It depends on the panel, but what if you don’t agree with age ratings board decisions and think it’s OK to bring your kid, shouldn’t their parent do the parenting? And why should it make anyone uncomfortable?
They aren’t doing the parenting, they are just making things awkward for everyone else attending who agrees with the ratings board decision that that kind of content is not for kids.
I mean lots of things can make things “awkward” for some people that shouldnt be banned - disabilities of all kinds, holding hands with a same sex partner, piercings/tattoos, blue hair, short skirts, farting, pregnant women, in some countries having your hair/shoulders/face/cleavage out…
Some people think kids shouldn’t be exposed to Harry Potter, D&D, rock music, seeing people drink alcohol…
I just don’t think it’s that big a deal.
This is such a shitty comparison lol
In fairness I haven’t seen the show, I’m seeing a lot of parents say it’s for 13+ teens, and some say 8+.
It has swearing and jokes about sex. I was raised in a household where I couldn’t say “Damn,” “Fart,” or “Ass.” Two close friends of mine don’t care if their 6 year olds say “fuck.” And honestly, it seems like they have a closer relationship to their kids than I do to my parents (I love them and care for them, but our mode of communication is pretty formal).
Also, I was watching Urotsukidoji, Battle Angel Alita, The Guyver around 11-13 years which is probably way worse.
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)
Wouldn’t a kid just not understand what’s happening though? We’ve all experienced watching something again as an adult and being like “ohhhhh THAT’s what it’s about.”
And/or most kids recognize “this character is doing something bad,” even if they don’t understand the context, aren’t we just talking another satanic panic here? Like how it was false alleged CoD or D&D makes kids into serial killers.
Make a rule at the conventioans and prevent them from entering …?
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.
Wait, you think they care if the teenagers get in? We’re talking about the elementary school kids.
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.
Yeah, at the end of the day though you have to set realistic expectations and if you can’t round up the staff with that then you can’t have it. Trying to card check everyone coming into the room would just take too long.