Look, it’s a weird hill to die on, especially when I don’t really explain, but children deserve to experience fear, disgust, and discomfort in safe scenarios where they can process those sensations.
Media for children used to be scary and that’s important.
Media for children used to have sensuality--not just fear, but also a sort of fleshiness, a wide breadth of sensations. There was weird surreal stuff that may have been Nightmare Fuel or may have been Fetish Fuel, depending on who was watching it. Women had boobs and jiggly parts, not just smooth barbie doll curves. Bad things happened. Scary things happened. WEIRD things happened. People got tied up, or fell in goop, or transformed into animals, or blew up like a balloon, or a thousand other things that, once the mainstream became aware could be someone's fetish (despite none of that being inherently sexual--the whole point of a fetish is that it's having sexual feelings for something that isn't sex), they freaked 0ut and stopped including. Which severely hampered the story and made it boring and empty of humanity. Humans are made of meat. Art needs to be made of meat also.
The puritanical panic will and has destroyed art. Until you let the fuck go of it, you won't make good art. We are in a second Victorian era where all stories have to have a Moral Lesson and it's fucked up. Let art be for arts sake. Stop with this fash bullshit.
