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.

2.14x show.

Delicious.

This piece of shit had a few things going for it:

1. Drill bullets
2. Drill armor
3. People feeling each other’s weight
4. The hat from Yami to Boushi to Hon no Tabibito
5. People shutting up and fighting

notdotq brings you this coverage in conjunction with Shirukii. You can see Part 1 of my coverage here. Also, yes, I gave into “Owen’s hegemony” and watched subs. Now with 2500% more title attributes.

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One of the central themes I intend to explore in my blogging is the concept of the guilty pleasure.

In the more common contexts, guilty pleasures are negatively valued/low-culture activities and pursuits relative to high-culture media. For example, a person with a ‘cultured’ self-image may feel guilty taking pleasure in a lot of reality TV programs as opposed to watching classical theater or the ballet.

I am not interested in this particular context. I don’t make value judgments, or subscribe to the high/low culture binary. It’s all deculture to me. But as should be clear in my first meditation on this, there is such a thing as a guilty pleasure. But taking pleasure in what things exactly?

In the aforementioned post I confessed to an attraction to and an appreciation for evil characters in anime. Here the guilty pleasure is thinking dirty thoughts about 2d females in fictional high school age. The freshman high school student in Japan is 16 years old. I will be 32 in less than 3 weeks.

Every year, it gets worse and worse. I get older and older, the girls stay the same age. I’m even attracted to a particular subset of 2d high school girl: the loli.

Like Izumi Sou, Konata’s dad, I too, am also a lolicon. However, according to the source of all that is good and true, there’s nothing wrong with me:

Some level of sexual attraction to late adolescents is common among adults of all sexual orientations.^[8] The term ephebophilia is used only to describe the preference for mid to late adolescent sexual partners, not the mere presence of some level of sexual attraction.

I’m actually married to an older woman (though I admit she looks younger than I am and is often described as more girly than womanly). But if there’s nothing clinically wrong with me (I am neither a pedophile nor an ephebophile), why do I feel guilt? A clinical psychosis would actually absolve me of guilt because it takes away my freedom. But I am well, and I am free. And I use this freedom to indulge my attraction through the consumption of media that allows for a certain level of wish-fulfillment: I get to pursue thinking dirty thoughts about these underage females.

While I get to see these characters in a large number of anime, and the experience is quite voyeuristic especially for slice-of-life shows watched in marathon sessions, I don’t feel as guilty as I do now. What’s different about now? I’ve discovered eroge, having started playing Fate/stay Night. The difference in the experience is that the eroge is so much more immersive.

I feel like I’m living with these girls. After hours and hours of play, which is weeks in ‘anime time’ is merely a day or two in the game. The frequent breaks the text-based medium allows also gives an added ‘lived-in’ impression. Mind you, at this point in the game, I have yet to encounter a hentai moment. So I’m really confronted with the guilt only freedom allows.

How so? It’s because I’m free to stop this at any point. I don’t have to pursue this pleasure. Only that I most probably will. It’s this exercise of freedom that makes me feel the guilt. Nobody’s forcing me to perform vile acts on these girls, as vile as the thoughts I have tell me I’m so ready to do.

I’ve theorized in the recent past that there are two broad categories of otaku behavior: the amassive, and the expressive. My immersion in Fate/stay Night has led me to some amassing activities:

These toys aren't cheap, hence some of the guilt.

Fraulein Revoltech Toshaka Rin (in previous photo, Revoltech Enoki Tomohide-sculpted Saber)

However, being the expressive person that I am, I put together the ff. images. Like I said, nobody’s forcing me to perform vile acts on these girls. I put these images here (NSFW) not because I underestimate your imagination of what I am capable of doing, only that I’m very fond of my own imagination thank you.

Click to Reveal [NSFW]

"Let's buy ALL Revoltech": Toshaka, Gurren-Lagann, Eva Unit-01 Test Type

Going beyond the impossible

The heavens are being pierced, WITH HIS DRILL!

What better way to finish off a series of posts like this than to reminisce on my most awing anime experience of the year? On May 7th I woke up to see that Aria the Origination episodes 12 and 13 had been delivered to mplayer. I was nervous about my AP Calculus exam, so I figured I would watch some calming Aria and let it soothe me.

I always liked Aria, from the day I watched the first episode of the Animation more than a year earlier. I’d never for one moment, though, considered that it would break into my Top 10 list. My Top 10 list being riddled with such hits as… Interlude, Kannazuki no Miko, AIR, Loveless, and Saishuuheiki Kanojo.

I cried once during episode 12 of the Origination and I cried four times during episode 13. I cried when Akari cried, I cried when Akari cried again, I cried when Akari woke up the next morning, and I cried when she uttered the last line of the whole show:

“Chotto ureshii dake da yo.”

The moment I heard those words, I understood that Aria was my favorite show of all time. My Top 10 list crumbled like Teppelin, replaced with a single show upon a single pedestal. I cried like a mother at her daughter’s wedding when I heard those words, and then I went to school and kicked the shit out of that Calculus exam’s ass.

P.S. “Only two posts about Aria, lolikit?” Yeah, I could have made every one of these twelve posts be about this show. I tried hard not to. It was a grueling task, but I won in the end. V!

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

Fuck.

Well that’s just fabulous. » Continue reading this…

In an amazingly good show, DS of Daijoubu has announced that he is fed up with how shitty bad anime is. He has issued a call to arms, and has requested that everyone do their best to back him up in his holy war. One of the things he does in his post that is most unfortunate, however, is that he calls on me as though I need to mobilize.

Does he not know? I’ve been waging this war on my own for years.

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