Fortress of Perpetual Midnight

The other night, I noticed that I had a tennen tate-roll (just one, on the right). This reminded me, I don't know where the stereotype that such a 'do is sported by rich ladies (as exemplified by the source for the subject line, which applies just as well to me as to Ms. Azumano; also includes three-point ellipses, which are somewhat half-assed according to the Yuri Dōjō in a recent issue) originated. The only support that comes to mind is Ms. Daitokuji from PROJECT "A" KO, which was itself a parody (in her case, of a character from the original Macross, if memory serves; I never saw it anyway).

Closer to my heart is the much more commonly obvious trope of the character with a lot of melanin in the skin but not in the hair. (I call it a trope because it doesn't seem to appear in real life, except where darker hair has gone gray/white or has been artificially changed. I've never encountered any accounts of such localized albinism. It's probably also popular because of the abstraction needed to differentiate characters when all but one human race in the real world seem to have the-same-colored hair, a point that the Japanese unsurprisingly have a tradition of stylistically avoiding. Incidentally, I also have found myself unable to find reference information about races' physical characteristics on Wikipedia, which makes it difficult for me to check the authenticity of my work. On example that I don't plan to use but that has bothered me for a while: I don't recall having ever seen a man of American descent with facial hair. Is this genetic or cultural?) As far back in time as I've traced it (through idle thought, not actual research, as I don't know any good places to look for such information on Japanese media), there are two main possibilities:

1. Ms. "Storm" Munroe of Ame-comi fame. As Watsuki's liner notes often illustrate, these are well known in Japan (although not enough that she influenced him to use a similar character design in Ruro-Ken, even though, despite the fact that all but five of the characters in the 28 books are native Japanese, he goes quite far in variety, including at least a 1,000% range in height of grown men; maybe he was just too lazy to cut all that tone). Unless we can find someone way back there who was so direct about his influences, it would be pretty impossible to pin this one down.

2. The Dark Elves from Lodoss-tō Senki (an island whose name, despite the official Romanization, is spelled exactly the same as "Rhodes"). In case you were living under a rock in the '80s as I was, this series was a thinly veiled retelling of a Basic D&D campaign, as illustrated by the fact that the starting lineup consisted of six of the seven classes from the original "blue box" (excluding only the one that was stolen entirely from Tolkien's creation). Even back in those days, there was already the policy that the dark-skinned subraces of the good peoples are the evil ones, but D&D avoided some flak by saying the drow were actually black-skinned, not a human skin tone. Whether it's because they hadn't made that point yet or because of creative differences, that safety was not present in Lodoss, so (other than the being evil part) it translates just fine to humans in versions of the real world. This one could be easily confirmed or denied by asking someone who's actually watched the major Japanese animation and read Japanese comics from before that whether or not there were any examples then, but I don't think I know any such person.

By the way, in one of the extra stories from Sapphism, Ms. Lee (Ley?) tries to talk Ms. Yang down by telling her that her loss would devastate all the dark-skin fetishists. Of the examples given, I recognized only Akamatsu (no doubt due to my lack of attention to mainstream stuff), but all were called "-Sensei," so I imagine the other two are of the same ilk. But from what I've read of Akamatsu's, he's less so than I am: no major character in his first work, one who starts ranking at fifth-most-important then is displaced further by new ones in his second. As if it's not maniac enough already, my taste is mostly restricted to the illustrated versions, as in real life I'm more narcissistic, preferring my own two races (now that I've been out of high school long enough to break down my prejudice against non-white blood). I feel as if I don't much like real-world African features, which is a hell of a generalization considering that they're thought to be the oldest and thus now most diverse human race. (The aforementioned Ms. Munroe looks good, particularly with the 'do in the third movie.) I don't seem to have any such preconception about ladies of South Asian or American descent, probably because I don't see as much of them in American TV and movies.

In terms of more general tropes, is there some name for the one where the hero thinks up a clever plan but keeps it a secret from his friends in order to maintain audience suspense? I'd look around on the eponymous wiki, but from what I've seen it just seems to be a bunch of people typing whatever they feel like typing, so I'm not bothering to learn how to find things there.

On the topic of possible entries for the Ichijinsha Comic Taishō (YuriHime Bumon):

I forgot in the last paragraph that there's also one in S that has a drag queen (thus, the subject clipped from the same quote as before) as pretty much the most important character after the protagonist and heroine. I guess these guys are more palatable than big, hairy gits like the ones in "Spaghetti Western." There have been various men who've appeared in the numerous sad one-shots throughout the years, but those are the only two major ones whom I remember in serials.

Meanwhile, there may be another problem if I have to give up my ownership of the intellectual property as with the contest for my other half, which would mean that it would have to be thrown out if I couldn't get it published. If so, I'd want to make sure that I have the best chance I'll ever have of winning before I risk it. It would be better, of course, if I could instead become an established author/illustrator and thus be considered for publishing without having to take that risk in the first place. I'll have to take a closer look at the rules when I get back to those issues as part of my other stuff I'm supposedly doing. (I can also use that opportunity to look over the previous winning entry and the judges' comments for that and the runners-up to get a better idea of what they want.)

Another consideration is the problem of graphic novels. I've seen that Japanese author/illustrators often have problems getting one-shots that have been published in periodicals printed in more permanent form as they're not enough to make up a full compilation. A common solution is to put them in as extras in volumes of series by the same person, but that wouldn't work very well in my case, because these ones would read right-to-left, while my projects are left-to-right. YuriHime Comics dealt with that through Yuri-Hime Selection, but I don't know whether they'll do that again or how long it'll be in print. Authors sometimes publish sequels/spinoffs/side stories of their own works as dōjinshi, as you may have noticed (also mentioned here), but I don't imagine they're allowed to do that with the stuff that's been licensed by professional publishers.

Speaking of which, I hear that Zettai×Roman actually has quite a lot of stuff that wasn't published in the mooks, including a short from a long-out-of-print anthology, two from another magazine, and further explanation on the one from YuriHime whose details I found quite incomprehensible (also, incidentally, the only one I remember where one of the main characters is anywhere near as promiscuous as in mine). I haven't been bothering to buy the graphic novels as I already have all of the serials, but I suppose I should be checking their introductions to see whether the extras are worth it.

By the by, as I was grabbing links for this post, I found there was a tachi-yomi (reading without buying) page in case you want to try any of the publications.

We were hiding out in some Japanese school.

I remember almost nothing from this one, but it was a combination of Raki☆Sta (particularly the bit starting here) and another school series. (It's been so long, I've forgotten what the latter was.) I've never even read or watched the former, but it's one of the ones blitzcon told me he was going to show me long, long ago (but not early enough that I could actually get the videos), so I've been breaking my usual rule in its case. Consequently, most of my knowledge of it is from Ms.?† Maitake's illustrations and comics (although I haven't actually been reading the posts since I haven't even started the series yet), which is undoubtedly skewing my preconceptions of its content.

†You may remember that I fouled up a while back and that I later decided not to worry about it. I neglected to mention that Ms.? Maitake replied the very next day and pointed out that it was clearly stated on the site that duplicating things without permission was prohibited, which rather scuppered a post I'd made.

Meanwhile, when I contacted her/him to ask whether I could post direct links to individual posts, I decided to ask about her/his gender so I could address her/him less awkwardly, but she/he declined to say. (Japanese writers/illustrators sometimes take PNs that would suggest genders different from their own, but I've never seen anything proving that any have made false claims about this. Then again, nor do I have any proof that any Japanese comic writer/illustrator has ever been captured on camera (with the exception of Akamatsu, whose mug I do not fondly remember seeing, particularly considering that he's actually married to a lady who's more than 13 years his junior now), so that's hard to say with certainty, either. You can take this into account for my generalizations in the next paragraph.) I would tend to assume that she/he's a man like me due to the demographics (?) of what she/he seems to find interesting, but that's a bit of a disservice to Ms. Hayashiya, Ms. oneirotsai, and many others. Of course, in English, there aren't any honorifics‡ except title prefixes, so it doesn't make much difference; in Japanese, I've just been using speech patterns somewhere in-between.

I do find it interesting that I see ladies who draw stuff aimed at male audiences all the time (with Ms. Takahashi being the classic example), but never confirmed examples of men drawing stuff for ladies. (The fact that ladies draw lots of yuri, yet I never hear about men drawing much yaoi, is less surprising.) The closest I've seen is Fujieda, who has been suppressing his style (judging by Iono Sama Fanatics, his only independent work I've read) in various YuriHime Comics mooks (and of course the compilations), but although they always use feminine second-person pronouns, the content of even the main series is more moe than shōjo, so he's still a bit short of Jack Nicholson.

‡In my research for Projects Abdiel and Homuncupunk, I was surprised to find that in modern English, the one language I've encountered that has almost no ways of showing respect, we have retained the plural/formal singular objective from the early modern variety as our sole (before conjugation) second-person pronoun.

We had an alliance of kami-tsukai from the two R.O.Ds, like in THE TV. I was Ms. Readman, which meant it was a pain in the ass because I had to speak in a high-pitched voice and always use polite forms.

Of course, from what little I remember, I was talking to Ms. King, which means that I'd be using even politer forms if I were myself. Also, if I were really Ms. Readman, neither of those things would be difficult. . . .

I found some more stuff I wanted available at jpqueen, so I decided on a whim to try yet another order. If you want anything, you just need to tell me by 2008.06.07 (in a time zone close to the International Date Line), and we can share the shipping. As ever, there's a chance that the items will be bought by someone else if you don't tell me quickly enough, but there's not enough turnaround for it to be terribly important (or for their recommendations to be useful—currently AZUMANGA is associated with yaoi and "Hentai").

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. . . .

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.

David Morgan-Mar recently posted about Webcomic time and RPG time, both concepts with which I'm quite familiar. The former is of course just as prevalent in other media, including print comics. For instance, in Nana-Misu, the characters have passed through seasonal events several times (including, for instance, two Valentines) but still seem to be the same year in school as they were when they started. In a more extreme example, Ramma 1/2 ran for nine years without any of the characters aging. Less dramatically, STRANGERS IN PARADISE strongly shows the author's changes in style and purpose over the 14 years of writing and drawing, while the characters only aged about eight years. Also amusingly, the kaki-oroshi in CHIBI DEVIL! 2 shows Ms. Satō and Ms. Tōdō in their high school uniforms, despite the fact that the former graduated a couple of years ago in the show, meaning it must have been earlier than that in the original source material (which is confirmed if you look at the publication date of the compilation).

All of this explains why I'm very vague about the temporal setting of Projects AnthraXX and Maddie's Maids, which are set in an approximation of the real world. I'd like them to be generally contemporary, but I don't know whether circumstances will allow me to release them correspondingly (if at all).

For some reason, there've been several follicular jokes today:

*Pat Sajak took off his toupée. (I've been watching this utterly pointless show lately when there isn't anything interesting to watch in just the half hour between CA$H CAB and JEOPARDY! At least last week they had a free contest. It wasn't for anything I wanted, but it was free anyway.)

*Alex Trebek grew his mustache back (black this time) between episode tapings in one day, then shaved it during a CM break.

*Aussie geeks have long hair, but no beards. I'd've cast the darker-haired guy as Qui-Gon because the colors match better that way, and his five-o'-clock shadow is more prominent because of the contrast. (I have that problem as well. Geeks are too lazy to shave daily.) Apparently, they also have tiny dinosaurs on the dinner table in Ms. Skywalker's house. (Apparently Mos Espa slaves are allowed to own a lot of property.)

Nothing from Ms. Hayashiya this year or last year. I only remember her here because of the bomb she dropped in '06. From what I hear, she's doing just fine with Ms. Makise (although she doesn't talk about their relationship, so we just have mōsō).

Continuing from previously (and noticing that my reference to bootlegs ended up being after the break):

You may have noticed that I haven't quit the horrible job that I have. The fact is, despite its horribleness, it's the only job I managed to get in a year of searching and working with Voc Rehab. I'm going to do my best to tough it out until I get something else.

"But if that's all you were able to get, how could you get something else, you stupid bastard?" I hear you ask. After all, I still have no usable experience, skills, talents, or work ethic. However, my previous job coach let drop the value of this job: that I get a good reference from it. Sad to say, but I'm one of the best workers in the department, and the chief supervisor (the one who doesn't smoke) has a very high opinion of me. Combined with the fact that I've been able to keep this job, this is of value to getting a better one.

Anyway, I don't know about specifics, but there are a few ideas I've seen lately that particularly jump out at me:


POLICE OFFICER

This was featured in the Star's "5 Jobs for Which You Don't Need a Bachelor's" (or something like that) a while back when I happened to read.

Pros: I'd be able to get good training and experience in assertiveness and tactical combat. I'd also most likely gain access to resources that would allow me to actually find out what the hell the laws are without having to hire a legal consultant. The only physical requirements noted were a test of agility, which is the least of my weaknesses.

Cons: I'd have to deal with bullying from coworkers and suspects, which I don't currently handle well. I imagine they wouldn't be receptive to use as a temporary job until I can find something better, or to having someone with such radical nonconformist views on the force. Perhaps most importantly, I'd be likely to be turned away because I'm diagnosed as "crazy" to human eyes.

Alternatives: A security guard job would be similar, but unlikely to provide training. It would also be likely to require graveyard shifts. The military would be even better training, but I hear that bullying is extremely bad there. Worse than that, in the military, I'd be required to fight whatever wars the government wants me to fight, unlike the police, which just enforces our own laws.


GAME DESIGNER/DEVELOPER

Although I haven't had the resources or conne to be able to play their actual games, I've been following Privateer Press's main setting for a number of years just because it's nifty.

Pros: It's a dream job, one that would actually be fun to do and give me useful experience toward my life goals. They specifically say that they want a positive work environment, so I doubt that there will be so much hatred toward game designers/developers in the office itself. I'd be able to work on what are, as far as I know, the best two wargames out there, and one of the best settings. I'd also get employee discounts on what is, as far as I know, the best miniature line in the world now that GW stopped being friendly to real gamers.

Cons: The biggest obstacle seems to be actually getting the job, since I have no published credits. I've put this off so long that I'm going to have to truck it to get the "design kung fu" submission in on time, which means probably no playtesting—although I do have quite a good idea, and they're not expecting a finished, balanced product. (Unlike last time, I can easily do these things because I know about the setting and thus can write things that I wouldn't be able to sell myself anyway.) I'd also have to relocate to the Seattle area, but that doesn't bother me too much, and I already have relatives and family friends there.

Alternatives: I would have a much easier time getting grunt work. It wouldn't be great, but it's likely to beat out my current one on points 1, 4, and * in the previous post. Also, the proximity might get me a foot in the door for another go at R&D. The main question is whether I'd be willing to relocate just for that. There were also openings at Fantasy Flight, but they don't accept rookies.

Anyway, Project Cow Level, which is coming to be my (solitary) internship for my hypothetical real job, has been delayed by research for the latter, the trip, and more comics. These should all be out of the way (other than my kansō) by the end of March, so I can get back to it. In terms of other short-term stuff, I'm considering at least one submission to Gamer Lifestyle.

Although Wikipedia has an entire article on wasei Eigo, the opposite (which is more significant to English-speakers) is not discussed in a centralized place. Some of them are included in this really long list, but it doesn't mention the one that I find most dangerous. This is noted briefly, however, in the article I've been avoiding, but they don't say anything about the actual movement; it's implied that it's just an insult.

Also significantly, it says that Japanese lesbians refer to themselves as "les." I'd heard that this was a pejorative, which is presumably why I have never seen it used self-referentially in lesbian media, only in yuri. I have something more to mention related to that in relation to another kansō, if I ever get around to it.

I've posted my notes for future posts (previously previewed in in the works posts) on my Yahoo! Group, so members can check out prospects for anything they might want to read at any time. (Sadly, Firefox opens it as an HTML file, so formatting is absent. Maybe I should just keep updating it as an LJ post in my Memories instead.)

Meanwhile, I've found out a few other things about Yahoo! Groups:

*lokodraucarn actually did use a Yahoo! account to join; he apparently just used a separate email address. Thus, as far as I know, there is no way to join without a Yahoo! account.

*I can actually link you directly to individual files, as I have above. However, you will probably still have to join and sign in to access them.

*I have pinpointed the rule for whether or not I'm allowed to edit files directly at the group: only files of 20 kB or less. At least this gives me a way to deal with it, if I want to try and make sure I can use it. It still seems pretty stupid, though.

Also, you may note that the number of titles in the "kansō" section is growing and growing, particularly with the recent splurge. I'm thinking that I'm going to prioritize the ones that haven't already had full write-ups on Yuri na Hibi (at least since I've subscribed) or been posted on daily_yuri. I also have at least one that I want to type up for an aid to the description when I try to sell it on ebay, but I may not get around to that anytime soon either.

I'm too lazy to post my kansō for what I've read so far of my oversized order, but there was so much stuff that I actually managed to find a couple of good things in the insert adverts too:

1. The cover illustration for Oto×Maho 3 looks pretty. Of course, it's listed as "comedy," so I'm pretty sure the teasers at the starts of the summaries for 2 and 3 are gags, but it specifically says at least that they have a date scene (although the meaning of "date" seems considerably lighter in Japanese). Of course, they're (light) novels, so I'm not likely to get around to checking them out anytime soon.

2. Yahoo! Comic seems to have a hell of a selection of titles available for free tachi-yomi (reading in the store before (or instead of) buying). I'll probably get to this once I finish the stuff on hand; I've downloaded the software in the meantime, so maybe it'll get a once-over from the virus-scan by then just in case. . . .