When I was done with my 12 Days last year, I asked the multi-million dollar question “Will I stop?” Or will I continue?” And I’ll be blunt — I’m still not sure.

I’ve mulled over it for quite a while and one thing’s for certain, I will keep this blog open just in case I got something I want to get off my chest. And I mean, if I truly, truly got something really special I want to say, otherwise, this blog will be on an indefinite hiatus at the moment. Having a personal platform to share my opinions is great, and I seriously don’t think I will be able to establish a new personal platform with the same success I had for Deluscar.

For the time and energy that I get to spare off on blogging, I’m going to use them to think about my life, because… let’s face it, my life’s not getting any better, and even now I still feel my future is as bleak as a black hole.

If you’re a follower of my blog, once again, I would like to thank you for all of your support for Deluscar, and I apologize for my blatant lack of effort and passion over the years. Just know that even if I’m not around here that much anymore, it’s not like I have disappeared into an isekai or anything (I wish though, lol). If you want to talk, I’m still busy browsing hentai artworks on twitter so I will definitely see your tweets there if you tag me. If not, the good ol’ email works too.

In any case, happy new year guys, I’ll see you soon.

Some things I want to say before I end this post:
1. Since 2012, I made a special list where I update it yearly with my Best Girl of choice for that particular year of anime. But as of now, I don’t think I will be updating it anymore, as I want to drop off everything that would force me to keep coming back. It will also give me the freedom of watching newer/backlog shows at my own leisure, and such freedom is godsend at this stage of my life.

2. On the subject of not wanting to have anything to chain me back to my own blog, I also won’t be posting any new year posts/updates/milestones/anniversaries. This new year post will be my last one.

3. Guest posts are still welcomed, always and forever more, if anyone in this wide, vast, empty galaxy is even interested (lol).

10 years.

I will be frank, I’m extremely weak-willed, and even when I do something, I usually quit with the speed of light. However, even if it’s just a simple hobby for me, even if I wasn’t able to earn any money from it, I think I can at least feel proud over this — over the fact that I have stuck on something for as lengthy as a decade. And ignoring all the stats; all the views, all the comments, all the followers — to a weak-willed me, that is one hell of an achievement.

You might have realized by now that I have this weird obsession with 5 (or multiples of 5s) and the reason why this 12 Days of Deluscar was even a thing was because my blog reached 10 years and I wanted to do something special for it. I always have this weird feeling of conclusion whenever something reaches a multiple of 5s, and even more so when it’s in the 10s. So yes, it feels even more conclusive now that I’ve reached 10 years as opposed to 5 years.

Indeed, I feel oddly at peace now that I got 10 years under my belt. The last quarter of my 10 years of blogging where I’m constantly writing the shittiest fillers possible trying to drag this blog’s sorry ass to my 10 year goal. All that fight, all that battles have finally come to a stop now.

That begets the question though, will I quit blogging now? Maybe, or maybe not. I’m still not sure to be honest, and right now I’m still relishing the fact that I’ve finally achieved my latest (and probably final) major goal of Deluscar. I’m sure in a few days, the dust and the cobwebs will clear, albeit slightly, and I can perhaps give a clearer answer by then.

For now though, I want to once again express my gratitude to everyone else who’s been supporting my blog. It hasn’t exactly been smooth sailing, and there’ve been too many bumps on the road; but your presence on my blog is a constant moral support, and is one significant reason why I’ve stuck with this as long as I had. This will (possibly) be my last “thank you” post so I can only pray my gratitude could get across.

In other, more positive news, it’s Christmas! I hope everyone had a very merry Christmas. I’m still relishing my decade-long journey and the more I write this post, the harder it is for me to find the words — so I’ll just stop here, and hopefully come up with an official announcement on where Deluscar will go from here soon.

I made a lot of pages, for some reason, some of them hidden within sub-pages and sub-pages people may not know they even exist. For this post, I’m just going to link some prominent ones that some of you may not know about.

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A Call for Help – Guest Posts for Deluscar
I’m going to start with this (lol). Guest posts are always, and forever welcomed. If you’re interested, feel free to send me a draft via mail. I mostly prefer editorials, but we can work out the details otherwise. Check out the page for more info.
 

Carnivals
Carnivals/projects are also always open, if you don’t have a blog or other platforms to host, feel free to send it to me and I will host it on my blog.
 

My Rating System
Here’s a page where I describe how I usually rate the titles I review. The system may not necessarily be for everyone, but it does work for me. I also linked a series of posts there for more insights to my review.
 

Guest Posts and Collaborations
This is a page where I compiled all the guest posts I wrote for other people (and vice versa) and other collaborations.
 

Awards, Chains and Carnivals
Another compilation page where I compiled all award posts I’ve written in the past, and additionally, some chain posts and anime carnivals/projects for other people I’ve participated in.

Mascots
The main page for my blog mascots, also have the links for relevant sub-pages where I wrote all the character info and more of their illustrations.

Here’s a fun post — I’m going to put here a list of trivia you may not know about my blog.

1. I owned multiple blogs

Because I can barely even keep Deluscar active, it’s easy to forget I actually own multiple blogs sometimes, and as you might have expected, all of them are deadmen wonderland. GraphicaKai was where I posted about my (shitty) GFX, mostly signatures. You may remember I used to be pretty active in anime forums, and forum signatures were huge back in the day. Anyway, next, The Art of Kaijutsu is where I wrote about martial arts, MMA and wrestling, few of my non-anime hobbies. I also have another blog where I originally wanted to write and post stories. Obviously didn’t pan out well, and after writing a rather embarrassing hentai scene, I have since ditched the blog and pretend it never existed. Lastly, I have a private blog where I only use it to test themes, format, looks, codes and various stuffs before applying them properly on my main blog.
 

2. My reasoning behind the name “Deluscar”

I shit on my own blog name throughout this 12 Days, but there’s actually a reasoning behind this seemingly random amalgamation of letters. As you know, I used to be pretty active in various anime forums — and that means having various names. From the right, “Scar” is from “Scarlet”, “Lu” is from “LunaWard” and “De” is from “DivinusVento” (changed “Di” to “De” to make the whole thing looks/sounds a little bit better) — all 3 are few among many names I used in various sites and forums. My mascot’s surname, “Kougetsu” (Crimson Moon), is also a play on both the words “Luna” (moon) and Scarlet (red).
 

3. More Mascots?

If there’s something I have an abundance of, it’s character ideas. I got a whole bunch of original characters in my head, but two of them I really wanted to commission were Li and Haruka. Well the names mean nothing now since I don’t think I will ever be able to get them done. Commissioning is tough and especially in my later life where financial issues kept creeping into every corner of my life, I just had to stop commissioning altogether. So yeah, I might as well reveal about them here and now. Haruka’s setting is that she is the president of the jazz music club in school and is the one who got Rin into jazz music. Li’s story is more aligned with Kyouko’s world than the others — a triad boss operating in Japan whom Kyouko often fought against. Godamnit, someone help me turn these into a story.
 

4. Typos I never realized I made

English’s not my first language. And while I know my writing can’t be compared to the lot of you, English is still a language I’m the most confident with as far as written languages go. Regardless, that still doesn’t stop me from making some dumb typos I thought was correct all this time. I mistyped “of course” as “of cause” for months (fuck, maybe even years) and didn’t know why I thought was correct until someone told me about it. Hell, because I was using the wrong spelling for so long, I bet you can google “deluscar of cause”, and find some of the posts I have yet to edit. I had also been misusing “altitude” as a word to describe a character’s feeling when it really should have been “attitude”. Engishishard.
 

5. Bonded over visual novels

For the most part, I’m quiet both in life and on the internet. You may not realize that since I can hide my quiet and reserved nature through the magic of words. And because of that, it’s easier to interact on the internet. I have been acquainted with a few people in the internet and over the years, have talk to them so much that I consider them very, very good friends of mine. No idea how they see me though, but I digress. One of them was someone I bonded over visual novels. This unique form of media was still new to him at the time, and he asked me about my recommendations. He then played a few of them, we talked about them further, and before I knew it, he ended up becoming one of my few very close friends on the internet. Hell, our blog comments are just the tip of an iceberg, and I still remember the day we had our lengthy conversations on facebook (something I no longer use, and obviously my account was closed down), e-mail and so on. So yes, this is a rather embarrassing, but uplifting story about how two guys bonded over porn games. (Jokes on us we still haven’t meet in real life though, oh and if you’re seeing this post — you know who you are, I love you bud)
 

6. Imperfections

This may not sound like much right now, but I’m new to blogging, and even now, I still feel like I’m learning new things. To put things into perspective — for the longest time ever, I didn’t know you can make your post function as one of your site pages as well. Hence why you sometimes weirdly see the same list (like my “Top Chinese Anime Characters”, for example) written twice in both a post and a page. (This also might be a good time to tell you guys to focus on the page version instead, since the page version is the one I frequently update). Also, while my blog theme has all image captions in cap locks by default, it took me almost 5 years (of procrastination) to finally figure out how to manually set them to lowercase with my legendary web design skills. There are a lot of things I never realize you can do until I’m already considered an “old man” by aniblogging standards. I mostly never bothered to edit my old stuff again, because come on, it’s like years of content. So sometimes, you might spot some of these “imperfections” on my blog.

You know what I’m most proud of over my blogging achievements? No, not the fact that I have written some lengthy articles, not the fact that I have been able to keep this blog active for so long, and not the fact that I have (hopefully) build up a solid presence in the aniblogging world. It’s the fact that I have blog mascots.

Yes, mascots.

It’s fun to personalize your own personal space and I have always wanted to design my own original characters for the longest time ever. The ideas were in my head, faintly, but I just can’t draw for life. I always thought having mascots for my blog was just another one of my many pipe dreams.

One of my aniblogging friends though, got me into commissioning artworks. I learned how it all works when I went through the process with him to commission my first artwork ever. And since then, having original characters as mascots representing my blog is one of the few things I’m glad I could achieve for Deluscar.

I’m not gonna lie though. Commissioning isn’t easy — time and monetary-wise, and at some point, I reached a point where I just couldn’t continue anymore. But that’s exactly why I treasure the very few commissioned pieces I have so much. They are my blood, sweat and tears (…and money). My mascots are my crowning achievement.

And obviously, I have never regretted the fact that I have poured so much time, effort and money (hell, I bet the artists were having even more difficult times than me trying to satisfy my fussy needs). I’ve said it before, but mascots are great — they give your blog a sense of uniqueness and identity no other blogs will be able to replicate.

That’s exactly why designing original characters for mascots is something I would love more bloggers to try to do. Understandably, it isn’t easy nor cheap, but mascots help personalize your blog. They give your blog a more distinctive feel and personality, in a different way than buying your domain name could.

Outside of blogging, commissioning artworks is just fun especially if you have a lot of original characters in your head, but just don’t have the artistic talent to draw them — like me. I understand why commissioning isn’t something a lot of people sought, but I’m always willing to spread the love of commissioning artworks.

If anyone needs help where to start or want to know which artist I recommend or whatever, I’m here if you need to talk.

Notes:
1. If you’re truly interested, I do have a guide of sort to commissioning that I have written before.
2. As my (possibly) last ever commission-related post, it’s time for some shameless plugs, I have profile pages for all 3 of my mascots where you can see most of the illustrations I have commissioned. But you can also check out my Deviantart.