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Post by Messup434 on Sept 10, 2020 12:03:30 GMT -5
Interesting {Spoiler}Also looks like the obstacles do change week to week to that's cool.
Week2: ① Shrinking Steps ② Lunatic Ledges ③ Spinning Bridge ④ Ring Chaser ⑤ Honeycomb Hang ⑥ Warped Wall / Mega Wall Um, some of those are wrong. Very wrong. What? That's what the trailer showed. Unless those were just generic clips from different episodes. You've piqued my interest now!
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Post by Al Bundy on Sept 10, 2020 17:21:18 GMT -5
as for the upcoming episodes, it will be interesting to see how they address the power tower, since they just skipped over it in the first episode. They won't. It will just be like "here it is, we're not taking any questions"
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Post by Ninja Warrior Ryan on Sept 11, 2020 8:39:34 GMT -5
Sneak Peak for Monday!
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Tico
Ōmori Akira
Posts: 328
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Post by Tico on Sept 11, 2020 10:35:49 GMT -5
This is going to be the most dividing episode that has been on American ninja warrior. Ninjas For Black Lives is not affiliated with Black Lives Matter. We know about the leaders of that group and we don’t agree with rioting, looting and police violence. NBC did their best to pick pictures and videos that’s best describe what our group is trying to accomplish.
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alc
Harashima Masami
Posts: 10
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Post by alc on Sept 11, 2020 11:33:15 GMT -5
No offense, but who the hell are you and who do you purport to speak for? Black Lives Matter was never about rioting or looting. Try turning off Fox News for a few minutes and follow some real news sources. This is going to be the most dividing episode that has been on American ninja warrior. Ninjas For Black Lives is not affiliated with Black Lives Matter. We know about the leaders of that group and we don’t agree with rioting, looting and police violence. NBC did their best to pick pictures and videos that’s best describe what our group is trying to accomplish.
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Tico
Ōmori Akira
Posts: 328
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Post by Tico on Sept 11, 2020 12:22:11 GMT -5
No offense, but who the hell are you and who do you purport to speak for? Black Lives Matter was never about rioting or looting. Try turning off Fox News for a few minutes and follow some real news sources. This is going to be the most dividing episode that has been on American ninja warrior. Ninjas For Black Lives is not affiliated with Black Lives Matter. We know about the leaders of that group and we don’t agree with rioting, looting and police violence. NBC did their best to pick pictures and videos that’s best describe what our group is trying to accomplish. I’m Donovan, there was no offense taken until you instructed me to “try turning off Fox News. . .” You’re making assumptions. You don’t know me. Like you, ALC, I’m a human being with an opinion. I’m a member of Ninjas For Black Lives and we’ve had numerous people attack us with statements about BLM and linking them with rooting, looting and violence towards officers. I was merely informing people of what NFBL is against. Not staying BLM is for those things. Also, I don’t watch Fox News.
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alc
Harashima Masami
Posts: 10
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Post by alc on Sept 11, 2020 12:56:02 GMT -5
Fair enough. I'm not trying to be an a** either, and I apologize for the dig regarding Fox News. I'm sorry you're being attacked and that Ninjas for Black Lives is being associated with rioting, looting and violence towards officers. We are 100% on the same page here.
I'll type a longer response about Black Lives Matters momentarily. Just wanted to get that first part out there quickly.
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alc
Harashima Masami
Posts: 10
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Post by alc on Sept 11, 2020 13:18:22 GMT -5
Ok, about me. I don't want to give out my first name because it's an uncommon one, but I'm a real person. I live in Seattle. I've been to the Women's March and a lot of other protests in this area. I know many of the organizers personally. I bring my young children with me and for that reason I am overcautious about safety and have admittedly avoided the ones that I fear might get ugly, especially towards persons of color. Black Lives Matter is a responsible organization and I have donated a sizable amount to their bail fund for protestors across the country who got arrested for exercising their Constitutional First Amendment right to freedom of assembly. (For the record, Black Lives Matter was not affiliated with the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone that got so much press outside of Seattle.)
Despite what Fox News Watchers might think (and again, I apologize for lumping you in with them), protesting is not synonymous with rioting, looting, or aggression toward police. The right to protest is baked into the Constitution and it's what schoolkids used to learn when they learned about the Founding Fathers. People cheer the Women's March, but fear a Black Lives Matter march for consciously and subconsciously racist reasons. People forget now how hated and feared Martin Luther King Jr. was during his lifetime. White people forget the "civil disobedience" part, and render "nonviolent" to be synonymous with "inoffensive." Martin Luther King Jr. was anything but inoffensive. He was deeply, profoundly offensive because he was fighting for justice, and justice doesn't come easily to those who blindly defend the status quo.
So yes, I do understand why you wanted to dissociate Ninjas for Black Lives from an image of violence and looting. But please don't do so at the expense of Black Lives Matters and other groups that have been on the ground championing racial justice and police accountability issues for far longer than most Ninja fans have been aware of the issues, and ***have never advocated for violence*** themselves. We can all do better than than that.
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alc
Harashima Masami
Posts: 10
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Post by alc on Sept 11, 2020 13:53:12 GMT -5
I obviously think that Ninjas for Black Lives is great and I'm sorry I misunderstood the point you were trying to make, which is that anything with the words "Black Lives" in it is going to be controversial.
It's just a pain point to me because even in supposedly liberal Seattle, the police have routinely sided with violent, neo-fascist, white supremacist hate groups like the Proud Boys. It's apparently ok for them to stage a demonstration, because it's protected under the First Amendment. But the minute a Black-led group tries to exercise their exact same right to freedom of assembly, it's assumed that it will devolve into rioting and looting, and the police feel they need to attack first. Which they do, with military-grade weapons. That toddler that got tear gassed? That could have been my child. But it wasn't, because we stayed home.
I realize that NBC will not want to go into any of that. And that Ninjas For Black Lives will be presented in a positive, feelgood way. Which, I suppose, is an understandable first step given their target audience.
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Tico
Ōmori Akira
Posts: 328
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Post by Tico on Sept 11, 2020 15:29:12 GMT -5
Thank you for your point of view and I will choose my words more wisely in the future. We have to get back on topic!! Ah, ANW is so cool, I can’t wait to see the new obstacles.
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alc
Harashima Masami
Posts: 10
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Post by alc on Sept 11, 2020 22:22:09 GMT -5
The Ninja community has been pretty damn amazing in these trying times. I normally hate the fluff pieces, but I was tearing up within the first few minutes of the preview for the first episode. And that was even before they started showing runs! I really like the obstacles we've seen so far. Creative, fun, and challenging in different ways for different body types.
I will say this, though. When doing anti-racism work, you can't choose your words carefully enough. And while it's obviously important for Ninjas for Black Lives to define themselves in a positive manner - what you are, not what you aren't - it's also important not to do so in a way that sets you up as a foil for those "other bad Black people." This plays straight into the racists' hands. They get to have the credibility and social standing of being able to say, "Look, I have Black friends! I'm not a racist!" while avoiding the touchy issue of police accountability. Because... those other guys. They're just rioters and looters. They weren't risking their lives to protest police brutality. Oh no. They were just out there to be violent. But you, you're the good Black guys, I'm happy to work with you.
Believe me, I'm aware of how important it is for Ninjas for Black Lives to avoid getting rebranded as some sort of violent movement. But if the very words "Black Lives" have already gotten rebranded that way, then the Fox News watchers have already won. They've shifted the conversation away from police accountability, away from Emmett Till and Trayvon Martin and George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and every single other name that Black Lives Matter is begging us to say because these are real Black lives that were taken and can never be brought back. My four-year old's first question when I tried to explain the protests was, "But why do just black lives matter? Why not all lives or white lives?" And the answer, is "because black lives are being killed by the police a lot more than white lives. And they shouldn't be."
A four-year old just accepts that as the answer. Adults, however, can come up with all sorts of deflection mechanisms. And sadly, one of the most common is to contort themselves into a worldview that dehumanizes the targets of police brutality. They were criminals. Looters. Rioters. Not people. And that way, these adults can have their cake and eat it too: they can pat themselves on the back for not being racist, while enjoying all the fruits of their racism.
So even though it's tough - I get it, I get it - please, Donovan, when you represent Ninjas for Black Lives, I hope you can find a way to choose your words to avoid playing into that mentality. You can't get trapped into being the "good" Black people as a foil to the "bad" Black people - because that just deflects the racism without addressing it.
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Post by partialbigots on Sept 11, 2020 23:53:22 GMT -5
Wish I could figure out how to do the raised hands emoji using BBCode but I can't so I'll say: thanks alc for your posts and 100% agree with you. I've seen similar language used from the athletes on instagram and other social media and what you wrote is something everyone needs to see and take in. Especially because people who are promoting the racist and fascist views on the internet are going to attack NFBL either way. They're intentionally trying to create division to create distance between people who would be great partners in working together to advance anti-racist causes. I hope people stand strong in their convictions and don't fall into the traps you lay out. (And like you said: NBC is never going to create that nuance on the show so it's up to the community built around it to drive that home.)
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Post by GlobalNinjaFan on Sept 12, 2020 5:23:33 GMT -5
While I understand that Ninjas For Black Lives and Black Lives Matter are two distinct, separate organisations, I doubt a majority of viewers will be able to make that distinction.
That said, I'm extremely pleased that a movement like this is going mainstream in an episode. No matter how much some people deny it, the USA is not a place of equality, and more people SHOULD be speaking out.
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Post by Ninja Warrior Ryan on Sept 12, 2020 11:21:18 GMT -5
That said, I'm extremely pleased that a movement like this is going mainstream in an episode. No matter how much some people deny it, the USA is not a place of equality, and more people SHOULD be speaking out. Agreed. Been very pleased to see this pushed. Ninja is all about inclusion, not separation.
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Tico
Ōmori Akira
Posts: 328
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Post by Tico on Sept 15, 2020 19:35:38 GMT -5
Time management was key on episode 2. There were so many people that were capable of crushing this course that you had to move!
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Post by crimson on Sept 16, 2020 13:20:37 GMT -5
I'm sad that Nick Hansen did not advance even though he completed the course and the only person to complete Mega Wall. I guess there's a good reason only a few people attempted the Mega Wall, as time was a big factor. There were a number of people who I thought would go for the Mega Wall, but didn't.
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Post by GlobalNinjaFan on Sept 16, 2020 14:46:25 GMT -5
I'm sad that Nick Hansen did not advance even though he completed the course and the only person to complete Mega Wall. I guess there's a good reason only a few people attempted the Mega Wall, as time was a big factor. There were a number of people who I thought would go for the Mega Wall, but didn't. Honestly, given how completely out of juice Nick looked on the Ferris Wheel, I'm astonished he managed to clear the Mega Wall so easily. It might just be the cleanest looking clear we've seen of it yet. He ran up it with the comfort most ninjas run up the regular wall.
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Post by GlobalNinjaFan on Sept 16, 2020 15:22:30 GMT -5
IMO, this episode was much better than the first.
The Power Tower really added a lot to the episode (though I can't blame episode 1 for omitting it). On top of that, we got what felt like a much higher concentration of top ninjas than episode one. Ethan Swanson, Jake Murray, Jamie Rahn, Daniel Gil, Flex Labreck, JJ Woods, Nick Hanson, Abel Gonzalez... the list goes on.
Also, I'm totally spooked to find out that Nick Hanson didn't even end up moving on, despite being a huge part of the episode and beating the Mega Wall. Just goes to show how utterly fierce the competition is these days.
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tyler
Satō Hiromichi
Posts: 246
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Post by tyler on Sept 17, 2020 0:20:44 GMT -5
I feel happy for Nick winning the 10k. He's not that fast of a ninja. This format really sucks for him. It made so much more sense for him to go for the 10k that he a serious shot at getting than to worry about moving on with a faster time to potentially have the chance at winning 100k at the end of the season in a format he wouldn't do too well in.
I still wish he made it through. It's weird to complete the mega wall and not make it. Like the mega wall is supposed to be this serious thing and it's just weird not having him move on after beating it. I understand with the tournament format they are going with that he wouldn't move on. But it's still weird.
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Post by higeboshi on Sept 18, 2020 6:59:29 GMT -5
Yeah, a slight rule change that if you top the Mega Wall you advance regardless of placement would be nice. It's a serious feat, *ESPECIALLY* after already doing several obstacles in succession.
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