(no subject)

"To put it shortly, Galbraith’s argument is that “lolicon” was initially a word male shoujo fans used to refer to themselves. Indeed, as shoujo manga developed, so did its audience, and more and more men started reading them. But such a taste for “girly”, “childish” or “cute” works would have been frowned upon at the time, especially by other manga fans who prefered dark gekiga or science-fiction stories that were developing at the same time. These fans therefore developed a strong sense of community, and “lolicon” was one of the key words they used to refer to each other. However, during most of the 70’s, these fans were still a minority: the Comiket was mostly attended by women, while most male fandoms were oriented towards science-fiction. It is only around 1979 that things began to change and that lolicon became more mainstream, thanks to two artists: mangaka Hideo Azuma and director Hayao Miyazaki."

 

- From lolicon to moe: the adventures of the bishoujo (via lukadian )

the whole article's worth a read, but this was an illuminating and fairly neutral read on some much-maligned subcultures and covering a part of why Anime Is Like That. (especially post-a-Lupin III-watch and seeing the ripple effect/conversations that keystone shows and the doujin circles have on each other).

(no subject)

by some quirk of fate i was on both twitter n' pinterest briefly in the last week (i haven't been on both in, sincerely, 4+ years) to grab some last minute arts and links and holy shit talk about unusable.

i'm not talking 'annoying to use' i'm talking like [aims a shotgun in their way to batter my way through every gaddang dark pattern on every page] level of hostility. blatant hostility. pinterest pops up a fucking log-in wall if you try to use the back button. what the hell.

and it's making me melancholic because it wasn't always like this. pinterest used to be a legitimately great place to find scads of old artists' inspiration (hell my own inspiration board was on there for years b/c the recommendation algorithm was so good, second only to pixiv). twitter, i've kind of always hated more than any other site - but there used to be some great artists on there that you could follow with rss.

and idk between that and noting that some of the old FE webring sites on my links page are down at last (when they were still up ~2 years ago), it just...  i know nothing springs eternal but it really does feel like the end of the era for the internet I grew up on.