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shihalyfie · 3 years ago

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Frontier’s relationship with Super Sentai

Frontier is well-known -- and by well-known, I mean the staff has literally admitted it -- to be based off of Toei’s tokusatsu series Super Sentai. But what is Super Sentai, anyway? If anything, most people in the West probably know it as the original basis for Power Rangers (and Power Rangers will probably be their only real understanding of non-kaiju tokusatsu). But that doesn’t really have a lot in common with Frontier, does it? Well, you might be surprised.

Let’s take a look at Super Sentai as it’s known in Japan, and its relationship to Frontier and Digimon as a whole!

Much thanks to @digitalgate02, @demonoflight, and my other tokusatsu consultants who assisted in the making of this post.

So what is Super Sentai anyway, and how is it different from Power Rangers?

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I don’t want to assume what people reading this post know and don’t know beforehand, but I at least imagine readers of this blog are more likely to be familiar with Power Rangers. Power Rangers’ relationship to Super Sentai is that it’s the American adaptation of Sentai, but the word “adaptation” is a bit loose here. More specifically, it uses the suits, character designs, and battle footage from a given Sentai series, but exactly how closely it follows the premise of the original Sentai it’s “based” on will vary, and in many cases (including with the original Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers), it won’t even remotely resemble the original premise at all.

Generally speaking, the main differences between Super Sentai and Power Rangers are:

While it’s not to say Power Rangers doesn’t have some degree of camp, Super Sentai takes the camp and marinates itself in it. Dramatic poses, over-the-top surrealist humor, explosions for no good reason, personal catchphrases, excessively noisy talking toys, and basically trying to be as outrageously silly as possible. In fact, Sentai series that don’t go hard enough on these factors often get criticized as “too bland”/“not fun enough”. A lot of these factors end up getting toned down in the transition to Power Rangers to give it more of a “cool” image (case in point, Power Rangers exists in the first place because Haim Saban thought Sentai was “weird”), and it’s to the point where certain Sentai series with “absurd” enough premises like ToQger and Kiramager are suspected to be impossible to market as Power Rangers because the Western market will consider them too cheesy.

Most Sentai characters are adults (canonically adults, not just adults acting as teenagers). This means they often have the degree of societal freedom adults have, and, on the flip side, it means the series can often be more active about putting its characters through harsher plot events, up to and including permanently killing them off. This doesn’t happen as much in modern Sentai series, but it did happen with enough frequency in the past that Power Rangers (which is significantly more shy about killing characters off) would run into problems because they would run out of footage for a character whose counterpart had died in the original Sentai.

While there are still plenty of Sentai series with normal humans on its teams, Sentai will generally be more willing to have more outlandish premises for its background characters, such as ancient warriors emerging from suspended animation, angels, alien pirates, furries people from a race of humanoid animals, actual robots, and more. It also means it can have a lot more variation in premise; for instance, Kyuranger takes place entirely in interplanetary travel, and doesn’t touch on Earth very much.

Individual Sentai rangers will have names specific to their series; for example, Zyuranger’s Red is named “TyrannoRanger”, while Gokaiger’s Red is “Gokai Red”. Modern series will also often give them longer one-sentence titles to use during their roll call; for example, “The Sparkling Inspiration, Kiramai Red”. (Frontier’s “this Digivice will purify you” lines are probably somewhat meant as a callback to these.) In line with Sentai being very deliberately campy, the roll call is almost always dramatic and drawn-out, with a group pose, sometimes even a group title, and occasionally an explosion.

While Power Rangers did eventually concede to following Sentai’s take on it to some degree, barring minor things like crossover movies and special series, every Sentai series has had its own distinct premise and a change of cast since the very beginning, in contrast to Power Rangers which tried to have multiple separate Sentai series be adapted into one single continuity for several years. (This caused infamous trouble when the ninja-themed series Kakuranger and the absurdist comedy Carranger had premises and tones that were extremely incompatible with the other series Power Rangers was working with at the time, leading to the Power Rangers works based on Kakuranger and Carranger being extremely controversial.)

While this happens more with Sentai’s sister series, Kamen Rider, Sentai is considered enough of a cultural touchstone in Japan that actors will often be booked for it as a stepping stone to get more exposure and eventually break into the industry. While it does have a bit of kids’ show stigma, it’s still a staple of Japanese pop culture (as is tokusatsu as a whole), and so it doesn’t have nearly as heavy of a “weird corny kids’ show stigma” that Power Rangers unfortunately still has.

More broadly, tokusatsu is a genre that’s just very well known and accepted in Japan in general. The definition of tokusatsu is any series that relies mostly on practical effects in live-action, including rubber and spandex suits, and beyond just Super Sentai and Kamen Rider, there’s competitor company Tsuburaya’s Ultraman, and kaiju (giant monster) franchises like Godzilla, and even tons of other Sentai- and Rider-like transforming hero shows that most people in the West have probably never heard of (GARO and Kikaider, anyone?). The advent of CGI has made tokusatsu come off as “cheesy” in the modern era, meaning most of it has been relegated to the kids’ show arena, but nevertheless, it’s a genre with a rich and long history. And, of course, because it’s focused more on being bright, absurdist, and fun, it often has a lot of the same absurd “cartoonishness” you’d get from animated series -- which means it actually has a lot of influence on animated kids’ shows, especially Toei shows, despite not actually being anime itself.

Sentai’s influence on Japanese kids’ shows, on Toei works, and on Digimon as a whole

Super Sentai has been running continuously, with virtually no significant breaks, since 1975. In that sense, it’s probably one of Toei’s most historically successful franchises ever (its sister series, Kamen Rider, is probably a bit more culturally prominent in the long run, but it also suffered a long break between its Showa and Heisei periods). Every single year comes with a new premise and a new Sentai team, meaning that a vague set of tropes common to most Sentai series is embedded harder in the public memory than any one specific Sentai series.

And, of course, Sentai is a Toei series. It’s by their live-action department instead of their animation department, but nevertheless, Sentai has shaped a lot of Toei’s kids show formats and style. Even Sailor Moon exists in the form it does now because of Sentai; it would have been an anime adaptation of Sailor V if it hadn’t been for discussions about making a Sentai-like team of magical girls (which means that, by proxy, it influenced every other “magical girl team” series that followed it). Moreover, Digimon shares a lot of staff with Sentai; most prominently, 02 head writer Maekawa Atsushi went on to be the head writer for the very well-acclaimed Mahou Sentai Magiranger, regular Adventure/02/Tamers episode writer Urasawa Yoshio was the head writer for Gekisou Sentai Carranger, and Xros Wars head writer Sanjou Riku was the head writer for Zyuden Sentai Kyoryuger (and this is even before we start getting into the shared individual episode screenwriters). In fact, 02 even referenced it for fun in episode 42 (note that “Sentai” is the Japanese word for “squadron”):

The reason these shows have so much in common is that Sentai’s precedent actually had a massive influence on Toei’s original children’s shows, including Digimon. In fact, a lot of what Western Digimon fans considered to be unique to Digimon, or difficult to get used to from a Western perspective, had been done by Sentai for years already:

Most significantly, the sheer concept of changing up the cast, premise, and tone every year had basically been standard form for Sentai (and of course, not just Sentai, but also other Japanese children’s shows from other companies, like Ultraman) for decades. The idea that the story you're watching will be wrapped up in a year was already a well-understood concept by that point, as well as the fact it allows a franchise to have more variety instead of beating a dead horse of a concept over and over. In fact, even the nomenclature of referring to different Sentai/Digimon/etc. series as “seasons” is a very American-tinted concept, because they’re not treated as seasons of the same show in Japan, but legally registered and acknowledged as distinct series that happen to be part of the same franchise (and considering the premise changes every year, it’s probably a more accurate way of describing it anyway).

The idea that the core group of protagonists will fundamentally be a team with each member on an equal level, and the idea that there would be specific “focus episodes” focusing on a given character or given relationship, is often thought by Western Digimon fans to be something that was codified by Adventure, but in actuality it’s been a staple of Sentai since long before then (and has also shown up in Toei’s other shows like PreCure). Debates about whether the Red’s been getting too much focus this year have characterized the Sentai fandom for ages.

Even certain tropes like “the red hot-blooded leader and the blue cool-headed rival” are heavily immersed in public memory thanks to Sentai.

The “sixth (not always sixth) ranger” -- the idea of having a solidifed near-equal group for most of the series, and then throwing a wrench in it halfway through with a new character who joins the group, often having turned from the antagonist side -- was of course made very popular by Sentai (and, of course, it being carried over into Power Rangers made it popular in the West as well).

Digimon’s way of using insert songs takes several cues from the way Sentai does it (and thanks to Sentai’s very luxurious budget, it has a ton of insert songs per series -- basically imagine 02 or Xros Wars level, except every year). In fact, most of the Xros Wars insert songs are sung by vocalists who usually sing for Sentai.

While Digimon and Sentai are, of course, still very different series in the end, you can see that a lot of the rough writing style consistent to many Toei series is based on the fact Sentai has had success with that kind of thing for decades.

Sentai and Frontier

Frontier is definitely the Digimon series with the most fundamentally derivative premise, being the only one to have human kids transform directly into Digimon (somewhat contrary to the base Digimon concept of having a human “raise” Digimon). It’s also infamously made Frontier a very hard sell for people who aren’t familiar with it, mainly because of concerns about the lack of partners, but one thing I notice is that the complaint “the idea of humans turning into Digimon is weird” comes up far more in the West than it does in Japan. This is just my personal speculation, but I think it’s because Japanese kids’ media is simply just no stranger to having human characters transform into inhuman heroes on the regular. Ultraman’s been running since 1966 and revolves around humans turning into giant silver aliens. The original Kamen Rider involved a modified cyborg, and in fact, many Sentai and Rider and other similar tokusatsu series treat the transformed form as not just humans in powerful suits, but a manifestation of them actually physically transforming into something. Of course, the West does still have things like that like the Hulk or Ben 10, but usually they come with a heaping of angst about the potential loss of humanity, whereas the idea of “yeah, that’s just part of the premise, roll with it and don’t worry about it” is a lot more common in Japanese works.

(Incidentally, there are actually some Sentai series where the team members will have their own “partners” similar to Digimon, usually in the form of cute robot mascots. Ironically, Power Rangers seems to dislike these, and they usually phase them out to be inanimate or feral in their adaptations, with Beast Morphers being a notable exception most likely due to how unavoidably prominent the Buddyroids were in Go-Busters’ plot. Power Rangers RPM infamously mocked the “big googly anime eyes” on the cars that originally came from Go-Onger’s versions being actual distinct characters.)

Frontier is a series from 2002, so it’s interesting in that the “Sentai” it took huge inspiration from is already very different from the “Sentai” we know now (more on this later). A lot of what Frontier takes cues from are tropes that were more common to the Showa era of Sentai, or the early 90′s works, and some of them were even on their way out by the time Frontier aired (but still well-known in the memory of the adult staff making the series).

There are at least two things that were more associated with Sentai back in 2002 than they are now:

While there are still Sentai teams with five or more members in total with only one being female, having two female members is generally considered more of the modern standard, but back when Frontier was being produced, there was outright pressure to not exceed one girl in a five-person group (for a series made for boys). This is actually the reason Adventure starts off with seven characters; they wanted more than one girl on the team, so in order to maintain a high ratio of boys to girls, they had to make a group as big as seven (no word on why this didn’t apply to 02). At the time, Sentai series with more than one girl on a five-person team were very rare -- this is something Power Rangers was a lot more diligent about from the very beginning -- but, ironically, right after Frontier finished airing, having two girls on a five-person team started becoming a Sentai staple. If Frontier had aired only a few years later, it’s possible there might have been another girl besides Izumi.

In one really unfortunate factor that hasn’t aged well at all, the idea of Junpei being the “fat character” is something that comes straight from early Sentai, where it would be a stereotypical trope where the yellow ranger would be a comedic fat character who loves eating (the archetype example being curry, coming from the very first series, Goranger). This was already on its way out by the time Frontier aired -- in fact, no Sentai series that aired after Frontier actually does this -- but for anyone who was an adult at the time Frontier aired, it was a well-known trope, and it’s why the Persona series also describes it in its Jetman parody. Despite some unfortunate things having been considered about Junpei’s weight back during development and during an interview in 2003, in a possible reflection of the times, Junpei’s finalized character arc in Frontier is already far more tasteful than the usual invocations of the trope (in that it treats him mostly like any other character and focuses more on his friendmaking abilities and practical intelligence), and the 2019 drama CD offhandedly mentions his weight without making a huge deal about it, so while your mileage may vary on how tastefully the final product came off as, it’s definitely far, far better than it really could have been given context.

The Sentai series that Frontier most obviously takes after is Kyoryu Sentai Zyuranger, which aired in 1992 (ten years before Frontier aired). Rather fortuitously, it also happens to be the series that was adapted into the original Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers -- but in Japan, Zyuranger has some cultural significance besides just happening to be the first series that got localized off in the West.

For some context, Sentai was actually on the verge of dying the year before, resulting in Zyuranger’s predecessor, Jetman, adding a ton of soap opera tropes and saving the franchise by getting the support of a lot of soap opera lovers into it. (Jetman is the one Persona references for its “Featherman” Sentai parody.) Nevertheless, the fact remained that Sentai had been doing poorly because people were a bit tired of how repetitive it was getting. Prior to Zyuranger, every Sentai series had a bit of a “sci-fi enhanced secret agent” plot, and so Zyuranger decided to change things up by being the first Sentai series with a more fantasy-oriented plot, allowing for Sentai to more drastically reinvent itself thereafter. Thus, the Zyurangers are warriors from ancient tribes who went into suspended animation to be ready when threats resurfaced in the modern day. Hmm, that sounds a bit familiar, doesn’t it?

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The biggest dead giveaway that Frontier mostly takes from Zyuranger, however, is the fact that series producer Seki outright stated that Kouichi’s position as an enemy-turned-ally sibling of a major character was a Sentai-inspired element. When you look for which Sentai had this, it turns out Kouichi’s character story is a blatant callback to Zyuranger’s Burai. DragonRanger, Burai, was the long-separated older brother of TyrannoRanger Geki, with Geki having been taken away by the Yamato Tribe's royal family right after he was born. Burai fostered jealousy for his younger brother and followed him in suspended animation to take revenge. After Geki learned that Burai was his brother, the two reconciled, but Burai learned that he was already dead and on limited time, and spends his last moments giving his powers to his brother before he dies...wait, wow, this is really familiar, isn't it?

(Fortunately, Kouichi survives, but Burai wasn’t nearly as lucky.)

Burai was Sentai’s first example of a “sixth ranger” in the form we currently know the trope as, and just like his counterpart Tommy Oliver over in Power Rangers, the character inspired immense popularity and led to tons of other media, Sentai or otherwise, making use of the trope. Of course, Adventure and 02 had already used it in the form of Hikari and Ken, but Kouichi is such a blatant callback to the original Burai himself that it isn’t even subtle.

Modern Sentai

At this point we’re at a bit of a digression, but as I said before, as of this writing, Super Sentai has been running continuously since 1975, and that includes after Frontier’s time and well into the modern era. This means Sentai itself has already changed a lot in both style and in public perception. As I mentioned earlier, a lot of what people know Sentai for now wasn’t as much of a thing back when Frontier aired twenty years ago, so Frontier was based on a version of Sentai that doesn’t quite exist in the same way it does now. So what is Sentai now? What’s changed, and what hasn’t?

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Well, it’s still running. Several things have been modernized, and while there’s a lot more CGI than it used to be (which has been a serious concern for veteran fans as time has gone on), it’s fundamentally still a practical effects franchise. While the process has been slow, the gendered color stereotyping has been slowly chipped away at; on top of making two girls on a five-person team a more regular occurrence, female characters have been associated with non-pink colors like yellow, blue, silver, and most recently green, and the most recent series (as of this writing) currently has the coveted male pink ranger (finally!). In general, the association of “this character’s color must have this kind of personality” is slowly starting to erode, and while red is still almost always the leader, different variations of team dynamics that aren’t just things like “hot-blooded red, cool-headed blue, comical yellow” are starting to appear, or at least it’s possible to see a bigger variety of different takes on them.

In 2000 (when 02 was airing), Toei rebooted its old Kamen Rider series into what’s now known as “Heisei Kamen Rider”, and Rider and Sentai became sibling shows on TV Asahi known as the “Super Hero Time” block. In 2004, a year after Frontier ended, Toei started its PreCure magical girl series, which gained a reputation for having the girls physically beat up their opponents, and since the three shows aired (and still air) back-to-back on Sunday mornings, they started gaining a collective fanbase in which it was commonly understood that being a fan of one made you very likely to be a fan of the others. Among the three, Sentai is the one most likely to be closest to the monster-of-the-week format and is probably the most formulaic of all of them (probably due to its long history being based on such a formula), but since all three series change every year, the dynamic between them will change depending on the year. The three series will also often cross-promote each other (especially Sentai and Rider, since they’re both tokusatsu), and, in what might be a bit of a depressing thing to think about, the three of them probably collectively represent the kind of thing Digimon could have been if it didn’t have such a troubled history.

In 2011 (when Xros Wars was airing), Sentai’s 35th series, Gokaiger, was produced as an anniversary celebration that involved crossing over every single Sentai series to date, with at least one actor from every series making some kind of cameo. Despite the fact this sounds like an absolute disaster in theory, the result was very well-acclaimed thanks to the strong central premise of space pirates who can turn into any ranger form in the franchise and use their abilities to learn what heroism is (in fact, the space pirates are arguably more popular than the actual crossover elements). In 2021, probably wisely figuring that it wouldn’t be a good idea to imitate Gokaiger too closely because everyone would keep comparing it, 45th Sentai anniversary series Zenkaiger took a completely different comedic approach to its crossover elements, which also ended up being very popular.

Of course, since the series has run for so long, there’s already been multiple generational changes with kids who grew up with the series becoming actors in the series themselves, and the franchise has its own branch of direct-to-video special movies (think similar to OVAs) targeted at adults who watched the series as kids, such as “10 Years After” specials that bring the original actors back for a short sequel movie. Amusingly enough, Kouji and Kouichi’s voice actors Kamiya Hiroshi and Suzumura Kenichi are huge fans of tokusatsu (even besides occasionally being in it themselves) and jointly run an official radio show called Kamen Radiranger, where they talk about the currently airing Sentai and Rider and interview some of the actors and staff in it. Part of this involved sneaking into the Kyoryuger dance ending theme, which of course led to a fanartist making a Frontier parody.

Unfortunately, however, things haven’t been looking very good for Sentai lately. While the most recent few series (as of this writing) have been critically acclaimed in terms of actual storywriting, in kids’ shows, toy sales are everything, and they’ve been on a very noticeable slump since 2015, made even worse by the pandemic. As a result, Sentai has been getting a bit desperately experimental with most recent series Zenkaiger and Donbrothers, and there are some genuine concerns that the series may finally die soon after all of these years (although, in a bit of bitter irony, it’s still doing a lot better than Digimon despite that). Of course, it being such an iconic cultural property gives it a bit of insurance from having the plug pulled on it abruptly, but there are definitely concerns. Time will only tell how things work out, but there’s no doubt that even the modern incarnation of Sentai, despite it having changed greatly from what it used to be known as before, still has a lot of core elements regarding its approach to ensemble casts, team balance, character color coding, and hero writing that are very important to the kids’ shows surrounding it.

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Besides, the opening for the currently running series totally slaps.

#digimon #digimon frontier #super sentai #shihameta #please consider this my repentance for not finishing frontier fest

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ryukyuan-sunflower · 4 years ago

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Romance in Samurai Champloo: The Mirror Reflection of Jin and Shino and Mugen and Fuu

Upon re-watching Episode 11, I was utterly shocked by how many parallels exist between Mugen and Jin as characters, in regards to their relationship with the most important women of their journey. The interactions and concepts are near identical. These specific themes and interactions were only exhibited with two specific women, and no other characters in the series.

In episode 11, Jin falls in love with Shino: a courtesan who was forced into prostitution due to her lousy, abusive husband's gambling debt. Jin later saves Shino from this brothel, and helps her escape to a divorce temple.

Canonically, it was stated in the Samurai Champloo Roman Album by Shino’s character designer that Jin does indeed "fall for" her, so it was not simply chivalry that led him to help her. This echoes his actual dialogue in episode 11:

Fuu: I understand why you pity her but-

Jin: It’s not pity.

It is not pity, because it is love.

So, here is the INSANE number of ways Jin's confirmed romantic dynamic with Shino is an uncanny mirror to Mugen's subtle romantic dynamic with Fuu.

Warning: There is a LOT of comparisons. I was honestly so surprised and have a whole new level of respect for this anime now, and specifically Episode 11.

Enjoy the read!

The First Meeting: Saving the Girl and Reading Her Mind

Both Mugen and Jin save a woman’s life at their first encounter. Both also know the girl is in trouble without ever being told.

Both Fuu and Shino reject the notion that they need help. But it is revealed later that they do.

Jin meets Shino on a bridge and saves her life. She confesses much later, that she had been contemplating suicide, but because he stopped to talk with her, she did not go through with it.

Never did Shino ever show any indication she wanted to drown herself, other than looking at the canal. Jin just knew the moment he walked by.

Mugen meets Fuu in the tea house and saves her life. The magistrate's son was going to have her mutilated and killed. But because Mugen talked with her, she was able to strike a deal of killing them for 100 dumplings.

Never did Fuu tell Mugen that the guys were giving her trouble. Mugen just knew the moment he walked in.

In addition to this first meeting, Jin also stops Shino’s husband from beating her. Mugen also stops Umanousuke from beating Fuu in Episode 25.

Thinking in the Rain: Love Interest Trapped in a Brothel

Previously, in Episodes 3+4, Fuu was thrown into a brothel, just like Shino's predicament in episode 11.

After Mugen skips town and ditches the Yakuza, the thought of Fuu stuck in the brothel invades his mind, and compels him to turn back.

Note: Jin never thinks about Fuu stuck in the brothel.

After being unable to afford Shino, Jin is beaten by bouncers and trudges away, thinking about how Shino is sleeping with another man.

Both of these incidences occur during heavy rain.

Both think about their love interests trapped in the brothel which leads them to return to save them.

The Brothel Escape.

Both Mugen and Jin attempt to break their love interests out of a brothel.

On the second night they spend together, Jin concocts a plan to sneak Shino out of the brothel.

Never one to be discrete, Mugen’s plan to save Fuu involves breaking into the brothel, kicking open the cage doors, and pulling her out. However, to keep the MugenxFuu romance subtle and to have shippers rip their hair out Fuu escapes alone, and she never finds out about Mugen’s wild attempt to get her back. So, we never get the obviously romantic scene of him grabbing her arm and whisking her away. We just know that poor Mugen tried.

There is evident blood on his sword. He killed a person or multiple people to get back to her.

Mugen could have taken and freed any of these lovely ladies. But no.

Note: Jin is seen putting no effort into saving Fuu at all. When Jin initially sneaks into the brothel of Episode 3+4 disguised as a woman, he had no idea Fuu was there at the time. He was just helping the boy Sousuke save Osuzu. Later, even when he sees Fuu there, Jin never is shown putting in any effort to rescue her, nor thinking about it. If we assume he intended to, with his roundabout way of being involved with the Kawara gang, (who he was already helping anyway), Fuu would have already been bought by a client, because she was. (luckily the client did not have sex with her).

If this isn't enough of a mirror, Fuu and Shino escape the brothel in the exact same way: tying a series of clothes to the porch and sliding out the window.

Giving Up One’s Sword For a Woman

Shown in both episodes 6 and 8, Jin is extremely protective of his katana, saying that his swords are the equivalent of his soul as a samurai.

He adamantly refuses to part with them for any reason. He is also shown in episodes 14, 16 and 20 diligently polishing them.

On a different note, Mugen is not shown taking care of his swords as meticulously as Jin, nor as protectively. He is willing to pawn them off if it means being able to eat: shown in episode 6 and episode 8.

But his sword is no less important to Mugen, as he is shown carrying the same sai handled tsurugi in his flashbacks in the Ryukyuan Islands, implying he had carried it for a long time. For Mugen, the sword has nothing to do with some code of bushido, or philosophy. It serves the fundamental purpose of keeping him alive, which is something Mugen constantly struggles with.

In a brothel, swords are not allowed, as it is unsafe for the courtesans if there happened to be a violent client.

In Episode 25, Umanousuke is about to kill Fuu when Mugen arrives.

To spend time with Shino and free her, Jin willingly gives up his swords.

To save Fuu’s life and free her, Mugen gives up his sword in Episode 25.

Note: The only other example we have of Jin “giving up his swords” is comedy when Mugen and Fuu confiscates his swords against his will, so they can enter an eating contest in Episode 6.

Interestingly, the two men gave up their swords under reversed circumstances, yet with the same intentions.

Jin, who has always cherished his katana, ends up giving them up in a moment that he logically "shouldn't". He does what could be considered a frivolous activity of spending time with a prostitute, which completely goes against his personal code as a samurai.

Mugen, who had always been willing to give up his sword for the sake of survival, finally needs to keep his sword, or he will be brutally tortured and killed by Umanousuke. But instead, he gives it up anyway in this extremely critical moment, to save Fuu's life.

In the end, both men resorted to giving up their swords for one simple reason: love.

Red and Pink Color Composition

This one was very surprising for me, and the reason I ended up writing this entire post. The other examples until now are more obvious. But this? Mugen and Fuu's main colors are obviously red and pink. But...Jin and Shino?

Shino’s kimono color is light green, with a dark green collar. Jin’s color is dark blue.

However, when Shino is put in the brothel and takes on the name “Kohana”, she is seen throughout the majority of the episode wearing pink, with a burgundy collar. This is exactly Fuu’s kimono colors, and no other character in the series wears these colors that I can recall.

More interesting, is Shino’s brothel name becomes “Kohana”.

Kohana means “Flower Child”.

Fuu is the child of the “Sunflower Samurai”.

For the first time, I was suddenly faced with a serious question of "Was this name choice and kimono color put as a symbolism of Jin choosing to buy a woman that resembled Fuu?" And in turn, would this be one solid way to disprove so much that I've always thought and written about Jin being the father figure to Fuu?

But, then I noticed something else.

Shino only wears this pink and burgundy kimono in the brothel. It is not her true outfit.

And it is not only her who gets a "change" in appearance. Jin does too, in a sense. He gets an addition to his ensemble, only for this particular episode.

Every time Jin visits Shino in pink, he carries a bright red umbrella. Whenever she is in green, he does not have the umbrella. He visits her on four separate occasions when she’s a courtesan, always with the umbrella in tow.

The red umbrella is visually striking, as the atmosphere of this episode is particularly drab due to the rainfall.

The red umbrella becomes the connection between Jin and Shino during her stay in the brothel. It is significant, because it was initially hers, and was a gift to him since she had no use for it in the brothel anymore.

One can argue, “It’s raining and he just needed an umbrella.” But during his depressing walk, he carries it, but doesn't even use it, and we don’t even get to see it or its striking red color. (Which I will explain my interpretation as to why shortly).

We only know he’s holding it, because he continues to have it afterwards.

It is far more a symbol of his connection to her, than for practical use. Watching the episode, everyone else has drab brown and gray umbrellas. Even in Episode 4, Jin donned a drab brown umbrella.

In Japanese culture, red is famously the color that represents the “main character”. This is extremely common in many anime and video games, and particularly shown in the Super Sentai genre, in which every season since 1975 to present, the main character always dons red.

In the case of Samurai Champloo as well, Mugen is confirmed to be the “main character”, first developed by Shinichiro Watanabe, with Jin created later as his foil so the story did not become “one dimensional”, as he said. This is why most episodes focus on Mugen.

Episode 11 is the very first episode that focuses on Jin. Up until this point, Jin was never a rescuer. (He doesn’t even rescue Fuu until Episode 26).

With Shino, he finally fulfills the "noble hero saving the maiden" role.

More interesting, is the scene where the brothel bouncers attack Jin, who intentionally decides not to fight back. Jin loses his grip on the umbrella. This is my personal interpretation, but I think this could be a representation that Jin could not protect Shino, as she is forced to have sex moments later.

If it were Mugen being attacked, he would kill the men, repercussions or not, just as he did to the Yakuza in Episode 4. Mugen will always embody the “passionate red” that he wears.

But it does not suit Jin. He has chosen the lawful path, unlike Mugen’s chaotic nature of killing whoever stands in his way. Jin does not kill these men, since he has no reasonable cause, and does not risk the repercussions. It is his own fault, not theirs, that he can’t purchase or protect Shino.

In this scene, he not only drops the red umbrella, but Shino also drops her pink robes when she is undressed. They are not red and pink: they are not Mugen and Fuu. They are back to the cruel reality of being a different, more tragic tale of love in which he can’t protect her.

One of the attackers even picks up the umbrella, and throws it at him, as if to add more injury to insult in his failure.

In the ending of the episode, Shino no longer wears pink and burgundy, and is back in her original green kimono. Interestingly, Jin stops using this red umbrella at the exact same point she is back in green.

Since Shino is no longer a “maiden in distress in pink”, Jin no longer needs to be the “hero in red”. They no longer have to play this role. Their episode is at its close. The anime will return to Mugen and Fuu carrying out the dynamic of “hero and maiden”.

Jin will once again, play the role as the cool and collected “rival in blue” that foils the main protagonist.

One could still argue these color choices of red and pink were random and thoughtless. They very well could be. But, this is a Watanabe work, and colors often hold surprising symbolism in the anime he directs.

As a more solid example of color symbolism: here is a link to a fascinating video that reveals just how intentional the color palette is in Samurai Champloo's Episode 14. The choice of Mukuro's yellow versus Mugen's red and the episode ending on Koza in gray was all deliberate and was repeatedly shown in the episode's composition through various means, to subtly convey the story.

Flashing the Coin and “Buying”a Woman

Jin is shown to be the character who makes/finds money for the group the most. Even in this episode, he was working for the eel stand. Mugen meanwhile, makes money and spends it selfishly. But in this episode, it is Mugen making the money and Jin demanding it for a selfish purpose, reversing their roles once again. Jin is the main character now, and Mugen the foil.

Mugen flaunts the coin he made to impress Fuu, demanding her validation by tapping her head.

Jin flaunts the same exact coin (Mugen gave it to him), in a very similar way, to show he’s buying Shino.

Both men, in essence, are "buying time with a woman".

While Jin is, in a literal sense, using the money to purchase a prostitute, Mugen's is more figurative.

Mugen gives the money to Jin, causing him to go away, and leaving him and Fuu alone. Once Jin is back, they will once again be a trio, and the “pairing dynamic” between them will be shattered. But for that brief night, Mugen got time with Fuu.

Mugen, despite acting like he detests Fuu's company, does some very strange and completely uncharacteristic things in this episode. For one...he is the one to bring Fuu to the beetle wrestling match. Her dialogue implies she didn't want to go and Mugen dragged her along.

Then, despite being all stingy about the money with Fuu, he willingly gives the money to Jin to send him away to go to a brothel. For a man Mugen claims to despise, this is a remarkably thoughtful act. Especially when he said he was going to use the money to buy seeds to make more in beetle wrestling. Strangest of all, Mugen doesn't use the money himself for a prostitute. He chooses to stay at an inn, alone with Fuu, rather than the prospect of going to the brothel in town, even when he’s repeatedly shown being a womanizer.

I think this act shows both his selfish desire to spend time with Fuu alone, but also his selfless care for Jin as a friend. He killed two birds with one stone. In both cases, these are things Mugen would never admit to his companions.

With the exchange of that on koban coin between them, both Mugen and Jin have "bought time" with their respective love interests.

Helping to Save Each Other's Love Interest.

In every episode Fuu gets into trouble, Mugen is the one who saves Fuu, if she isn’t saving herself. Jin does not. But there is one exception to this: Episode 26. Jin saves Fuu for the first time, in the one moment Mugen can't, while also simultaneously avenging his father figure Mariya Enshirou.

In episode 11, Jin does not have his swords on him. But Mugen and Fuu arrive. Mugen cuts down many men to help them escape. And in addition, he knocks down a man right in front of Shino that Jin failed to incapacitate, before telling Jin “You’re pathetic!”

The Windowsill and the Mirror in the Same Room

This one is a very, VERY minor comparison, so don’t take this one seriously. I just thought the imagery was similar.

In Episode 18, where Mugen attempts to win Fuu in a tagging contest (yes, that was actually the plot: Here's a Post About It), Mugen and Fuu spend a small moment in the inn room alone.

In this inn room, Fuu is looking at herself in the mirror, when Mugen appears behind her.

Their faces are wonderful.

In the brothel room, Shino also looks in the mirror, when Jin is shown behind her.

Alone with their love interests, they sit on windowsills.

Again, very, very minor and I highly doubt it was intentional. But there is no other moment of window sill sitting that I can recall.

There is one other gazing into a mirror though: the end credits of Fuu and her mother. This relates her mother to Shino, aside from the fact that they have the same exact hair and wear green kimonos, and who are in love with a poor samurai who ends up wearing gray.

Parting Ways

In the defining moment of Jin and Shino parting, there is a distance of water separating them. But Jin must let her go to the temple to be free of the marriage: her final goal.

In the defining moment of Mugen and Fuu parting, a distance of the Church with Umanousuke is in the way, separating them. But Mugen tells her to go see her Sunflower Samurai: her final goal.

Neither Jin and Shino or Mugen and Fuu are allowed to touch or to embrace before this forced goodbye.

Jin is the one to push the boat away, even when Shino tries to reach out to him.

Mugen is the one who urges Fuu to run, even when Fuu hesitates and wants to stay.

Both Shino and Fuu are reluctant to leave Jin and Mugen behind.

Mugen and Jin remain stoic, even when their emotions must be running wild.

Fuu and Shino’s eyes well up, until they are unable to hold in the tears.

“The Love Triangle” Dilemma: A Lousy Gambler, A Noble Samurai and a Pure Maiden

Now, I am not saying that Mugen, Fuu and Jin is an actual love triangle. I firmly believe it isn't, as I have shown the evidence of the two romances above.

But I believe in Mugen's mind, there is a love triangle, and he’s the odd one out.

Yes, there is a sense that Fuu has insecurity about Jin's abandonment and is jealous of his attention to Shino. Personally though, I think this is in more relation to her father's abandonment, as Jin and Shino strikingly resemble Fuu's father and mother. Jin even gets Fuu’s father’s kimono in Episode 26, and likely his katana too, as his were broken.

But that aside, the relationship dynamics going on in Episode 11 are painfully satirical.

Shino, her husband, and Jin are an ugly representation of Fuu, Mugen, and Jin.

Jin is interfering with both of these "couples".

Shino's husband is an avid gambler, who fell into debt, causing her to be thrown into prostitution. It is no coincidence that Mugen is avidly gambling throughout this episode, and being chastised by Fuu.

Fuu’s words to Mugen are Shino’s words to her husband.

Mugen is being portrayed as the "lesser man", lacking in morals, while Jin takes on the mantle of the “gallant knight”. This again relates to the earlier concept that Jin has for the first time assumed the position as the “main character”.

This is likely why they chose “Gamblers and Gallantry” as the English title for Episode 11. Note that Gamblers is plural. (Also, the original Japanese title is Fallen Angel).

Fuu’s “jealousy” in this episode is used in the narrative to make Mugen believe she loves Jin, and not him. We see this again, in Episode 20. The one and only time Fuu cries for Jin is comical, compared to her over five emotional times for Mugen, still causes Mugen to stomp off with jealousy and annoyance.

Our first indicator of Mugen harboring jealousy of Jin stems from Episode 11 and piles up more as the show goes on.

There is three separate implied occasions in this specific episode 11.

1. Mugen states that Fuu is jealous that Jin is seeing Shino. But when he says this, it is him to roll over away from her. It is almost a blatant indicator that he is sulking. Then, he feigns sleeping and snoring.

We know his sleeping is fake because upon closer inspection....

His eyes are open and his eyebrows are furled angrily. This “faking sleep” is a trick he repeats three times total in the anime, always concerning Jin and Fuu.

2. When Fuu gets upset at Jin about leaving the group for good, Mugen pretends to sleep yet again, but was listening to the whole thing.

His facial expression is almost sad looking here. Very uncharacteristic indeed.

Note: The very last time Mugen pretends to sleep, is Episode 24, when Fuu hugs Jin on the riverbank. It appears here, that Mugen didn't hear or understand what they were talking quietly about. The dialogue is hard to interpret but it seems Fuu rejected Jin’s dutiful offer to stay with her after the journey close. She seems to confide her feelings for Mugen to Jin in this extremely subtle scene, by mentioning him out of the blue, crying, and then apologizing to Jin for it. Rather than embrace Fuu romantically, Jin comforts her with a hand upon her shoulder, in an understanding that is, by my interpretation, very fatherly.

3. Back to Episode 11, when Fuu decides to help Jin, despite being angry at him for abandoning them, Mugen says some telling dialogue. This scene, Mugen and Fuu are running through town together, just as Jin and Shino are.

If Mugen only stuck around solely to kill Jin, then this exchange makes one question why is he still hanging around Fuu. We also know Mugen was listening the whole time when Jin states "If I don’t return, I want you two to continue your journey without me." It is as if he's trying to convince Fuu to be "over" with Jin.

But this isn't the only time Mugen is fine with taking Fuu to find the sunflower samurai alone. Mugen also agrees to travel with Fuu in ep 21 alone, when they think Jin is leaving for good with Sara, and makes no indication of leaving her to do battle with Jin.

Despite all the jealousy of Jin, and all the intentional comparison that Mugen bears with Shino's husband, we know Mugen is not actually like Shino's husband at all.

On the surface, perhaps, he seemed like an irresponsible, lawless lecher who frivolously wastes money. But in actuality, he is honorable and deeply cares about Fuu, saving her and worrying about her in every single episode something bad befalls her.. Mugen does more noble deeds for Fuu than Jin ever does.

While “Gamblers” apply to Mugen and Shino’s husband, the “Gallantry” applies to Mugen and Jin just as much.

That is why, unlike Shino’s husband, Mugen wins in gambling. And that is why, despite making money gambling, he generously gave it all to Jin.

The secretly gallant character of this episode was Mugen. Had he not given/borrowed this money to Jin, Jin would have never been able to save Shino at all.

How the Relationships Differ

While these comparisons highlight that Jin and Shino is equivalent to Mugen and Fuu, there are some directly opposite characteristics as well. Just as Mugen and Jin are opposite.

Jin and Shino are calm and quiet. Mugen and Fuu are passionate and loud.

Jin and Shino wear cold colors of green and blue, while Mugen and Fuu don warm colors of red and pink.

Shino is older than Jin. Fuu is younger than Mugen.

While Shino is forced to give herself to men and Jin can’t save her, Fuu is saved from this fate many times by Mugen.

Mugen and Fuu spend an entire, long journey together. Jin and Shino’s time together is fleeting. Mugen and Fuu appear together every episode. Jin and Shino only get one.

Ironically, Jin and Shino consummate their love in this short time, while Mugen and Fuu do not.

The relationships are remarkably the same story but from opposite ends of a spectrum.

Conclusion

Mugen and Jin may be opposites, but they are also like Yin and Yang. Both characters are a duality of one another, possessing opposite traits in their appearances and attitudes, and yet bearing similar beliefs and morals. In the love department, it turns out that they are also two sides of the very same coin.

After discovering the parallels between these two romances, I was utterly blown away. This concept of duality is the entire point of Mugen and Jin’s dynamic in every other sense.

The love they bore for Fuu and Shino highlighted this concept in another new, astonishing way.

Mugen and Jin both bear something else in common. Even though Jin and Shino is far more an obvious romance due to the sexual consummation of the coupling, Jin and Mugen still relate in one way: they never directly express their love for Shino or Fuu words.

Jin comes off as “old fashioned” with his “I hope that the rain will never stop so I can stay here forever.”, Mugen comes off as “unromantic” by never saying kind and romantic words to Fuu. Their love was wholly expressed through action. Words are unneeded.

Finally, even though Jin and Shino part ways, and even though Mugen and Fuu (and Jin) part in the finale, hope still exists that they will meet again someday.

Both tales of love do not have tragic endings, but neither does either obtain closure. Their hopeful future is left up to you, the viewer, to determine.

Perhaps, their reunions with their loved one, will be a mirror too.

#samurai champloo #fuugen #jin samurai champloo #mugen samurai champloo #fuu samurai champloo

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arimamary-main · 3 years ago

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Fairy Ranmaru, a straightforward story with much to give

Fairy Ranmaru got to my attention through KrisPNatz's video about it's MAL rating. I was between watching Fairy Ranmaru or XEros, settling on the former just because. Magical boys anime are few in between, and as someone who loves magical girls anime and Super Sentai/Power Rangers, magical boys are an unusual treat. It's an interesting, underdeveloped genre that I have little expectations going into, so I appreciate every piece of content in it. Fairy Ranmaru is, like I mentioned, a combination of magical girls tropes mixed with Super Sentai and fantasy elements. The plot is straightforward: Five young fairies from the biggest clans are sent to Earth to gather "attachment", some sort of human emotion, to revive their kingdom. From this information, Fairy Ranmaru could be a slice of life/adventure or a serious story, but the anime takes neither approach. Instead, from it's magical boys/girls roots or from Cute Earth Defense Club (it's previous series), it's introduced as a "monster of the week" where they help girls battling with some external issue. At the same time, it builds up an overarching plot with a mysterious antagonist, peppered with episodic subplots with each of the main characters that serve as introductions and their development.

As intriguing as talking about Fairy Ranmaru's plot is, the elements that truly captured my attention are unrelated to the writing. In the music department, it has a fantastic opening, and each episode features the character song and transformation scene from the respective main character of focus (they transform from human form to their fairy/original forms). There's so much effort put into their muscles and outfits that I would love to spend five minutes taking in all the details for each. Perhaps this is why others have mentioned JoJo's Bizzare Adventures as a comparison. The boys' fairy forms represent a variety of body types from twink to heavy weight.

However, the characters are more than their bodies. Each character has their own story and are battling through personal issues. The manservice is there but there's plenty of character and development to accompany it. Thus, I wasn't only watching Fairy Ranmaru to look at some cute boys but I was also looking forward to their transformation scenes to see their cool battle designs/outfits (something I enjoy a lot in magical girls/boys anime).

One a short sidetopic, I noticed that most of the humans the boys helped were girls. I can't speak for the female audience, the hetero-aligned to be specific. I can only guess this factor would appeal them because the idea of having a cute boy help you when you need it seems appealing. The girl and the character of focus kiss for the fairy boy to transform (hetero content for the hets). The final element that I enjoyed the most was the LGBT+ representation. The gay romance is simple, uncomplicated, and straightforward. In other words, no drama nor homophobia. This applies to both the side characters and main characters. Surprisingly, or maybe not, it peacefully shares its space with het romance presented. Perfectly balanced, as all things should be.

On the last short note, I find Fairy Ranmaru's finale fantastic. Because of its 12 episode run, each episode builds the overarching plot. I would rather not talk too much about it because it could be spoilery.

In summary, Fairy Ranmaru's may not be anything special in the intellectual department, but it kept me engaged with its music, visuals, characters, LBGT+ elements, quality manservice, and amazing ending. Perhaps these are what makes Fairy Ranmaru great; they are definitely its strongest elements. Fairy Ranmaru made me consider the magical boys genre can also cater to an action-oriented audience and those who prefer character designs that more common in shounen series, LBGT+ audiences, and hetero people.

#fairy ranmaru #lbgt+#anime #queer characters #manservice #cute earth defense club #magical boys #fantasy #body diversity #action #seasonal anime #monster of the week #feel good japanese lbgt+ content #ArimMary's blog content

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watch-grok-brainrot · 3 years ago

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hii i was wondering if you have any other cdrama recs that's similar in tone to cql that's not shl? it doesn't have to be adapted from danmei either. i've tried ashes of love but the generous use of cgi kinda threw me off. i tried handsome siblings too, and i found that i LOVE wuxia as a genre but the pace feels a little all over the place so i didn't finish it either. any kind of help would be much appreciated!

I don’t watch as much cdrama as I would like… I think @baoshan-sanren @wuxian-vs-wangji @wuyus, @minmoyu, and @drwcn all watch more than I do i think.... i’m just not good at focusing on ANYTHING tbh. ooof.

This post got long. TL;DR: i’d probably say try out Ever Night, Legend of Fei, and Love and Redemption in that order.

I recommend Nirvana in Fire a TON but it’s not the same -- much heavier but the pacing is AMAZING.

Joy of Life and Sleuth of Ming Dynasty are both very good so far but i’m not done with them. They’re not really wuxia. Joy of Life is like a isekai. and Sleuth is semi-wuxia but period specific and case solving. Lots of food.

You might enjoy movies such as Painted Skin and Yin Yang Master: Dream of Eternity.

Also check out some danmei based donghuas. you might have fun. For a much more rambley list... see after the cut

AND! i almost forgot!!!! check out mydramalist. a lot of shows are listed there and maybe you can see what you like. i’ll probably watch anything as long as it’s well done... or pretty enough... hahaha.

That said, since Nov 2019 I have watched/half heartedly paid attention to while playing phone games:

Love and redemption – this one was ok. It was almost really good and then kinda fell flat for me. I don’t think I’d watch it again but I did like the setting and a lot of the premise.

And the winner is love – this one is fun! But the first 12 eps are slow and I have a hard time caring. The rest get a bit better. I didn’t hate it. I did like how they randomly killed off characters so that was good. Flirty Luo Yunxi with a fan was definitely a perk. If you like him, I recommend.

Ever Night (I) – OH! This one is a ton of fun. I think its intricacy level and setting styles and storytelling pacing isn’t too far off from CQL’s. but it’s only S1. WORTH IT, imo… but S2 is so different I couldn’t make it past ep 1

Nirvana in Fire – AMAZING. BEST FREAKING CHINESE DRAMA I’VE EVER SEEN. PERIOD. HANDS DOWN. MIND BLOWING. But it IS INTENSE and not really like cql. It’s fun but much much much heavier. I technically first watched this in 2016 but I rewatched it this year so it’s on the list.

Love o2o – not bad. Boring. Not much plot. The main ship are cute enough, I guess. Something to watch in the bkgd.

King’s Avatar – I seriously only watched this to see Yang Yang on my non-gif-making screen whenever I was waiting for things to happen in photoshop. It’s ok. Cute. Feels like a sports anime. Is an esports show.

Legend of Fei – this might be your best bet on something close to CQL. The plot, imo, is a bit contrived… and it really kinda feels like a shonen manga if I’m gonna be honest… maybe a shonen manga crossed with a season of super sentai.

Dating in the Kitchen – cute, straight, modern romance. The girl is only a TINY bit annoying. She’s a chef and spunky. It was fun.

Eternal Love – not terrible. Better than ashes of love. I don’t really like yang mi that much…

Ashes of Love – do not recommend. Unless you adore Luo Yunxi. I also don’t love Yang Zi… so that doesn’t help. I haven’t seen her in a role where I didn’t want to smack her yet. (but my sample size is 2… so there’s that)

Lost Tomb Season 1 this was fun? again, something to only half pay attention to. cliche. tang yan is hot in it. and yang yang too... but not really enough of yang yang for me... ope.

(and of course, CQL and SHL)

I’m assuming if you’re asking about cql, you’ve looked at tgcf, mdzs, and svsss animations. Have you looked up the Qian Qiu donghua? I think it’s call “shan he tong bei”… but I could be wrong. @hunxi-after-hours blogs about it a lot. Worth checking out. I loved the novel. Currently I’m watching can ci pin on bilibili.

I’m in the middle of:

Guardian – I like it even if it’s sometimes a bit cringy

Sleuth of Ming Dynasty – this one is FUN. I should pay more attention

Advance Bravely – I watch this after I drink booze and then only if I am streaming it as a group watch on discord. It’s danmei and a hot mess of a show. Do not watch without emotional support. Do not watch as a serious show.

Joy of Life – this one is serious but good so far. I’m scared to get too far because no word on S2 and I was burned with Ever Night. It’s really good so far though… I’m only only ep 7ish.

Ode to Joy – the cast is so good: Liu Tao, Wang Kai, Wang Ziwen, Jin Dong… but I just can’t get into it.

Older shows I watched that i can remember:

My Sunshine: modern romance. Sad and melancholy in tone. Not like cql at all. But!! Luo Yunxi is in it briefly. And he is styled so poorly it’s just sad. And kinda funny. Tang Yan and Wallace Chung are great in it. I enjoyed it a lot. (granted, this was 2014/2015 and I might’ve been some various levels of depressed at the end of grad school… )

Princess Pearl: wuxia-ish. Zhao wei skyrocketed to fame with this show. It was fun. Qing dynasty to prepare you eyes for the queues… but it’s a lot of fun. If you’re a tea snob (like my dad was and now I am), you’ll be pissed about a character claiming dragonwell tea is from taihu… but that’s really just my own neurosis. I liked the spunky MC and her bff. Very nostalgic for me

Tiger Mom: Hilarious modern family/slice of life drama about raising kids in china. i loved it... but i love the two leads? one of which is zhao wei of princess pearl fame.

CCTV’s version of Romance of Three Kingdoms (1994), Journey to the West (1986), and Dream of Red Mansion (1987) are all amazing and cultural touchstones… but no… I’m rambling. I should recommend this but that might be 90% of my nostalgia and cultural feels speaking. Nothing like cql… I should also recommend a good version of Outlaws of the Marsh… but I don’t remember having any really grab me as a kid. Ope.

Wuxia shows based on Jin Yong novels (there are multiple versions of these, usually and 100% were wuxia staples for 80s/90s kids and even my parents’ generation)

Legend of the Condor Heroes: classic. Iconic. Watch this to get a lot of Chinese references

Return of the Condor Heroes: shifu/disciple taboo trope, I liked it ok. Not my favorite. I did like a lot of the wuxia world building

Heavenly Sword and Dragon Sabre: good main character whump, main character takes a while to show up though… I didn’t like how it felt like a harem anime for a bit… and the ML doesn’t show up for a while…

Proud Smiling Wanderer: this one I loved. Also good MC whump. Uh… ok. I like whump… *facepalm* and I don’t remember that much more of it but I did read it twice almost two decades ago and liked it… even if I didn’t like the eunuch related weird stuff and that definitely didn’t age well… it was a good story…

And i never did get into Deer and Cauldron. I read 3/5 to 4/5 of the novel, got really annoyed with the lack of morality of the MC and quit. it was fun but i had no desire to watch the show if couldn’t even stomach the novel.

#haoppo answers #i hope this isn't too long #i don't actually watch that much tv i say #my to-watch list is also a mile long #oooof #alas #my to read list is longer #but i fail at focusing period #so oops?#i hope this helps nonny #i hope i answered something for you

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t-u-i-t-c · 3 days ago

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Racles for the character asks pls???

Racules Husty - Ohsama Sentai King-Ohger

First Impression

You would think I would have loved him from the start, but I actually didn't start getting attached to him until a few weeks in. So initially I didn't feel much of anything other than the standard thoughts about how I wanted to see him on the ground and knocked around a bit.

Impression Now

He's my favorite character in Super Sentai and I have so many thoughts and feelings about him. I think he's a really well done character and one of the most important characters in King-Ohger, even if he's not a part of the team.

Favorite Moment

I have so many, so let me give you a list of some of them just from the main series.

Whenever he gets angry and his eyes get wide or the muscles in his face twitch (ex. When Rita slaps him)

When Gira pulls the mantle from him and he pushes him in a way that very much feels like a sibling thing to do, before they were revealed to be brothers

When Jeramie shows up at Gira's funeral and Racules walks toward him while wrapping his own hand around his throat

When he returns to the throne room after being beaten

When Gira tries to convince Racules to remember his dream from when they were kids, but Racules rejects it

His return as Shugo Mask and him saying "I have returned from the depths of hell."

When Kaguragi throws the lance to Ohkuwagata, telling him to show him and the people who's fit to be king

The entire scene with him and Suzume at the bottom of the cliff when he fakes his death

Racules' reaction to Gira claiming him as his brother and calling himself Gira Husty

When Racules points the lance at Gira after they defeat Dagded the first time, and saying that Gira can do it while smiling before passing out

Racules saying that Gira is Gira and not a tool

When Gira finally reaches Racules

Racules discussing the alliance with Suzume

Racules talking to Jeramie about how a long life may not actually be a good thing

Gira pulling Racules into the group hug after they manage to evacuate everyone without any deaths

Racules' speech about how the kings are miracles and how the others are fools, but he is one too

When Spider Kumonos says that he knows someone who's more suited to deliver discipline to Kamejim and then Ohkuwagata delivers said discipline

When Gira returns from the final battle and hugs Racules

Suzume and Racules in Gokkan

Every time Racules smiles

Note: Everyone should watch The Secrets of King Racules

Story Idea

I think there’s a lot of potential with exploring trauma and the impact it has had on him and his relationships. Also just learning to be his own person again with the strings cut, while also being a tool for the people.

On a lighter note, I think it'd be neat to explore his skills that he picks up and improves on through his work for the kings (ex. Sewing)

Unpopular Opinion

Racules is just as important as Gira in the grand scheme of things.

Favorite Relationship

His familial relationship with Gira is so important and is really like the tree that everything branches off of. Nearly everything Racules does he does for the sake of his brother, and to try to create a future where Gira can make things better and maintain peace. I often think about the live show and how Racules wants to push Gira away after everything as he's been stripped of his title and sees himself as nothing more than a criminal. He doesn't think that he's worthy of being Gira's brother, but Gira doesn't believe this. Gira has accepted Racules as his family, they're the Husty brothers and he's not going back on that.

Romantically, I really like Suzume and Racules together. It's very clear that they care about one another and love each other. I think that due to having to isolate himself and play a specific role, Racules does struggle with affection, especially physical affection. He is shown to be willing to accept being killed as punishment for his crimes, so him trying to not be too intimate with Suzume makes sense, seeing as he wouldn't want to hurt her through reciprocating when he knows he'll have to pay for his crimes. I think that shows the most after he's granted a stay of execution and seems to allow Suzume to be a bit closer after this.

Favorite Headcanon

Standing by my headcanon that Racules was the one who noted Rainbow Jururira being served in the archives. It was named that by Gira and Racules, so there's no real reason for anyone else to have noted it under that name, and considering what it actually is, it seems unlikely that anyone would have noted it otherwise for the sake of it being a secret. Also Racules was the one who prepared it, so staff wouldn't have had to note it.

Here's another ask from a while back where a talk even more these things with Racules

Send Me a Character

#umbrella.asks #subject.ask games #umbrella.posts #answered.mo-ok

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yeonchi · 3 years ago

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The state of tokusatsu in the West in 2021

The events of the past few weeks have taken the Western toku fanbase by storm. Amidst the shitstorm of spergs and a-logs who think they’re being rational but are really low-key spergs, unexpected turns in events are heralding the death knell for tokusatsu fansubs (that was going to be the name of this post initially). In addition, these events have also exposed the state of tokusatsu in the West in 2021, whether it be in regards to fansubs and streaming or Shirakura and the fanbase.

An update on the current situation

This is an update to the two posts I made in the past few weeks regarding the subject.

So some Indonesian wrote a Twitter thread about tokusatsu in general and in one of those tweets, he mentions Shirakura and the recent fansub scandal in a passing manner. Another Indonesian quote retweets him and tags Shirakura and this is what he got:

A few hours later, Shirakura wrote a few tweets about the situation (which are after the break):

(Tweets 1 and 3 translated by killadelfo, tweets 2, 4 and 5 translated by me because Shirakura and other a-logs won’t do it)

Some context:

Tweet 1 - 「雉も鳴かずば打たれまい」 directly translates to "If the pheasant didn't ring, then it wouldn't have been hit". At a stretch, it sounds like victim-blaming in rape culture. Also, the “semi-official streaming site” Shirakura is referring to is TokuHD, who are currently streaming Kamen Rider Agito and 555 with abysmal subtitle translation quality (Honshin and Olfenok) and were apparently licenced by an unknown third-party (if anyone knows, please tell me and I’ll update this).

Tweet 2 - The North Wind and the Sun, one of Aesop’s fables that teaches the superiority of persuasion over force. You can read the story here if you’re too infantile to read Wikipedia.

Later on, TV-Nihon officially announced that they have decided to stop subbing Saber and Zenkaiger, softsubs or hardsubs alike, with Takenoko stating that he doesn’t want to worry about legal trouble on their team. Whether or not they will sub future series is still unknown at the moment. Nothing has come back regarding the apparent C&D from Toei, particularly as NewZect and KRDL haven’t received anything else from them apart from one email (and KRDL received theirs in 2019 apparently).

Despite this, Shirakura has expressed his gratitude for fans across the world who watch Toei’s shows, no matter how they watch them. It’s a far cry from “I believe there’s no fanbase of Kamen Rider in the west practically.”

So now, let’s dissect the whole situation, from fansubbing, streaming and official releases to Shirakura and the Western fanbase.

Fansubbing, streaming and official releases: le Happy Merchant intensifies

There was a time when TV-Nihon held a monopoly in tokusatsu fansubbing, subbing series that other people normally wouldn’t have cared about, including the Chouseishin and Tomica Hero series. They were known for their mistakes in translation and extensive use of different fonts and effects, which led to groups like Over-Time springing up over the past decade in an effort to diversify the fansubbing scene and break up TV-Nihon’s monopoly. (It’s time to #ReleaseTheFonts, TV-Nihon. Get that hashtag trending.) Though TV-Nihon seem to have this unspoken rule to not mention other sub groups on their forums, the recent C&D debacle has resulted in a truce of sorts between them.

Many tokusatsu fans outside of Japan will have known of the genre through fansubs and I am no exception. It’s very likely that for a long time, Japanese executives thought the only toku Westerners liked was Power Rangers, but in recent years, the increasing popularity of tokusatsu in the West has led to companies like Toei and Tsuburaya drawing up plans to release their series in the West. Presumably due to the two companies’ different attitudes to copyright, their IPs are being treated differently, as I will detail.

Tsuburaya - Based and redpilled For some reason, Ultraman is a franchise that very few fansub groups have cared about over the years, which makes Tsuburaya’s Western expansion that much more special.

Before 2018, Crunchyroll streamed Leo, 80, Gaia, Nexus, Max, Mebius, Ginga (S), X, Orb and Geed, but they have now been removed from the platform as Mill Creek Blu-rays, TokuHD, TokuSHOUTsu and Tsuburaya’s YouTube channel became more prolific.

Tsuburaya has been streaming the newest episodes of Ultraman weekly on their YouTube channel since 2012, presumably because their coverage on TV Tokyo and their affiliates don’t cover all of Japan. They have added Chinese subtitles to their episodes since either Geed or R/B and even though their translations of some names can be a bit autistic, they have added English subtitles to their episodes since Z following the release of Ultra Galaxy Fight: New Generation Heroes with dual audio and multi-language subtitles (including English). Alongside reruns of older series, Tsuburaya releases episodes on YouTube every week, which are then available for two weeks. In addition, they also have separate channels where they publish dubs for Ultraman episodes in Mandarin, Korean and even Cantonese (official TVB Tiga-Mebius dub release when), which is pretty based if you ask me.

Tsuburaya doesn’t seem to do takedowns of their materials on YouTube, though they do claim ownership of the material posted by other channels so that ad revenue goes to them. It’s the reason why whole series of Ultraman and various compilations using footage from various episodes are still surviving on YouTube today. Cynically though, I suspect that the main reason they don’t do takedowns is because they can’t afford to following years of financial problems and their decades-long conflict with Chaiyo Productions. They probably thought that it wouldn’t be worth it.

Toei - Cringe and bluepilled Is it any wonder that the one company with the more popular series amongst a niche fanbase would be so Jewish with their copyrights? While entire series and various compilations have been taken down by Toei over the years (which they technically have the right to do), they don’t give fans (particularly outside of the US) a lot of options to support them officially, so they only dug this hole for themselves. It’s also very naive of people to presume that Toei doesn’t know about fansubs; it would be fair to say that it’s an open secret that neither Toei nor fansub groups can acknowledge for fear of legal retribution.

From 2015 to 2019, Shout! Factory have released Super Sentai series from Jetman (the first pre-Mighty Morphin series to be released in the West) to Hurricaneger, but since Power Rangers was sold from Saban to Hasbro, Shout! Factory have not regained the rights to distribute any further series and Toei hasn’t done much lobbying in that regard. However, Shout! Factory have begun streaming some Kamen Rider series from 2020 on TokuSHOUTsu (Shout! Factory TV) and Tubi (in addition to the Super Sentai series they had already licenced), namely the original series, Kuuga, Ryuki, Zero-One and the Heisei Generations FOREVER movie. Agito and 555 are streaming on TokuHD (as I mentioned before) and Amazons is streaming on Amazon Prime.

While Toei does have an official tokusatsu YouTube channel, where they stream their library of series similar to how Tsuburaya does with their YouTube channel, it is only available in Japan. In April 2020, Toei began uploading their series on Toei Tokusatsu World, a separate YouTube channel created specifically for their Western fans that immediately got taken down by copyright strikes on their own content. Aside from streaming Metal Hero series and other toku series nobody cares about, they’ve only bothered to upload the first two episodes of every Kamen Rider series on there, with no plans to follow through with the rest of the episodes (Super Sentai is only available in Asia because of the last paragraph). Apparently, the official subtitled release of the first two Kamen Rider episodes was funded by the J-LOD scheme (Japan Content LOcalisation and Distribution) established by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry and that they hope that fans would provide subtitles for the rest of the episodes. The only problem is that YouTube discontinued its community captions feature last year and I have been unable to find any evidence of Toei suggesting such a thing from their fans, so I can only assume that they either weren’t transparent about it or had no intention of doing so at all. You can see why I prefer Tsuburaya’s approach better. Frankly, I think Toei should have just uploaded TV-Nihon’s releases and called it a day.

There’s a Europoor sperg on Twitter (and the TV-Nihon forums) by the name of HowlingSnail who always complains about tokusatsu series only being licensed in the US. Like him or not, you’ve got to admit that he does have a point. Even in the age of VPNs and multi-region DVD players, the entire world has to be considered when it comes to international licencing and expansion because believe it or not, the “West” isn’t made up of just the US alone. Things shouldn’t have to be like this, and yet, things are the way they are.

Around the time that TV-Nihon (apparently) got C&D’d, Western fans were pissed that The Tokusatsu Network posted news of Toei streaming Kamen Rider Drive on their Japanese-exclusive channel, rubbing salt into their wounds, while also not saying anything about the current situation with fansubs. In TokuNet’s defence, I can understand why they wouldn’t do that; on top of being based in Japan, they’ve done interviews with various actors and producers on their YouTube channel, plus their senior editor, Tom Constantine, has made cameo appearances on a few episodes and movies. So if anything, TokuNet are closer to Toei than any other news site covering tokusatsu.

In summary, Toei are complicit in enabling this shitstorm that could have been preventable if they weren’t so incompetent and out-of-touch with their Western fanbase. If more scrutiny was exercised during the negotiation of Western licencing, we probably wouldn’t have had the TokuHD disaster. If Toei were more transparent with their intentions for streaming their toku series in the West, fansub groups would be more than happy to contribute to the official subtitles and/or take their (unofficial) releases down (though I don’t necessarily agree with this practice entirely). Or maybe if Toei actually made a media release saying that it was actually them who sent the C&D’s to KRDL, NewZect and TV-Nihon, we wouldn’t have had this debacle and this post would just be me talking about the death knell for tokusatsu fansubs (which would probably be just this section of the post).

In the lack of free and easily accessible means to access media protected behind paywalls and geoblocks, people will always turn to things like “illegal” streaming sites and torrenting, particularly when they believe that multi-million dollar companies don’t deserve their hard-earned money just because they keep bugging everyone to give it all to them.

(Also, I know someone called me out in one of my linked posts where I described Toei’s attitude to copyright as “Jewish”, but fuck you, my stance doesn’t change just because a few people got their fee-fees hurt from poking their noses into other people’s business. If Toei changes their attitude and gives us a plan for international distribution, then I might soften my stance.)

Shirakura and the Western fanbase: lolcows in their own right

So it’s been established that it’s a bad idea to tag Shirakura or anyone affiliated with Toei regarding this situation with the TV-Nihon C&D (or fansubs or leaks or whatever in general) because we don’t have the full details and they probably have no idea of what’s going on. Look, I know Shirakura is worthy of criticism for some things, but this is not one of them because he is the director of planning and production at Toei - he’s not responsible for international distribution or copyright takedowns. All that these spergs on TokuTwitter have done is prove that Shirakura has no idea what is going on and made Japanese fans aware (to some extent) that spergs like them exist. The irony behind Shirakura’s actions as the producer of some Kamen Rider series and his interactions with Western fans is the reason why I lovingly coin “The Shirakura Paradox” as a phrase to describe it.

I’ve noticed that a lot of people on TokuTwitter are very paranoid and reactionary. They believe in conspiracy theories like “TV-Nihon actually got C&D’d” and “Over-Time got C&D’d as well” when 1) the notice they got wasn’t a C&D per se or even a DMCA and 2) Over-Time never got C&D’d, though they did help TV-Nihon analyse the email and decided to stop posting about their releases when they were convinced that the email was somewhat legit (because a Toei email can’t be faked due to the Sender Policy Framework, or SPF).

With regards to the “reactionary” part, the main example relating to this is twt_tokusatsu, who has been blamed for causing this debacle with fansubs because Shirakura replied to her tweets (that did NOT mention fansubs) with a joke. However, another big example is WeiWenn and Ichi of the Castranger podcast. “What?”, I hear you ask in a surprised tone, “What do they have to do with all this?” If you want to know the story behind them, take a look at my Shirakura Paradox post under “You are supposed not to know about Trinity”.

I know this debacle was two years ago and that Ichi has deserved enough blame (and apologised) for posting scans from a toy catalog targeted at distributors and not consumers, but why the hell is WeiWenn being blamed when he only mentioned “Trinity” (in verbatim) possibly referring to Agito Trinity and not Zi-O Trinity? WeiWenn has been sent death threats because entitled manbabies with gunts can never read the latest leaks about new toys. As a result, WeiWenn has deleted his Twitter account, claiming that Shirakura’s joke was the last straw (Ichi has also deleted his Twitter account as well). Anyone who blames WeiWenn (or Ichi) for somehow causing the TV-Nihon C&D’s is just as retarded, if not more, than the people who still blame twt_tokusatsu, especially when the damage has already been done and the debacle is already two years old. As such, I stand behind #RespectWeiWenn and #RespectIchi. For more information, check out this Twitter thread and the below video.

youtube

Things like this are the reason why the tokusatsu fanbase in the West is seemingly on thin ice with Toei. If you ask me, TokuTwitter as a whole deserves to be discussed and mocked on sites like 4chan and Kiwi Farms, because some individuals seem to act in a manner resembling lolcows. On top of that, I wish that tokusatsu fans in Japan would talk more about this retardation and join in the circlejerking with their Western counterparts who are more sophisticated and logical.

In conclusion, the whole debacle with Toei and TV-Nihon has been a ticking time bomb fuelled by Toei’s incompetence and lack of awareness of their Western fanbase, who are no saints either with their lolcow attitudes. Tsuburaya is pretty based with their international distribution and TV-Nihon’s typesetters should #ReleaseTheFonts.

#tokusatsu #kamen rider #super sentai #ultraman #tv-nihon #releasethefonts #respectweiwenn #respectichi

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aion-rsa · 3 years ago

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Netflix’s He-Man Isn’t for Parents, It’s For a New Generation

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The Masters of the Universe franchise is experiencing a major resurgence, with three new series on Netflix after a drought of animated content after the 2002 MOTU series ended in 2004. The new era has been an altogether unexpected one for the franchise. Leading off with a new version of She-Ra, a character not seen in animation since the ‘80s, the show boldly aimed its stories at a new and more diverse group of viewers. Even with its eschewing of direct connections to He-Man the show delighted in its references and use of the wider MOTU mythology.

Then we got Masters of the Universe: Revelation. Where many updates of old franchises simply take concepts and do a modern take on them, Revelation instead was a love letter to fans of the franchise. It wasn’t a reboot of He-Man, it was a continuation of the original show. It was filled to the brim with references and callbacks, both obvious and deep cut. This was a show that wasn’t just using nostalgia as a marketing tactic, it was actively courting its original audience and making something specific for them.

Now we come to Netflix’s new He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. Another kids series like She-Ra and the Princesses of Power but this time utilizing the flagship elements of the franchise. That gang’s all here – He-Man, Skeletor, Teela, Man at Arms, Cringer, Evil-Lyn, etc. In some ways this is the more prototypical example of a nostalgic reboot, one that takes certain elements of the past and remixes them for a new generation. However this show goes even farther than She-Ra in its straying from the source material.

The new He-Man has its own unique story-telling sense. The plot isn’t a retread of what came before, in this version Adam doesn’t remember his past and discovers the powers of He-Man in his teens. Where before only he wielded the power of Grayskull, now a whole team is able to call on its power, turning the show from one with a clear main character to an ensemble piece. It boldly reimagines the look of classic characters, still retaining key visual markers, but breathing new and modern design sensibilities in them, much of this aided by the show’s use of CGI instead of traditional animation.

Jeff Matsuda, co-executive producer of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, knew full well that while it was essential to honor the original series and core aspects of the franchise, the important thing was to create something that the new generation of kids could own for themselves.

“We have ours,” Jeff explains, referring to longtime fans of the franchise, “and all the iterations, but it’s nice for kids (because) they want to own something themselves. I have kids and if it’s something that has to do with their dad, they’re ‘ah, no, thanks.’ They want something of their own to enjoy.”

This doesn’t mean the new series is He-Man in name only. Showrunner Rob David makes it clear that they’re standing on the shoulders of the many creative’s who’ve had a hand in the franchise. The new creative team’s goal however was to take everything that came before, distill it to its core essence, and find a way of reimagining it, “for a kid today who needs it to reflect both that kid’s hopes, dreams, world, and aspirations on their terms.”

One of the biggest elements of that was changing He-Man a.k.a. Adam himself. In the original series He-Man is a larger than life hero who begins the series fully formed and ready to take on evil with very few doubts in his mind. David wanted the new version of He-Man to reflect how the concept of a hero has changed over the years.

“Our need for heroes is not for instant perfect heroes. It is to show the challenge and journey of becoming a hero.”

This core ethos for the show meant sweeping changes to the story. One example of this is in the changes to the character of Duncan aka Man-At-Arms. In the original series he was an older mentor to He-Man and the father of Teela. In the new series, he and Adam are the same age and there’s no relation to Teela. These changes were made to aid Adam’s larger arc of having to grow into being a hero. He couldn’t have someone like Man-At-Arms around to protect him. However, the new Man-At-Arms does maintain his role of being a master inventor so a core part of the original character is still there.

This would have left the new series without a mentor character, something David stressed was something that couldn’t be discarded from a MOTU series. This led to Cringer, formerly a comedic sidekick, to fill that mentor role. This keeps that core mentor element but also lets the series bring a new take to the story with the concept of a whole team utilizing the power of Grayskull.

“The archetypes are always there even when they’re re-imagined for a new audience,” David says.

In keeping with this being a new take on He-Man, the creative team didn’t just look for inspiration from the original series but drew on multiple new sources. One easily recognizable influence is the genre of Tokusatsu, Japanese special effects series that include Super Sentai (better known in America for being adapted into Power Rangers.) He-Man and the rest of the cast all have colorful stock transformation sequences that play in most of the episodes. They wear armor and each character has their own stock attack animation sequences.

Matsuda says this wasn’t completely intentional but, “being Japanese, I grew up with a lot of that stuff. Sometimes I’d be like, ‘why do I love it when there’s a team of people that all have a specific color for each person?”’

He also points to Goonies and Stranger Things as inspiration for the team dynamic of the series.

“Anytime you have kids becoming friends and hanging out, it is exactly where I love to be.”

While a small group of fans may argue that the series should stick close to its roots, a franchise like He-Man needs to reinvent itself to stay relevant. It can’t just keep going back to the well and redoing the same old stories. The creative team of Netflix’s He-Man and the Masters of the Universe made sure to draw inspiration from the past because without that it wouldn’t be MOTU, but they also weren’t afraid to take the franchise in a new direction. Especially with two other recent MOTU shows for fans to watch and enjoy, this was the perfect and right time for the franchise to take a chance.

The franchise also can’t keep being made exclusively for older fans. This series, like She-Ra and the Princesses of Power before it, is wisely aimed at the new generation and in the long run the franchise will benefit from it. What may seem new and different now is something that, in 20 or 30 years, will be another beloved part of a long franchise. That isn’t to say old school fans can’t enjoy the series, there’s a lot to love about it if you’re a hardcore fan or just an adult looking to watch a fun show, but it’s nice to know that today’s generation will have a He-Man series to call their own.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

He-Man and the Masters of the Universe is available to stream on Netflix now.

The post Netflix’s He-Man Isn’t for Parents, It’s For a New Generation appeared first on Den of Geek.

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#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

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amisbro · 4 years ago

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Let’s discuss: UtaPri and “factions”

So this is something that I feel has been long overdue but I held off on it for the longest time (and no not just because I couldn’t figure out the issue with my dash on this website either) but I threw my hands up and went “Screw it...WE’RE DOING IT NOW!” With that let’s discuss UtaPri and the “factions”

So we can look at this subject any # of ways and we can use the Anime in a way (especially after Season 4 which people in the fandom can’t fucking let go of to the point I still gotta hear about it) OR We can discuss this in a way with how there is becoming factions where it feels like there are more and more people wanting to have HEAVENS in the game but there is a sharp adversary to this and that causes issues OR We can discuss how ,for a year and a half, there were people like me that just wanted to see the main story updated to get more songs added (and also because the fact that the game was legitimately blocking people from finishing tasks on the missions segment) Things like this are things that have been going on now since AT LEAST 2016 and ,in my opinion, has gotten WORSE once SL became a Global game. I genuinely believe that Broccoli has unknowingly (or possibly knowingly) done things that would splinter the fanbase and KLab got thrown into the mess once Shining Live came out. It’s gone from something that has been one big family to factions of people wanting one thing but being told to basically “Shut the fuck up” by the other group Let me give you an example Shining Live came out in 2017 in Japan and then Globally in 2018. Now is the game called “Shining Live” yes but I think that was a big misstep by KLab and Broccoli because I knew in a way (and its bared out that I was right) that this was going to cause problems Why? I have felt that one of the best things to do with UtaPri was to continue the Music series in some way. We had ended on the A-Sides for QN and STARISH for season songs and then the Group songs for them. It made sense that ,when the next game came out, that we would have the continuation of that and NOT a complete reboot People forget that had there been a “Proper Music 4″ that we would have gone through the S3 B-Sides and then moved on to Season 4 and it would have more than likely started with the Duets and then have had the solos in the next Music game. The point here is that they were going to have enough songs that were “publicly available” that “Broccoli’s Rule” wouldn’t have had to come into effect. Nonetheless we got Shining Live and for the first year + we had a lot of content for the people that liked to play the events and then still please those that really...probably knew better than to play the events so we just played the main story and chilled out. Keep in mind though this was also before they instituted the “Points Shot” and the mission that maxed out at the # 50 so for a while it was a bit weird...but you understood it! Then October of 2018 happened and because of that the Collection event and the halt of “Main Story” content and I remember mentioning in the comments of one of the KLab Game Stations that I would have liked to see more “Main Story” content and that resulted in an argument with someone and that was my first real realization that there were going to start to become more “camps” like this in the future. The biggest problem is always this one with SL Again is the game called “Shining Live”? Yes it is but that doesn’t mean you should get the right to exclude content from the game JUST BECAUSE its not from “Shining Productions”! Remember kids: “Shining Live” is a “Subtitle” of a game but “Uta no Prince-Sama” is the main part of the title...excluding one part of the series literally becomes a problem then! Now one could say “Well HEAVENS doesn’t have enough songs” And yet they get new songs released (and mentioned in tweets) and yet we can’t put those songs in SL...right! I think sometimes people forget that SL doesn’t exist in the universe of UtaPri like I think you do. Like they could have literally said that HEAVENS was canonically a part of Shining Productions in SL and that would literally solve everything...now they DON’T so we go into this whole thing every time they tweet out something that involves song releases. Like you all DO realize that there were 3 groups at Maji Love Kingdom right? So therefore there were SIX songs performed outside of “Maji Love Kingdom” right? I’m making sure you are aware of this because the way KLab has marketed this game (poorly in a way) is such that you genuinely forgot that HEAVENS IS a part of the UtaPri Universe! Here is another one Here in the States we had screenings of Maji Love Kingdom. I went to the one in NJ and it was literally like walking into a morgue! Now a big part of this is that Sentai fucked up royally and didn’t send out anything to theaters that this was to be treated more like a CONCERT than a MOVIE but they didn’t so what you ended up with was a lot of people not really singing along to the songs and it was literally so DEAD that I walked out before “Encore” finished! Now one would think that ,if you had a bad experience and you wanted to talk about it, people would be more sympathetic...problem is that didn’t happen! Here is what DID happen! Apparently there was this one cat that felt they needed to do PR for Sentai and anyone that genuinely complained about it on twitter were being told by this one individual (no I will not name them but I bet you they know who they are) “Maybe your next experience will be better” Alright shut all the way the fuck up! The experience that I had (and some others apparently) LITERALLY SUCKED! I get that we were in the minority but still...if there are people that had a bad time you don’t get to act any kind of way towards them...point blank period! The reality is that yes the camp of people that had a bad time was small...we got that but at the same time those people deserved to be heard and if you negate those people that’s a problem because how do theaters get to fix their issues then? But these are things I’m talking about. We get to the point where the series here starts to get divisive because of different things. HEAVENS not being in SL is a big one because...shouldn’t fans of the group be allowed to get cards of their faves too? The other big thing we can get into is the fact that it was recently announced that there are going to be an “Animated Concert Series” starting in 2022 and first is STARISH. I think we all know (based on past performances) that they are no doubt going to give STARISH and QN this treatment and that’s fine...but you have to be lying to yourself if you think for any amount of time that Broccoli gives any fucks about HEAVENS...they don’t...they literally DO NOT CARE! If you say they do then answer me this question “Why didn’t HEAVENS get a stage event like QN and STARISH?” Or answer me this one “Why didn’t they get to perform their solos but STARISH did at 6th stage?” I mean...ANYONE with a clue knows why and its obvious. When Agematsu tweeted out a photo from the Movie of course he tweeted it out specifically of STARISH but HE don’t get put on blast for his bias? HE IS LITERALLY HARUKA’S PROXY FOR FUCK SAKES!! Let me assure you all of something: You know damn well that a lot of you really hate the fuck out of HEAVENS because if you didn’t then for FOUR YEARS (soon to be 5) you all wouldn’t have harped JUST on what happened to Otoya...nah you’d have given a fuck about Eiichi but we get it cos you all hate his guts right? Y’all love to still post your Eiichi hate and I still get to see it SOMEHOW but don’t worry cos I got a spot on the bench for all of ya That is all I needed to say here...talk to all you lovely people again soon

#uta no prince sama #HEAVENS #factions #Shining Live #6th Stage

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reversemoon255 · 5 years ago

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Fifth Review: Kishiryu Sentai Ryusoulger

Controversial take: I think this is a good series. Not the best, but certainly not bad. And there are some people who read that and question what I'm talking about because they either love the series or think it's terrible. Well, for the first half of this series' run, most of the people I talked to did not like this series, to the point that I stopped talking to people about it. Now, I didn't stop because I thought their opinions were invalid, or because I was mad, but because hearing all that criticism was negatively impacting my opinions. I'd come off episodes feeling good, listen to what other people were saying, and suddenly my opinion would lessen. Ryusoulger does have some issues, but I feel like they were ballooned out of proportion to the point that the shadow they cast prevented people from seeing some very positive things this series had to offer.

The Good: This is a very trope heavy series, with both the goods and bads that come with that. And that does make sense, as this series was supposed to be a ratings grab season to bring in new fans. I know we all enjoy when Sentai breaks its standard tropes, but you have to establish what your tropes are before you can break them. And this checks all the boxes: having Red and the sixth getting the most focus, Red getting power-ups, big robot combinations, (Dino Sentai specific) having an important character die. It doesn't stray very far from the typical formula. But that's ok. Part of the reason we like Sentai is because we like the tropes, and to criticize the series for sticking to its foundation means you have an issue with Sentai as a whole, not Ryusoulger.

The series itself was also structured to help draw in new fans, which seemed to rub some people the wrong way. Episode one was extremely bombastic, with a few decent humorous and dramatic moments, and some over the top fighting. Following that, the first half plus of the show was very episodic, with not a lot of connecting elements. This was probably done to not alienate new viewers and make it feel like they could come in at any episode without missing much. The second half of the show had more connecting plots, like Gaisorg, Pricious, and Heras, to reward people who had stuck with the show and raise the stakes moving into the final acts. While I do prefer more threads and build-up, especially early on, I can appreciate what the writers were trying to do.

And Ryusoulger had a decent cast, if a little underdeveloped because of the aforementioned Red/Six trope. I'm not a big fan of Koh. He's fine when it comes to the goofier episodes, but he was hard to take seriously. Still like him more than Daigo. Melto felt like he might make a better Red, as he was a serious character whose nature easily lead him to being the butt of a joke. His relationship with Oto was actually cute and funny. I normally don't like the "legal loli" trope, but as everyone was far older than they appeared it helped to underplay that issue for me. Asuna had a lot of good moments throughout the season (being the first Pink since TimePink to defeat an enemy general) and had a great actress, but suffers from being the only female Ranger. In my opinion it's always better to write at least two female Rangers since it forces the writers to give them distinct personalities. When you only have one, like in Asuna's case, you normally end up with "girl in a boys show." Yes, she has quirks, like a bottomless stomach and super strength, but quirks a personality does not make. Towa is probably the least developed character, but felt like he had a lot more planned for him (like how he was able to summon Haya Soul's power without a RyuSoul in the final episode). Bamba is a darling, and I love him. The episode where we meet his ex-girlfriend says it all: a tough but kind man who has become better through his interactions with the other Ryusoulgers. I also don't like Canalo that much. His personality feels very responsive to the fact that Toei seems to be trying to subtly push having kids as a good thing to help with Japan's population crisis (which is much more evident in Precure if you pay attention to the fairy designs in recent years), and the fact that said higher-ups seemed to force retconned straight relationships on possibly gay characters over the last three season (which I think is more to do with the population agenda than anything else as Chocolate Macaroons is very much a canon thing). It just feels like he was written that way as a jab from the writers at the Toei big wigs (meaning he's purposefully annoying).

The design work in this series is also excellent. While I would have liked a little more armor on the main costumes, like shoulder pads, the armor given by the RyuSouls was nice, the villain and monster designs were great (as were their personalities, I just don't want to make this longer than need be), and the Megazords had much sleeker designs that allowed for a lot more movement (which seems to be carrying over to Kiramager). I also love the designs of the Kishiryu. Giving them a fossilized look helps set them apart from the dinosaurs that have preceded them, as well as helps with the ever shifting issues of how much feathering any particular species had. They also get huge credit from me as a toy guy for the amount of interplay and non-robot combining present within them. SpinoThunder, Pteramigo, CosmoRaptor, there were a lot of Kishiryu that could combine into other dinosaurs.

Episode to episode, as that's how most of the show was, was hit or miss. I typically loved anything that heavily features Tyramigo (as he was also a great character). Thankfully nothing was as bad as Pitch Cock from Lupin. As for ongoing plots, the Gaisorg plot had a few hiccups, but lead to a good death scene, a cool looking power-up, and some lasting impact on Koh. Pricious, after s/he showed up, easily demonstrated themself as a force to be reckoned with, and the pressure s/he put on the other generals lead to some great moments from the villain cast. The Heras plot had some neat twists to it, but I wish the ending resolved with Heras admitting that she was wrong before her death (since the current generation had overcome the long-standing feud between the two RyuSoul Tribes and had shown willingness to work with the Druidons, both things she criticized them for).

The last thing I'll go into is themes, as Life and Death were two very prevalent themes that were the focus of some of the best episodes. They went full ham on the downsides of the extended life of the RyuSoul Tribe, such as the episode where we meet Bamba's 60-70 year-old ex-girlfriend or the episode where another member of the Tribe wants to commit suicide because she's outlived too many people she's loved. The episodes with Shine and ShadowRaptor were probably my favorite, particularly the parts with Ui and her mom. It felt like a better version of what they tried to do with Kotaro in Kyuranger (which was, coincidentally, my favorite episode of that season).

The Bad: I already brought up a few issues. Focusing on Koh and Canalo isn't bad, but focusing on them too much negatively impacted everyone else's development until the last 10ish episodes of the show. Bamba got a decent amount because he had a backstory, but Towa got almost none and Asuna got little outside "team's girl." Going into power-ups, that is again not inherently a bad thing, but how you use them can be. This was a big issue I had with Lupinranger, as that series focused on two teams, but one of them stopped getting power-ups half-way through the show. Power-ups can be a physical representation of a character's growth, and if only Koh is getting them that means only he is growing. Bamba, Asuna, and Melto all eventually got to use one, but Towa wasn't seen using one until the second-to-last episode.

The Kishiryu are an offshoot of this problem. Koh essentially owns every Kishiryu outside the ones everyone started with. Furthermore, the Kishiryu were designed to be modular, but that was severely underutilized. There were no interesting combinations after they gained access to Five Knights outside of the final episode. Kishiryu-Oh's ability to move his parts around for specific attacks isn't seen outside the first few episodes. There was so much more they could do that they didn't. And I understand that part of that is costume design and budget, but you shouldn't bring forth that idea of modularity if you're not going to use it.

Then there's the aforementioned death scene, which, while I like it, highlights some of the issues with pushing all your plot threads to the end of the show. There were some writing hiccups involving Gaisorg and his relationship with the Druidons. In the death scene itself, it happens the episode immediately after they break the curse of the Gaisorg armor. There is no time to build up Nada's relationships, how grateful he is, how his dynamic might shake up Koh's with Melto or Bamba or Canalo; he's gone before any of that. And it's by a one-off villain. What should have happened, in my opinion, is Nada should have lived through that fight, proven his worth to the team, and then in the following episode died to Pricious. It would still be quick, but it would increased Pricious' threat level, given Nada more time with the team, and might have helped how they tried to nerf Max RyuSoul the episode after it premiered.

Overall, Ryusoulger is a popcorn series; one that is easy to pick up and watch, but isn't something that will blow your mind and you'll be talking about for years to come. It's a good show that is hampered by some sizable issues, but those issues serve as a benefit for the series as a whole and aim to keep it on the air for years to come. If we have to sit through a Ryusoulger every couple of years, I don't have a problem with that. It's not the best, but I still had fun.

#Super Sentai #Kishiryu Sentai Ryusoulger #Ryusoulger #review #dinosaur #Power Rangers

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tentacletherapissed · 5 years ago

Text

Public Callout: Paradox, Blue, Jay, Bird

This is a public callout post for users Paradox (@rushifaas -- previously @mournins ; @beliisms), Blue (@divinebetrayed ; @halcyonfought), Jay (@loyalbetrayed) and Bird (@soulsbetrayed). They are active in the fandoms Persona, Fire Emblem, Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, Danganronpa, Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor, Sentai, Power Rangers, and Kamen Rider.

Never in my 15 years of roleplaying have I met a group of abusers and enablers so toxic, and this post is a PSA so that I can hopefully keep others from falling into their hands. Please blacklist them ALL for your own safety, however, DO NOT ENGAGE THEM WITH HARASSMENT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.

Keep in mind, Paradox’s actions are so egregious, he is already getting charges pressed against him by two different people he abused so far, and more may be on the horizon. The rest all enable this behavior and defend him despite all that he’s done to harm them and people they previously called friends. While this callout has snapshots of receipts proving our claims sprinkled in at the mention of them, for full transparency, the full comment chains will be uploaded at the end so that context for everything will be supplied, with censoring only provided for those who have nothing to do with the conflict and wish to be left out of it.

Strong trigger warning for mob mentality, mental and emotional manipulation, emotional abuse, emotional neglect, transphobia, pedophilia, ableism, and a lot more. Details under the cut. (7,300+ words, be mindful)

[Gdoc link in case Tumblr’s formatting is unreadable]

OPEN ALL LINKS AS NEW TABS, I’M SORRY TUMBLR SUCKS AT THIS

Note: Paradox claims to have Dissociative Identity Disorder, and claims to have many alters which are sometimes go by the names of Abel, Vic, Nikki, Hebel, Cain, and Ana in some of these screencaps. I will not be arguing the veracity of such claims in this callout, but for simplicity’s sake, I will be referring to everyone in his system solely by the name of “Paradox” since there is a considerable amount of confusion based on who said what and it’s not entirely clear who’s supposed to be talking in a lot of these screenshots. He also claims to have several other mental disorders like depression, anxiety, and BPD, but regardless of anyone’s mental illness, they should treat those around them with respect and kindness, which is why this callout has been made.

________________________________________________________________

MAIN EVENT - Early September 2018 / June 10th

Paradox is the ringleader of this little cult. A few months ago, he was dating my friend Nael (occasionally called Arin, Ciel, Naoya or Hevel in some of these screens). I first got alarmed about the health of their relationship during an incident in early September 2018 where Paradox threatened to commit suicide over a conflict having to do with RPing and prioritizing one blog over one he liked. [September Break Up: Singles] They broke up, but after a lot of guilt tripping from Paradox and others in his group, my friend Nael decided to get back together with him. Even though I had a lot of misgivings about the situation, I told Nael that I respected their decision and wouldn’t pressure them either way. [Scout and Nael: 12, 13]

Months went by, and I didn’t hear much due to specifically asking Nael not to tell me about their significant other and that group of friends, but things were going downhill. There were many more fights over roleplaying and shipping, some of which Blue and Jay expressed concern about privately, especially since it seemed Paradox himself was ignoring his other lover Kieran for Nael. [For Me: 13, 15, 16]

Paradox’s behavior continued worsening until it came to a head in mid March 2019. Blue and Nael were getting invested in an rp campaign I was running on a private server. When Nael showed off a picture they drew portraying their character, Paradox became extremely upset at them. After a solid week of enduring abuse from their lover [Abel Suicide: 1, 2, 6], it eventually culminated in Paradox apparently trying to take his own life after Nael attempted to break off their relationship. [Abel Suicide: 22, 23, 24] Nael was able to contact their mutual partner Kieran (sometimes called Kie or Vampy in screens) so that he could send the police to Paradox’s home and he would be rushed to the hospital. [Nael: 11]

Nael has multiple health issues that include heart disease and problems with their brain, and was so traumatized by the experience, they had to go to the hospital themselves [Nael: 19, 20 ; Before / After Suicide: 43]. Because I was terrified at the possibility of Nael dying from the escalating nature of their toxic relationship, I urged them to go through with the breakup. Nael decided to take my advice and broke up with Paradox and Kieran on a group chat while on a screenshared call with me and another friend who wishes to remain nameless. [Before / After Suicide: 46]

Blue was at first on board for the breakup and supportive of Nael’s decision [Blue Agrees: Singles] but at the persuasion of Jay decided to believe Paradox’s story when he said Nael had misrepresented what he said when he told Nael he would probably drop Blue due to the breakup. [Copy of Group DM: Full] Keep in mind, we have the FULL attempted suicide dropbox [Abel Suicide: Full], and the breakup conversation including Paradox’s abusive behavior before the attempted suicide attempt. [Before/After Suicide: Full] Much of what Paradox says are blatant falsehoods. In addition, Kieran (Vampy) no longer agrees with the things he has said to support Paradox’s argument and says he was pressured to agree with everything, even if it didn’t feel right.

So instead of making it clear to either of us that Blue no longer considered us friends, she instead gave us the silent treatment and leaked what I vented to her in confidence to Paradox behind my back. She only admitted to doing this when I confronted her after finding a vague post Paradox made that used the exact same wording. [Scout vs Blue: 1, 3, 4] I was extra furious with her because Paradox was making it sound as if it was Nael saying those words when in fact they had no idea what I said to her and was highly distraught when they found out about the vague post. Her excuse was that she didn’t think we would find out. [Scout vs Blue: 7, 9]

This is a common theme with their relationship that shows the extent of how complicit Blue is with Paradox’s abusive behavior. Due to her once close relationship with Nael, she often served as the “bait” to bring Nael back, agreeing that the relationship is unhealthy at first [With Blue: 12] only to go back to heaping abuse on Nael for leaving and trying to persuade them to come back [Nael’s Last Conversation with Blue: Full].

By then, Nael had already blocked everyone else in the cult-like group except Blue due to a promise they’d made to her, and she abused this trust right away by pulling Nael into a group chat so that everyone could yell at them. [Scout vs Blue: 10, 11] IF YOU BECOME A PART OF THIS GROUP, THIS IS WHAT YOU CAN LOOK FORWARD TO. If you do anything to provoke Paradox’s ire, you will be subjected to a firing squad full of people yelling at you for whatever you did. You will not have a chance to defend yourself, only grovel for forgiveness until they decide they’re through with you. Nael and other members of the group have been subjected to it many times.

Unfortunately, there are no surviving screencaps of this particular dispute, but I do have the one I was involved with. More on that later.

Eventually Nael left and blocked Blue so that they couldn’t be added back to get yelled at more. For the sake of our RP, we agreed upon a peaceable way to continue the server RP [Scout vs Blue: 12, 13, 14, 15, 16] but Blue eventually exited that too [Scout vs Blue: 17]. During the three or so weeks they were split apart, Paradox vagued continuously about us, copied our behavior and prior ships he had with Nael with others currently in his cult, and sent Nael threatening and unstable messages [“Goodbye, Nael”: Single]. While behind their back, he was privately making light of the situation and even made bets with his stooges about when Nael would return [Betting: Singles].

Here’s where I have to put an important disclaimer: During Nael’s time away from the main cult, we both would snoop on his and Blue’s blogs to see if they had mentioned us. Also, during the period immediately after Blue sold me out to Paradox, I became enraged and sent him a pretty angry message [Scout Loses Their Mind: Single], commented on one of his posts, and indirectly threatened them with my popularity compared to theirs in the community I was in. All of those things were the direct result of piss poor decision making and I apologize for my behavior, because it was simply not right to do, no matter who I thought I was defending. Though the blog snooping continued, I thankfully sent no more harassing messages to anyone from the group once Blue indicated she wanted a clean break from us, and no vaguing messages were made on either of our blogs.

Worse still, I privately speculated if this latest suicide attempt Paradox had gone through was “real” or not, which is totally unacceptable. Though I was just concerned about my friend and worried that this might have been another attempt to manipulate them, all threats of suicide should be treated seriously and the proper authorities contacted, PERIOD, regardless of how “serious” the threat might seem. I definitely agree with Nael’s decision to contact the authorities as it was happening, and I’m relieved to know another life wasn’t tragically lost, no matter what my situation is with Paradox after the fact.

Now, with that out of the way… Eventually, Paradox was able to get through to Nael by convincing them that I had lied about a certain mental disorder he was assumed to have. This is all despite me never having said he didn’t have it as I do NOT have the medical condition described and am NOT a medical professional. Paradox willingly passed medical records through a mutual friend [Consent: Single] that Nael initially found convincing but has recently come to doubt. Note: PLEASE NEVER DO THIS, OBVIOUSLY.

Paradox then convinced Nael to pretend to be my friend for a little longer so that he could lure me into a groupchat under the impression that I was defending him from all his former friends. Here is the entire chat almost in its entirety (a few glitches in captures results in a few repeats and nearly 4 minutes straight of lost content), with screenshots proudly taken by BLUE [Her Discord Drop: Single], who played an instrumental role in helping it happen. While I would encourage everyone to read it in its entirety, please be warned that the amount of abuse I endured is very troubling. [Scout Trap: Full]

Please note that Nael (Hevel), Kieran (Ghostie), and Dave have all come to me and personally apologized to me for their role participating in that group chat and we are friends now. But at the time due to this traumatic experience, my friendship with Nael was officially ended. Even though I was worried sick about them, I knew they couldn’t be saved until they saw Paradox’s abusive behavior for what it was on their own. And of course, after a brief honeymoon period, the abuse started again. (Keep in mind, I wasn’t in contact with Nael or anyone else for most of these, so I’m not as familiar about what happened and when.)

The first sign of trouble started on April 16th, not even two full weeks after I had been "defeated". Once again, it was over RP drama, where Paradox became upset at his two lovers Nael and Kieran for shipping with anyone besides him [Initial Ship Drama: 6], even though he usually continues multishipping on his blog with certain people when he pleases. [With Blue: 2] He complained about this endlessly. [Random Paradox Screen]

He continuously gaslit Kieran for about a week, cycling between saying he was going to leave forever [Initial Ship Drama: 9], telling the Kieran to take care of Nael [Initial Ship Drama: 10, 27], giving conflicting directions [Initial Ship Drama: 22, 38], putting himself down so Kieran would feel compelled to console him [Initial Ship Drama: 30, 41, 58], and asking them not to try to pursue romance with him [Initial Ship Drama: 12, 13, 32, 63], only to flip around and say that the idea of romancing them makes him feel “happy”, so he will [Initial Ship Drama: 45, 46], then become upset when either one of them indicated they might need space to either think or just live life like normal. [Initial Ship Drama: 53] Really, the entire thing has to be seen to be believed. [Initial Ship Drama: Full]

Eventually, Paradox’s behavior got so bad that once again, Blue expressed dissatisfaction with his behavior [With Blue: 4], but apparently it wasn’t enough to dissuade her from luring Nael into yet another trap to be yelled at barely a month later on May 17th. [May 17th: Full]

Confusingly, the reason behind this collective thrashing was that Nael actually overcorrected too much and tried to do more stuff with Paradox, only to be called clingy and possessive when they did. Then, when Paradox told Nael he didn’t want to RP with them anymore, Nael tried to respect his decision and not get involved with group RPs that Paradox was involved with so there would be no pressure either way. This was then held up as an example as to why they were “isolating” themselves from the group. Paradox showed the screencaps to others in the group with very little context to get them riled up and angry at Nael so that they’d be on board to yell at them, again showing his willingness to twist someone’s words to make them a convenient villain, no matter what they do to try to appease him.

Then on May 24th, there was the supposed “death” of the alter “Abel”, (who has since returned yet again). [Paradox: 2] The source of all this drama was that Blue simply mentioned a ship that she was continuing with Nael during a period of time Paradox wasn’t at all receptive to the idea of them interacting. Blue freely admitted to being the source of this conflict in private [With Blue: 21], but had no problem letting Nael take the brunt of the abuse. Once again, she is complicit for enabling actions she knows are wrong and hurtful, judging by the way she expresses concern about them, as long as she’s not the one in the eye of the storm.

Following this conflict, Nael started having serious second thoughts. After getting yelled at yet again about something they didn’t even cause, they had to go to the hospital for a near suicide attempt due to all the stress of being repeatedly attacked by someone they thought they could trust.

After they got out again, they were pulled into a smaller group chat with the newly formed “Paradox” alter as well as Jay, where it was demanded he answer for the wrongful death of an alter that has since returned. Multiple times, Paradox held up the incident from September, (which was over 9 months prior!) as to why Nael was to blame for Blue’s actions this time. [Paradox: 8, 10] Paradox even told Nael, someone who had been in the hospital just a few short hours ago [Paradox: 5], that their “suicide held no meaning to him”. [Paradox: 32] All of this despite the fact that they had talked about the very same ship on May 6th! [Proof Abel Knew: 10 total]

This was also supposed to serve as yet another “My heart is telling me not to get in a relationship with you” conversation -- a breakup convo, and one their third lover, Kieran, hadn’t even initially been invited to. [Paradox: 59] It was mostly just Paradox yelling at Nael with Jay usually only chiming in to agree with or heap praise on Paradox. [Paradox: 67] Several times, Paradox made confusing reversals, at one point musing “another alter might come and love you again” [Paradox: 49] to going back to insisting they could never be together again [Paradox: 70], then accusing Nael of saying they don’t love him [Paradox: 45, 46]. You might remember this erratic pattern from his conversation with Kieran back in April. This is gaslighting in its purest and ugliest form.

Clearly after this, Nael was rattled and eventually decided to leave. Instead of making any sort of formal goodbye, they just decided to delete their old Discord and make a clean break so there was no way they could be dragged into another group chat and yelled at. The group quickly fell into chaos once again. Paradox quickly began pumping out venting vague posts on his personal and RP blogs, sometimes pitying himself over the way Nael had apparently treated him [Single: Singles], and sometimes outright wishing death on them. [Paradox die: Single] Before long, he cracked and started sending desperate messages to Nael directly despite Nael obviously not wanting to talk. [Paradox Desperation: Singles] And when that didn’t work, of course Blue was deployed to try to persuade them to come back. [Last Convo w/ Blue: 22 pages] Luckily Dave warned them beforehand. [Thanks, Dave!: Single]

To try to convince others in the group that Nael was the bad guy and needed to be stopped, Paradox began feeding lies to his followers about bad stuff Nael was apparently doing. Paradox told Dave that Nael had been badmouthing him behind his back. But when Dave went to confront Nael about their behavior, Nael provided proof that was in fact Blue saying bad things about Dave. That’s when Dave decided to leave, too.

More chaos happened within the group. Soon after, Kieran the supposed third in their relationship got tired of Paradox constantly saying how Nael was “the only person he could ever love” as well as the constant torrent of irrational behavior and abuse. [Paradox Flipping Out: Single] So he left, as well. Aside from many, many more aggressive venting and vague posts, nothing much new has happened as far as group dynamics.

So far Paradox has been mostly fixated on Nael’s absence, but without the contributions of everyone who left, this callout wouldn’t be possible, and they should all be commended for their efforts and their courage for coming to me to apologize personally for their part in the abuse I and others have suffered.

As terrible as Paradox’s behavior has been in this retelling of events, mostly centered around Nael’s situation, it’s really only scratching the surface of how toxic this group is. There are many smaller details and other people he’s hurt that couldn’t fit in this brief recap, so here are a few more things you should know about that will hopefully keep you from this toxic group of friends.

First I’ll talk about the accounts of people who used to be in the group and go into detail about all the people who are still backing Paradox up despite everything he’s done.

________________________________________________________________

PARTIES INVOLVED

- Other victims -

Kieran:

While Nael took the lion’s share of the abuse from Paradox, it’s important to remember that he was involved with two different people and treated them both badly. Paradox is an outstanding example of what NOT to do when in a polyamorous relationship.

While there was a brief month long period where everything seemed fine after they started dating on October 23rd, Paradox began heavily playing favorites towards Nael, a pattern that only seemed to get worse over time. Kieran was subjected to long periods of neglect from his lover with Paradox only seeming to remember he existed when he was trying to use Kieran against Nael. Even Blue and Jay noticed this when the relationship was just starting out and rightfully called it out, though only in the safety of a private chat. [For Me: 13, 15, 16]

Several times during their relationship, when Nael would mess up or try to leave, Paradox would say that Nael was “the only person he could love” (he even wrote a diary about it!) [Copy of Journal: 2 pages] and break things off with Kieran as well. Most of the time without even telling him. However whenever he was trying to condemn Nael about something, he would hold up Kieran to say “What you’re doing is hurting US”, often without Kieran’s consent.

Of course, Kieran was still subjected to the same amount of lies, gaslighting, emotional blackmail, and mental instability from Paradox that Nael had to endure, but the fact is that he was also basically used as a weapon against someone he cared about by someone who was supposed to care about them both EQUALLY.

Ruby:

Ruby is someone who’s been fighting a personal battle with Paradox for years, starting with a dispute that happened, of course, because of an argument about a fictional character. For the past year and a half as of writing this (the harassment started Nov 2017, it is currently July 2019), Paradox has been stalking her blogs and harassing her over this perceived slight. He lied about her to all her friends in an attempt to alienate her from the public, and we have a confession from Nael that says not only was Paradox guilty of sending tons of anon hate towards Ruby even after they had each other blocked, he would send other people (Nael included) to send anon hate after her.

I briefly intervened during this dispute on Nael’s behalf in November 2018 because during that time we were both lead to believe that Ruby was targeting both Paradox and Nael. This is despite the fact that the post Paradox was upset about wasn’t even about him and she barely even knew Nael even existed. Thanks to my help, I was able to negotiate a brief ceasefire that lasted a few months up until Nael’s separation from Paradox in March.

The stalking and harassment started up again as soon as I had been branded an enemy, and eventually it got so bad that Ruby was the first (but not the only) one to announce she is going to try to press charges against everyone still remaining in the group. Although we don’t see eye to eye on a lot of things, and she’s done and said things that were unintentionally hurtful, she has been very receptive to feedback and has made great pains to change for the better. I support Ruby wholeheartedly in her endeavors to make the ones abusing her pay for what they’ve done. If you want to know a little more about her conflict with Paradox from her perspective, visit her page. [Ruby’s page of Receipts: Full]

- Part of Paradox’s group -

Blue:

Out of all the people on this list, Blue is the most disappointing aspect of all this, seeing as I considered her my friend even before Nael came along. We’d been friends for more than a year by the time the March Madness started, meeting somewhere around February 2018. She was the one who introduced me to Nael in the first place, and Nael was so close to her they called each other their long lost siblings.

Unfortunately for all of us, Blue can’t stand up to a bully who insults and abuses her friends, even if she knows what he’s doing is wrong. We have multiple screenshots showing instances where she admits that Paradox is in the wrong or being annoying or excessively guilt tripping others based on trivial matters. However, whenever she’s personally on the hook for getting targeted by the ones she calls her “friends”, she quickly falls into line.

The second Paradox asks her to jump, she asks “How high?” She’s been willingly used as bait to rope Nael back into situations she knows and has even admitted are super unhealthy for them, all because she’s too afraid of being the next one everyone turns on. The only time she shows any semblance of “courage” is when she’s backed up by the rest of the hivemind. She’s too afraid to speak for herself, often parroting what others have already written in a desperate attempt to show external strength and total fealty for her master.

I have to wonder what exactly it is that keeps bringing Blue back to him, even though we have an entire folder showing times where she has come to her own conclusions that Paradox is unhealthy to be around [With Blue: 24 total] and has a penchant for blaming her whenever his relationship with his two lovers ever took a downwards turn. [Paradox blaming Blue: Singles] It’s not my place to speculate, but it’s safe to say that with all the times she’s personally let me, Nael, and others in our group down, there’s no way in hell we’re giving her another chance. She has made her choice to stay with someone she knew to be an abuser and emotional manipulator -- someone who hurt her and her friends -- and she will have to live with that decision.

Bird:

Ruby’s situation with Bird is very much like my situation with Blue, made all the worse by the fact that they were actually dating at the time. Bird purposefully sold Ruby out to Paradox while claiming they weren’t in contact, all the while she was feeding all of Ruby’s words and private thoughts to him. This is a common theme with this group and why you can’t be friends with just one of them if you don’t want to be involved with the cult as a whole.

Eventually she was found out and hasn’t really bothered to hide the fact that she’s on Paradox’s team ever since. We also have screenshots of her calling Nael a brat and useless during conflicts Paradox started, like the shipping drama in September. [Misc Bird Folder: 9 total] [Ruby and Bird’s Breakup: 16 total]

Jay:

Now we get to the biggest sycophant of the entire group, Jay. She’s been the one by his side the longest -- for a whopping 4 years -- and one of his most ardent supporters and biggest enablers. While I didn’t know much about her at first, seeing as she was largely absent from what I affectionately call the “six-person beat down”, she’s an invaluable member of Paradox’s cult and basically functions as his right arm and messenger.

If you have a problem with Paradox and want to talk things over with him, he’ll usually insist upon bringing Jay as an “impartial judge”. Not surprisingly, she usually just ends up agreeing with whatever he says and pushing his narrative, all the while insisting she’s being unbiased. She will lie for him, rope cult members attempting to leave back with excuses for his inexcusable behavior, and always swallows whatever lie he has to say wholeheartedly. If he needs a message from Abel passed on to someone trying to persuade them to come back, she’ll deliver it gladly. But if you need her to send a message to him, she’ll curtly tell you not to have her “fight your battles.”

She tried to send an entire drop box of “evidence” to Dave attempting to prove Nael was manipulative and evidence of the alter “Hebel's” existence. In it, Paradox (or rather, his alter Hebel) admitted to trying to spur Nael to kill themselves so that “Hebel” could apparently take over and get Kieran all to himself. [Potential Manslaughter: Singles] All of this was sent as proof that NAEL was the bad guy BY Jay, which is truly mind boggling and shows how far gone she is with regards to him.

There is a woman in prison the very moment that I’m writing this for spurring her suicidal boyfriend to take his own life [Article], and yet Jay thinks this behavior is okay? And before anyone tries to say that Hebel is “technically” to blame for attempting to push Nael to suicide, this argument hasn’t worked in the courtroom since the 1970s! [Article] IF PARADOX’S ALTER IS A DANGER TO NAEL AND CAN’T BE CONTROLLED, PARADOX HIMSELF IS ALSO DANGEROUS. PERIOD.

This isn’t even mentioning the multiple times she’s seen Paradox himself or his other various "good" alters (everyone in the group has seen, in fact) tell Nael outright that he “wishes [they] would die” [Abel Vent: Single] and that their suicide “holds no meaning to him” [Paradox: 32]. Jay was supposed to be “mediating” the very conversation where Paradox -- not “Hebel” or anyone else -- said that to Nael! And she said NOTHING. Her silence is complicity and she should take the blame for being such an ardent supporter of his abusive behavior.

Amazingly, there’s even MORE awful things that this group (particularly, but not exclusively Paradox) that I didn’t have any space to discuss in the callout itself, but they can’t go unmentioned. I know this is already super long, so I’ll try to run through them all as quickly as possible, and then we can get to the large wealth of screenshots we have linked at the end, where everything is in context for you to browse at your convenience.

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OTHER OCCURENCES

Transphobia: Paradox is a terf, and there’s not much else to say. [For Me: 2] Ironically he said this in a group chat with one of the only two people who identify as trans in their group, his then-boyfriend Kieran. Here’s him heavily fetishizing a failed attempted Corrin muse that he described as intersex, too. [FE Abel Problems: 5 pages] (In parenthesis is a user attempting to check their work. He makes a bit of an error concerning outrealms and dragon gates and whatnot, but please forgive him for those small errors considering how much he had on his hands.)

Abuse victim blaming: Paradox would often tell his two lovers, who are survivors of various types of abuse, ranging from mental, physical, and even sexual, how it’s their fault for letting their past traumas affect them. [Victim Blaming: Singles] Please note that these screenshots were taken in May, nearly a month before they separated from him fully, so they would have no reason to lie to each other about the things he said or needlessly malign his character before they left.

Promoting infighting: Paradox enjoyed watching his underlings tear each other apart for his amusement or to influence their behavior by saying their actions affected “everyone” despite him using false pretenses to get them to fight in the first place. He lied to Dave about Nael comparing him to a user that he wasn’t fond of when it was really Paradox and Blue that had done it. He also lied to Kieran and the entire group to get them all to yell at Nael in a group chat about Nael trying to isolate themselves from everyone when it was really done to please Paradox.

Ableism: Nael is unwell and has brain conditions they don’t feel comfortable with sharing. Instead of being understanding and supportive of them occasionally not understanding things or forgetting things, Paradox would immediately use it as a weapon against them. When “Paradox” first surfaced, Nael claimed that it wasn’t fair to them that the “Abel” alter yelled at them for forgetting about their ship with Blue. Paradox immediately countered that he Nael would no longer be allowed to use the excuse that they forgot things to AVOID being yelled at for minor things. [Paradox: 21, 22] He would constantly do things like this while they were together.

Copying and stealing OCs: Besides stalking the people that left and that he’s grown to hate, Paradox also has a peculiar habit of copying their activities on his blog with the few remaining people in his circle. For example, back in March when Nael’s Grima muse began interacting with a Reyson rper I introduced them to, Paradox made Kieran pick up his abandoned Reyson muse so that he could ship him with his Robin. (This hasn’t been linked to protect the identity of the second Reyson.) Worse still, Paradox has even outright stolen characters and backstories from those that leave. Here Kieran tries to ask Jay to tell Paradox to stop using some of his stolen OCs and she questions why it “would matter” to Kieran before promptly telling him to basically take a hike and blocking him. [Jay: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

Racism: This group seems to relish in their own ignorance when it comes to matters of race. Here are screenshots Dave took where he discussed Paradox saying that Japanese people are white. [No, seriously: Singles] (Please note the dates -- it was back in December, so he has no reason to lie.) Here’s Nael recounting a time Paradox told them that, because they were partially North African, they had to distance themselves from people of their race because other people would only see them as a terrorist. (No caps of that since it was in a call, so feel free to take it with a grain of salt.) Here’s Blue telling me, a black fan, that unintentional racism in a game I enjoyed but was put off by “didn’t matter” and that there was no need for me to “get so salty about it”. [Scout vs Blue: 19, 20] While I don’t think they’re going to any Klan meetings over the weekend, it’s still a bit concerning and something POC muns should be aware of because they can be startlingly insensitive at times.

Pedophilia: Probably the hardest one to talk about for me personally, but definitely one of the most serious. While I must stress that we haven’t noticed any sort of untoward behavior with underaged USERS thus far, Paradox shows an almost unhealthy fascination with underage MUSES that might be off putting to some people and may spell danger. This actually isn’t the first callout someone has made about his behavior. In 2018 while he went by the name “Vic” and was in the Pokemon fandom, he wrote a disturbing post where a 14 year old girl was killed by a literal penis monster that was saying “penetrate” as it ran her through the middle.

Though the mun was fine with their muse dying, the obvious sexual connotations of the post left them feeling uneasy. When they went to approach him about this, instead of apologizing, he got defensive and said that because it was fictional, it didn’t matter. Later he made a bizarre case arguing that because the girl was 14 and thus had presumably experienced puberty, it couldn’t TECHNICALLY be considered pedophilia. [WTF: Single] Which, while correct on only the most technical of terms, flies in the face of all reason. Here’s the full PSA about him back then [Paradox PSA], and screenshots he was booted out of for his terrible behavior. [Paradox Booted: Singles] (His then-lover initially tried to defend him, but his abusive behavior eventually drove them away as well, so care was taken to keep them anonymous.)

Most disturbing of all, though, is a smut drabble that he made this year concerning one of his newer muses, Momo. On his blog, he describes Momo as someone who is “physically” 18 but “actually” seven due to the circumstances of his creation. That would be fine, except he will often portray Momo as also being mentally seven years old even though he continues to write him lewdly. In the smut drabble, he even goes a step further and constantly refers to him as a “child” and constantly fixates on his underdeveloped genitals.

DUE TO THE HIGHLY GRAPHIC AND POTENTIALLY TRIGGERING NATURE OF THIS DRABBLE, DO NO CLICK UNLESS YOU ARE PREPARED. It’s honestly not for the faint of the heart and makes me queasy from the first sentence, but there’s no other way to describe the severity of his awful nature unless you experience it for yourself. [To Endure a Fiend’s Heat: full 6 page drabble]

While some would say it’s okay to experience triggering material in a safe environment to potentially help ease the pain of past trauma, Paradox has already shown himself to be unreliable when it comes to respecting the mental health and safety of others, and though we don’t have any screenshots of this, Nael has recounted several times where Paradox said he was sexually excited by RPing his childlike muses having sex with the adult muses of others in the cult. Here's him once again emphasizing the child like element with one and then drawing them in a suggestive "pin up" pose immediately after. [Vector: Singles]

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Finally we are at our end. Once again, my purpose behind this callout is not to shame anyone with a particular mental illness or unique set of challenges. Paradox is dangerous to any community he’s in because of his view of other people as simple playthings that he can use and throw away as he pleases. He treats life as an RP, living people as muses, and his apparent mental illnesses as an excuse to do away with any sort of accountability for his actions, and it is simply NOT ACCEPTABLE. Please protect yourself and others by reblogging this -- I feel as though Nael is very lucky to have escaped this situation with his life. Informing others might save another’s.

Complete, unedited list of references, roughly in the order of mention:

(Please note that anything labeled “Single(s)” will not have an entry here, as those are the only screenshots we have about them. We got better about capping things as time went on.)

[Scout and Nael Convo: 13 total] When Nael decided to get back together with Paradox the first time in September 2018, I let them know my concerns, but told them I respected their decision, no matter if I agreed with it or not. Looking back, parts of this conversation feel almost prophetic.

[Didn’t Feel Like…: 9 total] One of Kieran’s first conversations with Paradox. Watch closely how he characterizes the incident in September. He also mentions that his trauma and BPD makes him a sexual fiend, which… idk how others in the community would feel about that.

[For me: 16 total] A loose collection of screenshots Kieran took that shows quite a few odd moments during his time in the cult. That includes Paradox being a terf, Paradox insisting that Kieran to stay with Nael if they broke up (which is something he criticized Nael for suggesting in the March break up, even though Nael only said it once), and Jay and Blue expressing concern for Kieran when Paradox was starting to neglect him back in January. PLEASE MIND THE DATES! They vary page to page sometimes!

[Before/After Suicide: 88 total] A few screenshots showing the tumultuous times immediately before and after the Paradox suicide attempt in March 2019. Afterwards, Nael breaks up with both Paradox and Kieran in no uncertain terms due to the trauma he faced.

[Abel Suicide: 33 total] Paradox’s infamous suicide attempt.

[Nael: 34 total] Nael and Kieran talk as Paradox’s suicide attempt is in progress, and Nael tells Kieran to get the police. Sensitive information blotted out for obvious reasons.

[Scout vs Blue: 25 total] A collection of the conflicts I’ve dealt with in regards to Blue since the incident in March. Also includes her racial insensitivity and back when she agreed with me and Nael before Paradox lied to her.

[Initial Ship Drama: 93 total] Kieran endures like 5 days of nonstop gaslighting from Paradox. At the end (Around page 88) he manipulates Kieran into sparking a confrontation with Nael, telling him to “be assertive” about fixing a problem Paradox caused with his erratic behavior.

[Proof Abel Knew: 10 total] On May 6th, Nael discussed with Paradox or one of his alters about the ship that triggered the May 24th meltdown. Paradox also says that having any ships, including ones that he doesn’t even have to see is unacceptable simply because they exist. He then blames Nael for something Blue brought up. Again. While asking Nael not to blame him for something Blue has done.

[With Blue: 24 total] Kieran talks with Blue about the aforementioned shipping drama, and she immediately expresses frustration and anger with Paradox blowing the whole thing out of proportion. Later she also expresses annoyance with the May 24th incident of the alter “Abel” “dying” due to even more ship drama.

[May 17th: 13 total] Once again, Paradox whips his followers up into a frenzy over Nael, who’s really just trying to do what they were told and prioritize their lover. When they’re told the amount of attention Paradox literally asked for is stifling, they back off, only to be yelled at for it once again. It’s not shown here, but Blue once again acted as a lure to bring Nael into a public flogging.

[Paradox: 72 total] Nael is blamed for the “death” of an alter that has since returned because the alter “wasn’t around” for something they discussed on the 6th of May. This is the introduction to the “Paradox” alter, that I’m assuming now has assumed a fronting role. I don’t really care if that situation has changed since I started writing this.

[Jay: 12 total] Just some screens of Jay kind of being a jerk (mostly in the first set). She won’t tell Paradox to stop stealing someone else’s OCs and stop improperly using Nael’s last name, which is considered legitimate identity theft in France, where he lives! Mind the dates.

[Last Convo w/ Blue: 22 pages] Blue reprises her role as the bait to try to drag Nael back, but they’ve wised up to her game by now. It’s not going to ever work again.

[Jay’s “Evidence” Folder: 122 total] All of the things Jay sent to Dave in order to convince him that Nael was the bad guy. None of it accomplishes that goal. In it there’s a lot of doting between Nael’s alter “Naoya” and Paradox’s alter “Abel”, before Paradox showed the exact same abusive behavior and drove Naoya away as well. Then Paradox’s alter “Hebel” tries to explain his existence. He also admits to attempted manslaughter. So. (Please note: some of these are out of order, and we’re very sorry about this, but it’s not our doing, sorry!)

[Ruby and Bird’s Breakup: 16 total] Ruby tried to get Bird to intervene on her behalf to get Paradox to stop harassing her after she tried making an apology post. Bird totally flaked out, probably due to her dual loyalties to Paradox himself. This spurred a messy breakup between them both.

[Misc Bird Folder: 9 total] Some more random stuff showing Bird and Ruby’s relationship, including her take on Paradox and Nael’s September breakup, where she calls him a “brat”. The entire time during these screenshots, Bird was secretly feeding information to Paradox against Ruby’s will, breaking her trust when she found out. She even told Paradox, Ruby’s abuser, about the new blog Ruby made in order to escape him. That’s why she’s on this callout.

[Discord Server Chat with Blue: 23 pages] The complete chat about the Fire Emblem Heroes event that left me feeling upset about the handling of race in Book 2. While the rest in the server try to be respectful or change the subject, Blue insisted on devaluing my feelings and saying I was accusing her of racism, which was, of course, untrue at the time. Currently, I’m not feeling so generous. (Note: My apologies to fans of Heroes’ Nifl -- I say some strongly worded things here which may be unflattering, but I felt it was important to get the entire conversation down.)

BONUS: [Paradox Guilt Tripping on his birthday: 16 total] In case you needed more evidence of Paradox’s gaslighting behavior, here is him guilt tripping them because Nael, who is not a native English speaker, didn’t understand one video he sent. If this is all it takes to trigger a breakdown, he is probably not ready for a relationship.

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