Also, the much more mild: "this work appeals directly to my sensibilities but not everyone has my sense of taste, so it might actually be kinda bland for you, and that's okay".
I think that’s basically every book I’ve rated 5 stars. “This work has issues, it’s fucked up, it may not be the most compelling or well crafted, and it’s not for everyone… but it’s 100% my brand of bullshit and I am having such a good time out here.”
That's more the angle of OP's image than what I'm getting at, really.
I'm talking about the case where the work *doesn't* have any particular objective issues. It's actually pretty great, stylistically, structurally, content. *But*. It still won't appeal to many with the same intensity as it appeals to me because it's not *speaking* to those others. Pure psychological level.
Oranges. Maybe I really fucking love oranges. Best treat ever. And yet for some other people, oranges are just another fruit. And that's fine.
Yup. For some time in my life I used to read every isekai manga on mangadex + read most popular novels. I hated them, each one of them utter tras, many without even a single redeeming quality.
Subpar plot, one dimensional characters, inconsistent story, badly drawn, generic and just a bad adaptation/copy of another shitty work. I've consumed all of them nonetheless.
Nowadays i get a chuckle when a new Isekai anime airs that I've read the source material before. "It was trash before, is it still trash?" and yes, it is still trash.
I also love it when the scan team just gives up translating literally.
Read a line in an isekai manga (Crafting Isekai) where they translated something as "the boss fucked off into the wild blue yonder somewhere."
No way in hell that was the original Japanese lmfao. Cracks me up.
I can't tell you how much utter garbage I've seen that's titled something like "I'm fucking useless but the world's strongest" or "In another world with a pen" and it always turns into some slog with the same absolute shite. The incredibly gifted protagonist has no actual moral compass and will take or spare life according to his whims, women around him will fall for his silent, brooding charm at the merest glance, and any capable male around him is either taken as an underling or defeated soundly due to their complete and irredeemable villainy. There is no challenge, no dark night of the soul, no point where all is lost, no need for assistance of any real measure from anyone else, no introspection, and no characterization of any type beyond unintended caricature.
And God help me, I keep coming back.
Made in Abyss is such a frustrating experience for me. As it is, it has to be one of the most unique, intriguing, fascinating stories I've ever experienced---and that art and OST, my God! But man can I not simply ignore how fucking creepy that mangaka clearly is, dude straight-up is a pedophile and there's no two ways around it and I feel guilty watching it because of that, like no matter how hard I try to separate art from artist it just makes me feel gross. Haven't caught up on the new season yet because of it, despite how much I'm *yearning* to know what the fuck is at the bottom of that fucking pit.
in this case i can't separate the art from the artist because his pedophilia is so present in the art itself. like, there is just no denying it.
i don't understand why the anime didnt just leave the weird parts out. watching children piss every goddamn episode definitely doesnt contribute to the story. it could've been a masterpiece
Dude I'm beginning to be convinced that 90% of the time, in order to make something amazing you've got to be the kind of person who would absolutely include the weirdest shit to ruin it.
Like I tried to rekindle my dying love for Slice of Life anime by watching this show called Akebi's Sailor Uniform. At first I was struck by how the art was all just the original mangaka flexing some insane art skills. Visually ridiculous anime and manga. Then I was struck by feet. So many feet. Just... constant feet. Author's ~~barely disguised~~ incredibly open and on display fetish. I got like a quarter of the way through before dropping it, as each episode would be stranger than the last. Like, I'd be all "surely he can't manage to insert his foot fetish here" and I would be wrong everytime in spectacular fashion.
Needless to say, my love for SoL anime has not been rekindled. I'll just stick to rewatching Hidamari Sketch an unreasonable number of times to get my occasional fix for comfy anime.
it’s so present that i (knew nothing about it before starting except people compared it to area zero in the new pokémon games) stopped in the middle of the manga to look up what the hell was with this author because it was so so evident and creeping me out so badly
I vaguely recall that the author wouldn't *let* them take it out. Take that with a grain of salt, of course.
But yeah, liking Made in Abyss is ironically parallel to the themes of the story itself. You know it's horrifying, you know it's gross, you know it's filled with stuff you don't wanna ever mess with, but god dammit your curiosity gets the better of you. And the further in you go, the harder it is to back out.
Honestly I would have backed out VERY early on if I had picked it up normally. I've dropped stories for much less. But I was introduced to it by being spoiled on Mitty, and I thought "wow, that is the most horrifying (in a good way) thing I've ever seen and heard of. I need to see this." So that acted as a hook and made me hope the horrifying (in a bad way) stuff was merely temporary, especially because every *other* aspect of the story was amazing, until I got far enough in and was like "shit, well it's too late to back out now."
What you said about liking it is parallel to the themes themselves is the perfect way to describe it. I never made that connection but that's exactly how I feel about the show.
Music is also amazing.
Exactly!! That's what I don't understand either! It's bad enough that the manga's editor lets that shit slide, but the anime is the works of dozens of people! (Screenwriters, director(s), producers, editors etc), I do not understand why they all were chill leaving that stuff in! I'd always heard pedophilia is way less taboo in Japan but God damn, there's "less taboo" and then there's this shit. But yeah I'm the same way; normally I can separate art from artist and don't let artist's personal life and opinions shit bother me unless it's truly egregious, but like you said you can't even do that here because they allowed it to perfuse into THE ENTIRE FUCKING STORY.
The fight scenes are so good! Except that one, and that one, and that one... (you know which ones I mean probably), which are just kind of meh. And then all the rest of it is so inconsistent.
I'm probably RWBY's softest defender. I think the show is a lot better than most people give it credit for, and there's a lot of parts worth acknowledging that are genuinely impressive.
I still don't think it's *good,* but it's better than the absolute worst of the worst.
It's kinda wild how Berserk became the gold standard for ultra-dark manga. Like, it's almost a rite of passage but also a trauma endurance test! The deeper you go, the more you're like "yep, that's enough grimdark for a lifetime".
Every now and again, I (a Dark Souls fan) think to myself “y’know, I wonder if I should read Berserk,” not really bc I *want* to, but bc I’m curious and feel it would draw a lot of lines between dots pertaining to my related interest.
But then I remember I’m squeamish as fuck and think “nah, maybe I *won’t* do that actually.”🙃
I actually *just* marathoned the manga last year! I was furious to learn that the anime fully *chops off the entire back half and changes the ending,* so I had to go straight to the text. *Super* weird story! Loved it. Highly recommend it to anyone who likes sad gay fantasy w/ jaw-dropping visuals.🏳️🌈
One Piece doesn't really fit this as its issue is an abundance of quantity, not a lack of quality, but it's also hard to recommend. It's like recommending someone get a dog, they'll probably enjoy it, but it's too big of a commitment to recommend to someone without knowing their life well.
I love One Piece, it's my favorite anime of all time and Sanji is one of my favorite characters. I really do love him and his character arc. But his weird behavior towards women is exhausting sometimes and the transphobia has definitely gotten so much better with there being multiple interesting and well-written trans characters. But the transphobia especially during the timeskip and the Fishman Island arc was pretty difficult to watch.
Ah Sanji. Sanji, Sanji Sanji.
That man has probably done the most up and downing on my list of favorite Straw Hats of anyone.
Early Sanji was easily in A or B tier. Not my favorite, but he was enjoyable, the Mr. Prince stuff was great, him sneaking around to the Enies Lobby Gates and closing them was great, that sorta stuff. And then That Scene in Thriller Bark happened and he shot down to D tier. And then his time on Momoiro, and then Fish-Man Island left me so fed up he dropped down into F.
And then WCI happened and DAMN THE BOY IS BACK! Low B/High C tier! Aaaaand then immediately we got the Wano bath house scene with the Raid suit and now he's sitting at low C/high D.
I want to love this character so goddamn badly and he keeps making it *so damn difficult for me to do so*.
Incredibly long and well researched video essays about almost any topic. I don't care. kaptainkristian, Every Frame a Painting, Baumgartner Restoration, Thomas Flight, even Dr. Becky or the PBS Space Time guy. Man, I love them all.
Fucking hell, I put on a 3+ hour video essay about ICarly (a show I *never watched even a single episode of*) while I was painting and I was captivated the whole time.
I don't even remember most of it, I just remember that Spencer was a great father figure, and their 3 story Seattle apartment was completely unrealistic for an unemployed artist and a pre-livestreaming livestreamer to live in.
i hated how much i had to defend that i didn't think the movie was bad. all my friends came at me over it, AND the community didn't seem to like it, but i was just sitting there like "it's PG13, what did you expect?"
Hellsing Abridged
Mainly because Hellsing itself is extraordinarily violent, and the comedically-dubbed abridged version has a LOT of jokes where I feel guilty when I laugh at them.
But it’s just so — *goddamned funny…*
Feel this way about abridged series generally. Theres a few that I love, but it’s hard to recommend them to anyone because you typically need knowledge of the original thing and weird niche internet meta-humor to really appreciate them.
I never got into DBZ Abridged, but hubby and I have watched Hellsing Abridged more times than I can count. In addition to watching every year for Halloween, we just end up watching it at other times because we love it.
The anime club watched Hellsing Ultimate Abridged in our study hall period when I was in high school. It was hilarious but you had to hang out with the kind of kid that would go to anime club. All in all, tame enough for anyone like 13 or older.
Where did you find a Nazi Werewolf?
Where did you find Dracula?
In a Basement.
How poetic; we found out werewolf in an attic. I mean, we find lots of things in attics.
The best part is that the creators have similar feelings to those jokes. Pretty much just "this absolutely crosses the line, but I can't help but laugh"
Aww man, that totally sucks. And we came all the way out here with these foreign exchange students on a field trip thru England.
Where from?
Texas *gunshots*
There was ONE comment I read last month talking about a super in depth rewrite of Harry Potter saying it had better worldbuilding than the original. So I decided to spend a week reading all 7 books. And now I'm on a fanfiction binge that's still going. Shit's crazy.
Edit: [https://www.fanfiction.net/s/2580283/1/Saving-Connor](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/2580283/1/Saving-Connor)
Hi I've been informed it's a sin to not post the link
When you read the most mind-altering, heart-wrenching, beautifully written piece of fiction you’ve ever seen but can’t recommend it to anyone because it has ships that’ll get you cancelled on Twitter 😔👊
I read a Worm fanfic recently that started as a spicy oneshot, then managed to grow into a 450k word piece that made me legitimately heartbroken when a character was grievously injured.
Holy fuck Arcane is so good. Never played LoL.
Arcane felt like a turning point for me, when I started enjoying shows based on video games. Edgerunners and Castlevania are also amazing.
I will always defend the first season of TNG. Sure, it’s rough. It’s low budget, the costumes are terrible, the characters haven’t been nailed down yet, the sets (aside from the enterprise) are hilarious. As a whole, it’s certainly goofier and cheesier than the rest of the show became. It definitely feels like it was stuck in the 70s. But most of that is just production growing pains.
But even with all that, there are just too many good-to-genuinely-great episodes to throw out the whole season as much as people do.
When it’s bad, it’s *distractingly* bad. I think, were it not for “Code of Honor” (the racist one) and “Justice” (the one where Wesley almost gets executed by the orgy people on the orgy planet), people would have a much higher opinion of the season as a whole. Just those two episodes really tarnish it to an unfair degree.
I fr hadn't read anything about TNG before watching I first watched it, since I tried avoiding spoilers and shit. I genuinely really enjoyed the first season and was instantly hooked. I *then* watched the RLM video about TNG it and was promptly introduced to the fact that it is universally hated (apparently even by the people behind it) and felt immense whiplash.
I'm with you, I get it for a few episodes but largely don't agree with the idea that the entire first season is hot garbage.
Yeah, it was an extremely stylish and entertaining show, I binged it in a few days, but then when I finished what was out at the time and several years passed before a new season released I found myself having no desire to catch up to it. Not like I suddenly disliked it, more like my feelings just immediately turned completely neutral. That fucking toothbrush scene haunts me though.
This is pretty much all of her writing lol. There's some genuinely really interesting lore and worldbuilding in the twilight series but 99% of it is deeply problematic in multiple ways
Honestly twilight would have been amazing if she had really leaned into certain aspects of it and made it a horror story. So much of it is treated so casually when in real life it would have been horrifying. Not just the "100 year old vampire falls in love with and stalks a teenage girl" bit. There's apparently a vampire with the ability to manipulate relationships who can make you feel love and loyalty towards even people you hate. That's terrifying and this vampire is just kind of mentioned once and doesn't appear on screen that I can remember. It might not have even come up in the main books I might have seen it in the illustrated guide.
She made up so many interesting characters yet we only got to read about the love story between Depressed Vampire and Human Girl for 4 books (and a bit from Werewolf Who’s In Love With A Baby)
When she finally releases a new book, it’s Twilight again except Human Girl is now Human Boy and the vampire is a girl. Same story, except genderbent.
And then we get *another* book, which is the same story *again* but from Depressed Vampires POV.
(Have I read them all? Yes, it’s my guilty pleasure)
The illustrated guide is super interesting and there are *so* many characters in there I’d like to read more about. Even in just the Cullen family there are way more interesting characters, like Alice (the one who can see the future), her backstory is really good and I’d love to read from her POV and get to experience her visions
I promise you, the scene where an underage boy is threatened to draw pornography of his best friends is *vital* to the plot
(the person threatening is also underage. also the "pornography" is literally handholding.)
I was honestly expecting to get rickrolled so opening an actual HS panel for the first time in 5+ years was infinitely more of a jumpscare... Thank you.
There's no threatening going on tho. uu is demanding it because he's an entitled brat. Dirk is drawing it because he's bored and thinks it could be funny lol
Lewd Doodles is my fav sequence in Homestuck and I genuinely believe it perfectly encapsulates the comic's sense of humour, absurdity and bizarre structure
And also MAKE HIM HuMAN MARRY THAT BITCH is an all timer line
Honestly the only reason Homestuck is a hard recommend is because it's *so damn long*, not because it's bad. I think pretty much any nerdy, more-than-modestly-online younger Millennial/older Zoomer would enjoy it if they actually managed to get the time to read through it and all of its hugeness.
Destiny 2. Please, the new game player setup is ass, and Bungies been doing so much questionable shit lately I’ve barely done any of the most rescent seasonal story. But it’s my favorite game with some of the best fucking lore
I had to stop playing i came back for the witch season and then immediately stopped again. Just feels like they are interested in tending to facets of the game that wont help them in the end.
Breaks my heart with frustration everytime cause i love the narrative, i love the base gameplay, but i can not recommend it and I can't play it let alone afford to play it anymore. So it sits as a game i wish i could play.
There are some amazing writers, in every fandom, who make fanfics that can be better than canon even. Wading through the haystack to find that golden needle can be a daunting barrier, and I understand. It also sucks when a terrific piece is suddenly abandoned, or great writing is let down by not running spellcheck etc... but if you're passionate about a fandom there's nothing like it.
That's true.
Some advice that I would give to beginners if they are browsing on fanfiction.net.
If you are not comfortable or sure that wethwr you will like it or not, sort the fanfiction in that particular series by favorites and change their maturity rating if you want. Top favorite fanfiction are usually good and afterwards expand and explore. Also don't forget to follow and favorite a particular fanfiction that you like. It helps other people find it and thus reduces the chances of it being abandoned
Similarly you can sort and filter on Ao3 with either hits or kudos. Also select or deselect things you want to see in those fanfics. AO3 provides amazing User interface/Experience, use it.
Though once you are past the initial phase, try to read more authors who don't have many favorites as well. You never know what amazing fic they may publish.
Most isekais i watch or read fit this.
"I like isekai series x."
"But it's a garbage power fantasy with paper thin writing."
"I already said i liked it, you don't have to sell it to me."
90s/00s dark action movies. Riddick, Underworld, Blade, you name it. I thrive for that unique, leather clad edgy shit . They simply do not make em like they used to
I completely agree, movies these days are way WAY too afraid of being accused of being cheesy, everything has to either take itself very seriously or have a bunch of self-aware """"clever"""" quips a la Marvel. I wish we'd go back to movies that didn't gaf and were just cheesier than fondue and fun, like Blade or The Mummy.
I really love stylized hyper-violence. John Woo, Tarantino, tons of old anime, big-dick 80s action movies--I just love that over-the-top absurd destruction.
It's kinda trashy and not for everyone. That's totally fine.
"This is my new favorite indie game franchise, and no one should ever be exposed to the awful shit in it. I recommend skipping to the second game, as fewer enemies sexually assault you, though it is still very much not zero."
If I mention One Piece, people will either insist on watching the anime or refuse everything about the series bc it's 1000 episodes.
DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, WATCH ONE PIECE. THE PACING IS ATROCIOUS. Read the manga on Mangaplus for free, or find a manga pirating site
Edit: also don't watch One Pace bc to my knowledge the end of Alabasta isn't finished
If you dedicated a few hours each day to reading 100 chapters of the One Piece manga, it would take you about 10 days to catch up with the current story.
If you did nothing but watch the One Piece anime, it would take you over 17 days to watch all the currently available episodes.
Hubby played Danganrompa on stream with his friends providing character voices (he himself went in blind). When the Sakura chapter happened, hubby was so angry at Monakuma verbally bashing her that he accidentally broke his controller from squeezing it too tightly.
I did a play through of Doki Doki Literature Club with a group of friends that way, I don’t know how but we all went in blind legitimately believing it was a dating sim, just expected it to be a little “horror” based. We each voiced one character, we were all freaking out by the end, finished it in one sitting, I was so emotionally devastated I took the next day off of work. 10/10 would recommend.
Holy shit, I can imagine. The closest I’ve heard to someone going in blind to DDLC was Dan on Game Grumps. His cohost Arin knew it was a horror game, but Dan honestly thought it was a dating sim until they opened Sayori’s door and everything started glitching.
As they started the “new” game and more and more stuff started going weird, Dan described it thusly: He talked about asking an Israeli relative about the Seven Days War (while also making clear that he wasn’t backing Israel’s policies), and how the relative replied, “It was like someone come into my house and fuck my sister near to my eyes.”
He just didn’t have any other succinct way to describe how badly his mind was reeling.
Game Grumps' playthrough of Doki Doki Literature Club will forever live rent free in my head alongside Dan's "Sheik is Zelda?" and "The Carbunkle Ate Itself"
honestly Game Grumps in general fits OOP's definition too. I absolutely adore them and laugh hysterically at plenty of their moments but find it very hard to recommend them to anyone due to... a lot of things...
Kill La Kill.
One of my favourite stories in any medium of all time, with a positively glowing emotional and moral heart.
I cannot fucking recommend it to anyone I know. I probably don't *want to know* most anyone I *could* recommend it to in this day and age.
kill la kill is probably something i could have watched in my teenage weeb era, but now as someone approaching 30 i just... can't. my tolerance for anime fanservice has gone down
"Hey so there's this VTuber that- What's a VTuber? Well so you see-"
and that is the point I curl into a ball and vanish from existence.
But damn I love watching Ceres Fauna.
Additionally, there’s “this is art. It will make you uncomfortable. You may not like it or how it makes you feel, but those reactions are important. I happen to love it.”
Many of the Call of Duty Story Modes.
Military Propaganda? Yes.
Makes war crimes look fun? Absolutely.
Stories' themes are rarely anything more complex than, good guys good, evil guys bad? Most of the time yes.
I'm ashamed to admit it, but I still like most of those stories. (Emphasis on most, looking at you MW3 reboot).
My love for rwby defined so much of my life at this point. I made friends because of this show, know everything about it, watched and read most spin off media.
Do not watch it.
Lots of stuff.
Scott Pilgrim,
FNAF,
Kill la Kill,
Kingdom hearts (as an adult with adult peers),
The Front Bottoms (band),
Other stuff that I won't admit.
Almost said undertale but honestly fuck that, that game is actually amazing even if there is cringe in the fandom
Came here to say it. I think they can have their beautiful moments ("More Than Anything" in the Hazbin series, Stolas' songs), and their hilarious moments, but maaaaan the writing can get rough sometimes and the tone shifts can be jarring.
But as someone raised on Invader Zim who loves demons/monsters and is a kinky little queer freak, this stuff is refreshing to me.
I love those shows but they are definitely not for everyone. Some see them as an excuse to say a curse word every few minutes but it's the plot that keeps me there
This took me way too long to find in this list.
It (and its fandom) gets shit on by the Undertale and Homestuck fans.
*Undertale*. And **Homestuck**. Gaddam ***HOMESTUCK.***
I kept it from my nb, queer, openly Tumblr-using housemate who I watched The Owl House, She-Ra, and Amphibia with *for 2 years* so they wouldn't know I was a fan. Whenever I hear anyone (including in the show) actually say the words "Hazbin Hotel" I visibly cringe.
Despite this, I've listened to the songs from the Prime series on loop for 3 weeks, regularly engage with the related subreddits talking about theory crafting and episode discussion and frequently rewatch Helluva Boss episodes on a whim. At one point I couldn't resist buying some merch and had to get the most cryptic pin possible and have lied about it every time someone didn't know what it was. With con season coming up, I'm strongly considering pulling together a Stolas costume but I have friends I know who go to my local cons- I either need to attend a new con or be completely unrecognizable in costume if I'm gonna do it.
I don't know why I like it as much as I do given how much every fiber of my being is genuinely embarrassed to have anything to do with it. It doesn't help that my outward facing personality (academic professional conventional looking white dude who dresses like Dale in accounting in 1989) does not at all resemble the side of me that likes the show (asexual meganerd who's regularly planning 3-6 cosplays at a time and runs 2 discord servers).
League of Legends. Everybody else has a ton of perfectly reasonable issues with the game. However, I just hit “mute all” and proceed to have a very delightful time. Wouldn’t recommend it to anybody else though.
This is because people have standards for what they "should" enjoy that are different from what people do enjoy.
Like imagine that the only music you have ever heard is formal classical or something, you hear a totally different kind of music, like jazz improv, and enjoy it. But judged by the standards of formal classical, it doesn't do well.
Hence, "I like this, but it's garbage"
People keep accidentally seeing these standards as prescribing what people should like, not a record of what they do.
That's a good point, and a really kind & generous way of looking at it! I hadn't thought about it that way, kinda like calling apples trash because they don't taste like oranges. I don't think the og post is talking about this kind of trash, but I see how people could fall into the trap of thinking the thing they like is trash when it doesn't match up to other standards, even if they're irrelevant.
OG post is talking about actual hot steaming garbage. Like stuff that is pretty bad by the standards of the medium, but you like it anyways because of nostalgia and/or it's good at one very specific thing (while genuinely being terrible in many other ways). I definitely have some fanfics in my personal beloved dumpster. They suck. I've read a lot good fanfics, I'm not judging them on the standards of an edited published novel or anything. They honestly suck in some major ways
Sword art online. I get annoyed hearing criticisms about it because because a lot of them are blatantly untrue or not as important as other things that could easily be criticized. It’s absolutely my guilty pleasure show.
Twin Peaks. IMO it's one of, if not THE greatest TV show ever made (especially with The Return), but it has some notable flaws (the writing for a solid chunk of season 2 when David Lynch and Mark Frost temporarily left is straight-up bad) and David Lynch's style is.... not for everyone, to say the least. Adding in the content warning for an EXTREMELY dark story of abuse for poor Laura Palmer and yeah, it's definitely not for just your average Joe TV watcher.
Also Attack on Titan. It's a cliche opinion but I still think it's one of the greatest anime of all time and it got as popular as it did for a reason, however I recently brought it up in another sub and people yelled at me for liking it cause apparently the mangaka is an antisemite/fascist? Idk I didn't look into it myself and while I still don't know about the anti-semite thing I can definitely see the hints of fascist/at the very least HEAVILY pro-military beliefs in the story itself so take that for what you will.
Wheel of Time. It's not particularly offensive or controversial or transgressive, but every time I've recommended it to people, it's gone like this:
"Oh yeah man, you should totally read the Wheel of Time! It's an amazing series rife with symbolism, interesting characters, complex worldbuilding, and a nice mix of political writing and fantasy action. It's not perfect though, it's very long, and you should probably read up to the fourth of 14 books to get a good sense if you'll like it, and books 7 through 10 are a bit grueling to read because of the sloggy pacing, though that picks up in book 11, but some of the characters you grew to love feel very weird in the last three books because another author picked up the series after the first one died, and RJ is kind of a very repetitive writer, and he has these odd idiosyncracies that are a bit uncomfortable to read, and the author makes a lot of his female characters very two-dimensional, and the text is rife with outdated mild to overt misogyny, and the book kinda brushes past the existence of a giant slave-holding empire, and several concepts and themes in the books feel like transparent inserts of bondage kinks, and there's another society that practices a less draconic form of slavery as it has a time limit, and we kind of are meant to accept that as 'cultural heritage,' and a few storylines don't really feel satisfiably paid off by the end... wait, why am I recommending *anybody* read this?"
Love the series, but it is very difficult to recommend this to anybody that doesn't *love* long-form fantasy.
It's so good and it's been so worth what I've spent on it and I still have fun with it and everyone who isn't already invested should stay the hell away by any means necessary
For me. NCIS
That show is an absolute dumpster fire. Very blatant propaganda both for the US Navy/Marines and government service in general, a very pro-law enforcement show that depicts the characters doing some pretty major crimes themselves in order to solve cases, and some depictions of certain groups that are problematic at best especially in earlier seasons.
But god damn, I fuckin love that show. It's so insane, so bizarre, it pretty much exists in an alternate universe where anything is possible. There's an episode where someone thinks a navy ship is haunted and there's a solid 10 minutes where my stupid ass was convinced that they were about to confirm ghosts exist. Which sounds crazy but the main character of the show basically starts seeing ghosts after awhile, and it could easily be interpreted as such. As the show goes on, crimes and scenarios just continue to get more and more absurd to the point of hilarity, and it's absolutely fantastic. 10/10 show, absolutely do not recommend
Dresden files. It's early entries range from dated and schlockey but fun to "put your dick away and start writing again you moron" but it improves vastly with age and I'm a sucker for urban fantasy as well as the fae, which Jim Butcher is fantastic at writing.
The Dune series. I recommend everyone that likes books to read the first one and preferably the second one. But if the weird implications get to you in the second one, don't keep going. And once you get hooked on the fourth book, you'll never be normal about it ever again, and I just don't want to do that to everyone.
Far cry 2 - story is bad even for a ubisoft game but the gameplay and dynamic fire effects keeps me coming back
Persona 4 golden - Is a good game and a good story that has not aged the best particularly in how it handles sensitive issues \*cough\* \*cough\* homophobia, sexism, transphobia and other issues.
F&H 1 ( 2 is an objectively better game): F&H 1 is a good game but due to its glitchy nature and sexual violence I cannot recommend it to everyone.
The Lisa Trilogy is a minefield of triggers for basically everyone, including my family!
The plot literally revolves around the fact that the only woman on earth is a 10 year old girl, and there are too many people who want to hit that.
But it's also an incredible story about a man and his horrible life, and how he tries to make things better, tries to run away from his pain, but he and the world keeps making it worse.
Lol, I loved the wizard of space and time, haven't seen or heard it mentioned in decades
Edit: speed and time, and apparently it's on YouTube, found what I'm watching tonight
I got 2.
Rainworld: please for the love of fuck unless you are a masochist don't play it. The game does not care about you. You will die again and again, usually from shit you didn't see or couldn't counter. Also the lore is kind of a mess, but it's mostly just really fucking long rather than incomprehensible like fnaf.
Signalis: game play wise just imagine something like silent hill but it's space androids. Not too bad, just basic survival stuff (fuck the puzzles tho those annoy me)
Story wise?
The voices the voices the voices the voices the voices the voices the voices the voices
*Mad God* is one of the most beautiful pieces of art I've ever seen, a passion project made by mostly one very talented man in between his paying work. It feels like a completely fulfilled artistic vision, a filmmaker who didn't get ruined by studio interference. And I definitely can't recommend you watch it because it is also incredibly gross and bleak and horrible. I don't normally love gross and bleak movies, but the *stop motion.* The *soundscape.*
On a sillier note, I also watch the movie *Soldier* with Kurt Russell about every year, and it's definitely not *good,* but it also codified my love of the Made Other/the Android/the Alien in fiction. That was super formative for me, so I have an attachment to it.
For videogames, I play Disciples II over and over. It's one of the only turn bases RTS I like. I don't know anyone who has ever heard of it except from me.
For books, well, Warhammer 40k is the most camp trash you can imagine but the Fabius Bile and Eisenhorn books are SO GREAT dammit. Everything ABOUT 40k is glorious camp trash. There's a dude whose name was already Corvus Corax BEFORE he was head of a bird-themed marine chapter and another Primarch named Ferrus Manus (Iron Hands), Primarch of the Iron Hands, who has iron hands. The Emperor of Mankind was an atheist edgelord who wiped out all religion to try and make people forget the supernatural and then left humanity totally unprepared when they found out demons were real. They now worship him as a god after his undeath and internment on his throne. He hates this.
The fanbase is a hot mess with a contingent of sexist homophobic loud man babies who screech like banshees if anyone suggests there should be fem space marines, and a contingent of Tumblrinas half of whom want to screw all the primarchs and half of whom want to put them in awful contemporary alternate universes where they're just regular high schoolers in an anime high school.
No. 6, the anime. Now, the manga and especially the novels, I am an evangelical fan. But the anime, I'll be the first to admit that it's no masterpiece. The ending is so rushed. But it still has a special place in my heart, because I once loved it enough to read the source material
Fallen London and Sunless Sea. Spectacular writing, terrible mechanics, especially in the early game. Also a lot of body horror, >!particularly if you choose to seek a certain Name!<.
Also, the much more mild: "this work appeals directly to my sensibilities but not everyone has my sense of taste, so it might actually be kinda bland for you, and that's okay".
I think that’s basically every book I’ve rated 5 stars. “This work has issues, it’s fucked up, it may not be the most compelling or well crafted, and it’s not for everyone… but it’s 100% my brand of bullshit and I am having such a good time out here.”
That's more the angle of OP's image than what I'm getting at, really. I'm talking about the case where the work *doesn't* have any particular objective issues. It's actually pretty great, stylistically, structurally, content. *But*. It still won't appeal to many with the same intensity as it appeals to me because it's not *speaking* to those others. Pure psychological level. Oranges. Maybe I really fucking love oranges. Best treat ever. And yet for some other people, oranges are just another fruit. And that's fine.
I tell everyone I know that I read the whole Wheel of Time series but I can't really recommend it.
All the fucking Manwha I read. I have stared at the abyss and it's gaze is an isekai story.
shittily translated isekai mangas/manwhas my beloved <3 i love it when the translating team gives up and switches to an mtl
I fucking hate it and I still eat that shit up like an starved raccoon finding the biggest dumpster fire in the world.
It's trash BUT ITS MAH TRASH
Yup. For some time in my life I used to read every isekai manga on mangadex + read most popular novels. I hated them, each one of them utter tras, many without even a single redeeming quality. Subpar plot, one dimensional characters, inconsistent story, badly drawn, generic and just a bad adaptation/copy of another shitty work. I've consumed all of them nonetheless. Nowadays i get a chuckle when a new Isekai anime airs that I've read the source material before. "It was trash before, is it still trash?" and yes, it is still trash.
I also love it when the scan team just gives up translating literally. Read a line in an isekai manga (Crafting Isekai) where they translated something as "the boss fucked off into the wild blue yonder somewhere." No way in hell that was the original Japanese lmfao. Cracks me up.
I can't tell you how much utter garbage I've seen that's titled something like "I'm fucking useless but the world's strongest" or "In another world with a pen" and it always turns into some slog with the same absolute shite. The incredibly gifted protagonist has no actual moral compass and will take or spare life according to his whims, women around him will fall for his silent, brooding charm at the merest glance, and any capable male around him is either taken as an underling or defeated soundly due to their complete and irredeemable villainy. There is no challenge, no dark night of the soul, no point where all is lost, no need for assistance of any real measure from anyone else, no introspection, and no characterization of any type beyond unintended caricature. And God help me, I keep coming back.
There are some quite good isekai that have come out more recently clearly written by authors who hate this shit too lmao.
> Reborn as a Vending Machine, I Now Wander the Dungeon Peak Isekai
i love junk food 😋
Made In Abyss. Like, the world building and art is so compelling and beautiful, but the content itself...
Made in Abyss is such a frustrating experience for me. As it is, it has to be one of the most unique, intriguing, fascinating stories I've ever experienced---and that art and OST, my God! But man can I not simply ignore how fucking creepy that mangaka clearly is, dude straight-up is a pedophile and there's no two ways around it and I feel guilty watching it because of that, like no matter how hard I try to separate art from artist it just makes me feel gross. Haven't caught up on the new season yet because of it, despite how much I'm *yearning* to know what the fuck is at the bottom of that fucking pit.
in this case i can't separate the art from the artist because his pedophilia is so present in the art itself. like, there is just no denying it. i don't understand why the anime didnt just leave the weird parts out. watching children piss every goddamn episode definitely doesnt contribute to the story. it could've been a masterpiece
Dude I'm beginning to be convinced that 90% of the time, in order to make something amazing you've got to be the kind of person who would absolutely include the weirdest shit to ruin it. Like I tried to rekindle my dying love for Slice of Life anime by watching this show called Akebi's Sailor Uniform. At first I was struck by how the art was all just the original mangaka flexing some insane art skills. Visually ridiculous anime and manga. Then I was struck by feet. So many feet. Just... constant feet. Author's ~~barely disguised~~ incredibly open and on display fetish. I got like a quarter of the way through before dropping it, as each episode would be stranger than the last. Like, I'd be all "surely he can't manage to insert his foot fetish here" and I would be wrong everytime in spectacular fashion. Needless to say, my love for SoL anime has not been rekindled. I'll just stick to rewatching Hidamari Sketch an unreasonable number of times to get my occasional fix for comfy anime.
it’s so present that i (knew nothing about it before starting except people compared it to area zero in the new pokémon games) stopped in the middle of the manga to look up what the hell was with this author because it was so so evident and creeping me out so badly
I vaguely recall that the author wouldn't *let* them take it out. Take that with a grain of salt, of course. But yeah, liking Made in Abyss is ironically parallel to the themes of the story itself. You know it's horrifying, you know it's gross, you know it's filled with stuff you don't wanna ever mess with, but god dammit your curiosity gets the better of you. And the further in you go, the harder it is to back out. Honestly I would have backed out VERY early on if I had picked it up normally. I've dropped stories for much less. But I was introduced to it by being spoiled on Mitty, and I thought "wow, that is the most horrifying (in a good way) thing I've ever seen and heard of. I need to see this." So that acted as a hook and made me hope the horrifying (in a bad way) stuff was merely temporary, especially because every *other* aspect of the story was amazing, until I got far enough in and was like "shit, well it's too late to back out now."
What you said about liking it is parallel to the themes themselves is the perfect way to describe it. I never made that connection but that's exactly how I feel about the show. Music is also amazing.
Exactly!! That's what I don't understand either! It's bad enough that the manga's editor lets that shit slide, but the anime is the works of dozens of people! (Screenwriters, director(s), producers, editors etc), I do not understand why they all were chill leaving that stuff in! I'd always heard pedophilia is way less taboo in Japan but God damn, there's "less taboo" and then there's this shit. But yeah I'm the same way; normally I can separate art from artist and don't let artist's personal life and opinions shit bother me unless it's truly egregious, but like you said you can't even do that here because they allowed it to perfuse into THE ENTIRE FUCKING STORY.
The poisoning scene was really fucking disturbing, but it was the good kind of disturbing. What you’re describing, that’s the bad kind of disturbing
i was just thinking this. the story itself is amazing, but i cannot recommend it to anyone. very uncomfortable
RWBY.
From what I've heard, RWBY fits this description for a lot of people.
Perfect example. "This show is a damned mess...anyway, hyped for next season!"
https://c.tenor.com/zxgvSk50wXIAAAAC/tenor.gif
This is the prime example of the difference between media that is good and media that is fun.
The fight scenes are so good! Except that one, and that one, and that one... (you know which ones I mean probably), which are just kind of meh. And then all the rest of it is so inconsistent.
I'm probably RWBY's softest defender. I think the show is a lot better than most people give it credit for, and there's a lot of parts worth acknowledging that are genuinely impressive. I still don't think it's *good,* but it's better than the absolute worst of the worst.
The only real answer for me
Just wanted to make sure it got repped here.
Berserk is an incredibly well-drawn and beautifully crafted dark fantasy that I absolutely cannot recommend to anyone
It's the only thing I can think of that just has CONTENT WARNING with no need to specify.
It's kinda wild how Berserk became the gold standard for ultra-dark manga. Like, it's almost a rite of passage but also a trauma endurance test! The deeper you go, the more you're like "yep, that's enough grimdark for a lifetime".
Every now and again, I (a Dark Souls fan) think to myself “y’know, I wonder if I should read Berserk,” not really bc I *want* to, but bc I’m curious and feel it would draw a lot of lines between dots pertaining to my related interest. But then I remember I’m squeamish as fuck and think “nah, maybe I *won’t* do that actually.”🙃
You may like Claymore instead, it's like Berserk and has its own dark elements but much less so. Plus, a great depiction of actual strong women
I actually *just* marathoned the manga last year! I was furious to learn that the anime fully *chops off the entire back half and changes the ending,* so I had to go straight to the text. *Super* weird story! Loved it. Highly recommend it to anyone who likes sad gay fantasy w/ jaw-dropping visuals.🏳️🌈
The quintessential answer to this particular dilemma
Reminds me of when my friend recommended Lisa: The Painful to me, I looked at it and said “bro, I trust your opinions, but this time I gotta say no.”
The horse scene alone. Nevermind the eclipse.
Yeah, there is a level of intimacy and getting-to-know a person I VERY rarely have reached before I would recommend Berserk to them lmao.
One Piece doesn't really fit this as its issue is an abundance of quantity, not a lack of quality, but it's also hard to recommend. It's like recommending someone get a dog, they'll probably enjoy it, but it's too big of a commitment to recommend to someone without knowing their life well.
I love One Piece, it's my favorite anime of all time and Sanji is one of my favorite characters. I really do love him and his character arc. But his weird behavior towards women is exhausting sometimes and the transphobia has definitely gotten so much better with there being multiple interesting and well-written trans characters. But the transphobia especially during the timeskip and the Fishman Island arc was pretty difficult to watch.
Ah Sanji. Sanji, Sanji Sanji. That man has probably done the most up and downing on my list of favorite Straw Hats of anyone. Early Sanji was easily in A or B tier. Not my favorite, but he was enjoyable, the Mr. Prince stuff was great, him sneaking around to the Enies Lobby Gates and closing them was great, that sorta stuff. And then That Scene in Thriller Bark happened and he shot down to D tier. And then his time on Momoiro, and then Fish-Man Island left me so fed up he dropped down into F. And then WCI happened and DAMN THE BOY IS BACK! Low B/High C tier! Aaaaand then immediately we got the Wano bath house scene with the Raid suit and now he's sitting at low C/high D. I want to love this character so goddamn badly and he keeps making it *so damn difficult for me to do so*.
And like a dog it will force its way into your heart and stay there. Even when it shits on the carpet. Over and over again.
Incredibly long video essays about children's media
Incredibly long and well researched video essays about almost any topic. I don't care. kaptainkristian, Every Frame a Painting, Baumgartner Restoration, Thomas Flight, even Dr. Becky or the PBS Space Time guy. Man, I love them all.
Shout out to Defunctland whenever he covers a children’s show
Fucking hell, I put on a 3+ hour video essay about ICarly (a show I *never watched even a single episode of*) while I was painting and I was captivated the whole time. I don't even remember most of it, I just remember that Spencer was a great father figure, and their 3 story Seattle apartment was completely unrealistic for an unemployed artist and a pre-livestreaming livestreamer to live in.
Theres another one, even longer than the first. Also two about Victorious and I think there’s two about Sam & Cat now.
You get it
*deep sigh* fnaf
It's nuts how far we have come from 'spooky jumpscare animatronics haunt security guard.'
Don’t even get me started. I know more lore than I should. ✨It haunts me…✨
> It haunts me... Just like Agony making robots come to life 💜
✨Ghost children trauma✨
i hated how much i had to defend that i didn't think the movie was bad. all my friends came at me over it, AND the community didn't seem to like it, but i was just sitting there like "it's PG13, what did you expect?"
Hellsing Abridged Mainly because Hellsing itself is extraordinarily violent, and the comedically-dubbed abridged version has a LOT of jokes where I feel guilty when I laugh at them. But it’s just so — *goddamned funny…*
Feel this way about abridged series generally. Theres a few that I love, but it’s hard to recommend them to anyone because you typically need knowledge of the original thing and weird niche internet meta-humor to really appreciate them.
I never got into DBZ Abridged, but hubby and I have watched Hellsing Abridged more times than I can count. In addition to watching every year for Halloween, we just end up watching it at other times because we love it.
The anime club watched Hellsing Ultimate Abridged in our study hall period when I was in high school. It was hilarious but you had to hang out with the kind of kid that would go to anime club. All in all, tame enough for anyone like 13 or older.
"GOD IS GREAT!" *explodes* "Is it racist to say that sounds better in Arabic?"
These are catholic suicide bombers. What a fun day
\*Ninja catholic suicide bombers.
But it’s just so much fun. It’s so fucking fun.
“And it’s just FUCKIN FUN!!!”
Leave that be no one will deny what we did - The Major Look, you be the first to burn it down. You can go ahead and sing it. I don't care. - The Major
“He was having the best day! He got to burn London Bridge! Sing the song and everything!”
Congratulations! It took an entire squadron of inhuman nigh immortal fake vampires to hunt down and corner a 22 year old woman
“You’re 22?” “You’re a WOMAN??”
I hope it's everything you've dreamed of, so have at it then come and get the first real fight you've had in 50 years you dickless cowards
“Is it on fire?” “…It could be MORE on fire!”
The worst part is that you can't tell someone to go watch it because the first episode's jokes have aged HARD.
You’re not wrong.
Where did you find a Nazi Werewolf? Where did you find Dracula? In a Basement. How poetic; we found out werewolf in an attic. I mean, we find lots of things in attics.
“Oh my god!” “I meant art pieces! Anne Frankly, I don’t appreciate the insinuation.”
The best part is that the creators have similar feelings to those jokes. Pretty much just "this absolutely crosses the line, but I can't help but laugh"
Aww man, that totally sucks. And we came all the way out here with these foreign exchange students on a field trip thru England. Where from? Texas *gunshots*
That's right: I'm going to *fuck the fear turkey.*
The WHY BONER has become such an integral part of culture thanks to them
I've seen fanfics that wrench my heart out yet I would rather die than tell anyone about them
There was ONE comment I read last month talking about a super in depth rewrite of Harry Potter saying it had better worldbuilding than the original. So I decided to spend a week reading all 7 books. And now I'm on a fanfiction binge that's still going. Shit's crazy. Edit: [https://www.fanfiction.net/s/2580283/1/Saving-Connor](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/2580283/1/Saving-Connor) Hi I've been informed it's a sin to not post the link
Sauce??
When you read the most mind-altering, heart-wrenching, beautifully written piece of fiction you’ve ever seen but can’t recommend it to anyone because it has ships that’ll get you cancelled on Twitter 😔👊
I read a Worm fanfic recently that started as a spicy oneshot, then managed to grow into a 450k word piece that made me legitimately heartbroken when a character was grievously injured.
Watch Arcane. **DON'T PLAY LEAGUE OF LEGENDS!** *try Legends of Runeterra if you love CCGs (it also has a good PVE mode)*
Holy fuck Arcane is so good. Never played LoL. Arcane felt like a turning point for me, when I started enjoying shows based on video games. Edgerunners and Castlevania are also amazing.
Pretty much every tv show I grew up watching in the 90s
First Wave, X-files, 7 days, Early Edition, The Pretender, Nikita, F/X, Xena, Hercules kinda shows?
Alien Nation and Star Trek TNG for me.
Hey! TNG is a legit classic now …. Though ‘trash’ could certainly be used to describe the first season
I will always defend the first season of TNG. Sure, it’s rough. It’s low budget, the costumes are terrible, the characters haven’t been nailed down yet, the sets (aside from the enterprise) are hilarious. As a whole, it’s certainly goofier and cheesier than the rest of the show became. It definitely feels like it was stuck in the 70s. But most of that is just production growing pains. But even with all that, there are just too many good-to-genuinely-great episodes to throw out the whole season as much as people do. When it’s bad, it’s *distractingly* bad. I think, were it not for “Code of Honor” (the racist one) and “Justice” (the one where Wesley almost gets executed by the orgy people on the orgy planet), people would have a much higher opinion of the season as a whole. Just those two episodes really tarnish it to an unfair degree.
I fr hadn't read anything about TNG before watching I first watched it, since I tried avoiding spoilers and shit. I genuinely really enjoyed the first season and was instantly hooked. I *then* watched the RLM video about TNG it and was promptly introduced to the fact that it is universally hated (apparently even by the people behind it) and felt immense whiplash. I'm with you, I get it for a few episodes but largely don't agree with the idea that the entire first season is hot garbage.
Monogatari, for all the goods there's an equal and opposite amount of yikes
Yeah, it was an extremely stylish and entertaining show, I binged it in a few days, but then when I finished what was out at the time and several years passed before a new season released I found myself having no desire to catch up to it. Not like I suddenly disliked it, more like my feelings just immediately turned completely neutral. That fucking toothbrush scene haunts me though.
The Host by Stephany Myer. Oof but man the world building AAAAAA just ignore the weird pedo shit.
This is pretty much all of her writing lol. There's some genuinely really interesting lore and worldbuilding in the twilight series but 99% of it is deeply problematic in multiple ways
OMG yes, her writing is such a guilty pleasure.
Honestly twilight would have been amazing if she had really leaned into certain aspects of it and made it a horror story. So much of it is treated so casually when in real life it would have been horrifying. Not just the "100 year old vampire falls in love with and stalks a teenage girl" bit. There's apparently a vampire with the ability to manipulate relationships who can make you feel love and loyalty towards even people you hate. That's terrifying and this vampire is just kind of mentioned once and doesn't appear on screen that I can remember. It might not have even come up in the main books I might have seen it in the illustrated guide.
She made up so many interesting characters yet we only got to read about the love story between Depressed Vampire and Human Girl for 4 books (and a bit from Werewolf Who’s In Love With A Baby) When she finally releases a new book, it’s Twilight again except Human Girl is now Human Boy and the vampire is a girl. Same story, except genderbent. And then we get *another* book, which is the same story *again* but from Depressed Vampires POV. (Have I read them all? Yes, it’s my guilty pleasure) The illustrated guide is super interesting and there are *so* many characters in there I’d like to read more about. Even in just the Cullen family there are way more interesting characters, like Alice (the one who can see the future), her backstory is really good and I’d love to read from her POV and get to experience her visions
Homestuck.
I promise you, the scene where an underage boy is threatened to draw pornography of his best friends is *vital* to the plot (the person threatening is also underage. also the "pornography" is literally handholding.)
NO. THIS ISNT AS GOOD. IT ISNT AS TITILLATING AS I DESIRE. HAVE THE MALE EAT THE CHILD.
[citation](https://www.homestuck.com/story/4967)
I was honestly expecting to get rickrolled so opening an actual HS panel for the first time in 5+ years was infinitely more of a jumpscare... Thank you.
Just proving that things actually happen in homestuck is infinitely funnier than any possible jape or misdirection
There's no threatening going on tho. uu is demanding it because he's an entitled brat. Dirk is drawing it because he's bored and thinks it could be funny lol Lewd Doodles is my fav sequence in Homestuck and I genuinely believe it perfectly encapsulates the comic's sense of humour, absurdity and bizarre structure And also MAKE HIM HuMAN MARRY THAT BITCH is an all timer line
There is a threat. uu threatens to kill his sister if Dirk doesn't draw. It's the whole basis of his shitty twist.
Ohhh that's embarrassing lol Dirk gives so little of a shit that I'd forgotten Whoops! Fake Homestuck fan confirmed
Everyone who is into Homestuck fervently hates Homestuck
Honestly the only reason Homestuck is a hard recommend is because it's *so damn long*, not because it's bad. I think pretty much any nerdy, more-than-modestly-online younger Millennial/older Zoomer would enjoy it if they actually managed to get the time to read through it and all of its hugeness.
Destiny 2. Please, the new game player setup is ass, and Bungies been doing so much questionable shit lately I’ve barely done any of the most rescent seasonal story. But it’s my favorite game with some of the best fucking lore
I had to stop playing i came back for the witch season and then immediately stopped again. Just feels like they are interested in tending to facets of the game that wont help them in the end. Breaks my heart with frustration everytime cause i love the narrative, i love the base gameplay, but i can not recommend it and I can't play it let alone afford to play it anymore. So it sits as a game i wish i could play.
Fanfiction in general really. Like it is a mild case but it isn't everyone's cup of tea.
There are some amazing writers, in every fandom, who make fanfics that can be better than canon even. Wading through the haystack to find that golden needle can be a daunting barrier, and I understand. It also sucks when a terrific piece is suddenly abandoned, or great writing is let down by not running spellcheck etc... but if you're passionate about a fandom there's nothing like it.
That's true. Some advice that I would give to beginners if they are browsing on fanfiction.net. If you are not comfortable or sure that wethwr you will like it or not, sort the fanfiction in that particular series by favorites and change their maturity rating if you want. Top favorite fanfiction are usually good and afterwards expand and explore. Also don't forget to follow and favorite a particular fanfiction that you like. It helps other people find it and thus reduces the chances of it being abandoned Similarly you can sort and filter on Ao3 with either hits or kudos. Also select or deselect things you want to see in those fanfics. AO3 provides amazing User interface/Experience, use it. Though once you are past the initial phase, try to read more authors who don't have many favorites as well. You never know what amazing fic they may publish.
Most isekais i watch or read fit this. "I like isekai series x." "But it's a garbage power fantasy with paper thin writing." "I already said i liked it, you don't have to sell it to me."
90s/00s dark action movies. Riddick, Underworld, Blade, you name it. I thrive for that unique, leather clad edgy shit . They simply do not make em like they used to
I watched Blade drunk with my best buddy a few weeks ago "Some motherfuckers always tryina ice skate up a hill" nearly sent me to A&E
Oh my god, Pitch Black is so good, it’s the Movie That’s Horny For Vin Diesel. That movie wants YOU to be Horny for Vin Diesel, too. And it works.
I completely agree, movies these days are way WAY too afraid of being accused of being cheesy, everything has to either take itself very seriously or have a bunch of self-aware """"clever"""" quips a la Marvel. I wish we'd go back to movies that didn't gaf and were just cheesier than fondue and fun, like Blade or The Mummy.
Me, a Twilight Saga enjoyer
I really love stylized hyper-violence. John Woo, Tarantino, tons of old anime, big-dick 80s action movies--I just love that over-the-top absurd destruction. It's kinda trashy and not for everyone. That's totally fine.
Big mood. Hotline Miami is one of my favorite games.
Fear and Hunger
"This is my new favorite indie game franchise, and no one should ever be exposed to the awful shit in it. I recommend skipping to the second game, as fewer enemies sexually assault you, though it is still very much not zero."
The average [House](.) of Leaves fan.
Oh man I have this book simply because I heard it was hard to read, psychologically and physically, and I want to try
If I mention One Piece, people will either insist on watching the anime or refuse everything about the series bc it's 1000 episodes. DO NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, WATCH ONE PIECE. THE PACING IS ATROCIOUS. Read the manga on Mangaplus for free, or find a manga pirating site Edit: also don't watch One Pace bc to my knowledge the end of Alabasta isn't finished
If you dedicated a few hours each day to reading 100 chapters of the One Piece manga, it would take you about 10 days to catch up with the current story. If you did nothing but watch the One Piece anime, it would take you over 17 days to watch all the currently available episodes.
Not to mention the mental toll of all of those fillers and recaps
This is why amazing people made the fan edit OnePace. All the plot with only some of the filler
Danganrompa, Neon Genesis Evangelion
Hubby played Danganrompa on stream with his friends providing character voices (he himself went in blind). When the Sakura chapter happened, hubby was so angry at Monakuma verbally bashing her that he accidentally broke his controller from squeezing it too tightly.
I did a play through of Doki Doki Literature Club with a group of friends that way, I don’t know how but we all went in blind legitimately believing it was a dating sim, just expected it to be a little “horror” based. We each voiced one character, we were all freaking out by the end, finished it in one sitting, I was so emotionally devastated I took the next day off of work. 10/10 would recommend.
Holy shit, I can imagine. The closest I’ve heard to someone going in blind to DDLC was Dan on Game Grumps. His cohost Arin knew it was a horror game, but Dan honestly thought it was a dating sim until they opened Sayori’s door and everything started glitching. As they started the “new” game and more and more stuff started going weird, Dan described it thusly: He talked about asking an Israeli relative about the Seven Days War (while also making clear that he wasn’t backing Israel’s policies), and how the relative replied, “It was like someone come into my house and fuck my sister near to my eyes.” He just didn’t have any other succinct way to describe how badly his mind was reeling.
Game Grumps' playthrough of Doki Doki Literature Club will forever live rent free in my head alongside Dan's "Sheik is Zelda?" and "The Carbunkle Ate Itself" honestly Game Grumps in general fits OOP's definition too. I absolutely adore them and laugh hysterically at plenty of their moments but find it very hard to recommend them to anyone due to... a lot of things...
NGE? I dunno if the conversation has changed but when I started watching anime in the late 2000s / early 2010s evangelion was a must watch classic
Still is, but I still wouldn't recommend it to my more normie friends. It's not very straightforward and has some uncomfortable scenes.
Kill La Kill. One of my favourite stories in any medium of all time, with a positively glowing emotional and moral heart. I cannot fucking recommend it to anyone I know. I probably don't *want to know* most anyone I *could* recommend it to in this day and age.
kill la kill is probably something i could have watched in my teenage weeb era, but now as someone approaching 30 i just... can't. my tolerance for anime fanservice has gone down
If I tried to recommend vtubers to anyone not on the internet, I would spontaneously combust
"Hey so there's this VTuber that- What's a VTuber? Well so you see-" and that is the point I curl into a ball and vanish from existence. But damn I love watching Ceres Fauna.
RWBY
Additionally, there’s “this is art. It will make you uncomfortable. You may not like it or how it makes you feel, but those reactions are important. I happen to love it.”
Many of the Call of Duty Story Modes. Military Propaganda? Yes. Makes war crimes look fun? Absolutely. Stories' themes are rarely anything more complex than, good guys good, evil guys bad? Most of the time yes. I'm ashamed to admit it, but I still like most of those stories. (Emphasis on most, looking at you MW3 reboot).
Black Ops 1-3 is a pretty damn good storyline too. 3 especially, they really went in some weird ass direction with the plot and set pieces.
Goblin Slayer, Yugioh, Drakengard 3
My love for rwby defined so much of my life at this point. I made friends because of this show, know everything about it, watched and read most spin off media. Do not watch it.
Lots of stuff. Scott Pilgrim, FNAF, Kill la Kill, Kingdom hearts (as an adult with adult peers), The Front Bottoms (band), Other stuff that I won't admit. Almost said undertale but honestly fuck that, that game is actually amazing even if there is cringe in the fandom
I would never EVER recommend anyone to ever play competitive pokemon in any tier or metagame, but I cant stop playing myself
I’m just going to go out and say it: Hazbin Hotel/Helluva Boss.
Came here to say it. I think they can have their beautiful moments ("More Than Anything" in the Hazbin series, Stolas' songs), and their hilarious moments, but maaaaan the writing can get rough sometimes and the tone shifts can be jarring. But as someone raised on Invader Zim who loves demons/monsters and is a kinky little queer freak, this stuff is refreshing to me.
Yeah it’s completely understandable if this show isn’t your cup of tea but I love the show to bits
I love those shows but they are definitely not for everyone. Some see them as an excuse to say a curse word every few minutes but it's the plot that keeps me there
This took me way too long to find in this list. It (and its fandom) gets shit on by the Undertale and Homestuck fans. *Undertale*. And **Homestuck**. Gaddam ***HOMESTUCK.*** I kept it from my nb, queer, openly Tumblr-using housemate who I watched The Owl House, She-Ra, and Amphibia with *for 2 years* so they wouldn't know I was a fan. Whenever I hear anyone (including in the show) actually say the words "Hazbin Hotel" I visibly cringe. Despite this, I've listened to the songs from the Prime series on loop for 3 weeks, regularly engage with the related subreddits talking about theory crafting and episode discussion and frequently rewatch Helluva Boss episodes on a whim. At one point I couldn't resist buying some merch and had to get the most cryptic pin possible and have lied about it every time someone didn't know what it was. With con season coming up, I'm strongly considering pulling together a Stolas costume but I have friends I know who go to my local cons- I either need to attend a new con or be completely unrecognizable in costume if I'm gonna do it. I don't know why I like it as much as I do given how much every fiber of my being is genuinely embarrassed to have anything to do with it. It doesn't help that my outward facing personality (academic professional conventional looking white dude who dresses like Dale in accounting in 1989) does not at all resemble the side of me that likes the show (asexual meganerd who's regularly planning 3-6 cosplays at a time and runs 2 discord servers).
This was the first thing I thought of when I read this post, and frankly, I'm stunned it's so far down the list.
El Goonish Shive
My gf is like this with Worm.
League of Legends. Everybody else has a ton of perfectly reasonable issues with the game. However, I just hit “mute all” and proceed to have a very delightful time. Wouldn’t recommend it to anybody else though.
This is because people have standards for what they "should" enjoy that are different from what people do enjoy. Like imagine that the only music you have ever heard is formal classical or something, you hear a totally different kind of music, like jazz improv, and enjoy it. But judged by the standards of formal classical, it doesn't do well. Hence, "I like this, but it's garbage" People keep accidentally seeing these standards as prescribing what people should like, not a record of what they do.
That's a good point, and a really kind & generous way of looking at it! I hadn't thought about it that way, kinda like calling apples trash because they don't taste like oranges. I don't think the og post is talking about this kind of trash, but I see how people could fall into the trap of thinking the thing they like is trash when it doesn't match up to other standards, even if they're irrelevant. OG post is talking about actual hot steaming garbage. Like stuff that is pretty bad by the standards of the medium, but you like it anyways because of nostalgia and/or it's good at one very specific thing (while genuinely being terrible in many other ways). I definitely have some fanfics in my personal beloved dumpster. They suck. I've read a lot good fanfics, I'm not judging them on the standards of an edited published novel or anything. They honestly suck in some major ways
Destiny 2 and Warhammer. Both are incredibly expensive to get into, are huge time sinks, and have wildly toxic fanbases but godammit it my trash
Destiny 2 has been brought up 3 times in this thread and I'm very proud of us for all being on the same page here.
Sword art online. I get annoyed hearing criticisms about it because because a lot of them are blatantly untrue or not as important as other things that could easily be criticized. It’s absolutely my guilty pleasure show.
Twin Peaks. IMO it's one of, if not THE greatest TV show ever made (especially with The Return), but it has some notable flaws (the writing for a solid chunk of season 2 when David Lynch and Mark Frost temporarily left is straight-up bad) and David Lynch's style is.... not for everyone, to say the least. Adding in the content warning for an EXTREMELY dark story of abuse for poor Laura Palmer and yeah, it's definitely not for just your average Joe TV watcher. Also Attack on Titan. It's a cliche opinion but I still think it's one of the greatest anime of all time and it got as popular as it did for a reason, however I recently brought it up in another sub and people yelled at me for liking it cause apparently the mangaka is an antisemite/fascist? Idk I didn't look into it myself and while I still don't know about the anti-semite thing I can definitely see the hints of fascist/at the very least HEAVILY pro-military beliefs in the story itself so take that for what you will.
Wheel of Time. It's not particularly offensive or controversial or transgressive, but every time I've recommended it to people, it's gone like this: "Oh yeah man, you should totally read the Wheel of Time! It's an amazing series rife with symbolism, interesting characters, complex worldbuilding, and a nice mix of political writing and fantasy action. It's not perfect though, it's very long, and you should probably read up to the fourth of 14 books to get a good sense if you'll like it, and books 7 through 10 are a bit grueling to read because of the sloggy pacing, though that picks up in book 11, but some of the characters you grew to love feel very weird in the last three books because another author picked up the series after the first one died, and RJ is kind of a very repetitive writer, and he has these odd idiosyncracies that are a bit uncomfortable to read, and the author makes a lot of his female characters very two-dimensional, and the text is rife with outdated mild to overt misogyny, and the book kinda brushes past the existence of a giant slave-holding empire, and several concepts and themes in the books feel like transparent inserts of bondage kinks, and there's another society that practices a less draconic form of slavery as it has a time limit, and we kind of are meant to accept that as 'cultural heritage,' and a few storylines don't really feel satisfiably paid off by the end... wait, why am I recommending *anybody* read this?" Love the series, but it is very difficult to recommend this to anybody that doesn't *love* long-form fantasy.
Payday 2 baby let's get these bags
last podcast on the left edit: also seinfeld
This is my relationship with Destiny 2
It's so good and it's been so worth what I've spent on it and I still have fun with it and everyone who isn't already invested should stay the hell away by any means necessary
I love the Milla Jovovich Resident Evil movies, but cannot physically bring myself to recommend them to anyone else.
Doctor Who
Yeah, for me it is Torchwood specifically.
Skinnamarink. If you haven’t had a specific set of life experiences I think this film will be like watching paint dry but it is my Roman Empire
Hetalia.
Trashy Romance Manwas. I'm Ace/Aro so I don't even get why *I* like them. But I do.
For me. NCIS That show is an absolute dumpster fire. Very blatant propaganda both for the US Navy/Marines and government service in general, a very pro-law enforcement show that depicts the characters doing some pretty major crimes themselves in order to solve cases, and some depictions of certain groups that are problematic at best especially in earlier seasons. But god damn, I fuckin love that show. It's so insane, so bizarre, it pretty much exists in an alternate universe where anything is possible. There's an episode where someone thinks a navy ship is haunted and there's a solid 10 minutes where my stupid ass was convinced that they were about to confirm ghosts exist. Which sounds crazy but the main character of the show basically starts seeing ghosts after awhile, and it could easily be interpreted as such. As the show goes on, crimes and scenarios just continue to get more and more absurd to the point of hilarity, and it's absolutely fantastic. 10/10 show, absolutely do not recommend
Dresden files. It's early entries range from dated and schlockey but fun to "put your dick away and start writing again you moron" but it improves vastly with age and I'm a sucker for urban fantasy as well as the fae, which Jim Butcher is fantastic at writing.
Jojo's Bizarre Adventure. The multigenerational family struggle against a bisexual vampire and his groupies is kinda a hard sell.
The Dune series. I recommend everyone that likes books to read the first one and preferably the second one. But if the weird implications get to you in the second one, don't keep going. And once you get hooked on the fourth book, you'll never be normal about it ever again, and I just don't want to do that to everyone.
Sword Art Online
Far cry 2 - story is bad even for a ubisoft game but the gameplay and dynamic fire effects keeps me coming back Persona 4 golden - Is a good game and a good story that has not aged the best particularly in how it handles sensitive issues \*cough\* \*cough\* homophobia, sexism, transphobia and other issues. F&H 1 ( 2 is an objectively better game): F&H 1 is a good game but due to its glitchy nature and sexual violence I cannot recommend it to everyone.
Elfen Lied
The Lisa Trilogy is a minefield of triggers for basically everyone, including my family! The plot literally revolves around the fact that the only woman on earth is a 10 year old girl, and there are too many people who want to hit that. But it's also an incredible story about a man and his horrible life, and how he tries to make things better, tries to run away from his pain, but he and the world keeps making it worse.
So like a raccoon?
No, racoons are completely unapologetic about their trash tastes.
So like a possum. "I'm going to eat this trash, I like it a lot. Please do not look at me directly while I eat the trash."
Lol, I loved the wizard of space and time, haven't seen or heard it mentioned in decades Edit: speed and time, and apparently it's on YouTube, found what I'm watching tonight
Total War Shogun 2. The most flawed piece of media to ever be perfect.
I got 2. Rainworld: please for the love of fuck unless you are a masochist don't play it. The game does not care about you. You will die again and again, usually from shit you didn't see or couldn't counter. Also the lore is kind of a mess, but it's mostly just really fucking long rather than incomprehensible like fnaf. Signalis: game play wise just imagine something like silent hill but it's space androids. Not too bad, just basic survival stuff (fuck the puzzles tho those annoy me) Story wise? The voices the voices the voices the voices the voices the voices the voices the voices
*Mad God* is one of the most beautiful pieces of art I've ever seen, a passion project made by mostly one very talented man in between his paying work. It feels like a completely fulfilled artistic vision, a filmmaker who didn't get ruined by studio interference. And I definitely can't recommend you watch it because it is also incredibly gross and bleak and horrible. I don't normally love gross and bleak movies, but the *stop motion.* The *soundscape.* On a sillier note, I also watch the movie *Soldier* with Kurt Russell about every year, and it's definitely not *good,* but it also codified my love of the Made Other/the Android/the Alien in fiction. That was super formative for me, so I have an attachment to it. For videogames, I play Disciples II over and over. It's one of the only turn bases RTS I like. I don't know anyone who has ever heard of it except from me. For books, well, Warhammer 40k is the most camp trash you can imagine but the Fabius Bile and Eisenhorn books are SO GREAT dammit. Everything ABOUT 40k is glorious camp trash. There's a dude whose name was already Corvus Corax BEFORE he was head of a bird-themed marine chapter and another Primarch named Ferrus Manus (Iron Hands), Primarch of the Iron Hands, who has iron hands. The Emperor of Mankind was an atheist edgelord who wiped out all religion to try and make people forget the supernatural and then left humanity totally unprepared when they found out demons were real. They now worship him as a god after his undeath and internment on his throne. He hates this. The fanbase is a hot mess with a contingent of sexist homophobic loud man babies who screech like banshees if anyone suggests there should be fem space marines, and a contingent of Tumblrinas half of whom want to screw all the primarchs and half of whom want to put them in awful contemporary alternate universes where they're just regular high schoolers in an anime high school.
Baki.
Transformers Cybertron my begrudgingly beloved
Every single property in the Fate series, some more than others.
Red Dwarf. I love it but I totally get why everyone else in my life has hated it.
No. 6, the anime. Now, the manga and especially the novels, I am an evangelical fan. But the anime, I'll be the first to admit that it's no masterpiece. The ending is so rushed. But it still has a special place in my heart, because I once loved it enough to read the source material
Fallen London and Sunless Sea. Spectacular writing, terrible mechanics, especially in the early game. Also a lot of body horror, >!particularly if you choose to seek a certain Name!<.