FrePara

FrePara (フレパラ, Furepara) is a popular social networking service (or SNS) mentioned throughout the Science Adventure Series, and is fictitious. It is based on Mixi, which was the most popular social network in Japan when ChäoS;HEAd and Steins;Gate were released.
== In ChäoS;HEAd ==
In ChäoS;HEAd, Takumi Nishijou has over a hundred friends on FrePara.
FrePara has communities (sometimes called comms for short) organized around different topics, which is the main way it is organized. In ChäoS;HEAd, most of Takumi's ESO guildmates, most notably Grimm, join the same FrePara community to share information about the New Gen serial killings. The only two members of the guild who do not join the New Gen FrePara comm are Takumi (as Neidhardt) and Sister Centipede, neither of whom is interested in New Gen.
=== In the Kozue route ===
In the Kozue route, "Shougun" (Mamoru Suwa) stalks Takumi Nishijou and starts posting images of the way to his "base" on FrePara under a certain handle.
==Etymology==
The origin of the name FrePara is not known for certain, but since “Fre” is how the word “Friend” begins (at least in Japanese, phonetically), and “Para” is how the word “Paradise” begins, it is probably short for “Friend Paradise”, but written similarly to “MySpace”, “YouTube”, “SoundCloud”, and other websites with two capital letters in different parts but no spaces. In Japanese, “FrePara” is written as “フレパラ”, with “フレ” for “Fre” and “パラ” for “Para”. “Friend” is written as “フレンド” and “Paradise” is written as “パラダイス”. This is all using katakana which is used for loanwords. So “フレパラ” (“FrePara”) is probably short for “フレンド・パラダイス” (“Friend Paradise”).
==In other Science Adventure games==
This section contains spoilers for Steins;Gate and Robotics;Notes
In Steins;Gate, Daru also has many friends on FrePara, including both Sister Centipede and Lightning-Fast Neidhardt. When Okabe wants to find an IBN 5100, Daru gets friends of his from a retro computing FrePara comm to help him look for an IBN 5100 in Akihabara, with Sister Centipede organizing many people to search and Neidhardt also involved in this search effort, and by this time, Neidhardt is considered legendary for his abilities to track things down. However, neither Sister Centipede nor Neidhardt is able to find the IBN 5100.
In Robotics;Notes, Sister Centipede turns out to be one of the main characters, who had been making cameo appearances online in earlier parts of the Science Adventure Series as both a member of the same ESO guild as Neidhardt and Grimm, and as someone active on FrePara with an interest in retro computing who is friends with Neidhardt, Daru, and many other people. It turns out that she is part of dual AI system called Airi, with 2 personalities, Airi and Sister Centipede, that runs on the popular augmented reality IRUO. app and takes the form of a teenage girl who can only be seen and interacted with through the IRUO. app on a PhoneDroid, which is basically akin to Android phablets. However, she first launched as an AI and became active on the FrePara social networking service using the handle Sister Centipede back on December 24, 2008, and also became an active player of Empire Sweeper Online and part of the same guild as Neidhardt and Grimm soon after the game launched.
Category:Terminology