Release order on first experience is the only way guaranteed to not create unnecessary confusion. Works in a continuity that are released after each other tend rely upon prior knowledge of the work to accentuate the experience. Inventing a new angle to experience them through may be valuable as an artistic exercise, but it is very clearly a bad idea to recommend that angle to newcomers. Release order is specifically reliable because it tracks either the creative process/development of ideas in cases of straightforward serialization, or in case of intentionality in release order follows author intent.

The only time a bespoke work order is even debatable is in cases of an adaptation of a work that is not adapted in release order of the original work. Even then, that adaptation may work around that in a way where it makes it, too, confusing to experience outside of its own release order.

  • WhyEssEff [she/her]@hexbear.netOP
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    4 days ago

    Hmm, yeah fair. I can also see it working for say, franchise comics, it gets messy when work count goes into high-double/triple digits.

    I think my pet peeve is specifically when people take like, Metal Gear, JoJo’s, or as I first experienced this ick when I was 15, Monogatari, and twist it into a bespoke maze to follow chronology or some other thing, and then it catches on and people start recommending it to new people. It just gives me the ick.