Just around the time COVID hit I had started reading The Road. Man is it a bleak book, which isn’t something I normally have a problem with, but it hit way too close to home at a time when grocery store shelves were looking pretty picked-over and people were getting into fights over toilet paper.
I put it down and haven’t gotten around to picking it back up yet.
Possibly the worst part is that I’ve been in a bit of a reading slump for the last few years, and I was just really starting to work my way out of it and had read a few books but that kind of hit my reset button and I haven’t been able to really get restarted again.
I do intend to go back and restart it at some point though, I really enjoyed it, just really unfortunate timing.
I physically recoiled at the idea of reading that book during the pandemic. I remember how I felt reading it, and if that had been on top of my pandemic depression… not sure I would’ve made it.
Yeah, the handful of chapters I read were amazing, McCarthy’s writing style really sells the post-apocalyptic vibe, so very blunt and to-the-point, almost like it’s the writer saying “we’re all fucked and I’m not going to sugar-coat it because there’s no point anyway”
I didn’t even have a bad case of pandemic depression, I’ve been lucky and these last few years have actually been really good to me, the pandemic and everything since have probably been the best years of my life, but I don’t live in a bubble and The Road was not the right vibe to go with all of the bullshit in the world.
Notice: Some moderate spoilers for the two media sources listed below:
Book: Misery, by Stephen King.
This is a horror story about a bestselling author whose car gets buried in a snowstorm. He’s rescued by a huge fan of his, but it turns out the fan is the crazy stalker type, and she keeps the author trapped in her farm house, demanding he write her perfect version of a sequel to his novel series.
I was reading it during class in high school one day and I got to the part about the “hobbling.” Anyone who saw the movie version remembers this part as where the crazy lady takes a sledge hammer to the captive author’s foot and breaks it at the ankle, effectively hobbling him so he can’t run away anymore.
But the book was worse. It was so much worse.
In the book, she takes an axe and cuts his foot off. But because it’s a dull rusty axe, it takes her several swings to effectively hack it off, all the while the author is screaming bloody murder, unable to stop this woman from painfully hacking away at his foot. The way Stephen King described the way the axe embedded deep in the author’s leg and squeaked on his bones as she dislodged it for another swing… /shudders
I had to set the book down for a moment. My teacher asked me if I was okay, because he said I was suddenly as white as a sheet of paper. When I couldn’t find the words to explain what was wrong with me, he told me to go to the nurse. He sent someone to help me walk there, as I was light-headed and wobbly, and having trouble standing on my own. Never in my life have I ever had a book affect me so physically and emotionally in my life, and I’m a huge fan of gory and grotesque horror.
TV show: Season 4 finale of Dexter.
I really enjoyed Dexter, a show about a serial killer who lived by a code and tried to only murder bad people. And my all-time favorite character on the show was his girlfriend, Rita.
When the series began, she was a broken shell of a human being. Which Dexter preferred, because the relationship was simple. She didn’t need much affection or attention and was the perfect cover to make him appear to have normal relationships without having to fully commit to someone emotionally.
But as the series went on, Rita became stronger, more capable, and more confident and outspoken. Through a relatively healthy relationship with Dexter, she was learning how to heal and grow as a person. She was even changing Dexter for the better; he found himself feeling attached to her and daydreaming about giving up the serial killer life to settle down and be a good father and husband.
Throughout season 4, Dexter met his match in another serial killer, Arthur Mitchell, who also had a family of his own, except he kept them under his control by fear and intimidation. It was an incredible acting performance by John Lithgow, who up until this point, I had only known as the funny man on 3rd Rock from the Sun. He was absolutely terrifying as a serial killer!
In the season 4 finale, Dexter finally gets his hands on Arthur and dispatches him, as he’s done with many other bad people. But the finale twist was that Arthur had gotten his hands on Rita shortly beforehand, and Dexter returns home to find her in the bathtub, murdered.
I was so enraged that they killed off my favorite character that I shut off the TV and never watched another episode of Dexter again. Which was apparently a wise decision, as the show apparently took a nosedive after that season and never recovered. To this day, most fans agree that Dexter ended at season 4.
This was absolutely heartbreaking. I think I made it about 20 or 30 min in before I broke down and couldn’t continue. I’ve never attempted to go back and finish it. I just can’t.
Read the book! It was so good as well. Not entirely the same as the movie. The movie was more of the premise with book plus some exerpts, but still amazing in its own way. I really enjoy both. Really easy read because of how it is written, and so much fun as well.
When Glenn was murdered with the baseball bat - the picture and him saying Ma- Mag- Ma It was just too intense for me. I just closed the book and walked away for a long time.
When my husband saw that part in the show he just stopped watching. Also too intense for him
I watched the last episode of the season (when we see someone eating a bat but don’t know who) and was like “Ok, this thing has been shit for a while, that’s enough.” and only watched the next episode years later to know who was the victim and that confirmed my lack of interest for whatever came after.
To add, that same season they already killed Glenn.
He dies, but the show doesn’t really address it. The characters do, but the show at this point was SUPER clear when a character died. Extra slow motion, special music, the works. Then they spend like 6 episodes with him dead, but you really just don’t believe it. Then they reveal how he survived and it’s just ridiculous, it’s basically “the zombies just sorta give up for some reason”. (Or is it like a dozen headshots, I forget at this point).
Anyway, ALL that happens, then the season ends on a big cliffhanger. Unfortunately the tension is all wrong. The show was moving at a glacial pace where basically if you watched the season opener, the mid-season finale (see, above) and the finale, you’d be mostly caught up on the story. And so this finale robbed us of that too.
Also the Internet was full of spoilers saying it was Glenn (from the comics) such that all excitement was lost between seasons.
Outer Worlds. Specifically when you have the conversation with Parvati in the bar about asexuality.
As someone who’s generally not been sexually attracted to anyone but is masculine, I felt a connection in the dialogue that I’ve never really felt from any media before, ever.
“I’ve tripped up folks in the past. Folks I thought cared about me for me. People said I was Cold.”
Man I’ve never felt representation like that. Sex to me is so strange and often gives me a disgusting vibe, though I won’t deny it to my partner, its just not in my DNA I guess.
Anyways. Never finished that game. After that conversation, I lost most interest in any other dialogue in the game. Might go back at some point, but not yet.
For me it was Nier: Automata after the Pascal’s rage. I just dropped my controller and cried for an hour. Their hatred, their loss… I couldn’t even find a space to place it. To place myself. Anywhere. Anyhow. I felt defective.
If you still have some heartbeat in you, remaster of the OG Nier is a thing to try. It would hurt you, even more than Automata, but in the end, with an added ending, you’d feel a relief like nothing else. That I can promise.
See if you’d be open to such a journey. Feel free to ping me back to discudss it if you would.
It’s OK. Yoko Taro is an outlier and a niche in himself. I, for example, can’t even enjoy Souls games besides Bloodborne, and I feel a little sad about it. But what games are to your taste?
Not me but when my wife was pregnant, the scene in Homeward Bound where Sassy is swept away in the river left her in tears. She stopped the movie and never watched it again lol.
Sons of Anarchy. The show portrays so many people living in ever-increasing states of desperation. One episode ends with a character hanging himself and I almost quit right then and there even though there were multiple seasons left. I had never seen so much depression and crushing desperation portrayed like that. I took a break from it after that episode.
I did finish the show and it was indeed horribly depressing, but incredibly well-done and well-written.
Hellblade Senua’s Sacrifice. Played it with headphones as many suggested. I had recently lost my uncle, who by the time he died, was in a pretty bad state mentally. Seeing and hearing things that weren’t there. Everyone out to get him. Calling to say the cops were trying to break into his home. No one was there.
He was a good guy and incredibly funny. Introduced me to the greatness of Monty Python at a young age. He was getting some better help near the end, finally. In part because he finally was accepting help.
He was a Vietnam vet, and from what everyone told me came back changed like so many did. This, in part, led to drug use that spiraled him down. Much better handled than some as he always held a job and such.
But the game made me think of what he might have been experiencing, and it was overwhelming for me. I think I stopped a third of the way through. It is very well done, but I just couldn’t deal with it.
Glad you switched it off. I’ve read a lot of stories of people playing Senua and having a mental breakdown over associating her with themselves or relatives. Ultimately, not the best way to reconnect with your family. The worst way.
I stopped playing it after fear of me myself having something akin to it. There are mental illnesses running in my family and I’m afraid I have some chances to play Senua IRL. 'Tis why I don’t even try to get a gun license. It’s safer that way.
I was playing it at night at a campground that was terrifying by itself at night. My roommate had gone to sleep and I was getting more and more scared as the night went on. I couldn't find a save point and I was getting frantic just trying to save my game and go to sleep. I couldn't find one after an hour or so so I said fuck it and turned it off.
Cue a mouse eating something in our loft or some other small animal making it so I had to wake up my roommate telling him I need to talk for a minute to a real person before falling asleep. I didn't sleep much that night and didn't pick the game up for another 6 months.
Played it in the day time with people in the room. Fuck that game and it's still one of my favorites of all time to make me feel that way.
Michael crosses so many red lines. None critical to me, but here and there it makes me eerk. And I remembered this episode juts by reading it’s name. It says something.
I don’t know if this counts, but I own multiple copies of Spiritfarer and haven’t played it yet, because my mother suddenly passed away shortly before I learned about the game, and just watching the trailer still breaks me up a bit.
edit: sigh correction, just thinking about the trailer breaks me up a bit
I haven’t played it in over a year and just can’t bring myself to fully finish it. I think I was right there, but I just… can’t.
Just thinking about it makes me misty.
I hope you’re in a better place emotionally now. But maybe continue to put off playing, unless you feel you’re ready to stare some potentially difficult things directly in the face.
Thank you for the kind words. I could tell from the trailer and reviews that it’s a beautiful, glorious labor of love that I definitely need to play… someday. I’m not there yet, but I will have a generous supply of tissues available when it happens.