Grave of the Fireflies, a Ghibli film. Stopped it a couple times. Ended up finishing it eventually, wish I never had.
This exists and is one of my favorite / most horrible shelf decorations
I’ve heard so much about it and never watched it. I love the Ghiblis though
It’s not Miyazaki but it’s a masterpiece nonetheless.
Yeah, that film crushed me.
I’ve never watched the movie. The synopsis alone crushed me. I couldn’t handle actually seeing it.
I watched it 20 years ago and still can’t bring myself to watch it again.
Ha, yeah I’ve just posted the same answer. Still haven’t finished it, and I’m not going to.
Spoilers for anyone who hasn’t seen it.
I watched it with my girlfriend and the part about the bones in the tin candy container at the start of the movie flew over her head. She was hopeful that the girl might survive, I realized she missed the bones because she got a smidge hopeful when they went to see the doctor.
Fantastic movie. Fucking awful, and I don’t know if I could watch it again.
Came here to mention this, you beat me to it.
Hands down the saddest movie I’ve ever seen
You humans will laugh, but for me, it was Marley and Me, a film that allows you to watch a dog live and then die.
i was a fun loving guy with a golden and I met my Jennifer Anniston so it was just too similar and painful and remembering my dog makes me sad.
There’s a reason https://www.doesthedogdie.com/ exists after all
Any time my wife and I are watching a horror movie and see a pet, I immediately pause and go check.
If the answer is yes, I look for the times to skip, and ask her if she wants to keep watching knowing what happens.
So far we’ve only ever skipped parts for two movies, usually it’s just a “let’s find another movie”
I should have done that for “I am legend”
I can’t even listen to that song anymore. That movie ruined it for me.
And… it’s down
Ohhh I thought it was just me
i saw that as a kid the second the tone got serious i ran to my room. still never finished it
Outer Wilds: Echoes of the Eye. i can handle horror just fine, but Echoes of the Eye is on entirely another level of horror than most everything else. i was only able to complete about a third of it before i got too psyched out to continue
Is that some kind of DLC to an original game?
It is and both are masterpieces. I don’t like horror games and I bore through it. There is a setting to reduce frights but it does a good job using darkness and sound to freak you out. At least from the perspective of a person who doesn’t normally go for that kind of thing.
Hey. If you ever want to give it another go there is a spoiler I can share that will greatly help with those portions.
Eote is a masterpiece and I had to rly battle my fears to do it. Unlike the base game, you can play it in smaller pieces if playing it gets overwhelming
EOTE Spoilers
I think what’s crazy about eote is that you figure things out that make everything visible, and once you understand how things work it really shouldn’t be scary anymore… but it is. As soon as you go back into the lantern’s bubble you’re just consumed by darkness and it feels just as scary as it was before - even though you know exactly what’s in the dark.
If you’re still interested in finishing it:
Besides the tip given by someone else there’s also a mod for PC that makes the scary parts significantly less scary: https://outerwildsmods.com/mods/eotebrighterdreams
The George Floyd video.
I watched maybe a minute of it the day it came out and that was enough for me forever.
Same there. I watched a lot of horror movies and another kinds of gore, and it felt like I almost lost my senses at all, but the way Chauvin did that filled me with so much confusion, hatred and sadness I couldn’t stand watching it. So routine, so senseless, like he’s used to do this daily and likes it. I felt sick. And I want this mfer to rot.
With horror movies, you at least have that layer of knowing it’s not real. Seeing the real horrors of mankind without that to protect you is truly disturbing.
Anything that maximizes embarrassment or cringe. Can’t watch most Will Ferrell or Borat. Ugh, it makes me so uncomfortable.
Maybe controversial but I had that with the office.
Same, Steve Carrell’s character almost causes me physical pain
I’ve seen every episode of the office at least 4 times (and some much more) with the exceptions of Scott’s Tots. Watched it once and never went back. That one was too much.
I’ve never seen it based on everyone’s description and the meme, fuck walking into that mirrored feeling lol
It’s not really controversial. Cringe is used to full effect in The Office, and it’s absolutely something that a lot of people don’t enjoy.
I love The Office, and I do think that once you know the characters, the cringe gets less intense, but it just isn’t going to jive with everyone.
Same. I’m someone who likes the kind of Borat comedy, listed above, and I loved the British version of The Office, but the American adaptation of The Office is so cringe it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Weirdly, I really enjoy Parks and Recreation, it is a very similar show with similar writing.
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Videos of my now deceased sister playing violin.
The Tragically Hip - Ahead By a Century
I will cross a room to turn the radio off when it is playing.
Both died from the same brain cancer and I can’t handle listening or watching either of them yet.
Specifically just that song or any Hip?
Specifically that song, it was my favourite song of theirs. I tuned in late to their last concert when it aired on CBC, I thought I must have missed them singing it because I was so late but it came on next. I was happy I didn’t miss it but I cried as they sang it.
I have heard parts of it in the years since then, I have probably heard the whole song a few times but it hurts to hear it.
I’m sorry for both of your losses
That sounds really rough. :(
I find stuff like this doesn’t ever change for me, even though it may hurt less over time. I like knowing I have it, but … I don’t need to watch it.
The news
There was a news station I saw while vacationing in the Smokies. They called it “news with a heart”. They did all the same news stories, bit didn’t dwell on the death toll or show video of the carnage. It was the first time I didn’t become enraged by the news.
We have a drinking game for the NBC Nightly News. Drink any time they say “breaking news”, “disaster”, “epidemic” or show people crying. You won’t make it through the news.
Same. For many years now. I didnt even remember that some people actually watch the news regularly.
The correct answer.
I have a friend who regularly shares the latest news that brings him mental anguish, followed by messages along the lines of “the world is doomed, society is trash, how can anyone sleep soundly at night knowing the terrors that are happening this very second”. I don’t know why he still follows them. It’s not like he takes action against these things, and most often he can’t do anything against them even if he wanted to, and this feeling of powerlessness, helplessness, hopelessness, is weighing him down so much.
Breaking bad
SPOILERS
Specifically this was 2 episodes away from the end of the show but I just could not handle it. It was just so depressing. Family and friends being murdered, almost everything walt has worked for squandered, Skyler trying to kill him, having to steal the child and Skyler’s anguish. Man it was just too much to handle because EVERYTHING was just crumbling and collapsing in on itself.
What made it cut so deep is that Walter tried to provide for his family, so they could have a good life and for a time was extremely successful. After multiple missteps, some of his family is murderer or they hate him, trying desperately to remove him from their lives and resent his very existence. While Walter still loved them, he realized his and his family’s was utterly ruined. The second hand crushing and crippling guilt was too painful to bear.
Waler’s psychopathy and coldness was also building up at this point, killing, using and manipulating a lot of people. He began with good intentions but directly and indirectly ended and ruined countless people’s lives.
He didn’t do it for his family
He didn’t want to die miserable with no respect from anyone.
He wanted to show the world he was great. He never was going to have “enough” that he would quit and die anonymously. He was going to keep going bigger and bigger until he was caught or killed.
The whole show is a dying man’s ego trip.
Yeah, exactly. He literally says all this sitting down at the table with Skylar.
I think you missed a good chunk of the point of that show. It was pretty clear after the first few seasons that Walt was not doing it to provide for his family. Walt loved his family but loved his job and power more. There were countless times that he could have washed his hands of it and walked away to go back to teaching. He chose to stay in even when it was pretty damn clear it was destroying his family and putting them in extreme danger.
Finally, a school teacher has some leverage and is treated like a real man. By making drugs, yeah. What’s your problem?
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I understand and respect your decision to not continue, but I have to let you know that your feelings on it are totally justified and even vindicated in the final episodes that you didn’t watch. The misery and frustration is intentional. The arc of struggle, glory/success, and awful consequences are kinda the whole point of the show, and there’s almost some amount of cathartic redemption in seeing Walter realize just how badly he has fucked up and what he does with that knowledge. I’m being intentionally vague in case you or others decide to go back and finish, even though it’s pretty unlikely.
One of my favorite things about the show is that it’s very much a show that encourages discussion about morality in a very gradual way. Most people would agree that Walter starts off as a decent man, and he’s become an evil man somewhere along the way, but testimony differs from viewer to viewer about where exactly that line was along the way. So I’m curious, as somebody who didn’t finish specifically because of what a spectacular cautionary tale it was, where was the line for you? At what point did you stop rooting for Walter White?
Wait, most people agree that Walter starts off as a decent man?
You are right, but he wasn’t that cold-blooded schemist he’s in the end all the time. Waltuh gradually descended to that state of mind.
I was gonna say “good” but settled on “decent”. He was certainly flawed like any of us, but he was a loving father and husband who was using his knowledge to teach the next generation. I think he was resentful of how his life panned out, and that’s why he so quickly decided to spend his remaining years proving that there was greatness within him to achieve something so much more, especially in spite of the whole Gray Matter thing.
Huh, I didn’t get that at all when I last watched the show. I see him as a static character. Even back as early as Gray Matter, I thought the writers strongly implied that Walter’s memories of getting screwed were highly unreliable, twisted by his own pride and his feelings of rejection by Gretchen. Now he’s owed something. I see the root evil as Walter’s narcissism, not the drugs, and I have an easier time forgiving him for the drugs and murder than I do his willful ignorance. The former were only in service to the latter. Loving father and husband? I can’t agree. I think he became a drug kingpin only because opportunity and circumstance changed around him.
I don’t disagree with your general assessment, but I can’t remember whether the Gray Matter flashbacks were objective or narrated by him and therefore susceptible to an unreliable narrator, so you could be right on that point. He was an incredibly proud man, always. You’re definitely correct that he was narcissistic for most of the show, but idk about before the diagnosis. I found him to be meek and passive before the diagnosis, and understandably upset by the unfairness that despite playing by the rules and living his small life without vices he still got a death sentence. He was disappointed in what happened at Gray Matter and envious of its massive success once he left, disappointed by having a son that can’t ever be as abled as he was, disappointed that he’s stuck busting his ass at TWO thankless jobs that pay peanuts just to make ends meet, and ultimately disappointed that this was all he ever got to experience in his woefully shortened life. It’s understandable that with his ticking clock that he would become much more selfish and controlling, especially regarding his stated goal of leaving something behind to take care of his family, which may have been true at one point but it’s unclear when that would’ve changed. Upon first watch, we the audience understand his desperation and it’s presented in a way that we aren’t sure that we wouldn’t be capable of something similar. Wrong things done for the right reasons and all that. The show barely touches on the end users of his product, so all we see is that he does something immoral to make up for the hole he’s leaving behind. It’s an indictment of the profit-motivated healthcare system here in the US, and later with corporate sponsorship and Walter’s lust for money over all it becomes an indictment on capitalism in general.
I think he was content enough with his lackluster life because he figured it would pay off in the end. If he weren’t decent before the diagnosis, I’m not sure that he would’ve sacrificed so much to take care of his family in terms of working two jobs and submitting to everything his wife and son needed and wanted. He wasn’t great or even good, but he held himself accountable for his choices, which in my book makes him decent. And then episode one happened and we saw that even a decent man could break bad.
I was wrong; Walter left Gretchen! I don’t remember any flashbacks explicitly about his departure; I think this scene is the best we get and we have to extrapolate from there. Maybe I’ll have to binge the series again just to be sure.
I’ll add one more piece of evidence: “All the things I did, you need to understand… I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it. And… I was alive”. I don’t know if Walter is thinking as far back as episode 1 when he says this, but I’m willing to bet Skyler would understand it that way.
I should also admit my bias; having dealt with in-laws with severe cluster B personality disorders, I’m going to have a hard time feeling any pity for a narcissist. Even the ones that seek psychological help have statistically bad outcomes. Mind you, regarding Walter White and narcissism, I’m talking about actual NPD, which typically reveals itself at the onset of adulthood, not later in life. Lousy circumstances can certainly embitter a narcissist, and narcissists do often get worse with age, but I don’t know of any real-world pathway for a normal person in Walter’s position to become a narcissist. As for why this necessarily makes him indecent, I’d recommend lurking on r/RaisedbyNarcissists.
I think “he held himself accountable for his choices” might actually be our point of contention, but I have to admit I don’t really know what that means to you. I never use the phrase. Walter was always accountable to himself; that was kinda the problem. Maybe having multiple jobs is evidence that he was accountable to his family, but we’re also talking about a man motivated by the admiration of others, so the benefit to his family could’ve just been a byproduct.
Excellent points. Sorry about the history that led to your bias btw.
I think a lot about his admission to Skyler about having done it for himself because of how great that moment was. I think that it’s most likely that it was always true, but he probably didn’t realize it until he had a lot of time to think back on it and reflect. I’ve certainly looked back at how shitty I was when I was younger and had the realization that I had been a selfish prick but thought I was a good person at the time.
When I said that he held himself accountable for his choices, I meant that if he were a selfish and indecent person, he might’ve backed out of the responsibilities he signed up for when things didn’t serve him. I think I remember that there was a flashback of seeing the house and that he didn’t think it was a good buy because of the price vs his salary but he relented for the sake of his family. He stuck around with Skyler despite being pretty clearly unhappy. He stuck to teaching despite having a great scientific mind that could’ve achieved much more. When they got pregnant again like 15 years after having their first child, I’m assuming that it wasn’t a planned pregnancy. Walter just kinda let life happen to him, and he took on more and more burden. He was committed to that family no matter how much they walked over him and expected their wants and needs to come before his own. Internalizing all of that expectation played a significant role in him snapping. He could’ve set clear barriers, gently or otherwise, or completely walked out, but instead he gave them everything until he realized he had already given nearly everything he would ever be capable of giving.
So, did he actually enter the meth business with the goal of giving them even more? It would align with his character before since that’s really all he’s ever done and maybe all he knows how to do. Or was he finally being selfish for once just before his death rattle that was coming any day now? It really doesn’t matter. For me, I think it’s possible that his admission to Skyler that he had been doing it for himself may have actually been one last lie, trying to atone for his sins that caused his family so much pain and damage; he may have been giving her what she wanted to hear to allow her to hate him and blame him; he may have been giving her the one, final thing he had left to give: his pride. It’s possible that he was falling on his sword for the foolish gamble he took; he may have thought that he was only gambling with his own life which was already forfeit anyway, but he instead gambled away the lives of the people he was working so hard to secure. Ironic.
Or maybe he was just a total piece of shit from birth. Idk, I’m not Vince Gilligan lol.
You got further than me, I had to stop after S1 because it was already way too stressful for me!
I quit on the 4th or 5th episode, it was already too much anxiety
I also quit in the last season - not sure what episode but it was towards then end. Enough time has past that I have no interest in finishing it. I don’t get so involved in series since then.
Don’t Look Up. As an environmental biologist, I feel they really nailed the constant feeling of crisis that everyone either chooses to ignore or use for greed. There came a point where I couldn’t stomach it anymore, I watch TV to escape reality not be reminded of it lol.
The prologue of The Last of Us. (The game, not the show.)
That one broke me. I stopped the game, ugly cried for a bit, pulled my shit together then went upstairs and my daughter and I went out for ice cream.
You mean, the beginning of the first game with Sarah? Yeah, it was dark. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to continue that game after that, because usually, usually, that’s a thing directors leave for ending. It felt anticlimactic and wrong. And only a couple of chapters into the journey with Ellie I felt like I’m open to that game. If there wasn;t another person playing it for me, I could’ve just droped it.
Yep, that’s the exact part I’m talking about. My daughter & only child was right at the same age & it hit pretty close to home. Couldn’t take it.
This. I hugged my daughter so hard after this scene. I don’t think I have ever recovered.
I had to unsubscribe from NotJustBikes’s YouTube channel because I could no longer bear thinking about just how thoroughly and irreversably fucked the city planning is out here in the American midwest, and how there’s less than a gnat’s fart in the wind I can do about any of it.
Will be moving to Midwest from Italy soon. My heart hurts already. I lived in the Midwest for ten years and worked with urban planners there so I know the pain all too well.
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.
Senua is wonderful for people not affected by what she suffers from imo
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.
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.
I guess the “lol” is because
spoiler
Sassy survives?
Bingo. And the end is the real tear jerker.
CW: Trump, uspol
Trump separating families at the border. Children being put in cages. Americans waving the fucking nazi flag.
It’s one thing to read about genocide. Another thing is to see it with your own eyes, even on TV.
And if any of you fuckers tries to tell me that both “sides are the same” or that “democrats did the same” or something in that vein, they are obviously doing this in bad faith and they can go fuck themselves. 🖕🤬
It Takes Two.
There’s a point where your characters brutally murder the only nice thing thing in the entire story while it’s begging for its life (your characters are pieces of shit, but the gameplay is good, so you can kind of ignore it). It happens to be the characters’ daughter’s favorite stuffed elephant.
Then your characters dance gleefully in their daughter’s tears and show no remorse at their daughter crying or any emotion other than woe is us, our brutal murder didn’t work.
Seriously, one of the most horrific things my husband and I have ever played through in a game. It made us feel sick. We stopped playing after that. The best thing I can do for that little girl is for her shitty ass parents to never waje up so she becomes an orphan. That’s honestly a better outcome for her than having to live with her shitty abusive parents another day. I only wish it had been earlier in the game so we could have gotten refunds.
I can’t believe they market that game to play with your kids and put that scene in it.
Funny, I stopped playing the game right after this scene but not really because of it. I just couldn’t stand the main characters from the very beginning.
I absolutely hate the story of this game. The parents are horrible ego-centric people who do not deserve to be happy. My wife and I played it and we almost quit at the very end because we were convinced they shouldn’t end up back together. They don’t actually fix any relationship problems besides being reminded why they fell in love and nostalgia.
It drives me nuts how this game won GOTY when I hated it so much.
The entire time I was doing the awkward sad chuckles asking my partner repeatedly if it was for real and no, no ,no while I dragged it around killing it. I judged the parents soooooo hard for it.
