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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    1 month ago

    the only other time it’s debatable for me is release order but with ‘problematic’ (i.e. hard to experience/gatekeeper/turn-off) or ‘unnecessary’ (spinoff/non-canon/retread/etc.) skipped, but that shifts it to a debate on that criteria, which is separate from the order itself.