< Memetic Mutation

Memetic Mutation/Literature

We saw these memes in a book somewhere... but we really read them for the actual stories, we swear! (Look at that... we're poets and we were unaware of this fact until recently.)

Please add entries in the following format:

  • The name of the book.
    • Meme name: description of meme and how it's used.
      • Source of meme and fandom it relates to in the form of a hot tip.
      • Famous instances (such as the Rick Roll during the Thanksgiving parade).
      • Further mutations and successor memes, if any.

fnord

  • Rare poetry example -- Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven":
    • Once upon a midnight dreary as I pondered weak and weary...
    • Quoth the raven: "Nevermore."
  • Another poetry example, from Beowulf: "So."
    • It should perhaps be noted that only the Seamus Heaney translation begins that way. Others translators have rendered the opening word, "Hwæt!", as quite a range of words and phrases, among them "Lo!", "Listen!", and "Hear me!".
  • H.P. Lovecraft:
    • Phn'glui mgl'wnafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.
    • Iä! Iä! The Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young!
    • The Necronomicon.
    • I am the last. I will tell the audient void.
    • The mad piping of two amorphous flute-players.
    • Tekeli-li?
      • Which is borrowed from Edgar Allan Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym.
    • We'll be alright as long as no one says Hastur-AAAAUUGH!
    • Whatever you do, never, ever read the name of Y'golonac. (YOU FOOL! YOU'VE DOOMED US ALL!)
    • Lovecraft was an adequately excellent lover.
    • "That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange aeons, even death may die."
  • The King in Yellow: The Yellow Sign. Fear it.
  • Harry Potter:
    • "NOT MY DAUGHTER, YOU BITCH!"
    • Sirius Black and Remus Lupin: Theirloveissocanon!
    • Killed By A Curtain
      • related: Death By Curtain
    • SNAPE KILLS DUMBLEDORE!!!
    • Potter Puppet Pals videos, especially The Mysterious Ticking Noise.
      • Snape. Snape. Severus Snape. DUMBLEDORE! (When Alan Rickman turned up at the Deathly Hallows Part 2 premiere in Trafalgar Square, the crowd behind him were audibly chanting "Snape, Snape, Severus Snape!" Awesome.)
        • Heeeeeerrrrrrrrmione!
      • Bother, bother, bother, bother!
      • NAKED TIME!
      • Ahhh!
      • I am Snape, the potions master.
    • Pottermore (@pottermore) tweets. Including TMI (Toilet Magic Illuminated) one (it's her company, so ultimately she owns this poopheadedness).
    • ALBUS SEVERUS POTTER?!
      • AS/S
    • Hedwig is not dead. Dot com. Can be found here.
    • Republicans for Voldemort.
      • Alternatively, Democrats for Dolores.
        • and then there's J.K. Twitter:

J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling): If we all hit ctrl-alt-del simultaneously and pray, perhaps we can force 2016 to reboot.

        • …and famous

Joakim Jørgensen (@MrMesonoxian): Wow. You're good at making up stories. You should be an author.

" by heart by people of all sorts, that the instant they see any lean hack, they say, 'There goes Rocinante.' "

    • Con la iglesia hemos topado: Could be translated as "We have run onto the church". A case of both a meme and Beam Me Up, Scotty, as the original phrase is actually "Con la iglesia hemos dado, Sancho". In the book it is literal (they examine a stone wall and determine it is a church) but it is always quoted to denote a situation in which the Church, bureaucracy or some other power that be is impeding your progress.
    • Maybe they're just windmills, but They Might Be Giants...
  • The Faerie Queene: Malacasta is so sassy!
  • Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: "Two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half-full of cocaine, and a whole galaxy of multicolored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers..."
  • Star Wars Expanded Universe: Anakin Solo had the hots for his aunt?
    • Cliegg: Your son's dead, son. Accept it.[5]
      • Your Wookiee's dead son. Accept it.[6]
    • Jimmy [7]
    • Destroy your planet.[8]
    • Jacen's penis! [9]
  • "My god--it's full of stars!" The last thing said by Dave Bowman in 2001: A Space Odyssey, though not in the film.
  • In the Warrior Cats fandom:
  • In The Pendragon Adventure fandom:
    • What exactly is a french before it's fried?
    • Hobey ho! Let's go!
      • Hobey lady of the night!!!! Let's go!!!
    • This is the way it was meant to be.
    • THERE ARE FREAKIN' POLAR BEARS AND PENGUINS IN THE DESERT.
    • Everything obscure Bobby says is quoted enough to be considered a meme. Especially anything he has to say about clowns, smilie faces, or his boxers.
  • This trope becomes a lot less funny and gets a rather large serving of Nightmare Fuel when Faction Paradox enters the picture. Their beautiful universe has the Celestis, a group of Homeworld agents who foresaw a monstrous Time War, and obsessed with preventing the destruction of their bodies, they destroy them themselves, and leaving their meaning behind, making them sentient ideas, the literal physical incarnation of this trope. After they Ascended to A Higher Plane of Existence, it becomes painfully obvious they're still the same fearful, backstabbing Complete Monsters they were, and they find about their new cool powers...
  • Maradonia Saga: 2 dislikes. Gloria and her mom have been here.[14]
    • "Appolyon's Club of Evil": "The powers of evil believe in teamwork!".[15]
  • Faust:
    • A Faustian pact or bargain as a Deal with the Devil, or anyone else who probably should have been avoided.
    • Forbidden knowledge or diabolical research methods.
  • I Want My Hat Back
    • I HAVE SEEN MY HAT
    • Substituting characters from different fandoms for the characters in the book
  • The Phantom of the Opera has several, mostly originating from the LiveJournal badfic-sporking community, Phanwank:
    • The most ubiquitous is "Roule's Ingenious Plane," which also has a Distaff Counterpart in "Christine's Small Bus" and a modern-day counterpart in "Ryan's Lime Service."[16]
    • "Erique would never kill a whale!" and "Erique is one with teh walez!!!11!!"[17]
    • "Erik's Wonton Goddess."[18]
    • "Bonnie-Marie."[19]
    • "KIMMEEEEEEEEEEEEH!"[20]
    • "Erik's pink kissable lips."
    • "Erik the hospital."
  • Heart of a Dog: "[But] The problem is in the heads[, not in the lavatories]". (originally, «Ruin, therefore, is not caused by lavatories but it's something that starts in people's heads.»)
  1. ↑ With Snape often being shown doing these, the awarded House is always Slytherin, and the penalized House always Gryffindor.
  2. ↑ From an interview, "It's kind of funny...the essence of the Native Spirit tends to resist modernization for a desire to return to the Old Ways, yet we struggle to show that the Native does not only come drunk, in breechcloth and sounding primitive. Don't get me wrong, I embrace the loin, that's my bread and butter but we still have a ways to go."
  3. ↑ Special bonus if said subject was outside the romance genre.
  4. ↑ The phrase comes from a LiveJournal review of Ghost, wherein the reviewer is reading along and finding something interesting, then runs into something totally, brain-breakingly wrong, prompting the uttering of the phrase. Given that the book, an exercise in letting loose some demons in Ringo's head that were blocking his writing other stories, was originally to be titled "The Wanker Piece" until Baen Books marketing convinced Ringo otherwise, it goes without saying this was a frequent utterance on the reviewer's part.
  5. ↑ In Star Wars Legacy, we see Luke as a ghost. Yes, he'd be over 150 now, but we have proof of Jedi living hundreds of years, even human Jedi. LFL won't say if Luke's alive or dead.
  6. ↑ They killed Chewbacca at the beginning of the New Jedi Order, making all those heartwarming moments in the Holiday Special and the like turn into a huge Funny Aneurysm Moment.
  7. ↑ Lucasfilm referred to the death of a character given the operative name "Jimmy". Turned out to be Anakin Solo.
  8. ↑ No, not the Death Star. This one comes from the Marvels: "If Lando dies, I'll destroy your planet."
  9. ↑ The art for the American cover of Destiny's Way is a bit, ahem, suggestive.
  10. ↑ A user on the Warriors Official Forum claimed to have obtained Night Whispers early and said that Mapleshade ate a cat in it.
  11. ↑ Purdy has become a popular character in the fandom
  12. ↑ This is a line from the "SSS Warrior Cats" fanimation that fans found a bit narmy.
  13. ↑ Sol's Affably Evil attitude has led to fans comparing him to an internet Troll. This image macro is an example.
  14. ↑ Inevitably, whenever a video criticizes Team Tesch, 2 dislikes will appear. Because fandom for Tesch's books is literally nonexistent, youtubers took to saying they had to be Gloria and her mom. It's not clear where this first surfaced.
  15. ↑ Actual excerpts from the book about the villains, in a clear case of "I don't think those words mean what you think they mean" by Tesch. Now used to show how much of Designated Villains Apollyon and co. are
  16. ↑ All originate from typos in terrible pieces of fanfiction; in the first, the author was trying to say "Raoul's ingenious plan." The second comes from a Mary Sue fic in which Erik compares the Sue's bustline (or at least tries to) to Christine's, and the third from a modern-day fic in which... we have no idea what the author was trying to say.
  17. ↑ Spammed by the phanwank members to an anti-Raoul community.
  18. ↑ The author of the fic was trying to say "wanton."
  19. ↑ The name of a particularly hideous Mary Sue; she went on to be a major player in The Sueniverse.
  20. ↑ The name of a modern-day Sue's best friend; this meme is often accompanied by a picture of Bob Saget.
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