#there is so much pr original footage in this season and really all it does is make the sentai stuff feel SUPER weird

[mo-ok]

A curated list of Lost Galaxy observations (as the worlds number one Gingaman enjoyer). Ordered from "found this fun" to "grinding my teeth very mad losing sleep over this"

1 - i absolutely love how all over the place they are about emulating Gingaman's I C O N I C running. They kinda sorta do it sometimes but no one ever seems committed to it and its so fucking funny. Like an embarrassed kid not wanting to play "yes and" in front of his friends in drama class. Delightful.

2 - Endlessly amused by Mike's Aura Changer. Ki ryoku tenshin. Mike of the heavenly ring star. Cow Ranger.

3 - They only ever use the washed out/thrown overboard/kinda dead Bucrates suit for Kegler (they dont actually use ANY Gingaman footage for this character isnt that fun)

4- The Gingaman Yartotos: baby boy, baby. The Lost Galaxy Swabbies: evil. Its the eyes man, why are they looking at me like that

5 - what's up with the big ass scar on Captain Mutiny's chest?? It's cool and makes him look like a battle hardened pirate but also he never had this in Gingaman (not even in the megaranger crossover) and i wanna know how it happened

6 - Magna Defender comes back as a ghost and tells Mike to kill himself this has nothing to do with anything i just think its so fucking funny.

"Killing myself fixed all of my problems. You should give it a try"

7 - these poor suits are absolutely wrecked lmao i wonder if thats one of the reasons Mike never does anything. the texture on the magna defender suit is making me feel like i need to wash my hands

8 - i'm beating my head against a wall over these. how do you even fucking manage. very funny tho hi Gouki hi Shelinda

9 - Are the Torozord, Centaurus and Stratoforce Megazords not sentient??? Like, they are just as self aware as the other galactabeasts right?????? WHY DID ABSOLUTELY NO ONE FUCKING CARE WHEN THEY ALL GOT BLOWN UP??????????? none of them appear in the crossover so I'm making the assumption that they died for good and NO ONE. CARED. is the Zenith Carrierzord ok? does he miss them????? this actually hurt my feelings tbh

10 - this is THE BIGGEST nitpick i have and really it doesnt affect anything and i'm only upset because of how much i love Hyuuga but

Mike suddenly just HAVING THE KNIGHT AXE fucking gutted me. I lost count of the amount of times this team suddenly had a new weapon at their disposal with no explanation and typically this kinda shit doesnt bother me but you CANNOT just give the Defender Torozord this FUCKING AXE. this axe is so important to Hyuuga's character and story arc and Mike just fucking pulls it out of his big cow ass, uses it like twice, and then blows up the Torozord. IN FACT, I DONT THINK HE EVEN USES IT OUTSIDE OF THE MEGAZORD.

ALSO. dont use the close ups of the Defender Torozords head moving around like he's talking if you arent goiNG TO LET HIM ACTUALLY TALK he looks so silly

BONUS - this is from the Lightspeed Rescue crossover but like jesus fucking christ they dont even use the morphers like this why did they use this footage who made this decision i would like to speak to them

[incarnateirony]

Someone dropped this in my submission box instead of ask box, “So I’m trying to genuinely understand what you’re saying is you understand corporate execs at the CW had a hand in the ending of supernatural? I’m not judging not attacking I swear I’m just trying to make sense of it because I had no idea about any of this up till now because I had stayed out of online fandom because well for years it felt big but anyways am I getting this right?”

---

The CW has a hand in everything. Here’s how this generally works.

The authors have ~relative~ freedom on a show. That is to say, the execs really don’t sit there splitting the nuances of the storytelling the fandom is receiving. They generally don’t even identify major markers that any of us would know (see: not even recognizing what the Roadhouse is.) -- we all knew the original ending had TFW at the Roadhouse as framed and spoiled by 15.04 among other details, and the whole “heaven/mental bar” theme from DSOTM, Nihilism, and Last Call all amplified this as an inevitability--but when you ask about “hey, is there a bar in heaven?” and get a “no?” that tells you they don’t even understand *ancient* plot beats like the Roadhouse, much less the ramifications of what it’s supposed to entail. Oh look at that, the roadhouse was just in fucking heaven like we said, but you identified it as a “cabin” because of filming locations and your basic notes.

Corporate has very basic compliance demands. They expect X, Y, and Z. What X Y and Z are across different shows vary depending on their markets. As long as the authors operate within X Y and Z, the corporate face essentially works off of synopsis of pitches and ideas.

This is also why I’ve talked about queer writing history and people being careful what they call queerbait: you don’t know what their X Y and Z are. The WB for example does not really CARE about representation. I’ve blogged about this often. We’re dollar signs. If they can package a new product to market it explicitly as LGBTQ fare, then they’ll turn you into a revenue machine by feeding you that particular fodder. When it comes to legacy shows--which is funny, because when the suit went off in my DM about this, they used the exact same phrasing as me--they’re going to play it safe, especially if they don’t truly understand the returns from the demographics they’re observing.

The space between X Y and Z is where the authors have liberty to push and, the longer and harder they push, the louder the content is allowed to get.

Here! I’ll even quote them directly, somewhat truncated because they ranted for fucking PARAGRAPHS.

“In reference to the media landscape, on a corporate level we do not distinguish fandoms. [...] That said, legacy shows such at Arrow, Supernatural, and even Flash are relics and we never really endeavored to reinvent the wheel on a corporate level, we are more focused on shows that are newer and still in our pipeline to premiere. [...] As for social media like all businesses and brands the engagement itself is key, but the content of the engagement is mostly irrelevant, though every show does have certain keywords that are often used in conjunction with harsher interactions blacklisted.”

The funny part is, they thought they were preaching to me like this was new information, but those of you that have been around my blog will PROBABLY RECOGNIZE this is almost VERBATIM exactly what I have told everybody over the years. Enough I half-suspect some trolls out there will think i wrote it myself and made it up and lob that accusation around. But there’s about 50 people that watched this conversation as it unfolded.

If you guys get mad? You’re still giving them PR. If you engage the content? You’re giving them PR. If you guys get bitchy ENOUGH? They completely blacklist a certain kind of engagement. I have literally been telling you all of this for years.

They don’t care who you are or what you want, just if you’re watching and what they at-best roughly estimate your demographic as desiring. So for example, Supernatural reading as a largely non-urban white demographic in its viewership, especially with a heavier lean in red states than most shows on the network, they presume to cater to what they perceive that demographic wants, rather than individualizing the understanding of the content, because they do not distinguish the shows or fandoms. “Oh, heavier republican white non-urban demographic” is where their understanding ends at, which is why they’re going to be utterly mystified why even my trump-voting republican neighbor from rural Alabama looked at the end result and went “what the fuck?” -- they weren’t expecting a big gay confession, but they were expecting a different sort of final tone.

Of course they’re never going to take that on for themselves and go “wow, we’re giant blazing dumbasses that understand nothing about the show!” -- they’ll, for example, claim they don’t leave network notes, when they’re still the ones passing material along about demographics and expectations etc etc. Their notes are *basic*. They do not leave *extensive* notes. Because extensive notes require extensive understanding of the content.

So for example: Berens spent since S9 slowly gaying up our show. Since they do not pay attention to the fine details of the story contents (lol no bar in heaven lolololol just a cabin lololol), he never got a note to *stop*. But it was not within the original structure plans and didn’t technically fit the demographic notes. The show continued to get aggressively gayed up, and Berens never really signed a note like “hey, I’m gaying it the fuck up” so even fandom reporters were going “THERE’S NO INTENT THERE!!!!!” -- berens operated in his very basic X, Y, Z landmarks to expand content within a story the suits literally do not pay the fuck attention to.

Corporate’s understanding is basic: dudes stabbing monsters and brothers against the world. Play in that box and keep these demographic notes in mind. You’re good.

They’ll NEVER mention blacklisting issues directly beyond what they admitted in the above quote but I DO remind you I have ranted ON AND ON AND ON how much Destiel fandom shot themselves in the goddamn foot with a fucking bazooka with the Chad Kennedy incident years ago. Others like Emily handled it intelligently to inform the *authors*. No, the network will never tell you if they blacklisted Destiel, but I informed you pretty heavily years ago that odds are, yeah, they probably fucking blacklisted Destiel.

Add in paying attention to the things Berens himself liked (if you don’t believe, scroll to Nov 5 on his tl)

Like, listen. berens knows exactly what he did and did the best he could do in the situations that were set up for him. And, frankly, I had been talking about this season as a writer room rebellion all year--just like corporate DID leave them a note in S11 that they couldn’t kill god. But if they couldn’t kill him or cage him, they would find another way. In 17 we said goodbye to Meredith and, in a way, to a MAJOR portion of Dean’s substantial story. In 18, we said goodbye to Bobo, and frankly all the parts that grew into queer Castiel that came with it. 19 and 20 became residual notes of hitting expected plot beats on the head on a rhythm, tying off godforces, and then just sliding into the Dabb subversion of them having learned to grieve, let go, and process emotions-- just the surrounding delivery left the feeling of more ~wanting~ on that front which is understandable.

But these are the kind of things people don’t even ~think~ about. This is WHY I’ve turned myself into a bulletshield protecting Berens’ work for YEARS while people yelled about queerbait not understanding the years of process he used in his unbabysat space to make something unable to dodge.

More posts he liked:

This isn’t a solo story. At the same SDCC he leaned over to my friend and grinned, whispering, “I hope you like what I did this year.” -- he knew. He knew and he fought his ass off but there was an end of the line.

That end of the line having an extra note or two to drop in the finale--never a big gay confirmation, just a “everyone’s there together, assume what you want” --is its own thing. As it is, Jensen even remarked how much of his dialogue got cut in final draft out of 18, and if the brazil dubbing footage leak tells me anything, they got the raw version before it was cut. And before they ADR’ed Dean’s sniffling collapsed against the wall. They had everything right, beyond the fact that there was supposed to be more dialogue from Dean along the lines of, “You can’t go”, or “you can’t leave” (difficult to determine what a ESL person seeing an english draft then yelling in portuguese then translated back to english meant, specifically, but something in that ballpark -- just like “don’t do this” came as “no it’s not” through the translation pipeline), and other similar minor bartering about this. And we’re not even gonna get into Dean’s hilariously loudly ADRed sniffling on the wall. Here, Jensen, breathe IMMEDIATELY into this microphone.

But they’re never going to tell you this. Of course they’re not. 

Summarily, corporate had half a year of having to re-manage scheduling everybody’s flights and planners during covid rewrites to stare directly into the huge gay abyss and fuck things up. 

It’s all about the unmonitored space vs the monitored space. Of COURSE they’re never going to fucking tell you these things. 

FRANKLY I am DYING to see the Portuguese dub of the show to see what the fuck they do with it, all things considered. I’m pretty sure the suit in my inbox that’s trying to vagueblog around things sideways now never accounted for the fact that there’s copies of the raw available in some parts of the world. I’m... pretty sure they thought they were my only leak source in fact. 

Either way--it’s not that corporate micromanages and passes constant notes. It’s that they gloss over vague summaries and plans, drop a few base expectations and performance boxes. It’s up to the authors how to kick up dust inside those boxes. 

[kabutoraiger]

y’all are probably asking the wrong person about PR-related things but. from my understanding, 3 min anon, that’s pretty much how things are currently? like i only watched 2 episodes of beast morphers (the current season) but the fights seemed to me to be a majority their own footage. so i think financially things are at the point where that’s how they’re doing power rangers now, which is great.

of course that wasn’t always the case and we flash back to rpm ~10 years ago where they tried to create their own original show, basically (for the. artistic merit of it all?) and apparently the cost of that show nearly ended the franchise. 

but i do think it was worth it in rpm’s case bc that season is great. you can make the almost-exact copy, and it might be good (like say. time force), but it won’t really have that spark of creativity behind it? it won’t be the passion of the people working on it which does tend to show through in the final product.

looking at certain individual characters, personality swaps might be the result of demographic, too. a character type that was deemed fine for a hero in a japanese show might be considered not marketable enough for american kids. thinking about something like nakadai->trent or matoi->carter in particular, where an abrasive character is turned into someone earnest & pleasant (just brainwashed for a bit in trent’s case). 

[bwprowl]

So Power Rangers Beast Morphers is a thing, huh? It’s been *decades* since I actually followed a PR series, my love of Go-Busters and earnest curiosity about what this ‘Hasbro Era’ will look like fueling me, but it’s turned out to be a pretty solid kids’ action show so far. It’s at least no more or less goofy than your average Sentai season, some of the characters are cool (Devon’s a great Red) and it’s nuts how much original footage they’re slipping in there. And of course, its existence means we get sweet new Hasbro figures of Go-Busters designs. The first set has officially dropped at Wal-Marts nationwide in special bins as part of an Easter promotion (seriously, just...go with it), and I was able to snap up the main three Rangers plus ‘Cybervillain Blaze’ yesterday! Talk about an event!

Apart from the quality of the figures themselves, I just wanna gush about ‘Blaze’ for a second on account of how happy I am he exists. Enter is still one of the best Sentai villains in recent memory, and his Dark Buster form from last couple episodes was a design that was absolute sex. I’ve *craved* a toy of some sort of it since, but the Go-Bus SHFs fizzled before we even got to Beet and Stag Busters (and weren’t all that great anyway), so chances of this guy went right out the window. Well thanks to Beast Morphers rewriting the use of the suit, here we are with a toy of it right from the start! Blaze is fine as a villain, I guess, but I mainly got this because it’s Enter, Dark Buster, to me.

Being a villain figure, Blaze Buster has slightly lower priorities than the main Rangers, so he does get cost-cut down to only having T-crotch hips, which limits his posing options some, Everything else on him is nicely universal joints though, and the sculpt and paint are still killer for a ‘basic’ figure from this line (Power Rangers! With painted backs! Hasbro spoils us). He’s got his sword and even some Beast Morphers bonus accessories: An evil version of the Cheetah Beast Blaster (we’ll see if that shows up in-show) and a role-play-size version of his key. All the figures come with one of these, Hasbro opting to fill the collectible-gimmick hole in Go-Busters’ play pattern by just inventing their own things, and they’re honestly pretty cool! They look neat, they actually flip out instead of just being static pieces like I thought they would be. They don’t really *do* anything yet since I haven’t got the morpher, but they’re cool to have and are at least on-par with some of the collectible trinkets Bandai’s produced throughout the years. They actually make me more interested in getting the morpher!

The Rangers themselves are all a bit better than Beast Blazer there, owing to their top-billing. Honestly, the sculpts on these alone are worth the license changeover- Ranger toys that actually look like the Rangers! No more beefcake boys and wasp-waist girls! Yellow Buster is a *bit* curvier than real-life, but compared to what we got in the past, she’s still far and away superior. Overall the texture, detailing, and paint are so far away from what we’d come to expect from Bandai of America that the shortcomings that are on these can be excused by comparison. Would I like to have wrist and ankle joints? Sure. But look, weapons with paint on them! Painted backs! The Beast Busters all come with slightly differentiate weapon loadouts, so you gotta get ‘em all if you want the regular blaster, the combined gun, and that dang Cheetoh Blaster, but it upticks the variety anyway. And the keys can even clip to their arms like big blade weapons, which is kinda goofy, sure, but at least gives them something to do.

These things are a great start for this line, and I can’t go on enough about how happy I am that Hasbro making finally half-decent Power Rangers toys for our shores coincided with my favorite Sentai in ages being brought over. Gonna have to get at least a couple of mooks for all these guys to fight with, and I’ll probably be all-in on future waves too.

So that was fun! Good to be back, everyone. I’ll see you here again next time!