Fortress of Perpetual Midnight

So, it turns out that two of my regular buys are opening subscription services here. This is now apparently the only way to get the comics to which they're trying to restrict access. Unfortunately, they only allow addresses in Japan. If I use the proxy service, they'd be too far apart to allow me to combine them in one shipment, so I'd have to make twice as many orders a year. I guess there's probably only going to be one special per year, so if I use the subscription for one, I can get that, and I can buy the other one normally at that time to get it in the same shipment.

I had a good idea for a shōrt about ladies sharing their notes in school. I wasn't at the computer, so I noted the word "Notes" in my notes.

Unfortunately, as there is neither such a note in my phone nor a good idea in my brain, it was just a dream. I have way too many ideas for someone who can't publish them, but I always appreciate more to mull over. The ones for which I've typed blurbs are only the very tip of the iceberg.

The dream was obviously brought on by reading 『★Y★R★Y★R★』 here. They finally get to the real yuri, and apparently that's not the part that sticks in my head. Bloody comedy

To go along with the fact that it's released on a slightly different date due to a holiday, the preorders are starting comparatively really early, too. Any requests?

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.

Yeah, this is out of order. I just want to have this first part for posterity, and there's too much to type for the weekend for me to get that out of the way first.

"[T]his first part" is the set of goals I've set (with my social worker's input). I have until Monday the 27th. I've had mixed results with trying to do specific things before, but anyway:

1. Read the introduction to the book I chose to make sure it's the one I want to use

2. Work out character and outfit designs for the two main characters my short "♥2♥." This one seemed like a good starting point, as of the ones that are yuri enough for the contest*, it was the tamest (with the exception of the ones set in Japan, which would require more research, particularly for this audience). This means that it will be less insulting to the ladies who will judge, as well as those who read. It also means that sloppy drawing won't be terribly accentuated, as they keep their clothes mostly on. I later realized that I may be able to write "A Crowd" (which does not have a blurb as of press time) with even less sex, and that that part isn't set in a place with school uniforms, which is in theory a good way to show off not being just another Japanese illustrator, but that would also require more design work. . . .

3. Move some furniture to make the bedroom work better. Ironically, this means switching it so that the paper will be in the place that isn't convenient to reach. I shouldn't be trying to store paper in a cruddy drawer anyway.

*According to the latest issue of YuriHime S, the YuriHime label is having its contest separately from the other mags now. I don't know anything that's really changed by that.

In terms of things that actually happened, I got caught up in working on my tags and only grabbed a piece of bread and a mint on my way out. I was planning to get a small snack from the vending machine just before the first shift, but I forgot to get money before closing the locker. To aggravate this, I didn't get an individual break, so I didn't have a chance to get my meal to somewhere I'd be able to access it in-between shifts. At this time, there are always at least five people in the break room, so the likelihood that I can go through there to the locker without going ballistic is pretty slim even when I'm at my best. As it happened, I had other people moving around my equipment in ways that really tick me off, so by the end of the first shift, I was having another nervous breakdown. I went back into the warehouse area and cried for a while, then moved to the warmer (but generally less private) maintenance room to wait for the next shift.

I then noticed that the between-shifts stack-down was being performed by one of the people who is willing to listen to me and one who has started recently enough that I haven't made much of an enemy of him yet. I decided to approach there and see if the former would let me help, thus allowing me actually to do some work instead of hiding. However, the new worker started looking at me and gesturing, probably in an attempt to find out whether I wanted to do his job instead. He didn't say anything, so I couldn't order him to stay or to actually ask the question, and I can't go around deciding by myself what people mean if they don't speak, so I ended up having to replace him entirely. I was afraid that one of my three main enemies was going to replace the other worker when she went home, but fortunately, he was leaving at that point, too. The lady's actual replacement was someone who is actually willing to talk to me sometimes and with whom I haven't had any major fights as far as I know, but unfortunately, he's used to my taking the lead and deciding when to switch out the skids when we do stack-down together. As I just keep getting in more and more fights, I wasn't willing to take the initiative, so we just kept stacking the first skid higher and higher until the operator moved it out. All of these things made me particularly worried, but neither of the workers who work opposite me seemed to notice my sobbing.

For the second shift, the operator put me on the position where he always puts me at 03:30 on Tuesdays. Besides my being too slow to work that station adequately, I also have to run to get ready every hour or so when a new paper starts, as the operator starts without letting me catch up about 50% of the time. Twice, I've tried telling him when I can't do things he assigns me, but both times, he just said "okay" and made me do them anyway, resulting in fully and semi-catastrophic failure, respectively, of the shifts' work. Knowing (from these and other cases) that I can't ask for help, combined with the fact that I was in bad physical condition at the time, resulted into more running around and falling over to try to keep up, which continued to be rather humiliating.

Anyway, I was working alone this time, so I had plenty of time to ponder how ridiculous it is that I'm supposed to work in a place where I can't communicate with most people even in an emergency, thus completely preventing me from filling out my duties. I'm not sure my social worker and I aren't doing anything about this. It's just getting worse and worse, but I'm still not allowed to quit. I had a few fantasies about severely injuring myself or threatening the operator with a knife, thus forcing them to fire and/or institutionalize me so I could start rebuilding my life. In any case, I managed to stuff the snack down my throat during the 10-minute break during the second shift, so I felt better afterward. (I did have to give up using the restroom, but I had done that only five hours earlier, as opposed to the 10.5 I went without substantial food.) Still, when I got back to Mother's house, I didn't feel like actually getting a full meal (perhaps because of the monotony of the few things I'm given), and I used my condition as an excuse not to call the clinic as mentioned here.

Selling stuff: Even less interest than I expected. I forgot to add my extra issue of Comic YuriHime, but it's there now for posterity.

Gaming: I've added some more information here (and in some of the linked pages). Discussion (what little there is) has brought up some further points:

*I would prefer if I could get three to five players for a session. (It's hard to judge the length of time that an adventure would take without play-testing it, but I'd prefer to have six hours.) In any case, from past experience, I can probably rope in a couple more people even if they're not actually interested enough to bother to touch the keyboard.

*A more immediate problem than scheduling is the choice of adventure (and thus game system), as I need to work it to a playable point. (Given my schedule, I'd prefer about a week to do that.) It occurred to me that using a game in a setting that you'll already know, such as Star Wars or WoW would be a good place to start for novice gamers. Of those ones, my commentary includes:

"Fools' Gold [Thicker than Water]": If I'm going to be on a computer anyway, I may as well update this to the current rules. This may affect the level at which it's set (as the new classes get the powers I want at different points), but the idea is the same.

"Into the Woods": I don't have much in the way of ideas for this one beyond hack and slash, although that may be better for WoW players. . . .

"The Moon! It's Asplode!": The first footnote discusses the main issue. I think blitzcon would like this one.

"Order 65": This is another one where I just thought of a lot of character builds to kick each other's asses. I think the current edition makes it simpler to run Force-users than its predecessor, but that also means I'd have to make completely different builds. . . .

"These Aren't the Droids for Which You're Looking": I've already tried this one out (and fit it into one session), but I'd want to edition-update it, as well, so it would take about as long as any other to ready. It also by default covers the same characters as "Moon" at a later time, so it may be better to play that first. Also, since lokodraucarn was in the first run, that's one less person I could dragoon.

Anyone who is willing to contribute to the discussion gets a say in which one I'd want to play. The others are also available, if you want to look into them.

*It occurred to me that if I'm hosting, MapTool may require more bandwidth than usual, so I guess I'd go without voice chat for starters, just in case. The parts I need to learn for GMing are pretty simple, so that shouldn't be a consideration when compared to the necessary work for getting the adventure itself ready.

Edit (2009.04.10): Updated links

Continuing from before, here's a more detailed list of what I'm selling (in Roman letters, as the links can take you to the official titles and PNs anyway):

Kaiketsu Jōki Tantei-dan 1–8 (all) (Asamiya Kia)

Shin・Kaiketsu Jōki Tantei-dan 9 (Asamiya Kia) [Relationship with the original series described in the earlier post]

Hyakki Ō-koku MONSTER KINGDOM 1 (Ayaku Nī)

Comic YuriHime VOL.14 (anthology)*

Magical Antique Visual Comic Anthology (anthology)†

Comic Party 1 (Inui Sekihiko)

FLCL 1 (Ueda Hajime)

O-Takara Sagashi-tai (OMOIATARU) [Not the edition linked, but a later one, with a new cover and several other illustrations and commentary. Ms. OMOI didn't write the script for this one, so there isn't even any notable yuri in this one.]

WARCRAFT: THE SUNWELL TRILOGY 1 DRAGON HUNT (Richard A. Knaak, Jae-Hwan Kim) [Mentioned earlier; not to be confused with this edition]

MAGIC KNIGHT RAYEARTH 1–3 (all) (CLAMP)

MAGIC KNIGHT RAYEARTH 2 1–3 (all) (CLAMP)

Kami-sama no Iu Tōri! 1–2 (Konishi Aki)

Moe-Tan Magical Busters, please save the world!! (Takahashi Tetsuya) [Given this comicalize's illustrator, they at least throw out heart-marks when they touch one another, but there's significantly more tension with male characters (of which most are not even vaguely humanoid). When you consider him, it's likely that the "Nankyoku Penguin" is female, too, but it only has a cameo. Anyway, the review based on which I bought it was here.]

HUNTER×HUNTER 1 (Togashi Yoshihiro)

Cowboy Bebop 1–3 (complete) (Nanten Yutaka) [not to be confused with Shooting Star Bebop, the one with the weird character designs]

KIDDY GRADE REVERSE (Hiyo Hiyo)†

Black Cat 1 (Yabuki Kentarō)

Arabesque 3 (arc 2, first part) (Yamagishi Ryōko)‡

Ayashi no Ceres Tenkū o-Togi Sōshi? 1–2 (Watase Yu'u)‡

†These are ones I've described briefly here.

‡There are covers for these visible on the massive post where I got them. The one for this version of O-Takara Sagashi-tai isn't, but I like the new one better, personally.

You will of course be able to find more information about these on jpqueen and throughout the Web. If you're interested in any more specific comments, I can give those, too. As most of these are going to remain here to be in the next batch, I should probably put them in a more permanent place. . . .

[Edit (2009.05.21): Managed to sell some]

Whose bright* idea was it to put my two nights off on either side of my double shift? That really messes with my circadian rhythms. I've talked to the new social worker about seeing if I can get the drugs adjusted to fit that, but that seems to have fallen by the wayside. At this point, it's only a few weeks before my next appointment with the psychiatrist anyway.

I was actually able to stay in good spirits for the first shift (even borrowed a pair of cutters (see here)) because I was thinking about some new ideas. One was about more plot details relating to the new character for Project Artificer. On the problem of focus, it occurred to me that I could make the title character more of a catalyst-type character who simply helps the people who actually have something to do with the story (like the Kuroneko-kan? proprietor in the Comic YuriHime series by the Hatsu-Koi Shimai illustrator), but a noncombatant would work better for that. I've also been working on making the main trio niftier, but they still pale in comparison to so many others. At least in Homuncupunk the main protagonist has a reason that he's only a supporting character (!?), and there's no sense trying to do it in Artificer if I did it better in my other big one.

By the time I got to work, however, I was working on something else: another short that definitely isn't yuri-themed. I like real-world weaponry, but I have so few places to use them, and I don't think I could make a full gun-action series even remotely realistic in such a setting. This one-shot also plays on elements of the setting introduced in Project AnthraXX and is another radical one, so it may not be good to put it out before I'm established, although it would be comparatively easy to draw.

Sadly, for the second shift, I was put on a station with another worker. It's quite annoying to have to predict what another person's going to do and how without being able to communicate with her. At least when I work alone, I don't have to keep my fear and hatred at the front of my mind. (There haven't been that many times that I've gotten in trouble just because I was caught helping someone or fixing someone's mistakes without permission, but they tick me off even more than when I feel that I've done something wrong.) Judging by the (admittedly low) frequency with which this still happens, either the supervisor didn't tell my limitations to the people who actually decide whether or not to overrule them; or other people have some reason why they couldn't do that and let me do the job I do so much better than they. I can understand that it's difficult to try to accommodate someone who has so few abilities, and I haven't risked trying to explain to people about what I can do. . . .

*Allowed as standard, since I'm being sarcastic

This time, I've got time before the deadline (as far as I can tell). However, there are a couple of things that concern me:

1. It says to pay by going to the bank and requesting a postal transfer (郵便振替). I imagine I can probably do this even from the States, but it'll be difficult for me.

2. There's a fixed shipping charge of ¥600, regardless of how much you order. Thus, I really would prefer to get more than just one volume. The specials from the other three mags probably contain side stories to other things I've tagged, but my wish list is so backlogged that I haven't gotten around to buying parts of the actual series of any of them. So, alternatively, does anyone else want a copy of SayuriHime Vol*.4 (¥1,000 a pop)?

Anyway, since it's a fixed shipping cost, they'd probably be ticked if I tried to ship it to this side of the (other) pond, so I'm probably using postty. This means that, at least for the journey overseas, it's more economical if I pick the full three packages to be combined. (Of course, since amazon has free shipping to postty anyway, they often split orders into smaller pieces without warning, so it's hard to say how many there will be.) As it's noted to be shipped toward the end of April, it should be close enough to combine with my next standard order (now three quarterlies and counting!).

*It has lower-case Roman letters, unlike the main mook, since it's "sa."

I still haven't gotten around to typing the second part of my thoughts about the Ichijinsha Comic Taishō, but I have posted some blurbs for the shorts. I'd appreciate it if anyone is actually interested in reading any of them. "Diamond in the Rough" is the one of which I almost got all the way through the rough draft (because I thought of it first, not because it's at the bottom of the list), but I haven't gotten around to finishing it or making all the changes I've thought up since then. That's the trouble with momentum, I guess. I also see that I'm really bad at writing prose (since I mostly only read dialogue).

arifyn mentioned that he's not reading much of my stuff in Japanese because it's a pain in the ass with the Chinese characters. That means that I can draw the line above reading English and below looking things up (as it's just cut-and-paste online). I thought that BABEL FISH might be useful to at least give you a general idea of what I'm saying, but it turns out it was even worse than I thought, to the point of ignoring white space and changing the names of the title characters in the draft I posted earlier to "thin D," "beer tris," and "thornback me" (which, though amusing, doesn't get people to read it).

In general, one expects that through continuing exposure to some element, one would become accustomed or desensitized to it. So it's somewhat disturbing that the more I interact with human beings, the more I learn to hate and fear them. (I'll hopefully elaborate on that later.) This is making life difficult enough that, time and again, I'm afraid that I'm going to have to give up.

One interesting thing that I've noticed is that I don't remember ever having seen Japanese people do this. It may be because of how little experience therein, but statistically speaking, I should have found at least one flame in the fora, blogs, wiki talk pages, and personal messages by now if it's anywhere near as bad as people conversing in English—and that's the sort of thing that I remember. It almost seems like it's true that Japanese people are ridiculously polite to strangers. Of course, it may simply be that my unfamiliarity with the language makes it more difficult for me to read how they mean things, but that still means it's less hurtful to me and may help me build up a bit of confidence (and practice my language skills and build contacts*). The one obvious way to do this is Yuri na Hibi's place for sharing information. I have a few older comics that I didn't find introduced there, so I'm thinking of asking if there's interest in me posting about them.

First, of course, I really should type the second installment of that stuff I promised Ms. darkenez0_o I'd post. This has been hugely delayed due to the fact that I find it difficult to schedule a couple of hours to work on a single blog post these days. The agreement didn't state the extent of what I'd type, but I'm planning to try to catch up with the current issue and call it quits, as from that point on, it'd be easy enough for anyone who can play the subject to buy them and read them herself.

*My therapist even suggested that I talk about getting people to draw my shorts. for me, but I'm a long way away from having anyone that friendly yet.

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.

As you may have guessed from the name, a Harrow deck is a mystical set of cards used for telling fortunes. The second Pathfinder Adventure Path uses it as a running theme throughout, and the finalé (spoilers for general progression of the story in the link) includes rules for a mighty artifact known as the Harrow deck of many things, based on the ordinary deck of many things, one of the two most complicated magic items in any DMG (along with its fellow pile of cards, the deck of illusions), with more than twice as many effects in it. One on page 72 piqued my interest:

From this, we can infer either (a) that the artifact has the power to cause genie governments (which are run by beings close to gods in the core setting, not sure about this one) to accept same-sex marriage; or, even better, (b) that genie governments already accept same-sex marriage. (One might say the same thing about ladies proposing, although as far as I know that's always been a matter of tradition and not law.) The latter is the closest I've seen to any societal stand on the matter, as from what I've read, there are no such marriages depicted in the official works, and no particular opinion is given on those individuals who are in such a relationship or have such tastes.

Other related comments:

1. As you probably know, genies are based on the jinn of Muslim (and perhaps pre-Muslim) folklore, and their depiction in D&D and thus the OGL follows such inspiration (as illustrated by the fact that the genies, including the ones from the Plane of Water, are associated mostly with desert-originating, Middle-Eastern-themed humans in both the Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk). If you assume that they follow such a culture in the absence of contradictory information, that would mean that they would allow same-sex marriage (because of the information above), but allow polygyny and not polyandry (by default). That sounds a bit confusing. . . .

2. In case you were wondering, The Marriage is the card connected to the lawful neutral alignment and the ability score Charisma. Its traditional meaning is "Union of persons or ideas"; as a morally neutral card, it is never misaligned and thus always means this. (This information is found in the article about Harrow in general in the premiere of the adventure path.) Of course, there's nothing to relate it to same-sex marriage except one effect of the wording of the first clause (instead of "a genie of the opposite sex," for instance) in the description of the artifact version, and the commercially available illustration appears to show opposite sexes (judging by the fact that the partner with the pecs has sideburns like the illustrator's protagonist in his Dungeon-serialized NPC-race comic, and the one without needs a strategically placed infant), but considering the fact that it's allowed by the card, one might consider this to mean that it's also allowed by traditional/civilized society and is neither moral nor immoral. In any case, I've never seen another magic item that has such a clause. (The Chinese lady from "Hǎo!" would like that.) Too bad it's only available by random draw.

3. "The genie's type ... [is] determined by the GM." This brings up the question, "What types are available?" In D&D, genies are split into a balanced mix of the four elements (air, earth, fire, and water) and the generic Material Plane ones. However, the layout of my cosmology is somewhat hard to explain due to the fact that the earth and water genies are only described in the Manual of the Planes in 3rd Edition/v.3.5, which means that they're not Open Game Content and thus are not allowed to be used by anyone except Wizards—which means no one, now that they've done away with D&D as we know it. Of course, we've seen that paizo is allowed to use some closed content, probably having gotten the rights when they were publishing Dragon and Dungeon, so maybe we'll get them back. Incidentally, although the illustrations of the deck for sale were made before the Harrow deck of many things, the "union" was emphasized by showing one of the partners distinctly watery and the other fiery.

4. The protagonist of "Private Club" (one of my shorts) would work very well in a story about this item. Unfortunately, there are two problems with that: (a) that names in Pathfinder products are Product Identity, so I can't sell it if it has specifics; and (b) that it's a very obscure topic, so no one would read it. So I probably won't bother to drawing it (even if I get around to drawing anything), and the ideas will just go to waste.