Ryan: I remember Itsubun saying that the point of the AGRR was to get a buncha girls together to talk about girl stuff without feeling pressured or marginalized in the shadow of the male dominated aniblogosphere. On that note it’s slightly hilarious that I’m in Calamitous Intents.

Crusader/Ghost/N/Sakura: I’m doing re-comments in a post shortly.

I left the academe before ‘postmodern’ became somewhat of a problematic idea, and so I’m still living in some freak time-bubble where/when it still promises freedom. Through methods perceived to be within it’s fold like deconstruction, I still believe I can build affirmation on argument and vice-versa. I may not be able to articulate it the same way right now, but I agree and aspire to the same things you’ve just said (at least pertaining to what you quoted from me.

Even as niches become more distinguished from each other, and deeper into their distinctions, I do feel that some voices can thread all of these points along the long tail of anime blogs. Not so much as an authority or and organizing force, but an affirming one.

I agree with Crusader on the note of similar content, but a diversity in subject matter. That sort of diversity is solid as well, because it’s spreading a given form across various genre, if we can use that word anymore.

Impz, nice, you should step into a newspaper office and see the craziness of their “team blogs” [or massive army of journalists directed by editors directed by upper-management]. Team blogs are nice for providing man-power and distributing load, but topically it still needs direction from some driver (editor).

Post-finish:

Generally, blog articles can become forum threads, but its not an absolute relation. In this respect, articles/entries are thread starters, and discussers really have no say in what starts a discussion; it is left in the directing hands of the blogger.

Personally, I enjoy the conciseness of blogs over forums, since forums tend to be hectic, time-consuming, and often too expansive to get good info from.

So…

what is the thing we really get from anime blogs?

Really, beyond everything, I think it is the connection to who it is exactly writing these things. It’s human nature to “see” personality, and I think that tends to shine over all other aspects. People can read and feel the author’s emotion, it’s just that way. You know, perhaps its attraction; where we find writers we like and want to know their opinion.

These meta posts are a good example

In some way, I’ve felt that meta-posts were usually blogger-targetted, and not necessarily reader-targetted. It makes me wonder what readers take from them, other than our own views on ourselves/community. This doesn’t exclude the fact that readers can help extremely in a community when not on the producer side.

I could see some collective debate, like, OH vs. THAT or RandomC vs. Drastic. Actually, that would be really interesting to witness, if not partake in. But even then, it’s hard to homogenize even the small team blog.

The issue is we don’t necessarily have the infrastructure to handle and bring such thing to a concise “location”. Trackbacks are great, but its hard to demand readers read another post ontop of a pending one, unless of course you are dealing with those more involved, in the case of meta, its bloggers.

I think there is something to the aggregator services, not in the “automatic and expansive” sense, but in the fact that there is some entity collecting and re-listing blogger entries. Depending on the entity, this could be something for the future.

an effort towards greater female anime/blogger/fujoshi/whatever solidarity

wut

By the way, there are major issues with team blogs lately, and I am building a rather major rant about it.

Even if THAT is more episodically oriented there is still something to be said for the variety of genres that we may cover at times, we all know Impz will always have an adversity to mecha, while I am largely allergic to harem. I consider a team blog to be like the Kampfgruppe concept an ad-hoc formation of authors who try to coordinate as best they can, if one author needs to focus on RL issues then another can help pick up the slack as a inactive blog runs the risk of becoming a dead blog. Furthermore it allows for Abteilung like yourself it allows for a certain degree of nomadic habits.

The blogosphere itself is essentially a substitute for the old anime club which seems to be on the decline in recent years. At least through blogs there can be more focused discussions with pictures it is also a more controlled environment than forum. I have never been a single person blogger, but in such circumstances there is a higher probability of burn out, recently IKnight invoked burn out at a point ever so close to his 1 year anniversary, he’s not alone I reckon.