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I agree that DDLC was well-written, and that people are going to like things that are well-written better than things that aren't. I'm also not using the word "art" to say that a creative work is necessarily good. There's a lot of bad art out there, and a lot of it's lazy or empty, but a lot of it did involve effort/love/etc even if things didn't work out.

My reason for talking about the reaction I had to DDLC is just, harm is complicated! DDLC was actually really bad for my mental health. I'm not trying to be special, I played the game and then was triggered for days. It is a pretty clear-cut case of being harmed by exposure to a piece of media, and I'm not the only one who had this reaction. But a lot of other mentally ill people liked the game and found it meaningful, and they would be harmed if it was taken away for being harmful to others, and the writer would've been harmed by being prevented from or harassed for telling his story, and any mentally ill people who wanted to create works with similar elements would've been put in a position where they might feel like they had to choose between giving up or dealing with an amount of hostility they may not be equipped to handle, and that's definitely harmful, too. It's a mess, and there's no way to make sure nobody gets hurt. And it seems like you know this, because you're not writing DDLC off for having badly fucked with some people's heads. I don't think you should write it off, it clearly has value to people, but elsewhere in this conversation you're talking about harm as if it's very black and white and it really isn't.

(+3)

I understand this a lot better and get your point completely, this cleared some stuff up and helped me get more clarity on what you meant. I wasn’t trying to invalidate your feelings about you not liking DDLC, it’s a reasonable reaction to not like something you don’t feel like represents you properly and I think people will have a different reaction to all sorts of things, depression or suicidal ideations or anything besides that everyone is going to have a difference of opinion and not share the exact same sentiments 24/7 and that much I completely understand. I’m going to have disagree with the harm thing however, I don’t think it’s all black and white and good and bad, I see both the bad and the good in both games and I’m not saying either are the most accurate portrayals and even if they were, to some, like you said, they couldn’t be to them. I’m not saying DDLC hasn’t hurt anyone but it’s just kinda rare that I see anyone say it did, which is why I had my initial reaction to what you had said. I’m just behind the standpoint that I don’t think you should be preaching how people should release bad games about suicidal ideation and bad representations of mental health to profit off of when we’re already a very stigmatized and misunderstood group of people, and I think that viewpoint is harmful. There is pros and cons to a lot of games that deal with this, but I don’t think you should have this mentality when we do not need more of this out in the world when we’ve been treated like monsters and freaks because of it historically for hundreds of years and I think reinforcing the stereotype that people should continue to make bad games about us and not doing any research to approach a sensitive topic is not a very good take.