Shelia

Other times, it's like this. Animators often don't get any attention from fans when they work on a big project, because nobody watches the credit sequence, so you're used to no one really knowing what you've worked on, or what it is. Your cool uncle asks you what you're working on. You try to explain. He asks if it's like Family Guy.

Matt releases a series of animantics for his favourite family guy episodes. He's not a particularly good draftsman, but he's adopted some basic techniques like stretch-and-squash and is widely hailed for his inovation as a result. You have spent the last three years of your life doing character animation for the production of Violet Evergarden. Your wrist hurts from drawing all day. You mention your work to an aquaintance. They say you should check out Matt Mercer's Family Guy animatics; he even does close ups sometimes!

With that said, to try and give you the context you feel like you're missing, relevant section of the previous posts bolded in parenthesis:

Dungeons and Dragons saw an explosion in popularity in the mid-2010s. This was due to a lot of factors all coming together around the same time; the first generations of players introducing their kids and grandkids to the game, Stranger Things being an absolutely massive hit that featured D&D, Matt Mercer & co. starting Critical Role, a D&D podcast that quickly became one of the biggest streaming properties and even got its own TV show, the general embrace of traditionally "nerdy" interests in the mainstream, a brand new edition of the game coming out in 2014 that simplified a lot of rules and made it much more accessible for new players, it was something of a perfect storm of things to give D&D a huge, sudden tailwind of hype and excitement. ("imagine a world where watching cartoons had become suddenly super popular over the course of a few years. Huge burst in popularity. Suddenly everybody's talking about animation.")

There was hope from a lot of people that this rising tide of interest would lift all games in the space. D&D has been the biggest name in the space longer than most people in the space have been alive, so on some level everyone knew that a reasonable portion of the hype would stay confined to it, but the amount of hype that went to other games, even large well-established games like Call of Cthulu and Cyberpunk 2020, was a very small bump by comparison. ("Most of those new viewers only watch Family Guy") Consequently, a lot of players who played other systems wound up playing those systems less and less and D&D more and more, because TTRPGs are a hobby that inherently requires other people to play with, and if the only game all the new players want to play is D&D, you're going to play D&D, because you the veteran understand it, and it's the only game the rookies know/want. ("a good chunk of older viewers stopped watching anything except Family Guy.")

The thing about the new, more beginner-friendly edition of D&D from 2014, hereon referred to as either "Fifth edition" or "5e", is that while a lot of the simplification came from streamlining systems, a lot of it also came from basically saying "Figure something out" and leaving it up to the DM's discretion. The result is that a lot of 5e games lean much more heavily on their particular table's DM's interpretation of the rules rather than engaging with the rules and mechanics themselves, only engaging with one part of the overall work, which I imagine is very frustrating for someone who works in game design. ("Most of these new viewers have got into the habit of just listening to the audio of Family Guy, 'cos the actual animation's kinda ugly, and normally just turn the screen off and listen to the cartoon like a podcast." Note: This is the first place where I'm not 100% confident in my interpretation of OP, my understanding of that analogy may be off)

Because this means that a lot of 5e tables are somewhat detached from the rules, and that's the only form of TTRPG most of the newer players have experienced, a common problem is that they try to take that heavy-on-winging-it approach to other systems if and when they eventually try them out. But if you aren't used to engaging with a system's rules, or just don't want to, then everything unique about that system becomes at-best something you just ignore, and at-worst something you actively dislike because for you it's a distraction, so you wind up abandoning it and going back to D&D because "it just works" so to speak. ("These new viewers, whenever they try watching any new animation - from Bob's Burgers to Cowboy Bebop - turn the screen off and just listen to the audio, and then don't understand why these shows are any different and go back to Family Guy because it's familiar.")

Content warning: incest, sexual abuse, sexual abuse of a minor, suicide

Okay. We took our time. Sorry for the wait.

Given we write our Media, Myself & I essays on complex dissociation, allow us to tackle this from the perspective of cognitive dissonance of an irredeemable abuser who sees themselves as both a saviour and a victim.

Before we begin note that Utena is a show that requires an allegorical read to fully understand its narrative. Our reading is subjective. It may not match every reading. We'll do our best to explain the line between text and interpretation. Challenge us if needed. We do not believe we have the correct read.

So. Prince Dios and Akio Ohtori.

To be blunt and swift the TL;DR version is this: Prince Dios is a projection. He is an ideal. He is an unreachable concept.

Now. Let's tell the literal read and then interpret.

The backstory that Utena is provided is that Prince Dios was a brave prince who traveled the world and protected women and loaned them his strength. We see him do this for Utena in both the misremembered fantasy of the fairy tale intro and the reality based story of a traumatized/grieving Utena having a brief encounter with the prince after discovering the martyred rose bride.

At a certain point this dashing prince grew weak. Unable to live up to the demands of the world. The people grew angry with him and brought about their entitled wrath. Anthy in an act of martyrdom took on the hatred of the world for depriving the world of the brave Prince Dios.

Akio then goes on to set up the dueling game under the stated goal to release Dios from his egg prison, like the chick of the poem. He is engaged to marry Kanae Ohtori, the daughter of the head of Ohtori Academy. In order to literally wield the power of the establishment, Akio changes his name to meet his fiancée. He then takes on the title The End of the World and uses his position of power to groom and sexually exploit the students of the academy while sexually abusing his scapegoated younger sister.

That is a very broad and swift version of the literal story. Apologies if there is any misremembering. Utena is a dense show with contradicting versions of stories filtered through character biases and misremembering. We did not commit to rewatching 39 episodes before speaking to this.

Dios is said to exist in a floating Castle of Eternity that lays above the dueling ground. During Utena's battles the ghost of Dios blesses Utena and allows her to overcome her opponent in her bids to defend the rose bride.

At the end of the show we discover that this castle (representing the ideal heteronormative Happily Ever After romance) was just a projection in the chairman's office that uses the literal planetarium projector that lives in that office. The egg that Dios is said to be trapped within is a literal projector.

He is a projection. An illusion.

The backstory that we are given describes the brave prince and Akio continually asserts that it is who he was and what he desires to awaken.

Which brings us to the magical thinking interpretation that we hold.

In Adolescence the death of Akio is brought about by Anthy being awake, lucid and looking him in the eye when he rapes her. He attempts to flee from the scene of his monstrous act but Anthy had stolen his car keys. His agency. Unable to handle looking at who he had become he opts to jump from the top of the tower as Anthy had attempted to do at her lowest point.

Unlike Anthy, there is no one to catch her and beg her not to go through with it.

Akio is a monster.

In the final arc of the show he has isolated his two victims and left them both so cornered and bereft of hope that they are looking at death as a potential escape.

Yet when confronted in episode 38 and shown Utena's example of true selfless heroism in episode 39, he has excuses for everything. Justifications for all his acts. He talks about how martyred Anthy is by the hateful world that stripped everything from the pair of them.

Akio cannot look himself in the mirror. He deflects all accusation by spinning tales, scapegoating his victim and blaming her for her own abuse and sanitizing his acts by normalizing them.

In my read, as an illusion/projection, Dios is who Akio believes himself to be. He was once a hero, a prince, a paragon of chivalry and in his mind he should be that. That is who he was told he was and so if he is not that then there must be a reason, a cause, a blame. Because Akio IDENTIFIES as a good heroic prince.

But he's a groomer who has a whole cult of indoctrinated victims who isolate and prepare further victims for him to prey upon.

At the end of the video I link to SulMatul's video series on Utena. Video 3 is specifically about abusers and how they control their victims. I am not even going to pretend my Tumblr Dot Com Ask answer can approach the level of detail and research of that video. So if you want a full answer, skip this and go to that.

SulMatul quite correctly focused on the danger of the abuser's methods and what they do to their victims. I'll type a little about the mental gymnastics a person must commit to in order to hold true the idea "I am a good prince who is kind to women" while sexually abusing them.

Let's talk about Cognitive Dissonance.

Leon Festinger coined the term in his writing When Prophecy Fails to describe the act of holding contradicting beliefs that do not stand up to scrutiny of reality. When presented with contradicting evidence the mind has a tendency to adjust their beliefs to accommodate the current reality.

In this writing he spoke about cults that had specific prophecies with concrete dates and studied how their belief structures endured the date of their prophecies passing without the believed acts coming to pass.

Cognitive dissonance allows these challenged beliefs to remain truth in the face of evidence to their falsehood.

Akio's most consistent method of doing this is to normalize his actions or scapegoat his victims.

In Cognitive Dissonance theory these justifications are reflected by the acts of Rationalization, Just-World Fallacy, Confirmation Bias and Selective Perception.

Let's talk about them one by one.

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Rationalization

Rationalization (ego defense) is the mind tackling emotional conflict by concealing the nuance of their own beliefs through throwing up (not necessarily accurate) information to justify, downplay or avoid the conflict.

"It's good that we invaded that country because the people were suffering under the corrupt regime and can have a better life now that we have enacted war upon them" is an all too common version in reality where people justify invading a foreign nation without allowing themselves to believe they are evil.

For a good example of Akio's behavior we can look at the conversation between Akio, Touga and Nanami in the back of his car during the 3rd arc of the show. Nanami has come to live with Utena, Anthy and Akio in the chairman's building and witnessed Akio having sex with Anthy.

She plans to flee Ohtori and is instead cornered by her brother and Akio who take her on a car ride. The car rides symbolizing Akio using his position of power and his adulthood to give the youngsters a taste of the power and agency that adulthood grants you. Often the car rides represent sex but agency is the more appropriate read. Sex is just one of the many things only an adult should be able to do. Driving a car is another.

During the car ride Nanami tries to say outloud what Akio did but cannot stomach to speak the words. Akio merely laughs and responds:

"What do you see with your eyes? Merely your own world. The world you perceive. The world in which you exist. A world like a labyrinth with no way out... where you are doomed by your limited point of view to endlessly wander the same path. But what you need to see does not lie there."

Touga, under Akio's instructions, then attempts to force himself on his 13 year old sister in the back of the car. When she pushes him away he demands "Isn't this what you wanted?!" she refuses, "Even though we're not really brother and sister?!"

It is revealed that they are and Touga knows they are. That very episode ends with Akio asking when he intends to tell her the truth. Both men in the car knew. But the instruction was to normalize the behavior, minimizing it, obfuscate it. Downplay. Warp and bend the truth until their victim caves in.

Akio's above speech is an attempt to tell Nanami that he is not wrong for assaulting his sister. She is in the wrong for viewing it as immoral. If it's so terrible then why does she seek romance from her brother? If she cannot be made to understand through words then actions will suffice.

Here Akio's is trying to play that he is not a monster. Nanami just doesn't understand. But she can be made to understand. After all. Isn't this what she wants, too?

All of that with the horrific unspoken implication.

Akio believes this is what Anthy wants.

He believes his assault on Utena is what she wants.

If these children didn't want what he shows them then they'd reject it and him, surely? After all. They let him do it to them. He isn't forcing them...

This implication, unspoken for now, eventually does find voice though...

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Just-World Fallacy

Just-World Fallacy is the cognitive distortion that claims that there is an arbiter of morality and fate that ensure that people "get what they deserve". This can be "criminals deserve to be assaulted in prison" or "our neighbors deserves to lose their home for not having a rainy day fund" or more terrifyingly "She was asking for it."

The idea that there is some cosmic fairness that justifies the incongruity.

Or in Akio's case "Anthy took Dios away from the world so she deserves to be abused as The Rose Bride."

But also, when taken to task about assaulting Anthy by Utena he says this:

He plays on the projector the sequence where he forced himself upon her in the back of the car.

The entire context of this scene is about the toxic behavior abusers use to control their victims, minimize their accusations and escape accountability. I am not arguing that Akio believes what he is saying here but...

He is using an accusation levied at Utena to escape blame.

Not resisting when an engaged man kisses you and routinely raping your biological sibling are not comparable.

Not only is Akio saying that Utena's failure to resist was consent. He is saying that if it was assault then she deserved it for being in a romantic situation with an unavailable man.

"Isn't it unfair to pretend only you are noble and in the right?"

Here is Akio recognizing the fallacy and using it as a weapon to attack Utena with. The entire confrontation in Episode 38 is an abuser levying attack after attack on the ego of someone confronting him and every single attack is a confession.

He truly believes that his victims deserve the treatment they receive and if they don't deserve it then neither does he. He gets to both be right for how he acts and absolved if his victims justify it for themselves then they justify it for him too.

He outright says that Anthy is responsible for the prince no longer existing. That he once viewed her as a goddess who would sacrifice for the one that she loved, her brother; but now she is nothing more than a witch.

The implication of course being.

A witch deserves to be treated like this. For depriving the world of Dios.

...and if she doesn't deserve it...

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Perhaps she desires it.

Confirmation Bias

Confirmation Bias is the unconscious behavior of seeking and absorbing information that validates and supports pre-existing beliefs, using it to further justify and evidence that belief. For instance specifically searching for 1-star reviews of the new Avatar movie because you hate the series and want the new one to be bad.

Or perhaps a more topical example, dismissing a news story inconvenient to your political beliefs as "Fake News"

He can look at his perpetually traumatized sister and sees her complying with the script that he has instilled into her. Every time in the show Anthy has claimed to be the rose bride, to obey the winner of the duel, to be disposable, to deserve this.

She's a victim speaking the words of her abuser.

And her abuser hears he speak these words, words he has planted in her lips, and can believe them to be true. To justify the actions that cause those words to exist in the first place.

She is a victim of abuse and acts like a victim of abuse and because she acts like a victim of abuse he treats her like a victim of abuse.

Just like Utena not rejecting the kiss or allowing him to have sex with her in the love hotel, a lack of rejection is consent.

For an abuser they can self-justify their acts by claiming that they are merely playing a part that they have been forced into.

"Don't make me hurt you."

Princely Dios is vanquished from this world because the cruel witch forces him to act the part of a monster. It's not his fault. It's hers. She's the one choosing this. This is the product of her choices. Her free will.

In episode 38 Akio is candid about this. He is no longer the prince and it is Anthy's fault in his eyes.

So if he is accepting that he is a monster (because Anthy wants it/made him) then how can he believe himself a good person, how can he believe that he is still capable of being a prince?

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Selective Perception

Selective Perception is the cognitive bias that leads a person to highlight things they are predisposed to agree with while ignoring or dismissing things which contradict their worldview.

A classic one is a football fan seeing two instances of a sliding tackle and claiming that the one from their team was to take possession of the ball and not deserving of referee intervention but the opposing team was trying to injure the other player and deserves a red card.

It's taking the same information and using it to reinforce their existing behaviors no matter the context. The reality of the situation is that both teams are capable of unsportsman conduct, but tribalism and selective perception enables one to see the same act as virtuous by the in-group and nefarious by the out-group.

A horrifying version of this cognitive bias can be seen in this simple statement he makes during the duel with Utena.

Utena is a child when she is spouting ignorant ideals at Akio in defiance of him. She is an adult in his mind when she offers dubious and uninformed consent to have sex with him.

But for a version of this specific to how Akio views himself as a prince despite being a monster one need only look at episodes 38 and 39 to see how often Akio comments to himself (or the reflection of Dios) that Utena is just like how he used to be and that she is doomed to fail in her quest to save Anthy because he was unable to save her too.

As far as he is concerned the only outcome of being a hero is to fail. When he tells Utena that she is selfish and ignorant and does not know what she's trying to do she states, in defiance of all "I will become a prince" destroying the illusion of Eternity and Dios entirely.

Akio cannot maintain the projection of princely goodness against Utena's true demonstration of it.

It may have been destroyed for good if not for Anthy, seeing this illusion crumble, literal backstabs Utena. As so many abuse victims choose to do when someone tries to pry them out of their coffin.

...as Adolscence proves... a victim can not be rescued from hell. They have to be given the support and agency and understanding to walk out for themselves. Heaven knows I've been the backstabber and the one to walk away in the past. Without structured support and care I may well have gone back of my own free will. Recognizing that terrifies me.

Episode 39 has Akio and Dios existing as separate entities viewing Utena's attempt at rescuing Anthy, once again reinforcing that living up to these ideals is an impossibility and if Akio cannot be a prince, it is impossible for anyone to be. Because Akio is a good person who just failed. Utena must be the same.

Watching as Utena displays her heroic determination, Akio merely sees her as a reflection of the warped self-perception of his princely persona and he feels no threat to her outshining him or proving him wrong because obviously she will fail as he did.

Akio, the man who keeps Anthy imprisoned in an abusive relationship and routinely assaults her, truly looks at a selfless and valiant attempt to rescue her and dismisses it as worthless because he tried and failed and in assuming that views himself as a fallen hero and not an abuser. When provided evidence of someone living up to the ideals he claims himself to display he downplays them while also attempting to identify with them.

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In comparison to Akio. When Anthy attempts to commit suicide and is stopped by Utena, she begins confessing that she trapped Utena in the cycle of abuse with her and that she was cruel and manipulative during their entire relationship.

Here's a transcript of the conversation copied from this SRT file (Red is Anthy, Pink is Utena):

"Forgive me, Miss Utena. The pain I feel comes with the curse of being the Rose Bride."

"The pain I caused you…! You were swept up into all this against your will. And even knowing that, I…! I used you and your naivete. I took advantage..." "Forgive me, Miss Utena. I've cheated you. I've used you. I've betrayed you from the very beginning. I--"

"No."

"I… I never realized the pain you were in. I never noticed how much you were suffering. And despite that, I…! I kept acting like I was a noble prince who would save you!"

"The truth is, my protecting you was just for my ego! And the night I learned about you and Akio…! I thought that you had betrayed me. Even though you were suffering so much…! After I had said we should help each other, come what may…! I was the one who cheated you! I was the one who used you!"

"I was the one who betrayed you…!!!"

Anthy choosing to jump from the tower throws Utena's identity of being a heroic prince who will rescue her under attack and rather than accept Anthy's programmed self-abuse and martyring words, she rejects them and accepts responsibility. Admits that she was performing the heroic act for the sake of her own ego and that she viewed Anthy as a prop to be the hero that she had sworn herself to become.

That's maturity. That's accountability.

The ability to know your motivations and desires and see the evidence of the way those motivations and reality do not match and truly and openly reflect on the reasons why.

When Anthy tried to jump from the tower and showed Utena just how failed her attempts at heroism were, she owned it.

When Anthy looked Akio in the eyes and showed just how far from the heroic ideal he was acting, he chose to jump from the tower himself.

That's the difference between a hero and a coward.

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If you enjoyed this, please check out our essay on Anthy's parallels to Laura Palmer and Nanami.

Or SulMatul's Patreon which has a 4 part breakdown of the whole show.

had to share this brilliant discussion - source: X

At the most important moment in modern fantasy, the hero fails. Not quietly. Not ambiguously. He stands at the edge of the world, feels the full weight of evil loosen its grip, and chooses it anyway.

At the edge of Mount Doom, with the fate of the world balanced on a single will, Frodo Baggins does not throw the Ring into the fire. He claims it. The moment every heroic narrative has trained us to expect as triumph becomes instead a confession of failure. Tolkien does not flinch. He lets the hero break.

And yet the world is saved.

This is not a plot twist. It is a moral thesis. The destruction of the Ring happens not because Frodo earns victory, but because mercy extended long before the ending finally comes due. The quest resolves because of a chain reaction of restraint. The decisive force is not discipline, not optimization, not grit. It is pity.

This is where Tolkien quietly dismantles the moral machinery of hustle culture decades before we had language for it. We live inside a story that teaches us effort converts cleanly into outcome. That endurance guarantees reward. That suffering is a down payment on success. Tolkien offers a colder and far more honest truth. Sometimes you do everything right and still cannot finish the job.

Scholars have long noted that Frodo’s failure is not a betrayal of his character but the completion of it. The Ring is not a fair test of willpower. As J.R.R. Tolkien wrote plainly in his letters, the will is not infinite. Power erodes agency. The closer one comes to absolute domination, the less freedom remains. Frodo is not weak at the Crack of Doom. He is human at the end of an inhuman burden.

By the time he reaches the Fire, Frodo has endured starvation, sleep deprivation, repeated physical injury, and sustained psychological terror. Modern neuroscience would describe this as cumulative trauma. Tolkien simply wrote it as reality. Expecting one last burst of perfect moral clarity from a nervous system already wrecked by suffering is not heroism. It is wishful thinking disguised as virtue.

The quest only succeeds because of Gollum. And even that rescue is not redemption in the sentimental sense. Gollum does not transform into goodness. He falls into the fire because of what he already is. The deeper truth is that Gollum is alive at all only because he was spared when mercy looked foolish. First by Bilbo. Then by Gandalf. Then most dangerously by Frodo himself.

The Ring is destroyed not because Frodo conquers it, but because Frodo once chose not to destroy someone else.

This is a devastating inversion of the moral economy most of us were raised to believe in. We are taught to look for visible proof that goodness works. Tolkien gives us an older logic. Moral victories are often retroactive. The most transformative decisions rarely announce themselves as such. They look inefficient. They look naive. They often look like failure.

In the medieval moral tradition that shaped Tolkien, mercy was not sentimental. It was strategic in a way power could never be. Mercy refused to close the future. It kept outcomes unresolved. It preserved the possibility that evil might one day undo itself. Tolkien does not sanctify Gollum. He allows evil to collapse under its own gravity because mercy refuses to force a premature ending.

This alone would be enough to unsettle the reader. But Tolkien goes further. He denies us the fantasy that salvation heals everything.

After the Ring is destroyed, Tolkien insists on the Scouring of the Shire. Home is violated. The saved world is not the same world. The victory does not restore innocence. Frodo returns permanently wounded. He cannot sleep without pain. He cannot fully enter the peace he helped secure.

The modern myth is that collapse will be redeemed by recognition. Tolkien refuses that lie.

We want the hero to stand at the end and receive the moral reward. Tolkien lets his hero sit down and admit he is finished. Frodo does not recover because recovery would falsify the cost.

This is why The Lord of the Rings remains psychologically modern beneath its ancient scaffolding. The story already understands what burnout culture would take another century to articulate. Some burdens cannot be survived without damage. Some systems demand more than one conscience can sustain. Sometimes the bravest outcome is not conquest but survival long enough to make mercy matter.

We live in an age that worships visible dominance. We measure virtue through performance. We reward leaders who claim they can bend chaos through sheer will. Tolkien issues a quiet warning instead. When power becomes the proof of goodness, goodness collapses.

Frodo fails because no one was ever meant to pass that final test.

The world is not saved by the flawless execution of the righteous. It is saved by the accumulated weight of restraint. By choices made without assurance of payoff. By mercy that looked wasted at the time. By patience that looked irrational. By hands that refused the easy kill and kept the future open instead.

The modern fantasy is not Middle-earth. The modern fantasy is that effort always guarantees justice.

Tolkien tells a harder truth. Sometimes the most important moral decisions you will ever make will feel powerless when you make them. Sometimes the victory will not belong to your endurance at all. It will belong to mercy that looked like weakness years earlier.

Frodo does not win.

Mercy does.

This news probably came as a surprise to you. After all, you haven’t done anything pedophilic that you know of. Yet here you are, accused of being a pedophile.

It doesn’t matter whether you’ve been diagnosed with POCD or not, whether you’ve sought out material or not, even if you’ve been vocally opposed to pedophilia in the past. What matters right now is that YOU are a pedophile. Someone said it was true, and that’s what matters to most people.

Don’t worry, it happens to a lot of us, especially if you’re queer and ESPECIALLY if you’re transfemme. Hell, it’s happened to me before:

For some people, they become more vocally opposed to pedophiles to prove they aren’t a pedophile. Others develop radical compassion.

This is gonna sound like an unhinged comparison at first, but hear me out.

This whole “discourse” around ISFF has had me thinking over and over again about how Paul Robeson was blacklisted from being a prominent face of the civil rights campaign despite being possibly the most globally well known Black person from the US, bc he was a communist in a time it wasn’t just unacceptable socially but legally dangerous and would’ve brought even heavier crackdowns on the civil rights movement.

The result was an incomplete liberation because it was only uplifting the “acceptable ones” within a capitalist framework rather than uplifting the baseline total rights regardless of belief/existence.

The point there being is that so long as there are categories of human we view as unacceptable we cannot achieve total liberation. All trannies and faggots are pedophiles, addicts, bums, rapists, whores, etc. to those who see it convenient to get rid of us, and refusing to address this issue will only result in an incomplete liberation because we cannot leave behind those who are seen the worst by society when we ARE them too by default.

“But communist and pedophile is an unhinged comparison” they’ve been calling communists that, perverts, sexual deviants, etc. since McCarthyism anyway so.

We cannot be truly liberated until even those viewed as “the worst of society” have the same basic rights and ability to survive in society as everyone else. As humans, they deserve that much. If you cannot accept that, consider that all any of the rest of us need to become one of them is to be accused of it. Proof doesn’t matter. Reality doesn’t matter. You are a pedophile. You will become a pedophile as soon as it is useful for someone to make you into one.

There is no option but acknowledging they are still human and cannot be simply removed from society, because as long as there are stigmatized demographics, we will be able to remove the basic rights of anyone.

It helps to bear in mind that there were a lot of of collectible card games released in 1994–1996 that were trying to ride Magic: The Gathering's wave and didn't really have a plan beyond that. The majority of them only received a single print run, and seemed to stick around for years only because that print run hugely overestimated demand and it took them like a decade to run out the stock. XXXenophile was one of those.

As for how it came about, the answer to that is actually pretty simple: the Foglios made it up as a joke in one of the XXXenophile comic's trade paperbacks, and it received such a positive reaction from readers that they decided to make it real. You know what happened with Yu-Gi-Oh? Picture that, except with cards depicting alien titties and dildos the size of your leg.

Wizards opened at least three huge game stores in the Seattle area -- where commercial real estate is NOT cheap, and most game stores up until then were hole-in-the-wall operations -- which they did eventually close a few years later, but it's indicative of the kind of money they were suddenly rolling in.

The other indication, of course, was when Wizards bought TSR. That was seismic. TSR had been the big dog of the TTRPG industry as long as it had existed, and for some upstart card-game company to just come along and buy it was astonishing.

(Of course, we all got a lesson on the difference between Big Money in the game hobby world and Big Money in the actual corporate world when Hasbro rolled up and bought Wizards in turn like they were a county fair corn dog.)

Some character designs with some…atypical color choices? I guess. I don’t know what’s going on in that area.

This is Nimona and her supervillain friend (He doesn’t have a name yet, I’m working on that). Nimona is his sidekick/squire, they’re like the Batman and Robin of slightly Medieval villains, but she’s actually way more evil than him. He does what he does to make a point, and he doesn’t really want anyone get hurt - Nimona just gets a kick out of destroying stuff.

She has made it off the Nautiloid (or "the airplane," as she calls it) and begun recruiting the party. Her thoughts on them thus far:

- Lae'zel: An angry frog

- Shadowheart: An at-risk youth whose parents are absent