Summer 2026 Update: My Twitter Account Was Deleted
1. The History of Otastorian Going to College
I originally started college back in the spring of 2018, a year before this blog started. And that first semester, I failed (proper F) all of my classes, completely tanking my GPA. A year later in spring 2019, I attempted one class, and passed it with a clean 4.0. Nice! That summer, I started this blog, and attempted two classes. I withdrew from one and failed the other. That kept my GPA's head under water long enough that I ended up going on academic probation for a year. When I got back, I attempted five classes over the course of three years. I ended up with two B's, one C, one F, one W, and another gap year. Not exactly the grand comeback I had hoped for, but at the same time, I was (relatively) very productive here on the blog, with a total of nine full-length articles by the spring of 2022. That summer, I ended up getting a new job, and for the next two years I floundered, going from one job to the next with mere months between. At a certain point, I was working three jobs at once. For those whole two years, I made zero progress either in school or on the blog (does anyone remember how I was supposed to post my final articles on here in winter 2023?). This whole period of my life was honestly a mess; coming out of highschool I was both emotionally and mentally a complete mess. I didn't even really know why I was in school for most of it, and by the time I finally got a sense of purpose, I had jumped from the safety nest of my chill, good-enough-paying job into the dark, chaotic, stormy waters of serial job hopping.
Eventually though, we get to the late winter of 2023. My job hopping finally came to a close. I got a trashy job with good benefits, with which I finally found myself in an economic position to go back to college. My student account had almost been shutdown for the years of inactivity, but I got back on just in time, and successfully signed up for college classes for the spring of 2024. On May 7, 2026 at about 2PM, I finished the final for the last class I needed for graduation, and I walked across the stage that night. Over the last two years, I have taken no gaps (besides the summers) and attempted seventeen classes, with one W and sixteen A's.
I still have a long way to go before I'm "officially" finished with college. I'm currently taking a gap year, but I'll be returning to school for my bachelor's (and maybe even my master's?). But it feels crazy to look back at how I got where I am now. When I first started this blog, I had a major that I'd decided on on a whim (English, maybe obviously), and I didn't even have a plan to finish my associate's, let alone anything after that. And yet somehow, here I am, with all that work behind me and a college diploma in my hands. It honestly feels surreal.
Alright, so that's the story of what I've mainly been up to since the last "real" post on this site, but sorry, this post is going to be pretty long. There's a lot of news and housekeeping I've got to get up to.
2. My Twitter Account Was Deleted
So first of all, I'm not even really sure how most of you are going to get to see this post. It's not like I have a mailing list or anything, and I doubt anyone has added this site to their RSS reader of choice (because we all know how popular those are). Normally I'd expect most people to get here through my Twitter account, but unfortunately, my account got nuked! I'm not totally sure how it happened, to be honest. My first hypothesis is that I got banned for using OldTwitter and OldTweetdeck. I got caught in the original ban wave from last November, and after I was unbanned from that, I was laying low... until one day I left OldTweetdeck running in a window all day. That probably sounds like an open-and-shut case, but days before I'd also run a program to search for all my Twitter followings on Bluesky. So that's my second hypothesis.
So that's all what happened, but now what am I going to do about it? I can't really rely on the non-existent Blogger algorithm to carry my posts into the hearts and minds of its user base. What I'll be doing is twofold; first, I'm going to make an Otastorian account on Bluesky (mayhaps self-hosted? is Otastorian tech-savvy now??), and secondly, I'll be making a new Otastorian account on Twitter. It's probably incredibly stupid to publicly announce that I'm going to ban-evade on Twitter, and it's probably even more stupid to go back to Twitter to begin with (I didn't post about it much, but I HATE pretty much everything Musk and friends have done to the place). The reality is that as much as I like Bluesky, it just didn't have either the colleagues or the audience Twitter does. Maybe if all the fandom studies and anime history people were on Bluesky, I might feel kind of differently. And I hope that me being on there will inspire some people to make the jump. But for now, dual boxing social media is the most sensible approach.
3. The Blog is Changing From Here On Out
Onto matters with the actual blog, I've decided I'm going to make some pretty radical changes to its structure going forward. In the past, I've focused almost entirely on large scale reviews and writing projects. I still want to do those, but I feel like I'm insanely rusty. On one hand, I've barely written anything in the four years since the Di Gi Charat review. And on the other hand, I've barely watched any anime in the four years since the Di Gi Charat review. I want to get back in the groove before I re-dedicate my time and energy to the big project that is the Zeta Gundam review (which I guess I'll start over YET AGAIN). To that end, starting this next, I'm going to be working weekly (or bi-weekly if I'm really feeling myself) short form blog posts. Over the next few months I'll be catching up on the anime and tokusatsu I missed out on over the last few years. My weekly posts will be me discussing my progress and thoughts, as well as any random opinions I have on the movings and shakings of the anime fandom world. I also will be getting deep into my reading list for my upcoming bachelor's (and maybe master's) degree run, so I'll be incorporating those into the blog as well.
As for the big writing projects, I am once again re-adjusting my final posts on this site. The last update had a whole giant list of articles I was going to do, but in the end, I'm only doing two; the Zeta Gundam review and the ZZ Gundam review. I'll already have a bunch of other post because of my aforementioned changes, so all of other my full-length blog projects are being shelved until I move to the new site. My projection is that the final non-update post on the site, the ZZ Gundam review, will be up around the end of the year, and finally, after all this time, the move to the new blog will kick off at the beginning of 2027. So exciting!
There's a ton more that I could write about (for example, I want to talk about my revised purpose and goals for this blog), but I think for now that'll be everything. It honestly feels a little weird writing on here again; it's as if everything is exactly where I left it, which is not normal for social media these days. Unironically shout out to Google for at least leaving Blogger the same as I've always known it. Anyways, my goal is not go overboard for these first few weeks while I get into (or back into) the habits of watching anime, reading, and blogging. For those of you who've been here for a while, thanks for sticking with my on this long crazy journey; for those who are new here, I hope you enjoy reading all my wacky thoughts. Until next time, don't get into any fights.
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| A little teaser for the many-times-now mentioned new website! |
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