we're finally notdotq anymore

Breaking news!! CJ Blackwing has posted a fairly comprehensive review of the game, featuring screenshots and commentary. Check it out!

That’s right, bitches. I’m releasing this one day early.

It all began one dreary November evening when I read a comment of CCY’s (“make ccy make a visual novel, the visual novel”) and opened Ren’Py. I began scripting and I never looked back.

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I don’t know what that faggot ghostlightning has been up to, but I’ve been working on my visual novel. I made this promise on Twitter already, but here it is with a bit more info:

=-= This Friday, July 31st =-=
I will release version 0.1 of my visual novel CCY-senpai wa 17sai, a satirical epic featuring our beloved eternally youthful senpai CCY. Last version released was version 0.04, in which I introduced a ton more story and some background images.

This version will bring many new things to the table.

1. The first smatterings of Sixten’s contributions to the game. CCY’s sprite will be present in every scene, and one of the backgrounds is Sixten’s.

2. Music. lelangir transcribed some anime music, so we have suitably annoying midi backgrounds.

3. More story. Lots more story. More branching, more options, more bad ends, more good ends.

4. Character art from Choux: five beautiful character sprites to liven up the game’s scenes.

And there’s more… touched up dialogue, improved ending notes, credits, an opening, and, well, more. I won’t enumerate it all here. But there will be a changelog when I release the game this Friday. It’ll be good.

This is a major leap forward from last release.

And remember: this won’t be a final version of the game. It’s still very much unfinished. There will be more releases as I make suitable progress in the future. Continued community feedback throughout the game’s development is crucial to a good final product, so please: play every release and comment in as much depth as possible!

Thank you, and look forward to Friday.

And the way you hold your glasses screams “pretentious.”

Click for Sixten’s blog post.

Sixten is doing a fabulous job with the art for my game thus far. Our protagonist now has a sprite.

In the “better late than never category,” I started anime blogging on my old livejournal four years ago May. This officially makes me as pro as Jason Miao, and should elicit throngs of fanboys screeching “four more years! four more years!”

I would do a retrospective like lelangir did, but it wouldn’t be too interesting—every few points would be interspersed with “then lolikit gave up aniblogging in an emo rage fit, and closed down notdotq for five months.” Not that I ever stayed away for long, but…

… I do have a habit for, shall we call them, disappearances.

Instead of a retrospective, let’s do a highlights, and without dates, because I care more about the feelings than I do the historical accuracies:

- after one year of animeblogging, notdotq is born on wordpress.com, one of the handful of “first” anime blogs to use wordpress.com, along with jp meyer’s fairy tale of love and courage.

- Jason Miao promises to put notdotq on Blogsuki.

- Jason Miao removes newcomer RIUVA from Blogsuki, refuses to put notdotq on.

- Various bedraggled anibloggers realize that Jason is a cancer.

- Hung builds AnimeNaNo, invites Jason Miao.

- I start spreading my name by creating and maintaining the AnimeNaNo IRC channel. The community is thriving. Mr. Pippers is still an aniblogger.

- Jason still doesn’t join AnimeNaNo.

- So there are no killer lolis in Higurashi, mmmkay?

- Jason says that Japanese anibloggers are better than English-speaking anibloggers. Reason: graphs.

- Beginning of holy anti-Jason crusade.

- Oh by the way Haruhi sucks balls.

- I go to France, where I finish Fate/Stay-night and die a premature death due to suck. While in France, AnimeNaNo takes off like a flock of majestic birds, Japes becomes my friend, and Haruhi 12 blows me away.

- Hung, Japes, and Hinano–later, Japes’ girlfriend, now, his wife–start the AnimeNaNo podcast. Pips and I parody: podcast.dotq.org.

- wait, this is turning into a chronological recounting. SHIT.

Okay. Deep breath.

Here are my top ten moments in animeblogging.

#10. The founding of AnimeNaNo. Shit was so cash.

#9. Blogging Kyoushiro to Towa no Sora, Sola, and Aria the Origination with Shirukii.

#8. That time a newbie added me to her initial blogroll along with the big names–Jason, Jeff, Japes, Omo, etc.

#7. Baka-Raptor informed me that I was the king of trolls. (Or maybe it was ‘trolling king,’ either way.)

#6. Konoe and I enjoy many philosophical discourses over AIM, I publish these discourses (“on disagreement,” etc.), ghostlightning realizes that love needs explanation just the same as hate, various anibloggers begin defending their stances more rigorously, “lolikitean” invented.

#5. Kyousora.com is registered and built. My first exercise in hilarious satirical porn stories, perhaps the genesis of my visual novel project.

#4. Graphs. So fucking many of them. Everywhere. All the fucking time.

#3. When Jason stopped posting for three months. Hell yes. This was also when lots of people (ghostlightning, lolikappa, lelangir) were posting on notdotq. I was being extremely productive and the ’sphere was looking happy.

#2. Miao on My Mind.

#1. So, CCY-senpai, I herd u were maiking a gaem?

I’m going to stop the nostalgia train here because I’m not being very coherent or classy. This was really just a poor excuse to post more.

Love and peace and rock my song,
-Dr. lolikitsune

This is in part for CCY-senpai, who endured two hours of mostly terrible AMVs with me.

After noticing Nyoronyolo’s black sweatshirt in the Marriott hallway, being entranced the part of the design I could see and its trademark shade of purple, remarking to CCY, “dude, is that Nanoha? It’s Nanoha isn’t it?” and being correct, I pumped my fists.

Me: “Who’s good?! Who’s GOOD?! Just one corner of the spell circle, and I knew it was Nanoha’s!”
CCY: “How many shows have spell circles, though? Can’t be many.”
Me: “Hmmm… Fullmetal Alchemist… the watches in Eden of the East… oh! And Dennou Coil!!”
CCY: “Haha…”

Surprise of surprises, AniDB has a magic circle tag.

I’ve seen most of the shows in its lists: Scrapped Princess, Negima, Card Captor Sakura, etc. The ones I haven’t seen are fewer than the ones I’ve seen.

And the question is, are they worth watching? (And do they actually have lots of spell circles?)

- Kara no Kyoukai
- Strike Witches
- Macademi Wasshoi
- Pandora Hearts
- 07-Ghost
- Kurokami
- Tears to Tiara

Spell circles make everything better, but they don’t make shit better shit, so I really need to know if these shows are worth watching. Thanks.

Jesus is gone now, but in these wrists, and in my side—!!

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I’ll be participating in CCY-senpai’s 12 Moments project this year. I would have participated last year as well but I didn’t blog between August 2007 and March 2008. Ah well. Late to the party, but that’s fine by me.

Over the next twelve days, I will post once per day, doing a run-down of my favorite twelve moments in anime of this year. To qualify as “this year,” I just need to have seen the anime in question this year; its vintage doesn’t matter.

Here are a few rules I’ll be following for my posts:
1. nothing over 500 words
2. no links
3. minimum images
4. minimum metabloggery
5. no asshole jokes
6. no trolling

Hopefully these guidelines enforce some commonality between my twelve posts, and will keep the posts friendly and in the holiday spirit (rather than being in my usual hateful style). Oh, and there will obviously be lots of spoilers.