You recently wrote a short post called “Will we get better comments?” to which I responded in a troll-ish manner here. With Impz penning his thoughts on team blogging referencing you, I would like to give my opinion on your blog in general.

You should get rid of the registration thing. You situate your blog in the public sphere, but really, when you effectively disable comments, you’re positioning it in a private sphere meant for IRL friends. Anitations and Ani-Nouto are different because they exist in a different paradigm of the sphere – the metaverse. Essentially, and not to offend, your blog seems like a contradiction – why exist on twitter when you have no interaction with those bloggers? I know it’s not hard to register (I just did), but people are so lazy they won’t even click on an RSS feed to subscribe to a blog. Have faith in people but realize they are lazy and unappreciative.

Best,
lelangir

p.s: your forums are down I think…

Kabitzin wrote a better post about this than I ever could. Go check it out. Mad props to him for approaching the ABAs with such reason and constructive thought, and for being quicker to combo than any idiots other than myself (and I was extremely premature).

Before we go much farther, though, let it be known: I do not intend to use Jason Miao’s victory in “Funniest” in 2008 become a point of contention or competition between myself and that man.

Miao on My Mind will be dismantled soon. Look forward to it.

Right now it seems I’m prioritizing my work on this over more serious writing, so please reward my efforts with helpful feedback :)

You can ask Jason Miao for a sign.

So yeah. Please, download this and test it out. Even if you’ve played previous versions. There’s a lot of new content, save games from previous versions should still work, and Skip Mode should remember what text you read in previous versions (it does for me).

Download whichever build floats your platform:
Mac: .zip, 7.2mb
Linux: .bz2, 3.9mb
Windows: .zip, 4.6mb

Changelog :: v0.04

==== Endings ====
+ 2 bad endings
+ 1 good ending
==== Characters ====
+ Owen (introduced outside of bad end)
+ Baka-Raptor (professor)
+ Os (professor)
+ DarkMirage (professor)
+ Scott (student)
+ Mike (student)
+ Riex (professor)
+ Impz (professor)
+ lKnight (professor)
==== Gameplay ====
+ 3 menus
+ Day 1 has a date
~ updated concluding notes
~ updated tutorial
==== Contents ====
+ 3600 words (total is over 9000 now)

If you do either of the things he mentions, you’re a pedophile. I’m a pedophile.

Anime bloggers featured/referenced thus far:

Baka-Raptor (male)
CCY (male)
CJ (female)
DarkMirage (male)
hashihime (mentioned)
Impz (trap)
Jason Miao (male)
Jeff Lawson (mentioned)
lKnight (male)
lolikitsune (male)
Marmot (female)
Mike (male)
Omo (female, genderbent)
Os (male)
Owen S. (male)
Riex (stuffed animal)
Shirukii (mentioned)

Again—I don’t have character art, and I likely won’t ever if someone doesn’t contribute it. There will be credits. There probably won’t be payment. I want this to be an open “resource” for the aniblogosphere. So that people can say “I see what you did thar” and make their own VNs. Yeah.

Art? Contribute it.
Music? Contribute it.

I’m focusing on writing, and throwing in cop-out backgrounds where I can.

Thank you for your time!

Now for some random whoredom:

• a post of mine has been published on Oi, Hayaku! I’m linking this not only to get you guys to read my post, but also to get Riex to see this post. He’s a lazy fellow who only checks trackbacks. Lamer.

• lolikitean is now a word. ghostlightning continues to rock my socks.

October 24th, 2008

BERKELEY, CA—Miao on My Mind, an anime blogging and anime blog blogging site, has been launched to the public today by enthusiastic admin and gold-winning satirist lolikitsune. Already, it has been the target of much fanfare and many rotten oranges tweets. It is both a bitter day for the aniblogosphere and a sweet day for the aniblogosphere; in essence, it is a bittersweet day for the aniblogosphere.

It is a bitter day, because the birth of Miao on My Mind signals the death of notdotq, an aniblog and aniblog blog previously run at the same URL by the same admin. Many long-time readers will be shocked to see their favorite site mysteriously missing when they load their only bookmark.

“I’m not worried ’bout dat,” said lolikitsune, who prefers to go by the more intimate monicker of lolikit, when he was questioned about the issue of reader loyalty, expectations, and potential betrayal. “If a long-time reader looks around with the critical eye I have trained my readers to have, he or she will notice that all the old content is still intact, and that all new content follows in the footsteps of the old.”

When we asked him about the aforementioned “training,” he likened it to a high school education.

“I keep throwing nonsense and utter bullshit at them, you see,” he patiently explained. “Eventually they learn how to cut away that bullshit and get to the heart of things.”

He went on to add, “of course, there isn’t always a heart. Aniblogging is heartless business. But that’s the point, you know? There’s no real substance, anywhere. A true notdotq reader won’t be disappointed by the new shell—the same old lack of meaning is still pervasive.”

Miao on My Mind promises to be “the same old shit” in a “refined package.” The fifteen-day redesign shows lolikit’s hard work in the field of CSS, especially.

“[lolikitsune] learned how to create classes the names of which mean nothing,” said a noted expert from the World Wide Web Consortium. “This is no mean accomplishment. We at the W3C are all very impressed with how far he’s come since he learned HTML 4 in the ninth grade.”

One contact in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Communications Department revealed that the W3C was in fact so impressed with lolikit’s abominable coding habits that plans to file three different lawsuits were currently occupying two entire 1.5TB hard drives. When asked for further details, our contact—who asked to remain anonymous—said that the rest was “classified information.” She also sent us an animated .gif file of a red-haired anime character winking.

But the W3C aren’t the only ones taking notice of—or offense at—lolikit’s latest shenanigans.

“It’s atrocious,” stated Impz of THAT Animeblog [@] and the Anime Blog Awards [@] Committee. “Simply atrocious.”

Owen S. of Cruel Angel Theses [@] concurred with Impz, adding that “lolikitsune is an unthinking douche, and should be removed from the internet with post haste.”

Some, like Shirukii of Anime Blog ga Arimasu [@], merely shrugged when we asked them about the news. “lolikit’s an old friend,” Shirukii said when we pestered him. “I can forgive him for liking flat chests more than <ul> tags.”

Others are on the other side of the love/hate spectrum.

“I think the jasonisms are totally out of hand,” said CCY of Mega Megane Moe [@], in reference to the fact that lolikit’s XHTML stopped being very semantic with the redesign. “But that’s not necessarily a bad thing, you know? lolikitsune has always been an out-of-hand kind of guy. And he’s doing something 100% original, bringing a new style of anime blog to the table.”

100% original, it might be noted, so long as you count “recycling the memes of others” as original. To lolikit’s credit, most anime bloggers recycle crowd memes (see: 4chan) or their own memes, and the reuse of other anime bloggers’ memes is a rare practice. Devoting a site to this is an even rarer practice, and indeed lolikit’s efforts might be the first in the field.

The new genre of website that Miao on My Mind purports to be—”aniblog, aniblog blog, and aniblogger shrine”—may sit stagnant for months or even years before lolikit sees new neighbors joining him, rushed studies show. Only 1 in 17 anime bloggers even recognize the term “aniblog” as official jargon in the aniblogosphere, and only about 1 in 25 read other anime blogs. With those numbers, it is extremely unlikely that anyone will be joining Miao on My Mind anytime soon.

“I did quick studies of my own,” admitted lolikit when we asked him about this. “Ran some quick simulations through Technorati, converted the results into some pleasing graphs, and quickly discovered that the most likely candidate to start up another site like Miao on My Mind in the next two years is yours truly. Now THAT is Web 2.0!”

We appreciated lolikit’s jovial tone, but we noted the despair in his eyes. He’s a true pioneer.

When asked about the future of Miao on My Mind, lolikit lightened up significantly.

“Oh, it’s going to be awesome!” he declared. “The site looks different, but behind the scenes, nothing’s really changing. Working on notdotq was almost always fun, so Miao on My Mind will be a barrel of monkeys as well, I’m sure.”

We asked him to be more specific about his plans.

“Well, at some point I’m going to have to acknowledge those Oi, Hayaku! guys. Riex has been clutching onto my epenis for dear life. He’s even stalking me on Facebook. I feel like the guy from LME in Skip Beat—if I don’t satisfy this fellow, he’ll follow me to the grave. That aside… I guess I’m going to be blogging some anime this season, Mouryou no Hako, and whatever else catches my fancy. As for aniblog blogging, I’m long overdue for some good Versus posts. Expect to see the following before the year is out: Baka-Raptor.com VS. LovelyKitsune.com, Natsuneko VS. TheBigN, and the big one that everyone’s been waiting for, anime|otaku VS. Cruel Angel Theses.”

In short, lolikit’s spirits are wavering back and forth like Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni‘s per-episode quality, and his ambitions are soaring like the proverbial (and actual) paper airplanes of noted symbolism anime ef. It will be interesting to see what comes of this transformation, and where Miao on My Mind goes from here.

In the meantime, we can satisfy our hunger for lolikit’s obscenities by examining the various new pages of information that he has set up around the site, including, but not limited to, a fresh page about the admin in question himself, a new page of frequently asked questions, and a page about blogging awards.

Lastly, lolikit expressed his desire to thank selected members of the aniblogosphere. We have published his message along with our article, and you can read it just below.

FUCK JASON MIAO!

Thank you, lolikit.

lolikitsune, also known as Flak, is a first-year student at the University of California, Berkeley, where he will begin exploring the fields of Cognitive Science, Rhetoric, and Legal Studies in January. He spends half his time working in the Communications Department at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and in his free time he enjoys writing stories—such as Miao on My Mind’s featured Night Switch—and maintaining websites, both activities he’s pursued for several years now. You can learn more about him at his main site, Dreams of the Quill.

The former notdotq was part of the second generation of anime blogs, rearing its little head around the same time as other now-notable anime blogs, including the award-winning Minaide! Hazukashii… and the award-winning RIUVA (recipients of Bronze and Silver in the 2008 Anime Blog Award’s Satire section, respectively). notdotq has come and gone four times in the last three years, appearing and disappearing with the seasons and lolikitsune’s mood swings.

This was two days ago, now, and there’s no way I’m going to reread that post, so I unfortunately cannot tell you why I picked what I did. I like to think I tended to polarize at the two ends of the fail spectrum (you know, fail, and less fail) and went with shows I thought I’d either like or hate, but no guarantees. The “resource” wasn’t too resourceful and I ended up making some wild guesses. Anyway, expect at least one post each on all of these shows, and expect at least half of those to be scathing:

ChäoS;HEAd
ef – a tale of melodies
Akane Iro ni Somaru Saka
Kurogane no Linebarrel
Toradora!
Skip Beat
Shikabane Hime: Aka
Clannad ~After Story~
Michiko to Hatchin
Kannagi
Tales of the Abyss

With any luck I’ll be blogging regularly this fall. I don’t see any reason why I shouldn’t be. Other than, you know, having a job (or two, or three). And maybe trying my hand at NaNoWriMo. Anyway, there should be some free time in there which I can dedicate to bashing shit.

In less well news, I’m down a weapon from my arsenal.

… graphs.

And why am I down graphs?

Because fucking Steve fucking Jobs and fucking Apple fucking broke fucking Photoshop fucking 7 in fucking Leopard.

Thankfully, Google, in classic Athena-senpai style, is still pretending to be an ally of mine:

I shall learn this Google Charts thing, and I shall use it well.

They sound suspiciously like fansubs, don’t they?

So, I’m a huge fan of transparency. And the Anime Blog Awards have transparency—you can easily see who nominated what. But I like taking transparency a step further. A step further into the realm of attention whoring. So I’m going to display all my nominations here along with unfunny comments.

Best Episodic Blog
I nominated Shirukii and Lovely Kitsune. Bias in the case of the former, adulation in the case of the latter. Lovely Kitsune blogged epic on AIR, and it’s arguable that without him I would not have started anime blogging, and that without that, ANO‘s IRC channel would have never been created, and that without that, the ANO community might never have come together, and well… the possibilities run wild from there. But basically, Jason Miao would still run the aniblogosphere.

I guess I’m making it sound like LK’d be good for Most Influential Blog (which he is), but this is due in large part to his episodic posts, which are deserving of epic lulz.

Best Editorial Blog

I nominated jp meyer. He is true win of the editorial. Or at least, he was. I hear he hasn’t been blogging about Kimi ga Nozomu Eien and porn conventions and college anymore, now that he’s not in college anymore. Or is he still? What does an absentfag like me know.

Best Team Blog

I rowed, rowed, and fought the power, and didn’t nominate either of the favorites. I nominated Anime Diet and Anime Blog ga Arimasu. The former because Mike thinks Lain is good (I’m a troll, right?) and the latter because technically Soda accompanies Shirukii.

Also, there has been much outcry against the disappearance of Epic Win Blog. I would have nominated them, but they apparently disappeared off the face of the planet or something. Ah well, must be divine retribution for liking Lucky Star.

Best Manga Blog

I nominated Extrange. He introduced me to My Lovely Ghost KANA or something like that. It was delicious cake and I was a regional CO. ’nuff said.

Most Influential Blog

Here I once more nominated jp meyer and Lovely Kitsune. jp meyer started blogging around the same time as me, just a little over two years ago. He is epic win and inspired me to be such as well. Lovely Kitsune I already explained. In addition to these two, there is one more:

Owen.

He’s the epitome of anti-influential seeing as he is a derivative work of me. Buuuuut, to be generous, for the purposes of nominations I took the absolute values of everyone’s influence. Owen got up to >9000 instantly, and thusly deserves a nomination.

Best Dorama

DrmChsr0 gets my only nomination in this category. DarkMirage deserved one but I hate dislike him intensely. Drm on the other hand is lovable Jesusfag.

Rookie of the Year

I nominated Owen here again, just to put him in his place. As he himself rightfully noticed, he is technically a rookie until April 9th, the date that my chef d’oeuvre Lucky Star post forced him into the aniblogosphere.

Funniest Blog

More Lovely Kitsune and jp meyer. These Anime Blog Awards are pretty good at at least one thing—they are helping me put a finger on why I like the blogs that I do. Notice how I’m like, the one guy who DIDN’T nominate Jason for this category.

Best Satire Blog

jp meyer. The others are, unfortunately, all complete garbage.

Best Seiyuu-Orientated Blog

I didn’t nominate anyone for this category, for the obvious reason that I would spam my nomination comment with “THE OGRE THE OGRE THE OGRE THE OGRE” and links to hashihime who, though I appreciate him for his work on Simoun, seems to have taken it upon himself to become Hirano Aya’s lifetime biographer. And she is hideous to behold.

Most Thought-Provoking Blog

I’m embarrassed that I nominated Mike for this category. Especially after that post about fansubs and slavery. Totally fucking depressing.

At least I made up for it by nominating Owen (who’s deep like a whore) and jp meyer (who’s deep like stingrAIDs).

Best Blog-related Comic

I’m not going to discuss my nominations in this category because there’s nothing funny about meta-humor. I’ll just say that DiGiKerot is cool.

Best Figurine Blog

I gave a pity nomination in this category to my cute kouhai Riuva. I could go on about “not-win anime blogger” or “tri-penile mangoes” or whatever, but I don’t think I will. Instead I’ll just say that Riuva could have won my support in other categories were it not counter to the very nature of Riuva as originally envisioned to be involved in other categories. Whew. That was hard to say.

Best Art/Doujin/Visual Novel Blog

Best News Blog

Objection!

In closing I think I’ll just say this: nominate notdotq for Most Influential, or Funniest, or Best Satire, or Best Dorama. Any of those or all of them. Remember the Haruhi hate. Remember the Higurashi hate. Remember the Lucky Star hate. Remember the love.

V!

EDIT: I am impelled to apologize to Baka-Raptor. Even though he went back on his morals and made his site look more like a blog, he’s almost Lovely Kitsune-class funny and that’s epic and I should have nominated him. Unfortunately, the time to edit comments is over. OTL

This is so bad… it’s so bad, I won’t even blog it. It’s… Haruhi-level bad.

What’s so bad about it, you ask?

And what right do I have to talk, having only seen two and half minutes of a single episode of a newly started show?

Oh, we’ve seen this show before. We’ve all seen it before. This, ladies and gentlemen, is what Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu is. Whoredom at its finest. We’ve seen it in Naruto; the single franchise that makes the most money with the least effort. We’ve seen it in Gonzo films that make relatively little money with a lot of effort, but please a lot of fans with “zomfg suteki~” animation. Before Lucky Star, there was this dancing anime.

And now, there’s this dancing anime.

And it’s multiplying.

As you all may or may not know, I’ve long hated the concept of “moe.” It objectifies a set of qualities (given, this set includes every single quality there is, according to Dr. Japes) and turns appreciation into a pretty damn formulaic thing. Instead of enjoying a character for the character as a character, “moe” aspects, traits, behavioral patterns, etc. take the foreground and become reason for a character’s acceptance. Instead of being intrigued by Tsukimiya Ayu’s lack of background, in watching Kanon, fans trouble themselves with “she’s so cute!”

And why’s she cute? Because she says “uguu.” And because she wears that coat, and those mittens, and that backpack, and acts like the little loli bitch she is. But who is she? Does anyone think to wonder?

Don’t you want to know who this girl is? Oh, we find out, after twenty-four episodes, eighteen of which were spent on other characters. There’s no development to Ayu’s character. Yuuichi is frighteningly detached from concern regarding this little girl who claims to know him… and who doesn’t have a family? Or a home? Or a school? Or any of the things she claims she has? All of a sudden, twenty episodes in, he kisses her… but we, the viewers, what motivation do we have for wanting the protagonist to kiss Ayu? Who is Ayu?

Some girl who says “uguu.” She likes taiyaki and dislikes scary things, including the dark.

/me snaps fingers

That’s not a character, and this degeneration of character development in favor of pandering to fetishes/aesthetics is the main reason I’m opposed to the concept of “moe.” “Moe” is whoredom, plain and simple. Yuki’s silence. Haruhi’s psycho bitchiness. Mikuru’s “lolimoe” helplessness. Tsuruya’s nyoro~n. Yes, even Itsuki’s homosexuality. Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu’s saving grace has always been, in my opinion, Kyon’s narration, and that may well be because he has a solid character. Of course, it’s entirely possible that the author of the novels merely made him as bland and dry as possible in order to help readers connect to him. Maybe there isn’t anything, even to him.

So why do I rant against “moe” so vehemently?

Lucky Star is, in a word, “moe.” You only need about 4 seconds of the obnoxious OP to figure that out. Take a look at these responses to bj0rn’s post about the OP:

• Impz says: MOE ATTACK!!!!!! i am dying, i am dying and I want my lucky star now!!!! moeeeeeeeeeeeeeee~
• bakavic says: I just died. [...] The dancing is just too addictive…
• Aesir says: holy.. tat was.. just too awesome for words @@

And this explosion occurring as a result of Lucky Star’s entrance isn’t same old, same old. Look how willing these ghouls are; look how eagerly they embrace something knowing the meaning of “moe” and that they’re under some twisted genjutsu. The sos-dan.com site, formed some time last year in response to previous whore-show Haruhi, is scuttling with little bugs of people, the sad remains of people once unaffected by this “moe.” What was once a stupid book about some alien-loving girl has escalated to the level of epic reeducation.

I repeat, it’s multiplying.

I had respect for Kyoto Animation. I respected them for making AIR, the one show I’ve seen with the most compelling atmosphere. I respected them for making Fumoffu, the one show that’s made me laugh the most. I could deal with them making Haruhi; it’s business, after all. I cried more for the Haruhi fans than for myself when they made Kanon—what harm could it do to me? But this… this “Lucky Star” or what have you…

I quote Omni on the OP sequence, “It makes me think that they’re intentionally trying to create another Hare Hare Yukai style sensation.”

You think right, Omni.

They’ve descended from grace and are now fervently recycling everything of theirs that ever worked. Haruhi was passable and Kanon was a step back in the right direction. Lucky Star?

Kyoto Animation, you are whores.

You are whores and your show fucking sucks.