Canto I of my Godzilla in Hell series, Kaijubasis (a portmanteau of "kaiju" and "katabasis," 'natch), went up yesterday, but I've only gotten around to writing an update now, and that's because it isn't until now that any kind of infrastructure was added. I've had this "print" page for a while but it's never been linked to on the site before, if you look up at the contents bar you'll see it there now, and you'll notice it really isn't anything more than a list and it seems quite barren, as the only thing it links to is the first part of Kaijubasis. This is, naturally, because I haven't, you know, written anything about about the subject yet, and because to be honest I haven't fully thought about how I'm going to tackle that sort of thing yet at all.
It's at moments like these when it sinks in just how ambitious this project is, and unless I get some sort of major extension, I seriously doubt I'll ever even come close to finishing it. I mean, I can try, but there's too much else going on and even if I could work on this full-time, which I assure you I cannot, it still would only crank out maybe a page or so every two days.
What I might have to do is, come next month, actually drop the "print" page off the contents altogether and replace it with a dedicated Kaijubasis page until some other article about a comic or something is finished.
What else what else... well, two things:
1.) I sent James Stokoe a tweet yesterday about the article and asked about the possibility of a short email interview. I wanted to put this up after I got a response, but I've waited long enough as it is. I would like this to become a regular feature in addition to the standard article about the issue, and do a similar thing with all the other artists, but who knows. Some of the questions I want to ask include Stokoe's history with Godzilla, Hell, and of course what the names of his demons are (the ones I use, Minagalos and Acheron, are only conjectural). Hopefully this works out and I can continue to provide more substantive, enriching, and accurate information and opinion on Godzilla than anywhere else on the web. Maybe it isn't popular to publish articles of a tad more sophisticated variety in the age of poopyguys and dubstep dogs, but again, if no one is going to give Godzilla the attention and respect he deserves, then I have to.
2.) After plugging the article on a handful of websites nominally about Godzilla, I checked today to see if anyone actually read the new article and, to my surprise, they had! I got about 100 views after peppering the internet with links in places where I felt the viewers might be interested in such a thing. However, I don't really understand the internet (I used to think it was a repository for new, knowledge, and entertainment, but I guess it's just a gigantic billboard) or how it is things go "viral," so I'm largely kind of relying on people finding this who want to find something like this. However I realized that I had fucked up in my link-seeding somewhere when I arrived to find a "troll" comment on my article. For those unfamiliar, I'm not talking about an actual troll using firefox, but rather the nickname for a kind of anonymous internet commenter that uses spiteful comments to incite anger and provoke arguments or "flame wars." I recognize now that adding a link to a thread on Toho Kingdom's forums was probably the absolute shittiest of ideas, especially when it only got me 13 out of the ~100 views, one of whom was a troll, and the other 12 I can guarantee you don't give a shit about Godzilla.
So, I don't actually expect to get any comments, but the option is open and I have fielded questions about the content of the site in the comments before. I do welcome questions and conversations about Godzilla and the people who made him, because, and let me be absolutely clear about this: The Godzilla Cycle is a place for substantive and accurate discussion of the Godzilla mythic cycle. I am not here to shovel lists of facts and bland summaries at you like a wiki, and I am not here to lie to you like Toho Kingdom, and I am certainly not trying to sell you anything or push thoughts into your head like a "nerd culture" blog. My goal is to tell Godzilla's story in the most complete and meaningful way that I possibly can. I of course have my own limits but this is what's important to me and this is what I want to share with the world.
It matters to me that the articles I write here are appreciated by those who read them. I don't care about hashtags, I don't care if the site doesn't take off until after I'm dead, none of that is the goal. If only one person reads something from The Godzilla Cycle who learns something, that's more than enough for me. The problem is that when you write a whole website devoted to what is little more than a carcass, you're going to get vultures. Because of the site's virtual invisibility online, this has never come up until now, and hopefully it never will again. Either way, I've made some changes to the comment policy here. From now on, anonymous comments are disallowed and I'm going to moderate everything before its posted. In this way I can assure that everything on my site deserves to be here. Because of the low traffic I get I don't expect this to be an issue but, should I suddenly get a billion views over night or w/e, I'm open to reconsidering this.
For now, though, I suspect it won't matter.
As for the future? The Anguirus article is coming soon, but I need to take care of other things for now. If I don't start work on it next week than I'll get to it after issue #2 comes out. When I can find the time I'm going to buckle down and focus on getting this site growing again, but it's going to take a little longer.
It's at moments like these when it sinks in just how ambitious this project is, and unless I get some sort of major extension, I seriously doubt I'll ever even come close to finishing it. I mean, I can try, but there's too much else going on and even if I could work on this full-time, which I assure you I cannot, it still would only crank out maybe a page or so every two days.
What I might have to do is, come next month, actually drop the "print" page off the contents altogether and replace it with a dedicated Kaijubasis page until some other article about a comic or something is finished.
What else what else... well, two things:
1.) I sent James Stokoe a tweet yesterday about the article and asked about the possibility of a short email interview. I wanted to put this up after I got a response, but I've waited long enough as it is. I would like this to become a regular feature in addition to the standard article about the issue, and do a similar thing with all the other artists, but who knows. Some of the questions I want to ask include Stokoe's history with Godzilla, Hell, and of course what the names of his demons are (the ones I use, Minagalos and Acheron, are only conjectural). Hopefully this works out and I can continue to provide more substantive, enriching, and accurate information and opinion on Godzilla than anywhere else on the web. Maybe it isn't popular to publish articles of a tad more sophisticated variety in the age of poopyguys and dubstep dogs, but again, if no one is going to give Godzilla the attention and respect he deserves, then I have to.
2.) After plugging the article on a handful of websites nominally about Godzilla, I checked today to see if anyone actually read the new article and, to my surprise, they had! I got about 100 views after peppering the internet with links in places where I felt the viewers might be interested in such a thing. However, I don't really understand the internet (I used to think it was a repository for new, knowledge, and entertainment, but I guess it's just a gigantic billboard) or how it is things go "viral," so I'm largely kind of relying on people finding this who want to find something like this. However I realized that I had fucked up in my link-seeding somewhere when I arrived to find a "troll" comment on my article. For those unfamiliar, I'm not talking about an actual troll using firefox, but rather the nickname for a kind of anonymous internet commenter that uses spiteful comments to incite anger and provoke arguments or "flame wars." I recognize now that adding a link to a thread on Toho Kingdom's forums was probably the absolute shittiest of ideas, especially when it only got me 13 out of the ~100 views, one of whom was a troll, and the other 12 I can guarantee you don't give a shit about Godzilla.
So, I don't actually expect to get any comments, but the option is open and I have fielded questions about the content of the site in the comments before. I do welcome questions and conversations about Godzilla and the people who made him, because, and let me be absolutely clear about this: The Godzilla Cycle is a place for substantive and accurate discussion of the Godzilla mythic cycle. I am not here to shovel lists of facts and bland summaries at you like a wiki, and I am not here to lie to you like Toho Kingdom, and I am certainly not trying to sell you anything or push thoughts into your head like a "nerd culture" blog. My goal is to tell Godzilla's story in the most complete and meaningful way that I possibly can. I of course have my own limits but this is what's important to me and this is what I want to share with the world.
It matters to me that the articles I write here are appreciated by those who read them. I don't care about hashtags, I don't care if the site doesn't take off until after I'm dead, none of that is the goal. If only one person reads something from The Godzilla Cycle who learns something, that's more than enough for me. The problem is that when you write a whole website devoted to what is little more than a carcass, you're going to get vultures. Because of the site's virtual invisibility online, this has never come up until now, and hopefully it never will again. Either way, I've made some changes to the comment policy here. From now on, anonymous comments are disallowed and I'm going to moderate everything before its posted. In this way I can assure that everything on my site deserves to be here. Because of the low traffic I get I don't expect this to be an issue but, should I suddenly get a billion views over night or w/e, I'm open to reconsidering this.
For now, though, I suspect it won't matter.
As for the future? The Anguirus article is coming soon, but I need to take care of other things for now. If I don't start work on it next week than I'll get to it after issue #2 comes out. When I can find the time I'm going to buckle down and focus on getting this site growing again, but it's going to take a little longer.
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