Fortress of Perpetual Midnight

As you can see, I've done a bit of sketching that I promised earlier. Mother was out all Saturday, so I was even able to lie in the living room to draw, which made things much easier. The fact that I have so few chances to do this resulted in my having planned a whole lot before drawing it, meaning that there wasn't too much sketching to do to get the general idea what I wanted. (Of course, the fact that I haven't had much practice actually drawing makes the technical proficiency rather low.) Considering where these are posted, I should draw them in landscape orientation for better formatting. (I've also linked to the photobucket page rather than the image alone this time, in case you actually want to look at the other images there.) Anyway, I need to decide what to sketch next, so I'll get the discussion (or at least my comments) started right away.

The sketch is of the Paisley Twins from "♥2♥" here. Besides what I've noted in the previous post, there were two other reasons why I chose them. First, I get two character designs for not too much more than the price of one, as all of their genetic characteristics are the same. Second, they make good models for different ways to wear the St. Katherine's uniform, something I needed to design for a number of uses.

Their inborn traits are a good microcosm of the latter concept, as I wanted to try variations on the same base to show their differences in personality (which are explained by their upbringing, as will be shown in the story). Significantly, the side on which the hair parts and the location of the birthmark (on opposite sides from one another, for balance) were added as traits that are the same for both of them and not for many other characters. The hair is wavy for the same reason and allows some variation (one who keeps it neatly trimmed, one who just pulls it back in a ponytail as I do—although in this case at the top with a scrunchy for even more femininity), but I don't think I've drawn the texture adequately here. (The only particular source to study that comes to mind is Sakura no Kiwa.)

In terms of drawing in general, you may notice that I'm trying a new way of drawing noses not seen the last time I showed sketches of humans. (Good grief, that's a long time ago, and it needs new links.) This is another attempt at a compromise between realism (nose) and æsthetics (no nose), particularly in a straight-on view (which I've used for three of the figures here because it's good to illustrate physical features, not because it looks good). The former may be better fulfilled if I go to the trouble of adding shading.

The uniform itself is just generic, with touches taken from a source that none of you will guess (particularly now that I've changed the name of the school to be less of a blatant rip-off). (I imagine the shoulder straps are the biggest giveaway—but, technically, all images and designs are copyrighted, so I should probably lose them.) The most obvious variation is how many of the pieces one wears, but although I've seen this in numerous Japanese sources, I'm thinking that may be too eclectic. I'm also a bit bothered by the wearing of a tie with an unbuttoned collar. I'm thinking of saying that Amber can get away with skipping the tie as long as she wears the blazer, which will theoretically allow a glimpse of her stylish brassière (although I don't have any ideas for when we'd see that Roxanne is wearing a more functional one). The untucked shirttails will also be an obvious point, if I ever get around to showing a rear view.

The skirt is a bit unconventional, as I've used my inspiration to make it buttoned in two columns. This makes it inconvenient to roll up (as I've heard mentioned in both American and Japanese sources), but instead allows the wearer to leave it partially unbuttoned for a slit-skirt look. (In theory, one who takes particular pride in how she looks from behind could wear it unbuttoned and backwards, although that would probably be rather uncomfortable when sitting.) Having buttons allows the skirt to have a fitted waist without needing elastic or a belt, but there isn't any real point to having two columns, other than the idiosyncrasies of the design. . . . Maybe I'll just make one side fake or something. Also, you may note that the shot in the middle shows the skirt ending a fair distance above the knee; this was just because of my inexperience with proportions. Although this is intended for a Japanese comic, it's still a Catholic school. . . . Another thing you may notice about the buttons is that you can only see the holes on the sides away from the edges when they're done up. This is because I imagine (and am too lazy to actually look for myself to see) that tension would cause a button to be pulled toward the side where it's attached to the cloth, not the side with the hole.

As you can see, although there are only two Paisley Twins, I made another scale model (on the right) to try different things. Other than the issues with Amber's necktie and skirt length, I also wanted to try a different hairstyle for Roxanne. You can see that I added earrings to the first Roxanne (as she takes more care of her appearance and thus is willing to deal with piercings—just like how Amber doesn't wear contacts), but they seemed a bit large for a Catholic school, so I tried a 'do that shows her earlobes in the first place. I suppose that means that the third sketch is of Roxanne dressing up as Amber. The fourth is of course just an attempt to see how my designs and techniques work at a less staid angle.

Overall, I'm most taken with the facial proportions in the sketch of Amber, which should be a simple matter of spending more time to get that right. More concerningly, the torsos look really bad. I shouldn't have tried to start with characters of such a buxom build, and I really need more experience to be able to draw cloth. Between these problems and the one I mentioned when I announced this task, I'm thinking "While You Were Sleeping" here would be a better place to start—hooray for thin people who wear battle bikinis!

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.

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]

My orders for the second quarter will be going out pretty soon. Since the middleman didn't seem to understand when I asked him about combining orders, I'm planning on going back to amazon, as long as I can get it before Tsubomi Vol.1 sells out again. (If it consistently sells out faster, I'm considering moving the orders to the month that one comes out in the future. As non-periodical limited editions are by definition unable to be predicted, that may be a more usable criterion.)

I'm also going to be getting rid of some other old comics (none yuri, since I'm keeping those ones). As my job prevents me from being able to consistently ship things within the time limits that would be required for official selling, I'm hoping someone here might want them. Off the top of my head, I've got Jōki Tanteidan (the full eight of the original, plus Vol. 9 of Shin, for which the first eight were essentially just a reordering of the original), EARTHIAN (all five of the original series, which doesn't include the last few chapters or extras because the serialization ended in-between full volumes; I imagine you can get pretty much everything you miss here if you buy the last volume of the complete edition), and X (volumes 1–18, which is as many of the long-on-hiatus series as have been compiled permanently, although there were apparently a few more chapters in a special edition of Gekkan Newtype). I'm going to get rid of Hōshin Engi as well, but I'm keeping them for the foreseeable future since, as noted before, I'm thinking of using a speech pattern for which this is the only reference I recall having in one of my shorts. If you're interested in any of these, I'm sure you can find your own links (and post them here for our reference).

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."

Apparently there's another one of a level that I should be downloading it. Sadly, I'm so backlogged that I don't have the disk space for another series. I should just burn or delete a lot of stuff.

(And yes, finding the subject for this post took about as long as typing it.)

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.

You probably haven't noticed, but I moved some old Project Homuncupunk background write-ups to the wiki. (I haven't moved the part about the Templars' armaments, as I need to update that information more heavily to fit my current idea.) This was just while I was at it writing a bit of new stuff for Project Artificer.

Although there's only that much to show you, most of the ideas there lately are comprised of a lot of new ideas for characters (mostly to increase the yuri factor—maybe enough to get me to actually fix that instead of messing around with Homuncupunk and AnthraXX so much). Sadly, there's not much to show for them without telling you what happens.* I can say that the story is suffering from the fact that it's all about the supporting characters and has little to do with the chief protagonists. Of course, since I'm going to have to rework the entire thing, I might just change who's in the middle. In any case, I did at least keep the head count down (far too little, far too late?) by using one I already had (who happens to be famous) to become "Slash" (since it didn't make any sense for her to have a Latin name in a world where the language never existed). Her personality and appearance have changed quite a bit in the process, but since all is widely known is rumor, the information given isn't specific enough that you'd see any of that evolution (other than the name). Incidentally, I never knew the origin of the term until I looked it up; I guess that means in Japanese it'd be "kakeru." (I'm somewhat bothered by the slang definitions, but I doubt they would be among the first three that come to mind for the target audience.)

Another new character ends up replacing the other point in the love triangle around the Lady Deléa (also famous). A problem there is that under the current society, that would mean both he and Áeleran would have to be of the same house (since they were both considered possible suitors for the lady). That's not so bad, as the new idea is that they be House Blue[Hock]brush, and there's space for a lot of variety in unarmed combat, but like Hōshin Engi, Artificer's gimmick is magic items, and thus I'd want to focus on weapon styles. A more widespread problem is the fact that, judging by D&D, a pre-industrial small city boasts a population numbering only in the thousands, which means if you have more than a half-dozen noble houses, each one would have a very small gene-pool. Of course, the Bridgefolk are the quintessential frail aristocrats of the Pale Sea, so maybe that fits. I think the main reason I said they didn't mix was the hereditary birthmarks on their foreheads, but since those were added by the high elves millennia ago using necromancy, I could just as well say they still maintain their integrity when interbred (which would make an interesting phenomenon where a mixed couple's children would be separated depending on which House's mark each manifests). Speaking of which, the debased markings of the River Rats are probably the only feature of humans in the Pale Sea that doesn't commonly appear in real-world humans as far as I know, which is something they normally don't do for some reason even in fantasy (with the notable exception here)—but since humans are supposed to be the most adaptable and varied race, I think that fits, too.

*It has been mentioned that the information I post about my projects is pretty incomprehensible outside the context of the stories (which will not be ready anytime in the foreseeable future because I don't know how to draw). My social worker suggested that I might post scripts as I did with prose drafts, but considering that any I've written are for my use alone, the stage directions may not be sufficient for comprehension. It might be nifty if someone read my scripts and offered to draw them for me, but I'm still not too keen on the idea of trying to collaborate with a stranger. In any case, all I've got is a pathetic fancomic about MYTHBUSTERS (since blitzcon offered to do some image edits for me, then never replied to either of the emails) and most of one of my shorts (which would have to be kept members-only, since I'm supposedly entering it in a contest and handing over the rights, so I don't want to take the very small risk of someone stealing it).

Edit (2008.08.18): Added links

I was playing an RPG using the engine from WARCRAFT III (like the not-really-orc-campaign in Frozen Throne) where I seemed to be the living version of Arthas. I was going around doing quests in some castle that had a layout similar to the Tippecanoe Mall. Oddly, despite my being the good guy version, one of my quest-givers was a plague witch. One of the missions involved escorting a human lady used as a receptacle for some disease [possibly related to the neta from one of my shorts, only more gruesome]. Still, I seemed more concerned about attacking friendly NPCs so they would mob and kill me. I also thought about the fact that they had to change the names of the Steam Tank and Gyrocopter in the expansion because GW drew the line.

Sadly, this one seems to have filled my disk cache, so I forgot about the previous three that I hadn't gotten around to typing. I've got various things to post, but for the moment I'm a bit sidetracked by the rereading I did while I was looking up the subject line for the previous post. I'm done rereading the actual book, but it occurred to me that there might be more of the original Webcomic, despite the fact that there was no suggestion that there might be any continuation or even where it might be found on the Web (which might be a good way to stop tachi-yomi performers from leaving the book and just going and reading it there, but prevents publicity for what comes after). Anyway, since the book only goes up to Chapter ~20 and the oldest serial installment still available on the Web is 32, I'm thinking it'd be a good idea to make sure I read it while I'm sure I can, barring finding some comment saying that the other parts will also be published. (And yes, my kansō on this series are in the backlog too. . . .)

Speaking of last night, I feel as if I should make sure that I've taken my drugs on days when I read things by Ms. Hakamada. As a person and as someone who aspires to write himself, it's good to be able to have emotional reactions to drama, but it sure doesn't feel good.

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.

Upon closer inspection, it was probably just Ron's big-ass revolver. Speaking of his weapons, I find it odd that they feature him holding up the big stone fist and saying, "five-fingered Molly" or some such, considering that when he's using it (I've only seen the end of the first one and none of the comics, so I don't know whether it's a gauntlet, a metamorphosis, or what) it only has four fingers (counting the thumb). It also seems unusual to use "boy" for a muscular 6-ft.-1-in. superhero with that much facial hair. Judging by the CLIX, that's because the "baby" is the size of a grade-schooler.

Some other points about "Spaghetti Western（仮）" that I neglected to mention:

*Although I'm told that "Hispanic" is technically not a race but an ethnic group that includes both blacks and whites, I plan to make them all a tan tone to emphasize the difference from the outsider protagonist. For the same reason, I'm also tempted to have them speak Kansai dialect (mostly because of the "sai"), in which I'm even less fluent than standard. It might be more logical to give them stereotypical rural accents (using the copula verb "da" after verbs and adjectives and the emphasis particle "be"), but that always annoys me because it sounds like bad grammar.

*Also, since it's set in a Spanish-speaking area, I can hardly resist using the first-person pronoun 「予」 ("yo"). Unfortunately, I only know one character who uses it, so I don't have much on which to base the speech patterns. (He's an emperor, so it may not even be appropriate for anyone in the setting.) I've commented before on all the new first-person pronouns I encountered when I first read that series, but I never saw any of them again, except the one that's used by two characters therein, which turned out to be all over the place.

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.