of the the twilight series?




I HONESTLY DON'T KNOW IF I CAN THINK OF MANY WTF-Y BOOKS. my tastes don't usually seem to stray into territories where this is easily possible ):'

...all though i once watched a korean movie in which i'm pretty sure a lot of main characters died, though i can't be positive because it was all very dark and convoluted, and it ended with the two main characters (a gay prostitute and a business man? I THINK. IT WAS DARK (really dark!), HARD TO TELL WHICH TWO PEOPLE IT REALLY WAS) were making out in a car, and a police man knocked on the door, eating a donut.

...that's how it ended. and it was not really relevant to the story. : ||

[skygiants]

Hahaha man, I have read the recaps of all the Twilight books, and I basically just have to say that I will never read them and yet I can never be sorry they exist for all the hilarity they have brought me!

. . . . that does seem like an anticlimactic ending . . .

[sandrylene.livejournal.com]

I hope Shati or Gen has Sciencesque written down somewhere, because periodically I think of it, and mostly all I recall is:
Stick in your arm! Stick it in your arm!
Cool powers! Cool powers!

And yes - it definitely qualifies as a work of genius. :D

[skygiants]

I am secretly hoping that Shati will swoop in here with the full song when she gets home from work tonight. And then I will be glad I live alone so that I can gleefully sing it and be SUPER COOL.

[tempestsarekind.livejournal.com]

pretend the whole book is about Lewis the fanfic-writing cyborg and his adopted daughter Princess Tiana Parakeet

YES THIS OMG. Seriously. I read the Company books one after the other in about a month, and they kept getting more and more awesome--and then the last two just let me down so thoroughly. (Except for Lewis. Lewis = fabulous.) There's a sequel or prequel out, I know, and I just can't read it because it's about a character I despise. Alas.

[skygiants]

Hahaha, I actually JUST READ that prequel! I don't even know why, because Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax is THE WORST, but the urge to completionism compelled me. (And because even when Kage Baker's plots are on the worst kind of crack, I still love her prose. It's a sickness!)

Lewis is always the best. I would read books about Lewis forever. For me, I will admit, the last book was worth reading just for him - I've been reading the books as they came out since I was around thirteen and after so many years waiting to find out what happened to him, I was so full of glee to get a whole awesome storyline for him that it took me a while to even get around to boggling at EVERYTHING ELSE.

[nevacaruso.livejournal.com]

I stopped watching Heroes after Season 2. By all accounts, I have chosen wisely.

Based on the first three volumes and a lot of hearsay, I'd also like to nominate the Buffy Season 8 comics.

[skygiants]

It was indeed an excellent, excellent choice. Hope sprang eternal for me, but I gave up about three episodes into season 3.

HAHAHAHAHA from what I have heard about the Season 8 comics . . . . yeah.

[blacksheep91.livejournal.com]

.....WELL YES THAT IS THE ONLY LOGICAL CONCLUSION TO THE SECRET GARDEN EVER. EVER.


Lets just stick in any and all "Jane Austen: We wrote it for teh sex" books. The end. (Although I like two of the Gone with the Wind sequel books, one where Scarlet is having adventures in Ireland and giving birth to demon babies and the other were it's during/after the was and EVERYONE'S LIVES KIND OF SUCK.)

(While on the subject, I can has some sort of The Flamboyantly Troubled Youth of Albus Dumbledore anthology?)

[skygiants]

OBVIOUSLY. I can't think why I didn't come up with it myself!

(. . . please tell me that when you say 'demon babies' you are speaking literally. PLEASE.)

[elle-white.livejournal.com]

Oh dear. I will never read Return to the Secret Garden because it most definitely ruin my childhood memories of the original story.

[skygiants]

It is SOMEONE'S TERRIBLE PUBLISHED FANFIC. And someday I will probably have to read it just to be sure how terrible it is, because I hate myself.

[genarti]

My (patchy) memory of the song:

So dangerous, so dangerous! [I have no idea what we substituted in here.]

He fights the law, but he also fights the crime [??? I FORGET what we subbed in here too]
but not as much, Sciencesque

With Sylar at his side, he'll have Sylar at his side, Sciencesque [?? I think.]

He's got some friends and neighbors, and he keeps them stuck to the wall with a creepy web
Sciencesque (creepy web!)

That guy is Sciencesque,
The voiceover is spoken
If he keeps on talking maybe finally
He'll make some sense (or maybe not)

Stick it in your arm, stick it in your arm
Cool powers, cool powers
Stick it in your arm, stick it in your arm
Cool, cool powers

He works alone, except when he works with bad guys, which is all the time
Sciencesque
He's a private eye, a crooked cop, a secret agent, and a celebrity pharmacist [?? I can't remember if we substituted out some of these]
Sciencesque

That guy is Sciencesque, Sciencesque, Sciencesque, Sciencesque

...Or did I?

[skygiants]

I know we definitely kept celebrity pharmacist! TOO HILARIOUS NOT TO.

I had however forgotten the verse about the voiceovers and am now cracking up at my desk. WE ARE BRILLIANT.

[fahye.livejournal.com]

Let's talk about how desperately I want to see it on Broadway, and how drunk I will have to be beforehand. -- I KNOW. I KNOW. I seriously considered doing this in London but it wouldn't have been any fun on my own.

[skygiants]

ahhhhhhhh now I am EVEN SADDER that we won't be overlapping in London. ;____;

[shati.livejournal.com]

Clearly you need to watch the Utena movie again, Eva-lessly!

I was going to say "it's less disturbing than Piers Anthony" but ... while I believe this in my heart, I cannot support this thesis with quotes from the text.

(Tsuwabuki is probably a Piers Anthony fan.)

[skygiants]

I was going to say 'it's probably less pedophilic,' but . . . . . um.

At least it's probably more intentionally disturbing?

(Tsuwabuki is a Piers Anthony character.)

[littledust.livejournal.com]

Ohhhhh, the Utena car. I also love how the entirety of Angel Sanctuary is one great big WTF. I have read it twice, TWICE, and I still have no idea what happens in it.

[skygiants]

hahahaha a few months ago shati and I were sitting around, and Shati was like ". . . what did happen at the end of Angel Sanctuary?" and I was like "I think . . . . something!" so we decided to look it up . . . .

We stared at last chapter for like half an hour and still couldn't figure it out.

[lacewood]

Oh man I am TOTALLY with you on Return to the Secret Garden's stellar place on this list. XD

Unfortunately my track record of reading/watching things like Katekyo Hitman Reborn (featuring MAGICAL ASSASSIN BABY MENTORS - and that's the least of the weird) and Gintama (I can't even BEGIN) has kind of ruined my capacity to WTF at anything. Unless we start heading in Hong Kong cinema, which is like a universe of batshit unto itself.

Oh, wait, there was that time my local television channel made a series about Buddhist vegetarian vampires. NOT EVEN KIDDING.

[skygiants]

I know how you feel, I am pretty sure Kaori Yuki at least temporarily broke my WTF abilities for myself! At least until LOVE NEVER DIES came along.

Also, I would totally watch that series about the Buddhist vegetarian vampires. *____*

[ojuzu.livejournal.com]

Haha, I love the Utena movie in all its crazy gorgeously animated glory. I've watched it like, what, ten times now? And my Utena fanfic is almost always for the movie rather than the series, because I can just throw out pretty imagery and symbolism and it doesn't have to make sense.

. . . I admit, the music doesn't hurt either.

[skygiants]

I'll admit, aside from the fact that I can remember basically none of it, I am also unjustly biased against the movie for not having Nanami. >.>

[wanderlustlover]

I agree with you one #1.....and I up you some heavy alcohol and candy on #5. Which I may never not need you for.

[skygiants]

When it comes here - and it will come here - SO ARE YOU. This is a given and a necessity. (And alcohol and candy I can promise as well!)

[bansidhe]

I like to pretend that year when I was thirteen and devouring Piers Anthony books like candy never happened.

Me too, hon. Me too.
Just like I want to forget reading his book Firefly, which involved a 30 year old being 'seduced' by a 5 year old girl. (Don't know if you've heard or not, but that was the book with the 8-page pedophilia apologist author's note. Eyurgh.)
*twitch*

[skygiants]

ahhhhh that is worse than the worst I knew of him and the worst I knew was pretty bad aaaaah!

[rowanberries.livejournal.com]

(Let's talk about how desperately I want to see it on Broadway, and how drunk I will have to be beforehand.)

YOU SHOULD SEE IT IN LONDON.

If I am around (which: who knows aaaahh RL whut) I would totally come along for moral support.

[skygiants]

If we can swing that I would SO BE FOR IT. *____*

(fingers crossed either way that you will be around though! :O WHAT GOOD IS COMING TO LONDON IF I CAN'T STALK THE INTERNET.)