Cruel Angel Theses

And now for something completely different. I’m convinced that I’m going to wake up one day and find that my eternal nemesis self-proclaimed rival fellow blogger bateszi has been one step ahead of my life all this time, pulling the strings of my internet existence like a puppeteer’s wont to do. A month ago when he linked the Slow Blogging manifesto (mirror) on Twitter [1] [2] my first reaction wasn’t that of interest, but that of recognition. Something clicked in my head, like a Magic Circuit turning on.

It's the Zodiac Year of... well, the better you know.

It’s a particularly satisfying moment whenever you discover someone putting words or a structure to behaviour or thoughts of yours previously unexplained–a response I suppose has roots in those fabled days of yore where the proverbial caveman attempted to explain lightning by way of gods. I’ve previously gone into the How of ‘raw watching’, and I believe I owe everyone a Why to back that up. So here’s why.

Remember this post? If you were around the ’sphere in any capacity, of course you did. Bloggers were in paroxysms over something that they didn’t want to hear, let alone understand. People were defensive. People were dumb. People relied on the good old motto of “It’s the internet, I can do what I want!” without really lending much by way of dialogue–well, maybe a few did, but hey, controversy. How dare you criticise our hegemony! Or for that matter, how dare you even think of criticism? You stay in your side of the ’sphere and I’ll stay in my side, okay? Agree to disagree, blah blah blah, and nothing of value was lost.

This is a belated (almost a year!) answer to that.

Essentially, ‘Raw watching’ is nothing more than fuel to an episodic blog that feeds the concept of Providing A Service. Stripped down and deconstructed, an episodic blog at its most fundamental can offer no more opinion than an editorial blog can offer a consistent posting schedule, if we’re going to go with that traditional division of blogs. If you want to be old-school media about it, episodic blogs are like the cub reporters reporting about current events, and editorial blogs the snarky writers with their op-ed pieces.

How does this relate to raw watching? It’s simple–raw watching, and episodic blogging by extension, is nothing more than a report of what happened in an episode. You want to report the same news as everyone out there? That’s all well and good, but we’re sharing the same newspaper! That, I think, is what bateszi wanted to say, albeit in less analogous and more direct terms. And people get angry when you don’t use analogies, it’s like having the chair pulled away from under them as they’re about to sit down for dinner.

Editorial blogs, on the other hand, are essentially built on the concept of Providing An Opinion, and report on what they think about what happened. This isn’t me going “hurr durr, episodic blogs aren’t deep”–they just can’t in the same way that fish can’t survive on land when birds can. Do you blame birds for not being able to hunt underwater? Occasionally you’ll get the odd breed that can do just that, I’m sure, but it’s a rare case for the most part, even if they’re multiplying as of late.

That was my rage against the machine, an invention wrought by the twin demons of Supply and Demand. That there are fans out there who want to spoil themselves silly about the latest episode is one thing. To feed that monster with multifarious maws when it has plenty to dine on is another, and I believe that my scorn had its roots there. Are there reporters who make up stories or creatively embellish facts just to beat their rivals to the scoop? Probably. Doesn’t mean we’ve got to do the same, though.

I can’t bear to look at my archives in the same way that some people are loath to admit that they’re the sibling of a particular person, because some of them (the posts, not the people) are like the raw watching equivalent of editorials. They aren’t much by way of what I pride myself on doing, were meant to fill a time/space requirement (I wanted to say something at that point in time), and are embarrassing to read. Yes, Cruel Angel Theses is a team blog, I just happen to share the same name with that guy who posted here long ago.

Despite the glaring disparity in our taste and experience, I’ve always found Paul to be a good read. Why’s that? You can see the care he puts into each post, the almost hysterical amount of preparation contained in each word, so much so that it feels like I’m reading something meant to be performed on stage, not read through a feedreader. It’s the kindred spirit thing that two strangers can connect over with just a glance, and then some.

In comparison, what episodic blogging as of late has given me, well… nothing more than a heightened sense of elitist disdain and justified superiority over the hoi polloi of blogging. Admit it, how many of you were predicting the responses to Toradora (”Tsunderes are the cancer that is killing anime!132ninetyeight”) or Kannagi (”How dare they pander to otaku! How dare they!”)? I know I did. Speed does not equal precision, unlike what you’ve seen of battles portrayed in fiction.

If too much of a good thing is bad, what does that make too much of a dumb thing?

But blogging isn’t a battle, and shouldn’t be. Neither is this about me being a green-eyed monster, so think again–for those of you imbeciles about to accuse me of being bitter about not being able to post at the rate of those who outstrip me, amounts of incoming traffic, or any such delusions of grandeur that I’m apparently aspiring to, well, have a pre-emptive, idiots. It’s called the Blue Ocean Strategy, and it’s something the internet was made for. Not like you’d know how to use it to begin with.

Which brings me to my second point: In a framework of non-episodic blogging, Slow Anime Blogging makes Long Anime Posts; alternately, Short Anime Posts are made from Fast Anime Blogging. This is where you should feel free to disagree with me by all means (for matters of brevity and sanity, agreeing with the first half of my post is a must), for here’s where I’m going to throw down the gauntlet.

If you’re the author of a non-episodic fast blog–and I’m using ‘non-episodic’ here simply because there are blogs out there that don’t blog episodically but don’t quite fit into an traditional editorial blog’s skin, either–there’s a chance that you write short posts. You write them often. There’s the possibility that you don’t put a lot of thought into it. And your content will (not necessarily, but for some, with surprising regularity) be less meaningful and more homogeneous than that of a non-episodic slow blog.

Again, before you arm yourself to the teeth with nouns and verbs, I suggest you step back from your little caffeine-fuelled, sleep-deprived, 21st-century Life of the Now and chew on that for a bit. What do slow bloggers usually do? They make up for it in word count what they can’t in post count. Occasionally there’s your odd hero who effortlessly posts across blogs like he’s a bee and blogs flowers, but we can’t all be like that. I’m glad we can’t, too, since the possibility is a frightening thought.

Unlike bateszi, my primary annoyance isn’t with episodic blogs. I’m past that, we fill different niches, and I don’t really read them anymore no thanks to my ever-growing blogroll, which is expanding like the waistline of a glutton at a buffet. My habits of consumption have altered as of late, and I just can’t be arsed to be the sole voice of reason in a raucous, superficial crowd, or be bothered to point out time and again that premise is not the same as genre (thanks, Aroduc).

My primary annoyance is with non-episodic blogs that blog quickly, and sparsely as a result. They can be shallow. They only ever bother to skim the surface. In their ever-so-hasty bid to go all-out against episodic blogs in a war that shouldn’t have been fought in the first place, they’ve become a fake GN drive that emits red particles–something that should be able to run forever, but as a result of technical imperfection, have to refuel ever so often. In other words, they’re doing it wrong.

The question here is, “Why so hasty?” It’s also the reason I removed my limiter for a moment and gave otou-san both barrels–because his first attempt was terrible. In that single post (and I’m not trying to take you down a peg for that, I’m just stating why I replied the way I did then), he demonstrated no more depth of opinion than your average anonymous imageboard. Considering that Google already lists what happens to be an excellent precedent for this, you’d think he’d have gotten it right the first time.

If you have a non-episodic blog, word quantity is post quality. It’s that simple. No two ways about it. I don’t get why non-episodic bloggers want to dance to the same monotonous tune as the episodic bloggers, since they’re showing off their moves to a different audience. I’m not tarring everyone with the same brush, but you’ll be hard pressed to find someone who blogs irregularly with a decent word count per post whose writing sucks. Consider the inverse for a moment, though, and you’ll see what I mean.

Of course, there’s the other argument that can be used against this, which is the laughable “Anime blogging shouldn’t be serious business!” Really? Pray tell, why are you then taking the time to find hosting, setting aside invaluable time in your 24 hours that could be used to do something else, and watching a show for the purpose of reproducing what you thought of an episode or ten on the internet in all its glory? Don’t you think that that amount of effort is already serious enough? Or are you going to pull out one of those memetic discussion-killers like ‘tl;dr’ and pass?

It's not like ZUN intentionally created a monopoly or anything.

I’m tired, oh yes. I’m tired of seeing so much wasted potential that I have to italicise the phrase to get anywhere near how tired I am of reading non-episodic bloggers that I know could write better. You’re not one of the *chans, guys, there’s no reason for you to write as if you need to ward off the dreaded sage, or eventual post limit. There’s no reason for you to go head-to-head with another form of blogging that laughs at your pitiful attempts at regular opinion when they’ve been doing the same for ages, and better. There’s no reason to not write with reason.

Different people have different methods of recuperating. Martin made another blog. So did Paul. Me, I just took time off to play Fate/stay night, and that worked out exceedingly well for me. I think my knife’s pretty sharp now, thank you. The benefits that come with blogging about something not bound to time like anime is immense, and considering that I finished Heaven’s Feel and blogged about it quite some time after the release of the patch, well, go figure.

My hunch behind this dichotomy of People Who Take Their Time To Think and People Who Don’t Have Time To Think is this, that the internet can be divided into two kinds of people:

1. Those who regard the internet as freedom of expression.
2. Those who regard the internet as freedom of exchanging expression.

I like to think that those who subscribe to #1 are in a time-bubble of sorts where Web 2.0 never happened, since they’re content with merely telling the world what they think, as opposed to why they think about what they think. How is this done? Words, or a lack of it. The less you say, the less meaningful it becomes to more people, and the inverse is true–the more you say, the more meaningful it becomes to more people since it goes from something that’s solely relevant to yourself to something that everyone can relate to.

(I don’t think I need to mention that those who reply in length to this post will inevitably prove my point.)

Have fun with your non-episodic blog by all means. Watch some anime. Read some manga. Play Fate/stay night a visual novel or two, and dammit, do it quickly since it’s rather lonely at the top. But most of all, and most importantly, don’t forget to be verbose. In fact, don’t be afraid to go on for more than a pitiful paragraph or two if you’re going to tell me why something rocks, sucks, or is in-between. For while it might mean everything to you, it means nothing to me, and if your writing can mean so little to those who read it, then why are you doing it at all to begin with? Not because you like the sound of your own voice, I’m sure.

2009 is going to be 2008, Extended Version for me, because I’m going to take my time savouring shows that are meant to be enjoyed at their own pace, not some absurd, socially-enforced once-a-week duration. In other words, when I don’t feel pressured into watching it. You’re watching anime for the company, you say? What a farce. Anime is timeless, and no matter when you watch it, how you watch it, or where you watch it, there’s always bound to be someone as slow, if not slower than you.

So don’t forget to take it easy. Kick speed to the kerb. Happy New Year, everyone.