a disabled clown in training, and mean with it

i wish the world was kinder to women

back in the day making moodboards was a full time job.

the way teenagers are treated these days is wild. when i was a teenager we were all watching porn, jerking off, and going to horror movies with 3000 gallons of blood. Nowadays they make kids get a permission slip to watch anything darker than Barney the Dinosaur. Insane.

Every year we infantilize teenagers more and more and act surprised when they grow up to be terrified, angry, emotionally stunted adults.

& then for some reason people fixate more on "ugh these teenagers just want to be treated like babies!!! teenagers are to blame for the rise in puritanism!!!!!" than how this is a very obvious example of ageism and the increased control over a socially vulnerable and exploited group

I think a commonly overlooked part of this coddling is that it teaches kids and teenagers to be afraid of things they don't need to be afraid of, which is exactly how they end up as "puriteens". I remember as a child being terrified to change the channel on the tv because I had ended up with the impression that seeing even seconds of an R rated movie or tv show would give me nightmares. And then as a tween every time I saw swearing I felt sick to my stomach because I had been taught such a thing is bad and harmful. I think I would have suffered less if I hadn't been raised with everyone around me acting like mature media was so bad. By the time I was a teenager I had figured out this was bunk, but understandably a lot of people don't. By making this whole system worse and stronger you have teens who have been told that seeing explicit or dark media Will Harm Them, and so they act in ways that would be appropriate if it really was the info-hazard it's implied to be.

^^ never heard anybody specifically talk about this but yeah. parents acting like sexual or any "dark" content in a story or show was going to put bad things in my head that were going to be there permanently just gave me a deeply distressing sort of contamination anxiety

image description: laminated paper sign hung up on guardrails outside. the english-language text reads: For avoiing beasts. By swing the rope, bells ring. there's an illustration of a ringing bell, which causes a bear to flee the sanguine pedestrian. /end description

"The first hour or two of okami are rough, but it gets better!" No it fucking doesn't. After defeating the water dragon, you have to sit through or skip literally half an hour of cutscenes again. The ONLY gameplay you get to do is running across one section of the map (maybe 2 if you go the long way) and a 5 minute mini boss fight. Okami is the type of game where you HAVE to click through egregious movie clip ass cutscenes or just skip them entirely. Which is too bad because it's not like the cutscenes are boring. But i CANNOT sit through 15 minutes of static characters slowly expositing the same lore we've heard 3 times already for just a couple seconds of animation that's actually fresh, pretty, or cute. I would rather rawdog code lyoko season 1 clockwork orange style than have my Activity overtaken by "sitting on your ass and absorbing information at an agonizingly slow predetermined pace." It's fucking boring.

"Look yonder!! The oni island will disappear and no one will know where it will appear next once the sun sets. And hark!! The beautiful sun setteth. Oh great god Amaterasu, goddess of the sun, my people have been terrorized by oni island, which is an island of evil beings, which is bringing evil and terrorizing our lands. Once it disappears, it will be gone forever and no one will know where it will appear next. We must act now! If we do not go to Oni Island right this second, it will disappear and no one will know where it will next appear!!! Let me initiate the fifth cutscene you've endured in the last half hour of cutscenes to remind you where you are and what you're supposed to be doing. I'm reminding you because the devs want you to pay attention. It turns out making cutscenes longer and more repetitive is a great way to handle a story based game!"

i think we are long overdue for a game that does the reverse of 90s first person shooters and actively makes fun of the player for picking the hard difficulty

#it’s so so important to remember that representation is not one-size-fits-all#what is empowering to one person might be exhausting and oppressive to someone else#some people need stories about having the strength to save themselves#some people need stories about being considered worthy of being saved#some people need inspiration for their independence while others need validation that they don’t have to be able to do everything themselves#before you lash out against something PLEASE stop to consider:#is this inadequate and/or damaging representation?#or is it just something I don’t personally relate to? [X]

It’s been half a decade and I still haven’t found an articulation of the complexity of “representation” as concisely and precisely mindblowing as @hungrylikethewolfie’s here.