Estuans Interius Ira Vehementi

video game should be accessible. because video games are, generally, a medium that requires a level of active input and interaction in ways that generally other mediums do not, there is an added layer to consider when you get into making the medium accessible. the method of interacting is not always accessible to everyone. because I am getting old and broken and brainfogged and my reflexes have always been approximately the speed of a particularly asthmatic turtle, if a game requires long stretches of play time and twitch reflexes and perfect timing I will not by default have the experience of the Average Gamer on Twitch. and I would argue that while I am not the average, I'm not exactly a distant outlier, either.

but the thing is whenever this argument starts someone always comes in with "but video games should be fun!!" and I always have the thought that video games is that while often they are a form of entertainment, they are also a way of making art

and like any artform, their job is to provide an experience. and that experience is not always going to be fun. sometimes it will be serious or cathartic or horrifying or challenging. in the same way not all books are light-hearted adventure novels and not all movies are action blockbusters.

I've always kinda hated it, not least because I became an apatheist in my early teens when the first major depressive episode hit like a train. but man. sometimes looking at fandom and the insistence Thing Must Be Canon or Life is Ruined and The World Will End, it pops back into my head.

mass-market media is not a thing you can control. may something grant you the serenity to understand and accept there are things you do not control. that even mass-market art has artists who have their own vision for their art. and then there are the constraints placed on that art by financial realities. by their budget. by ceos of companies who have money in that art and want to make more money. by whoever will end up hosting that art and also has financial stakes in it. by political realities, the political climate and the political leanings of all those people with a financial stake.

this is not to say you cannot criticise a show if it does a thing badly. nor is it a "hey you are not allowed a comfort media"- by all means, if you find a piece of media that gives you comfort *as is*, go for it.

watercolour of the sky over Caelid in Elden Ring

sometimes bad things happen to people. sometimes people have strong feelings about it that they want to express in art. sometimes that art will be loud and shocking and cruel and nasty and full of pain. because art is a way to express things, including feelings. and because not all feelings are soft and gentle and nice, not all art is soft and gentle and nice.

like. Homestuck was my fandom for a few years. I was on the forum with my obnoxious avatars, I went to RL meetups, I was on the LJ-later-DW kinkmeme, I cosplayed, I was in a tiny loose LJ roleplay comm, of all my fandoms it might have been the one I was most involved with.

but the thing is that Homestuck will always be a weird, (quirky)-text-heavy, mixed-internet-media-format-text/gif/FMV/flash game time-fuckery-built-in with a little too much 2nd-person-as-(fake)-prompt Thing to me, and like. I know it started getting published in dead tree, too. but the format of the webcomic is for me inevitably intertwined with the story and the voice of it.