Mightyblue’s Corner

Those who are well versed in the lore of the anime fan may know what that acronym means, both in its original and extended contexts, but the for the rest of you, it may be helpful to read this. If you want those few minutes of your life back, or your innocence, well, I’d apologize but I’m pretty sure I’d be lying.
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Misery, even a diabolically laughing one, deserves company.
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TVTropes does a pretty good job explaining the etymology and the related history behind the concept, so I won’t go into it here, but since this column revolves around the seedier side of anime and the concept of moe, I wanted to expand on the prevalence and sheer weirdness of the concept.
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To wit: In my wanderings through the internet, I stumbled upon a discussion about whether garters qualified as Zettai Ryouiki material and the resultant implications thereof. Garters, for the males in the audience who probably don’t know, are little pieces of cloth that are tied to stockings and something else (usually a garter belt, nowadays) to keep the stockings from falling down. Elastic made them more or less redundant, but they’ve been resurrected in the halls of modern fashion, or so Wiki tells me.
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Anyway, the short of the discussion held that garters didn’t count on the grounds that they obstructed the “view”, and that it had to be socks and not stockings (with some exceptions, apparently based on how “hot” the girl wearing them is). The minority opinion held that garters enhanced the experience, and so more garters should be seen on more hot girls, which arguably none of the posters will ever see in real life. Sad that, but safer for the gene pool at any rate. This is of course ignoring the attending flaming, poo throwing and general assholery that tends to accompany any discussion on the Internet, save for those few places where the kind and sane gather with big sticks to fend off the flaming poo-ers.
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“Why am I telling you this?” You might cry, sensing some vague feeling of innocence lost and violated at this tawdry little bit of the black side of entertainment.
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To which I answer:
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1. Blogs are for blogging, like logs are for logging. Thus: I like to ramble.
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2. Misery loves company, especially the laughing kind [See Note Above]. Thus: I like company too, but Misery can be a bit of an ass sometimes.
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3. I love sharing sordid tales about my hobbies, because I find it darkly entertaining to mock the weirdos that comprise the large part of the fanbases. Thus: I am a snarky bastard.
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4. See #1, with special emphasis. Thus: I like to amble.