Mitcher Green

lately i've come to think a lot less about studios and more about the individual staff involved, since talent in the industry are usually freelance and do not stick strictly to one studio. that said, i think p.a. works is generally my favorite. they have a strong and consistent visual style that appeals to me, yet they are able to express the individual quirks of the different creative leads behind their shows. for example, charlotte and kamisama ni natta hi are written by maeda jun (the clannad guy) and they feel entirely different from nagi no asukara written by mari okada (has a lot of works, not sure what to list as an example) which is then still entirely different from shirobako whose main creative lead is probably the director mizushima tsutomu (girls und panzer). all 4 shows i just listed are by PA works, they're all pretty good-looking and smoothly animated, but they're vastly different from each other as creative works. not all of them are good (the 2 jun maeda shows i listed are kinda bad imo) but i'm able to identify the bad parts as coming from the writer and not the rest of the studio's creative staff. thats why i generally like the studio itself even if not all of their shows have been a hit for me.

i have just moved to a new place myself like a week ago, so i know that feel ? gl with the moving

so back when everyone was telling each other to bys it wasnt even possible in the firs tplace???

congrats

fly me to the moon has always been the subtitle of the manga though, way back since the very first chapter came out. you can see it in the chapter title page if you look it up. ok i apparently never noticed the subtitle is different. i guess thats more fair. i dont really think that kind of change is a bad thing though, and maybe there's copyright issues with using the phrase 'fly me to the moon'

plz add my signature to this petition

I honestly don't understand the restrictions here. Is this not the point of the question? You only have 3 games you can ever play, so which 3 can you get the most sustained enjoyment out of? Games that are heavily packed with content is supposed to be how you answer it, isn't it? And I'm assuming the first half of the restriction just means don't pick a multiplayer game. I don't even know if my 3 picks would be cheating in this thread or not but here I guess: 1. Terraria - Assuming I have access to mods, and even without, this game would last me forever. Helps me fulfill what little need I have to build stuff. Would be nice if I could multiplayer though but no big loss. 2. Sengoku Rance - For a porn RTS game this one is honestly just so fun. And there's so many routes and things to do and there's even a free-for-all mode. 3. i guess Yakuza 0 is pretty cool

i love that people are now portraying female MC(shield-chan) as a foul-mouthed scotswoman EY WAS HANGIN' YA SLAG its fucking great y'all best thing i saw since the trailer came out

this is by no means the only way to look at nationalism, but one way you could look at it is as a battle between two predominant schools: either nations are primordial (they exist before nationalism) or they are modern (they come after nationalism, which itself came after roughly the industrial revolution). within nationalists, they either argue that nations are inherent and primordial in humankind in some way, or that nations only become a necessity after societal transformations that came after the industrial revolution. they're two opposing schools but keep in mind they agree that nations really do exist. now: i'd recommend starting with anthony d. smith's nationalism: theory, ideology, history . anthony d. smith is a primordialist but he gives a decent overview into both fields. i havent read the whole book but a lot of it is really interesting and honestly not that hard to read. the point of this is to get a working definition of what nationalism even is then there's benedict anderson who's a modernist whose main idea was that nations are imagined communities. his book imagined communities is a pain to read cuz the language is complicated but skim through a chapter or two. i had to read him first actually and that main idea is the thing you need to sorta get an idea of. its sorta important cuz its not from d. smith's primordialist perspective. from there there's a guy called ozrikimli who wrote a book called theories of nationalism that goes over a bunch of nationalists, both primordial and modernist and otherwise, and what their theories mean. go over that and then see which guy in that you're interested in. this will give you a better overview of how other people have tried to define and discuss nationalism, and give you some names you can start pursuing from there. unfortumately a lot of this stuff is at least a bit eurocentric so it may not align with the reality you're familiar with in china but it should provide a foundation to start understanding not just what nationalism is but how people interpret it, which ideally helps you understand how to write that earlier scenario.

rather than whether they'd consider challenging their ideals by stepping outside their comfort zone, for something like nationalism (and a lot of beliefs and ideals in general) it often wont occur to you that its a way of thought has yet to be contested at all, it just seems so natural to feel that way. even just recognizing that you're in your comfort zone and that you can step outside of it is tremendously difficult. its close to being unconscious rlly. and thats what makes nationalism in particular a really difficult thing to grasp. having war as a threat to peoples' lives will definitely make some of them willing to surrender, but a threat to your life by itself doesnt necessarily mean its ideologically challenging you. for many, rather than considering whether they should abandon the nation they've been a part of to save themselves and possibly their loved ones, instead just accept that they're part of that nation and consider what might happen if that nation loses its autonomy, effectively that's the death of their nation. and for many, whether they're patriotic or not (also quite important, patriotism and nationalism are not synonyms, would be good to make that distinction in your story), the death of the nation they've lived in up to that point becomes the metaphorical death of who they are up to that point. if they dont see a viable future beyond that, then it'd feel like there's no real choice but to die, so they may as well go out in a blaze of glory. that would be another way to interpret the whole 'fighting to the death is glorious' spiel, in a way that's not reasonable but it's very humane i think. yes, a lot of public speeches and discourses make/manipulate people to feel that way for their country rather than that sort of feeling being something organic, but that rhetoric only works because it evokes within people unconscious feelings of nationalism that's already there in some form. the feeling itself is embedded and innate even if it's not natural. nationalism is not logical (at least imo), so you can't use logic to convince someone to believe or not believe in it. going back to the more general question of how to write people you dont agree with, all i can say is to learn about the subject as much as possible. i can only say this much because, going back to your example, i've taken a nationalism class recently and read some texts about it so even if i reject nationalism (both the one i'm born to and the general idea of nations), i understand a lot better why it exists. i dont understand nationalism completely but i do understand it rather than just knowing about it as i did previously. to make that more general that applies to most things i think. not to be rude but if you're struggling to write the other side convincingly, especially writing the other side trying not to be convinced convincingly then its possibly a sign there's not enough understanding on your side yet. at the very least i myself wouldnt try to write a nationalist character and try to tackle their beliefs myself, i'm not interested and i dont know enough to be able to tackle him convincingly.

before they are people with ideals and opinions, they are just people. the ideals and thoughts we all have, we currently keep them because they keep us comfortable in some way, and which ones we choose to keep depend on each of our circumstances. if our ideals are challenged, we hold on to them when the alternative doesnt offer us comfort, and we abandon them for new ones when holding on to them doesnt feel good anymore, again keeping in mind each of our circumstances. regardless of how different our ideals may be, that fundamental comfort, for the lack of a better word, is what keeps our thoughts the way they are. going to your nationalist example, ultimately they'd only appear as being bullheaded to people like you and i who either dislike nationalism or find no sense of belonging in such a thing. for those other characters though, those feelings are very real and comfortable and although not logical, they're supported by their past experiences and that's not something you can ever deny with just logic. if your story is focused on trying to logically dismantle the characters' sense of nationalism through dialogue and convincing that just isnt going to work imo

i guess i'll just throw a general rec for ryuuou no oshigoto/ryuo at work. its a shogi LN with lolis (got an anime, not very good quality but i liked it tbh) but hear me out first if you're not into that usually with this sort of thing its basically cute lolis hanging together with some kind of activity as the side dish (which is perfectly fine, i will not condemn that sort of thing ever) but ryuuou is the opposite. lolis and lolicon jokes are very much the side dish to the two volumes i read in english so far, and its honestly some rlly intense shogi. its a story about people not just being into a weird hobby, but trying to make their living off of it. its about a real life field of very passionate people who honestly just sit down and move pieces of wood on the board but it captures why shogi is so charming so well. it gets into its characters' heads, it shows why people want to win, why they want to keep living off shogi and what kind of pressures they face as a professional (aspiring or actual) in that field and god its so intense. i've only played casual shogi but i admire how much love this has for the game and the people playing it. and it still throws in dozes of fairly predictable romcom hijinks and loli jokes and i dont know, i like that

OH MY GOD NOUR