Fortress of Perpetual Midnight

いちおう書いておきますが、このブログは英語で書いています。英語の分からん読者がきたい出来ん為、こちら以外は日本語をほとんど入れていません。それでも、日本語のコメントはかんげいします。

It's that time of the season again. Anyone who wants something from amazon that can be shipped overseas (e.g. not DVDs, console games, or used) should speak now or forever hold her peace.

I decided to risk taking a shower while Mother was out.

As you may have noticed, I didn't catch up any on journaling. This is because I was too busy wading through the Penny and Aggie archives (thanks to Ms.? kyanited). It's not enough yuri that I'd buy it, but most of it is free, they don't try to be Japanese (much), and they have an RSS feed, so I may as well follow it. Still, I think I see more clearly why I had so much trouble watching the L word: because it deals with real-life issues and hatreds. I can deal with crime shows and action movies because they're so alien to anything I've ever encountered. (Of course, I've never had a confirmed sighting of a non-straight lady, either, but prejudices are pretty similar regardless of which minority they cover.) I'm thinking maybe I should publish all my stories set on "Earth" mainly in Japan, just to reduce the accusations of dealing with social issues.

It's funny what a search for "song stuck in head" can turn up. Now I have a name (and several others) for it. However, the article doesn't go into much detail. I was in particular looking to see whether or not there was anyone else who gets it 24/7, as I've never heard as much. It was also already well known throughout the world that I'm (at least) borderline OCD, and I don't know if an annoyance is worth medicating.

Also, when I was looking up the sex of the author, I found what I needed to fix the Music: line.

What do the main I-, the main US, and the main SR in the West Lafayette area have in common?

Apparently I am scientifically recognized as being a zero.

As opposed to the research described in my previous post, I figured that for "Final Exam," I could find a fair amount of stuff on the Website. As it turns out, there's hardly any background text on the pages. But what really struck me is that you can download any of the current books for free. Although the information won't be as accurate, this would prove an extremely useful resource for someone who doesn't already bootleg them.

Also, I'm amused by the fact that this commercial site is chummy and informal, addressing the customer as "kimi." As he'd most likely be a dude, I don't find this particularly offensive （笑）.

Here are a couple of issues that are crimping my style [hindering my acquisition of Japanese media]:

—Since Tōkyō Toshokan and its RSS feeds seem to have suddenly ceased to exist, I have no way of watching what raws are available in a timely manner. This would be significantly more distressing if I hadn't already had to give up watching full-sized series due to my lack of disk space.

—My next quarter's order is still a couple of months off, but this time, there are some other circumstances that will take some consideration. As noted before, "Mandalorian with a Mission" (see here) is second on my short list, and to script the Japanese dialog, I'm going to want some STAR WARS comics for reference. (There are some dōjin-shi listed at jpqueen, but they're unofficial and mostly 801, and I can't find their request form anymore.) As they're all at least 10 years old, they're not available from amazon itself, so that means buying from users. Although cheap, these are generally not shipped overseas, which means using POSTTY or testing out one of the other similar services I've found. The former gets me knowledge of how it works and small customer loyalty discounts, but I also know how it doesn't work. The significant point here is that they charge per package they receive and allow only three per order. Even if I could figure out how to find multiple items from the same buyer (which I once did for arifyn, but now can't figure out how to effect even in the U.S.), I don't know whether they would be shipped together. I suppose all that this means is that it would be expensive, really. . . .

Speaking of the first two on the list, I just realized that some Twi'leks have lumps on their foreheads just like ogres. Of course, our future-Mandalorian protagonist won't, because that just isn't cute. . . .

After another tour, my brother and I set out back to our respective lodgings. As he had gotten very little sleep, I drove part of the segment with both of us. He mentioned that I should try to prevent other drivers from cutting in front of us and merging at the last moment, which seemed at odds with what he said earlier. From Bloomington, I took the freeway. It turned out to be much faster than the direct route, which stands to reason, as it was only about 50 miles longer. Still, as we weren't allowed to leave until after noon, I was unable to return in time to visit the store, get a pizza safely, or mow the lawn.

As an overall review of the trip, it was helpful to have someone with whom I could converse freely, and I somehow even managed to avoid any major fights with our father (although there were several between him and his daughter). There was just one instance where he said it was not a good idea to suggest prescription drugs just because my brother is so insomniac that he can't sleep 10 feet away from the window if there are birds outside.

I managed to get up early enough to leave in the early afternoon. Google Maps suggested a direct route, but Mother suggested a longer one using freeways. I decided to try the former on the way down and the latter on the way back. Navigating was particularly difficult for someone who has only once been allowed to travel outside of town in the last nine years. (Mother did give me permission to do a bit of practice before that time, but it didn't fit my schedule.)

On the leg of the trip with my brother, talking about D&D got sidetracked into my social problems. He gave me a lot of advice, of which the gist seemed to be that people will do horrible things all the time, so I just have to put up with it and be friends with them. It's good to have someone with whom I can talk about these things (as I don't have any friends, and I can't talk with the people at work or gaming), but I think the fact that he doesn't know me is a handicap. He probably hasn't heard about my major psychoses, and he seems to think that I'm able to function like a human being.

When I asked whether he keeps his A/C set on "circulate" for the same reason I do, he said that tobacco smoke in small amounts is actually beneficial to one's health, as it inures the body to its effects. This didn't turn up in my cursory research on the topic. I can understand how difficulty breathing could strengthen the lungs and make them more resistant to emphysema, but it seems odd that one would be able to develop antibodies against carcinogens. Even if so, I still feel that poisoning others for the sole purpose of poisoning yourself is not validated by a side effect. It's like coughing on people when you're sick and saying it helps as a vaccination.

We arrived at our destination in the evening, so our father allowed us our freedom for the moment. Other than watching a bit of Happy Feet and some other stuff, one other incident was that Daniel complained about my snoring, which shook up my perception that it was safe to spend time with him. He also said that it was unhealthy of me to use two pillows.

The DM for the campaign running that night didn't tell me, so I found out when I arrived that we were playing a new version of MapTool. Consequently, the only way I found out was to open MapTool (which takes several minutes), then close it and install and run the new one (which takes several minutes). I do find it irritating that you always have to have all participants running the exact same version (of which they have many dozens). The Web launcher will give you the current version, but when I tried it, it was just as much trouble as downloading and installing a new version.

On the other hand, all three campaigns are going on variable hiatus, due to the fact that one of the players/GMs has moved back home, where he has slow Internet. (Overgrowth's GM already plugs so much code into his campaign that two of us have our clients freeze all the time, to say nothing of the fact that it makes us unable to use our characters easily because they're so complicated.) This makes up for the fact that no one replied when I asked them about quitting or taking a break.

I completely forgot to do the laundry on my long day when I had time. (I'd skipped it when I had the chance last week because I didn't have enough to make a real load.)

My new assignment from my social worker is to read Sections 1–4 of Chapter 9 (when they actually get to the exercises). We looked over some things during the session. I'm a bit ambivalent about the parts about how I'm supposed to act. For example, let's look at eye contact:

1. In high school, the "normals" claimed that if you look at someone, it's definitely because you want to have sex with that person (like how you're automatically masturbating unless you keep both hands above the table). This shouldn't be a problem, but one of the two main ringleaders in the department has stated publicly that he takes pride in being less mature than a high-school student, and both certainly act that way.

2. Lowering my head is the only compromise I've found between treating ladies with respect and not being considered a freak.

3. I've also ended up keeping my head down at work, as the only way I can find to avoid fights is to avoid any interactions entirely. It irks me to have to bow to a man, but I don't see any other option.

Of course, I didn't have the guts to say any of this to her. She says I'm going to have to start by practicing on her on Monday.

At work, I got in trouble for not completely disposing of things when I wasn't explicitly told how much to do. Admittedly, I haven't gotten in that many fights because people caught me cleaning up properly.

For the second shift, the operator gave me the choice of either working the station where I can't keep up or the one with two people. I didn't want to provoke people by thinking about it, so I made a snap decision to the latter. Unfortunately, I failed to consider the fact that they put me there replacing the one of the previous two with whom I actually get along, leaving me to work with the one person I despise most. (He's still only one of my three main enemies, as I don't fear him nearly as much as the other two.) I've deliberately been avoiding teamwork for some time now, but this really rubbed my face in the fact that, after more than six months, he's still completely incompetent at this job. Besides the usual slowness (he's one of the only two in the 20-man department who's slower than I) and sloppiness, he kept making obvious mistakes and then escalating them continuously. Even if I were willing to try to communicate with an enemy in less than an emergency, he has a track record of doing the opposite of what I say even when he asks me (hopefully because he's deaf and delusional, not malicious). It's a good thing they replaced him with someone else for the hard part.

Figure 1 is what I thought I might do next on Monday. A was originally intended to be a test for the heroine, but I intend to make her look older and more boyish than the protagonist, so I should have made her a bit less wide-eyed and skirt-wearing. I also didn't bother to think up a good design for her top or her pauldrons. As you can see, when you're over 10,000 years old, it's reasonable to expect you may have a visible battle scar. With B, I attempted to try out narrower eyes and a longer face (to emphasize how tall and slender elves are). I also tried making a design for bangs without obscuring the archetypal eyebrows. C was another attempt at a longer chin, but it looked so bad that I decided to give him a silly haircut like before.

Fig. 1	Fig. 2	Fig. 3

By Wednesday, I had further revised my idea of where to start. Of the two listed, "Final Exam" (thankfully) has no sex, or even female characters. Further, as skaven carry lots of things with warpstone in them and these ogres live close to the Great Maw, it'll be understandable if they look a bit deformed. (Interestingly, although this unsourced article claims that warpstone is common in the area, the Lazarghs are described in their army book as having their teeth and hair fall out as with radiation poisoning, contrasting with the usual Chaos warping, exemplified by the more northern ogre tyrant who has grown fingers on his head.) I may further avoid problems (particularly with cloth) by making the skaven a bit indistinct to emphasize their stealthy skills.

So, Figure 2 shows some ideas for the skaven themselves. The guys on the left were facial structure tests, but then I tried out designing a helmet and mustache. Neither is common among Clan Eshin adepts, but I'm planning to use them to distinguish certain individuals who lean in less usual directions. The one on the right is a test for body structure. As they're sneaky assassins rather than proud leaders, they're as hunched-over as any skaven. I also tried another hat for him, but not any footwear, as I wanted to make sure I can still draw the bare feet that most skaven sport. I wasn't thinking straight, so I gave him the sort of sword you may see on an old Warlord Clan rat-man. (You can see a more Eshin-style blade in the lower left.) All three show different attempts at the incisors. I think normal buck-teeth make them look a bit nerdy rather than scary, so I'm testing more fearsome designs.

As I have much more experience drawing skaven than other things, I devoted the rest of the page to weaponry. This is an important tool to differentiate the various Gutter Runners and their specialties. For instance, the kusari-gama is a compromise between the two-handed flail used by some Clan Eshin members in Mordheim (as seen in the boxed set) and a more versatile tool. (I don't know if there's any real-world background for using one as a utility item like in the original Seiken Densetsu, but this is supposed to be an over-the-top action comic, not historical fiction.) As skaven have no precedent for using kama in the first place, I added a slight hook on the end of the blade (to match typical fighting claws) and small spikes on the weight to make it more vicious-looking as per their style.

Many of the other weapons show simpler concerns. Skaven don't usually use scabbards, but one of them is secretly an assassin, whose trademark weeping blade constantly drips "corrosive venom" (presumably meaning acid). I've modeled it after a Japanese sort (notably the lack of a pointed end). I also don't know how throwing stars are supposed to be carried. (Perhaps a Pez dispenser would do.) The boomerang is another weapon that is not known to be used by skaven. I'm debating where I should put them in the spectrum between historical (based on their geographical counterparts in the real world) and original (made up or taken from elsewhere) fantasy.

Figure 3 shows my attempts at the defenders. As you can see, much of it is experimenting with proportions. (For some reason, I wanted to make it so the gut-plates completely obscure the breadth of their torsos from the front view.) The upper-right one also shows the lumpy forehead seen in some ogres (presumably knobs in the bone of the cranium?) and the fact that ogres have five toes per foot, like men but unlike skaven. The lower-left guy is the hunter, who is an outcast from the kingdom and thus hasn't suffered the radiation therapy the others constantly endure. Although the standard model has a full beard, I gave him a more typical ogre Fu Manchu and goatee to make up for the fact that the tribe doesn't have them. (Of course, I forgot to give the others no teeth, so the contrast isn't as significant.) The fact that he's wearing a cloak (with a very crude rhinox head showing) and helmet shows that he's on his way back from a hunt, not just getting out of bed as most of the surprised squatters will be (if they even manage to wake). I want to give him a fairly round skull for his plackart to match the usual ogre gut-plate style, but I haven't thought of an appropriate one yet, so I've just used a place-holder in this image. (The one obvious choice would be a giant, but those are for tyrants to enslave, not for hunters to hunt.)

The gnoblar in the upper right shows that these gits will not allow me to forgo the noses. You can also probably guess where he scavenged the shirt. The hammer shows a more distinctive variation on the classic ogre club than the one held by the upper-left fellow. As ogres are quite strong and don't mine, they often use stone weights in their clubs, with iron bands to keep them from splitting. I'll have to be careful about textures to show that. You can also see that I've put another pistol here. Although Clan Eshin use them in Mordheim, I suppose firearms are not very good for covert missions in the days before suppressors, but I'll have chances to show them off with the ogres.