Trope: Shock Value

  • Captive Prince

    Captive Prince

    “This was Vere, voluptuous and decadent, country of honeyed poison” Damen is a warrior hero to his people, and the rightful heir to the throne of Akielos. But when his half brother seizes power, Damen is captured, stripped of his identity, and sent to serve the prince of an enemy nation as a pleasure slave.

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  • Incidents Around the House

    Incidents Around the House

    A chilling horror novel about a haunting told from the perspective of a young girl whose troubled family is targeted by an entity she calls “Other Mommy,” from the New York Times bestselling author of Bird Box To eight-year-old Bela, her family is her world. There’s Mommy, Daddo, and Grandma Ruth. But there is also Other Mommy, a malevolent entity

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  • Bloat

    Bloat

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    “…this thing feels trapped in its own homeland.” — dude who suspects that a kappa want to go to america and so keeps doing weird shit to young american boys After a near-death drowning accident, a young boy’s family is horrified to discover he has become possessed by a legendary demon from the depths of

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  • They All Died Screaming

    They All Died Screaming

    It’s called The Scream… Once you get it, you simply cannot stop screaming. You can’t eat or sleep. It drives you more and more insane until you can’t stand to be alive a second longer. When the phenomenon hits Chuck’s city, the chronically unemployed pervert joins a band of misfits to make his final stand.

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  • Lovesickness

    Lovesickness

    An innocent love becomes a bloody hell in another superb collection by master of horror Junji Ito. Ryusuke returns to the town he once lived in because rumors are swirling about girls killing themselves after encountering a bewitchingly handsome young man. Harboring his own secret from time spent in this town, Ryusuke attempts to capture

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  • Deadman Wonderland Vol. 1-13

    Deadman Wonderland Vol. 1-13

    After a powerful earthquake nearly destroyed all of Tokyo, a prison known as Deadman Wonderland rose from what was left of the city. Privately-run through the guise and functions of a theme park, Deadman Wonderland takes in prisoners from all over Japan, using them as attractions for tourists. Little do the public know about the

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  • 100 Ghost Stories That will Lead to My Own Death Vol. 01

    100 Ghost Stories That will Lead to My Own Death Vol. 01

    I am a sucker for ghost story anthologies like this. Some stories linger, some flop, and then you have the framework to wonder about as well. Also, sometimes fun art. The conceit is that a grade schooler, depressed and suicidal, was told about these 100 ghost stories. He’ll summon a real ghost if he manages

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  • The Substance

    The Substance

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    In the pursuit of youth and beauty, you rob yourself. That’s the most basic message in the Substance. The very least you can get from it. But we can expand on that, can’t we? The disposal of aging women in our society, the need to meet male standards for women’s beauty, the men in position

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  • Stab the Rabbit

    Stab the Rabbit

    This book is just a way to alleviate some masculine violence, bro. I’m not joking. It’s got a few stories in it and it takes a juvenile delight in using slurs and doesn’t really have a care for being “politically correct”, as angry male comics would put it. They let you know right in the

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  • Lady Devil

    Lady Devil

    PLEASE BE MINDFUL OF THE TRIGGER WARNINGS. Finally. I finally finished this story. Once, eons ago, I started reading this while it was updating. It was one of those services where you need to unlock chapters with money each time so I (as usual) fell off the horse. Now I have finally read the whole

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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: 19/50
38%
Comics Read in 2026: 39/200
19%
Physical Owned Books Read: 477/830
58%


Menagerie Categories


Tagged in the Menagerie

Absolute Asshole NPC (86) A Fetish For Suffering (45) Can't Say No (67) Chekov's Gun (42) Childhood Friends (50) Curiosity Fucks You Up (76) Cursed (58) Damsel in Distress (57) Damsel in Distress (subverted) (85) Dangerous Reputation (85) Doting Husband (64) Double Identity (41) Everyone Loves MC (87) Evil Eyes & Big Heart (49) Fan Service (92) Grumpy x Sunshine (52) Hypercompetent MC (72) If You Love Them, Set Them Free (49) I Know a Guy (46) Last Minute Hero (97) Loss of Humanity (50) Main Character Coloring (69) MC's Skewed Metrics (71) Mean Boy (118) Mean Boy Love Interest (47) Modern Morals (45) Nat 20s (89) Not Actually Dead (74) Nuclear Revenge (68) OP Protag (91) Petty Revenge (44) Power of Friendship (73) Power of Love (68) Self-Sacrifice (67) Shock Value (44) Sympathetic Evil (63) The Moral is Community (60) Tragic Backstory (76) Twist! (55) Uniquely Skilled (87) Unreliable Narrator (53) Weird and Wacky On Purpose (74) Western-Style Fantasy (83) Wrong Place Wrong Time (64) Zero to Hero (77)


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