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

News and Updates

February 05, 2012

As the writers of the hit musical Avenue Q assured us, the internet is for porn. If the internet has any definite secondary purpose, it would most likely be for socialization—or at least the kind of unfulfilling, imaginary socialization that occurs between people who never come into direct contact with each other and only "interact" by looking at messages and pictures on a computer screen. Thus, we have the 21st century definition of networking: acknowledging the works of people you pretend to have some personal connection with in the hopes that they will acknowledge you in turn so you can receive more attention from more people you'll never meet in reality.

With this inspiring thought as my motivation, I was recently able to overcome my hatred of updating the site's link page long enough to update the site's links page. Sadly, most of the changes involve the removal of dead links (never thought I'd live to see Portal of Evil bite the dust). There are, however, a couple of additions to the list for you folks to check out. I hope to add more friendly URLs worthy of mention in the future, but a lack of time to go hunting for them means I'm usually forced to rely on other folks bringing the links to me (something I encourage anyone reading this to do if they know of a site PA would do well to associate with). Oh, and there's also a new ad banner for PA located at the bottom of the page. Feel free to post it on your website, blog, Tweeterbook profile, forum signature, or anywhere else you want to let people know what impeccable taste in online entertainment you have.

I didn't want the site's first update of 2012 to consist of something as unexciting as a routine link cleanup, but I figured it was getting way too long past due for me to put something up here. I already missed the opportunity to update in January, and experience has taught me that even devout readers will jump ship if a site so much as gives the appearance that it might be drifting toward inactivity. Not that I haven't been paying attention to the site in any capacity; on the contrary, one of the projects that's been eating up the biggest chunk of my time during the past month is overseeing a major software upgrade for the Project AFTER Forums. In addition to improved security and some aesthetic improvements, the forums now offer members a host of new features to enhance their posting experience: we've added video embedding in posts, more customizable profile pages, easier page navigation, and more. If you've been thinking about taking the plunge and joining the community, now is the perfect time to sign up.

As for the site itself, I fully intend to get more new content up as soon as my schedule allows me to work on it. I've got some big plans in store that should make 2012 one hell of a pulse-pounding thrill ride for readers who are easily excited by looking at static pages on a monitor. In the meantime, remember to turn off all your various web-browsing devices and go outside every once in a while. A lot of it may not exist anymore, but they've still got some pretty amazing stuff out there in the real world.

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.