Fortress of Perpetual Midnight

AZUMANGA is torrented. I'd download it myself while I had the chance, but I don't have enough disk space or a DVD-ROM burner. (There is, on the other hand, a DV-R, which we unsurprisingly never use.) Obviously, the category is incorrect, so it may not even be actual raws either, but whatever.

Contrary to the title, this is not another post about downloading bootlegs—at least not primarily.

I finally managed to get hold of my new job coach a few weeks ago and set up an appointment. I went in without any clear idea of what to do, hoping to ask her for advice, so she sent me home to codify my criteria and think about what kind of job I'd want. Consequently, I've made a few rough notes based on my experience so far:

1. The most immediate and obvious criterion is that I need enough money to be able to afford a home. Judging by the low-end rents I've seen in the paper I assemble, I would be able if I stepped up to full time at my current just-above-minimum wage, but for the rest of the reasons, that would just be even worse.

2. There are two problems that both are detrimental to my long-term health and really tick me off. The first is that the work environment is incredibly loud. This is rather inevitable for a factory job, of course. It also results in the facts that no one can understand what anyone else is saying (in my case due to my ADD making it difficult to discern individual voices from background noise, in the others' because they've suffered so much hearing damage already due to their job and their music-listening lifestyles), which requires that they yell incoherently at each other all the time, and that the alert signals all have to be even louder and more ear-piercing due to high pitch so that they aren't missed in the cacophony.

The second is more of a morality issue. The workplace is smoke-free, but workers are encouraged to smoke right outside the entrances, including when the garage doors are open, and they generally smoke just before getting to work, both of which meaning I have to breathe their second-hand smoke if I'm nearby. About half the workers (including three of the four supervisors) smoke at least one cigarette every couple of hours. As you know, I particularly hate smoking not just because it's harmful, but because it has no purpose other than as a poison. However, U.S. law protects the right of smokers to poison others, and even beyond my policy*, I prefer to avoid complaining about it within earshot. In my experience, smokers are, on average, even more bad-tempered than others with whom I've spent time, and the last two to whom I've mentioned that I didn't like it claimed that it was my own fault and that I was making fun of him, respectively.

3. The fact that almost no one there gives a damn about doing even the bare minimum makes my own apathy even stronger. (I tried to wean them off my picking up after them before my trip, but we'll see about the results when I get back tonight.) I imagine this stems from the fact that it's a horrible job. There's also the fact that the company apparently can't even afford to tell us even the most basic things about stuff that we're supposed to do, so learning is mostly by educated guess. This is no doubt due to the fact that annual employee turnaround appears to be about 200%, again stemming from the fact that it's an awful job. I haven't bothered to call them on these things because of my policy*, which is reinforced by the fact that some people get extremely ticked off if I try to do my own job efficiently.

4. The fact that I have to be heavily sedated to sleep puts quite a damper on my life when working graveyard. Most significantly, I have difficulty getting to appointments (including the job coach) and stores while they're open. (In the latter case, essentials such as food and drugs are usually available 24-7, but I do like to go to stores that are actually interesting, such as hobby shops and bookstores, once in a while.) Of course, most jobs are available during the day; this current one just happens to be a morning paper about events the day before.

Just to break up the large block of text, I'll talk about my current prospects (such as they are) in a separate post.

*As you can see from the Cool Hand Luke (which I've never seen) quote in my notes, I was planning on typing an entire post about how it doesn't seem to be worth it to let anyone know about any opinion I may have unless that anyone happens to be a close friend. To sum up, it's been my experience that doing so just ticks him off, causes him to be if anything more opposed to my view (either out of spite, perverseness, or the fact that he respects me so little that he feels my opinions are automatically ineligible), and adds to the ongoing friction between us. When combined with the fact that I find arguing very hurtful, this comes to my admittedly dysfunctional policy. Hopefully if I manage to find coworkers who have less negative attitudes than the people around here, the people on the LG Yahoo! Group, the people on daily_yuri, etc., I will be able to work better. Otherwise, I just have to keep thinking about what to do about it myself.

I was lucky enough to receive something Japanese from Ms. mizuno_youko, but somehow it turned out to be a crude scanslation.

This was undoubtedly brought on by this and the rare gem here. I've been thinking about stopping sharing bootlegs of published material (although I can't resist using such sources myself), but I'm less worried about such limited edition things, a system that I never liked. Comic Yuri-Hime and its predecessor have had free giveaways since the beginning, but I never bothered reading through the rules because I assumed I was ineligible for being overseas; just as I hear things to suggest differently, I've gotten a mailing address in Japan. Oh well. At least this quarter I'm getting my issues reasonably promptly, so I may check those out.

So, to work through my backlogs, here are more thoughts about some visual novels I've played:

Note: From what I've seen, Japanese use the English "heroine" to refer to the chief protagonist ("shujinkō")'s female love interest even if the protagonist is also a lady. (This is especially prominent in ones where you choose a scenario based on one in particular.) Since you won't know which character is which unless you know the games, I'm using this system for brevity and clarity.

Kurenai-Doki no Uta, Chapter 1 (Atelier of Chiharu): I've posted about Chapter 0 here and here. Sadly, I never got through this chapter. Although it is some interesting stuff, including commentary on societies both mortal and keyō and how life is after giving up one's humanity, the fact that I no longer have the patience to wade through large chunks of text was my undoing. The fact that the protagonist and heroine don't look like they're going to be getting back together anytime soon (which is just as well, since I've learned not to post on daily_yuri) doesn't help. According to the circle's page, it's currently on hiatus but planned to go up to Chapter 9, and considering that 0 and 1 each take umpteen hours (perhaps a single-digit number for fluent readers), there's a long way yet before a conclusion. I also didn't reach any suggestion of why this one was rated "18 and up," but with the story focusing on two guest characters (one male), I didn't have particularly high hopes about that, either. Chapter 0 already showed the internal organs of a human who'd been cut in half despite being "all ages," so I can only imagine what sorts of things would require such ratings (as usual for Japanese stuff).

Natsu no Hi no Resonance (Saitō Kagura): I was alerted to this one here. Fortunately, it's not nearly as long and meandering, so I was able to sit through it. The central theme is a weird techno-fantasy anomaly that's never really explained, but, like in a recent review, that's not the point. It's not a happy end, of course, and as with Yami-Bō （う～、思い出したくないな）, people on daily_yuri are complaining about something that I didn't see, which means either that the translator assumed something I didn't, or that I just missed it. I was more bothered by troubles with the game engine, such as the facts that you can't turn down the ridiculously loud sound effects and that you can't use "skip" because there aren't any choices to stop (so you have to make sure to save). It would also have been nice if there were a few CG events (full-screen set pieces), but that's not a big deal. This is also one of the rare occurrences of a lady who uses the first-person pronoun "boku" just because she's cute and energetic, not because she's boyish as is much more common.

Aoi Shiro Taiken-ban (SUCCESS): I mentioned this one back here. Although the game is for PS2, they were kind enough to provide a downloadable playable demo (downloadable here) for PC. Of course, before that, they released the OP (also downloadable from the same page), which is a good preview. Apparently, there will still be some blood-sucking, but from this sample, it appears to be only a 1:2 ratio to kissing, so that ought to be good enough for me. There's also an obvious water theme, but that's not enough to put me off.

Anyway, this is a commercial product with full voice, so it's a lot easier reading than the other two. One related interesting element is that you can choose a voice to tell you about the options in the main menu (although only the protagonist's is available in the demo). The game itself is the usual combination of (1) generic backgrounds with character images showing their current emotions/etc. and (2) CG events with at most slight changes when people move, but both are much more dynamic, with sprites moving around at different distances and the camera zooming and panning to whichever part of a set-piece is currently being described.

In terms of actual characters, I get the sense that the protagonist's voice seems more mature than you generally hear for a second-year high-school student (equivalent of an American junior). It's not like she sounds like an old lady or anything, just more serene, or something. I guess that's to show that she's an assiduous sort of person. It's also interesting to see how one of the main heroines reacts from the standpoint where I know about her feelings (from here*), but the protagonist apparently doesn't. Meanwhile, someone from the second page of characters steals a lot of scenes because of her extremely extroverted nature, but I think most (if not all) of the first page has a destiny advantage over her in terms of long-term plot.

*We only get the description of their meeting second-hand, so I'm not sure how the protagonist saved her from a boring speech with hime-sama dakko. . . . I also find it amusing that the other heroine refers to the object of her affection as her "daughter," as in Ōran Kōkō Host Club.

Despite the fact that the story centers on a girls' school kendō club and the swordswomen they encounter on their getaway, there haven't been any with badass speech patterns so far, but I imagine I won't be disappointed by the heartless swordswoman and the oni queen (a spoiler, yes, but c'mon, they tell the story about the eye in the first scene, so anyone who even starts it can guess just as well as I did). Speaking of the latter, I think I heard that the name "Kohaku" is traditionally paired with "Hisui" like in Tsuki-Hime, but it apparently isn't this time unless that's the name of one of the others in a previous life. Meanwhile, all of the students are from the first two school years, despite the fact that this doesn't appear to have the necessity of keeping them for a series as in HAYA-BLA. There's also a male character who's rather sparkly (and I'm not talkin' 'bout the top of his head), but I doubt he'll be much of a problem, as he seems to be a nice guy and doesn't appear in the video.

All in all, I'm quite expectant about the last one, even if it will set me back quite a chunk of change. . . .

Between my falling out with daily_yuri and my irregular schedule, I haven't had it in me to watch my videos lately. Consequently, the files on Mother's computer are piling up again. (As I've mentioned before, I prefer not to burn files until I've watched them, to make sure they work properly and so I don't have to look up the official titles and episode subtitles.) My only solution has been to move things to the computer in the bedroom, but there are two problems with that. First, I only have a 1-GB portable container, so it's a pain in the ass. (This part might be solved if blitzcon ever actually gives me that broken laptop, because I might be able to hook it up to the others using that ethernet cable I bought a while back on the false assumption that my laptop had a port.) Second, even there, I only have an 80-GB hard drive, so that'll fill up eventually, too.

Of course, one might wonder why I'm even bothering to download this stuff if I'm not watching it. The main reason is that I'm restricted to torrents, meaning that I have to get the files while they're fresh, because it's unlikely that I'll ever have another chance once people throw away the files and seed the fansubs* instead. (I'm still bitter about the fact that I can't take advantage of Share because no one will tell me how to use an Internet connection.) Ms. mizuno_youko tells me that IRC isn't as bad as I thought, but if I'm too depressed to watch the videos, it stands to reason that I'm not going to wade through trying to figure out how that works.

*It's rather sad that "Anime" has become so mainstream that even bootleggers cater to people who can't figure out how to use a separate ji-maku file.

After a little research, it turns out that ICE's heroine's surname is "Lanzknecht," a historical amalgam of "Lanze" and "Landsknecht." (Those Germans are lucky to have such simple capitalization rules, which is almost as good as not having a stupid case-sensitive alphabet in the first place.) Meanwhile, I'm still miffed at the fact that "ANSWER" hasn't shown up at my usual sources, despite its release three weeks ago. I thought it was possible that I was missing it because there was a typo in the torrent name so it didn't show up from my search, but it seems unlikely that all of the various fansub versions would make the same mistake. Theoretically, I can now buy it, but Japanese DVDs are still ass-expensive. Even with the 16% discount, that's ¥124 a minute.

Ms. mizuno_youko was kind enough to point out some good stuff to me here (no direct link, because then you'd be linked to the entire series), but I don't seem to be able to play the .rmvbs. My research tells me that Media Player Classic should work, but I apparently don't have the right codecs. Can someone help me decipher this?

C:\Documents and Settings\*BLEEP*\Desktop\Inbox\[官方：YYcaF.net][2007日剧][恋爱诊断.07][日语中字][YYcaF制作]\[YYcaF][Ren ai Shindan][Jp_Cn][0::Output 00 (Audio Stream)

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bFixedSizeSamples: 1
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cbSize: 0 (extra bytes)

pbFormat:
0000: 04 20 02 00 44 ac 00 00 00 00 00 00 a2 03 10 00 . ..D¬......¢...
0010: 00 00|2e 72 61 fd 00 05 00 00 2e 72 61 35 00 00 ...raý.....ra5..
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0050: 67 65 6e 72 63 6f 6f 6b 01 07 00 00 00 00 00 10 genrcook........
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As noted before, I've planned to use avatars to indicate the topics of my posts. However, since I haven't found/drawn many yet, I'm using the default one for most categories. I was going to mitigate this by at least typing the categories on the picture, but Paint requires a block background behind text. I really should download a copy of The GIMP at some point. . . .

Well, I'm not allowed to leave the computer on unless I'm using it (to make sure I counter-hack anyone who tries to break in), so here's another post for today while I wait for my files to download:

The term "love triangle" seems a bit of a misnomer to me, because in normal ("straight") relationships, there are only two faces that are actually "love," because there's an odd number. Fortunately, I've had the opportunity to peruse quite a variety of less stale materials—but sadly, neither of the examples I've manage to catch is anything that I can call "recommended reading."

The well known Ramma ¹/₂ covers this without being too iconoclastic (even the one apparent yuri coupling late in the series turns out to include a man who was raised as a girl) by having one of the characters change into a female form. The arrow pointing to him comes from someone who doesn't know he's a man. This is something of an isosceles or bilaterally symmetric triangle, as there are two arrows coming from the fellow at the bottom, and the other two both point to one another.

HEN does things a little better, actually having two real female characters. In this case, the triangle is an infinite loop appearing similar to an American recycling symbol (or perhaps three dogs chasing each other's tails . . . ?). Unfortunately, the illustration style and content are less than appealing.

I really ought to be able to think of something better than these. Can anyone else point out something I've missed? Perhaps I'll have to make my own. . . .

As you can see from my last preview, I'm getting pretty swamped by all the kansō I wanted to type, so I'm not getting any done. As a mitigating measure, I think I'll cut them down into very small chunks [one here] so I'm more motivated to get some of them done.

So, despite the fact that I've been too lazy to watch any other videos lately, I eventually caught on to ICE from my usual source. The problem with Japanese videos is the fact that, since no one managed/was willing to help me set up my Internet connection, I have to use Western sources. Since I don't have any way of knowing what'll be good until (Ms.?) Amagasa reviews them, I'm generally too late to get anything without supporting the translators. However, this one is an OVA, which means slow release schedules, so I got the review in time to get Vol. 2 and was desperate enough to get a soft-subbed .mkv of Vol. 1.

And it was rather nice—although some parts were unintentionally silly. The heroine is quite a badass, despite the fact that the actress has a lot of young boy roles on her résumé (remember LOVELESS?). Sadly, she's one of the deviants in the world who don't show their friendship through sex. Also, I was easily able to spot the fact that the dictatrix is played by our old friend Ishida, master of annoying villains for the last decade. It's pretty common to have actresses play young or effeminate male roles (which is one of the things that bothered arifyn about RuroKen), but I don't remember ever seeing a man playing a human lady before. If it turns out that she is indeed the last man on Earth, they certainly gave it away (the opposite of how they did it in BLEACH).

Between the DVD (for which I hear you still haven't collected your recompensation, arifyn), the amazon order, and other things I've encountered, I have an oodle (not a word you see often in the singular) of kansō to type. So, let's start with BLEACH. With 10 books (10–17 and 19–20), I have plenty of comments, and since my two best readers are familiar with the series, it's on a comparatively high priority. So, here goes:

( Minor spoilers up to the end of Soul Society Kyūshutsu-hen )

Edit (2008/06/20): Fixed a couple of typos, noted a broken link (not related to the ones in the comments)

Well, here's a brief digest on the developments since my last kansō post:

※When looking up tags, I found comments that suggest that Ichigo mashimaro and Joshikōsei get better later. I might reconsider those, but . . .

※Ms. mizuno_youko was kind enough to introduce me to a yuri blog. I can see why this is her main source—Just from a couple of hours' perusal, I've added another 12 series/one-shots to my Wish List. One is something I had ruled out earlier—There's plenty of kissing and snuggling, but the characters go about it in such a matter-of-fact way that it just doesn't seem right. But based on this review, I decided to give it another try. Another is one I got on recommendations before, but I ruled it out because I apparently misconstrued the sex of one of the main characters.[*] I'd never even heard of the other 10. Now that she mentions it, I really should have found out about this before, as it's on Lililicious's links page. I'll have to take a look at those other ones, too.

※This post introduced me to this kick-ass site. There are only two problems I see. First, they only have mainstream stuff. Oh well, I'm still happy to have a reunion with a couple of old friends, and not to have to buy the continuation of one on which I won't comment for at least another two posts. More importantly, they use direct downloads, which means it's dreadfully slow even if I'm not using the bandwidth for anything else. One volume takes significantly longer than the three hours I'm supposed to be on the computer each day. This site alone may be enough to warrant downloading a download accelerator/resumer. Does anyone recommend one in particular?

[*Edit [2007.11.20]: No, actually, it turns out that I misconstrued the fact that he was a main character.