Dying By Inches

I'm not sure how many of you are left to read this note, but one thing I'm sure of: those who remain are those that are true to our mission statement. So it is to you, the believers, the faithful, the ones who never lost sight, that I address this message.

Some of you may wonder, what am I doing up so late on a weekday night? After all, I've got a job to go to in the morning (a job that allows me to keep this list going, since most of you are apparently too financially strapped to donate, as I've requested on several occasions). Well, the truth is, I've got too much on my mind to sleep.

I was combing over the subscriber list tonight, and I couldn't help but be stricken by how greatly it has diminished. Normally, this wouldn't cause me a great deal of concern. I have always valued quality over quantity, as anyone who's had a chance to look at my die-cast metal Star Blazers collection can testify. But there has been a great deal of small-minded carping on other lists (or so I'm told; I'm a busy man who has no time to squander on interests not my own) about how my "heavy-handed" management of this list has led to its numerical decline.

My friends, this is nothing but small-minded political garbage, spread by bitter little men who want to increase their own traffic at the expense of mine. If I am guilty of anything, it's of caring too much, having too much passion, for this divine madness we call fandom. This list was created for a specific purpose. Any marketing expert will tell you that the key to success is to find a niche, and fill it; and that's exactly what I did. I built this list, with my own money, my own time, my own sweat and blood, for one reason: to serve as the definitive place for discussion of anime weaponry. Not manga weaponry. Not comic book or cartoon weaponry. Not anime in general. Not sci-fi weaponry. And certainly not ridiculously off-topic subjects like characters, plots, production, general discussion and the other frivolous items that have too often (dis)graced this forum. I have remained true to my purpose; is it for this I should be mocked and insulted? And is it something I should be ashamed of, for cancelling the accounts of people who can't follow the simplest and most basic rule of the list?

We of AnimIron are like a family. And like a family, we gain nothing by tiptoeing around the truth to spare people's feelings. I'm not afraid to name names. The high-level defectors who (I hear) have been slandering me on less disciplined mailing lists must have trouble sleeping at night, so vast must be their guilt at deriding my "flaws" when their own closets are so filled with skeletons. Carey Millen calls me an "obnoxious jerk", while he happily blurs the distinction between mint and near-mint for the sake of a few extra pennys' profit on eBay; Rebecca Houghton says I'm "humorless" while all the while she waits for any opportunity to talk about Iron Giant. Well, guess what, Becky? Iron Giant is not even anime. Or maybe you're just making a joke, and I'm too "humorless" to get it. As for the coward who hides behind the name RobotechMaster as he libels me endlessly, if his blind ignorance of Record of Lodoss War is any indication, I don't think he even knows anything about anime weaponry.

Are these the kinds of subcribers we want on our list? "Balkanization" is one of those big words that Rebecca Houghton likes to throw around to remind everyone that she went to Bryn Mawr, but is it any worse than the alternative -- a Tower of Babel, with important comparisons of Goddess models in Pilot Candidate being drowned in a sea of jibberish about who did the voice of Black Rose in the English version of Ranma 1/2, themes of alienation in Lain, and other frivolous nonsense? Before my most recent so-called "purge", I had to delete what amounted to an entire thread about Yu-Yu Hakusho -- a series that features no weapons whatsoever! Is this the reason I'm being punished? Is protecting those who want a safe space to pursue our mandate the cause of my humiliation?

So be it, then. Let them go. They have their hate; we have each other.

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