"I know it's terrible, but..."

[pict]

What is your favourite piece of fiction that you love but can't call good? If you feel like sharing, why do you like it? Tell me all about your guilty pleasures!

Comments

[bookblather]

Oh man, let me tell you about The Last Legion.

I mean the movie, not the book: I've never read the book but the movie is BONKERS. It starts out as a Lost Roman Legion movie with a Brave Roman Commander (Colin Firth) and the Super Hot Bodyguard (Aishwarya Rai) of Clearly Wondering What He Is Doing In This Movie (Alexander Siddig), rescuing the Tiniest Last Roman Emperor (Thomas Brodie-Sangster) from a Treacherous Roman Senator (John Hannah) and the King of the Goths and Now Rome (Peter Mullan). Also Ben Kingsley is there as a Mystery Wizard. Then, halfway through, it abruptly turns into The Beginning of Arthurian Legend, starring the Tiniest Last Roman Emperor as Uther Pendragon and Mystery Wizard as Merlin. Also Brave Roman Commander and Super Hot Bodyguard get together, but only after she almost literally climbs naked into his bed because he is Dense. It's not a good movie. I love it so much.

Oh, also, they run into the remains of the Ninth Legion, including some people who served in the legion. The Ninth Legion disappeared sometime between 120 and 193, yet this movie is set in 476. It is a TRIP.

[lizvogel]

That... sounds kind of awesome.

[bookblather]

I mean I definitely love the movie a LOT. There's a few unfortunate tropes (c'mon guys, why is the black man the ONLY one to die) but it's by and large a great deal of silly fun.

[megpie71]

This sounds like it might occupy the same genre of "Horrible Pseudo-Historicals" that is occupied by "The Thirteenth Warrior" (Antonio Banderas as a Moor who falls in with a bunch of Vikings out to effectively re-do Beowulf). I love these as a genre because they're automatically in the "so terrible they're great" category - brilliant for watching when I'm in that really nit-picky mood because there are just So Many WRONG Things in there.

I really need to dig that one out at some point and re-watch it (I bought the DVD at a point where I was in a job I didn't enjoy much, and was therefore dealing with it by "laundering" the money into tacky consumerist tat).

[bookblather]

Oh hey, I saw that one! I think in English class, of all places. TBH Antonio Banderas is always okay by me.

[fleurviolette]

... I still like The Man from UNCLE, mainly for the aesthetic, characters, and humor. I still like this one ship, that I even made a comm for them a while back.

[krait]

The movie "Timeline."

I just really love
a) the total nerd yelling about electrons, and
b) the knight kissing the dude in the tunnel.

Oh, and shouting Trebuchet!!! every time somebody onscreen shouts Trebuchet!!!

[hannah]

The Sharon Shinn angel books, which I fully believe are thinly veiled fics of that one Christopher Walken movie from the late 1990s.

[writerkit]

There's a little self-published short story collection I got at a con once called "An Aspie Girl in Massachusetts". It's a little preachy, it has continuity stumbles from one story to the next, and it gets race wrong in that way that well-meaning white people who are trying to be "Diverse!" and not succeeding get it wrong (with a couple of forays into out-and-out *bad* stereotyping). But it was also the first autism rep I found that really mirrored what it was like for me, the first time I felt fully mirrored by a main character, and she gets to be a detective and have a romance, and the stories are all quiet and sweet rather than being emotionally overwhelming. Plus we get a lot of history of the Worcester Lunch Car Company, since the main character really likes traditional diners and spends a lot of time actively seeking them out. (The diners she visits in the stories all really exist. I've even been to one-- I was super amused when I realized it was one of the ones from the book.)

[cupcake_goth]

The Witching Hour by Anne Rice. It's huge and unwieldy, needed an editor Anne would actually listen to, and is full of Problematic Things. It is a lurid collection of gothic novel tropes wrapped in overwrought purple prose, and I LOVE IT.

(Only The Witching Hour, tho'. There were no other Mayfair Witches books. No, there weren't. I don't believe you.)

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

(OT:What is the world building needed for a universe where an editor actually can edit Rice?)

I heartily agree to this statement that any purported items are not the items they are named.

[firecat]

(OT:What is the world building needed for a universe where an editor actually can edit Rice?)

As an editor, LMAO

[peoriapeoriawhereart]

Does it require her and Stephen King to change places? Or do she and William Gibson swap?

Is it a convoluted daisy chain akin to Zemo's in CA:CW? (Which, btw is Occam's Shotgun--)

Now, On Topic: These aren't my favorites, but there are three works that are delightful and Not Great Craft--One half of a double sided book, where colonists lose most of the data tapes except an anthropology text, someone's history of Scotland and two others and there are dinosaur analogs. The early Myth Adventures and the early Pip and Jynx novels.

Here's the thing about these. I don't know if the first one is an early work of someone that writes still/wrote more or if it was dealt by someone that 'grew up' after college and has airbrushed fanart in a office somewhere. But they all have that Vibe of kool premise baby learning to walk Writer. Which is infinitely preferable to all flash and cardboard mush inside *joss* Oh, sorry. Sips some tea with honey and lemon.

[silverusagi]

Yeah, I also like this one. The other Mayfair Witches books which do not exist went off in quite a different tangent.

I also love early Vampire Chronicles, but they also don't exist after a certain point for me.

[cupcake_goth]

If you haven't read it, Prince Lestat is gloriously silly. It reads like Lestat is writing self-insert fic, even more than The Vampire Lestat. Just don't read Prince Lestat and the Realms of Atlantis.

[silverusagi]

I read Prince Lestat. I had sort of been done with TVC books for a long time, after they got more and more like crossover fanfic, but when I saw a new one at the library after so many years of no new vampire books, I thought what the hell. I fully expected it to be bonkers, and it was. But I decided I was definitely done after that.

[geraineon]

The Vampire Armand. I love it, but I cannot in good conscience recommend it as a good book to read. But Armand is my fav, so I enjoyed that book a lot.

[silveradept]

I don't know that I'd call them loves, but I have quite a few of The Suck Fairy's Greatest Hits in my SF/F childhood and teenage reading, to the point where I based my user name on one when I was still young and liked the concept more than the execution, or the author, and have been doing a years-long "oh, what is this nonsense?" to another.

[swingandswirl]

Three come to mind:

1) Justice League. Don't care that it was objectively bad; it was still these heroes I'd loved since I was ten on the big screen, and not being dickmeasuring asshats at each other, unlike the goatfucking stupidity that the Avengers movies turned into.

2) The Man From Uncle. Pretty spies! Hijinks! Banter! /grabbyhands/

3) Jupiter Ascending. Honestly, I will defend this movie to the death. It's not its fault that WB didn't know how to market a wish fulfilment fantasy for tween girls rather than tween boys. Also BEES!

[type_wild]

Kyo Kara Maoh. I like it for the characters, which is not to say that they're well written at all - honestly, it's all about Wolfram and all the drama he has with his fiancé, his totally-not-his-brother, and the entire political whatever with his uncle.

I'm not sure I'd call it bad, as is, since it was successful enough to run for some 130something episodes. But it's definitely not quality material on any measure. The universe has the potential of SO MUCH, but it never tries to follow up on any of it, and in fact squanders some of its most potent stuff on filler episode nonsense. The novels/manga might be better - they're certainly tonally more mature than the anime. But be that as it may, it was the anime I fell in love with, and it's the anime I love the best to this day.

Another one is Gravitation, where the manga and the anime both have their different but grave problems. But ugh I love these dysfunctional nineties musicians anyway.

[castiron]

Patricia Kennealy Morrison's Aeron Aoibhell trilogy -- The Copper Crown, The Throne of Scone, and The Silver Branch. It's one of these stories where you can tell who's a good guy and who's a bad guy by how they feel about the main character, and there are very few shades of gray. It's also one of these stories where the main character doing terrible things in the past is mostly excused because she Felt Really Really Bad afterwards. The internal chronology makes zero sense, especially in Throne. The Celtic cultures are extremely romanticized. And I adore this series, particularly the first two books, and will happily wrap myself up in it for an escape.

I do not, however, recommend any of Kennealy Morrison's other Keltia books; they have the same flaws without the over-the-top fun of the original trilogy. The author makes me love Aeron; she doesn't make me love the leads of the other stories.

[cynthia1960]

Aeron is the best; her books are my favorites. I also like the Arthur books, just not quite as much. I am a completist so I am glad to have the other stories, but they definitely smack of PKM using them to work stuff out. All of them are being kept, but Aeron's stories are the first for rereading.

[fred_mouse]

Ooh, I have the Throne of Scone, which I picked up cheap somewhere and have never got around to reading. I may also have The Silver Branch. These might be the crack-tastic mind candy I'm looking for when I want something trash to read.

[allekha]

Genesis of Aquarion - I'm not sure I'd call it bad, though it's certainly not the best anime I've ever seen. But I love the OTT mecha powered by magical threesome totally-not-orgasms, the weird alien 'angels', and the relationships complicated by betrayal and reincarnation and obsessive pining.

[doranwen]

The first one that comes to mind is The Girl Who Owned a City. Children's apocalyptic book where all the adults die and a ten-year-old rules a city, complete with the writer's personal political views (apparently based on some failed social experiment) - but it's delightful to read, lol. It's not the best story ever but it's certainly fun.

It's easier to think of fanfic that fits this than regular published stuff…

[silverusagi]

I like the Kendra Donovan mystery series by Julie McElwain, which is about an FBI agent who falls two hundred years back in time and then has to make a life there, and also solves mysteries! And have a romance with a Duke's heir! It’s kind of as ridiculous as it sounds. I really enjoy the books, though I suspect they’re not actually good. I can't even say I like the characters that much! But I like the situation, and I like the idea of of the heroine falling back in time, which might as well be another world, and having to make a life somehow.

Weirdly, I do not like Outlander, because there is just too much drama for me. lol.