Fortress of Perpetual Midnight

As was the case with Spanish back when I thought I knew it, I'm planning also to publish official Japanese versions of my projects. (Of course, as I've noted here, my first one might be a bit heavy on the English even in the Japanese version.) I'm far from fluent, of course, but this way I can provide translations that are much truer to the author's intent than most. The expanded exposure this should provide would also give me a chance to come into contact with people who are fluent, which means I could have a chance to actually learn the language, and perhaps impose on someone to correct my work. (I think I'd have more trouble bothering to make the rest of the appropriate site bilingual to cater to these people.)

Another thing that I've pondered at times is that, since I'm going to have to learn to draw anyway, it would be really nifty if someday I could get one of my works published in my belovèd YuriHime S (not the main Comic YuriHime, as I don't imagine I'll ever manage to write works appropriately feminine or comedic for there—with Ms.? Natsuneko's work there, I might have hope, but it's nothing compared to Picard's, as I'll note later). If I did manage to achieve widespread popularity as noted above, they might let me do it cold turkey, but the more likely way is through the Ichijinsha Comic Taishō （「大正」ではなくて「大賞」） or other yomi-kiri (the comic equivalent of a pilot episode). The problem with that is that, as I've no doubt mentioned before, I don't think of many good one-shot ideas lately, as I'm so absorbed in crafting intricate webs of full-sized projects. (Even Project Cow Level, which was pre-planned to be a short, simple "practice" project, is expected to run to about one graphic novel's worth.)

And yet, oddly enough, I happened to think of an interesting one-shot idea yesterday. Although it relies on a lot of tropes, it has a major setting element that I haven't seen used for this before, and unlike some, the premise is distinctly yuri, not just a romance that happens to be between two ladies. (Oddly enough, the unusual setting for a yuri story may have caused me to have a dream last night about sleeping with a man (don't remember for sure). If so, at least I was the seme. . . .) Of course, as a short story, it doesn't have much to reveal without actually writing it, and I'd rather keep the good parts to myself just to avoid anyone else stealing them. (Yes, that's my delusions of grandeur talking again.)

If this somehow did come to pass, there's the problem that the format only allows 400 characters of commentary, much less than I'd normally use. I'd probably put most of it (and the official English translation) on the Web as a supplement to the published part, as Ms. Miyahara does. For the actual printed version, I'm thinking the essentials are along the lines of 「男で申し訳御座いません。いつか必ずレディーにもよろこんで頂けるまんがを描ける様になりますから、今は違った味でがまんして下さいませな。」 (although I haven't bothered to boot up Word to get a character count).

The "chigatta aji" bit overlaps with the question of how predisposed these Japanese folks will be to publishing stuff by some American git. I can't do much about that, but I might consider working in a more Japanese style than my own. For some reason, it seems to be coming out with a larger-than-usual proportion of pseudo-comical elements despite the fact that I don't have a sense of humor (perhaps to make up for the fact that romance is an alien concept to me), so it'll be an outlier in my portfolio in more ways than one (hey, more dovetailing with the post subject).

By the way, in the excessively megalomaniacal mōsō situation that I actually got to do a serial, Project AnthraXX seems at this point as if it would actually be palatable. Of course, it would be helluva Webcomic time in a quarterly mook. . . .

Who wins?

Notes: These were the most adversarial-looking images I found in appropriate resolutions. I chose to flip the former (forgetting that I'd left some text in) so they'd look a little more like they were facing off, in case the latter had asymmetrical tattoos. As with its predecessor, I hope the image itself doesn't take up much in the way of bandwidth.

For some time, I'd been planning on making a helluva tough fancomic (a one-shot along the lines of Darths & Droids) to hone my layout skillz, but it turned out that my image-editing skillz weren't up to the task (as you can see by the crudely pasted-in text in this one). The chief problems were appropriate panel spacing and word bubbles. I imagine both of these will be solved in comics I draw myself, the former because I'm planning on using graph paper, and the latter because I can draw them myself.

AZUMANGA is torrented. I'd download it myself while I had the chance, but I don't have enough disk space or a DVD-ROM burner. (There is, on the other hand, a DV-R, which we unsurprisingly never use.) Obviously, the category is incorrect, so it may not even be actual raws either, but whatever.

Fortunately, I managed to find my MARIO KARTridge. Unfortunately, I was munching on my old Skaven miniatures.

It's too bad I lost that Game Pak; it's pretty pointless, but can be entertaining (more so than METROID) for a moment every once in a while. I probably wouldn't have lost it if the purpose-made DS case had a place to put DS cartridges in it. . . .

When thinking about 4th Edition for a later post, I happened to run across this. When I found it, it was at 355 posts and counting, so I'm too lazy to read it all, but the first page linked this. DM has been linking this wiki quite a bit lately, but apparently he only uses reputable sections, because the first paragraph here makes me say "What the hell?" The talk page points out that defining this as an individual phenomenon is pretty arbitrary and that this is encouraged here, but the first sentence, as far as I can tell, completely fabricates a new definition for a Japanese word. . . .

Since it's difficult to predict whether or not I'll have a chance to use the computer on a Sunday, this post is post-dated. Please note that this may mess with the sequence of your friends page.

Anyway, this is a little something to which blitzcon linked me a while back.

They were going to visit the mystical hermit, who lived in the forest just beyond the chain-link fence at the edge of the abandoned playground. Fortunately, he was willing to meet them halfway, but he didn't look particularly mystical in the synthetic-material winter jacket. He also spotted me spying on them from above.

For some reason, when I fly, I can hover just fine, but when I move I have to swoop, like the annoying cape-flying in SUPER MARIO WORLD. Apparently that's the wrong kind, which explains why I haven't manifested dragon disciple powers (or even sorcery) so far.

I've mentioned before how on HGTV, they avoid talking about the relationships of two people of the same sex who aren't family but live together. Well, it's not much, but on an episode of CA$H CAB, they showed two ladies kissing on the mouth twice. (The episode synopsis is not helpful.)

By the way, I have no idea why DEADLIEST CATCH is supposedly "the most popular nonfiction show on cable." I already think no one's going to recognize the references to shows I actually do watch in my projects.

1. It's taking while for them to test all the auditions for the opening I mentioned before, but they say there were about 70 entries, so my chances are extremely slim considering I don't have any experience or qualifications.

2. As mentioned earlier, I talked with the job company to work on getting something tolerable. I was later told that I was not allowed to work with them after having gotten a job and had to re-apply at Voc Rehab. I'm not sure whether I want to bother with this, considering that my last two job coaches both seem to hate my guts.

3. Between the two of these, I'm thinking that it may just be worth it to try and get the packing/shipping job once they give me the bad news about the other one (or maybe before that, just to make sure). I think I'd have a reasonable shot at this one because my jobs at arifyn Books and the J&C actually give me related experience, and I should still be able to get a good recommendation, depending on how many more tantrums I throw by the time I get to that. In addition to the advantages I mentioned last time, I would have to get a home (in a more tolerable climate, from what I hear), and I'd be packing more of a variety of things that I find more interesting. The main problem, I think, is that I need to type up a real résumé, with which I was hoping to get help from the job people. My social worker suggested that I look on the Web for advice on how to do it, but I'm so lazy. . . .

I've decided to start my experiment with characters for Project AnthraXX, since I removed them earlier. (I took down a page from Homuncupunk as well, but as it stands at the moment, AnthraXX has actually become slightly more publishable, since it has something vaguely resembling a story and themes to go with the sex and weirdness.) This may be a bit of a waste of time if I manage to later get other people to do it for me, but it's pretty easy to edit, so this is a reasonably good way to keep notes for my own use as well. It would be even peachier if I could figure out how to make a template for a little info box like they use on other wikis.

After my many troubles with Yahoo!® Groups and Google™ Docs, it occurred to me that a wiki might help. I'll be trying it out and moving a varying amount of stuff there depending on how much I like it; your comments, requests, and suggestions are welcome.

I've a lot of short little posts to type, yet I don't even get around to them:

*The primaries (running out of time, dammit!)
*A couple of movies I watched lately
*Holidays
*News items
*Vocab

I'm not sure about where to draw the line on how much to put in a post (particularly with the kansō): enough to take a significant chunk out of my backlog, or little enough that I actually type them and get them out of the way? (Although I've been thinking about this ever since I started getting swamped, it actually came to mind now because I found that PENGUIN GIRL FOUЯTEEN had been animated when I wasn't looking and it's in 11-minute episodes, so I may actually manage to watch it, unlike the last half-dozen series I downloaded.) Either way, I doubt I'll ever get caught up with all of it. Maybe I should work more on prioritizing or something.

I'm far too lazy to correct the titles, particularly considering I don't even recognize half of them.

Rules:

What we have below are the top 106 books most often marked as "unread*" by LibraryThing’s users--as in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded.

- bold the ones you've read,
- underline the ones you read for classes (at least once),
- italicize the ones you started but didn't finish,
- * if it's actually on your bookcase and you haven't read it.
- + for the ones that I really want to read but haven't gotten to yet

( As one might expect, the list is about 106 lines long. )

As you can see from the nonexistent Venn diagram, I don't do my homework—and I don't read prose given a choice. The Hobbit just barely made the cut; I imagine it'll fall off the list once the blockbuster comes out, too.