Grave of the Fireflies, a Ghibli film. Stopped it a couple times. Ended up finishing it eventually, wish I never had.

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.

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

The George Floyd video.

I watched maybe a minute of it the day it came out and that was enough for me forever.

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.

Anything that maximizes embarrassment or cringe. Can’t watch most Will Ferrell or Borat. Ugh, it makes me so uncomfortable.

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 news

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Behind the Bastards lobotomy episode

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.

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. 🖕🤬

The Curse

It's Nathan Fielder and Emma Stone, and has to be the most embarrassing cringe inducing show ever made.

It's amazing, but a lot of episodes I've had to stop and do something else and finish it later.

I can't even imagine trying to binge it all at once. Fielder is just too good at that stuff

Schindler's List towards the end where Schindler was regretful that he could've sold more stuff and got more money to save more people.

Black Swan. Too intense for me, although I'll probably try to finish it sometime.

Big fish.

At the time, the dad death hit a little too close to home after a few drinks.

Cyberpunk Edgerunners. The world is simply too brutal for our protagonists.

Grave of the Fireflies. It just hurts to watch this movie.

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 often had to pause during episodes of Violet Evergarden. My wife always knew when I was watching it because I would be a complete mess every single episode. I finished the show but some episodes I could not take in one go.

The Walking Dead TV series- Great show, but it was legit giving me nightmares, and I couldn't handle the storyline once they killed Glenn off. I'm reading the comics now years later and it's much more enjoyable

The Handmaid's Tale TV series-- I think I got like 4 episodes in, and then they hung that one woman's wife in front of her and sewed her vagina shut and I just couldn't handle the graphics. I did read the book later on, though. My own imagination is just so tame compared to what they show on TV, I think

Revenge of the Sith - I was deployed to Iraq when I saw it, and was in a really bad headspace, and that scene where Anakin gets burned up and then you see them putting the Vader mask on him just really fucked me up at the time. Absolutely will never watch that one again.

Silent Hill 2.

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.

The graphic novel for The Walking Dead

SPOILER

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

Jesus Camp

Made me so angry for those kids

Breaking Bad. I made it to the end of season 4 after trying once and stopping after just a couple episodes because the tension was so intense. I just couldn't push further than season 4, it was taking a toll on my nerves. Brilliant writing

The Gantz manga. I took a break after an event that could be described as a terrorist attack.

Full Metal Alchemist, the episode with the girl and the dog.

Recently, For All Mankind, Season 1, the episode where the kid gets hit by a car and is in the hospital with a brain bleed. My son was in the hospital with a brain bleed right after his birthday and spent months in the hospital recovering. This episode hit real close to home.

I had to take a break half way through the episode and didn't finish it until 2 weeks later.

The documentary Dominion that is narrated by Joaquin Phoenix.

I had to stop about 16 minutes in. I did come back and finish it the next day.

I don’t know about emotionally overwhelming but we stopped watching the walking dead when they introduced Neegan because the shit he did was so fucking over the top brutal. I didn’t want to have that shit in my head

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.

Mr. Robot. I think I got a few seasons in and realised that watching it was negatively impacting my mental health. It's just too depressing in parts, amazing show though. Its on hold for me to rewatch when I've got the emotional capacity for it.

The Handmaid's Tale (TV Show), hands down.

The first season was emotional but I've gotten through it multiple times as I've tried re-watching to get through season 2. I got a little farther the last time I tried, but man, it's so visceral and constantly beating down the protagonist and everyone around her. That's the point and it's great, it's just so depression-inducing when there's just no uplifting points. IT does not let up in beating you down with the horribleness. I just can't keep going when it goes on for so long.

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.

German movie 'Der goldene Handschuh' which tells the true story of 70's serial killer Fritz Honka. When a friend proposed to watch it, I seriously thought it to be a sports movie (the german 'Handschuh' translates to glove and my association instantly was a goal keeper's glove...). Well, I was wrong. The dense and depressing atmosphere of Honka's childhood and life, together with the derogatory, very hard and profane language and of course depiction of sexuality and violence towards women was simply too much for me. It sucked away all positivity at that moment. I finished it later and the director hit me once more, because in the end credits real pictures of the true locations where shown, proving the film's sets where simply identical. That ripped away the last imagination that what I've just seen was just a very dark fantasy and too bad to be real. Brilliant movie and actors (the main actor in his role is simply not recognizable any more from his real life appearance, just like Charlize Theron in 'Monster'), but too hard to for me to take.

Show: Love, Death and Robots. It's fantastic but some of the episodes just hit too hard. I'll eventually get back to it, I just need some time

Game: Cyberpunk. I was looking something up and found out what happens to Evelyn. I kinda look like her a bit, and have also dealt with (much milder) issues in the same category. Too brutal

Movie: I actually watched it all the way, but the first time I watched American Beauty is just fucked me up for like, a week