But I have exactly no interest in LitRPG or "isekai" (sp?) stories of people in their games with characters talking about spell slots and health bars or whatever.
Isekai just means portal fantasy essentially (most literal translation is "a different world") and includes reincarnation, planar travel, alternate realities, time travel that actually changes stuff, as well as "trapped in a video game" and so on. It's not inherently bad, it's just like, disproportionate amounts of bad/formulaic/problematic anime is Isekai (mostly because of "trapped in a video game").
LitRPG is a separate, Western genre, but which has heavy thematic and subject crossover with a certain subgenre of Isekai, which doesn't have a specific name (AFAICT), but yes where characters (or worst of all, just the main character), know about their HP/MP, active and passive special abilities, etc. etc.
And yeah, I also loathe this genre - there are some less annoying/gross examples (particularly where literally everyone in a setting can see their "character sheet"), or where the idea is subverted or derailed somewhat, but generally the very worst (both as stories and morally/ethically) and least interesting stories follow this pattern. Where it crosses over with anime, particularly where only the protagonist (and maybe a few others) can see the "rules", you also see the frankly creepiest, most exploitative and most misogynist Isekai (though a couple which aren't technically this work hard to compete with that, eh, Mushoku Tensei?), which are edgelord/school shooter-type power/revenge/harem (often all three) fantasies.
So whilst I watch a fair amount of anime these days, I generally avoid Isekai but particularly "trapped in a videogame" or "I can see my stats" stuff because there's just an absolutely overwhelming chance it's awful on various levels. A lot higher than the standard "90% of everything is crap" rule.
JK Rowling’s stuff- never appealed in the first place, and her personal views & advocacy have rendered HP stuff radioactive.
Yeah I was convinced to read the first four by a friend (who later became trans, ironically) so I could talk about the books with them, and I just ditched them on the fourth book where Rowling decides being anti-slavery is wrong and dumb because the slaves
like being slaves, which is literally a real argument people have used to support slavery repeatedly (and indeed virtually every kind of oppression). I always found the social overtones of the books creepy, disliked the "chosen one" plot, how gleefully malicious some of the "good guys" were (without like, it seeming very earned), and how Rowling seemed to be very keen to ensure the girls were always much, much less important than the boys (very much including Hermione) in this supposed co-ed situation, but that was the final straw.
And I've only been proven more and more right to have been weirded out by that stuff! Including today! (As some of you on Twitter and Bluesky may be aware.)
Another in the “picked up on a whim” category was Storm Constantine’s Wraethu. and its sequel series. It’s…special. If you don’t know it, the Wraethu are a hermaphoditic species evolved from humans, and the series details the struggle between fading humanity and the riding Wraethu. There’s a lot of questionable plot & writing decisions. TBH, reading the stories was kind of like watching a slo-mo train wreck.
Yeah same, I couldn't finish the first book because how you going to make magic gay/trans people into clearly the bad guys in your story just so you can eroticise them, lady? This seems like a real case of "[she] was so concerned with whether [she] could, [she] didn't stop to think if [she] should!". Don't do that! Stop it! Just saying they're the good guys doesn't make it true when they do horrible things non-stop!
