A recap, in case any of you are even more out of it than I was: there’s an Aniblog Tourney happening. That’s right, bitches, aniblog.

“This is the first time!!! SO EXCITED” scream countless aniblogosphere sycophants. But no, sadly, this is not the first time. We had the Anime Blog Awards in 200…8? Lemme check my sidebar. Ah yes. Best Satire Blog 08. To give credit where credit is due, there are two original things about this Aniblog Tourney: first, it’s sucking on Jason’s cock by being set up in a sports-esque bracket (which Josh so kindly SGML-ized); second, I’m not in it.

Am I bitter? Fuck no! Being excluded from this sham of democracy is the best thing that’s happened to me all month!

This also means that I can kibitz from the sidelines with impunity. I won’t look like a narcissistic whore and I won’t look like an emo loser! I’ll just be me, you know, just be me. And then no one be judging me, except me.

All this said in various shades of verbal irony, I shall now move right along to the first round of the Aniblog Tourney without further ado.

My picks are winning for now, but will it all be meaningless in the end?

Every day, two pairs of blogs are voted on. Today, it’s… well, you see the names in the above-srced image. Calamitous Intents and The Cart Driver are winning so far today. This is good, because those are the two blogs I voted for. Why did I vote for them? Funny you should ask!

I voted for Calamitous Intents because that’s where Choux resides. For those not in the know, Choux is a lovely lovely artist who did the female character designs of CCY-senpai wa 17sai. Yes, this is a plain case of personal bias. What? How much did she charge me for the artwork? Zero dollars. Fuck, this looks like corruption in action. So much for democracy!

As for The Cart Driver, I was unfamiliar with the blog prior to today. I was also unfamiliar with its opponent, Sekijitsu, but the choice was pretty easy to make after a quick peek at both sites. First, Sekijitsu has about 600 pixels of the HTML equivalent of drivel before you actually get down to business and read their posts. That’s a big no-no in my book. To make matters worse… well, I’ll let the blog speak for itself:

Do you remember what I said about the originality of the Aniblog Tourney earlier in this post?

Okay, okay, so something can be 100% unoriginal and still be epic, but this is really pushing it.

Moving right along, The Cart Driver is… well, you remember how Code Geass R2 ended? Remember how a certain Mike was orgasming over the idea of Lelouch still being alive at the end? Remember how, grasping for whatever straws he could, he came up with a 4chan rumor that zomg the cart driver is Lelouch!! ? Yeah. The Cart Driver is that cart driver.

Negative points in my book, but said aniblog quickly shoots to the top of my list of good blogs due to the number of pixels between the top of the page and the first post (maybe 100? something sexy like that). All this pored over, The Cart Driver carts home an easy win.

Am I suggesting that my votes are important in any way?

I suppose I am. Please forgive me, oh aniblogospeers.

P.S. just for the record, if rankings in the Aniblog Tourney are primarily based on blog age, how is notdotq not even featured? I was around before half of the participant blogs. ghostlightning? You gotta be kidding me.

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.

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

[canned introduction] Maria-sama ga Miteru: a show about disgustingly rich girls attending a private school that at once shields them from the harshness of reality and subjects them to the darkest, most horrific thing a girl could go through: romantic friendship with other girls! [/canned introduction]

As DiGiKerot pointed out, there’s a lot wrong with this new season of Maria-sama ga Miteru. This isn’t limited to the OP song change, or to the running in the OP sequence. This episode sees the *gasp* introduction of apparently heterosexual men! In my Hanadera Academy? Obviously it’s more likely than I thought—I would have said the chances were 0%.

Spiral power? “Your sexy lesbian is a sexy lesbian that can pierce the gay man’s gayness?” I don’t even know!

Anyway, this episode sees us approximately one year after the events in episode one of season one. The school festival is coming up, and Lillian Jougakuen’s Yamayurikai is once more holding a play. Once more, the boys from sister gay school Hanadera Gakuen are participating. Once more, there’s some tall, dark, and bishoujo girl bitch who hates men and wants out. Once more, Yumi is given the task of making everything work out.

By the way, Kanako. You want Yumi to remain an angel?

Protip: People die when they’re killed.

Crazy Sachiko, in classic Crazy Sachiko style, informs the actors that the girls and boys will be switching roles. Well, she’s gotten better about gender issues in the last year (remember her moaning about how evil men were?), but this kind of blunt trolling isn’t very attractive. At first Yumi is displeased with her onee-sama’s decision, but then she decides to take it like a good little walking vagina when said onee-sama melts her with her eyes.

Shirukii is also on board with Sachiko’s “meaningful” expressions.

“Rape is imminent.”

In between the Yamayurikai practicing the play and Shimako training her new dog, Yumi has some flashbacks of when she became Crazy Sachiko’s petite soeur. We get some nice piano version of Pastel Pure that almost makes up for the new OP, and… Yoshino suggests that Yumi have a nice anniversary with her onee-sama. I’m starting to see eye-to-eye with IcyStorm here; Yoshino rocks. “Nice anniversary?” Roses, chocolates, a fancy dinner, and a hotel room.

The fanfiction writes itself!

In any event, Crazy Sachiko clearly remembers what day is coming up. She’s got her rape mask on.

Later on, Yumi and Touko are having some problems with their relationship. Thankfully Yumi has learned the lessons taught by Rainy Blue and confronts Touko directly, making a big fuss in front of the Yamayurikai’s sex chapel.

As the school watches in horror, Yumi trills “Ano (Tou)ko wo Rape.”

Now that Maria-sama ga Miteru is current again, I should really do some YFR fic of it, huh?

The stage was set. The metools painted a rainbow over Lillian’s entryway and the Yamayurikai took to the sky in kaiawase formation. Who will profit? Who will get sexxings? Who will make my next blog post funny? So many questions, and a whole another week until episode two…

(The emo girl was emo, but such is the lot in life for those who fall in love with DEAD PEOPLE WHO WERE KILLED. OH EM GEE.)

Fuck Yesssssssssss

Toward the end of the episode, we are informed that Rosa Gigantea is coming back for the school festival. The possibilities are endless. Personally, I’m hoping for the “Sei surprise-sexes Yumi while Yumi is waiting for Sachiko to meet her for their after-festival anniversary-celebratory make-out session” route. Other lovely possibilities include a threesome, an overly-dramatic scene with humongous sexual tension, and a tennis match.

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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.

Well that’s just fabulous. So what I thought I’d do was, I’d stop my “Rage Against The Jason” long enough to pull some kind of “hahaha just kidding!!” gag. Figured it’d be funny. Figured it’d be hiiiiilarious. The plan was simple: I’d rename notdotq “Miao on My Mind,” I’d float my layout down a river of jasonisms, and then I’d ride on the wave of my readers’ cum.

The plan was, as stated, simple. And so I executed it flawlessly.

I renamed notdotq “Miao on My Mind.”

I floated my layout down a river of jasonisms.

But.

I guess that there was a hidden “???” step I missed out on, though, because my plan has gone horribly wrong. I’m not profiting. If anything, my coffers are being depleted. Rapidly. If this goes on much longer, I will lose all means of waging war against the monster. I will lose… everything.

As we speak, I’m rowing and rowing against the river of jasonisms I myself caused to spring forth from the metaphorical spring. It’s like my month’s work has become an oppressive power, and I find myself forced by my morals and learning to fight it.

Fuck.

This is my “remorse” face pose.

I know what I did wrong. It’s the inside jokes. I left them open to interpretation, to those of you who weren’t familiar with them. You might not have understood that my use of “oh geass no” in a recent post was my attempt at lampooning Jason for his idiocy. In fact, you didn’t. You thought that my alleged “love” for Jason was true, that it was real. You probably thought you could reach out and touch it, and you probably did reach out, and you probably touched something.

The truth is that I have, in my attempts at satire, in my attempts at parody, in my attempts at destruction, legitimized idol-worship of Jason Miao.

This is Jason raping me and, by extension, the entire EL aniblogosphere.

I will never forgive myself.

Look at Oi, Hayaku! It’s this shit-awful team aniblog that sprung up a little over a month ago. Its pretentious-as-all-fuck prima donna ringleader, Riex, has promised us an “aniblogging revolution.” He promised us a new era, and above that he promised us awesome. He assembled a kick-ass score of gifted writers. Unfortunately, all but one of these were aware of how much Jason Miao blows.

I can only guess that, being the enlightened individuals they are, Riex’s bitches took it upon themselves to read my blog when researching the ‘sphere. It’s a beacon of intelligence, after all, right? Fuck.

And what did they take away? They took away that Jason Miao is the end-all, be-all of anibloggerality and that his method is a method that will pierce the drivel of the modern aniblogging scene. Oh, how wrong. Oh, how misled. Jason Miao’s methods won’t call in a new era. Jason Miao’s methods won’t change anything for the better. Jason Miao is a staple of the old-age aniblogosphere, the one-time tyrant of Blogsuki, the desecrator of good shows and proponent of filth. Jason Miao is a demon, and following in his footsteps is like being the confessor to his Zange-chan. Using his forced memes is like being the art club to his Nagi-sama.

This is what’s happening, and it’s not even behind the scenes.

I’m not trying to say anything bad about Oi, Hayaku. They’re good people. I know that the harsh logorrhea is flowing, but that’s just my mood.

I’m not trying to say that Oi, Hayaku has nothing to offer to the ‘sphere. As I said, it’s more full of good writers than your mom’s vagina is of flutes.

Oi, Hayaku could indeed be great.

But not like this.

And I’m a nice guy. Like Akari, I’m wishing for your happiness. I want Oi, Hayaku to succeed. I want it to revolutionize the aniblogosphere. I want it to rock hard. So I’ll give the fellows over there a piece of advice: it’s not too late. You can still turn back.

beanbrew. Maggeh. However many others of you think that jasonisms are all the rage.

Fuck, I don’t care who you are.

Don’t feed the monster.

Others and I worked our fingers to the bone breaking his hegemony in June 2006. Hung of BasuGasuBakuhatsu and AnimeNaNo is the main star to thank, what with making Blogsuki useless. But there are dozens. Drm and tj han, who stood up to the abuse they and others received. Corydorf, who encouraged me to wage my all-out war against the then-Anime on My Mind. Everyone who made fun of Jason in IRC. Everyone. Everyone worked together, as a team, to defeat the beast.

tj han fields tripeman against jason

And we succeeded. The community thrived outside of Jason’s grasp. We made a world where new anibloggers could set up their sites without knowing about Jason.

And now, more than two years later, those new anibloggers, in their ignorance, are about to be the Hebrews to my God—they’re going to ignore my warnings, my words of wisdom, and they’re going to worship false idols. The message of this paragraph is not that anyone should worship me. It just seems like it is. Seriously. I’m almost writing stream of consciousness here. Why all the punctuation? Shit, man. I think in punctuation.

Anyway.

Don’t do this. You don’t need to. You can find your own funny, and you can use it to power a new generation in the aniblogosphere. You don’t need Jason. He’s a blighting influence. Purge him from your systems. (I’m mixing metaphors so fast you’d think this was an alchemist’s NASCAR track!)

How do trains resemble race cars? Let me count the ways…

But. I can’t talk of myself as if I were a saint, or the chemo, or what have you. Oi, Hayaku’s writers beanbrew and Maggeh drew to my attention my most grievous mistake: I took my satire too far. I obfuscated my sarcasm. People took me seriously. They thought I loved Jason. They interpreted my parroting as adulation. Have they not watched the Colbert Report? But I cant blame them for a lack of insightfulness. I can only blame myself for failing to communicate.

I can only blame myself, and ask that the ‘sphere reconsider. That Oi, Hayaku reconsider.

I repeat: it’s not too late.

You can still turn back.

Mid-post Breaking News!
This just in: Otou-san divulges the fact that Oi, Hayaku’s shittiness is all a ploy to put me out of business.

I was going to add, at the end of this post, that I was at least touched that Maggeh imitated me ( Exhibit A :: a recent graph of mine | Exhibit B :: a more recent graph of Maggeh’s ). But now I see. This whole thing was merely a plot to steal my crown? Fuck that shit. Oi, Hayaku must not receive Best Satire or Funniest at ABA 2009. I’m donning my “fuck these shits” outfit.

This is my “fuck these shits” face.

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

Here you can see DS’s original post, annotated by yours truly.

FUCK REVOLUTIONS, I WANT TO LIVE

DS says some big things, and he’s pretty vehement, but personally, I’m not entirely convinced. This is a new stance, and he has just about no experience dealing with bad anime (maybe he can see Haruhi’s shores from his back porch). I, as someone with a long history of battling anime, would prefer it if someone with more dedication were to take command.

I’m not going to say that I am most fit for this role—I know there are haters greater than I—but I would expect someone with at least half as many credentials to step up to the plate (as opposed to someone with none). Without further ado, I present unto you my credentials:

Exhibit A
Exhibit B

While Exhibit B is an example of my level-headed approach toward serious topics, it is still a commentary on how fucking bad some shitty anime can be. Read it at least three times—it’s deep.

Exhibit C
Exhibit D
Exhibit E
Exhibit F
Exhibit G
Exhibit H
Exhibit I

Sometimes, as exhibited by Exhibit I, I can be an concise anime hater.

Exhibit J
Exhibit K
Exhibit L
Exhibit M
Exhibit N
Exhibit O

In before “fuck anime, I want to live”—Exhibit O is srs fkn bsns, and if you take it lightly then you are just one more growth stemming from the cancer that is killing the aniblogosphere and giving a bad name to anime fans everywhere.

Exhibit P
Exhibit Q

Yes, Exhibit Q was, in fact, trolling on my part. Up yours, Owen.

Exhibit R

I stand by Exhibit R to this day.

Exhibit S
Exhibit T

Exhibit T is easily the coolest thing I’ve ever done.

Exhibit U
Exhibit V
Exhibit X
Exhibit Y
Exhibit Z

DS isn’t Kamina, but that’s no reason not to keep rowing. Bad anime is the power and your hatred is a hatred that will—argh, you get the picture.

The changes are in progress. Ultimately Churuya will be wiped off the face of the blog (as one reader astutely observed, I hate Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu) and replaced with a single bland color (or I might just steal Jason’s background). Everything will be slimming down. Everything will be fabulous.

Until the changes are complete, I can only comment on the work done so far.

First: I tried to imitate some of Jason’s more idiotic web design cues. Note that the front page has like, a million instances of text-transform:uppercase and text-transform:lowercase.

Second: I worked Jasonisms in all over the place. All I’m missing are “oh geass no” and “emo facial distortion.” Seriously, it’s all there. YTAMR, meido, moe modes, broken, etc. (Look in the source for more lulz and references.) Hell, I even used Jasonisms that don’t exist yet! By gauging the shows Jason enjoys and deploying quotes from them, I have in effect preemptively meowed!

Third: um, I’m all out. BUT! I’m being trendy, and I’ve got a DMC tribute in the footer! I also have like, over nine thousand dumb otaku references strewn throughout the layout, ranging from my description of IcyStorm (Pretty Face) to my archives hook (Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann).

Fourth: Ari—wait, Jason probably doesn’t even know what Aria is. FUCK!

Fifth: gotta love how I have a “blogroll” but it only lists a select few! That’s Jason-style elitism for you!