Behold! My collection of hilariously campy fics from the depths of the Internet, featuring my MST3Kstyle commentary! You can turn off my annotations if you want to enjoy the cheese without me interrupting you with a joke every few lines. Chucking at so-bad-it’s-good camp has been one of my pastimes since I was like 13 and I’ve never stopped. These twisted tales are all 15-30+ years old, rescued from defunct personal websites, Usenet groups, fetish fiction archives, dusty corners of fanfiction.net, and old furry libraries. None of these stories are from private collections. They were written for pubic consumption, and the authors definitely wanted people to read them. Because these tales are so old, it’s unlikely that anyone’s feelings are going to be hurt by my running gags. I will not poke fun at anything that was published within the last 15 years, so if you’re currently posting your fics on AO3 or Wattpad or something, you’re safe from my yucky little eyeballs scrutinizing your work.

That's right! We find that there's a unique charm to older tales online, as their authors would have grown up in a time with no internet at all! Thus, with the isolation of growing up in a small town and all the time to develop various derangements and perversions, it creates more unique people. Things homogenise so horrifically nowadays that even when we have come across sporkable material, it doesn't capture us the way some lonely nerd writing about voracious foxtaurs can. Frankly, a lot of modern anything feels too cynical. Too self-aware. Too invested in this desire to be cool, aloof and "ironic". You don't get that kind of performative restraint in masterpieces such as "Ninja Sluts" and "Woman Swallowing Pythons".

Note: I mean the term “shitty” with pure affection. I am a shamelessly campy and weird person on top of being a dirty furry. Feel free to laugh directly in my face for getting all hot and bothered by the bigboobied muppets in “Meet the Feebles” because I know exactly how strange it is. Absolutely none of my joking is presented with ill will towards the authors. Even though I often critique the prose and plot, my intent is not to tear amateur writers down and rip them a few new holes. Here’s the thing: I actually like these stories. I like the goofy situations where sex must occur. I find it funny when a giant snake appears and—uh oh!—there’s an almost-naked hot lady right there and it’s totally not going to eat her, you guys! I cry laughing at stories where every other word is spelled wrong and each sentence runs on for multiple paragraphs. These stories are gross at worst, but they’re enjoyable in their own way and they aren’t hurting anybody. I might not be reading them the way the author intended, but I’m engaging with the material like crazy. I love these types of stories because they challenge the concept of what a good plot is supposed to look like. The authors don’t care about adhering to the same standards of published print media; they’re mostly interested in getting their crazy idea out there in the world, no matter how clumsy the execution. I love earnestness, even up to the point of being silly—especially to the point of being silly. I have read many stories that are technically better-written than anything presented herein, but they’re often boring, dry, and forgettable. The library of “Shitty Stories to Tell in the Dark” is memorable. These tales will stick with you.

Much like a poorly-written bombshell sinking into a pool of quicksand.

For example, one of my favorite fics of all time is “Lost and Found” by ChrisWolf, which was published on VCL in either 1997 or 1998. I found it while browsing the site when I was about 18 years old and almost suffocated laughing at it. Because VCL was old and unstable even in 2011, I sensed that “Lost and Found” was in danger of being…lost [rimshot], so I saved a copy of it on my computer. It’s the perfect bad writing: the characters have no agency, the main character falls asleep in public and a sexy lady stranger lies down on him for no reason, many words are spelled incorrectly, the author specifies exact measurements for everything, and the sex scene is ridiculous. That being said, I love this story so much that I want to be buried with a copy of it. I feel like I’m the only one who knows about it and I want to share it with people. If I like you enough, I will sit you down and perform a dramatic reading of “Lost and Found” for you. If I were to meet ChrisWolf in the flesh, I would shake his hand and thank him for writing one of the funniest stories I have ever read in my life.

Barring that, you must read Ninja Sluts. If you're going to do anything here, love it, hate it, love us, hate us...read Ninja Sluts.

It would be hypocritical of me to get so much mirth and joy from a story, then turn around and tell the author that they’re an idiot for writing it to begin with. The persona of the critic who virulently hates what they’re reviewing has been stale for a long time. One of the few people who’s ever done it right is the AVGN and it worked because he had a genuine affection for the material. If I hated these fics, I wouldn’t be scream-laughing at them, adding goofy commentary, and drawing funny pictures to go with them. If I truly loathe something, I don’t want to engage with it. That’s why I torched my entire social media presence: people and things I gravely dislike are not worth my limited time on earth. As for why these stories are all ancient internet relics, it’s because they’re buried treasure. The modern baggage of fan fiction is completely absent in the writing. Each story feels completely different, but the authors’ personal obsessions with the subject matter are present in all of them. Many of these authors have fallen off the face of the Internet, and some of them may no longer be with us. Their stories are in danger of being lost to time. We unearth their stories to celebrate the silliness and enjoy the weird fantasies they shared with their corner of the world. “Shitty Stories to Tell in the Dark” isn’t just a collection of so-bad-it’s-good camp; it’s a carnival of personal expression and high strangeness. We are breathing new life into forgotten material.

It's a sort of anthropology for the internet. Under all the jipes, we want to celebrate sexuality, fetishism and all things strange. I myself am a fetishist in ways that will make themselves apparent during these reviews, so we rest assure you we are not playing a game of atrocity tourism.

Fuckle your seatbelts. We are leaving the world of narrative conventions behind and entering a bizarre world where anything can happen. Ganondorf can be melted by his own poop, Hillary Clinton can unhinge her jaw and eat someone alive, and elves can make people at a concert trip balls by playing elaborate instruments that look like they’d piss off the Grinch. You don’t have to be the next best thing to Ernest Hemingway to create a fun story. Fiction doesn’t have to be such serious business.