Terrible lines that made it into published works

Spotts1701 wrote:

Penguin wrote:

Quote :

Jennifer stood there, quietly ovulating.

How would someone ovulate loudly? Would it sound like dropping a marble onto a tin roof? :lolinsane:

I think of it as sounding more like a small bell, like those ones they use to call people to dinner at expensive parties. It could actually be useful if you were trying to conceive and having trouble; instead of having to take your temperature every day and keep a calendar, you could just wait for the pinging sound and know it was time to have sex.

To be fair, it's not like Podkayne was anything vaguely resembling a normal human being. Still, I never could stand that book.

Wandering Critic wrote:

To be fair, it's not like Podkayne was anything vaguely resembling a normal human being. Still, I never could stand that book.

I think I was traumatized by the ending. I was probably thirteen when I read it. D:

In his short story "Serpents' Teeth", Spider Robinson has a character asking a bartender to send "a couple of horses" to the table, and then adds, "In fact, make it three pair."

A moment later the bartender obliges by sending three bottles of Dos Equis beer -- one for each person at the table.

Why is this terrible?

Spider Robinson, like his god Robert Heinlein, likes to make up idioms he thinks sound clever: Heinlein, for instance, liked to have his characters use "slipstick" for a slide rule. People who actually used slide rules called them "guessing sticks", an expression Heinlein never put into the mouth of any character; his characters use "slipstick" so consistently and regularly that a reader might think it was the real-world idiom for a slide rule.

Robinson apparently thought the word "equis" was cognate to the Latin equus,"horse". From this he seems to have extrapolated that clever people, like him, would use "two horses" to mean "Dos Equis". And that this clever expression would -- in the future world he describes -- become common usage, an idiom common enough for everyone to recognize.

The problem is that only very stupid, very ignorant people would do that. People who had never learned to say the alphabet in Spanish. People who thought they were clever -- "Look, I can trace a word back to (what I imagine to be) its Latinate root!" -- but actually knew nothing about what they were talking about.

People who had never looked at a Dos Equis label.

Do graphic novels count? 'Cause Lost Girls is pretty faily on a lot of accounts, and prose is one of them:

Quote :

Perhaps he'd force me down on all fours in the dirt and make me bum him off, pushing that great blunt thing up my tight bottom until I could feel his cock-hairs bristling and prickling at the stretched, protesting rim, could feel my bowel movements mashed to hot paste inside me.

Uh...huh. A fanbrat describes anal sex like a scat butter churn and we laugh them out of the ring. Alan Moore does it and it's art. I understand the man won some literary license with his other works, but seriously? Seriously?

Delcat wrote:

Do graphic novels count? 'Cause Lost Girls is pretty faily on a lot of accounts, and prose is one of them:

Quote :

Perhaps he'd force me down on all fours in the dirt and make me bum him off, pushing that great blunt thing up my tight bottom until I could feel his cock-hairs bristling and prickling at the stretched, protesting rim, could feel my bowel movements mashed to hot paste inside me.

Uh...huh. A fanbrat describes anal sex like a scat butter churn and we laugh them out of the ring. Alan Moore does it and it's art. I understand the man won some literary license with his other works, but seriously? Seriously?

Moore should stick to crazy people; "write what you know" and all that.

From "Dark Disciple" by Anthony Reynolds:

Quote :

Mothac's face was solemn, and the Dark Apostles gave him some room as he hefted it.

Mothac is supposed to be hefting a *book*, but someone wasn't paying attention to what they were writing ...

Delcat wrote:

Do graphic novels count? 'Cause Lost Girls is pretty faily on a lot of accounts, and prose is one of them:

Quote :

Perhaps he'd force me down on all fours in the dirt and make me bum him off, pushing that great blunt thing up my tight bottom until I could feel his cock-hairs bristling and prickling at the stretched, protesting rim, could feel my bowel movements mashed to hot paste inside me.

Uh...huh. A fanbrat describes anal sex like a scat butter churn and we laugh them out of the ring. Alan Moore does it and it's art. I understand the man won some literary license with his other works, but seriously? Seriously?

Seeing as Alan Moore's last work was basically a songfic, I think he's a lot closer to the fanbrats than a lot of his readers would admit...

Delcat wrote:

I understand the man won some literary license with his other works, but seriously? Seriously?

It's because we're afraid of him.

I heard he once killed a guy with his beard.

Delcat wrote:

Do graphic novels count? 'Cause Lost Girls is pretty faily on a lot of accounts, and prose is one of them:

Quote :

Perhaps he'd force me down on all fours in the dirt and make me bum him off, pushing that great blunt thing up my tight bottom until I could feel his cock-hairs bristling and prickling at the stretched, protesting rim, could feel my bowel movements mashed to hot paste inside me.

Uh...huh. A fanbrat describes anal sex like a scat butter churn and we laugh them out of the ring. Alan Moore does it and it's art. I understand the man won some literary license with his other works, but seriously? Seriously?

If it helps, everyone and their mother hates Lost Girls. It is genuinely terrible and Moore should be ashamed to put his name on it.

Delcat wrote:

Quote :

Perhaps he'd force me down on all fours in the dirt and make me bum him off, pushing that great blunt thing up my tight bottom until I could feel his cock-hairs bristling and prickling at the stretched, protesting rim, could feel my bowel movements mashed to hot paste inside me.

Uh...huh. A fanbrat describes anal sex like a scat butter churn and we laugh them out of the ring. Alan Moore does it and it's art. I understand the man won some literary license with his other works, but seriously? Seriously?

Oh my poor eyeballs. Don't do this to me, Alan Moore - I like Watchmen, I like The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, I like Swamp Thing, but who on earth thought it a good idea to release Lost Girls to the public and tack Moore's name on it? He should be ashamed of himself.

Quote :

could feel my bowel movements mashed to hot paste inside me.

... This is not a sex-scene - it's the missing lines from Agony in Pink. The poor innards are being viciously destroyed. o.O

Well, while we're on the topic of comics....

"What are you, dense? Are you retarded or something? Who the hell do you think I am? I'm the god damn Batman."

Actually, you could open any of the issues of All-Star Batman and Robin, pick out a random page, and there's a good chance you'll find several good candidates for this thread. 

I beg to differ, Roo. That line rules.

Well, we all have our different tastes, but in my opinion that line, and just about everything else about that comic, rules only by virtue of how much it sucks.

I'll offer up a few, but I guess from a different perspective.

Proper books have editors that proof. Or proofreaders who edit. Or both.

J.K. Rowling. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows:

Quote :

'She's like my sister,' he went on. 'I love her like a sister and I reckon she feels the same way about me.'

Shockingly we only find out in the final book that Hermione has been under the delusion that Harry is a girl for all those years.

Which is why you should watch your pronouns.

Georgette Hayer. The Unknown Ajax:

Quote :

It was not her intention to spend any time on the entertainment of Mr. Matthew Darracourt.

Nothing wrong on principle, but the context makes it obvious is should say 'Mr. Hugo Darracourt.' Makes me flinch every time I read it.

Also on the same subject...

Agatha Christie. At Bertram's Hotel:

Quote :

And so - well, so these people didn't look real. But the point was that they were real. Selina Hazy was real. And that rather handsome military man in the corner was real - she had met him once, although she did not recall his name - and the Bishop (dear Robbie!) was dead.

No, Actually the Bishop (of Westchester), mentioned in the previous chapter was also real.

Both of these errors occur in books printed decades apart. Maybe it's like Shakespeare's handsaw. Once it was wrong it just keeps wrong.

Summercorn wrote:

J.K. Rowling. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows:

Quote :

'She's like my sister,' he went on. 'I love her like a sister and I reckon she feels the same way about me.'

Ehh, dialogue doesn't need to be in fully grammatical Standard English. I don't think Harry would care if one of the other characters pointed it out anyway.

Sutremaine wrote:

Ehh, dialogue doesn't need to be in fully grammatical Standard English. I don't think Harry would care if one of the other characters pointed it out anyway.

But, it gives canonical proof of a female Harry!!11! You don't give fic writers that kind of juicy meat!

It's madness. Madness I tell you!

I jest. Every time I read the line, I just want Ron to call Harry out on it. I would have been so Ron at such a emotion heavy moment.

*sigh* missed opportunities.