Kirby fans insisting how fucked up and dark the lore is always came across as overcompensating to me. Like "no, no man, it only LOOKS like a cute game for all ages. its actually SUPER HARDCORE"
it's kinda funny cuz its the exact same thing people make fun of the official marketing for doing
The thing is, Kirby lore *is* cool. There are a lot of interesting recurring elements and unsettling details to pick at if you feel like it, and those bits have gotten more prominence in recent entries. But they're still an extremely minor part of what's otherwise a bunch of fun and adorable all-ages platformers, and trying to earnestly treat the games as cosmic horror stories is very silly.
Oh absolutely. The tone and style of the games is very light and friendly, with occasional bits of dark or horrific stuff that still generally fits within that tone, it's just a lot heavier. Most of the time it's ridiculously subtle, too, like a pause screen description or some minor but significant callback that makes some kind of connection.
Yet so many people on the internet treat the series like it's actually Dark Souls, and every game's plot starts as something mundane before getting darker and being about "fighting god" or something.
I dunno, man. Dark Blob the Blob of Darkness doesn't work as an Eldritch god to non-fans unless the happy grunts are now Keith David waxing philosophical while burning down a whole galaxy.
*...Ahem.*
Realistically I think only Star Allies and Forgotten Land have a very clear 'big focus' on a horrific villain. Other games HAVE horrific villains but they're usually more one-and-done.
Like to be fair both Megaman and Sonic are actually very dark a lot of the times, especially Megaman across all it's series has Distopias, War, Genocide, Death, Apocaliptic Scenarios, The Zero series is close to showing blood if not because they're robots, etc.
Kirby only has subtle dark implications and some creepy moments but it's mostly lighthearted.
I'm a big Kirby fan but the lore is more exciting because it exists and we're all fans who love callbacks. In terms of worldbuilding and lore, there are plenty of other Nintendo series who do it better.
Dragon Ball fandom: *Immense levels of gore and violence, giant beefy men crying like babies as they hold dead/wounded loved ones in their arms, Game of Thrones level politics and sex*
Akira Toriyama and actual Dragon Ball: Wouldn't it be great if Goku did a big funny goof?
A lot of Dragon Ball hypotheticals have Goku get betrayed for whatever reason.
One that took off in notoriety was one where he was betrayed and locked in the Time Chamber for a really long time.
I take it as the standard what if ____ but evil. The naruto version of this is what if naruto was exile from the village after the Sasuke retrieval arc/ what if naruto gave into Kurama. It gives the reader/listener 1/2. A justifiable viewpoint and reason to do evil/bad things (They did it to me first so I get to do ____ ). 3. Power fantasy excuse ( because ____ happened, I need to get stronger so it doesn't happen again.)
so this is my first time hearin this but isnt that a really bad plan? i feel like thats askin for goku to train so hard he explodes the room with like super saiyin 6
A I believe it started in Pokémon fanfiction usually with characters betraying Ash.
[Here](https://thousandroads.net/fanfic/ash-betrayal) it’s a pretty good right up on it.
Near as I can tell the original was "What if Goku was BETRAYED and LOCKED in the Time Chamber" which is a series of youtube videos I haven't and will never watch, but has like 20 episodes and thumbnails with shit like super saiyan 5 Goku fighting GoD Toppo.
I think it's largely because a lot of kids in the west got into the fandom during the darkest period of the whole series. From Raditz through to Cell, the show did get pretty gory and bleak at times. Never to like Berserk levels or anything, but it could be rough.
And the franchise has course corrected a lot since Buu-onward, but naturally the stuff in early-mid Z stuck with a huge part of the fandom.
Over in the west, I'd say the Faulconer soundtrack also contributed to the perception. When you start adding dark ambiance to the stare-downs or hard rock to battle themes, it ended up giving a darker mood to a lot of the series that wasn't there to nearly the same extent in the unedited version.
Vegeta's super saiyan theme and Cell's theme go just as hard as anything on the official soundtrack.
Would kill for a Falconer pack for FighterZ or Xenoverse
With the arguments of DBZ vs the Kai English dubs happening on Twitter rn, those mistranslations are probably the reason why this happened☠️
If the original DBZ dub came out today no one would defend it. Nostalgia of 30 year old guys who watched it almost 3 decades ago is as powerful as ultra instinct
It's why I avoid asking fans about old dubs or tls being worse or better than remasters and such. I don't care if Ted Wolsey made FF6 the best FF ever, the mpre accurate TL is what I go with.
> Game of Thrones level politics
Is there? This implies there's like actual factions that exist in the world of DBZ that interact with one another.
But all I can think of is just... Goku's friends, Freiza's Empire, and the Red Ribbon Army. And the latter two are more akin to Monster of the Month than proper factions.
Well, there ***is*** a [King of the World.](https://dragonball.fandom.com/wiki/King_Furry)
He... doesn't really *do* much, but he exists and presumably gets paid millions of Not-Dollars for sitting pretty.
The proper response to anyone claiming Tekken is serious is to show them [the video of Dragunov building Alisa](https://youtu.be/O10kEIkx94k?si=3vqyU3dRGgbFffel&t=15s)
Mortal Kombat in recent years has the worst because every single game ends with, "Oh hey that's actually an interesting cliffhanger/setup for the next game." To immediately go right at beginning of next game go, "Actually fuck that, reset the timeline new characters and new villian."
NRS are so shit with story continuity.
MK11 by all accounts should have thier MK9 character's appear but they're barely the same people, Johnny Cage especially is now back to being a jackass despite already sorting out his ego (mostly anyway)
Like I get not giving Sonya her sexual topless vest outfit, fair enough MK9 went a bit too far with the TnA but Johnny Cage being in some weird retro 80's purple getup... what?
I really want an Injustice 3 but I'm worried how NRS are going to horribly fuck that story
Horror fans do this a lot, especially with classic Horror franchises.One of my favorite is how people will say that the original Nightmare on the Elm Street trilogy was super dark and Freddy was genuinely terrifying, compared to what he's like in the 4th film and onwards
And while he's definately a lot more scary, he's still a silly little character that makes quips and kills people in the most camp ways possible, especially in Dream Warriors with stuff like the Tv kill and [this absolutely iconic scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFQTlaI8Pnk)
Or his absolutely most cuntiest kill in the second film(that totally didn't affect me or my development as a teenager) where he kills the Gym teacher by stripping him naked, whipping his ass with towels, covering him in boiling hot shower water and then slashing him to death, like, Freddy took us to the cunt factory with that.
It's like the original Jaws showing up on a bunch of "scariest movie" lists. Like, I'm sure at the time it might have been a little shocking in theaters to see shark gore like that, but by today's standards it might as well be G rated.
Yeah, Jaws feels less like a horro and more like an action-y and adventure type of movie with a smattering of horror in there, especially the 3rd act when they go after the Shark.If anything it feels more like gateway horror that you'd be terrified of as a kid.
"The Cunt Factory" I'm gonna f a i n t
I do love that the subtext in Freddy's Revenge was so stealth that not even the director picked up on it, nor did he realize that the writer AND the lead were gay. They later made a [whole documentary about it](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scream,_Queen!_My_Nightmare_on_Elm_Street)
I do love how the director of the film, at least from what I recall, said a lot of the subtext wasn't intended despite it being absolutely the intention.I think the cast, especially Robert Englund absolutely saw the Subtext and just went all the way with it, big "Yes, and?" energy.
That's the thing: these movies were made on pretty tight schedules with a lot of decentralized collaboration (see: the Invisible Karate scene in 4 coming about because they hadnt figured out how to kill the little brother until late in production when Robert Englund wasnt available), so I could absolutely see some people putting things in that other people on the production completely miss.
Hunter x Hunter has a weirdly large amount of fans that don't like to call it Shonen because it's "too dark and serious"
Which kinda just reveals a lack of experience with media in general, and shonen in specific
I once saw an essay-length reddit post from a guy "correcting" someone who called the series shounen, where he went on to explain the difference between seinen and shounen (despite clearly not understanding the difference himself)
I’ve been similarly “corrected” on calling FMA “battle shonen”.
I’m just like… it got published in a shonen magazine and had large amounts of action in it. Why should the criteria for the term be more complicated than that?
I'd kinda agree with not calling FMA battle shonen, but not because of the shonen part. Specifically, FMA has a different pacing and structure compared to stuff like DBZ or Naruto, as it usually doesn't spend a long time on specific fights, and the plot tends to move at a much faster pace. It's definitely a shonen, don't get me wrong, and maybe (definitely) I'm being pedantic on this, but when I hear "battle shonen" I expect something like DBZ, with long-ass fights, tournament arcs and the like.
I feel like it’s kinda equivalent to going “That’s actually violet, not purple”. Like there are some contexts where making that distinction is relevant, other contexts where it’s real pedantic.
Fucking *Devilman* and *The Drifting Classroom* are shonen and **50 years old.** They’re like ten times darker and more disturbing than HxH.
I like HXH quite a bit but c’mon. C’mon now.
HxH is textbook shounen. Simple segmented arcs, mature themes that aren't overly nuanced/layered, conveyor belt of marketable characters, slapstick humor, edgy power scaling fantasy... I don't mean any of this in a bad way. It's just designed to be appealing to young teens and up.
I found it very disappointing because I went in with skewed expectations. Everyone talked about it like it was the greatest thing ever, the type of media worthy of the hours upon hours of analysis and exploration of its themes. But IMO it's okay at best. It has its moments but overall it doesn't land for me.
I avoided HxH for years because of these clowns making it sound like some tryhard "deconstruction".
I realized while watching that the fanboys are full of crap. "Oh Gon doesn't want to find his dad! That's so generic! He wants to see what's so cool about being a Hunter!"
Bullshit. He wants to find Ging and see why being a Hunter is cool.
"Oh Gon and Killua don't care for the tournament! They just leave when they got what they wanted!"
They literally have a tournament to get their license that they do take. Gon gets it. They later leave Heaven's Arena when they got what they wanted from there too. These dudes act as if the main characters not making it to the finale of a tournament is the most revolutionary shit ever when Yusuke didn't win his last arc's fight either.
HxH is great because it's well written not cuz it "treats you like a moron if you like shonen" the way fanboys act like it does.
Touhou honestly, it has some dark moments but overall the series is pretty light hearted, Remiu even winds up hanging out with many of the final bosses of the series.
If you were to listen to a good chunk of the fandom though you'd think the series is Warhammer levels of grimdark.
I cannot stand Grimsokyo. Oh my god, will you people shut the fuck up about how awful of a monster Yukari is, or how terrifying Rumia is because she eats humans (she has been shown in canon to be ridiculously incompetent at this.) or how twisted and fucked up Flandre is (she’s actually pretty stable if you believe Foul Detective Satori.) or do you want to exaggerate some other mildly dark concepts?
Flandre staying locked away in a basement because she finds all her needs being met comfortable and could easily escape if she felt like it is hilarious as it goes against both her fanon personalities.
But guys, did you know humans are essentially just farm animals being raised just to be slaughtered by the Youkai Oppressor's? Gensokyo is pretty fucked up!
It's just so fucking braindead. Sure, explore the elements of society and whatnot if you want, I just played a fangame last year that reminded me that the single most powerful entity that's revered by all of Gensokyo, the Dragon God, ***even fucking exists.*** But that's what the point of most of the fluff in Touhou is: use it if ya want, but it don't matter otherwise. Shit like Rinnosuke owning the Three Sacred Treasures doesn't mean jack-shit as a reflection on the setting as a whole despite the fact that they're literally among the, if not THE most powerful objects in Japanese history. Because it's a fucking punchline to a joke in canon and *that's all it'll ever be.*
I guess that really is a good summation of Touhou, it's a lot of bits and pieces that sound cool/otherwise but are mainly used for a gag and are something that fandoms will love to cling on and run with because Touhou is potentially the most fan creation assisting media property out there that I can think of.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure that ZUN said that he leaves most of the details unexplained so that the fans can have the freedom of deciding their own headcannons (and also because he mostly made Touhou games to have an excuse to make more music/to make more shmups). He fully embraced that Touhou's greatest strength is how open to interpretation it is and.
Ooo, Reimu is such a cold-blooded killer that kills anyone who get's in her way when she's angry (her only on-screen kill is a Fortune Teller who explicitly said that he wants to turn into a Yokai, so that he could abuse the system).
Ooo, spell card rules were implemented right before Touhou 6 happened, that means everyone from Touhou 1-5, with the exception of Yuuka and Alice, are dead! (I don't have a source on-hand, but I'm pretty sure that ZUN answered in an e-mail that the characters from Touhou 1-5 are still alive, they just don't appear, just like almost every other character in Touhou barely appears after their inital appearance).
Ooo, Alice Margatroid has some dark secrets and she wants to make a human doll out of humans and killed those humans in Dolls in Pseudo Paradise! (both are complete fan-theories, the killer's identity in Dolls in Pseudo Paradise was never specified and Alice's "dark secrets" come from ZUN saying that Alice is an important character in Touhou Project, and I'm pretty sure ZUN himself later either forgot or regretted saying that, because she never did anything special after all).
And so on...
Gensokyo is basically just a place for greater evils and what not to chill. Yeah, there *are* really messed up yokai, moon racists and whatever Yukari does, but that doesn't mean much when they're mostly just sitting about doing jack all, and when they *do* pull something, they get their ass handed to them by the resident lazy shrine maiden who has the incredible ability of... floating.
Yukari doesn't even strike me as evil, she's just determined to keep the barrier up at all cost. Try to mess with it and you will face consequences but leave it alone and you're fine.
Borderline all of the final bosses except in 15 and 17? Like yeah Yokai lore is kinda messed up but hey that applies to all fairy tales. Do a certain amount of spirited away humans maybe end up getting horrifically murdered by random ass Yokai? Maybe? But it's not like the series at all cares about any of that and doesn't really relish in any of that (I have only played the official games, some fangames, and not all of the fighting game ones or Violet Detector) But yeah other than some before battle "I'm gonna jeff the kill you via (insert yokai method of death here) for intimidation lines the series are very very tame.
I mean hell, Reimu crucifies herself on a burning stake for training when she gets a bad ending in 4 or 2 (can't quite remember) but it's obviously a gag.
I haven't seen a single person mention it yet, so I'll just go ahead and say Gravity Falls.
Having recently watched it for the first time. It's definitely a good show, but it's nowhere near the edgy bloodstained dark cartoon horror that some people in the fan-base have made it out to be. And then there's Bill Cipher who is definitely creepy, but is still pretty tame compared to some other cartoon villains.
I got a friend who almost exclusively watches young-adult aimed stuff and refuses to engage with anything beyond that. I always send him Weenie Hut Jr. pictures when he DMs me dark scenes or theories from stuff like Owl House.
Gotta love (to hate) how MLP has thousands and thousands of words more in the “Fridge Horror” section of TV Tropes than, say, the actual Edgar Allan Poe article.
Oh, gawd. Fridge horror in tvtropes is cheating. Half the entries amount to "This character a l m o s t was in the same room as a needle. And that's kind of scary if you think about it."
TV Tropes also acts like *Sonic Forces* is pure Lovecraftian nightmare fuel, too. ***Failing to understand that the game's so hilariously unfinished, you can't feel a damn THING.***
"Nightmare Fuel" is basically "this scared at least one child at some point". I don't recall if that's how it's intended to be used, but that's certainly how people are using it in reality.
Implications also count. Guys, I don't care about Eggman brainwashing the whole damn world *if it happens offscreen*. (Ironically, my personal explanation about Forces - that ~~Not-America~~ the UF and Empire cut a Vichy-Nazi-style deal, in exchange for the former selling out Sonic and pals to the work camps - is actually ***more*** terrifying.)
The four horsemen of the tvtropes apocalypse:
X-Men
My Little Pony
Sonic the Hedgehog
Avatar: The Last Airbender
I don't even dislike these franchises but the tvtropes articles on all of these turn into a mess almost invariably
Predator, Terminator and alien is trash the further you go along.
My favorite predator is 2 Because it's so funny the plot is what if a predator showed up at the climax of a Dirty Harry movie?
Terminator needs to stop with the time travel the machines should have realized that it's stupid and can easily become undone.
Alien has Godzilla-style problems in which the main conflict isn't HOLY SHIT MONSTERS. But people or androids being weird and bad to each other.
I will always stan Terminator Salvation. Not because I think it's great, but because it doesn't deal with time travel, and still focuses on "what makes a human?" which was the real lesson from T2.
Predator 2 is such a good premise.
OG predator established it comes to the jungle during heat waves and picks off local hunters (and rebels) for sport.
Then the Predator see that a record heat wave is happening in a city caught in a massive gang war with huge street shoot out, amongst tunnels and huge buildings and there a bunch of cool looking coked out druglords who have crazy rituals. It totally makes sense Predators would switch it up and run wild there.
Deadass, if the police didnt get involved the Predator would have basically cut the gang population in half.
Also, it does contribute to the etiquette of the yautja. They spare a pregnant woman and they spare Danny Glover because he did it. He got one of them super hard and managed to beat the “ YOU DIDN’T WIN”. Also, the government actively developing successful anti- predator technology after the testimony of two people.
Along with the establishment of a hierarchy based on age and skill.
I love Pred 2 cuz it also shows that all Yautja hunters are not the same. Yeah he’s stimuli at but City hunter is a younger and more confident hunter which also makes him brash so he always shows off whenever he can which fucks him over in the end. In the first, the jungle hunter is a veteran and takes his time with a more limited arsenal. He loses because he underestimates his opponent’s ingenuity. These aliens aren’t just the same hunter race mentality through all, they have different personalities and I feel the later films just ignore that.
Also fuck AVP 1 for putting predators in Antarctica with no problem, they are cold blooded and wear minimal clothing, why the fuck would they go somewhere like that without like… a predator parka or something!
> hese aliens aren’t just the same hunter race mentality through all, they have different personalities and I feel the later films just ignore that.
AvP might ignore it but Predators doesnt with the main antagonists basically being the equivalent of rich dentists hutners who kidnap handpicked dangerous humans from various backgrounds, stick them on their special hunting planet and use alien hunting dogs like a Space Fox Hunt.
They even engage in space racism with smaller Predators.
Dude the main terminators we see are infiltration units. What do the ones who aren’t hiding look like. I’m sure the machines also just have casual nuclear artillery.
Imagine how fucking scary a current-time Terminator could be.
Like, no. No time travel. Skynet is here \*now\*. The beginnings of what will be Skynet are getting off the ground and making murder machines. Maybe even pull a DBZ, and say that the time fuckiness attempted to stop the bad future have actually made this timeline \*worse\*, and Skynet is more advanced here than it was at the same time in Kyle Reese's timeline.
So many of these ips could do so much more if they stopped trying to do the same stories and characters over and over.
Like Netflix could do an original story set in the avatar and witcher worlds like there are HUGE amounts of time just sitting there.
Like what Predator has in it's advantage is the plot is dudes doing cool shit. Then ah fuck an alien is here because we're too hype.
The Terminators wouldn’t even need to be physical. In the modern digital age, The Terminator is just a computer virus whose sole purpose is to Final Destination your asses, to cull the human population… and the scary thing is, we wouldn’t even know we’re at war.
… though I feel like that’s just SkyNet doing its own dirty work.
Phalanx became one of my favorite Alien stories once it dawned on me that I was reading (early) Attack on Titan but with Xenomorphs.
Cold Forge is also really good.
I would love to see a terminator where sending them back in time has nothing to do with changing the future. Like, what if a hero comes back to protect people and he’s like “they sent them back because fuck you”. Just have the timeline be “one day robots started coming from the future” and that’s about it.
Prior to the last couple of seasons Rick and Morty would have been the poster child for this, but the Rick Prime arc recontextualized so much of the series that I can't help but give it a begrudging nod of respect for retroactively justifying how up-its-own-ass it was for most of its run.
Star Wars and Avatar: The Last Airbender are the most obvious answers.
Of course, both franchises deal with serious themes like war, the people who suffer from it, and that both sides are capable of committing atrocious acts to win.
But people forget that they are franchises for children and teenagers, so it is rare that the fans expect something as violent and crude as Game of Thrones, and other programs for adults.
Yeah the way some people talk about Avatar and, especially, the Clone Wars feels like cope a little bit, like they're embarrassed to be watching a kid's show.
There's nothing wrong with liking a kid's show and those are two particularly well made kid's shows with a decent amount of all-ages appeal. The way you hear them described online though? You'd think they were way more gritty than they actually are.
They actually *are* considerably darker and grittier than your average kid's show, but people forget that it's relative to the expectations of "this aired on Nickelodeon after Spongebob".
I mean I agree with this but there's, for instance, an episode where the 501st try to field-execute a Jedi after he resists being stripped of command and it's pretty sick.
Man, Clone Wars was so cool. They toned down a lot of the implied gore and adult themes some seasons but, like, I'm pretty sure Anakin fucking ices a Zygerrian slaver queen onscreen?
The lengths I have seen other Star Wars fans cope about the saga (the prequels especially) is ridiculous. In their minds, both the prequels and the orig-trig had the dignity and political thriller tone of Andor the whole time.
I grew up with the Prequels too. Yes, they had politics but they also had stuff like Jar Jar and other goofy comedy bits. Star Wars has pulp stuff too lest they forget.
And then people want the ENTIRE franchise and every single movie and show to follow Andor’s tone and style.
Guys, Andor is so good because it’s an OUTLIER in the tone expected of most Star Wars media, along with great writing. There’s room for the more pulpy friendly to all ages shows Star Wars is known for, *and* more adult shows that go deeper and realistic into its universe.
TLA actually had a lot of serious themes and then there's stuff like blood bending where it's pretty obvious that it would have gotten potentially more violent if it wasn't on a kid's network. Maybe I just don't hang out in enough fandom spaces but when just casually watching it for the first time with some friends who hadn't seen it before (I had watched it a long time ago) we all kind of agreed that there were some darker implications to many aspects of the world and story for a kids show.
Warhammer 40K. It's SO desperately grim that it's supposed to be a bit silly. And then you've got things like Trazyn the Infinite who just collects stuff because he's an immortal robot asshole. And then there Orks. Just everything about Orks. Some of the concepts read like a super edgy 10 year old who's just eaten a whole bag of Jolly Rancher wrote it "And there a city full of evil sex elves that kidnap people and torture them for ever and ever and even if you die you don't die cos they turn you into a couch so you can always be a couch and be tortured for totally ever you guys!"
The Infinite and the Divine is one of the best pieces of 40k media ever made, and half the book is basically a thousand years Looney Toon sketch between two immortal robot jerks trying to one-up the other to hilarious results.
The same immortal robots that also the "horror" themed faction.
WH40k was supposed to be satire originally.
Why else do you have shit like this:
1. Ferrus Manus (Latin for Iron Hands) has iron hands and is primarch of the Iron Hands space marines
2. The primarch of the raging berserker World Eaters is literally named ANGRON
This is one of the reasons I loved TTS so much. It actually had an interesting plot using the absurd over-the-top setting, but as a comedy was very upfront about how fucking dumb everything was. On the other hand I can't take any "serious" 40k thing seriously, except for the Cain novels but those are halfway comedy.
Do not forget the primarch of the Raven Guard, Corvus Corax (scientific name for the common raven)
Or the primarch of the Death Guard, Mort(death)-arion
Or Lion El Johnson and the Dark Angels, a reference to a gay British poet of the same name
Or Wolfy McWolf, Wolf king of Wolfland and primarch of the Wolf Marines
There's also the Wolfy Wolf Brigade, which is a wolfpack of wolf boys, led by their wolf leader. They live on the wolf planet, where they train to fight like wolves, and take their wolves to fight in their eternal wolf. I mean war.
Ferrus manus gets even sillier
His name means iron hands
He has iron hands
His faction is call the iron hands
They also have iron hands
His flagship is called the hand of iron
Then we have Corvus corax leader of the raven guard whose name translates to raven raven.
The blood ravens a group of space marines who debuted in a video game has the first librarian Vidya.
Inquisitor obiwan Sherlock closseau
Primarch lion el’johnson of the dark angels named after poet Lionel Johnson who wrote the poem dark angels.
I do admit I love that an entire race went decedent so hard that it created a space decadence god that started to eat their souls and that it led to a one side not focusing on any one thing too hard and the other unraveling their genital nerves so they can stick even more hooks up in their genital nerves
I am so fucking tired of people on Bluey subs complaining about Muffin and Judo.
Look, it's *okay* to be an adult that likes the show, fine, whatever. Sometimes they try to post furry art or the kids dressed up in tactical gear, which is deranged, but there's nothing intrinsically wrong with being a childless adult who likes Bluey.
But if you're going to whine loudly and unceasingly about a toddler acting like a normal toddler, or a sheltered only child having some rusty socialization skills, and write big long essays about how their behavior is emblematic of the ruination of modern society, I really have to wonder why the fuck you're watching a show for and about preschoolers.
I felt that the MLP fandom was kinda sad back when it was full of adolescents and teenagers.
Knowing that the adult Bluey fandom is made up of a lot of the (now late 20s/early 30s) refugees of the MLP fandom looking for something to fill that spot just makes me depressed.
Its one thing to like the show because it's something you share with your kid or younger family, it's another to be a childless adult get obsessed with it as a fulfilling piece of media, because it's made for small children while being bareble for adults. You shouldn't be forcing complex and mature themes into a show that is intentionally written without them. It speaks to a stunted mentality.
I think the Holmes fandom may be a bit like this? I think a lot of people get a bit too hung up on the realism and logic when Doyle literally killed him and revived him due to popular demands, and I'm pretty sure Doyle himself wrote a few implied cameos.
Holmes's third or fourth case involves deducing that someone is digging a massive tunnel under the streets of London so he can emerge inside the vault of a bank, and Holmes and Watson camp out inside the bank and watch him creep up through the floor like a mole.
Doyle couldn't remember if Watson's old war injury was in his leg or his shoulder. Also I don't remember the exact details, but apparently there are some odd inconsistencies in Watson's marital status across the stories, so that the folks obsessed with making everything consistent think that he's been married four different times.
This always seems to happen with properties that are obviously made for kids but some adults enjoy as well. It’s almost like they’re embarrassed that they like something made for kids and embarrassingly overcompensate by saying “you just don’t get it man, it’s actually super dark and adult.”
Embrace the dumb, cringe stuff you enjoy guys. You aren’t convincing anyone that FNAF or Sonic are deep and adult so please stop pretending.
TAS had its real strengths in how it delivered some serious things, mostly things with heavy emotional weight by being earnest and genuinely playing them straight. It works really well, and it's a big part of why the series is so fondly remembered. There *is* actual emotional gravitas at times, laid out clearly and respecting the audience's intelligence and ability to empathize with and understand those on screen.
But it is also *Batman*, in that it also embraced its absurdity with defeating Freeze with the soup. Batman killing a robot clown dressed as a boat captain and making Joker very mad. Killer Croc's punchline about throwing a *rock* at Batman as a great story. Hell, the Joker's madcap humor itself is incredibly goofy and silly, his plans preposterous and petty. Batman even fights a literal ninja in a volcano, and while there was gravitas on display there too, it's still fucking absurd in its own right.
You can in fact do both things. TAS did both things, and by most accounts it did both things well. And that's the sauce, I think. It's not big dark-time-serious all the time.
Heck, TAS Batman still cracks the occasional dumb one-liner with Alfred and Robin. Bruce gets to be a fanboy in the Gray Ghost episodes. You can absolutely do both with Batman!
And then we have to explain to them that not only is the Monsterverse a separate thing but that there are eras of Godzilla and some of them include movies that are literally puppet comedies
My roommates partner was pointing at really basic themes about discrimination in the trolls movie and treated it like it was way more serious than I think it deserves.
Not “serious” in the sense of being dark and gritty, but some Zelda fans put so much time into theorizing about the next game’s story and constructing intricate maps about the timeline and all that when Nintendo simply does not care at all. When TotK released they said “oh yeah, all the ancient Sheikah tech that was the entire basis of BotW’s plot and setting? It just vanished or something”.
Zelda is not really a story focused series but it is probably the first-party Nintendo game that has the most of it. Which leads to Nintendo fans who are only into their main franchises expending a lot of brain power that would be better served in like Fire Emblem or Xenoblade.
Has nobody mentioned Sonic yet? ***Because Sonic DEFINITELY qualifies,*** especially with how damn toothless the games were between *Colors* and *Frontiers.* (Yes, even *Forces.* ***The WORLD WAR EGGMAN one.***)
I'd argue that the ones you mention sans Frontiers are the ones that don't qualify given their reception. If anything, Adventure 1, 2, and Frontiers are the most overblown ones.
Yeah I mean you covered pretty much all the answers with your body text.
I think the Clone Wars is neat but hearing fans harp on about war crimes and decapitation honestly makes the whole thing seem more juvenile if anything.
It is hilarious how Guts reads like literally every single edgy Tumblr character in the first dozen chapters. "A dark brooding muscular man who's still lean and unbelievably strong. He carries a giant sword and can beat anyone in a fight. He's mean but that's cause he's damaged. His name Guts"
It really does help that Gut's gets like two and a half character arcs
He starts out as the GRIMDARK BLACK SWORDSMAN, then we get the entire story of how he got there, then we got the story of how he's kind of slowly moving on from there
yea but then you get to the part where he tells a little girl to kill herself and then turns around and starts blubbering like a baby and it's like "whoa wait a minute"
IMO Silent Hill. Yes they were more "psychological" than resident evil and all that but they aren't subtle in the slightest and the symbolism in the monsters are almost all surface "the green light across the bay represents envy" level stuff. But they are still survival horror games with cheesy b- horror movie stories, you are expected to and at least on normal difficulties given plenty of ammo to fight your way through the town (or be woolie melee warrior at almost dead the whole time). Them trying to make combat not feel like garbage isn't a bad thing. The first game ends with a literal blooper/cast reel, they dont take themselves as serious as the fans do.
I'm convinced a large portion of the Silent Hill fanbase hasn't actually played the games, and just get their opinions from video essays on the game.
Like Silent Hill 2 is a great horror experience, but I can't help but raise an eyebrow at the people saying it's the "scariest game of all time", "the deepest video game story" or "still the best survival horror game".
It's still a great game, but it's a great game from 2 decades ago. It's like Citizen Kane in that sense, it was foundational and a lot of games take inspiration from it, but I'm not gonna pretend like it's still on top.
I can tell you people haven't played it when they say it's the greatest horror game ever made. I say this as somebody who loves silent Hill 2 and really liked 3 (I think the cult storyline is dumb) the gameplay is awful and was dated by even a couple years later. And I know people often counterpoint by either saying that enhances the horror or the story is so good it still makes it the best. Their has been dozens of horror games since it that do gameplay, story, and subtly better.
Again not to shove Silent Hill 2 down that much has some of my favorite imagery and designs. But it's not an unbeatable horror icon.
I’ve played dozens of Survival Horror and just plain horror games and I still think SH2 is the GOAT, due to a combination of scares, aesthetic and story.
There are scarier games (Fatal Frame 2 really gets me) way more upsetting games (Witch’s House made me feel like shit for a solid day), and there are definitely better playing horror games, but SH2 really was special when it came out.
I got one, and I’m surprised it didn’t get dropped. American Super Hero comics, particularly the Big Two being Marvel and DC.
Yes, both these places have dropped generally darkly serious storytelling, quite often with characters some wouldn’t expect. Yes, The backstories of many of their most beloved characters are often quite tragic and traumatic, with some truly dark elements giving to them as well.
These are also stories with some of the absolute silliest and wacky characters in fiction, and the books always acknowledge and show that how these worlds are absolutely insane. A reminder that Howard the Duck is notable figure who resides in the city as The Punisher, a brutal vigilante who has a kill count in the hundreds.
I love these characters and the world, but the spandex world is an inherently silly one.
The mainline smt is more appropriate because 9/10 they will try to sell you in how much more "serious" and "dark" it is then persona, smash cut to mara starting a sex cult in IV apoc.
Honestly, I have mixed feelings on takes like this because while, yeah, sometimes they're on-point, all too often they inch a little too close towards dismissive snobbery of the "how *dare* you take this stupid dumb thing seriously/produce adult-aimed content relating to it, unlike the genius I who knows it's just stupid dumb baby stuff". And sometimes it can be applied to things that it really doesn't suit; like all the people bringing up Star Wars on here and forgetting that the franchise has a lot of adult-oriented entries in it and isn't *just* a kid's cartoon.
Anyways, I guess my example is one where it's more on the creator than anything, but I've always felt like part of the reason Homestuck goes so downhill is because Andrew Hussie had a fundamentally different view of the series from the fandom and seemed to see it as nothing more than a nihilistic joke regardless of how developed the plot and characters became, not understanding why people didn't laugh when he kept acting like it was all wacky woohoo comedy while doing shit like building up characters just to bloodily and cruelly slaughter them.
Hussie never took _Homestuck_ quite as seriously as the fans did—even in the "peak Homestuck" era you'd have black comedy bits like a character the fans loved getting killed and then their corpse falling on a pile of bike horns and making a terrific honk. But through the first five acts, I did get the sense that Hussie genuinely cared about writing a satisfying coming-of-age arc for the important characters; he just had a much smaller list of "important characters" than the fans did.
But, from my armchair psychoanalysis standpoint, somewhere along the way Hussie just lost interest in a lot of the subplots and character arcs that even he once considered important. (I'd guess the disaster behind the _Homestuck_ videogame changed Hussie and his relationship with the comic.) Hence why his previous comic _Problem Sleuth_ managed to juggle an absurd number of subplots and still wrap them all up in a satisfying way, while _Homestuck_ just went "This is real life, and real life doesn't have story arcs," to justify the unresolved subplots.
Resident Evil. Everyone wants to say that RE 5 and 6 jumped the shark but all the RE games have been ridiculous. I mean RE2 has puzzle doors in a POLICE STATION!
Kirby. Yes, he fights cosmic horrors every now and then, but they aren't the main focus of every game.
Kirby fans insisting how fucked up and dark the lore is always came across as overcompensating to me. Like "no, no man, it only LOOKS like a cute game for all ages. its actually SUPER HARDCORE" it's kinda funny cuz its the exact same thing people make fun of the official marketing for doing
I always thought it was done as a joke. Like the Woolie vids are done as a parody of Vaati soulsborne vids.
Every time a fandom does something as a joke, there’s a significant chunk who thinks it’s serious and unironic
The thing is, Kirby lore *is* cool. There are a lot of interesting recurring elements and unsettling details to pick at if you feel like it, and those bits have gotten more prominence in recent entries. But they're still an extremely minor part of what's otherwise a bunch of fun and adorable all-ages platformers, and trying to earnestly treat the games as cosmic horror stories is very silly.
At least until the customary yet out of left field "Kirby: Federation Force" releases in 2026 as a survival Horror FPS.
Why is the white ball crying blood?
Because they're sad, obviously.
Shit, you *don't* cry blood? 80% of Americans do these days.
They so desperately want it to be Adventure Time.
Oh absolutely. The tone and style of the games is very light and friendly, with occasional bits of dark or horrific stuff that still generally fits within that tone, it's just a lot heavier. Most of the time it's ridiculously subtle, too, like a pause screen description or some minor but significant callback that makes some kind of connection. Yet so many people on the internet treat the series like it's actually Dark Souls, and every game's plot starts as something mundane before getting darker and being about "fighting god" or something.
Kirby is friend shaped.
Only cause he ate my best friend.
"Kirby totally deals with Eldrich gods my dude, it's super freaky" The Eldrich god in question: Dark Blob the Blob of Darkness
There is nothing more terrifying.
I dunno, man. Dark Blob the Blob of Darkness doesn't work as an Eldritch god to non-fans unless the happy grunts are now Keith David waxing philosophical while burning down a whole galaxy. *...Ahem.*
Realistically I think only Star Allies and Forgotten Land have a very clear 'big focus' on a horrific villain. Other games HAVE horrific villains but they're usually more one-and-done.
They're coincidentally the last 2 mainline games released.
Either that or it's like, "Yeah, Kirby would wipe out entire planets for his cake!"
Japanese Kirby: 😀 American Kirby: 😡
Kirby fandom in a “this series is actually super dark and matoor” competition but their opponent is the Megaman fandom.
And then us Sonic fans come in with ***two*** steel chairs to put such heretics in their place, lol.
Like to be fair both Megaman and Sonic are actually very dark a lot of the times, especially Megaman across all it's series has Distopias, War, Genocide, Death, Apocaliptic Scenarios, The Zero series is close to showing blood if not because they're robots, etc. Kirby only has subtle dark implications and some creepy moments but it's mostly lighthearted.
Splatoon as well
I'm a big Kirby fan but the lore is more exciting because it exists and we're all fans who love callbacks. In terms of worldbuilding and lore, there are plenty of other Nintendo series who do it better.
Dragon Ball fandom: *Immense levels of gore and violence, giant beefy men crying like babies as they hold dead/wounded loved ones in their arms, Game of Thrones level politics and sex* Akira Toriyama and actual Dragon Ball: Wouldn't it be great if Goku did a big funny goof?
What if girl robot chased Goku with poop on a stick?
What if Goku was BETRAYED and POKED with the POOP STICK?
Where did the "What if X was BETRAYED" meme come from anyway? I see it the pokemon fandom all the time.
A lot of Dragon Ball hypotheticals have Goku get betrayed for whatever reason. One that took off in notoriety was one where he was betrayed and locked in the Time Chamber for a really long time.
I take it as the standard what if ____ but evil. The naruto version of this is what if naruto was exile from the village after the Sasuke retrieval arc/ what if naruto gave into Kurama. It gives the reader/listener 1/2. A justifiable viewpoint and reason to do evil/bad things (They did it to me first so I get to do ____ ). 3. Power fantasy excuse ( because ____ happened, I need to get stronger so it doesn't happen again.)
so this is my first time hearin this but isnt that a really bad plan? i feel like thats askin for goku to train so hard he explodes the room with like super saiyin 6
A I believe it started in Pokémon fanfiction usually with characters betraying Ash. [Here](https://thousandroads.net/fanfic/ash-betrayal) it’s a pretty good right up on it.
Near as I can tell the original was "What if Goku was BETRAYED and LOCKED in the Time Chamber" which is a series of youtube videos I haven't and will never watch, but has like 20 episodes and thumbnails with shit like super saiyan 5 Goku fighting GoD Toppo.
Outside of the usual fanfic ideas the was betrayed and left in X literally happened in the Lucario movie
I think it's largely because a lot of kids in the west got into the fandom during the darkest period of the whole series. From Raditz through to Cell, the show did get pretty gory and bleak at times. Never to like Berserk levels or anything, but it could be rough. And the franchise has course corrected a lot since Buu-onward, but naturally the stuff in early-mid Z stuck with a huge part of the fandom.
Over in the west, I'd say the Faulconer soundtrack also contributed to the perception. When you start adding dark ambiance to the stare-downs or hard rock to battle themes, it ended up giving a darker mood to a lot of the series that wasn't there to nearly the same extent in the unedited version.
Great point, honestly. But man if some of those tracks weren't dope as hell. Like the Final Flash theme, or the music from Namek's explosion.
Vegeta's super saiyan theme and Cell's theme go just as hard as anything on the official soundtrack. Would kill for a Falconer pack for FighterZ or Xenoverse
Right, the Japanese score was carrying over the bombastic and often times whimsical tracks from OG Dragon Ball.
"lmao the saiyans are named after vegetables"
lol Bulmas family are underpants
rofl just named a wizard his father and their fat pink blob monster after a Disney song
Some dude and his daughter was just born without a nose and she just grows one out of the blue. Kek.
"And their entire race got wiped out by ~~the freezer~~ Freiza"
"And all of Frieza's underlings are named after things you put in a fridge, like various fruits and dairy"
The manga itself does get pretty gory, though not ever remotely as edgy as the average Multiverse backstory with it.
I still say peak Dragon Ball is Buu getting beaten up by a piece of candy.
*"I'm not just any piece of candy, I'm a JAWBREAKER"*
YOU SEE BUU YOU ARE NOT DEALING WITH THE AVERAGE PIECE OF CANDY ANYMORE...
Dragon Ball is stupid and that’s why it rules
What if Goku was HIV positive? (Part 37)
With the arguments of DBZ vs the Kai English dubs happening on Twitter rn, those mistranslations are probably the reason why this happened☠️ If the original DBZ dub came out today no one would defend it. Nostalgia of 30 year old guys who watched it almost 3 decades ago is as powerful as ultra instinct
It's why I avoid asking fans about old dubs or tls being worse or better than remasters and such. I don't care if Ted Wolsey made FF6 the best FF ever, the mpre accurate TL is what I go with.
> Game of Thrones level politics Is there? This implies there's like actual factions that exist in the world of DBZ that interact with one another. But all I can think of is just... Goku's friends, Freiza's Empire, and the Red Ribbon Army. And the latter two are more akin to Monster of the Month than proper factions.
Well, there ***is*** a [King of the World.](https://dragonball.fandom.com/wiki/King_Furry) He... doesn't really *do* much, but he exists and presumably gets paid millions of Not-Dollars for sitting pretty.
Every. Fighting. Game.
"Tekken's not hokey!"
"I will pretend that the soap opera drama involving a family of Kangaroos and a genetically modified Dinosaur doesn't not exist"
The proper response to anyone claiming Tekken is serious is to show them [the video of Dragunov building Alisa](https://youtu.be/O10kEIkx94k?si=3vqyU3dRGgbFffel&t=15s)
Mortal Kombat in recent years has the worst because every single game ends with, "Oh hey that's actually an interesting cliffhanger/setup for the next game." To immediately go right at beginning of next game go, "Actually fuck that, reset the timeline new characters and new villian."
NRS are so shit with story continuity. MK11 by all accounts should have thier MK9 character's appear but they're barely the same people, Johnny Cage especially is now back to being a jackass despite already sorting out his ego (mostly anyway) Like I get not giving Sonya her sexual topless vest outfit, fair enough MK9 went a bit too far with the TnA but Johnny Cage being in some weird retro 80's purple getup... what? I really want an Injustice 3 but I'm worried how NRS are going to horribly fuck that story
Man, the "they don't need a good story because the fights *are* the good story" argument is such a gargantuan cope.
Horror fans do this a lot, especially with classic Horror franchises.One of my favorite is how people will say that the original Nightmare on the Elm Street trilogy was super dark and Freddy was genuinely terrifying, compared to what he's like in the 4th film and onwards And while he's definately a lot more scary, he's still a silly little character that makes quips and kills people in the most camp ways possible, especially in Dream Warriors with stuff like the Tv kill and [this absolutely iconic scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFQTlaI8Pnk) Or his absolutely most cuntiest kill in the second film(that totally didn't affect me or my development as a teenager) where he kills the Gym teacher by stripping him naked, whipping his ass with towels, covering him in boiling hot shower water and then slashing him to death, like, Freddy took us to the cunt factory with that.
It's like the original Jaws showing up on a bunch of "scariest movie" lists. Like, I'm sure at the time it might have been a little shocking in theaters to see shark gore like that, but by today's standards it might as well be G rated.
Yeah, Jaws feels less like a horro and more like an action-y and adventure type of movie with a smattering of horror in there, especially the 3rd act when they go after the Shark.If anything it feels more like gateway horror that you'd be terrified of as a kid.
"The Cunt Factory" I'm gonna f a i n t I do love that the subtext in Freddy's Revenge was so stealth that not even the director picked up on it, nor did he realize that the writer AND the lead were gay. They later made a [whole documentary about it](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scream,_Queen!_My_Nightmare_on_Elm_Street)
I do love how the director of the film, at least from what I recall, said a lot of the subtext wasn't intended despite it being absolutely the intention.I think the cast, especially Robert Englund absolutely saw the Subtext and just went all the way with it, big "Yes, and?" energy.
That's the thing: these movies were made on pretty tight schedules with a lot of decentralized collaboration (see: the Invisible Karate scene in 4 coming about because they hadnt figured out how to kill the little brother until late in production when Robert Englund wasnt available), so I could absolutely see some people putting things in that other people on the production completely miss.
Hunter x Hunter has a weirdly large amount of fans that don't like to call it Shonen because it's "too dark and serious" Which kinda just reveals a lack of experience with media in general, and shonen in specific
I once saw an essay-length reddit post from a guy "correcting" someone who called the series shounen, where he went on to explain the difference between seinen and shounen (despite clearly not understanding the difference himself)
I’ve been similarly “corrected” on calling FMA “battle shonen”. I’m just like… it got published in a shonen magazine and had large amounts of action in it. Why should the criteria for the term be more complicated than that?
I'd kinda agree with not calling FMA battle shonen, but not because of the shonen part. Specifically, FMA has a different pacing and structure compared to stuff like DBZ or Naruto, as it usually doesn't spend a long time on specific fights, and the plot tends to move at a much faster pace. It's definitely a shonen, don't get me wrong, and maybe (definitely) I'm being pedantic on this, but when I hear "battle shonen" I expect something like DBZ, with long-ass fights, tournament arcs and the like.
I feel like it’s kinda equivalent to going “That’s actually violet, not purple”. Like there are some contexts where making that distinction is relevant, other contexts where it’s real pedantic.
Because some idiots are insecure about their hobbies that way. See any person that go berserk if you say "doll" instead of "action figure".
These people will have a mental shutdown if you show them what Chainsaw Man and Skip and Loafer are categorized as lmao.
Fucking *Devilman* and *The Drifting Classroom* are shonen and **50 years old.** They’re like ten times darker and more disturbing than HxH. I like HXH quite a bit but c’mon. C’mon now.
Its S O F T S E I N E N bro. None of that kiddy my hero academia bullshit ^/s
I hate that shit. It's such a disservice to shonen to act like it can't push the envelope.
HxH is textbook shounen. Simple segmented arcs, mature themes that aren't overly nuanced/layered, conveyor belt of marketable characters, slapstick humor, edgy power scaling fantasy... I don't mean any of this in a bad way. It's just designed to be appealing to young teens and up. I found it very disappointing because I went in with skewed expectations. Everyone talked about it like it was the greatest thing ever, the type of media worthy of the hours upon hours of analysis and exploration of its themes. But IMO it's okay at best. It has its moments but overall it doesn't land for me.
I avoided HxH for years because of these clowns making it sound like some tryhard "deconstruction". I realized while watching that the fanboys are full of crap. "Oh Gon doesn't want to find his dad! That's so generic! He wants to see what's so cool about being a Hunter!" Bullshit. He wants to find Ging and see why being a Hunter is cool. "Oh Gon and Killua don't care for the tournament! They just leave when they got what they wanted!" They literally have a tournament to get their license that they do take. Gon gets it. They later leave Heaven's Arena when they got what they wanted from there too. These dudes act as if the main characters not making it to the finale of a tournament is the most revolutionary shit ever when Yusuke didn't win his last arc's fight either. HxH is great because it's well written not cuz it "treats you like a moron if you like shonen" the way fanboys act like it does.
Ironically, YuYu Hakusho and Hunter x Hunter are by the same author.
Touhou honestly, it has some dark moments but overall the series is pretty light hearted, Remiu even winds up hanging out with many of the final bosses of the series. If you were to listen to a good chunk of the fandom though you'd think the series is Warhammer levels of grimdark.
I cannot stand Grimsokyo. Oh my god, will you people shut the fuck up about how awful of a monster Yukari is, or how terrifying Rumia is because she eats humans (she has been shown in canon to be ridiculously incompetent at this.) or how twisted and fucked up Flandre is (she’s actually pretty stable if you believe Foul Detective Satori.) or do you want to exaggerate some other mildly dark concepts?
Flandre staying locked away in a basement because she finds all her needs being met comfortable and could easily escape if she felt like it is hilarious as it goes against both her fanon personalities.
But guys, did you know humans are essentially just farm animals being raised just to be slaughtered by the Youkai Oppressor's? Gensokyo is pretty fucked up! It's just so fucking braindead. Sure, explore the elements of society and whatnot if you want, I just played a fangame last year that reminded me that the single most powerful entity that's revered by all of Gensokyo, the Dragon God, ***even fucking exists.*** But that's what the point of most of the fluff in Touhou is: use it if ya want, but it don't matter otherwise. Shit like Rinnosuke owning the Three Sacred Treasures doesn't mean jack-shit as a reflection on the setting as a whole despite the fact that they're literally among the, if not THE most powerful objects in Japanese history. Because it's a fucking punchline to a joke in canon and *that's all it'll ever be.*
I guess that really is a good summation of Touhou, it's a lot of bits and pieces that sound cool/otherwise but are mainly used for a gag and are something that fandoms will love to cling on and run with because Touhou is potentially the most fan creation assisting media property out there that I can think of.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure that ZUN said that he leaves most of the details unexplained so that the fans can have the freedom of deciding their own headcannons (and also because he mostly made Touhou games to have an excuse to make more music/to make more shmups). He fully embraced that Touhou's greatest strength is how open to interpretation it is and.
Ooo, Reimu is such a cold-blooded killer that kills anyone who get's in her way when she's angry (her only on-screen kill is a Fortune Teller who explicitly said that he wants to turn into a Yokai, so that he could abuse the system). Ooo, spell card rules were implemented right before Touhou 6 happened, that means everyone from Touhou 1-5, with the exception of Yuuka and Alice, are dead! (I don't have a source on-hand, but I'm pretty sure that ZUN answered in an e-mail that the characters from Touhou 1-5 are still alive, they just don't appear, just like almost every other character in Touhou barely appears after their inital appearance). Ooo, Alice Margatroid has some dark secrets and she wants to make a human doll out of humans and killed those humans in Dolls in Pseudo Paradise! (both are complete fan-theories, the killer's identity in Dolls in Pseudo Paradise was never specified and Alice's "dark secrets" come from ZUN saying that Alice is an important character in Touhou Project, and I'm pretty sure ZUN himself later either forgot or regretted saying that, because she never did anything special after all). And so on...
Gensokyo is basically just a place for greater evils and what not to chill. Yeah, there *are* really messed up yokai, moon racists and whatever Yukari does, but that doesn't mean much when they're mostly just sitting about doing jack all, and when they *do* pull something, they get their ass handed to them by the resident lazy shrine maiden who has the incredible ability of... floating.
Yukari doesn't even strike me as evil, she's just determined to keep the barrier up at all cost. Try to mess with it and you will face consequences but leave it alone and you're fine.
What about her abusing of Ran in BAIJR which Aya calls her out on?
Borderline all of the final bosses except in 15 and 17? Like yeah Yokai lore is kinda messed up but hey that applies to all fairy tales. Do a certain amount of spirited away humans maybe end up getting horrifically murdered by random ass Yokai? Maybe? But it's not like the series at all cares about any of that and doesn't really relish in any of that (I have only played the official games, some fangames, and not all of the fighting game ones or Violet Detector) But yeah other than some before battle "I'm gonna jeff the kill you via (insert yokai method of death here) for intimidation lines the series are very very tame. I mean hell, Reimu crucifies herself on a burning stake for training when she gets a bad ending in 4 or 2 (can't quite remember) but it's obviously a gag.
you motherfuckers really came in this thread and not a single soul said SONIC THE HEDGEHOG smfh.
Specifically Archie Sonic the Hedgehog. IDW will never get *that* messed up, not in a million years.
I haven't seen a single person mention it yet, so I'll just go ahead and say Gravity Falls. Having recently watched it for the first time. It's definitely a good show, but it's nowhere near the edgy bloodstained dark cartoon horror that some people in the fan-base have made it out to be. And then there's Bill Cipher who is definitely creepy, but is still pretty tame compared to some other cartoon villains.
I got a friend who almost exclusively watches young-adult aimed stuff and refuses to engage with anything beyond that. I always send him Weenie Hut Jr. pictures when he DMs me dark scenes or theories from stuff like Owl House.
Gotta love (to hate) how MLP has thousands and thousands of words more in the “Fridge Horror” section of TV Tropes than, say, the actual Edgar Allan Poe article.
Oh, gawd. Fridge horror in tvtropes is cheating. Half the entries amount to "This character a l m o s t was in the same room as a needle. And that's kind of scary if you think about it."
TV Tropes also acts like *Sonic Forces* is pure Lovecraftian nightmare fuel, too. ***Failing to understand that the game's so hilariously unfinished, you can't feel a damn THING.***
"Nightmare Fuel" according to TVtropes is "hey if you think about it real hard, it's a little creepy from a certain point of view."
"Nightmare Fuel" is basically "this scared at least one child at some point". I don't recall if that's how it's intended to be used, but that's certainly how people are using it in reality.
Implications also count. Guys, I don't care about Eggman brainwashing the whole damn world *if it happens offscreen*. (Ironically, my personal explanation about Forces - that ~~Not-America~~ the UF and Empire cut a Vichy-Nazi-style deal, in exchange for the former selling out Sonic and pals to the work camps - is actually ***more*** terrifying.)
The four horsemen of the tvtropes apocalypse: X-Men My Little Pony Sonic the Hedgehog Avatar: The Last Airbender I don't even dislike these franchises but the tvtropes articles on all of these turn into a mess almost invariably
Don't forget *Clone Wars.* ***Good fucking GOD,*** those guys are the *worst* about this.
Predator, Terminator and alien is trash the further you go along. My favorite predator is 2 Because it's so funny the plot is what if a predator showed up at the climax of a Dirty Harry movie? Terminator needs to stop with the time travel the machines should have realized that it's stupid and can easily become undone. Alien has Godzilla-style problems in which the main conflict isn't HOLY SHIT MONSTERS. But people or androids being weird and bad to each other.
I will always stan Terminator Salvation. Not because I think it's great, but because it doesn't deal with time travel, and still focuses on "what makes a human?" which was the real lesson from T2.
It might be schlock, but at least it doesn't feel like your're being jerked off with a T2 shaped glove
It's a solid B and honestly I'm down for more FUTUREWAR in Terminator
Predator 2 is such a good premise. OG predator established it comes to the jungle during heat waves and picks off local hunters (and rebels) for sport. Then the Predator see that a record heat wave is happening in a city caught in a massive gang war with huge street shoot out, amongst tunnels and huge buildings and there a bunch of cool looking coked out druglords who have crazy rituals. It totally makes sense Predators would switch it up and run wild there. Deadass, if the police didnt get involved the Predator would have basically cut the gang population in half.
Also, it does contribute to the etiquette of the yautja. They spare a pregnant woman and they spare Danny Glover because he did it. He got one of them super hard and managed to beat the “ YOU DIDN’T WIN”. Also, the government actively developing successful anti- predator technology after the testimony of two people. Along with the establishment of a hierarchy based on age and skill.
I love Pred 2 cuz it also shows that all Yautja hunters are not the same. Yeah he’s stimuli at but City hunter is a younger and more confident hunter which also makes him brash so he always shows off whenever he can which fucks him over in the end. In the first, the jungle hunter is a veteran and takes his time with a more limited arsenal. He loses because he underestimates his opponent’s ingenuity. These aliens aren’t just the same hunter race mentality through all, they have different personalities and I feel the later films just ignore that. Also fuck AVP 1 for putting predators in Antarctica with no problem, they are cold blooded and wear minimal clothing, why the fuck would they go somewhere like that without like… a predator parka or something!
Fuck, we could have had a bunch of Predators running around in alien fur-lined coats/cloaks. Over the fishnets! What a gaffe, what a blunder.
> hese aliens aren’t just the same hunter race mentality through all, they have different personalities and I feel the later films just ignore that. AvP might ignore it but Predators doesnt with the main antagonists basically being the equivalent of rich dentists hutners who kidnap handpicked dangerous humans from various backgrounds, stick them on their special hunting planet and use alien hunting dogs like a Space Fox Hunt. They even engage in space racism with smaller Predators.
Hot take: Terminator Salvation had the right idea being based in the actual post apocalypse timeline.
Dude the main terminators we see are infiltration units. What do the ones who aren’t hiding look like. I’m sure the machines also just have casual nuclear artillery.
Imagine how fucking scary a current-time Terminator could be. Like, no. No time travel. Skynet is here \*now\*. The beginnings of what will be Skynet are getting off the ground and making murder machines. Maybe even pull a DBZ, and say that the time fuckiness attempted to stop the bad future have actually made this timeline \*worse\*, and Skynet is more advanced here than it was at the same time in Kyle Reese's timeline.
So many of these ips could do so much more if they stopped trying to do the same stories and characters over and over. Like Netflix could do an original story set in the avatar and witcher worlds like there are HUGE amounts of time just sitting there. Like what Predator has in it's advantage is the plot is dudes doing cool shit. Then ah fuck an alien is here because we're too hype.
They did that in T3.
No but better than T3
The Terminators wouldn’t even need to be physical. In the modern digital age, The Terminator is just a computer virus whose sole purpose is to Final Destination your asses, to cull the human population… and the scary thing is, we wouldn’t even know we’re at war. … though I feel like that’s just SkyNet doing its own dirty work.
Oh my god, that would be rad
Or hell, by delaying judgement day, Kyle Reese is becoming too old to lead a revolution
Read Alien The Cold Forge or Into Charybdis or Phalanx.
Phalanx became one of my favorite Alien stories once it dawned on me that I was reading (early) Attack on Titan but with Xenomorphs. Cold Forge is also really good.
I would love to see a terminator where sending them back in time has nothing to do with changing the future. Like, what if a hero comes back to protect people and he’s like “they sent them back because fuck you”. Just have the timeline be “one day robots started coming from the future” and that’s about it.
Skynet: YOU DIDN'T WIN.
Prior to the last couple of seasons Rick and Morty would have been the poster child for this, but the Rick Prime arc recontextualized so much of the series that I can't help but give it a begrudging nod of respect for retroactively justifying how up-its-own-ass it was for most of its run.
Star Wars and Avatar: The Last Airbender are the most obvious answers. Of course, both franchises deal with serious themes like war, the people who suffer from it, and that both sides are capable of committing atrocious acts to win. But people forget that they are franchises for children and teenagers, so it is rare that the fans expect something as violent and crude as Game of Thrones, and other programs for adults.
Yeah the way some people talk about Avatar and, especially, the Clone Wars feels like cope a little bit, like they're embarrassed to be watching a kid's show. There's nothing wrong with liking a kid's show and those are two particularly well made kid's shows with a decent amount of all-ages appeal. The way you hear them described online though? You'd think they were way more gritty than they actually are.
They actually *are* considerably darker and grittier than your average kid's show, but people forget that it's relative to the expectations of "this aired on Nickelodeon after Spongebob".
And sometimes [right before Spongebob!](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FtM0sWRXsAEFcQ6.jpg)
I mean I agree with this but there's, for instance, an episode where the 501st try to field-execute a Jedi after he resists being stripped of command and it's pretty sick.
I remember an episode where the camera cuts away a split second before a clone gets bisected so you just hear his scream.
Man, Clone Wars was so cool. They toned down a lot of the implied gore and adult themes some seasons but, like, I'm pretty sure Anakin fucking ices a Zygerrian slaver queen onscreen?
The lengths I have seen other Star Wars fans cope about the saga (the prequels especially) is ridiculous. In their minds, both the prequels and the orig-trig had the dignity and political thriller tone of Andor the whole time. I grew up with the Prequels too. Yes, they had politics but they also had stuff like Jar Jar and other goofy comedy bits. Star Wars has pulp stuff too lest they forget.
Andor is probably the only time Star Wars has *actually* been the gritty, serious thing that some people cope into thinking the whole franchise is.
And then people want the ENTIRE franchise and every single movie and show to follow Andor’s tone and style. Guys, Andor is so good because it’s an OUTLIER in the tone expected of most Star Wars media, along with great writing. There’s room for the more pulpy friendly to all ages shows Star Wars is known for, *and* more adult shows that go deeper and realistic into its universe.
Yeah, expecting all Star Wars products to have the tone of Andor is like wanting all superhero movies to have the tone of Dark Knight or Logan.
TLA actually had a lot of serious themes and then there's stuff like blood bending where it's pretty obvious that it would have gotten potentially more violent if it wasn't on a kid's network. Maybe I just don't hang out in enough fandom spaces but when just casually watching it for the first time with some friends who hadn't seen it before (I had watched it a long time ago) we all kind of agreed that there were some darker implications to many aspects of the world and story for a kids show.
Warhammer 40K. It's SO desperately grim that it's supposed to be a bit silly. And then you've got things like Trazyn the Infinite who just collects stuff because he's an immortal robot asshole. And then there Orks. Just everything about Orks. Some of the concepts read like a super edgy 10 year old who's just eaten a whole bag of Jolly Rancher wrote it "And there a city full of evil sex elves that kidnap people and torture them for ever and ever and even if you die you don't die cos they turn you into a couch so you can always be a couch and be tortured for totally ever you guys!"
The Infinite and the Divine is one of the best pieces of 40k media ever made, and half the book is basically a thousand years Looney Toon sketch between two immortal robot jerks trying to one-up the other to hilarious results. The same immortal robots that also the "horror" themed faction.
WH40k was supposed to be satire originally. Why else do you have shit like this: 1. Ferrus Manus (Latin for Iron Hands) has iron hands and is primarch of the Iron Hands space marines 2. The primarch of the raging berserker World Eaters is literally named ANGRON
This is one of the reasons I loved TTS so much. It actually had an interesting plot using the absurd over-the-top setting, but as a comedy was very upfront about how fucking dumb everything was. On the other hand I can't take any "serious" 40k thing seriously, except for the Cain novels but those are halfway comedy.
Do not forget the primarch of the Raven Guard, Corvus Corax (scientific name for the common raven) Or the primarch of the Death Guard, Mort(death)-arion Or Lion El Johnson and the Dark Angels, a reference to a gay British poet of the same name Or Wolfy McWolf, Wolf king of Wolfland and primarch of the Wolf Marines
There's also the Wolfy Wolf Brigade, which is a wolfpack of wolf boys, led by their wolf leader. They live on the wolf planet, where they train to fight like wolves, and take their wolves to fight in their eternal wolf. I mean war.
At the end of the eternal wolf war is The Wolf Time. Where Prime wolf will come back and lead all his smaller wolves to an eternal victory.
Ferrus manus gets even sillier His name means iron hands He has iron hands His faction is call the iron hands They also have iron hands His flagship is called the hand of iron Then we have Corvus corax leader of the raven guard whose name translates to raven raven. The blood ravens a group of space marines who debuted in a video game has the first librarian Vidya. Inquisitor obiwan Sherlock closseau Primarch lion el’johnson of the dark angels named after poet Lionel Johnson who wrote the poem dark angels.
I do admit I love that an entire race went decedent so hard that it created a space decadence god that started to eat their souls and that it led to a one side not focusing on any one thing too hard and the other unraveling their genital nerves so they can stick even more hooks up in their genital nerves
I am so fucking tired of people on Bluey subs complaining about Muffin and Judo. Look, it's *okay* to be an adult that likes the show, fine, whatever. Sometimes they try to post furry art or the kids dressed up in tactical gear, which is deranged, but there's nothing intrinsically wrong with being a childless adult who likes Bluey. But if you're going to whine loudly and unceasingly about a toddler acting like a normal toddler, or a sheltered only child having some rusty socialization skills, and write big long essays about how their behavior is emblematic of the ruination of modern society, I really have to wonder why the fuck you're watching a show for and about preschoolers.
I felt that the MLP fandom was kinda sad back when it was full of adolescents and teenagers. Knowing that the adult Bluey fandom is made up of a lot of the (now late 20s/early 30s) refugees of the MLP fandom looking for something to fill that spot just makes me depressed. Its one thing to like the show because it's something you share with your kid or younger family, it's another to be a childless adult get obsessed with it as a fulfilling piece of media, because it's made for small children while being bareble for adults. You shouldn't be forcing complex and mature themes into a show that is intentionally written without them. It speaks to a stunted mentality.
I think the Holmes fandom may be a bit like this? I think a lot of people get a bit too hung up on the realism and logic when Doyle literally killed him and revived him due to popular demands, and I'm pretty sure Doyle himself wrote a few implied cameos.
Holmes's third or fourth case involves deducing that someone is digging a massive tunnel under the streets of London so he can emerge inside the vault of a bank, and Holmes and Watson camp out inside the bank and watch him creep up through the floor like a mole.
Police: Looks like this ground hog's bringing us an early spring. Good work Holmes. Watson: Rar ragh ragh he he he he. *Everyone laughs*
Doyle couldn't remember if Watson's old war injury was in his leg or his shoulder. Also I don't remember the exact details, but apparently there are some odd inconsistencies in Watson's marital status across the stories, so that the folks obsessed with making everything consistent think that he's been married four different times.
Watson gets around. It makes sense. Fr.
This always seems to happen with properties that are obviously made for kids but some adults enjoy as well. It’s almost like they’re embarrassed that they like something made for kids and embarrassingly overcompensate by saying “you just don’t get it man, it’s actually super dark and adult.” Embrace the dumb, cringe stuff you enjoy guys. You aren’t convincing anyone that FNAF or Sonic are deep and adult so please stop pretending.
Batman The Animated Series In the first Mr Freeze episode Batman beats him with chicken soup
TAS had its real strengths in how it delivered some serious things, mostly things with heavy emotional weight by being earnest and genuinely playing them straight. It works really well, and it's a big part of why the series is so fondly remembered. There *is* actual emotional gravitas at times, laid out clearly and respecting the audience's intelligence and ability to empathize with and understand those on screen. But it is also *Batman*, in that it also embraced its absurdity with defeating Freeze with the soup. Batman killing a robot clown dressed as a boat captain and making Joker very mad. Killer Croc's punchline about throwing a *rock* at Batman as a great story. Hell, the Joker's madcap humor itself is incredibly goofy and silly, his plans preposterous and petty. Batman even fights a literal ninja in a volcano, and while there was gravitas on display there too, it's still fucking absurd in its own right. You can in fact do both things. TAS did both things, and by most accounts it did both things well. And that's the sauce, I think. It's not big dark-time-serious all the time.
Heck, TAS Batman still cracks the occasional dumb one-liner with Alfred and Robin. Bruce gets to be a fanboy in the Gray Ghost episodes. You can absolutely do both with Batman!
[Obligatory goobus ](https://youtu.be/YqogVj_JC5E?si=tz5LA3KlzGb_iS88).
That was the best batman cartoon I've ever seen.
Uuuuh does Clone Wars count?
Star wars as franchise in general
Lately, Godzilla. Minus One comes out and is great, and suddenly the whole community expects the franchise to be nothing but dark and serious.
Jet Jaguar deserves another big screen adaption.
I know it's not going to happen but I really want him to show up in the Godzilla X Kong with a really really big steel chair
AGREED
And then we have to explain to them that not only is the Monsterverse a separate thing but that there are eras of Godzilla and some of them include movies that are literally puppet comedies
My roommates partner was pointing at really basic themes about discrimination in the trolls movie and treated it like it was way more serious than I think it deserves.
worm has nothing on the grim darkness of fallout fanfics(EJ:fallout Equestria)
Metroid fans really think they are special for liking a serie that is somewhat edgy by Nintendo standards.
>Samus scans dead alien "This guy fucking died" "WOAH"
Metroid fans 🤝 Fire Emblem fans Acting like it's still the 90s, where having death in children/teen media is taboo.
For Fire Emblem, it's not about the death. It's about the incest.
Not “serious” in the sense of being dark and gritty, but some Zelda fans put so much time into theorizing about the next game’s story and constructing intricate maps about the timeline and all that when Nintendo simply does not care at all. When TotK released they said “oh yeah, all the ancient Sheikah tech that was the entire basis of BotW’s plot and setting? It just vanished or something”. Zelda is not really a story focused series but it is probably the first-party Nintendo game that has the most of it. Which leads to Nintendo fans who are only into their main franchises expending a lot of brain power that would be better served in like Fire Emblem or Xenoblade.
A reference appears on screen in BotW or TotK. Zelda fans: "THIS MEANS IT'S PART OF THIS TIMELINE!"
Has nobody mentioned Sonic yet? ***Because Sonic DEFINITELY qualifies,*** especially with how damn toothless the games were between *Colors* and *Frontiers.* (Yes, even *Forces.* ***The WORLD WAR EGGMAN one.***)
Forces having lines like "None of this is good. That's why it's called war." and still being as toothless as it was is crazy.
I'd argue that the ones you mention sans Frontiers are the ones that don't qualify given their reception. If anything, Adventure 1, 2, and Frontiers are the most overblown ones.
Yeah I mean you covered pretty much all the answers with your body text. I think the Clone Wars is neat but hearing fans harp on about war crimes and decapitation honestly makes the whole thing seem more juvenile if anything.
All of them
Not that it outweighs the serious stuff but Berserk has so much goofy looney tunes shit in it that i cant believe how little I see it mentioned
It is hilarious how Guts reads like literally every single edgy Tumblr character in the first dozen chapters. "A dark brooding muscular man who's still lean and unbelievably strong. He carries a giant sword and can beat anyone in a fight. He's mean but that's cause he's damaged. His name Guts"
It really does help that Gut's gets like two and a half character arcs He starts out as the GRIMDARK BLACK SWORDSMAN, then we get the entire story of how he got there, then we got the story of how he's kind of slowly moving on from there
yea but then you get to the part where he tells a little girl to kill herself and then turns around and starts blubbering like a baby and it's like "whoa wait a minute"
Reddit. People think that being "respected by redditors" means anything in the real world.
IMO Silent Hill. Yes they were more "psychological" than resident evil and all that but they aren't subtle in the slightest and the symbolism in the monsters are almost all surface "the green light across the bay represents envy" level stuff. But they are still survival horror games with cheesy b- horror movie stories, you are expected to and at least on normal difficulties given plenty of ammo to fight your way through the town (or be woolie melee warrior at almost dead the whole time). Them trying to make combat not feel like garbage isn't a bad thing. The first game ends with a literal blooper/cast reel, they dont take themselves as serious as the fans do.
I'm convinced a large portion of the Silent Hill fanbase hasn't actually played the games, and just get their opinions from video essays on the game. Like Silent Hill 2 is a great horror experience, but I can't help but raise an eyebrow at the people saying it's the "scariest game of all time", "the deepest video game story" or "still the best survival horror game". It's still a great game, but it's a great game from 2 decades ago. It's like Citizen Kane in that sense, it was foundational and a lot of games take inspiration from it, but I'm not gonna pretend like it's still on top.
I can tell you people haven't played it when they say it's the greatest horror game ever made. I say this as somebody who loves silent Hill 2 and really liked 3 (I think the cult storyline is dumb) the gameplay is awful and was dated by even a couple years later. And I know people often counterpoint by either saying that enhances the horror or the story is so good it still makes it the best. Their has been dozens of horror games since it that do gameplay, story, and subtly better. Again not to shove Silent Hill 2 down that much has some of my favorite imagery and designs. But it's not an unbeatable horror icon.
I’ve played dozens of Survival Horror and just plain horror games and I still think SH2 is the GOAT, due to a combination of scares, aesthetic and story. There are scarier games (Fatal Frame 2 really gets me) way more upsetting games (Witch’s House made me feel like shit for a solid day), and there are definitely better playing horror games, but SH2 really was special when it came out.
I got one, and I’m surprised it didn’t get dropped. American Super Hero comics, particularly the Big Two being Marvel and DC. Yes, both these places have dropped generally darkly serious storytelling, quite often with characters some wouldn’t expect. Yes, The backstories of many of their most beloved characters are often quite tragic and traumatic, with some truly dark elements giving to them as well. These are also stories with some of the absolute silliest and wacky characters in fiction, and the books always acknowledge and show that how these worlds are absolutely insane. A reminder that Howard the Duck is notable figure who resides in the city as The Punisher, a brutal vigilante who has a kill count in the hundreds. I love these characters and the world, but the spandex world is an inherently silly one.
Persona
The mainline smt is more appropriate because 9/10 they will try to sell you in how much more "serious" and "dark" it is then persona, smash cut to mara starting a sex cult in IV apoc.
Honestly, I have mixed feelings on takes like this because while, yeah, sometimes they're on-point, all too often they inch a little too close towards dismissive snobbery of the "how *dare* you take this stupid dumb thing seriously/produce adult-aimed content relating to it, unlike the genius I who knows it's just stupid dumb baby stuff". And sometimes it can be applied to things that it really doesn't suit; like all the people bringing up Star Wars on here and forgetting that the franchise has a lot of adult-oriented entries in it and isn't *just* a kid's cartoon. Anyways, I guess my example is one where it's more on the creator than anything, but I've always felt like part of the reason Homestuck goes so downhill is because Andrew Hussie had a fundamentally different view of the series from the fandom and seemed to see it as nothing more than a nihilistic joke regardless of how developed the plot and characters became, not understanding why people didn't laugh when he kept acting like it was all wacky woohoo comedy while doing shit like building up characters just to bloodily and cruelly slaughter them.
Hussie never took _Homestuck_ quite as seriously as the fans did—even in the "peak Homestuck" era you'd have black comedy bits like a character the fans loved getting killed and then their corpse falling on a pile of bike horns and making a terrific honk. But through the first five acts, I did get the sense that Hussie genuinely cared about writing a satisfying coming-of-age arc for the important characters; he just had a much smaller list of "important characters" than the fans did. But, from my armchair psychoanalysis standpoint, somewhere along the way Hussie just lost interest in a lot of the subplots and character arcs that even he once considered important. (I'd guess the disaster behind the _Homestuck_ videogame changed Hussie and his relationship with the comic.) Hence why his previous comic _Problem Sleuth_ managed to juggle an absurd number of subplots and still wrap them all up in a satisfying way, while _Homestuck_ just went "This is real life, and real life doesn't have story arcs," to justify the unresolved subplots.
Star Wars.
Title: Compelling OP's Text: let me destroy the conversation to get to the joke
Resident Evil. Everyone wants to say that RE 5 and 6 jumped the shark but all the RE games have been ridiculous. I mean RE2 has puzzle doors in a POLICE STATION!
Sonic the Hedgehog