This picture is here for a reason.
The Aniblog Tourney has me looking at a whole lot more blogs than I normally do, and as I check out one after the other, I’ve noticed a recurring blogging style that many sites follow, and I would like to figure out where it came from.
I also have no recollection where this image is from.
The style is defined by its frequent back-and-forth switches between between text and anime-related images. Sometimes it involves screenshots, but more often the pictures are high-resolution fanart with some kind of humorous caption underneath. At their most extreme, images and text will alternate at a frequency of one image per paragraph.
Like so.
Now it’s easy to point fingers at “episodic blogs,” but that’s a little different from what I’m talking about, as a glut of screenshots is practically par for the course for an episode review. Also, many times they’re placed at the beginning, with a summary and then opinions following. This 1:1 paragraph to text ratio seems far more common with editorial-style anime blogs.
So I’d like to know, where did this style come from? Using the Aniblog Tourney itself, I checked out the highest-seeded blogs in the tournament to see if it was their far-reaching influence which provided younger bloggers with a stylistic framework, but in all of the cases the connection would be tenuous at best.
I might be thinking about this too hard. Maybe the desire to alternate paragraphs with images at a constant rate goes beyond simply anime blogging to the fact that there exists a space between every paragraph, literary voids which beckon to gain prominence by having art emerge from them. Or maybe it’s that people take screenshots and download fanart in batches first, and then look for ways to apply all of the images to an existing post. I’ve felt that desire myself, as it becomes hard to decide which images to cut from a post, a decision almost as difficult as having to cut out extraneous paragraphs that kill the flow of a post.
Speaking of which, the reason why I don’t really throw in a large amount of images into my posts is because an excess of images has the potential to be detrimental to the writing itself, interrupting the flow of a post as much as a superfluous paragraph, if not moreso. Not to say that it’s impossible to write well with constantly alternating paragraphs and images, but you risk cutting off your writing at the knees just as it’s starting to go into a full sprint.
So if you’re a fan of the aforementioned style of blog-posting, tell me, where did you find your inspiration, if any at all? If you really enjoy those types of posts, what in particular do you like about them?
OGIUE MANIAX 
One of the first anime blogs I ever read was T.H.A.T. — specifically Crusader’s coverage of Macross Frontier. My earlier posts reflected the style specifically by trying to say something smart to caption images.
However that kind of post structure became unreadable for me for the reasons you stated. And while I do enjoy looking at a blog post for its selection of images, I don’t like a 1:1 ratio. I catch myself doing a 1:2 (images to paragraphs — no captions).
Furthermore, images directly function to illustrate a point. My own work suffers when the image I select is tangential to the idea of the nearest paragraphs. I notice that many blogs use captioned images as separate/independent thoughts. It’s as if they were a paragraph on their own or,
…there are two narrative threads on the post, one for text and one for images and captions. Most of the time I don’t feel like these two don’t work together.
I won’t say that the style itself is wrong, only that I haven’t seen an execution of it that makes the post a smooth read.
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It comes from the same place all the “nerd humor” sites get their identical voice from: the desire to be like Seanbaby. A noble goal, yes, but nigh-unattainable such that resulting failures are rendered absolutely horrendous.
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I think it’s used everywhere to break up large pieces of text. I see it on blogs of all kinds — unrelated images breaking up the the otherwise obscenely long blocks of text.
Sub headings and images break up the text and make it approachable.
Example that immediately came to mind: doshdosh always does the same thing: http://www.doshdosh.com/twitter-marketing-mass-follow-users/
and the thought of that post without images is slightly frightening.
Who decided to start posting unrelated images? I have no idea.
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When I started blogging, the sites I read always had an image at the top of a post and not usually during I copied this style, because I thought it was just customary. Up until recently, I always started a post off with an image because I cut my posts off after the first paragraph on the front page of my blog, so I always thought it would be less pretty if there wasn’t an image there before the break.
I started putting images in my posts when I started reading more aniblogs and saw that others did it (though I never reached such an extreme level as what you mention, except when it helps to illustrate my points in the post and allow me to cut down on word count). I just figured that people had too short of attention spans to read a blog without images.
This seems to be true. When I was introducing this one guy to anime blogs, I showed him your blog along with some others, and he told me he had a hard time reading your posts because they ‘felt too long’. I told him that my posts were usually around 1000 words, and that your posts were usually under 500 or so, and he told me that mine felt shorter because I used images whereas yours were ‘bricks of nonstop text.’
Lately I’ve been trying to be more conscious of the images in my post, using more than I usually would or less than I usually would where necessary, and I’ve been trying not to start off most of my posts with an image because it apparently gets on some peoples’ nerves as well. Therefor I started putting the first image under the first paragraph or two and breaking the page there.
You can’t please everyone, though.
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@ Yuji:
>I think it’s used everywhere to break up large pieces of text. I see it on blogs of all kinds — unrelated images breaking up the the otherwise obscenely long blocks of text.
My reading of that is, “It’s a way of catering to the illiterate teenagers these days who aren’t used to just reading bloody books.”
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I always put pictures at the top of my posts (makes the homepage of the blog look nice) but I only add images within the post once in a while if I feel it’s relevant. It does help break up text-heavy posts that may appear tl;dr without the pictures. But I try not to use random pictures within the post, only ones that pertain to what I’m talking about.
I think the reason people do it, besides my reason for breaking up an exasperating amount of text, is that it gives them a way to showcase images they like at the same time (without making a separate post just for images I guess).
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I don’t claim to have invented or popularized the style, but I did deliberately adopt the 1:1 ratio (or at least tried to stay close to it) as far back as 2003 (see http://karmaburn.com/cardcaptor_sakura.php for example). Captions, I’ve had since 2002.
The large-image part was also a deliberate attempt to differentiate myself from the cluster-of-tiny-screenshots methods popularized by JASCII and Momotato, a style that would dominate anime blogging for something like seven years. In fact, at some point in 2005 I decided to fix all my screenshots at 315 pixels tall. I.e., constant height instead of constant width. This was because widescreen shows were more prevalent and I wanted their images to be larger–not smaller–than those from 4:3 shows.
Moreover, I’ve also tried to stick to a four-paragraph limit as anime blogs grew more popular (competition for readers’ time) and as I got busier (competing for my own time). This one is more of a guideline than a hard-and-fast rule.
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Interesting observation. I think it’s possible to have too many images, especially if they aren’t related to the text. But I think it’s even more possible to have too much wall o’ text.
The growth of Twitter is a good indication of what’s natural for Net communication, as we all become neuron bundles in a single planetary nervous system.
My favorite seiyuu blog is Hirano Aya’s, and she has one photo and a related paragraph or two of text in each post — except in unusual circumstances. That kind of presentation seems to me to work best on the Web: a dish at a time, rather than a whole meal.
Of course, I myself am far too long-winded for that.
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I use them as text breakers, and unless the topic doesn’t really focus on direct anime-related manners (as in talking about a show or a anime-related work compared to something like what’s going on in my life), they are usually related to the post at hand. Most of the time they aren’t tangential to me, but I always need to remind myself that I don’t see things the same way that others do.
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You also have to look at the size of the paragraphs, I guess. if it’s a 1:1 ratio but the paragraphs are suitably long then it’s still balanced.
I find that my own wall-of-texts are often unreadable to myself. if i want to read up on an old post in my blog I’ll sometimes print it out…otherwise it’s too painful. Not to mention black-background blogs are harder to read too.
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For me, I just put pictures wherever I think they’d fit.
Some of my posts have a 1:1 ratio (more because I have nothing much to say and need to make my posts seem as long), and some of my posts have a 1 picture : rest of post ratio because I either have content or there’s not even enough content to make a 1:1 ratio.
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I wonder how many uses it like, an image gallery.
I admit, half the time that’s the reason why there are even any pictures on my blog posts.
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I’m pretty sure I remember Jason Miao doing the 1:1 or 2:1 thing way back in like 2004 or so. Wouldn’t be surprised if it flowed from there.
I usually see the paragraph>picture>more as the standard in blogging in general, though.
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I would rather have a wall of text with accompanying images at the bottom of the post, but whenever I try that my blogging comrade Lwelyk tells me it looks stupid. Bah.
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I always interpreted high image ratios as either an attempt at artistic, magazine-like layout, or if the text is actually about the images (e.g. screenshots) then they’re there to give the blogger something to write about. It often seems like a blogger isn’t wordy enough to write whole essays without visual aides. That isn’t meant to knock the practice, blogging can be about communicating, not only prose.
Most probably it’s a mingling of the two factors.
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Oh, Read Or Die.
Nice to see not a whole long hate against episodic thing. I don’t really do the whole summery thing, I just enjoy talking about the episode itself. I’ve never really liked it, I screenshot moments I honestly enjoyed in the episode, and want to comment on. I don’t think about it beyond that.
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Also, the idea, as I try to have the screenshot link to the paragraph, is in my mind, new screenshot means new topic.
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I’ve also wondered how images function/are supposed to function within anime blog posts! I always struggle to find a balance between images and text that works for me, and I’m never sure if it works for anyone else.
I find that the “episode synopsis with a ton of screencaps” format annoys me beyond belief. So I don’t read those posts. Similarly, I can’t stand posts that are mainly images with no connecting thread or analysis or commentary to bind them together.
My posts tend to fall into a couple of categories and I use images accordingly. When I write compare/contrast posts, I use the images to illustrate my points and break the post into sections. Similarly, if I’m analyzing a theme or character, I provide images to illustrate my point. But if it’s just a general post, I just stick an image up as a sort of header/banner to show what the post will be about.
I’m often torn between wanting to break up large paragraphs of text, knowing that people won’t read much more than a couple of lines at a time, and wanting to keep the coherence of what I’m writing. I know that writing for the web means incorporating design elements into your text, but I think I fail at that :)
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I’m a week late to this conversation. Sorry!
Some research indicates that the attention readers might pay to a physical text just isn’t present on the same level when reading on the computer. And that makes sense. It’s much too tempting to multitask, to move on to something else or simply scroll through the bigger blocks of text, especially on the Internet.
So I use images to attempt to counteract that effect, first by introducing a thematically related visual break to refresh the eyes, and secondly by using captions to bring up points that I want to say, but which don’t fit into the main post. Images are also a surprisingly effective substitute for verbal segues into new topics.
At the best of times, I feel that this makes my posts into total products of image and text, engaging the senses in a way more suited for our unique medium. At the worst of times… Well, I just want something pretty to look at between my own dribble. ;)
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