Porygon Was Innocent: An epileptic perspective on the infamous Pokémon episode

&gt; I have seen many fans, in the face of being told the reason for these changes, say that it doesn’t matter because they aren’t personally epileptic. This is, as you might understand, incredibly personally frustrating, and yes, very ableist. In saying this, these fans claim that disabled people do not have a right to feel safe when watching their favorite series, and that their wellbeing doesn’t matter in comparison to a few brighter shots of teenagers using their magic powers to punch each other.<p>I don&#x27;t get it. Why is it bad wanting to see the unsafe version for yourself?<p>&gt; Over 2500 fans signed a change.org petition asking Crunchyroll to take down this edited, safe, version of the series and instead upload an unedited version that was true to the original vision—even if it had the potential to cause seizures.<p>That&#x27;s not how I read the petition in question. People are asking to get access to the original that they know exist. I can&#x27;t find a paragraph that demands deletion of the edited safe version.<p>&gt;&gt; As fans, we implore Crunchyroll to try to acquire an uncut version of the simulcast as we are paying good money each month for the services they provide.

&gt; Unlike with “Electric Soldier Porygon” the movie continued to be shown unedited in American cinemas throughout its entire run. Since the movie failed to pass the Harding Test, an alternative cut had to be shown in the UK, Ireland, and Japan. This meant that for at least two months of its theatrical run, Pixar had a safe cut they could show to English speaking American audiences and yet still chose to have the unsafe version in US cinemas.<p>Exhibit A - companies will only ever do anything if they are forced to, even if what they are doing is harmful and compliance is relatively easy.

On the other side of the coin: have a kid with epilepsy. After learning about possible effects of K448&#x2F;Mozart&#x27;s sonata in D Major, we keep a copy of it on all our phones, and it does seem to relax him when he is having a seizure.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nature.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;s41598-021-95922-7" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nature.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;s41598-021-95922-7</a><p>Always thought it was funny that the only other song they had found (up until 2021) with a similar audio signature was from &quot;Yanni Live at the Acropolis&quot;<p>Also, I found and watched the porygon episode in the last year, and it&#x27;s certainly pretty intense.

I don&#x27;t understand why in the current era we don&#x27;t have videos just post-processed by the media player &#x2F; TV. That seems like it would increase accessibility while not irritating folks who do not have epilepsy.<p>I tried to search to see if something like a plugin existed for VLC, and I didn&#x27;t find anything. Seems like it should be solvable at least if the media can be parsed ahead of time or with some delay for a live feed.

&gt; These include Absence Seizures, when a person stops what they are doing altogether, loses awareness but does not collapse or have visible convulsions; Myoclonic Seizures, when a person’s limbs suddenly jerk uncontrollably but they remain conscious and aware; and Tonic Clonic Seizures where a person loses consciousness, collapses, and their whole body convulses.<p>I&#x27;ve witnessed something that I&#x27;ve never seen described anywhere – a very similar thing to an &#x27;absence seizure&#x27;, but the person is still aware and responding but seem unable to break away from the empty stare even when they try.

Okay strong &quot;forbidden fruit&quot; vibes here; I had the strongest compulsion to look up that scene on youtube. It&#x27;s <i>very</i> unpleasant to watch, at least to me. No wonder this gave people seizures.

I think the author’s tone in the article causes more damage to the cause than good.<p>Even if you are right, you don’t ever win the hearts and minds of anyone when your argument comes off as entitled or deserving.<p>The mockery that OP refers to is the direct result of the tone that the author uses. Mocking the other side is how you get mockery back. Then you have to write an article about being mocked.

Serious question for epileptics. Are those failed LED flashing street lights an issue? I feel like they must be. Even to me they can be disorientating at night when the one flashing lamp on the exit ramp is the main light source.

The mechanics of the human optical system are absolutely wild, and the abstraction many have of &quot;the eye just gathers pixels and sends them to the brain to interpret&quot; is just wrong.<p>One of the most fascinating things to me about virtual reality was the discovery that we can mitigate VR nausea by giving people temporary &quot;tunnel vision&quot; when they are repositioned in space without their bodies being moved in the real world. For a significant percentage of users, it&#x27;s the motion in the peripheral vision that leads to the gross dissociative-body nausea, and simply cutting off that stimulus helps significantly. And for other people, it doesn&#x27;t!

“ I have seen many fans, in the face of being told the reason for these changes, say that it doesn’t matter because they aren’t personally epileptic. This is, as you might understand, incredibly personally frustrating, and yes, very ableist. In saying this, these fans claim that disabled people do not have a right to feel safe when watching their favorite series, and that their wellbeing doesn’t matter”<p>Or simply that if there is a warming, it’s your OWN choice to Watch it or not.<p>If I get a migraine from the colour yellow, should it then be banned from television? Seems a bit weird, no?

Gee this seems like an actual useful feature to build into smart TVs.

I thought it was common knowledge that Pikachu was the culprit.

For more context: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Denn%C5%8D_Senshi_Porygon" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Denn%C5%8D_Senshi_Porygon</a><p>The Wikipedia article also has the scene that you can watch at your own risk.

&gt; <i>I have seen many fans, in the face of being told the reason for these changes, say that it doesn’t matter because they aren’t personally epileptic. This is, as you might understand, incredibly personally frustrating, and yes, very ableist. In saying this, these fans claim that disabled people do not have a right to feel safe when watching their favorite series, and that their wellbeing doesn’t matter in comparison to a few brighter shots of teenagers using their magic powers to punch each other.</i><p>As a person who&#x27;s never had a seizure, and who doesn&#x27;t want to find out the hard way that I&#x27;m vulnerable, nor have anyone vulnerable be harmed, I get angry at filmmakers who throw in rapid strobe light scenes.<p>(Secondarily, it even happens in non-action movies, so you can get the sudden strobe lighting when you&#x27;re just watching a movie at night, in a dimmed living room, to wind down from the day before bed.)<p>It&#x27;s often a nightclub scene, but most recently it was a fight scene with gratuitous strobe light.<p>The strobing is usually a surprise, as evidenced by the startled note to my initial curse word.<p>An engineer solution would be to make a software filter that operates on video playback in real time.<p>A lawyer solution would be to wait for someone&#x27;s family to be devastated, then sue the perpetrator so hard that US companies start caring.<p>A social media mob solution would be to downvote punish movies that did this, then go through the credits, and downvote all the other properties in which those people are involved.<p>A human solution would be for people to be more considerate and responsible.

It seems to be something of an urban legend that the original Pokemon seizure clip was subsequently <i>rebroadcasted</i> by Japanese news stations in the immediate aftermath of the first broadcast, thus increasing the number of impacted viewers. I can&#x27;t find any source backing that claim, though, in the Wikipedia article.

&gt; In Japan, the stricter rules for passing the Harding Test have resulted in techniques known as “dimming” and “ghosting”.<p>These are also used in the UK, and in fact are automatically applied to video going through the broadcast chain, in order that live broadcasts are also considered &quot;safe&quot;. If the system detects bright flashing at any point, the white point of the video is clamped down to a lower level, until the flashing has stopped.

Is it possible to program a look ahead filter that detects too much sudden change across a window of frames and blanks it or somehow stifles it?

I’m glad they bring up the techniques of ghosting and others to pass the Harding test, and the outcry from western audiences about it. Because personally, I find the diminishing of the animation quality really distracting during those hype scenes.<p>I wish we could find some solution where we distribute the epileptic-safe versions alongside the unsafe ones and users could choose.

It&#x27;s unfortunate that there doesn&#x27;t seem to be a free open source version of the harding scanner that flags possible sequences that could be triggering in this way. Or probably I&#x27;m just searching wrong.

&gt; In an ideal world, the animators in 1997 should absolutely have been aware of the risk using flashing lights could cause, but in reality, their ignorance is understandable.<p>Cmon, just 600 out of 7 million people experienced this. You have my sympathy but we can’t take every imaginable condition into account and make it a legal requirement. Just today i’ve read that Costco called back all their butter to destroy it because they forgot to print that butter contains milk. It’s getting absurd.

An interesting viewpoint. And from it, a good example of how failure can be positive -- even when it hurts.

I really resent the use of “unsuitable for some viewers” in story arcs. Is someone with epilepsy just supposed to watch the rest of the series with a hole in the middle of the story? Why even do that. Tell the writers to fuck right off and try again.