>>2868646I didn't mention a need. I just meant that very often, I'll be watching an animated show and I'll see a character with a compelling character design, and I'll often get confused on wether or not I'm sexually attracted to him, or if I just like, find him cute. But then I'll go online and see that people straight up do find him hot, even for characters where I just don't get it. I'm 29 so not all that young anymore and I'm seeing a therapist, I just wanted to see what others on here thought.
On some level I can't help but think antis have a point, that we sexualize stuff a bit too directly, but I also realize it can come from a place of dealing with frustration most of us felt in our youth, repressed sexuality, and that it really doesn't normalize shit as much as they say (that's what the mainstream does, not niche crap, the mainstream needs to adapt, and the niche crap must be properly hidden from children).
I especially don't get their argument when it comes to characters that look "grown up" even if they're like teens in canon. I once went into an argument with someone over wether or not it was ok to make porn of botw Link. I tried to explain to them that age in cases like this is given arbitrarily, that the designs are ambiguous enough and close enough to adulthood it's really no big deal, but no, apparently it was pedoshit. That fucked me up for a while. Again on some level I agree that it's probably worth thinking over why we eroticize youth and stuff, and yeah anime and other media should probably slow down on making teens seem like the ultimate fantasy, but at the same time there's so much worse shit than fanmade porn of what looks like an adult, stuff that I find legit disgusting, that really it just seems like they're sex-repulsed, have had experiences with creeps in their youth, and are just over scrutinizing everything and harrassing people over it who just want to have their specific little fun with the idea of characters and their designs.