Oooo, trying to spin this so you don’t take a hit in the ol’ ego? Good luck with that. Though there is something delecious about someone who clearly doesn’t have a clue what they’re talking about being this confident while being so very, very wrong. Its like some kind of delightful tonic for the soul…

The point of full auto is to improve hit probability, not increase lethality. There absolutely is a multiround bonus, and 3rnd burst used by every major military for this exact reason.

The amount of helium produced is truly miniscule, in the order of a few cubic centimeters. They’ll just pump it into the ground somewhere, assuming we ever get fusion working

“I̡̖̝͔̯͌̄̈́ ̧̙̮̈̈́H̥̫̭͈̖̐̆̒̂̓̾A̼͚̘̦̼͂͌̇͒̏̌͝Ṽ̡̡͙͙͌́̽Ȩ̮̝̪̞͖̍͆̋͋̄̒͝ͅ ̳̙͝R̥͕̱̠̱̈̈́͜I͎͒͌̋͗̈̑͜͝S̨͙̻͍̺̟̾Ẹ̳̖̖̼̥̊̓̆Ǹ̡̳͍̏͒͛̉̃̀,̳̅̋͑ ̡̡̠̗͈́͑̌A̡̧̛̦͛̅̎̄͒͂Ṅ̨͕͈͍͎͆̑̕D̻̑̾̔̊̉͊̚ͅ ̧̳̙̳͗̈́͊͊̓͝Ḭ̻̗̻̥̙͉̀̒̂͛̈́ ̢̡̯͖̩̻͍͛D̰͔͇͉̪̆E̛̝̻͇͚̼̤͗̊̑̀͋͜M͕̯̠͎̳͌͛͐͒̋͑Ä̹̺̥̤́̓̾̕N̝͎̓̓̆͋͐D͇̺̮̠̏͊̌͐̍̚͠.͓̼̰̈́͛̈̈͊.̺͎͖̰͔̻̇̂̉̈́̌.̢̮̣͖̳͖̜́͌ ̫̰̗͋P͔͗̑͆O̳͛͌̂̎̀Ṅ̦̣͖̭Ḭ̱̖̊̂Ė̛̠̺̭̓̉Ś̞͔͍̠̟͓̦̿̈́̆”

But for a child that is ready, who wants to know, what I mean to find out is why you would reject them.

Ah, I see. While I think you’ve got a really rose tinted view of childhood that very much is at odds with what I understand childhood development to look like, that’s probably just because I’m a very jaded removed. But that said, I’ve been under the impression you think it should be the job of panelists or strangers to educate children. If we’re talking about a child I know, that I could reasonably judge would be able to understand the concepts and not be freaked out by them, then sure that would be fine.

But there is no way for me to judge that about somebody else’s kid - and it’s ridiculous that someone would think other people should be comfortable being forced into that situation (ie, the people bringing their children to these kinds of panels). I’m sure glad their parents might think they’re ready to face concepts from Paw Patrol After Dark, but so many parents are just neglectful bastards, or assume that their kids are ready for mature topics when they are clearly not. Hazbin isn’t exactly ‘toybox killer tapes’ levels of fucked up, but it’s certainly got some content that could really mess up a kid’s perspective of the world if they weren’t careful, and those topics are absolutely discussed at panels like this, hence why the panelists in question are uncomfortable having children in the audience.

I guess my point here is that while I do broadly agree with your point, and that I am (and even have been in the past) perfectly comfortable talking to kids about my scars (most of them now just emotional, yay), I’m not comfortable talking to every/any kid about that, and that’s been what I’ve understood you to be arguing in favor of. Sorry for that!

(Imo, the role of a parent should be to regulate when self-directed discovery should be and is encouraged, and when it should be curtailed until the child in question is ready to experience a given topic. A difficult line to walk, yes, but a pretty important one. Children are notoriously bad judges of what they are actually ready for, and you can’t build up an immunity to emotional trauma Dread Pirate Roberts style…)

Real question here, you ever worked with any children, or is this idealism? Because the idea that a child could have the relevant background to understand the nuanced motivations of characters in these situations is pretty… well depressing, if we assume that all children are going to have that background.

As an illustrative example, children’s media. It isn’t simplistic because we’re condescending, it’s simplistic because its both to explain simple, fundemental concepts and becasue that’s what kids enjoy. They can relate to it, because it addresses concepts that they have the intellectual capacity and prerequisite understanding to be able to relate to it. This is childhood education at its heart.

I don’t want to explain concpets that most actual adults cant understand, or even discuss in a mature way, to a child. People use “you’ll understand when your older” all too often as an excuse to brush aside questions they just don’t want to take the time to explain, but sometimes it’s because explaining “I hated myself so much I didn’t care what happened with my body which is why I have all these scars that spell out words you hopefully dont know yet on my chest/legs/back” isn’t something a child can understand. And thank fuck for that.

I’m not saying kids shouldn’t watch it, though imo they shouldn’t, just that there’s no way I would be comfortable discussing it around a kid.

I think the danger is not in children understanding it, its that they’ll misunderstand it, and with some topics you want to be careful to ensure a kid has the right background context to understand it.

hell, given this political cycle I barely remember who that is. “The guy from fifty horrifying headlines ago” doesn’t stick around as much as you’d hope, at a certain age…

Hell, I’m setting up a vote buying site right now to capitalize on the sentiment. Course I have exactly 0 reddit bots, but hey I can just tell the conservatives that the gay librul mafia has been buying votes too to cancel them out, right?

Uh… yeah, actually, it does. Being able to admit ignorance or fault, even begrudgingly, is an often insurmountable obstacle in any human interaction.

I’m not doing this to win an argument or something similar. I’m doing this to explain a topic that’s important to me, to someone that can negatively impact said topic by jumping to conclusions. Conclusions which, to anyone not familiar with the topic, would appear totally reasonable. Even though in this case we’re even in agreement, knowing the complexities of a topic is important to growth and understanding as an individual.

Eeh, more complicated than that. Enforcing age restrictions is an obnoxiously complex issue, even though by all reasonable measures it shouldn’t be.

The #1 priority of a con is protecting its panelists & volunteers, and while keeping the panelists comfortable is a critical aspect, enforcement of the conditions they need for adult panels can be a logistical nightmare. It’s why so many cons are moving away from having any adult oriented panels at all, and it’s really sad to see that the most reasonable solution is to just not have them.

You should, it’s damn good! The sister show, Helluva Boss, is free on youtube and is quite different but also very good and I highly recommend it. (Heads up, Hazbin’s pilot episode is canon and plot critical and on youtube and is not included with the rest of the show, which is on prime video. Watch that first!)

Yeah and in the same sentence I apologized for being excessively glib. Come on. How would you have preferred I say this, “Hey you really painfully clearly don’t know what you’re talking about, here’s why you’re wrong”?. While that’s obviously a sarcastic extreme we both know that any other approach I took that contradicted what you were saying would have lead to the same hyperdefensive redoubling of your positions that you’re doing right now. You’re even still obsessing about saying ‘consent is important’, when it’s got nothing to do with the discussion at hand here. I’m sure glad you know the word, but what does it mean? Genuinely, sincerely, explain your point to me. Because right now it appears to be “Conventions shouldn’t have adult panels if they’re unwilling to police the age of the participants to ensure their panelists are comfortable” and yeah, no shit sherlock. That’s why we don’t have very many adult panels. Wanna know what the challenges to ensuring consent / comfort are? Read my earlier post where I elaborated on the topic and apologized for initially dismissing your comment.

Jesus fucking christ, while ignorance isn’t shameful, choosing to stay ignorant because of your ego sure fucking is.

I think you may be overestimating the size of room most convention speakers address. 2m from panelist to front row of audience is normal.

… I’m sorry, you’re attacking my argument based on what you think I might have said? And you’re continuing to belittle me/my attempt to actually engage with you on the topic at hand because…?

Just a guess here:

You really don’t know anything about this topic and you’re responding both defensively and very insultingly because you treat a response that is even mildly critical as personal attack, as the realization that you don’t really understand the topic at hand causes you to cement your prior position (since we as a species don’t easily admit fault) and because casting yourself as fundamentally superior to the person you disagree with not only helps with the aforesaid cementing but also allows you to assuage the feeling of insecurity that comes with the also aforesaid realization of fault by giving yourself a sense of reassuringly fundamental supremacy over those who might cause you to suffer the mental anguish of self-reflection?

That’s the only way I can figure out how you’d feel justified in making a comment that is both rude and plainly shows you misunderstood what you’re responding to. Lmfao, I agree with you. I even say that in the comment you’re replying to. Calm down.

I’m getting the feeling there’s a bit of dunning-kruger going on here, and that it was unfair of me to be quite so glib about this in my initial comment. A short overview of why it’s Not That Simple:

There’s the huge issue of both ‘volunteer personal liability’ and ‘convention liability for enforcement.’ You can’t have your volunteers handling 250-500-1000 people’s IDs (one hazbin panel was in a 2000 seat room and still overflowed whoops), and the con really doesn’t want to take on the liability that would come with enforcing ID checks. It’s why cons with beer gardens have outside (usually facility-provided) staff to manage them, they don’t just use their own crew, you actually need training to deal with that. And then, if the con is enforcing age requirements they open themselves up to be sued for failing to enforce it (and causing ‘emotional distress’ to a panel viewer that was uncomfortable, this is a real example I had to deal with, it was even more stupid than it sounds) or lawsuits for unfair discrimination when someone who looks 14, but is in fact 20, is denied entry by a frazzled and overworked volunteer.

And then logistically: you don’t want your volunteers fielding all the complaints at the door, people won’t be able to get in or you’ll run out of volunteers. This isn’t a concert venue or a club, these things are huge and are the most complex crowd management scenarios that exist after Disney World. There’s no expansion of a line like you get with security checks outside of panel rooms because convention centers are designed to make movement of people from spaces as efficient as possible. Introducing artificial bottlenecks into spaces like that will not only impede foot traffic and violate fire codes, it can be actively dangerous. Introducing excessive foot traffic for avenues not designed to handle peak loads like that sets up a perfect crush situation, and it absolutely has to be discussed with the venue beforehand to see if it’s even legal.

These aren’t insurmountable problems, but they are large problems that come on top of a million other ones. A convention’s resources are much better spent managing problems, not creating new (and potentially very severe) ones for themselves.

One of the main characters in hazbin is an anthropomorphic spider prostitute porn star drug addict named “angel dust” who is in a very graphic emotionally, physically and sexually abusive relationship with the porn studio director that’s exploiting them, and one of his major themes is why he hates himself for liking being treated like that.

While not the most graphic show Ive seen (despite multiple onscreen dismemberments), it’s easily the most adult oriented cartoon/anime I’ve watched. It’s certainly not geared for children and I would be extremely uncomfortable having a conversation about why people stay with their abusers with a kid. It’s not me being prudish, its that it requires a fuckload of societal context that most adults don’t have in order to be able to discuss it in anything like a mature way, and I don’t want to have to explain things like “the gray areas around coercion and nonconsensual sex” to someone else’s kid in a panel setting. It’s going to be as uncomfortable for them as it is for me when we get to, say, “self harm as expressed through consenting to sexual abuse”.

Thats an easier to explain example, and it’s certainly a conversation you should have with your kids when they’re old enough, but thats just one example out of many. I certainly don’t want to have to explain the 2000 years of real-world religious bloodshed being evoked with lines like “if hell is forever then that means heaven’s a lie” to a kid, either.

(Not to harp on about it, but the scene with angel trying to get charlie out of the studio before valentino notices her is such an accurate portrayal of living with an abuser that it regularly triggers people’s PTSD, and that commonly comes up at hazbin panels. You might have been watching Urotsukidoji as a kid, but I really doubt you were reading Lolita or The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo)

Even at the bigger cons which have enough staff to police it, it’s a damned difficult thing to do. You can’t card everyone at the door, panel rooms have to be turned over as quickly as possible (and you can’t force that kind of liability onto your volunteers), people are in costume or just look really young, and that’s even ignoring the seemingly infinite technical issues that every convention is plagued with, etc. etc.

Not saying you’re wrong, it’s just not as simple as “telling them they can’t”. The kind of people that would bring their kid to a hazbin panel aren’t the kind of people that will give a shit about the inconvenient convention rules in the first place.

Which brings me to my suggested solution: Make a rule about it and give every volunteer a cattle prod.

Seriously, last ECCC someone tried to bring their kids in to the late-night ‘how to photograph models in latex’ panel. I just can’t imagine what it must be like to be a person who not only thinks that’s a fine idea (it was even listed as 18+ only) but thinks it’s such a fine idea they should spend a solid five minutes angrily arguing with a volunteer about it.

(good panel though!)