Bobduh

I'd like to cheat and just design a Speedwagon toolkit, but there's already an actual JoJo fighting game, so I guess that's out.

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Unfortunately, real life me is a lot less exciting than Speedwagon me - I mainly just sit at my computer and write a whole bunch of words. I'm a pretty skinny dude, so I guess I wouldn't be a tank-style character - probably midrange, trying to keep opponents away with long-range kicks and positional projectiles. Likely the equivalent of something like a fencing character - fragile, but precise, and with a lot of options at a very specific range. Maybe also some kind of charging mechanic if I'm allowed to just type away without interruption at a distance, along with weak, randomized projectile "summons" of either kitty or dawg (a very important part of my aesthetic).

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I'm bad with confrontation, so if any characters got close to me, you'd probably just have to resort to trying to mash them with my keyboard. But if I get into a top comment combo, I can keep an opponent under lock pretty well. If this is a game with assist characters, you'd have to choose between benevolent Madoka (better for letting me charge up writing powers at range) or a rushdown shittweeter (better for hitting people with my keyboard). I'm guessing both my taunt and my victory animation would involve taking a nap on my couch.

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I would not make a particularly intimidating fighting game character.

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It's all relative, of course. Relative to most other modern countries, America is a fiercely conservative place in a lot of ways - our policies on healthcare, guns, church and state, women's rights, criminal justice, etc all lag far behind most modern countries. Our "left-wing" party essentially falls in the center-right of what most other countries would consider their political spread, while our "traditional conservative" party would be the very hard right. But our politics have been dragged even further to the right by the dramatic polarization and radicalization of American conservatives (like with the Tea Party, etc), meaning our current "right wing" exists basically off the map of all other countries, somewhere out in a place where government programs are inherently bad, immigrants are inherently evil, and dark forces lurk around every corner.

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If you haven't, you might want to check out one of our recent Republican debates - they're essentially a bizarre case study in how basically any degree of political radicalization can become a "new normal."

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[continued] time round, so I was wondering as to how your perspective has changed since then.

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I'm enjoying it! It's light and breezy, the characters have a strong internal dynamic (basically any pair of them will have a very different style of interaction than any other pair), and it sticks to its strengths. The jokes can get repetitive at times, but I often feel like they're more about establishing a warm tone than being laugh-out-loud funny, and there are enough genuinely endearing moments to keep it satisfying. There's stuff I dislike (like a lot of Sawako's material), but overall I'm having a good time.

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As for how my perspective has changed, WELL. I mean, I've basically (hopefully?) become a way more mature media consumer and person than the first time I watched K-On!, in a variety of ways. First, like many fans, I used to have a kind of selfish "zero sum game" attitude about what I was watching. "Why are these good creators working on this thing that isn't exactly what I like, when instead they could be making something that is perfect for me?!" I didn't frame it in those words, obviously - like most pretentious young people, I equated my preferences with some kind of aesthetic "good." But art doesn't work that way, and creators aren't your slaves, and everyone deserves to have media they love created with real craft and attention.

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On top of that, K-On! fit nicely into that whole "moe death of anime" narrative that was popular for a while there. "Is this what anime has become, empty nonsense blah blah blah" etc. But there's always going to be popular trends that you have problems or don't personally engage with, and these will shift, and that's just something you learn to roll with eventually. The new "death of anime" is power fantasy light novel adaptations, but they're not going to kill anime any more than moe did - the only actual threats to anime are things like the current overproduction bubble, or the awful wage issues faced by its overworked creators. Getting mad about popular trends is silly and self-centered, and it's something you either grow out of or become one of those people still mad all anime isn't exactly like Patlabor.

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So I've hopefully ditched a lot of the negative elements of those two attitudes while keeping all the fun parts of being a pretentious windbag, and my appreciation for a wide variety of genres and styles has increased substantially, and that all basically puts me where I am now, having a perfectly fine experience with fuwa fuwa time.

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I'm really not a worldbuilding-for-its-own-sake person in general - like, there are whole swathes of fantasy literature I'll never get into because they just feel like vehicles for maps and magical programming systems, and I found the Silmarillion one of the most tedious reads I've ever forced myself through.

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But that said, I think worldbuilding can be compelling to me if it's integrated with not just themes or characters (like the way it is in, say, Shinsekai Yori), but also with the fundamentals of the narrative (say Madoka), the dramatic highlights (Hunter x Hunter's rules-based battles), or the overall tone (Dark Souls). But however it's used, I generally want worldbuilding to have more of a reason to exist than just being blocks of text - worldbuilding that's just stats and minutia feels like narrative-killing fanservice to me.

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