Fortress of Perpetual Midnight

So, I'm starting a new campaign. I'm pretty much done with my character, but I found that my brother appears to have taken his mic back to school with him. I've got a very old one as backup, but my tests find that it picks up a whole lot of static (call archlords on Skype if you don't believe me), so I should probably get a new one. Does anyone have any suggestions on what would be the cheapest option that would be serviceable?

Continuing from before:

1. In a way, I've actually been following the mook for years before it was created. . . .

2. Ms. Hayashiya says that the first edition (?) of the latest dmara CD will contain bonus tracks, so I'm pretty sure I'm going to put one in next month—anyone else want in? Still, I haven't been able to find any information on this on the official site, amazon, or TORANOANA, so I don't know the details. I assume that I just have to buy it before the first production run runs out or something.

Meanwhile, we'll see if I ever get around to posting about the current order either. . . .

As if I weren't busy enough with my application and more equipment training, apparently the stress caused my mind to wander, because I suddenly stumbled upon another really stupid coincidence (or Freudian slip?) that I should have noticed long ago. As you know, I have two projects that are set in a setting closely based upon the real world. You may not notice because of the omissions, but there are exactly three native Japanese characters among the many dozens of characters I'm currently developing for those two projects. And all three are lesbians.

「今さら何ほざいてんだてめえ」とは言われそうだから言っておくが・・・*

As noted in the first paragraph of the previous link, I don't write lesbian stories. I write yuri. Judging by the notes I'm keeping in my head, of those many dozens of characters, those are the only three lesbian-identified individuals I have planned. So how the hell did this happen? To tell the truth, in all three cases, I just made them Japanese because of the names I thought up for them. (It's not as much of a coincidence as it might have been, as the two from Project AnthraXX are connected in terms of their background.) As noted in the disclaimers, I don't have any intentions of perpetuating stupid stereotypes (even ones I accidentally made up myself), and I certainly didn't do this on purpose. It just goes to show that I don't pay much of any attention to how my projects end up looking, which means I'm just going to get even more flak as I release any of this stuff. I really need to look more carefully at these things before they are (hypothetically) published.

Meanwhile, as with the other night, I'm putting myself on a slippery slope trying to bring up half-remembered lines off the top of my head and using them as post subtitles. I've read both of those at least half a dozen times, but they're really dipping into the archives; I'm not sure if I've even opened either volume in several months, much less read those chapters. At least one of them I plan to check at some point to corroborate something else I vaguely remembered, so hopefully I'll use that opportunity to correct myself. Being obsessive-compulsive is rather dumb sometimes.

*Yeah, another line that I'm too lazy to try and figure out how to say in English. It's not terribly important to the so-called flow of my blabbing, so those of you who can't read it don't need to feel left out.

Edit (2008.05.03): Fixed vowel length and punctuation in the quote

Just for the hell of it, I feel like typing a bit about the ideas behind my PN.

מיכאל: This one comes, of course, from the name of the angel (one of only two named in the Old and New Testaments). He's often considered to be one of the big shots (as the meaning, "who is like god(?)," suggests), although his common title of "archangel" is second from the bottom in the nine-order hierarchy that's so popular (and used in Ten-Kin, significantly). I also like his common designation as commander of the celestial host, as well as how Ten-Kin and Shiharu Genesis portray her/him as a berserker type, which fits well with me. The spelling is to make it less generic and to differentiate between the common Anglicization that turns it to two syllables, thus blobbing together the two Hebrew words, and the (I believe) more accurate pronunciation. (Interestingly enough, in Japanese, they approximate each pronunciation separately （「マイケル」・「ミカエル」), despite spelling them both with the "ch" in English as everyone else does.)

One of these days I'll actually get around to memorizing how to write it, so I can actually sign things (in theory).

偉闇: In addition to legal names, it appears that Mother's family marks its children with Cantonese given names. This is mine, altered slightly for symbolic purposes. Any of you who know me can probably guess how (even if you don't know Chinese characters, since you can just look them up on Wiktionary). This is another way of making my name not just the same-old same-old, as the other two parts are so generic.

王: Chinese surnames are nothing if not straightforward. Again, you can see the meaning for yourselves. It's also really easy to write.

It is rather odd to have a name that is read partially right-to-left and partially left-to-right, but that doesn't really bother me.

Edit (2008.02.11)

Typing of limited editions, I find it odd that they put one on dirt-cheap clearance. If I really cared about making money, I'd have bought five. It's not at an appropriate scale to be used with the game that doesn't require you to use miniatures that look just like everyone else's. Then again, the latter point doesn't make much difference now that the bastards canceled bitz service. Speaking of which, considering the fact that D&D Chainmail never showed a single conversion and went out of business to be replaced by a game where you don't even get to paint the minis yourselves, I was quite surprised to find that they published this series.

My readership appears to be at an all-time high (apparently at least two regulars!), but I've accumulated quite a lot of stuff during its absence, to say nothing of my sloth and the fact that I've built up a lot of new things due to year's-end-and-beginning splurging. So, I'd like to see if you have any requests or suggestions. What I've got in the works is as follows:

( Ridiculously long notes )

It has come to my attention that if a non-member clicks on any of the links to my Yahoo! Group that are parts not available to non-members (which is, due to the system, most everything), it will just ask you to sign in to your Yahoo! account. If you want to see the front page, you can get to it at any time (not dependent on linking it in the current post) by going to my LJ and clicking the "Archlords Press" link in the top section of the sidebar on the left. You can also access my links there at the bottom of that sidebar (which may be quite a distance from the bottom of the page depending on how long the last 13 posts are). As noted before, the rest you cannot access without joining the group, which is available to anyone. However, I do not know how you join without a Yahoo! account. lokodraucarn, I would appreciate it if you could explain that.

So, to work through my backlogs, here are more thoughts about some visual novels I've played:

Note: From what I've seen, Japanese use the English "heroine" to refer to the chief protagonist ("shujinkō")'s female love interest even if the protagonist is also a lady. (This is especially prominent in ones where you choose a scenario based on one in particular.) Since you won't know which character is which unless you know the games, I'm using this system for brevity and clarity.

Kurenai-Doki no Uta, Chapter 1 (Atelier of Chiharu): I've posted about Chapter 0 here and here. Sadly, I never got through this chapter. Although it is some interesting stuff, including commentary on societies both mortal and keyō and how life is after giving up one's humanity, the fact that I no longer have the patience to wade through large chunks of text was my undoing. The fact that the protagonist and heroine don't look like they're going to be getting back together anytime soon (which is just as well, since I've learned not to post on daily_yuri) doesn't help. According to the circle's page, it's currently on hiatus but planned to go up to Chapter 9, and considering that 0 and 1 each take umpteen hours (perhaps a single-digit number for fluent readers), there's a long way yet before a conclusion. I also didn't reach any suggestion of why this one was rated "18 and up," but with the story focusing on two guest characters (one male), I didn't have particularly high hopes about that, either. Chapter 0 already showed the internal organs of a human who'd been cut in half despite being "all ages," so I can only imagine what sorts of things would require such ratings (as usual for Japanese stuff).

Natsu no Hi no Resonance (Saitō Kagura): I was alerted to this one here. Fortunately, it's not nearly as long and meandering, so I was able to sit through it. The central theme is a weird techno-fantasy anomaly that's never really explained, but, like in a recent review, that's not the point. It's not a happy end, of course, and as with Yami-Bō （う～、思い出したくないな）, people on daily_yuri are complaining about something that I didn't see, which means either that the translator assumed something I didn't, or that I just missed it. I was more bothered by troubles with the game engine, such as the facts that you can't turn down the ridiculously loud sound effects and that you can't use "skip" because there aren't any choices to stop (so you have to make sure to save). It would also have been nice if there were a few CG events (full-screen set pieces), but that's not a big deal. This is also one of the rare occurrences of a lady who uses the first-person pronoun "boku" just because she's cute and energetic, not because she's boyish as is much more common.

Aoi Shiro Taiken-ban (SUCCESS): I mentioned this one back here. Although the game is for PS2, they were kind enough to provide a downloadable playable demo (downloadable here) for PC. Of course, before that, they released the OP (also downloadable from the same page), which is a good preview. Apparently, there will still be some blood-sucking, but from this sample, it appears to be only a 1:2 ratio to kissing, so that ought to be good enough for me. There's also an obvious water theme, but that's not enough to put me off.

Anyway, this is a commercial product with full voice, so it's a lot easier reading than the other two. One related interesting element is that you can choose a voice to tell you about the options in the main menu (although only the protagonist's is available in the demo). The game itself is the usual combination of (1) generic backgrounds with character images showing their current emotions/etc. and (2) CG events with at most slight changes when people move, but both are much more dynamic, with sprites moving around at different distances and the camera zooming and panning to whichever part of a set-piece is currently being described.

In terms of actual characters, I get the sense that the protagonist's voice seems more mature than you generally hear for a second-year high-school student (equivalent of an American junior). It's not like she sounds like an old lady or anything, just more serene, or something. I guess that's to show that she's an assiduous sort of person. It's also interesting to see how one of the main heroines reacts from the standpoint where I know about her feelings (from here*), but the protagonist apparently doesn't. Meanwhile, someone from the second page of characters steals a lot of scenes because of her extremely extroverted nature, but I think most (if not all) of the first page has a destiny advantage over her in terms of long-term plot.

*We only get the description of their meeting second-hand, so I'm not sure how the protagonist saved her from a boring speech with hime-sama dakko. . . . I also find it amusing that the other heroine refers to the object of her affection as her "daughter," as in Ōran Kōkō Host Club.

Despite the fact that the story centers on a girls' school kendō club and the swordswomen they encounter on their getaway, there haven't been any with badass speech patterns so far, but I imagine I won't be disappointed by the heartless swordswoman and the oni queen (a spoiler, yes, but c'mon, they tell the story about the eye in the first scene, so anyone who even starts it can guess just as well as I did). Speaking of the latter, I think I heard that the name "Kohaku" is traditionally paired with "Hisui" like in Tsuki-Hime, but it apparently isn't this time unless that's the name of one of the others in a previous life. Meanwhile, all of the students are from the first two school years, despite the fact that this doesn't appear to have the necessity of keeping them for a series as in HAYA-BLA. There's also a male character who's rather sparkly (and I'm not talkin' 'bout the top of his head), but I doubt he'll be much of a problem, as he seems to be a nice guy and doesn't appear in the video.

All in all, I'm quite expectant about the last one, even if it will set me back quite a chunk of change. . . .

This time I had a small batch, so I'm trying to drop them all down here before I get the next one and end up being distracted again. But if I always use the same number of items for good luck, why is this one smaller than usual?

説明しよう！†

I did indeed pick 13 items in my original order. However, due to the fact that the release of one of the items kept being postponed, I had a chance to trim out some mistakes I had made: one that I had bought elsewhere (and posted kansō here‡), one that I had accidentally put in the cart twice and ordered elsewhere, and one where my suspicions were confirmed, resulting in its removal as per my policy. When I heard that Yuri Michelin (?) was pushed back again to February, I finally gave up on having it in this order, so the survivors finally shipped.

Anyway, the actual kansō:

「Comic YuriHime VOL.9」 (Anthology): I don't remember too much of these, no doubt due to the difficulty of keeping track of multiple series with multi-month gaps in-between episodes. Nonetheless, it's all good. (Actually, I haven't gotten around to reading the solid blocks of text yet. I'm somewhat curious about an entire article on the Himitsu no Kaidan series, which I found very disappointing from a yuri standpoint—but, then again, I'm a man.) I found it amusing that, unlike Ms. Kiryū, Futami saw the good side of not being blood-related to one's sibling. There's also a second one-shot from the person who did the one about the yakuza heiress earlier. Apparently she/he likes "bad girl" protagonists—and sex, although the latter is pretty ubiquitous in this mook lately.

「MY OTOME Zwei」 (Higuchi Tatsuto/Abeno Chaco): Fortunately, this one follows the chronology from the Ein animation rather than the comics (although there is an allusion to the latter), yet has just as much nudity as Yoshino/Satō's works. (Incidentally, I can't seem to find that post on one of my sources that describes exactly how much you see of which characters in Episode 3.) The chief things I like about it over the OVAs are the increased focus on the relationships between Ms. Kruger and Ms. Viola (although still not much) and Ms. Chrysant and Ms. Armitage (the latter because the author admits that she's her? favorite character), and the complete lack of appearance from Ms. Marguerite (which is better than seeing the depths to which she'd sunk in the show).

「Gakuen Utopia MANABI STRAIGHT! Massugu Go!! Amamiya Manami 3A NO.45526 SEIOH GAKUEN 1」 (ufotable/Tartan Check): The title refers to the punch visible on the cover, which is one of Ms. Amamiya's trademarks. In any case, the primary heroine is quite cheerful and provides lots of skinship, mostly with the secondary heroine; there's some hint of admiration for a character who shows up later on, as well. A standard sports lady and an assiduous tsun-dere (hmm, seem to remember one just like that from Na*na*ki!) round out the cast. I have some difficulty telling the four heroines apart visually, as they're all the same size and shape, and all have short hair other than the fourth.

「Shiharu Genesis 1」 (Kondō Rururu): There are plenty of stories about reincarnation of demons, but it's unusual to use that as a premise for a honobono girls' school life comedy. . . . Like X and Ten-Kin, this follows the 1999-based chronology, but in this case, that's only the birth of the Devil, so it's set in the near future, before her awakening (thus avoiding the continuity problem the other two had, in that they were not finished by the time 1999 passed and the world didn't end). You may notice that I said "she," which fits in with my description of the series in the first sentence. It's not clearly stated, but I assume that this follows the standard in Japanese secular sources that demons (and possibly angels) do have gender, so this would probably fall under the heading of "transexual yuri"—although in a fantastic manner, like KA・SHI・MA・SHI. [It turns out that this isn't the case; for the purposes of this series, all of the top seven demons were ladies in the first place, as was I.] Anyway, it's mostly about the friendship between the two major heroines, but there are hints that Lilith is looking for a bit more (unsurprisingly, considering that she's often described as the bride of Satan, despite the fact that she is also commonly called the first human woman). Stating the presence of any given reincarnatee is not much of a spoiler, as all are identified by their names (e.g. ルシファー → るしはあ → しはる).

Speaking of names, this work also follows the Japanese convention of "Lucifer" being the demon name of the Enemy, as compared to his Latin angel name. In Ten-Kin and DEVIL & DEVIL, his angel name was Lucifel, a fabrication using the Hebrew "el," which is found in many angel and human names. In the former, "Satan" is a title applied to his seven lieutenants (and not him), while the latter has "Satan" as the hereditary title for the ruler of hell.

Like CHRNO CRUSADE and Project AnthraXX, a running gag is that the chief demon is actually a very nice person. And like Ten-Kin, there is also an angel who is reincarnated in parallel to the fallen—although this time they reversed the missed opportunity by making them both ladies. Personally, I'm glad I wasn't actually reincarnated as a Japanese lady in 1999. I appear to be the most popular angel in Japanese media; in Earthian, DEVIL & DEVIL, and this, it looks like I'm the only one taken from Abrahamic scriptures and apocrypha. [Actually, it turns out that Raphael is actually my aide, and Lucifel, Uriel, and Gabriel appear as well.] At least in this and Ten-Kin, I get to fight, instead of being in what appears to be a purely administrative post. . . .

「Neko Mokoro 1」 (Otokasa Aki): Another one set in a magic school for ladies, although this one is in some sort of space opera setting. The heroine's feelings originate in the fact that the object was the first other person she ever saw who looked human, but she remains loyal even after meeting various other beauties. An amusing running gag is that, although the heroine spends most of the first volume only being able to see her admiree from afar, she has many fantasies about what would happen when they meet, all following the same pattern, including that what they're doing towards the end of the dream is always censored (or perhaps left to the reader's imagination, but I like the sound of the first one better). The heroine's reaction when they finally do meet face to face is also quite nice. Of course, it's hard to say they have good prospects for a relationship if they don't even know one another, but I'm confident (as is the cover to Volume 2). Incidentally, this series is also the first I've seen to portray the difficulties of mermaids living on land.

「PENGUINMUSUME 1」 (Takahashi Tetsu): On the inside pages, this is called "PENGUINGIRL 14," where the "14" means (numerically, not phonetically) the same thing as in 14; the exploitative nature and the overly developed figures of the two chief heroines are other parallels. Sadly, this one loses out in the key point, as the athletic lady and her suitor (suitress?) are Heroines #2 and #5 rather than #1 and #2, and the former doesn't seem to have a huge following of underclass fans. (I told you the "boku" was an important selling point!) Still, there are several good prospects—I think the hime-sama dakko was a nice touch. (Incidentally, that's the one point that punk Zidane wins over Squall. It might have something to do that Ms. Til Alexandros was actually a real princess, though.) Heroine #1 has been related to the term 「ミーハー」, but unlike Ms. Kuremi, she's interested in men, too. Heroine #2 also knows a hunk when she sees one, but then again, so did Meg (too lazy to look up her surname).

Other points of interest include the fact that, for some reason, the ladies' uniform has a slit skirt with a fake petticoat doohickey. Meanwhile (not much of a spoiler), like in Ruro-Ken and Iono the fanatics, the drag queen guest (hopefully)-chara feels the need to show concrete proof. (Is it a coincidence that all of these were written and drawn by men?) Also, the Japanese heiress has a head butler named "Sebastian" (contrary to most old geezer butlers I've seen, who are called "Jī" or "Jīya" by their masters), while the American? one ("Marie Chupacabra W. Whitebear" sounds quite multicultural, but since the "W." is pronounced "Double-U," English has as many points as French and Spanish put together, and we all know how English speakers love giving their kids names from other languages, as anyone who knows my family can attest) has a head maid named "Maguro." Takahashi beat me to the punch with his badass eyepatched maid, but her personality is completely different from mine's, and the world still has room for plenty of gantai moe. There's also the same misunderstanding about the term 「メイド」 as in HAYA-BLA, but this time it's because she's Chinese, not because she's had an unusual upbringing.

「Kyōkan Astro 1」 (BannoNegi): From the title, I thought this was going to be set on an educational starship or something, but apparently the "ASTRO" is just the name of the athletics wear company that the main heroine patronizes. (I haven't the foggiest idea where they got the 「艦」.) Anyway, this is something of an unusual series, as it's set in a high school, yet the main characters are the teachers. (There was a student with good taste and a name who appeared, but only for one strip. Perhaps she was hospitalized after the heroine's hug.) Still, they are mostly in their 20s, as is to be expected from a society where female sex appeal is supposed to peak in the teens or earlier and ladies are ostracized for not marrying and retiring by the age of 25.

Anyway, the chief heroine inadvertently provides a lot of good scenes, mostly with the other who fell for her on the third page, but also with the other two main heroines and several lesser characters. (The story starts out focusing on a small group of individuals, but later adds some others, likely when it was clear that the serial was going to continue. Kubo did a similar thing with BLEACH, I imagine due to the fact that he wasn't told until the last chapter that his previous series was being cut.) I believe that falls under the heading of "tennen." The other characters are disappointing, but on the whole, I think this is my favorite of the new ones.

「HAYATE CROSS BLADE DRAMA CD Vol.2」 (Hayashiya Shizuru): Since this one has audio, I haven't gotten around to listening to it yet, but I do notice that they've skipped ahead to the Gakuensai part. Obviously they don't have the demand to adapt the entire series, so they're just doing the favorites.

Conclusion: Apparently the loss of luck wasn't terribly significant, as these are all worthy of continuing to read (with the exception of the one that was only one volume).

P.S. I was going to discuss a few new vocab words from this batch, but I've already spent my computer sessions for three days typing this, so I'll follow that up later. So much to type, so little time and readership . . .

†I first remember hearing this element used by Seki Tomokazu (played by Seki Tomokazu) in Love Pheromone (half of Love-Ge), but I can only assume it's more prevalent in pop culture than I've noticed. It's also used commonly in PENGUINMUSUME.

‡I know that you can't access this if you're not a member of daily_yuri. However, if you actually care, it's no trouble to join. You don't even have to have it on your friends page. The only risk I see is that someone might see your membership on your userinfo and think you're weird. You can also join whenever you want to read a post, then immediately quit again when you're done.

[Edit (2009.08.19): Clarified some misconceptions I had before reading further in those series]

ふだんコメントはあまりもらえんのに、読者の中で誰も読んだ事のない作品の上に日本語で誰も分からん話して何の得があるんだ？・・・と言われるでしょうが、まあ、ミーム（日本語でそう呼ぶかどうか分からん）好きな私で面白ければ良いでしょう？とにかく、こっちから取りました。１→２→３で見付けました。誰に聞かれているか分かりませんが、天地学園の事ですので、レディーに、という事にしておきました。

( 今回はずいぶんと長いですので切っておきましたが、ちゃんと読んで下さいませ )



「天地を手に入れたらどうする？」等御座いませんでしたな。

ＨＰによれば、４６のしつもんがある理由は「シロ」だからです。（４６２９は無理でしょうな。）それで林家様の絵に二回程（一回はこちら（調べてみれば林家様のおたんじょうびですが、それもかんけい無いでしょう）で、もう一回はこちらの８３ページ）もくげきした「４２６」は「シヅル」でしょうか？

I decided on a whim to buy up all the best deals on stuff I was getting on amazon shops and sending them to postty. Hopefully they'll tell me if they have a limit on how long they hold stuff before they have to send it to me. If you want to add anything from the shops, it won't be particularly less efficient than buying it together, because each item has a flat shipping rate of ¥340. (Some shops give you a ¥100 discount for buying multiple items, but this seems inconvenient, since I didn't figure out how to show a listing of what's available from an individual shop. Hell, I don't even remember how I did it that one time on amazon way back when.)

If, on the other hand, you want to buy regular amazon stuff, including video games and DVDs (which aren't shipped overseas by amazon itself), just tell me and I'll add it to my next order. I'm hoping to do that as soon as the next issues of Comic Yuri-Hime, Comic Yuri-Hime S, and HAYATE CROSS BLADE show up for preorder. As an added bonus, if this turns out to be illegal, I'm the only one whose name is on the documents, so you won't have to help me fend off unarmed Japanese police.

Speaking of etail, the last book of STRANGERS IN PARADISE, which I ordered with a gift card last year, finally arrived yesterday. I had to stay up all day anyway, so I read it. It's a rather epic series and unlike most anything else I read, so I've been planning to make an entire post just about that when I finished it. We'll see if I get around to that.

Apparently Ms. -Vell (see here) had died, but was found to be alive, but in skeletal form. This was undoubtedly due to the fact that I saw Corpse Bride yesterday. Mother was watching it, so I too decided to sit in front of the tube while I did some research for LEXICANUM.

I wasn't expecting much out of a mainstream musical, so I wasn't disappointed. Some of the ways in which undead were used (such as the skeleton with one eyeball that can move around inside his skull and the severed head transported by bugs living in the neck) were rather interesting. During the after-game conversation on Friday, I thought about making a series in a necropunk (ubiquitous undead technology) setting.

I was also struck by how old Christopher Lee looks. I guess they had to make him up so the apprentice didn't look older than the master. I never watched many horror flicks, but I give him props for being one of the two Frankenstein's Monsters and one of the two Draculas with whom Ms. Portman has co-starred. Unlike De Niro, she also actually appears in a scene with him, albeit at great distance and with no lines exchanged, if memory serves.

Meanwhile, I might as well note that I was surprised to see that Dan Abnett did superhero comics, although I'd already heard as much about several other Black Library folks (notably Wayne Reynolds, my favorite Warhammer 40,000 illustrator, who also happens to be my favorite D&D illustrator). It really is a small world. I noticed earlier that the illustrator of Artesia did some illustrations for EPIC LEVEL HANDBOOK.

Meanwhile, I have to mention HAYABLA in this post because I just noticed that it's surpassed the ubiquitous STAR WARS tag. We'll see how long that lasts. I have some more to say about the series, but no one here cares, so I have little motivation.