History Main / GiftedlyBad

* William [=McGonagall=], the SugarWiki/MostTriumphantExample and [[http://www.mcgonagall-online.org.uk/ worst poet in the English language]]. He ''also'' thought of himself as a fantastic dramatic actor. According to ''The Book of Heroic Failures'', whilst playing Macbeth in the eponymous play, [=McGonagall=] liberally rewrote sections of Shakespeare's text onstage. He went on to [[CrowningMomentOfAwesome top this]] during the final scene, in which Macbeth duels, and is killed by, Macduff. [=McGonagall=], on the other hand, continued to duel without dying for so long that the actor playing Macduff shouted "Fool! [[WhyWontYouDie Why don't you fall]]?!" at him -- to no response. In spite of himself, [=McGonagall=] apparently still received a standing ovation from the crowd that night (including lusty cries of "[=McGonagall=]! [=McGonagall=]! Bring him out!"), albeit in appreciation of the ''comedy'' rather than his acting abilities.

** The second worst (the Vogons are third) belongs to the Azgoths of Kria, a less meta example. Their poet master caused four of his audience died of internal hemorrhaging and one case of survival only by gnawing one of his own legs off with a single poem. Following said recitation his own major intestine gained a sudden burst of sentience and throttled his brain to save the rest of the universe from encores.

** "The very worst poetry of all perished along with its creator, Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings of Greenbridge, Essex, England in the destruction of the planet Earth."

* Would-be opera diva Florence Foster Jenkins. You can read about her [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Foster_Jenkins here]] at TheOtherWiki and hear a sample of her singing. It's... awesome?

* Florence Foster Jenkins, one of the few people to be truly HollywoodToneDeaf. She was, unusually for a singer, considered SoBadItsGood, and in huge demand.

** There are also people that believe that he is multiple people trying to do a bad job. He never appears at conventions the only photo claiming to have him in it is franckly suspect. his artwork changes very much between tracts. For all we know "he" is the evangelical Troll Fic writer

* Christian Weston Chandler, who has dedicated his life to the ''Sonichu'' webcomic. To sum up: Apathetic five-year-olds have produced higher quality material, but Chandler firmly believes himself to be a professional-quality artist.

* [[{{Sonichu}} Christian Weston Chandler]]. Type 2. And ''how''.
** To sum up: Apathetic five-year-olds have produced higher quality material, but Chandler firmly believes himself to be a professional-quality artist.

This trope, while appearing fairly often in fiction, seems to be even more common in RealLife (there's even a name for it, [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect the Dunning-Kruger effect]]). Strangely, the ''fictional'' characters seem to be downright subdued compared to the bizarre and outrageous real people. The most famous example in the film world is probably EdWood; in literature William [=McGonagall=], often held up as the worst poet in the English language, who was described (see the page quote above) as being "so giftedly bad he backed unwittingly into genius". Both in fiction and in RealLife, the Giftedly Bad usually turn out one of two ways -- as a [[TheFool dumb, lovable underdog]] (EdWood, William [=McGonagall=]), or as an obnoxious, overbearing TedBaxter (UweBoll, [[TheCaligula Emperor Nero]]).

** JustifiedTrope: Can ''you'' think of any other reason Murdoc might tolerate 2D's presence (even accounting for the fact that the two characters' mutual backstory involves Murdoc being forced to care for a comatose 2D as punishment for being the one to put him in the coma in the first place - then dragging him out of the coma by inadvertently replicating the accident that caused it).

* [[TheCaligula Emperor Nero]] of Rome, who often held public performances of his poetry and lyre playing (not, incidentally, [[WhileRomeBurns fiddle playing]]). Of course, not many people had the balls to tell the Emperor that he was no damn good, but historians of the time suggest that was the case.
** Romans as a culture had little appreciation for music to begin with, so he didn't even have to be all that bad to be GiftedlyBad, since all we have to go on are the historians' word.
** Other Roman historians tell us this might be an exaggerated backlash due to Nero's unpopular posterity. The issue wasn't that he was a particularly bad artist but that he had a major God complex, which forced his peers to elevate him to the status of poetic genius every time he read his works in public. The poems in themselves, while not brilliant, weren't that bad. Nero decorated his apartments himself and apparently had a lot of artistic taste.
** His social station also worked against him. To Romans the concept of a nobleman as an actor or a poet was inheritly hilarious, absurd concept, and there's no way that an emperor who sought to be both could be taken seriously, even if he had been a god among artists. Almost everything known about Nero comes from his enemies, so much of his reputation should be taken with a grain of salt. From a modern perspective it seems that he had the character of a rock star, rather than a politician, and as such utterly failed at ruling and excelled at the appreciation of arts. Unfortunately he only realized too late that using the state coffers to build himself an opulent masterpiece of a palace was not the best idea when the city had just burned to the ground - in result he was blamed for setting the fire himself, a belief that has continued to this day.
* [[FanFic/ChristianHumberReloaded Christian Humber]], though we've got no way of knowing which he is because he either doesn't have Internet access or (wisely) remains quiet and anonymous.

*** Or that modern audiences have bad taste.
*** Or that becoming a vampire with a soul actually made him [[TrueArtIsAngsty a better poet]].
*** You know why they call him "William the Bloody", right? It's because of his bloody awful poetry!

** [[PetTheDog His work actually gets appreciated in]] "House Fancy".
*** ...You mean [=SpongeBob=]'s work of accidentally blowing up Squidward's house.
**** There IS an episode where his work as a COMPOSER gets appreciated... but again, Spongebob's idiocy is an integral part of the performance.

** To sum up: Apathetic five-year-olds have produced higher quality material, but Chandler firmly believes himself to be a professional-quality artist (he's probably been reading too much [[TakeThat Liefeld]]). He's also utterly convinced that by combining two existing properties, he's created one entirely new one, which he can market as his own (he's even in talks with Shigeru Miyamoto trying to turn it into a video game. Or he would be, except that "Shigeru Miyamoto" is in this case a troll who's just leading him on, rather than the real McCoy). He also has a number of repulsive personal habits which he is [[{{Squick}} unfortunately]] open about if not actively proud of.

* {{Seltzer And Friedberg}}'s ShallowParody movies.

** [[PoesLaw Or maybe]] [[TrollFic not]].

** ''The Inklings'' invented TheEyeOfArgon game?! I knew it was good stuff!

* Edward George Bulwer-Lytton. Composer of the famous opening line, "It was a dark and stormy night." His work is held in such high esteem by so-bad-it's-good aficionados, that annual contests are held in which contestants attempt to write opening lines as joyously atrocious as his.
** Bulwer-Lytton was well-respected by his contemporaries and a popular and prolific author. He also coined the well-known phrases, "the unwashed masses" and "the pen is mightier than the sword" although clearly these are not the things for which he is best remembered. ("...but you screw just ''one'' goat...")

** The scariest thing about Tommy Wiseau? When Hollywood refused to provide funding for TheRoom, he decided to have it made independently. Over the course of five years of (possibly shady) fundraising, he managed to amass $6 million. That's right, he managed to raise $6 million in over just half a decade - too bad he's too self-obsessed to realise where his real talents lie, because if he abandoned the film career and went into business management he could very well end up as the next Alan Sugar.
** Most recently known for threatening to sue TheNostalgiaCritic for giving him a bad review - I mean, for copyright infringement.
*** The sad thing about the affair with ThatGuyWithTheGlasses (as it wasn't just NC's review that got pulled from the site) is that a good chunk of people had never even ''heard'' of TheRoom before seeing those reviews, and some were [[BileFascination interested in checking out]] the SoBadItsHorrible movie, especially given that Doug himself ''recommended seeing it''... and then Wiseau got the reviews pulled. Now, because of that, at least for this Troper, any and all interest in potentially seeing it has gone completely down the drain. So, this means that Wiseau is so GiftedlyBad that he's willing to lose sales because of it. Hell, for that matter, the movie isn't even worth [[DigitalPiracyIsEvil acquiring through nefarious means]].

** Gob as well. He just isn't a very good magician (his props constantly fail, he kills his animals, he often fails at simple sleight of hand, and his method for getting a yacht to disappear is to sink it while nobody is looking) but not only does he continue to vigarously pursue it, he insists upon his [[strike: tricks]] ''[[InsistentTerminology illusions]]'' being [[SeriousBusiness taken seriously]].

** Gob as well. He just isn't a very good magician (his props constantly fail, he kills his animals, he often fails at simple sleight of hand, and his method for getting a yacht to disappear is to sink it while nobody is looking) but not only does he continue to vigarously pursue it, he insists upon his [[stroke: tricks]] ''[[InsistentTerminology illusion]]'' being [[SeriousBusiness taken seriously]].

* [[TheTwilightSaga Stephanie Meyer]] is heading for a permanent place on this list, as it is obvious from reading her website that she has NO IDEA [[SoBadItsHorrible how bad her books are]].

* [[Twilight Stephanie Meyer]] is heading for a permanent place on this list, as it is obvious from reading her website that she has NO IDEA [[SoBadIt'sHorrible how bad her books are]].

DO NOT POST EXAMPLES JUST BECAUSE THEY ARE BAD. They must be not only bad, but ''deluded'', as demonstrated by either comments they've made or their sheer persistence.

* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shaggs The Shaggs]] sounded like a band warming up before a performance... during their performance.[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XR9d4ESlpHY]]

* Brian from ''FamilyGuy'' is this bad a writer, mainly because whenever he writes a book, he ends up accidentally copying a movie he saw. His writing is so bad that, when he was finally published, he didn't sell a single copy in spite of all the help Lois's father gave him.
** Arguably the FamilyGuy writers whenever they try to put any kind of pro-gay or leftist aesop into their show: it usually ends up as being a CluelessAesop.

** Most recently known for threatening to sue TheNostalgiaCritic for giving him a bad review - I mean, for copyright infringement.

** Most recently known for threatening to sue [[ThatGuyWithTheGlasses the Nostalgia Critic]] for giving him a bad review - I mean, for copyright infringement.

** The scariest thing about Tommy Wiseau? When Hollywood refused to provide funding for TheRoom, he decided to have it made independently. Over the course of five years of (possibly shady) fundraising, he managed to amass £6 million dollars. That's right, he managed to raise £6 million dollars in over just half a decade - too bad he's too self-obsessed to realise where his real talents lie, because if he abandoned the film career and went into business management he could very well end up as the next Alan Sugar.

* In one episode on ''SamuraiChamploo'', Jin mans a grilled eel stand alongside a woman he ran into earlier in the episode. After the dinner rush, he agrees to cook her an eel. Her reaction? "...Wow. Your cooking is really quite amazing. I'm pretty sure this the worst thing I've ever eaten! But I suppose that's a talent in and of itself..."

* In the GIJoe comic, Major Bludd has a rather (deservedly) dismal reputation as a poet.

* [[{{Gorillaz}} Murdoc Niccals]] [[TakeOurWordForIt has never canonically been heard to sing onscreen]], but his singing has been described as sounding [[ItTastesLikeFeet "like someone treading on a duck"]]. He insists the world is merely too small-minded to appreciate his genius and he needs 2D's more "conventional" voice for the albums.

* In ''SamuraiChamploo'', there's a running gag about Jin lacking any remote aptitude in anything but swordsmanship. In one episode, after taking a job at a food stand due to a misunderstanding, a woman describes something he made as the worst thing she's ever tasted, but goes on to say that such poor cooking is kind of a talent in itself. A slightly later episode features a disastrous venture into fishing, wherein Jin's patient, philosophical approach gets him nowhere after several hours, while Mugen catches dozens.