I have to start by saying this was a huge week for me. I finished NaNoWriMo, my most ambitious goal of the year, and went immediately into cramming for the JLPT N4 exam, which I take on Sunday. Needless to say, I haven’t been working on collecting good links as often.

But there is one link I wanted to highlight and that’s Battle For the Net, a website that encourages you to email and call Congress about your support for net neutrality. I have also used 5 Calls to do this—their scripts eliminate my phone anxiety!

If net neutrality goes away, so will Otaku Journalist, Gunpla 101, and Anime Origin Stories. I can’t afford to fork over big bucks to Verizon or Comcast in order to ensure readers still have a high-speed connection to view my blogs. Losing net neutrality harms me directly, and if you like reading what I post here, it’ll hurt you, too.

One more note: the FCC is ignoring scripted emails, saying that they are probably spam or fake. So you need to either write a unique message instead of Battle For the Net’s default one, or just be uncomfortable for a couple of minutes and make a call.

Thanks for your time. Now, onto some links!

• Ursula LeGuin on science fiction and fantasy: “you can a mash lot of orcs and unicorns and intergalactic wars together without actually imagining anything.”
• This is how anime breaks. Sakugabooru writes a thorough autopsy of Dynamic Chord that answers the question, “What went wrong here?”
• Not Just A Man’s Job: How war involves (and hurts) everybody in Gundam 0080. Proud to have edited Zeldaru’s great piece on War in the Pocket for Anime Feminist.
• Comrades Against Suicide is Tony of Manga Therapy’s new project on creating an oral history of mental health stories in anime fandom. You can share your story now.
• Kixkillradio creates incredible dioramas for your Nendoroids to live in. Her latest project recreates Umaru’s apartment in miniature.
• Gundam Pans, Tom’s new Tumblr, stitches together hand-drawn scenes from the original Mobile Suit Gundam.
• Got 36 hours in Osaka? Here are some suggestions for how to spend them. HT Zoe.

Screenshot via Gundam Pans.