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yeonchi · 3 years

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Kisekae Insights #17: Angelina Ballerina

It’s about time I started the second run of Kisekae Insights after taking a break for the past few months. My objective is to hopefully cover Gokaiger, Decade and Soulbound this year, but there are some things that I need to cover before that because they are needed in order to understand certain aspects.

Like Fifi and Roary, Angelina Ballerina was implemented early on in my personal project and the characters continue to play big roles to this day. At the time, I was playing Warriors Orochi 2 on the PSP, which introduced me to the characters of the Samurai Warriors series. As a result, some of these guys got Japanese warrior names whereas the rest got Chinese warrior names.

In case you haven’t noticed, yes, I have (predominately) used the CGI-animated sequel, The Next Steps, in this project. Watching the sequel was how I got into this series a decade ago; while I have heard about the original 2D-animated series, it never really appealed to me, which is why I prefer this version over that. And look, I know there are people who don’t like the sequel for various reasons, but you are free to have your opinion as long as you respect the opinions of others. Don’t worry, characters from the original series have been implemented as well.

Setting the record straight (voice actors)

I’m putting this list before the break because this is really important. Here are the characters’ voice actors for the UK and US versions of The Next Steps:

Angelina Mouseling: Charlotte Spencer (UK/US)

Alice Nimbletoes: Rachael Louise Miller (UK)/Naomi McDonald (US)

Marco Quesillo: Louis Williams (UK)/Jules de Jongh (US)

Gracie: Charlie Cameron (UK)/Jo Wyatt (US)

Viki/Vici: Emily Dormer (UK)/Jules de Jongh (US)

AJ/AZ: Lizzie Waterworth (UK)/Larissa Murray (US)

Ms Mimi: Larissa Murray (US)

Maurice Mouseling: Simon Mattacks (UK/US)

Matilda Mouseling: Emma Tate (UK/US)

Polly Mouseling: Leah Zabari (UK/US)

Mrs Thimble: Beverly Klein (UK/US)

Alright, time to rant about the English dubs of this series. See, because the characters of this series are not credited under their voice actors, it can be hard to exactly determine who voiced who (a pain I know all too well in regards to Sea Princesses). On top of that, because there are different English voices for the US and the UK (because they don’t want American kids to end up speaking with British accents or vice versa), it can be easy to miss things or mess them up. Some US voice actors are based in the UK, which can throw things off as well.

Just as there are UK-produced children’s shows that get redubbed for the US, there are US-produced children’s shows that get redubbed for the UK (particularly on Nick Jr). In Australia, we tend to get the “original” version of the dub depending on where the show (or its source materials) originated – if it originally came from the UK, then we get the UK dub, but if it originally came from the US, we get the US dub. In the case of Angelina Ballerina, we get the UK dub and as such, I implemented the series with the assumption that the characters would speak as they did in the UK dub. As such, Marco and Gracie don’t speak in Hispanic or French accents.

Due to my initial ignorance and lack of information, I ended up crediting the characters’ US voice actors for Marco, Gracie and Ms Mimi instead of their UK voice actors. Even worse, I thought Naomi Wilkinson voiced Angelina until a friend of mine tweeted her years ago and confirmed that she didn’t voice Angelina. Also, the really funny thing is that there are people who unironically believed that Hilary Duff and Justin Bieber voiced Viki and AZ in the series. If only we all knew this one simple rule: If an actor isn’t credited in the series/episode, then they didn’t have a role in the series/episode. I did manage to work out the UK voice actors for the other characters, but why Alice’s voice actor was different in both versions despite her voice sounding similar I’ll never understand.

For some reason, I have been unable to find out who Ms Mimi’s UK voice actor is because nobody in the credits has owned up to voicing her. However, if I really had to guess, I would say that Emma Tate voiced her because even though the Scottish accent threw me off, she sounds a bit like Matilda (Angelina’s mum). As for Marco and Gracie’s UK voice actors, Louis Williams and Charlie Cameron, trying to find resumes or records of their past work has been impossible so I wasn’t able to find any proof, but I eventually did. Louis William’s LinkedIn profile mentions that he voiced Marco (he’s an English teacher in Japan now, shock of all shocks) and while Charlie Cameron doesn’t have a site or official profile of her own (why), I managed to link her roles for Dark Souls and Poppy Cat on IMDb to BTVA.

In the Moushouden Series, I ended up “recasting” Marco and Ms Mimi while keeping Gracie’s voice actor the same. Marco and Ms Mimi played major roles in my stories and I needed credits for them. “Getting” Louis Williams to “reprise” his role would have been impossible because he’s not an actor anymore, though it wouldn’t have been a big problem if I had found out earlier that he voiced Marco. Likewise, if I had managed to guess Ms Mimi’s UK voice actor earlier, then maybe I wouldn’t have needed to keep scratching my head all these years.

What’s in a name?

There has been quite a bit of speculation regarding the characters’ middle and last names, and I say “speculation” because there don’t seem to be any official sources that confirm it or the only official sources available can’t be accessed from the Wayback Archive because Adobe Flash is dead. Though the names were on the Wikipedia page at some stage, the only place where they exist now is on a poorly-maintained wiki of the series on Fandom. It is possible that Angelina and Alice’s middle and last names can be backed up because they were in the original series, but even then, I’m unable to do that due to lack of information (seriously, even the official website redirects to Mattel’s website, the absolute sellouts). So please take these names with a grain of salt:

Angelina Jeanette Mouseling

Alice Bridgette Nimbletoes

Marco Fernando Quesillo

Grace Madeleine “Gracie” le Chateau

Viktoria Andrea “Viki” Whiskerson

Adrian Zander James “A.Z.” Smithers (even though an official PDF from PBS WNET13 states that A.Z. stands for “Adam Zachariah”)

Mimi Jane Squigglytail

Maurice Rupert Mouseling

Matilda Felicity Mouseling

Polly Anne Mouseling

Harriet Cecily Thimble

Other stuff before I begin

In late 2015, there was talk of Angelina Ballerina getting relaunched in 2017 by Mattel and 9 Story Media Group. By 2017, however, nothing really came of it, or at least nothing significant that we could see. 9 Story currently have the distribution rights to both the 2D and CGI series, clips and episodes have been uploaded on the official Angelina Ballerina YouTube channel (a mix of UK and US versions, with Brazilian Portuguese and Latin American Spanish dubs on other channels) and the original books created by Katharine Holabird have been republished in the past two years.

Not seeing anything in 2017 has allowed Angelina Ballerina’s involvement in my personal project to flourish, but only time will tell whether anything else will come of this so-called relaunch. This series would probably have gone down the path of Fabio Yabu and Sea Princesses if it wasn’t so well-known all around the world.

The 9 Story pages show that there are some specials for the series. While the 2D series does have three specials, I could only find two movies in the CGI series that are fully original stories and not just episode compilations, namely The Shining Star Trophy and Dreams Do Come True. They don’t seem to be available on YouTube and the only online versions I could find use the US voices, meaning that a UK dub of these movies is unknown.

If you follow Gail Chord Schuler/Gabrielle Chana/The Church of Gail online, you might know that there is a Satanic Jesuit villain named Angelina Ballerina, depicted as a woman modelling a ballerina costume with wings. Rest assured that she is NOT the Angelina we all know and love, as Gail confirms in the comments of one of her videos (though there is a chance that trolls could have fed her that information).

All About Angelina

As I stated in #12, Maurice and the Takeda Army of Mouseland were in conflict with the Salacians before the Dimensional Merge. Because the time in their world, AB-561, was running faster compared to other worlds, they ended up on our Earth in 2009. In both timelines, Angelina and her family and friends became Hiroki and Parker’s comrades. In the first timeline, Angelina had an adventure with the Third Doctor. The second timeline is where things get detailed.

Before the Archangel Tunnel System was activated, there was no other way to get to Chipping Cheddar from Hong Kong, so when the Takeda Army were brought to this world, they had to do what they could to survive. Eventually, they ended up being controlled by another local army and used as their mascots. When Parker went to them to seek an alliance, he discovered this and helped the Takeda Army escape, which led them to pledge their allegiance to Parker.

Over the next two years, Parker and Hiroki became great friends with the Takeda Army’s officers. In 2010, Ms Mimi became disillusioned with Parker when she realised that he only seemed to care about fighting and enjoying himself on the battlefield. When the JIMPS were formed, Ms Mimi began to side with them as she saw Minnie and the others as the better strategists, but she had a newfound respect for Parker when he made peace with Minnie following their battle against each other.

When Squid Girl turns Minnie against Parker, however, Ms Mimi sides with the former again and a split occurs within the Takeda. Ms Mimi became one of the Sanada Army’s commanders while Gracie, AJ and Viki surrendered to the Sanada. Angelina was the first officer Parker found after being separated from Hiroki. Her family was being guarded by Alice and Marco before Parker arrives with reinforcements from the Date Army.

Months after Parker’s death and resurrection, the Sanada Army finally fell. Ms Mimi and the Takeda defectors rejoin their former comrades; Ms Mimi finally admits that she was a fool who never really understood Parker because she believed in loyalty and discipline.

With Parker’s army disbanded and the Flowertots returning home, the Takeda became the only close friends Hiroki had left. They supported him in his fight against Girl Power and the Teiro Army, so much so that they were willing to accept him in their ranks if he decided to leave his secondary school army. Ultimately, Hiroki declined their offer and became a ronin.

The Next Step

The Takeda Army eventually managed to resettle in Mouseland which was transported to Shizuoka Prefecture between the Archangel Tunnels to the Shikoku region and Cardiff. The Takeda Army had no significant relevance in 2013, but Angelina and her family attended Hiroki and Akari’s wedding, which was held in Chipping Cheddar (Kikugawa).

In 2014, the Takeda Army rose back to significance again as a result of events in real life (see #16). Following the Battle of Mikatagahara and Akari’s betrayal of Hiroki, Angelina joined the Doctor (again) as his companion. Later that year, Maurice would attempt another expedition to Kyōto when Girl Power forces stationed around Nagashino Castle in Nagoya would block his army’s path. When the Doctor arrives with Hiroki and Angelina, Hiroki gathers up some reinforcements before the Takeda Army splits up into three groups; one group defending the main camp, one group laying siege to the castle and one group attacking Girl Power forces stationed in nearby Shitaragahara. Despite the Takeda suffering severe casualties at the hands of the superior Girl Power army, Hiroki charges into Nagashino Castle alone and fights the enemy commanders before leaving his drones to crash into the castle keep.

Soon after, Angelina would participate in prototype testing for the Superhero Project, becoming the Pink Samurai Ranger alongside the Doctor and his other companions as they fought Girl Power in a parallel world. Following that adventure, Angelina would be summoned back by her father upon hearing word that Girl Power were preparing for an all-out siege on Yokohama. The Takeda Army allied with their old enemies, the Salacian (Uesugi) Army as they fought at Sekigahara and Ōsaka Castle. After the world was destroyed and restored, the Takeda were one of the armies that helped UNIT defend Yokohama from Girl Power.

Though Angelina stopped being the Doctor’s companion after 2014, she would regain that role again in 2017 when she and Alice officially joined the Superhero Project. Angelina and Marco make a cameo appearance in the Series 10 premiere as a couple and that’s the only time their relationship is brought up (I think that ship was hinted at in the series but not explicitly shown).

Having been selected, Angelina and Alice joined the Gokaigers as GokaiPink and GokaiGreen respectively. Their fighting styles were adapted to fit with their characters and the original Gokaiger footage; on top of predominately wielding guns, GokaiPink incorporates ballet into her fighting while GokaiGreen clumsily incorporates gymnastics which she makes up for with stealth and trickery.

As for the rest of the mouselings, they were hired by BOARD to become Kamen Riders as follows:

Kamen Rider Blade – Marco

Kamen Rider Garren – AJ

Kamen Rider Leangle – Viki

Kamen Rider Glaive – Ms Mimi

Kamen Rider Larc – Gracie

Kamen Rider Lance – Polly

Although not as significant compared to Fifi and Roary, the mouselings do play a significant role in the project. As with many obscure series I’ve encountered, finding accurate information is a daunting task. Though I have managed to find information that I haven’t been able to find in the past, there are times where I am still unable to do so, which results in me having to speculate missing information (usually by observation) that may or may not be correct. This is not so much a problem in Angelina Ballerina compared to Sea Princesses, but regardless, it’s better to have every piece of information confirmed than have even one piece of speculated information.

#kisekae insights #angelina ballerina

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yeonchi · 3 years

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2020 In Review

It’s that time of the year again. At the end of every year, I write a post to sum up what I did this year and share my (controversial) opinions of the year’s current affairs. However, because I had so much to say for the latter, I’ve moved it to the Red Pill Year post - as obvious from the title, I’ve become red-pilled on quite a few things this year.

Things have been very different due to the coronavirus; while my transition into society has been forced to slow drastically, I did manage to achieve quite a lot over the six months in lockdown (from late-March to October). The lockdown has given me a good excuse to be a NEET and do all the things I want to do because I actually become a productive member of society.

Before I go into detail over various aspects, let’s start off this review with a list of...

What I did during lockdown

Finished my uni degree (I only had one subject left at that point and it was a beginner’s course to Cisco networking)

Reposted my reviews of the Sea Princesses animated series (which I completed last year)

Did some analysis on how Kamen Riders are not weapons

Played Warriors Orochi Z

Did a little reminiscence post on Kingdom of Paradise

Played Dynasty Warriors 8 and collected every 5 and 6 star weapons for each character

Launched Kisekae Insights as a soft reboot of the Yui Hirasawa Kisekae Project

Made a Change My Mind post about freedom of speech, censorship and cancel culture

Translated and reviewed the ten Princesas do Mar books, with the blessings of the author, Fabio Yabu

Played a bit of Dynasty Warriors Multi Raid 2 and 6 Special, no posts made for those games

Kept working on my personal project for a bit before putting it on hold

Checked and rewrote every story in my personal project (it’s still not finished yet)

Looking back at the year

Doctor Who

In case you haven’t read about it already, I decided to take the red pill on this series after watching The Timeless Children. Check out the hiatusbreaker update for some post-review thoughts that I made months after the end of Series 12.

Of course, I’ll be reviewing the New Year’s Special, Revolution of the Daleks, and Series 13 when it premieres late 2021. Be sure to check out my review of the New Year’s Special when it comes out the day after New Year’s Day.

Sea Princesses

For the third year in a row, I’ve done something significant for Sea Princesses. in 2018, I collected the English episodes as they were posted on YouTube. In 2019, I worked on the episode plots and transcripts for the wiki while also downloading the Amazon raws and collecting the remaining episodes that weren’t posted on YouTube (because the Mr Bean and Friends channel has finally given up after years of shitty marathon streams). In 2020, I brought the ten Princesas do Mar books and translated them into English.

When I emailed the author, Fabio Yabu, at the end of April to tell him of my intentions to translate the books, I didn’t get a reply from him until the middle of July. By that point, I had already brought the books from Pure Brazil (on Amazon) and I had finished scanning most of the books. In reflection, if I had known that he would offer to send me his manuscripts, I would have emailed him last year and not a week before I decided to buy the books. However, what’s done is done and at the very least, I’m probably the only person in Australia to actually have the books.

My original plan was to buy the books when I had gotten a job and saved up some money from each paycheck until I got the amount I needed. Looking back, I think it was a stupid idea and I’m glad I decided to cave. Considering the time it took me to scan and translate the books being unemployed and under lockdown, who knows how long it would have taken if I were studying or working full-time.

It’s funny how I’ve tried to spread the word about my efforts to revive the series and yet, I ended up doing all the work. Maybe it was because very few people cared as much about the series as I did, or maybe I didn’t make an effort to promote it enough because I was quite reserved about reaching out on platforms other than Facebook or Tumblr. This whole experience has taught me that in the end, if you want something done, you have to do it yourself.

In addition to this, I’ve also reposted my reviews of the cartoon series that I did in 2019. You can find all the reviews on this page. On top of that, I wrote three instalments on the series’ involvement in my personal project for Kisekae Insights. All in all, they made up the bulk of content that I posted during the lockdown.

Just as a note, only the English, Brazilian Portuguese and Castilian Spanish dubs have both seasons online in full, whether on YouTube, Amazon Prime or my cloud drive. As for the Latin American Spanish dubs, only the first season is available and I know someone at Southern Star is screwing with us because I have evidence that the second season was broadcast in that region as well. While this channel doesn’t have all the episodes and the videos were filmed with a camera in front of a television in not even 360p quality, it’s probably the only place where that version of the series is available. The second season wasn’t even released on DVD, which complicates things even more, but hey, that’s what happens when a series goes lost and forgotten for a decade.

Yabu has published translated versions of the first four literacy series books on Amazon Kindle and is planning on publishing translated versions of the main series books. As for the main series books on Kindle, there are errors in two of the books. In A Shadow in the Water, there’s two chunks of text missing at the start of Chapter 10, namely the Turtle King’s call to Miss Marla, so that the Turtle King says, “Hello! It’s cancelled!” before Leia gets off the bus and goes to the whale without any context as to how it got there. In The Windy Letters, there was a line missing at the end of Chapter 12 (13 in the Kindle version) saying that Tubarina passed out as she was leaving the cave. I was going to mention this in the epilogue for the book reviews, but I decided to cut it because I thought that Yabu would fix it. Sure enough, the second error was fixed (albeit haphazardly), but the first error hasn’t, and it’s been three months since I pointed it out to him. In hindsight, I’m kind of glad that I have the physical books because I wouldn’t have known about this if I just had the Kindle books.

I didn’t promote this until now because it’s not that important, but the literacy series books (with the exception of Turtles in Danger, I don’t know why distribution rights are all over the place) are available on Ubook in both ebook and audiobook formats. Interestingly, some of the narrators listed on the audiobooks include Eduardo Drummond, Ana Elena Bittencourt and Jullie, who are known for voicing Marcello, Tata and Leia on the Portuguese version of the cartoon. I can likely deduce from this that they managed to get some of the original cast back to do the audiobooks. This is yet another reminder that the series receives more love in Brazil than it does in Australia. I can bet that if the series were to receive English audiobooks, then whoever’s making them won’t bother to find the old cast. I won’t hold it against them if they don’t, but I’ll give them props if they do, even if they just get Paige Walker back as Tubarina.

If anyone wants to know about the production of the series, a few guys did a study on the Brazilian animation industry and Flamma Films, one of the producers of Sea Princesses, is covered in section 3.1. There is nothing special to be gleaned from it that I haven’t known or deduced already; the series is still decent even though there were places where it was screwed over. Although, it’s a shame that this series was never picked up by anyone who could have done better than Southern Star or that Yabu left Flamma in 2009 because I think there was more potential in both him and Sea Princesses. But hey, that’s just my opinion. I might cover the production history on the wiki someday.

With this, all canon material for Sea Princesses has been covered. I will still work on the wiki and moderate the content on there as admin, it’s just that it won’t be as groundbreaking as it was for the past three years. I’ve done all I can for the series and regardless of the reception it has or will receive, it’s time for me to move on.

Kisekae Insights

During the lockdown, I decided to launch Kisekae Insights as a means of sharing my personal project outside of my circle of friends. It also served as a reboot of the Yui Hirasawa Kisekae Project that I attempted to launch in 2015 before abandoning it due to commitments.

At the moment, I’m taking a break from this series to focus on other things, but in 6 months, I managed to make 16 instalments of this series centred around various aspects of my personal project. I don’t know when I might decide to start making instalments again, let alone if, so if you’ve been closely following the series, be prepared for the possibility that the series will stop at any point. I still have a portion of the project I want to write before finishing up, so I want to focus on that first along with revising older portions of the project.

Censorship

This was a topic that I wanted to cover in the Red Pill Year post, but I decided to move it to here because I wanted to get that post published before focusing on this one.

I’ve been on social media for 10 years now and over that time, I’ve seen many cases of censorship (not just on both sides of the political spectrum, but on many other spectrums) and been a victim of it myself. There have been so many different types of censorship that I’ve found it difficult to generalise into a single category until now.

When Donald Trump announced that he wanted Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act revoked because his tweets got fact-checked, I was almost onboard with him until someone who owns a (controversial) website I browse regularly pointed out that he would have to shut down his website because of the potential lawsuits that would be filed against him. The sad thing about this is that Joe Biden is looking to revoke 230 as well and no major website is making an uproar about this, given that they were so vocal about things like SOPA/PIPA, Article 13 and net neutrality in the past. I swear, this site is the only site I’ve seen that is actually talking about this.

Basically, the main gist of Section 230, or “the twenty-six words that created the internet”, are as follows: “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” In other words, websites can’t be held responsible for content posted by users of that website, including posts, comments or videos, and thus they can’t be sued for it. Without 230, websites (particularly big websites and social media websites based in the US) would have more incentive to censor as they would be liable for that content; even with the amount of money the big companies have, they can only fight so many lawsuits before their money runs out, and that’s even if they want to bother doing that in the first place.

Social media sites define what seems to be clear rules for the use of their sites, but lately it seems that they keep moving the goalposts on content that touches the line at best while content that outright breaks the rules (like gore and child porn) remains hiding in the shadows or isn’t deemed a problem when reported. Their moderation systems are heavily reliant on AI with little, if any, human guidance, which basically means that their rationale for censorship is based on reports from, in order, corporations and IP owners, left-wing (SJW) biases and people who cry hard enough (en masse) to get something taken down.

Copyright takedowns are also a form of censorship because it’s mostly corporations being absolute Jews with their content. This is a problem with people who post content with copyrighted material because they run the risk of having the material taken down or demonetised, particularly in the case of content creators who use YouTube as their main source of income. The lines of copyright have been so blurred over the years that many people don’t care about it beyond crediting the original creators or not. At this point, it’s practically common knowledge that corporations are still stubborn over copyright even though they have other sources of revenue, not to mention the way they exploit their assets (franchises, celebrities and so forth).

In summary, political bias is a problem when it comes to censorship, but corporate bias and people gaming the system are just as much of a problem. The political biases of social media can seem like they flip-flop between two sides, but that’s what happens when you let AI do your work for you.

Who remembers the Tumblr NSFW ban of December 2018? I honestly can’t believe I’m saying this, but Pornhub has just gone through a similar purge, now only allowing official partners and verified creators to post because of rape, trafficking and child porn. You know what the common element between the two purges is? It’s burning down a large part of the orchard just because of a few rotten trees. A lot of perfectly legal content has been caught up in the crossfire because Tumblr and Pornhub are a bunch of pussies who are too lazy or afraid to have people go through and delete illegal content like child porn. Is anyone getting a feeling of déjà vu here? However, the situation with Pornhub is more financially motivated because their payment networks, namely Visa and Mastercard, terminated their services with them. I’ll get back to them in a bit.

Going on a bit of a tangent, YouTube has blocked all age-restricted videos from being played on other sites in their embedded player, meaning that users have to go onto their site and log into their account in order to watch those videos. That’s just great. How am I supposed to watch old Chris-chan videos now without having it appear in my internet history or even my Google account history?

Conservatives believe that the amount of censorship that is happening on social media sites is making them look like publishers instead of platforms. Sadly, I agree with this, but the even sadder thing is that Section 230 makes no distinction to such nor mentions “platforms” in any context. Therefore, I don’t believe that Section 230 should be revoked, but I do believe that there should be a reform in order to cover things like platforms, publishers and recourse for people who have been deplatformed. The Communications Decency Act was first passed in 1995; at that time, the internet was in its infancy, but in 2020, it has expanded to levels that people would never have imagined back then. Of course, the government shouldn’t be the only party to do something about censorship; social media sites and their uses have responsibility in this as well.

“bUt PRiVaTe CompanIES cAN dO whaTEveR THey WaNt, ThEy aREN't oblIgeD tO HOsT yOUR CoNTEnt” No. Anyone who still unironically believes this in current year, after all the government and corporate bullshit that has affected and threatened the integrity of the internet, can go fuck themselves. What about all the people who have been unfairly deplatfomed in recent years despite not doing anything illegal? What about #StopTheLeftPurge? I and many other people knew that the karma of censorship would somehow hit back on people eventually, so nobody should be defending any website for the actions they take to censor people. I’m all for getting scammers and people peddling illegal content off of social media, but we’re at the point where people are being deplatformed for things like copyright, wrongthink and criticism “as harassment” and innocent people are getting caught in the crossfire. My attitude to the current state of censorship on the internet is pretty much the same as my attitude to the police: How can we trust social media sites to moderate their users and content if they keep moving the goalposts, being vague about their justifications and believing victims practically all the time?

Here are some suggestions for how I would reform censorship.

Define large social media networks as public platforms: Despite all the alternatives that have sprung up, such as Gab, Parler, MeWe, Rumble, BitChute or the like, very few social media sites will have the potential to become the new Facebook, Twitter or YouTube, which has become so ubiquitous in our society. The alternatives may be good in their own ways, but the main reason why people are moving to them is because the mainstream sites have deemed their content or presences unwelcome. We’re talking about companies the size of supermarket or fast food chains compared to small businesses or businesses with a few branches in less than a few states. I realise that defining Facebook, Twitter or YouTube as “platforms” alone won’t do anything to reform censorship, so I should note that the next few suggestions should be just as important as this one.

Lessen punishments for people who post copyrighted content: Let’s face it, deplatforming YouTube channels after three copyright strikes is unfair considering that this is a fairly minor offence and the lines of copyright and fair use have been severely blurred over the past decade. If the content is from TV or something, then the most that should happen is that the video is removed or the ad revenue goes to the copyright owners, but if a channel is outright impersonating and/or plagiarising (original) content from another channel, that’s a different story.

Allow opportunities for discourse and appeals: When I was postblocked on Facebook thanks to some gaijin bitch who was too butthurt to take or respond to my criticisms of him, there was no way for me to appeal his reports of my content or the postblocks that resulted from them. When I tried to post something, a window would pop up saying that I was postblocked and there would be a button saying something like “Something’s Wrong”, but even after I clicked on it, nothing ever resulted from it. I would have been postblocked for 30 days or even deplatformed if he didn’t agree to rescind his reports after I called him out on his bullshit again. I’ve also heard of other cases where people’s appeals don’t seem to do anything or only make the problem worse.

Prevent abuse of DMCAs and reporting systems: Adding onto my previous point, there needs to be a way for people to say “these people are trying to get me deplatformed even though I did nothing wrong”. On one hand, I think there should be a limit on how many times people can report a particular page per week, while on the other hand, people need to be told to grow a spine and stop being crybabies over content that they shouldn’t be affected by (in most cases). In regards to DMCAs, I’ve found that some people abuse the system to get any criticisms of them taken down. Criticism is covered under fair use, but there needs to be a distinction between creative content and things that people say on social media.

Rely less on AI moderation and more on human moderation: During the Tumblr NSFW ban, they decided to ban “female-presenting nipples” except in contexts such as breastfeeding or surgery. However, the AI they used caught male nipples and female nipples that fit the exceptions for that ban. Social media relies too much on AI for the moderation of their content because they don’t want to expose human moderators to that stuff, even though that is technically part of their job. The content bots on YouTube make this worse with things like ContentID, COPPA or even the automatic detection of age-restricted videos. I’m convinced that AI alone cannot moderate content fairly; there should be another level of moderation where humans judge the moderation of the AI. For the past year, I’ve been doing a work-from-home thing where I assess Google search queries to see which results satisfy the needs of the user making the search. Having something like that for Facebook, Tumblr, YouTube and the like would be good, but the only problem is ensuring that they have a diverse range of political standings and interests in the moderator pool.

Finally, there are a few things I would like to clarify. Firstly, when I say “censor”, I don’t mean putting content warnings on things (in fact I’m all for them because some people might not like certain types of content), but I mean outright deleting them and/or punishing the users for posting them. Secondly, when it comes to NSFW content, I believe that “either all of it is okay or none of it is okay”, particularly when AI moderation can’t tell things apart most of the time. Thirdly, I make exceptions when it comes to things like rape, trafficking and child porn because they are exploitative and non-consensual. Fourthly, I believe that fan art and artworks, including hentai and Rule 34 (while contentious at times), should be treated differently to real life and live-action because while it is a subjective debate, there are generally no victims in the former.

Of course, those are just some of my suggestions for reforming censorship; there may be some that I haven’t brought up. My point is that knee-jerk reactions can end up hurting more people than they benefit.

There was another suggestion brought up by the owner of the website I mentioned earlier. He believes that the solution to fixing censorship is to make banks and payment networks like utilities (gas, electricity, phone, internet), meaning that they can’t blacklist anyone unless they have actually been convicted of financial crime (or sanctioned by other countries). When I first read it, I couldn’t figure out how to connect the two, but now that I know the circumstances behind the Pornhub purge, I realise that all these companies really care about isn’t just money, but whether they can be paid by conventional means. Small sites can afford to use alternate means such as cryptocurrency, but big sites have to cater to the mainstream. There’s a difference between being banned from a business because you’re being belligerent and being banned from a business because you’re a controversial figure who has said some controversial stuff online, particularly in the past. I’d also suggest that social media be considered an utility as well, but compared to the examples I’ve given, it’s pretty much a non-essential service.

In my first suggestion, I named some alternative social media platforms that people have been using in recent years. I don’t really intend to sign up for those platforms because a) I don’t post contentious stuff all the time and even when I do, it either follows the community guidelines or flies under the radar (with the exception of petty snitches and bitches) and b) I don’t have a strong enough fanbase nor do I have enough fans who are willing to follow me to wherever I decide to migrate to. After cutting off other social media platforms like Twitter or Pinterest due to lack of use, the only platforms I have left are Facebook and Tumblr. Various factors have kept me from posting as often as I have done in the past; I’m struggling to find enough things to post per month just for the sake of it.

Even if you follow the rules, you should still be worried about censorship, because before you know it, you might be the next one on the chopping block.

Political correctness

I’ve been as tolerant as I can be about changing the way we say or do things because of political correctness, but some of the changes I’ve seen, particularly in the past year in response to Black Lives Matter, has me questioning why. I mean, yes, of course the answer is about racism, but my main question with it is that if people had a problem with something, why didn’t they say something earlier? Why did it take the death of a black drug user who was arrested for using counterfeit bills for people to do something instead of all the other black people whose deaths led to similar protests in the past? Why didn’t black people say anything when they began to be treated fairly following the Civil Rights Movement?

Some people have said that removing monuments and memorials of figures related to Confederacy or slavery is destroying or censoring history. I think that a better idea would be to keep them, but teach people why those figures should or should not be revered.

As for casting changes, it seems that the trend is to have characters of marginalised demographics being portrayed by people from those demographics; black characters being portrayed by black actors, transgender characters being portrayed by transgender actors and autistic characters being portrayed by autistic actors. On one hand, I can kind of understand, particularly when it comes to live-action works, but on the other hand, they’re just actors and it’s in their profession to portray different characters as the job requires. In animation, you probably wouldn’t be able to tell who’s the voice behind the character if you don’t bother researching the actors in the credits. I get the idea of diversity and casting the right person based on talent, but sometimes, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

I don’t understand the motivation behind political correctness sometimes. Either that or I just don’t like things changing so drastically (when there’s very little problem with it in the first place).

On another note, check out my Red Pill Year post to see why I prefer to use the term “coronavirus” over “COVID-19″.

Cancel culture

I’ve said it before and I’ve said it again. Cancel culture is just people overreacting to things people did, particularly in the past which nobody should be caring about anymore. This then leads to censorship and arguments about political correctness.

Personally, cancel culture should be more like iDubbbz’s Content Cops; someone does an exposé on a problematic figure, they get a chance to respond and the rest of us either accept their response or mock them for their shit response or lack thereof. Such a shame that iDubbbz has fallen so low after the RiceGum Content Cop though...

In any case, people need to learn how to think critically and stop being so petty over trivial things. Also, getting someone fired just for something they said or did outside of their workplace is just as petty. People need to learn to separate the internet from real life and about what professionalism is.

Other miscellaneous stuff

A few more things before I finish up.

Between publishing the Red Pill Year post and this one, some mutant strains of the coronavirus, originating in the UK and South Africa, have begun spreading all over the world along with some new cases and clusters in Australia. Hopefully we’ll be able to contain these new cases like we did with all the other ones, but some blame still needs to be put on governments for allowing the pandemic to get this far and people for not following social distancing guidelines.

I decided to randomly search my Tumblr blog in the Wayback Archive recently. There’s not a lot of stuff there, but one thing that alarmed me was that two posts from 2017, namely my Content Cop parody and my rant about Facebook pages, were archived more than 20 times. I don’t know who initiated it or whatever, but if it is who I think it is, then I would have thought that archiving the post forever would be the last thing they wanted.

In a way, I’ve begun to understand why the right tends to say “All Lives Matter” in response to “Black Lives Matter”. They think we already live in an utopia where racism is all but eradicated, so they think that the movement is merely attention seeking, virtue signalling and so on. Would we be complaining if there wasn’t any injustice in our society? The same question could be said for Hong Kong and any other place where there is injustice.

Over the past few years, I’ve come to realise that corporations are not our friends. If my time writing English dub rants has taught me anything, it’s that corporations rarely listen to their customers; the only reason why shills and cucks support anything corporations do is because their interests happen to align with whatever they’re doing. It’s the same logic as corporations supporting Black Lives Matter. The main objective of a company isn’t to virtue signal because they have very little or no place to do so. They should just give us customers what we want, take our money and fuck off.

And if you thought that last line sounded familiar, that’s because it’s from Ricky Gervais’ monologue at the 2020 Golden Globes in January. How good was that? Anyone who disagrees with what he said is, knowingly or unknowingly, defending the kind of culture he is criticising.

Lockdowns aside, the time has come for me to resume my transition into society, but not without precautions. Of course, I’ll still be around, but I’ll probably be posting less in 2021 compared to 2020, not that it really matters anyway.

Before I go, I’d like to leave you with some final words.

Black lives matter and Hongkonger lives matter.

All cops are bastards.

Corporations are not your friends, even if they make something you like.

Stay safe, practice social distancing and wear a face mask when going out.

願榮光歸香港 (May glory return to Hong Kong.)

Happy New Year everyone. I wish you peace as we move from a very turbulent 2020 to what could possibly be an even more turbulent 2021.

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