Fortress of Perpetual Midnight

I'll be gone to Georgia from Sunday, 2009.10.20 to Sunday, 2009.10.27. Of course, that means I'll probably be able to check my mail and LJ every day. . . .

It recently occurred to me that I can leave the computer in the bedroom on, since it doesn't have Internet. This is making it a lot easier to note down ideas. As the only functioning OS is Linux, I haven't gotten it Japanese tech support, so I've been working on my latest fix, Project Supernatural Weapons and Tactics (as always, only a working title). This one doesn't have much necessary world-building design work, doesn't have female characters getting naked all that often, and is about fighting rather than relationships, so I thought it would be a good starting project for drawing. Unfortunately, I don't get to use firearms and don't know anyone who does, so I'm a bit vague on a lot of the details. Most significant is the armament for the entry team, which is shown off in the first chapter. It's too bad blitzcon only got that one course, and lokodraucarn doesn't use LJ. I'm currently thinking about just posting it online and using commentary from readers to build the corrected version, which they'd have to buy.

Incidentally, other things about weaponry I've thought up for MythBusters are here. Too bad the ideas I have for my story aren't going to be urban myths until I've drawn it. . . . I guess I could wait until the boys have had time to read the online version and test the myths before finalizing the printed graphic novel.

最近（と言うかいつも）読んだ漫画のかんそうをちゃんと書く気にならんので、こちらで一言ずつ入力しておいています。売る事にもべんりになるでしょう。

I've found that wikispaces provides RSS feeds for individual tags, so you can subscribe only to what interests you. In that respect, at least, it's a good thing that I'm posting much more stuff there than here. It's much more organized than spouting off stuff that I have to muck around to find. It's also indexed on Google, so it'll hopefully be slightly more likely to generate response (since people will go back to pages rather than ignoring each post just once).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I 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.

Contrary to my usual tastes, I rather liked the music video that was posted on daily_yuri the other day. However, it brings up the problem with ethics in these communities. Particularly with free media, I don't mind people posting samples to blogs, but they should at least credit the creators. (In this case, the poster doesn't know, but she should at least have posted a link to where she found it so that others could try to figure it out.) If any of my works ended up there, I'd have to go there and fight them. The same goes for scanslation sites where they don't even give the real title of the works, much less the ISBN. If you don't allow people any way to buy them, your mantra about why it's acceptable doesn't work very well.

As I live in fear because of much less significant problems, I spend my spare time trying to enjoy myself rather than being an activist for major causes. However, I have been willing to at least add my name to petitions that I've encountered (on the Web) on the moral issues that are most significant to me. This has put me on mailing lists that thankfully increase my real-mail:spam ratio*. More significantly, they've pointed out more things that I should at least link: that systematic rape is more popular than I realized (1 2) and that creationists have even more pseudo-reasons than I realized.

*The third link also got me four automatic replies from various congressmen. I don't remember having run into that before. At least I can assume that ".in.gov" domains don't give a lot of accounts to spammers.

I was surprised to find that the works I noted have been relayed on a main article at Yuri na Hi-Bi. (Between the RSS feed not working well and the articles changing order all the time, it's lucky I didn't miss that one.) Unfortunately, I had only said what they were to test the water, not actually posted any information about them yet, so I'd better actually type the reviews before people come complaining that some of them have very little yuri in them.

I also got a reply from Ms. Morishima when I answered a post a while back, but I don't have proof, since I used email, and she only answers "applause" publicly. This one may have been misleading too, as I haven't actually drawn anything yet.

But in any case, it does seem that Japanese people are polite, so I'd like to try to keep these communications up to help recover some of the confidence in human interaction that I've been losing through communicating with English-speaking people (on the Internet, gaming, and especially at work). I actually got an OpenID livedoor account, but that doesn't seem to have any effect on commenting.

I don't really see the problem with having to remember different passwords to fit requirements for different accounts (since mine seems to work pretty much everywhere), but I do have trouble keeping track of all my memberships (although still better than people who decide to sign up for extra email accounts and then deliberately ignore them), so I thought it was cool when I encountered OpenID at my wiki. Ironically, I had signed up for an account by the time I noticed that I was already supposed to have two. I've managed to figure out how to combine my existing accounts at sites where they give me the option specifically, but I don't know whether I'll be able to do that with others for which I sign up, or, more importantly, whether I can transfer the other one that already is OpenID (as I don't want to lose what I have there). Does anyone have any experience with this?