Trope: Shock Value

  • Follow Her Down

    Follow Her Down

    The hunt is on.Sera Vale stalks her tormentor.Men stalk Sera.And somewhere in the dark, a killer waits. Will this be Sera Vale’s final unmaking? That depends. She’s not running. She’s collecting—tools, weapons, worshippers.They bow to her.Crave her.Kill for her.Follow her down, even to hell. Her monsters aren’t just lovers.They’re trophies.They’re jewels in her bloody crown.

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  • The Ancient Magus’ Bride

    The Ancient Magus’ Bride

    , ,

    Chise Hatori was a child nobody wanted. Told by her own mother that she should never have been born and passed from one neglectful guardian to the next, the young girl has grown up feeling lost, hopeless, and emotionally numb. At age fifteen she sells herself into slavery, desperate for a home where somebody –

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  • This Is My Body

    This Is My Body

    A gripping, emotional, and darkly funny queer horror novel about family trauma and possession, for fans of Rachel Harrison and Catriona Ward. Single gay mom Brigid always thought that cutting ties with her extremist Catholic family was the best thing she could have done for her daughter, Dylan—and for herself. But when Dylan starts having

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  • A Guest in the House

    A Guest in the House

    After many lonely years, Abby’s just gotten married. She met her new husband, a recently widowed dentist, when he arrived in town with his young daughter seeking a new start. Although it’s strange living in the shadow of her predecessor, Abby does her best to be a good wife and mother, but the more she

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  • Witchcraft for Wayward Girls

    Witchcraft for Wayward Girls

    They call them wayward girls. Loose girls. Girls who grew up too fast. And they’re sent to the Wellwood Home in St. Augustine, Florida, where unwed mothers are hidden by their families to have their babies in secret, give them up for adoption, and most important of all, to forget any of it ever happened.

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  • After God Vol. 7

    After God Vol. 7

    You know what, I feel bad for Obikawa. He’s caught in this weird web of friendship and manipulation, and as my favorite character and the biggest rat-man in the series, I do not think he should have become a liquidated mass of meat. (not that I think the story should go differently, i truly wonder

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  • Black Sheep

    Black Sheep

    A cynical twentysomething must confront her unconventional family’s dark secrets in this fiery, irreverent horror novel from the author of Such Sharp Teeth and Cackle. Nobody has a “normal” family, but Vesper Wright’s is truly…something else. Vesper left home at eighteen and never looked back—mostly because she was told that leaving the staunchly religious community

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  • My Best Friend’s Exorcism

    My Best Friend’s Exorcism

    Was Grady Hendrix a teenage girl in a past life? Some of it is staggeringly teenage girl. The horror of being young and powerless rolls off this book strongly. No one believing you when you try to tell the truth, when things go awry. The world suddenly turning against you when you don’t have privilege.

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  • The Twice-Scorned Lady of Shadow

    The Twice-Scorned Lady of Shadow

    I’m learning to embrace who and what I am, but there’s one thing I can’t face: the night Zak betrayed me. But even with the mysteries of our shared past hanging between us, I can’t turn Zak away when he asks for my help. Powerful fae are going missing, and when he tried to investigate,

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  • The Long-Forgotten Winter King

    The Long-Forgotten Winter King

    Everyone is keeping secrets. Zak won’t reveal what really happened between us ten years ago. Ríkr’s been hiding so much I scarcely recognize him anymore. But the biggest secret belongs to my parents, and it’s the one I’m most desperate to unravel. Finding out who they really were, and who I am, means solving their

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Welcome to the Menagerie.

Here is where M logs their media activity. Partly because Goodreads is forgettable and keeping physical logs is harder. Sometimes M writes a lot. Sometimes M doesn’t write enough. It doesn’t matter. This is just a for-fun little blog so that M can remember what they thought about whatever they watched or read or played or. Whatever.


What is M?

I read. Voraciously. I have subscriptions to those book things on digital retailers. I consume books at nearly all hours. The hours I don’t spend reading? I’m writing. I’m drawing. I have a problem. I have a problem in that I love to read things that are in the same vein repeatedly. Book journals don’t work and as much as I text my friends screenshots of book passages, it doesn’t scratch the itch. Now I’m going to be doing… tiny… tiny book reports.


Truck-Kun Kill Count:


Books & Light Novels Read in 2025: 23/50
46%
Comics Read in 2026: 51/200
25%
Physical Owned Books Read: 470/809
58%


Menagerie Categories


Tagged in the Menagerie

Absolute Asshole NPC (93) Accidentally in Charge (43) A Fetish For Suffering (48) Can't Say No (76) Chekov's Gun (47) Childhood Friends (52) Curiosity Fucks You Up (79) Cursed (64) Damsel in Distress (64) Damsel in Distress (subverted) (91) Dangerous Reputation (89) Doting Husband (68) Everyone Loves MC (94) Evil Eyes & Big Heart (49) Fan Service (98) Grumpy x Sunshine (54) Hypercompetent MC (74) If You Love Them, Set Them Free (55) I Know a Guy (52) Last Minute Hero (106) Loss of Humanity (53) Main Character Coloring (75) MC's Skewed Metrics (76) Mean Boy (123) Mean Boy Love Interest (49) Modern Morals (48) Nat 20s (92) Not Actually Dead (80) Nuclear Revenge (70) OP Protag (92) Petty Revenge (45) Power of Friendship (78) Power of Love (74) Self-Sacrifice (69) Shock Value (47) Sympathetic Evil (67) The Moral is Community (62) Tragic Backstory (84) Twist! (59) Uniquely Skilled (90) Unreliable Narrator (56) Weird and Wacky On Purpose (80) Western-Style Fantasy (87) Wrong Place Wrong Time (65) Zero to Hero (81)


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