Fortress of Perpetual Midnight

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）.

I was doing research for one of my shorts. According to more careful perusal of the wiki, my original premise was completely incorrect, as he's an exception because he was the primogenitor, not because of the specifics of the act. It's too bad they don't actually cite their information, but I guess I shouldn't be too disappointed to lose one that I can't sell anyway. I was thinking about that one because it seemed like an easy one to draw and have people critique my Japanese without publishing something that I'd want to enter in the contest later (and thus would prefer not to have floating around the Web too much). With my illustrations, at least, I can tell whether or not I'm getting better.

I haven't been getting around to posting much about these things, but I got around to it this time because I thought that showing off this part I turned up seemed easy. The glossary didn't help save my story, but I was interested to find an entire essay on Celas×Integra, and the first and third stories use that and its converse, respectively, as a gimmick—but they're comedies, so you shouldn't expect too much. (In each of the two, one of them compares the other's supposed tastes to "a certain MI-6 lieutenant commander." I have no idea who that is.) As there are no pictures, I wouldn't be able to post it on daily_yuri even if I could take the heat. For the same reason, I'm not familiar with the actual discussion communities where it would be more appropriate.

They also repeatedly use the quote in the subject line for some reason. That line used to bother me (why's he talking to someone who isn't there?) until I remembered that the guy who fights only with wire also happens to be the gunsmith. . . .

I also noticed that this and GUN SMITH CATS both claim that it's absurd to think that a ~20-year-old American or English lady would be a virgin.

You probably haven't noticed that I've added a bunch more ideas to my shorts since the last time I actually announced one (although I have obliquely mentioned ones that I didn't announce in the previous two posts with the tag). I'm considering moving the list to Google Docs so that you don't have to join to look at it. (Wikispaces doesn't seem to have as good a system for editing databases.) Incidentally, with this many ("¿Oro?" being rather long), I could probably even make up an entire graphic novel doohicky (thus meaning that people would actually be able to get copies after the mook sells out), if I could get someone to publish it.

On the topic of publication, I finally got around to examining the latest rules for the Ichijinsha Comic Taishō. An older version can be found here; as it appears to be the same other than the facts that the money amounts have changed and the newer version has added typos, I'll refer directly to the categories there:

受賞者特典 (Prizes): There are two overall prizes (the special one and the regular one), which both include publication of the winning entry and a contract for a serial. That would be damned nifty, but unfortunately, as I've mentioned, I don't currently have one that looks good even for S, much less the one that has a category in the contest. As this section is not specific to category, I imagine the judges' choices would be colored by which magazine/mook would benefit from it (for instance, not likely that they'd give both prizes to one in the same category). Below those two are the top prizes for the four magazine/mooks. Each includes publication of the winning entry and the winner's next story. All of the above are interesting in that they give you a contract to publish stuff that the judges haven't seen (or that you haven't even written) yet; I suppose there has to be a balance between the guarantee and the exit clauses in the contract depending on how good these works are. Also, it appears that they don't have to give away these prizes unless there are worthy entries, as only two of the six had winners this year. There are lower prizes that don't give you contracts, but still give you a patron editor for your continuing work; these ones are apparently not limited in minimum or maximum number of winners, as there were twenty-four winners between four categories and three levels of success, not covering all combinations of the two.

応募資格 (Entry Qualifications): You can't enter if you've previously published something through ID, but I imagine if you have, you have a step up on getting your other stuff published without having to enter a contest. Also, it's interesting that the work you submit is only forbidden from having been published professionally, so in theory, you could submit something you've already sold as a dōjinshi. Of course, I'd probably lose money trying to sell those while living in America, so the more pertinent point to me is that I could, for instance, post the works on the Web first. There is of course the chance that someone else would see my works and steal ideas. My social worker suggests that I look a bit into international copyright law, but for now, I think that I should be pretty safe just pointing out to the authorities (in this case, the judges) and having them take that into account.

応募規定 (Entry Specifications): Some stuff about ink type, paper size, file format, et cetera. I don't think I'd ever heard of MO before, despite all the Japanese stuff I read. Apparently you have to send in the text as a separate piece from the actual laid-out manuscript. One thing I find unusual is that you're free to choose the length of the story, although obviously the judges are going to take whether or not it's worth the space into account (for instance, a greater number of pages than the mook itself would probably be a bad idea).

必要記入事項 (Required Included Information): A bunch of stuff to write on the back of page 1

結果発表 (Announcement of Results): When the winners will be published. I'm not going to make this deadline, so the current one is irrelevant.

原稿返却 (Manuscript Return): As usual, you have to add an SASE if you want your stuff back. Of course, this isn't important if you send a digital copy.

諸権利 (Various Rights): ID gets all rights to publish the work, so if you've published it as an amateur as noted above, you'll probably have to take it down. (I'd also want to give daily_yuri gift illustrations to convince people not to distribute bootlegs. This would be a lot easier if I could get a compilation out quickly at least in Japan, so they actually have a legal way of getting the stuff if they miss the mook.) It's also interesting that they reserve the rights for screening and performance, which means that they have considered the possibility of making adaptations of the works in other media. One point that sticks out is the fact that they get the rights to the entries for all prizes, including the ones that aren't high enough that they get contracts for publication. I haven't seen any of those published so far, so I hope they don't just sit on them. They don't keep the ones that don't win as with RPG Superstar, which puts me in the odd position of hoping I win either one of the top six prizes or nothing at all. I also notice that it only says they get the rights to the work itself. I hope they don't want ownership of specific content, as in particular I'm using overlapping settings with some of my projects. Ms. Eiki has sold a spin-off that she couldn't get published about the same characters as her pro works as a dōjinshi, but she didn't get there through the contest, so she's likely to have different terms.

This is long enough for the moment, so I'll talk more about general concerns for the contest later. I should look over the non-contest submission guidelines, too.

blitzcon stopped by last weekend for the Feast, which gave me an excuse to watch a reasonable amount of video for the first time in a number of months, even though there were plenty of people there making fun of me. In case you actually want to get me to post about some of them, here are your choices (I'm sure he'll point out if I've forgotten any; it was a bit haphazard due to using a random computer without proper codecs):

「Candy☆Boy」 0–2
「チョコミミ」/Choko-Mimi 1
「恋姫†無双」/Koi-Hime†Musō 1
「スレイヤーズR」/Slayers R 1–3

Of course, all (except the one I've only downloaded for nostalgia) are already reviewed on Yuri na Hi-Bi, so the only two people who may give a damn can just read those ones.

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.

For some reason, the Waffen-SS of the Last Battalion were not a military group but an urban gang, and it was up to us Ninja Turtles to deal with them. The Hauptsturmführer's work was easy to identify, as there weren't many others running around with Broomhandle Mausers these days.† Oddly enough, Dok‡ wasn't actually doing anything evil, just researching at a local library.

†It had been replaced as a service pistol even by WWII, although some officers (such as him) still had personal ones. As the only confirmed Werwolfes are him and Ms. Rip-Van, we don't know anything about how they're spawned, so for all we know he may have been a soldier for decades before that. Interestingly enough, the powers they are seen to have seem to relate to firearms: Ms. Rip-Van's dancing musket ball and the Hauptsturmführer's ability to make two long-barreled Mausers look like one normal piece when holstered （笑）. (Speaking of extensible barrels, DM had to make a similar excuse so that typical slugthrower rifles (exemplified by the Czerka Adventurer) can double as BAW E-5 Droid Blaster Carbines due to the changes he's made to the plot.) Tangentially, I'm also amused by the fact that humans like Walter can chop up people with mono-wire, while vampires (there's one who shows up later on, not to spoil anything by saying where) can chop up skyscrapers. There's also the fact that Walter is a gunsmith, yet he fights exclusively with mono-wire. (I've thought of a logical reason for that, but that's ( a spoiler for Book 9. ))

Admittedly, there are Mauser variants chambered in modern calibers, so his work might not be identifiable by the ammo and brass left at the scene if he uses one of those. However, each firearm has a distinct pattern of marks that it leaves on each bullet from the rifling in the barrel. I think I may have heard that it's possible to determine the model as well, but I failed to find confirmation on that; still, they would be able to tell that all of the rounds came from the same two weapons, making it easier to link it to a specific person.

‡Since they're German, I assumed it was an abbreviation of the German word. I don't know whether they use such an affectionate term in German, but I don't imagine Hirano does either. (The dwarf is known as "Chef.") Using German words can lead to some odd things; this one is the same as an Ork word, and "Death Korps" is a bit of a false friend. . . .

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.

Last night was a flashback to my normal harem days, specifically LOVE♥HINA. Fortunately, by the end, Ms. Aoyama (who may have been played by me) remembered Ms. Kaolla's feelings, so it turned out all right. Sadly, this seems to have overshadowed the one from the previous night, since I've forgotten it.

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.