
Welcome to the official Project AFTER homepage! If this is
your first time visiting, then please come in and enjoy the
site's many exciting and comical features* that exist solely
for your entertainment. Also, feel free to bookmark the site
in case you want to come back and view it again at a later
time. Return visitors are almost unheard of around here, but
hey, maybe you'll have unusually low standards or something.
"But hold on a minute. What is this 'Project AFTER'
phenomenon you speak of, anyway?" If that's what you were
thinking just now, then congratulate yourself for pondering
a damn good question! First, let's start with the meaning
behind this cryptic title. Project A.F.T.E.R. is actually an
acronym for:
Project Anime Fanfiction:
Twisted Entertainment Review
This previously top-secret operation is the result of many
years of costly and tiresome research to discover what
exactly is causing modern society to plunge into its current
downward spiral toward oblivion. Astonishingly, all test
results have thus far pointed to one horrifying conclusion.
War, pollution, disease, world hunger, natural disasters,
cosplayers... They all stem from the same vile source: bad
anime fanfiction.
Admittedly, it may seem harmless enough at first glance, but
in reality it is a potent, all-consuming evil that has
silently corrupted humanity since the dawn of time (and, by
"the dawn of time", I mean the mid 1980's). Today, bad anime
fanfiction is content to waste your precious online
web-surfing time with its seemingly never-ending tedium and
idiocy that has infected hundreds upon hundreds of
unsuspecting websites. Tomorrow, however, it may very well
be out murdering your children and setting fire to your
homes.
While the future may seem ridden with pain and despair, all
is not lost! Through Project AFTER, a creation that can only
be described as a demonstration of human ingenuity at its
finest, I will select promising pieces of anime fanfiction
that have unfortunately ended up in the realm of awfulness.
By providing an astute running commentary within the
fanfiction, I hope to inform readers of how to identify bad fanfics, and even more importantly, how to avoid writing
them. Such a concept may seem to some of you like little
more than an uninspired way for me to publicly display
malicious outbursts of rage to help me deal with my own
inner suffering while garnering attention from strangers
over the internet, but I assure you that I am doing this
strictly for the good of humanity! Why? Because that's just
the kind of selfless guy I am.
If you're interested in learning more about my epic struggle
to save all mankind, then please feel free to take a look
around the site and see what one man is doing to save the
world which he so dearly loves... One bad fanfiction at a
time.
*Note: Features contained within this site are not
guaranteed to be exciting or comical.

News and Updates
December 30, 2011
Just when you thought PA wouldn't see another update before 2012
hit, here I am to take your expectations and slap them upside
the head before demanding they grab me a cold beer and iron my
shirts. A lot of things happened earlier in the month that
managed to obliterate my planned update schedule, hence the
reason this one is getting rushed out the door at the last
minute. I'm not going to patronize you by pretending that I
think you care about the specifics of what's been keeping me
busy, so let's skip all that and jump right into the meat of
this update.
The holidays may be winding down by now, but hopefully you folks
can still summon up a little seasonal spirit and enjoy a newly
revised version of the 7th Special,
Christmas Fluff. I was never satisfied with the original
draft of that one when I first uploaded it years ago, and for a
long time it's stuck in my mind as being one of the weakest
fanfiction reviews on the entire site. This new version (which
has been painstakingly rewritten and enhanced to make the leap
all the way from "unreadable" up to "not terrible but still
disappointingly unfunny") was supposed to be a special Christmas
gift to both my readers and my nagging sense of inadequacy;
unfortunately, I wasn't able to finish the revisions in time to
get the thing online before Christmas. So just consider this a
late present, like the kind you get from those friends who
obviously got you something in a panicked rush three weeks after
they'd finished the rest of their shopping because they didn't
expect to get anything from you but now they feel obligated to
reciprocate the gesture to make it look like they give a shit
and hopefully avoid any further awkwardness the next time they
see you.
Continuing the theme of stuff going up later than it should
have, this next item cranks the lateness up to eleven! Forum
regular Screaming Soulcatcher sent me a guest editorial last
August(!!) that fell to the back of my overcrowded list of guest
content pieces to upload and has sat in my inbox during two
season changes. Thankfully, not only does SS happen to be the
Champion Grand Master of Patience, but the article he wrote
feels just as fresh now as it did last summer. So make sure you
take some time to read Panty and
Stocking: A Casual Perspective on Animated Garbage. You'll
applaud his opinions if you hate Panty and Stocking, and you'll
love them even more if you like Panty and Stocking. Because
there is no greater pleasure for an opinionated anime nerd than
the chance to send some vitriolic hate-mail to someone they
disagree with.
Last on the agenda, I've recently been involved with a project
that begs to be plugged here. While it's not directly related to
this site per se, anyone who enjoys the kind of dark,
angry, ultra-cynical humor found here should be able to
appreciate The Other Side. That link points to a new podcast
series starring yours truly and Cody "Shmeckie" Baier (who
you'll remember as the guy who used to write
Comic Release
before Max-Vader took over) now appearing on the popular
multimedia site Anime 3000. Each
podcast consists of Cody and myself discussing some subject
related to anime, various fandoms, internet subcultures, or
anything else we can come up with to talk shit about for roughly
an hour. Each episode is packed with of foul language and
hateful ramblings sure to spark plenty of controversy, because
that's how we roll.
Speaking of rambling, this post is already running longer than I
intended. Thanks to all the readers and contributors who made
2011 such an incredible year for Project AFTER! Despite things
slowing down a little over the past few months, this has been a
hugely successful year for PA that saw record hits for both the
website and the forums. Here's to making the community even
stronger in 2012!

November 23, 2011
Hey folks, you looking forward to Thanksgiving tomorrow? Yeah,
me neither. I always used to think the sugar-coated treats and
fried dishes oozing artery-clogging calories were parts of the
traditional Thanksgiving Day meal because the pilgrims were on a
mission to make America the fattest nation even before
McDonald's was invented; a few years ago, however, I figured out
that the menu evolved from generations of people trying to
induce a fatal heart attack after spending an entire day with
their neurotic, judgmental, bickering families. I'm actually
thinking of starting a new tradition where I give thanks over a
meal of instant cup noodles in my car.
If the holidays have got you feelin' down or stressed out, then
you might want to consider unwinding with a little
Comic Release. In the eleventh
installment of the internet's twelfth favorite series of
derisive webcomic reviews, Max-Vader and myself take a look at
the long-running online manga Misfile
and conclude that it kind of sucks a ton of ass. Sorry to spoil
the ending for you, but the review should still be worth reading
if you're curious what all the fuss over this one is about. I
mean, someone somewhere has to be talking about this comic,
right? Misfile has been running for over seven years now and
includes almost two thousand pages. You don't hit those
kinds of numbers unless your work is extremely popular or you're
extremely oblivious as to what a colossal waste your life has
been. But perhaps I've already said too much...
Provided I can resist the urge to use the electric turkey carver
on my wrists tomorrow and don't get trampled to death beneath a
stampede of frantic shoppers on Black Friday, I'll try to roll
out another update sometime within the next couple of weeks. My
goal is to make at least two more content additions to the site
before the end of the year, but pretend this says that I'm
abandoning the site forever and this is the very last update.
That way, anything that goes up after this will seem like a
treat no matter how late or disappointing it is.

November 03, 2011
Aw shucks, couldn't quite make it before the end of the month.
And I didn't even have that much in the way of academic
assignments to slow me down—you can blame this delay on the
creators of Batman: Arkham City. Sorry guys, but I can't even
pretend like beating throngs of henchmen into unconsciousness
with the Caped Crusader isn't immeasurably more satisfying than
working on this site. You wouldn't even be seeing an update this
soon if it wasn't for the fact that the game disc suddenly
stopped working because... Shit, who knows. At this point, my
best guess is ancient Egyptian curse.
The good news is that it's finally time to end the drought with
a flood of new content. Okay, not quite a flood; more like a
light rain. We always stress quality over quantity here at
Project AFTER, though, and this is some good stuff. Courtesy of
forum member Dr. O comes a brand new (read: this is NOT a
repost) Guest Special!
Ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy
Room 666. The story
itself is pretty terrible, yeah, but ol' Doc O. gives it a
thorough examination and administers plenty of bitter medicine
to dull the pain. My diagnosis? Chronic hilarity!
Real quick, I want to give a shout-out to Dr. O and thank him
for his unfailing patience in waiting for this review to make it
online. I'm too embarrassed to admit when he first sent this to
me, but let's just say it's lucky that guest content submissions
don't have expiration dates, otherwise I probably just poisoned
everyone reading this. I'd totally carve "PATHETIC FAILURE" into
my arm to make amends for such a grievous lack of
professionalism in sitting on this for so long, but that sounds
painful and messy, so I'm hoping this public apology will
suffice.
To everyone else who sent in guest content that I've yet to
upload, shut the hell up already. I'm getting to it, okay?
Goddamn.

October 24, 2011
Ugh, I hate making announcements updates... These are always met
with all the enthusiasm of an IRS audit notice. In fact, anyone
who only checks this site periodically to see if any new content
has gone up can go ahead and skip this post; there's nothing new
to read besides what you're looking at now. If you actually care
about the behind-the-scenes aspects of PA at all and would like
to know why there's been such a cavernous gap between updates,
keep on reading. I dare you, asshole!
To put it bluntly, life has been kicking me in the face lately.
I can only assume that all the bad karma I have stored up from
publically humiliating total strangers for eight years has
finally caught up with me, since no other explanation accounts
for all the bullshit I've gone through since early September.
I'd like to write about the horrible, world-shattering tragedies
that have befallen me, but the less interesting (and less
sympathy-grabbing) truth is that I've been up against a
seemingly unending procession of minor problems and annoyances
that collectively add up to one gigantic pain in the ass. I
think this is why so many overstressed, middle-class salary
slaves go insane: you spend most of your time pushed to the
knife edge of total physical and emotional exhaustion, yet you
can never seem to come up with a good way of explaining why
without launching into a lengthy rant that most people just
write off as complaining.
But I digress! Back to complaining, an unexpectedly heavy
workload this semester has kept me busier than a Child
Protective Services worker assigned to one of the families from
Toddlers & Tiaras. Meanwhile, some personal issues I'd rather
not delve into combined with a flare-up of some chronic health
problems have ensured that the majority of what little free time
I do have is spent standing in the shower, fully clothed,
muttering to myself incoherently until the hot water heater is
empty. Also, as you might have already guessed from reading this
unfocused mess of a news post, I haven't slept well in several
months now. The most restful night I've had in recent memory
took place on the neighbors' front lawn after I somehow managed
to make it home following a marathon of Ouzo shot races with a
terminally ill Greek man and two lesbians who work in a failing
record store.
I have managed to make some headway on the next update during
the past week, but I ran into a little technical problem that's
going to push back the nearest date I can get that shit online.
My webhost service recently dropped support for FrontPage
extensions, so the software I use to code the site no longer has
a way of communicating directly with the host. I can still use a
third-party FTP service to get the files online (which is how
you're able to read this update), but it requires extra work on
my part and results in some compatibility issues. This site
doesn't use a whole lot in the way of FrontPage extensions
outside of file transferring, thankfully, but I have noticed
that certain pages and images are loading more slowly than
usual. Truthfully, I have no idea if there's any correlation
between that and my host dropping FP support; if you notice any
portion of PA behaving sluggish, though, I'm guessing that's
probably why.
While having to jump through more hoops to update the site is
frustrating, part of me is glad this happened. I've known for
years now that it's stupid to keep working with such
ridiculously outdated software. If this is what it took to slap
me awake so I can finally modernize the site, so be it. This old
girl of mine deserves a new dress, and by God, I'm gonna get her
something pretty!
Speaking of which, I'll be on the lookout for someone to help me
design a new layout for PA before too long. I haven't decided
whether or not I'm willing to pay someone for their services
yet, but I suspect it will most likely come to that... If you're
an aspiring graphic designer and/or coding wiz who's looking for
a reasonably basic project to help build up their portfolio,
however, definitely send me an e-mail
and we'll talk a little about the what and the when.
Now that I've gotten the explanations out of the way, I'll
return to finishing up what I originally intended to post before
the file uploading process became all scary and confusing. I'm
going to try to get everything finished and online before the
end of the month, but the feasibility of that plan will largely
depend on whether or not my professors feel like being bastards
hell-bent on ruining my weekends. If so, then the next update
should happen in early November. |