Cookie Clicker

No, collective wisdom of the internet, you're fired! The correct answer to "Should I unleash an apocalypse of lovecraftian horrors marked 'You will regret this. Do you want to proceed anyway?'" is NO. I thought that was an easy one!

But instead I got answers like:

"Yes, it will be a good story"
"Yes, you can always undo it if it turns out to destroy the whole world"
"No, just give up"
"Yes, you definitely won't regret it"
"Yes, because you will get a cookie, like a quadrillion times"
"Yes, so you can tell us what happened"
"I got bored of waiting so I tried it for myself"

:)

But I admit, it's turned out ok in this case so far. I bought the first ominous upgrade, and then a few useful upgrades, and then ELDER PACT. Everything got really creepy and THINGS started eating my cookies. But overall, it massively increased my cookie output. Which is the important thing, assuming you care solely about billion cookies produced per second (bcps) and not about the fate of humans in your fictional cookie world...

Now I'm getting (I think) about 70 billion cookies per second base, on average increased several-fold by the THINGS. And I reached my highest stockpile of cookies of about 6 quadrillion.

But I'm nervous... I keep expecting the game to say "you have meddles with what humanity was not meant to know" and see my cookie production drop to zero. My impression from the wiki is that that doesn't happen, but I'm not sure.

More books and films

"A key, an egg, an unfortunate remark" by Harry Connolly

Like Miss Marple urban fantasy! The protagonist has gone through her adventurous years ages ago and settled down to be an eccentric society lady with strong pacifist leanings, trying to broker a peaceful status quo between various supernatural creatures and the mundane world. And hires her nephew as a driver and general assistant. Like many fantasy novels, but from the point of view of the mentor, not the apprentice :)

Harry Connolly wrote the Twenty Palaces series which didn't quite click for me, but I loved for the way the characters felt more real -- Ray, who spent his life unemployable, stealing cars and petty crime, before being drafted unwillingly into the service of a magician, one who is genuinely ruthless and creepy, but much better than most of the others. And it felt like all the things were wrong were wrong because that was how the world really was, but you could maybe fix them, rather than "here's a status quo, and here's someone gratuitously evil who disrupts it for no reason". But they didn't sell that well. And he's released the first book in a fantasy trilogy I kickstarted but haven't read yet, but a bonus was this novel which was really fun.

I loved the embracing of an omniscient narrator who just describes what people are thinking whenever it's interesting, not only when the protagonist is listening (which becomes relevant later in the book).

"Interior Life" by Katherine Blake

A book about a housewife who daydreams an unexpectedly realistic fantasy world, including a seer Lady and her maid. But I love it for including lots of the actual challenges of taking people away from the harvest to fight Darkness, and supply chains, and whether the people you put in charge have any experience or leadership skills or not. I loved how it felt much more real than many fantasy books.

It switches back and forth between the two worlds seamlessly, which I found confusing at first but fast got used to.

I was left thinking I wanted more, but it was interesting.

Thanks to rysmiel for indirectly recommending it.

Super

A film about a washed-up guy who decided to become a super-hero when his wife leaves him. It veers between parody, a little bit of fun, and too much "ok, this guy just beat someone graphically with a wrench wtf". It's like, yes, in the real world, being a vigilante is more often like murder than like self-defence, but the film doesn't seem to condemn it, or endorse it, just mixes it in with some light humour and leaves it sitting there. I get the feeling it's a sort of in-joke film to people who know more about the film industry or something? But I didn't really get it.