we're finally notdotq anymore

I get on Twitter to mention that I’ve made some progress on National Novel Writing Month, and I see all these tweets: OEG this, OEG that. My first thought goes to Original English … Games? But there seems to be something about flaming.

I like flames.

These guys are the Queen’s bollocks. I love them. They write run-on sentences and don’t afraid of anything. They compare themselves to volcanoes—you know who else did that? Kamina. Eat your heart out, TTGL fans.

Anyway, the mission is clear: these pleasant individuals wish to stamp out the “incorrect” usage of the term “otaku” in the EL aniblogosphere by publicly shaming bad animebloggers who “incorrectly” dub themselves “otaku.” A noble goal. I love crusaders, and the conviction and vitriol these guys pack remind me of my days spent raging against Lucky Star. Go get’em, anonytaigas! Pounce on those shitty Danny Choo-wannabes, pin’em down, rape the daylights out of them, and then pull back, in full ape form, beat your chests and scream “EEEEEEEEELIMINATED!!”

According to a site search, this is my first post containing the word “otaku,” disregarding a link to a post of digitalboy’s (digi’s post had the term “otaku” in its name). As such, I doubt I will come under fire personally, though it would no doubt be fun to. And I don’t say this in the “omg I’m so cute, I call myself a masochist” way in which countless losers begged to be on the OEG list. I say this because this shit is fun, pure, unadulterated barrel of monkeys.

Three hints and suggestions for the OEG folks:

- don’t force the cordiality. Be as angry as you like, by all means.
- review every EL aniblog. You can’t say shit like “digitalboy isn’t notable enough.” Be thorough. Really get into the bones of this. Don’t fuck this up.
- work faster. Do you really need a whole week for four disses? C’mon, chop chop.

And yes, I am only writing this post because one of the OEG dudes nodded my way in their latest blogation. But who the fuck cares? That’s how the ’sphere has always worked, from before the fall of (the original) Blogsuki. Circle jerks and all that. Yeehaw.

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.

» Continue reading this…

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.

Sixten has tossed another character sprite for CCY-senpai wa 17sai our way, and this one’s Owen. Sixten’s description does him more justice than I ever could.

Damn. What a manly man.

I continue to be very pleased with Sixten’s work.

If any of you are as pleased as I am, feel free to help fund this artwork.

Within the last 24 hours Sixten delivered another two beautiful character portraits for my CCY-senpai visual novel. These are Baka-Raptor and Scott Von Schilling.

The full portraits can be found at Sixten’s site, with on-the-mark character descriptions he wrote himself. [ Baka-Raptor | Scott ]

So far I am quite pleased with Sixten’s work.

If any of you are as pleased as I am, feel free to help fund this artwork.

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

The Darker than BLACK OVA was one of the largest let-downs of the year. It tried to be funny but was just way too creepy-Japanese. Oh, and *facepalms* @ the phlag. The epic fail of this episode of anime was so great that when I brought it up a couple weeks later, my brother, who had the misfortune of experiencing it with me, cringed.

“You weren’t supposed to remind me!” he protested.

I felt so bad, I apologized. And I meant it.