2012: An OK Year in Review

So, with only two weeks left in the year, I thought I’d take a look back and share some thoughts on how Everything is Oll Korrect! fared in 2012, and share some of what I consider the best, or at least most interesting, posts of the last year.

Overall, the blog fared pretty well. It is, by far, the most successful year yet for Everything. Post quality has evened out, at least in my admittedly biased but self-critical opinion, and for the first time I can claim with a straight face that I update regularly. There’s been a post every week except two, in late March and late November. A few weeks had two posts, making my average just above one update per week. I also had more views and comments than ever before, though this is still far from a popular blog.

Now, I don’t go back and re-read my old posts very often, but for the end of the  year I did go through the archives and come up with what I think are the highlights of 2012.

Everything!’s bread-and-butter is the review/impressions posts. Most of them are fairly similar as far as how I structure them, but I find that the best tend to strike a balance between objective criticisms and my own interpretations. That I include several media helps me, because the wide variety of works to choose from lets me pick my spots and prevents repetition in the types of criticism I offer; whereas I’ve heard from others who focus on a single medium or genre that they often find themselves making the same sort of criticisms over and over. The posts that turned out best, I think, are “Golding’s Golden Lord of the Flies,” “Rozen Maiden Traumend,” “Oh, My Goddess! Vol. 41 Kinda Sucks,” and “Welcome to the NHK! (Novel).”

Though the Lord of the Flies and Welcome to the NHK! reviews did give some interpretation, I only wrote a couple posts devoted solely to analysing a single work, “Wired Theology: Godhood in serial experiments lain,” and “Rex Quondom Rexque Futurus: Kingship in Fate/Zero,” which is also my classiest post title. I hope to do more of these sorts of posts next year; they’re largely the sort of analysis I was taught to do at university, and are the posts I enjoy writing the most. The hard part is finding a suitable topic, though, which is why I write so few of them.

I also attempted a few editorial posts. I tend to be selective about my topics, and these are the most difficult posts I write largely because there’s so much ground I could cover that would go far beyond the scope of this blog. The most successful was probably “The Moral Dimension of Judging Art,” though my first attempt at such a post, “What’s Up with Anime Fans?” also turned out fairly well.

One new feature for Everything! was the number of series I started. One of these, “Maynguh Memories,” is very irregular, but I’m fond of each post I’ve done for it so far. The Uncle Walt-a-thon, which began with _Snow White _and is as regular as how often I watch the next Disney film in line, is a little more humble, but fun to write. The first series was the “Anime Autobiography,” which started off a bit weak but improved with each new entry. This series was, I think, a turning point for Everything!, as this was the series that really formed the habit of blogging regularly for me.

There were also a handful of miscellaneous, more personal little posts scattered throughout the year, of which the most interesting is probably “That 50 Questions Meme.”

The most enjoyable post to write, though, was this one, because I got to pat myself on the back for over 600 words, which is a nice break from my usual attitude of self-deprecation. I hope you enjoy some of these posts, and as always - thank you for reading.