History YMMV / FallenLondon

* HarsherInHindsight: Alexis Kennedy was a founder of Failbetter Games and the writer to some of the most popular and iconic stories of Fallen London, including the Seeking Mr. Eaten's Name quest. Years after he left the company, allegations of abuse and misconduct surfaced, with many of the accusers being women from his own former company. Many of those within the fandom who have become familiar with his name and style may find it difficult to ignore how the relationship between him and those who own the property they are enjoying have seemingly irreparably soured.

* {{Adorkable}}:
** Many of the Masters manage to come across like grand, unknowable, eldritch beings of mystery. Mr. Pages is a big giant nerd who can't think in a straight line, makes up its own language, and writes romance stories under a lady pseudonym. Even its burglary-induced tantrum is strangely adorable.

* EvilIsCool: Combined with [[EvilIsSexy evil is sexy]]. The game itself is full of [[GreyAndGreyMorality grey and grey morality]], [[BlackAndGreyMorality black and grey morality]] and just full on [[BlueAndOrangeMorality blue and orange morality]], but for certain characters and factions, this still applies in full force.

* EnjoyTheStorySkipTheGame: A common response among critics.

* UnintentionallyUnsympathetic: Some feel this way about Gregory [[spoiler:Beechwood]] in Heart's Desire. He is not evil, but many players feel that he is nowhere near as sympathetic as the story seems to portray him as. [[spoiler:He was transformed into a monkey which he describes as a horrible state of existence and he loses his fiancé as a result. Allowing him to win is portrayed as a happy outcome, resulting in him selflessly putting an end to the Marvellous which he claims has ruined many lives rather than using that wish on himself. However, players who are not inclined to side with him point out that rather than this being a case of the [[JustForPun monkey's]] [[JerkassGenie paw]], Gregory's suffering is [[DidNotThinkThisThrough a result of his own lack of foresight in what his wish intaled]]. He wished to become a monkey himself and the Masters of the Bazaar merely made his wish come true to the letter. His claim that the Marvellous has not made anyone happy rings hollow when we see that arguably more often than not the other players have indeed gotten what they wished for and show no regret, the [[BrokenAesop player character included, if they choose to win the Marvellous]]. For those who do not feel inclined to side with Gregory, he can be seen as trying to blame his own mistakes on the game, projecting dissatisfaction onto the other players that are often not present in interactions with them.]]

* TierInducedScrappy: A stat example. Of the four main stats, Shadowy has proven to be the most difficult to grind without relying on social actions and arguably the least useful lategame, but it has ''enough'' uses that it can't simply be ignored as a DumpStat.

** Brass Lollipop: Headless Skeletons capped off with a Brass Skull and sold as is. Useful to get certain basic utilities like Incorruptible Biscuits from the Bone Market, especially since you can just buy Brass Skulls and Licenciates in particular have an infinite supply of decapitated skeletons.

* CatharsisFactor: Becoming a full-fledged Corsair opens some opportunities a ''lot'' of veteran players had been waiting for, when it comes to zee travel and its perils. Before, all your fights with other vessels involved simple intimidation or hand-to-hand combat, at best a single warning shot, always leaving the enemy relatively unscathed. But as a pirate? You can sink almost ''everyone'' you find, including the Circumcellion Brotherhood brutes, the Unfinished and Iron Republic pirates, fellow corsairs that often robbed you in the snares, and if you deliberately tank the Persuasive check even Dr. Orthos' goons can meet the Fathomking at your call. Older players have been known to rampage through the Zee taking their long-delayed vengeance thanks to this.

* AuthorsSavingThrow: As the game is over a decade old and regularly receives updates, certain unpopular elements have been addressed following feedback from the fanbase in an effort to improve the game in various ways.
** For the longest time, acquiring Favours is almost entirely reliant on your opportunity cards, save for partaking in Sinning Jenny's school, which itself is fate-locked, eats a lot of action and is still random. This makes it very frustrating when you need to suddenly acquire Favour to progress a story or accomplish a goal or raise Renown. Failbetter Games has since introduced a method to earn favours with each faction that does not rely on drawing cards, albeit at a somewhat relatively high action cost, as well as made it so that every week the player would regain their Favourable Circumstance (an item otherwise too expensive to acquire to be worth the bother) if they don't already have one, which they can use to summon a number of cards, faction cards among them, that may otherwise cause some grief due to the random element of cards.
** A number of players criticized the player's laboratory activities for being incredibly repetitive and boring and in most cases there is no reason to employ any number of interesting lab assistants at your disposal instead of relying on the best student available for everything. Failbetter Games has since reworked the lab heavily, so that there is more of a strategic element, a greater variety of actions the player can take and more reason to have more assistants in your lab.
** With opportunity cards being a source of wealth as well as necessary for a number of activities, players often complained about their deck being clogged up with useless cards whose rewards have long since fallen behind the current "meta", making it less likely to draw cards the player would actually want as a result. Worse, the game sometimes "reward" the player with more opportunity cards upon completing certain stories or acquiring certain items, so the player sometimes feel punished for going out of their way to complete stories and collect things. The developers have recognized this and tried to alleviate it in a number of ways, such as now allowing certain cards to be removed from the deck (such as the renting out whatever house you're not currently living in or whatever vehicle you happen to have) or making it so that certain cards are only added to your deck while you have the associated items equipped, allowing players more control over what goes into their deck.
** Many players find the casual sexism (albeit saterical) of the game, particularly those that belong to an earlier era of Fallen London's development, to be uncomfortable and incongruous with lore depicted elsewhere, where London in the Neath is depicted as much more egalitarian than one may expect from the period (for example, despite some early texts making joke about women not being allowed to vote, London has no shortage of female mayoral candidates and the player themselves have no problem voting). Some of these texts have been altered since then.
** Despite a portion of the fanbase being heavy on roleplaying their character, some sections of the game necessitate the player engaging in romance and/or sex, which is a problem for players who roleplay an asexual or aromantic characters. As a result, Failbetter Games has added alternatives to Making Your Name: Persuasive as well as include new "[[PlatonicLifePartners spouses]]" so that players don't feel left out of certain activities for playing characters who are flatly uninterested in romance or sex, or happen to be polyamorous.

** September's thick accent and more vulnerable demeanors add to the charm.

** Ambitions contain a bunch of these, but two particular points in Nemesis are especially well-known for how demanding they are. First, you have to acquire a Bat with Attitude to progress. This isn't expensive, but it is incredibly luck-dependent, as you are relying on drawing a standard frequency opportunity card, achieving success on a 50% luck check ''and'' getting a rare success, which reportedly has about 10% chance success rate. Depending on how often you play and how clean your deck is, this might take weeks or months, and the cherry on top is that this is such an out of nowhere requirement that even endgame players with massive hoard of wealth and possessions are taken completely unprepared, giving this part a reputation as a kind of wake-up call for how demanding Ambitions are going to be on your wallet and inventory. It is infamous enough that Failbetter Games has since provided an alternative method to acquiring the Bat with Attitude, not that it's a cakewalk either. The second infamous example is the so-called [[spoiler:knifegate]], or that-bit-where-you-have-to-cough-up-ten-thousands-echoes-to-progress, and that is if you're lucky enough to pass a luck check. For players who have been playing for years, this might merely be a significant hit to their wallet, but survivable all things considered. For everyone else, this is a ludicrous amount of wealth, and considering most grinds earn you about 3.5 echoes per action if you're lucky, if you happen to be short on money, good luck progressing through this roadblock with any kind of expediency.

* CompleteMonster: [[BloodKnight Mr. Veils]], aka the monstrous Vake, presides over the trade in cloth and spends his free time [[HuntingTheMostDangerousGame hunting innocent people]] for sport. [[MindRape Haunting the nightmares of his victims]] before hunting them down in the waking world, Veils has some of his victims consume a version of a drink known as Black Wings Absinthe spiked with prisoner's honey, which transports them physically into the nightmare, where as the Vake he taunts, torments, and then tears them to pieces. In ancient times, Veils [[betrayed the fellow Master Mr Candles by having him]] stabbed repeatedly by ;;the other Masters and fed to Priest-Kings]], after which Veils [[delivered the final blow when he drowned Mr Candles in the tears of the Bazaar and dissolved him in purest sorrow, causing his]] vengeful disembodied spirit to become [[spoiler:[[WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds Mr Eaten]]]].

* CompleteMonster: [[BloodKnight Mr. Veils]], aka the monstrous Vake, presides over the trade in cloth and spends his free time [[HuntingTheMostDangerousGame hunting innocent people]] for sport. [[MindRape Haunting the nightmares of his victims]] before hunting them down in the waking world, Veils has some of his victims consume a version of a drink known as Black Wings Absinthe spiked with prisoner's honey, which transports them physically into the nightmare, where as the Vake he taunts, torments, and then tears them to pieces. In ancient times, Veils betrayed the fellow Master Mr Candles by having him stabbed repeatedly by the other Masters and fed to Priest-Kings, after which Veils delivered the final blow when he drowned Mr Candles in the tears of the Bazaar and dissolved him in purest sorrow, causing his vengeful disembodied spirit to become [[spoiler:[[WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds Mr Eaten]]]].

* UglyCute: The Rubbery Men.

%%** The poor [[spoiler:Albino Rat]].
%%** Not to mention the "helpless trust" on the face of the Salt Weasel.

** The Starving Artist for being almost just as much of a nuisance. He is one of the early love interests in the game, but unlike the Artist's Model who ends up making a name for herself and can become the player's spouse, the Starving Artist (if you made the unwise decision to reconnect with him) will continuously beg you for things while never improving his lot, clogging up your deck with a useless card like the example above. Later, you can dump him into your Laboratory to get him out of your deck, but this will simply mean he takes up a Lab Assistant slot instead of an Opportunity Card slot. Though later on a curiously profitable option to just make him useful by sending him out for more honey was added, on par with some of the more prominent money grinds. Either he's less starving than one thinks or your character is embezzling ten kinds of hell out of the university's tenure (honey ''is'' a research expense for a researcher that needs regular access to Parabola). And if that isn't enough for you, during longer experiments you can use an Unwise Idea to ''[[TakeThatScrappy kill him]]'' [[ForScience for research's sake]]. This being the Neath, he'llbe back to your deck soon afterwards, but there's catharsis at least.

** The Starving Artist for being almost just as much of a nuisance. He is one of the early love interests in the game, but unlike the Artist's Model who ends up making a name for herself and can become the player's spouse, the Starving Artist (if you made the unwise decision to reconnect with him) will continuously beg you for things while never improving his lot, clogging up your deck with a useless card like the example above. Later, you can dump him into your Laboratory to get him out of your deck, but this will simply mean he takes up a Lab Assistant slot instead of an Opportunity Card slot. Though later on a curiously profitable option to just make him useful by sending him out for more honey was added, on par with some of the more prominent money grinds. Either he's less starving than one thinks or your character is embezzling ten kinds of hell out of the university's tenure (honey ''is'' a research expense for a researcher that needs regular access to Parabola).

* FandomVIP: The community has a couple of them, such as "[=Spacemarine9,=]" who runs a lore blog and was responsible for [[Funny/FallenLondon the Ratmas incident]], and "[=NiteBrite=]," whose claims to fame include being one of the few Hesperideans (and possibly the first to become one fair-and-square rather than through BribingYourWayToVictory), [[spoiler: picking the [[PressXToDie "this-will-destroy-your-character"]] option during Mr. Eaten's Name, and [[SpringtimeForHitler not having their character destroyed]]]], and becoming the proud owner of a Heptagoat.

* CompleteMonster: [[BloodKnight Mr Veils]], aka the monstrous Vake, presides over the trade in cloth and spends his free time [[HuntingTheMostDangerousGame hunting innocent people]] for sport. [[MindRape Haunting the nightmares of his victims]] before hunting them down in the waking world, Veils has some of his victims consume a version of a drink known as Black Wings Absinthe spiked with prisoner's honey, which transports them physically into the nightmare, where as the Vake he taunts, torments, and then tears them to pieces. In ancient times, Veils betrayed the fellow Master Mr Candles by having him stabbed repeatedly by the other Masters and fed to Priest-Kings, after which Veils delivered the final blow when he drowned Mr Candles in the tears of the Bazaar and dissolved him in purest sorrow, causing his vengeful disembodied spirit to become [[spoiler:[[WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds Mr Eaten]]]].