we're finally notdotq anymore

Um.

Wow.

2010 is finally over, and good riddance to this fucking trashpile of a year.

I’m honestly not even going to bother with awards, because really, what this year possibly deserved an award? Let’s see if we can’t recap all the horrible things that happened this year…

The year started off pretty uncomfortably with the fall of the OEG. Things seemed to have been going well, but they made the mistake of pissing some fans who were more, uh, devoted (read: crazy) than any of us anticipated. Once their contact information, it was honestly only a matter of time.

And then the media backlash started. The murder of two random guys didn’t seem that big a deal, but the media can never quite seem to let a potential scandal die. So it became the Blogger Murder. And suddenly there we were, aniblogs at the center of a huge news circus, and reviled by everyone.

There’s kind of a reason we started this year with a few hundred aniblogs and are ending it with barely three dozen. No one wants to be a part of this mess any more, and for good reason. I mean come on, this is the first post on notdotq by anyone for eight months. Shit.

Of course, the real shitstorm hit at Otakon. It was luck of the draw, really. Bad luck, that is. I maintain it could’ve been any convention center, and we just got the worst luck. With the bomber long dead, obviously, no one will ever know if it was targeted or just a random act of terrorism, but… the damage was done. Thousands dead (including half a dozen anibloggers–the most tragic of course being lelangir getting hit by an ambulance as he tried to pull himself from the wreckage), and apparently all over some Japanese cartoons.

The subsequent collapse of the anime industry, both stateside and in Japan, caught absolutely no one by surprise. The bottom fell out everywhere. It didn’t help that the fans went fucking nuts in the wreckage. Stragglers running to save themselves, ignoring burning and bleeding friends around them. Talk about the dregs of humanity. There’s a reason the world as a whole seems to hate anime fans these days.

So here we are. In the twilight days of anime.

And what do we have to say for ourselves?

Not a whole fucking lot.

I’m going to go read some webcomics now. That’s a ship that doesn’t seem to be sinking any time soon, and those few of you left are welcome to join me. The one we’re on is heading nowhere but down.

.lolikappa