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Algid posted:Blood 23-25: Mahou Shoujo Sophia experiences genre shift and finds herself in an otome game. I like how three years with Kumo have rendered her completely oblivious to assassination attempts.
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Oct 27, 2015 09:51
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Cipher Pol 9 posted:Jesus Christ what is she even doing? She probably just needed a babysitter. Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by Kumo being a lazy deadbeat parent.
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Oct 30, 2015 18:06
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Cynic Jester posted:This is another reason why I really like ISSTH, as in most Xianxia, schools seem to encourage murdering fellow cultivators, even of the same school, which just seems utterly retarded. ISSTH actually makes the point that the entire reason for Meng Haos original sect being poo poo was that they tolerated such behavior. Well, that, and the Patriarch. It's not just tolerated, Patriarch Reliance deliberately implemented the system to weaken the sect so that he could eventually escape from his seal. Serious Frolicking posted:It doesn't do anything, no. But it means a whole lot to some people in the violet fate sect. At this point I think he's done more to help the Violet Fate than he ever did to hurt them. All he did was rip off a couple of outer sect idiots for a few thousand spirit stones and some high quality newbie gear. That whole bidding war had me crying tears of laughter. The best part of that exchange was that Meng Hao never actually consented to the trade.
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Nov 13, 2015 04:16
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jwang posted:I tried getting into ISSTH but after 2 chapters I felt that everything was ridiculously contrived. The instant he stepped onto immortal territory the gatekeeper dude was like "yo, I see you're different for no good discernible reason, so I'll give you a pass instead of being an rear end in a top hat to you like every shitbag that gets picked up to toil here." At that point, my suspension of disbelief just went out the window. At least make it like Spartacus where he has to fight like crazy to get recognition. While everyone else is whining about being kidnapped, Meng Hao is happy to get a shot at immortality. It's not like he had anything else to do with his life.
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Nov 23, 2015 06:16
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Most cultivators spend their lives meditating in a cave and pursuing the safest path to immortality. Meng Hao runs all over the place getting in fights, stealing poo poo from people who could easily kill him, and doing lots and lots of weird drugs.
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Nov 26, 2015 01:47
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Arkeus posted:Are you joking? We constantly see that most cultivators risk their lives as much if not more than Meng Hao. Most cultivators risk their lives when they go outside, but they spend the majority of their time in a safe place under the protection of their sect or clan. When they go outside there is danger, but they can still rely on their friends, or their sect's reputation, or high level artifacts that have been passed down from their elders to help mitigate that danger. Meng Hao spent years running around on his own acquiring battle experience, powerful magical artifacts, and mortal enemies.
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Nov 26, 2015 02:12
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Algid posted:The cosmology of ISSTH seems super weird. Planets/suns/moons don't work that way The giant turtle was just the country he was born in, and apparently big enough that you could run at several hundred miles per hour for two weeks straight without sleeping and only get about halfway across it. That country was described as being 1/1000th the size of the country he now resides in (since his homeland told him to go gently caress himself and then swam away) which is itself one of four continents, and as backwards and unimportant as a place can be while still having something resembling civilization. There was also a giant zombie bird with a wingspan of 300,000 kilometers that spent several weeks flying across that continent after Meng Hao did something stupid and woke it up. Treating all of the absurd numbers in this series as 100% accurate makes everything 100,000,000 times better.
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Dec 7, 2015 06:27
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The best parts of ISSTH are when Meng Hao robs people blind, and the subsequent reactions. The Alchemy Outlet Store, the Rain Dragon Core, the Iron Spear, Patriarch Reliance's Treasure Trove...
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Dec 13, 2015 04:07
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ISSTH 339: Lord Fifth fucks the sky to death.
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Dec 15, 2015 21:54
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Yasser Arafatwa posted:hahahaha oh my god latest chapter of ISSTH has the best loving ending I love how recent chapters have been focused on the POV of the random people Meng Hao encounters in the Black Lands. His collection of uniquely overpowered techniques and equipment really does make him seem like some kind of bizarre and incomprehensible demon.
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Dec 24, 2015 07:52
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I love how bizarre and magical fights can be in I Shall Seal The Heavens. I love how each new place Meng Hao travels to changes up the rules and feels distinct from the other regions. I love how Meng Hao's power ups aren't simply built around higher numbers but an accumulation of strange and bewildering techniques that make him seem like some inhuman demon. I like how he's not the only one with unusual circumstances and weird abilities, just the one that the story happens to focus on. I love how the author never lets us forget that despite his seemingly overpowered protagonist status, Meng Hao is just a medium sized fish in a very small pond. I love everything about Patriarch Reliance. I love how when he's being chased by a godlike Immortal who intends to erase all memory of him from existence and devour his karma, Meng Hao uses the opportunity to steal everything in sight.
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Jan 27, 2016 14:55
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Lyon posted:The only downside to most of these stories are that there are always so many lucky coincidences for the protagonist but once you get past that the genre is fun and this is definitely my favorite Xianxia novel so far. I'm more than willing to overlook the overpowered protagonist cliche because Meng Hao is the best protagonist ever. I Shall Seal The Heavens posted:“If I don’t keep grabbing stuff until my hands cramp, then my name isn’t Meng Hao!” he said, his eyes gleaming as he wrenched up a floor tile. All the best scenes in ISSTH involve Meng Hao stealing other people's poo poo (and other people's reactions to him stealing all their poo poo): The Spirit Pill Sprint, the Raindragon Hunt, Monster Mountain and the Bag of the Cosmos, the Iron Spear Auction, Salary Negotiations with Patriarch Reliance, Meeting the Meat Jelly, the Primordial Heavenly Replenishing Pill, the Million Spirit Stone giveaway and Church of Golden Light Annual Charity Marathon, the Crow Divinity Holy Land Fishing Excursion, and now Meng Hao's Extreme Home Makeover (in Space!). He earned every single one of his absurdly powerful magic items by being an audacious kleptomaniac wizard. Avulsion fucked around with this message at 07:47 on Feb 16, 2016 |
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Feb 16, 2016 07:41
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Serious Frolicking posted:The blood divinity thing was the opposite from usual. Meng Hao was the chosen one there, with someone else trying to subvert the entire process to swipe it for himself. The criteria for becoming the "Chosen One" was to be such an incredible rear end in a top hat that sky tries to murder you, and was a direct result of his earlier activities. The Gold Core Tribulation was also great, not just because of the murder and stealing that was going on at the time, but also because of all the lightning gags leading up to the grand finale, and all the "What the gently caress is wrong with this guy?!" reactions from everyone around him.
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Feb 16, 2016 07:57
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Yasser Arafatwa posted:giant demonic continent-sized turtle New York to LA is about 2,500 miles. The circumference of the Earth is about 25,000 miles. The distance to the Moon is just under 240,000 miles. Patriarch Reliance is described as having a circumference of "millions" of miles. If you consider every single number in ISSTH to be 100% accurate (which you should) then Patriarch Reliance is probably around the same size as the Sun.
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Feb 17, 2016 00:12
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UberJew posted:It was actually when that story had the detour into his irl college experience that I stopped being able to deal with him as a protaganist and had to drop lms It's a whole lot easier to read if you treat the whole thing as satire.
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Feb 19, 2016 19:01
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Serious Frolicking posted:The funny part is how originally, Meng Hao wasn't inclined to steal at all. But the wooden sword gave him a taste and then patriarch reliance drove him over the edge. Now he sometimes even steals from people who haven't tried to screw him over first. If they wanted to keep the roofs on their houses they should have used better nails or cheaper shingles.
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Feb 28, 2016 09:18
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FriggenJ posted:While walking down the street an apple hit my head and I awakened my previous life memories. WHAAAA? I'M THE FAT OR SUPER PRETTY BUT STUCK UP BAD GUY FROM A FORGETTABLE GIRL-GAME WITH A FOOD-RELATED TITLE? That reminds me, does anyone know why so many webnovels eventually turn into cookbooks? Is it a cry for help from the authors as they slowly starve to death in front of a computer screen in a dark room, or do they just run out of ideas to keep the plot moving and start copy/pasting recipes as filler?
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Mar 1, 2016 03:30
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I have low standards, and I can usually muddle through some engrish as long as the underlying story is interesting enough. What really annoys me and takes me out of the story is when the translator decides that the best way to preserve the original feel of the work is to leave half of the words in japanese and then cram in a bunch of translator's notes to explain what the hell is going on. I'm not talking about calling someone onee-sama or what have you, I understand that in english addressing someone as brother or sister can have different connotations, and if the translator decides to leave it in Japanese I'll just treat it like a nickname. No, it's poo poo like this that I cannot understand: Footnotes from a chapter of Wordmaster posted:(1) Uun: Japanese equivalent of ‘Hmm’. Sound indicating deep thought. Why not just write "Hmm" instead of "Unn" and skip the explanation? Avulsion fucked around with this message at 03:51 on Mar 8, 2016 |
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Mar 7, 2016 19:48
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FriggenJ posted:I feel like my least favorite thing about JP novels -has- to be all the loving onomatopoeia. It's the epitome of terrible writing and the stories that have even small amounts of it are immeasurably worse as a result. Some stories read like the script to a manga or anime instead of an actual novel, which is probably deliberate in many cases.
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Mar 9, 2016 18:31
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jwang posted:I can't really think of any of the standard Xianxia genre MCs not being some degree of murderhobo rear end in a top hat. It's like a standard requirement to the genre in order to get ahead of the other muderhobo assholes, and it's what the women in these genres swoon over. The bigger your murderhobo goatse is, the more they swoon. Only in subversions of the genre do you get "not quite" murderhobo assholes, or perhaps even a decent guy that isn't all about loving over your fellow man just to get ahead. Here you go: http://shiroyukitranslations.com/ztj/ Ze Tian Ji is about a polite, honest, and slightly naive young monk from the sticks who comes to the big city to visit a library and stumbles into a world of political intrigue. He is incredibly polite and straightforward, but his naivety and sometimes cryptic way of speaking causes everyone to mistake him for some kind of machiavellian mastermind. It's also notable in that it features a crippled-and-unable-to-cultivate protagonist who doesn't get possessed by a demon/god/old-guy-in-a-magic-ring after three chapters and turn into some unstoppable killing machine who is somehow incredibly attractive to women despite being a complete rear end in a top hat. Instead, the MC spends 100+ chapters trying to avoid fights and read books while the rest of the world comes up with increasingly convoluted plots to drive him out of town because they believe he is a supervillain out to destroy humanity.
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Mar 14, 2016 11:35
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Take a moment to think about how most other web novels handle relationships and female characters in general, then be grateful that the worst thing you can say about this character is that she's slightly less interesting than the competition. Also, part of what makes many of the other women in the story so interesting is that they all have their own goals and ambitions and would gladly sacrifice Meng Hao to further those goals, which might explain why he's in no hurry to shack up with any of them. I'm just glad ISSTH finally jumped on the reincarnation bandwagon, it opens up so many new ways for Meng Hao to screw people over.
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Apr 10, 2016 01:10
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I like how when the Ji clan were serving Lord Li, they had a status and power that was far superior to the Demon Immortal Sect, but after betraying Li and taking over the Ninth Mountain they've been reduced to the point where they have to send their best and brightest to scavenge the ruins of the Demon Immortal Sect. I'm guessing that wasn't a part of the original plan.
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Apr 22, 2016 21:31
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Patriarch Reliance Jr cultivated the Dao of Greed for centuries (and Meng Hao managed to burn through the entirety of his savings in a couple of years) so it's entirely possible for Meng Hao to achieve spiritual enlightenment by swindling people.
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Apr 25, 2016 07:31
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He had the paperwork written up beforehand! That Bag of the Cosmos is probably the most valuable and dangerous artifact in his possession.
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Apr 25, 2016 18:27
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The Reliance Sect was an interesting contrast to the Violet Fate Sect, which actually treated its disciples well, provided them with guidance and cultivation materials, and actively encouraged them not to be dicks to each other. The result was that the Violet Fate Sect produced a number of strong, well equipped, and gullible idiots while the Reliance Sect produced Meng Hao.
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Apr 26, 2016 19:45
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Cynic Jester posted:Meng Hao will steal everything that's not nailed down and 
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Apr 29, 2016 00:30
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Neurophage posted:All the lengthy descriptions of Xiao Wu's sexiness every other chapter, despite her being prepubescent. ZTJ is great and not at all creepy. Kid from the sticks comes to the big city and gets mixed up in court politics.
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May 4, 2016 20:46
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Silynt posted:I think it was a hand-wavey "and he has pills that extend his longevity so no problem after all". It's kind of stupid that the author would introduce that gimmick as a drawback to his strength and then never have it come into play at all, so maybe it'll be relevant in the future. In order to maintain the 9th Anima, he has to dupe lots of medicinal pills. In order to dupe medicinal pills, he has to spend spirit stones. In order to "earn" more spirit stones, he has to con more people.
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May 11, 2016 19:46
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The Sandman posted:I'm looking forward to seeing how Meng Hao loses his vast wealth, because given the story to date I can't imagine him managing to keep it. I'm guessing demon hearts can be made to explode, and given his fondness for saturation bombing it wouldn't be hard for him to burn through a few hundred thousand demon hearts in a couple of minutes.
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May 20, 2016 18:41
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I think Meng Hao is going to have trouble collecting on his IOU from the Wang Clan's Chosen. What a tragedy.
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May 26, 2016 21:23
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Neurophage posted:Desolate Era is fun, but it could easily be half its length without losing anything of the slightest importance to the overall plot. It's really loving annoying how the author repeats everything three or four times just to pad out the word count. "The author repeats everything three or four times?" Asked Ji Ning, "To pad out the word count?" "Yes!" Exclaimed an unimportant NPC, "The Author, Er Gen, likes to repeat everything three times, sometimes even FOUR times, just to pad out the word count!" It was exactly as the unimportant NPC described, the author, I Eat Tomatoes, would often have different characters, as well as the narrator repeat a given statement over and over again just to remind you of how profound and important that seemingly trivial piece of information really was! "Three times? But sometimes four?" Ji Ning muttered to himself, "Is it to pad out the word count, or to make sure the readers don't forget the details since they are probably simultaneously reading 15 xianxia novels with virtually identical plots and characters? But... what if there is some deeper meaning to this mystery?!" A sudden light flashed in Ji Ning's eyes and he immediately sat down to meditate on this insight for six years! Avulsion fucked around with this message at 23:09 on May 28, 2016 |
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May 28, 2016 22:18
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In Desolate Era, if you murder too many innocent people the universe puts a big blinking sign over your head that says "KILL ME AND WIN FABULOUS PRIZES" which seems to be the only way to cram millions of xianxia protagonists into one setting without them exterminating all other forms of life. It's not that Ji Ning isn't a douchebag, it's just that the universe actively limits his opportunities to express his douchiness.
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May 29, 2016 03:11
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His Perfect foundation just meant that he didn't leak energy, but due to the Heavens of Ji's ban on perfection, he couldn't absorb energy normally and had to cram himself full of medicinal pills or cultivate in alternate dimensions. Normal cultivators soak up energy from their surroundings, but they also leak it out through the cracks in their foundations, which I assume is some kind of immortal pyramid scheme to funnel power to the Heavens of Ji and prevent anyone from rivaling the Ji Clan's power. Fun bit of trivia that some people may have forgotten, the formula for the Perfect Foundation and Perfect Core were inscribed on a piece of turtle shell that Meng Hao "acquired" from Shangguan Xiu. Shangguan Xiu could also use Demonic Qi, and would likely have become the 9th Generation Demon Sealer if it weren't for Meng Hao.
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May 31, 2016 18:41
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Webnovels in general seem to be a mix of good and bad ideas, that's what happens when you have little to no editing and are expected to publish X number of words per day. You can't go back at the end and say "This subplot turned out to be terrible, better rewrite it" because it's already been online for months. I think the trick to enjoying the format is to focus on the parts that are either good, or hilariously bad and just let the mediocre and creepy just fade from your memory. Good example from TDG: Nie Li meets a thousand year old ghost of one of the founding elders of his home country, who offers to take him as a disciple. Nie Li makes fun of his ancient "wisdom" and turns him into a bird. Now Nie Li is walking around with a talking bird who also happens to be the great great great grandfather of his future father-in-law and current king, a guy who absolutely loathes Nie Li for creeping on his daughter, but can't afford to kill him because they need his knowledge to save the kingdom. When the three of them finally end up in a room together, the results are hilarious.
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Jun 1, 2016 22:23
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Captain Bravo posted:I'm having trouble remembering a series I read a while back, and was wondering if anyone remembers it. I think it was a web novel, but it might have been a manga or a manhwa? The main character is an npc from one of the dragon quest games who spends his whole life sitting around in the village tending a small campfire. At some point, something happens to the hero, and he's kind of forced to step up and actually do stuff other than sit on his rear end and burn sticks all day. How I stalked some dude with an exposed nipple and stumbled upon the Zenithian Sword Also check out MonsterXMonster by the same author.
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Jun 6, 2016 08:50
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Serious Frolicking posted:Also invincible saint is the most boring goddamn thing imaginable. And bizarrely pro slavery, even for a Japanese WN. Is it some kind of metaphor for the plight of the Japanese salaryman?
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Jun 7, 2016 16:55
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I've always wondered, do titles like this sound less retarded in Japanese?
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Jun 7, 2016 22:43
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jwang posted:I really don't get what's with the obsession with auctions in these Chinese WN. It seems like every other one would involve an auction in some shape or form. My favorite bits are when the MC goes to take a written exam and there are tens of thousands of spectators. Nail-biting stuff.
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Jun 10, 2016 21:35
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For those of you who got tired of the constant battles in ISSTH, in the latest arc Meng Hao has turned into a Scooby-doo villain in his pursuit of the Dao of Conning.
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Jul 22, 2016 08:55
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Meng Hao is doing another Pokemon arc. Gotta catch 'em all.
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Jul 26, 2016 21:34
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