Bitches, Mai Bloggu Be Four Years Old!

JIGGLYPUFF

Also, straight people be crazy!

Really! They do! Even if that has nothing to do with my blog being four years old. I have friends who are straight, and they have all been kerrrrr-aaazy lately. I bet it is the season! The rush of youthful blood as the hormones burst into full bloom with the warming weather! People wanna make babies!

I hate babies.

Actually, not really, other people’s babies are cool! Because when they cry or poop, you can give them back to their owners parents. And then they are no longer your problem.

Actually, everyone is crazy. I don’t understand single-sex attraction, but I also got frozen to a fence once and have the sex drive of your average velociraptor (didn’t you know? THEY FUCKING LOVED SEX), so, uh… everyone is crazy. Its just a matter of degrees. And what constitutes normal behavior anyway? If a person is behaving in some way, regardless of what it is, isn’t that normal? If it was wholly abnormal for a person to behave that way, then they wouldn’t be! What standard are we using? Society’s conception of it is bunk!

…yeah, I know, I’ve wandered far-afield, and I am probably going to get flamed for heterophobia. WHATEVS, HETERBROS, WHATEVS!

Its moments like these when I wonder if I’m going to hell.

So, yes, when the hormones are a-rushing, we all get a little wacky. Remember, folks, wrap your dick, wrap your vadge, and life will be much more delightful for all concerned. Most of you miss this part of my repertoire as my encouragement of safe sex is confined to my Twitter. But, hell, I should share the wealth! If you don’t use those condoms, don’t worry – you can haul water with them! Or make a tourniquet!

Anyway, so, GAR GAR Stegosaurus is four years old. Actually, it was four years old last week (the 17th!), but as I actually possess a REAL LIFE and am a REAL LIVE ADULT, I didn’t get the chance to sit down and do a right, proper post.

…yes, yes, I know, I had a few Fate/Zero posts, but I just didn’t have time to do a right, proper birthay post, ok?

…alright, so maybe it slipped my mind…

After four years, I still think the name of my blog is utterly brilliant, even if Air isn’t my favorite show, nor has it ever been. Folks, its the spirit of the name, the cleverness of it… THE HEART OF IT, or so my good buddy Yugi told me once. Although maybe he was talking about cards. Or maybe it was his grandpa. They’re all so fucking short, who knows the difference…

My blog, by aniblog standards, is old. Yes, there are a few out there that are older (Baka-Raptor and Okazu come to mind most immediately). Yes, I have peers who have blogs of similar age. But, let’s face it, aniblogging tends to be a fairly short-term venture, something I suspect is true of blogging, period. A lot of us start young, and, well, you can see it in my blogging output – maintaining a blog as a working adult is a lot different from maintaining a blog as a full-time student. I would love to blog at the level that I did once, but it just isn’t possible, and to try to force myself would make me hate it.

I feel no need to impress; I like my blog, I like blogging at my blog, and my core readership reads because they enjoy my blog. If I want to do something with my blog, then I will do it. If people dislike it, well, there are plenty of fish in the sea to choose from. Cast your line elsewhere.

Of relation to making yourself hate blogging, one of the nice things about being an established blog is not fussing about readership. I feel no impetus to leap up and down and all over, trying to catch the trends. This, by the way, isn’t an indictment of younger bloggers who do, mind you; I think its pretty normal to sweat over numbers of hits per day when one’s blog is fairly new. I think that folks also are given the wrong idea about blogging by the ultra-successful blogs, thinking that they must do whatever those are doing to have a readership. But if you’re just breaking your back to get eyeballs, you’re going to be miserable at the end of the day. Write what you love; if you don’t, its only a matter of time before it all withers and crumbles into the wind.

If you don’t read anything else in this post, just walk away with that sentiment: that you should do as makes you happy in blogging, and not try to do what you think others desire. Will you necessarily become a blogging superstar that way? Of course not. But you’ll enjoy yourself a hell of a lot more.

Four years blogging, closing fast on fourteen years as an anime fan… wow! I feel a bit old! And I’m really not that old, I’ve just been a fan for a long while, and, well, a lot of my cohort from when I was first a fan has drifted away from the fandom. I have a hard time thinking of friends of mine who still dutifully watch and read; I used to know dozens of folks, and of those I can only think of three or so who remain.

And, yes, it is a fandom that skews fairly young, such that twentysomethings are pretty much dinosaurs (and those of you above that mythical thirty mark? well, you’re basically the primordial soup itself!). So, surrounded by shrieking teenagers running around at cons… I feel a bit old. And, yes, I know, this is silly coming from a twenty-three year old.

Where am I going in blogging? Well, I’m trying to start a Yuri Book Club, wherein myself and a few others read the same thing every two weeks and do our on posts on it, then link to each other. Other than that, I don’t really know; I’m deploying next year, so that’ll really throw everything into flux. But that’s pretty distant from now.

I foresee more manga posts, and I have a few posts planned otherwise (one of which is “Aquarion EVOL: The Lovechild of G Gundam and Mai-Otome”). I may even have a smattering of light novel reviews, as my recent review of Love Water demonstrated that, actually, yes, there are some decent light novels available in English! At the very least, you can anticipate Strawberry Panic light novels reviews at some point, although I do wish Seven Seas would get an e-book version of those out there (I’m sure its a licensing matter).

I may also review a few Japanese books that are neither light novel nor manga. Terribly shocking, yes, although I have done it before. Summer of the Ubume was fantastic; I wish Vertical would license the rest, although I know why they haven’t and are unlikely to. Viz released Loups=Garous… maybe they could pick up with Mouryou no Hako? A fan can dream…

The rest of this post shall be pictures of all my anime and manga, because the other night folks were sharing photos of their collections, but I missed it, as, alas, I had no access to it, as I was on the road. I am all uguu sadface/madface about that one, so clearly I must make it up here BECAUSE WHY ELSE HAVE AN ANIBLOG??? MAN, I LOVE HAVING AN ANIBLOG.

Originally, I was going to start with a full shot of my bookcase, but that seems unnecessary. Instead, close-ups, shelf-by-shelf; I figure some folks might be curious about what I actually own…. which includes first edition printings of TokyoPop’s release of CardCaptor Sakura… and, in fact, I’m pretty sure a few of those actually give the original name of ‘Mixx’ for TP. And, yes, I know, Bryan O’Malley and the Aran Islands aren’t manga, but that’s where they live, and as the chillens say these days, DEAL WITH IT.
Also, Baseball Heaven is one of the unprofessionally done official releases I’ve ever read. BARF.
(did you know that To Terra is EMO MANGA???)

EMO MANGA. Not really. I still can’t believe they called it that. There is lots of CMX stuff, though, that will never be completed, those jerks. And a bunch of TokyoPop. What a fucking depressing photo.

All that Spiral manga is probably going to disappear in the next few weeks. Oh, and, manga from ADV. Remember when they did manga? No? Well, they licensed Peacemaker, and then they died, so TokyoPop licensed it, and then they died, so I think JManga has it now. This means JManga will probably die. It is the Peacemaker curse.
Looking at this photo was interesting, because I thought I’d given away Miyuki-chan in Wonderland years ago. Surprise!
That copy of Shirahime-syo is hardcover, and it was given to me by TokyoPop. Man. They used to be a hell of a company…

Yes, those are the Shiki novels. No, I can’t really read them. Yes, I spent about $60 on them. Yes, I’m hoping they’ll motivate me to start learning Japanese again, although I am currently mired in learning how to say things like “Where is the minefield?” and “If you do not stop, I will have to shoot you.” in French.

Yes, a lot of this isn’t anime; I’ve got Battlestar Galactica, and a few Western movies mixed in there. But, well, most of it is anime.
That lunchbox is an awesome Cutey Honey lunchbox that came with the somewhat recent live action movie. It is pretty much awesome. Awesome.

Yes, I still have videotapes. And a bootleg of Yami no Matsuei. The online seller lied.

Here you can see that I own two sets of Revolutionary Girl Utena; CPM’s release and Nozomi’s. I don’t have the first set they released, though, as I gave it to a friend a few years back.
You can see in the corner some video tapes I recorded Sailor Moon and Tenchi Muyo episodes on about a decade ago. Also on these shelves is a bootleg of the second Pokemon movie (or, as they call them in the subs, ‘Magical Sonnies’). And the ADV set of the first season of Sailor Moon, a.k.a. how I will fund my graduate school education. That and CardCaptor Sakura.
Oh, and the comic books at the bottom are Pokemon comics.

Cheese.

The bureau drawer of manga. And eroge. The eroge are there to be hidden, obviously. The manga is mostly BL and just happens to be in there because my largest ‘genre’ of manga in my collection is BL, so it made sense to “shelve” it separately. I think the one in the lower left-hand corner sucks. So does Kashimashi.

I bet most of you didn’t notice that there is spent ammunition in that first picture.